n'avaient pas conscience des modifications successives que le
temps apporte avec lui dans les choses humaines" (Revue Historique, i.
p. 8).]

2.

But there are certain features in the medieval theory of which we must
not ignore the significance. In the first place, while it maintained
the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely
abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was
recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again
or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that
Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time
attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human
events, a synthesis which represents the past as leading up to a
definite and desirable goal in the future. Once this belief had been
generally adopted and prevailed for centuries men might discard it along
with the doctrine of Providence on which it rested, but they could not
be content to return again to such views as satisfied the ancients,
for whom human history, apprehended as a whole, was a tale of little
meaning. [Footnote: It may be observed that Augustine (De Civ. Dei, x.
14) compares the teaching (recta eruditio) of the people of God, in
the gradual process of history, to the education of an individual.
Prudentius has a similar comparison for a different purpose (c.
Symmachum, ii. 315 sqq.):

Tardis semper processibus aucta Crescit vita hominis et longo proficit
usu. Sic aevi mortalis habet se mobilis ordo, Sic variat natura vices,
infantia repit, etc.

Floras (Epitome, ad init.) had already divided Roman history into four
periods corresponding to infancy, adolescence, manhood, and old age.]

They must seek for some new synthesis to replace it.

Another feature of the medieval theory, pertinent to our inquiry, was an
idea which Christianity took over from Greek and Roman thinkers. In
the later period of Greek history, which began with the conquests of
Alexander the Great, there had emerged the conception of the whole
inhabited world as a unity and totality, the idea of the whole human
race as one. We may conveniently call it the ecumenical idea--the
principle of the ecumene or inhabited world, as opposed to the principle
of the polis or city. Promoted by the vast extension of the geographical
limits of the Greek world resulting from Alexander's conquests, and by
his policy of breaking down the barriers between Greek and