When it reached a high level of population, and this vast community demanded the solution of certain material problems which technique only could furnish, the ancient world started on a process of involution, retrogression, and decay. But to-day it is man who is the failure, because he is unable to keep pace with the progress of his own civilisation. It is painful to hear relatively cultured people speak concerning the most elementary problems of the day. They seem like rough farmhands trying with thick, clumsy fingers to pick up a needle lying on a table. Political and social subjects, for example, are handled with the same rude instruments of thought which served two hundred years since to tackle situations in effect two hundred times less complex.
Advanced civilisation is one and the same thing as arduous problems.
Hence, the greater the progress, the greater danger it is in. Life gets gradually better, but evidently also gradually more complicated. Of course, as problems become more complex, the means of solving them also become more perfect. But each new generation must master these perfected means. Historical knowledge is a technique of the first order to preserve and continue a civilisation already advanced.