The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

VIII

IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT

255

human race in knowledge, in mastery of nature,
and in the structure of society. I think we may
safely say that the general conditions of their own
life and thought seemed to the Greeks final, capable
only of modification and improvement in details;
they never dreamed that more complex forms of civilisation, and entirely different from theirs, might be
reached by a gradual development in the course of
time. They dreamed of a golden age, but they
generally placed it behind them. They sought it
in simpler, not in more complex, conditions. And
their eagerness to improve the lot of man did not
take the form of a conscientious or passionate sense
of obligation to posterity. The idea of duty
towards posterity which often appears in Greek
patriotic orations has mainly a rhetorical value, and
does not imply any serious concern about future
generations. Afterwards, the fancy of the Christians that the life of the human race on earth
would be very brief, and that men would then pass
into monotonous states in which there would be no
history, excluded any thoughts of future terrestrial
progress; and the psychological effects of this
error, promulgated by the Church, are a distinct
factor in human development. It is only since this
fiction has been exploded that the vista of progress
in an indefinitely long future has become part of
our mental outlook, and has introduced, as all ideas
of such a range must introduce, a new ethical
principle, namely, duty towards the future heirs of
the ages. Progress was a feature in the philosophy