"It may truly be affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the world had never through-lights made in it till the age of us and our fathers. For although they [the ancients] had knowledge of the antipodes... yet that mought be by demonstration, and not in fact; and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of half the earth. But to circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor enterprised till these later times: and therefore these times may justly bear in their word... plus ultra in precedence of the ancient non ultra.... And this proficience in navigation and discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further proficience and augmentation of all sciences, because it may seem that they are ordained by God to be coevals, that is, to meet in one age. For so the prophet Daniel, speaking of the latter times foretelleth, Plurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia: as if the openness and through-passage of the world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages; as we see it is already performed in great part: the learning of these later times not much giving place to the former two periods or returns of learning, the one of the Grecians, the other of the Romans." [Footnote: Advancement of Learning, ii. 13, 14.] In all this we have a definite recognition of the fact that knowledge progresses. Bacon did not come into close quarters with the history of civilisation, but he has thrown out some observations which amount to a rough synthesis. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 1, 6; Nov. Org. i. 78, 79, 85.] Like Bodin, he divided, history into three periods--(1) the antiquities of the world; (2) the middle part of time which comprised two sections, the Greek and the Roman; (3) "modern history," which included what we now call the Middle Ages. In this sequence three particular epochs stand out as fertile in science and favourable to progress--the Greek, the Roman, and our own--"and scarcely two centuries can with justice be assigned to each." The other periods of time are deserts, so far as philosophy and science are concerned. Rome and Greece are "two exemplar States of the world for arms, learning, moral virtue, policy, and laws." But even in those two great epochs little progress was made in natural philosophy. For in Greece moral and political speculation absorbed men's minds; in Rome, meditation and labour were wasted on moral philosophy, and the greatest intellects were devoted to civil affairs. Afterwards, in the third period, the study of theology was the chief occupation of the Western European nations. It was actually in the earliest period that the most useful discoveries for the comfort of human life were made, "so that, to say the truth, when contemplation and doctrinal science began, the discovery of useful works ceased."