And to speak truly, Antiquitas saeculi
juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world
is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine
retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.
(2) Another error induced by the former is a distrust that anything
should be now to be found out, which the world should have missed
and passed over so long time: as if the same objection were to be
made to time that Lucian maketh to Jupiter and other the heathen
gods; of which he wondereth that they begot so many children in old
time, and begot none in his time; and asketh whether they were
become septuagenary, or whether the law Papia, made against old
men's marriages, had restrained them. So it seemeth men doubt lest
time is become past children and generation; wherein contrariwise we
see commonly the levity and unconstancy of men's judgments, which,
till a matter be done, wonder that it can be done; and as soon as it
is done, wonder again that it was no sooner done: as we see in the
expedition of Alexander into Asia, which at first was prejudged as a
vast and impossible enterprise; and yet afterwards it pleaseth Livy
to make no more of it than this, Nil aliud quam bene ausus vana
contemnere.
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