6 4 6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



been already debased. From political servitude they and other 

 races had often suffered before and since and had yet thriven 

 well. The malaria must have been more serious for certain 

 tracts in Greece, but not for all — such as the Attic Plain and 

 the Theban Rock ; and even the Greeks partly knew how 

 to deal with it, while other civilisations have fallen without 

 it or similar causes. 1 No — I think that the decline of Greece, 

 as of most other countries, was chiefly due to the fact that 

 long-continued prosperity, wealth, and overcrowding teach 

 men that more is to be won for themselves by cunning, dis- 

 honesty, and even crime than by conscientious work. The 

 lying politician, the servile general, the cheating trader, the 

 perfunctory workman then become predominant ; the councils 

 of the nation lose both honesty and wisdom ; art becomes facile 

 and impressionist ; and science and philosophy cease because 

 the study of them rewards no one. In short the religion of 

 the god-man, which consists in the worship of man, is replaced 

 by the religion of the ape-man, which consists in the worship 

 of self. The people clamour only for their rights, and their 

 duties are forgotten. 



St experimentum requiris, circumspice. If we do this we 

 shall find ourselves to-day in a great and dismal jungle with 

 innumerable creatures peering down at us, and all repeating at 

 once the single word Rights, Rights, Rights. There are the 

 legions of large pot-bellied gorilla-men demanding their right 

 of having a place in the sun, and killing everything that comes 

 their way in the hope, apparently, of getting more sunlight by 

 doing so. Then there are vast herds of chacma-men, walking 

 about slowly with bags of tools in their hands, but refusing to 

 use them, even to save the lives of their comrades, unless they 

 are first propitiated with an abundance of roots. Further to 

 the east, there are hordes of mandrill-men, hideously and 

 obscenely coloured, flying from the gorilla-men but slaying 

 every one else they meet in order to obtain they know not what. 

 Here and there, up in the boughs, there are long-bearded 

 langur-men, calmly teaching philosophies which they know to 

 be lies to such few anthropoids as wait to listen to them ; and 



1 My theory of the probable entry of malaria into Greece about the time of the 

 Persian wars and its effect on the people has received much confirmation from the 

 historical labours of W. H. S. Jones (Macmillan * Bowes, 1907), but I think that 

 it was only one of the causes of the decadence. 



