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A scepticism become extinct.  Bold and daring undertakings are rarer in the modern age than they were in ancient times or in the Middle Ages  probably because the modern age no longer believes in omens, oracles, soothsayers or the stars. That is to say: we have become incapable of believing in a future determined for us, as did the ancients: who  in this quite different from us  were far less sceptical in regard to what was coming than they were in regard to what is.