" In our knowledge of astronomy and
cosmography we surpass the ancients." We can affirm that the whole
world is now known, and all the races of men; they can interchange
all their commodities and mutually supply their needs, as
inhabitants of the same city or world-state." And hence there has
been a notable increase of wealth.
Vice and suffering, indeed, are as grave as ever, and we are
afflicted by the trouble of heresies; but this does not prove a
general deterioration of morals. If that inveterate complaint, the
refrain chanted by old men in every age, were true, the world would
already have reached the extreme limit of wickedness, and integrity
would have disappeared utterly. Seneca long ago made the right
criticism. Hoc maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc
posteri nostri querentur, eversos esse mores .... At ista stant loco
eodem. Perhaps Le Roy was thinking particularly of that curious book
the Apology for Herodotus, in which the eminent Greek scholar, Henri
Estienne, exposed with Calvinistic prejudice the iniquities of
modern times and the corruption of the Roman Church.
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