[32]
But apart from these considerations, if we waive all this and carry our inquiry back to the beginning, we shall find that those who first appeared upon the earth did not at the outset find the kind of life which we enjoy to-day, but that they procured it little by little through their own joint efforts.1 Whom, then, must we think the most likely either to have received this better life as a gift from the gods or to have hit upon it through their own search?
1 for this view of the gradual progress of civilization see Xenophanes, Fr. 18 Diels; Aesch. PB 447 ff.; Eur. Supp. 201 ff.; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. pp. 60, 236, 542, 771, 813, 931; and Lucretius's elaborate picture, v. 780 ff.
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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