of unknown
antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them
grow, and could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man
which preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian
monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but
literally, were ten thousand years old (Laws), and they contrasted the
antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.

The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the later
history: they are at a distance, and the intermediate region is
concealed from view; there is no road or path which leads from one to
the other. At the beginning of Greek history, in the vestibule of the
temple, is seen standing first of all the figure of the legislator,
himself the interpreter and servant of the God. The fundamental laws
which he gives are not supposed to change with time and circumstances.
The salvation of the state is held rather to depend on the inviolable
maintenance of them. They were sanctioned by the authority of heaven,
and it was deemed impiety to alter them. The desire to maintain
them unaltered seems to be the origin of what at first sight is very
surprising to us--the intolerant zeal of Plato against innovators in
religion or politics (Laws); although with a happy inconsistency he
is also willing that the laws of other countries should be studied and
improvements in legislation privately communicated to the Nocturnal
Council (Laws). The additions which were made to them in later ages in
order to meet the increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed
by a fiction to the original legislator; and the words of such
enactments at Athens were disputed over as if they had been the words of
Solon himself. Plato hopes to preserve in a later generation the mind of
the legislator; he would have his citizens remain within the lines
which he has laid down for them. He would not harass them with minute
regulations, he would have allowed some changes in the laws: but not
changes which would affect the fundamental institutions of the state,
such for example as would convert an aristocracy into a timocracy, or a
timocracy into a popular form of government.

Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress has been
the exception rather than the law of human history. And therefore we are
not surprised to find that the idea of progress is of modern rather than
of ancient date; and, like the idea of a philosophy of history,