When I set this limit to my pessimistic outlook and admit that such a Renaissance is possible, I mean no more than that it is just possible. I cannot agree with those who say it is certain, either because it happened once before, or because ‘civilization is due to the human race’. Civilization as I understand it here--moral supremacy conferred on the cult of the spiritual and on the feeling of the universal--appears to me as a lucky accident in man’s development. It blossomed three thousand years ago under a set of circumstances whose contingent character was perfectly perceived by the historian who called it ‘the Greek miracle’. It does not appear to me in the least to be a thing due to the human race by virtue of the data of its nature. It seems to me so little such a thing that I observe large portions of the species (the Asiatic world in antiquity, the Germanic world in modern times) who showed themselves incapable of it and quite likely to remain so. And this means that if humanity loses this jewel, there is not much chance of finding it again. On the contrary there is every chance that humanity will not find it again, just as a man who should find a precious stone in the sea and then drop it back in the water would have little chance of ever seeing it again. Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost. The other position which maintains that civilization, despite partial eclipses, is something which humanity cannot lose, seems to me quite worthless except as an act of faith--though it is valuable as a means of preserving the good we wish to keep. I should not think it a serious objection to what I have said if someone should point out that civilization, lost once with the fall of the ancient world, nevertheless had its Renaissance. Everyone knows that the Graeco-Roman form of mind was far from being wholly extinguished during the Middle Ages and that the sixteenth century only brought to life what was not dead; to which I add that even if that form of mind had been ‘reborn’ _ex nihilo_, the fact that this is the only instance would make it insufficient to reassure me, although the fact that it had occurred would disturb me.