Lucretius’ whole sketch of social evolution (V, 1011, ff.), though replete with regret at the errors committed, reveals a strong conviction that on the whole the trend had been toward betterment, and this view is clearly stated at the end (Munro’s translation): Ships and tillage, walls, laws, roads, arms, dress and all such like things, all the prizes, all the elegancies too of life without exception, poems, pictures, and the chiselling of fine-wrought statues, all these things _practice_, together with the acquired knowledge of the untiring mind, taught men by slow degrees as they advanced on the way step by step. Thus time by degrees brings each several thing forth before men’s eyes, and reason raises it up into the borders of light; for things must be brought to light one after the other and in due order in the different arts, until these have reached their highest point of development. It is sometimes said that Lucretius did not make the final fruitful deduction that progress might continue in the future—which is the dominant note in modern evolutionary literature. It is true that the poet, whose task was to describe rather than to prophesy, does not emphasize the note of optimism, but when he says explicitly that some of the arts “are even now in the process of growth” he has committed himself to the full theory. And if one is convinced that the creative process has on the whole been one of progress, the rest follows, and the theory of the Social Contract to which Lucretius so fully commits himself rests in a deep faith that the best men have aided and will continue to aid progress by their efforts. Vergil, a close reader of Lucretius, was able in the fourth _Eclogue_ to shift the golden age into the future, and in the _Georgics_ he reveals the conviction that men have themselves, aware of their needs, improved the arts and crafts. Here we see immediately the consequences of the new evolutionary idea. Cicero also exhibits a practical optimism that is ready to undertake the labor of bettering conditions. While he never explicitly discusses the question he traces in his _Brutus_ the evolution of Roman oratory showing its successive improvement, and in the _De Republica_ and the _De Legibus_, where he accepts the evolutionary theory of social progress, he asserts again and again that it is the duty of statesmen to contribute their efforts to aid this advance. Finally, Seneca has also caught the full import of the gospel of progress. As a Stoic he should have consistently held to the discouraging theory of cycles. That he did not is doubtless due to his great fondness for Epicurean science.[10]