ing view that man had degenerated in
the course of the last fifteen hundred years. From the exaltation of
Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of unattainable superiority,
especially in the field of knowledge, the degeneration of humanity was
an easy and natural inference. If the Greeks in philosophy and
science were authoritative guides, if in art and literature they were
unapproachable, if the Roman republic, as Machiavelli thought, was an
ideal state, it would seem that the powers of Nature had declined, and
she could no longer produce the same quality of brain. So long as this
paralysing theory prevailed, it is manifest that the idea of Progress
could not appear.

But in the course of the sixteenth century men began here and there,
somewhat timidly and tentatively, to rebel against the tyranny of
antiquity, or rather to prepare the way for the open rebellion which was
to break out in the seventeenth. Breaches were made in the proud citadel
of ancient learning. Copernicus undermined the authority of Ptolemy
and his predecessors; the anatomical researches of Vesalius injured the
prestige of Galen; and Aristotle was attacked on many sides by men like
Telesio, Cardan, Ramus, and Bruno. [Footnote: It has been observed that
the thinkers who were rebelling against the authority of Aristotle--the
most dangerous of the ancient philosophers, because he was so closely
associated with theological scholasticism and was supported by the
Church--frequently attacked under the standard of some other ancient
master; e.g. Telesio resorted to Parmenides, Justus Lipsius to
the Stoics, and Bruno is under the influence of Plotinus and Plato
(Bouillier, La Philosophie cartesienne, vol. i. p. 5). The idea of
"development" in Bruno has been studied by Mariupolsky (Zur Geschichte
des Entwicklungsbegriffs in Berner Studien, Bd. vi. 1897), who pointed
out the influence of Stoicism on his thought.] In particular branches of
science an innovation was beginning which heralded a radical revolution
in the study of natural phenomena, though the general significance of
the prospect which these researches opened was but vaguely understood at
the time. The thinkers and men of science were living in an intellectual
twilight. It was the twilight of dawn. At one extremity we have
mysticism which culminated in the speculations of Bruno and Campanella;
at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez.
The bewildered condition of know