Bertrand Russell came to the identical conclusion from a diametrically opposed starting point. Creative civilisations like ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, he said, found that ‘the liberation from fetters made individuals energetic and creative, producing a rare florescence of genius’, but ‘the decay of morals’ made them ‘collectively impotent’, and they fell to ‘nations less civilised than themselves but not so destitute of social cohesion’.3
