Chapter 3 No.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, like Tassoni, surveys all the arts and sciences, and concludes that the moderns are equal to the ancients in poetry, and in almost all other things excel them. [Footnote: Among modern poets equal to the ancients, Hakewill signalises Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marot, Ronsard, Ariosto, Tasso (Book iii. chap. 8, Section 3).]

One of the arguments which he urges against the theory of degeneration is pragmatic-its paralysing effect on human energy. "The opinion of the world's universal decay quails the hopes and blunts the edge of men's endeavours." And the effort to improve the world, he implies, is a duty we owe to posterity.

"Let not then the vain shadows of the world's fatal decay keep us either from looking backward to the imitation of our noble predecessors or forward in providing for posterity, but as our predecessors worthily provided, for us, so let our posterity bless us in providing for them, it being still as uncertain to us what generations are still to ensue, as it was to our predecessors in their ages."

We note the suggestion that history may be conceived as a sequence of improvements in civilisation, but we note also that Hakewill here is faced by the obstacle which Christian theology offered to the logical expansion of the idea. It is uncertain what generations are still to ensue. Roger Bacon stood before the same dead wall. Hakewill thinks that he is living in the last age of the world; but how long it shall last is a question which cannot be resolved, "it being one of those secrets which the Almighty hath locked up in the cabinet of His own counsel." Yet he consoles himself and his readers with a consideration which suggests that the end is not yet very near. [Footnote: See Book i. chap. 2, Section 4, p. 24.] "It is agreed upon all sides by Divines that at least two signs forerunning the world's end remain unaccomplished-the subversion of Rome and the conversion of the Jews. And when they shall be accomplished God only knows, as yet in man's judgment there being little appearance of the one or the other."

It was well to be assured that nature is not decaying or man degenerating. But was the doctrine that the end of the world does not "depend upon the law of nature," and that the growth of human civilisation may be cut off at any moment by a fiat of the Deity, less calculated to "quail the hopes and blunt the edge of men's endeavours?" Hakewill asserted with confidence that the universe will be suddenly wrecked by fire. Una dies dabit exitio. Was the prospect of an arrest which might come the day after to-morrow likely to induce men to exert themselves to make provision for posterity?

The significance of Hakewill lies in the fact that he made the current theory of degeneration, which stood in the way of all possible theories of progress, the object of a special inquiry. And his book illustrates the close connection between that theory and the dispute over the Ancients and Moderns. It cannot be said that he has added anything valuable to what may be found in Bodin and Bacon on the development of civilisation. The general synthesis of history which he attempts is equivalent to theirs. He describes the history of knowledge and arts, and all things besides, as exhibiting "a kind of circular progress," by which he means that they have a birth, growth, nourishing, failing and fading, and then within a while after a resurrection and reflourishing. [Footnote: Book iii. chap. 6, Section i, p. 259.] In this method of progress the lamp of learning passed from one people to another. It passed from the Orientals (Chaldeans and Egyptians) to the Greeks; when it was nearly extinguished in Greece it began to shine afresh among the Romans; and having been put out by the barbarians for the space of a thousand years it was relit by Petrarch and his contemporaries. In stating this view of "circular progress," Hakewill comes perilously near to the doctrine of Ricorsi or Returns which had been severely denounced by Bacon.

In one point indeed Hakewill goes far beyond Bodin. It was suggested, as we saw, by the French thinker that in some respects the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless deserves to be noted as an assertion of the progress of man in social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the intellectual field. Hakewill, though he overshot the mark and said nothing actually worth remembering, nevertheless anticipated the larger problem of social progress which was to come to the front in the eighteenth century.