hink that probably there are not
many things for which we need envy future generations."

Indifference to the future, or even a certain scepticism about it, is
the note of this passage, and accords with the view that the world
has reached its old age. The idea of the progress of knowledge, which
Perrault expounds, is still incomplete.

3.

Independently of this development in France, the doctrine of
degeneration had been attacked, and the comparison of the ancients with
the moderns incidentally raised, in England.

A divine named George Hakewill published in 1627 a folio of six hundred
pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's perpetual and
universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power
and Providence of God in the Government of the World, consisting in an
Examination and Censure of the common Errour, etc. (1627, 1630, 1635).]
He and his pedantic book, which breathes the atmosphere of the sixteenth
century, are completely forgotten; and though it ran to three editions,
it can hardly have attracted the attention of many except theologians.
The writer's object is to prove that the power and providence of God
in the government of the world are not consistent with the current view
that the physical universe, the heavens and the elements, are undergoing
a process of decay, and that man is degenerating physically, mentally,
and morally. His arguments in general are futile as well as tedious.
But he has profited by reading Bodin and Bacon, whose ideas, it would
appear, were already agitating theological minds.

A comparison between the ancients and the moderns arises in a general
refutation of the doctrine of decay, as naturally as the question of
the stability of the powers of nature arises in a comparison between the
ancients and moderns. Hakewill protests against excessive admiration of
antiquity, just because it encourages the opinion of the world's
decay. He gives his argument a much wider scope than the French
controversialists. For him the field of debate includes not only
science, arts, and literature, but physical qualities and morals. He
seeks to show that mentally and physically there has been no decay, and
that the morals of modern Christendom are immensely superior to those
of pagan times. There has been social progress, due to Christianity; and
there has been an advance in arts and knowledge.

Multa dies uariusque labor mutabilis aeui
Rettulit in melius.

Hakewill,