But the lifelong student of history, the
practised feeler of the pulse of times, cannot allow himself to be deceived by
this system of optics based on imaginary periods of plenitude. As I have said,
for such a "plenitude of time" to exist, it is that a long-felt
desire, dragging its anxious, eager way through centuries, is at last one day
satisfied, and in fact these plenary periods are times which are self-satisfied;
occasionally, as in the XIXth Century, more than satisfied with themselves.[2]
[2]In the
moulds for the coinage of Hadrian, we read phrases as these: Itatia Felix,
Saeculum aureum, Tellus stabilita, Temporum felicitas. Besides the great
work on numismatics of Cohen, see the coins reproduced in Rostowzeff, Social
and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 1926, Plate LII, and p. 588, note
6.
But we are now beginning to realise that these centuries, so
self-satisfied, so perfectly rounded-off, are dead within. Genuine vital
integrity does not consist in satisfaction, in attainment, in arrival. As
Cervantes said long since: "The road is always better than the inn."
When a period has satisfied its desires, its ideal, this means that it desires
nothing more; that the wells of desire have been dried up. That is to say, our
famous plenitude is in reality a coming to an end. There are centuries which die
of self-satisfaction through not knowing how to renew their desires, just as the
happy drone dies after the nuptial flight.[3]
[3]The
wonderful pages of Hegel on periods of self-satisfaction in his Philosophy
of History should be read.
