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But the regular growth of a state enlightened by experience,

progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the

citizens were educated by the fulfilment of political duties,

appears never to have come within the range of their hopes and

aspirations. Such a state had never been seen, and therefore

could not be conceived by them. Their experience (Aristot.

Metaph.; Plato, Laws) led them to conclude that there had been

cycles of civilization in which the arts had been discovered and

lost many times over, and cities had been overthrown and rebuilt

again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and other natural

convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition told

them of many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a

remnant. The world began again after a deluge and was

reconstructed out of the fragments of itself.