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diff --git a/old/35461-8.txt b/old/35461-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..753f17f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/35461-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15296 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + +Title: A Short History of the World + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: March 2, 2011 [EBook #35461] +[Last updated: November 3, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD *** + + + + +Produced by Donald F. Behan + + + + + + +A Short History of the World +Illustrated + +BY + +H. G. Wells + + + +J. J. Little & Ives Company + +New York + +1922 + +Copyright, 1922, by H. G. Wells + + + +{v} + +PREFACE + +This SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD is meant to be read +straightforwardly almost as a novel is read. It gives in the most +general way an account of our present knowledge of history, shorn +of elaborations and complications. It has been amply illustrated +and everything has been done to make it vivid and clear. From it +the reader should be able to get that general view of history +which is so necessary a framework for the study of it particular +period or the history of a particular country. It may be found +useful as a preparatory excursion before the reading of the +author's much fuller and more explicit _Outline of History_ is +undertaken. But its especial end is to meet the needs of the busy +general reader, too driven to study the maps and time charts of +that _Outline_ in detail, who wishes to refresh and repair his +faded or fragmentary conceptions of the great adventure of +mankind. It is not an abstract or condensation of that former +work. Within its aim the _Outline_ admits of no further +condensation. This is a much more generalized History, planned +and written afresh. + +{vii} + + + + CONTENTS + + CHAPTER PAGE + I. THE WORLD IN SPACE 1 + II. THE WORLD IN TIME 5 + III. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 11 + IV. THE AGE OF FISHES 16 + V. THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS 21 + VI. THE AGE OF REPTILES 26 + VII. THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS 31 + VIII. THE AGE OF MAMMALS 37 + IX. MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN 43 + X. THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN 48 + XI. THE FIRST TRUE MEN 53 + XII. PRIMITIVE THOUGHT 60 + XIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION 65 + XIV. PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS 71 + XV. SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING 77 + XVI. PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES 84 + XVII. THE FIRST SEA-GOING PEOPLES 91 + XVIII. EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA 96 + XIX. THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS 104 + XX. THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I 109 + XXI. THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS 115 + XXII. PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA 122 + XXIII. THE GREEKS 127 + XXIV. THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 134 + XXV. THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 139 + XXVI. THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 145 + XXVII. THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA 150 + +{viii} + + XXVIII. THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA 156 + XXIX. KING ASOKA 163 + XXX. CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE 167 + XXXI. ROME COMES INTO HISTORY 174 + XXXII. ROME AND CARTHAGE 180 + XXXIII. THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 185 + XXXIV. BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA 196 + XXXV. THE COMMON MAN'S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE 201 + XXXVI. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 208 + XXXVII. THE TEACHING OF JESUS 214 + XXXVIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY 222 + XXXIX. THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST 227 + XL. THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 233 + XLI. THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES 238 + XLII. THE DYNASTIES OF SUY AND TANG IN CHINA 245 + XLIII. MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 248 + XLIV. THE GREAT DAYS OF THE ARABS 253 + XLV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM 258 + XLVI. THE CRUSADES AND THE AGE OF PAPAL DOMINION 267 + XLVII. RECALCITRANT PRINCES AND THE GREAT SCHISM 277 + XLVIII. THE MONGOL CONQUESTS 287 + XLIX. THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS 294 + L. THE REFORMATION OF THE LATIN CHURCH 304 + LI. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 309 + LII. THE AGE OF POLITICAL EXPERIMENTS; OF GRAND MONARCHY + AND PARLIAMENTS AND REPUBLICANISM IN EUROPE 318 + LIII. THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE EUROPEANS IN ASIA AND OVERSEAS 329 + LIV. THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 335 + +{ix} + + LV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE RESTORATION OF + MONARCHY IN FRANCE 341 + LVI. THE UNEASY PEACE IN EUROPE THAT FOLLOWED + THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 349 + LVII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE 355 + LVIII. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 365 + LIX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS 370 + LX. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 382 + LXI. THE RISE OF GERMANY TO PREDOMINANCE IN EUROPE 390 + LXII. THE NEW OVERSEAS EMPIRES OF THE STEAMSHIP AND RAILWAY 393 + LXIII. EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA, AND THE RISE OF JAPAN 399 + LXIV. THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914 405 + LXV. THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND + THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 409 + LXVI. THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA 415 + LXVII. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD 421 + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 429 + INDEX 439 + + +{xi} + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + Luminous Spiral Clouds of Matter 2 + Nebula seen Edge-on 3 + The Great Spiral Nebula 6 + A Dark Nebula 7 + Another Spiral Nebula 8 + Landscape before Life 9 + Marine Life in the Cambrian Period 12 + Fossil Trilobite 13 + Early Palæozoic Fossils of various Species of Lingula 14 + Fossilized Footprints of a Labyrinthodont, Cheirotherium 15 + Pterichthys Milleri 17 + Fossil of Cladoselache 18 + Sharks and Ganoids of the Devonian Period 19 + A Carboniferous Swamp 22 + Skull of a Labyrinthodont, Capitosaurus 23 + Skeleton of a Labyrinthodont: The Eryops 24 + A Fossil Ichthyosaurus 27 + A Pterodactyl 28 + The Diplodocus 29 + Fossil of Archeopteryx 32 + Hesperornis in its Native Seas 33 + The Ki-wi 34 + Slab of Marl Rich in Cainozoic Fossils 35 + Titanotherium Robustum 38 + Skeleton of Giraffe-camel 40 + Skeleton of Early Horse 40 + Comparative Sizes of Brains of Rhinoceros and Dinoceras 41 + A Mammoth 44 + Flint Implements from Piltdown Region 45 + A Pithecanthropean Man 46 + The Heidelberg Man 46 + The Piltdown Skull 47 + A Neanderthaler 49 + +{xii} + + Europe and Western Asia 50,000 years ago Map 50 + Comparison of Modern Skull and Rhodesian Skull 51 + Altamira Cave Paintings 54 + Later Palæolithic Carvings 55 + Bust of Cro-magnon Man 57 + Later Palæolithic Art 58 + Relics of the Stone Age 62 + Gray's Inn Lane Flint Implement 63 + Somaliland Flint Implement 63 + Neolithic Flint Implement 67 + Australian Spearheads 68 + Neolithic Pottery 69 + Relationship of Human Races Map 72 + A Maya Stele 73 + European Neolithic Warrior 75 + Babylonian Brick 78 + Egyptian Cylinder Seals of First Dynasty 79 + The Sakhara Pyramids 80 + The Pyramid of Cheops: Scene from Summit 81 + The Temple of Hathor 82 + Pottery and Implements of the Lake Dwellers 85 + A Lake Village 86 + Flint Knives of 4500 B.C. 87 + Egyptian Wall Paintings of Nomads 87 + Egyptian Peasants Going to Work 88 + Stele of Naram Sin 89 + The Treasure House at Mycenæ 93 + The Palace at Cnossos 95 + Temple at Abu Simbel 97 + Avenue of Sphinxes at Karnak 98 + The Hypostyle Hall at Karnak 99 + Frieze of Slaves 101 + The Temple of Horus, Edfu 103 + Archaic Amphora 105 + The Mound of Nippur 107 + Median and Chaldean Empires Map 110 + The Empire of Darius Map 111 + A Persian Monarch 112 + The Ruins of Persepolis 113 + The Great Porch of Xerxes 113 + +{xiii} + + The Land of the Hebrews Map 117 + Nebuchadnezzar's Mound at Babylon 118 + The Ishtar Gateway, Babylon 120 + Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II 124 + Captive Princes making Obeisance 125 + Statue of Meleager 128 + Ruins of Temple of Zeus 130 + The Temple of Neptune, Pæstum 132 + Greek Ships on Ancient Pottery 135 + The Temple of Corinth 137 + The Temple of Neptune at Cape Sunium 138 + Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens 140 + The Acropolis, Athens 141 + Theatre at Epidauros, Greece 141 + The Caryatides of the Erechtheum 142 + Athene of the Parthenon 143 + Alexander the Great 146 + Alexander's Victory at Issus 147 + The Apollo Belvedere 148 + Aristotle 152 + Statuette of Maitreya 153 + The Death of Buddha 154 + Tibetan Buddha 158 + A Burmese Buddha 159 + The Dhamêkh Tower, Sarnath 160 + A Chinese Buddhist Apostle 164 + The Court of Asoka 165 + Asoka Panel from Bharhut 165 + The Pillar of Lions (Asokan) 166 + Confucius 169 + The Great Wall of China 171 + Early Chinese Bronze Bell 172 + The Dying Gaul 175 + Ancient Roman Cisterns at Carthage 177 + Hannibal 181 + Roman Empire and its Alliances, 150 B.C. Map 183 + The Forum, Rome 188 + Ruined Coliseum in Tunis 189 + Roman Arch at Ctesiphon 190 + The Column of Trajan, Rome 193 + +{xiv} + + Glazed Jar of Han Dynasty 197 + Vase of Han Dynasty 198 + Chinese Vessel in Bronze 199 + A Gladiator (contemporary representation) 202 + A Street in Pompeii 204 + The Coliseum, Rome 206 + Interior of Coliseum 206 + Mithras Sacrificing a Bull 210 + Isis and Horus 211 + Bust of Emperor Commodus 212 + Early Portrait of Jesus Christ 216 + Road from Nazareth to Tiberias 217 + David's Tower and Wall of Jerusalem 218 + A Street in Jerusalem 219 + The Peter and Paul Mosaic at Rome 223 + Baptism of Christ (Ivory Panel) 225 + Roman Empire and the Barbarians Map 228 + Constantine's Pillar, Constantinople 229 + The Obelisk of Theodosius, Constantinople 231 + Head of Barbarian Chief 235 + The Church of S. Sophia, Constantinople 239 + Roof-work in S. Sophia 240 + Justinian and his Court 241 + The Rock-hewn Temple at Petra 242 + Chinese Earthenware of Tang Dynasty 246 + At Prayer in the Desert 250 + Looking Across the Sea of Sand 251 + Growth of Moslem Power Map 254 + The Moslem Empire Map 254 + The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem 255 + Cairo Mosques 256 + Frankish Dominions of Martel Map 260 + Statue of Charlemagne 262 + Europe at Death of Charlemagne Map 264 + Crusader Tombs, Exeter Cathedral 268 + View of Cairo 269 + The Horses of S. Mark, Venice 271 + Courtyard in the Alhambra 273 + Milan Cathedral (showing spires) 278 + A Typical Crusader 280 + +{xv} + + Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 283-4 + The Empire of Jengis Khan Map 288 + Ottoman Empire before 1453 Map 289 + Tartar Horsemen 291 + Ottoman Empire, 1566 Map 292 + An Early Printing Press 296 + Ancient Bronze from Benin 299 + Negro Bronze-work 300 + Early Sailing Ship (Italian Engraving) 301 + Portrait of Martin Luther 305 + The Church Triumphant (Italian Majolica work, 1543) 307 + Charles V (the Titian Portrait) 311 + S. Peter's, Rome: the High Altar 315 + Cromwell Dissolves the Long Parliament 321 + The Court at Versailles 323 + Sack of a Village, French Revolution 325 + Central Europe after Peace of Westphalia, 1648 Map 326 + European Territory in America, 1750 Map 330 + Europeans Tiger Hunting in India 331 + Fall of Tippoo Sultan 332 + George Washington 337 + The Battle of Bunker Hill 338 + The U.S.A., 1790 339 + The Trial of Louis XVI 344 + Execution of Marie Antoinette 346 + Portrait of Napoleon 352 + Europe after the Congress of Vienna Map 353 + Early Rolling Stock, Liverpool and Manchester Railway 356 + Passenger Train in 1833 356 + The Steamboat Clermont 357 + Eighteenth Century Spinning Wheel 361 + Arkwright's Spinning Jenny 361 + An Early Weaving Machine 363 + An Incident of the Slave Trade 367 + Early Factory, in Colebrookdale 368 + Carl Marx 372 + Electric Conveyor, in Coal Mine 376 + Constructional Detail, Forth Bridge 378 + American River Steamer 385 + Abraham Lincoln 387 + +{xvi} + + Europe, 1848-71 Map 391 + Victoria Falls, Zambesi 395 + The British Empire, 1815 Map 397 + Japanese Soldier, Eighteenth Century 401 + A Street in Tokio 403 + Overseas Empires of Europe, 1914 Map 406 + Gibraltar 407 + Street in Hong Kong 408 + British Tank in Battle 410 + The Ruins of Ypres 411 + Modern War: War Entanglements 412 + A View in Petersburg under Bolshevik Rule 418 + Passenger Aeroplane in Flight 423 + A Peaceful Garden in England 426 + + + + + + +{1} + +I + +THE WORLD IN SPACE + + +The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly +known. A couple of hundred years ago men possessed the history of +little more than the last three thousand years. What happened +before that time was a matter of legend and speculation. Over a +large part of the civilized world it was believed and taught that +the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C., though +authorities differed as to whether this had occurred in the spring +or autumn of that year. This fantastically precise misconception +was based upon a too literal interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, +and upon rather arbitrary theological assumptions connected +therewith. Such ideas have long since been abandoned by religious +teachers, and it is universally recognized that the universe in +which we live has to all appearances existed for an enormous +period of time and possibly for endless time. Of course there may +be deception in these appearances, as a room may be made to seem +endless by putting mirrors facing each other at either end. But +that the universe in which we live has existed only for six or +seven thousand years may be regarded as an altogether exploded +idea. + +The earth, as everybody knows nowadays, is a spheroid, a sphere +slightly compressed, orange fashion, with a diameter of nearly +8,000 miles. Its spherical shape has been known at least to a +limited number of intelligent people for nearly 2,500 years, but +before that time it was supposed to be flat, and various ideas +which now seem fantastic were entertained about its relations to +the sky and the stars and planets. We know now that it rotates +upon its {2} axis (which is about 24 miles shorter than its +equatorial diameter) every twenty-four hours, and that this is the +cause of the alternations of day and night, that it circles about +the sun in a slightly distorted and slowly variable oval path in a +year. Its distance from the sun varies between ninety-one and a +half millions at its nearest and ninety-four and a half million +miles. + +[Illustration: "LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER"] + +About the earth circles a smaller sphere, the moon, at an average +distance of 239,000 miles. Earth and moon are not the only bodies +to travel round the sun. There are also the planets, Mercury and +Venus, at distances of thirty-six and sixty-seven millions of +miles; and beyond the circle of the earth and disregarding a belt +of numerous smaller bodies, the planetoids, there are Mars, +Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune at mean distances of 141, 483, +886, 1,782, and 1,793 millions of miles respectively. These +figures in {3} millions of miles are very difficult for the mind +to grasp. It may help the reader's imagination if we reduce the +sun and planets to a smaller, more conceivable scale. + +[Illustration: THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE ON] + +If, then, we represent our earth as a little ball of one inch +diameter, the sun would be a big globe nine feet across and 323 +yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile, four or five minutes' +walking. The moon would be a small pea two feet and a half from +the world. Between earth and sun there would be the two inner +planets, Mercury and Venus, at distances of one hundred and +twenty-five and two hundred and fifty yards from the sun. All +round and about these bodies there would be emptiness until you +came to Mars, a hundred and seventy-five feet beyond the earth; +Jupiter {4} nearly a mile away, a foot in diameter; Saturn, a +little smaller, two miles off; Uranus four miles off and Neptune +six miles off. Then nothingness and nothingness except for small +particles and drifting scraps of attenuated vapour for thousands +of miles. The nearest star to earth on this scale would be 40,000 +miles away. + +These figures will serve perhaps to give one some conception of +the immense emptiness of space in which the drama of life goes on. + +For in all this enormous vacancy of space we know certainly of +life only upon the surface of our earth. It does not penetrate +much more than three miles down into the 4,000 miles that separate +us from the centre of our globe, and it does not reach more than +five miles above its surface. Apparently all the limitlessness of +space is otherwise empty and dead. + +The deepest ocean dredgings go down to five miles. The highest +recorded flight of an aeroplane is little more than four miles. +Men have reached to seven miles up in balloons, but at a cost of +great suffering. No bird can fly so high as five miles, and small +birds and insects which have been carried up by aeroplanes drop +off insensible far below that level. + + + + +{5} + +II + +THE WORLD IN TIME + + +In the last fifty years there has been much very fine and +interesting speculation on the part of scientific men upon the age +and origin of our earth. Here we cannot pretend to give even a +summary of such speculations because they involve the most subtle +mathematical and physical considerations. The truth is that the +physical and astronomical sciences are still too undeveloped as +yet to make anything of the sort more than an illustrative +guesswork. The general tendency has been to make the estimated +age of our globe longer and longer. It now seems probable that +the earth has had an independent existence as a spinning planet +flying round and round the sun for a longer period than +2,000,000,000 years. It may have been much longer than that. This +is a length of time that absolutely overpowers the imagination. + +Before that vast period of separate existence, the sun and earth +and the other planets that circulate round the sun may have been a +great swirl of diffused matter in space. The telescope reveals to +us in various parts of the heavens luminous spiral clouds of +matter, the spiral nebulæ, which appear to be in rotation about a +centre. It is supposed by many astronomers that the sun and its +planets were once such a spiral, and that their matter has +undergone concentration into its present form. Through majestic +æons that concentration went on until in that vast remoteness of +the past for which we have given figures, the world and its moon +were distinguishable. They were spinning then much faster than +they are spinning now; they were at a lesser distance from the +sun; they travelled round it very much faster, and they were +probably incandescent or molten at the surface. The sun itself +was a much greater blaze in the heavens. + +{6} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA] + +If we could go back through that infinitude of time and see the +earth in this earlier stage of its history, we should behold a +scene more like the interior of a blast furnace or the surface of +a lava flow before it cools and cakes over than any other +contemporary scene. No water would be visible because all the +water there was would still be superheated steam in a stormy +atmosphere of sulphurous and metallic vapours. Beneath this would +swirl and boil an ocean of molten rock substance. Across a sky of +fiery clouds the glare of the hurrying sun and moon would sweep +swiftly like hot breaths of flame. + +==================================================================== + +{7} + +[Illustration: A DARK NEBULA] + +==================================================================== + +Slowly by degrees as one million of years followed another, this +{8} fiery scene would lose its eruptive incandescence. The +vapours in the sky would rain down and become less dense overhead; +great slaggy cakes of solidifying rock would appear upon the +surface of the molten sea, and sink under it, to be replaced by +other floating masses. The sun and moon growing now each more +distant and each smaller, would rush with diminishing swiftness +across the heavens. The moon now, because of its smaller size, +would be already cooled far below incandescence, and would be +alternately obstructing and reflecting the sunlight in a series of +eclipses and full moons. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA] + +And so with a tremendous slowness through the vastness of time, +the earth would grow more and more like the earth on which we +live, until at last an age would come when, in the cooling air, +steam would begin to condense into clouds, and the first rain +would fall hissing upon the first rocks below. For endless +millenia the greater part of the earth's water would still be +vaporized in the atmosphere, but there would now be hot streams +running over the crystallizing {9} rocks below and pools and lakes +into which these streams would be carrying detritus and depositing +sediment. + +[Illustration: LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE] + +At last a condition of things must have been attained in which a +man might have stood up on earth and looked about him and lived. +If we could have visited the earth at that time we should have +stood on great lava-like masses of rock without a trace of soil or +touch of living vegetation, under a storm-rent sky. Hot and +violent winds, exceeding the fiercest tornado that ever blows, and +downpours of rain such as our milder, slower earth to-day knows +nothing of, might have assailed us. The water of the downpour +would have rushed by us, muddy with the spoils of the rocks, +coming together into torrents, cutting deep gorges and canyons as +they hurried past to deposit their sediment in the earliest seas. +Through the clouds we should have glimpsed a great sun moving +visibly across the sky, and in its wake and in the wake of the +moon would have come a diurnal tide of earthquake and upheaval. +And {10} the moon, which nowadays keeps one constant face to +earth, would then have been rotating visibly and showing the side +it now hides so inexorably. + +The earth aged. One million years followed another, and the day +lengthened, the sun grew more distant and milder, the moon's pace +in the sky slackened; the intensity of rain and storm diminished +and the water in the first seas increased and ran together into +the ocean garment our planet henceforth wore. + +But there was no life as yet upon the earth; the seas were +lifeless, and the rocks were barren. + + + + +{11} + +III + +THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE + + +As everybody knows nowadays, the knowledge we possess of life +before the beginnings of human memory and tradition is derived +from the markings and fossils of living things in the stratified +rocks. We find preserved in shale and slate, limestone, and +sandstone, bones, shells, fibres, stems, fruits, footmarks, +scratchings and the like, side by side with the ripple marks of +the earliest tides and the pittings of the earliest rain-falls. It +is by the sedulous examination of this Record of the Rocks that +the past history of the earth's life has been pieced together. +That much nearly everybody knows to-day. The sedimentary rocks do +not lie neatly stratum above stratum; they have been crumpled, +bent, thrust about, distorted and mixed together like the leaves +of a library that has been repeatedly looted and burnt, and it is +only as a result of many devoted lifetimes of work that the record +has been put into order and read. The whole compass of time +represented by the record of the rocks is now estimated as +1,600,000,000 years. + +The earliest rocks in the record are called by geologists the +Azoic rocks, because they show no traces of life. Great areas of +these Azoic rocks lie uncovered in North America, and they are of +such a thickness that geologists consider that they represent a +period of at least half of the 1,600,000,000 which they assign to +the whole geological record. Let me repeat this profoundly +significant fact. Half the great interval of time since land and +sea were first distinguishable on earth has left us no traces of +life. There are ripplings and rain marks still to be found in +these rocks, but no marks nor vestiges of any living thing. + +==================================================================== + +{12} + +[Illustration: MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD] + +==================================================================== + +Then, as we come up the record, signs of past life appear and +increase. The age of the world's history in which we find these +past {13} traces is called by geologists the Lower Palæozoic age. +The first indications that life was astir are vestiges of +comparatively simple and lowly things: the shells of small +shellfish, the stems and flowerlike heads of zoophytes, seaweeds +and the tracks and remains of sea worms and crustacea. Very early +appear certain creatures rather like plant-lice, crawling +creatures which could roll themselves up into balls as the +plant-lice do, the trilobites. Later by a few million years or so +come certain sea scorpions, more mobile and powerful creatures +than the world had ever seen before. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED)] + +None of these creatures were of very great size. Among the +largest were certain of the sea scorpions, which measured nine +feet in length. There are no signs whatever of land life of any +sort, plant or animal; there are no fishes nor any vertebrated +creatures in this part of the record. Essentially all the plants +and creatures which have left us their traces from this period of +the earth's history are shallow-water and intertidal beings. If +we wished to parallel the flora and fauna of the Lower Palæozoic +rocks on the earth to-day, we should do it best, except in the +matter of size, by taking a drop of water from a rock pool or +scummy ditch and examining it under a microscope. The little +crustacea, the small shellfish, the zoophytes and algæ we should +find there would display a quite striking resemblance to these +clumsier, larger prototypes that once were the crown of life upon +our planet. + +[Illustration: EARLY PALÆOLITHIC FOSSILS OF VARIOUS SPECIES OF +LINGULA] + +It is well, however, to bear in mind that the Lower Palæozoic +rocks probably do not give us anything at all representative of +the first beginnings of life on our planet. Unless a creature has +bones {14} or other hard parts, unless it wears a shell or is big +enough and heavy enough to make characteristic footprints and +trails in mud, it is unlikely to leave any fossilized traces of +its existence behind. To-day there are hundreds of thousands of +species of small soft-bodied creatures in our world which it is +inconceivable can ever leave any mark for future geologists to +discover. In the world's past, millions of millions of species of +such creatures may have lived and multiplied and flourished and +passed away without a trace remaining. The waters of the warm and +shallow lakes and seas of the so-called Azoic period may have +teemed with an infinite variety {15} of lowly, jelly-like, +shell-less and boneless creatures, and a multitude of green scummy +plants may have spread over the sunlit intertidal rocks and +beaches. The Record of the Rocks is no more a complete record of +life in the past than the books of a bank are a record of the +existence of everybody in the neighbourhood. It is only when a +species begins to secrete a shell or a spicule or a carapace or a +lime-supported stem, and so put by something for the future, that +it goes upon the Record. But in rocks of an age prior to those +which bear any fossil traces, graphite, a form of uncombined +carbon, is sometimes found, and some authorities consider that it +may have been separated out from combination through the vital +activities of unknown living things. + +[Illustration: FOSSILIZED FOOTPRINTS OF A LABYRINTHODONT +CHEIROTHERIUM] + + + + +{16} + +IV + +THE AGE OF FISHES + + +In the days when the world was supposed to have endured for only a +few thousand years, it was supposed that the different species of +plants and animals were fixed and final; they had all been created +exactly as they are to-day, each species by itself. But as men +began to discover and study the Record of the Rocks this belief +gave place to the suspicion that many species had changed and +developed slowly through the course of ages, and this again +expanded into a belief in what is called Organic Evolution, a +belief that all species of life upon earth, animal and vegetable +alike, are descended by slow continuous processes of change from +some very simple ancestral form of life, some almost structureless +living substance, far back in the so-called Azoic seas. + +This question of Organic Evolution, like the question of the age +of the earth, has in the past been the subject of much bitter +controversy. There was a time when a belief in organic evolution +was for rather obscure reasons supposed to be incompatible with +sound Christian, Jewish and Moslem doctrine. That time has +passed, and the men of the most orthodox Catholic, Protestant, +Jewish and Mohammedan belief are now free to accept this newer and +broader view of a common origin of all living things. No life +seems to have happened suddenly upon earth. Life grew and grows. +Age by age through gulfs of time at which imagination reels, life +has been growing from a mere stirring in the intertidal slime +towards freedom, power and consciousness. + +Life consists of individuals. These individuals are definite +things, they are not like the lumps and masses, nor even the +limitless and motionless crystals, of non-living matter, and they +have two characteristics no dead matter possesses. They can +assimilate other matter into themselves and make it part of +themselves, and {17} they can reproduce themselves. They eat and +they breed. They can give rise to other individuals, for the most +part like themselves, but always also a little different from +themselves. There is a specific and family resemblance between an +individual and its offspring, and there is an individual +difference between every parent and every offspring it produces, +and this is true in every species and at every stage of life. + +[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF THE PTERICHTHYS MILLERI OR SEA SCORPION +SHOWING BODY ARMOUR] + +Now scientific men are not able to explain to us either why +offspring should resemble nor why they should differ from their +parents. But seeing that offspring do at once resemble and +differ, it is a matter rather of common sense than of scientific +knowledge that, if the conditions under which a species live are +changed, the species should undergo some correlated changes. +Because in any generation of the species there must be a number of +individuals whose individual differences make them better adapted +to the new conditions under which the species has to live, and a +number whose individuals whose individual differences make it +rather harder for them to live. And on the whole the former sort +will live longer, bear more offspring, and reproduce themselves +more abundantly than the latter, and so generation by generation +the average of the species will change in the favourable +direction. This process, which is called Natural Selection, is +not so much a scientific theory as a necessary deduction {18} from +the facts of reproduction and individual difference. There may be +many forces at work varying, destroying and preserving species, +about which science may still be unaware or undecided, but the man +who can deny the operation of this process of natural selection +upon life since its beginning must be either ignorant of the +elementary facts of life or incapable of ordinary thought. + +Many scientific men have speculated about the first beginning of +life and their speculations are often of great interest, but there +is absolutely no definite knowledge and no convincing guess yet of +the way in which life began. But nearly all authorities are +agreed that it probably began upon mud or sand in warm sunlit +shallow brackish water, and that it spread up the beaches to the +intertidal lines and out to the open waters. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL OF THE CLADOSELACHE, A DEVONIAN SHARK] + +That early world was a world of strong tides and currents. An +incessant destruction of individuals must have been going on +through their being swept up the beaches and dried, or by their +being swept out to sea and sinking down out of reach of air and +sun. Early conditions favoured the development of every tendency +to root and hold on, every tendency to form an outer skin and +casing to protect the stranded individual from immediate +desiccation. From the very earliest any tendency to sensitiveness +to taste would turn the individual in the direction of food, and +any sensitiveness to light would assist it to struggle back out of +the darkness of the sea deeps and caverns or to wriggle back out +of the excessive glare of the dangerous shallows. + +Probably the first shells and body armour of living things were +protections against drying rather than against active enemies. +But tooth and claw come early into our earthly history. + +We have already noted the size of the earlier water scorpions. +For long ages such creatures were the supreme lords of life. Then +{19} in a division of these Palæozoic rocks called the Silurian +division, which many geologists now suppose to be as old as five +hundred million years, there appears a new type of being, equipped +with eyes and teeth and swimming powers of an altogether more +powerful kind. These were the first known backboned animals, the +earliest fishes, the first known Vertebrata. + +[Illustration: SHARKS AND GANOIDS OF THE DEVONIAN PERIOD] + +These fishes increase greatly in the next division of rocks, the +rocks known as the Devonian system. They are so prevalent that +this period of the Record of the Rocks has been called the Age of +{20} Fishes. Fishes of a pattern now gone from the earth, and +fishes allied to the sharks and sturgeons of to-day, rushed +through the waters, leapt in the air, browsed among the seaweeds, +pursued and preyed upon one another, and gave a new liveliness to +the waters of the world. None of these were excessively big by +our present standards. Few of them were more than two or three +feet long, but there were exceptional forms which were as long as +twenty feet. + +We know nothing from geology of the ancestors of these fishes. +They do not appear to be related to any of the forms that preceded +them. Zoologists have the most interesting views of their +ancestry, but these they derive from the study of the development +of the eggs of their still living relations, and from other +sources. Apparently the ancestors of the vertebrata were +soft-bodied and perhaps quite small swimming creatures who began first +to develop hard parts as teeth round and about their mouths. The +teeth of a skate or dogfish cover the roof and floor of its mouth +and pass at the lip into the flattened toothlike scales that +encase most of its body. As the fishes develop these teeth scales +in the geological record, they swim out of the hidden darkness of +the past into the light, the first vertebrated animals visible in +the record. + + + + +{21} + +V + +THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS + + +The land during this Age of Fishes was apparently quite lifeless. +Crags and uplands of barren rock lay under the sun and rain. +There was no real soil--for as yet there were no earthworms which +help to make a soil, and no plants to break up the rock particles +into mould; there was no trace of moss or lichen. Life was still +only in the sea. + +Over this world of barren rock played great changes of climate. +The causes of these changes of climate were very complex and they +have still to be properly estimated. The changing shape of the +earth's orbit, the gradual shifting of the poles of rotation, +changes in the shapes of the continents, probably even +fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, now conspired to plunge +great areas of the earth's surface into long periods of cold and +ice and now again for millions of years spread a warm or equable +climate over this planet. There seem to have been phases of great +internal activity in the world's history, when in the course of a +few million years accumulated upthrusts would break out in lines +of volcanic eruption and upheaval and rearrange the mountain and +continental outlines of the globe, increasing the depth of the sea +and the height of the mountains and exaggerating the extremes of +climate. And these would be followed by vast ages of comparative +quiescence, when frost, rain and river would wear down the +mountain heights and carry great masses of silt to fill and raise +the sea bottoms and spread the seas, ever shallower and wider, +over more and more of the land. There have been "high and deep" +ages in the world's history and "low and level" ages. The reader +must dismiss from his mind any idea that the surface of the earth +has been growing steadily cooler since its crust grew solid. +After that much cooling had been achieved, the internal +temperature ceased to affect surface {22} conditions. There are +traces of periods of superabundant ice and snow, of "Glacial +Ages," that is, even in the Azoic period. + +It was only towards the close of the Age of Fishes, in a period of +extensive shallow seas and lagoons, that life spread itself out in +any effectual way from the waters on to the land. No doubt the +earlier types of the forms that now begin to appear in great +abundance had already been developing in a rare and obscure manner +for many scores of millions of years. But now came their +opportunity. + +[Illustration: A CARBONIFEROUS SWAMP] + +Plants no doubt preceded animal forms in this invasion of the +land, but the animals probably followed up the plant emigration +{23} very closely. The first problem that the plant had to solve +was the problem of some sustaining stiff support to hold up its +fronds to the sunlight when the buoyant water was withdrawn; the +second was the problem of getting water from the swampy ground +below to the tissues of the plant, now that it was no longer close +at hand. The two problems were solved by the development of woody +tissue which both sustained the plant and acted as water carrier +to the leaves. The Record of the Rocks is suddenly crowded by a +vast variety of woody swamp plants, many of them of great size, +big tree mosses, tree ferns, gigantic horsetails and the like. +And with these, age by age, there crawled out of the water a great +variety of animal forms. There were centipedes and millipedes; +there were the first primitive insects; there were creatures +related to the ancient king crabs and sea scorpions which became +the earliest spiders and land scorpions, and presently there were +vertebrated animals. + +[Illustration: SKULL OF A LABYRINTHODONT, CAPITOSAURUS] + +Some of the earlier insects were very large. There were dragon +flies in this period with wings that spread out to twenty-nine +inches. + +In various ways these new orders and genera had adapted themselves +to breathing air. Hitherto all animals had breathed air dissolved +in water, and that indeed is what all animals still have to do. +But now in divers fashions the animal kingdom was acquiring the +power of supplying its own moisture where it was needed. A man +with a perfectly dry lung would suffocate to-day; {24} his lung +surfaces must be moist in order that air may pass through them +into his blood. The adaptation to air breathing consists in all +cases either in the development of a cover to the old-fashioned +gills to stop evaporation, or in the development of tubes or other +new breathing organs lying deep inside the body and moistened by a +watery secretion. The old gills with which the ancestral fish of +the vertebrated line had breathed were inadaptable to breathing +upon land, and in the case of this division of the animal kingdom +it is the swimming bladder of the fish which becomes a new, +deep-seated breathing organ, the lung. The kind of animals +known as amphibia, the frogs and newts of to-day, begin +their lives in the water and breathe by gills; and subsequently +the lung, developing in the same way as the swimming +bladder of many fishes do, as a baglike outgrowth from the throat, +takes over the business of breathing, the animal comes out on +land, and the gills dwindle and the gill slits disappear. (All +except an outgrowth of one gill slit, which becomes the passage of +the ear and ear-drum.) The animal can now live only in the air, +but it must return at least to the edge of the water to lay its +eggs and reproduce its kind. + +[Illustration: SKELETON OF A LABYRINTHODONT; THE ERYOPS] + +All the air-breathing vertebrata of this age of swamps and plants +belonged to the class amphibia. They were nearly all of them +forms related to the newts of to-day, and some of them attained a +considerable size. They were land animals, it is true, but they +were land animals needing to live in and near moist and swampy +places, and all the great trees of this period were equally {25} +amphibious in their habits. None of them had yet developed fruits +and seeds of a kind that could fall on land and develop with the +help only of such moisture as dew and rain could bring. They all +had to shed their spores in water, it would seem, if they were to +germinate. + +It is one of the most beautiful interests of that beautiful +science, comparative anatomy, to trace the complex and wonderful +adaptations of living things to the necessities of existence in +air. All living things, plants and animals alike, are primarily +water things. For example all the higher vertebrated animals +above the fishes, up to and including man, pass through a stage in +their development in the egg or before birth in which they have +gill slits which are obliterated before the young emerge. The +bare, water-washed eye of the fish is protected in the higher +forms from drying up by eyelids and glands which secrete moisture. +The weaker sound vibrations of air necessitate an ear-drum. In +nearly every organ of the body similar modifications and +adaptations are to be detected, similar patchings-up to meet +aerial conditions. + +This Carboniferous age, this age of the amphibia, was an age of +life in the swamps and lagoons and on the low banks among these +waters. Thus far life had now extended. The hills and high lands +were still quite barren and lifeless. Life had learnt to breathe +air indeed, but it still had its roots in its native water; it +still had to return to the water to reproduce its kind. + + + + +{26} + +VI + +THE AGE OF REPTILES + + +The abundant life of the Carboniferous period was succeeded by a +vast cycle of dry and bitter ages. They are represented in the +Record of the Rocks by thick deposits of sandstones and the like, +in which fossils are comparatively few. The temperature of the +world fluctuated widely, and there were long periods of glacial +cold. Over great areas the former profusion of swamp vegetation +ceased, and, overlaid by these newer deposits, it began that +process of compression and mineralization that gave the world most +of the coal deposits of to-day. + +But it is during periods of change that life undergoes its most +rapid modifications, and under hardship that it learns its hardest +lessons. As conditions revert towards warmth and moisture again +we find a new series of animal and plant forms established, We +find in the record the remains of vertebrated animals that laid +eggs which, instead of hatching out tadpoles which needed to live +for a time in water, carried on their development before hatching +to a stage so nearly like the adult form that the young could live +in air from the first moment of independent existence. Gills had +been cut out altogether, and the gill slits only appeared as an +embryonic phase. + +These new creatures without a tadpole stage were the Reptiles. +Concurrently there had been a development of seed-bearing trees, +which could spread their seed, independently of swamp or lakes. +There were now palmlike cycads and many tropical conifers, though +as yet there were no flowering plants and no grasses. There was a +great number of ferns. And there was now also an increased +variety of insects. There were beetles, though bees and +butterflies had yet to come. But all the fundamental forms of a +new real land fauna and flora had been laid down during these vast +ages of severity. {27} This new land life needed only the +opportunity of favourable conditions to flourish and prevail. + +[Illustration: A FOSSIL ICHTHYOSAURUS, A MESOZOIC FISH-LIZARD] + +Age by age and with abundant fluctuations that mitigation came. +The still incalculable movements of the earth's crust, the changes +in its orbit, the increase and diminution of the mutual +inclination of orbit and pole, worked together to produce a great +spell of widely diffused warm conditions. The period lasted +altogether, it is now supposed, upwards of two hundred million +years. It is called the Mesozoic period, to distinguish it from +the altogether vaster Palæozoic and Azoic periods (together +fourteen hundred millions) that preceded it, and from the +Cainozoic or new life period that intervened between its close and +the present time, and it is also called the Age of Reptiles +because of the astonishing predominance and variety of this form +of life. It came to an end some eighty million years ago. + +In the world to-day the genera of Reptiles are comparatively few +and their distribution is very limited. They are more various, it +is true, than are the few surviving members of the order of the +amphibia which once in the Carboniferous period ruled the world. +We still have the snakes, the turtles and tortoises (the +Chelonia), {28} the alligators and crocodiles, and the lizards. +Without exception they are creatures requiring warmth all the year +round; they cannot stand exposure to cold, and it is probable that +all the reptilian beings of the Mesozoic suffered under the same +limitation. It was a hothouse fauna, living amidst a hothouse +flora. It endured no frosts. But the world had at least attained +a real dry land fauna and flora as distinguished from the mud and +swamp fauna and flora of the previous heyday of life upon earth. + +[Illustration: A PTERODACTYL] + +All the sorts of reptile we know now were much more abundantly +represented then, great turtles and tortoises, big crocodiles and +many lizards and snakes, but in addition there was a number of +series of wonderful creatures that have now vanished altogether +from the earth. There was a vast variety of beings called the +Dinosaurs. Vegetation was now spreading over the lower levels of +the world, reeds, brakes of fern and the like; and browsing upon +this abundance came a multitude of herbivorous reptiles, which +increased in size as the Mesozoic period rose to its climax. Some +of these beasts exceeded in size any other land animals that have +ever lived; they were as large as whales. The _Diplodocus +Carnegii_ for example measured eighty-four feet from snout to +tail; the Gigantosaurus was even greater; it measured a hundred +feet. Living upon these monsters was a swarm of carnivorous +Dinosaurs of a corresponding size. One of these, the +Tyrannosaurus, is figured and described in many books as the last +word in reptilian frightfulness. + +{29} + +[Illustration: A BIG SWAMP-INHABITING DINOSAUR, THE DIPLODOCUS, +OVER EIGHTY FEET FROM SNOUT TO TAIL-TIP] + +While these great creatures pastured and pursued amidst the fronds +and evergreens of the Mesozoic jungles, another now vanished tribe +of reptiles, with a bat-like development of the fore limbs, +pursued insects and one another, first leapt and parachuted and +presently flew amidst the fronds and branches of the forest trees. +These were the Pterodactyls. These were the first flying creatures +with backbones; they mark a new achievement in the growing powers +of vertebrated life. + +Moreover some of the reptiles were returning to the sea waters. +Three groups of big swimming beings had invaded the sea from which +their ancestors had come: the Mososaurs, the Plesiosaurs, and +Ichthyosaurs. Some of these again approached the proportions of +our present whales. The Ichthyosaurs seem to have been quite +seagoing creatures, but the Plesiosaurs were a type of animal that +has no cognate form to-day. The body was stout and big with +paddles, adapted either for swimming or crawling through marshes, +or along the bottom of shallow waters. The comparatively small +{30} head was poised on a vast snake of neck, altogether outdoing +the neck of the swan. Either the Plesiosaur swam and searched for +food under the water and fed as the swan will do, or it lurked +under water and snatched at passing fish or beast. + +Such was the predominant land life throughout the Mesozoic age. +It was by our human standards an advance upon anything that had +preceded it. It had produced land animals greater in size, range, +power and activity, more "vital" as people say, than anything the +world had seen before. In the seas there had been no such advance +but a great proliferation of new forms of life. An enormous +variety of squid-like creatures with chambered shells, for the +most part coiled, had appeared in the shallow seas, the Ammonites. +They had had predecessors in the Palæozoic seas, but now was their +age of glory. To-day they have left no survivors at all; their +nearest relation is the pearly Nautilus, an inhabitant of tropical +waters. And a new and more prolific type of fish with lighter, +finer scales than the plate-like and tooth-like coverings that had +hitherto prevailed, became and has since remained predominant in +the seas and rivers. + + + + +{31} + +VII + +THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS + + +In a few paragraphs a picture of the lush vegetation and swarming +reptiles of that first great summer of life, the Mesozoic period, +has been sketched. But while the Dinosaurs lorded it over the hot +selvas and marshy plains and the Pterodactyls filled the forests +with their flutterings and possibly with shrieks and croakings as +they pursued the humming insect life of the still flowerless +shrubs and trees, some less conspicuous and less abundant forms +upon the margins of this abounding life were acquiring certain +powers and learning certain lessons of endurance, that were to be +of the utmost value to their race when at last the smiling +generosity of sun and earth began to fade. + +A group of tribes and genera of hopping reptiles, small creatures +of the dinosaur type, seem to have been pushed by competition and +the pursuit of their enemies towards the alternatives of +extinction or adaptation to colder conditions in the higher hills +or by the sea. Among these distressed tribes there was developed +a new type of scale--scales that were elongated into quill-like +forms and that presently branched into the crude beginnings of +feathers. These quill-like scales layover one another and formed +a heat-retaining covering more efficient than any reptilian +covering that had hitherto existed. So they permitted an invasion +of colder regions that were otherwise uninhabited. Perhaps +simultaneously with these changes there arose in these creatures a +greater solicitude for their eggs. Most reptiles are apparently +quite careless about their eggs, which are left for sun and season +to hatch. But some of the varieties upon this new branch of the +tree of life were acquiring a habit of guarding their eggs and +keeping them warm with the warmth of their bodies. + +With these adaptations to cold other internal modifications {32} +were going on that made these creatures, the primitive birds, +warm-blooded and independent of basking. The very earliest birds +seem to have been seabirds living upon fish, and their fore limbs +were not wings but paddles rather after the penguin type. That +peculiarly primitive bird, the New Zealand Ki-Wi, has feathers of +a very simple sort, and neither flies nor appears to be descended +from flying ancestors. In the development of the birds, feathers +came before wings. But once the feather was developed the +possibility of making a light spread of feathers led inevitably to +the wing. We know of the fossil remains of one bird at least +which had reptilian teeth in its jaw and a long reptilian tail, +but which also had a true bird's wing and which certainly flew and +held its own among the pterodactyls of the Mesozoic time. +Nevertheless birds were neither varied nor abundant in Mesozoic +times. If a man could go back to typical Mesozoic country, he +might walk for days and never see or hear such a thing as a bird, +though he would see a great abundance of pterodactyls and insects +among the fronds and reeds. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL OF THE ARCHEOPTERYX; ONE OF THE EARLIEST +BIRDS] + +And another thing he would probably never see, and that would be +any sign of a mammal. Probably the first mammals were in {33} +existence millions of years before the first thing one could call +a bird, but they were altogether too small and obscure and remote +for attention. + +[Illustration: HESPERORNIS IN ITS NATIVE SEAS] + +The earliest mammals, like the earliest birds, were creatures +driven by competition and pursuit into a life of hardship and +adaptation to cold. With them also the scale became quill-like, +and was developed into a heat-retaining covering; and they too +underwent modifications, similar in kind though different in +detail, to become warm-blooded and independent of basking. +Instead of feathers they developed hairs, and instead of guarding +and incubating their eggs they kept them warm and safe by +retaining them inside their bodies until they were almost mature. +Most of them became altogether vivaparous and brought their young +into the world alive. And even after their young were born they +tended to maintain a protective and nutritive association with +them. Most {34} but not all mammals to-day have mammæ and suckle +their young. Two mammals still live which lay eggs and which have +not proper mammæ, though they nourish their young by a nutritive +secretion of the under skin; these are the duck-billed platypus +and the echidna. The echidna lays leathery eggs and then puts +them into a pouch under its belly, and so carries them about warm +and safe until they hatch. + +But just as a visitor to the Mesozoic world might have searched +for days and weeks before finding a bird, so, unless he knew +exactly where to go and look, he might have searched in vain for +any traces of a mammal. Both birds and mammals would have seemed +very eccentric and secondary and unimportant creatures in Mesozoic +times. + +[Illustration: THE KI-WI, APTERYX, STILL FOUND IN NEW ZEALAND] + +==================================================================== + +{35} + +[Illustration: SLAB OF LOWER PLIOCENE MARL] + +==================================================================== + +The Age of Reptiles lasted, it is now guessed, eighty million +years. Had any quasi-human intelligence been watching the world +through that inconceivable length of time, how safe and eternal +the sunshine and abundance must have seemed, how assured the +wallowing prosperity of the dinosaurs and the flapping abundance +of the flying lizards! And then the mysterious rhythms and +accumulating forces of the universe began to turn against that +quasi-eternal stability. That run of luck {36} for life was +running out. Age by age, myriad of years after myriad of years, +with halts no doubt and retrogressions, came a change towards +hardship and extreme conditions, came great alterations of level +and great redistributions of mountain and sea. We find one thing +in the Record of the Rocks during the decadence of the long +Mesozoic age of prosperity that is very significant of steadily +sustained changes of condition, and that is a violent fluctuation +of living forms and the appearance of new and strange species. +Under the gathering threat of extinction the older orders and +genera are displaying their utmost capacity for variation and +adaptation. The Ammonites for example in these last pages of the +Mesozoic chapter exhibit a multitude of fantastic forms. Under +settled conditions there is no encouragement for novelties; they +do not develop, they are suppressed; what is best adapted is +already there. Under novel conditions it is the ordinary type +that suffers, and the novelty that may have a better chance to +survive and establish itself.... + +There comes a break in the Record of the Rocks that may represent +several million years. There is a veil here still, over even the +outline of the history of life. When it lifts again, the Age of +Reptiles is at an end; the Dinosaurs, the Plesiosaurs and +Ichthyosaurs, the Pterodactyls, the innumerable genera and species +of Ammonite have all gone absolutely. In all their stupendous +variety they have died out and left no descendants. The cold has +killed them. All their final variations were insufficient; they +had never hit upon survival conditions. The world had passed +through a phase of extreme conditions beyond their powers of +endurance, a slow and complete massacre of Mesozoic life has +occurred, and we find now a new scene, a new and hardier flora, +and a new and hardier fauna in possession of the world. + +It is still a bleak and impoverished scene with which this new +volume of the book of life begins. The cycads and tropical +conifers have given place very largely to trees that shed their +leaves to avoid destruction by the snows of winter and to +flowering plants and shrubs, and where there was formerly a +profusion of reptiles, an increasing variety of birds and mammals +is entering into their inheritance. + + + + +{37} + +VIII + +THE AGE OF MAMMALS + + +The opening of the next great period in the life of the earth, the +Cainozoic period, was a period of upheaval and extreme volcanic +activity. Now it was that the vast masses of the Alps and +Himalayas and the mountain backbone of the Rockies and Andes were +thrust up, and that the rude outlines of our present oceans and +continents appeared. The map of the world begins to display a +first dim resemblance to the map of to-day. It is estimated now +that between forty and eighty million years have elapsed from the +beginnings of the Cainozoic period to the present time. + +At the outset of the Cainozoic period the climate of the world was +austere. It grew generally warmer until a fresh phase of great +abundance was reached, after which conditions grew hard again and +the earth passed into a series of extremely cold cycles, the +Glacial Ages, from which apparently it is now slowly emerging. + +But we do not know sufficient of the causes of climatic change at +present to forecast the possible fluctuations of climatic +conditions that lie before us. We may be moving towards +increasing sunshine or lapsing towards another glacial age; +volcanic activity and the upheaval of mountain masses may be +increasing or diminishing; we do not know; we lack sufficient +science. + +With the opening of this period the grasses appear; for the first +time there is pasture in the world; and with the full development +of the once obscure mammalian type, appear a number of interesting +grazing animals and of carnivorous types which prey upon these. + +At first these early mammals seem to differ only in a few +characters from the great herbivorous and carnivorous reptiles +that ages before had flourished and then vanished from the earth. +A {38} careless observer might suppose that in this second long +age of warmth and plenty that was now beginning, nature was merely +repeating the first, with herbivorous and carnivorous mammals to +parallel the herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs, with birds +replacing pterodactyls and so on. But this would be an altogether +superficial comparison. The variety of the universe is infinite +and incessant; it progresses eternally; history never repeats +itself and no parallels are precisely true. The differences +between the life of the Cainozoic and Mesozoic periods are far +profounder than the resemblances. + + +[Illustration: A MAMMAL OF THE EARLY CAINOZOIC PERIOD] + +The most fundamental of all these differences lies in the mental +life of the two periods. It arises essentially out of the +continuing contact of parent and offspring which distinguishes +mammalian and in a lesser degree bird life, from the life of the +reptile. With very few exceptions the reptile abandons its egg to +hatch alone. The young reptile has no knowledge whatever of its +parent; its mental life, such as it is, begins and ends with its +own experiences. {39} It may tolerate the existence of its +fellows but it has no communication with them; it never imitates, +never learns from them, is incapable of concerted action with +them. Its life is that of an isolated individual. But with the +suckling and cherishing of young which was distinctive of the new +mammalian and avian strains arose the possibility of learning by +imitation, of communication, by warning cries and other concerted +action, of mutual control and instruction. A teachable type of +life had come into the world. + +The earliest mammals of the Cainozoic period are but little +superior in brain size to the more active carnivorous dinosaurs, +but as we read on through the record towards modern times we find, +in every tribe and race of the mammalian animals, a steady +universal increase in brain capacity. For instance we find at a +comparatively early stage that rhinoceros-like beasts appear. +There is a creature, the Titanotherium, which lived in the +earliest division of this period. It was probably very like a +modern rhinoceros in its habits and needs. But its brain capacity +was not one tenth that of its living successor. + +The earlier mammals probably parted from their offspring as soon +as suckling was over, but, once the capacity for mutual +understanding has arisen, the advantages of continuing the +association are very great; and we presently find a number of +mammalian species displaying the beginnings of a true social life +and keeping together in herds, packs and flocks, watching each +other, imitating each other, taking warning from each other's acts +and cries. This is something that the world had not seen before +among vertebrated animals. Reptiles and fish may no doubt be +found in swarms and shoals; they have been hatched in quantities +and similar conditions have kept them together, but in the case of +the social and gregarious mammals the association arises not +simply from a community of external forces, it is sustained by an +inner impulse. They are not merely like one another and so found +in the same places at the same times; they like one another and so +they keep together. + +==================================================================== + +{40} + +[Illustration: STENOMYLUS HITCHCOCKI--A GIRAFFE-CAMEL] + +[Illustration: SKELETON OF PROTOHIPPUS VENTICOLUS--EARLY HORSE] + +==================================================================== + +This difference between the reptile world and the world of our +human minds is one our sympathies seem unable to pass. We cannot +conceive in ourselves the swift uncomplicated urgency of a +reptile's instinctive motives, its appetites, fears and hates. We +{41} cannot understand them in their simplicity because all our +motives are complicated; our's are balances and resultants and not +simple urgencies. But the mammals and birds have +self-restraint and consideration for other individuals, a social +appeal, a self-control that is, at its lower level, after our own +fashion. We can in consequence establish relations with almost +all sorts of them. When they suffer they utter cries and make +movements that rouse our feelings. We can make understanding pets +of them with a mutual recognition. They can be tamed to +self-restraint towards us, domesticated and taught. + +[Illustration: COMPARATIVE SIZES OF BRAINS OF RHINOCEROS AND +DINOCERAS] + +That unusual growth of brain which is the central fact of +Cainozoic times marks a new communication and interdependence of +individuals. It foreshadows the development of human societies of +which we shall soon be telling. + +As the Cainozoic period unrolled, the resemblance of its flora and +fauna to the plants and animals that inhabit the world to-day {42} +increased. The big clumsy Uintatheres and Titanotheres, the +Entelodonts and Hyracodons, big clumsy brutes like nothing living, +disappeared. On the other hand a series of forms led up by steady +degrees from grotesque and clumsy predecessors to the giraffes, +camels, horses, elephants, deer, dogs and lions and tigers of the +existing world. The evolution of the horse is particularly +legible upon the geological record. We have a fairly complete +series of forms from a small tapir-like ancestor in the early +Cainozoic. Another line of development that has now been pieced +together with some precision is that of the llamas and camels. + + + + +{43} + +IX + +MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN + + +Naturalists divide the class _Mammalia_ into a number of orders. +At the head of these is the order _Primates_, which includes the +lemurs, the monkeys, apes and man. Their classification was based +originally upon anatomical resemblances and took no account of any +mental qualities. + +Now the past history of the Primates is one very difficult to +decipher in the geological record. They are for the most part +animals which live in forests like the lemurs and monkeys or in +bare rocky places like the baboons. They are rarely drowned and +covered up by sediment, nor are most of them very numerous +species, and so they do not figure so largely among the fossils as +the ancestors of the horses, camels and so forth do. But we know +that quite early in the Cainozoic period, that is to say some +forty million years ago or so, primitive monkeys and lemuroid +creatures had appeared, poorer in brain and not so specialized as +their later successors. + +The great world summer of the middle Cainozoic period drew at last +to an end. It was to follow those other two great summers in the +history of life, the summer of the Coal Swamps and the vast summer +of the Age of Reptiles. Once more the earth spun towards an ice +age. The world chilled, grew milder for a time and chilled again. +In the warm past hippopotami had wallowed through a lush +sub-tropical vegetation, and a tremendous tiger with fangs like +sabres, the sabre-toothed tiger, had hunted its prey where now the +journalists of Fleet Street go to and fro. Now came a bleaker age +and still bleaker ages. A great weeding and extinction of species +occurred. A woolly rhinoceros, adapted to a cold climate, and the +mammoth, a big woolly cousin of the elephants, the Arctic musk ox +and the reindeer passed across the scene. Then century by century +the Arctic ice cap, the wintry death of the great Ice Age, crept +{44} southward. In England it came almost down to the Thames, in +America it reached Ohio. There would be warmer spells of a few +thousand years and relapses towards a bitterer cold. + +[Illustration: A MAMMOTH] + +Geologists talk of these wintry phases as the First, Second, Third +and Fourth Glacial Ages, and of the interludes as Interglacial +periods. We live to-day in a world that is still impoverished and +scarred by that terrible winter. The First Glacial Age was coming +on 600,000 years ago; the Fourth Glacial Age reached its bitterest +some fifty thousand years ago. And it was amidst the snows of +this long universal winter that the first man-like beings lived +upon our planet. + +By the middle Cainozoic period there have appeared various apes +with many quasi-human attributes of the jaws and leg bones, but it +is only as we approach these Glacial Ages that we find traces of +creatures that we can speak of as "almost human." These traces +are not bones but implements. In Europe, in deposits of this +period, between half a million and a million years old, we find +flints {45} and stones that have evidently been chipped +intentionally by some handy creature desirous of hammering, +scraping or fighting with the sharpened edge. These things have +been called "Eoliths" (dawn stones). In Europe there are no bones +nor other remains of the creature which made these objects, simply +the objects themselves. For all the certainty we have it may have +been some entirely un-human but intelligent monkey. But at Trinil +in Java, in accumulations of this age, a piece of a skull and +various teeth and bones have been found of a sort of ape man, with +a brain case bigger than that of any living apes, which seems to +have walked erect. This creature is now called _Pithecanthropus +erectus_, the walking ape man, and the little trayful of its bones +is the only help our imaginations have as yet in figuring to, +ourselves the makers of the Eoliths. + +[Illustration: FLINT IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN PILTDOWN REGION] + +It is not until we come to sands that are almost a quarter of a +million years old that we find any other particle of a sub-human +being. But there are plenty of implements, and they are steadily +improving in quality as we read on through the record. They are +no longer clumsy Eoliths; they are now shapely instruments made +with considerable skill. _And they are much bigger than the +similar implements afterwards made by true man._ Then, in a +sandpit at Heidelberg, appears a single quasi-human jaw-bone, a +clumsy jaw-bone, absolutely chinless, far heavier than a true +human jaw-bone and narrower, so that it is improbable the +creature's tongue could have moved about for articulate speech. +On the strength of this jaw-bone, scientific men suppose this +creature to have been a heavy, almost human monster, possibly with +huge limbs and hands, possibly with a thick felt of hair, and they +call it the Heidelberg Man. + +{46} + +This jaw-bone is, I think, one of the most tormenting objects in +the world to our human curiosity. To see it is like looking +through a defective glass into the past and catching just one +blurred and tantalizing glimpse of this Thing, shambling through +the bleak wilderness, clambering to avoid the sabre-toothed tiger, +watching the woolly rhinoceros in the woods. Then before we can +scrutinize the monster, he vanishes. Yet the soil is littered +abundantly with the indestructible implements he chipped out for +his uses. + +[Illustration: A THEORETICAL RESTORATION OF THE PITHECANTHROPUS +ERECTUS BY PROF. RUTOT] + +[Illustration: THE HEIDELBERG MAN] + +Still more fascinatingly enigmatical are the remains of a creature +found at Piltdown in Sussex in a deposit that may indicate an age +between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, +though some authorities would put these particular remains back in +time to before the Heidelberg jaw-bone. Here there {47} are the +remains of a thick sub-human skull much larger than any existing +ape's, and a chimpanzee-like jaw-bone which may or may not belong +to it, and, in addition, a bat-shaped piece of elephant bone +evidently carefully manufactured, through which a hole had +apparently been bored. There is also the thigh-bone of a deer +with cuts upon it like a tally. That is all. + +[Illustration: THE PILTDOWN SKULL, AS RECONSTRUCTED FROM ORIGINAL +FRAGMENT] + +What sort of beast was this creature which sat and bored holes in +bones? + +Scientific men have named him Eoanthropus, the Dawn Man. He +stands apart from his kindred; a very different being either from +the Heidelberg creature or from any living ape. No other vestige +like him is known. But the gravels and deposits of from one +hundred thousand years onward are increasingly rich in implements +of flint and similar stone. And these implements are no longer +rude "Eoliths." The archæologists are presently able to +distinguish scrapers, borers, knives, darts, throwing stones and +hand axes .... + +We are drawing very near to man. In our next section we shall +have to describe the strangest of all these precursors of +humanity, the Neanderthalers, the men who were almost, but not +quite, true men. + +But it may be well perhaps to state quite clearly here that no +scientific man supposes either of these creatures, the Heidelberg +Man or _Eoanthropus_, to be direct ancestors of the men of to-day. +These are, at the closest, related forms. + + + + +{48} + +X + +THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN + + +About fifty or sixty thousand years ago, before the climax of the +Fourth Glacial Age, there lived a creature on earth so like a man +that until a few years ago its remains were considered to be +altogether human. We have skulls and bones of it and a great +accumulation of the large implements it made and used. It made +fires. It sheltered in caves from the cold. It probably dressed +skins roughly and wore them. It was right-handed as men are. + +Yet now the ethnologists tell us these creatures were not true +men. They were of a different species of the same genus. They +had heavy protruding jaws and great brow ridges above the eyes and +very low foreheads. Their thumbs were not opposable to the +fingers as men's are; their necks were so poised that they could +not turn back their heads and look up to the sky. They probably +slouched along, head down and forward. Their chinless jaw-bones +resemble the Heidelberg jaw-bone and are markedly unlike human +jaw-bones. And there were great differences from the human +pattern in their teeth. Their cheek teeth were more complicated +in structure than ours, more complicated and not less so; they had +not the long fangs of our cheek teeth; and also these quasi-men +had not the marked canines (dog teeth) of an ordinary human being. +The capacity of their skulls was quite human, but the brain was +bigger behind and lower in front than the human brain. Their +intellectual faculties were differently arranged. They were not +ancestral to the human line. Mentally and physically they were +upon a different line from the human line. + +Skulls and bones of this extinct species of man were found at +Neanderthal {49} among other places, and from that place these +strange proto-men have been christened Neanderthal Men, or +Neanderthalers. They must have endured in Europe for many hundreds +or even thousands of years. + +[Illustration: THE NEANDERTHALER, ACCORDING TO PROF. RUTOT] + +At that time the climate and geography of our world was very +different from what they are at the present time. Europe for +example was covered with ice reaching as far south as the Thames +and into Central Germany and Russia; there was no Channel +separating Britain from France; the Mediterranean and the Red Sea +were great valleys, with perhaps a chain of lakes in their deeper +portions, and a great inland sea spread from the present Black Sea +across South Russia and far into Central Asia. Spain and all of +Europe not actually under ice consisted of bleak uplands under a +harder climate than that of Labrador, and it was only when North +Africa was reached that one would have found a temperate climate. +Across the cold steppes of Southern Europe with its sparse arctic +vegetation, drifted such hardy creatures as the woolly mammoth, +and woolly rhinoceros, great oxen and reindeer, no doubt following +the vegetation northward in spring and southward in autumn. + +{50} + +[Map: Possible Outline of Europe and Western Asia at the Maximum +of the Fourth Ice Age (about 50,000 years ago)] + +Such was the scene through which the Neanderthaler wandered, +gathering such subsistence as he could from small game or fruits +and berries and roots. Possibly he was mainly a vegetarian, +chewing twigs and roots. His level elaborate teeth suggest a +largely vegetarian dietary. But we also find the long marrow +bones of great animals in his caves, cracked to extract the +marrow. His weapons could not have been of much avail in open +conflict with great beasts, but it is supposed that he attacked +them with spears at difficult river crossings and even constructed +pitfalls for them. Possibly he followed the herds and preyed upon +any dead that were killed in fights, and perhaps he played the +part of jackal to the sabre-toothed tiger which still survived in +his day. Possibly in the bitter hardships of the Glacial Ages +this creature had taken to attacking animals after long ages of +vegetarian adaptation. + +We cannot guess what this Neanderthal man looked like. He may have +been very hairy and very unhuman-looking indeed. It is even +doubtful if he went erect. He may have used his knuckles as well +as his feet to hold himself up. Probably he went about {51} alone +or in small family groups. It is inferred from the structure of +his jaw that he was incapable of speech as we understand it. + +For thousands of years these Neanderthalers were the highest +animals that the European area had ever seen; and then some thirty +or thirty-five thousand years ago as the climate grew warmer a +race of kindred beings, more intelligent, knowing more, talking +and co-operating together, came drifting into the Neanderthaler's +world from the south. They ousted the Neanderthalers from their +caves and squatting places; they hunted the same food; they +probably made war upon their grisly predecessors and killed them +off. These newcomers from the south or the east--for at present +we do not know their region of origin--who at last drove the +Neanderthalers out of existence altogether, were beings of our own +blood and kin, the first True Men. Their brain-cases and thumbs +and necks and teeth were anatomically the same as our own. In a +cave at Cro-Magnon and in another at Grimaldi, a number of +skeletons have been found, the earliest truly human remains that +are so far known. + +So it is our race comes into the Record of the Rocks, and the +story of mankind begins. + +[Illustration: COMPARISON OF (1) MODERN SKULL AND (2) RHODESIAN +SKULL] + +The world was growing liker our own in those days though the +climate was still austere. The glaciers of the Ice Age were +receding in Europe; the reindeer of France and Spain presently +gave way to great herds of horses as grass increased upon the +steppes, and the {52} mammoth became more and more rare in +southern Europe and finally receded northward altogether .... + +We do not know where the True Men first originated. But in the +summer of 1921, an extremely interesting skull was found together +with pieces of a skeleton at Broken Hill in South Africa, which +seems to be a relic of a third sort of man, intermediate in its +characteristics between the Neanderthaler and the human being. +The brain-case indicates a brain bigger in front and smaller +behind than the Neanderthaler's, and the skull was poised erect +upon the backbone in a quite human way. The teeth also and the +bones are quite human. But the face must have been ape-like with +enormous brow ridges and a ridge along the middle of the skull. +The creature was indeed a true man, so to speak, with an ape-like, +Neanderthaler face. This Rhodesian Man is evidently still closer +to real men than the Neanderthal Man. + +This Rhodesian skull is probably only the second of what in the +end may prove to be a long list of finds of sub-human species +which lived on the earth in the vast interval of time between the +beginnings of the Ice Age and the appearance of their common heir, +and perhaps their common exterminator, the True Man. The +Rhodesian skull itself may not be very ancient. Up to the time of +publishing this book there has been no exact determination of its +probable age. It may be that this sub-human creature survived in +South Africa until quite recent times. + + + + +{53} + +XI + +THE FIRST TRUE MEN + + +The earliest signs and traces at present known to science, of a +humanity which is indisputably kindred with ourselves, have been +found in western Europe and particularly in France and Spain. +Bones, weapons, scratchings upon bone and rock, carved fragments +of bone, and paintings in caves and upon rock surfaces dating, it +is supposed, from 30,000 years ago or more, have been discovered +in both these countries. Spain is at present the richest country +in the world in these first relics of our real human ancestors. + +Of course our present collections of these things are the merest +beginnings of the accumulations we may hope for in the future, +when there are searchers enough to make a thorough examination of +all possible sources and when other countries in the world, now +inaccessible to archæologists, have been explored in some detail. +The greater part of Africa and Asia has never even been traversed +yet by a trained observer interested in these matters and free to +explore, and we must be very careful therefore not to conclude +that the early true men were distinctively inhabitants of western +Europe or that they first appeared in that region. + +In Asia or Africa or submerged beneath the sea of to-day there may +be richer and much earlier deposits of real human remains than +anything that has yet come to light. I write in Asia or Africa, +and I do not mention America because so far there have been no +finds at all of any of the higher Primates, either of great apes, +sub-men, Neanderthalers nor early true men. This development of +life seems to have been an exclusively old world development, and +it was only apparently at the end of the Old Stone Age that human +beings first made their way across the land connexion that is now +cut by Behring Straits, into the American continent. + +{54} + +[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELLOUS CAVE PAINTINGS OF ALTAMIRA, +NORTH SPAIN] + +These first real human beings we know of in Europe appear already +to have belonged to one or other of at least two very distinct +races. One of these races was of a very high type indeed; it was +tall and big brained. One of the women's skulls found exceeds in +capacity that of the average man of to-day. One of the men's +skeletons is over six feet in height. The physical type resembled +that of the North American Indian. From the Cro-Magnon cave in +which the first skeletons were found these people have been called +Cro-Magnards. They were savages, but savages of a high order. +The second race, the race of the Grimaldi cave remains, was +distinctly negroid in its characters. Its nearest living +affinities are the Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa. It is +interesting to find at the very outset of the known human story, +that mankind was already racially divided into at least two main +varieties; and one is tempted to such unwarrantable guesses as +that the former race was probably brownish rather than black and +that it came from the East or North, and that the latter was +blackish rather than brown and came from the equatorial south. + +{55} + +[Illustration: BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD] + +{56} + +And these savages of perhaps forty thousand years ago were so +human that they pierced shells to make necklaces, painted +themselves, carved images of bone and stone, scratched figures on +rocks and bones, and painted rude but often very able sketches of +beasts and the like upon the smooth walls of caves and upon +inviting rock surfaces. They made a great variety of implements, +much smaller in scale and finer than those of the Neanderthal men. +We have now in our museums great quantities of their implements, +their statuettes, their rock drawings and the like. + +The earliest of them were hunters. Their chief pursuit was the +wild horse, the little bearded pony of that time. They followed +it as it moved after pasture. And also they followed the bison. +They knew the mammoth, because they have left us strikingly +effective pictures of that creature. To judge by one rather +ambiguous drawing they trapped and killed it. + +They hunted with spears and throwing stones. They do not seem to +have had the bow, and it is doubtful if they had yet learnt to +tame any animals. They had no dogs. There is one carving of a +horse's head and one or two drawings that suggest a bridled horse, +with a twisted skin or tendon round it. But the little horses of +that age and region could not have carried a man, and if the horse +was domesticated it was used as a led horse. It is doubtful and +improbable that they had yet learnt the rather unnatural use of +animal's milk as food. + +They do not seem to have erected any buildings though they may +have had tents of skins, and though they made clay figures they +never rose to the making of pottery. Since they had no cooking +implements their cookery must have been rudimentary or +nonexistent. They knew nothing of cultivation and nothing of any +sort of basket work or woven cloth. Except for their robes of skin +or fur they were naked painted savages. + +These earliest known men hunted the open steppes of Europe for a +hundred centuries perhaps, and then slowly drifted and changed +before a change of climate. Europe, century by century, was +growing milder and damper. Reindeer receded northward and +eastward, and bison and horse followed. The steppes gave way to +forests, and red deer took the place of horse and bison. There is +a {57} change in the character of the implements with this change +in their application. River and lake fishing becomes of great +importance to men, and fine implements of bone increased. "The +bone needles of this age," says de Mortillet, "are much superior +to those of later, even historical times, down to the Renaissance. +The Romans, for example, never had needles comparable to those of +this epoch." + +[Illustration: THE RUTOT BUST OF A CRO-MAGNON MAN] + +Almost fifteen or twelve thousand years ago a fresh people drifted +into the south of Spain, and left very remarkable drawings of +themselves upon exposed rock faces there. These were the Azilians +(named from the Mas d'Azil cave). They had the bow; they seem to +have worn feather headdresses; they drew vividly; but also they +had reduced their drawings to a sort of symbolism--a man for +instance would be represented by a vertical dab with two or three +horizontal dabs--that suggest the dawn of the writing idea. +Against hunting sketches there are often marks like tallies. One +drawing shows two men smoking out a bees' nest. + +{58} + +[Illustration: FIGHT OF BOWMEN] + +{59} + +These are the latest of the men that we call Palæolithic (Old +Stone Age) because they had only chipped implements. By ten or +twelve thousand years a new sort of life has dawned in Europe, men +have learnt not only to chip but to polish and grind stone +implements, and they have begun cultivation. The Neolithic Age +(New Stone Age) was beginning. + +It is interesting to note that less than a century ago there still +survived in a remote part of the world, in Tasmania, a race of +human beings at a lower level of physical and intellectual +development than any of these earliest races of mankind who have +left traces in Europe. These people had long ago been cut off by +geographical changes from the rest of the species, and from +stimulation and improvement. They seem to have degenerated rather +than developed. They lived a base life subsisting upon shellfish +and small game. They had no habitations but only squatting +places. They were real men of our species, but they had neither +the manual dexterity nor the artistic powers of the first true +men. + + + + +{60} + +XII + +PRIMITIVE THOUGHT + + +And now let us indulge in a very interesting speculation; how did +it feel to be a man in those early days of the human adventure? +How did men think and what did they think in those remote days of +hunting and wandering four hundred centuries ago before seed time +and harvest began. Those were days long before the written record +of any human impressions, and we are left almost entirely to +inference and guesswork in our answers to these questions. + +The sources to which scientific men have gone in their attempts to +reconstruct that primitive mentality are very various. Recently +the science of psycho-analysis, which analyzes the way in which +the egotistic and passionate impulses of the child are restrained, +suppressed, modified or overlaid, to adapt them to the needs of +social life, seems to have thrown a considerable amount of light +upon the history of primitive society; and another fruitful source +of suggestion has been the study of the ideas and customs of such +contemporary savages as still survive. Again there is a sort of +mental fossilization which we find in folk-lore and the deep-lying +irrational superstitions and prejudices that still survive among +modern civilized people. And finally we have in the increasingly +numerous pictures, statues, carvings, symbols and the like, as we +draw near to our own time, clearer and clearer indications of what +man found interesting and worthy of record and representation. + +Primitive man probably thought very much as a child thinks, that +is to say in a series of imaginative pictures. He conjured up +images or images presented themselves to his mind, and he acted in +accordance with the emotions they aroused. So a child or an +uneducated person does to-day. Systematic thinking is apparently +a comparatively late development in human experience; it has not +{61} played any great part in human life until within the last +three thousand years. And even to-day those who really control +and order their thoughts are but a small minority of mankind. +Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion. + +Probably the earliest human societies, in the opening stages of +the true human story, were small family groups. Just as the +flocks and herds of the earlier mammals arose out of families +which remained together and multiplied, so probably did the +earliest tribes. But before this could happen a certain restraint +upon the primitive egotisms of the individual had to be +established. The fear of the father and respect for the mother +had to be extended into adult life, and the natural jealousy of +the old man of the group for the younger males as they grew up had +to be mitigated. The mother on the other hand was the natural +adviser and protector of the young. Human social life grew up out +of the reaction between the crude instinct of the young to go off +and pair by themselves as they grew up, on the one hand, and the +dangers and disadvantages of separation on the other. An +anthropological writer of great genius, J. J. Atkinson, in his +_Primal Law_, has shown how much of the customary law of savages, +the _Tabus_, that are so remarkable a fact in tribal life, can be +ascribed to such a mental adjustment of the needs of the primitive +human animal to a developing social life, and the later work of +the psycho-analysts has done much to confirm his interpretation of +these possibilities. + +Some speculative writers would have us believe that respect and +fear of the Old Man and the emotional reaction of the primitive +savage to older protective women, exaggerated in dreams and +enriched by fanciful mental play, played a large part in the +beginnings of primitive religion and in the conception of gods and +goddesses. Associated with this respect for powerful or helpful +personalities was a dread and exaltation of such personages after +their deaths, due to their reappearance in dreams. It was easy to +believe they were not truly dead but only fantastically +transferred to a remoteness of greater power. + +The dreams, imaginations and fears of a child are far more vivid +and real than those of a modern adult, and primitive man was +always something of a child. He was nearer to the animals {62} +also, and he could suppose them to have motives and reactions like +his own. He could imagine animal helpers, animal enemies, animal +gods. One needs to have been an imaginative child oneself to +realize again how important, significant, portentous or friendly, +strangely shaped rocks, lumps of wood, exceptional trees or the +like may have appeared to the men of the Old Stone Age, and how +dream and fancy would create stories and legends about such things +that would become credible as they told them. Some of these +stories would be good enough to remember and tell again. The +women would tell them to the children and so establish a +tradition. To this day most imaginative children invent long +stories in which some favourite doll or animal or some fantastic +semi-human being figures as the hero, and primitive man probably +did the same--with a much stronger disposition to believe his hero +real. + +[Illustration: RELICS OF THE STONE AGE] + +For the very earliest of the true men that we know of were +probably quite talkative beings. In that way they have differed +from the Neanderthalers and had an advantage over them. The +Neanderthaler may have been a dumb animal. Of course the primitive +{63} human speech was probably a very scanty collection of names, +and may have been eked out with gestures and signs. + +There is no sort of savage so low as not to have a kind of science +of cause and effect. But primitive man was not very critical in +his associations of cause with effect; he very easily connected an +effect with something quite wrong as its cause. "You do so and +so," he said, "and so and so happens." You give a child a +poisonous berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a valiant enemy +and you become strong. There we have two bits of cause and effect +association, one true one false. We call the system of cause and +effect in the mind of a savage, Fetish; but Fetish is simply +savage science. It differs from modern science in that it is +totally unsystematic and uncritical and so more frequently wrong. + +[Illustration: WIDESPREAD SIMILARITY OF MEN OF THE STONE AGE] + +In many cases it is not difficult to link cause and effect, in +{64} many others erroneous ideas were soon corrected by +experience; but there was a large series of issues of very great +importance to primitive man, where he sought persistently for +causes and found explanations that were wrong but not sufficiently +wrong nor so obviously wrong as to be detected. It was a matter +of great importance to him that game should be abundant or fish +plentiful and easily caught, and no doubt he tried and believed in +a thousand charms, incantations and omens to determine these +desirable results. Another great concern of his was illness and +death. Occasionally infections crept through the land and men +died of them. Occasionally men were stricken by illness and died +or were enfeebled without any manifest cause. This too must have +given the hasty, emotional mind of primitive man much feverish +exercise. Dreams and fantastic guesses made him blame this, or +appeal for help to that man or beast or thing. He had the child's +aptitude for fear and panic. + +Quite early in the little human tribe, older, steadier minds +sharing the fears, sharing the imaginations, but a little more +forceful than the others, must have asserted themselves, to +advise, to prescribe, to command. This they declared unpropitious +and that imperative, this an omen of good and that an omen of +evil. The expert in Fetish, the Medicine Man, was the first +priest. He exhorted, he interpreted dreams, he warned, he +performed the complicated hocus pocus that brought luck or averted +calamity. Primitive religion was not so much what we now call +religion as practice and observance, and the early priest dictated +what was indeed an arbitrary primitive practical science. + + + + +{65} + +XIII + +THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION + + +We are still very ignorant about the beginnings of cultivation and +settlement in the world although a vast amount of research and +speculation has been given to these matters in the last fifty +years. All that we can say with any confidence at present is that +somewhen about 15,000 and 12,000 B.C. while the Azilian people +were in the south of Spain and while the remnants of the earlier +hunters were drifting northward and eastward, somewhere in North +Africa or Western Asia or in that great Mediterranean valley that +is now submerged under the waters of the Mediterranean sea, there +were people who, age by age, were working out two vitally +important things; they were beginning cultivation and they were +domesticating animals. They were also beginning to make, in +addition to the chipped implements of their hunter forebears, +implements of polished stone. They had discovered the possibility +of basketwork and roughly woven textiles of plant fibre, and they +were beginning to make a rudely modelled pottery. + +They were entering upon a new phase in human culture, the +Neolithic phase (New Stone Age) as distinguished from the +Palæolithic (Old Stone) phase of the Cro-Magnards, the Grimaldi +people, the Azilians and their like. [1] Slowly these Neolithic +people spread over the warmer parts of the world; and the arts +they had mastered, the plants and animals they had learnt to use, +spread by imitation and acquisition even more widely than they +did. By 10,000 B.C., most of mankind was at the Neolithic level. + +{66} + +Now the ploughing of land, the sowing of seed, the reaping of +harvest, threshing and grinding, may seem the most obviously +reasonable steps to a modern mind just as to a modern mind it is a +commonplace that the world is round. What else could you do? +people will ask. What else can it be? But to the primitive man +of twenty thousand years ago neither of the systems of action and +reasoning that seem so sure and manifest to us to-day were at all +obvious. He felt his way to effectual practice through a +multitude of trials and misconceptions, with fantastic and +unnecessary elaborations and false interpretations at every turn. +Somewhere in the Mediterranean region, wheat grew wild; and man +may have learnt to pound and then grind up its seeds for food long +before he learnt to sow. He reaped before he sowed. + +And it is a very remarkable thing that throughout the world +wherever there is sowing and harvesting there is still traceable +the vestiges of a strong primitive association of the idea of +sowing with the idea of a blood sacrifice, and primarily of the +sacrifice of a human being. The study of the original +entanglement of these two things is a profoundly attractive one to +the curious mind; the interested reader will find it very fully +developed in that monumental work, Sir J. G. Frazer's _Golden +Bough_. It was an entanglement, we must remember, in the +childish, dreaming, myth-making primitive mind; no reasoned +process will explain it. But in that world of 12,000 to 20,000 +years ago, it would seem that whenever seed time came round to the +Neolithic peoples there was a human sacrifice. And it was not the +sacrifice of any mean or outcast person; it was the sacrifice +usually of a chosen youth or maiden, a youth more often who was +treated with profound deference and even worship up to the moment +of his immolation. He was a sort of sacrificial god-king, and all +the details of his killing had become a ritual directed by the +old, knowing men and sanctioned by the accumulated usage of ages. + +==================================================================== + +{67} + +[Illustration: NEOLITHIC FLINT IMPLEMENTS] + +==================================================================== + +At first primitive men, with only a very rough idea of the +seasons, must have found great difficulty in determining when was +the propitious moment for the seed-time sacrifice and the sowing. +There is some reason for supposing that there was an early stage +in human experience when men had no idea of a year. The first {68} +chronology was in lunar months; it is supposed that the years of +the Biblical patriarchs are really moons, and the Babylonian +calendar shows distinct traces of an attempt to reckon seed time +by taking thirteen lunar months to see it round. This lunar +influence upon the calendar reaches down to our own days. If usage +did not dull our sense of its strangeness we should think it a +very remarkable thing indeed that the Christian Church does not +commemorate the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ on the +proper anniversaries but on dates that vary year by year with the +phases of the moon. + +[Illustration: NEOLITHICISM OF TO-DAY] + +It may be doubted whether the first agriculturalists made any +observation of the stars. It is more likely that stars were first +observed by migratory herdsmen, who found them a convenient mark +of direction. But once their use in determining seasons was +realized, their importance to agriculture became very great. The +seed-time sacrifice was linked up with the southing or northing of +some prominent star. A myth and worship of that star was for +primitive man an almost inevitable consequence. + +It is easy to see how important the man of knowledge and +experience, the man who knew about the blood sacrifice and the +stars, became in this early Neolithic world. + +The fear of uncleanness and pollution, and the methods of +cleansing that were advisable, constituted another source of power +for the knowledgeable men and women. For there have always been +witches as well as wizards, and priestesses as well as priests. +The early priest was really not so much a {69} religious man as a +man of applied science. His science was generally empirical and +often bad; he kept it secret from the generality of men very +jealously; but that does not alter the fact that his primary +function was knowledge and that his primary use was a practical +use. + +[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF NEOLITHIC POTTERY] + +Twelve or fifteen thousand years ago, in all the warm and fairly +well-watered parts of the Old World these Neolithic human +communities, with their class and tradition of priests and +priestesses and their cultivated fields and their development of +villages and little walled cities, were spreading. Age by age a +drift and exchange of ideas went on between these communities. +Eliot Smith and Rivers have used the term "Heliolithic culture" +for the culture of these first agricultural peoples. +"Heliolithic" (Sun and Stone) is not perhaps the best possible +word to use for this, but until scientific men give us a better +one we shall have to use it. Originating somewhere in the +Mediterranean and western Asiatic area, it spread age by age +eastward and from island to island across the Pacific until it may +even have reached America and mingled with the more primitive ways +of living of the Mongoloid immigrants coming down from the North. + +Wherever the brownish people with the Heliolithic culture went +they took with them all or most of a certain group of curious +ideas and practices. Some of them are such queer ideas that they +call for the explanation of the mental expert. They made pyramids +{70} and great mounds, and set up great circles of big stones, +perhaps to facilitate the astronomical observation of the priests; +they made mummies of some or all of their dead; they tattooed and +circumcized; they had the old custom, known as the _couvade_, of +sending the _father_ to bed and rest when a child was born, and +they had as a luck symbol the well-known Swastika. + +If we were to make a map of the world with dots to show how far +these group practices have left their traces, we should make a +belt along the temperate and sub-tropical coasts of the world from +Stonehenge and Spain across the world to Mexico and Peru. But +Africa below the equator, north central Europe, and north Asia +would show none of these dottings; there lived races who were +developing along practically independent lines. + +[1] The term Palæolithic we may note is also used to cover the +Neanderthaler and even the Eolithic implements. The pre-human age +is called the "Older Palæolithic;" the age of true men using +unpolished stones in the "Newer Palæolithic." + + + + +{71} + +XIV + +PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS + + +About 10,000 B.C. the geography of the world was very similar in +its general outline to that of the world to-day. It is probable +that by that time the great barrier across the Straits of +Gibraltar that had hitherto banked back the ocean waters from the +Mediterranean valley had been eaten through, and that the +Mediterranean was a sea following much the same coastlines as it +does now. The Caspian Sea was probably still far more extensive +than it is at present, and it may have been continuous with the +Black Sea to the north of the Caucasus Mountains. About this +great Central Asian sea lands that are now steppes and deserts +were fertile and habitable. Generally it was a moister and more +fertile world. European Russia was much more a land of swamp and +lake than it is now, and there may still have been a land +connexion between Asia and America at Behring Straits. + +It would have been already possible at that time to have +distinguished the main racial divisions of mankind as we know them +to-day. Across the warm temperate regions of this rather warmer +and better-wooded world, and along the coasts, stretched the +brownish peoples of the Heliolithic culture, the ancestors of the +bulk of the living inhabitants of the Mediterranean world, of the +Berbers, the Egyptians and of much of the population of South and +Eastern Asia. This great race had of course a number of +varieties. The Iberian or Mediterranean or "dark-white" race of +the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast, the "Hamitic" peoples which +include the Berbers and Egyptians, the Dravidians; the darker +people of India, a multitude of East Indian people, many +Polynesian races and the Maoris are all divisions of various value +of this great main mass of humanity. Its western varieties are +whiter than its eastern. In the forests of central and northern +Europe a more blonde variety {72} of men with blue eyes was +becoming distinguishable, branching off from the main mass of +brownish people, a variety which many people now speak of as the +Nordic race. In the more open regions of northeastern Asia was +another differentiation of this brownish humanity in the direction +of a type with more oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, a yellowish +skin, and very straight black hair, the Mongolian peoples. In +South Africa, Australia, in many tropical islands in the south of +Asia were remains of the early negroid peoples. The central parts +of Africa were already a region of racial intermixture. Nearly +all the coloured races of Africa to-day seem to be blends of the +brownish peoples of the north with a negroid substratum. + +[Illustration: A Diagrammatic Summary of Current Ideas of the +Relationship of Human Races] + +We have to remember that human races can all interbreed freely and +that they separate, mingle and reunite as clouds do. Human races +do not branch out like trees with branches that never come +together again. It is a thing we need to bear constantly in mind, +this remingling of races at any opportunity. It will save us from +many cruel delusions and prejudices if we do so. People will use +such a word as race in the loosest manner, and base the most +preposterous generalizations upon it. They will speak of a +"British" {73} race or of a "European" race. But nearly all the +European nations are confused mixtures of brownish, dark-white, +white and Mongolian elements. + +[Illustration: A MAYA STELE] + +It was at the Neolithic phase of human development that peoples of +the Mongolian breed first made their way into America. Apparently +they came by way of Behring Straits and spread southward. They +found caribou, the American reindeer, in the north and great {74} +herds of bison in the south. When they reached South America +there were still living the Glyptodon, a gigantic armadillo, and +the Megatherium, a monstrous clumsy sloth as high as an elephant. +They probably exterminated the latter beast, which was as helpless +as it was big. + +The greater portion of these American tribes never rose above a +hunting nomadic Neolithic life. They never discovered the use of +iron, and their chief metal possessions were native gold and +copper. But in Mexico, Yucatan and Peru conditions existed +favourable to settled cultivation, and here about 1000 B.C. or so +arose very interesting civilizations of a parallel but different +type from the old-world civilization. Like the much earlier +primitive civilizations of the old world these communities +displayed a great development of human sacrifice about the +processes of seed time and harvest; but while in the old world, as +we shall see, these primary ideas were ultimately mitigated, +complicated and overlaid by others, in America they developed and +were elaborated, to a very high degree of intensity. These +American civilized countries were essentially priest-ruled +countries; their war chiefs and rulers were under a rigorous rule +of law and omen. + +These priests carried astronomical science to a high level of +accuracy. They knew their year better than the Babylonians of +whom we shall presently tell. In Yucatan they had a kind of +writing, the Maya writing, of the most curious and elaborate +character. So far as we have been able to decipher it, it was +used mainly for keeping the exact and complicated calendars upon +which the priests expended their intelligence. The art of the +Maya civilization came to a climax about 700 or 800 A.D. The +sculptured work of these people amazes the modern observer by its +great plastic power and its frequent beauty, and perplexes him by +a grotesqueness and by a sort of insane conventionality and +intricacy outside the circle of his ideas. There is nothing quite +like it in the old world. The nearest approach, and that is a +remote one, is found in archaic Indian carvings. Everywhere there +are woven feathers and serpents twine in and out. Many Maya +inscriptions resemble a certain sort of elaborate drawing made by +lunatics in European asylums, more than any other +old-world work. It is as if the Maya mind {75} had developed upon +a different line from the old-world mind, had a different twist to +its ideas, was not, by old-world standards, a rational mind at +all. + +This linking of these aberrant American civilizations to the idea +of a general mental aberration finds support in their +extraordinary obsession by the shedding of human blood. The +Mexican civilization in particular ran blood; it offered thousands +of human victims yearly. The cutting open of living victims, the +tearing out of the still beating heart, was an act that dominated +the minds and lives of these strange priesthoods. The public +life, the national festivities all turned on this fantastically +horrible act. + +[Illustration: NEOLITHIC WARRIOR] + +The ordinary existence of the common people in these communities +was very like the ordinary existence of any other barbaric +peasantry. Their pottery, weaving and dyeing was very good. The +Maya writing was not only carven on stone but written and painted +upon skins and the like. The European and American museums +contain many enigmatical Maya manuscripts of which at present +little has been deciphered except the dates. In Peru there were +beginnings of a similar writing but they were superseded by a +method of keeping records by knotting {76} cords. A similar +method of mnemonics was in use in China thousands of years ago. + +In the old world before 4000 or 5000 B.C., that is to say three or +four thousand years earlier, there were primitive civilizations +not unlike these American civilizations; civilizations based upon +a temple, having a vast quantity of blood sacrifices and with an +intensely astronomical priesthood. But in the old world the +primitive civilizations reacted upon one another and developed +towards the conditions of our own world. In America these +primitive civilizations never progressed beyond this primitive +stage. Each of them was in a little world of its own. Mexico it +seems knew little or nothing of Peru, until the Europeans came to +America. The potato, which was the principal food stuff in Peru, +was unknown in Mexico. + +Age by age these peoples lived and marvelled at their gods and +made their sacrifices and died. Maya art rose to high levels of +decorative beauty. Men made love and tribes made war. Drought +and plenty, pestilence and health, followed one another. The +priests elaborated their calendar and their sacrificial ritual +through long centuries, but made little progress in other +directions. + + + + +{77} + +XV + +SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING + + +The old world is a wider, more varied stage than the new. By 6000 +or 7000 B.C. there were already quasi-civilized communities almost +at the Peruvian level, appearing in various fertile regions of +Asia and in the Nile valley. At that time north Persia and +western Turkestan and south Arabia were all more fertile than they +are now, and there are traces of very early communities in these +regions. It is in lower Mesopotamia however and in Egypt that +there first appear cities, temples, systematic irrigation, and +evidences of a social organization rising above the level of a +mere barbaric village-town. In those days the Euphrates and +Tigris flowed by separate mouths into the Persian Gulf, and it was +in the country between them that the Sumerians built their first +cities. About the same time, for chronology is still vague, the +great history of Egypt was beginning. + +These Sumerians appear to have been a brownish people with +prominent noses. They employed a sort of writing that has been +deciphered, and their language is now known. They had discovered +the use of bronze and they built great tower-like temples of +sun-dried brick. The clay of this country is very fine; they used +it to write upon, and so it is that their inscriptions have been +preserved to us. They had cattle, sheep, goats and asses, but no +horses. They fought on foot, in close formation, carrying spears +and shields of skin. Their clothing was of wool and they shaved +their heads. + +Each of the Sumerian cities seems generally to have been an +independent state with a god of its own and priests of its own. +But sometimes one city would establish an ascendancy over others +and exact tribute from their population. A very ancient +inscription {78}at Nippur records the "empire," the first recorded +empire, of the Sumerian city of Erech. Its god and its +priest-king claimed an authority from the Persian Gulf to +the Red Sea. + +[Illustration: BRICK OF HAMMURABI, KING OF BABYLON ABOUT 2200 +B.C.] + +At first writing was merely an abbreviated method of pictorial +record. Even before Neolithic times men were beginning to write. +The Azilian rock pictures to which we have already referred show +the beginning of the process. Many of them record hunts and +expeditions, and in most of these the human figures are plainly +drawn. But in some the painter would not bother with head and +limbs; he just indicated men by a vertical and one or two +transverse strokes. From this to a conventional condensed picture +writing was an easy transition. In Sumeria, where the writing was +done on clay with a stick, the dabs of the characters soon became +unrecognizably unlike the things they stood for, but in Egypt +where men painted on walls and on strips of the papyrus reed (the +first paper) the likeness to the thing imitated remained. From +the fact that the wooden styles used in Sumeria made wedge-shaped +marks, the Sumerian writing is called cuneiform (= wedge-shaped). + +{79} + +[Illustration: EBONY CYLINDER SEALS OF FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY] + +An important step towards writing was made when pictures were used +to indicate not the thing represented but some similar thing. In +the rebus dear to children of a suitable age, this is still done +to-day. We draw a camp with tents and a bell, and the child is +delighted to guess that this is the Scotch name Campbell. The +Sumerian language was a language made up of accumulated syllables +rather like some contemporary Amerindian languages, and it lent +itself very readily to this syllabic method of writing words +expressing ideas that could not be conveyed by pictures directly. +Egyptian writing underwent parallel developments. Later on, when +foreign peoples with less distinctly syllabled methods of speech +were to learn and use these picture scripts they were to make +those further modifications and simplifications that developed at +last into alphabetical writing. All the true alphabets of the +later world derived from a mixture of the Sumerian cuneiform and +the Egyptian hieroglyphic (priest writing). Later in China there +was to develop a conventionalized picture writing, but in China it +never got to the alphabetical stage. + +{80} + +The invention of writing was of very great importance in the +development of human societies. It put agreements, laws, +commandments on record. It made the growth of states larger than +the old city states possible. It made a continuous historical +consciousness possible. The command of the priest or king and his +seal could go far beyond his sight and voice and could survive his +death. It is interesting to note that in ancient Sumeria seals +were greatly used. A king or a nobleman or a merchant would have +his seal often very artistically carved, and would impress it on +any clay document he wished to authorize. So close had +civilization got to printing six thousand years ago. Then the +clay was dried hard and became permanent. For the reader must +remember that in the land of Mesopotamia for countless years, +letters, records and accounts were all written on comparatively +indestructible tiles. To that fact we owe a great wealth of +recovered knowledge. + +[Illustration: THE SAKHARA PYRAMIDS] + +Bronze, copper, gold, silver and, as a precious rarity, meteoric +iron were known in both Sumeria and Egypt at a very early stage. + +==================================================================== + +{81} + +[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF +CHEOPS] + +==================================================================== + +{82} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDEREH] + +==================================================================== + +Daily life in those first city lands of the old world must have +been {83} very similar in both Egypt and Sumeria. And except for +the asses and cattle in the streets it must have been not unlike +the life in the Maya cities of America three or four thousand +years later. Most of the people in peace time were busy with +irrigation and cultivation--except on days of religious festivity. +They had no money and no need for it. They managed their small +occasional trades by barter. The princes and rulers who alone had +more than a few possessions used gold and silver bars and precious +stones for any incidental act of trade. The temple dominated +life; in Sumeria it was a great towering temple that went up to a +roof from which the stars were observed; in Egypt it was a massive +building with only a ground floor. In Sumeria the priest ruler was +the greatest, most splendid of beings. In Egypt however there was +one who was raised above the priests; he was the living +incarnation of the chief god of the land, the Pharaoh, the god +king. + +There were few changes in the world in those days; men's days were +sunny, toilsome and conventional. Few strangers came into the +land and such as did fared uncomfortably. The priest directed +life according to immemorial rules and watched the stars for seed +time and marked the omens of the sacrifices and interpreted the +warnings of dreams. Men worked and loved and died, not unhappily, +forgetful of the savage past of their race and heedless of its +future. Sometimes the ruler was benign. Such was Pepi II, who +reigned in Egypt for ninety years. Sometimes he was ambitious and +took men's sons to be soldiers and sent them against neighbouring +city states to war and plunder, or he made them toil to build +great buildings. Such were Cheops and Chephren and Mycerinus, who +built those vast sepulchral piles, the pyramids at Gizeh. The +largest of these is 450 feet high and the weight of stone in it is +4,883,000 tons. All this was brought down the Nile in boats and +lugged into place chiefly by human muscle. Its erection must have +exhausted Egypt more than a great war would have done. + + + +{84} + +XVI + +PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES + + +It was not only in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley that men were +settling down to agriculture and the formation of city states in +the centuries between 6000 and 8000 B.C. Wherever there were +possibilities of irrigation and a steady all-the-year-round food +supply men were exchanging the uncertainties and hardships of +hunting and wandering for the routines of settlement. On the +upper Tigris a people called the Assyrians were founding cities; +in the valleys of Asia Minor and on the Mediterranean shores and +islands, there were small communities growing up to civilization. +Possibly parallel developments of human life were already going on +in favourable regions of India, and China. In many parts of +Europe where there were lakes well stocked with fish, little +communities of men had long settled in dwellings built on piles +over the water, and were eking out agriculture by fishing and +hunting. But over much larger areas of the old world no such +settlement was possible. The land was too harsh, too thickly +wooded or too arid, or the seasons too uncertain for mankind, with +only the implements and science of that age to take root. + +For settlement under the conditions of the primitive civilizations +men needed a constant water supply and warmth and sunshine. Where +these needs were not satisfied, man could live as a transient, as +a hunter following his game, as a herdsman following the seasonal +grass, but he could not settle. The transition from the hunting +to the herding life may have been very gradual. From following +herds of wild cattle or (in Asia) wild horses, men may have come +to an idea of property in them, have learnt to pen them into +valleys, have fought for them against wolves, wild dogs and other +predatory beasts. + +{85} + +[Illustration: POTTERY AND IMPLEMENTS OF THE LAKE DWELLERS] + +{86} + +[Illustration: A CONTEMPORARY LAKE VILLAGE] + +So while the primitive civilizations of the cultivators were +growing up chiefly in the great river valleys, a different way of +living, the nomadic life, a life in constant movement to and fro +from winter pasture to summer pasture, was also growing up. The +nomadic peoples were on the whole hardier than the +agriculturalists; they were less prolific and numerous, they had +no permanent temples and no highly organized priesthood; they had +less gear; but the reader must not suppose that theirs was +necessarily a less highly developed way of living on that account. +In many ways this free life was a fuller life than that of the +tillers of the soil. The individual was more +self-reliant; less of a unit in a crowd. The leader was more +important; the medicine man perhaps less so. + +[Illustration: NOMADS IN EGYPT] + +{87} + +Moving over large stretches of country the nomad took a wider view +of life. He touched on the confines of this settled land and +that. He was used to the sight of strange faces. He had to +scheme and treat for pasture with competing tribes. He knew more +of minerals than the folk upon the plough lands because he went +over mountain passes and into rocky places. He may have been a +better metallurgist. Possibly bronze and much more probably iron +smelting were nomadic discoveries. Some of the earliest +implements of iron reduced from its ores have been found in +Central Europe far away from the early civilizations. + +[Illustration: FLINT KNIVES OF 4500 B.C.] + +[Illustration: NOMADS IN EGYPT] + +On the other hand the settled folk had their textiles and their +pottery and made many desirable things. It was inevitable that as +the two sorts of life, the agricultural and the nomadic +differentiated, a certain amount of looting and trading should +develop between the two. In Sumeria particularly which had +deserts and seasonal {88} country on either hand it must have been +usual to have the nomads camping close to the cultivated fields, +trading and stealing and perhaps tinkering, as gipsies do to this +day. (But hens they would not steal, because the domestic +fowl--an Indian jungle fowl originally was not domesticated by man +until about 1000 B.C.) They would bring precious stones and things +of metal and leather. If they were hunters they would bring skins. +They would get in exchange pottery and beads and glass, garments +and suchlike manufactured things. + +[Illustration: EGYPT PEASANTS GOING TO WORK] + +Three main regions and three main kinds of wandering and +imperfectly settled people there were in those remote days of the +first civilizations in Sumeria and early Egypt. Away in the +forests of Europe were the blonde Nordic peoples, hunters and +herdsmen, a lowly race. The primitive civilizations saw very +little of this race before 1500 B.C. Away on the steppes of +eastern Asia various Mongolian tribes, the Hunnish peoples, were +domesticating the horse and developing a very wide sweeping habit +of seasonal movement between their summer and winter camping +places. Possibly the Nordic and Hunnish peoples were still +separated from one another by the swamps of Russia and the greater +Caspian Sea of that time. For very much of Russia there was swamp +and lake. In the deserts, which were growing more arid now, of +Syria and Arabia, tribes of a dark white or brownish people, the +Semitic tribes, were driving flocks of sheep and goats and asses +from pasture to pasture. It was these Semitic shepherds and +certain more negroid people from southern Persia, the Elamites, +who were the first nomads to come into close contact with the +early civilizations. They came {90} as traders and as raiders. +Finally there arose leaders among them with bolder imaginations, +and they became conquerors. + +==================================================================== + +{89} + +[Illustration: STELE GLORIFYING KING NARAM SIN, OF AKKAD] + +==================================================================== + +About 2750 B.C. a great Semitic leader, Sargon, had conquered the +whole Sumerian land and was master of all the world from the +Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. He was an illiterate +barbarian and his people, the Akkadians, learnt the Sumerian +writing and adopted the Sumerian language as the speech of the +officials and the learned. The empire he founded decayed after +two centuries, and after one inundation of Elamites a fresh +Semitic people, the Amorites, by degrees established their rule +over Sumeria. They made their capital in what had hitherto been a +small up-river town, Babylon, and their empire is called the first +Babylonian Empire. It was consolidated by a great king called +Hammurabi (circa 2100 B.C.) who made the earliest code of laws yet +known to history. + +The narrow valley of the Nile lies less open to nomadic invasion +than Mesopotamia, but about the time of Hammurabi occurred a +successful Semitic invasion of Egypt and a line of Pharaohs was +set up, the Hyksos or "shepherd kings," which lasted for several +centuries. These Semitic conquerors never assimilated themselves +with the Egyptians; they were always regarded with hostility as +foreigners and barbarians; and they were at last expelled by a +popular uprising about 1600 B.C. + +But the Semites had come into Sumeria for good and all, the two +races assimilated and the Babylonian Empire became Semitic in its +language and character. + + + + +{91} + +XVII + +THE FIRST SEAGOING PEOPLES + + +The earliest boats and ships must have come into use some +twenty-five or thirty thousand years ago. Man was probably +paddling about on the water with a log of wood or an inflated skin +to assist him, at latest in the beginnings of the Neolithic +period. A basketwork boat covered with skin and caulked was used +in Egypt and Sumeria from the beginnings of our knowledge. Such +boats are still used there. They are used to this day in Ireland +and Wales and in Alaska; sealskin boats still make the crossing of +Behring Straits. The hollow log followed as tools improved. The +building of boats and then ships came in a natural succession. + +Perhaps the legend of Noah's Ark preserves the memory of some +early exploit in shipbuilding, just as the story of the Flood, so +widely distributed among the peoples of the world, may be the +tradition of the flooding of the Mediterranean basin. + +There were ships upon the Red Sea long before the pyramids were +built, and there were ships on the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf +by 7000 B.C. Mostly these were the ships of fishermen, but some +were already trading and pirate ships--for knowing what we do of +mankind we may guess pretty safely that the first sailors +plundered where they could and traded where they had to do so. + +The seas on which these first ships adventured were inland seas on +which the wind blew fitfully and which were often at a dead calm +for days together, so that sailing did not develop beyond an +accessory use. It is only in the last four hundred years that the +well-rigged, ocean-going, sailing ship has developed. The ships +of the ancient world were essentially rowing ships which hugged +the shore and went into harbour at the first sign of rough +weather. As ships grew into big galleys they caused a demand for +war captives as galley slaves. + +We have already noted the appearance of the Semitic people as +wanderers and nomads in the region of Syria and Arabia, and how +they conquered Sumeria and set up first the Akkadian and then the +first Babylonian Empire. In the west these same Semitic peoples +{92} were taking to the sea. They set up a string of harbour +towns along the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean, of which Tyre +and Sidon were the chief; and by the time of Hammurabi in Babylon, +they had spread as traders, wanderers and colonizers over the +whole Mediterranean basin. These sea Semites were called the +Phoenicians, They settled largely in Spain, pushing back the old +Iberian Basque population and sending coasting expeditions through +the straits of Gibraltar; and they set up colonies upon the north +coast of Africa. Of Carthage, one of these Phoenician cities, we +shall have much more to tell later. + +But the Phoenicians were not the first people to have galleys in +the Mediterranean waters. There was already a series of towns and +cities among the islands and coasts of that sea belonging to a +race or races apparently connected by blood and language with the +Basques to the west and the Berbers and Egyptians to the south, +the Ægean peoples. These peoples must not be confused with the +Greeks, who come much later into our story; they were pre-Greek, +but they had cities in Greece and Asia Minor; Mycenæ and Troy for +example, and they had a great and prosperous establishment at +Cnossos in Crete. + +It is only in the last half century that the industry of +excavating archæologists has brought the extent and civilization +of the Ægean peoples to our knowledge. Cnossos has been most +thoroughly explored; it was happily not succeeded by any city big +enough to destroy its ruins, and so it is our chief source of +information about this once almost forgotten civilization. + +The history of Cnossos goes back as far as the history of Egypt; +the two countries were trading actively across the sea by 4000 +B.C. By 2500 B.C., that is between the time of Sargon I and +Hammurabi, Cretan civilization was at its zenith. + +Cnossos was not so much a town as a great palace for the Cretan +monarch and his people. It was not even fortified. It was only +fortified later as the Phoenicians grew strong, and as a new and +more terrible breed of pirates, the Greeks, came upon the sea from +the north. + +The monarch was called Minos, as the Egyptian monarch was called +Pharaoh; and he kept his state in a palace fitted with running +water, with bathrooms and the like conveniences such as we know of +in no other ancient remains. There he held great festivals and +shows. There was bull-fighting, singularly like the +bull-fighting that {93} still survives in Spain; there was +resemblance even in the costumes of the bull-fighters; and there +were gymnastic displays. The women's clothes were remarkably +modern in spirit; they wore corsets and flounced dresses. The +pottery, the textile manufactures, the sculpture, painting, +jewellery, ivory, metal and inlay work of these {94} Cretans was +often astonishingly beautiful. And they had a system of writing, +but that still remains to be deciphered. + +[Illustration: THE TREASURE HOUSE AT MYCENÆ] + +This happy and sunny and civilized life lasted for some score of +centuries. About 2000 B.C. Cnossos and Babylon abounded in +comfortable and cultivated people who probably led very pleasant +lives. They had shows and they had religious festivals, they had +domestic slaves to look after them and industrial slaves to make a +profit for them. Life must have seemed very secure in Cnossos for +such people, sunlit and girdled by the blue sea. Egypt of course +must have appeared rather a declining country in those days under +the rule of her half-barbaric shepherd kings, and if one took an +interest in politics one must have noticed how the Semitic people +seemed to be getting everywhere, ruling Egypt, ruling distant +Babylon, building Nineveh on the upper Tigris, sailing west to the +Pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar) and setting up +their colonies on those distant coasts. + +There were some active arid curious minds in Cnossos, because +later on the Greeks told legends of a certain skilful Cretan +artificer, Dædalus, who attempted to make some sort of flying +machine, perhaps a glider, which collapsed and fell into the sea. + +It is interesting to note some of the differences as well as the +resemblances between the life of Cnossos and our own. To a Cretan +gentleman of 2500 B.C. iron was a rare metal which fell out of the +sky and was curious rather than useful--for as yet only meteoric +iron was known, iron had not been obtained from its ores. Compare +that with our modern state of affairs pervaded by iron everywhere. +The horse again would be a quite legendary creature to our Cretan, +a sort of super-ass which lived in the bleak northern lands far +away beyond the Black Sea. Civilization for him dwelt chiefly in +Ægean Greece and Asia Minor, where Lydians and Carians and Trojans +lived a life and probably spoke languages like his own. There +were Phoenicians and Ægeans settled in Spain and North Africa, but +those were very remote regions to his imagination. Italy was +still a desolate land covered with dense forests; the +brown-skinned Etruscans had not yet gone there from Asia Minor. And +one day perhaps this Cretan gentleman went down to the harbour and saw +a captive who attracted his attention because he was very +fair-complexioned {95} and had blue eyes. Perhaps our Cretan tried to +talk to him and was answered in an unintelligible gibberish. This +creature came from somewhere beyond the Black Sea and seemed to be +an altogether benighted savage. But indeed he was an Aryan +tribesman, of a race and culture of which we shall soon have much +to tell, and the strange gibberish he spoke was to differentiate +some day into Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, German, English and +most of the chief languages of the world. + +[Illustration: THE PALACE AT CNOSSOS] + +Such was Cnossos at its zenith, intelligent, enterprising, bright +and happy. But about 1400 B.C. disaster came perhaps very +suddenly upon its prosperity. The palace of Minos was destroyed, +and its ruins have never been rebuilt or inhabited from that day +to this. We do not know how this disaster occurred. The +excavators note what appears to be scattered plunder and the marks +of the fire. But the traces of a very destructive earthquake have +also been found. Nature alone may have destroyed Cnossos, or the +Greeks may have finished what the earthquake began. + + + + +{96} + +XVIII + +EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA + + +The Egyptians had never submitted very willingly to the rule of +their Semitic shepherd kings and about 1600 A.D. a vigorous +patriotic movement expelled these foreigners. Followed a new +phase or revival for Egypt, a period known to Egyptologists as the +New Empire. Egypt, which had not been closely consolidated before +the Hyksos invasion, was now a united country; and the phase of +subjugation and insurrection left her full of military spirit. +The Pharaohs became aggressive conquerors. They had now acquired +the war horse and the war chariot, which the Hyksos had brought to +them. Under Thothmes III and Amenophis III Egypt had extended her +rule into Asia as far as the Euphrates. + +We are entering now upon a thousand years of warfare between the +once quite separated civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile. +At first Egypt was ascendant. The great dynasties, the +Seventeenth Dynasty, which included Thothmes III and Amenophis III +and IV and a great queen Hatasu, and the Nineteenth, when Rameses +II, supposed by some to have been the Pharaoh of Moses, reigned +for sixty-seven years, raised Egypt to high levels of prosperity. +In between there were phases of depression for Egypt, conquest by +the Syrians and later conquest by the Ethiopians from the South. +In Mesopotamia Babylon ruled, then the Hittites and the Syrians of +Damascus rose to a transitory predominance; at one time the +Syrians conquered Egypt; the fortunes of the Assyrians of Nineveh +ebbed and flowed; sometimes the city was a conquered city; +sometimes the Assyrians ruled in Babylon and assailed Egypt. Our +space is too limited here to tell of the comings and goings of the +armies of the Egyptians and of the various Semitic powers of Asia +Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia. They were armies now provided with +vast droves of war chariots, for the horse--still used only for +{97} war and glory--had spread by this time into the old +civilizations from Central Asia. + +[Illustration: TEMPLE AT ABU SIMBEL] + +Great conquerors appear in the dim light of that distant time and +pass, Tushratta, King of Mitanni, who captured Nineveh, Tiglath +Pileser I of Assyria who conquered Babylon. At last the Assyrians +became the greatest military power of the time. Tiglath Pileser +III conquered Babylon in 745 B.C. and founded what historians call +the New Assyrian Empire. Iron had also come now into civilization +out of the north; the Hittites, the precursors of the Armenians, +had it first and communicated its use to the Assyrians, and an +Assyrian usurper, Sargon II, armed his troops with it. Assyria +became the first power to expound the doctrine of blood and iron. +Sargon's son Sennacherib led an army to the borders of Egypt, and +was defeated not by military strength but by the plague. +Sennacherib's grandson Assurbanipal (who is also known in history +{98} by his Greek name of Sardanapalus) did actually conquer Egypt +in 670 B.C. But Egypt was already a conquered country then under +an Ethiopian dynasty. Sardanapalus simply replaced one conqueror +by another. + +[Illustration: AVENUE OF SPHINXES] + +If one had a series of political maps of this long period of +history, this interval of ten centuries, we should have Egypt +expanding and contracting like an amoeba under a microscope, and +we should see these various Semitic states of the Babylonians, the +Assyrians, the Hittites and the Syrians coming and going, eating +each other up and disgorging each other again. To the west of +Asia Minor there would be little Ægean states like Lydia, whose +capital was Sardis, and Caria. But after about 1200 B.C. and +perhaps earlier, a new set of names would come into the map of the +ancient world from {100} the north-east and from the north-west. +These would be the names of certain barbaric tribes, armed with +iron weapons and using horse-chariots, who were becoming a great +affliction to the Ægean and Semitic civilizations on the northern +borders. They all spoke variants of what once must have been the +same language, Aryan. + +==================================================================== + +{99} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK] + +==================================================================== + +Round the north-east of the Black and Caspian Seas were coming the +Medes and Persians. Confused with these in the records of the +time were Scythians and Samatians. From north-east or +north-west came the Armenians, from the north-west of the +sea-barrier through the Balkan peninsula came Cimmerians, +Phrygians and the Hellenic tribes whom now we call the Greeks. +They were raiders and robbers and plunderers of cities, these +Ayrans, east and west alike. They were all kindred and similar +peoples, hardy herdsmen who had taken to plunder. In the east +they were still only borderers and raiders, but in the west they +were taking cities and driving out the civilized Ægean +populations. The Ægean peoples were so pressed that they were +seeking new homes in lands beyond the Aryan range. Some were +seeking a settlement in the delta of the Nile and being repulsed +by the Egyptians; some, the Etruscans, seem to have sailed from +Asia Minor to found a state in the forest wildernesses of middle +Italy; some built themselves cities upon the south-east coasts of +the Mediterranean and became later that people known in history as +the Philistines. + +Of these Aryans who came thus rudely upon the scene of the ancient +civilizations we will tell more fully in a later section. Here we +note simply all this stir and emigration amidst the area of the +ancient civilizations, that was set up by the swirl of the gradual +and continuous advance of these Aryan barbarians out of the +northern forests and wildernesses between 1600 and 600 B.C. + +And in a section to follow we must tell also of a little Semitic +people, the Hebrews, in the hills behind the Phoenician and +Philistine coasts, who began to be of significance in the world +towards the end of this period. They produced a literature of +very great importance in subsequent history, a collection of +books, histories, poems, books of wisdom and prophetic works, the +Hebrew Bible. + +In Mesopotamia and Egypt the coming of the Aryans did not cause +fundamental changes until after 600 B.C. The flight of {101} the +Ægeans before the Greeks and even the destruction of Cnossos must +have seemed a very remote disturbance to both the citizens of +Egypt and of Babylon. Dynasties came and went in these cradle +states of civilization, but the main tenor of human life went on, +with a slow increase in refinement and complexity age by age. In +Egypt the accumulated monuments of more ancient times--the +pyramids were already in their third thousand of years and a show +for visitors just as they are to-day--were supplemented by fresh +and splendid buildings, more particularly in the time of the +seventeenth and nineteenth dynasties. The great temples at Karnak +and Luxor date from this time. All the chief monuments of +Nineveh, the great temples, the winged bulls with human heads, the +reliefs of kings and chariots and lion hunts, were done in these +centuries between 1600 and 600 B.C., and this period also covers +most of the splendours of Babylon. + +[Illustration: FRIEZE SHOWING EGYPTIAN FEMALE SLAVES CARRYING +LUXURIOUS FOODS] + +Both from Mesopotamia and Egypt we now have abundant public +records, business accounts, stories, poetry and private +correspondence. We know that life, for prosperous and influential +people in such cities as Babylon and the Egyptian Thebes, was +already almost as refined and as luxurious as that of comfortable +and prosperous people to-day. Such people lived an orderly and +ceremonious life in beautiful and beautifully furnished and +decorated houses, wore richly decorated clothing and lovely +jewels; they had feasts and festivals, entertained one another +with music and dancing, were waited upon by highly trained +servants, were cared for by doctors and dentists. They did not +travel very much or very far, but boating {102} excursions were a +common summer pleasure both on the Nile and on the Euphrates. The +beast of burthen was the ass; the horse was still used only in +chariots for war and upon occasions of state. The mule was still +novel and the camel, though it was known in Mesopotamia, had not +been brought into Egypt. And there were few utensils of iron; +copper and bronze remained the prevailing metals. Fine linen and +cotton fabrics were known as well as wool. But there was no silk +yet. Glass was known and beautifully coloured, but glass things +were usually small. There was no clear glass and no optical use +of glass. People had gold stoppings in their teeth but no +spectacles on their noses. + +One odd contrast between the life of old Thebes or Babylon and +modern life was the absence of coined money. Most trade was still +done by barter. Babylon was financially far ahead of Egypt. Gold +and silver were used for exchange and kept in ingots; and there +were bankers, before coinage, who stamped their names and the +weight on these lumps of precious metal. A merchant or traveller +would carry precious stones to sell to pay for his necessities. +Most servants and workers were slaves who were paid not money but +in kind. As money came in slavery declined. + +A modern visitor to these crowning cities of the ancient world +would have missed two very important articles of diet; there were +no hens and no eggs. A French cook would have found small joy in +Babylon. These things came from the East somewhere about the time +of the last Assyrian empire. + +Religion like everything else had undergone great refinement. +Human sacrifice for instance had long since disappeared; animals +or bread dummies had been substituted for the victim. (But the +Phoenicians and especially the citizens of Carthage, their +greatest settlement in Africa, were accused, later of immolating +human beings.) When a great chief had died in the ancient days it +had been customary to sacrifice his wives and slaves and break +spear and bow at his tomb so that he should not go unattended and +unarmed in the spirit world. In Egypt there survived of this dark +tradition the pleasant custom of burying small models of house and +shop and servants and cattle with the dead, models that give us +to-day the liveliest realization of the safe and cultivated life +of these ancient people, three thousand years and more ago. + +{103} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF HORUS AT EDFU] + +Such was the ancient world before the coming of the Aryans out of +the northern forests and plains. In India and China there were +parallel developments. In the great valleys of both these regions +agricultural city states of brownish peoples were growing up, but +in India they do not seem to have advanced or coalesced so rapidly +as the city states of Mesopotamia or Egypt. They were nearer the +level of the ancient Sumerians or of the Maya civilization of +America. Chinese history has still to be modernized by Chinese +scholars and cleared of much legendary matter. Probably China at +this time was in advance of India. Contemporary with the +seventeenth dynasty in Egypt, there was a dynasty of emperors in +China, the Shang dynasty, priest emperors over a loose-knit empire +of subordinate kings. The chief duty of these early emperors was +to perform the seasonal sacrifices. Beautiful bronze vessels from +the time of the Shang dynasty still exist, and their beauty and +workmanship compel us to recognize that many centuries of +civilization must have preceded their manufacture. + + + + +{104} + +XIX + +THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS + + +Four thousand years ago, that is to say about 2000 B.C., central +and south-eastern Europe and central Asia were probably warmer, +moister and better wooded than they are now. In these regions of +the earth wandered a group of tribes mainly of the fair and +blue-eyed Nordic race, sufficiently in touch with one another to +speak merely variations of one common language from the Rhine to +the Caspian Sea. At that time they may not have been a very +numerous people, and their existence was unsuspected by the +Babylonians to whom Hammurabi was giving laws, or by the already +ancient and cultivated land of Egypt which was tasting in those +days for the first time the bitterness of foreign conquest. + +These Nordic people were destined to play a very important part +indeed in the world's history. They were a people of the +parklands and the forest clearings; they had no horses at first +but they had cattle; when they wandered they put their tents and +other gear on rough ox waggons; when they settled for a time they +may have made huts of wattle and mud. They burnt their important +dead; they did not bury them ceremoniously as the brunette peoples +did. They put the ashes of their greater leaders in urns and then +made a great circular mound about them. These mounds are the +"round barrows" that occur all over north Europe. The brunette +people, their predecessors, did not burn their dead but buried +them in a sitting position in elongated mounds; the "long +barrows." + +The Aryans raised crops of wheat, ploughing with oxen, but they +did not settle down by their crops; they would reap and move on. +They had bronze, and somewhen about 1500 B.C. they acquired iron. +They may have been the discoverers of iron smelting. And somewhen +vaguely about that time they also got the horse--which to begin +with they used only for draught purposes. Their social life did +not centre upon a temple like that of the more settled people +round the Mediterranean, and their chief men were leaders rather +than priests. They had an aristocratic social order rather than a +{106} divine and regal order; from a very early stage they +distinguished certain families as leaderly and noble. + +==================================================================== + +{105} + +[Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL ARCHAIC AMPHORA] + +==================================================================== + +They were a very vocal people. They enlivened their wanderings by +feasts, at which there was much drunkenness and at which a special +sort of man, the bards, would sing and recite. They had no +writing until they had come into contact with civilization, and +the memories of these bards were their living literature. This +use of recited language as an entertainment did much to make it a +fine and beautiful instrument of expression, and to that no doubt +the subsequent predominance of the languages derived from Aryan +is, in part, to be ascribed. Every Aryan people had its legendary +history crystallized in bardic recitations, epics, sagas and +vedas, as they were variously called. + +The social life of these people centred about the households of +their leading men. The hall of the chief where they settled for a +time was often a very capacious timber building. There were no +doubt huts for herds and outlying farm buildings; but with most of +the Aryan peoples this hall was the general centre, everyone went +there to feast and hear the bards and take part in games and +discussions. Cowsheds and stabling surrounded it. The chief and +his wife and so forth would sleep on a dais or in an upper +gallery; the commoner sort slept about anywhere, as people still +do in Indian households. Except for weapons, ornaments, tools and +suchlike personal possessions there was a sort of patriarchal +communism in the tribe. The chief owned the cattle and grazing +lands in the common interest; forest and rivers were the wild. + +This was the fashion of the people who were increasing and +multiplying over the great spaces of central Europe and west +central Asia during the growth of the great civilization of +Mesopotamia and the Nile, and whom we find pressing upon the +heliolithic peoples everywhere in the second millennium before +Christ. They were coming into France and Britain and into Spain. +They pushed westward in two waves. The first of these people who +reached Britain and Ireland were armed with bronze weapons. They +exterminated or subjugated the people who had made the great stone +monuments of Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge and Avebury in +England. They reached Ireland. They are called the Goidelic +Celts. The {107} second wave of a closely kindred people, perhaps +intermixed with other racial elements, brought iron with it into +Great Britain, and is known as the wave of Brythonic Celts. From +them the Welsh derive their language. + +[Illustration: THE MOUND OF NIPPUR] + +Kindred Celtic peoples were pressing southward into Spain and +coming into contact not only with the heliolithic Basque people +who still occupied the country but with the Semitic Phoenician +colonies of the sea coast. A closely allied series of tribes, the +Italians, were making their way down the still wild and wooded +Italian peninsula. They did not always conquer. In the eighth +century B.C. Rome appears in history, a trading town on the Tiber, +inhabited by Aryan Latins but under the rule of Etruscan nobles +and kings. + +At the other extremity of the Aryan range there was a similar +progress southward of similar tribes. Aryan peoples, speaking +Sanskrit, had come down through the western passes into North +{108} India long before 1000 B.C. There they came into contact +with a primordial brunette civilization, the Dravidian +civilization, and learnt much from it. Other Aryan tribes seem to +have spread over the mountain masses of Central Asia far to the +east of the present range of such peoples. In Eastern Turkestan +there are still fair, blue-eyed Nordic tribes, but now they speak +Mongolian tongues. + +Between the Black and Caspian Seas the ancient Hittites had been +submerged and "Aryanized" by the Armenians before 1000 B.C., and +the Assyrians and Babylonians were already aware of a new and +formidable fighting barbarism on the north-eastern frontiers, a +group of tribes amidst which the Scythians, the Medes and the +Persians remain as outstanding names. + +But it was through the Balkan peninsula that Aryan tribes made +their first heavy thrust into the heart of the old-world +civilization. They were already coming southward and crossing +into Asia Minor many centuries before 1000 B.C. First came a +group of tribes of whom the Phrygians were the most conspicuous, +and then in succession the Æolic, the Ionic and the Dorian Greeks. +By 1000 B.C. they had wiped out the ancient Ægean civilization +both in the mainland of Greece and in most of the Greek islands; +the cities of Mycenæ and Tiryns were obliterated and Cnossos was +nearly forgotten. The Greeks had taken to the sea before 1000 +A.D., they had settled in Crete and Rhodes, and they were founding +colonies in Sicily and the south of Italy after the fashion of the +Phoenician trading cities that were dotted along the Mediterranean +coasts. + +So it was, while Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II and +Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia +and Syria and Egypt, the Aryan peoples were learning the methods +of civilization and making it over for their own purposes in Italy +and Greece and north Persia. The theme of history from the ninth +century B.C. onward for six centuries is the story of how these +Aryan peoples grew to power and enterprise and how at last they +subjugated the whole Ancient World, Semitic, Ægean and Egyptian +alike. In form the Aryan peoples were altogether victorious; but +the struggle of Aryan, Semitic and Egyptian ideas and methods was +continued long after the sceptre was in Aryan hands. It is indeed +a struggle that goes on through all the rest of history and still +in a manner continues to this day. + + + + +{109} + +XX + +THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I + + +We have already mentioned how Assyria became a great military +power under Tiglath Pileser III and under the usurper Sargon II. +Sargon was not this man's original name; he adopted it to flatter +the conquered Babylonians by reminding them of that ancient +founder of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon I, two thousand years +before his time. Babylon, for all that it was a conquered city, +was of greater population and importance than Nineveh, and its +great god Bel Marduk and its traders and priests had to be treated +politely. In Mesopotamia in the eighth century B.C. we are +already far beyond the barbaric days when the capture of a town +meant loot and massacre. Conquerors sought to propitiate and win +the conquered. For a century and a half after Sargon the new +Assyrian empire endured and, as we have noted, Assurbanipal +(Sardanapalus) held at least lower Egypt. + +But the power and solidarity of Assyria waned rapidly. Egypt by +an effort threw off the foreigner under a Pharoah Psammetichus I, +and under Necho II attempted a war of conquest in Syria. By that +time Assyria was grappling with foes nearer at hand, and could +make but a poor resistance. A Semitic people from south-east +Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans, combined with Aryan Medes and Persians +from the north-east against Nineveh, and in +606 B.C.--for now we are coming down to exact chronology--took +that city. + +There was a division of the spoils of Assyria. A Median Empire +was set up in the north under Cyaxares. It included Nineveh, and +its capital was Ecbatana. Eastward it reached to the borders of +India. To the south of this in a great crescent was a new +Chaldean Empire, the Second Babylonian Empire, which rose to a +very great degree of wealth and power under the rule of +Nebuchadnezzar the Great (the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible). The +last great days, the {110} greatest days of all, for Babylon +began. For a time the two Empires remained at peace, and the +daughter of Nebuchadnezzar was married to Cyaxares. + +Meanwhile Necho II was pursuing his easy conquests in Syria. He +had defeated and slain King Josiah of Judah, a small country of +which there is more to tell presently, at the battle of Megiddo in +608 B.C., and he pushed on to the Euphrates to encounter not a +decadent Assyria but a renascent Babylonia. The Chaldeans dealt +very vigorously with the Egyptians. Necho was routed and driven +back to Egypt, and the Babylonian frontier pushed down to the +ancient Egyptian boundaries. + +From 606 until 589 B.C. the Second Babylonian Empire flourished +insecurely. It flourished so long as it kept the peace with the +stronger, hardier Median Empire to the north. And during these +sixty-seven years not only life but learning flourished in the +ancient city. + +[Map: Map showing the relation of the Median and Second Babylonian +(Chaldæan) Empires in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great] + +[Map: The Empire of Darius (tribute-paying countries) at its +greatest extent] + +Even under the Assyrian monarchs and especially under +Sardanapalus, Babylon had been a scene of great intellectual +activity. {111} Sardanapalus, though an Assyrian, had been quite +Babylon-ized. He made a library, a library not of paper but of +the clay tablets that were used for writing in Mesopotamia since +early Sumerian days. His collection has been unearthed and is +perhaps the most precious store of historical material in the +world. The last of the Chaldean line of Babylonian monarchs, +Nabonidus, had even keener literary tastes. He patronized +antiquarian researches, and when a date was worked out by his +investigators for the accession of Sargon I he commemorated the +fact by inscriptions. But there were many signs of disunion in +his empire, and he sought to centralize it by bringing a number of +the various local gods to Babylon and setting up temples to them +there. This device was to be practised quite successfully by the +Romans in later times, but in Babylon it roused the jealousy of +the powerful priesthood of Bel Marduk, the dominant god of the +Babylonians. They cast about for a possible alternative to +Nabonidus and found it in Cyrus the Persian, the ruler of the +adjacent Median Empire. Cyrus had already distinguished himself +by conquering Croesus, the rich king of Lydia in Eastern Asia +Minor. {112} He came up against Babylon, there was a battle +outside the walls, and the gates of the city were opened to him +(538 B.C.). His soldiers entered the city without fighting. The +crown prince Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, was feasting, the +Bible relates, when a hand appeared and wrote in letters of fire +upon the wall these mystical words: _"Mene, Mene, Tekel, +Upharsin,"_ which was interpreted by the prophet Daniel, whom he +summoned to read the riddle, as "God has numbered thy kingdom and +finished it; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting and +thy kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians." Possibly the +priests of Bel Marduk knew something about that writing on the +wall. Belshazzar was killed that night, says the Bible. +Nabonidus was taken prisoner, and the occupation of the city was +so peaceful that the services of Bel Marduk continued without +intermission. + +[Illustration: PERSIAN MONARCH] + +Thus it was the Babylonian and Median empires were united. +Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, subjugated Egypt. Cambyses went mad +and was accidentally killed, and was presently succeeded by Darius +the Mede, Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, one of the chief +councillors of Cyrus. + +==================================================================== + +{113} + +[Illustration: THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS] + +[Illustration: THE GREAT PORCH OF XERXES, AT PERSEPOLIS] + +==================================================================== + +The Persian Empire of Darius I, the first of the new Aryan empires +in the seat of the old civilizations, was the greatest empire the +world had hitherto seen. It included all Asia Minor and Syria, +all the old Assyrian and Babylonian empires, Egypt, the Caucasus +and Caspian regions, Media, Persia, and it extended into India as +far as the Indus. Such an empire was possible because the horse +and rider and the chariot and the made-road had now been brought +into the world. Hitherto the ass and ox and the camel for desert +use had afforded the swiftest method of {114} transport. Great +arterial roads were made by the Persian rulers to hold their new +empire, and post horses were always in waiting for the imperial +messenger or the traveller with an official permit. Moreover the +world was now beginning to use coined money, which greatly +facilitated trade and intercourse. But the capital of this vast +empire was no longer Babylon. In the long run the priesthood of +Bel Marduk gained nothing by their treason. Babylon though still +important was now a declining city, and the great cities of the +new empire were Persepolis and Susa and Ecbatana. The capital was +Susa. Nineveh was already abandoned and sinking into ruins. + + + + +{115} + +XXI + +THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS + + +And now we can tell of the Hebrews, a Semitic people, not so +important in their own time as in their influence upon the later +history of the world. They were settled in Judea long before 1000 +B.C., and their capital city after that time was Jerusalem. Their +story is interwoven with that of the great empires on either side +of them, Egypt to the south and the changing empires of Syria, +Assyria and Babylon to the north. Their country was an inevitable +high road between these latter powers and Egypt. + +Their importance in the world is due to the fact that they +produced a written literature, a world history, a collection of +laws, chronicles, psalms, books of wisdom, poetry and fiction and +political utterances which became at last what Christians know as +the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. This literature appears in +history in the fourth or fifth century B.C. + +Probably this literature was first put together in Babylon. We +have already told how the Pharaoh, Necho II, invaded the Assyrian +Empire while Assyria was fighting for life against Medes, Persians +and Chaldeans. Josiah King of Judah opposed him, and was defeated +and slain at Megiddo (608 B.C.). Judah became a tributary to +Egypt, and when Nebuchadnezzar the Great, the new Chaldean king in +Babylon, rolled back Necho into Egypt, he attempted to manage +Judah by setting up puppet kings in Jerusalem. The experiment +failed, the people massacred his Babylonian officials, and he then +determined to break up this little state altogether, which had +long been playing off Egypt against the northern empire. +Jerusalem was sacked and burnt, and the remnant of the people was +carried off captive to Babylon. + +{116} + +There they remained until Cyrus took Babylon (538 B.C.). He then +collected them together and sent them back to resettle their +country and rebuild the walls and temple of Jerusalem. + +Before that time the Jews do not seem to have been a very +civilized or united people. Probably only a very few of them +could read or write. In their own history one never hears of the +early books of the Bible being read; the first mention of a book +is in the time of Josiah. The Babylonian captivity civilized them +and consolidated them. They returned aware of their own +literature, an acutely self-conscious and political people. + +Their Bible at that time seems to have consisted only of the +Pentateuch, that is to say the first five books of the Old +Testament as we know it. In addition, as separate books they +already had many of the other books that have since been +incorporated with the Pentateuch into the present Hebrew Bible, +Chronicles, the Psalms and Proverbs for example. + +The accounts of the Creation of the World, of Adam and Eve and of +the Flood, with which the Bible begins, run closely parallel with +similar Babylonian legends; they seem to have been part of the +common beliefs of all the Semitic peoples. So too the stories of +Moses and of Samson have Sumerian and Babylonian parallels. But +with the story of Abraham and onward begins something more special +to the Jewish race. + +Abraham may have lived as early as the days of Hammurabi in +Babylon. He was a patriarchal Semitic nomad. To the book of +Genesis the reader must go for the story of his wanderings and for +the stories of his sons and grandchildren and how they became +captive in the Land of Egypt. He travelled through Canaan, and +the God of Abraham, says the Bible story, promised this smiling +land of prosperous cities to him and to his children. + +And after a long sojourn in Egypt and after fifty years of +wandering in the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, the +children of Abraham, grown now to a host of twelve tribes, invaded +the land of Canaan from the Arabian deserts to the East. They may +have done this somewhen between 1600 B.C. and 1300 B.C.; there are +no Egyptian records of Moses nor of Canaan at this time to help +out the story. But at any rate they did not succeed in conquering +any {117} more than the hilly backgrounds of the promised land. +The coast was now in the hands, not of the Canaanites but of +newcomers, those Ægean peoples, the Philistines; and their cities, +Gaza, Gath, Ashdod, Ascalon and Joppa successfully withstood the +Hebrew attack. For many generations the children of Abraham +remained an obscure people of the hilly back country engaged in +incessant bickerings with the Philistines and with the kindred +tribes about them, the Moabites, the Midianites and so forth. The +reader will find in the book of Judges a record of their struggles +and disasters during this period. For very largely it is a record +of disasters and failures frankly told. + +[Map: The Land of the Hebrews] + +{118} + +For most of this period the Hebrews were ruled, so far as there +was any rule among them, by priestly judges selected by the elders +of the people, but at last somewhen towards 1000 B.C. they chose +themselves a king, Saul, to lead them in battle. But Saul's +leading was no great improvement upon the leading of the Judges; +he perished under the hail of Philistine arrows at the battle of +Mount Gilboa, his armour went into the temple of the Philistine +Venus, and his body was nailed to the walls of +Beth-shan. + +[Illustration: MOUND AT BABYLON] + +His successor David was more successful and more politic. With +David dawned the only period of prosperity the Hebrew peoples were +ever to know. It was based on a close alliance with the +Phoenician city of Tyre, whose King Hiram seems to have been a man +of very great intelligence and enterprise. He wished to secure a +trade route to the Red Sea through the Hebrew hill country. +Normally Phoenician trade went to the Red Sea by Egypt, but Egypt +was in a state of profound disorder at this {119} time; there may +have been other obstructions to Phoenician trade along this line, +and at any rate Hiram established the very closest relations both +with David and with his son and successor Solomon. Under Hiram's +auspices the walls, palace and temple of Jerusalem arose, and in +return Hiram built and launched his ships on the Red Sea. A very +considerable trade passed northward and southward through +Jerusalem. And Solomon achieved a prosperity and magnificence +unprecedented in the experience of his people. He was even given +a daughter of Pharaoh in marriage. + +But it is well to keep the proportion of things in mind. At the +climax of his glories Solomon was only a little subordinate king +in a little city. His power was so transitory that within a few +years of his death, Shishak the first Pharaoh of the twenty-second +dynasty, had taken Jerusalem and looted most of its splendours. +The account of Solomon's magnificence given in the books of Kings +and Chronicles is questioned by many critics. They say that it +was added to and exaggerated by the patriotic pride of later +writers. But the Bible account read carefully is not so +overwhelming as it appears at the first reading. Solomon's +temple, if one works out the measurements, would go inside a small +suburban church, and his fourteen hundred chariots cease to +impress us when we learn from an Assyrian monument that his +successor Ahab sent a contingent of two thousand to the Assyrian +army. It is also plainly manifest from the Bible narrative that +Solomon spent himself in display and overtaxed and overworked his +people. At his death the northern part of his kingdom broke off +from Jerusalem and became the independent kingdom of Israel. +Jerusalem remained the capital city of Judah. + +The prosperity of the Hebrew people was short-lived. Hiram died, +and the help of Tyre ceased to strengthen Jerusalem. Egypt grew +strong again. The history of the kings of Israel and the kings of +Judah becomes a history of two little states ground between, +first, Syria, then Assyria and then Babylon to the north and Egypt +to the south. It is a tale of disasters and of deliverances that +only delayed disaster. It is a tale of barbaric kings ruling a +barbaric people. In 721 B.C. the kingdom of Israel was swept away +into captivity by the Assyrians and its people utterly lost to +history. Judah struggled {121} on until in 604 B.C., as we have +told, it shared the fate of Israel. There may be details open to +criticism in the Bible story of Hebrew history from the days of +the Judges onward, but on the whole it is evidently a true story +which squares with all that has been learnt in the excavation of +Egypt and Assyria and Babylon during the past century. + +==================================================================== + +{120} + +[Illustration: THE ISHTAR GATEWAY, BABYLON] + +==================================================================== + +It was in Babylon that the Hebrew people got their history +together and evolved their tradition. The people who came back to +Jerusalem at the command of Cyrus were a very different people in +spirit and knowledge from those who had gone into captivity. They +had learnt civilization. In the development of their peculiar +character a very great part was played by certain men, a new sort +of men, the Prophets, to whom we must now direct our attention. +These Prophets mark the appearance of new and remarkable forces in +the steady development of human society. + + + + +{122} + +XXII + +PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA + + +The fall of Assyria and Babylon were only the first of a series of +disasters that were to happen to the Semitic peoples. In the +seventh century B.C. it would have seemed as though the whole +civilized world was to be dominated by Semitic rulers. They ruled +the great Assyrian empire and they had conquered Egypt; Assyria, +Babylon, Syria were all Semitic, speaking languages that were +mutually intelligible. The trade of the world was in Semitic +hands. Tyre, Sidon, the great mother cities of the Phoenician +coast, had thrown out colonies that grew at last to even greater +proportion in Spain, Sicily and Africa. Carthage, founded before +800 B.C., had risen to a population of more than a million. It +was for a time the greatest city on earth. Its ships went to +Britain and out into the Atlantic. They may have reached Madeira. +We have already noted how Hiram co-operated with Solomon to build +ships on the Red Sea for the Arabian and perhaps for the Indian +trade. In the time of the Pharaoh Necho, a Phoenician expedition +sailed completely round Africa. + +At that time the Aryan peoples were still barbarians. Only the +Greeks were reconstructing a new civilization of the ruins of the +one they had destroyed, and the Medes were becoming "formidable," +as an Assyrian inscription calls them, in central Asia. In 800 +B.C. no one could have prophesied that before the third century +B.C. every trace of Semitic dominion would be wiped out by +Aryan-speaking conquerors, and that everywhere the Semitic peoples +would be subjects or tributaries or scattered altogether. +Everywhere except in the northern deserts of Arabia, where the +Bedouin adhered steadily to the nomadic way of life, the ancient +way of life of the Semites before Sargon I and his Akkadians went +down to conquer Sumeria. But the Arab Bedouin were never +conquered by Aryan masters. + +{123} + +Now of all these civilized Semites who were beaten and overrun in +these five eventful centuries one people only held together and +clung to its ancient traditions and that was this little people, +the Jews, who were sent back to build their city of Jerusalem by +Cyrus the Persian. And they were able to do this, because they +had got together this literature of theirs, their Bible, in +Babylon. It is not so much the Jews who made the Bible as the +Bible which made the Jews. Running through this Bible were +certain ideas, different from the ideas of the people about them, +very stimulating and sustaining ideas, to which they were destined +to cling through five and twenty centuries of hardship, adventure +and oppression. + +Foremost of these Jewish ideas was this, that their God was +invisible and remote, an invisible God in a temple not made with +hands, a Lord of Righteousness throughout the earth. All other +peoples had national gods embodied in images that lived in +temples. If the image was smashed and the temple razed, presently +that god died out. But this was a new idea, this God of the Jews, +in the heavens, high above priests and sacrifices. And this God +of Abraham, the Jews believed, had chosen them to be his peculiar +people, to restore Jerusalem and make it the capital of +Righteousness in the World. They were a people exalted by their +sense of a common destiny. This belief saturated them all when +they returned to Jerusalem after the captivity in Babylon. + +Is it any miracle that in their days of overthrow and subjugation +many Babylonians and Syrians and so forth and later on many +Phoenicians, speaking practically the same language and having +endless customs, habits, tastes and traditions in common, should +be attracted by this inspiring cult and should seek to share in +its fellowship and its promise? After the fall of Tyre, Sidon, +Carthage and the Spanish Phoenician cities, the Phoenicians +suddenly vanish from history; and as suddenly we find, not simply +in Jerusalem but in Spain, Africa, Egypt, Arabia, the East, +wherever the Phoenicians had set their feet, communities of Jews. +And they were all held together by the Bible and by the reading of +the Bible. Jerusalem was from the first only their nominal +capital; their real city was this book of books. This is a new +sort of thing in history. It is something of which the seeds were +sown long before, when the Sumerians {124} and Egyptians began to +turn their hieroglyphics into writing. The Jews were a new thing, +a people without a king and presently without a temple (for as we +shall tell Jerusalem itself was broken up in 70 A.D.), held +together and consolidated out of heterogeneous elements by nothing +but the power of the written word. + +And this mental welding of the Jews was neither planned nor +foreseen nor done by either priests or statesmen. Not only a new +kind of community but a new kind of man comes into history with +the development of the Jews. In the days of Solomon the Hebrews +looked like becoming a little people just like any other little +people of that time clustering around court and temple, ruled by +the wisdom of the priest and led by the ambition of the king. But +already, the reader may learn from the Bible, this new sort of man +of which we speak, the Prophet, was in evidence. + +As troubles thicken round the divided Hebrews the importance of +these Prophets increases. + +[Illustration: THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II] + +What were these Prophets? They were men of the most diverse +origins. The Prophet Ezekiel was of the priestly caste and the +Prophet Amos wore the goatskin mantle of a shepherd, but all had +this in common, that they gave allegiance to no one but to the God +of Righteousness and that they spoke directly to the people. They +{125} came without licence or consecration. "Now the word of the +Lord came unto me;" that was the formula. They were intensely +political. They exhorted the people against Egypt, "that broken +reed," or against Assyria or Babylon; they denounced the indolence +of the priestly order or the flagrant sins of the King. Some of +them turned their attention to what we should now call "social +reform." The rich were "grinding the faces of the poor," the +luxurious were consuming the children's bread; wealthy people made +friends with and imitated the splendours and vices of foreigners; +and this was hateful to Jehovah, the God of Abraham, who would +certainly punish this land. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER PANEL OF THE BLACK OBELISK] + +These fulminations were written down and preserved and studied. +They went wherever the Jews went, and wherever they went they +spread a new religious spirit. They carried the common man past +priest and temple, past court and king and brought him face to +face with the Rule of Righteousness. That is their supreme +importance in the history of mankind. In the great utterances of +Isaiah the prophetic voice rises to a pitch of splendid +anticipation and foreshadows the whole earth united and at peace +under one God. Therein the Jewish prophecies culminate. + +All the Prophets did not speak in this fashion, and the +intelligent reader of the prophetic books will find much hate in +them, much prejudice, and much that will remind him of the +propaganda pamphlets {126}of the present time. Nevertheless it is +the Hebrew Prophets of the period round and about the Babylonian +captivity who mark the appearance of a new power in the world, the +power of individual moral appeal, of an appeal to the free +conscience of mankind against the fetish sacrifices and slavish +loyalties that had hitherto bridled and harnessed our race. + + + + +{127} + +XXIII + +THE GREEKS + + +Now while after Solomon (whose reign was probably about 960 B.C.) +the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah were suffering +destruction and deportation, and while the Jewish people were +developing their tradition in captivity in Babylon, another great +power over the human mind, the Greek tradition, was also arising. +While the Hebrew prophets were working out a new sense of direct +moral responsibility between the people and an eternal and +universal God of Right, the Greek philosophers were training the +human mind in a new method and spirit of intellectual adventure. + +The Greek tribes as we have told were a branch of the +Aryan-speaking stem. They had come down among the Ægean cities and +islands some centuries before 1000 B.C. They were probably +already in southward movement before the Pharaoh Thothmes hunted +his first elephants beyond the conquered Euphrates. For in those +days there were elephants in Mesopotamia and lions in Greece. + +It is possible that it was a Greek raid that burnt Cnossos, but +there are no Greek legends of such a victory though there are +stories of Minos and his palace (the Labyrinth) and of the skill +of the Cretan artificers. + +==================================================================== + +{128} + +[Illustration: STATUE OF MELEAGER] + +==================================================================== + +Like most of the Aryans these Greeks had singers and reciters +whose performances were an important social link, and these handed +down from the barbaric beginnings of their people two great epics, +the _Iliad_, telling how a league of Greek tribes besieged and +took and sacked the town of Troy in Asia Minor, and the _Odyssey_, +being a long adventure story of the return of the sage captain, +Odysseus, from Troy to his own island. These epics were written +down somewhen in the eighth or seventh century B.C., when the +Greeks had acquired the use of an alphabet from their more +civilized neighbours, but they {129} are supposed to have been in +existence very much earlier. Formerly they were ascribed to a +particular blind bard, Homer, who was supposed to have sat down +and composed them as Milton composed Paradise Lost. Whether there +really was such a poet, whether he composed or only wrote down and +polished these epics and so forth, is a favourite quarrelling +ground for the erudite. We need not concern ourselves with such +bickerings here. The thing that matters from our point of view is +that the Greeks were in possession of their epics in the eighth +century B.C., and that they were a common possession and a link +between their various tribes, giving them a sense of fellowship as +against the outer barbarians. They were a group of kindred +peoples linked by the spoken and afterwards by the written word, +and sharing common ideals of courage and behaviour. + +The epics showed the Greeks a barbaric people without iron, +without writing, and still not living in cities. They seem to +have lived at first in open villages of huts around the halls of +their chiefs outside the ruins of the Ægean cities they had +destroyed. Then they began to wall their cities and to adopt the +idea of temples from the people they had conquered. It has been +said that the cities of the primitive civilizations grew up about +the altar of some tribal god, and that the wall was added; in the +cities of the Greeks the wall preceded the temple. They began to +trade and send out colonies. By the seventh century B.C. a new +series of cities had grown up in the valleys and islands of +Greece, forgetful of the Ægean cities and civilization that had +preceded them; Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Samos, Miletus +among the chief. There were already Greek settlements along the +coast of the Black Sea and in Italy and Sicily. The heel and toe +of Italy was called Magna Græcia. Marseilles was a Greek town +established on the site of an earlier Phoenician colony. + +Now countries which are great plains or which have as a chief +means of transport some great river like the Euphrates or Nile +tend to become united under some common rule. The cities of Egypt +and the cities of Sumeria, for example, ran together under one +system of government. But the Greek peoples were cut up among +islands and mountain valleys; both Greece and Magna Græcia are +very mountainous; and the tendency was all the other way. When +the {130} Greeks come into history they are divided up into a +number of little states which showed no signs of coalescence. +They are different even in race. Some consist chiefly of citizens +of this or that Greek tribe, Ionic, Æolian or Doric; some have a +mingled population of Greeks and descendants of the pre-Greek +"Mediterranean" folk; some have an unmixed free citizenship of +Greeks lording it over an enslaved conquered population like the +"Helots" in Sparta. In some the old leaderly Aryan families have +become a close aristocracy; in some there is a democracy of all +the Aryan citizens; in some there are elected or even hereditary +kings, in some usurpers or tyrants. + +[Illustration: RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA] + +And the same geographical conditions that kept the Greek states +divided and various, kept them small. The largest states were +smaller than many English counties, and it is doubtful if the +population of any of their cities ever exceeded a third of a +million. Few came up even to 50,000. There were unions of +interest and sympathy but no coalescences. Cities made leagues +and alliances as {131} trade increased, and small cities put +themselves under the protection of great ones. Yet all Greece was +held together in a certain community of feeling by two things, by +the epics and by the custom of taking part every fourth year in +the athletic contests at Olympia. This did not prevent wars and +feuds, but it mitigated something of the savagery of war between +them, and a truce protected all travellers to and from the games. +As time went on the sentiment of a common heritage grew and the +number of states participating in the Olympic games increased +until at last not only Greeks but competitors from the closely +kindred countries of Epirus and Macedonia to the north were +admitted. + +The Greek cities grew in trade and importance, and the quality of +their civilization rose steadily in the seventh and sixth +centuries B.C. Their social life differed in many interesting +points from the social life of the Ægean and river valley +civilizations. They had splendid temples but the priesthood was +not the great traditional body it was in the cities of the older +world, the-repository of all knowledge, the storehouse of ideas. +They had leaders and noble families, but no quasi-divine monarch +surrounded by an elaborately organized court. Rather their +organization was aristocratic, with leading families which kept +each other in order. Even their so-called "democracies" were +aristocratic; every citizen had a share in public affairs and came +to the assembly in a democracy, but everybody was not a _citizen_. +The Greek democracies were not like our modern "democracies" in +which everyone has a vote. Many of the Greek democracies had a +few hundred or a few thousand citizens and then many thousands of +slaves, freedmen and so forth, with no share in public affairs. +Generally in Greece affairs were in the hands of a community of +substantial men. Their kings and their tyrants alike were just +men set in front of other men or usurping a leadership; they were +not quasi-divine overmen like Pharaoh or Minos or the monarchs of +Mesopotamia. Both thought and government therefore had a freedom +under Greek conditions such as they had known in none of the older +civilizations. The Greeks had brought down into cities the +individualism, the personal initiative of the wandering life of +the northern parklands. They were the first republicans of +importance in history. + +{132} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PÆSTUM, SICILY] + +And we find that as they emerge from a condition of barbaric +warfare a new thing becomes apparent in their intellectual life. +We find men who are not priests seeking and recording knowledge +and enquiring into the mysteries of life and being, in a way that +has hitherto been the sublime privilege of priesthood or the +presumptuous amusement of kings. We find already in the sixth +century B.C.--perhaps while Isaiah was still prophesying in +Babylon--such men as Thales and Anaximander of Miletus and +Heraclitus of Ephesus, who were what we should now call +independent gentlemen, giving their minds to shrewd questionings +of the world in which we live, asking what its real nature was, +whence it came and what its destiny might be, and refusing all +ready-made or evasive answers. Of these questionings of the +universe by the Greek mind, we shall have more to say a little +later in this history. These Greek enquirers {133} who begin to +be remarkable in the sixth century B.C. are the first +philosophers, the first "wisdom-lovers," in the world. + +And it may be noted here how important a century this sixth +century B.C. was in the history of humanity. For not only were +these Greek philosophers beginning the research for clear ideas +about this universe and man's place in it and Isaiah carrying +Jewish prophecy to its sublimest levels, but as we shall tell +later Gautama Buddha was then teaching in India and Confucius and +Lao Tse in China. From Athens to the Pacific the human mind was +astir. + + + + +{134} + +XXIV + +THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS + + +While the Greeks in the cities in Greece, South Italy and Asia +Minor were embarking upon free intellectual enquiry and while in +Babylon and Jerusalem the last of the Hebrew prophets were +creating a free conscience for mankind, two adventurous Aryan +peoples, the Medes and the Persians, were in possession of the +civilization of the ancient world and were making a great empire, +the Persian empire, which was far larger in extent than any empire +the world had seen hitherto. Under Cyrus, Babylon and the rich +and ancient civilization of Lydia had been added to the Persian +rule; the Phoenician cities of the Levant and all the Greek cities +in Asia Minor had been made tributary, Cambyses had subjected +Egypt, and Darius I, the Mede, the third of the Persian rulers +(521 B.C.), found himself monarch as it seemed of all the world. +His couriers rode with his decrees from the Dardanelles to the +Indus and from Upper Egypt to Central Asia. + +The Greeks in Europe, it is true, Italy, Carthage, Sicily and the +Spanish Phoenician settlements, were not under the Persian Peace; +but they treated it with respect and the only people who gave any +serious trouble were the old parent hordes of Nordic people in +South Russia and Central Asia, the Scythians, who raided the +northern and north-eastern borders. + +Of course the population of this great Persian empire was not a +population of Persians, The Persians were only the small +conquering minority of this enormous realm. The rest of the +population was what it had been before the Persians came from time +immemorial, only that Persian was the administrative language. +Trade and finance were still largely Semitic, Tyre and Sidon as of +old were the great Mediterranean ports and Semitic shipping plied +upon the seas. But many of these Semitic merchants and business +people as {135} they went from place to place already found a +sympathetic and convenient common history in the Hebrew tradition +and the Hebrew scriptures. A new element which was increasing +rapidly in this empire was the Greek element. The Greeks were +becoming serious rivals to the Semites upon the sea, and their +detached and vigorous intelligence made them useful and, +unprejudiced officials. + +[Illustration: FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY] + +It was on account of the Scythians that Darius I invaded Europe. +He wanted to reach South Russia, the homeland of the Scythian +horsemen. He crossed the Bosphorus with a great army and marched +through Bulgaria to the Danube, crossed this by a bridge of boats +and pushed far northward. His army suffered terribly. It was +largely an infantry force and the mounted Scythians rode all round +it, cut off its supplies, destroyed any stragglers and never came +to a pitched battle. Darius was forced into an inglorious +retreat. + +He returned himself to Susa but he left an army in Thrace and +Macedonia, and Macedonia submitted to Darius. Insurrections of +the Greek cities in Asia followed this failure, and the European +Greeks were drawn into the contest. Darius resolved upon the +subjugation of the Greeks in Europe. With the Phoenician fleet at +his disposal he was able to subdue one island after another, and +finally in 490 B.C. he made his main attack upon Athens. A +considerable Armada sailed from the ports of Asia Minor and the +eastern Mediterranean, and the expedition landed its troops at +Marathon to the north of Athens. There they were met and signally +defeated by the Athenians. + +{136} + +An extraordinary thing happened at this time. The bitterest rival +of Athens in Greece was Sparta, but now Athens appealed to Sparta, +sending a herald, a swift runner, imploring the Spartans not to +let Greeks become slaves to barbarians. This runner (the +prototype of all "Marathon" runners) did over a hundred miles of +broken country in less than two days. The Spartans responded +promptly and generously; but when, in three days, the Spartan +force reached Athens, there was nothing for it to do but to view +the battlefield and the bodies of the defeated Persian soldiers. +The Persian fleet had returned to Asia. So ended the first +Persian attack on Greece. + +The next was much more impressive. Darius died soon after the +news of his defeat at Marathon reached him, and for four years his +son and successor, Xerxes, prepared a host to crush the Greeks. +For a time terror united all the Greeks. The army of Xerxes was +certainly the greatest that had hitherto been assembled in the +world. It was a huge assembly of discordant elements. It crossed +the Dardanelles, 480 B.C., by a bridge of boats; and along the +coast as it advanced moved an equally miscellaneous fleet carrying +supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylæ a small force of 1400 +men under the Spartan Leonidas resisted this multitude, and after +a fight of unsurpassed heroism was completely destroyed. Every +man was killed. But the losses they inflicted upon the Persians +were enormous, and the army of Xerxes pushed on to Thebes and +Athens in a chastened mood. Thebes surrendered and made terms. +The Athenians abandoned their city and it was burnt. + +==================================================================== + +{137} + +[Illustration: ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH] + +==================================================================== + +Greece seemed in the hands of the conqueror, but again came +victory against the odds and all expectations. The Greek fleet, +though not a third the size of the Persian, assailed it in the bay +of Salamis and destroyed it. Xerxes found himself and his immense +army cut off from supplies and his heart failed him. He retreated +to Asia with one half of his army, leaving the rest to be defeated +at Platea (479 B.C.) what time the remnants of the Persian fleet +were hunted down by the Greeks and destroyed at Mycalæ in Asia +Minor. + +The Persian danger was at an end. Most of the Greek cities in +Asia became free. All this is told in great detail and with much +picturesqueness in the first of written histories, the _History_ +of {138} Herodotus. This Herodotus was born about 484 B.C. in the +Ionian city of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, and he visited Babylon +and Egypt in his search for exact particulars. From Mycalæ onward +Persia sank into a confusion of dynastic troubles. Xerxes was +murdered in 465 B.C. and rebellions in Egypt, Syria and Media +broke up the brief order of that mighty realm. The history of +Herodotus lays stress on the weakness of Persia. This history is +indeed what we should now call propaganda--propaganda for Greece +to unite and conquer Persia. Herodotus makes one character, +Aristagoras, go to the Spartans with a map of the known world and +say to them: "These Barbarians are not valiant in fight. You on +the other hand have now attained the utmost skill in war .... No +other nations in the world have what they possess: gold, silver, +bronze, embroidered garments, beasts and slaves. _All this you +might have for yourselves, if you so desired._" + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON) AT CAPE SUNIUM] + + + + +{139} + +XXV + +THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE + + +The century and a half that followed the defeat of Persia was one +of very great splendour for the Greek civilization. True that +Greece was torn by a desperate struggle for ascendancy between +Athens, Sparta and other states (the Peloponnesian War 431 to 404 +B.C.) and that in 338 B.C. the Macedonians became virtually +masters of Greece; nevertheless during this period the thought and +the creative and artistic impulse of the Greeks rose to levels +that made their achievement a lamp to mankind for all the rest of +history. + +The head and centre of this mental activity was Athens. For over +thirty years (466 to 428 B.C.) Athens was dominated by a man of +great vigour and liberality of mind, Pericles, who set himself to +rebuild the city from the ashes to which the Persians had reduced +it. The beautiful ruins that still glorify Athens to-day are +chiefly the remains of this great effort. And he did not simply +rebuild a material Athens. He rebuilt Athens intellectually. He +gathered about him not only architects and sculptors but poets, +dramatists, philosophers and teachers. Herodotus came to Athens +to recite his history (438 B.C.). Anaxagoras came with the +beginnings of a scientific description of the sun and stars. +Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides one after the other carried the +Greek drama to its highest levels or beauty and nobility. + +The impetus Pericles gave to the intellectual life of Athens lived +on after his death, and in spite of the fact that the peace of +Greece was now broken by the Peloponnesian War and a long and +wasteful struggle for "ascendancy" was beginning. Indeed the +darkling of the political horizon seems for a time to have +quickened rather than discouraged men's minds. + +Already long before the time of Pericles the peculiar freedom of +Greek institutions had given great importance to skill in +discussion. {140} Decision rested neither with king nor with +priest but in the assemblies of the people or of leading men. +Eloquence and able argument became very desirable accomplishments +therefore, and a class of teachers arose, the Sophists, who +undertook to strengthen young men in these arts. But one cannot +reason without matter, and knowledge followed in the wake of +speech. The activities and rivalries of these Sophists led very +naturally to an acute examination of style, of methods of thought +and of the validity of arguments. When Pericles died a certain +Socrates was becoming prominent as an able and destructive critic +of bad argument--and much of the teaching of the Sophists was bad +argument. A group of brilliant young men gathered about Socrates. +In the end Socrates was executed for disturbing people's minds +(399 B.C.), he was condemned after the dignified fashion of the +Athens of those days to drink in his own house and among his own +friends a poisonous draught made from hemlock, but the disturbance +of people's minds went on in spite of his condemnation. His young +men carried on his teaching. + +[Illustration: PART OF THE FAMOUS FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, ATHENS] + +==================================================================== + +{141} + +[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS] + +[Illustration: THE THEATRE AT EPIDAUROS, GREECE] + +==================================================================== + +Chief among these young men was Plato (427 to 347 B.C.) who +presently began to teach philosophy in the grove of the Academy. +His teaching fell into two main divisions, an examination of the +foundations and methods of human thinking and an examination of +political institutions. He was the first man to write a Utopia, +that is to say the plan of a community different from and better +than any {142} existing community. This shows an altogether +unprecedented boldness in the human mind which had hitherto +accepted social traditions and usages with scarcely a question. +Plato said plainly to mankind: "Most of the social and political +ills from which you suffer are under your control, given only the +will and courage to change them. You can live in another and a +wiser fashion if you choose to think it out and work it out. You +are not awake to your own power." That is a high adventurous +teaching that has still to soak in to the common intelligence of +our race. One of his earliest works was the Republic, a dream of +a communist aristocracy; his last unfinished work was the Laws, a +scheme of regulation for another such Utopian state. + +[Illustration: THE CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEUM] + +The criticism of methods of thinking and methods of government was +carried on after Plato's death by Aristotle, who had been his +pupil and who taught in the Lyceum. Aristotle came from the city +of Stagira in Macedonia, and his father was court physician to the +Macedonian king. For a time Aristotle was tutor to Alexander, +{144} the king's son, who was destined to achieve very great +things of which we shall soon be telling. Aristotle's work upon +methods of thinking carried the science of Logic to a level at +which it remained for fifteen hundred years or more, until the +mediæval schoolmen took up the ancient questions again. He made +no Utopias. Before man could really control his destiny as Plato +taught, Aristotle perceived that he needed far more knowledge and +far more accurate knowledge than he possessed. And so Aristotle +began that systematic collection of knowledge which nowadays we +call Science. He sent out explorers to collect _facts_. He was +the father of natural history. He was the founder of political +science. His students at the Lyceum examined and compared the +constitutions of 158 different states .... + +{143} + +[Illustration: ATHENE OF THE PARTHENON] + +Here in the fourth century B.C. we find men who are practically +"modern thinkers." The child-like, dream-like methods of +primitive thought had given way to a disciplined and critical +attack upon the problems of life. The weird and monstrous +symbolism and imagery of the gods and god monsters, and all the +taboos and awes and restraints that have hitherto encumbered +thinking are here completely set aside. Free, exact and +systematic thinking has begun. The fresh and unencumbered mind of +these newcomers out of the northern forests has thrust itself into +the mysteries of the temple and let the daylight in. + + + + +{145} + +XXVI + +THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT + + +From 431 to 404 B.C. the Peloponnesian War wasted Greece. +Meanwhile to the north of Greece, the kindred country of Macedonia +was rising slowly to power and civilization. The Macedonians +spoke a language closely akin to Greek, and on several occasions +Macedonian competitors had taken part in the Olympic games. In +359 B.C. a man of very great abilities and ambition became king of +this little country--Philip. Philip had previously been a hostage +in Greece; he had had a thoroughly Greek education and he was +probably aware of the ideas of Herodotus--which had also been +developed by the philosopher Isocrates--of a possible conquest of +Asia by a consolidated Greece. + +He set himself first to extend and organize his own realm and to +remodel his army. For a thousand years now the charging +horse-chariot had been the decisive factor in battles, that and +the close-fighting infantry. Mounted horsemen had also fought, +but as a cloud of skirmishers, individually and without +discipline. Philip made his infantry fight in a closely packed +mass, the Macedonian phalanx, and he trained his mounted +gentlemen, the knights or companions, to fight in formation and so +invented cavalry. The master move in most of his battles and in +the battles of his son Alexander was a cavalry charge. The +phalanx _held_ the enemy infantry in front while the cavalry swept +away the enemy horse on his wings and poured in on the flank and +rear of his infantry. Chariots were disabled by bowmen, who shot +the horses. + +With this new army Philip extended his frontiers through Thessaly +to Greece; and the battle of Chæronia (338 B.C.), fought against +Athens and her allies, put all Greece at his feet. At last the +dream of Herodotus was bearing fruit. A congress of all the Greek +states appointed Philip captain-general of the Græco-Macedonian +confederacy {146} against Persia, and in 336 B.C. his advanced +guard crossed into Asia upon this long premeditated adventure. +But he never followed it. He was assassinated; it is believed at +the instigation of his queen Olympias, Alexander's mother. She +was jealous because Philip had married a second wife. + +But Philip had taken unusual pains with his son's education. He +had not only secured Aristotle, the greatest philosopher in the +world, as this boy's tutor, but he had shared his ideas with him +and thrust military experience upon him. At Chæronia Alexander, +who was then only eighteen years old, had been in command of the +cavalry. And so it was possible for this young man, who was still +only twenty years old at the time of his accession, to take up his +father's task at once and to proceed successfully with the Persian +adventure. + +[Illustration: BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT] + +In 334 B.C.--for two years were needed to establish and confirm +his position in Macedonia and Greece--he crossed into Asia, +defeated a not very much bigger Persian army at the battle of the +Granicus and captured a number of cities in Asia Minor. He kept +along the sea-coast. It was necessary for him to reduce and +garrison all the coast towns as he advanced because the Persians +had control of the fleets of Tyre and Sidon and so had command of +the sea. {147} Had he left a hostile port in his rear the +Persians might have landed forces to raid his communications and +cut him off. At Issus (333 B.C.) he met and smashed a vast +conglomerate host under Darius III. Like the host of Xerxes that +had crossed the Dardanelles a century and a half before, it was an +incoherent accumulation of contingents and it was encumbered with +a multitude of court officials, the harem of Darius and many camp +followers. Sidon surrendered to Alexander but Tyre resisted +obstinately. Finally that great city was stormed and plundered +and destroyed. Gaza also was stormed, and towards the end of 332 +B.C. the conqueror entered Egypt and took over its rule from the +Persians. + +[Illustration: ALEXANDER'S VICTORY OVER THE PERSIANS AT ISSUS] + +At Alexandretta and at Alexandria in Egypt he built great cities, +accessible from the land and so incapable of revolt. To these the +trade of the Phoenician cities was diverted. The Phoenicians of +the western Mediterranean suddenly disappear from history--and as +immediately the Jews of Alexandria and the other new trading +cities created by Alexander appear. + +In 331 B.C. Alexander marched out of Egypt upon Babylon as +Thothmes and Rameses and Necho had done before him. But he +marched by way of Tyre. At Arbela near the ruins of Nineveh, +{148} which was already a forgotten city, he met Darius and fought +the decisive battle of the war. The Persian chariot charge +failed, a Macedonian cavalry charge broke up the great composite +host and the phalanx completed the victory. Darius led the +retreat. He made no further attempt to resist the invader but +fled northward into the country of the Medes. Alexander marched +on to Babylon, still prosperous and important, and then to Susa +and Persepolis. There after a drunken festival he burnt down the +palace of Darius, the king of kings. + +[Illustration: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE] + +Thence Alexander presently made a military parade of central Asia, +going to the utmost bounds of the Persian empire. At first he +turned northward. Darius was pursued; and he was overtaken at +dawn dying in his chariot, having been murdered by his own people. +He was still living when the foremost Greeks reached him. +Alexander came up to find him dead. Alexander skirted the Caspian +Sea, he went up into the mountains of western Turkestan, he came +down by Herat (which he founded) and Cabul and the Khyber Pass +into {149} India. He fought a great battle on the Indus with an +Indian king, Porus, and here the Macedonian troops met elephants +for the first time and defeated them. Finally he built himself +ships, sailed down to the mouth of the Indus, and marched back by +the coast of Beluchistan, reaching Susa again in 324 B.C. after an +absence of six years. He then prepared to consolidate and +organize this vast empire he had won. He sought to win over his +new subjects. He assumed the robes and tiara of a Persian +monarch, and this roused the jealousy of his Macedonian +commanders. He had much trouble with them. He arranged a number +of marriages between these Macedonian officers and Persian and +Babylonian women: the "Marriage of the East and West." He never +lived to effect the consolidation he had planned. A fever seized +him after a drinking bout in Babylon and he died in 323 B.C. + +Immediately this vast dominion fell to pieces. One of his +generals, Seleucus, retained most of the old Persian empire from +the Indus to Ephesus; another, Ptolemy, seized Egypt, and +Antigonus secured Macedonia. The rest of the empire remained +unstable, passing under the control of a succession of local +adventurers. Barbarian raids began from the north and grew in +scope and intensity. Until at last, as we shall tell, a new +power, the power of the Roman republic, came out of the west to +subjugate one fragment after another and weld them together into a +new and more enduring empire. + + + + +{150} + +XXVII + +THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA + + +Before the time of Alexander Greeks had already been spreading as +merchants, artists, officials, mercenary soldiers, over most of +the Persian dominions. In the dynastic disputes that followed the +death of Xerxes, a band of ten thousand Greek mercenaries played a +part under the leadership of Xenophon. Their return to Asiatic +Greece from Babylon is described in his Retreat of the _Ten +Thousand_, one of the first war stories that was ever written by a +general in command. But the conquests of Alexander and the +division of his brief empire among his subordinate generals, +greatly stimulated this permeation of the ancient world by the +Greeks and their language and fashions and culture. Traces of +this Greek dissemination are to be found far away in central Asia +and in north-west India. Their influence upon the development of +Indian art was profound. + +For many centuries Athens retained her prestige as a centre of art +and culture; her schools went on indeed to 529 A.D., that is to +say for nearly a thousand years; but the leadership in the +intellectual activity of the world passed presently across the +Mediterranean to Alexandria, the new trading city that Alexander +had founded. Here the Macedonian general Ptolemy had become +Pharaoh, with a court that spoke Greek. He had become an intimate +of Alexander before he became king, and he was deeply saturated +with the ideas of Aristotle. He set himself, with great energy +and capacity, to organize knowledge and investigation. He also +wrote a history of Alexander's campaigns which, unhappily, is lost +to the world. + +Alexander had already devoted considerable sums to finance the +enquiries of Aristotle, but Ptolemy I was the first person to make +a permanent endowment of science. He set up a foundation in +Alexandria which was formerly dedicated to the Muses, the Museum +{151} of Alexandria. For two or three generations the scientific +work done at Alexandria was extraordinarily good. Euclid, +Eratosthenes who measured the size of the earth and came within +fifty miles of its true diameter, Apollonius who wrote on conic +sections, Hipparchus who made the first star map and catalogue, +and Hero who devised the first steam engine are among the greater +stars of an extraordinary constellation of scientific pioneers. +Archimedes came from Syracuse to Alexandria to study, and was a +frequent correspondent of the Museum. Herophilus was one of the +greatest of Greek anatomists, and is said to have practised +vivisection. + +For a generation or so during the reigns of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy +II there was such a blaze of knowledge and discovery at Alexandria +as the world was not to see again until the sixteenth century A.D. +But it did not continue. There may have been several causes of +this decline. Chief among them, the late Professor Mahaffy +suggested, was the fact that the Museum was a "royal" college and +all its professors and fellows were appointed and paid by Pharaoh. +This was all very well when Pharaoh was Ptolemy I, the pupil and +friend of Aristotle. But as the dynasty of the Ptolemies went on +they became Egyptianized, they fell under the sway of Egyptian +priests and Egyptian religious developments, they ceased to follow +the work that was done, and their control stifled the spirit of +enquiry altogether. The Museum produced little good work after +its first century of activity. + +Ptolemy I not only sought in the most modern spirit to organize +the finding of fresh knowledge. He tried also to set up an +encyclopædic storehouse of wisdom in the Library of Alexandria. +It was not simply a storehouse, it was also a book-copying and +book-selling organization. A great army of copyists was set to +work perpetually multiplying copies of books. + +Here then we have the definite first opening up of the +intellectual process in which we live to-day; here we have the +systematic gathering and distribution of knowledge. The +foundation of this Museum and Library marks one of the great +epochs in the history of mankind. It is the true beginning of +Modern History. + +{152} + +[Illustration: ARISTOTLE] + +Both the work of research and the work of dissemination went on +under serious handicaps. One of these was the great social gap +that separated the philosopher, who was a gentleman, from the +trader and the artisan. There were glass workers and metal +workers in abundance in those days, but they were not in mental +contact with the thinkers. The glass worker was making the most +beautifully coloured beads and phials and so forth, but he never +made a Florentine flask or a lens. Clear glass does not seem to +have interested him. The metal worker made weapons and jewellery +but he never made a chemical balance. The philosopher speculated +loftily about atoms and the nature of things, but he had no +practical experience of enamels and pigments and philters and so +forth. He was not interested in substances. So Alexandria in its +brief day of opportunity produced no microscopes and no +chemistry. And though Hero invented a steam engine it was never +set either to pump or drive a boat or do any useful thing. There +were few practical applications of science except in the realm of +medicine, and the progress of science was not stimulated and +sustained by the interest and excitement of practical +applications. There was nothing to keep the work going therefore +when the intellectual curiosity of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II {153} +was withdrawn. The discoveries of the Museum went on record in +obscure manuscripts and never, until the revival of scientific +curiosity at the Renascence, reached out to the mass of mankind. + +[Illustration: STATUETTE OF MAITREYA: THE BUDDHA TO COME] + +Nor did the Library produce any improvements in book making. That +ancient world had no paper made in definite sizes from rag pulp. +Paper was a Chinese invention and it did not reach the western +world until the ninth century A.D. The only book materials were +parchment and strips of the papyrus reed joined edge to edge. +These strips were kept on rolls which were very unwieldy to wind +to and fro and read, and very inconvenient for reference. It was +these things that prevented the development of paged and printed +books. Printing itself was known in the world it would seem as +early as the Old Stone Age; there were seals in ancient Sumeria; +but without abundant paper there was little advantage in printing +books, an improvement that may further have been resisted by +trades unionism on the part of the copyists employed. Alexandria +produced abundant books but not cheap books, and it never spread +knowledge into the population of the ancient world below the level +of a wealthy and influential class. + +So it was that this blaze of intellectual enterprise never reached +beyond a small circle of people in touch with the group of +philosophers collected by the first two Ptolemies. It was like +the light in a dark lantern which is shut off from the world at +large. Within the blaze may be blindingly bright, but +nevertheless it is unseen. The rest of the world went on its old +ways unaware that the seed of scientific knowledge that was one +day to revolutionize it altogether had been sown. Presently a +darkness of bigotry fell even upon {154} Alexandria. Thereafter +for a thousand years of darkness the seed that Aristotle had sown +lay hidden. Then it stirred and began to germinate. In a few +centuries it had become that widespread growth of knowledge and +clear ideas that is now changing the whole of human life. + +[Illustration: THE DEATH OF BUDDHA] + +Alexandria was not the only centre of Greek intellectual activity +in the third century B.C. There were many other cities that +displayed a brilliant intellectual life amidst the disintegrating +fragments of the brief empire of Alexander. There was, for +example, the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily, where thought and +science flourished for two centuries; there was Pergamum in Asia +Minor, which also had a great library. But this brilliant +Hellenic world was now stricken by invasion from the north. New +Nordic barbarians, the Gauls, were striking down along the tracks +that had once been followed by the ancestors of the Greeks and +Phrygians and Macedonians. They raided, shattered and destroyed. +And in the wake of the Gauls came a new conquering people out of +Italy, the Romans, who gradually subjugated all the western half +of the vast realm of Darius and Alexander. They were an able but +unimaginative people, preferring law and profit to either science +or art. {155} New invaders were also coming down out of central +Asia to shatter and subdue the Seleucid empire and to cut off the +western world again from India. These were the Parthians, hosts +of mounted bowmen, who treated the Græco-Persian empire of +Persepolis and Susa in the third century B.C. in much the same +fashion that the Medes and Persians had treated it in the seventh +and sixth. And there were now other nomadic peoples also coming +out of the northeast, peoples who were not fair and Nordic and +Aryan-speaking but yellow-skinned and black-haired and with a +Mongolian speech. But of these latter people we shall tell more +in a subsequent chapter. + + + + +{156} + +XXVIII + +THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA + + +But now we must go back three centuries in our story to tell of a +great teacher who came near to revolutionizing the religious +thought and feeling of all Asia. This was Gautama Buddha, who +taught his disciples at Benares in India about the same time that +Isaiah was prophesying among the Jews in Babylon and Heraclitus +was carrying on his speculative enquiries into the nature of +things at Ephesus. All these men were in the world at the same +time, in the sixth century B.C.--unaware of one another. + +This sixth century B.C. was indeed one of the most remarkable in +all history. Everywhere--for as we shall tell it was also the +case in China--men's minds were displaying a new boldness. +Everywhere they were waking up out of the traditions of kingships +and priests and blood sacrifices and asking the most penetrating +questions. It is as if the race had reached a stage of +adolescence--after a childhood of twenty thousand years. + +The early history of India is still very obscure. Somewhen +perhaps about 2000 B.C., an Aryan-speaking people came down from +the north-west into India either in one invasion or in a series of +invasions; and was able to spread its language and traditions over +most of north India. Its peculiar variety of Aryan speech was the +Sanskrit. They found a brunette people with a more elaborate +civilization and less vigour of will, in possession of the country +of the Indus and Ganges. But they do not seem to have mingled +with their predecessors as freely as did the Greeks and Persians. +They remained aloof. When the past of India becomes dimly visible +to the historian, Indian society is already stratified into +several layers, with a variable number of +sub-divisions, which do not eat together nor intermarry nor +associate freely. And throughout history this {157} +stratification into castes continues. This makes the Indian +population something different from the simple, freely +inter-breeding European or Mongolian communities. It is really a +community of communities. + +Siddhattha Gautama was the son of an aristocratic family which +ruled a small district on the Himalayan slopes. He was married at +nineteen to a beautiful cousin. He hunted and played and went +about in his sunny world of gardens and groves and irrigated +rice-fields. And it was amidst this life that a great discontent +fell upon him. It was the unhappiness of a fine brain that seeks +employment. He felt that the existence he was leading was not the +reality of life, but a holiday--a holiday that had gone on too +long. + +The sense of disease and mortality, the insecurity and the +un-satisfactoriness of all happiness, descended upon the mind of +Gautama. While he was in this mood he met one of those wandering +ascetics who already existed in great numbers in India. These men +lived under severe rules, spending much time in meditation and in +religious discussion. They were supposed to be seeking some +deeper reality in life, and a passionate desire to do likewise +took possession of Gautama. + +He was meditating upon this project, says the story, when the news +was brought to him that his wife had been delivered of his +first-born son. "This is another tie to break," said Gautama. + +He returned to the village amidst the rejoicings of his fellow +clansmen. There was a great feast and a Nautch dance to celebrate +the birth of this new tie, and in the night Gautama awoke in a +great agony of spirit, "like a man who is told that his house is +on fire." He resolved to leave his happy aimless life forthwith. +He went softly to the threshold of his wife's chamber, and saw her +by the light of a little oil lamp, sleeping sweetly, surrounded by +flowers, with his infant son in her arms. He felt a great craving +to take up the child in one first and last embrace before he +departed, but the fear of waking his wife prevented him, and at +last he turned away and went out into the bright Indian moonshine +and mounted his horse and rode off into the world. + +{158} + +[Illustration: TIBETAN BUDDHA] + +Very far he rode that night, and in the morning he stopped outside +{159} the lands of his clan, and dismounted beside a sandy river. +There he cut off his flowing locks with his sword, removed all his +ornaments and sent them and his horse and sword back to his house. +Going on he presently met a ragged man and exchanged clothes with +him, and so having divested himself of all worldly entanglements +he was free to pursue his search after wisdom. He made his way +southward to a resort of hermits and teachers in a hilly spur of +the Vindhya Mountains. There lived a number of wise men in a +warren of caves, going into the town for their simple supplies and +imparting their knowledge by word of mouth to such as cared to +come to them. Gautama became versed in all the metaphysics of his +age. But his acute intelligence was dissatisfied with the +solutions offered him. + +[Illustration: A BURMESE BUDDHA] + +The Indian mind has always been disposed to believe that power and +knowledge may be obtained by extreme asceticism, by fasting, +sleeplessness, and self-torment, and these ideas Gautama now put +to the test. He betook himself with five disciple companions to +the jungle and there he gave himself up to fasting and terrible +penances. His fame spread, "like the sound of a great {160} bell +hung in the canopy of the skies." But it brought him no sense of +truth achieved. One day he was walking up and down, trying to +think in spite of his enfeebled state. Suddenly he fell +unconscious. When he recovered, the preposterousness of these +semi-magical ways to wisdom was plain to him. + +[Illustration: THE DHAMÊKH TOWER] + +He horrified his companions by demanding ordinary food and +refusing to continue his mortifications. He had realized that +whatever truth a man may reach is reached best by a nourished +brain in a healthy body. Such a conception was absolutely foreign +to the ideas of the land and age. His disciples deserted him, and +went off in a melancholy state to Benares. Gautama wandered +alone. + +When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it +makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of +the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt +illumination, it realizes its victory. So it happened to Gautama. +He had seated himself under a great tree by the side of a river to +eat, when this sense of clear vision came to him. It seemed to +him that he saw life plain. He is said to have sat all day and +all night in profound thought, and then he rose up to impart his +vision to the world. + +He went on to Benares and there he sought out and won back his +lost disciples to his new teaching. In the King's Deer Park at +Benares they built themselves huts and set up a sort of school to +which came many who were seeking after wisdom. + +The starting point of his teaching was his own question as a +fortunate {161} young man, "Why am I not completely happy?" It +was an introspective question. It was a question very different +in quality from the frank and self-forgetful _externalized_ +curiosity with which Thales and Heraclitus were attacking the +problems of the universe, or the equally self-forgetful burthen of +moral obligation that the culminating prophets were imposing upon +the Hebrew mind. The Indian teacher did not forget self, he +concentrated upon self and sought to destroy it. All suffering, +he taught, was due to the greedy desires of the individual. Until +man has conquered his personal cravings his life is trouble and +his end sorrow. There were three principal forms that the craving +for life took and they were all evil. The first was the desire of +the appetites, greed and all forms of sensuousness, the second was +the desire for a personal and egotistic immortality, the third was +the craving for personal success, worldliness, avarice and the +like. All these forms of desire had to be overcome to escape from +the distresses and chagrins of life. When they were overcome, +when self had vanished altogether, then serenity of soul, Nirvana, +the highest good was attained. + +This was the gist of his teaching, a very subtle and metaphysical +teaching indeed, not nearly so easy to understand as the Greek +injunction to see and know fearlessly and rightly and the Hebrew +command to fear God and accomplish righteousness. It was a +teaching much beyond the understanding of even Gautama's immediate +disciples, and it is no wonder that so soon as his personal +influence was withdrawn it became corrupted and coarsened. There +was a widespread belief in India at that time that at long +intervals Wisdom came to earth and was incarnate in some chosen +person who was known as the Buddha. Gautama's disciples declared +that he was a Buddha, the latest of the Buddhas, though there is +no evidence that he himself ever accepted the title. Before he +was well dead, a cycle of fantastic legends began to be woven +about him. The human heart has always preferred a wonder story to +a moral effort, and Gautama Buddha became very wonderful. + +Yet there remained a substantial gain in the world. If Nirvana +was too high and subtle for most men's imaginations, if the +myth-making impulse in the race was too strong for the simple +facts of Gautama's life, they could at least grasp something of +the intention {162} of what Gautama called the Eight-fold way, the +Aryan or Noble Path in life. In this there was an insistence upon +mental uprightness, upon right aims and speech, right conduct and +honest livelihood. There was a quickening of the conscience and +an appeal to generous and self-forgetful ends. + + + + +{163} + +XXIX + +KING ASOKA + + +For some generations after the death of Gautama, these high and +noble Buddhist teachings, this first plain teaching that the +highest good for man is the subjugation of self, made +comparatively little headway in the world. Then they conquered +the imagination of one of the greatest monarchs the world has ever +seen. + +We have already mentioned how Alexander the Great came down into +India and fought with Porus upon the Indus. It is related by the +Greek historians that a certain Chandragupta Maurya came into +Alexander's camp and tried to persuade him to go on to the Ganges +and conquer all India. Alexander could not do this because of the +refusal of his Macedonians to go further into what was for them an +unknown world, and later on (303 B.C.) Chandragupta was able to +secure the help or various hill tribes and realize his dream +without Greek help. He built up an empire in North India and was +presently (303 B.C.) able to attack Seleucus I in the Punjab and +drive the last vestige of Greek power out of India. His son +extended this new empire. His grandson, Asoka, the monarch of +whom we now have to tell, found himself in 264 B.C. ruling from +Afghanistan to Madras. + +Asoka was at first disposed to follow the example of his father +and grandfather and complete the conquest of the Indian peninsula. +He invaded Kalinga (255 B.C.), a country on the east coast of +Madras, he was successful in his military operations and--alone +among conquerors--he was so disgusted by the cruelty and horror of +war that he renounced it. He would have no more of it. He +adopted the peaceful doctrines of Buddhism and declared that +henceforth his conquests should be the conquests of religion. + +{164} + +[Illustration: A LOHAN OR BUDDHIST APOSTLE (Tang Dynasty)] + +His reign for eight-and-twenty years was one of the brightest +interludes in the troubled history of mankind. He organized a +great digging of wells in India and the planting of trees for +shade. He founded hospitals and public gardens and gardens for +the growing of medicinal herbs. He created a ministry for the +care of the aborigines and subject races of India. He made +provision for the education of women. He made vast benefactions +to the Buddhist teaching orders, and tried to stimulate them to a +better and more energetic criticism of their own accumulated +literature. For corruptions and superstitious accretions had +accumulated very {165} speedily upon the pure and simple teaching +of the great Indian master. Missionaries went from Asoka to +Kashmir, to Persia, to Ceylon and Alexandria. + +[Illustration: TRANSOME SHOWING THE COURT OF ASOKA] + +[Illustration: ASOKA PANEL FROM BHARHUT] + +Such was Asoka, greatest of kings. He was far in advance of his +age. He left no prince and no organization of men to carry on his +work, and within a century of his death the great days of his +reign had become a glorious memory in a shattered and decaying +India. The priestly caste of the Brahmins, the highest and most +privileged caste in the Indian social body, has always been +opposed to the frank and open teaching of Buddha. Gradually they +undermined the Buddhist influence in the land. The old monstrous +gods, the innumerable cults of Hinduism, resumed their sway. +Caste became {166} more rigorous and complicated. For long +centuries Buddhism and Brahminism flourished side by side, and +then slowly Buddhism decayed and Brahminism in a multitude of +forms replaced it. But beyond the confines of India and the +realms of caste Buddhism spread--until it had won China and Siam +and Burma and Japan, countries in which it is predominant to this +day. + +[Illustration: THE PILLAR OF LIONS] + + + + +{167} + +XXX + +CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE + + +We have still to tell of two other great men, Confucius and Lao +Tse, who lived in that wonderful century which began the +adolescence of mankind, the sixth century B.C. In this history +thus far we have told very little of the early story of China. At +present that early history is still very obscure, and we look to +Chinese explorers and archæolologists in the new China that is now +arising to work out their past as thoroughly as the European past +has been worked out during the last century. Very long ago the +first primitive Chinese civilizations arose in the great river +valleys out of the primordial heliolithic culture. They had, like +Egypt and Sumeria, the general characteristics of that culture, +and they centred upon temples in which priests and priest kings +offered the seasonal blood sacrifices. The life in those cities +must have been very like the Egyptian and Sumerian life of six or +seven thousand years ago and very like the Maya life of Central +America a thousand years ago. + +If there were human sacrifices they had long given way to animal +sacrifices before the dawn of history. And a form of picture +writing was growing up long before a thousand years B.C. + +And just as the primitive civilizations of Europe and western Asia +were in conflict with the nomads of the desert and the nomads of +the north, so the primitive Chinese civilizations had a great +cloud of nomadic peoples on their northern borders. There was a +number of tribes akin in language and ways of living, who are +spoken of in history in succession as the Huns, the Mongols, the +Turks and Tartars. They changed and divided and combined and +re-combined, just as the Nordic peoples in north Europe and central +Asia changed and varied in name rather than in nature. These +Mongolian nomads had horses earlier than the Nordic peoples, and +it may {168} be that in the region of the Altai Mountains they +made an independent discovery of iron somewhen after 1000 B.C. +And just as in the western case so ever and again these eastern +nomads would achieve a sort of political unity, and become the +conquerors and masters and revivers of this or that settled and +civilized region. + +It is quite possible that the earliest civilization of China was +not Mongolian at all any more than the earliest civilization of +Europe and western Asia was Nordic or Semitic. It is quite +possible that the earliest civilization of China was a brunette +civilization and of a piece with the earliest Egyptian, Sumerian +and Dravidian civilizations, and that when the first recorded +history of China began there had already been conquests and +intermixture. At any rate we find that by 1750 B.C. China was +already a vast system of little kingdoms and city states, all +acknowledging a loose allegiance and paying more or less +regularly, more or less definite feudal dues to one great priest +emperor, the "Son of Heaven." The "Shang" dynasty came to an end +in 1125 B.C. A "Chow" dynasty succeeded "Shang," and maintained +China in a relaxing unity until the days of Asoka in India and of +the Ptolemies in Egypt. Gradually China went to pieces during +that long "Chow" period. Hunnish peoples came down and set up +principalities; local rulers discontinued their tribute and became +independent. There was in the sixth century B.C., says one +Chinese authority, five or six thousand practically independent +states in China. It was what the Chinese call in their records an +"Age of Confusion." + +But this Age of Confusion was compatible with much intellectual +activity and with the existence of many local centres of art and +civilized living. When we know more of Chinese history we shall +find that China also had her Miletus and her Athens, her Pergamum +and her Macedonia. At present we must be vague and brief about +this period of Chinese division simply because our knowledge is +not sufficient for us to frame a coherent and consecutive story. + +==================================================================== + +{169} + +[Illustration: CONFUCIUS] + +==================================================================== + +And just as in divided Greece there were philosophers and in +shattered and captive Jewry prophets, so in disordered China there +were philosophers and teachers at this time. In all these cases +{170} insecurity and uncertainty seemed to have quickened the +better sort of mind. Confucius was a man of aristocratic origin +and some official importance in a small state called Lu. Here in +a very parallel mood to the Greek impulse he set up a sort of +Academy for discovering and teaching Wisdom. The lawlessness and +disorder of China distressed him profoundly. He conceived an +ideal of a better government and a better life, and travelled from +state to state seeking a prince who would carry out his +legislative and educational ideas. He never found his prince; he +found a prince, but court intrigues undermined the influence of +the teacher and finally defeated his reforming proposals. It is +interesting to note that a century and a half later the Greek +philosopher Plato also sought a prince, and was for a time adviser +to the tyrant Dionysius who ruled Syracuse in Sicily. + +Confucius died a disappointed man. "No intelligent ruler arises +to take me as his master," he said, "and my time has come to die." +But his teaching had more vitality than he imagined in his +declining and hopeless years, and it became a great formative +influence with the Chinese people. It became one of what the +Chinese call the Three Teachings, the other two being those of +Buddha and of Lao Tse. + +The gist of the teaching of Confucius was the way of the noble or +aristocratic man. He was concerned with personal conduct as much +as Gautama was concerned with the peace of self-forgetfulness and +the Greek with external knowledge and the Jew with righteousness. +He was the most public-minded of all great teachers. He was +supremely concerned by the confusion and miseries of the world, +and he wanted to make men noble in order to bring about a noble +world. He sought to regulate conduct to an extraordinary extent; +to provide sound rules for every occasion in life. A polite, +public-spirited gentleman, rather sternly self-disciplined, was +the ideal he found already developing in the northern Chinese +world and one to which he gave a permanent form. + +==================================================================== + +{171} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA] + +==================================================================== +The teaching of Lao Tse, who was for a long time in charge of the +imperial library of the Chow dynasty, was much more mystical and +vague and elusive than that of Confucius. He seems to have +preached a stoical indifference to the pleasures and powers of +{172} the world and a return to an imaginary simple life of the +past. He left writings very contracted in style and very obscure. +He wrote in riddles. After his death his teachings, like the +teachings of Gautama Buddha, were corrupted and overlaid by +legends and had the most complex and extraordinary observances and +superstitious ideas grafted upon them. In China just as in India +primordial ideas of magic and monstrous legends out of the +childish past of our race struggled against the new thinking in +the world and succeeded in plastering it over with grotesque, +irrational and antiquated observances. Both Buddhism and Taoism +(which ascribes itself largely to Lao Tse) as one finds them in +China now, are religions of monk, temple, priest and offering of a +type as ancient in form, if not in thought, as the sacrificial +religions of ancient Sumeria and Egypt. But the teaching {173} of +Confucius was not so overlaid because it was limited and plain and +straightforward and lent itself to no such distortions. + +[Illustration: EARLY CHINESE BRONZE BELL] + +North China, the China of the Hwang-ho River, became Confucian in +thought and spirit; south China, Yang-tse-Kiang China, became +Taoist. Since those days a conflict has always been traceable in +Chinese affairs between these two spirits, the spirit of the north +and the spirit of the south, between (in latter times) Pekin and +Nankin, between the official-minded, upright and conservative +north, and the sceptical, artistic, lax and experimental south. + +The divisions of China of the Age of Confusion reached their worst +stage in the sixth century B.C. The Chow dynasty was so enfeebled +and so discredited that Lao Tse left the unhappy court and retired +into private life. + +Three nominally subordinate powers dominated the situation in +those days, Ts'i and Ts'in, both northern powers, and Ch'u, which +was an aggressive military power in the Yangtse valley. At last +Ts'i and Ts'in formed an alliance, subdued Ch'u and imposed a +general treaty of disarmament and peace in China. The power of +Ts'in became predominant. Finally about the time of Asoka in +India the Ts'in monarch seized upon the sacrificial vessels of the +Chow emperor and took over his sacrificial duties. His son, +Shi-Hwang-ti (king in 246 B.C., emperor in 220 B.C.), is called in +the Chinese Chronicles "the First Universal Emperor." + +More fortunate than Alexander, Shi-Hwang-ti reigned for +thirty-six years as king and emperor. His energetic reign marks +the beginning of a new era of unity and prosperity for the Chinese +people. He fought vigorously against the Hunnish invaders from +the northern deserts, and he began that immense work, the Great +Wall of China, to set a limit to their incursions. + + + + +{174} + +XXXI + +ROME COMES INTO HISTORY + + +The reader will note a general similarity in the history of all +these civilizations in spite of the effectual separation caused by +the great barriers of the Indian north-west frontier and of the +mountain masses of Central Asia and further India. First for +thousands of years the heliolithic culture spread over all the +warm and fertile river valleys of the old world and developed a +temple system and priest rulers about its sacrificial traditions. +Apparently its first makers were always those brunette peoples we +have spoken of as the central race of mankind. Then the nomads +came in from the regions of seasonal grass and seasonal migrations +and superposed their own characteristics and often their own +language on the primitive civilization. They subjugated and +stimulated it, and were stimulated to fresh developments and made +it here one thing and here another. In Mesopotamia it was the +Elamite and then the Semite, and at last the Nordic Medes and +Persians and the Greeks who supplied the ferment; over the region +of the Ægean peoples it was the Greeks; in India it was the +Aryan-speakers; in Egypt there was a thinner infusion of conquerors +into a more intensely saturated priestly civilization; in China, +the Hun conquered and was absorbed and was followed by fresh Huns. +China was Mongolized just as Greece and North India were Aryanized +and Mesopotamia Semitized and Aryanized. Everywhere the nomads +destroyed much, but everywhere they brought in a new spirit of +free enquiry and moral innovation. They questioned the beliefs of +immemorial ages. They let daylight into the temples. They set up +kings who were neither priests nor gods but mere leaders among +their captains and companions. + +==================================================================== + +{175} + +[Illustration: THE DYING GAUL] + +==================================================================== + +In the centuries following the sixth century B.C. we find +everywhere a great breaking down of ancient traditions and a new +spirit {176} of moral and intellectual enquiry awake, a spirit +never more to be altogether stilled in the great progressive +movement of mankind. We find reading and writing becoming common +and accessible accomplishments among the ruling and prosperous +minority; they were no longer the jealously guarded secret of the +priests. Travel is increasing and transport growing easier by +reason of horses and roads. A new and easy device to facilitate +trade has been found in coined money. + +Let us now transfer our attention back from China in the extreme +east of the old world to the western half of the Mediterranean. +Here we have to note the appearance of a city which was destined +to play at last a very great part indeed in human affairs, Rome. + +Hitherto we have told very little about Italy in our story. It +was before 1000 B.C. a land of mountain and forest and thinly +populated. Aryan-speaking tribes had pressed down this peninsula +and formed little towns and cities, and the southern extremity was +studded with Greek settlements. The noble ruins of Pæstum +preserve for us to this day something of the dignity and splendour +of these early Greek establishments. A non-Aryan people, probably +akin to the Ægean peoples, the Etruscans, had established +themselves in the central part of the peninsula. They had +reversed the usual process by subjugating various Aryan tribes. +Rome, when it comes into the light of history, is a little trading +city at a ford on the Tiber, with a Latin-speaking population +ruled over by Etruscan kings. The old chronologies gave 753 B.C. +as the date of the founding of Rome, half a century later than the +founding of the great Phoenician city of Carthage and twenty-three +years after the first Olympiad. Etruscan tombs of a much earlier +date than 753 B.C. have, however, been excavated in the Roman +Forum. + +In that red-letter century, the sixth century B.C., the Etruscan +kings were expelled (510 B.C.) and Rome became an aristocratic +republic with a lordly class of "patrician" families dominating a +commonalty of "plebeians." Except that it spoke Latin it was not +unlike many aristocratic Greek republics. + +For some centuries the internal history of Rome was the story of a +long and obstinate struggle for freedom and a share in the +government on the part of the plebeians. It would not be +difficult to find {177} Greek parallels to this conflict, which +the Greeks would have called a conflict of aristocracy with +democracy. In the end the plebeians broke down most of the +exclusive barriers of the old families and established a working +equality with them. They destroyed the old exclusiveness, and +made it possible and acceptable for Rome to extend her citizenship +by the inclusion of more and more "outsiders." For while she +still struggled at home, she was extending her power abroad. + +[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT ROMAN CISTERNS AT CARTHAGE] + +The extension of Roman power began in the fifth century B.C. +Until that time they had waged war, and generally unsuccessful +war, with the Etruscans. There was an Etruscan fort, Veii, only a +few miles from Rome which the Romans had never been able to +capture. In 474 B.C., however, a great misfortune came to the +Etruscans. Their fleet was destroyed by the Greeks of Syracuse in +Sicily. {178} At the same time a wave of Nordic invaders came +down upon them from the north, the Gauls. Caught between Roman +and Gaul, the Etruscans fell--and disappear from history. Veii +was captured by the Romans, The Gauls came through to Rome and +sacked the city (390 B.C.) but could not capture the Capitol. An +attempted night surprise was betrayed by the cackling of some +geese, and finally the invaders were bought off and retired to the +north of Italy again. + +The Gaulish raid seems to have invigorated rather than weakened +Rome. The Romans conquered and assimilated the Etruscans, and +extended their power over all central Italy from the Arno to +Naples. To this they had reached within a few years of 300 B.C. +Their conquests in Italy were going on simultaneously with the +growth of Philip's power in Macedonia and Greece, and the +tremendous raid of Alexander to Egypt and the Indus. The Romans +had become notable people in the civilized world to the east of +them by the break-up of Alexander's empire. + +To the north of the Roman power were the Gauls; to the south of +them were the Greek settlements of Magna Græcia, that is to say of +Sicily and of the toe and heel of Italy. The Gauls were a hardy, +warlike people and the Romans held that boundary by a line of +forts and fortified settlements. The Greek cities in the south +headed by Tarentum (now Taranto) and by Syracuse in Sicily, did +not so much threaten as fear the Romans. They looked about for +some help against these new conquerors. + +We have already told how the empire of Alexander fell to pieces +and was divided among his generals and companions. Among these +adventurers was a kinsman of Alexander's named Pyrrhus, who +established himself in Epirus, which is across the Adriatic Sea +over against the heel of Italy. It was his ambition to play the +part of Philip of Macedonia to Magna Græcia, and to become +protector and master-general of Tarentum, Syracuse and the rest of +that part of the world. He had what was then it very efficient +modern army; he had an infantry phalanx, cavalry from +Thessaly--which was now quite as good as the original Macedonian +cavalry--and twenty fighting elephants; he invaded Italy and routed +the Romans in two considerable battles, Heraclea (280 B.C.) and +Ausculum (279 B.C.), and {179} having driven them north, he turned +his attention to the subjugation of Sicily. + +But this brought against him a more formidable enemy than were the +Romans at that time, the Phoenician trading city of Carthage, +which was probably then the greatest city in the world. Sicily +was too near Carthage for a new Alexander to be welcome there, and +Carthage was mindful of the fate that had befallen her mother city +Tyre half a century before. So she sent a fleet to encourage or +compel Rome to continue the struggle, and she cut the overseas +communications of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus found himself freshly assailed +by the Romans, and suffered a disastrous repulse in an attack he +had made upon their camp at Beneventum between Naples and Rome. + +And suddenly came news that recalled him to Epirus. The Gauls +were raiding south. But this time they were not raiding down into +Italy; the Roman frontier, fortified and guarded, had become too +formidable for them. They were raiding down through Illyria +(which is now Serbia and Albania) to Macedonia and Epirus. +Repulsed by the Romans, endangered at sea by the Carthaginians, +and threatened at home by the Gauls, Pyrrhus abandoned his dream +of conquest and went home (275 B.C.), and the power of Rome was +extended to the Straits of Messina. + +On the Sicilian side of the Straits was the Greek city of Messina, +and this presently fell into the hands of a gang of pirates. The +Carthaginians, who were already practically overlords of Sicily +and allies of Syracuse, suppressed these pirates (270 B.C.) and +put in a Carthaginian garrison there. The pirates appealed to +Rome and Rome listened to their complaint. And so across the +Straits of Messina the great trading power of Carthage and this +new conquering people, the Romans, found themselves in antagonism, +face to face. + + + + +{180} + +XXXII + +ROME AND CARTHAGE + + +It was in 264 B.C. that the great struggle between Rome and +Carthage, the Punic Wars, began. In that year Asoka was beginning +his reign in Behar and Shi-Hwang-ti was a little child, the Museum +in Alexandria was still doing good scientific work, and the +barbaric Gauls were now in Asia Minor and exacting a tribute from +Pergamum. The different regions of the world were still separated +by insurmountable distances, and probably the rest of mankind +heard only vague and remote rumours of the mortal fight that went +on for a century and a half in Spain, Italy, North Africa and the +western Mediterranean, between the last stronghold of Semitic +power and Rome, this newcomer among +Aryan-speaking peoples. + +That war has left its traces upon issues that still stir the +world. Rome triumphed over Carthage, but the rivalry of Aryan and +Semite was to merge itself later on in the conflict of Gentile and +Jew. Our history now is coming to events whose consequences and +distorted traditions still maintain a lingering and expiring +vitality in, and exercise a complicating and confusing influence +upon, the conflicts and controversies of +to-day. + +The First Punic War began in 264 B.C. about the pirates of +Messina. It developed into a struggle for the possession of all +Sicily except the dominions of the Greek king of Syracuse. The +advantage of the sea was at first with the Carthaginians. They +had great fighting ships of what was hitherto an unheard-of size, +quinqueremes, galleys with five banks of oars and a huge ram. At +the battle of Salamis, two centuries before, the leading +battleships had only been triremes with three banks. But the +Romans, with extraordinary energy and in spite of the fact that +they had little naval experience, set themselves to outbuild the +Carthaginians. They manned the new navy they created chiefly with +Greek seamen, and they invented {181} grappling and boarding to +make up for the superior seamanship of the enemy. When the +Carthaginian came up to ram or shear the oars of the Roman, huge +grappling irons seized him and the Roman soldiers swarmed aboard +him. At Mylæ (260 B.C.) and at Ecnomus (256 B.C.) the +Carthaginians were disastrously beaten. They repulsed a Roman +landing near Carthage but were badly beaten at Palermo, losing one +hundred and four elephants there--to grace such a triumphal +procession through the Forum as Rome had never seen before. But +after that came two Roman defeats and then a Roman recovery. The +last naval forces of Carthage were defeated {182} by it last Roman +effort at the battle of the Ægatian Isles (241 B.C.) and Carthage +sued for peace. All Sicily except the dominions of Hiero, king of +Syracuse, was ceded to the Romans. + +[Illustration: HANNIBAL] + +For twenty-two years Rome and Carthage kept the peace. Both had +trouble enough at home. In Italy the Gauls came south again, +threatened Rome--which in a state of panic offered human +_sacrifices to the Gods!_--and were routed at Telamon. Rome +pushed forward to the Alps, and even extended her dominions down +the Adriatic coast to Illyria. Carthage suffered from domestic +insurrections and from revolts in Corsica and Sardinia, and +displayed far less recuperative power. Finally, an act of +intolerable aggression, Rome seized and annexed the two revolting +islands. + +Spain at that time was Carthaginian as far north as the river +Ebro. To that boundary the Romans restricted them. Any crossing +of the Ebro by the Carthaginians was to be considered an act of +war against the Romans. At last in 218 B.C. the Carthaginians, +provoked by new Roman aggressions, did cross this river under a +young general named Hannibal, one of the most brilliant commanders +in the whole of history. He marched his army from Spain over the +Alps into Italy, raised the Gauls against the Romans, and carried +on the Second Punic War in Italy itself for fifteen years. He +inflicted tremendous defeats upon the Romans at Lake Trasimere and +at Cannæ, and throughout all his Italian campaigns no Roman army +stood against him and escaped disaster. But a Roman army had +landed at Marseilles and cut his communications with Spain; he had +no siege train, and he could never capture Rome. Finally the +Carthaginians, threatened by the revolt of the Numidians at home, +were forced back upon the defence of their own city in Africa, a +Roman army crossed into Africa, and Hannibal experienced his first +defeat under its walls at the battle of Zama (202 B.C.) at the +hands of Scipio Africanus the Elder. The battle of Zama ended +this Second Punic War. Carthage capitulated; she surrendered +Spain and her war fleet; she paid an enormous indemnity and agreed +to give up Hannibal to the vengeance of the Romans. But Hannibal +escaped and fled to Asia where later, being in danger of falling +into the hands of his relentless enemies, he took poison and died. + +{183} + +For fifty-six years Rome and the shorn city of Carthage were at +peace. And meanwhile Rome spread her empire over confused and +divided Greece, invaded Asia Minor, and defeated Antiochus III, +the Seleucid monarch, at Magnesia in Lydia. She made Egypt, still +under the Ptolemies, and Pergamum and most of the small states of +Asia Minor into "Allies," or, as we should call them now, +"protected states." + +Meanwhile Carthage, subjugated and enfeebled, had been slowly +regaining something of her former prosperity. Her recovery +revived the hate and suspicion of the Romans. She was attacked +upon the most shallow and artificial of quarrels (149 B.C.), she +made an obstinate and bitter resistance, stood a long siege and +was stormed (146 B.C.). The street fighting, or massacre, lasted +six days; it was extraordinarily bloody, and when the citadel +capitulated only about fifty thousand of the Carthaginian +population remained alive out of a quarter of a million. They +were sold into slavery, and the city was burnt and elaborately +destroyed. The blackened ruins were ploughed and sown as a sort +of ceremonial effacement. + +[Map: The Extent of the Roman Power & its Alliances about 150 +B.C.] + +So ended the Third Punic War. Of all the Semitic states and +cities that had flourished in the world five centuries before only +one little country remained free under native rulers. This was +Judea, which had liberated itself from the Seleucids and was under +the rule {184} of the native Maccabean princes. By this time it +had its Bible almost complete, and was developing the distinctive +traditions of the Jewish world as we know it now. It was natural +that the Carthaginians, Phoenicians and kindred peoples dispersed +about the world should find a common link in their practically +identical language and in this literature of hope and courage. To +a large extent they were still the traders and bankers of the +world. The Semitic world had been submerged rather than replaced. + +Jerusalem, which has always been rather the symbol than the centre +of Judaism, was taken by the Romans in 65 B.C.; and after various +vicissitudes of quasi-independence and revolt was besieged by them +in 70 A.D. and captured after a stubborn struggle. The Temple was +destroyed. A later rebellion in 132 A.D. completed its +destruction, and the Jerusalem we know to-day was rebuilt later +under Roman auspices. A temple to the Roman god, Jupiter +Capitolinus, stood in the place of the Temple, and Jews were +forbidden to inhabit the city. + + + + +{185} + +XXXIII + +THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE + + +Now this new Roman power which arose to dominate the western world +in the second and first centuries B.C. was in several respects a +different thing from any of the great empires that had hitherto +prevailed in the civilized world. It was not at first a monarchy, +and it was not the creation of any one great conqueror. It was +not indeed the first of republican empires; Athens had dominated a +group of Allies and dependents in the time of Pericles, and +Carthage when she entered upon her fatal struggle with Rome was +mistress of Sardinia and Corsica, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and +most of Spain and Sicily. But it was the first republican empire +that escaped extinction and went on to fresh developments. + +The centre of this new system lay far to the west of the more +ancient centres of empire, which had hitherto been the river +valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt. This westward position enabled +Rome to bring in to civilization quite fresh regions and peoples. +The Roman power extended to Morocco and Spain, and was presently +able to thrust north-westward over what is now France and Belgium +to Britain and north-eastward into Hungary and South Russia. But +on the other hand it was never able to maintain itself in Central +Asia or Persia because they were too far from its administrative +centres. It included therefore great masses of fresh Nordic +Aryan-speaking peoples, it presently incorporated nearly all the +Greek people in the world, and its population was less strongly +Hamitic and Semitic than that of any preceding empire. + +For some centuries this Roman Empire did not fall into the grooves +of precedent that had so speedily swallowed up Persian and Greek, +and all that time it developed. The rulers of the Medes and +Persians became entirely Babylonized in a generation or so; they +{186} took over the tiara of the king of kings and the temples and +priesthoods of his gods; Alexander and his successors followed in +the same easy path of assimilation; the Seleucid monarchs had much +the same court and administrative methods as Nebuchadnezzar; the +Ptolemies became Pharaohs and altogether Egyptian. They were +assimilated just as before them the Semitic conquerors of the +Sumerians had been assimilated. But the Romans ruled in their own +city, and for some centuries kept to the laws of their own nature. +The only people who exercised any great mental influence upon them +before the second or third century A.D. were the kindred and +similar Greeks. So that the Roman Empire was essentially a first +attempt to rule a great dominion upon mainly Aryan lines. It was +so far a new pattern in history, it was an expanded Aryan +republic. The old pattern of a personal conqueror ruling over a +capital city that had grown up round the temple of a harvest god +did not apply to it. The Romans had gods and temples, but like +the gods of the Greeks their gods were quasi-human immortals, +divine patricians. The Romans also had blood sacrifices and even +made human ones in times of stress, things they may have learnt to +do from their dusky Etruscan teachers; but until Rome was long +past its zenith neither priest nor temple played a large part in +Roman history. + +The Roman Empire was a growth, an unplanned novel growth; the +Roman people found themselves engaged almost unawares in a vast +administrative experiment. It cannot be called a successful +experiment. In the end their empire collapsed altogether. And it +changed enormously in form and method from century to century. It +changed more in a hundred years than Bengal or Mesopotamia or +Egypt changed in a thousand. It was always changing. It never +attained to any fixity. + +In a sense the experiment failed. In a sense the experiment +remains unfinished, and Europe and America to-day are still +working out the riddles of world-wide statescraft first confronted +by the Roman people. + +It is well for the student of history to bear in mind the very +great changes not only in political but in social and moral +matters that went on throughout the period of Roman dominion. +There is much too strong a tendency in people's minds to think of +the Roman {187} rule as something finished and stable, firm, +rounded, noble and decisive. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_, +S.P.Q.R. the elder Cato, the Scipios, Julius Cæsar, Diocletian, +Constantine the Great, triumphs, orations, gladiatorial combats +and Christian martyrs are all mixed up together in a picture of +something high and cruel and dignified. The items of that picture +have to be disentangled. They are collected at different points +from a process of change profounder than that which separates the +London of William the Conqueror from the London of to-day. + +We may very conveniently divide the expansion of Rome into four +stages. The first stage began after the sack of Rome by the Goths +in 390 B.C. and went on until the end of the First Punic War (240 +B.C.). We may call this stage the stage of the Assimilative +Republic. It was perhaps the finest, most characteristic stage in +Roman history. The age-long dissensions of patrician and plebeian +were drawing to it close, the Etruscan threat had come to an end, +no one was very rich yet nor very poor, and most men were +public-spirited. It was a republic like the republic of the +South African Boers before 1900 or like the northern states of the +American union between 1800 and 1850; a free-farmers republic. At +the outset of this stage Rome was a little state scarcely twenty +miles square. She fought the sturdy but kindred states about her, +and sought not their destruction but coalescence. Her centuries +of civil dissension had trained her people in compromise and +concessions. Some of the defeated cities became altogether Roman +with a voting share in the government, some became self-governing +with the right to trade and marry in Rome; garrisons full of +citizens were set up at strategic points and colonies of varied +privileges founded among the freshly conquered people. Great +roads were made. The rapid Latinization of all Italy was the +inevitable consequence of such a policy. In 89 B.C. all the free +inhabitants of Italy became citizens of the city of Rome. +Formally the whole Roman Empire became at last an extended city. +In 212 A.D. every free man in the entire extent of the empire was +given citizenship; the right, if he could get there, to vote in +the town meeting in Rome. + +This extension of citizenship to tractable cities and to whole +countries was the distinctive device of Roman expansion. It {188} +reversed the old process of conquest and assimilation altogether. +By the Roman method the conquerors assimilated the conquered. + +[Illustration: THE FORUM AT ROME AS IT IS TO-DAY] + +But after the First Punic War and the annexation of Sicily, though +the old process of assimilation still went on, another process +arose by its side. Sicily for instance was treated as a conquered +prey. It was declared an "estate" of the Roman people. Its rich +soil and industrious population was exploited to make Rome rich. +The patricians and the more influential among the plebeians +secured the major share of that wealth. And the war also brought +in a large supply of slaves. Before the First Punic War the +population of the republic had been largely a population of +citizen farmers. Military service was their privilege and +liability. While they were on active service their farms fell +into debt and a new large-scale slave agriculture grew up; when +they returned they found their produce in competition with +slave-grown produce from Sicily and from the new estates at home. +Times had changed. The republic had {189} altered its character. +Not only was Sicily in the hands of Rome, the common man was in +the hands of the rich creditor and the rich competitor. Rome had +entered upon its second stage, the Republic of Adventurous Rich +Men. + +[Illustration: RELICS OF ROMAN RULE] + +For two hundred years the Roman soldier farmers had struggled for +freedom and a share in the government of their state; for a +hundred years they had enjoyed their privileges. The First Punic +War wasted them and robbed them of all they had won. + +The value of their electoral privileges had also evaporated. The +governing bodies of the Roman republic were two in number. The +first and more important was the Senate. This was a body +originally of patricians and then of prominent men of all sorts, +who were summoned to it first by certain powerful officials, the +consuls and censors. Like the British House of Lords it became a +gathering of great landowners, prominent politicians, big business +men and the {190} like. It was much more like the British House +of Lords than it was like the American Senate. For three +centuries, from the Punic Wars onward, it was the centre of Roman +political thought and purpose. The second body was the Popular +Assembly. This was supposed to be an assembly of _all_ the +citizens of Rome. When Rome was a little state twenty miles +square this was a possible gathering. When the citizenship of +Rome had spread beyond the confines in Italy, it was an altogether +impossible one. Its meetings, proclaimed by +horn-blowing from the Capitol and the city walls, became more and +more a gathering of political hacks and city riff-raff. In the +fourth century B.C. the Popular Assembly was a considerable check +upon the Senate, a competent representation of the claims and +rights of the common man. By the end of the Punic Wars it was an +impotent relic of a vanquished popular control. No effectual +legal check remained upon the big men. + +[Illustration: THE GREAT ROMAN ARCH AT CTESIPHON NEAR BAGDAD] + +Nothing of the nature of representative government was ever +introduced into the Roman republic. No one thought of electing +delegates to represent the will of the citizens. This is a very +important point for the student to grasp. The Popular Assembly +{191} never became the equivalent of the American House of +Representatives or the British House of Commons. In theory it was +all the citizens; in practice it ceased to be anything at all +worth consideration. + +The common citizen of the Roman Empire was therefore in a very +poor case after the Second Punic War; he was impoverished, he had +often lost his farm, he was ousted from profitable production by +slaves, and he had no political power left to him to remedy these +things. The only methods of popular expression left to a people +without any form of political expression are the strike and the +revolt. The story of the second and first centuries B.C., so far +as internal politics go, is a story of futile revolutionary +upheaval. The scale of this history will not permit us to tell of +the intricate struggles of that time, of the attempts to break up +estates and restore the land to the free farmer, of proposals to +abolish debts in whole or in part. There was revolt and civil +war. In 73 B.C., the distresses of Italy were enhanced by a great +insurrection, of the slaves under Spartacus. The slaves of Italy +revolted with some effect, for among them were the trained +fighters of the gladiatorial shows. For two years Spartacus held +out in the crater of Vesuvius, which seemed at that time to be an +extinct volcano. This insurrection was defeated at last and +suppressed with frantic cruelty. Six thousand captured +Spartacists were crucified along the Appian Way, the great highway +that runs southward out of Rome (71 B.C.). + +The common man never made head against the forces that were +subjugating and degrading him. But the big rich men who were +overcoming him were even in his defeat preparing a new power in +the Roman world over themselves and him, the power of the army. + +Before the Second Punic War the army of Rome was a levy of free +farmers, who, according to their quality, rode or marched afoot to +battle. This was a very good force for wars close at hand, but +not the sort of army that will go abroad and bear long campaigns +with patience. And moreover as the slaves multiplied and the +estates grew, the supply of free-spirited fighting farmers +declined. It was a popular leader named Marius who introduced a +new factor. North Africa after the overthrow of the Carthaginian +civilization had become a semi-barbaric kingdom, the kingdom of +Numidia. {192} The Roman power fell into conflict with Jugurtha, +king of this state, and experienced enormous difficulties in +subduing him. Marius was made consul, in a phase of public +indignation, to end this discreditable war. This he did by +raising _paid troops_ and drilling them hard. Jugurtha was +brought in chains to Rome (106 B.C.) and Marius, when his time of +office had expired, held on to his consulship illegally with his +newly created legions. There was no power in Rome to restrain +him. + +With Marius began the third phase in the development of the Roman +power, the Republic of the Military Commanders. For now began a +period in which the leaders of the paid legions fought for the +mastery of the Roman world. Against Marius was pitted the +aristocratic Sulla who had served under him in Africa. Each in +turn made a great massacre of his political opponents. Men were +proscribed and executed by the thousand, and their estates were +sold. After the bloody rivalry of these two and the horror of the +revolt of Spartacus, came a phase in which Lucullus and Pompey the +Great and Crassus and Julius Cæsar were the masters of armies and +dominated affairs. It was Crassus who defeated Spartacus. +Lucullus conquered Asia Minor and penetrated to Armenia, and +retired with great wealth into private life. Crassus thrusting +further invaded Persia and was defeated and slain by the +Parthians. After a long rivalry Pompey was defeated by Julius +Cæsar (48 B.C.) and murdered in Egypt, leaving Julius Cæsar sole +master of the Roman world. + +The figure of Julius Cæsar is one that has stirred the human +imagination out of all proportion to its merit or true importance. +He has become a legend and a symbol. For us he is chiefly +important as marking the transition from the phase of military +adventurers to the beginning of the fourth stage in Roman +expansion, the Early Empire. For in spite of the profoundest +economic and political convulsions, in spite of civil war and +social degeneration, throughout all this time the boundaries of +the Roman state crept outward and continued to creep outward to +their maximum about 100 A.D. There had been something like an ebb +during the doubtful phases of the Second Punic War, and again a +manifest loss of vigour before the reconstruction of the army by +Marius. The revolt of Spartacus {193} marked a third phase. +Julius Cæsar made his reputation as a military leader in Gaul, +which is now France and Belgium. (The chief tribes inhabiting +this country belonged to the same Celtic people as the Gauls who +had occupied north Italy for a time, and who had afterwards raided +into Asia Minor and settled down as the Galatians.) Cæsar drove +back a German invasion of Gaul and added all that country to the +empire, and he twice crossed the Straits of Dover into Britain (55 +and 54 B.C.), where however he made no permanent conquest. +Meanwhile Pompey the Great was consolidating Roman conquests that +reached in the east to the Caspian Sea. + +[Illustration: THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN AT ROME] + +At this time, the middle of the first century B.C., the Roman +Senate was still the nominal centre of the Roman government, +appointing consuls and other officials, granting powers and the +like; and a number of politicians, among whom Cicero was an +outstanding {194} figure, were struggling to preserve the great +traditions of republican Rome and to maintain respect for its +laws. But the spirit of citizenship had gone from Italy with the +wasting away of the free farmers; it was a land now of slaves and +impoverished men with neither the understanding nor the desire for +freedom. There was nothing whatever behind these republican +leaders in the Senate, while behind the great adventurers they +feared and desired to control were the legions. Over the heads of +the Senate Crassus and Pompey and Cæsar divided the rule of the +Empire between them (The First Triumvirate). When presently +Crassus was killed at distant Carrhæ by the Parthians, Pompey and +Cæsar fell out. Pompey took up the republican side, and laws were +passed to bring Cæsar to trial for his breaches of law and his +disobedience to the decrees of the Senate. + +It was illegal for a general to bring his troops out of the +boundary of his command, and the boundary between Cæsar's command +and Italy was the Rubicon. In 49 B.C. he crossed the Rubicon, +saying "The die is cast" and marched upon Pompey and Rome. + +It had been the custom in Rome in the past, in periods of military +extremity, to elect a "dictator" with practically unlimited powers +to rule through the crisis. After his overthrow of Pompey, Cæsar +was made dictator first for ten years and then (in 45 B.C.) for +life. In effect he was made monarch of the empire for life. +There was talk of a king, a word abhorrent to Rome since the +expulsion of the Etruscans five centuries before. Cæsar refused +to be king, but adopted throne and sceptre. After his defeat of +Pompey, Cæsar had gone on into Egypt and had made love to +Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, the goddess queen of Egypt. +She seems to have turned his head very completely. He had brought +back to Rome the Egyptian idea of a god-king. His statue was set +up in a temple with an inscription "To the Unconquerable God." +The expiring republicanism of Rome flared up in a last protest, +and Cæsar was stabbed to death in the Senate at the foot of the +statue of his murdered rival, Pompey the Great. + +Thirteen years more of this conflict of ambitious personalities +followed. There was a second Triumvirate of Lepidus, Mark Antony +and Octavian Cæsar, the latter the nephew of Julius Cæsar. +Octavian like his uncle took the poorer, hardier western provinces +{195} where the best legions were recruited. In 31 B.C., he +defeated Mark Antony, his only serious rival, at the naval battle +of Actium, and made himself sole master of the Roman world. But +Octavian was a man of different quality altogether from Julius +Cæsar. He had no foolish craving to be God or King. He had no +queen-lover that he wished to dazzle. He restored freedom to the +Senate and people of Rome. He declined to be dictator. The +grateful Senate in return gave him the reality instead of the +forms of power. He was to be called not King indeed, but +"Princeps" and "Augustus." He became Augustus Cæsar, the first of +the Roman emperors (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.). + +He was followed by Tiberius Cæsar (14 to 37 A.D.) and he by +others, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and so on up to Trajan (98 A.D.), +Hadrian (117 A.D.), Antonius Pius (138 A.D.) and Marcus Aurelius +(161-180 A.D.). All these emperors were emperors of the legions. +The soldiers made them, and some the soldiers destroyed. +Gradually the Senate fades out of Roman-history, and the emperor +and his administrative officials replace it. The boundaries of +the empire crept forward now to their utmost limits. Most of +Britain was added to the empire, Transylvania was brought in as a +new province, Dacia; Trajan crossed the Euphrates. Hadrian had an +idea that reminds us at once of what had happened at the other end +of the old world. Like Shi-Hwang-ti he built walls against the +northern barbarians; one across Britain and a palisade between the +Rhine and the Danube. He abandoned some of the acquisitions of +Trajan. + +The expansion of the Roman Empire was at an end. + + + + +{196} + +XXXIV + +BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA + + +The second and first centuries B.C. mark a new phase in the +history of mankind. Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean are +no longer the centre of interest. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt were +still fertile, populous and fairly prosperous, but they were no +longer the dominant regions of the world. Power had drifted to +the west and to the east. Two great empires now dominated the +world, this new Roman Empire and the renascent Empire of China. +Rome extended its power to the Euphrates, but it was never able to +get beyond that boundary. It was too remote. Beyond the +Euphrates the former Persian and Indian dominions of the Seleucids +fell under a number of new masters. China, now under the Han +dynasty, which had replaced the Ts'in dynasty at the death of +Shi-Hwang-ti, had extended its power across Tibet and over the +high mountain passes of the Pamirs into western Turkestan. But +there, too, it reached its extremes. Beyond was too far. + +China at this time was the greatest, best organized and most +civilized political system in the world. It was superior in area +and population to the Roman Empire at its zenith. It was possible +then for these two vast systems to flourish in the same world at +the same time in almost complete ignorance of each other. The +means of communication both by sea and land was not yet +sufficiently developed and organized for them to come to a direct +clash. + +Yet they reacted upon each other in a very remarkable way, and +their influence upon the fate of the regions that lay between +them, upon central Asia and India, was profound. A certain amount +of trade trickled through, by camel caravans across Persia, for +example, and by coasting ships by way of India and the Red Sea. +In 66 B.C. Roman troops under Pompey followed in the footsteps of +Alexander the Great, and marched up the eastern shores of the +{197} Caspian Sea. In 102 A.D. a Chinese expeditionary force +under Pan Chau reached the Caspian, and sent emissaries to report +upon the power of Rome. But many centuries were still to pass +before definite knowledge and direct intercourse were to link the +great parallel worlds of Europe and Eastern Asia. + +To the north of both these great empires were barbaric +wildernesses. What is now Germany was largely forest lands; the +forests extended far into Russia and made a home for the gigantic +aurochs, a bull of almost elephantine size. Then to the north of +the great mountain masses of Asia stretched a band of deserts, +steppes and then forests and frozen lands. In the eastward lap of +the elevated part of Asia was the great triangle of Manchuria. +Large parts of these regions, stretching between South Russia and +Turkestan into Manchuria, were and are regions of exceptional +climatic insecurity. Their rainfall has varied greatly in the +course of a few centuries They are lands treacherous to man. For +years they will carry pasture and sustain cultivation, and then +will come an age of decline in humidity and a cycle of killing +droughts. + +[Illustration: A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE] + +The western part of this barbaric north from the German forests to +South Russia and Turkestan and from Gothland to the Alps was the +region of origin of the Nordic peoples and of the Aryan speech. +The eastern steppes and deserts of Mongolia was the region of +origin of the Hunnish or Mongolian or Tartar or Turkish +peoples--for all these several peoples were akin in language, race, +and way of life. And as the Nordic peoples seem to have been +continually overflowing their own borders and pressing south upon +the developing civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean +coast, so the Hunnish {198} tribes sent their surplus as +wanderers, raiders and conquerors into the settled regions of +China. Periods of plenty in the north would mean an increase in +population there; a shortage of grass, a spell of cattle disease, +would drive the hungry warlike tribesmen south. + +[Illustration: VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE] + +For a time there were simultaneously two fairly effective Empires +in the world capable of holding back the barbarians and even +forcing forward the frontiers of the imperial peace. The thrust +of the Han empire from north China into Mongolia was strong and +continuous. The Chinese population welled up over the barrier of +the Great Wall. Behind the imperial frontier guards came the +Chinese farmer with horse and plough, ploughing up the grass lands +and enclosing the winter pasture. The Hunnish peoples raided and +murdered the settlers, but the Chinese punitive expeditions were +too much for them. The nomads were faced with the choice of +settling down to the plough and becoming Chinese tax-payers or +shifting in search of fresh summer pastures. Some took the former +course and were absorbed. Some drifted +north-eastward and eastward over the mountain passes down into +western Turkestan. + +This westward drive of the Mongolian horsemen was going on from +200 B.C. onward. It was producing a westward pressure upon the +Aryan tribes, and these again were pressing upon the Roman +frontiers ready to break through directly there was any weakness +apparent. The Parthians, who were apparently a Scythian people +with some Mongolian admixture, came down to the Euphrates by the +first century B.C. They fought against Pompey the Great in {199} +his eastern raid. They defeated and killed Crassus. They +replaced the Seleucid monarchy in Persia by a dynasty of Parthian +kings, the Arsacid dynasty. + +[Illustration: CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE] + +But for a time the line of least resistance for hungry nomads lay +neither to the west nor the east but through central Asia and then +south-eastward through the Khyber Pass into India. It was India +which received the Mongolian drive in these centuries of Roman and +Chinese strength. A series of raiding conquerors poured down +through the Punjab into the great plains to loot and destroy. The +empire of Asoka was broken up, and for a time the history of India +passes into darkness. A certain Kushan dynasty founded by the +"Indo-Scythians"--one of the raiding peoples--ruled for a time +over North India and maintained a certain order. These invasions +went on for several centuries. For a large part of the fifth +century A.D. India was afflicted by the Ephthalites or White Huns, +who levied tribute on the small Indian princes and held India in +terror. Every summer these Ephthalites pastured in western +Turkestan, every autumn they came down through the passes to +terrorize India. + +{200} + +In the second century A.D. a great misfortune came upon the Roman +and Chinese empires that probably weakened the resistance of both +to barbarian pressure. This was a pestilence of unexampled +virulence. It raged for eleven years in China and disorganized +the social framework profoundly. The Han dynasty fell, and a new +age of division and confusion began from which China did not +fairly recover until the seventh century A.D. with the coming of +the great Tang dynasty. + +The infection spread through Asia to Europe. It raged throughout +the Roman Empire from 164 to 180 A.D. It evidently weakened the +Roman imperial fabric very seriously. We begin to hear of +depopulation in the Roman provinces after this, and there was a +marked deterioration in the vigour and efficiency of government. +At any rate we presently find the frontier no longer invulnerable, +but giving way first in this place and then in that. A new Nordic +people, the Goths, coming originally from Gothland in Sweden, had +migrated across Russia to the Volga region and the shores of the +Black Sea and taken to the sea and piracy. By the end of the +second century they may have begun to feel the westward thrust of +the Huns. In 247 they crossed the Danube in a great land raid, +and defeated and killed the Emperor Decius in a battle in what is +now Serbia. In 236 another Germanic people, the Franks, had broken +bounds upon the lower Rhine, and the Alemanni had poured into +Alsace. The legions in Gaul beat back their invaders, but the +Goths in the Balkan peninsula raided again and again. The +province of Dacia vanished from Roman history. + +A chill had come to the pride and confidence of Rome. In 270-275 +Rome, which had been an open and secure city for three centuries, +was fortified by the Emperor Aurelian. + + + + +{201} + +XXXV + +THE COMMON MAN'S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE + + +Before we tell of how this Roman empire which was built up in the +two centuries B.C., and which flourished in peace and security +from the days of Augustus Cæsar onward for two centuries, fell +into disorder and was broken up, it may be as well to devote some +attention to the life of the ordinary people throughout this great +realm. Our history has come down now to within 2000 years of our +own time; and the life of the civilized people, both under the +Peace of Rome and the Peace of the Han dynasty, was beginning to +resemble more and more clearly the life of their civilized +successors to-day. + +In the western world coined money was now in common use; outside +the priestly world there were many people of independent means who +were neither officials of the government nor priests; people +travelled about more freely than they had ever done before, and +there were high roads and inns for them. Compared with the past, +with the time before 500 B.C., life had become much more loose. +Before that date civilized men had been bound to a district or +country, had been bound to a tradition and lived within a very +limited horizon; only the nomads traded and travelled. + +But neither the Roman Peace nor the Peace of the Han dynasty meant +a uniform civilization over the large areas they controlled. +There were very great local differences and great contrasts and +inequalities of culture between one district and another, just as +there are to-day under the British Peace in India. The Roman +garrisons and colonies were dotted here and there over this great +space, worshipping Roman gods and speaking the Latin language; but +where there had been towns and cities before the coming of the +Romans, they went on, subordinated indeed but managing their own +affairs, and, for a time at least, worshipping their own gods in +their own fashion. Over Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and the +Hellenized East {202} generally, the Latin language never +prevailed. Greek ruled there invincibly. Saul of Tarsus, who +became the apostle Paul, was a Jew and a Roman citizen; but he +spoke and wrote Greek and not Hebrew. Even at the court of the +Parthian dynasty, which had overthrown the Greek Seleucids in +Persia, and was quite outside the Roman imperial boundaries, Greek +was the fashionable language. In some parts of Spain and in North +Africa, the Carthaginian language also held on for a long time in +spite of the destruction of Carthage. Such a town as Seville, which +had been a prosperous city long before the Roman name had been heard +of, kept its Semitic goddess and preserved its Semitic speech for +generations, in spite of a colony of Roman veterans at Italica a few +miles away. Septimius Severus, who was emperor from 193 to 211 +A.D., spoke Carthaginian as his mother speech. He learnt Latin +later as a foreign tongue; {203} and it is recorded that his sister +never learnt Latin and conducted her Roman household in the +Punic language. + +[Illustration: A GLADIATOR] + +In such countries as Gaul and Britain and in provinces like Dacia +(now roughly Roumania) and Pannonia (Hungary south of the Danube), +where there were no pre-existing great cities and temples and +cultures, the Roman empire did however "Latinize." It civilized +these countries for the first time. It created cities and towns +where Latin was from the first the dominant speech, and where +Roman gods were served and Roman customs and fashions followed. +The Roumanian, Italian, French and Spanish languages, all +variations and modifications of Latin, remain to remind us of this +extension of Latin speech and customs. +North-west Africa also became at last largely Latin-speaking. +Egypt, Greece and the rest of the empire to the east were never +Latinized. They remained Egyptian and Greek in culture and +spirit. And even in Rome, among educated men, Greek was learnt as +the language of a gentleman and Greek literature and learning were +very, properly preferred to Latin. + +In this miscellaneous empire the ways of doing work and business +were naturally also very miscellaneous. The chief industry of the +settled world was still largely agriculture. We have told how in +Italy the sturdy free farmers who were the backbone of the early +Roman republic were replaced by estates worked by slave labour +after the Punic wars. The Greek world had had very various +methods of cultivation, from the Arcadian plan, wherein every free +citizen toiled with his own hands, to Sparta, wherein it was a +dishonour to work and where agricultural work was done by a +special slave class, the Helots. But that was ancient history +now, and over most of the Hellenized world the estate system and +slave-gangs had spread. The agricultural slaves were captives who +spoke many different languages so that they could not understand +each other, or they were born slaves; they had no solidarity to +resist oppression, no tradition of rights, no knowledge, for they +could not read nor write. Although they came to form a majority +of the country population they never made a successful +insurrection. The insurrection of Spartacus in the first century +B.C. was an insurrection of the special slaves who were trained +for the gladiatorial combats. The agricultural workers in Italy in +the latter days of {204} the Republic and the early Empire +suffered frightful indignities; they would be chained at night to +prevent escape or have half the head shaved to make it difficult. +They had no wives of their own; they could be outraged, mutilated +and killed by their masters. A master could sell his slave to +fight beasts in the arena. If a slave slew his master, all the +slaves in his household and not merely the murderer were +crucified. In some parts of Greece, in Athens notably, the lot of +the slave was never quite so frightful as this, but it was still +detestable. To such a population the barbarian invaders who +presently broke through the defensive line of the legions, came +not as enemies but as liberators. + +[Illustration: POMPEII] + +The slave system had spread to most industries and to every sort +of work that could be done by gangs. Mines and metallurgical +operations, the rowing of galleys, road-making and big building +operations were all largely slave occupations. And almost all +domestic service was performed by slaves. There were poor +free-men {205} and there were freed-men in the cities and upon the +country side, working for themselves or even working for wages. +They were artizans, supervisors and so forth, workers of a new +money-paid class working in competition with slave workers; but we +do not know what proportion they made of the general population. +It probably varied widely in different places and at different +periods. And there were also many modifications of slavery, from +the slavery that was chained at night and driven with whips to the +farm or quarry, to the slave whose master found it advantageous to +leave him to cultivate his patch or work his craft and own his +wife like a free-man, provided he paid in a satisfactory quittance +to his owner. + +There were armed slaves. At the opening of the period of the +Punic wars, in 264 B.C., the Etruscan sport of setting slaves to +fight for their lives was revived in Rome. It grew rapidly +fashionable; and soon every great Roman rich man kept a retinue of +gladiators, who sometimes fought in the arena but whose real +business it was to act as his bodyguard of bullies. And also +there were learned slaves. The conquests of the later Republic +were among the highly civilized cities of Greece, North Africa and +Asia Minor; and they brought in many highly educated captives. +The tutor of a young Roman of good family was usually a slave. A +rich man would have a Greek slave as librarian, and slave +secretaries and learned men. He would keep his poet as he would +keep a performing dog. In this atmosphere of slavery the +traditions of modern literary criticism were evolved. The slaves +still boast and quarrel in our reviews. There were enterprising +people who bought intelligent boy slaves and had them educated for +sale. Slaves were trained as book copyists, as jewellers, and for +endless skilled callings. + +But there were very considerable changes in the position of a +slave during the four hundred years between the opening days of +conquest under the republic of rich men and the days of +disintegration that followed the great pestilence. In the second +century B.C. war-captives were abundant, manners gross and brutal; +the slave had no rights and there was scarcely an outrage the +reader can imagine that was not practised upon slaves in those +days. But already in the first century A.D. there was a +perceptible improvement in the attitude of the Roman civilization +towards slavery. Captives were not so abundant for one thing, +{207} thing, and slaves were dearer. And slave-owners began to +realize that the profit and comfort they got from their slaves +increased with the self-respect of these unfortunates. But also +the moral tone of the community was rising, and a sense of justice +was becoming effective. The higher mentality of Greece was +qualifying the old Roman harshness. Restrictions upon cruelty +were made, a master might no longer sell his slave to fight +beasts, a slave was given property rights in what was called his +_peculium_, slaves were paid wages as an encouragement and +stimulus, a form of slave marriage was recognized. Very many +forms of agriculture do not lend themselves to gang working, or +require gang workers only at certain seasons. In regions where +such conditions prevailed the slave presently became a serf, +paying his owner part of his produce or working for him at certain +seasons. + +==================================================================== + +{206} + +[Illustration: THE COLISEUM, ROME] + +[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY] + +==================================================================== + +When we begin to realize how essentially this great Latin and +Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the first two centuries A.D. was a +slave state and how small was the minority who had any pride or +freedom in their lives, we lay our hands on the clues to its decay +and collapse. There was little of what we should call family +life, few homes of temperate living and active thought and study; +schools and colleges were few and far between. The free will and +the free mind were nowhere to be found. The great roads, the +ruins of splendid buildings, the tradition of law and power it +left for the astonishment of succeeding generations must not +conceal from us that all its outer splendour was built upon +thwarted wills, stifled intelligence, and crippled and perverted +desires. And even the minority who lorded it over that wide realm +of subjugation and of restraint and forced labour were uneasy and +unhappy in their souls; art and literature, science and +philosophy, which are the fruits of free and happy minds, waned in +that atmosphere. There was much copying and imitation, an +abundance of artistic artificers, much slavish pedantry among the +servile men of learning, but the whole Roman empire in four +centuries produced nothing to set beside the bold and noble +intellectual activities of the comparatively little city of Athens +during its one century of greatness. Athens decayed under the +Roman sceptre. The science of Alexandria decayed. The spirit of +man, it seemed, was decaying in those days. + + + + +{208} + +XXXVI + +RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE + + +The soul of man under that Latin and Greek empire of the first two +centuries of the Christian era was a worried and frustrated soul. +Compulsion and cruelty reigned; there were pride and display but +little honour; little serenity or steadfast happiness. The +unfortunate were despised and wretched; the fortunate were +insecure and feverishly eager for gratifications. In a great +number of cities life centred on the red excitement of the arena, +where men and beasts fought and were tormented and slain. +Amphitheatres are the most characteristic of Roman ruins. Life +went on in that key. The uneasiness of men's hearts manifested +itself in profound religious unrest. + +From the days when the Aryan hordes first broke in upon the +ancient civilizations, it was inevitable that the old gods of the +temples and priesthoods should suffer great adaptations or +disappear. In the course of hundreds of generations the +agricultural peoples of the brunette civilizations had shaped +their lives and thoughts to the temple-centred life. Observances +and the fear of disturbed routines, sacrifices and mysteries, +dominated their minds. Their gods seem monstrous and illogical to +our modern minds because we belong to an Aryanized world, but to +these older peoples these deities had the immediate conviction and +vividness of things seen in an intense dream. The conquest of one +city state by another in Sumeria or early Egypt meant a change or +a renaming of gods or goddesses, but left the shape and spirit of +the worship intact. There was no change in its general character. +The figures in the dream changed, but the dream went on and it was +the same sort of dream. And the early Semitic conquerors were +sufficiently akin in spirit to the Sumerians to take over the +religion of the Mesopotamian civilization they subjugated without +any profound alteration. Egypt was never {209} indeed subjugated +to the extent of a religious revolution. Under the Ptolemies and +under the Cæsars, her temples and altars and priesthoods remained +essentially Egyptian. + +So long as conquests went on between people of similar social and +religious habits it was possible to get over the clash between the +god of this temple and region and the god of that by a process of +grouping or assimilation. If the two gods were alike in character +they were identified. It was really the same god under another +name, said the priests and the people. This fusion of gods is +called theocrasia; and the age of the great conquests of the +thousand years B.C. was an age of theocrasia. Over wide areas the +local gods were displaced by, or rather they were swallowed up in, +a general god. So that when at last Hebrew prophets in Babylon +proclaimed one God of Righteousness in all the earth men's minds +were fully prepared for that idea. + +But often the gods were too dissimilar for such an assimilation, +and then they were grouped together in some plausible +relationship. A female god--and the Ægean world before the coming +of the Greek was much addicted to Mother Gods--would be married to +a male god, and an animal god or a star god would be humanized and +the animal or astronomical aspect, the serpent or the sun or the +star, made into an ornament or a symbol. Or the god of a defeated +people would become a malignant antagonist to the brighter gods. +The history of theology is full of such adaptations, compromises +and rationalizations of once local gods. + +As Egypt developed from city states into one united kingdom there +was much of this theocrasia. The chief god so to speak was +Osiris, a sacrificial harvest god of whom Pharaoh was supposed to +be the earthly incarnation. Osiris was represented as repeatedly +dying and rising again; he was not only the seed and the harvest +but also by a natural extension of thought the means of human +immortality. Among his symbols was the wide-winged scarabeus +beetle which buries its eggs to rise again, and also the effulgent +sun which sets to rise. Later on he was to be identified with +Apis, the sacred bull. Associated with him was the goddess Isis. +Isis was also Hathor, a cow-goddess, and the crescent moon and the +Star of the sea. Osiris dies and she bears a child, Horus, who is +also a {210} hawk-god and the dawn, and who grows to become Osiris +again. The effigies of Isis represent her as bearing the infant +Horus in her arms and standing on the crescent moon. These are +not logical relationships, but they were devised by the human mind +before the development of hard and systematic thinking and they +have a dream-like coherence. Beneath this triple group there are +other and darker Egyptian gods, bad gods, the dog-headed Anubis, +black night and the like, devourers, tempters, enemies of god and +man. + +[Illustration: MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN] + +Every religious system does in the course of time fit itself to +the shape of the human soul, and there can be no doubt that out of +these illogical and even uncouth symbols, Egyptian people were +able to fashion for themselves ways of genuine devotion and +consolation. The desire for immortality was very strong in the +Egyptian mind, and the religious life of Egypt turned on that +desire. The Egyptian {211} religion was an immortality religion as +no other religion had ever been. As Egypt went down under foreign +conquerors and the Egyptian gods ceased to have any satisfactory +political significance, this craving for a life of compensations +here-after, intensified. + +[Illustration: ISIS AND HORUS] + +After the Greek conquest, the new city of Alexandria became the +centre of Egyptian religious life, and indeed of the religious +life of the whole Hellenic world. A great temple, the Serapeum, +was set up by Ptolemy I at which a sort of trinity of gods was +worshipped. These were Serapis (who was Osiris-Apis rechristened), +Isis and Horus. These were not regarded as separate gods but as +three aspects of one god, and Serapis was identified with the +Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter and the Persian sun-god. This +worship spread wherever the Hellenic influence extended, even into +North India and Western China. The idea of immortality, an +immortality of compensations and consolation, was eagerly received +by a world in which the common life was hopelessly wretched. +Serapis was called "the saviour of souls." "After death," said +the hymns of that time, "we are still in the care of his +providence." Isis attracted many devotees. Her images stood in +her temples, as Queen of Heaven, bearing the infant Horus in her +arms. Candles were burnt before her, votive offerings were made +to her, shaven priests consecrated to celibacy waited on her +altar. + +The rise of the Roman empire opened the western European world to +this growing cult. The temples of Serapis-Isis, the chanting of +the priests and the hope of immortal life, followed the Roman +standards to Scotland and Holland. But there were many rivals to +the Serapis-Isis religion. Prominent among these was Mithraism. +This was a religion of Persian origin, and it {212} centred upon +some now forgotten mysteries about Mithras sacrificing a sacred +and benevolent bull. Here we seem to have something more +primordial than the complicated and sophisticated Serapis-Isis +beliefs. We are carried back directly to the blood sacrifices of +the heliolithic stage in human culture. The bull upon the +Mithraic monuments always bleeds copiously from a wound in its +side, and from this blood springs new life. The votary to +Mithraism actually bathed in the blood of the sacrificial bull. +At his initiation he went beneath a scaffolding upon which a bull +was killed so that the blood could actually run down on him. + +Both these religions, and the same is true of many other of the +numerous parallel cults that sought the allegiance of the slaves +and citizens under the earlier Roman emperors, are personal +religions. They aim at personal salvation and personal +immortality. The older religions were not personal like that; +they were social. The older fashion of divinity was god or +goddess of the city first or of the state, and only secondarily of +the individual. The sacrifices were a public and not a private +function. They concerned collective practical needs in this world +in which we live. But the Greeks first and now the Romans had +pushed religion out of politics. Guided by the Egyptian tradition +religion had retreated to the other world. + +[Illustration: BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192] + +These new private immortality religions took all the heart and +emotion out of the old state religions, but they did not actually +replace them. A typical city under the earlier Roman emperors +would have a number of temples to all sorts of gods. There might +be a temple to Jupiter of the Capitol, the great god of Rome, and +there would probably be one to the reigning Cæsar. For the Cæsars +had learnt from the Pharaohs the possibility of being gods. In +such temples a cold and stately political worship went on; one +would go and make an offering and burn a pinch of incense to show +one's loyalty. But it would be to the temple of Isis, the dear +Queen of Heaven, one would go with the burthen {213} of one's +private troubles for advice and relief. There might be local and +eccentric gods. Seville, for example, long affected the worship +of the old Carthaginian Venus. In a cave or an underground temple +there would certainly be an altar to Mithras, attended by +legionaries and slaves. And probably also there would be a +synagogue where the Jews gathered to read their Bible and uphold +their faith in the unseen God of all the Earth. + +Sometimes there would be trouble with the Jews about the political +side of the state religion. They held that their God was a +jealous God intolerant of idolatry, and they would refuse to take +part in the public sacrifices to Cæsar. They would not even +salute the Roman standards for fear of idolatry. + +In the East long before the time of Buddha there had been +ascetics, men and women who gave up most of the delights of life, +who repudiated marriage and property and sought spiritual powers +and an escape from the stresses and mortifications of the world in +abstinence, pain and solitude. Buddha himself set his face +against ascetic extravagances, but many of his disciples followed +a monkish life of great severity. Obscure Greek cults practised +similar disciplines even to the extent of self-mutilation. +Asceticism appeared in the Jewish communities of Judea and +Alexandria also in the first century B.C. Communities of men +abandoned the world and gave themselves to austerities and +mystical contemplation. Such was the sect of the Essenes. +Throughout the first and second centuries A.D. there was an almost +world-wide resort to such repudiations of life, a universal search +for "salvation" from the distresses of the time. The old sense of +an established order, the old confidence in priest and temple and +law and custom, had gone. Amidst the prevailing slavery, cruelty, +fear, anxiety, waste, display and hectic self-indulgence, went +this epidemic of self-disgust and mental insecurity, this agonized +search for peace even at the price of renunciation and voluntary +suffering. This it was that filled the Serapeum with weeping +penitents and brought the converts into the gloom and gore of the +Mithraic cave. + + + + +{214} + +XXXVII + +THE TEACHING OF JESUS + + +It was while Augustus Cæsar, the first of the Emperors, was +reigning in Rome that Jesus who is the Christ of Christianity was +born in Judea. In his name a religion was to arise which was +destined to become the official religion of the entire Roman +Empire. + +Now it is on the whole more convenient to keep history and +theology apart. A large proportion of the Christian world +believes that Jesus was an incarnation of that God of all the +Earth whom the Jews first recognized. The historian, if he is to +remain historian, can neither accept nor deny that interpretation. +Materially Jesus appeared in the likeness of a man, and it is as a +man that the historian must deal with him. + +He appeared in Judea in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar. He was a +prophet. He preached after the fashion of the preceding Jewish +prophets. He was a man of about thirty, and we are in the +profoundest ignorance of his manner of life before his preaching +began. + +Our only direct sources of information about the life and teaching +of Jesus are the four Gospels. All four agree in giving us a +picture of a very definite personality. One is obliged to say, +"Here was a man. This could not have been invented." + +But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been distorted +and obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded idol of +later Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous +personality of Jesus is much wronged by the unreality and +conventionality that a mistaken reverence has imposed upon his +figure in modern Christian art. Jesus was a penniless teacher, +who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon +casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed +and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect and with something +motionless about him as though {215} he was gliding through the +air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people +who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental +and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout. + +We are left, if we do strip this record of these difficult +accessories, with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest +and passionate, capable of swift anger, and teaching a new and +simple and profound doctrine--namely, the universal loving +Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He was +clearly a person--to use a common phrase--of intense personal +magnetism. He attracted followers and filled them with love and +courage. Weak and ailing people were heartened and healed by his +presence. Yet he was probably of a delicate physique, because of +the swiftness with which he died under the pains of crucifixion. +There is a tradition that he fainted when, according to the +custom, he was made to bear his cross to the place of execution. +He went about the country for three years spreading his doctrine +and then he came to Jerusalem and was accused of trying to set up +a strange kingdom in Judea; he was tried upon this charge, and +crucified together with two thieves. Long before these two were +dead his sufferings were over. + +The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching +of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines +that ever stirred and changed human thought. It is small wonder +if the world of that time failed to grasp its full significance, +and recoiled in dismay from even a half apprehension of its +tremendous challenges to the established habits and institutions +of mankind. For the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus +seems to have preached it, was no less than a bold and +uncompromising demand for a complete change and cleansing of the +life of our struggling race, an utter cleansing, without and +within. To the gospels the reader must go for all that is +preserved of this tremendous teaching; here we are only concerned +with the jar of its impact upon established ideas. + +The Jews were persuaded that God, the one God of the whole world, +was a righteous god, but they also thought of him as a trading god +who had made a bargain with their Father Abraham {216} about them, +a very good bargain indeed for them, to bring them at last to +predominance in the earth. With dismay and anger they heard Jesus +sweeping away their dear securities. God, he taught, was no +bargainer; there were no chosen people and no favourites in the +Kingdom of Heaven. God was the loving father of all life, as +incapable of showing favour as the universal sun. And all men +were brothers--sinners alike and beloved sons alike--of this +divine father. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus cast +scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey, to glorify our own +people and to minimize the righteousness of other creeds and other +races. In the parable of the labourers he thrust aside the +obstinate claim of the Jews to have a special claim upon God. All +whom God takes into the kingdom, he taught, God serves alike; +there is no distinction in his treatment, because there is no +measure to his bounty. From all moreover, as the parable of the +buried talent witnesses, and as the incident of the widow's mite +enforces, he demands the utmost. There are no privileges, no +rebates and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven. + +[Illustration: EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS +CHRIST IN WHICH THE TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN] + +{217} + +But it is not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews that +Jesus outraged. They were a people of intense family loyalty, and +he would have swept away all the narrow and restrictive family +affections in the great flood of the love of God. The whole +kingdom of Heaven was to be the family of his followers. We are +told that, "While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother +and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then +one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand +without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said +unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? +And he stretched forth his hands towards his disciples, and said, +Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will +of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and +sister, and mother." [2] + +[Illustration: THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS] + +And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds of +family loyalty in the name of God's universal fatherhood and +brotherhood of all mankind, but it is clear that his teaching +condemned all the gradations of the economic system, all private +wealth, and {218} personal advantages. All men belonged to the +kingdom; all their possessions belonged to the kingdom; the +righteous life for all men, the only righteous life, was the +service of God's will with all that we had, with all that we were. +Again and again he denounced private riches and the reservation of +any private life. + +[Illustration: DAVID'S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM] + +"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, +and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do +that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why +callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God. +Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not +kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour +thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master, +all these things have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus +beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou +lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the +poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up +the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went +away grieved; for he had great possessions. + +"And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How +hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God! +And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus +answered again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for +them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God! It is +{220} easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than +for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." [3] + +==================================================================== + +{219} + +[Illustration: A STREET IN JERUSALEM] + +==================================================================== + +Moreover, in his tremendous prophecy of this kingdom which was to +make all men one together in God, Jesus had small patience for the +bargaining righteousness of formal religion. Another large part +of his recorded utterances is aimed against the meticulous +observance of the rules of the pious career. "Then the Pharisees +and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the +tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He +answered and said unto them, Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you +hypocrites, as it is written, + +"This people honoureth me with their lips, + +"But their heart is far from me. + +"Howbeit in vain do they worship me, + +"Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. + +"For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of +men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such things +ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment +of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." [4] + +It was not merely a moral and a social revolution that Jesus +proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his +teaching had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true +that he said his kingdom was not of this world, that it was in the +hearts of men and not upon a throne; but it is equally clear that +wherever and in what measure his kingdom was set up in the hearts +of men, the outer world would be in that measure revolutionized +and made new. + +Whatever else the deafness and blindness of his hearers may have +missed in his utterances, it is plain they did not miss his +resolve to revolutionize the world. The whole tenor of the +opposition to him and the circumstances of his trial and execution +show clearly that to his contemporaries he seemed to propose +plainly, and did propose plainly, to change and fuse and enlarge +all human life. + +In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who +were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a +swimming of their world at his teaching? He was dragging out all +the little private reservations they had made from social service +into the light {221} of a universal religious life. He was like +some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug +burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of +this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no +pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love. Is +it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out +against him? Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare +them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realized that +between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or +priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman +soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their +comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take +refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in +purple and make a mock Cæsar of him? For to take him seriously +was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, +to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible +happiness. . . . + +[2] Matt. xii, 46-50. + +[3] Mark x. 17-25. + +[4] Mark vii, 1-9. + + + + +{222} + +XXXVIII + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY + + +In the four gospels we find the personality and teachings of Jesus +but very little of the dogmas of the Christian church. It is in +the epistles, a series of writings by the immediate followers of +Jesus, that the broad lines of Christian belief are laid down. + +Chief among the makers of Christian doctrine was St. Paul. He had +never seen Jesus nor heard him preach. Paul's name was originally +Saul, and he was conspicuous at first as an active persecutor of +the little band of disciples after the crucifixion. Then he was +suddenly converted to Christianity, and he changed his name to +Paul. He was a man of great intellectual vigour and deeply and +passionately interested in the religious movements of the time. +He was well versed in Judaism and in the Mithraism and Alexandrian +religion of the day. He carried over many of their ideas and +terms of expression into Christianity. He did very little to +enlarge or develop the original teaching of Jesus, the teaching of +the Kingdom of Heaven. But he taught that Jesus was not only the +promised Christ, the promised leader of the Jews, but also that +his death was a sacrifice, like the deaths of the ancient +sacrificial victims of the primordial civilizations, for the +redemption of mankind. + +When religions flourish side by side they tend to pick up each +other's ceremonial and other outward peculiarities. Buddhism, for +example, in China has now almost the same sort of temples and +priests and uses as Taoism, which follows in the teachings of Lao +Tse. Yet the original teachings of Buddhism and Taoism were +almost flatly opposed. And it reflects no doubt or discredit upon +the essentials of Christian teaching that it took over not merely +such formal things as the shaven priest, the votive offering, the +altars, candles, chanting and images of the Alexandrian and +Mithraic faiths, but adopted even their devotional phrases and +their theological {223} ideas. All these religions were +flourishing side by side with many less prominent cults. Each was +seeking adherents, and there must have been a constant going and +coming of converts between them. Sometimes one or other would be +in favour with the government. But Christianity was regarded with +more suspicion than its rivals because, like the Jews, its +adherents would not perform acts of worship to the God Cæsar. +This made it a seditious religion, quite apart from the +revolutionary spirit of the teachings of Jesus himself. + +[Illustration: MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, +ON GOLD BACKGROUND] + +St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like +{224} Osiris, was a god who died to rise again and give men +immortality. And presently the spreading Christian community was +greatly torn by complicated theological disputes about the +relationship of this God Jesus to God the Father of Mankind. The +Arians taught that Jesus was divine, but distant from and inferior +to the Father. The Sabellians taught that Jesus was merely an +aspect of the Father, and that God was Jesus and Father at the +same time just as a man may be a father and an artificer at the +same time; and the Trinitarians taught a more subtle doctrine that +God was both one and three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For a +time it seemed that Arianism would prevail over its rivals, and +then after disputes, violence and wars, the Trinitarian formula +became the accepted formula of all Christendom. It may be found +in its completest expression in the Athanasian Creed. + +We offer no comment on these controversies here. They do not sway +history as the personal teaching of Jesus sways history. The +personal teaching of Jesus does seem to mark a new phase in the +moral and spiritual life of our race. Its insistence upon the +universal Fatherhood of God and the implicit brotherhood of all +men, its insistence upon the sacredness of every human personality +as a living temple of God, was to have the profoundest effect upon +all the subsequent social and political life of mankind. With +Christianity, with the spreading teachings of Jesus, a new respect +appears in the world for man as man. It may be true, as hostile +critics of Christianity have urged, that St.. Paul preached +obedience to slaves, but it is equally true that the whole spirit +of the teachings of Jesus preserved in the gospels was against the +subjugation of man by man. And still more distinctly was +Christianity opposed to such outrages upon human dignity as the +gladiatorial combats in the arena. + +Throughout the first two centuries after Christ, the Christian +religion spread throughout the Roman Empire, weaving together an +ever-growing multitude of converts into a new community of ideas +and will. The attitude of the emperors varied between hostility +and toleration. There were attempts to suppress this new faith in +both the second and third centuries; and finally in 303 and the +following years a great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. +The considerable accumulations of Church property were {225} +seized, all bibles and religious writings were confiscated and +destroyed, Christians were put out of the protection of the law +and many executed. The destruction of the books is particularly +notable. It shows how the power of the written word in holding +together {226} the new faith was appreciated by the authorities. +These "book religions," Christianity and Judaism, were religions +that educated. Their continued existence depended very largely on +people being able to read and understand their doctrinal ideas. +The older religions had made no such appeal to the personal +intelligence. In the ages of barbaric confusion that were now at +hand in western Europe it was the Christian church that was mainly +instrumental in preserving the tradition of learning. + +[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST] + +The persecution of Diocletian failed completely to suppress the +growing Christian community. In many provinces it was ineffective +because the bulk of the population and many of the officials were +Christian. In 317 an edict of toleration was issued by the +associated Emperor Galerius, and in 324 Constantine the Great, a +friend and on his deathbed a baptized convert to Christianity, +became sole ruler of the Roman world. He abandoned all divine +pretensions and put Christian symbols on the shields and banners +of his troops. + +In a few years Christianity was securely established as the +official religion of the empire. The competing religions +disappeared or were absorbed with extraordinary celerity, and in +300 Theodosius the Great caused the great statue of Jupiter +Serapis at Alexandria to be destroyed. From the outset of the +fifth century onward the only priests or temples in the Roman +Empire were Christian priests and temples. + + + + +{227} + +XXXIX + +THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST + + +Throughout the third century the Roman Empire, decaying socially +and disintegrating morally, faced the barbarians. The emperors of +this period were fighting military autocrats, and the capital of +the empire shifted with the necessities of their military policy. +Now the imperial headquarters would be at Milan in north Italy, +now in what is now Serbia at Sirmium or Nish, now in Nicomedia in +Asia Minor. Rome halfway down Italy was too far from the centre +of interest to be a convenient imperial seat. It was a declining +city. Over most of the empire peace still prevailed and men went +about without arms. The armies continued to be the sole +repositories of power; the emperors, dependent on their legions, +became more and more autocratic to the rest of the empire and +their state more and more like that of the Persian and other +oriental monarchs. Diocletian assumed a royal diadem and oriental +robes. + +All along the imperial frontier, which ran roughly along the Rhine +and Danube, enemies were now pressing. The Franks and other +German tribes had come up to the Rhine. In north Hungary were the +Vandals; in what was once Dacia and is now Roumania, the Visigoths +or West Goths. Behind these in south Russia were the East Goths +or Ostrogoths, and beyond these again in the Volga region the +Alans. But now Mongolian peoples were forcing their way towards +Europe. The Huns were already exacting tribute from the Alans and +Ostrogoths and pushing them to the west. + +In Asia the Roman frontiers were crumpling back under the push of +a renascent Persia. This new Persia, the Persia of the Sassenid +kings, was to be a vigorous and on the whole a successful rival of +the Roman Empire in Asia for the next three centuries. + +A glance at the map of Europe will show the reader the peculiar +weakness of the empire. The river Danube comes down to within +{228} a couple of hundred miles of the Adriatic Sea in the region +of what is now Bosnia and Serbia. It makes a square re-entrant +angle there. The Romans never kept their sea communications in +good order, and this two hundred mile strip of land was their line +of communication between the western Latin-speaking part of the +empire and the eastern Greek-speaking portion. Against this +square angle of the Danube the barbarian pressure was greatest. +When they broke through there it was inevitable that the empire +should fall into two parts. + +[Map: The Empire and the Barbarians] + +A more vigorous empire might have thrust forward and reconquered +Dacia, but the Roman Empire lacked any such vigour. Constantine +the Great was certainly a monarch of great devotion and +intelligence. He beat back a raid of the Goths from just these +vital Balkan regions, but he had no force to carry the frontier +across the Danube. He was too pre-occupied with the internal +weaknesses of the empire. He brought the solidarity and moral +force of Christianity to revive the spirit of the declining +empire, and he decided to create a new permanent capital at +Byzantium upon the Hellespont. This new-made Byzantium, which was +re-christened Constantinople in his honour, was still building +when he died. Towards the end of his reign occurred a remarkable +transaction. The {229} Vandals, being pressed by the Goths, asked +to be received into the Roman Empire. They were assigned lands in +Pannonia, which is now that part of Hungary west of the Danube, +and their fighting men became nominally legionaries. But these +new legionaries remained under their own chiefs. Rome failed to +digest them. + +[Illustration: CONSTANTINE'S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE] + +Constantine died working to reorganize his great realm, and soon +the frontiers were ruptured again and the Visigoths came almost to +Constantinople. They defeated the Emperor Valens at Adrianople and +made a settlement in what is now Bulgaria, similar to the +settlement of the Vandals in Pannonia. Nominally they were +subjects of the emperor, practically they were conquerors. + +From 379 to 395 A.D. reigned the Emperor Theodosius the Great, and +while he reigned the empire was still formally intact. Over the +armies of Italy and Pannonia presided Stilicho, a Vandal, over the +armies in the Balkan peninsula, Alaric, a Goth. When Theodosius +died at the close of the fourth century he left {230} two sons. +Alaric supported one of these, Arcadius, in Constantinople, and +Stilicho the other, Honorius, in Italy. In other words Alaric and +Stilicho fought for the empire with the princes as puppets. In +the course of their struggle Alaric marched into Italy and after a +short siege took Rome (410 A.D.). + +The opening half of the fifth century saw the whole of the Roman +Empire in Europe the prey of robber armies of barbarians. It is +difficult to visualize the state of affairs in the world at that +time. Over France, Spain, Italy and the Balkan peninsula, the +great cities that had flourished under the early empire still +stood, impoverished, partly depopulated and falling into decay. +Life in them must have been shallow, mean and full of uncertainty. +Local officials asserted their authority and went on with their +work with such conscience as they had, no doubt in the name of a +now remote and inaccessible emperor. The churches went on, but +usually with illiterate priests. There was little reading and +much superstition and fear. But everywhere except where looters +had destroyed them, books and pictures and statuary and such-like +works of art were still to be found. + +The life of the countryside had also degenerated. Everywhere this +Roman world was much more weedy and untidy than it had been. In +some regions war and pestilence had brought the land down to the +level of a waste. Roads and forests were infested with robbers. +Into such regions the barbarians marched, with little or no +opposition, and set up their chiefs as rulers, often with Roman +official titles. If they were half civilized barbarians they +would give the conquered districts tolerable terms, they would +take possession of the towns, associate and intermarry, and +acquire (with an accent) the Latin speech; but the Jutes, the +Angles and Saxons who submerged the Roman province of Britain were +agriculturalists and had no use for towns, they seem to have swept +south Britain clear of the Romanized population and they replaced +the language by their own Teutonic dialects, which became at last +English. + +It is impossible in the space at our disposal to trace the +movements of all the various German and Slavonic tribes as they +went to and fro in the disorganized empire in search of plunder +and a pleasant home. But let the Vandals serve as an example. +They came into {232} history in east Germany. They settled as we +have told in Pannonia. Thence they moved somewhen about 425 A.D. +through the intervening provinces to Spain. There they found +Visigoths from South Russia and other German tribes setting up +dukes and kings. From Spain the Vandals under Genseric sailed for +North Africa (429), captured Carthage (439), and built a fleet. +They secured the mastery of the sea and captured and pillaged Rome +(455), which had recovered very imperfectly from her capture and +looting by Alaric half a century earlier. Then the Vandals made +themselves masters of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and most of the +other islands of the western Mediterranean. They made, in fact, a +sea empire very similar in its extent to the sea empire of +Carthage seven hundred odd years before. They were at the climax +of their power about 477. They were a mere handful of conquerors +holding all this country. In the next century almost all their +territory had been reconquered for the empire of Constantinople +during a transitory blaze of energy under Justinian I. + +==================================================================== + +{231} + +[Illustration: BASE OF THE "OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS," +CONSTANTINOPLE] + +==================================================================== + +The story of the Vandals is but one sample of a host of similar +adventures. But now there was coming into the European world the +least kindred and most redoubtable of all these devastators, the +Mongolian Huns or Tartars, a yellow people active and able, such +as the western world had never before encountered. + + + + +{233} + +XL + +THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE + + +This appearance of a conquering Mongolian people in Europe may be +taken to mark a new stage in human history. Until the last +century or so before the Christian era, the Mongol and the Nordic +peoples had not been in close touch. Far away in the frozen lands +beyond the northern forests the Lapps, a Mongolian people, had +drifted westward as far as Lapland, but they played no part in the +main current of history. For thousands of years the western world +carried on the dramatic interplay of the Aryan, Semitic and +fundamental brunette peoples with very little interference (except +for an Ethiopian invasion of Egypt or so) either from the black +peoples to the south or from the Mongolian world in the far East. + +It is probable that there were two chief causes for the new +westward drift of the nomadic Mongolians. One was the +consolidation of the great empire of China, its extension +northward and the increase of its population during the prosperous +period of the Han dynasty. The other was some process of climatic +change; a lesser rainfall that abolished swamps and forests +perhaps, or a greater rainfall that extended grazing over desert +steppes, or even perhaps both these processes going on in +different regions but which anyhow facilitated a westward +migration. A third contributary cause was the economic +wretchedness, internal decay and falling population of the Roman +Empire. The rich men of the later Roman Republic, and then the +tax-gatherers of the military emperors had utterly consumed its +vitality. So we have the factors of thrust, means and +opportunity. There was pressure from the east, rot in the west +and an open road. + +The Hun had reached the eastern boundaries of European Russia by +the first century A.D., but it was not until the fourth and {234} +fifth centuries A.D. that these horsemen rose to predominance upon +the steppes. The fifth century was the Hun's century. The first +Huns to come into Italy were mercenary bands in the pay of +Stilicho the Vandal, the master of Honorius. Presently they were +in possession of Pannonia, the empty nest of the Vandals. + +By the second quarter of the fifth century a great war chief had +arisen among the Huns, Attila. We have only vague and tantalizing +glimpses of his power. He ruled not only over the Huns but over a +conglomerate of tributary Germanic tribes; his empire extended +from the Rhine cross the plains into Central Asia. He exchanged +ambassadors with China. His head camp was in the plain of Hungary +east of the Danube. There he was visited by an envoy from +Constantinople, Priscus, who has left us an account of his state. +The way of living of these Mongols was very like the way of living +of the primitive Aryans they had replaced. The common folk were +in huts and tents; the chiefs lived in great stockaded timber +halls. There were feasts and drinking and singing by the bards. +The Homeric heroes and even the Macedonian companions of Alexander +would probably have felt more at home in the camp-capital of +Attila than they would have done in the cultivated and decadent +court of Theodosius II, the son of Arcadius, who was then reigning +in Constantinople. + +For a time it seemed as though the nomads under the leadership +of the Huns and Attila would play the same part towards the +Græco-Roman civilization of the Mediterranean countries that the +barbaric Greeks had played long ago to the Ægean civilization. It +looked like history repeating itself upon a larger stage. But the +Huns were much more wedded to the nomadic life than the early +Greeks, who were rather migratory cattle farmers than true nomads. +The Huns raided and plundered but did not settle. + +For some years Attila bullied Theodosius as he chose. His armies +devastated and looted right down to the walls of Constantinople, +Gibbon says that he totally destroyed no less than seventy cities +in the Balkan peninsula, and Theodosius bought him off by payments +of tribute and tried to get rid of him for good by sending secret +agents to assassinate him. In 451 Attila turned his attention to +the remains of the Latin-speaking half of the empire and invaded +{235} Gaul. Nearly every town in northern Gaul was sacked. +Franks, Visigoths and the imperial forces united against him and +he was defeated at Troyes in a vast dispersed battle in which a +multitude of men, variously estimated as between 150,000 and +300,000, were killed. This checked him in Gaul, but it did not +exhaust his enormous military resources. Next year he came into +Italy by way of Venetia, burnt Aquileia and Padua and looted +Milan. + +[Illustration: HEAD OF BARBARIAN CHIEF] + +Numbers of fugitives from these north Italian towns and +particularly from Padua fled to islands in the lagoons at the head +of the Adriatic and laid there the foundations of the city state +of Venice, which was to become one of the greatest or the trading +centres in the middle ages. + +In 453 Attila died suddenly after a great feast to celebrate his +marriage to a young woman, and at his death this plunder +confederation of his fell to pieces. The actual Huns disappear +from history, mixed into the surrounding more numerous +Aryan-speaking populations. {236} But these great Hun raids +practically consummated the end of the Latin Roman Empire. After +his death ten different emperors ruled in Rome in twenty years, +set up by Vandal and other mercenary troops. The Vandals from +Carthage took and sacked Rome in 455. Finally in 476 Odoacer, the +chief of the barbarian troops, suppressed a Pannonian who was +figuring as emperor under the impressive name of Romulus +Augustulus, and informed the Court of Constantinople that there +was no longer an emperor in the west. So ingloriously the Latin +Roman Empire came to an end. In 493 Theodoric the Goth became +King of Rome. + +All over western and central Europe now barbarian chiefs were +reigning as kings, dukes and the like, practically independent but +for the most part professing some sort of shadowy allegiance to +the emperor. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands of such +practically independent brigand rulers. In Gaul, Spain and Italy +and in Dacia the Latin speech still prevailed in locally distorted +forms, but in Britain and east of the Rhine languages of the +German group (or in Bohemia a Slavonic language, Czech) were the +common speech. The superior clergy and a small remnant of other +educated men read and wrote Latin. Everywhere life was insecure +and property was held by the strong arm. Castles multiplied and +roads fell into decay. The dawn of the sixth century was an age +of division and of intellectual darkness throughout the western +world. Had it not been for the monks and Christian missionaries +Latin learning might have perished altogether. + +Why had the Roman Empire grown and why had it so completely +decayed? It grew because at first the idea of citizenship held it +together. Throughout the days of the expanding republic, and even +into the days of the early empire there remained a great number of +men conscious of Roman citizenship, feeling it a privilege and an +obligation to be a Roman citizen, confident of their rights under +the Roman law and willing to make sacrifices in the name of Rome. +The prestige of Rome as of something just and great and +law-upholding spread far beyond the Roman boundaries. But even as +early as the Punic wars the sense of citizenship was being +undermined by the growth of wealth and slavery. Citizenship +spread indeed but not the idea of citizenship. + +{237} + +The Roman Empire was after all a very primitive organization; it +did not educate, did not explain itself to its increasing +multitudes of citizens, did not invite their co-operation in its +decisions. There was no network of schools to ensure a common +understanding, no distribution of news to sustain collective +activity. The adventurers who struggled for power from the days +of Marius and Sulla onward had no idea of creating and calling in +public opinion upon the imperial affairs. The spirit of +citizenship died of starvation and no one observed it die. All +empires, all states, all organizations of human society are, in +the ultimate, things of understanding and will. There remained no +will for the Roman Empire in the World and so it came to an end. + +But though the Latin-speaking Roman Empire died in the fifth +century, something else had been born within it that was to avail +itself enormously of its prestige and tradition, and that was the +Latin-speaking half of the Catholic Church. This lived while the +empire died because it appealed to the minds and wills of men, +because it had books and a great system of teachers and +missionaries to hold it together, things stronger than any law or +legions. Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. while the +empire was decaying, Christianity was spreading to a universal +dominion in Europe. It conquered its conquerors, the barbarians. +When Attila seemed disposed to march on Rome, the patriarch of +Rome intercepted him and did what no armies could do, turning him +back by sheer moral force. + +The Patriarch or Pope of Rome claimed to be the head of the entire +Christian church. Now that there were no more emperors, he began +to annex imperial titles and claims. He took the title of +_pontifex maximus_, head sacrificial priest of the Roman dominion, +the most ancient of all the titles that the emperors had enjoyed. + + + + +{238} + +XLI + +THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES + + +The Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much +more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the +disasters of the fifth century A.D., which saw a complete and +final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila +bullied the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to +the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The +Nubians came down the Nile and looted Upper Egypt, but Lower Egypt +and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia +Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians. + +The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the +West, saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. +Justinian I (527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and +energy, and he was married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of +quite equal capacity who had begun life as an actress. Justinian +reconquered North Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy from +the Goths. He even regained the south of Spain. He did not limit +his energies to naval and military enterprises. He founded a +university, built the great church of Sta. Sophia in +Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to +destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools +of philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken +continuity from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a +thousand years. + +From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the +steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two empires kept Asia +Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. +In the first century A.D., these lands were still at a high level +of civilization, wealthy and with an abundant population, but the +continual coming and going of armies, massacres, looting and war +taxation wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous +{239} cities remained upon a countryside of scattered peasants. +In this melancholy process of impoverishment and disorder lower +Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest of the world. +Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a dwindling trade +between the east and the west. + +Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these +warring and decaying empires. The last philosophers of Athens, +until their suppression, preserved the texts of the great +literature of the past with an infinite reverence and want of +understanding. But there remained no class of men in the world, +no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought, to +carry on the tradition of frank statement and enquiry embodied in +these writings. The social and political chaos accounts largely +for the disappearance of this class, but there was also another +reason why the human intelligence was sterile and feverish during +this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it was all age of +intolerance. Both empires were religious empires in a new way, in +a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the human mind. + +[Illustration: THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, +CONSTANTINOPLE] + +{240} + +[Illustration: THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA] + +Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires, +centring upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander +was treated as a divinity and the Cæsars were gods in so much as +they had altars and temples devoted to them and the offering of +incense was made a test of loyalty to the Roman state. But these +older religions were essentially religions of act and fact. They +did not invade the mind. If a man offered his sacrifice and bowed +to the god, he was left not only to think but to say practically +whatever he liked about the affair. But the new sort of religions +that had come into the world, and particularly Christianity, +turned inward. These new faiths demanded not simply conformity +but understanding belief. Naturally fierce controversy ensued +upon the exact meaning of the things believed. These new +religions were creed religions. The world was confronted with a +new word, Orthodoxy, and with a stern resolve to keep not only +acts but speech {241} and private thought within the limits of a +set teaching. For to hold a wrong opinion, much more to convey it +to other people, was no longer regarded as an intellectual defect +but a moral fault that might condemn a soul to everlasting +destruction. + +[Illustration: THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS +COURT] + +Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third +century A.D., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the +Roman Empire in the fourth, turned to religious organizations for +help, because in these organizations they saw a new means of using +and controlling the wills of men. And already before the end of +the fourth century both empires were persecuting free talk and +religious innovation. In Persia Ardashir found the ancient +Persian religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) with its priests +and temples and a sacred fire that burnt upon its altars, ready +for his purpose as a state religion. Before the end of the third +century Zoroastrianism was persecuting Christianity, and in 277 +A.D. Mani, the founder of {243} a new faith, the Manichæans, was +crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was +busy hunting out Christian heresies. Manichæan ideas infected +Christianity and had to be fought with the fiercest methods; in +return ideas from Christianity affected the purity of the +Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas became suspect. Science, which +demands before all things the free action of an untroubled mind, +suffered a complete eclipse throughout this phase of intolerance. + +==================================================================== + +{242} + +[Illustration: THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA] + +==================================================================== + +War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind +constituted Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it +was romantic; it had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium +and Persia were not fighting the barbarians from the north, they +wasted Asia Minor and Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. +Even in close alliance these two empires would have found it a +hard task to turn back the barbarians and recover their +prosperity. The Turks or Tartars first come into history as the +allies first of one power and then of another. In the sixth +century the two chief antagonists were Justinian and Chosroes I; +in the opening of the seventh the Emperor Heraclius was pitted +against Chosroes II (580). + +At first and until after Heraclius had become Emperor (610) +Chosroes II carried all before him. He took Antioch, Damascus and +Jerusalem and his armies reached Chalcedon, which is in Asia Minor +over against Constantinople. In 619 he conquered Egypt. Then +Heraclius pressed a counter attack home and routed a Persian army +at Nineveh (627), although at that time there were still Persian +troops at Chalcedon. In 628 Chosroes II was deposed and murdered +by his son, Kavadh, and an inconclusive peace was made between the +two exhausted empires. + +Byzantium and Persia had fought their last war. But few people as +yet dreamt of the storm that was even then gathering in the +deserts to put an end for ever to this aimless, chronic struggle. + +While Heraclius was restoring order in Syria a message reached +him. It had been brought in to the imperial outpost at Bostra +south of Damascus; it was in Arabic, an obscure Semitic desert +language, and it was read to the Emperor, if it reached him at +all, by an interpreter. It was from someone who called himself +"Muhammad the Prophet of God." It called upon the Emperor to +{244} acknowledge the One True God and to serve him. What the +Emperor said is not recorded. + +A similar message came to Kavadh at Ctesiphon. He was annoyed, +tore up the letter, and bade the messenger begone. + +This Muhammad, it appeared, was a Bedouin leader whose +headquarters were in the mean little desert town of Medina. He +was preaching a new religion of faith in the One True God. + +"Even so, O Lord!" he said; "rend thou his Kingdom from Kavadh." + + + + +{245} + +XLII + +THE DYNASTIES OF SUY AND TANG IN CHINA + + +Throughout the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, there +was a steady drift of Mongolian peoples westward. The Huns of +Attila were merely precursors of this advance, which led at last +to the establishment of Mongolian peoples in Finland, Esthonia, +Hungary and Bulgaria, where their descendants, speaking languages +akin to Turkish, survive to this day. The Mongolian nomads were, +in fact, playing a role towards the Aryanized civilizations of +Europe and Persia and India that the Aryans had played to the +Ægean and Semitic civilizations ten or fifteen centuries before. + +In Central Asia the Turkish peoples had taken root in what is now +Western Turkestan, and Persia already employed many Turkish +officials and Turkish mercenaries. The Parthians had gone out of +history, absorbed into the general population of Persia. There +were no more Aryan nomads in the history of Central Asia; +Mongolian people had replaced them. The Turks became masters of +Asia from China to the Caspian. + +The same great pestilence at the end of the second century A.D. +that had shattered the Roman Empire had overthrown the Han dynasty +in China. Then came a period of division and of Hunnish conquests +from which China arose refreshed, more rapidly and more completely +than Europe was destined to do. Before the end of the sixth +century China was reunited under the Suy dynasty, and this by the +time of Heraclius gave place to the Tang dynasty, whose reign +marks another great period of prosperity for China. + +Throughout the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries China was the +most secure and civilized country in the world. The Han dynasty +had extended her boundaries in the north; the Suy and Tang +dynasties now spread her civilization to the south, and China +{247} began to assume the proportions she has to-day. In Central +Asia indeed she reached much further, extending at last, through +tributary Turkish tribes, to Persia and the Caspian Sea. + +==================================================================== + +{246} + +[Illustration: CHINESE EARTHENWARE ART OF THE TANG +DYNASTY, 616-906] + +==================================================================== + +The new China that had arisen was a very different land from the +old China of the Hans. A new and more vigorous literary school +appeared, there was a great poetic revival; Buddhism had +revolutionized philosophical and religious thought. There were +great advances in artistic work, in technical skill and in all the +amenities of life. Tea was first used, paper manufactured and +wood-block printing began. Millions of people indeed were leading +orderly, graceful and kindly lives in China during these centuries +when the attenuated populations of Europe and Western Asia were +living either in hovels, small walled cities or grim robber +fortresses. While the mind of the west was black with theological +obsessions, the mind of China was open and tolerant and enquiring. + +One of the earliest monarchs of the Tang dynasty was Tai-tsung, +who began to reign in 627, the year of the victory of Heraclius at +Nineveh. He received an embassy from Heraclius, who was probably +seeking an ally in the rear of Persia. From Persia itself came a +party of Christian missionaries (635). They were allowed to +explain their creed to Tai-tsung and he examined a Chinese +translation of their Scriptures. He pronounced this strange +religion acceptable, and gave permission for the foundation of a +church and monastery. + +To this monarch also (in 628) came messengers from Muhammad. They +came to Canton on a trading ship. They had sailed the whole way +from Arabia along the Indian coasts. Unlike Heraclius and Kavadh, +Tai-Tsung gave these envoys a courteous hearing. He expressed his +interest in their theological ideas and assisted them to build a +mosque in Canton, a mosque which survives, it is said, to this +day, the oldest mosque in the world. + + + + +{248} + +XLIII + +MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM + + +A prophetic amateur of history surveying the world in the opening +of the seventh century might have concluded very reasonably that +it was only a question of a few centuries before the whole of +Europe and Asia fell under Mongolian domination. There were no +signs of order or union in Western Europe, and the Byzantine and +Persian Empires were manifestly bent upon a mutual destruction. +India also was divided and wasted. On the other hand China was a +steadily expanding empire which probably at that time exceeded all +Europe in population, and the Turkish people who were growing to +power in Central Asia were disposed to work in accord with China. +And such a prophecy would not have been an altogether vain one. A +time was to come in the thirteenth century when a Mongolian +overlord would rule from the Danube to the Pacific, and Turkish +dynasties were destined to reign over the entire Byzantine and +Persian Empires, over Egypt and most of India. + +Where our prophet would have been most likely to have erred would +have been in under-estimating the recuperative power of the Latin +end of Europe and in ignoring the latent forces of the Arabian +desert. Arabia would have seemed what it had been for times +immemorial, the refuge of small and bickering nomadic tribes. No +Semitic people had founded an empire now for more than a thousand +years. + +Then suddenly the Bedouin flared out for a brief century of +splendour. They spread their rule and language from Spain to the +boundaries of China. They gave the world a new culture. They +created a religion that is still to this day one of the most vital +forces in the world. + +{249} + +The man who fired this Arab flame appears first in history as the +young husband of the widow of a rich merchant of the town of +Mecca, named Muhammad. Until he was forty he did very little to +distinguish himself in the world. He seems to have taken +considerable interest in religious discussion. Mecca was a pagan +city at that time worshipping in particular a black stone, the +Kaaba, of great repute throughout all Arabia and a centre of +pilgrimages; but there were great numbers of Jews in the +country--indeed all the southern portion of Arabia professed the +Jewish faith--and there were Christian churches in Syria. + +About forty Muhammad began to develop prophetic characteristics +like those of the Hebrew prophets twelve hundred years before him. +He talked first to his wife of the One True God, and of the +rewards and punishments of virtue and wickedness. There can be no +doubt that his thoughts were very strongly influenced by Jewish +and Christian ideas. He gathered about him a small circle of +believers and presently began to preach in the town against the +prevalent idolatry. This made him extremely unpopular with his +fellow townsmen because the pilgrimages to the Kaaba were the +chief source of such prosperity as Mecca enjoyed. He became +bolder and more definite in his teaching, declaring himself to be +the last chosen prophet of God entrusted with a mission to perfect +religion. Abraham, he declared, and Jesus Christ were his +forerunners. He had been chosen to complete and perfect the +revelation of God's will. + +He produced verses which he said had been communicated to him by +an angel, and he had a strange vision in which he was taken up +through the Heavens to God and instructed in his mission. + +As his teaching increased in force the hostility of his fellow +townsmen increased also. At last a plot was made to kill him; but +he escaped with his faithful friend and disciple, Abu Bekr, to the +friendly town of Medina which adopted his doctrine. Hostilities +followed between Mecca and Medina which ended at last in a treaty. +Mecca was to adopt the worship of the One True God and accept +Muhammad as his prophet, but the adherents of the new _faith were +still to make the pilgrimage to Mecca_ just as they had done when +they were pagans. So Muhammad established the One True God in +{251} Mecca without injuring its pilgrim traffic. In 629 Muhammad +returned to Mecca as its master, a year after he had sent out +these envoys of his to Heraclius, Tai-tsung, Kavadh and all the +rulers of the earth. + +==================================================================== + +{250} + +[Illustration: AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT] + +[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND] + +===================================================================== + +Then for four years more until his death in 632, Muhammad spread +his power over the rest of Arabia. He married a number of wives +in his declining years, and his life on the whole was by modern +standards unedifying. He seems to have been a man compounded of +very considerable vanity, greed, cunning, self-deception and quite +sincere religious passion. He dictated a book of injunctions and +expositions, the Koran, which he declared was communicated to him +from God. Regarded as literature or philosophy the Koran is +certainly unworthy of its alleged Divine authorship. + +Yet when the manifest defects of Muhammad's life and writings have +been allowed for, there remains in Islam, this faith he imposed +upon the Arabs, much power and inspiration. One is its +uncompromising monotheism; its simple enthusiastic faith in the +rule and fatherhood of God and its freedom from theological +complications. Another is its complete detachment from the +sacrificial priest and the temple. It is an entirely prophetic +religion, proof against any possibility of relapse towards blood +sacrifices. In the Koran the limited {252} and ceremonial nature +of the pilgrimage to Mecca is stated beyond the possibility of +dispute, and every precaution was taken by Muhammad to prevent the +deification of himself after his death. And a third element of +strength lay in the insistence of Islam upon the perfect +brotherhood and equality before God of all believers, whatever +their colour, origin or status. + +These are the things that made Islam a power in human affairs. It +has been said that the true founder of the Empire of Islam was not +so much Muhammad as his friend and helper, Abu Bekr. If Muhammad, +with his shifty character, was the mind and imagination of +primitive Islam, Abu Bekr was its conscience and its will. +Whenever Muhammad wavered Abu Bekr sustained him. And when +Muhammad died, Abu Bekr became Caliph (= successor), and with that +faith that moves mountains, he set himself simply and sanely to +organize the subjugation of the whole world to Allah--with little +armies of 3,000 or 4,000 Arabs--according to those letters the +prophet had written from Medina in 628 to all the monarchs of the +world. + + + + +{253} + +XLIV + +THE GREAT DAYS OF THE ARABS + + +There follows the most amazing story of conquest in the whole +history of our race. The Byzantine army was smashed at the battle +of the Yarmuk (a tributary of the Jordan) in 634; and the Emperor +Heraclius, his energy sapped by dropsy and his resources exhausted +by the Persian war, saw his new conquests in Syria, Damascus, +Palmyra, Antioch, Jerusalem and the rest fall almost without +resistance to the Moslim. Large elements in the population went +over to Islam. Then the Moslim turned east. The Persians had +found an able general in Rustam; they had a great host with a +force of elephants; and for three days they fought the Arabs at +Kadessia (637) and broke at last in headlong rout. + +The conquest of all Persia followed, and the Moslem Empire pushed +far into Western Turkestan and eastward until it met the Chinese. +Egypt fell almost without resistance to the new conquerors, who +full of a fanatical belief in the sufficiency of the Koran, wiped +out the vestiges of the book-copying industry of the Alexandria +Library. The tide of conquest poured along the north coast of +Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar and Spain. Spain was invaded +in 710 and the Pyrenees Mountains were reached in 720. In 732 the +Arab advance had reached the centre of France, but here it was +stopped for good at the battle of Poitiers and thrust back as far +as the Pyrenees again. The conquest of Egypt had given the Moslim +a fleet, and for a time it looked as though they would take +Constantinople. They made repeated sea attacks between 672 and +718 but the great city held out against them. + +The Arabs had little political aptitude and no political +experience, and this great empire with its capital now at +Damascus, which stretched from Spain to China, was destined to +break up very speedily. From the very beginning doctrinal +differences undermined {254} its unity. But our interest here +lies not with the story of its political disintegration but with +its effect upon the human mind and upon the general destinies of +our race. The Arab intelligence had been flung across the world +even more swiftly and dramatically than had the Greek a thousand +years before. The intellectual stimulation of the whole world +west of China, the break-up of old ideas and development of new +ones, was enormous. + +[Map: The Growth of the Moslem Power in 25 Years] + +[Map: the Moslem Empire, 750 A.D.] + +{255} + +In Persia this fresh excited Arabic mind came into contact not +only with Manichæan, Zoroastrian and Christian doctrine, but with +the scientific Greek literature, preserved not only in Greek but +in Syrian translations. It found Greek learning in Egypt also. +Every-where, and particularly in Spain, it discovered an active +Jewish tradition of speculation and discussion. In Central Asia +it met Buddhism and the material achievements of Chinese +civilization. It learnt the manufacture of paper--which made +printed books possible--from the Chinese. And finally it came +into touch with Indian mathematics and philosophy. + +[Illustration: JERUSALEM, SHOWING THE MOSQUE OF OMAR] + +Very speedily the intolerant self-sufficiency of the early days of +faith, which made the Koran seem the only possible book, was +dropped. Learning sprang up everywhere in the footsteps of the +Arab conquerors. By the eighth century there was an educational +{256} organization throughout the whole "Arabized" world. In the +ninth learned men in the schools of Cordoba in Spain were +corresponding with learned men in Cairo, Bagdad, Bokhara and +Samarkand. The Jewish mind assimilated very readily with the +Arab, and for a time the two Semitic races worked together through +the medium of Arabic. Long after the political break-up and +enfeeblement of the Arabs, this intellectual community of the +Arab-speaking world endured. It was still producing very +considerable results in the thirteenth century. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF CAIRO MOSQUES] + +So it was that the systematic accumulation and criticism of facts +which was first begun by the Greeks was resumed in this +astonishing renascence of the Semitic world. The seed of +Aristotle and the museum of Alexandria that had lain so long +inactive and neglected now germinated and began to grow towards +fruition. Very great advances were made in mathematical, medical +and physical science. {257} The clumsy Roman numerals were ousted +by the Arabic figures we use to this day and the zero sign was +first employed. The very name _algebra_ is Arabic. So is the +word chemistry. The names of such stars as Algol, Aldebaran and +Boötes preserve the traces of Arab conquests in the sky. Their +philosophy was destined to reanimate the medieval philosophy of +France and Italy and the whole Christian world. + +The Arab experimental chemists were called alchemists, and they +were still sufficiently barbaric in spirit to keep their methods +and results secret as far as possible. They realized from the +very beginning what enormous advantages their possible discoveries +might give them, and what far-reaching consequences they might +have on human life. They came upon many metallurgical and +technical devices of the utmost value, alloys and dyes, +distilling, tinctures and essences, optical glass; but the two +chief ends they sought, they sought in vain. One was "the +philosopher's stone"--a means of changing the metallic elements +one into another and so getting a control of artificial gold, and +the other was the _elixir vitoe_, a stimulant that would revivify +age and prolong life indefinitely. The crabbed patient +experimenting of these Arab alchemists spread into the Christian +world. The fascination of their enquiries spread. Very gradually +the activities of these alchemists became more social and +co-operative. They found it profitable to exchange and compare +ideas. By insensible gradations the last of the alchemists became +the first of the experimental philosophers. + +The old alchemists sought the philosopher's stone which was to +transmute base metals to gold, and an elixir of immortality; they +found the methods of modern experimental science which promise in +the end to give man illimitable power over the world and over his +own destiny. + + + + +{258} + +XLV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM + + +It is worth while to note the extremely shrunken dimensions of the +share of the world remaining under Aryan control in the seventh +and eighth centuries. A thousand years before, the Aryan-speaking +races were triumphant over all the civilized world west of China. +Now the Mongol had thrust as far as Hungary, nothing of Asia +remained under Aryan rule except the Byzantine dominions in Asia +Minor, and all Africa was lost and nearly all Spain. The great +Hellenic world had shrunken to a few possessions round the nucleus +of the trading city of Constantinople, and the memory of the Roman +world was kept alive by the Latin of the western Christian +priests. In vivid contrast to this tale of retrogression, the +Semitic tradition had risen again from subjugation and obscurity +after a thousand years of darkness. + +Yet the vitality of the Nordic peoples was not exhausted. +Confined now to Central and North-Western Europe and terribly +muddled in their social and political ideas, they were +nevertheless building up gradually and steadily a new social order +and preparing unconsciously for the recovery of a power even more +extensive than that they had previously enjoyed. + +We have told how at the beginning of the sixth century there +remained no central government in Western Europe at all. That +world was divided up among numbers of local rulers holding their +own as they could. This was too insecure a state of affairs to +last; a system of co-operation and association grew up in this +disorder, the feudal system, which has left its traces upon +European life up to the present time. This feudal system was a +sort of crystallization of society about power. Everywhere the +lone man felt insecure and was prepared to barter a certain amount +of his liberty for help and protection. He sought a stronger man +as his lord and protector; {259} he gave him military services and +paid him dues, and in return he was confirmed in his possession of +what was his. His lord again found safety in vassalage to a still +greater lord. Cities also found it convenient to have feudal +protectors, and monasteries and church estates bound themselves by +similar ties. No doubt in many cases allegiance was claimed +before it was offered; the system grew downward as well as upward. +So a sort of pyramidal system grew up, varying widely in different +localities, permitting at first a considerable play of violence +and private warfare but making steadily for order and a new reign +of law. The pyramids grew up until some became recognizable as +kingdoms. Already by the early sixth century a Frankish kingdom +existed under its founder Clovis in what is now France and the +Netherlands, and presently Visigothic and Lombard and Gothic +kingdoms were in existence. + +The Moslim when they crossed the Pyrenees in 720 found this +Frankish kingdom under the practical rule of Charles Martel, the +Mayor of the Palace of a degenerate descendant of Clovis, and +experienced the decisive defeat of Poitiers (732) at his hands. +This Charles Martel was practically overlord of Europe north of +the Alps from the Pyrenees to Hungary. He ruled over a multitude +of subordinate lords speaking French-Latin, and High and Low +German languages. His son Pepin extinguished the last descendants +of Clovis and took the kingly state and title. His grandson +Charlemagne, who began to reign in 768, found himself lord of a +realm so large that he could think of reviving the title of Latin +Emperor. He conquered North Italy and made himself master of +Rome. + +Approaching the story of Europe as we do from the wider horizons +of a world history we can see much more distinctly than the mere +nationalist historian how cramping and disastrous this tradition +of the Latin Roman Empire was. A narrow intense struggle for this +phantom predominance was to consume European energy for more than +a thousand years. Through all that period it is possible to trace +certain unquenchable antagonisms; they run through the wits of +Europe like the obsessions of a demented mind. One driving force +was this ambition of successful rulers, which Charlemagne (Charles +the Great) embodied, to become Cæsar. The realm of Charlemagne +consisted of a complex of feudal German states at {260} various +stages of barbarism. West of the Rhine, most of these German +peoples had learnt to speak various Latinized dialects which fused +at last to form French. East of the Rhine, the racially similar +German peoples did not lose their German speech. On account of +this, communication was difficult between these two groups of +barbarian conquerors and a split easily brought about. The split +was made the more easy by the fact that the Frankish usage made it +seem natural to divide the empire of Charlemagne among his sons at +his death. So one aspect of the history of Europe from the days +of Charlemagne onwards is a history of first this monarch and his +family and then that, struggling to a precarious headship of the +kings, princes, dukes, bishops and cities of Europe, while a +steadily deepening antagonism between the French and German +speaking elements develops in the medley. There was a formality +of election for each emperor; and the climax of his ambition was +to struggle to the possession of that worn-out, misplaced capital +Rome and to a coronation there. + +[Map: Area more or less under Frankish dominion in the time of +Charles Martel] + +{261} + +The next factor in the European political disorder was the resolve +of the Church at Rome to make no temporal prince but the Pope of +Rome himself emperor in effect. He was already pontifex maximus; +for all practical purposes he held the decaying city; if he had no +armies he had at least a vast propaganda organization in his +priests throughout the whole Latin world; if he had little power +over men's bodies he held the keys of heaven and hell in their +imaginations and could exercise much influence upon their souls. +So throughout the middle ages while one prince manoeuvred against +another first for equality, then for ascendancy, and at last for +the supreme prize, the Pope of Rome, sometimes boldly, sometimes +craftily, sometimes feebly--for the Popes were a succession of +oldish men and the average reign of a Pope was not more than two +years--manoeuvred for the submission of all the princes to himself +as the ultimate overlord of Christendom. + +But these antagonisms of prince against prince and of Emperor +against Pope do not by any means exhaust the factors of the +European confusion. There was still an Emperor in Constantinople +speaking Greek and claiming the allegiance of all Europe. When +Charlemagne sought to revive the empire, it was merely the Latin +end of the empire he revived. It was natural that a sense of +rivalry between Latin Empire and Greek Empire should develop very +readily. And still more readily did the rivalry of +Greek-speaking Christianity and the newer Latin-speaking version +develop. The Pope of Rome claimed to be the successor of St. +Peter, the chief of the apostles of Christ, and the head of the +Christian community everywhere. Neither the emperor nor the +patriarch in Constantinople were disposed to acknowledge this +claim. A dispute about a fine point in the doctrine of the Holy +Trinity consummated a long series of dissensions in a final +rupture in 1054. The Latin Church and the Greek Church became and +remained thereafter distinct and frankly antagonistic. This +antagonism must be added to the others in our estimate of the +conflicts that wasted Latin Christendom in the middle ages. + +Upon this divided world of Christendom rained the blows of three +sets of antagonists. About the Baltic and North Seas remained a +series of Nordic tribes who were only very slowly and reluctantly +{263} Christianized; these were the Northmen. They had taken to +the sea and piracy, and were raiding all the Christian coasts down +to Spain. They had pushed up the Russian rivers to the desolate +central lands and brought their shipping over into the +south-flowing rivers. They had come out upon the Caspian and Black +Seas as pirates also. They set up principalities in Russia; they +were the first people to be called Russians. These Northmen +Russians came near to taking Constantinople. England in the early +ninth century was a Christianized Low German country under a king, +Egbert, a protégé and pupil of Charlemagne. The Northmen wrested +half the kingdom from his successor Alfred the Great (886), and +finally under Canute (1016) made themselves masters of the whole +land. Under Rolph the Ganger (912) another band of Northmen +conquered the north of France, which became Normandy. + +==================================================================== + +{262} + +[Illustration: STATUE OF CHARLEMAGNE IN FRONT OF NOTRE DAME, +PARIS] + +==================================================================== + +Canute ruled not only over England but over Norway and Denmark, +but his brief empire fell to pieces at his death through that +political weakness of the barbaric peoples--division among a +ruler's sons. It is interesting to speculate what might have +happened if this temporary union of the Northmen had endured. +They were a race of astonishing boldness and energy. They sailed +in their galleys even to Iceland and Greenland. They were the +first Europeans to land on American soil. Later on Norman +adventurers were to recover Sicily from the Saracens and sack +Rome. It is a fascinating thing to imagine what a great northern +sea-faring power might have grown out of Canute's kingdom, +reaching from America to Russia. + +To the east of the Germans and Latinized Europeans was a medley of +Slav tribes and Turkish peoples. Prominent among these were the +Magyars or Hungarians who were coming westward throughout the +eighth and ninth centuries. Charlemagne held them for a time, but +after his death they established themselves in what is now +Hungary; and after the fashion of their kindred predecessors, the +Huns, raided every summer into the settled parts of Europe. In +938 they went through Germany into France, crossed the Alps into +North Italy, and so came home, burning, robbing and destroying. + +Finally pounding away from the south at the vestiges of the {264} +Roman Empire were the Saracens. They had made themselves largely +masters of the sea; their only formidable adversaries upon the +water were the Northmen, the Russian Northmen out of the Black Sea +and the Northmen of the west. + +[Map: Europe at the death of Charlemagne--814] + +Hemmed in by these more vigorous and aggressive peoples, amidst +forces they did not understand and dangers they could not +estimate, Charlemagne and after him a series of other ambitious +spirits took up the futile drama of restoring the Western Empire +under the name of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of +Charlemagne onward this idea obsessed the political life of +Western Europe, while in the East the Greek half of the Roman +power decayed and dwindled until at last nothing remained of it at +all but the corrupt trading city of Constantinople and a few miles +of territory about it. Politically the continent of Europe +remained traditional and uncreative from the time of Charlemagne +onward for a thousand years. + +{265} + +The name of Charlemagne looms large in European history but his +personality is but indistinctly seen. He could not read nor +write, but he had a considerable respect for learning; he liked to +be read aloud to at meals and he had a weakness for theological +discussion. At his winter quarters at +Aix-la-Chapelle or Mayence he gathered about him a number of +learned men and picked up much from their conversation. In the +summer he made war, against the Spanish Saracens, against the +Slavs and Magyars, against the Saxons, and other still heathen +German tribes. It is doubtful whether the idea of becoming Cæsar +in succession to Romulus Augustulus occurred to him before his +acquisition of North Italy, or whether it was suggested to him by +Pope Leo III, who was anxious to make the Latin Church independent +of Constantinople. + +There were the most extraordinary manoeuvres at Rome between the +Pope and the prospective emperor in order to make it appear or not +appear as if the Pope gave him the imperial crown. The Pope +succeeded in crowning his visitor and conqueror by surprise in St. +Peter's on Christmas Day 800 A.D. He produced a crown, put it on +the head of Charlemagne and hailed him Cæsar and Augustus. There +was great applause among the people. Charlemagne was by no means +pleased at the way in which the thing was done, it rankled in his +mind as a defeat; and he left the most careful instructions to his +son that he was not to let the Pope crown him emperor; he was to +seize the crown into his own hands and put it on his own head +himself. So at the very outset of this imperial revival we see +beginning the age-long dispute of Pope and Emperor for priority. +But Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, disregarded his +father's instructions and was entirely submissive to the Pope. + +The empire of Charlemagne fell apart at the death of Louis the +Pious and the split between the French-speaking Franks and the +German-speaking Franks widened. The next emperor to arise was +Otto, the son of a certain Henry the Fowler, a Saxon, who had been +elected King of Germany by an assembly of German princes and +prelates in 919. Otto descended upon Rome and was crowned emperor +there in 962. This Saxon line came to an end early in the +eleventh century and gave place to other German rulers. The +feudal princes and nobles to the west who spoke various French +dialects {266} did not fall under the sway of these German +emperors after the Carlovingian line, the line that is descended +from Charlemagne, had come to an end, and no part of Britain ever +came into the Holy Roman Empire. The Duke of Normandy, the King +of France and a number of lesser feudal rulers remained outside. +In 987 the Kingdom of France passed out of the possession of the +Carlovingian line into the hands of Hugh Capet, whose descendants +were still reigning in the eighteenth century. At the time of +Hugh Capet the King of France ruled only a comparatively small +territory round Paris. + +In 1066 England was attacked almost simultaneously by an invasion +of the Norwegian Northmen under King Harold Hardrada and by the +Latinized Northmen under the Duke of Normandy. Harold King of +England defeated the former at the battle of Stamford Bridge, and +was defeated by the latter at Hastings. England was conquered by +the Normans, and so cut off from Scandinavian, Teutonic and +Russian affairs, and brought into the most intimate relations and +conflicts with the French. For the next four centuries the +English were entangled in the conflicts of the French feudal +princes and wasted upon the fields of France. + + + + +{267} + +XLVI + +THE CRUSADES AND THE AGE OF PAPAL DOMINION + + +It is interesting to note that Charlemagne corresponded with the +Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, the Haroun-al-Raschid of the _Arabian +Nights_. It is recorded that Haroun-al-Raschid sent ambassadors +from Bagdad--which had now replaced Damascus as the Moslem +capital--with a splendid tent, a water clock, an elephant and the +keys of the Holy Sepulchre. This latter present was admirably +calculated to set the Byzantine Empire and this new Holy Roman +Empire by the ears as to which was the proper protector of the +Christians in Jerusalem. + +These presents remind us that while Europe in the ninth century +was still a weltering disorder of war and pillage, there +flourished a great Arab Empire in Egypt and Mesopotamia, far more +civilized than anything Europe could show. Here literature and +science still lived; the arts flourished, and the mind of man +could move without fear or superstition. And even in Spain and +North Africa where the Saracenic dominions were falling into +political confusion there was a vigorous intellectual life. +Aristotle was read and discussed by these Jews and Arabs during +these centuries of European darkness. They guarded the neglected +seeds of science and philosophy. + +North-east of the Caliph's dominions was a number of Turkish +tribes. They had been converted to Islam, and they held the faith +much more simply and fiercely than the actively intellectual Arabs +and Persians to the south. In the tenth century the Turks were +growing strong and vigorous while the Arab power was divided and +decaying. The relations of the Turks to the Empire of the +Caliphate became very similar to the relations of the Medes to the +last Babylonian Empire fourteen centuries before. In the eleventh +century a group of Turkish tribes, the Seljuk Turks, came down +into Mesopotamia and made the Caliph their nominal ruler but +really their {268} captive and tool. They conquered Armenia. +Then they struck at the remnants of the Byzantine power in Asia +Minor. In 1071 the Byzantine army was utterly smashed at the +battle of Melasgird, and the Turks swept forward until not a trace +of Byzantine rule remained in Asia. They took the fortress of +Nicæa over against Constantinople, and prepared to attempt that +city. + +The Byzantine emperor, Michael VII, was overcome with terror. He +was already heavily engaged in warfare with a band of Norman +adventurers who had seized Durazzo, and with a fierce Turkish +people, the Petschenegs, who were raiding over the Danube. In his +extremity he sought help where he could, and it is notable that he +did not appeal to the western emperor but to the Pope of Rome as +the head of Latin Christendom. He wrote to Pope Gregory VII, and +his successor Alexius Comnenus wrote still more urgently to Urban +II. + +[Illustration: CRUSADER TOMBS IN EXETER CATHEDRAL] + +This was not a quarter of a century from the rupture of the Latin +and Greek churches. That controversy was still vividly alive in +men's minds, and this disaster to Byzantium must have presented +itself to the Pope as a supreme opportunity for reasserting the +supremacy of the Latin Church over the dissentient Greeks. +Moreover this occasion gave the Pope a chance to deal with two +other matters that troubled western Christendom very greatly. One +was the custom of "private war" which disordered social life, and +the other was the superabundant fighting energy of the Low Germans +and Christianized Northmen and particularly of the Franks and +Normans. A religious war, the Crusade, the War of the Cross, was +{269} preached against the Turkish captors of Jerusalem, and a +truce to all warfare amongst Christians (1095). The declared +object of this war was the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the +unbelievers. A man called Peter the Hermit carried on a popular +propaganda throughout France and Germany on broadly democratic +lines. He went clad in a coarse garment, barefooted on an ass, he +carried a huge cross and harangued the crowd in street or +market-place or church. He denounced the cruelties practised upon +the Christian pilgrims by the Turks, and the shame of the Holy +Sepulchre being in any but Christian hands. The fruits of +centuries of Christian teaching became apparent in the response. +A great wave of enthusiasm swept the western world, and popular +Christendom discovered itself. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF CAIRO] + +Such a widespread uprising of the common people in relation to a +single idea as now occurred was a new thing in the history of our +race. There is nothing to parallel it in the previous history of +the {270} Roman Empire or of India or China. On a smaller scale, +however, there had been similar movements among the Jewish people +after their liberation from the Babylonian captivity, and later on +Islam was to display a parallel susceptibility to collective +feeling. Such movements were certainly connected with the new +spirit that had come into life with the development of the +missionary-teaching religions. The Hebrew prophets, Jesus and his +disciples, Mani, Muhammad, were all exhorters of men's individual +souls. They brought the personal conscience face to face with +God. Before that time religion had been much more a business of +fetish, of pseudoscience, than of conscience. The old kind of +religion turned upon temple, initiated priest and mystical +sacrifice, and ruled the common man like a slave by fear. The new +kind of religion made a man of him. + +The preaching of the First Crusade was the first stirring of the +common people in European history. It may be too much to call it +the birth of modern democracy, but certainly at that time modern +democracy stirred. Before very long we shall find it stirring +again, and raising the most disturbing social and religious +questions. + +Certainly this first stirring of democracy ended very pitifully +and lamentably. Considerable bodies of common people, crowds +rather than armies, set out eastward from France and the Rhineland +and Central Europe without waiting for leaders or proper equipment +to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. This was the "people's crusade." +Two great mobs blundered into Hungary, mistook the recently +converted Magyars for pagans, committed atrocities and were +massacred. A third multitude with a similarly confused mind, +after a great pogrom of the Jews in the Rhineland, marched +eastward, and was also destroyed in Hungary. Two other huge +crowds, under the leadership of Peter the Hermit himself, reached +Constantinople, crossed the Bosphorus, and were massacred rather +than defeated by the Seljuk Turks. So began and ended this first +movement of the European people, as people. + +Next year (1097) the real fighting forces crossed the Bosphorus. +Essentially they were Norman in leadership and spirit. They +stormed Nicæa, marched by much the same route as Alexander had +followed fourteen centuries before, to Antioch. The siege of +Antioch {271} kept them a year, and in June 1099 they invested +Jerusalem. It was stormed after a month's siege. The slaughter +was terrible. Men riding on horseback were splashed by the blood +in the streets. At nightfall on July 15th the Crusaders had +fought their way into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and +overcome all opposition there: blood-stained, weary and "sobbing +from excess of joy" they knelt down in prayer. + +[Illustration: THE HORSES OF S. MARK, VENICE] + +Immediately the hostility of Latin and Greek broke out again. The +Crusaders were the servants of the Latin Church, and the Greek +patriarch of Jerusalem found himself in a far worse case under the +triumphant Latins than under the Turks. The Crusaders discovered +themselves between Byzantine and Turk and fighting both. Much of +Asia Minor was recovered by the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin +princes were left, a buffer between Turk and Greek, with Jerusalem +and a few small principalities, of which Edessa was one of the +chief, in Syria. Their grip even on these possessions was +precarious, and in 1144 Edessa fell to the Moslim, leading to an +ineffective Second Crusade, which failed to recover Edessa but +saved Antioch from a similar fate. + +{272} + +In 1169 the forces of Islam were rallied under a Kurdish +adventurer named Saladin who had made himself master of Egypt. He +preached a Holy War against the Christians, recaptured Jerusalem +in 1187, and so provoked the Third Crusade. This failed to +recover Jerusalem. In the Fourth Crusade (1202-4) the Latin +Church turned frankly upon the Greek Empire, and there was not +even a pretence of fighting the Turks. It started from Venice and +in 1204 it stormed Constantinople. The great rising trading city +of Venice was the leader in this adventure, and most of the coasts +and islands of the Byzantine Empire were annexed by the Venetians. +A "Latin" emperor (Baldwin of Flanders) was set up in +Constantinople and the Latin and Greek Church were declared to be +reunited. The Latin emperors ruled in Constantinople from 1204 to +1261 when the Greek world shook itself free again from Roman +predominance. + +The twelfth century then and the opening of the thirteenth was the +age of papal ascendancy just as the eleventh was the age of the +ascendancy of the Seljuk Turks and the tenth the age of the +Northmen. A united Christendom under the rule of the Pope came +nearer to being a working reality than it ever was before or after +that time. + +In those centuries a simple Christian faith was real and +widespread over great areas of Europe. Rome itself had passed +through some dark and discreditable phases; few writers can be +found to excuse the lives of Popes John XI and John XII in the +tenth century; they were abominable creatures; but the heart and +body of Latin Christendom had remained earnest and simple; the +generality of the common priests and monks and nuns had lived +exemplary and faithful lives. Upon the wealth of confidence such +lives created rested the power of the church. Among the great +Popes of the past had been Gregory the Great, Gregory I (590-604) +and Leo III (795-816) who invited Charlemagne to be Cæsar and +crowned him in spite of himself. Towards the close of the +eleventh century there arose a great clerical statesman, +Hildebrand, who ended his life as Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085). +Next but one after him came Urban II (1087-1099), the Pope of the +First Crusade. These two were the founders of this period of +papal greatness during which the Popes lorded it over the +Emperors. From Bulgaria to Ireland and {274} from Norway to +Sicily and Jerusalem the Pope was supreme. Gregory VII obliged +the Emperor Henry IV to come in penitence to him at Canossa and to +await forgiveness for three days and nights in the courtyard of +the castle, clad in sackcloth and barefooted to the snow. In 1176 +at Venice the Emperor Frederick (Frederick Barbarossa), knelt to +Pope Alexander III and swore fealty to him. + +==================================================================== + +{273} + +[Illustration: A COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA] + +==================================================================== + +The great power of the church in the beginning of the eleventh +century lay in the wills and consciences of men. It failed to +retain the moral prestige on which its power was based. In the +opening decades of the fourteenth century it was discovered that +the power of the Pope had evaporated. What was it that destroyed +the naive confidence of the common people of Christendom in the +church so that they would no longer rally to its appeal and serve +its purposes? + +The first trouble was certainly the accumulation of wealth by the +church. The church never died, and there was a frequent +disposition on the part of dying childless people to leave lands +to the church. Penitent sinners were exhorted to do so. +Accordingly in many European countries as much as a fourth of the +land became church property. The appetite for property grows with +what it feeds upon. Already in the thirteenth century it was +being said everywhere that the priests were not good men, that +they were always hunting for money and legacies. + +The kings and princes disliked this alienation of property very +greatly. In the place of feudal lords capable of military +support, they found their land supporting abbeys and monks and +nuns. And these lands were really under foreign dominion. Even +before the time of Pope Gregory VII there had been a struggle +between the princes and the papacy over the question of +"investitures," the question that is of who should appoint the +bishops. If that power rested with the Pope and not the King, +then the latter lost control not only of the consciences of his +subjects but of a considerable part of his dominions. For also +the clergy claimed exemption from taxation. They paid their taxes +to Rome. And not only that, but the church also claimed the right +to levy a tax of one-tenth upon the property of the layman in +addition to the taxes he paid his prince. + +{275} + +The history of nearly every country in Latin Christendom tells of +the same phase in the eleventh century, a phase of struggle +between monarch and Pope on the issue of investitures and +generally it tells of a victory for the Pope. He claimed to be +able to excommunicate the prince, to absolve his subjects from +their allegiance to him, to recognize a successor. He claimed to +be able to put a nation under an interdict, and then nearly all +priestly functions ceased except the sacraments of baptism, +confirmation and penance; the priests could neither hold the +ordinary services, marry people, nor bury the dead. With these +two weapons it was possible for the twelfth century Popes to curb +the most recalcitrant princes and overawe the most restive +peoples. These were enormous powers, and enormous powers are only +to be used on extraordinary occasions. The Popes used them at +last with a frequency that staled their effect. Within thirty +years at the end of the twelfth century we find Scotland, France +and England in turn under an interdict. And also the Popes could +not resist the temptation to preach crusades against offending +princes--until the crusading spirit was extinct. + +It is possible that if the Church of Rome had struggled simply +against the princes and had had a care to keep its hold upon the +general mind, it might have achieved a permanent dominion over all +Christendom. But the high claims of the Pope were reflected as +arrogance in the conduct of the clergy. Before the eleventh +century the Roman priests could marry; they had close ties with +the people among whom they lived; they were indeed a part of the +people. Gregory VII made them celibates; he cut the priests off +from too great an intimacy with the laymen in order to bind them +more closely to Rome, but indeed he opened a fissure between the +church and the commonalty. The church had its own law courts. +Cases involving not merely priests but monks, students, crusaders, +widows, orphans and the helpless were reserved for the clerical +courts, and so were all matters relating to wills, marriages and +oaths and all cases of sorcery, heresy and blasphemy. Whenever +the layman found himself in conflict with the priest he had to go +to a clerical court. The obligations of peace and war fell upon +his shoulders alone and left the priest free. It is no great +wonder that jealousy and hatred of the priests grew up in the +Christian world. + +{276} + +Never did Rome seem to realize that its power was in the +consciences of common men. It fought against religious +enthusiasm, which should have been its ally, and it forced +doctrinal orthodoxy upon honest doubt and aberrant opinion. When +the church interfered in matters of morality it had the common man +with it, but not when it interfered in matters of doctrine. When +in the south of France Waldo taught a return to the simplicity of +Jesus in faith and life, Innocent III preached a crusade against +the Waldenses, Waldo's followers, and permitted them to be +suppressed with fire, sword, rape and the most abominable +cruelties. When again St. Francis of Assisi +(1181-1226) taught the imitation of Christ and a life of poverty +and service, his followers, the Franciscans, were persecuted, +scourged, imprisoned and dispersed. In 1318 four of them were +burnt alive at Marseilles. On the other hand the fiercely +orthodox order of the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic +(1170-1221) was strongly supported by Innocent III, who with its +assistance set up an organization, the Inquisition, for the +hunting of heresy and the affliction of free thought. + +So it was that the church by excessive claims, by unrighteous +privileges, and by an irrational intolerance destroyed that free +faith of the common man which was the final source of all its +power. The story of its decline tells of no adequate foemen from +without but continually of decay from within. + + + + +{277} + +XLVII + +RECALCITRANT PRINCES AND THE GREAT SCHISM + + +One very great weakness of the Roman Church in its struggle to +secure the headship of all Christendom was the manner in which the +Pope was chosen. + +If indeed the papacy was to achieve its manifest ambition and +establish one rule and one peace throughout Christendom, then it +was vitally necessary that it should have a strong, steady and +continuous direction. In those great days of its opportunity it +needed before all things that the Popes when they took office +should be able men in the prime of life, that each should have his +successor-designate with whom he could discuss the policy of the +church, and that the forms and processes of election should be +clear, definite, unalterable and unassailable. Unhappily none of +these things obtained. It was not even clear who could vote in +the election of a Pope, nor whether the Byzantine or Holy Roman +Emperor had a voice in the matter. That very great papal +statesman Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085) did much to +regularize the election. He confined the votes to the Roman +cardinals and he reduced the Emperor's share to a formula of +assent conceded to him by the church, but he made no provision for +a successor-designate and he left it possible for the disputes of +the cardinals to keep the See vacant, as in some cases it was kept +vacant, for a year or more. + +The consequences of this want of firm definition are to be seen in +the whole history of the papacy up to the sixteenth century. From +quite early times onward there were disputed elections and two or +more men each claiming to be Pope. The church would then be +subjected to the indignity of going to the Emperor or some other +outside arbiter to settle the dispute. And the career of everyone +of the great Popes ended in a note of interrogation. At his death +the church might be left headless and as ineffective as a +decapitated {279} body. Or he might be replaced by some old rival +eager only to discredit and undo his work. Or some enfeebled old +man tottering on the brink of the grave might succeed him. + +==================================================================== + +{278} + +[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL] + +==================================================================== + +It was inevitable that this peculiar weakness of the papal +organization should attract the interference of the various German +princes, the French King, and the Norman and French Kings who +ruled in England; that they should all try to influence the +elections, and have a Pope in their own interest established in +the Lateran Palace at Rome. And the more powerful and important +the Pope became in European affairs, the more urgent did these +interventions become. Under the circumstances it is no great +wonder that many of the Popes were weak and futile. The +astonishing thing is that many of them were able and courageous +men. + +One of the most vigorous and interesting of the Popes of this +great period was Innocent III (1198-1216) who was so fortunate as +to become Pope before he was thirty-eight. He and his successors +were pitted against an even more interesting personality, the +Emperor Frederick II; _Stupor mundi_ he was called, the Wonder of +the world. The struggle of this monarch against Rome is a turning +place in history. In the end Rome defeated him and destroyed his +dynasty, but he left the prestige of the church and Pope so badly +wounded that its wounds festered and led to its decay. + +Frederick was the son of the Emperor Henry VI and his mother was +the daughter of Roger I, the Norman King of Sicily. He inherited +this kingdom in 1198 when he was a child of four years. Innocent +III had been made his guardian. Sicily in those days had been but +recently conquered by the Normans; the Court was half oriental and +full of highly educated Arabs; and some of these were associated +in the education of the young king. No doubt they were at some +pains to make their point of view clear to him. He got a Moslem +view of Christianity as well as a Christian view of Islam, and the +unhappy result of this double system of instruction was a view, +exceptional in that age of faith, that all religions were +impostures. He talked freely on the subject; his heresies and +blasphemies are on record. + +As the young man grew up he found himself in conflict with his +guardian. Innocent III wanted altogether too much from his ward. +{280} When the opportunity came for Frederick to succeed as +Emperor, the Pope intervened with conditions. Frederick must +promise to put down heresy in Germany with a strong hand. Moreover +he must relinquish his crown in Sicily and South Italy, because +otherwise he would be too strong for the Pope. And the German +clergy were to be freed from all taxation. Frederick agreed but +with no intention of keeping his word. The Pope had already +induced the French King to make war upon his own subjects in +France, the cruel and bloody crusade against the Waldenses; he +wanted Frederick to do the same thing in Germany. But Frederick +being far more of a heretic than any of the simple pietists who +had incurred the Pope's animosity, lacked the crusading impulse. +And when Innocent urged him to crusade against the Moslim and +recover Jerusalem he was equally ready to promise and equally +slack in his performance. + +[Illustration: A TYPICAL CRUSADER: DON RODRIGO DE CARDENAS] + +Having secured the imperial crown Frederick II stayed in Sicily, +which he greatly preferred to Germany as a residence, and did +nothing to redeem any of his promises to Innocent III, who died +baffled in 1216. + +{281} + +Honorius III, who succeeded Innocent, could do no better with +Frederick, and Gregory IX (1227) came to the papal throne +evidently resolved to settle accounts with this young man at any +cost. He excommunicated him. Frederick II was denied all the +comforts of religion. In the half-Arab Court of Sicily this +produced singularly little discomfort. And also the Pope +addressed a public letter to the Emperor reciting his vices (which +were indisputable), his heresies, and his general misconduct. To +this Frederick replied in a document of diabolical ability. It +was addressed to all the princes of Europe, and it made the first +clear statement of the issue between the Pope and the princes. He +made a shattering attack upon the manifest ambition of the Pope to +become the absolute ruler of all Europe. He suggested a union of +princes against this usurpation. He directed the attention of +the princes specifically to the wealth of the church. + +Having fired off this deadly missile Frederick resolved to perform +his twelve-year-old promise and go upon a crusade. This was the +Sixth Crusade (1228). It was as a crusade, farcical. Frederick +II went to Egypt and met and discussed affairs with the Sultan. +These two gentlemen, both of sceptical opinions, exchanged +congenial views, made a commercial convention to their mutual +advantage, and agreed to transfer Jerusalem to Frederick. This +indeed was a new sort of crusade, a crusade by private treaty. +Here was no blood splashing the conqueror, no "weeping with excess +of joy." As this astonishing crusader was an excommunicated man, +he had to be content with a purely secular coronation as King of +Jerusalem, taking the crown from the altar with his own hand--for +all the clergy were bound to shun him. He then returned to Italy, +chased the papal armies which had invaded his dominions back to +their own territories, and obliged the Pope to grant him +absolution from his excommunication. So a prince might treat the +Pope in the thirteenth century, and there was now no storm of +popular indignation to avenge him. Those days were past. + +In 1239 Gregory IX resumed his struggle with Frederick, +excommunicated him for a second time, and renewed that warfare of +public abuse in which the papacy had already suffered severely. +The controversy was revived after Gregory IX was dead, when +Innocent IV {282} was Pope; and again a devastating letter, which +men were bound to remember, was written by Frederick against the +church. He denounced the pride and irreligion of the clergy, and +ascribed all the corruptions of the time to their pride and +wealth. He proposed to his fellow princes a general confiscation +of church property--for the good of the church. It was a +suggestion that never afterwards left the imagination of the +European princes. + +We will not go on to tell of his last years. The particular +events of his life are far less significant than its general +atmosphere. It is possible to piece together something of his +court life in Sicily. He was luxurious in his way of living, and +fond of beautiful things. He is described as licentious. But it +is clear that he was a man of very effectual curiosity and +inquiry. He gathered Jewish and Moslem as well as Christian +philosophers at his court, and he did much to irrigate the Italian +mind with Saracenic influences. Through him the Arabic numerals +and algebra were introduced to Christian students, and among other +philosophers at his court was Michael Scott, who translated +portions of Aristotle and the commentaries thereon of the great +Arab philosopher Averroes (of Cordoba). In 1224 Frederick founded +the University of Naples, and he enlarged and enriched the great +medical school at Salerno University. He also founded a +zoological garden. He left a book on hawking, which shows him to +have been an acute observer of the habits of birds, and he was one +of the first Italians to write Italian verse. Italian poetry was +indeed born at his court. He has been called by an able writer, +"the first of the moderns," and the phrase expresses aptly the +unprejudiced detachment of his intellectual side. + +A still more striking intimation of the decay of the living and +sustaining forces of the papacy appeared when presently the Popes +came into conflict with the growing power of the French King. +During the lifetime of the Emperor Frederick II, Germany fell into +disunion, and the French King began to play the role of guard, +supporter and rival to the Pope that had hitherto fallen to the +Hohenstaufen Emperors. A series of Popes pursued the policy of +supporting the French monarchs. French princes were established +in the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, with the support and approval +of Rome, and the French Kings saw before them the possibility of +{283} restoring and ruling the Empire of Charlemagne. When, +however, the German interregnum after the death of Frederick II, +the last of the Hohenstaufens, came to all end and Rudolf of +Habsburg was elected first Habsburg Emperor (1273), the policy of +Rome began to fluctuate between France and Germany, veering about +with the sympathies of each successive Pope. In the East in 1261 +the Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latin emperors, and +the founder of the new Greek dynasty, Michael Palæologus, Michael +VIII, after some unreal tentatives of reconciliation with the +Pope, broke away from the Roman communion altogether, and with +that, and the fall of the Latin kingdoms in Asia, the eastward +ascendancy of the Popes came to an end. + +[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK +OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY] + +In 1294 Boniface VIII became Pope. He was an Italian, hostile to +the French, and full of a sense of the great traditions and +mission of Rome. For a time he carried things with a high hand. +In 1300 he held a jubilee, and a vast multitude of pilgrims +assembled in Rome. "So great was the influx of money into the +papal treasury, that two assistants were kept busy with the rakes +collecting the {284} offerings that were deposited at the tomb of +St. Peter." [5] But this festival was a delusive triumph. +Boniface came into conflict with the French King in 1302, and in +1303, as he was about to pronounce sentence of excommunication +against that monarch, he was surprised and arrested in his own +ancestral palace at Anagni, by Guillaume de Nogaret. This agent +from the French King forced an entrance into the palace, made his +way into the bedroom of the frightened Pope--he was lying in bed +with a cross in his hands--and heaped threats and insults upon +him. The Pope was liberated a day or so later by the townspeople, +and returned to Rome; but there he was seized upon and again made +prisoner by the Orsini family, and in a few weeks' time the +shocked and disillusioned old man died a prisoner in their hands. + +[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK +OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY] + +The people of Anagni did resent the first outrage, and rose +against Nogaret to liberate Boniface, but then Anagni was the +Pope's native town. The important point to note is that the +French King {285} in this rough treatment of the head of +Christendom was acting with the full approval of his people; he +had summoned a council of the Three Estates of France (lords, +church and commons) and gained their consent before proceeding to +extremities. Neither in Italy, Germany nor England was there the +slightest general manifestation of disapproval at this free +handling of the sovereign pontiff. The idea of Christendom had +decayed until its power over the minds of men had gone. + +Throughout the fourteenth century the papacy did nothing to +recover its moral sway. The next Pope elected, Clement V, was a +Frenchman, the choice of King Philip of France. He never came to +Rome. He set up his court in the town of Avignon, which then +belonged not to France but to the papal See, though embedded in +French territory, and there his successors remained until 1377, +when Pope Gregory XI returned to the Vatican palace in Rome. But +Gregory XI did not take the sympathies of the whole church with +him. Many of the cardinals were of French origin and their habits +and associations were rooted deep at Avignon. When in 1378 +Gregory XI died, and an Italian, Urban VI, was elected, these +dissentient cardinals declared the election invalid, and elected +another Pope, the anti-Pope, Clement VII. This split is called +the Great Schism. The Popes remained in Rome, and all the +anti-French powers, the Emperor, the King of England, Hungary, +Poland and the North of Europe were loyal to them. The +anti-Popes, on the other hand, continued in Avignon, and were +supported by the King of France, his ally the King of Scotland, +Spain, Portugal and various German princes. Each Pope +excommunicated and cursed the adherents of his rival (1378-1417). + +Is it any wonder that presently all over Europe people began to +think for themselves in matters of religion? + +The beginnings of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, which we +have noted in the preceding chapters, were but two among many of +the new forces that were arising in Christendom, either to hold or +shatter the church as its own wisdom might decide. +Those two orders the church did assimilate and use, though with a +little violence in the case of the former. But other forces were +more frankly disobedient and critical. A century and a half later +{286} came Wycliffe (1320-1384). He was a learned Doctor at +Oxford. Quite late in his life he began a series of outspoken +criticisms of the corruption of the clergy and the unwisdom of the +church. He organized a number of poor priests, the Wycliffites, +to spread his ideas throughout England; and in order that people +should judge between the church and himself, he translated the +Bible into English. He was a more learned and far abler man than +either St. Francis or St. Dominic. He had supporters in high +places and a great following among the people; and though Rome +raged against him, and ordered his imprisonment, he died a free +man. But the black and ancient spirit that was leading the +Catholic Church to its destruction would not let his bones rest in +the grave. By a decree of the Council of Constance in 1415, his +remains were ordered to be dug up and burnt, an order which was +carried out at the command of Pope Martin V by Bishop Fleming in +1428. This desecration was not the act of some isolated fanatic; +it was the official act of the church. + +[5] J. H. Robinson. + + + + +{287} + +XLVIII + +THE MONGOL CONQUESTS + + +But in the thirteenth century, while this strange and finally +ineffectual struggle to unify Christendom under the rule of the +Pope was going on in Europe, far more momentous events were afoot +upon the larger stage of Asia. A Turkish people from the country +to the north of China rose suddenly to prominence in the world's +affairs, and achieved such a series of conquests as has no +parallel in history. These were the Mongols. At the opening of +the thirteenth century they were a horde of nomadic horsemen, +living very much as their predecessors, the Huns, had done, +subsisting chiefly upon meat and mare's milk and living in tents +of skin. They had shaken themselves free from Chinese dominion, +and brought a number of other Turkish tribes into a military +confederacy. Their central camp was at Karakorum in Mongolia. + +At this time China was in a state of division. The great dynasty +of Tang had passed into decay by the tenth century, and after a +phase of division into warring states, three main empires, that of +Kin in the north with Pekin as its capital and that of Sung in the +south with a capital at Nankin, and Hsia in the centre, remain. +In 1214 Jengis Khan, the leader of the Mongol confederates, made +war on the Kin Empire and captured Pekin (1214). He then turned +westward and conquered Western Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, India +down to Lahore, and South Russia as far as Kieff. He died master +of a vast empire that reached from the Pacific to the Dnieper. + +His successor, Ogdai Khan, continued this astonishing career of +conquest. His armies were organized to a very high level of +efficiency; and they had with them a new Chinese invention, +gunpowder, which they used in small field guns. He completed the +conquest of the Kin Empire and then swept his hosts right across +Asia to Russia (1235), an altogether amazing march. Kieff was +{288} destroyed in 1240, and nearly all Russia became tributary to +the Mongols. Poland was ravaged, and a mixed army of Poles and +Germans was annihilated at the battle of Liegnitz in Lower Silesia +in 1241. The Emperor Frederick II does not seem to have made any +great efforts to stay the advancing tide. + +[Map: The Empire of Jengis Khan at his death (1227)] + +"It is only recently," says Bury in his notes to Gibbon's _Decline +and Fall of the Roman Empire_, "that European history has begun to +understand that the successes of the Mongol army which overran +Poland and occupied Hungary in the spring of A.D. 1241 were won by +consummate strategy and were not due to a mere overwhelming +superiority of numbers. But this fact has not yet become a matter +of common knowledge; the vulgar opinion which represents the +Tartars as a wild horde carrying all before them solely by their +multitude, and galloping through Eastern Europe without a +strategic plan, rushing at all obstacles and overcoming them by +mere weight, still prevails. . . . + +"It was wonderful how punctually and effectually the arrangements +were carried out in operations extending from the Lower Vistula to +Transylvania. Such a campaign was quite beyond the {289} power of +any European army of the time, and it was beyond the vision of any +European commander. There was no general in Europe, from +Frederick II downward, who was not a tyro in strategy compared to +Subutai. It should also be noticed that the Mongols embarked upon +the enterprise with full knowledge of the political situation of +Hungary and the condition of Poland--they had taken care to inform +themselves by a well-organized system of spies; on the other hand, +the Hungarians and the Christian powers, like childish barbarians, +knew hardly anything about their enemies." + +[Map: The Ottoman Empire before 1453] + +But though the Mongols were victorious at Liegnitz, they did not +continue their drive westward. They were getting into woodlands +and hilly country, which did not suit their tactics; and so they +turned southward and prepared to settle in Hungary, massacring or +assimilating the kindred Magyar, even as these had previously +massacred and assimilated the mixed Scythians and Avars and Huns +before them. From the Hungarian plain they would probably have +made raids west and south as the Hungarians had done in the ninth +century, the Avars in the seventh and eighth and the Huns in the +fifth. But Ogdai died suddenly, and in 1242 there was trouble +{290} about the succession, and recalled by this, the undefeated +hosts of Mongols began to pour back across Hungary and Roumania +towards the east. + +Thereafter the Mongols concentrated their attention upon their +Asiatic conquests. By the middle of the thirteenth century they +had conquered the Sung Empire. Mangu Khan succeeded Ogdai Khan as +Great Khan in 1251, and made his brother Kublai Khan governor of +China. In 1280 Kublai Khan had been formally recognized Emperor +of China, and so founded the Yuan dynasty which lasted until 1368. +While the last ruins of the Sung rule were going down in China, +another brother of Mangu, Hulagu, was conquering Persia and Syria. +The Mongols displayed a bitter animosity to Islam at this time, +and not only massacred the population of Bagdad when they captured +that city, but set to work to destroy the immemorial irrigation +system which had kept Mesopotamia incessantly prosperous and +populous from the early days of Sumeria. From that time until our +own Mesopotamia has been a desert of ruins, sustaining only a +scanty population. Into Egypt the Mongols never penetrated; the +Sultan of Egypt completely defeated an army of Hulagu's in +Palestine in 1260. + +After that disaster the tide of Mongol victory ebbed. The +dominions of the Great Khan fell into a number of separate states. +The eastern Mongols became Buddhists, like the Chinese; the +western became Moslim. The Chinese threw off the rule of the Yuan +dynasty in 1368, and set up the native Ming dynasty which +flourished from 1368 to 1644. The Russians remained tributary to +the Tartar hordes upon the south-east steppes until 1480, when the +Grand Duke of Moscow repudiated his allegiance and laid the +foundation of modern Russia. + +In the fourteenth century there was a brief revival of Mongol +vigour under Timurlane, a descendant of Jengis Khan. He +established himself in Western Turkestan, assumed the title of +Grand Khan in 1369, and conquered from Syria to Delhi. He was the +most savage and destructive of all the Mongol conquerors. He +established an empire of desolation that did not survive his +death. In 1505, however, a descendant of this Timur, an +adventurer named Baber, got together an army with guns and swept +down upon the {292} plains of India. His grandson Akbar +(1556-1605) completed his conquests, and this Mongol (or "Mogul" +as the Arabs called it) dynasty ruled in Delhi over the greater +part of India until the eighteenth century. + +===================================================================== + +{291} + +[Illustration: TARTAR HORSEMEN] + +==================================================================== + +[Map: The Ottoman Empire at the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, +1566 A.D.] + +One of the consequences of the first great sweep of Mongol +conquest in the thirteenth century was to drive a certain tribe of +Turks, the Ottoman Turks, out of Turkestan into Asia Minor. They +extended and consolidated their power in Asia Minor, crossed the +Dardanelles and conquered Macedonia, Serbia and Bulgaria, until at +last Constantinople remained like an island amongst the Ottoman +dominions. In 1453 the Ottoman Sultan, Muhammad II, took +Constantinople, attacking it from the European side with a great +number of guns. This event caused intense excitement in Europe +and there was talk of a crusade, but the day of the crusades was +past. + +In the course of the sixteenth century the Ottoman Sultans +conquered Bagdad, Hungary, Egypt and most of North Africa, and +their fleet made them masters of the Mediterranean. They very +nearly took Vienna, and they exacted it tribute from the Emperor. +There were but two items to offset the general ebb of Christian +{293} dominion in the fifteenth century. One was the restoration +of the independence of Moscow (1480); the other was the gradual +reconquest of Spain by the Christians. In 1492, Granada, the last +Moslem state in the peninsula, fell to King Ferdinand of Aragon +and his Queen Isabella of Castile. + +But it was not until as late as 1571 that the naval battle of +Lepanto broke the prick of the Ottomans, and restored the +Mediterranean waters to Christian ascendancy. + + + + +{294} + +XLIX + +THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS + + +Throughout the twelfth century there were many signs that the +European intelligence was recovering courage and leisure, and +preparing to take up again the intellectual enterprises of the +first Greek scientific enquiries and such speculations as those of +the Italian Lucretius. The causes of this revival were many and +complex. The suppression of private war, the higher standards of +comfort and security that followed the crusades, and the +stimulation of men's minds by the experiences of these expeditions +were no doubt necessary preliminary conditions. Trade was +reviving; cities were recovering ease and safety; the standard of +education was arising in the church and spreading among laymen. +The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of growing, +independent or quasi-independent cities; Venice, Florence, Genoa, +Lisbon, Paris, Bruges, London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Nuremberg, +Novgorod, Wisby and Bergen for example. They were all trading +cities with many travellers, and where men trade and travel they +talk and think. The polemics of the Popes and princes, the +conspicuous savagery and wickedness of the persecution of +heretics, were exciting men to doubt the authority of the church +and question and discuss fundamental things. + +We have seen how the Arabs were the means of restoring Aristotle +to Europe, and how such a prince as Frederick II acted as a +channel through which Arabic philosophy and science played upon +the renascent European mind. Still more influential in the +stirring up of men's ideas were the Jews. Their very existence +was a note of interrogation to the claims of the church. And +finally the secret, fascinating enquiries of the alchemists were +spreading far and wide and setting men to the petty, furtive and +yet fruitful resumption of experimental science. + +{295} + +And the stir in men's minds was by no means confined now to the +independent and well educated. The mind of the common man was +awake in the world as it had never been before in all the +experience of mankind. In spite of priest and persecution, +Christianity does seem to have carried a mental ferment wherever +its teaching reached. It established a direct relation between +the conscience of the individual man and the God of Righteousness, +so that now if need arose he had the courage to form his own +judgment upon prince or prelate or creed. + +As early as the eleventh century philosophical discussion had +begun again in Europe, and there were great and growing +universities at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and other centres. There +medieval "schoolmen" took up again and thrashed out a series of +questions upon the value and meaning of words that were a +necessary preliminary to clear thinking in the scientific age that +was to follow. And standing by himself because of his distinctive +genius was Roger Bacon (circa 1210 to circa 1293), a Franciscan of +Oxford, the father of modern experimental science. His name +deserves a prominence in our history second only to that of +Aristotle. + +His writings are one long tirade against ignorance. He told his +age it was ignorant, an incredibly bold thing to do. Nowadays a +man may tell the world it is as silly as it is solemn, that all +its methods are still infantile and clumsy and its dogmas childish +assumptions, without much physical danger; but these peoples of +the middle ages when they were not actually being massacred or +starving or dying of pestilence, were passionately convinced of +the wisdom, the completeness and finality of their beliefs, and +disposed to resent any reflections upon them very bitterly. Roger +Bacon's writings were like a flash of light in a profound +darkness. He combined his attack upon the ignorance of his times +with a wealth of suggestion for the increase of knowledge. In his +passionate insistence upon the need of experiment and of +collecting knowledge, the spirit of Aristotle lives again in him. +"Experiment, experiment," that is the burthen of Roger Bacon. + +Yet of Aristotle himself Roger Bacon fell foul. He fell foul of +him because men, instead of facing facts boldly, sat in rooms and +pored over the bad Latin translations which were then all that was +{296} available of the master. "If I had my way," he wrote, in +his intemperate fashion, "I should burn all the books of +Aristotle, for the study of them can only lead to a loss of time, +produce error, and increase ignorance," a sentiment that Aristotle +would probably have echoed could he have returned to a world in +which his works were not so much read as worshipped--and that, as +Roger Bacon showed, in these most abominable translations. + +[Illustration: AN EARLY PRINTING PRESS] + +{297} + +Throughout his books, a little disguised by the necessity of +seeming to square it all with orthodoxy for fear of the prison and +worse, Roger Bacon shouted to mankind, "Cease to be ruled by +dogmas and authorities; _look at the world!_" Four chief sources +of ignorance he denounced; respect for authority, custom, the +sense of the ignorant crowd, and the vain, proud unteachableness +of our dispositions. Overcome but these, and a world of power +would open to men:-- + +"Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, so that +great ships suited to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be +borne with greater speed than if they were full of men. Likewise +cars may be made so that without a draught animal they may be +moved _cum impetu inoestimable_, as we deem the scythed chariots +to have been from which antiquity fought. And flying machines are +possible, so that a man may sit in the middle turning some device +by which artificial wings may beat the air in the manner of a +flying bird." + +So Roger Bacon wrote, but three more centuries were to elapse +before men began any systematic attempts to explore the hidden +stores of power and interest he realized so clearly existed +beneath the dull surface of human affairs. + +But the Saracenic world not only gave Christendom the stimulus of +its philosophers and alchemists; it also gave it paper. It is +scarcely too much to say that paper made the intellectual revival +of Europe possible. Paper originated in China, where its use +probably goes back to the second century B.C. In 751 the Chinese +made an attack upon the Arab Moslems in Samarkand; they were +repulsed, and among the prisoners taken from them were some +skilled papermakers, from whom the art was learnt. Arabic paper +manuscripts from the ninth century onward still exist. The +manufacture entered Christendom either through Greece or by the +capture of Moorish paper-mills during the Christian reconquest of +Spain. But under the Christian Spanish the product deteriorated +sadly. Good paper was not made in Christian Europe until the end +of the thirteenth century, and then it was Italy which led the +world. Only by the fourteenth century did the manufacture reach +Germany, and not until the end of that century was it abundant and +{298} cheap enough for the printing of books to be a practicable +business proposition. Thereupon printing followed naturally and +necessarily, for printing is the most obvious of inventions, and +the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far more +vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind to +mind; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and presently +scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated. + +One immediate result of this achievement of printing was the +appearance of an abundance of Bibles in the world. Another was a +cheapening of school-books. The knowledge of reading spread +swiftly. There was not only a great increase of books in the +world, but the books that were now made were plainer to read and +so easier to understand. Instead of toiling at a crabbed text +arid then thinking over its significance, readers now could think +unimpeded as they read. With this increase in the facility of +reading, the reading public grew. The book ceased to be a highly +decorated toy or a scholar's mystery. People began to write books +to be read as well as looked at by ordinary people. They wrote in +the ordinary language and not in Latin. With the fourteenth +century the real history of the European literature begins. + +So far we have been dealing only with the Saracenic share in the +European revival. Let us turn now to the influence of the Mongol +conquests. They stimulated the geographical imagination of Europe +enormously. For a time under the Great Khan, all Asia and Western +Europe enjoyed an open intercourse; all the roads were temporarily +open, and representatives of every nation appeared at the court of +Karakorum. The barriers between Europe and Asia set up by the +religious feud of Christianity and Islam were lowered. Great +hopes were entertained by the papacy for the conversion of the +Mongols to Christianity. Their only religion so far had been +Shumanism, a primitive paganism. Envoys of the Pope, Buddhist +priests from India, Parisian and Italian and Chinese artificers, +Byzantine and Armenian merchants, mingled with Arab officials and +Persian and Indian astronomers and mathematicians at the Mongol +court. We hear too much in history of the campaigns and massacres +of the Mongols, and not enough of their curiosity and desire for +learning. Not perhaps as an originative people, but as +transmitters {299} of knowledge and method their influence upon +the world's history has been very great. And everything one can +learn of the vague and romantic personalities of Jengis or Kublai +tends to confirm the impression that these men were at least as +understanding and creative monarchs as either that flamboyant but +egotistical figure Alexander the Great or that raiser of political +ghosts, that energetic but illiterate theologian Charlemagne. + +[Illustration: ANCIENT BRONZE FIGURE FROM BENIN, W. AFRICA] + +One of the most interesting of these visitors to the Mongol Court +was a certain Venetian, Marco Polo, who afterwards set down his +story in a book. He went to China about 1272 with his father and +uncle, who had already once made the journey. The Great Khan had +been deeply impressed by the elder Polos; they were the first men +of the "Latin" peoples he had seen; and he sent them back with +enquiries for teachers and learned men who could explain +Christianity to him, and for various other European things that +had aroused his curiosity. Their visit with Marco was their +second visit. + +The three Polos started by way of Palestine and not by the Crimea, +as in their previous expedition. They had with them a gold tablet +and other indications from the Great Khan that must have greatly +facilitated their journey. The Great Khan had asked for some oil +from the lamp that burns in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and +so thither they first went, and then by way of Cilicia into +Armenia. They went thus far north because the Sultan of Egypt was +raiding the Mongol domains at this time. Thence they came by way +of Mesopotamia to Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, as if they +contemplated a sea voyage. At Ormuz they met merchants from +India. For some reason they did not take ship, but instead turned +northward through the Persian deserts, and so by way of Balkh over +{300} the Pamir to Kashgar, and by way of Kotan and the Lob Nor +into the Hwang-ho valley and on to Pekin. At Pekin was the Great +Khan, and they were hospitably entertained. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER ANCIENT NEGRO BRONZE OF A EUROPEAN] + +Marco particularly pleased Kublai; he was young and clever, and it +is clear he had mastered the Tartar language very thoroughly. He +was given an official position and sent on several missions, +chiefly in south-west China. The tale he had to tell of vast +stretches of smiling and prosperous country, "all the way +excellent hostelries for travellers," and "fine vineyards, fields, +and gardens," of "many abbeys" of Buddhist monks, of manufactures +of "cloth of silk and gold and many fine taffetas," a "constant +succession of cities and boroughs," and so on, first roused the +incredulity and then fired the imagination of all Europe. He told +of Burmah, and of its great armies with hundreds of elephants, and +how these animals were defeated by the Mongol bowmen, and also of +the Mongol conquest of Pegu. He told of Japan, and greatly +exaggerated the amount of gold in that country. For three years +Marco ruled the city of Yang-chow as governor, and he probably +impressed the Chinese inhabitants as being little more of a +foreigner than any Tartar would have been. He may also have been +sent on a mission to India. Chinese records mention a certain +Polo attached to the imperial council in 1277, a very valuable +confirmation of the general truth of the Polo story. + +The publication of Marco Polo's travels produced a profound effect +upon the European imagination. The European literature, and +especially the European romance of the fifteenth century, echoes +with the names in Marco Polo's story, with Cathay (North China) +and Cambulac (Pekin) and the like. + +[Illustration: EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP] + +Two centuries later, among the readers of the Travels of Marco +Polo was a certain Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, who +{301} conceived the brilliant idea of sailing westward round the +world to China. In Seville there is a copy of the Travels with +marginal notes by Columbus. There were many reasons why the +thought of a Genoese should be turned in this direction. Until +its capture by the Turks in 1453 Constantinople had been an +impartial trading mart between the Western world and the East, and +the Genoese had traded there freely. But the "Latin" Venetians, +the bitter rivals of the Genoese, had been the allies and helpers +of the Turks against the Greeks, and with the coming of the Turks +Constantinople turned an {302} unfriendly face upon Genoese trade. +The long forgotten discovery that the world was round had +gradually resumed its sway over men's minds. The idea of going +westward to China was therefore a fairly obvious one. It was +encouraged by two things. The mariner's compass had now been +invented and men were no longer left to the mercy of a fine night +and the stars to determine the direction in which they were +sailing, and the Normans, Catalonians and Genoese and Portuguese +had already pushed out into the Atlantic as far as the Canary +Isles, Madeira and the Azores. + +Yet Columbus found many difficulties before he could get ships to +put his idea to the test. He went from one European Court to +another. Finally at Granada, just won from the Moors, he secured +the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was able to set out +across the unknown ocean in three small ships. After a voyage of +two months and nine days he came to a land which he believed to be +India, but which was really a new continent, whose distinct +existence the old world had never hitherto suspected. He returned +to Spain with gold, cotton, strange beasts and birds, and two +wild-eyed painted Indians to be baptized. They were called +Indians because, to the end of his days, he believed that this +land he had found was India. Only in the course of several years +did men begin to realize that the whole new continent of America +was added to the world's resources. + +The success of Columbus stimulated overseas enterprise enormously. +In 1497 the Portuguese sailed round Africa to India, and in 1515 +there were Portuguese ships in Java. In 1519 Magellan, a +Portuguese sailor in Spanish employment, sailed out of Seville +westward with five ships, of which one, the _Vittoria_, came back +up the river to Seville in 1522, the first ship that had ever +circumnavigated the world. Thirty-one men were aboard her, +survivors of two-hundred-and-eighty who had started. Magellan +himself had been killed in the Philippine Isles. + +Printed paper books, a new realization of the round world as a +thing altogether attainable, a new vision of strange lands, +strange animals and plants, strange manners and customs, +discoveries overseas and in the skies and in the ways and +materials of life burst upon the European mind. The Greek +classics, buried and forgotten for so {303} long, were speedily +being printed and studied, and were colouring men's thoughts with +the dreams of Plato and the traditions of an age of republican +freedom and dignity. The Roman dominion had first brought law and +order to Western Europe, and the Latin Church had restored it; but +under both Pagan and Catholic Rome curiosity and innovation were +subordinate to and restrained by organization. The reign of the +Latin mind was now drawing to an end. Between the thirteenth and +the sixteenth century the European Aryans, thanks to the +stimulating influence of Semite and Mongol and the rediscovery of +the Greek classics, broke away from the Latin tradition and rose +again to the intellectual and material leadership of mankind. + + + + +{304} + +L + +THE REFORMATION OF THE LATIN CHURCH + + +The Latin Church itself was enormously affected by this mental +rebirth. It was dismembered; and even the portion that survived +was extensively renewed. + +We have told how nearly the church came to the autocratic +leadership of all Christendom in the eleventh and twelfth +centuries, and how in the fourteenth and fifteenth its power over +men's minds and affairs declined. We have described how popular +religious enthusiasm which had in earlier ages been its support +and power was turned against it by its pride, persecutions and +centralization, and how the insidious scepticism of Frederick II +bore fruit in a growing insubordination of the princes. The Great +Schism had reduced its religious and political prestige to +negligible proportions. The forces of insurrection struck it now +from both sides. + +The teachings of the Englishman Wycliffe spread widely throughout +Europe. In 1398 a learned Czech, John Huss, delivered a series of +lectures upon Wycliffe's teachings in the university of Prague. +This teaching spread rapidly beyond the educated class and aroused +great popular enthusiasm. In 1414-18 a Council of the whole +church was held at Constance to settle the Great Schism. Huss was +invited to this Council under promise of a safe conduct from the +emperor, seized, put on trial for heresy and burnt alive (1415). +So far from tranquillizing the Bohemian people, this led to an +insurrection of the Hussites in that country, the first of a +series of religious wars that inaugurated the break-up of Latin +Christendom. Against this insurrection Pope Martin V, the Pope +specially elected at Constance as the head of a reunited +Christendom, preached a Crusade. + +Five Crusades in all were launched upon this sturdy little people +and all of them failed. All the unemployed ruffianism of Europe +was {305} turned upon Bohemia in the fifteenth century, just as in +the thirteenth it had been turned upon the Waldenses. But the +Bohemian Czechs, unlike the Waldenses, believed in armed +resistance. The Bohemian Crusade dissolved and streamed away from +the battlefield at the sound of the Hussites' waggons and the +distant chanting of their troops; it did not even wait to fight +(battle of Domazlice, 1431). In 1436 an agreement was patched up +with the Hussites by a new Council of the church at Basle in which +many of the special objections to Latin practice were conceded. + +[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LUTHER] + +In the fifteenth century a great pestilence had produced much +social disorganization throughout Europe. There had been extreme +misery and discontent among the common people, and peasant risings +against the landlords and the wealthy in England and France. +After the Hussite Wars these peasant insurrections increased in +gravity in Germany and took on a religious character. Printing +came in as an influence upon this development. By the middle of +the fifteenth century there were printers at work with movable +type {306} in Holland and the Rhineland. The art spread to Italy +and England, where Caxton was printing in Westminster in 1477. +The immediate consequence was a great increase and distribution of +Bibles, and greatly increased facilities for widespread popular +controversies. The European world became a world of readers, to +an extent that had never happened to any community in the past. +And this sudden irrigation of the general mind with clearer ideas +and more accessible information occurred just at a time when the +church was confused and divided and not in a position to defend +itself effectively, and when many princes were looking for means +to weaken its hold upon the vast wealth it claimed in their +dominions. + +In Germany the attack upon the church gathered round the +personality of an ex-monk, Martin Luther (1483-1546), who appeared +in Wittenberg in 1517 offering disputations against various +orthodox doctrines and practices. At first he disputed in Latin +in the fashion of the Schoolmen. Then he took up the new weapon +of the printed word and scattered his views far and wide in German +addressed to the ordinary people. An attempt was made to suppress +him as Huss had been suppressed, but the printing press had +changed conditions and he had too many open and secret friends +among the German princes for this fate to overtake him. + +For now in this age of multiplying ideas and weakened faith there +were many rulers who saw their advantage in breaking the religious +ties between their people and Rome. They sought to make +themselves in person the heads of a more nationalized religion. +England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, North Germany and +Bohemia, one after another, separated themselves from the Roman +Communion. They have remained separated ever since. + +The various princes concerned cared very little for the moral and +intellectual freedom of their subjects. They used the religious +doubts and insurgence of their peoples to strengthen them against +Rome, but they tried to keep a grip upon the popular movement as +soon as that rupture was achieved and a national church set up +under the control of the crown. But there has always been a +curious vitality in the teaching of Jesus, a direct appeal to +righteousness and a man's self-respect over every loyalty and +every subordination, lay or ecclesiastical. None of these +princely churches broke {307} off without also breaking off a +number of fragmentary sects that would admit the intervention of +neither prince nor Pope between a man and his God. In England and +Scotland, for example, there was a number of sects who now held +firmly to the Bible as their one guide in life and belief. They +refused the disciplines of a state church. In England these +dissentients were the Non-conformists, who played a very large +part in the polities of that country in the seventeenth {308} and +eighteenth centuries. In England they carried their objection to +a princely head to the church so far as to decapitate King Charles +I (1649), and for eleven prosperous years England was a republic +under Non-conformist rule. + +[Illustration: A MAJOLICA DISH PAINTED IN COLOURS] + +The breaking away of this large section of Northern Europe from +Latin Christendom is what is generally spoken of as the +Reformation. But the shock and stress of these losses produced +changes perhaps as profound in the Roman Church itself. The +church was reorganized and a new spirit came into its life. One +of the dominant figures in this revival was a young Spanish +soldier, Inigo Lopez de Recalde, better known to the world as St. +Ignatius of Loyola. After some romantic beginnings he became a +priest (1538) and was permitted to found the Society of Jesus, a +direct attempt to bring the generous and chivalrous traditions of +military discipline into the service of religion. This Society of +Jesus, the Jesuits, became one of the greatest teaching and +missionary societies the world has ever seen. It carried +Christianity to India, China and America. It arrested the rapid +disintegration of the Roman Church. It raised the standard of +education throughout the whole Catholic world; it raised the level +of Catholic intelligence and quickened the Catholic conscience +everywhere; it stimulated Protestant Europe to competitive +educational efforts. The vigorous and aggressive Roman Catholic +Church we know to-day is largely the product of this Jesuit +revival. + + + + +{309} + +LI + +THE EMPEROR CHARLES V + + +The Holy Roman Empire came to a sort of climax in the reign of the +Emperor Charles V. He was one of the most extraordinary monarchs +that Europe has ever seen. For a time he had the air of being the +greatest monarch since Charlemagne. + +His greatness was not of his own making. It was largely the +creation of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I +(1459-1519). Some families have fought, others have intrigued +their way to world power; the Habsburgs married their way. +Maximilian began his career with Austria, Styria, part of Alsace +and other districts, the original Habsburg patrimony; he +married--the lady's name scarcely matters to us--the Netherlands +and Burgundy. Most of Burgundy slipped from him after his first +wife's death, but the Netherlands he held. Then he tried +unsuccessfully to marry Brittany. He became Emperor in succession +to his father, Frederick III, in 1493, and married the duchy of +Milan. Finally he married his son to the weak-minded daughter of +Ferdinand and Isabella, the Ferdinand and Isabella of Columbus, +who not only reigned over a freshly united Spain and over Sardinia +and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, but over all America west of +Brazil. So it was that this Charles V, his grandson, inherited +most of the American continent and between a third and a half of +what the Turks had left of Europe. He succeeded to the +Netherlands in 1506. When his grandfather Ferdinand died in 1516, +he became practically king of the Spanish dominions, his mother +being imbecile; and his grandfather Maximilian dying in 1519, he +was in 1520 elected Emperor at the still comparatively tender age +of twenty. + +He was a fair young man with a not very intelligent face, a thick +upper lip and a long clumsy chin. He found himself in a world of +young and vigorous personalities. It was an age of brilliant +young {310} monarchs. Francis I had succeeded to the French +throne in 1515 at the age of twenty-one, Henry VIII had become +King of England in 1509 at eighteen. It was the age of Baber in +India (1526-1530) and Suleiman the Magnificent in Turkey (1520), +both exceptionally capable monarchs, and the Pope Leo X (1513) was +also a very distinguished Pope. The Pope and Francis I attempted +to prevent the election of Charles as Emperor because they dreaded +the concentration of so much power in the hands of one man. Both +Francis I and Henry VIII offered themselves to the imperial +electors. But there was now a long established tradition of +Habsburg Emperors (since 1273), and some energetic bribery secured +the election for Charles. + +At first the young man was very much a magnificent puppet in the +hands of his ministers. Then slowly he began to assert himself +and take control. He began to realize something of the +threatening complexities of his exalted position. It was a +position as unsound as it was splendid. + +From the very outset of his reign he was faced by the situation +created by Luther's agitations in Germany. The Emperor had one +reason for siding with the reformers in the opposition of the Pope +to his election. But he had been brought up in Spain, that most +Catholic of countries, and he decided against Luther. So he came +into conflict with the Protestant princes and particularly the +Elector of Saxony. He found himself in the presence of an opening +rift that was to split the outworn fabric of Christendom into two +contending camps. His attempts to close that rift were strenuous +and honest and ineffective. There was an extensive peasant revolt +in Germany which interwove with the general political and +religious disturbance. And these internal troubles were +complicated by attacks upon the Empire from east and west alike. +On the west of Charles was his spirited rival, Francis I; to the +east was the ever advancing Turk, who was now in Hungary, in +alliance with Francis and clamouring for certain arrears of +tribute from the Austrian dominions. Charles had the money and +army of Spain at his disposal, but it was extremely difficult to +get any effective support in money from Germany. His social and +political troubles were complicated by financial distresses. He +was forced to ruinous borrowing. + +{311} + +[Illustration: THE CHARLES V PORTRAIT BY TITIAN] + +{312} + +On the whole, Charles, in alliance with Henry VIII, was successful +against Francis I and the Turk. Their chief battlefield was North +Italy; the generalship was dull on both sides; their advances and +retreats depended mainly on the arrival of reinforcements. The +German army invaded France, failed to take Marseilles, fell back +into Italy, lost Milan, and was besieged in Pavia. Francis I made +a long and unsuccessful siege of Pavia, was caught by fresh German +forces, defeated, wounded and taken prisoner. But thereupon the +Pope and Henry VIII, still haunted by the fear of his attaining +excessive power, turned against Charles. The German troops in +Milan, under the Constable of Bourbon, being unpaid, forced rather +than followed their commander into a raid upon Rome. They stormed +the city and pillaged it (1527). The Pope took refuge in the +Castle of St. Angelo while the looting and slaughter went on. He +bought off the German troops at last by the payment of four +hundred thousand ducats. Ten years of such confused fighting +impoverished all Europe. At last the Emperor found himself +triumphant in Italy. In 1530, he was crowned by the Pope--he was +the last German Emperor to be so crowned--at Bologna. + +Meanwhile the Turks were making great headway in Hungary. They +had defeated and killed the king of Hungary in 1526, they held +Buda-Pesth, and in 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent very nearly took +Vienna. The Emperor was greatly concerned by these advances, and +did his utmost to drive back the Turks, but he found the greatest +difficulty in getting the German princes to unite even with this +formidable enemy upon their very borders. Francis I remained +implacable for a time, and there was a new French war; but in 1538 +Charles won his rival over to a more friendly attitude after +ravaging the south of France. Francis and Charles then formed an +alliance against the Turk. But the Protestant princes, the German +princes who were resolved to break away from Rome, had formed a +league, the Schmalkaldic League, against the Emperor, and in the +place of a great campaign to recover Hungary for Christendom +Charles had to turn his mind to the gathering internal struggle in +Germany. Of that struggle he saw only the opening war. It was a +struggle, a sanguinary irrational bickering of princes, for +ascendancy, now {313} flaming into war and destruction, now +sinking back to intrigues and diplomacies; it was a snake's sack +of princely policies that was to go on writhing incurably right +into the nineteenth century and to waste and desolate Central +Europe again and again. + +The Emperor never seems to have grasped the true forces at work in +these gathering troubles. He was for his time and station an +exceptionally worthy man, and he seems to have taken the religious +dissensions that were tearing Europe into warring fragments as +genuine theological differences. He gathered diets and councils +in futile attempts at reconciliation. Formulæ and confessions +were tried over. The student of German history must struggle with +the details of the Religious Peace of Nuremberg, the settlement at +the Diet of Ratisbon, the Interim of Augsburg, and the like. Here +we do but mention them as details in the worried life of this +culminating Emperor. As a matter of fact, hardly one of the +multifarious princes and rulers in Europe seems to have been +acting in good faith. The widespread religious trouble of the +world, the desire of the common people for truth and social +righteousness, the spreading knowledge of the time, all those +things were merely counters in the imaginations of princely +diplomacy. Henry VIII of England, who had begun his career with a +book against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with +the title of "Defender of the Faith," being anxious to divorce his +first wife in favour of a young lady named Anne Boleyn, and +wishing also to loot the vast wealth of the church in England, +joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530. Sweden, Denmark +and Norway had already gone over to the Protestant side. + +The German religious war began in 1546, a few months after the +death of Martin Luther. We need not trouble about the incidents +of the campaign. The Protestant Saxon army was badly beaten at +Lochau. By something very like a breach of faith Philip of Hesse, +the Emperor's chief remaining antagonist, was caught and +imprisoned, and the Turks were bought off by the promise of an +annual tribute. In 1547, to the great relief of the Emperor, +Francis I died. So by 1547 Charles got to a kind of settlement, +and made his last efforts to effect peace where there was no +peace. In 1552 all Germany was at war again, only a precipitate +flight from Innsbruck {314} saved Charles from capture, and in +1552, with the treaty of Passau, came another unstable +equilibrium.... + +Such is the brief outline of the politics of the Empire for +thirty-two years. It is interesting to note how entirely the +European mind was concentrated upon the struggle for European +ascendancy. Neither Turks, French, English nor Germans had yet +discovered any political interest in the great continent of +America, nor any significance in the new sea routes to Asia. +Great things were happening in America; Cortez with a mere handful +of men had conquered the great Neolithic empire of Mexico for +Spain, Pizarro had crossed the Isthmus of Panama (1530) and +subjugated another wonder-land, Peru. But as yet these events +meant no more to Europe than a useful and stimulating influx of +silver to the Spanish treasury. + +It was after the treaty of Passau that Charles began to display +his distinctive originality of mind. He was now entirely bored +and disillusioned by his imperial greatness. A sense of the +intolerable futility of these European rivalries came upon him. +He had never been of a very sound constitution, he was naturally +indolent and he was suffering greatly from gout. He abdicated. +He made over all his sovereign rights in Germany to his brother +Ferdinand, and Spain and the Netherlands he resigned to his son +Philip. Then in a sort of magnificent dudgeon he retired to a +monastery at Yuste, among the oak and chestnut forests in the +hills to the north of the Tagus valley. There he died in 1558. + +Much has been written in a sentimental vein of this retirement, +this renunciation of the world by this tired majestic Titan, +world-weary, seeking in an austere solitude his peace with God. +But his retreat was neither solitary nor austere; he had with him +nearly a hundred and fifty attendants: his establishment had all +the splendour and indulgences without the fatigues or a court, and +Philip II was a dutiful son to whom his father's advice was a +command. + +[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S, ROME, SHOWING THE HIGH +ALTAR] + +And if Charles had lost his living interest in the administration +of European affairs, there were other motives of a more immediate +sort to stir him. Says Prescott: "In the almost daily +correspondence between Quixada, or Gaztelu, and the Secretary of +State at Valladolid, there is scarcely a letter that does not turn +more or less on the Emperor's eating or his illness. The one +seems naturally to follow, {315} like a running commentary, on the +other. It is rare that such topics have formed the burden of +communications with the department of state. It must have been no +easy matter for the secretary to preserve his gravity in the +perusal of despatches in which politics and gastronomy were so +strangely mixed together. The courier from Valladolid to Lisbon +was ordered to make a detour, so as to take Jarandilla in his +route, and bring supplies to the royal table. On {316} Thursdays +he was to bring fish to serve for the _jour maigre_ that was to +follow. The trout in the neighbourhood Charles thought too small, +so others of a larger size were to be sent from Valladolid. Fish +of every kind was to his taste, as, indeed, was anything that in +its nature or habits at all approached to fish. Eels, frogs, +oysters, occupied an important place in the royal bill of fare. +Potted fish, especially anchovies, found great favour with him; +and he regretted that he had not brought a better supply of these +from the Low Countries. On an eel-pasty he particularly +doted." ... [6] + +In 1554 Charles had obtained a bull from Pope Julius III granting +him a dispensation from fasting, and allowing him to break his +fast early in the morning even when he was to take the sacrament. + +Eating and doctoring! it was a return to elemental things. He had +never acquired the habit of reading, but he would be read aloud to +at meals after the fashion of Charlemagne, and would make what one +narrator describes as a "sweet and heavenly commentary." He also +amused himself with mechanical toys, by listening to music or +sermons, and by attending to the imperial business that still came +drifting in to him. The death of the Empress, to whom he was +greatly attached, had turned his mind towards religion, which in +his case took a punctilious and ceremonial form; every Friday in +Lent he scourged himself with the rest of the monks with such good +will as to draw blood. These exercises and the gout released a +bigotry in Charles that had hitherto been restrained by +considerations of policy. The appearance of Protestant teaching +close at hand in Valladolid roused him to fury. "Tell the grand +inquisitor and his council from me to be at their posts, and to +lay the axe at the root of the evil before it spreads +further." .... He expressed a doubt whether it would not be well, +in so black an affair, to dispense with the ordinary course of +justice, and to show no mercy; "lest the criminal, if pardoned, +should have the opportunity of repeating his crime." He +recommended, as an example, his own mode or proceeding in the +Netherlands, "where all who remained obstinate in their errors +were burned alive, and those who were admitted to penitence +were beheaded." + +And almost symbolical of his place and role in history was his +{317} preoccupation with funerals. He seems to have had an +intuition that something great was dead in Europe and sorely +needed burial, that there was a need to write Finis, overdue. He +not only attended every actual funeral that was celebrated at +Yuste, but he had services conducted for the absent dead, he held +a funeral service in memory of his wife on the anniversary of her +death, and finally he celebrated his own obsequies. + +"The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of +wax-lights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The +brethren in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor's +household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque, +shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the +chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then +performed; and, amidst the dismal wail of the monks, the prayers +ascended for the departed spirit, that it might be received into +the mansions of the blessed. The sorrowful attendants were melted +to tears, as the image of their master's death was presented to +their minds--or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by +this pitiable display of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark +mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his +household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful +ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of +the priest, in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the +Almighty." + +Within two months of this masquerade he was dead. And the brief +greatness of the Holy Roman Empire died with him. His realm was +already divided between his brother and his son. The Holy Roman +Empire struggled on indeed to the days of Napoleon I but as an +invalid and dying thing. To this day its unburied tradition still +poisons the political air. + +[6] Prescott's Appendix to Robertson's _History of Charles V_. + + + + +{318} + +LII + +THE AGE OF POLITICAL EXPERIMENTS; OF GRAND MONARCHY AND +PARLIAMENTS AND REPUBLICANISM IN EUROPE + + +The Latin Church was broken, the Holy Roman Empire was in extreme +decay; the history of Europe from the opening of the sixteenth +century onward is a story of peoples feeling their way darkly to +some new method of government, better adapted to the new +conditions that were arising. In the Ancient World, over long +periods of time, there had been changes of dynasty and even +changes of ruling race and language, but the form of government +through monarch and temple remained fairly stable, and still more +stable was the ordinary way of living. In this modern Europe +since the sixteenth century the dynastic changes are unimportant, +and the interest of history lies in the wide and increasing +variety of experiments in political and social organization. + +The political history of the world from the sixteenth century +onward was, we have said, an effort, a largely unconscious effort, +of mankind to adapt its political and social methods to certain +new conditions that had now arisen. The effort to adapt was +complicated by the fad that the conditions themselves were +changing with a steadily increasing rapidity. The adaptation, +mainly unconscious and almost always unwilling (for man in general +hates voluntary change), has lagged more and more behind the +alterations in conditions. From the sixteenth century onward the +history of mankind is a story of political and social institutions +becoming more and more plainly misfits, less comfortable and more +vexatious, and of the slow reluctant realization of the need for a +conscious and deliberate reconstruction of the whole scheme of +human societies in the face of needs and possibilities new to all +the former experiences of life. + +What are these changes in the conditions of human life that have +disorganized that balance of empire, priest, peasant and trader, +with {319} periodic refreshment by barbaric conquest, that has +held human affairs in the Old World in a sort of working rhythm +for more than a hundred centuries? + +They are manifold and various, for human affairs are +multitudinously complex; but the main changes seem all to turn +upon one cause, namely the growth and extension of a knowledge of +the nature of things, beginning first of all in small groups of +intelligent people and spreading at first slowly, and in the last +five hundred years very rapidly, to larger and larger proportions +of the general population. + +But there has also been a great change in human conditions due to +a change in the spirit of human life. This change has gone on +side by side with the increase and extension of knowledge, and is +subtly connected with it. There has been an increasing +disposition to treat a life based on the common and more +elementary desires and gratifications as unsatisfactory, and to +seek relationship with and service and participation in a larger +life. This is the common characteristic of all the great +religions that have spread throughout the world in the last twenty +odd centuries, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam alike. They have +had to do with the spirit of man in a way that the older religions +did not have to do. They are forces quite different in their +nature and effect from the old fetishistic blood-sacrifice +religions of priest and temple that they have in part modified and +in part replaced. They have gradually evolved a self-respect in +the individual and a sense of participation and responsibility in +the common concerns of mankind that did not exist among the +populations of the earlier civilizations. + +The first considerable change in the conditions of political and +social life was the simplification and extended use of writing in +the ancient civilizations which made larger empires and wider +political understandings practicable and inevitable. The next +movement forward came with the introduction of the horse, and +later on of the camel as a means of transport, the use of wheeled +vehicles, the extension of roads and the increased military +efficiency due to the discovery of terrestrial iron. Then +followed the profound economic disturbances due to the device of +coined money and the change in the nature of debt, proprietorship +and trade due to this convenient but dangerous convention. The +empires grew in size and range, and {320} men's ideas grew +likewise to correspond with these things. Came the disappearance +of local gods, the age of theocrasia, and the teaching of the +great world religions. Came also the beginnings of reasoned and +recorded history and geography, the first realization by man of +his profound ignorance, and the first systematic search for +knowledge. + +For a time the scientific process which began so brilliantly in +Greece and Alexandria was interrupted. The raids of the Teutonic +barbarians, the westward drive of the Mongolian peoples, +convulsive religious reconstruction and great pestilences put +enormous strains upon political and social order. When +civilization emerged again from this phase of conflict and +confusion, slavery was no longer the basis of economic life; and +the first paper-mills were preparing a new medium for collective +information and co-operation in printed matter. Gradually at this +point and that, the search for knowledge, the systematic +scientific process, was resumed. + +And now from the sixteenth century onward, as an inevitable +by-product of systematic thought, appeared a steadily increasing +series of inventions and devices affecting the intercommunication +and interaction of men with one another. They all tended towards +wider range of action, greater mutual benefits or injuries, and +increased co-operation, and they came faster and faster. Men's +minds had not been prepared for anything of the sort, and until +the great catastrophes at the beginning of the twentieth century +quickened men's minds, the historian has very little to tell of +any intelligently planned attempts to meet the new conditions this +increasing flow of inventions was creating. The history of +mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an +imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the +prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking +but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with +ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man +consciously awake to danger and opportunity. + +Since history is the story not of individual lives but of +communities, it is inevitable that the inventions that figure most +in the historical record are inventions affecting communications. +In the sixteenth century the chief new things that we have to note +are the appearance of printed paper and the sea-worthy, +ocean-going sailing ship using the new device of the mariner's +compass. The former {321} cheapened, spread, and revolutionized +teaching, public information and discussion, and the fundamental +operations of political activity. The latter made the round world +one. But almost equally important was the increased utilization +and improvement of guns and gunpowder which the Mongols had first +brought westward in the thirteenth century. This destroyed the +practical immunity of barons in their castles and of walled +cities. Guns swept away feudalism. Constantinople fell to guns. +Mexico and Peru fell before the terror of the Spanish guns. + +[Illustration: CROMWELL DISSOLVES THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND SO +BECOMES AUTOCRAT OF THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC] + +The seventeenth century saw the development of systematic +scientific publication, a less conspicuous but ultimately far more +pregnant innovation. Conspicuous among the leaders in this great +forward step was Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) afterwards Lord +{322} Verulam, Lord Chancellor of England. He was the pupil and +perhaps the mouthpiece of another Englishman; Dr. Gilbert, the +experimental philosopher of Colchester (1540-1603). This second +Bacon, like the first, preached observation and experiment, and he +used the inspiring and fruitful form of a Utopian story, _The New +Atlantis_, to express his dream of a great service of scientific +research. + +Presently arose the Royal Society of London, the Florentine +Society, and later other national bodies for the encouragement of +research and the publication and exchange of knowledge. These +European scientific societies became fountains not only of +countless inventions but also of a destructive criticism of the +grotesque theological history of the world that had dominated and +crippled human thought for many centuries. + +Neither the seventeenth nor the eighteenth century witnessed any +innovations so immediately revolutionary in human conditions as +printed paper and the ocean-going ship, but there was a steady +accumulation of knowledge and scientific energy that was to bear +its full fruits in the nineteenth century. The exploration and +mapping of the world went on. Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand +appeared on the map. In Great Britain in the eighteenth century +coal coke began to be used for metallurgical purposes, leading to +a considerable cheapening of iron and to the possibility of +casting and using it in larger pieces than had been possible +before, when it had been smelted with wood charcoal. Modern +machinery dawned. + +Like the trees of the celestial city, science bears bud and flower +and fruit at the same time and continuously. With the onset of +the nineteenth century the real fruition of +science--which indeed henceforth may never cease--began. First +came steam and steel, the railway, the great liner, vast bridges +and buildings, machinery of almost limitless power, the +possibility of a bountiful satisfaction of every material human +need, and then, still more wonderful, the hidden treasures of +electrical science were opened to men .... + +We have compared the political and social life of man from the +sixteenth century onward to that of a sleeping prisoner who lies +and dreams while his prison burns about him. In the sixteenth +century the European mind was still going on with its Latin +Imperial dream, {323} its dream of a Holy Roman Empire, united +under a Catholic Church. But just as some uncontrollable element +in our composition will insist at times upon introducing into our +dreams the most absurd and destructive comments, so thrust into +this dream we find the sleeping face and craving stomach of the +Emperor Charles V, while Henry VIII of England and Luther tear the +unity of Catholicism to shreds. + +[Illustration: THE COURT AT VERSAILLES] + +In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the dream turned to +personal monarchy. The history of nearly all Europe during this +period tells with variations the story of an attempt to +consolidate a monarchy, to make it absolute and to extend its +power over weaker adjacent regions, and of the steady resistance, +first of the landowners and then with the increase of foreign +trade and home industry, of the growing trading and moneyed class, +to the exaction and interference of the crown. There is no +universal victory of either side; here it is the King who gets the +upper hand while there it is the {324} man of private property who +beats the King. In one case we find a King becoming the sun and +centre of his national world, while just over his borders a sturdy +mercantile class maintains a republic. So wide a range of +variation shows how entirely experimental, what local accidents, +were all the various governments of this period. + +A very common figure in these national dramas is the King's +minister, often in the still Catholic countries a prelate, who +stands behind the King, serves him and dominates him by his +indispensable services. + +Here in the limits set to us it is impossible to tell these +various national dramas in detail. The trading folk of Holland +went Protestant and republican, and cast off the rule of Philip II +of Spain, the son of the Emperor Charles V. In England Henry VIII +and his minister Wolsey, Queen Elizabeth and her minister +Burleigh, prepared the foundations of an absolutism that was +wrecked by the folly of James I and Charles I. Charles I was +beheaded for treason to his people (1649), a new turn in the +political thought of Europe. For a dozen years (until 1660) +Britain was a republic; and the crown was an unstable power, much +overshadowed by Parliament, until George III (1760-1820) made a +strenuous and partly successful effort to restore its +predominance. The King of France, on the other hand, was the most +successful of all the European Kings in perfecting monarchy. Two +great ministers, Richelieu (1585-1642) and Mazarin +(1602-1661), built up the power of the crown in that country, and +the process was aided by the long reign and very considerable +abilities of King Louis XIV, "the Grand Monarque" (1643-1715). + +Louis XIV was indeed the pattern King of Europe. He was, within +his limitations, an exceptionally capable King; his ambition was +stronger than his baser passions, and he guided his country +towards bankruptcy through the complication of a spirited foreign +policy with an elaborate dignity that still extorts our +admiration. His immediate desire was to consolidate and extend +France to the Rhine and Pyrenees, and to absorb the Spanish +Netherlands; his remoter view saw the French Kings as the possible +successors of Charlemagne in a recast Holy Roman Empire. He made +bribery a state method almost more important than warfare. +Charles II of {325} England was in his pay, and so were most of +the Polish nobility, presently to be described. His money, or +rather the money of the tax-paying classes in France, went +everywhere. But his prevailing occupation was splendour. His +great palace at Versailles with its salons, its corridors, its +mirrors, its terraces and fountains and parks and prospects, was +the envy and admiration of the world. + +[Illustration: THE SACK OF A VILLAGE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION] + +He provoked a universal imitation. Every king and princelet in +Europe was building his own Versailles as much beyond his means as +his subjects and credits would permit. Everywhere the nobility +rebuilt or extended their chateaux to the new pattern. A great +industry of beautiful and elaborate fabrics and furnishings +developed. The luxurious arts flourished everywhere; sculpture in +alabaster, faience, gilt woodwork, metal work, stamped leather, +much music, magnificent painting, beautiful printing and bindings, +fine crockery, fine vintages. Amidst the mirrors and fine +furniture went a strange race of "gentlemen" in tall powdered +wigs, silks and laces, poised upon high red heels, supported by +amazing canes; and still more wonderful "ladies," under towers of +powdered hair and wearing vast expansions of silk and satin +sustained on wire. Through it all postured the great Louis, the +sun of his world, unaware of the meagre and sulky and bitter faces +that watched him from those lower darknesses to which his sunshine +did not penetrate. + +[Map: Central Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648] + +The German people remained politically divided throughout this +period of the monarchies and experimental governments, and a +considerable {326} number of ducal and princely courts aped the +splendours of Versailles on varying scales. The Thirty Years' War +(1618-48), a devastating scramble among the Germans, Swedes and +Bohemians for fluctuating political advantages, sapped the +energies of Germany for a century. A map must show the crazy +patchwork in which this struggle ended, a map of Europe according +to the peace of Westphalia (1648). One sees a tangle of +principalities, dukedoms, free states and the like, some partly in +and partly out of the Empire. Sweden's arm, the reader will note, +reached far into Germany; and except for a few islands of +territory within the imperial boundaries France was still far from +the Rhine. Amidst this patchwork the {327} Kingdom of Prussia--it +became a Kingdom in 1701--rose steadily to prominence and +sustained a series of successful wars. Frederick the Great of +Prussia (1740-86) had his Versailles at Potsdam, where his court +spoke French, read French literature and rivalled the culture of +the French King. + +In 1714 the Elector of Hanover became King of England, adding one +more to the list of monarchies half in and half out of the empire. + +The Austrian branch of the descendants of Charles V retained the +title of Emperor; the Spanish branch retained Spain. But now +there was also an Emperor of the East again. After the fall of +Constantinople (1453), the grand duke of Moscow, Ivan the Great +(1462-1505), claimed to be heir to the Byzantine throne and +adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle upon his arms. His +grandson, Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), assumed the +imperial title of Cæsar (Tsar). But only in the latter half of +the seventeenth century did Russia cease to seem remote and +Asiatic to the European mind. The Tsar Peter the Great +(1682-1725) brought Russia into the arena of Western affairs. He +built a new capital for his empire, Petersburg upon the Neva, that +played the part of a window between Russia and Europe, and he set +up his Versailles at Peterhof eighteen miles away, employing a +French architect who gave him a terrace, fountains, cascades, +picture gallery, park and all the recognized appointments of Grand +Monarchy. In Russia as in Prussia French became the language of +the court. + +Unhappily placed between Austria, Prussia and Russia was the +Polish kingdom, an ill-organized state of great landed proprietors +too jealous of their own individual grandeur to permit more than a +nominal kingship to the monarch they elected. Her fate was +division among these three neighbours, in spite of the efforts of +France to retain her as an independent ally. Switzerland at this +time was a group of republican cantons; Venice was a republic; +Italy like so much of Germany was divided among minor dukes and +princes. The Pope ruled like a prince in the papal states, too +fearful now of losing the allegiance of the remaining Catholic +princes to interfere between them and their subjects or to remind +the world of the commonweal of Christendom. There remained indeed +no common {328} political idea in Europe at all; Europe was given +over altogether to division and diversity. + +All these sovereign princes and republics carried on schemes of +aggrandizement against each other. Each one of them pursued a +"foreign policy" of aggression against its neighbours and of +aggressive alliances. We Europeans still live to-day in the last +phase of this age of the multifarious sovereign states, and still +suffer from the hatreds, hostilities and suspicions it engendered. +The history of this time becomes more and more manifestly +"gossip," more and more unmeaning and wearisome to a modern +intelligence. You are told of how this war was caused by this +King's mistress, and how the jealousy of one minister for another +caused that. A tittle-tattle of bribes and rivalries disgusts the +intelligent student. The more permanently significant fact is +that in spite of the obstruction of a score of frontiers, reading +and thought still spread and increased and inventions multiplied. +The eighteenth century saw the appearance of a literature +profoundly sceptical and critical of the courts and policies of +the time. In such a book as Voltaire's _Candide_ we have the +expression of an infinite weariness with the planless confusion of +the European world. + + + + +{329} + +LIII + +THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE EUROPEANS IN ASIA AND OVERSEAS + + +While Central Europe thus remained divided and confused, the +Western Europeans and particularly the Dutch, the Scandinavians, +the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French and the British were +extending the area of their struggles across the seas of all the +world. The printing press had dissolved the political ideas of +Europe into a vast and at first indeterminate fermentation, but +that other great innovation, the ocean-going sailing ship, was +inexorably extending the range of European experience to the +furthermost limits of salt water. + +The first overseas settlements of the Dutch and Northern Atlantic +Europeans were not for colonization but for trade and mining. The +Spaniards were first in the field; they claimed dominion over the +whole of this new world of America. Very soon however the +Portuguese asked for a share. The Pope--it was one of the last +acts of Rome as mistress of the world--divided the new continent +between these two first-comers, giving Portugal Brazil and +everything else east of a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde +islands, and all the rest to Spain (1494). The Portuguese at this +time were also pushing overseas enterprise southward and eastward. +In 1497 Vasco da Gama had sailed from Lisbon round the Cape to +Zanzibar and then to Calicut in India. In 1515 there were +Portuguese ships in Java and the Moluccas, and the Portuguese were +setting up and fortifying trading stations round and about the +coasts of the Indian Ocean. Mozambique, Goa, and two smaller +possessions in India, Macao in China and a part of Timor are to +this day Portuguese possessions. + +The nations excluded from America by the papal settlement paid +little heed to the rights of Spain and Portugal. The English, the +Danes and Swedes, and presently the Dutch, were soon staking {330} +out claims in North America and the West Indies, and his Most +Catholic Majesty of France heeded the papal settlement as little +as any Protestant. The wars of Europe extended themselves to +these claims and possessions. + +[Map: Britain, France & Spain in America, 1750] + +In the long run the English were the most successful in this +scramble for overseas possessions. The Danes and Swedes were too +{331} deeply entangled in the complicated affairs of Germany to +sustain effective expeditions abroad. Sweden was wasted upon the +German battlefields by a picturesque king, Gustavus Adolphus, the +Protestant "Lion of the North." The Dutch were the heirs of such +small settlements as Sweden made in America, and the Dutch were +too near French aggressions to hold their own against the British. +In the far East the chief rivals for empire were the British, +Dutch and French, and in America the British, French and Spanish. +The British had the supreme advantage of a water frontier, the +"silver streak" of the English Channel, against Europe. The +tradition of the Latin Empire entangled them least. + +[Illustration: EUROPEANS TIGER HUNTING IN INDIA] + +France has always thought too much in terms of Europe. Throughout +the eighteenth century she was wasting her opportunities of +expansion in West and East alike in order to dominate Spain, Italy +and the German confusion. The religious and political dissensions +of Britain in the seventeenth century had driven many {332} of the +English to seek a permanent home in America. They struck root and +increased and multiplied, giving the British a great advantage in +the American struggle. In 1756 and 1760 the French lost Canada to +the British and their American colonists, and a few years later +the British trading company found itself completely dominant over +French, Dutch and Portuguese in the peninsula of India. The great +Mongol Empire of Baber, Akbar and their successors had now far +gone in decay, and the story of its practical capture by a London +trading company, the British East India Company, is one of the +most extraordinary episodes in the whole history of conquest. + +[Illustration: THE LAST EFFORT AND FALL OF TIPPOO SULTAN] + +This East India Company had been originally at the time of its +incorporation under Queen Elizabeth no more than a company of sea +adventurers. Step by step they had been forced to raise troops +and arm their ships. And now this trading company, with its +tradition of gain, found itself dealing not merely in spices and +dyes and tea and jewels, but in the revenues and territories of +princes {333} and the destinies of India. It had come to buy and +sell, and it found itself achieving a tremendous piracy. There +was no one to challenge its proceedings. Is it any wonder that +its captains and commanders and officials, nay, even its clerks +and common soldiers, came back to England loaded with spoils? + +Men under such circumstances, with a great and wealthy land at +their mercy, could not determine what they might or might not do. +It was a strange land to them, with a strange sunlight; its brown +people seemed a different race, outside their range of sympathy; +its mysterious temples sustained fantastic standards of behaviour. +Englishmen at home were perplexed when presently these generals +and officials came back to make dark accusations against each +other of extortions and cruelties. Upon Clive Parliament passed a +vote of censure. He committed suicide in 1774. In 1788 Warren +Hastings, a second great Indian administrator, was impeached and +acquitted (1792). It was a strange and unprecedented situation in +the world's history. The English Parliament found itself ruling +over a London trading company, which in its turn was dominating an +empire far greater and more populous than all the domains of the +British crown. To the bulk of the English people India was a +remote, fantastic, almost inaccessible land, to which adventurous +poor young men went out, to return after many years very rich and +very choleric old gentlemen. It was difficult for the English to +conceive what the life of these countless brown millions in the +eastern sunshine could be. Their imaginations declined the task. +India remained romantically unreal. It was impossible for the +English, therefore, to exert any effective supervision and control +over the company's proceedings. + +And while the Western European powers were thus fighting for these +fantastic overseas empires upon every ocean in the world, two +great land conquests were in progress in Asia. China had thrown +off the Mongol yoke in 1360, and flourished under the great native +dynasty of the Mings until 1644. Then the Manchus, another Mongol +people, reconquered China and remained masters of China until +1912. Meanwhile Russia was pushing East and growing to greatness +in the world's affairs. The rise of this great central power of +the old world, which is neither altogether of the East nor {334} +altogether of the West, is one of the utmost importance to our +human destiny. Its expansion is very largely due to the +appearance of a Christian steppe people, the Cossacks, who formed +a barrier between the feudal agriculture of Poland and Hungary to +the west and the Tartar to the east. The Cossacks were the wild +east of Europe, and in many ways not unlike the wild west of the +United States in the middle nineteenth century. All who had made +Russia too hot to hold them, criminals as well as the persecuted +innocent, rebellious serfs, religious secretaries, thieves, +vagabonds, murderers, sought asylum in the southern steppes and +there made a fresh start and fought for life and freedom against +Pole, Russian and Tartar alike. Doubtless fugitives from the +Tartars to the east also contributed to the Cossack mixture. +Slowly these border folk were incorporated in the Russian imperial +service, much as the highland clans of Scotland were converted +into regiments by the British government. New lands were offered +them in Asia. They became a weapon against the dwindling power of +the Mongolian nomads, first in Turkestan and then across Siberia +as far as the Amur. + +The decay of Mongol energy in the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries is very difficult to explain. Within two or three +centuries from the days of Jengis and Timurlane Central Asia had +relapsed from a period of world ascendancy to extreme political +impotence. Changes of climate, unrecorded pestilences, infections +of a malarial type, may have played their part in this +recession--which may be only a temporary recession measured by the +scale of universal history--of the Central Asian peoples. Some +authorities think that the spread of Buddhist teaching from China +also had a pacifying influence upon them. At any rate, by the +sixteenth century the Mongol, Tartar and Turkish peoples were no +longer pressing outward, but were being invaded, subjugated and +pushed back both by Christian Russia in the west and by China in +the east. + +All through the seventeenth century the Cossacks were spreading +eastward from European Russia, and settling wherever they found +agricultural conditions. Cordons of forts and stations formed a +moving frontier to these settlements to the south, where the +Turkomans were still strong and active; to the north-east, +however, Russia had no frontier until she reached right to the +Pacific .... + + + + +{335} + +LIV + +THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE + + +The third quarter of the eighteenth century thus saw the +remarkable and unstable spectacle of a Europe divided against +itself, and no longer with any unifying political or religious +idea, yet through the immense stimulation of men's imaginations by +the printed book, the printed map, and the opportunity of the new +ocean-going shipping, able in a disorganized and contentious +manner to dominate all the coasts of the world. It was a +planless, incoherent ebullition of enterprise due to temporary and +almost accidental advantages over the rest of mankind. By virtue +of these advantages this new and still largely empty continent of +America was peopled mainly from Western European sources, and +South Africa and Australia and New Zealand marked down as +prospective homes for a European population. + +The motive that had sent Columbus to America and Vasco da Gama to +India was the perennial first motive of all sailors since the +beginning of things--trade. But while in the already populous and +productive East the trade motive remained dominant, and the +European settlements remained trading settlements from which the +European inhabitants hoped to return home to spend their money, +the Europeans in America, dealing with communities at a very much +lower level of productive activity, found a new inducement for +persistence in the search for gold and silver. Particularly did +the mines of Spanish America yield silver. The Europeans had to +go to America not simply as armed merchants but as prospectors, +miners, searchers after natural products, and presently as +planters. In the north they sought furs. Mines and plantations +necessitated settlements. They obliged people to set up permanent +overseas homes. Finally in some cases, as when the English +Puritans went to New England in the early seventeenth {336} +century to escape religious persecution, when in the eighteenth +Oglethorpe sent people from the English debtors' prisons to +Georgia, and when in the end of the eighteenth the Dutch sent +orphans to the Cape of Good Hope, the Europeans frankly crossed +the seas to find new homes for good. In the nineteenth century, +and especially after the coming of the steamship, the stream of +European emigration to the new empty lands of America and +Australia rose for some decades to the scale of a great migration. + +So there grew up permanent overseas populations of Europeans, and +the European culture was transplanted to much larger areas than +those in which it had been developed. These new communities +bringing a ready-made civilization with them to these new lands +grew up, as it were, unplanned and unperceived; the statecraft of +Europe did not foresee them, and was unprepared with any ideas +about their treatment. The politicians and ministers of Europe +continued to regard them as essentially expeditionary +establishments, sources of revenue, "possessions" and +"dependencies," long after their peoples had developed a keen +sense of their separate social life. And also they continued to +treat them as helplessly subject to the mother country long after +the population had spread inland out of reach of any effectual +punitive operations from the sea. + +Because until right into the nineteenth century, it must be +remembered, the link of all these overseas empires was the +oceangoing sailing ship. On land the swiftest thing was still the +horse, and the cohesion and unity of political systems on land was +still limited by the limitations of horse communications. + +Now at the end of the third quarter of the eighteenth century the +northern two-thirds of North America was under the British crown. +France had abandoned America. Except for Brazil, which was +Portuguese, and one or two small islands and areas in French, +British, Danish and Dutch hands, Florida, Louisiana, California +and all America to the south was Spanish. It was the British +colonies south of Maine and Lake Ontario that first demonstrated +the inadequacy of the sailing ship to hold overseas populations +together in one political system. + +These British colonies were very miscellaneous in their origin and +character. There were French, Swedish and Dutch settlements {337} +as well as British; there were British Catholics in Maryland and +British ultra-Protestants in New England, and while the New +Englanders farmed their own land and denounced slavery, the +British in Virginia and the south were planters employing a +swelling multitude of imported negro slaves. There was no natural +common unity in such states. To get from one to the other might +mean a coasting voyage hardly less tedious than the transatlantic +crossing. But the union that diverse origin and natural +conditions denied the British Americans was forced upon them by +the selfishness and stupidity of the British government in London. +They were taxed without any voice in the spending of the taxes; +their trade was sacrificed to British interests; the highly +profitable slave trade was maintained by the British government in +spite of the opposition of the Virginians +who--though quite willing to hold and use slaves--feared to be +swamped by an ever-growing barbaric black population. + +[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON] + +Britain at that time was lapsing towards an intenser form of +monarchy, and the obstinate personality of George III (1760-1820) +did much to force on a struggle between the home and the colonial +governments. + +The conflict was precipitated by legislation which favoured the +London East India Company at the expense of the American shipper. +Three cargoes of tea which were imported under the new conditions +were thrown overboard in Boston harbour by a band of men disguised +as Indians (1773). {338} Fighting only began in 1775 when the +British government attempted to arrest two of the American leaders +at Lexington near Boston. The first shots were fired in Lexington +by the British; the first fighting occurred at Concord. + +[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, NEAR BOSTON] + +So the American War of Independence began, though for more than a +year the colonists showed themselves extremely unwilling to sever +their links with the mother land. It was not until the middle of +1776 that the Congress of the insurgent states issued "The +Declaration of Independence." George Washington, who like many of +the leading colonists of the time had had a military training in +the wars against the French, was made commander-in-chief. In 1777 +a British general, General Burgoyne, in an attempt to reach New +York from Canada, was defeated at Freemans Farm and obliged to +surrender at Saratoga. In the same year the French and Spanish +declared war upon Great Britain, greatly hampering her sea +communications. A second British army under General Cornwallis +was caught in the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia and obliged to +capitulate in 1781. In 1783 peace was made in Paris, and the +Thirteen Colonies from Maine to Georgia became a union of +independent sovereign States. So the United States of America +came into existence. Canada remained loyal to the British flag. + +[Map: The United States, showing extent of settlement in 1790] + +For four years these States had only a very feeble central +government under certain Articles of Confederation, and they +seemed destined to break up into separate independent communities. +Their immediate separation was delayed by the hostility of the +British and a certain aggressiveness on the part of the French +which brought {340} home to them the immediate dangers of +division. A Constitution was drawn up and ratified in 1788 +establishing a more efficient Federal government with a President +holding very considerable powers, and the weak sense of national +unity was invigorated by a second war with Britain in 1812. +Nevertheless the area covered by the States was so wide and their +interests so diverse at that time, that--given only the means of +communication then available--a disintegration of the Union into +separate states on the European scale of size was merely a +question of time. Attendance at Washington meant a long, tedious +and insecure journey for the senators and congressmen of the +remoter districts, and the mechanical impediments to the diffusion +of a common education and a common literature and intelligence +were practically insurmountable. Forces were at work in the world +however that were to arrest the process of differentiation +altogether. Presently came the river steamboat and then the +railway and the telegraph to save the United States from +fragmentation, and weave its dispersed people together again into +the first of great modern nations. + +Twenty-two years later the Spanish colonies in America were to +follow the example of the Thirteen and break their connection with +Europe. But being more dispersed over the continent and separated +by great mountainous chains and deserts and forests and by the +Portuguese Empire of Brazil, they did not achieve a union among +themselves. They became a constellation of republican states, +very prone at first to wars among themselves and to revolutions. + +Brazil followed a rather different line towards the inevitable +separation. In 1807 the French armies under Napoleon had occupied +the mother country of Portugal, and the monarchy had fled to +Brazil. From that time on until they separated, Portugal was +rather a dependency of Brazil than Brazil of Portugal. In 1822 +Brazil declared itself a separate Empire under Pedro I, a son of +the Portuguese King. But the new world has never been very +favourable to monarchy. In 1889 the Emperor of Brazil was shipped +off quietly to Europe, and the United States of Brazil fell into +line with the rest of republican America. + + + + +{341} + +LV + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE RESTORATION OF MONARCHY IN FRANCE + + +Britain had hardly lost the Thirteen Colonies in America before a +profound social and political convulsion at the very heart of +Grand Monarchy was to remind Europe still more vividly of the +essentially temporary nature of the political arrangements of the +world. + +We have said that the French monarchy was the most successful of +the personal monarchies in Europe. It was the envy and model of a +multitude of competing and minor courts. But it flourished on a +basis of injustice that led to its dramatic collapse. It was +brilliant and aggressive, but it was wasteful of the life and +substance of its common people. The clergy and nobility were +protected from taxation by a system of exemption that threw the +whole burden of the state upon the middle and lower classes. The +peasants were ground down by taxation; the middle classes were +dominated and humiliated by the nobility. + +In 1787 this French monarchy found itself bankrupt and obliged to +call representatives of the different classes of the realm into +consultation upon the perplexities of defective income and +excessive expenditure. In 1789 the States General, a gathering of +the nobles, clergy and commons, roughly equivalent to the earlier +form of the British Parliament, was called together at Versailles. +It had not assembled since 1610. For all that time France had +been an absolute monarchy. Now the people found a means of +expressing their long fermenting discontent. Disputes immediately +broke out between the three estates, due to the resolve of the +Third Estate, the Commons, to control the Assembly. The Commons +got the better of these disputes and the States General became a +National Assembly, clearly resolved to keep the crown in order, as +the British {342} Parliament kept the British crown in order. The +king (Louis XVI) prepared for a struggle and brought up troops +from the provinces. Whereupon Paris and France revolted. + +The collapse of the absolute monarchy was very swift. The +grim-looking prison of the Bastille was stormed by the people of +Paris, and the insurrection spread rapidly throughout France. In +the east and north-west provinces many chateaux belonging to the +nobility were burnt by the peasants, their title-deeds carefully +destroyed, and the owners murdered or driven away. In a month the +ancient and decayed system of the aristocratic order had +collapsed. Many of the leading princes and courtiers of the +queen's party fled abroad. A provisional city government was set +up in Paris and in most of the other large cities, and a new armed +force, the National Guard, a force designed primarily and plainly +to resist the forces of the crown, was brought into existence by +these municipal bodies. The National Assembly found itself called +upon to create a new political and social system for a new age. + +It was a task that tried the powers of that gathering to the +utmost. It made a great sweep of the chief injustices of the +absolutist regime; it abolished tax exemptions, serfdom, +aristocratic titles and privileges and sought to establish a +constitutional monarchy in Paris. The king abandoned Versailles +and its splendours and kept a diminished state in the palace of +the Tuileries in Paris. + +For two years it seemed that the National Assembly might struggle +through to an effective modernized government. Much of its work +was sound and still endures, if much was experimental and had to +be undone. Much was ineffective. There was a clearing up of the +penal code; torture, arbitrary imprisonment and persecutions for +heresy were abolished. The ancient provinces of France, Normandy, +Burgundy and the like gave place to eighty departments. Promotion +to the highest ranks in the army was laid open to men of every +class. An excellent and simple system of law courts was set up, +but its value was much vitiated by having the judges appointed by +popular election for short periods of time. This made the crowd a +sort of final court of appeal, and the judges, like the members of +the Assembly, were forced to play to the gallery. And the whole +vast property of the church was seized and administered {343} by +the state; religious establishments not engaged in education or +works of charity were broken up, and the salaries of the clergy +made a charge upon the nation. This in itself was not a bad thing +for the lower clergy in France, who were often scandalously +underpaid in comparison with the richer dignitaries. But in +addition the choice of priests and bishops was made elective, +which struck at the very root idea of the Roman Church, which +centred everything upon the Pope, and in which all authority is +from above downward. Practically the National Assembly wanted at +one blow to make the church in France Protestant, in organization +if not in doctrine. Everywhere there were disputes and conflicts +between the state priests created by the National Assembly and the +recalcitrant (non-juring) priests who were loyal to Rome. + +In 1791 the experiment of Constitutional monarchy in France was +brought to an abrupt end by the action of the king and queen, +working in concert with their aristocratic and monarchist friends +abroad. Foreign armies gathered on the Eastern frontier and one +night in June the king and queen and their children slipped away +from the Tuileries and fled to join the foreigners and the +aristocratic exiles. They were caught at Varennes and brought +back to Paris, and an France flamed up into a passion of patriotic +republicanism. A Republic was proclaimed, open war with Austria +and Prussia ensued, and the king was tried and executed (January, +1793) on the model already set by England, for treason to his +people. + +And now followed a strange phase in the history of the French +people. There arose a great flame of enthusiasm for France and +the Republic. There was to be an end to compromise at home and +abroad; at home royalists and every form of disloyalty were to be +stamped out; abroad France was to be the protector and helper of +all revolutionaries. All Europe, all the world, was to become +Republican. The youth of France poured into the Republican +armies; a new and wonderful song spread through the land, a song +that still warms the blood like wine, the Marseillaise. Before +that chant and the leaping columns of French bayonets and their +enthusiastically served guns the foreign armies rolled back; +before the end of 1792 the French armies had gone far beyond the +utmost achievements of Louis XIV; everywhere they stood on {344} +foreign soil. They were in Brussels, they had overrun Savoy, they +had raided to Mayence; they had seized the Scheldt from Holland. +Then the French Government did an unwise thing. It had been +exasperated by the expulsion of its representative from England +upon the execution of Louis, and it declared war against England. +It was an unwise thing to do, because the revolution which had +given France a new enthusiastic infantry and a brilliant artillery +released from its aristocratic officers and many cramping +conditions had destroyed the discipline of the navy, and the +English were supreme upon the sea. And this provocation united +all England against France, whereas there had been at first a very +considerable liberal movement in Great Britain in sympathy with +the revolution. + +[Illustration: THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI] + +Of the fight that France made in the next few years against a +European coalition we cannot tell in any detail. She drove the +Austrians for ever out of Belgium, and made Holland a republic. +The Dutch fleet, frozen in the Texel, surrendered to a handful of +{345} cavalry without firing its guns. For some time the French +thrust towards Italy was hung up, and it was only in 1796 that a +new general, Napoleon Bonaparte, led the ragged and hungry +republican armies in triumph across Piedmont to Mantua and Verona. +Says C. F. Atkinson, [7] "What astonished the Allies most of all +was the number and the velocity of the Republicans. These +improvised armies had in fact nothing to delay them. Tents were +unprocurable for want of money, untransportable for want of the +enormous number of wagons that would have been required, and also +unnecessary, for the discomfort that would have caused wholesale +desertion in professional armies was cheerfully borne by the men +of 1793-94. Supplies for armies of then unheard-of size could +not be carried in convoys, and the French soon became familiar +with 'living on the country.' Thus 1793 saw the birth of the +modern system of war--rapidity of movement, full development of +national strength, bivouacs, requisitions and force as against +cautious manoeuvring, small professional armies, tents and full +rations, and chicane. The first represented the +decision-compelling spirit, the second the spirit of risking +little to gain a little ... ." + +And while these ragged hosts of enthusiasts were chanting the +Marseillaise and fighting for _la France_, manifestly never quite +clear in their minds whether they were looting or liberating the +countries into which they poured, the republican enthusiasm in +Paris was spending itself in a far less glorious fashion. The +revolution was now under the sway of a fanatical leader, +Robespierre. This man is difficult to judge; he was a man of poor +physique, naturally timid, and a prig. But he had that most +necessary gift for power, faith. He set himself to save the +Republic as he conceived it, and he imagined it could be saved by +no other man than he. So that to keep in power was to save the +Republic. The living spirit of the Republic, it seemed, had +sprung from a slaughter of royalists and the execution of the +king. There were insurrections; one in the west, in the district +of La Vendée, where the people rose against the conscription and +against the dispossession of the orthodox clergy, and were led by +noblemen and priests; one in the south, where Lyons and Marseilles +had risen and the royalists of Toulon {346} had admitted an +English and Spanish garrison. To which there seemed no more +effectual reply than to go on killing royalists. + +The Revolutionary Tribunal went to work, and a steady slaughtering +began. The invention of the guillotine was opportune to this +mood. The queen was guillotined, most of Robespierre's +antagonists were guillotined, atheists who argued that there was +no Supreme Being were guillotined; day by day, week by week, this +infernal new machine chopped off heads and more heads and more. +The reign of Robespierre lived, it seemed, on blood; and needed +more and more, as an opium-taker needs more and more opium. + +[Illustration: THE EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE, +OCTOBER 16, 1793] + +Finally in the summer of 1794 Robespierre himself was overthrown +and guillotined. He was succeeded by a Directory of five men +which carried on the war of defence abroad and held France +together at home for five years. Their reign formed a curious +interlude in this history of violent changes. They took things +{347} as they found them. The propagandist zeal of the revolution +carried the French armies into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, +south Germany and north Italy. Everywhere kings were expelled and +republics set up. But such propagandist zeal as animated the +Directorate did not prevent the looting of the treasures of the +liberated peoples to relieve the financial embarrassment of the +French Government. Their wars became less and less the holy wars +of freedom, and more and more like the aggressive wars of the +ancient regime. The last feature of Grand Monarchy that France +was disposed to discard was her tradition of foreign policy. One +discovers it still as vigorous under the Directorate as if there +had been no revolution. + +Unhappily for France and the world a man arose who embodied in its +intensest form this national egotism of the French. He gave that +country ten years of glory and the humiliation of a final defeat. +This was that same Napoleon Bonaparte who had led the armies of +the Directory to victory in Italy. + +Throughout the five years of the Directorate he had been scheming +and working for self-advancement. Gradually he clambered to +supreme power. He was a man of severely limited understanding but +of ruthless directness and great energy. He had begun life as an +extremist of the school of Robespierre; he owed his first +promotion to that side; but he had no real grasp of the new forces +that were working in Europe. His utmost political imagination +carried him to a belated and tawdry attempt to restore the Western +Empire. He tried to destroy the remains of the old Holy Roman +Empire, intending to replace it by a new one centring upon Paris. +The Emperor in Vienna ceased to be the Holy Roman Emperor and +became simply Emperor of Austria. Napoleon divorced his French +wife in order to marry an Austrian princess. + +He became practically monarch of France as First Consul in 1799, +and he made himself Emperor of France in 1804 in direct imitation +of Charlemagne. He was crowned by the Pope in Paris, taking the +crown from the Pope and putting it upon his own head himself as +Charlemagne had directed. His son was crowned King of Rome. + +For some years Napoleon's reign was a career of victory. He {348} +conquered most of Italy and Spain, defeated Prussia and Austria, +and dominated all Europe west of Russia. But he never won the +command of the sea from the British and his fleets sustained a +conclusive defeat inflicted by the British Admiral Nelson at +Trafalgar (1805). Spain rose against him in 1808 and a British +army under Wellington thrust the French armies slowly northward +out of the peninsula. In 1811 Napoleon came into conflict with +the Tsar Alexander I, and in 1812 he invaded Russia with a great +conglomerate army of 600,000 men, that was defeated and largely +destroyed by the Russians and the Russian winter. Germany rose +against him, Sweden turned against him. The French armies were +beaten back and at Fontainebleau Napoleon abdicated (1814). He +was exiled to Elba, returned to France for one last effort in 1815 +and was defeated by the allied British, Belgians and Prussians at +Waterloo. He died a British prisoner at St. Helena in 1821. + +The forces released by the French revolution were wasted and +finished. A great Congress of the victorious allies met at Vienna +to restore as far as possible the state of affairs that the great +storm had rent to pieces. For nearly forty years a sort of peace, +a peace of exhausted effort, was maintained in Europe. + +[7] In his article, "French Revolutionary Wars," in the +Encyclopædia Britannica. + + + + +{349} + +LVI + +THE UNEASY PEACE IN EUROPE THAT FOLLOWED THE FALL OF NAPOLEON + + +Two main causes prevented that period from being a complete social +and international peace, and prepared the way for the cycle of +wars between 1854 and 1871. The first of these was the tendency +of the royal courts concerned, towards the restoration of unfair +privilege and interference with freedom of thought and writing and +teaching. The second was the impossible system of boundaries +drawn by the diplomatists of Vienna. + +The inherent disposition of monarchy to march back towards past +conditions was first and most particularly manifest in Spain. +Here even the Inquisition was restored. Across the Atlantic the +Spanish colonies had followed the example of the United States and +revolted against the European Great Power System, when Napoleon +set his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne in 1810. The George +Washington of South America was General Bolivar. Spain was unable +to suppress this revolt, it dragged on much as the United States +War of Independence had dragged on, and at last the suggestion was +made by Austria, in accordance with the spirit of the Holy +Alliance, that the European monarch should assist Spain in this +struggle. This was opposed by Britain in Europe, but it was the +prompt action of President Monroe of the United States in 1823 +which conclusively warned off this projected monarchist +restoration. He announced that the United States would regard any +extension of the European system in the Western Hemisphere as a +hostile act. Thus arose the Monroe Doctrine, the doctrine that +there must be no extension of extra-American government in +America, which has kept the Great Power system out of America for +nearly a hundred years and permitted the new states of Spanish +America to work out their destinies along their own lines. + +{350} + +But if Spanish monarchism lost its colonies, it could at least, +under the protection of the Concert of Europe, do what it chose in +Europe. A popular insurrection in Spain was crushed by a French +army in 1823, with a mandate from a European congress, and +simultaneously Austria suppressed a revolution in Naples. + +In 1824 Louis XVIII died, and was succeeded by Charles X. Charles +set himself to destroy the liberty of the press and universities, +and to restore absolute government; the sum of a billion francs +was voted to compensate the nobles for the chateau burnings and +sequestrations of 1789. In 1830 Paris rose against this +embodiment of the ancient regime, and replaced him by Louis +Philippe, the son of that Philip, Duke of Orleans, who was +executed during the Terror. The other continental monarchies, in +face of the open approval of the revolution by Great Britain and a +strong liberal ferment in Germany and Austria, did not interfere +in this affair. After all, France was still a monarchy. This man +Louis Philippe (1830-48) remained the constitutional King of +France for eighteen years. + +Such were the uneasy swayings of the peace of the Congress of +Vienna, which were provoked by the reactionary proceedings of the +monarchists. The stresses that arose from the unscientific +boundaries planned by the diplomatists at Vienna gathered force +more deliberately, but they were even more dangerous to the peace +of mankind. It is extraordinarily inconvenient to administer +together the affairs of peoples speaking different languages and +so reading different literatures and having different general +ideas, especially if those differences are exacerbated by +religious disputes. Only some strong mutual interest, such as the +common defensive needs of the Swiss mountaineers, can justify a +close linking of peoples of dissimilar languages and faiths; and +even in Switzerland there is the utmost local autonomy. When, as +in Macedonia, populations are mixed in a patchwork of villages and +districts, the cantonal system is imperatively needed. But if the +reader will look at the map of Europe as the Congress of Vienna +drew it, he will see that this gathering seems almost as if it had +planned the maximum of local exasperation. + +It destroyed the Dutch Republic, quite needlessly, it lumped {351} +together the Protestant Dutch with the French-speaking Catholics +of the old Spanish (Austrian) Netherlands, and set up a kingdom of +the Netherlands. It handed over not merely the old republic of +Venice, but all of North Italy as far as Milan to the +German-speaking Austrians. French-speaking Savoy it combined with +pieces of Italy to restore the kingdom of Sardinia. Austria and +Hungary, already a sufficiently explosive mixture of discordant +nationalities, Germans, Hungarians, Czecho-Slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, +Roumanians, and now Italians, was made still more impossible by +confirming Austria's Polish acquisitions of 1772 and 1795. The +Catholic and republican-spirited Polish people were chiefly given +over to the less civilized rule of the +Greek-orthodox Tsar, but important districts went to Protestant +Prussia. The Tsar was also confirmed in his acquisition of the +entirely alien Finns. The very dissimilar Norwegian and Swedish +peoples were bound together under one king. Germany, the reader +will see, was left in a particularly dangerous state of muddle. +Prussia and Austria were both partly in and partly out of a German +confederation, which included a multitude of minor states. The +King of Denmark came into the German confederation by virtue of +certain German-speaking possessions in Holstein. Luxembourg was +included in the German confederation, though its ruler was also +King of the Netherlands, and though many of its peoples talked +French. + +Here was a complete disregard of the fact that the people who talk +German and base their ideas on German literature, the people who +talk Italian and base their ideas on Italian literature, and the +people who talk Polish and base their ideas on Polish literature, +will all be far better off and most helpful and least obnoxious to +the rest of mankind if they conduct their own affairs in their own +idiom within the ring-fence of their own speech. Is it any wonder +that one of the most popular songs in Germany during this period +declared that wherever the German tongue was spoken, there was the +German Fatherland! + +In 1830 French-speaking Belgium, stirred up by the current +revolution in France, revolted against its Dutch association in +the kingdom of the Netherlands. The powers, terrified at the +possibilities of a republic or of annexation to France, hurried in +to pacify {353} this situation, and gave the Belgians a monarch, +Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. There were also ineffectual +revolts in Italy and Germany in 1830, and a much more serious one +in Russian Poland. A republican government held out in Warsaw for +a year against Nicholas I (who succeeded Alexander in 1825), and +was then stamped out of existence with great violence and cruelty. +The Polish language was banned, and the Greek Orthodox church was +substituted for the Roman Catholic as the state religion .... + +==================================================================== + +{352} + +[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)] + +==================================================================== + +[Map: Europe after the Congress of Vienna] + +In 1821 there was an insurrection of the Greeks against the Turks. +For six years they fought a desperate war, while the governments +of Europe looked on. Liberal opinion protested against this +inactivity; volunteers from every European country joined the +insurgents, and at last Britain, France and Russia took joint +action. The Turkish fleet was destroyed by the French and English +at the battle of Navarino (1827), and the Tsar invaded Turkey. By +the treaty of Adrianople (1829) Greece was declared free, but +{354} she was not permitted to resume her ancient republican +traditions. A German king was found for Greece, one Prince Otto +of Bavaria, and Christian governors were set up in the Danubian +provinces (which are now Roumania) and Serbia (a part of the +Jugo-Slav region). Much blood had still to run however before +the Turk +was altogether expelled from these lands. + + + + +{355} + +LVII + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE + + +Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the +opening years of the nineteenth century, while these conflicts of +the powers and princes were going on in Europe, and the patchwork +of the treaty of Westphalia (1648) was changing kaleidoscopically +into the patchwork of the treaty of Vienna (1815), and while the +sailing ship was spreading European influence throughout the +world, a steady growth of knowledge and a general clearing up of +men's ideas about the world in which they lived was in progress in +the European and Europeanized world. + +It went on disconnected from political life, and producing +throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no striking +immediate results in political life. Nor was it affecting popular +thought very profoundly during this period. These reactions were +to come later, and only in their full force in the latter half of +the nineteenth century. It was a process that went on chiefly in +a small world of prosperous and +independent-spirited people. Without what the English call the +"private gentleman," the scientific process could not have begun +in Greece, and could not have been renewed in Europe. The +universities played a part but not a leading part in the +philosophical and scientific thought of this period. Endowed +learning is apt to be timid and conservative learning, lacking in +initiative and resistent to innovation, unless it has the spur of +contact with independent minds. + +We have already noted the formation of the Royal Society in 1662 +and its work in realizing the dream of Bacon's _New Atlantis_. +Throughout the eighteenth century there was much clearing up of +general ideas about matter and motion, much mathematical advance, +a systematic development of the use of optical glass in microscope +and telescope, a renewed energy in classificatory natural {356} +history, a great revival of anatomical science. The science of +geology--foreshadowed by Aristotle and anticipated by Leonardo da +Vinci (1452-1519)--began its great task of interpreting the Record +of the Rocks. + +[Illustration: EARLY ROLLING STOCK ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER +RAILWAY IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE RAILWAY] + +The progress of physical science reacted upon metallurgy. +Improved metallurgy, affording the possibility of a larger and +bolder handling of masses of metal and other materials, reacted +upon practical inventions. Machinery on a new scale and in a new +abundance appeared to revolutionize industry. + +[Illustration: EARLY TRAVELLING ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER +RAILWAY, 1833] + +In 1804 Trevithick adapted the Watt engine to transport and made +the first locomotive. In 1825 the first railway, between Stockton +and Darlington, was opened, and Stephenson's "Rocket," with a +thirteen-ton train, got up to a speed of forty-four miles per +hour. From 1830 onward railways multiplied. By the middle of the +century a network of railways had spread all over Europe. + +Here was a sudden change in what had long been a fixed condition +of human life, the maximum rate of land transport. After the +Russian disaster, Napoleon travelled from near Vilna to Paris in +312 hours. This was a journey of about 1,400 miles. He was +travelling with every conceivable advantage, and he averaged {357} +under 5 miles an hour. An ordinary traveller could not have done +this distance in twice the time. These were about the same +maximum rates of travel as held good between Rome and Gaul in the +first century A.D. Then suddenly came this tremendous change. +The railways reduced this journey for any ordinary traveller to +less than forty-eight hours. That is to say, they reduced the +chief European distances to about a tenth of what they had been. +They made it possible to carry out administrative work in areas +ten times as great as any that had hitherto been workable under +one administration. The full significance of that possibility in +Europe still remains to be realized. Europe is still netted in +boundaries drawn in the horse and road era. In America the +effects were immediate. To the United States of America, +sprawling westward, it meant the possibility of a continuous +access to Washington, however far the frontier travelled across +the continent. It meant unity, sustained on a scale that would +otherwise have been impossible. + +[Illustration: THE STEAMBOAT: _CLERMONT_, 1807, U.S.A.] + +The steamboat was, if anything, a little ahead of the steam engine +in its earlier phases. There was a steamboat, the _Charlotte +Dundas_, on the Firth of Clyde Canal in 1802, and in 1807 an +American {358} named Fulton had a steamer, the Clermont, with +British-built engines, upon the Hudson River above New York. The +first steamship to put to sea was also an American, the Phoenix, +which went from New York (Hoboken) to Philadelphia. So, too, was +the first ship using steam (she also had sails) to cross the +Atlantic, the Savannah (1819). All these were paddle-wheel boats +and paddle-wheel boats are not adapted to work in heavy seas. The +paddles smash too easily, and the boat is then disabled. The +screw steamship followed rather slowly. Many difficulties had to +be surmounted before the screw was a practicable thing. Not until +the middle of the century did the tonnage of steamships upon the +sea begin to overhaul that of sailing ships. After that the +evolution in sea transport was rapid. For the first time men +began to cross the seas and oceans with some certainty as to the +date of their arrival. The transatlantic crossing, which had been +an uncertain adventure of several weeks--which might stretch to +months--was accelerated, until in 1910 it was brought down, in the +case of the fastest boats, to under five days, with a practically +notifiable hour of arrival. + +Concurrently with the development of steam transport upon land and +sea a new and striking addition to the facilities of human +intercourse arose out of the investigations of Volta, Galvani and +Faraday into various electrical phenomena. The electric telegraph +came into existence in 1835. The first underseas cable was laid +in 1851 between France and England. In a few years the telegraph +system had spread over the civilized world, and news which had +hitherto travelled slowly from point to point became practically +simultaneous throughout the earth. + +These things, the steam railway and the electric telegraph, were +to the popular imagination of the middle nineteenth century the +most striking and revolutionary of inventions, but they were only +the most conspicuous and clumsy first fruits of a far more +extensive process. Technical knowledge and skill were developing +with an extraordinary rapidity, and to an extraordinary extent +measured by the progress of any previous age. Far less +conspicuous at first in everyday life, but finally far more +important, was the extension of man's power over various +structural materials. Before the middle of the eighteenth century +iron was reduced from its ores by {359} means of wood charcoal, +was handled in small pieces, and hammered and wrought into shape. +It was material for a craftsman. Quality and treatment were +enormously dependent upon the experience and sagacity of the +individual iron-worker. The largest masses of iron that could be +dealt with under those conditions amounted at most (in the +sixteenth century) to two or three tons. (There was a very +definite upward limit, therefore, to the size of cannon.) The +blast-furnace rose in the eighteenth century and developed with +the use of coke. Not before the eighteenth century do we find +rolled sheet iron (1728) and rolled rods and bars (1783). +Nasmyth's steam hammer came as late as 1838. + +The ancient world, because of its metallurgical inferiority, could +not use steam. The steam engine, even the primitive pumping +engine, could not develop before sheet iron was available. The +early engines seem to the modern eye very pitiful and clumsy bits +of ironmongery, but they were the utmost that the metallurgical +science of the time could do. As late as 1856 came the Bessemer +process, and presently (1864) the open-hearth process, in which +steel and every sort of iron could be melted, purified and cast in +a manner and upon a scale hitherto unheard of. To-day in the +electric furnace one may see tons of incandescent steel swirling +about like boiling milk in a saucepan. Nothing in the previous +practical advances of mankind is comparable in its consequences to +the complete mastery over enormous masses of steel and iron and +over their texture and quality which man has now achieved. The +railways and early engines of all sorts were the mere first +triumphs of the new metallurgical methods. Presently came ships +of iron and steel, vast bridges, and a new way of building with +steel upon a gigantic scale. Men realized too late that they had +planned their railways with far too timid a gauge, that they could +have organized their travelling with far more steadiness and +comfort upon a much bigger scale. + +Before the nineteenth century there were no ships in the world +much over 2,000 tons burthen; now there is nothing wonderful about +a 50,000-ton liner. There are people who sneer at this kind of +progress as being a progress in "mere size," but that sort of +sneering merely marks the intellectual limitations of those who +indulge in it. {360} The great ship or the steel-frame building +is not, as they imagine, a magnified version of the small ship or +building of the past; it is a thing different in kind, more +lightly and strongly built, of finer and stronger materials; +instead of being a thing of precedent and +rule-of-thumb, it is a thing of subtle and intricate calculation. +In the old house or ship, matter was dominant--the material and +its needs had to be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter had been +captured, changed, coerced. Think of the coal and iron and sand +dragged out of the banks and pits, wrenched, wrought, molten and +cast, to be flung at last, a slender glittering pinnacle of steel +and glass, six hundred feet above the crowded city! + +We have given these particulars of the advance in man's knowledge +of the metallurgy of steel and its results by way of illustration. +A parallel story could be told of the metallurgy of copper and +tin, and of a multitude of metals, nickel and aluminium to name +but two, unknown before the nineteenth century dawned. It is in +this great and growing mastery over substances, over different +sorts of glass, over rocks and plasters and the like, over colours +and textures, that the main triumphs of the mechanical revolution +have thus far been achieved. Yet we are still in the stage of the +first fruits in the matter. We have the power, but we have still +to learn how to use our power. Many of the first employments of +these gifts of science have been vulgar, tawdry, stupid or +horrible. The artist and the adaptor have still hardly begun to +work with the endless variety of substances now at their disposal. + +Parallel with this extension of mechanical possibilities the new +science of electricity grew up. It was only in the eighties of +the nineteenth century that this body of enquiry began to yield +results to impress the vulgar mind. Then suddenly came electric +light and electric traction, and the transmutation of forces, the +possibility of sending power, that could be changed into +mechanical motion or light or heat as one chose, along a copper +wire, as water is sent along a pipe, began to come through to the +ideas of ordinary people.... + +The British and French were at first the leading peoples in this +great proliferation of knowledge; but presently the Germans, who +had learnt humility under Napoleon, showed such zeal and +pertinacity in scientific enquiry as to overhaul these leaders. +British {361} science was largely the creation of Englishmen and +Scotchmen working outside the ordinary centres of erudition. + +[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SPINNING WHEEL] + +[Illustration: MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT'S SPINNING JENNY, 1769] + +The universities of Britain were at this time in a state of +educational retrogression, largely given over to a pedantic +conning of the Latin and Greek classics. French education, too, +was dominated by the classical tradition of the Jesuit schools, +and consequently it was not difficult for the Germans to organize +a body of investigators, small indeed in relation to the +possibilities of the case, but large in proportion to the little +band of British and French inventors and experimentalists. And +though this work of research and experiment was making Britain and +France the most rich and {362} powerful countries in the world, it +was not making scientific and inventive men rich and powerful. +There is a necessary unworldliness about a sincere scientific man; +he is too preoccupied with his research to plan and scheme how to +make money out of it. The economic exploitation of his +discoveries falls very easily and naturally, therefore, into the +hands of a more acquisitive type; and so we find that the crops of +rich men which every fresh phase of scientific and technical +progress has produced in Great Britain, though they have not +displayed quite the same passionate desire to insult and kill the +goose that laid the national golden eggs as the scholastic and +clerical professions, have been quite content to let that +profitable creature starve. Inventors and discoverers came by +nature, they thought, for cleverer people to profit by. + +In this matter the Germans were a little wiser. The German +"learned" did not display the same vehement hatred of the new +learning. They permitted its development. The German business +man and manufacturer again had not quite the same contempt for the +man of science as had his British competitor. Knowledge, these +Germans believed, might be a cultivated crop, responsive to +fertilizers. They did concede, therefore, a certain amount of +opportunity to the scientific mind; their public expenditure on +scientific work was relatively greater, and this expenditure was +abundantly rewarded. By the latter half of the nineteenth century +the German scientific worker had made German a necessary language +for every science student who wished to keep abreast with the +latest work in his department, and in certain branches, and +particularly in chemistry, Germany acquired a very great +superiority over her western neighbours. The scientific effort of +the sixties and seventies in Germany began to tell after the +eighties, and the German gained steadily upon Britain and France +in technical and industrial prosperity. + +A fresh phase in the history of invention opened when in the +eighties a new type of engine came into use, an engine in which +the expansive force of an explosive mixture replaced the expansive +force of steam. The light, highly efficient engines that were +thus made possible were applied to the automobile, and developed +at last to reach such a pitch of lightness and efficiency as to +render flight--{363} long known to be possible--a practical +achievement. A successful flying machine--but not a machine large +enough to take up a human body--was made by Professor Langley of +the Smithsonian Institute of Washington as early as 1897. By 1909 +the aeroplane was available for human locomotion. There had +seemed to be a pause in the increase of human speed with the +perfection of railways and automobile road traction, but with the +flying machine came fresh reductions in the effective distance +between one point of the earth's surface and another. In the +eighteenth century the distance from London to Edinburgh was an +eight days' journey; in 1918 the British Civil Air Transport +Commission reported that the journey from London to Melbourne, +halfway round the earth, would probably in a few years' time be +accomplished in that same period of eight days. + +[Illustration: AN EARLY WEAVING MACHINE] + +Too much stress must not be laid upon these striking reductions in +the time distances of one place from another. They are merely one +aspect of a much profounder and more momentous enlargement of +human possibility. The science of agriculture and agricultural +chemistry, for instance, made quite parallel advances during the +nineteenth century. Men learnt so to fertilize the soil as to +produce quadruple and quintuple the crops got from the same area +in the seventeenth century. There was a still more extraordinary +advance in medical science; the average duration of life rose, the +daily efficiency increased, the waste of life through ill-health +diminished. + +{364} + +Now here altogether we have such a change in human life as to +constitute a fresh phase of history. In a little more than a +century this mechanical revolution has been brought about. In +that time man made a stride in the material conditions of his life +vaster than he had done during the whole long interval between the +palæolithic stage and the age of cultivation, or between the days +of Pepi in Egypt and those of George III. A new gigantic material +framework for human affairs has come into existence. Clearly it +demands great readjustments of our social, economical and +political methods. But these readjustments have necessarily +waited upon the development of the mechanical revolution, and they +are still only in their opening stage +to-day. + + + + +{365} + +LVIII + +THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION + + +There is a tendency in many histories to confuse together what we +have here called the mechanical revolution, which was an entirely +new thing in human experience arising out of the development of +organized science, a new step like the invention of agriculture or +the discovery of metals, with something else, quite different in +its origins, something for which there was already an historical +precedent, the social and financial development which is called +the _industrial revolution_. The two processes were going on +together, they were constantly reacting upon each other, but they +were in root and essence different. There would have been an +industrial revolution of sorts if there had been no coal, no +steam, no machinery; but in that case it would probably have +followed far more closely upon the lines of the social and +financial developments of the later years of the Roman Republic. +It would have repeated the story of dispossessed free cultivators, +gang labour, great estates, great financial fortunes, and a +socially destructive financial process. Even the factory method +came before power and machinery. Factories were the product not +of machinery, but of the "division of labour." Drilled and +sweated workers were making such things as millinery cardboard +boxes and furniture, and colouring maps and book illustrations and +so forth, before even water-wheels had been used for industrial +purposes. There were factories in Rome in the days of Augustus. +New books, for instance, were dictated to rows of copyists in the +factories of the book-sellers. The attentive student of Defoe and +of the political pamphlets of Fielding will realize that the idea +of herding poor people into establishments to work collectively +for their living was already current in Britain before the close +of the seventeenth century. There are intimations of it even as +early as More's _Utopia_ (1516). It was a social and not a +mechanical development. + +{366} + +Up to past the middle of the eighteenth century the social and +economic history of western Europe was in fact retreading the path +along which the Roman state had gone in the last three centuries +B.C. But the political disunions of Europe, the political +convulsions against monarchy, the recalcitrance of the common folk +and perhaps also the greater accessibility of the western European +intelligence to mechanical ideas and inventions, turned the +process into quite novel directions. Ideas of human solidarity, +thanks to Christianity, were far more widely diffused in the newer +European world, political power was not so concentrated, and the +man of energy anxious to get rich turned his mind, therefore, very +willingly from the ideas of the slave and of gang labour to the +idea of mechanical power and the machine. + +The mechanical revolution, the process of mechanical invention and +discovery, was a new thing in human experience and it went on +regardless of the social, political, economic and industrial +consequences it might produce. The industrial revolution, on the +other hand, like most other human affairs, was and is more and +more profoundly changed and deflected by the constant variation in +human conditions caused by the mechanical revolution. And the +essential difference between the amassing of riches, the +extinction of small farmers and small business men, and the phase +of big finance in the latter centuries of the Roman Republic on +the one hand, and the very similar concentration of capital in the +eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the other, lies in the +profound difference in the character of labour that the mechanical +revolution was bringing about. The power of the old world was +human power; everything depended ultimately upon the driving power +of human muscle, the muscle of ignorant and subjugated men. A +little animal muscle, supplied by draft oxen, horse traction and +the like, contributed. Where a weight had to be lifted, men +lifted it; where a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out; +where a field had to be ploughed, men and oxen ploughed it; the +Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its bank of +sweating rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early +civilizations were employed in purely mechanical drudgery. At its +onset, power-driven machinery did not seem to promise any release +from such unintelligent toil. Great gangs {367} of men were +employed in excavating canals, in making railway cuttings and +embankments, and the like. The number of miners increased +enormously. But the extension of facilities and the output of +commodities increased much more. And as the nineteenth century +went on, the plain logic of the new situation asserted itself more +clearly. Human beings were no longer wanted as a source of mere +indiscriminated power. What could be done mechanically by a human +being could be done faster and better by a machine. The human +being was needed now only where choice and intelligence had to be +exercised. Human beings were wanted only as human beings. The +_drudge_, on whom all the previous civilizations had rested, the +creature of mere obedience, the man whose brains were superfluous, +had become unnecessary to the welfare of mankind. + +[Illustration: INCIDENT IN THE DAYS OF THE SLAVE TRADE] + +This was as true of such ancient industries as agriculture and +mining as it was of the newest metallurgical processes. For +ploughing, sowing and harvesting, swift machines came forward to +do the work of scores of men. The Roman civilization was built +upon cheap and degraded human beings; modern civilization is being +rebuilt upon {368} cheap mechanical power. For a hundred years +power has been getting cheaper and labour dearer. If for a +generation or so machinery has had to wait its turn in the mine, +it is simply because for a time men were cheaper than machinery. + +[Illustration: EARLY FACTORY, IN COLEBROOKDALE] + +Now here was a change-over of quite primary importance in human +affairs. The chief solicitude of the rich and of the ruler in the +old civilization had been to keep up a supply of drudges. As the +nineteenth century went on, it became more and more plain to the +intelligent directive people that the common man had now to be +something better than a drudge. He had to be educated--if only to +secure "industrial efficiency." He had to understand what he was +about. From the days of the first Christian propaganda, popular +education had been smouldering in Europe, just as it had +smouldered in Asia wherever Islam has set its foot, because of the +necessity of making the believer understand a little of the belief +by which he is {369} saved, and of enabling him to read a little +in the sacred books by which his belief is conveyed. Christian +controversies, with their competition for adherents, ploughed the +ground for the harvest of popular education. In England, for +instance, by the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, +the disputes of the sects and the necessity of catching adherents +young had produced a series of competing educational organizations +for children, the church "National" schools, the dissenting +"British" schools, and even Roman Catholic elementary schools. +The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid +advance in popular education throughout all the Westernized world. +There was no parallel advance in the education of the upper +classes--some advance, no doubt, but nothing to correspond--and so +the great gulf that had divided that world hitherto into the +readers and the non-reading mass became little more than a +slightly perceptible difference in educational level. At the back +of this process was the mechanical revolution, apparently +regardless of social conditions, but really insisting inexorably +upon the complete abolition of a totally illiterate class +throughout the world. + +The economic revolution of the Roman Republic had never been +clearly apprehended by the common people of Rome. The ordinary +Roman citizen never saw the changes through which he lived, +clearly and comprehensively as we see them. But the industrial +revolution, as it went on towards the end of the nineteenth +century, was more and more distinctly _seen_ as one whole process +by the common people it was affecting, because presently they +could read and discuss and communicate, and because they went +about and saw things as no commonalty had ever done before. + + + + +{370} + +LIX + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS + + +The institutions and customs and political ideas of the ancient +civilizations grew up slowly, age by age, no man designing and no +man foreseeing. It was only in that great century of human +adolescence, the sixth century B.C., that men began to think +clearly about their relations to one another, and first to +question and first propose to alter and rearrange the established +beliefs and laws and methods of human government. + +We have told of the glorious intellectual dawn of Greece and +Alexandria, and how presently the collapse of the slave-holding +civilizations and the clouds of religious intolerance and +absolutist government darkened the promise of that beginning. The +light of fearless thinking did not break through the European +obscurity again effectually until the fifteenth and sixteenth +centuries. We have tried to show something of the share of the +great winds of Arab curiosity and Mongol conquest in this gradual +clearing of the mental skies of Europe. And at first it was +chiefly material knowledge that increased. The first fruits of +the recovered manhood of the race were material achievements and +material power. The science of human relationship, of individual +and social psychology, of education and of economics, are not only +more subtle and intricate in themselves but also bound up +inextricably with much emotional matter. The advances made in +them have been slower and made against greater opposition. Men +will listen dispassionately to the most diverse suggestions about +stars or molecules, but ideas about our ways of life touch and +reflect upon everyone about us. + +And just as in Greece the bold speculations of Plato came before +Aristotle's hard search for fact, so in Europe the first political +enquiries of the new phase were put in the form of "Utopian" +stories, directly imitated from Plato's _Republic_ and his _Laws_. +Sir Thomas {371} More's _Utopia_ is a curious imitation of Plato +that bore fruit in a new English poor law. The Neapolitan +Campanella's _City of the Sun_ was more fantastic and less +fruitful. + +By the end of the seventeenth century we find a considerable and +growing literature of political and social science was being +produced. Among the pioneers in this discussion was John Locke, +the son of an English republican, an Oxford scholar who first +directed his attention to chemistry and medicine. His treatises +on government, toleration and education show a mind fully awake to +the possibilities of social reconstruction. Parallel with and a +little later than John Locke in England, Montesquieu +(1689-1755) in France subjected social, political and religious +institutions to a searching and fundamental analysis. He stripped +the magical prestige from the absolutist monarchy in France. He +shares with Locke the credit for clearing away many of the false +ideas that had hitherto prevented deliberate and conscious +attempts to reconstruct human society. + +The generation that followed him in the middle and later decades +of the eighteenth century was boldly speculative upon the moral +and intellectual clearings he had made. A group of brilliant +writers, the "Encyclopædists," mostly rebel spirits from the +excellent schools of the Jesuits, set themselves to scheme out a +new world (1766). Side by side with the Encyclopædists were the +Economists or Physiocrats, who were making bold and crude +enquiries into the production and distribution of food and goods. +Morelly, the author of the _Code de La Nature_, denounced the +institution of private property and proposed a communistic +organization of society. He was the precursor of that large and +various school of collectivist thinkers in the nineteenth century +who are lumped together as Socialists. + +What is Socialism? There are a hundred definitions of Socialism +and a thousand sects of Socialists. Essentially Socialism is no +more and no less than a criticism of the idea of property in the +light of the public good. We may review the history of that idea +through the ages very briefly. That and the idea of +internationalism are the two cardinal ideas upon which most of our +political life is turning. + +{372} + +[Illustration: CARL MARX] + +The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of the +species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was a +proprietor. Primitive property is what a beast will fight for. +The dog and his bone, the tigress and her lair, the roaring stag +and his herd, these are proprietorship blazing. No more +nonsensical expression is conceivable in sociology than the term +"primitive communism." The Old Man of the family tribe of early +palæolithic times insisted {373} upon his proprietorship in his +wives and daughters, in his tools, in his visible universe. If +any other man wandered into his visible universe he fought him, +and if he could he slew him. The tribe grew in the course of +ages, as Atkinson showed convincingly in his _Primal Law_, by the +gradual toleration by the Old Man of the existence of the younger +men, and of their proprietorship in the wives they captured from +outside the tribe, and in the tools and ornaments they made and +the game they slew. Human society grew by a compromise between +this one's property and that. It was a compromise with instinct +which was forced upon men by the necessity of driving some other +tribe out of its visible universe. If the hills and forests and +streams were not _your_ land or _my_ land, it was because they had +to be our land. Each of us would have preferred to have it _my_ +land, but that would not work. In that case the other fellows +would have destroyed us. Society, therefore, is from its +beginning a _mitigation of ownership_. Ownership in the beast and +in the primitive savage was far more intense a thing than it is in +the civilized world to-day. It is rooted more strongly in our +instincts than in our reason. + +In the natural savage and in the untutored man to-day there is no +limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you can fight +for, you can own; women-folk, spared captive, captured beast, +forest glade, stone-pit or what not. As the community grew, a +sort of law came to restrain internecine fighting, men developed +rough-and-ready methods of settling proprietorship. Men could own +what they were the first to make or capture or claim. It seemed +natural that a debtor who could not pay should become the property +of his creditor. Equally natural was it that after claiming a +patch of land a man should exact payments from anyone who wanted +to use it. It was only slowly, as the possibilities of organized +life dawned on men, that this unlimited property in anything +whatever began to be recognized as a nuisance. Men found +themselves born into a universe all owned and claimed, nay! they +found themselves born owned and claimed. The social struggles of +the earlier civilization are difficult to trace now, but the +history we have told of the Roman Republic shows a community +waking up to the idea that debts may become a public inconvenience +and should then be repudiated, and that the unlimited ownership of +land is also an inconvenience. We {374} find that later Babylonia +severely limited the rights of property in slaves. Finally, we +find in the teaching of that great revolutionist, Jesus of +Nazareth, such an attack upon property as had never been before. +Easier it was, he said, for a camel to go through the eye of a +needle than for the owner of great possessions to enter the +kingdom of heaven. A steady, continuous criticism of the +permissible scope of property seems to have been going on in the +world for the last twenty-five or thirty centuries. Nineteen +hundred years after Jesus of Nazareth we find all the world that +has come under the Christian teaching persuaded that there could +be no property in human beings. And also the idea that a man may +"do what he likes with his own" was very much shaken in relation +to other sorts of property. + +But this world of the closing eighteenth century was still only in +the interrogative stage in this matter. It had got nothing clear +enough, much less settled enough, to act upon. One of its primary +impulses was to protect property against the greed and waste of +kings and the exploitation of noble adventurers. It was largely +to protect private property from taxation that the French +Revolution began. But the equalitarian formulæ of the Revolution +carried it into a criticism of the very property it had risen to +protect. How can men be free and equal when numbers of them have +no ground to stand upon and nothing to eat, and the owners will +neither feed nor lodge them unless they toil? Excessively--the +poor complained. + +To which riddle the reply of one important political group was to +set about "dividing up." They wanted to intensify and +universalize property. Aiming at the same end by another route, +there were the primitive socialists--or, to be more exact, +communists--who wanted to "abolish" private property altogether. +The state (a democratic state was of course understood) was to own +all property. + +It is paradoxical that different men seeking the same ends of +liberty and happiness should propose on the one hand to make +property as absolute as possible, and on the other to put an end +to it altogether. But so it was. And the clue to this paradox is +to be found in the fact that ownership is not one thing but a +multitude of different things. + +{375} + +It was only as the nineteenth century developed that men began to +realize that property was not one simple thing, but a great +complex of ownerships of different values and consequences, that +many things (such as one's body, the implements of an artist, +clothing, toothbrushes) are very profoundly and incurably one's +personal property, and that there is a very great range of things, +railways, machinery of various sorts, homes, cultivated gardens, +pleasure boats, for example, which need each to be considered very +particularly to determine how far and under what limitations it +may come under private ownership, and how far it falls into the +public domain and may be administered and let out by the state in +the collective interest. On the practical side these questions +pass into politics, and the problem of making and sustaining +efficient state administration. They open up issues in social +psychology, and interact with the enquiries of educational +science. The criticism of property is still a vast and passionate +ferment rather than a science. On the one hand are the +Individualists, who would protect and enlarge our present freedoms +with what we possess, and on the other the Socialists who would in +many directions pool our ownerships and restrain our proprietory +acts. In practice one will find every gradation between the +extreme individualist, who will scarcely tolerate a tax of any +sort to support a government, and the communist who would deny any +possessions at all. The ordinary socialist of +to-day is what is called a collectivist; he would allow a +considerable amount of private property but put such affairs as +education, transport, mines, land-owning, most mass productions of +staple articles, and the like, into the hands of a highly +organized state. Nowadays there does seem to be a gradual +convergence of reasonable men towards a moderate socialism +scientifically studied and planned. It is realized more and more +clearly that the untutored man does not co-operate easily and +successfully in large undertakings, and that every step towards a +more complex state and every function that the state takes over +from private enterprise, necessitates a corresponding educational +advance and the organization of a proper criticism and control. +Both the press and the political methods of the contemporary state +are far too crude for any large extension of collective +activities. + +But for a time the stresses between employer and employed and +{376} particularly between selfish employers and reluctant +workers, led to a world-wide dissemination of the very harsh and +elementary form of communism which is associated with the name of +Marx. Marx based his theories on a belief that men's minds are +limited by their economic necessities, and that there is a +necessary conflict of interests in our present civilization +between the prosperous and employing classes of people and the +employed mass. With the advance in education necessitated by the +mechanical revolution, this great employed majority will become +more and more class-conscious and more and more solid in +antagonism to the (class-conscious) ruling minority. In some way +the class-conscious workers would seize power, he prophesied, and +inaugurate a new social state. The antagonism, the insurrection, +the possible revolution are understandable enough, but it does not +follow that a new social state or anything but a socially +destructive process will ensue. Put to the test in Russia, +Marxism, as we shall note later, has proved singularly uncreative. + +[Illustration: SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE] + +{377} + +Marx sought to replace national antagonism by class antagonisms; +Marxism has produced in succession a First, a Second and a Third +Workers' International. But from the starting point of modern +individualistic thought it is also possible to reach international +ideas. From the days of that great English economist, Adam Smith, +onward there has been an increasing realization that for +world-wide prosperity free and unencumbered trade about the earth +is needed. The individualist with his hostility to the state is +hostile also to tariffs and boundaries and all the restraints upon +free act and movement that national boundaries seem to justify. +It is interesting to see two lines of thought, so diverse in +spirit, so different in substance as this class-war socialism of +the Marxists and the individualistic free-trading philosophy of +the British business men of the Victorian age heading at last, in +spite of these primary differences, towards the same intimations +of a new world-wide treatment of human affairs outside the +boundaries and limitations of any existing state. The logic of +reality triumphs over the logic of theory. We begin to perceive +that from widely divergent starting points individualist theory +and socialist theory are part of a common search, a search for +more spacious social and political ideas and interpretations, upon +which men may contrive to work together, a search that began again +in Europe and has intensified as men's confidence in the ideas of +the Holy Roman Empire and in Christendom decayed, and as the age +of discovery broadened their horizons from the world of the +Mediterranean to the whole wide world. + +To bring this description of the elaboration and development of +social, economic and political ideas right down to the discussions +of the present day, would be to introduce issues altogether too +controversial for the scope and intentions of this book. But +regarding these things, as we do here, from the vast perspectives +of the student of world history, we are bound to recognize that +this reconstruction of these directive ideas in the human mind is +still an unfinished task--we cannot even estimate yet how +unfinished the task may be. Certain common beliefs do seem to be +emerging, and their influence is very perceptible upon the +political events and public acts of to-day; but at present they +are not clear enough nor convincing enough to compel men +definitely and systematically towards their realization. {378} +Men's acts waver between tradition and the new, and on the whole +they rather gravitate towards the traditional. Yet, compared with +the thought of even a brief lifetime ago, there does seem to be an +outline shaping itself of a new order in human affairs. It is a +sketchy outline, vanishing into vagueness at this point and that, +{379} and fluctuating in detail and formulæ, yet it grows +steadfastly clearer, and its main lines change less and less. + +[Illustration: CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE] + +It is becoming plainer and plainer each year that in many respects +and in an increasing range of affairs, mankind is becoming one +community, and that it is more and more necessary that in such +matters there should be a common world-wide control. For example, +it is steadily truer that the whole planet is now one economic +community, that the proper exploitation of its natural resources +demands one comprehensive direction, and that the greater power +and range that discovery has given human effort makes the present +fragmentary and contentious administration of such affairs more +and more wasteful and dangerous. Financial and monetary +expedients also become world-wide interests to be dealt with +successfully only on world-wide lines. Infectious diseases and +the increase and migrations of population are also now plainly +seen to be world-wide concerns. The greater power and range of +human activities has also made war disproportionately destructive +and disorganizing, and, even as a clumsy way of settling issues +between government and government and people and people, +ineffective. All these things clamour for controls and +authorities of a greater range and greater comprehensiveness than +any government that has hitherto existed. + +But it does not follow that the solution of these problems lies in +some super-government of all the world arising by conquest or by +the coalescence of existing governments. By analogy with existing +institutions men have thought of the Parliament of Mankind, of a +World Congress, of a President or Emperor of the Earth. Our first +natural reaction is towards some such conclusion, but the +discussion and experiences of half a century of suggestions and +attempts has on the whole discouraged belief in that first obvious +idea. Along that line to world unity the resistances are too +great. The drift of thought seems now to be in the direction of a +number of special committees or organizations, with world-wide +power delegated to them by existing governments in this group of +matters or that, bodies concerned with the waste or development of +natural wealth, with the equalization of labour conditions, with +world peace, with currency, population and health, and so forth. + +{380} + +The world may discover that all its common interests are being +managed as one concern, while it still fails to realize that a +world government exists. But before even so much human unity is +attained, before such international arrangements can be put above +patriotic suspicions and jealousies, it is necessary that the +common mind of the race should be possessed of that idea of human +unity, and that the idea of mankind as one family should be a +matter of universal instruction and understanding. + +For a score of centuries or more the spirit of the great universal +religions has been struggling to maintain and extend that idea of +a universal human brotherhood, but to this day the spites, angers +and distrusts of tribal, national and racial friction obstruct, +and successfully obstruct, the broader views and more generous +impulses which would make every man the servant of all mankind. +The idea of human brotherhood struggles now to possess the human +soul, just as the idea of Christendom struggled to possess the +soul of Europe in the confusion and disorder of the sixth and +seventh centuries of the Christian era. The dissemination and +triumph of such ideas must be the work of a multitude of devoted +and undistinguished missionaries, and no contemporary writer can +presume to guess how far such work has gone or what harvest it may +be preparing. + +Social and economic questions seem to be inseparably mingled with +international ones. The solution in each case lies in an appeal +to that same spirit of service which can enter and inspire the +human heart. The distrust, intractability and egotism of nations +reflects and is reflected by the distrust, intractability and +egotism of the individual owner and worker in the face of the +common good. Exaggerations of possessiveness in the individual +are parallel and of a piece with the clutching greed of nations +and emperors. They are products of the same instinctive +tendencies, and the same ignorances and traditions. +Internationalism is the socialism of nations. No one who has +wrestled with these problems can feel that there yet exists a +sufficient depth and strength of psychological science and a +sufficiently planned-out educational method and organization for +any real and final solution of these riddles of human intercourse +and cooperation. We are as incapable of planning a really +effective peace organization of the world to-day as were men in +1820 to plan an {381} electric railway system, but for all we know +the thing is equally practicable and may be as nearly at hand. + +No man can go beyond his own knowledge, no thought can reach +beyond contemporary thought, and it is impossible for us to guess +or foretell how many generations of humanity may have to live in +war and waste and insecurity and misery before the dawn of the +great peace to which all history seems to be pointing, peace in +the heart and peace in the world, ends our night of wasteful and +aimless living. Our proposed solutions are still vague and crude. +Passion and suspicion surround them. A great task of intellectual +reconstruction is going on, it is still incomplete, and our +conceptions grow clearer and more exact--slowly, rapidly, it is +hard to tell which. But as they grow clearer they will gather +power over the minds and imaginations of men. Their present lack +of grip is due to their lack of assurance and exact rightness. +They are misunderstood because they are variously and confusingly +presented. But with precision and certainty the new vision of the +world will gain compelling power. It may presently gain power +very rapidly. And a great work of educational reconstruction will +follow logically and necessarily upon that clearer understanding. + + + + +{382} + +LX + +THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES + + +The region of the world that displayed the most immediate and +striking results from the new inventions in transport was North +America. Politically the United States embodied, and its +constitution crystallized, the liberal ideas of the middle +eighteenth century. It dispensed with state-church or crown, it +would have no titles, it protected property very jealously as a +method of freedom, and--the exact practice varied at first in the +different states--it gave nearly every adult male citizen a vote. +Its method of voting was barbarically crude, and as a consequence +its political life fell very soon under the control of highly +organized party machines, but that did not prevent the newly +emancipated population developing an energy, enterprise and public +spirit far beyond that of any other contemporary population. + +Then came that acceleration of locomotion to which we have already +called attention. It is a curious thing that America, which owes +most to this acceleration in locomotion, has felt it least. The +United States have taken the railway, the river steamboat, the +telegraph and so forth as though they were a natural part of their +growth. They were not. These things happened to come along just +in time to save American unity. The United States of to-day were +made first by the river steamboat, and then by the railway. +Without these things, the present United States, this vast +continental nation, would have been altogether impossible. The +westward flow of population would have been far more sluggish. It +might never have crossed the great central plains. It took nearly +two hundred years for effective settlement to reach from the coast +to Missouri, much less than halfway across the continent. The +first state established beyond the river was the steamboat state +of Missouri in 1821. But the rest of the distance to the Pacific +was done in a few decades. + +{383} + +If we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to +show a map of North America year by year from 1600 onward, with +little dots to represent hundreds of people, each dot a hundred, +and stars to represent cities of a hundred thousand people. + +For two hundred years the reader would see that stippling creeping +slowly along the coastal districts and navigable waters, spreading +still more gradually into Indiana, Kentucky and so forth. Then +somewhere about 1810 would come a change. Things would get more +lively along the river courses. The dots would be multiplying and +spreading. That would be the steamboat. The pioneer dots would +be spreading soon over Kansas and Nebraska from a number of +jumping-off places along the great rivers. + +Then from about 1850 onward would come the black lines of the +railways, and after that the little black dots would not simply +creep but run. They would appear now so rapidly, it would be +almost as though they were being put on by some sort of spraying +machine. And suddenly here and then there would appear the first +stars to indicate the first great cities of a hundred thousand +people. First one or two and then a multitude of cities--each +like a knot in the growing net of the railways. + +The growth of the United States is a process that has no precedent +in the world's history; it is a new kind of occurrence. Such a +community could not have come into existence before, and if it +had, without railways it would certainly have dropped to pieces +long before now. Without railways or telegraph it would be far +easier to administer California from Pekin than from Washington. +But this great population of the United States of America has not +only grown outrageously; it has kept uniform. Nay, it has become +more uniform. The man of San Francisco is more like the man of +New York to-day than the man of Virginia was like the man of New +England a century ago. And the process of assimilation goes on +unimpeded. The United States is being woven by railway, by +telegraph, more and more into one vast unity, speaking, thinking +and acting harmoniously with itself. Soon aviation will be +helping in the work. + +This great community of the United States is an altogether new +thing in history. There have been great empires before with +populations exceeding 100 millions, but these were associations of +divergent {384} peoples; there has never been one single people on +this scale before. We want a new term for this new thing. We +call the United States a country just as we call France or Holland +a country. But the two things are as different as an automobile +and a one-horse shay. They are the creations of different periods +and different conditions; they are going to work at a different +pace and in an entirely different way. The United States in scale +and possibility is halfway between a European state and a United +States of all the world. + +But on the way to this present greatness and security the American +people passed through one phase of dire conflict. The river +steamboats, the railways, the telegraph, and their associate +facilities, did not come soon enough to avert a deepening conflict +of interests and ideas between the southern and northern states of +the Union. The former were slave-holding states; the latter, +states in which all men were free. The railways and steamboats at +first did but bring into sharper conflict an already established +difference between the two sections of the United States. The +increasing unification due to the new means of transport made the +question whether the southern spirit or the northern should +prevail an ever more urgent one. There was little possibility of +compromise. The northern spirit was free and individualistic; the +southern made for great estates and a conscious gentility ruling +over a dusky subject multitude. + +Every new territory that was organized into a state as the tide of +population swept westward, every new incorporation into the fast +growing American system, became a field of conflict between the +two ideas, whether it should become a state of free citizens, or +whether the estate and slavery system should prevail. From 1833 +an American anti-slavery society was not merely resisting the +extension of the institution but agitating the whole country for +its complete abolition. The issue flamed up into open conflict +over the admission of Texas to the Union. Texas had originally +been a part of the republic of Mexico, but it was largely +colonized by Americans from the slave-holding states, and it +seceded from Mexico, established its independence in 1835, and was +annexed to the United States in 1844. Under the Mexican law +slavery had been forbidden in Texas, but now the South claimed +Texas for slavery and got it. + +{385} + +Meanwhile the development of ocean navigation was bringing a +growing swarm of immigrants from Europe to swell the spreading +population of the northern states, and the raising of Iowa, +Wisconsin, Minnesota and Oregon, all northern farm lands, to state +level, gave the anti-slavery North the possibility of predominance +both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The +cotton-growing South, irritated by the growing threat of the +Abolitionist movement, and fearing this predominance in Congress, +began to talk of secession from the Union. Southerners began to +dream of annexations to the south of them in Mexico and the West +Indies, and of great slave state, detached from the North and +reaching to Panama. + +[Illustration: ONE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RIVER STEAMERS] + +The return of Abraham Lincoln as an anti-extension President in +1860 decided the South to split the Union. South Carolina passed +an "ordinance of secession" and prepared for war. Mississippi, +Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas joined her, and a +convention met at Montgomery in Alabama, elected Jefferson Davis +president of the "Confederated States" of America, and adopted a +constitution specifically upholding "the institution of negro +slavery." + +{386} + +Abraham Lincoln was, it chanced, a man entirely typical of the new +people that had grown up after the War of Independence. His early +years had been spent as a drifting particle in the general +westward flow of the population. He was born in Kentucky (1809), +was taken to Indiana as a boy and later on to Illinois. Life was +rough in the backwoods of Indiana in those days; the house was a +mere log cabin in the wilderness, and his schooling was poor and +casual. But his mother taught him to read early, and he became a +voracious reader. At seventeen he was a big athletic youth, a +great wrestler and runner. He worked for a time as clerk in a +store, went into business as a storekeeper with a drunken partner, +and contracted debts that he did not fully pay off for fifteen +years. In 1834, when he was still only five and twenty, he was +elected member of the House of Representatives for the State of +Illinois. In Illinois particularly the question of slavery flamed +because the great leader of the party for the extension of slavery +in the national Congress was Senator Douglas of Illinois. Douglas +was a man of great ability and prestige, and for some years +Lincoln fought against him by speech and pamphlet, rising steadily +to the position of his most formidable and finally victorious +antagonist. Their culminating struggle was the presidential +campaign of 1860, and on the fourth of March, 1861, Lincoln was +inaugurated President, with the southern states already in active +secession from the rule of the federal government at Washington, +and committing acts of war. + +This civil war in America was fought by improvised armies that +grew steadily from a few score thousands to hundreds of +thousands--until at last the Federal forces exceeded a million +men; it was fought over a vast area between New Mexico and the +eastern sea, Washington and Richmond were the chief objectives. +It is beyond our scope here to tell of the mounting energy of +that epic struggle that rolled to and fro across the hills and +woods of Tennessee and Virginia and down the Mississippi. There +was a terrible waste and killing of men. Thrust was followed by +counter thrust; hope gave way to despondency, and returned and was +again disappointed. Sometimes Washington seemed within the +Confederate grasp; again the Federal armies were driving towards +Richmond. The Confederates, outnumbered and far poorer in +resources, fought under {387} a general of supreme ability, +General Lee. The generalship of the Union was far inferior. +Generals were dismissed, new generals appointed; until at last, +under Sherman and Grant, came victory over the ragged and +depleted South. In October, 1864, a Federal army under Sherman +broke through the Confederate left and marched down from Tennessee +through Georgia to the coast, right across the Confederate +country, and then turned up through the {388} Carolinas, coming in +upon the rear of the Confederate armies. Meanwhile Grant held Lee +before Richmond until Sherman closed on him. On April 9th, 1865, +Lee and his army surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and within +a month all the remaining secessionist armies had laid down their +arms and the Confederacy was at an end. + +[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN] + +This four years' struggle had meant an enormous physical and moral +strain for the people of the United States. The principle of +state autonomy was very dear to many minds, and the North seemed +in effect to be forcing abolition upon the South. In the border +states brothers and cousins, even fathers and sons, would take +opposite sides and find themselves in antagonistic armies. The +North felt its cause a righteous one, but for great numbers of +people it was not a full-bodied and unchallenged righteousness. +But for Lincoln there was no doubt. He was a clear-minded man in +the midst of much confusion. He stood for union; he stood for the +wide peace of America. He was opposed to slavery, but slavery he +held to be a secondary issue; his primary purpose was that the +United States should not be torn into two contrasted and jarring +fragments. + +When in the opening stages of the war Congress and the Federal +generals embarked upon a precipitate emancipation, Lincoln opposed +and mitigated their enthusiasm. He was for emancipation by stages +and with compensation. It was only in January, 1865, that the +situation had ripened to a point when Congress could propose to +abolish slavery for ever by a constitutional amendment, and the +war was already over before this amendment was ratified by the +states. + +As the war dragged on through 1862 and 1863, the first passions +and enthusiasms waned, and America learnt all the phases of war +weariness and war disgust. The President found himself with +defeatists, traitors, dismissed generals, tortuous party +politicians, and a doubting and fatigued people behind him and +uninspired generals and depressed troops before him; his chief +consolation must have been that Jefferson Davis at Richmond could +be in little better case. The English government misbehaved, and +permitted the Confederate agents in England to launch and man +three swift privateer ships--the _Alabama_ is the best remembered +of them--which {389} chased United States shipping from the seas. +The French army in Mexico was trampling the Monroe Doctrine in the +dirt. Came subtle proposals from Richmond to drop the war, leave +the issues of the war for subsequent discussion, and turn, Federal +and Confederate in alliance, upon the French in Mexico. But +Lincoln would not listen to such proposals unless the supremacy of +the Union was maintained. The Americans might do such things as +one people but not as two. + +He held the United States together through long weary months of +reverses and ineffective effort, through black phases of division +and failing courage; and there is no record that he ever faltered +from his purpose. There were times when there was nothing to be +done, when he sat in the White House silent and motionless, a grim +monument of resolve; times when he relaxed his mind by jesting and +broad anecdotes. + +He saw the Union triumphant. He entered Richmond the day after +its surrender, and heard of Lee's capitulation. He returned to +Washington, and on April 11th made his last public address. His +theme was reconciliation and the reconstruction of loyal +government in the defeated states. On the evening of April 14th +he went to Ford's theatre in Washington, and as he sat looking at +the stage, he was shot in the back of the head and killed by an +actor named Booth who had some sort of grievance against him, and +who had crept into the box unobserved. But Lincoln's work was +done; the Union was saved. + +At the beginning of the war there was no railway to the Pacific +coast; after it the railways spread like a swiftly growing plant +until now they have clutched and held and woven all the vast +territory of the United States into one indissoluble mental and +material unity--the greatest real community--until the common folk +of China have learnt to read--in the world. + + + + +{390} + +LXI + +THE RISE OF GERMANY TO PREDOMINANCE IN EUROPE + + +We have told how after the convulsion of the French Revolution and +the Napoleonic adventure, Europe settled down again for a time to +an insecure peace and a sort of modernized revival of the +political conditions of fifty years before. Until the middle of +the century the new facilities in the handling of steel and the +railway and steamship produced no marked political consequences. +But the social tension due to the development of urban +industrialism grew. France remained a conspicuously uneasy +country. The revolution of 1830 was followed by another in 1848. +Then Napoleon III, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, became first +President, and then (in 1852) Emperor. + +He set about rebuilding Paris, and changed it from a picturesque +seventeenth century insanitary city into the spacious Latinized +city of marble it is to-day. He set about rebuilding France, and +made it into a brilliant-looking modernized imperialism. He +displayed a disposition to revive that competitiveness of the +Great Powers which had kept Europe busy with futile wars during +the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Tsar Nicholas I of +Russia (1825-1856) was also becoming aggressive and pressing +southward upon the Turkish Empire with his eyes on Constantinople. + +After the turn of the century Europe broke out into a fresh cycle +of wars. They were chiefly "balance-of-power" and ascendancy +wars. England, France and Sardinia assailed Russia in the Crimean +war in defence of Turkey; Prussia (with Italy as an ally) and +Austria fought for the leadership of Germany, France liberated +North Italy from Austria at the price of Savoy, and Italy +gradually unified itself into one kingdom. Then Napoleon III was +so ill advised as to attempt adventures in Mexico, during the +American Civil War; he set up an Emperor Maximilian there and +abandoned him hastily to {391} his fate--he was shot by the +Mexicans--when the victorious Federal Government showed its teeth. + +[Map: Map of Europe, 1848-1871] + +In 1870 came a long-pending struggle for predominance in Europe +between France and Prussia. Prussia had long foreseen and +prepared for this struggle, and France was rotten with financial +corruption. Her defeat was swift and dramatic. The Germans +invaded France in August, one great French army under the Emperor +capitulated at Sedan in September, another surrendered in October +at Metz, and in January 1871, Paris, after a siege and +bombardment, fell into German hands. Peace was signed at +Frankfort surrendering the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the +Germans. {392} Germany, excluding Austria, was unified as an +empire, and the King of Prussia was added to the galaxy of +European Cæsars, as the German Emperor. + +For the next forty-three years Germany was the leading power upon +the European continent. There was a Russo-Turkish war in 1877-8, +but thereafter, except for certain readjustments in the Balkans, +European frontiers remained uneasily stable for thirty years. + + + + +{393} + +LXII + +THE NEW OVERSEAS EMPIRES OF STEAMSHIP AND RAILWAY + + +The end of the eighteenth century was a period of disrupting +empires and disillusioned expansionists. The long and tedious +journey between Britain and Spain and their colonies in America +prevented any really free coming and going between the home land +and the daughter lands, and so the colonies separated into new and +distinct communities, with distinctive ideas and interests and +even modes of speech. As they grew they strained more and more at +the feeble and uncertain link of shipping that had joined them. +Weak trading-posts in the wilderness, like those of France in +Canada, or trading establishments in great alien communities, like +those of Britain in India, might well cling for bare existence to +the nation which gave them support and a reason for their +existence. That much and no more seemed to many thinkers in the +early part of the nineteenth century to be the limit set to +overseas rule. In 1820 the sketchy great European "empires" +outside of Europe that had figured so bravely in the maps of the +middle eighteenth century, had shrunken to very small dimensions. +Only the Russian sprawled as large as ever across Asia. + +The British Empire in 1815 consisted of the thinly populated +coastal river and lake regions of Canada, and a great hinterland +of wilderness in which the only settlements as yet were the +fur-trading stations of the Hudson Bay Company, about a third of +the Indian peninsula, under the rule of the East India Company, +the coast districts of the Cape of Good Hope inhabited by blacks +and rebellious-spirited Dutch settlers; a few trading stations on +the coast of West Africa, the rock of Gibraltar, the island of +Malta, Jamaica, a few minor slave-labour possessions in the West +Indies, British Guiana in South America, and, on the other side of +the world, two dumps for convicts at Botany Bay in Australia and +in Tasmania. Spain retained Cuba and a few settlements in the +Philippine Islands. {394} Portugal had in Africa some vestiges of +her ancient claims. Holland had various islands and possessions +in the East Indies and Dutch Guiana, and Denmark an island or so +in the West Indies. France had one or two West Indian islands and +French Guiana. This seemed to be as much as the European powers +needed, or were likely to acquire of the rest of the world. Only +the East India Company showed any spirit of expansion. + +While Europe was busy with the Napoleonic wars the East India +Company, under a succession of Governors-General, was playing much +the same role in India that had been played before by Turkoman and +such-like invaders from the north. And after the peace of Vienna +it went on, levying its revenues, making wars, sending ambassadors +to Asiatic powers, a quasi-independent state, however, with a +marked disposition to send wealth westward. + +We cannot tell here in any detail how the British Company made its +way to supremacy sometimes as the ally of this power, sometimes as +that, and finally as the conqueror of all. Its power spread to +Assam, Sind, Oudh. The map of India began to take on the outlines +familiar to the English schoolboy of to-day, a patchwork of native +states embraced and held together by the great provinces under +direct British rule. . . . + +In 1859, following upon a serious mutiny of the native troops in +India, this empire of the East India Company was annexed to the +British Crown. By an Act entitled _An Act for the Better +Government of India_, the Governor-General became a Viceroy +representing the Sovereign, and the place of the Company was taken +by a Secretary of State for India responsible to the British +Parliament. In 1877, Lord Beaconsfield, to complete the work, +caused Queen Victoria to be proclaimed Empress of India. + +Upon these extraordinary lines India and Britain are linked at the +present time. India is still the empire of the Great Mogul, but +the Great Mogul has been replaced by the "crowned republic" of +Great Britain. India is an autocracy without an autocrat. Its +rule combines the disadvantage of absolute monarchy with the +impersonality and irresponsibility of democratic officialdom. The +Indian with a complaint to make has no visible monarch to go to; +his Emperor is a golden symbol; he must circulate pamphlets in +England {395} or inspire a question in the British House of +Commons. The more occupied Parliament is with British affairs, +the less attention India will receive, and the more she will be at +the mercy of her small group of higher officials. + +[Illustration: RAILWAY BRIDGE OVER THE GORGE, VICTORIA FALLS, OF +THE ZAMBESI, SOUTHERN RHODESIA] + +Apart from India, there was no great expansion of any European +Empire until the railways and the steamships were in effective +action. A considerable school of political thinkers in Britain +was disposed to regard overseas possessions as a source of +weakness to the kingdom. The Australian settlements developed +slowly until in 1842 the discovery of valuable copper mines, and +in 1851 of gold, gave them a new importance. Improvements in +transport were also making Australian wool an increasingly +marketable commodity in Europe. {396} Canada, too, was not +remarkably progressive until 1849; it was troubled by dissensions +between its French and British inhabitants, there were several +serious revolts, and it was only in 1867 that a new constitution +creating a Federal Dominion of Canada relieved its internal +strains. It was the railway that altered the Canadian outlook. +It enabled Canada, just as it enabled the United States, to expand +westward, to market its corn and other produce in Europe, and in +spite of its swift and extensive growth, to remain in language and +sympathy and interests one community. The railway, the steamship +and the telegraph cable were indeed changing all the conditions of +colonial development. + +Before 1840, English settlements had already begun in New Zealand, +and a New Zealand Land Company had been formed to exploit the +possibilities of the island. In 1840 New Zealand also was added +to the colonial possessions of the British Crown. + +Canada, as we have noted, was the first of the British possessions +to respond richly to the new economic possibilities that the new +methods of transport were opening. Presently the republics of +South America, and particularly the Argentine Republic, began to +feel in their cattle trade and coffee growing the increased +nearness of the European market. Hitherto the chief commodities +that had attracted the European powers into unsettled and barbaric +regions had been gold or other metals, spices, ivory, or slaves. +But in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century the increase +of the European populations was obliging their governments to look +abroad for staple foods; and the growth of scientific +industrialism was creating a demand for new raw materials, fats +and greases of every kind, rubber, and other hitherto disregarded +substances. It was plain that Great Britain and Holland and +Portugal were reaping a great and growing commercial advantage +from their very considerable control of tropical and sub-tropical +products. After 1871 Germany, and presently France and later +Italy, began to look for unannexed raw-material areas, or for +Oriental countries capable of profitable modernization. + +So began a fresh scramble all over the world, except in the +American region where the Monroe Doctrine now barred such +adventures, for politically unprotected lands. + +{397} + +[Map: The British Empire in 1815] + +Close to Europe was the continent of Africa, full of vaguely known +possibilities. In 1850 it was a continent of black mystery; only +Egypt and the coast were known. Here we have no space to tell the +amazing story of the explorers and adventurers who first pierced +the African darkness, and of the political agents, administrators, +traders, settlers and scientific men who followed in their track. +Wonderful races of men like the pygmies, strange beasts like the +okapi, marvellous fruits and flowers and insects, terrible +diseases, astounding scenery of forest and mountain, enormous +inland seas and gigantic rivers and cascades were revealed; a +whole new world. Even remains (at Zimbabwe) of some unrecorded +and vanished civilization, the southward enterprise of an early +people, were discovered. Into this new world came the Europeans, +and found the rifle already there in the hands of the Arab +slave-traders, and negro life in disorder. + +By 1900, in half a century, all Africa was mapped, explored, +estimated and divided between the European powers. Little heed +was given to the welfare of the natives in this scramble. The +Arab slaver was indeed curbed rather than expelled, but the greed +for rubber, which was a wild product collected under compulsion by +the natives in the Belgian Congo, a greed exacerbated by the clash +of inexperienced European administrators with the native {398} +population, led to horrible atrocities. No European power has +perfectly clean hands in this matter. + +We cannot tell here in any detail how Great Britain got possession +of Egypt in 1883 and remained there in spite of the fact that +Egypt was technically a part of the Turkish Empire, nor how nearly +this scramble led to war between France and Great Britain in 1898, +when a certain Colonel Marchand, crossing Central Africa from the +west coast, tried at Fashoda to seize the Upper Nile. + +Nor can we tell how the British Government first let the Boers, or +Dutch settlers, of the Orange River district and the Transvaal set +up independent republics in the inland parts of South Africa, and +then repented and annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877; nor how +the Transvaal Boers fought for freedom and won it after the battle +of Majuba Hill (1881). Majuba Hill was made to rankle in the +memory of the English people by a persistent press campaign. A +war with both republics broke out in 1899, a three years' war +enormously costly to the British people, which ended at last in +the surrender of the two republics. + +Their period of subjugation was a brief one. In 1907, after the +downfall of the imperialist government which had conquered them, +the Liberals took the South African problem in hand, and these +former republics became free and fairly willing associates with +Cape Colony and Natal in a Confederation of all the states of +South Africa as one self-governing republic under the British +Crown. + +In a quarter of a century the partition of Africa was completed. +There remained unannexed three comparatively small countries: +Liberia, a settlement of liberated negro slaves on the west coast; +Morocco, under a Moslem Sultan; and Abyssinia, a barbaric country, +with an ancient and peculiar form of Christianity, which had +successfully maintained its independence against Italy at the +battle of Adowa in 1896. + + + + +{399} + +LXIII + +EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA AND THE RISE OF JAPAN + + +It is difficult to believe that any large number of people really +accepted this headlong painting of the map of Africa in European +colours as a permanent new settlement of the worlds affairs, but +it is the duty of the historian to record that it was so accepted. +There was but a shallow historical background to the European mind +in the nineteenth century, and no habit of penetrating criticism. +The quite temporary advantages that the mechanical revolution in +the west had given the Europeans over the rest of the old world +were regarded by people, blankly ignorant of such events as the +great Mongol conquests, as evidences of a permanent and assured +European leadership of mankind. They had no sense of the +transferability of science and its fruits. They did not realize +that Chinamen and Indians could carry on the work of research as +ably as Frenchmen or Englishmen. They believed that there was +some innate intellectual drive in the west, and some innate +indolence and conservatism in the east, that assured the Europeans +a world predominance for ever. + +The consequence of this infatuation was that the various European +foreign offices set themselves not merely to scramble with the +British for the savage and undeveloped regions of the world's +surface, but also to carve up the populous and civilized countries +of Asia as though these people also were no more than raw material +for exploitation. The inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid +imperialism of the British ruling class in India, and the +extensive and profitable possessions of the Dutch in the East +Indies, filled the rival Great Powers with dreams of similar +glories in Persia, in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and in +Further India, China and Japan. + +{400} + +In 1898 Germany seized Kiau Chau in China. Britain responded by +seizing Wei-hai-wei, and the next year the Russians took +possession of Port Arthur. A flame of hatred for the Europeans +swept through China. There were massacres of Europeans and +Christian converts, and in 1900 an attack upon and siege of the +European legations in Pekin. A combined force of Europeans made a +punitive expedition to Pekin, rescued the legations, and stole an +enormous amount of valuable property. The Russians then seized +Manchuria, and in 1904, the British invaded Tibet.... + +But now a new Power appeared in the struggle of the Great Powers, +Japan. Hitherto Japan has played but a small part in this +history; her secluded civilization has not contributed very +largely to the general shaping of human destinies; she has +received much, but she has given little. The Japanese proper are +of the Mongolian race. Their civilization, their writing and +their literary and artistic traditions are derived from the +Chinese. Their history is an interesting and romantic one; they +developed a feudal system and a system of chivalry in the earlier +centuries of the Christian era; their attacks upon Korea and China +are an Eastern equivalent of the English wars in France. Japan +was first brought into contact with Europe in the sixteenth +century; in 1542 some Portuguese reached it in a Chinese junk, and +in 1549 a Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, began his teaching +there. For a time Japan welcomed European intercourse, and the +Christian missionaries made a great number of converts. A certain +William Adams became the most trusted European adviser of the +Japanese, and showed them how to build big ships. There were +voyages in Japanese-built ships to India and Peru. Then arose +complicated quarrels between the Spanish Dominicans, the +Portuguese Jesuits, and the English and Dutch Protestants, each +warning the Japanese against the political designs of the others. +The Jesuits, in a phase of ascendancy, persecuted and insulted the +Buddhists with great acrimony. In the end the Japanese came to +the conclusion that the Europeans were an intolerable nuisance, +and that Catholic Christianity in particular was a mere cloak for +the political dreams of the Pope and the Spanish monarchy--already +in possession of the Philippine Islands; there was a great +persecution of the Christians, and in 1638 Japan was absolutely +{401} closed to Europeans, and remained closed for over 200 years. +During those two centuries the Japanese were as completely cut off +from the rest of the world as though they lived upon another +planet. It was forbidden to build any ship larger than a mere +coasting boat. No Japanese could go abroad, and no European enter +the country. + +[Illustration: JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY] + +For two centuries Japan remained outside the main current of +history. She lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism in +which about five per cent of the population, the _samurai_, or +fighting men, and the nobles and their families, tyrannized +without restraint over the rest of the population. Meanwhile the +great world outside went on to wider visions and new powers. +Strange shipping became more frequent, passing the Japanese +headlands; sometimes ships were wrecked and sailors brought +ashore. Through the Dutch settlement in the island of Deshima, +their one link with the outer universe, came warnings that Japan +was not keeping pace with the power of the Western world. In 1837 +a ship sailed into Yedo Bay flying a strange flag of stripes and +stars, and carrying some Japanese sailors she had picked up far +adrift in the Pacific. She was driven off by cannon shot. This +flag presently reappeared on other ships. One in 1849 came to +demand the liberation {402} of eighteen shipwrecked American +sailors. Then in 1853 came four American warships under Commodore +Perry, and refused to be driven away. He lay at anchor in +forbidden waters, and sent messages to the two rulers who at that +time shared the control of Japan. In 1854 he returned with ten +ships, amazing ships propelled by steam, and equipped with big +guns, and he made proposals for trade and intercourse that the +Japanese had no power to resist. He landed with a guard of 500 +men to sign the treaty. Incredulous crowds watched this +visitation from the outer world, marching through the streets. + +Russia, Holland and Britain followed in the wake of America. A +great nobleman whose estates commanded the Straits of Shimonoseki +saw fit to fire on foreign vessels, and a bombardment by a fleet +of British, French, Dutch and American warships destroyed his +batteries and scattered his swordsmen. Finally an allied squadron +(1865), at anchor off Kioto, imposed a ratification of the +treaties which opened Japan to the world. + +The humiliation of the Japanese by these events was intense. With +astonishing energy and intelligence they set themselves to bring +their culture and organization to the level of the European +Powers. Never in all the history of mankind did a nation make +such a stride as Japan then did. In 1866 she was a medieval +people, a fantastic caricature of the extremest romantic +feudalism; in 1899 hers was a completely Westernized people, on a +level with the most advanced European Powers. She completely +dispelled the persuasion that Asia was in some irrevocable way +hopelessly behind Europe. She made all European progress seem +sluggish by comparison. + +We cannot tell here in any detail of Japan's war with China in +1894-95. It demonstrated the extent of her Westernization. She +had an efficient Westernized army and a small but sound fleet. +But the significance of her renascence, though it was appreciated +by Britain and the United States, who were already treating her as +if she were a European state, was not understood by the other +Great Powers engaged in the pursuit of new Indias in Asia. Russia +was pushing down through Manchuria to Korea. France was already +established far to the south in Tonkin and Annam, Germany was +{403} prowling hungrily on the look-out for some settlement. The +three Powers combined to prevent Japan reaping any fruits from the +Chinese war. She was exhausted by the struggle, and they +threatened her with war. + +[Illustration: A STREET IN TOKIO] + +Japan submitted for a time and gathered her forces. Within ten +years she was ready for a struggle with Russia, which marks an +epoch in the history of Asia, the close of the period of European +arrogance. The Russian people were, of course, innocent and +ignorant of this trouble that was being made for them halfway +round the world, and the wiser Russian statesmen were against +these foolish thrusts; but a gang of financial adventurers, +including the Grand Dukes, his cousins, surrounded the Tsar. They +had gambled deeply in the prospective looting of Manchuria and +China, and they would suffer no withdrawal. So there began a +transportation of great armies of Japanese soldiers across the sea +to Port Arthur and Korea, and the sending of endless trainloads of +Russian peasants along the Siberian railway to die in those +distant battlefields. + +{404} + +The Russians, badly led and dishonestly provided, were beaten on +sea and land alike. The Russian Baltic Fleet sailed round Africa +to be utterly destroyed in the Straits of Tshushima. A +revolutionary movement among the common people of Russia, +infuriated by this remote and reasonless slaughter, obliged the +Tsar to end the war (1905); he returned the southern half of +Saghalien, which had been seized by Russia in 1875, evacuated +Manchuria, resigned Korea to Japan. The European invasion of Asia +was coming to an end and the retraction of Europe's tentacles was +beginning. + + + + +{405} + +LXIV + +THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914 + + +We may note here briefly the varied nature of the constituents of +the British Empire in 1914 which the steamship and railway had +brought together. It was and is a quite unique political +combination; nothing of the sort has ever existed before. + +First and central to the whole system was the "crowned republic" +of the United British Kingdom, including (against the will of a +considerable part of the Irish people) Ireland. The majority of +the British Parliament, made up of the three united parliaments of +England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, determines the headship, +the quality and policy of the ministry, and determines it largely +on considerations arising out of British domestic politics. It is +this ministry which is the effective supreme government, with +powers of peace and war, over all the rest of the empire. + +Next in order of political importance to the British States were +the "crowned republics" of Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (the +oldest British possession, 1583), New Zealand and South Africa, +all practically independent and self-governing states in alliance +with Great Britain, but each with a representative of the Crown +appointed by the Government in office; + +Next the Indian Empire, an extension of the Empire of the Great +Mogul with its dependent and "protected" states reaching now from +Beluchistan to Burma, and including Aden, in all of which empire +the British Crown and the India Office (under Parliamentary +control) played the role of the original Turkoman dynasty; + +Then the ambiguous possession of Egypt, still nominally a part of +the Turkish Empire and still retaining its own monarch, the +Khedive, but under almost despotic British official rule; + +Then the still more ambiguous "Anglo-Egyptian" Sudan province, +{407} occupied and administered jointly by the British and by the +(British controlled) Egyptian Government; + +Then a number of partially self-governing communities, some +British in origin and some not, with elected legislatures and an +appointed executive, such as Malta, Jamaica, the Bahamas and +Bermuda; + +Then the Crown colonies, in which the rule of the British Home +Government (through the Colonial Office) verged on autocracy, as +in Ceylon, Trinidad and Fiji (where there was an appointed +council), and Gibraltar and St. Helena (where there was a +governor); + +Then great areas of (chiefly) tropical lands, raw-product areas, +with politically weak and under-civilized native communities which +were nominally protectorates, and administered either by a High +Commissioner set over native chiefs (as in Basutoland) or over a +chartered company (as in Rhodesia). In some cases the Foreign +Office, in some cases the Colonial Office, and in some cases the +India Office, has been concerned in acquiring the possessions that +fell into this last and least definite class of all, but for the +most part the Colonial Office was now responsible for them. + +[Illustration: GIBRALTAR] + +==================================================================== + +{406} + +[Map: OVERSEAS EMPIRES of EUROPEAN POWERS, January 1914] + +==================================================================== + +It will be manifest, therefore, that no single office and no +single brain had ever comprehended the British Empire as a whole. +It was a mixture of growths and accumulations entirely different +from anything that has ever been called an empire before. It +guaranteed a wide peace and security; that is why it was endured +and sustained by many men of the "subject" races--in spite of +official tyrannies {408} and insufficiencies, and of much +negligence on the part of the "home" public. Like the Athenian +Empire, it was an overseas empire; its ways were sea ways, and its +common link was the British Navy. Like all empires, its cohesion +was dependent physically upon a method of communication; the +development of seamanship, ship-building and steamships between +the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had made it a possible and +convenient Pax--the "Pax Britannica," and fresh developments of +air or swift land transport might at any time make it +inconvenient. + +[Illustration: STREET IN HONG KONG] + + + + +{409} + +LXV + +THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 + + +The progress in material science that created this vast +steamboat-and-railway republic of America and spread this +precarious British steamship empire over the world, produced +quite other effects upon the congested nations upon the continent +of Europe. They found themselves confined within boundaries fixed +during the horse-and-high-road period of human life, and their +expansion overseas had been very largely anticipated by Great +Britain. Only Russia had any freedom to expand eastward; and she +drove a great railway across Siberia until she entangled herself +in a conflict with Japan, and pushed south-eastwardly towards the +borders of Persia and India to the annoyance of Britain. The rest +of the European Powers were in a state of intensifying congestion. +In order to realize the full possibilities of the new apparatus of +human life they had to rearrange their affairs upon a broader +basis, either by some sort of voluntary union or by a union +imposed upon them by some predominant power. The tendency +of modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative, +but all the force of political tradition drove Europe towards the +latter. + +The downfall of the "empire" of Napoleon III, the establishment of +the new German Empire, pointed men's hopes and fears towards the +idea of a Europe consolidated under German auspices. For +thirty-six years of uneasy peace the polities of Europe centred +upon that possibility. France, the steadfast rival of Germany for +European ascendancy since the division of the empire of +Charlemagne, sought to correct her own weakness by a close +alliance with Russia, and Germany linked herself closely with the +Austrian Empire (it had ceased to be the Holy Roman Empire in the +days of Napoleon I) and less successfully with the new kingdom of +Italy. {410} At first Great Britain stood as usual half in and +half out of continental affairs. But she was gradually forced +into a close association with the Franco-Russian group by the +aggressive development of a great German navy. The grandiose +imagination of the Emperor William II (1888-1918) thrust Germany +into premature overseas enterprise that ultimately brought not +only Great Britain but Japan and the United States into the +circle of her enemies. + +[Illustration: BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD] + +All these nations armed. Year after year the proportion of +national production devoted to the making of guns, equipment, +battleships and the like, increased. Year after year the balance +{411} of things seemed trembling towards war, and then war would +be averted. At last it came. Germany and Austria struck at +France and Russia and Serbia; the German armies marching through +Belgium, Britain immediately came into the war on the side of +Belgium, bringing in Japan as her ally, and very soon Turkey +followed on the German side. Italy entered the war against +Austria in 1915, and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in the +October of that year. In 1916 Rumania, and in 1917 the United +States and China were forced into war against Germany. It is not +within the scope of this history to define the exact share of +blame for this vast catastrophe. The more interesting question is +not why the Great War was begun but why the Great War was not +anticipated and prevented. It is a far graver thing for mankind +that scores of millions of people were too "patriotic," stupid, or +apathetic to prevent this disaster by a movement towards European +unity upon frank and generous lines, than that a small number of +people may have been active in bringing it about. + +[Illustration: THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH +TOWN)] + +It is impossible within the space at our command here to trace the +intricate details of the war. Within a few months it became +apparent that the progress of modern technical science had changed +{412} the nature of warfare very profoundly. Physical science +gives power, power over steel, over distance, over disease; +whether that power is used well or ill depends upon the moral and +political intelligence of the world. The governments of Europe, +inspired by antiquated policies of hate and suspicion, found +themselves with unexampled powers both of destruction and +resistance in their hands. The war became a consuming fire round +and about the world, causing losses both to victors and vanquished +out of all proportion to the issues involved. The first phase of +the war was a tremendous rush of the Germans upon Paris and an +invasion of East Prussia by the Russians. Both attacks were held +and turned. Then the power of the defensive developed; there was +a rapid elaboration of trench warfare until for a time the +opposing armies lay entrenched in long lines right across Europe, +unable to make any advance without enormous losses. The armies +were millions strong, and behind them entire populations were +organized for the supply of food and munitions to the front. Then +was a cessation of nearly every sort of productive activity except +such as contributed to military operations. All the able-bodied +manhood of Europe was drawn into the armies or navies or into the +improvised factories that served {413} them. There was an +enormous replacement of men by women in industry. Probably more +than half the people in the belligerent countries of Europe +changed their employment altogether during this stupendous +struggle. They were socially uprooted and transplanted. +Education and normal scientific work were restricted or diverted +to immediate military ends, and the distribution of news was +crippled and corrupted by military control and "propaganda" +activities. + +[Illustration: THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR] + +The phase of military deadlock passed slowly into one of +aggression upon the combatant populations behind the fronts by the +destruction of food supplies and by attacks through the air. And +also there was a steady improvement in the size and range of the +guns employed and of such ingenious devices as poison-gas shells +and the small mobile forts known as tanks, to break down the +resistance of troops in the trenches. The air offensive was the +most revolutionary of all the new methods. It carried warfare +from two dimensions into three. Hitherto in the history of +mankind war had gone on only where the armies marched and met. +Now it went on everywhere. First the Zeppelin and then the +bombing aeroplane carried war over and past the front to an +ever-increasing area of civilian activities beyond. The old +distinction maintained in civilized warfare between the civilian +and combatant population disappeared. Everyone who grew food, or +who sewed a garment, everyone who felled a tree or repaired a +house, every railway station and every warehouse was held to be +fair game for destruction. The air offensive increased in range +and terror with every month in the war. At last great areas of +Europe were in a state of siege and subject to nightly raids. +Such exposed cities as London and Paris passed sleepless night +after sleepless night while the bombs burst, the anti-aircraft +guns maintained an intolerable racket, and the fire engines and +ambulances rattled headlong through the darkened and deserted +streets. The effects upon the minds and health of old people and +of young children were particularly distressing and destructive. + +Pestilence, that old follower of warfare, did not arrive until the +very end of the fighting in 1918. For four years medical science +staved off any general epidemic; then came a great outbreak of +{414} influenza about the world which destroyed many millions of +people. Famine also was staved off for some time. By the +beginning of 1918 however most of Europe was in a state of +mitigated and regulated famine. The production of food throughout +the world had fallen very greatly through the calling off of +peasant mankind to the fronts, and the distribution of such food +as was produced was impeded by the havoc wrought by the submarine, +by the rupture of customary routes through the closing of +frontiers, and by the disorganization of the transport system of +the world. The various governments took possession of the +dwindling food supplies, and, with more or less success, rationed +their populations. By the fourth year the whole world was +suffering from shortages of clothing and housing and of most of +the normal gear of life as well as of food. Business and economic +life were profoundly disorganized. Every-one was worried, and +most people were leading lives of unwonted discomfort. + +The actual warfare ceased in November, 1918. After a supreme +effort in the spring of 1918 that almost carried the Germans to +Paris, the Central Powers collapsed. They had come to an end of +their spirit and resources. + + + + +{415} + +LXVI + +THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA + + +But a good year and more before the collapse of the Central Powers +the half oriental monarchy of Russia, which had professed to be +the continuation of the Byzantine Empire, had collapsed. The +Tsardom had been showing signs of profound rottenness for some +years before the war; the court was under the sway of a fantastic +religious impostor, Rasputin, and the public administration, civil +and military, was in a state of extreme inefficiency and +corruption. At the outset of the war there was a great flare of +patriotic enthusiasm in Russia. A vast conscript army was called +up, for which there was neither adequate military equipment nor a +proper supply of competent officers, and this great host, ill +supplied and badly handled, was hurled against the German and +Austrian frontiers. + +There can be no doubt that the early appearance of Russian armies +in East Prussia in September, 1914, diverted the energies and +attention of the Germans from their first victorious drive upon +Paris. The sufferings and deaths of scores of thousands of +ill-led Russian peasants saved France from complete overthrow in +that momentous opening campaign, and made all western Europe the +debtors of that great and tragic people. But the strain of the +war upon this sprawling, ill-organized empire was too heavy for +its strength. The Russian common soldiers were sent into battle +without guns to support them, without even rifle ammunition; they +were wasted by their officers and generals in a delirium of +militarist enthusiasm. For a time they seemed to be suffering +mutely as the beasts suffer; but there is a limit to the endurance +even of the most ignorant. A profound disgust for Tsardom was +creeping through these armies of betrayed and wasted men. From +the close of 1915 onward Russia was a source of deepening anxiety +to her Western Allies. Throughout 1916 she remained largely on +{416} the defensive, and there were rumours of a separate peace +with Germany. + +On December 29th, 1916, the monk Rasputin was murdered at a dinner +party in Petrograd, and a belated attempt was made to put the +Tsardom in order. By March things were moving rapidly; food riots +in Petrograd developed into a revolutionary insurrection; there +was an attempted suppression of the Duma, the representative body, +there were attempted arrests of liberal leaders, the formation of +a provisional government under Prince Lvoff, and an abdication +(March 15th) by the Tsar. For a time it seemed that a moderate +and controlled revolution might be possible--perhaps under a new +Tsar. Then it became evident that the destruction of popular +confidence in Russia had gone too far for any such adjustments. +The Russian people were sick to death of the old order of things +in Europe, of Tsars and wars and of Great Powers; it wanted +relief, and that speedily, from unendurable miseries. The Allies +had no understanding of Russian realities; their diplomatists were +ignorant of Russian, genteel persons with their attention directed +to the Russian Court rather than to Russia, they blundered +steadily with the new situation. There was little goodwill among +these diplomatists for republicanism, and a manifest disposition +to embarrass the new government as much as possible. At the head +of the Russian republican government was an eloquent and +picturesque leader, Kerensky, who found himself assailed by the +forces of a profounder revolutionary movement, the "social +revolution," at home and cold-shouldered by the Allied governments +abroad. His Allies would neither let him give the Russian +peasants the land for which they craved nor peace beyond their +frontiers. The French and the British press pestered their +exhausted ally for a fresh offensive, but when presently the +Germans made a strong attack by sea and land upon Riga, the +British Admiralty quailed before the prospect of a Baltic +expedition in relief. The new Russian Republic had to fight +unsupported. In spite of their naval predominance and the bitter +protests of the great English admiral, Lord Fisher (1841-1920), it +is to be noted that the British and their Allies, except for some +submarine attacks, left the Germans the complete mastery of the +Baltic throughout the war. + +{417} + +The Russian masses, however, were resolute to end the war. At any +cost. There had come into existence in Petrograd a body +representing the workers and common soldiers, the Soviet, and this +body clamoured for an international conference of socialists at +Stockholm. Food riots were occurring in Berlin at this time, war +weariness in Austria and Germany was profound, and there can be +little doubt, in the light of subsequent events, that such a +conference would have precipitated a reasonable peace on +democratic lines in 1917 and a German revolution. Kerensky +implored his Western allies to allow this conference to take +place, but, fearful of a worldwide outbreak of socialism and +republicanism, they refused, in spite of the favourable response +of a small majority of the British Labour Party. Without either +moral or physical help from the Allies, the unhappy "moderate" +Russian Republic still fought on and made a last desperate +offensive effort in July. It failed after some preliminary +successes, and there came another great slaughtering of Russians. + +The limit of Russian endurance was reached. Mutinies broke out in +the Russian armies, and particularly upon the northern front, and +on November 7th, 1917, Kerensky's government was overthrown and +power was seized by the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik +socialists under Lenin, and pledged to make peace regardless of +the Western powers. On March 2nd, 1918, a separate peace between +Russia and Germany was signed at Brest-Litovsk. + +==================================================================== + +{418} + +[Illustration: A VIEW IN PETERSBURG UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE] + +==================================================================== + +It speedily became evident that these Bolshevik socialists were +men of a very different quality from the rhetorical +constitutionalists and revolutionaries of the Kerensky phase. +They were fanatical Marxist communists. They believed that their +accession to power in Russia was only the opening of a world-wide +social revolution, and they set about changing the social and +economic order with the thoroughness of perfect faith and absolute +inexperience. The western European and the American governments +were themselves much too ill-informed and incapable to guide or +help this extraordinary experiment, and the press set itself to +discredit and the ruling classes to wreck these usurpers upon any +terms and at any cost to themselves or to Russia. A propaganda of +abominable and disgusting inventions went on unchecked in the +press of the {419} world; the Bolshevik leaders were represented +as incredible monsters glutted with blood and plunder and living +lives of sensuality before which the realities of the Tsarist +court during the Rasputin regime paled to a white purity. +Expeditions were launched at the exhausted country, insurgents and +raiders were encouraged, armed and subsidized, and no method of +attack was too mean or too monstrous for the frightened enemies of +the Bolshevik regime. In 1919, the Russian Bolsheviks, ruling a +country already exhausted and disorganized by five years of +intensive warfare, were fighting a British Expedition at +Archangel, Japanese invaders in Eastern Siberia, Roumanians with +French and Greek contingents in the south, the Russian Admiral +Koltchak in Siberia and General Deniken, supported by the French +fleet, in the Crimea. In July of that year an Esthonian army, +under General Yudenitch, almost got to Petersburg. In 1920 the +Poles, incited by the French, made a new attack on Russia; and a +new reactionary raider, General Wrangel, took over the task of +General Deniken in invading and devastating his own country. In +March, 1921, the sailors at Cronstadt revolted. The Russian +Government under its president, Lenin, survived all these various +attacks. It showed an amazing tenacity, and the common people of +Russia sustained it unswervingly under conditions of extreme +hardship. By the end of 1921 both Britain and Italy had made a +sort of recognition of the communist rule. + +But if the Bolshevik Government was successful in its struggle +against foreign intervention and internal revolt, it was far less +happy in its attempts to set up a new social order based upon +communist ideas in Russia. The Russian peasant is a small +land-hungry proprietor, as far from communism in his thoughts and +methods as a whale is from flying; the revolution gave him the +land of the great landowners but could not make him grow food for +anything but negotiable money, and the revolution, among other +things, had practically destroyed the value of money. +Agricultural production, already greatly disordered by the +collapse of the railways through war-strain, shrank to a mere +cultivation of food by the peasants for their own consumption. +The towns starved. Hasty and ill-planned attempts to make over +industrial production {420} in accordance with communist ideas +were equally unsuccessful. By 1920 Russia presented the +unprecedented spectacle of a modern civilization in complete +collapse. Railways were rusting and passing out of use, towns +were falling into ruin, everywhere there was an immense mortality. +Yet the country still fought with its enemies at its gates. In +1921 came a drought and a great famine among the peasant +cultivators in the war-devastated south-east provinces. Millions +of people starved. + +But the question of the distresses and the possible recuperation +of Russia brings us too close to current controversies to be +discussed here. + + + + +{421} + +LXVII + +THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD + + +The scheme and scale upon which this History is planned do not +permit us to enter into the complicated and acrimonious disputes +that centre about the treaties, and particularly of the treaty of +Versailles, which concluded the Great War. We are beginning to +realize that that conflict, terrible and enormous as it was, ended +nothing, began nothing and settled nothing. It killed millions of +people; it wasted and impoverished the world. It smashed Russia +altogether. It was at best an acute and frightful reminder that +we were living foolishly and confusedly without much plan or +foresight in a dangerous and unsympathetic universe. The crudely +organized egotisms and passions of national and imperial greed +that carried mankind into that tragedy, emerged from it +sufficiently unimpaired to make some other similar disaster highly +probable so soon as the world has a little recovered from its war +exhaustion and fatigue. Wars and revolutions make nothing; their +utmost service to mankind is that, in a very rough and painful +way, they destroy superannuated and obstructive things. The great +war lifted the threat of German imperialism from Europe, and +shattered the imperialism of Russia. It cleared away a number of +monarchies. But a multitude of flags still waves in Europe, the +frontiers still exasperate, great armies accumulate fresh stores +of equipment. + +The Peace Conference at Versailles was a gathering very ill +adapted to do more than carry out the conflicts and defeats of the +war to their logical conclusions. The Germans, Austrians, Turks +and Bulgarians were permitted no share in its deliberations; they +were only to accept the decisions it dictated to them. From the +point of view of human welfare the choice of the place of meeting +was particularly unfortunate. It was at Versailles in 1871 that, +with every circumstance of triumphant vulgarity, the new German +{422} Empire had been proclaimed. The suggestion of a +melodramatic reversal of that scene, in the same Hall of Mirrors, +was overpowering. + +Whatever generosities had appeared in the opening phases of the +Great War had long been exhausted. The populations of the +victorious countries were acutely aware of their own losses and +sufferings, and entirely regardless of the fact that the defeated +had paid in the like manner. The war had arisen as a natural and +inevitable consequence of the competitive nationalisms of Europe +and the absence of any Federal adjustment of these competitive +forces; war is the necessary logical consummation of independent +sovereign nationalities living in too small an area with too +powerful an armament; and if the great war had not come in the +form it did it would have come in some similar form--just as it +will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in twenty +or thirty years' time if no political unification anticipates and +prevents it. States organized for war will make wars as surely as +hens will lay eggs, but the feeling of these distressed and +war-worn countries disregarded this fact, and the whole of the +defeated peoples were treated as morally and materially +responsible for all the damage, as they would no doubt have +treated the victor peoples had the issue of war been different. +The French and English thought the Germans were to blame, the +Germans thought the Russians, French and English were to blame, +and only an intelligent minority thought that there was anything +to blame in the fragmentary political constitution of Europe. The +treaty of Versailles was intended to be exemplary and vindictive; +it provided tremendous penalties for the vanquished; it sought to +provide compensations for the wounded and suffering victors by +imposing enormous debts upon nations already bankrupt, and its +attempts to reconstitute international relations by the +establishment of a League of Nations against war were manifestly +insincere and inadequate. + +[Illustration: PASSENGER AEROPLANE FLYING OVER NORTHOLT] + +So far as Europe was concerned it is doubtful if there would have +been any attempt whatever to organize international relations for +a permanent peace. The proposal of the League of Nations was +brought into practical politics by the President of the United +States of America, President Wilson. Its chief support was in +America. So far the United States, this new modern state, had +{423} developed no distinctive ideas of international relationship +beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which protected the new world from +European interference. Now suddenly it was called upon for its +mental contribution to the vast problem of the time. It had none. +The natural disposition of the American people was towards a +permanent world peace. With this however was linked a strong +traditional distrust of old-world polities and a habit of +isolation from old-world entanglements. The Americans had hardly +begun to think out an American solution of world problems when the +submarine campaign of the Germans dragged them into the war on the +side of the anti-German allies. President Wilson's scheme of a +League of Nations was an attempt at short notice to create a +distinctively American world project. It was a sketchy, +inadequate and dangerous scheme. In Europe however it was taken +as a matured American point of view. The generality of mankind in +1918-19 was intensely weary of war and anxious at almost any +sacrifice to erect {424} barriers against its recurrence, but +there was not a single government in the old world willing to +waive one iota of its sovereign independence to attain any such +end. The public utterances of President Wilson leading up to the +project of a World League of Nations seemed for a time to appeal +right over the heads of the governments to the peoples of the +world; they were taken as expressing the ripe intentions of +America, and the response was enormous. Unhappily President +Wilson had to deal with governments and not with peoples; he was a +man capable of tremendous flashes of vision and yet when put to +the test egotistical and limited, and the great wave of enthusiasm +he evoked passed and was wasted. + +Says Dr. Dillon in his book, _The Peace Conference_: "Europe, when +the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the +creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow +a Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars +are prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he +was just that great leader. In France men bowed down before him +with awe and affection. Labour leaders in Paris told me that they +shed tears of joy in his presence, and that their comrades would +go through fire and water to help him to realize his noble +schemes. To the working classes in Italy his name was a heavenly +clarion at the sound of which the earth would be renewed. The +Germans regarded him and his doctrine as their sheet-anchor of +safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said: 'If President Wilson were +to address the Germans and pronounce a severe sentence upon them, +they would accept it with resignation and without a murmur and set +to work at once.' In German-Austria his fame was that of a +saviour, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the +suffering and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted ... ." + +Such were the overpowering expectations that President Wilson +raised. How completely he disappointed them and how weak and +futile was the League of Nations he made is too long and too +distressful a story to tell here. He exaggerated in his person +our common human tragedy, he was so very great in his dreams and +so incapable in his performance. America dissented from the acts +of its President and would not join the League Europe accepted +from him. There was a slow realization on the part of the +American {425} people that it had been rushed into something for +which it was totally unprepared. There was a corresponding +realization on the part of Europe that America had nothing ready +to give to the old world in its extremity. Born prematurely and +crippled at its birth, that League has become indeed, with its +elaborate and unpractical constitution and its manifest +limitations of power, a serious obstacle in the way of any +effective reorganization of international relationships. The +problem would be a clearer one if the League did not yet exist. +Yet that world-wide blaze of enthusiasm that first welcomed the +project, that readiness of men everywhere round and about the +earth, of men, that is, as distinguished from governments, for a +world control of war, is a thing to be recorded with emphasis in +any history. Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and +mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and world +order exists and grows. + +From 1918 onward the world entered upon an age of conferences. Of +these the Conference at Washington called by President Harding +(1921) has been the most successful and suggestive. Notable, too, +is the Genoa Conference (1922) for the appearance of German and +Russian delegates at its deliberations. We will not discuss this +long procession of conferences and tentatives in any detail. It +becomes more and more clearly manifest that a huge work of +reconstruction has to be done by mankind if a crescendo of such +convulsions and world massacres as that of the great war is to be +averted. No such hasty improvisation as the League of Nations, no +patched-up system of Conferences between this group of states and +that, which change nothing with an air of settling everything, +will meet the complex political needs of the new age that lies +before us. A systematic development and a systematic application +of the sciences of human relationship, of personal and group +psychology, of financial and economic science and of education, +sciences still only in their infancy, is required. Narrow and +obsolete, dead and dying moral and political ideas have to be +replaced by a clearer and a simpler conception of the common +origins and destinies of our kind. + +[Illustration: A PEACEFUL GARDEN IN ENGLAND] + +But if the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man +in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past, it +is because science has brought him such powers as he never had +{426} before. And the scientific method of fearless thought, +exhaustively lucid statement, and exhaustively criticized +planning, which has given him these as yet uncontrollable powers, +gives him also the hope of controlling these powers. Man is still +only adolescent. His troubles are not the troubles of senility +and exhaustion but of increasing and still undisciplined strength. +When we look at all {427} history as one process, as we have been +doing in this book, when we see the steadfast upward struggle of +life towards vision and control, then we see in their true +proportions the hopes and dangers of the present time. As yet we +are hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness. But in the +beauty of flower and sunset, in the happy and perfect movement of +young animals and in the delight of ten thousand various +landscapes, we have some intimations of what life can do for us, +and in some few works of plastic and pictorial art, in some great +music, in a few noble buildings and happy gardens, we have an +intimation of what the human will can do with material +possibilities. We have dreams; we have at present undisciplined +but ever increasing power. Can we doubt that presently our race +will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will +achieve unity and peace, that it will live, the children of our +blood and lives will live, in a world made more splendid and +lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from +strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and +achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his +present state, and all this history we have told, form but the +prelude to the things that man has got to do. + + + + +{429} + +CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + +About the year 1000 B.C. the Aryan peoples were establishing +themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy and the Balkans, and +they were established in North India; Cnossos was already +destroyed and the spacious times of Egypt, of Thothmes III, +Amenophis III and Rameses II were three or four centuries away. +Weak monarchs of the XXIst Dynasty were ruling in the Nile Valley. +Israel was united under her early kings; Saul or David or possibly +even Solomon may have been reigning. Sargon I (2750 B.C.) of the +Akkadian Sumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian +history, more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world +of the present day. Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. +The Assyrians were already dominating the less military +Babylonians. In 1100 B.C. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. +But there was no permanent conquest; Assyria and Babylonia were +still separate empires. In China the new Chow dynasty was +flourishing. Stonehenge in England was already some hundreds of +years old. + +The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the XXIInd +Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of +Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans, South Italy +and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan predominance in Central +Italy. We begin our list of ascertainable dates with + + B.C. + 800. The building of Carthage. + 790. The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth Dynasty). + 776. First Olympiad. + 753. Rome built. + 745. Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded the New + Assyrian Empire. + 722. Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons. + 721. He deported the Israelites. + 680. Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the Ethiopian + XXVth Dynasty). + 664. Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the + XXVIth Dynasty (to 610). + 608. Necho of Egypt defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at the battle + of Megiddo. + 606. Capture of Nineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes. + Foundation of the Chaldean Empire. + 604. Necho pushed to the Euphrates and was overthrown by + Nebuchadnezzar II. + (Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon.) + 550. Cyrus the Persian succeeded Cyaxares the Mede. + Cyrus conquered Croesus. + Buddha lived about this time. + So also did Confucius and Lao Tse. + 539. Cyrus took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire. + 521. Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, ruled from the Hellespont + to the Indus. + His expedition to Scythia. + +{430} + + 490. Battle of Marathon. + 480. Battles of Thermopylæ and Salamis. + 479. The battles of Platea and Mycale completed the repulse of + Persia. + 474. Etruscan fleet destroyed by the Sicilian Greeks. + 431. Peloponnesian War began (to 404) + 401. Retreat of the Ten Thousand. + 359. Philip became king of Macedonia. + 338. Battle of Chæronia. + 336. Macedonian troops crossed into Asia. Philip murdered. + 334. Battle of the Granicus. + 333. Battle of Issus. + 331. Battle of Arbela. + 330. Darius III killed. + 323. Death of Alexander the Great. + 321. Rise of Chandragupta in the Punjab. + The Romans completely beaten by the Samnites at the battle of + the Caudine Forks. + 281. Pyrrhus invaded Italy. + 280. Battle of Heraclea. + 279. Battle of Ausculum. + 278. Gauls raided into Asia Minor and settled in Galatia. + 275. Pyrrhus left Italy. + 264. First Punic War. (Asoka began to reign in Behar--to 227.) + 260. Battle of Mylæ. + 256. Battle of Ecnomus. + 246. Shi-Hwang-ti became King of Ts'in. + 220. Shi-Hwang-ti became Emperor of China. + 214. Great Wall of China begun. + 210. Death of Shi-Hwang-ti. + 202. Battle of Zama. + 146. Carthage destroyed. + 133. Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to Rome. + 102. Marius drove back Germans. + 100. Triumph of Marius. (Chinese conquering the Tarim valley.) + 89. All Italians became Roman citizens. + 73. The revolt of the slaves under Spartacus. + 71. Defeat and end of Spartacus. + 66. Pompey led Roman troops to the Caspian and Euphrates. He + encountered the Alani. + 48. Julius Cæsar defeated Pompey at Pharsalos. + 44. Julius Cæsar assassinated. + 27. Augustus Cæsar princeps (until 14 A.D.). + 4. True date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth. + + A.D. Christian Era began. + + 14. Augustus died. Tiberius emperor. + 30. Jesus of Nazareth crucified. + 41. Claudius (the first emperor of the legions) made emperor by + pretorian guard after murder of Caligula. + 68. Suicide of Nero. (Galba, Otho, Vitellus, emperors in + succession.) + 69. Vespasian. + 102. Pan Chau on the Caspian Sea. + 117. Hadrian succeeded Trajan. Roman Empire at its greatest + extent. + 138. (The Indo-Scythians at this time were destroying the last + traces of Hellenic rule in India.) + 161. Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antoninus Pius. + 164. Great plague began, and lasted to the death of M. Aurelius + (180). This also devastated all Asia. + (Nearly a century of war and disorder began in the Roman + Empire.) + 220. End of the Han dynasty. Beginning of four hundred years of + division in China. + 227. Ardashir I (first Sassanid shah) put an end to Arsacid line + in Persia. + 242. Mani began his teaching. + 247. Goths crossed Danube in a great raid. + 251. Great victory of Goths. Emperor Decius killed. + 260. Sapor I, the second Sassanid shah, took Antioch, captured the + Emperor Valerian, and was cut up on his return from Asia {431} + Minor by Odenathus of Palmyra. + 277. Mani crucified in Persia. + 284. Diocletian became emperor. + 303. Diocletian persecuted the Christians. + 311. Galerius abandoned the persecution of the Christians. + 312. Constantine the Great became emperor. + 323. Constantine presided over the Council of Nicæa. + 337. Constantine baptized on his deathbed. + 361-3. Julian the Apostate attempted to substitute Mithraism for + Christianity. + 392. Theodosius the Great emperor of east and west. + 395. Theodosius the Great died. Honorius and Arcadius redivided + the empire with Stilicho and Alaric as their masters and + protectors. + 410. The Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome. + 425. Vandals settling in south of Spain. Huns in Pannonia, Goths + in Dalmatia. Visigoths and Suevi in Portugal and North Spain. + English invading Britain. + 439. Vandals took Carthage. + 451. Attila raided Gaul and was defeated by Franks, Alemanni and + Romans at Troyes. + 453. Death of Attila. + 455. Vandals sacked Rome. + 470. Odoacer, king of a medley of Teutonic tribes, informed + Constantinople that there was no emperor in the West. End of + the Western Empire. + 493. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, conquered Italy and became King of + Italy, but was nominally subject to Constantinople. (Gothic + kings in Italy. Goths settled on special confiscated lands as a + garrison.) + 527. Justinian emperor. + 529. Justinian closed the schools at Athens, which had flourished + nearly a thousand years. Belisarius (Justinian's general) took + Naples. + 531. Chosroes I began to reign. + 543. Great plague in Constantinople. + 553. Goths expelled from Italy by Justinian. Justinian died. The + Lombards conquered most of North Italy (leaving Ravenna and Rome + Byzantine). + 570. Muhammad born. + 579. Chosroes I died. + (The Lombards dominant in Italy.) + 590. Plague raged in Rome. Chosroes II began to reign. + 610. Heraclius began to reign. + 619. Chosroes II held Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, and armies on + Hellespont. Tang dynasty began in China. + 622. The Hegira. + 627. Great Persian defeat at Nineveh by Heraclius. Tai-tsung + became Emperor of China. + 628. Kavadh II murdered and succeeded his father, Chosroes II. + Muhammad wrote letters to all the rulers of the earth. + 629. Muhammad returned to Mecca. + 632. Muhammad died. Abu Bekr Caliph. + 634. Battle of the Yarmuk. Moslems took Syria. Omar second + Caliph. + 635. Tai-tsung received Nestorian missionaries. + 637. Battle of Kadessia. + 638. Jerusalem surrendered to the Caliph Omar. + 642. Heraclius died. + 643. Othman third Caliph. + 655. Defeat of the Byzantine fleet by the Moslems. + 668. The Caliph Moawija attacked Constantinople by sea. + 687. Pepin of Hersthal, mayor of the palace, reunited Austrasia + and Neustria. + 711. Moslem army invaded Spain from Africa. + +{432} + + 715. The domains of the Caliph Walid I extended from the Pyrenees + to China. + 717-18. Suleiman, son and successor of Walid, failed to take + Constantinople. + 732. Charles Martel defeated the Moslems near Poitiers. + 751. Pepin crowned King of the French. + 768. Pepin died. + 771. Charlemagne sole king. + 774. Charlemagne conquered Lombardy. + 786. Haroun-al-Raschid Abbasid Caliph in Bagdad (to 809). + 795. Leo III became Pope (to 816). + 800. Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West. + 802. Egbert, formerly an English refugee at the court of + Charlemagne, established himself as King of Wessex. + 810. Krum of Bulgaria defeated and killed the Emperor Nicephorus. + 814. Charlemagne died. + 828. Egbert became first King of England. + 843. Louis the Pious died, and the Carlovingian Empire went to + pieces. Until 962 there was no regular succession of Holy Roman + Emperors, though the title appeared intermittently. + 850. About this time Rurik (a Northman) became ruler of Novgorod + and Kieff. + 852. Boris first Christian King of Bulgaria (to 884). + 865. The fleet of the Russians (Northmen) threatened + Constantinople. + 904. Russian (Northmen) fleet off Constantinople. + 912. Rolf the Ganger established himself in Normandy. + 919. Henry the Fowler elected King of Germany. + 936. Otto I became King of Germany in succession to his father, + Henry the Fowler. + 941. Russian fleet again threatened Constantinople. + 962. Otto I, King of Germany, crowned Emperor (first Saxon + Emperor) by John XII. + 987. Hugh Capet became King of France. End of the Carlovingian + line of French kings. + 1016. Canute became King of England, Denmark and Norway. + 1043. Russian fleet threatened Constantinople. + 1066. Conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy. + 1071. Revival of Islam under the Seljuk Turks. Battle of + Melasgird. + 1073. Hildebrand became Pope (Gregory VII) to 1085. + 1084. Robert Guiscard, the Norman, sacked Rome. + 1087-99. Urban II Pope. + 1095. Urban II at Clermont summoned the First Crusade. + 1096. Massacre of the People's Crusade. + 1099. Godfrey of Bouillon captured Jerusalem. + 1147. The Second Crusade. + 1169. Saladin Sultan of Egypt. + 1176. Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged supremacy of the Pope + (Alexander III) at Venice. + 1187. Saladin captured Jerusalem. + 1189. The Third Crusade. + 1198. Innocent III Pope (to 1216). Frederick II (aged four), King + of Sicily, became his ward. + 1202. The Fourth Crusade attacked the Eastern Empire. + 1204. Capture of Constantinople by the Latins. + 1214. Jengis Khan took Pekin. + 1226. St. Francis of Assisi died. (The Franciscans.) + 1227. Jengis Khan died. Khan from the Caspian to the Pacific, and + was succeeded by Ogdai Khan. + 1228. Frederick II embarked upon the Sixth Crusade, and acquired + Jerusalem. + 1240. Mongols destroyed Kieff. Russia tributary to the Mongols. + +{433} + + 1241. Mongol victory in Liegnitz in Silesia. + 1250. Frederick II, the last Hohenstaufen Emperor, died. German + interregnum until 1273. + 1251. Mangu Khan became Great Khan. Kublai Khan governor of + China. + 1258. Hulagu Khan took and destroyed Bagdad. + 1260. Kublai Khan became Great Khan. + 1261. The Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latins. + 1273. Rudolf of Habsburg elected Emperor. The Swiss formed their + Everlasting League. + 1280. Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty in China. + 1292. Death of Kublai Khan. + 1293. Roger Bacon, the prophet of experimental science, died. + 1348. The Great Plague, the Black Death. + 1360. In China the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty fell, and was succeeded + by the Ming dynasty (to 1644). + 1377. Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. + 1378. The Great Schism. Urban VI in Rome, Clement VII at Avignon. + 1398. Huss preached Wycliffism at Prague. + 1414-18. The Council of Constance. + Huss burnt (1415). + 1417. The Great Schism ended. + 1453. Ottoman Turks under Muhammad II took Constantinople. + 1480. Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, threw off the Mongol + allegiance. + 1481. Death of the Sultan Muhammad II while preparing for the + conquest of Italy. + 1486. Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. + 1492. Columbus crossed the Atlantic to America. + 1498. Maximilian I became Emperor. + 1498. Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape to India. + 1499. Switzerland became an independent republic. + 1500. Charles V born. + 1509. Henry VIII King of England. + 1513. Leo X Pope. + 1515. Francis I King of France. + 1520. Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan (to 1566), who ruled from + Bagdad to Hungary. Charles V Emperor. + 1525. Baber won the battle of Panipat, captured Delhi, and founded + the Mogul Empire. + 1527. The German troops in Italy, under the Constable of Bourbon, + took and pillaged Rome. + 1529. Suleiman besieged Vienna. + 1530. Charles V crowned by the Pope. Henry VIII began his quarrel + with the Papacy. + 1539. The Society of Jesus founded. + 1546. Martin Luther died. + 1547. Ivan IV (the Terrible) took the Title of Tsar of Russia. + 1556. Charles V abdicated. Akbar, Great Mogul (to 1605). + Ignatius of Loyola died. + 1558. Death of Charles V. + 1566. Suleiman the Magnificent died. + 1603. James I King of England and Scotland. + 1620. _Mayflower_ expedition founded New Plymouth. First negro + slaves landed at Jamestown (Va.). + 1625. Charles I of England. + 1626. Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) died. + 1643. Louis XIV began his reign of seventy-two year's. + 1644. The Manchus ended the Ming dynasty. + 1648. Treaty of Westphalia. There-by Holland and Switzerland were + recognized as free republics and Prussia became important. The + treaty gave a complete victory neither to the Imperial Crown nor + to the Princes. + +{434} + + 1648. War of the Fronde; it ended in the complete victory of the + French crown. + 1649. Execution of Charles I of England. + 1658. Aurungzeb Great Mogul. Cromwell died. + 1660. Charles II of England. + 1674. Nieuw Amsterdam finally became British by treaty and was + renamed New York. + 1683. The last Turkish attack on Vienna defeated by John III of + Poland. + 1689. Peter the Great of Russia. (To 1725.) + 1701. Frederick I first King of Prussia. + 1707. Death of Aurungzeb. The empire of the Great Mogul + disintegrated. + 1713. Frederick the Great of Prussia born. + 1715. Louis XV of France. + 1755-63. Britain and France struggled for America and India. + France in alliance with Austria and Russia against Prussia and + Britain (1756-63); the Seven Years' War. + 1759. The British general, Wolfe, took Quebec. + 1760. George III of Britain. + 1763. Peace of Paris; Canada ceded to Britain. British dominant + in India. + 1769. Napoleon Bonaparte born. + 1774. Louis XVI began his reign. + 1776. Declaration of Independence by the United States of America. + 1783. Treaty of Peace between Britain and the new United States of + America. + 1787. The Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia set up the + Federal Government of the United States. France discovered to + be bankrupt. + 1788. First Federal Congress of the United States at New York. + 1789. The French States-General assembled. Storming of the + Bastille. + 1791. Flight to Varennes. + 1792. France declared war on Austria. Prussia declared war on + France. Battle of Valmy. France became a republic. + 1793. Louis XVI beheaded. + 1794. Execution of Robespierre and end of the Jacobin republic. + 1795. The Directory. Bonaparte suppressed a revolt and went to + Italy as commander-in-chief. + 1798. Bonaparte went to Egypt. Battle of the Nile. + 1799. Bonaparte returned to France. He became First Consul with + enormous powers. + 1804. Bonaparte became Emperor. Francis II took the title of + Emperor of Austria in 1805, and in 1806 he dropped the title of + Holy Roman Emperor. So the "Holy Roman Empire" came to an end. + 1806. Prussia overthrown at Jena. + 1808. Napoleon made his brother Joseph King of Spain. + 1810. Spanish America became republican. + 1812. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. + 1814. Abdication of Napoleon. Louis XVIII. + 1824. Charles X of France. + 1825. Nicholas I of Russia. First railway, Stockton to + Darlington. + 1827. Battle of Navarino. + 1829. Greece independent. + 1830. A year of disturbance. Louis Philippe ousted Charles X. + Belgium broke away from Holland. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha + became king of this new country, Belgium. Russian Poland + revolted ineffectually. + 1835. The word "socialism" first used. + 1837. Queen Victoria. + 1840. Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. + 1852. Napoleon III Emperor of the French. + 1854-56. Crimean War. + +{435} + + 1856. Alexander II of Russia. + 1861. Victor Emmanuel First King of Italy. Abraham Lincoln became + President, U. S. A. The American Civil War began. + 1865. Surrender of Appomattox Court House. Japan opened to the + world. + 1870. Napoleon III declared war against Prussia. + 1871. Paris surrendered (January). The King of Prussia became + "German Emperor." The Peace of Frankfort. + 1878. The Treaty of Berlin. The Armed Peace of forty-six years + began in western Europe. + 1888. Frederick II (March), William II (June), German Emperors. + 1912. China became a republic. + 1914. The Great War in Europe began. + 1917. The two Russian revolutions. Establishment of the Bolshevik + regime in Russia. + 1918. The Armistice. + 1920. First meeting of the League of Nations, from which Germany, + Austria, Russia and Turkey were excluded and at which the United + States was not represented. + 1921. The Greeks, in complete disregard of the League of Nations, + make war upon the Turks. + 1922. Great defeat of the Greeks in Asia Minor by the Turks. + + + + +{439} + + INDEX + + + A + + ABOLITIONIST movement, 384 + Abraham the Patriarch, 116 + Abu Bekr, 249, 252, 431 + Abyssinia, 398 + Actium, battle of, 195 + Adam and Eve, 116 + Adams, William, 400 + Aden, 405 + Adowa, battle of, 398 + Adrianople, 229 + Adrianople, Treaty of, 353 + Adriatic Sea, 178, 228 + Ægatian Isles, 182 + Ægean peoples, 92, 94, 100, 108, 117, 174 + Æolic Greeks, 108, 130 + Aeroplanes, 4, 363, 413 + Æschylus 139 + Afghanistan, 163 + Africa, 72, 92, 122, 123, 182, 253, 258, 302 + Africa, Central, 397 + Africa, North, 65, 94, 180, 192, 232, 292, 394, 397, 431 + Africa, South, 72, 335, 398, 405 + Africa, West, 393 + "Age of Confusion," the, 168, 173 + Agriculturalists, primitive, 66, 68 + Agriculture, 203; slaves in, 203 + Ahab, 119 + Air-breathing vertebrata, 23, 24 + Air-raids, 413 + Aix-la-Chapelle, 265 + Akbar, 292, 332, 433 + Akkadian and Akkadians, 90, 122, 429 + Alabama, 385 + _Alabama_, the, 388 + Alani, 227, 430 + Alaric, 230, 232, 431 + Albania, 179 + Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Prince Consort), 434 + Alchemists, 257, 294 + Aldebaran, 257 + Alemanni, 200, 431 + Alexander I, Tsar, 348 + Alexander II of Russia, 435 + Alexander III, Pope, 274, 432 + Alexander the Great, 142, 146 _et seq._, 163, 186, 240, 299, 430 + Alexandretta, 147 + Alexandria, 147, 151, 209, 222, 239 + Alexandria, library at, 151 + Alexandria, museum of, 150, 180 + Alexius Comnenus, 268 + Alfred the Great, 263 + Algæ, 13 + Algebra, 257, 282 + Algiers, 185 + Algol, 257 + Allah, 252 + Alligators, 28 + Alphabets, 79, 127 + Alps, the, 37, 197 + Alsace, 200, 309, 391 + Aluminium, 360 + Amenophis III, 96, 429 + Amenophis IV, 96 + America, 263, 302, 309, 314, 324, 335, 336, 422-23, 434 + America, North, 12, 330, 336, 382 + American Civil War, 386, 435 + American civilizations, primitive, 73 _et seq._ + American warships in Japanese waters, 402 + Ammonites, 30, 36 + Amorites, 90 + Amos, the prophet, 124 + Amphibia, 24 + Amphitheatres, 208 + Amur, 334 + Anagni, 284 + Anatomy, 24, 355 + Anaxagoras, 138 + Anaximander of Miletus, 132 + Andes, 37 + Angles, 230 + Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 405 + Animals, (_See_ Mammalia) + Annam, 402 + Anti-aircraft guns, 413 + Antigonus, 149 + Antioch, 243, 271, 431 + Antiochus III, 183 + Anti-Slavery Society, 384 + Antoninus Pius, 195, 430 + Antony, Mark, 194 + Antwerp, 294 + Anubis, 210 + Apes, 43, 44; anthropoid, 45 + Apis 209, 211 + Apollonius, 151 + Appian Way, 191 + Appomattox Court House, 388, 435 + Aquileia, 235 + Arabia, 77, 88, 91, 122, 123, 248 + Arabic figures, 257 + Arabic language, 243 + Arabs, 253 _et seq._, 294; culture of, 267 + Arbela, battle of, 147, 431 + Arcadius, 230, 431 + Archangel, 419 + Archimedes, 151 + Ardashir I, 241, 430 + Argentine Republic, 396 + Arians, 224 + Aristocracy, 130 + Aristotle, 142, 144, 146, 256, 282, 294, 295, 356, 370 + Armadillo, 74 + Armenia, 192, 268, 287, 299 + Armenians, 100, 108 + Armistice, the, 435 + Arno, the, 178 + Arsacid dynasty, 199, 431 + Artizans, 152 + Aryan language, 95, 100, 106 + Aryans, 95, 104 _et seq._, 122, 128, 151, 174, 176, 185, 197, 198, + 233, 303, 429 + Ascalon, 117 + Asceticism, 158-60, 213 + Ashdod, 117 + Asia, 72, 197, 227, 287, 298, 329 _et seq._, 333, 399 _et seq._, + 403 _et seq._, 430 + Asia, Central, 108, 122, 134, 148, 185, 245-247, 255, 334 + Asia Minor, 92, 94, 108, 127, 134, 148, 180, 192-93, 238, 243, + 258, 271, 292, 429, 430, 431 + Asia, Western, 65 + Asoka, King, 163 _et seq._, 180, 430 + Assam, 394 + Asses, 77, 83, 102, 112 + Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus), 97, 98, 109, 110 + Assyria, 109, 115, 119, 121, 122, 429 + Assyrians, 84, 96, 97, 98, 108, 429 + Astronomy, early, 70, 74 + Athanasian Creed, 224 + Athenians, 135 + Athens, 129, 135-36, 139, 150, 185, 204, 431 + Athens, schools of philosophy in, 238 + Atkinson, C. F., 345 + Atkinson, J. J., 61, 373 + Atlantic, 122, 302 + Attalus, 430 + Attila, 234, 235, 238, 431 + Augsburg, Interim of, 313 + Augustus Cæsar, Roman Emperor, 195, 214 + Aurelian, Emperor, 200 + Aurochs, 197 + Aurungzeb, 434 + Ausculum, battle of, 178, 430 + Australia, 72, 322, 336, 395, 405 + Austrasia, 431 + Austria, 309, 327, 347-48, 349-52, 390, 411, 434 + Austrian Empire, 409 + Austrians, 344, 351 + Automobiles, 362 + Avars, 289 + Avebury, 106 + Averroes, 282 + Avignon, 285, 433 + Axis of earth, 1, 2 + Azilian age, 57, 65 + Azilian rock pictures, 57, 78 + Azoic rocks, 11 + Azores, 302 + + B + + Baber, 290, 310, 332, 433 + Baboons, 43 + Babylon, 90, 94, 96, 97, 101, 102, 111, 112, 114, 115-16, 119, + 121, 122, 134, 147, 148, 373, 429 + Babylonian calendar, 68 + Babylonian Empire, 90, 91, 109, 110 + Babylonians, 108 + Bacon, Roger, 293-97, 433 + Bacon, Sir Francis, 321, 355, 433 + Bagdad, 256, 267, 290, 292, 432, 433 + Bahamas, 407 + Baldwin of Flanders, 272 + Balkan peninsula, 108, 200, 230, 392, 429 + Balkh, 299 + Balloons, altitude attained by, 4 + Baltic, 415 + Baltic Fleet, Russian, 404 + Baluchistan, 405 + Barbarians, 227 _et seq._, 230, 320 + Barbarossa, Frederick, (_See_ Frederick I) + Bards, 106, 234 + Barrows, 104 + Barter, 83, 102 + Basketwork, 65 + Basle, Council of, 305 + Basque race, 92, 107 + Bastille, 342, 434 + Basutoland, 407 + Beaconsfield, Lord, 394 + Bedouins, 122, 248 + Beetles, 26 + Behar, 180, 430 + Behring Straits, 52, 71, 73 + Bel Marduk, 109, 111, 112, 114 + Belgium, 185, 344, 347, 352, 411, 434 + Belisarius, 431 + Belshazzar, 112 + Beluchistan, 149 + Benares, 156, 160 + Beneventum, 179 + Berbers, 71, 92 + Bergen, 294 + Berlin, Treaty of, 435 + Bermuda, 407 + Bessemer process, 359 + Beth-shan, 118 + Bible, 1, 68, 100, 112, 115, 116, 119, 121, 122, 184, 286, 298, + 306-07, (_Cf._ Hebrew Bible) + Birds, flight of, 4; the earliest, 31; development of, 32 + Bison, 56 + Black Death, the, 433 + Black Sea, 71, 94-95, 108, 129, 200 + Blood sacrifice, 167, 186, 212 (_See also_ Sacrifice) + Boats, 91, 136 + Boer republic, 187 + Boers, 398 + Bohemia, 236, 306 + Bohemians, 304-05, 326 + Bokhara, 256 + Boleyn, Anne, 313 + Bolivar, General, 349 + Bologna, 295, 312 + Bolsheviks (and Bolshevism), 417-19, 435 + Bone carvings, 53 + Bone implements, 45, 46 + Boniface VIII, Pope, 283-84 + "Book religions," 226 + Books, 153, 298, 302 + Boötes, 257 + Boris, King of Bulgaria, 432 + Bosnia, 228 + Bosphorus, 135 + Boston, 337-38 + Bostra, 243 + Botany Bay, 393 + Bourbon, Constable of, 312, 433 + Bowmen, 145, 155, 300 + Brahmins and Brahminism, 165, 166 + Brain, 42 + Brazil, 329, 336, 340 + Breathing, 24 + Brest-Litovsk, 417 + Britain, 106, 122, 174, 185, 203, 236, 349, 353, 402, 431, 434, + (_See also_ England, Great Britain) + British, 329, 331 + British Civil Air Transport Commission, 363 + British East Indian Company, (_See_ East India Company) + British Empire, 407; (in 1815) 393; (in 1914) 405 + British Guiana, 393 + British Navy, 408 + "British schools," the, 369 + Brittany, 309 + Broken Hill, South Africa, 52 + Bronze, 80, 87, 102, 104 + Bruges, 294 + Brussels, 344 + Brythonic Celts, 107 + Buda-Pesth, 312 + Buddha, 133, 156, 172, 213, 429; life of, 158; his teaching, + 161-62 + Buddhism (and Buddhists), 166, 172, 222, 255, 290, 319, 334, 400, + (_See also_ Buddha) + Bulgaria, 135, 229, 245, 292, 411, 432 + Bull fights, Cretan, 93 + Burgoyne, General, 338 + Burgundy, 309, 342 + Burial, early, 102, 104 + Burleigh, Lord, 324 + Burma, 166, 300, 405 + Burning the dead, 104 + Bury, J, B, 288 + Bushmen, 54 + Byzantine Army, 253 + Byzantine Empire, 238, 271-72 + Byzantine fleet, 431 + Byzantium, 228, 243, 267, 268, (_See also_ Constantinople) + + C + + Cabul, 148 + Cæsar, Augustus, 430 + Cæsar, Julius, 187, 192, 193, 194, 195, 430 + Cæsar, title, etc., 212, 223, 240, 327 + Cainozoic period, 37 _et seq._ + Cairo, 256 + Calendar, 68 + Calicut, 329 + California, 336, 383 + Caligula, 195, 430 + Caliphs, 252 + "Cambulac," 300 + Cambyses, 112, 134 + Camels, 42, 102, 112, 196, 319 + Campanella, 371 + Canaan, 116 + Canada, 332, 396, 405, 434 + Canary Islands, 302 + Cannæ, 182 + Canossa, 274 + Canton, 247 + Canute, 263, 432 + Cape Colony, 398 + Cape of Good Hope, 336, 393, 433 + Capet, Hugh, 266, 432 + Carboniferous age, (_See_ Coal swamps) + Cardinals, 277 _et seq._ + Caria, 98 + Carians, 94 + Caribou, 73 + Carlovingian Empire, 432 + Carnac, 106 + Carolinas, 388 + Carrhæ, 194 + Carthage, 92, 122, 123, 134, 176, 179, 182, 183, 185, 232, 429-30, + 431 + Carthaginians, 179, 182 + Caspian Sea, 71, 88, 108, 148, 193, 197, 430 + Caste, 157, 165 + Catalonians, 302 + "Cathay," 300 + Catholicism, 237, 337, 351. (_See also_ Papacy, Roman Catholic) + Cato, 187 + Cattle, 77, 83 + Caudine Forks, 430 + Cavalry, 145, 148, 178 + Cave drawings, 53, 56, 57 + Caxton, William, 306 + Celibacy, 275 + Celts, 106, 107, 193 + Centipedes, 23 + Ceylon, 165, 407 + Chæronia, battle of, 145, 146, 430 + Chalcedon, 243 + Chaldean Empire, 109 + Chaldeans, 109, 110-11, 115, 429 + Chandragupta, 163, 430 + Chariots, 96, 100, 101-02, 112, 119, 145, 148 + Charlemagne, 259, 261, 264-65, 272, 309, 432 + Charles I, King of England, 308, 314, 433 + Charles II, King of England, 324, 434 + Charles V, Emperor, 309, 310, 314, 316, 433 + Charles X, King of France, 350, 434 + Charles the Great, (_See_ Charlemagne) + _Charlotte Dundas_, steamboat, 357 + Chelonia, 27 + Chemists, Arab, 257. (_Cf._ Alchemists) + Cheops, 83 + Chephren, 83 + China, 76, 84, 103, 166, 167 _et seq._, 173, 174, 233, 245 et + seq., 248, 287, 290, 297, 333, 399-400, 402-03, 411, 429-31, + 432, 433, 435. (_See also_ Chow, Han, Kin, Ming, Shang, Sung, + Suy, Ts'in, and Yuan dynasties) + China, culture and civilization in, 247 + China, Empire of, 196 _et seq._ + China, Great Wall of, 173, 430 + China, North, 173 + Chinese picture writing, 79, 167 + Chosroes I, 243, 431 + Chosroes II, 243, 431 + Chow dynasty, 168, 173, 429 + Christ. (_See_ Jesus) + Christian conception of Jesus, 214 + Christianity (and Christians), 224, 255, 272, 295, 319, 400, 431 + Christianity, doctrinal, development of, 222 _et seq._ + Christianity, spirit of, 224 + Chronicles, book of, 116, 119 + Chronology, primitive, 68 + Ch'u, 173 + Church, the, 68 + Cicero, 193 + Cilicia, 299 + Cimmerians, 100 + Circumcision, 70 + Circumnavigation, 302 + Cities, Sumerian, 78 + Citizenship, 187 _et seq._, 236, 237 + City states, Greek, 129 _et seq._, Chinese, 168 + Civilization, 100 + Civilization, Hellenic, 139, 150 _et seq._ + Civilization, Japanese, 400 + Civilization, pre-historic, 71 + Civilization, primitive, 76, 167 + Civilization, Roman, 185 + Claudius, Emperor, 195, 430 + Clay documents, 77, 80, 111 + Clement V, Pope, 285 + Clement VII, Pope, 285, 433 + Cleopatra, 194 + Clermont, 432 + _Clermont_, steamboat, 358 + Climate, changes of, 21, 37 + Clive, 333 + Clothing, 77 + Clothing of Cretan women, 93 + Clouds, 8 + Clovis, 259 + Clyde, Firth of, 357 + Cnossos (Crete), 92, 94, 95, 101, 108, 127, 429 + Coal, 26 + Coal swamps, the age of, 21 _et seq._ + Coinage, 114, 176, 201, 319 + Coke, 322 + Collectivists, 375 + Colonies, 394 _et seq._, 407 + Columbus, Christopher, 300-01, _et seq._, 335, 433 + Communism (and Communists), 374-75, 417 + Comnenus, Alexius. (_See_ Alexius) + Comparative anatomy, science of, 25, (_Cf._ Anatomy) + Concord, Mass., 338 + Confederated States of America, 385 + Confucius, 133, 168 _et seq._, 173, 429 + Congo, 397 + Conifers, 26, 36 + Constance, Council of, 286, 304,·433 + Constantine the Great, 187, 226, 228, 229, 241, 429, 431 + Constantinople, 229, 238, 239, 243, 253, 258, 263-64, 270 _et + seq._, 272, 283, 292, 301, 321, 327, 431, 432, 433. (_See also_ + Byzantium) + Consuls, Roman, 193 + Copper, 74, 80, 102, 360, 395 + Cordoba, 256 + Corinth, 129 + Cornwallis, General, 338 + Corsets, 93 + Corsica, 182, 185, 232 + Cortez, 314 + Cossacks, 334 + Cotton fabrics, 102 + Couvade, the, 70 + Crabs, 23 + Crassus, 192, 194, 199 + Creation of the world, story of, 1, 116 + Creed religions, 240 + Cretan script, 94 + Crete, 92, 108 + Crimea, 419 + Crimean War, 390, 434 + Crocodiles, 28 + Croesus, 111, 429 + Cro-Magnon race, 51, 54, 65 + Cromwell, Oliver, 434 + Cronstadt, 419 + Crucifixion, 204 + Crusades, 267 _et seq._, 281, 304-05, 432 + Crustacea, 13 + Ctesiphon, 244 + Cuba, 393 + Cultivation, the beginnings of, 65 _et seq._ + Culture, Heliolithic, 69 + Culture, Japanese, 402 + Cuneiform, 78 + Currents, 18 + Cyaxares, 109-10, 429 + Cycads, 26, 36 + Cyrus the Persian, 111, 116, 121, 123, 134, 429 + Czech language, 236 + Czecho-Slovaks, 351 + Czechs, 304 + + D + + Dacia, 195, 200, 203, 227, 236 + Dædalus, 94 + Dalmatia, 431 + Damascus, 243, 253, 431 + Danes, 329, 330 + Danube, 135, 200, 227, 430 + Dardanelles, 136, 147, 292 + Darius I, 112, 134, 135, 136, 429 + Darius III, 147, 148,·430 + Darlington, 356, 434 + David, King, 118-19, 429 + Da Vinci, Leonardo, 356 + Davis, Jefferson, 385, 388 + Dawn Man. (_See_ Eoanthropus) + Dead, burning the, 104; burial of (_See_ Burial) + Debtors' prisons, 336 + Deciduous trees, 36 + Decius, Emperor, 200, 432 + Declaration of Independence, 334, 434 + _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Gibbon's), 288-89 + Deer, 42, 56 + Defender of the Faith, title of, 313 + Defoe, Daniel, 365 + Delhi, 292, 433 + Democracy, 131, 132, 270 + Deniken, General, 419 + Denmark, 306, 313, 394, 432 + Deshima, 401 + Devonian system, 19 + Diaz, 433 + Dictator, Roman, 194 + Dillon, Dr., 424 + Dinosaurs, 28, 31, 36 + Diocletian, Emperor, 224, 226, 227 + Dionysius, 170 + Diplodocus Carnegii, measurement of, 28 + Diseases, infectious, 379 + Ditchwater, animal and plant life in, 13 + Dogs, 42 + Domazlice, battle of, 305 + Dominic, St., 276 + Dominican Order, 276, 285, 400 + Dorian Greeks, 108, 130 + Douglas, Senator, 386 + Dover, Straits of, 193 + Dragon flies, 23 + Drama, Greek, 139 + Dravidian civilization, 108 + Dravidians, 71 + Duck-billed platypus, 34 + Duma, the, 416 + Durazzo, 268 + Dutch, 329, 331, 332, 399 + Dutch Guiana, 394 + Dutch Republic, 350 + Dyeing, 75 + + E + + Earth, the, shape of, 1; rotation of, 1; distance from the sun, 2; + age and origin of, 5; surface of, 21 + Earthquakes, 95 + East India Company, 332, 337, 393, 394 + East Indies, 394, 399 + Ebro, 182 + Ecbatana, 109, 114 + Echidna, the, 34 + Eclipses, 8 + Ecnomus, battle of, 181, 430 + Economists, French, 371 + Edessa, 271 + Education, 294, 361, 368, 369 + Egbert, King of Wessex, 263, 432 + Egg-laying mammals, 34 + Eggs, 24, 26, 31, 102 + Egypt (and Egyptians), 71, 78, 90, 91, 92, 96, 98, 100-101, 115, + 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 134, 138, 147, 174, 208, 209, 210, 238, + 253, 267, 290, 292, 396, 398, 405, 429, 431, 434 + Egyptian script, 78, 79 + Elamites, 88, 90, 174 + Elba, 348 + Electric light, 360 + Electric traction, 360 + Electricity, 322, 358, 360 + Elephants, 42, 127, 149, 178, 181, 253, 300 + Elixir of life, 257 + Elizabeth, Queen, 324, 332 + Emigration, 336 + Emperor, title of, 327 + Employer and employed, 375 + "Encyclopædists," the, 371 + England (and English), 306, 390, 431 + England, Norman Conquest of, 266 + England, overseas possessions, 330 + English Channel, 331 + English language, 95 + Entelodonts, 42 + Eoanthropus, 47 + Eoliths, 45 + Ephesus, 149 + Ephthalites, 199 + Epics, 106, 127, 129, 131 + Epirus, 131, 178, 179 + Epistles, the, 222 + Eratosthenes, 151 + Erech, Sumerian city of, 78 + Esarhaddon, 429 + Essenes, 213 + Esthonia, 245 + Esthonians, 419 + Ethiopian dynasty, 429 + Ethiopians, 96, 233 + Etruscans, 94, 100, 176, 430 + Euclid, 151 + Euphrates, 77, 110, 127, 129, 174, 196, 429, 430 + Euripides, 139 + Europe, 200 + Europe, Central, 329 + Europe, Concert of, 350 + Europe, Western, 53, 298 + European overseas populations, 336 + Europeans, intellectual revival of, 294 _et seq._ + Europeans, North Atlantic, 329 + Europeans, Western, 329 + Everlasting League, 433 + Evolution, 16, 42 + Excommunication, 275, 281, 285 + Execution, Greek method of, 140 + Ezekiel, 124 + + F + + Factory system, 365 + Family groups, 61 + Famine, 420 + Faraday, 358 + Fashoda, 398 + Fatherhood of God, the, 215, 224, 251 + Fear, 61 + Feathers, 32 + Ferdinand of Aragon, King, 293, 302, 309 + Ferns, 23, 26 + Fertilizers, 363 + Fetishism, 63, 64 + Feudal system, 258, 400, 401, 402 + Fielding, Henry, 365 + Fiji, 407 + Finance, 134 + Finland, 245 + Finns, 351 + Fish, the age of, 16 _et seq._; the first known vertebrata, 19; + evolution of, 30 + Fisher, Lord, 416 + Fishing, 57 + Fleming, Bishop, 286 + Flint implements, 44, 47 + Flood, story of the, 91, 116 + Florence, 294 + Florentine Society, 322 + Florida, 336, 385 + Flying machines, 94, 363 + Fontainebleau, 348 + Food, rationing of, 414 + Food riots, 417 + Forests, 56, 197 + Fossils, 13, 43. (_Cf._ Rocks) + Fowl, the domestic, 88, 102 + France, 106, 185, 230, 259, 263, 312, 336, 342, 353, 390, 391, + 394, 396, 402, 409, 411, 434 + Francis I, King of France, 310, 312, 313, 433 + Francis II, Emperor of Austria, 434 + Francis of Assisi, St., 276, 432 + Franciscan Order, 276, 285, 432 + Frankfort, Peace of, 391, 435 + Franks, 200, 227, 235, 259, 265, 431 + Frazer, Sir J. G., 66 + Frederick I (Barbarossa), 274, 432 + Frederick I, King of Prussia, 434 + Frederick II, German Emperor, 279, 280 _et seq._, 288, 289, 294, + 304, 435 + Frederick II, King of Sicily, 432 + Frederick the Great of Prussia, 327, 434 + Freeman's Farm, 338 + French, 329, 331, 332, 419 + French Guiana, 394 + French language, 203, 327, 328, 419 + French Revolution, 342 _et seq._, 374 + Frogs, 24 + Fronde, war of the, 434 + Fulton, Robert, 358 + Furnace, blast, 359; electric, 359 + Furs, 335 + + G + + Galatia, 430 + Galatians, 193 + Galba, 430 + Galerius, Emperor, 226, 431 + Galleys, 91, 92, 181, 263 + Galvani, 258 + Gamma, Vasco da, 329, 335, 433 + Ganges, 156 + Gath, 117 + Gaul, 203, 235, 236, 357, 431 + Gauls, 154, 178, 179, 180, 182, 193, 430 + Gautama. (_See_ Buddha) + Gaza, 117, 147 + Gaztelu, 314 + Genoa (and Genoese), 294, 300, 301, 302 + Genoa Conference, 425 + Genseric, 232 + Geology, 11 _et seq._, 356 + George III, King of England, 324, 337, 434 + Georgia, 336, 339, 385, 387 + German Empire, 409 + German language, 95, 236, 260 + Germans, 268, 288, 310, 351, 360-61, 362 + Germany, 197, 326, 347, 348, 362, 390, 396, 402, 409, 410, 411 + Germany, North, 306 + Gibbon, E., 234, 288 + Gibraltar, 71, 92, 94, 253, 393, 407 + Gigantosaurus, measurement of, 28 + Gilbert, Dr., 322 + Gilboa, Mount, 118 + Gills, 24 + Giraffes, 42 + Gizeh, pyramids at, 83 + Glacial Ages, 22, 37, 44 + Gladiators, 205 + Glass, 102 + Glyptodon, 74 + Goa, 329 + Goats, 77 + God, idea of one true, 249 + God of Judaism, 123, 209, 213, 214, 215 + Godfrey of Bouillon, 432 + Gods, 111, 123, 129, 165, 184, 186, 201 _et seq._, 208 _et seq._, + 240 + Goidelic·Celts, 106 + Gold, 74, 80, 83, 102, 300, 395 + _Golden Bough_, Frazer's, 66 + Good Hope, Cape of. (See Cape) + Gospels, the, 214 _et seq._, 222 + Gothic kingdom, 259 + Gothland, 197, 200 + Goths, 181, 200, 227, 228, 430, 431 + Granada, 293, 301 + Granicus, battle of the, 146, 430 + Grant, General, 387, 388 + Graphite, 15 + Grass, 37, 51 + Great Britain, 396, 410 + Great Mogul, Empire of, 394, 434 + Great Powers, 399 _et seq._ + Great Schism. (_See_ Papal schism) + Great War, the, 411 _et seq._, 421, 435 + Greece, 92, 94, 108, 127, 139 _et seq._, 145 _et seq._, 434 + Greece, war with Persia, 134 _et seq._ + Greek language, 95, 202, 203 + Greeks, 92, 100, 101, 108, 122 _et seq._, 135, 150, 174, 186, 271, + 272, 301, 353, 419, 429, 430, 433 + Greenland, 263 + Gregory I, Pope, 263 + Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand), 268, 272, 274, 275, 278, 432 + Gregory IX, Pope, 281 + Gregory XI, Pope, 285, 433 + Gregory the Great, 272 + Grimaldi race, 51, 54, 65 + Guillotine, the, 346 + Guiscard, Robert, 432 + Gunpowder, 287, 321 + Guns, 321, 413 + Gustavus Adolphus, 331 + Gymnastic displays, Cretan, 93 + + H + + Habsburgs, 283, 309, 310 + Hadrian, 174, 430 + Halicarnassus, 138 + Hamburg, 294 + Hamitic people, 71 + Hammurabi, 90, 92, 104, 429 + Han dynasty, 196, 200, 245, 430 + Hannibal, 182 + Hanover, Elector of, 327 + Harding, President, 425 + Harold Hardrada, 266 + Harold, King of England, 266 + Haroun-al-Raschid, 267, 432 + Hastings, battle of, 266 + Hastings, Warren, 333 + Hatasu, Queen of Egypt, 96 + Hathor, 209 + Heaven, Kingdom of, 216, 217 + Hebrew Bible, 1, 115, 116. (Cf. Bible) + Hebrew literature, 100 + Hebrews, 100, 115. (_See also_ Jews) + Hegira, 431 + Heidelberg man, 45 + Heliolithic culture, 69, 71, 167, 174 + Heliolithic peoples, 107 + Hellenic tribes, 100. (_See also_ Greeks) + Hellespont, 430, 431 + Helots, 130, 203 + Hen. (_See_ Fowl) + Henry IV, King, 274 + Henry VI, Emperor, 279 + Henry VIII, King of England, 310, 312, 313, 324, 433 + Henry the Fowler, 265, 432 + Heraclea, battle of, 178, 430 + Heraclitus of Ephesus, 132, 156, 161 + Heraclius, Emperor, 243, 247, 253, 431 + Herat, 148 + Herbivorous reptiles, 28 + Hercules, Pillars of, (_See_ Gibraltar) + Hero, 151, 152 + Herodotus, 138, 139 + Herophilus, 151 + Hiero, 182 + Hieroglyphics, 79, 124 + Hildebrand. (_See_ Gregory VII) + Himalayas, the, 37 + Hipparchus, 151 + Hippopotamus, 43 + Hiram, King of Sidon, 118, 119, 122 + _History of Charles V_, 316 + Hittites, 96, 97, 98, 108 + Hohenstaufens, 283 + Holland, 306, 344, 347, 394, 396, 402, 433, 434 + Holstein, 351 + Holy Alliance, 349 + Holy Roman Empire, 264, 309, 317, 323, 347, 377, 409, 432, 434 + Homer, 129 + Honorius, 230, 431 + Honorius III, Pope, 281 + Horse, 51, 56, 94, 96, 97, 112, 167, 319, 336; evolution of the, + 42 + Horsetails, 23 + Horus, 209, 210, 211 + Hottentots, 54 + Hsia, 287 + Hudson Bay Company, 393 + Hudson River, 358 + Hulagu Khan, 290, 433 + Human sacrifice, 182, 186. (_Cf._ Blood Sacrifice, Sacrifice) + Hungarians, 263, 289, 351 + Hungary, 185, 203, 227, 245, 258, 263, 289, 290, 292, 310, 312, + 351 + Hungary, plain of, 234 + Huns, 88, 167, 168, 174, 197, 198, 227, 232, 233, 245, 263, 289, + 431 + Hunting, 56 + Huss, John, 304, 433 + Hussites, 305 + Hwang-ho river, 173 + Hwang-ho valley, 300 + Hyksos, 90, 96 + Hyracodons, 42 + Hystaspes, 430 + + I + + Iberians, 71, 92 + Ice age, 43. ·(_Cf._ Glacial ages) + Iceland, 263 + Ichthyosaurs, 29, 36 + Ignatius of Loyola, St., 308, 434 + _Iliad_, 127 + Illinois, 386 + Illyria, 179, 182 + Immolation of human beings, 102 + Immortality, idea of, 210, 211, 224 + Imperialism, 399 + Implements, 46, 48, 56, 57, 65, 87 + Implements, use of, by animals, 44, 45 + India, 71, 84, 104, 108, 122, 149, 156, 163, 164, 196, 199, 287, + 302, 335, 394-95, 399, 409, 433, 434 + Indian Empire, 405 + Indian Ocean, 329 + Indiana, 383, 386 + Individualists, 375 _et seq._ + Individuality in reproduction, 16 _et seq._ + Indo-Scythians, 199, 430 + Indus, 149, 429 + Industrial revolution, 365 _et seq._ + Infantry, 178 + Influenza, 414 + Innocent III, Pope, 276, 279, 280, 432 + Innocent IV, Pope, 281 + Innsbruck, 313 + Inquisition, the, 276, 349 + Insects, 26, 31 + Interdicts, papal, 275 + Interglacial period, 44 + Internationalism, 380 + Invertebrata, 13 + Investitures, 275 + Ionic Greeks, 108, 130 + Iowa, 385 + Ireland, 106, 405 + Iron, 80, 87, 94, 97, 102, 104, 168, 319, 321, 358, 359 + Irrigation, 290 + Isabella of Castile, Queen, 293, 302, 309 + Isaiah, 125, 133, 156 + Isis, 209, 210, 211, 212 + Islam, 251, 252, 432 + Islamism, 267, 319. (_See also_ Moslem, Muhammedanism) + Isocrates, 145 + Israel, judges of, 118 + Israel, kings of, 118, 119, 121 + Issus, battle of, 147, 430 + Italian language, 203 + Italians, 107, 351 + Italica, 202 + Italy, 94, 108, 129, 134, 176, 180, 230, 236, 312, 327, 347, 390, + 396, 409, 411, 429, 431, 434 + Italy, Central, 429 + Italy, North, 263, 312, 351, 390, 429, 431 + Italy, South, 429 + Ivan III (the Great), 327, 433 + Ivan IV (the Terrible), 327, 433 + + J + + Jacobin republic, 434 + Jamaica, 393, 407 + James I, King of England and Scotland, 324, 433 + Jamestown (Va.), 433 + Japan, 166, 300, 399, 400-01 _et seq._, 409, 410, 435 + Japanese, 419 + Jarandilla, 315 + Java, 302, 329 + Jaw-bone, Heidelberg, 45-46; Piltdown, 46 + Jehovah, 125 + Jena, 434 + Jengis Khan, 287, 298, 334, 432 + Jerusalem, 115, 116, 119, 121, 123, 124, 184, 215, 243, 267, 271, + 272, 299, 431, 432 + Jerusalem, Temple of, 119, 184 + Jesuits, 308, 400, 433 + Jesus, life and teaching of, 214 _et seq._, 224, 270, 306, 374, + 430 + Jews, 123, 124, 147, 184, 213, 215, 255, 256, 270, 294 + Jews, early history of, 115 _et seq._ + Jews, literature of, 115 + Jewish religion and sacred books, 116 + John III of Poland, 434 + John XI, Pope, 272 + John XII, Pope, 272, 432 + Joppa, 117 + Joseph, King of Spain, 349, 434 + Josiah, King of Judah, 110, 115, 116, 429 + Judah, 115, 119 + Judah, kings of, 119 + Judea, 115, 183, 214 + Judea, priests and prophets in, 122 _et seq._ + Judges, book of, 117 + Judges of Israel, 118 + Jugo-Slavia, 354 + Jugo-Slavs, 351 + Jugurtha, 192 + Julian the Apostate, 431 + Julius III, 316 + Junks, Chinese, 400 + Jupiter (god), 211, 212 + Jupiter (planet), 2, 3 + Jupiter Capitolinus, 184 + Jupiter Serapis, 226 + Justinian I, 232, 238, 243, 431 + Jutes, 230 + + K + + Kaaba, the, 249 + Kadessia, battle of, 253, 431 + Kalinga, 163 + Kansas, 383 + Karakorum, 287, 298 + Karnak, 101 + Kashgar, 300 + Kashmir, Buddhists in, 165 + Kavadh, 243, 244, 431 + Kentucky, 383, 386 + Kerensky, 416, 417 + Khans, 287 _et seq._ + Khyber Pass, 148, 199 + Kiau Chau, 400 + Kieff, 287, 432 + Kin dynasty, 287 + Kings, book of, 119 + Kioto, 402 + Ki-wi, the, 32 + Koltchak, Admiral, 419 + Koran, the, 251, 255 + Korea, 400, 402 + Kotan, 300 + Krum of Bulgaria, 432 + Kublai Khan, 290, 298, 300, 433 + Kushan dynasty, 199 + + L + + Labyrinth, Cretan, 127 + Lahore, 287 + Lake Ontario, 336 + Land scorpions, 23 + Langley, Professor, 363 + Languages of mankind, 94, 95, 100, 106, 107, 108, 134, 145, 156, + 176, 201, 202, 203, 230, 236, 243, 245, 259, 325, 328 + Lao Tse, 133, 170 _et seq._, 222, 429 + Lapland, 233 + Latin Emperor, 259 + Latin language, 201, 202, 203, 236, 259. (_Cf. also_ Languages) + Latins, the, 271, 272, 432 + Law, 238 + _Laws_, Plato's, 142 + League of Nations, 422, 423, 424, 425, 435 + Learning, 255 + Lee, General, 387, 389 + Legionaries, 229 + Lemurs, 43 + Lenin, 417, 419 + Leo III, Pope, 265, 272, 432 + Leo X, Pope, 310, 312, 433 + Leonidas, 136 + Leopold I, 353 + Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 434 + Lepanto, battle of, 293 + Lepidus, 194 + Lexington, 338 + Liberia, 398 + Libraries, 151, 164, 170 + Liegnitz, battle of, 288, 289, 433 + Life, beginnings of, the Record of the Rocks, 11 _et seq._; + progressive nature of, 16; of what it consists, 16; theory of + Natural Selection, 18; a teachable type: advent of, 39 + Lincoln, Abraham, 385, 386, 388, 389, 435; assassination of, 389 + Linen, 102 + Lions, 42, 127 + Lisbon, 294, 315, 329 + Literary criticism, evolution of, 205 + Literature, European, 298 + Literature, pre-historic, 115 + Lizards, 27, 28 + Llamas, 42 + Lob Nor, 300 + Lochau, battle of, 313 + Locke, John, 371 + Logic, science of, 144 + Lombard kingdom, 259 + Lombards, 431 + Lombardy, 431 + London, 294, 413 + Lopez de Recalde, Inigo, 308, (_See also_ Ignatius of Loyola) + Lorraine, 391 + Louis XIV, 324, 433 + Louis XV, 434 + Louis XVI, 342, 343, 434 + Louis XVIII, 350, 434 + Louis Philippe, 350, 434, + Louis the Pious, 265, 432 + Louisiana, 336, 385 + Lu, state of, 170 + Lucretius, 294 + Lucullus, 192 + Lunar month, 68 + Lung, the, 24 + Luther, Martin, 306, 310, 433 + Luxembourg, 351 + Luxor, 101 + Lvoff, Prince, 416 + Lyceum, Athens, 142, 144 + Lydia, 98, 134 + Lydians, 94 + Lyons, 345 + + M + + Macao, 329 + Macaulay, Lord, 187 + Maccabeans, 184 + Macedonia and Macedonians, 131, 135, 139, 145, 179, 292, 350 + Machinery, 322, 356 + Madeira, 122, 302 + Madras, 163 + Magellan, Ferdinand, 302 + Magic, 172 + Magna Græcia, 129, 178 + Magnesia, battle of, 183 + Magyars, 263, 264, 270, 289 + Mahaffy, Professor, 151 + Maine, 336, 339 + Majuba Hill, battle of, 398 + Malta, 393, 407 + Mammals, the earliest, 33; viviparous, 33; egg-laying, 34; the Age + of, 37 _et seq._ + Mammoth, 43, 49 + Man, brotherhood of, 216, 224, 380 + Man, 43; Heidelberg, 45; Eoanthropus, 47; Neanderthal, 47, 48 _et + seq._; earliest known, 53 _et seq._ + Manchu, 333, 433 + Manchuria, 197, 400,·402, 403, 404 + Mangu Khan, 290, 433 + Mani, 241, 270, 430, 431 + Manichæans, 243, 255 + Mankind, racial divisions of, 54, 71 + Mantua, 345 + Maoris, 71 + Marathon, 136 + Marathon, battle of, 430 + Marchand, Colonel, 398 + Marcus Aurelius, 174, 430 + Marie Antoinette, 343, 346 + Mariner's compass, 302, 320 + Marius, 191, 192, 237, 430 + "Marriage of East and West," 149 + Mars (planet), 2, 3 + Marseillaise, the, 343, 345 + Marseilles, 129, 182, 312, 345 + Martel, Charles, 259, 432 + Marlin V, Pope, 286, 304 + Marx, 376 + Maryland, 337 + Mas d'Azil cave, 57 + Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 390, 391 + Maximilian I, Emperor, 309, 433 + Maya writing, 74, 75 + Mayence, 265, 344 + _Mayflower_ expedition, 433 + Mazarin, Cardinal, 324 + Mecca, 248, 249, 251, 431 + Mechanical revolution, 256 _et seq._, 366, 369 + Medes, 100, 108, 109, 115, 122, 134, 155, 174, 429 + Media, rebellion in, 136 + Median Empire, 109, 110, 112 + Medicine man, the, 64 + Medina, 249 + Mediterranean, 71, 91, 176, 292, 293; valley, 71 + "Mediterranean" people, pre-Greek, 130 + Megatherium, 74 + Megiddo, battle of, 110, 115, 429 + Melasgird, battle of, 268, 432 + Mentality, primitive, 60, _et seq._ + Mercury (planet), 2, 3 + Mesopotamia, 77, 80, 96, 100, 109, 127, 174, 267, 290, 299 + Mesozoic period, 27; land life of, 28; sea life of, 30; scarcity + of bird and mammal life in, 32, 34; its difference from + Cainozoic period, 38 + Messina, 179, 180 + Messina, Straits of, 179 + Metallurgy, 356, 359, 360 + Metals, transmutation of, 257 + Meteoric iron, 80, 94 + Metz, 391 + Mexico, 74, 76, 324, 321, 384, 385, 389, 399 + Michael VII, Emperor, 268 + Michael VIII. (_See_ Palæologus) + Microscope, 355 + Midianites, 117 + Milan, 227, 235, 309, 312, 351 + Miletus, 129 + Millipedes, 23 + Milton, 129 + Ming dynasty, 290, 333, 433 + Mining, 335 + Minnesota, 385 + Minos, 92, 95, 127, 131 + Missionaries, 236, 247, 380, 400, 431 + Mississippi (state), 385 + Mississippi River, 386 + Missouri, 382 + Mithraism, 211, 212, 213, 222, 431 + Mithras, 211, 213 + Mnemonics, Chinese and Peruvian method of, 76 + Moabites, 117 + Moawija, Caliph, 431 + Mogul dynasty, 292, 433 + Moluccas, 329 + Monarchy, 323, 341, 347 + Monasticism, 213, 236 + Money, 114, 176, 201, 319 + Mongol conquests, influence of, 298 + Mongol Court, the, 299 + Mongol Empire, 332 + Mongolia, 197 + Mongolian language, 108 + Mongolian peoples, 72, 73, 88, 167, 197, 227, 232, 233 _et seq._, + 245, 258, 287 _et seq._, 298, 320, 333, 400, 433 + Mongoloid tribes, 69 + Monkeys, 43, 45 + Monotheism, 251. (_See also_ Muhammad) + Monroe doctrine, 349, 389, 396, 423 + Monroe, President, 349 + Montesquieu, 371 + Montgomery, 385 + Month, the lunar, 68 + Moon, the, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 68 + Moorish paper-mills, 297 + More, Sir Thomas, 365, 371 + Morelly, 371 + Morocco, 185, 398 + Mortillet, 57 + Moscow, 293, 434 + Moscow, Grand Duke of, 290 + Moses, 116 + Moslem Empire, 253 + Moslems, 297, 431, 432 + Moslim, the, 253, 269, 271, 290 + Mososaurs, 29 + Moses, 23 + Mounds, Neolithic, 70 + Mountains, 197 + Mozambique, 329 + Muehlon, Herr, 424 + Muhammad, prophet, 243, 247, 248 _et seq._, 270, 431 + Muhammad II, Sultan, 292, 433 + Mules, 102 + Mummies, 70 + Munitions, 412 + Musk ox, 43 + Mycalæ, battle of, 136, 430 + Mycenæ, 92, 108 + Mycerinus, 83 + Mylæ, battle of, 181, 430 + + N + + Nabonidus, 111, 112 + Nankin, 173 + Naples, 178, 350, 431 + Napoleon Bonaparte, 345, 347, 348, 356, 434 + Napoleon III, 390, 434, 435 + Nasmyth, 359 + Natal, 398 + "National schools," 369 + Natural history, father of, 144 + Natural Selection, theory of, 17 + Nautilus, the pearly, 39 + Navarino, battle of, 353, 434 + Neanderthaler Man, 47, 48 _et seq._ + Nebraska, 383 + Nebuchadnezzar II (the Great), 102, 110, 115, 429 + Nebulæ, 4, 5 + Necho II, 109, 110, 115, 122, 147, 429 + Needles, bone, 57 + Negroid tribes, 72, 88 + Nelson, Horatio, 348 + Neolithic age, 59, 65 + Neolithic civilizations, primitive, 71 _et seq._ + Neptune (planet), 2, 3 + Nero, 195, 430 + Nestorian missionaries, 431. (_Cf._ Missionaries) + Netherlands, 259, 309, 351 + Neustria, 431 + Neva, 327 + New Assyrian Empire, 97 + _New Atlantis, The_, 322, 355 + New England, 335, 337 + New Mexico, 433 + New Plymouth, 433 + Newts, 24 + New York, 358, 434 + New Zealand, 322, 396, 405 + Newfoundland, 405 + Nicæa, 268, 270 + Nicæa, Council of, 431 + Nicephorus, Emperor, 432 + Nicholas I, Tsar, 351, 390, 434 + Nicholas II, Tsar, 416 + Nickel, 360 + Nicomedia, 227 + Nieuw Amsterdam, 434. (_Cf._ New York) + Nile, 83, 100, 129, 398; valley 90, 429 + Nile, battle of the, 434 + Nineveh, 94, 97, 101, 109, 114, 243, 429, 431 + Nippur, 78 + Nirvana, 161 + Nish, 227 + Noah's Ark, 91 + Nogaret, Guillaume de, 284 + Nomadic peoples, primitive, 84 _et seq._, (_Cf._ Nomads) + Nomads, 122, 155, 167, 168, 174, 198-200, 233-34, 245, 287, 334 + Nonconformity, 307, 308 + Nordic race, 72, 88, 104, 108, 134, 154, 155, 174, 178, 185, 197, + 200, 233, 258, 261 + Normandy, 263, 342, 432 + Normandy, Duke of, 266 + Normans, 263, 266, 279, 302 + Northmen, 263, 264, 266, 268, 432 + Norway, 306, 313, 432 + Norwegians, 351 + Novgorod, 294, 432 + Nubians, 238 + Numerals, Arabic, 282 + Numidia, 191 + Numidians, 182 + Nuremberg, 294 + Nuremberg, Peace of, 313 + + O + + Ocean dredgings, deepest, 4 + Ocean liners, 322, 336 + Octavian. (_See_ Augustus) + Odenathus of Palmyra, 431 + Odoacer, 236, 431 + _Odyssey_, 127 + Ogdai Khan, 287, 289, 432 + Oglethorpe, 336 + Okapi, 397 + "Old Man," 372, 373 + Old Testament, 115, 116 + Olympiad, first, 176, 429 + Olympian games, 131 + Olympias, Queen, 146 + Omar, Caliph, 431 + Open-hearth process, 359 + Orange River, 398 + "Ordinance of secession," 385 + Oregon, 385 + Organic Evolution, 16 + Ormuz, 299 + Orsini family, 284 + Orthodoxy, 240 + Osiris, 200, 210, 211 + Ostrogoths, 227, 431 + Othman, 432 + Otho, 430 + Otto I, King of Germany, 265, 432 + Otto of Bavaria, Prince, 354 + Ottoman Empire, 202. (_See also_ Turkey, Turks) + Oudh, 394 + Ownership, 373, 374, 375 + Oxen, 49, 104, 112 + Oxford, 295 + + P + + Padua, 235 + Pæstum, 176 + Palæologus, Michael (Michael VIII), 283 + Palæolithic age, 13, 59, 66 (note) + Palermo, 181 + Palestine, 290, 299 + Pamirs, 196, 300 + Panama, 385 + Panama, Isthmus of, 314 + Pan Chau, 197, 430 + Panipat, battle of, 433 + Pannonia, 203, 229, 232, 234, 431 + Papacy (including Popes), 237, 261, 265, 277 _et seq._, 329 _et + seq._, 343 + Papal schism (the Great Schism), 285, 394, 433 + Paper, 153, 236, 255, 297, 320, 322 + Papyrus, 78, 153 + Parables, 216 + _Paradise Lost_, 129 + Parchment, 153 + Paris, 294, 295, 342, 350, 356, 390, 391, 412, 413, 415, 435 + Paris, Peace of, 338, 434 + Parthian dynasty, 202 + Parthians, 155, 192, 194, 198, 199, 245 + Passau, Treaty of, 314 + Patricians, Roman, 176, 188 + Paul, St., 202, 223 + Pavia, siege of, 312 + _Peace Conference_, Dr. Dillon's, 424 + Peasant revolts, 305, 310 + Peculium, 206 + Pedro I, 340 + Pegu, 300 + Pekin, 173, 287, 300, 383, 400, 432 + Peloponnesian War, 139, 145, 430 + Pentateuch, the, 116 + "People's crusade," the, 270, 432. (_Cf._ Crusades) + Pepi II, 83 + Pepin I, 259 + Pepin of Hersthal, 431 + Pergamum, 154, 180, 183, 430 + Pericles, 139, 140 + Perry, Commodore, 402 + Persepolis, 114, 148, 155 + Persia, 77, 134 _et seq._, 165, 185, 192, 227, 243, 253, 255, 287, + 399, 409, 430, 431 + Persian Empire, 112, 134, 238, 429 + Persian Gulf, 77, 78, 91, 299 + Persian language, 95 + Persians, 100, 108, 109, 115, 155, 174, 431 + Peru, 74, 75, 314, 321 + Pestilence, 305, 320, 334, 413, 430, 431, 433 + Peter the Great, 327, 434 + Peter the Hermit, 269, 270 + Peterhof, 327 + Petersburg, 127, 419. (_See also_ Petrograd) + Petrograd, 416, 417. (_See also_ Petersburg) + Petschenegs, 268 + Phalanx, 145, 178 + Pharaohs, the, 90, 96, 119, 131, 150, 188 + Pharsalos, 430 + Philadelphia, 358, 434 + Philip, Duke of Orleans, 350 + Philip, King of France, 285 + Philip II, King of Spain, 314, 324 + Philip of Hesse, 313 + Philip of Macedon, 145, 146, 430 + Philippine Islands, 302, 393, 400 + Philistines, 100, 117 + Philosopher's stone, 257 + Philosophers and Philosophy, 133, 139, 152, 168, 239, 294, 295 + Phoenicians, 92, 94, 107, 123, 147 + _Phoenix_, steamship, 358 + Phrygians, 100, 108 + Physiocrats, 371 + Picture writing, 56, 57, 78, 79, 167 + Piedmont, 345 + Pirates and Piracy, 92, 179, 180, 200, 263 + Pithecanthropus erectus, 45 + Pizarro, 314 + Plague, (_See_ Pestilence) + Planetoids, 2 + Planets, 2 + Plant lice, 13 + Plants, 22, 23, 36 + Platea, battle of, 136, 430 + Plato, 140, 142, 144, 170, 370-71 + Platypus, duck-billed, 34 + Plebeians, Roman, 176, 177, 187-88 + Plesiosaurs, 29, 30, 36 + Poison-gas, 413 + Poitiers, 432 + Poitiers, battle of, 253, 259 + Poland, 288, 327, 353, 434 + Poles, 288, 419 + Political experiment, age of, 318 _et seq._ + Political ideas, development of, 370 _et seq._ + Political science, founder of, 144 + Political worship, 412 + Polo, Marco, 299-300 + Polynesian races, 71 + Pompey the Great, 192, 193, 196, 198, 430 + Pontifex maximus, 237, 261 + Popes. (_See_ Papacy) + Population, 379, 383 + Port Arthur, 400, 403 + Portugal, 340, 394, 396, 431 + Portuguese, 302, 329, 332, 400 + Porus, King, 149 + Potato, 76 + Potsdam, 327 + Pottery, 75, 87 + Prague, 433 + Prescott, 314 + Priestcraft (including Priests), 64, 68, 69, 74, 75, 77, 83, 111, + 114 _et seq._, 122, 131, 132, 167, 174, 275, 277 + _Primal Law_, 61 + Primates, 43. (_Cf._ Mammalia) + Printing, 80 153, 247, 255, 298, 302, 305, 306, 320, 322, 329 + Priscus, 234 + Property, 274, 372, 374, 375 + Prophet, Muhammad as, 249 + Prophets, Jewish, 118, 122 _et seq._ + Proprietorship, 373 + Protestantism, 316, 324, 327, 351, 400 + Proverbs, book of, 116 + Prussia, 327, 348, 351, 390, 391, 392, 434, 435 + Prussia, East, 412, 415 + Psalms, 116 + Psammetichus I, 109, 429 + Psycho-analysis, 69 + Pterodactyls, 28, 29, 31, 36 + Ptolemy I, 149, 150, 151, 186, 211 + Ptolemy II, 151, 186 + Punic language, 203 + Punic Wars, 180 _et seq._, 187, 188, 430 + Punjab, 163, 199 + Puritans, 335 + Pygmies, 397 + Pyramids, 69, 83, 100 + Pyrenees, 253, 432 + Pyrrhus, 178, 179, 430 + + Q + + Quebec, 434 + Quinqueremes, 180 + Quixada, 314 + + R + + Races of mankind, 71 _et seq._ + Railways, 322, 350, 357, 382, 383, 384, 389, 395, 396, 409, 434 + Rain, 9, 10 + Rameses II, 96, 147, 429 + Rasputin, 415, 416 + Ratisbon, Diet of, 313 + Ravenna, 431 + Reading, 176 + Rebus, 79 + Red deer, 56 + Red Sea, 91, 118, 122, 196 + Reformation, the, 308 + Reindeer, 43, 49, 51, 56, 73 + Religion, and the creation of the world, 1; and organic evolution, + 16; primitive, 61, 64 + Religions, 172, 222 _et seq._, 240 _et seq._, 319. (_Cf._ + Buddhism, Christianity, etc.) + Religious developments under the Roman Empire, 208 _et seq._ + Religious wars, 270, 304, 313. (_Cf._ Crusades) + Reptiles, the age of, 26 _et seq._; mental life of, 38 + Reproduction, 17 _et seq._ + _Republic_, Plato's, 142 + Republic, the Assimilative, 187 + Republics, 187 _et seq._, 236, 308, 324, 328, 340, 343, 344, 416, + 433, 434, 435 + Republicans, the first, 131 + _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_, 150 + Revolution, 342 _et seq._, 349 _et seq._, 390, 404, 416, 435 + Rhine, 200, 227 + Rhine languages, 236 + Rhineland, 270, 306 + Rhinoceros, 43, 49 + Rhodes, 108 + Rhodesia, 407 + Rhodesian man, 52 + Richelieu, Cardinal, 324 + Richmond, U.S.A., 386, 388, 389 + Roads, 114, 187 + Robertson, 316 + Robespierre, 345, 346, 434 + Robinson, J. H., 284 + "Rocket," Stephenson's, 356 + Rock pictures, 57, 78 + Rocks as record of beginnings of life, 11 _et seq._ + + S + + Sabellians, 224 + Sabre-toothed tiger, 43 + Sacrifice, 102, 103, 167, 174, 182, 186, 211, 212. (_Cf._ also + Blood sacrifice, Human sacrifice) + Sagas, 106 + Saghalien, 404 + Sailing ships, 91, 336 + St. Angelo, castle of, 312 + St. Helena, 407 + St. Sophia, church of, 238 + Saladin, 272, 432 + Salamis, battle of, 180, 430 + Salamis, bay of, 136 + Salerno, 282 + Samarkand, 256, 297 + Samnites, 430 + Samos, 129 + Samson, 116 + Samurai, 401 + San Francisco, 383 + Sandstones, 26 + Sanskrit, 95, 107, 156 + Sapor I, 430 + Saracens, 264, 265, 297 + Saratoga, 338 + Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal), 98, 109, 111 + Sardinia, 182, 185, 232, 309, 351, 390 + Sardis, 98 + Sargon I, 90, 92, 109, 122, 429 + Sargon II, 97, 109, 429 + Sarmatians, 100 + Sassanid dynasty, 227, 241, 430 + Saturn (planet), 2, 3 + Saul, King of Israel, 118, 429 + Saul of Tarsus. (_See_ Paul, St.) + _Savannah_, steamship, 358 + Savoy, 334, 351, 390 + Saxons, 230, 265 + Saxony, Elector of, 310 + Scandinavians, 329 + Scarabeus beetle, 209 + Scheldt, 344 + Schmalkaldic League, 312 + Science, 144 + Science and religion, 243 + Science, exploitation of, 362 + Science, physical, 412 + Scientific societies, 322 + Scipio Africanus, 182, 187 + Scorpion, sea, 13, 18, 23 + Scotland, 306, 307 + Scott, Michael, 282 + Scythia, 429 + Scythians, 100, 108, 134, 135 + Sea trade, 91 + Sea worms, 13 + Seasons, the, 68 + Seaweed, 13 + Sedan, 391 + Seed-bearing trees, 26 + Seleucid dynasty, 183, 186, 196, 199 + Seleucus I, 149, 163 + Seljuks, 267, 268, 272, 432 + Semites and Semitic peoples, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 107, 115, 122, + 134, 174, 233, 256, 258 + Semitic language, 202, 243 + Sennacherib, 97 + Serapeum, 211, 213 + Serapis, 211, 212 + Serbia, 179, 200, 227, 228, 292, 354, 411 + Serfdom, 207 + Seven Years' War, 434 + Severus, Septimius, 202 + Seville, 202, 213, 302 + Shang dynasty, 103, 168 + Sheep, 77 + Shell necklaces, 56 + Shellfish, 13 + Shells, as protection against drying, 18 + Sherman, General, 387, 388 + Shi Hwang-ti, 173, 180, 430 + Shimonoseki, Straits of, 402 + Shipbuilding, 359, 360, 400 + Ships, 91, 119, 122, 149, 180, 196, 320, 322, 336 + Shishak, 119 + Shrubs, 16 + Shumanism, 298 + Siam, 166 + Siberia, 334 + Siberia, Eastern, 419 + Siberian railway, 403, 409 + Sicilies, Two, 287 + Sicily, 108, 122, 129, 134, 178, 179, 182, 185, 188, 232, 263, + 279, 280 + Sidon, 92, 122, 123, 134, 147 + Silurian system, 19 + Silver, 80, 102, 335 + Sind, 394 + Sirmium, 227 + Skins, use of; for clothing, 56 for writing, 75; inflated as + boats, 91 + Skull, Rhodesian, 52 + Slavery (and slaves), 94, 102, 188, 191, 194, 203 _et seq._, 236, + 320, 337, 373, 374, 384-86, 388, 430, 433 + Slavonic language, 236 + Slavs, 263, 265 + Smelting, 87, 104, 322 + Smith, Adam, 377 + Smith, Eliot, 69 + Snakes, 27, 28 + Social reform, 125 + Socialism, 371, 416, 417, 434 + Socialists, 375 _et seq._ + Socialists, primitive, 374 + Society, primitive, 60 + Socrates, 140 + Solomon, King, 119, 122, 127, 429 + Solomon's temple, 119 + Sophists, 140 + Sophocles, 139 + South Carolina, 385 + Soviets, 417 + Space, the world in, 1 _et seq._ + Spain, 93, 106, 122, 123, 180, 185, 230, 232, 236, 253, 255, 256, + 309, 348, 349, 350, 393, 429, 431; relics of first true man in, + 53 + Spain, North, 431 + Spanish, 329, 331 + Spanish language, 203 + Sparta, 129, 130, 136, 203 + Spartacus, 191, 192, 203, 430 + Spartans, 136 + Species, generation of, 17; new, 36 + Speech, primitive human, 63 + Spiders, 23 + Spiral nebulæ, 5 + Spores, 24 + Stagira, 142 + Stamford Bridge, battle of, 286 + Stars, 68, 257 + State, modern idea of a, 375 + State ownership, 374 + States General, the, 341, 434 + Steamboat, 340, 357 _et seq._, 374, 382, 395, 396 + Steam engine, 151, 152, 359 + Steam hammer, 359 + Steam power, 322 + Steel, 322, 359-60 + Stephenson, George, 356 + Stilicho, 230, 234, 431 + Stockholm, 417 + Stockton, 356, 434 + Stone age, 53, 59 + Stone implements, 45, 65 + Stonehenge, 106, 429 + Story-telling, primitive, 62 + Styria, 309 + Submarine campaign, 423 + Subutai, 289 + Sudan, the, 405 + Suevi, 431 + Suleiman the Magnificent, 310, 312, 432, 433 + Sulla, 192, 237 + Sumeria and Sumerians, 77, 78 _et seq._, 87, 88, 90, 91, 122 + Sumerian Empire, 429 + Sumerian language and writing, 77, 78, 79 + Sun, the, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 + Sun worship, 211 + Sung dynasty, 290 + Susa, 114, 135, 148, 149, 155 + Suy dynasty, 245 + Swastika, 70 + Sweden, 306, 313, 348 + Swedes, 326, 329, 330, 351 + Swimming bladder, 24 + Switzerland, 327, 347, 350, 433 + Syracuse, 151, 154, 170, 178 + Syria, 88, 91, 115, 119, 122, 138, 238, 243, 249, 290, 431 + Syrians, 96, 98 + + T + + _Tabus_, the, 61 + Tadpoles, 26 + Tagus valley, 314 + Tai-Tsung, 247, 431 + Tang dynasty, 200, 245, 247, 287, 431 + "Tanks," 413 + Taoism, 174, 222. (_See also_ Lao Tse) + Taranto, 178 + Tarentum, 178 + Tarim valley, 430 + Tartars, 167, 197, 232, 243, 288, 290, 334 + Tasmania, 59, 322, 393 + Tattooing, 70 + Taxation, 271, 337 + Tea, 247, 337 + Teeth, 19, 20 + Telamon, battle of, 182 + Telegraph, electric, 340, 358, 382, 384, 396 + Telescope, 355 + Temples, 77, 83, 101, 129, 131, 167, 174, 184, 186, 211, 212, 213, + 240 + Tennessee, 386 + Testament, Old, 115, 116 + Teutons, 431 + Texas, 384, 385 + Texel, 344 + Thales, 131, 161 + Thebes, 101, 102, 129, 136 + Theocrasia, 209 + Theodora, Empress, 238 + Theodoric the Goth, 236, 431 + Theodosius II, 234, 238 + Theodosius the Great, 226, 229, 431 + Thermopylæ, battle of, 136, 430 + Thessaly, 145, 178 + Thirty Years' War, 326 + Thothmes III, 96, 127, 147, 429 + Thought and research, 140 + Thought, primitive, 60 _et seq._ + Thrace, 135 + Three Estates, council of the, 285 + Three Teachings, the, 170 + Tiberius Cæsar, 195, 214, 430 + Tibet, 196, 400 + Tides, 18 + Tigers, 42, 43 + Tiglath Pileser I, 97, 429 + Tiglath Pileser III, 97, 108, 109, 429 + Tigris, 77, 84 + Time, 5, 6 + Timor, 329 + Timurlane, 290, 334 + Tin, 360 + Tiryns, 108 + Titanotherium, the, 39, 42 + Tonkin, 402 + Tortoises, 27, 28 + Toulon, 345 + Trade, early, 83, 88 + Trade, Grecian, 129 + Trade routes, 119 + Traders, 132, 335 + Traders, sea, 92 + Trafalgar, battle of, 348 + Trajan, 195, 430 + Transport, 319, 358, 382 + Transvaal, 398 + Transylvania, 195 + Trasimere, Lake, 182 + Trench warfare, 412 + Trevithick, 356 + Tribal life, 61 + Trilobites, 13 + Trinidad, 407 + Trinil, Java, 45 + Trinitarians, 224 + Trinity, doctrine of the, 224, 261 + Triremes, 180 + Triumvirates, 194 + Trojans, 94 + Troy, 92, 127 + Troyes, battle of, 235, 431 + Tsar, title of, 327 + Tshushima, Straits of, 404 + Ts'i, 173 + Ts'in, 173, 431 + Tuileries, 342, 343 + Tunis, 185 + Turkestan, 77, 108, 148, 196, 197, 198, 199, 245, 253, 287, 290, + 292, 334 + Turkey, 390, 411 + Turkoman dynasty, 405 + Turkomans, 334 + Turks, 167, 197, 243, 245, 263, 267, 287, 292, 310, 312, 334, 353, + 354, 434 + Turtles, 27, 28 + Tushratta, king of Mitanni, 97 + Twelve tribes, the, 116 + Tyrannosaurus, 28 + Tyre, 92, 118, 119, 122, 123, 134, 147 + + U + + Uintatheres, 42 + Uncleanness, 68 + United States, 357, 410, 411, 422, 434; Declaration of + Independence, 338; treaty with Britain, 339; expansion of, 382 + _et seq._ + Universities, 295, 304, 355, 361 + Uranus, 2, 3 + Urban II, Pope, 268, 272, 432 + Urban VI, Pope, 285, 433 + Utopias, 140, 142, 144 + + V + + Valens, Emperor, 229 + Valerian, 430 + Valladolid, 314, 315, 316 + Valmy, battle of, 434 + Vandals, 227, 229, 230, 232, 431 + Varennes, 343, 434 + Vassalage, 259 + Vatican, 265, 266, 272, 285 + Vedas, 106 + Vegetation of Mesozoic period, 28 + Veii, 177, 178 + Vendée, 345 + Venetia, 235 + Venetians, 301 + Venice, 235, 272, 274, 294, 327, 351, 432 + Venus (goddess), 213 + Venus (planet), 2, 3 + Verona, 345 + Versailles, 325, 327, 341, 342 + Versailles, Peace Conference of, 421 + Versailles, Treaty of, 421, 422 + Vertebrata, 19; ancestors of, 20 + Verulam, Lord, (_See_ Bacon, Sir Francis) + Vespasian, 430 + Vesuvius, 191 + Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 435 + Victoria, Queen, 394, 434 + Vienna, 292, 312, 433, 434 + Vienna, Congress of, 348, 349, 350 + Vienna, Treaty of, 355 + Vilna, 356 + Vindhya Mountains, 159 + Virginia, 337, 383, 386 + Visigoths, 227, 229, 232, 235, 259, 431. (_Cf._ Goths) + Vitellus, 430 + _Vittoria_, ship, 302 + Viviparous mammals, 33 + Vivisection, Herophilus and, 151 + Volcanoes, 37 + Volga, 200, 227 + Volta, 358 + Voltaire, 328 + Votes, 382 + + W + + Waldenses, 276, 280, 305 + Waldo, 276 + Walid I, 432 + War and Warfare, 96, 344, 390, 422 + War of American Independence, 338 _et seq._ + Warsaw, 353 + Washington, 340, 357, 383, 386, 389 + Washington, Conference of, 425 + Washington, George, 338 + Waterloo, battle of, 348 + Watt engine, 356 + Weapons, 100, 106 + Weaving, 65, 75 + Wei-hai-wei, 400 + Wellington, Duke of, 348 + West Indies, 330, 385, 393, 394 + Western Empire, 431 + Westminster, 306 + Westphalia, Peace of, 326, 355, 433 + Wheat, 66, 104 + White Huns. (_See_ Ephthalites) + William Duke of Normandy (William I), 432 + William II, German Emperor, 410, 435 + Wilson, President, 422, 423, 424 + Wings, birds', 32 + Wisby, 294 + Wisconsin, 385 + "Wisdom lovers," the first, 133 + Witchcraft, 68 + Wittenberg, 306 + Wolfe, General, 434 + Wolsey, Cardinal, 324 + Wood blocks for printing, 247 + Wool, 102, 395 + Workers' Internationals, 377 + World, The, creation of, 1; in time, 5 _et seq._ + Wrangel, General, 419 + Writing, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 94, 124, 176; dawn of, 57 + Wycliffe, John, and his followers, 286, 304, 433 + + X + + Xavier, Francis, 400 + Xenophon, 150 + Xerxes, 136, 138, 147, 150 + + Y + + Yang-Chow, 300 + Yang-tse-Kiang, 173 + Yangtse valley, 173 + Yarmuk, battle of, the, 253, 431 + Yedo Bay, 401 + Yorktown, 338 + Yuan dynasty, 290, 433 + Yucatan, 74 + Yudenitch, General, 419 + Yuste, 314, 317 + + Z + + Zama, battle of, 182, 430 + Zanzibar, 329 + Zarathustra, 241 + Zeppelins, 413 + Zero sign, 257 + Zeus, 211 + Zimbabwe, 397 + Zoophytes, fossilized, 13 + Zoroaster (and Zoroastrianism), 241, 243, 255 + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Short History of the World, by H. 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Wells + +Release Date: March 2, 2011 [EBook #35461] +[Last updated: November 3, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD *** + + + + +Produced by Donald F. Behan + + + + + + +A Short History of the World +Illustrated + +BY + +H. G. Wells + + + +J. J. Little & Ives Company + +New York + +1922 + +Copyright, 1922, by H. G. Wells + + + +{v} + +PREFACE + +This SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD is meant to be read +straightforwardly almost as a novel is read. It gives in the most +general way an account of our present knowledge of history, shorn +of elaborations and complications. It has been amply illustrated +and everything has been done to make it vivid and clear. From it +the reader should be able to get that general view of history +which is so necessary a framework for the study of it particular +period or the history of a particular country. It may be found +useful as a preparatory excursion before the reading of the +author's much fuller and more explicit _Outline of History_ is +undertaken. But its especial end is to meet the needs of the busy +general reader, too driven to study the maps and time charts of +that _Outline_ in detail, who wishes to refresh and repair his +faded or fragmentary conceptions of the great adventure of +mankind. It is not an abstract or condensation of that former +work. Within its aim the _Outline_ admits of no further +condensation. This is a much more generalized History, planned +and written afresh. + +{vii} + + + + CONTENTS + + CHAPTER PAGE + I. THE WORLD IN SPACE 1 + II. THE WORLD IN TIME 5 + III. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 11 + IV. THE AGE OF FISHES 16 + V. THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS 21 + VI. THE AGE OF REPTILES 26 + VII. THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS 31 + VIII. THE AGE OF MAMMALS 37 + IX. MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN 43 + X. THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN 48 + XI. THE FIRST TRUE MEN 53 + XII. PRIMITIVE THOUGHT 60 + XIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION 65 + XIV. PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS 71 + XV. SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING 77 + XVI. PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES 84 + XVII. THE FIRST SEA-GOING PEOPLES 91 + XVIII. EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA 96 + XIX. THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS 104 + XX. THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I 109 + XXI. THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS 115 + XXII. PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA 122 + XXIII. THE GREEKS 127 + XXIV. THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 134 + XXV. THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE 139 + XXVI. THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 145 + XXVII. THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA 150 + +{viii} + + XXVIII. THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA 156 + XXIX. KING ASOKA 163 + XXX. CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE 167 + XXXI. ROME COMES INTO HISTORY 174 + XXXII. ROME AND CARTHAGE 180 + XXXIII. THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 185 + XXXIV. BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA 196 + XXXV. THE COMMON MAN'S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE 201 + XXXVI. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 208 + XXXVII. THE TEACHING OF JESUS 214 + XXXVIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY 222 + XXXIX. THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST 227 + XL. THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 233 + XLI. THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES 238 + XLII. THE DYNASTIES OF SUY AND TANG IN CHINA 245 + XLIII. MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 248 + XLIV. THE GREAT DAYS OF THE ARABS 253 + XLV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM 258 + XLVI. THE CRUSADES AND THE AGE OF PAPAL DOMINION 267 + XLVII. RECALCITRANT PRINCES AND THE GREAT SCHISM 277 + XLVIII. THE MONGOL CONQUESTS 287 + XLIX. THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS 294 + L. THE REFORMATION OF THE LATIN CHURCH 304 + LI. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 309 + LII. THE AGE OF POLITICAL EXPERIMENTS; OF GRAND MONARCHY + AND PARLIAMENTS AND REPUBLICANISM IN EUROPE 318 + LIII. THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE EUROPEANS IN ASIA AND OVERSEAS 329 + LIV. THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 335 + +{ix} + + LV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE RESTORATION OF + MONARCHY IN FRANCE 341 + LVI. THE UNEASY PEACE IN EUROPE THAT FOLLOWED + THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 349 + LVII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE 355 + LVIII. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 365 + LIX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS 370 + LX. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 382 + LXI. THE RISE OF GERMANY TO PREDOMINANCE IN EUROPE 390 + LXII. THE NEW OVERSEAS EMPIRES OF THE STEAMSHIP AND RAILWAY 393 + LXIII. EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA, AND THE RISE OF JAPAN 399 + LXIV. THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914 405 + LXV. THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND + THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 409 + LXVI. THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA 415 + LXVII. THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD 421 + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 429 + INDEX 439 + + +{xi} + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + Luminous Spiral Clouds of Matter 2 + Nebula seen Edge-on 3 + The Great Spiral Nebula 6 + A Dark Nebula 7 + Another Spiral Nebula 8 + Landscape before Life 9 + Marine Life in the Cambrian Period 12 + Fossil Trilobite 13 + Early Palaeozoic Fossils of various Species of Lingula 14 + Fossilized Footprints of a Labyrinthodont, Cheirotherium 15 + Pterichthys Milleri 17 + Fossil of Cladoselache 18 + Sharks and Ganoids of the Devonian Period 19 + A Carboniferous Swamp 22 + Skull of a Labyrinthodont, Capitosaurus 23 + Skeleton of a Labyrinthodont: The Eryops 24 + A Fossil Ichthyosaurus 27 + A Pterodactyl 28 + The Diplodocus 29 + Fossil of Archeopteryx 32 + Hesperornis in its Native Seas 33 + The Ki-wi 34 + Slab of Marl Rich in Cainozoic Fossils 35 + Titanotherium Robustum 38 + Skeleton of Giraffe-camel 40 + Skeleton of Early Horse 40 + Comparative Sizes of Brains of Rhinoceros and Dinoceras 41 + A Mammoth 44 + Flint Implements from Piltdown Region 45 + A Pithecanthropean Man 46 + The Heidelberg Man 46 + The Piltdown Skull 47 + A Neanderthaler 49 + +{xii} + + Europe and Western Asia 50,000 years ago Map 50 + Comparison of Modern Skull and Rhodesian Skull 51 + Altamira Cave Paintings 54 + Later Palaeolithic Carvings 55 + Bust of Cro-magnon Man 57 + Later Palaeolithic Art 58 + Relics of the Stone Age 62 + Gray's Inn Lane Flint Implement 63 + Somaliland Flint Implement 63 + Neolithic Flint Implement 67 + Australian Spearheads 68 + Neolithic Pottery 69 + Relationship of Human Races Map 72 + A Maya Stele 73 + European Neolithic Warrior 75 + Babylonian Brick 78 + Egyptian Cylinder Seals of First Dynasty 79 + The Sakhara Pyramids 80 + The Pyramid of Cheops: Scene from Summit 81 + The Temple of Hathor 82 + Pottery and Implements of the Lake Dwellers 85 + A Lake Village 86 + Flint Knives of 4500 B.C. 87 + Egyptian Wall Paintings of Nomads 87 + Egyptian Peasants Going to Work 88 + Stele of Naram Sin 89 + The Treasure House at Mycenae 93 + The Palace at Cnossos 95 + Temple at Abu Simbel 97 + Avenue of Sphinxes at Karnak 98 + The Hypostyle Hall at Karnak 99 + Frieze of Slaves 101 + The Temple of Horus, Edfu 103 + Archaic Amphora 105 + The Mound of Nippur 107 + Median and Chaldean Empires Map 110 + The Empire of Darius Map 111 + A Persian Monarch 112 + The Ruins of Persepolis 113 + The Great Porch of Xerxes 113 + +{xiii} + + The Land of the Hebrews Map 117 + Nebuchadnezzar's Mound at Babylon 118 + The Ishtar Gateway, Babylon 120 + Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II 124 + Captive Princes making Obeisance 125 + Statue of Meleager 128 + Ruins of Temple of Zeus 130 + The Temple of Neptune, Paestum 132 + Greek Ships on Ancient Pottery 135 + The Temple of Corinth 137 + The Temple of Neptune at Cape Sunium 138 + Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens 140 + The Acropolis, Athens 141 + Theatre at Epidauros, Greece 141 + The Caryatides of the Erechtheum 142 + Athene of the Parthenon 143 + Alexander the Great 146 + Alexander's Victory at Issus 147 + The Apollo Belvedere 148 + Aristotle 152 + Statuette of Maitreya 153 + The Death of Buddha 154 + Tibetan Buddha 158 + A Burmese Buddha 159 + The Dhamekh Tower, Sarnath 160 + A Chinese Buddhist Apostle 164 + The Court of Asoka 165 + Asoka Panel from Bharhut 165 + The Pillar of Lions (Asokan) 166 + Confucius 169 + The Great Wall of China 171 + Early Chinese Bronze Bell 172 + The Dying Gaul 175 + Ancient Roman Cisterns at Carthage 177 + Hannibal 181 + Roman Empire and its Alliances, 150 B.C. Map 183 + The Forum, Rome 188 + Ruined Coliseum in Tunis 189 + Roman Arch at Ctesiphon 190 + The Column of Trajan, Rome 193 + +{xiv} + + Glazed Jar of Han Dynasty 197 + Vase of Han Dynasty 198 + Chinese Vessel in Bronze 199 + A Gladiator (contemporary representation) 202 + A Street in Pompeii 204 + The Coliseum, Rome 206 + Interior of Coliseum 206 + Mithras Sacrificing a Bull 210 + Isis and Horus 211 + Bust of Emperor Commodus 212 + Early Portrait of Jesus Christ 216 + Road from Nazareth to Tiberias 217 + David's Tower and Wall of Jerusalem 218 + A Street in Jerusalem 219 + The Peter and Paul Mosaic at Rome 223 + Baptism of Christ (Ivory Panel) 225 + Roman Empire and the Barbarians Map 228 + Constantine's Pillar, Constantinople 229 + The Obelisk of Theodosius, Constantinople 231 + Head of Barbarian Chief 235 + The Church of S. Sophia, Constantinople 239 + Roof-work in S. Sophia 240 + Justinian and his Court 241 + The Rock-hewn Temple at Petra 242 + Chinese Earthenware of Tang Dynasty 246 + At Prayer in the Desert 250 + Looking Across the Sea of Sand 251 + Growth of Moslem Power Map 254 + The Moslem Empire Map 254 + The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem 255 + Cairo Mosques 256 + Frankish Dominions of Martel Map 260 + Statue of Charlemagne 262 + Europe at Death of Charlemagne Map 264 + Crusader Tombs, Exeter Cathedral 268 + View of Cairo 269 + The Horses of S. Mark, Venice 271 + Courtyard in the Alhambra 273 + Milan Cathedral (showing spires) 278 + A Typical Crusader 280 + +{xv} + + Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 283-4 + The Empire of Jengis Khan Map 288 + Ottoman Empire before 1453 Map 289 + Tartar Horsemen 291 + Ottoman Empire, 1566 Map 292 + An Early Printing Press 296 + Ancient Bronze from Benin 299 + Negro Bronze-work 300 + Early Sailing Ship (Italian Engraving) 301 + Portrait of Martin Luther 305 + The Church Triumphant (Italian Majolica work, 1543) 307 + Charles V (the Titian Portrait) 311 + S. Peter's, Rome: the High Altar 315 + Cromwell Dissolves the Long Parliament 321 + The Court at Versailles 323 + Sack of a Village, French Revolution 325 + Central Europe after Peace of Westphalia, 1648 Map 326 + European Territory in America, 1750 Map 330 + Europeans Tiger Hunting in India 331 + Fall of Tippoo Sultan 332 + George Washington 337 + The Battle of Bunker Hill 338 + The U.S.A., 1790 339 + The Trial of Louis XVI 344 + Execution of Marie Antoinette 346 + Portrait of Napoleon 352 + Europe after the Congress of Vienna Map 353 + Early Rolling Stock, Liverpool and Manchester Railway 356 + Passenger Train in 1833 356 + The Steamboat Clermont 357 + Eighteenth Century Spinning Wheel 361 + Arkwright's Spinning Jenny 361 + An Early Weaving Machine 363 + An Incident of the Slave Trade 367 + Early Factory, in Colebrookdale 368 + Carl Marx 372 + Electric Conveyor, in Coal Mine 376 + Constructional Detail, Forth Bridge 378 + American River Steamer 385 + Abraham Lincoln 387 + +{xvi} + + Europe, 1848-71 Map 391 + Victoria Falls, Zambesi 395 + The British Empire, 1815 Map 397 + Japanese Soldier, Eighteenth Century 401 + A Street in Tokio 403 + Overseas Empires of Europe, 1914 Map 406 + Gibraltar 407 + Street in Hong Kong 408 + British Tank in Battle 410 + The Ruins of Ypres 411 + Modern War: War Entanglements 412 + A View in Petersburg under Bolshevik Rule 418 + Passenger Aeroplane in Flight 423 + A Peaceful Garden in England 426 + + + + + + +{1} + +I + +THE WORLD IN SPACE + + +The story of our world is a story that is still very imperfectly +known. A couple of hundred years ago men possessed the history of +little more than the last three thousand years. What happened +before that time was a matter of legend and speculation. Over a +large part of the civilized world it was believed and taught that +the world had been created suddenly in 4004 B.C., though +authorities differed as to whether this had occurred in the spring +or autumn of that year. This fantastically precise misconception +was based upon a too literal interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, +and upon rather arbitrary theological assumptions connected +therewith. Such ideas have long since been abandoned by religious +teachers, and it is universally recognized that the universe in +which we live has to all appearances existed for an enormous +period of time and possibly for endless time. Of course there may +be deception in these appearances, as a room may be made to seem +endless by putting mirrors facing each other at either end. But +that the universe in which we live has existed only for six or +seven thousand years may be regarded as an altogether exploded +idea. + +The earth, as everybody knows nowadays, is a spheroid, a sphere +slightly compressed, orange fashion, with a diameter of nearly +8,000 miles. Its spherical shape has been known at least to a +limited number of intelligent people for nearly 2,500 years, but +before that time it was supposed to be flat, and various ideas +which now seem fantastic were entertained about its relations to +the sky and the stars and planets. We know now that it rotates +upon its {2} axis (which is about 24 miles shorter than its +equatorial diameter) every twenty-four hours, and that this is the +cause of the alternations of day and night, that it circles about +the sun in a slightly distorted and slowly variable oval path in a +year. Its distance from the sun varies between ninety-one and a +half millions at its nearest and ninety-four and a half million +miles. + +[Illustration: "LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER"] + +About the earth circles a smaller sphere, the moon, at an average +distance of 239,000 miles. Earth and moon are not the only bodies +to travel round the sun. There are also the planets, Mercury and +Venus, at distances of thirty-six and sixty-seven millions of +miles; and beyond the circle of the earth and disregarding a belt +of numerous smaller bodies, the planetoids, there are Mars, +Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune at mean distances of 141, 483, +886, 1,782, and 1,793 millions of miles respectively. These +figures in {3} millions of miles are very difficult for the mind +to grasp. It may help the reader's imagination if we reduce the +sun and planets to a smaller, more conceivable scale. + +[Illustration: THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE ON] + +If, then, we represent our earth as a little ball of one inch +diameter, the sun would be a big globe nine feet across and 323 +yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile, four or five minutes' +walking. The moon would be a small pea two feet and a half from +the world. Between earth and sun there would be the two inner +planets, Mercury and Venus, at distances of one hundred and +twenty-five and two hundred and fifty yards from the sun. All +round and about these bodies there would be emptiness until you +came to Mars, a hundred and seventy-five feet beyond the earth; +Jupiter {4} nearly a mile away, a foot in diameter; Saturn, a +little smaller, two miles off; Uranus four miles off and Neptune +six miles off. Then nothingness and nothingness except for small +particles and drifting scraps of attenuated vapour for thousands +of miles. The nearest star to earth on this scale would be 40,000 +miles away. + +These figures will serve perhaps to give one some conception of +the immense emptiness of space in which the drama of life goes on. + +For in all this enormous vacancy of space we know certainly of +life only upon the surface of our earth. It does not penetrate +much more than three miles down into the 4,000 miles that separate +us from the centre of our globe, and it does not reach more than +five miles above its surface. Apparently all the limitlessness of +space is otherwise empty and dead. + +The deepest ocean dredgings go down to five miles. The highest +recorded flight of an aeroplane is little more than four miles. +Men have reached to seven miles up in balloons, but at a cost of +great suffering. No bird can fly so high as five miles, and small +birds and insects which have been carried up by aeroplanes drop +off insensible far below that level. + + + + +{5} + +II + +THE WORLD IN TIME + + +In the last fifty years there has been much very fine and +interesting speculation on the part of scientific men upon the age +and origin of our earth. Here we cannot pretend to give even a +summary of such speculations because they involve the most subtle +mathematical and physical considerations. The truth is that the +physical and astronomical sciences are still too undeveloped as +yet to make anything of the sort more than an illustrative +guesswork. The general tendency has been to make the estimated +age of our globe longer and longer. It now seems probable that +the earth has had an independent existence as a spinning planet +flying round and round the sun for a longer period than +2,000,000,000 years. It may have been much longer than that. This +is a length of time that absolutely overpowers the imagination. + +Before that vast period of separate existence, the sun and earth +and the other planets that circulate round the sun may have been a +great swirl of diffused matter in space. The telescope reveals to +us in various parts of the heavens luminous spiral clouds of +matter, the spiral nebulae, which appear to be in rotation about a +centre. It is supposed by many astronomers that the sun and its +planets were once such a spiral, and that their matter has +undergone concentration into its present form. Through majestic +aeons that concentration went on until in that vast remoteness of +the past for which we have given figures, the world and its moon +were distinguishable. They were spinning then much faster than +they are spinning now; they were at a lesser distance from the +sun; they travelled round it very much faster, and they were +probably incandescent or molten at the surface. The sun itself +was a much greater blaze in the heavens. + +{6} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA] + +If we could go back through that infinitude of time and see the +earth in this earlier stage of its history, we should behold a +scene more like the interior of a blast furnace or the surface of +a lava flow before it cools and cakes over than any other +contemporary scene. No water would be visible because all the +water there was would still be superheated steam in a stormy +atmosphere of sulphurous and metallic vapours. Beneath this would +swirl and boil an ocean of molten rock substance. Across a sky of +fiery clouds the glare of the hurrying sun and moon would sweep +swiftly like hot breaths of flame. + +==================================================================== + +{7} + +[Illustration: A DARK NEBULA] + +==================================================================== + +Slowly by degrees as one million of years followed another, this +{8} fiery scene would lose its eruptive incandescence. The +vapours in the sky would rain down and become less dense overhead; +great slaggy cakes of solidifying rock would appear upon the +surface of the molten sea, and sink under it, to be replaced by +other floating masses. The sun and moon growing now each more +distant and each smaller, would rush with diminishing swiftness +across the heavens. The moon now, because of its smaller size, +would be already cooled far below incandescence, and would be +alternately obstructing and reflecting the sunlight in a series of +eclipses and full moons. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA] + +And so with a tremendous slowness through the vastness of time, +the earth would grow more and more like the earth on which we +live, until at last an age would come when, in the cooling air, +steam would begin to condense into clouds, and the first rain +would fall hissing upon the first rocks below. For endless +millenia the greater part of the earth's water would still be +vaporized in the atmosphere, but there would now be hot streams +running over the crystallizing {9} rocks below and pools and lakes +into which these streams would be carrying detritus and depositing +sediment. + +[Illustration: LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE] + +At last a condition of things must have been attained in which a +man might have stood up on earth and looked about him and lived. +If we could have visited the earth at that time we should have +stood on great lava-like masses of rock without a trace of soil or +touch of living vegetation, under a storm-rent sky. Hot and +violent winds, exceeding the fiercest tornado that ever blows, and +downpours of rain such as our milder, slower earth to-day knows +nothing of, might have assailed us. The water of the downpour +would have rushed by us, muddy with the spoils of the rocks, +coming together into torrents, cutting deep gorges and canyons as +they hurried past to deposit their sediment in the earliest seas. +Through the clouds we should have glimpsed a great sun moving +visibly across the sky, and in its wake and in the wake of the +moon would have come a diurnal tide of earthquake and upheaval. +And {10} the moon, which nowadays keeps one constant face to +earth, would then have been rotating visibly and showing the side +it now hides so inexorably. + +The earth aged. One million years followed another, and the day +lengthened, the sun grew more distant and milder, the moon's pace +in the sky slackened; the intensity of rain and storm diminished +and the water in the first seas increased and ran together into +the ocean garment our planet henceforth wore. + +But there was no life as yet upon the earth; the seas were +lifeless, and the rocks were barren. + + + + +{11} + +III + +THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE + + +As everybody knows nowadays, the knowledge we possess of life +before the beginnings of human memory and tradition is derived +from the markings and fossils of living things in the stratified +rocks. We find preserved in shale and slate, limestone, and +sandstone, bones, shells, fibres, stems, fruits, footmarks, +scratchings and the like, side by side with the ripple marks of +the earliest tides and the pittings of the earliest rain-falls. It +is by the sedulous examination of this Record of the Rocks that +the past history of the earth's life has been pieced together. +That much nearly everybody knows to-day. The sedimentary rocks do +not lie neatly stratum above stratum; they have been crumpled, +bent, thrust about, distorted and mixed together like the leaves +of a library that has been repeatedly looted and burnt, and it is +only as a result of many devoted lifetimes of work that the record +has been put into order and read. The whole compass of time +represented by the record of the rocks is now estimated as +1,600,000,000 years. + +The earliest rocks in the record are called by geologists the +Azoic rocks, because they show no traces of life. Great areas of +these Azoic rocks lie uncovered in North America, and they are of +such a thickness that geologists consider that they represent a +period of at least half of the 1,600,000,000 which they assign to +the whole geological record. Let me repeat this profoundly +significant fact. Half the great interval of time since land and +sea were first distinguishable on earth has left us no traces of +life. There are ripplings and rain marks still to be found in +these rocks, but no marks nor vestiges of any living thing. + +==================================================================== + +{12} + +[Illustration: MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD] + +==================================================================== + +Then, as we come up the record, signs of past life appear and +increase. The age of the world's history in which we find these +past {13} traces is called by geologists the Lower Palaeozoic age. +The first indications that life was astir are vestiges of +comparatively simple and lowly things: the shells of small +shellfish, the stems and flowerlike heads of zoophytes, seaweeds +and the tracks and remains of sea worms and crustacea. Very early +appear certain creatures rather like plant-lice, crawling +creatures which could roll themselves up into balls as the +plant-lice do, the trilobites. Later by a few million years or so +come certain sea scorpions, more mobile and powerful creatures +than the world had ever seen before. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED)] + +None of these creatures were of very great size. Among the +largest were certain of the sea scorpions, which measured nine +feet in length. There are no signs whatever of land life of any +sort, plant or animal; there are no fishes nor any vertebrated +creatures in this part of the record. Essentially all the plants +and creatures which have left us their traces from this period of +the earth's history are shallow-water and intertidal beings. If +we wished to parallel the flora and fauna of the Lower Palaeozoic +rocks on the earth to-day, we should do it best, except in the +matter of size, by taking a drop of water from a rock pool or +scummy ditch and examining it under a microscope. The little +crustacea, the small shellfish, the zoophytes and algae we should +find there would display a quite striking resemblance to these +clumsier, larger prototypes that once were the crown of life upon +our planet. + +[Illustration: EARLY PALAEOLITHIC FOSSILS OF VARIOUS SPECIES OF +LINGULA] + +It is well, however, to bear in mind that the Lower Palaeozoic +rocks probably do not give us anything at all representative of +the first beginnings of life on our planet. Unless a creature has +bones {14} or other hard parts, unless it wears a shell or is big +enough and heavy enough to make characteristic footprints and +trails in mud, it is unlikely to leave any fossilized traces of +its existence behind. To-day there are hundreds of thousands of +species of small soft-bodied creatures in our world which it is +inconceivable can ever leave any mark for future geologists to +discover. In the world's past, millions of millions of species of +such creatures may have lived and multiplied and flourished and +passed away without a trace remaining. The waters of the warm and +shallow lakes and seas of the so-called Azoic period may have +teemed with an infinite variety {15} of lowly, jelly-like, +shell-less and boneless creatures, and a multitude of green scummy +plants may have spread over the sunlit intertidal rocks and +beaches. The Record of the Rocks is no more a complete record of +life in the past than the books of a bank are a record of the +existence of everybody in the neighbourhood. It is only when a +species begins to secrete a shell or a spicule or a carapace or a +lime-supported stem, and so put by something for the future, that +it goes upon the Record. But in rocks of an age prior to those +which bear any fossil traces, graphite, a form of uncombined +carbon, is sometimes found, and some authorities consider that it +may have been separated out from combination through the vital +activities of unknown living things. + +[Illustration: FOSSILIZED FOOTPRINTS OF A LABYRINTHODONT +CHEIROTHERIUM] + + + + +{16} + +IV + +THE AGE OF FISHES + + +In the days when the world was supposed to have endured for only a +few thousand years, it was supposed that the different species of +plants and animals were fixed and final; they had all been created +exactly as they are to-day, each species by itself. But as men +began to discover and study the Record of the Rocks this belief +gave place to the suspicion that many species had changed and +developed slowly through the course of ages, and this again +expanded into a belief in what is called Organic Evolution, a +belief that all species of life upon earth, animal and vegetable +alike, are descended by slow continuous processes of change from +some very simple ancestral form of life, some almost structureless +living substance, far back in the so-called Azoic seas. + +This question of Organic Evolution, like the question of the age +of the earth, has in the past been the subject of much bitter +controversy. There was a time when a belief in organic evolution +was for rather obscure reasons supposed to be incompatible with +sound Christian, Jewish and Moslem doctrine. That time has +passed, and the men of the most orthodox Catholic, Protestant, +Jewish and Mohammedan belief are now free to accept this newer and +broader view of a common origin of all living things. No life +seems to have happened suddenly upon earth. Life grew and grows. +Age by age through gulfs of time at which imagination reels, life +has been growing from a mere stirring in the intertidal slime +towards freedom, power and consciousness. + +Life consists of individuals. These individuals are definite +things, they are not like the lumps and masses, nor even the +limitless and motionless crystals, of non-living matter, and they +have two characteristics no dead matter possesses. They can +assimilate other matter into themselves and make it part of +themselves, and {17} they can reproduce themselves. They eat and +they breed. They can give rise to other individuals, for the most +part like themselves, but always also a little different from +themselves. There is a specific and family resemblance between an +individual and its offspring, and there is an individual +difference between every parent and every offspring it produces, +and this is true in every species and at every stage of life. + +[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF THE PTERICHTHYS MILLERI OR SEA SCORPION +SHOWING BODY ARMOUR] + +Now scientific men are not able to explain to us either why +offspring should resemble nor why they should differ from their +parents. But seeing that offspring do at once resemble and +differ, it is a matter rather of common sense than of scientific +knowledge that, if the conditions under which a species live are +changed, the species should undergo some correlated changes. +Because in any generation of the species there must be a number of +individuals whose individual differences make them better adapted +to the new conditions under which the species has to live, and a +number whose individuals whose individual differences make it +rather harder for them to live. And on the whole the former sort +will live longer, bear more offspring, and reproduce themselves +more abundantly than the latter, and so generation by generation +the average of the species will change in the favourable +direction. This process, which is called Natural Selection, is +not so much a scientific theory as a necessary deduction {18} from +the facts of reproduction and individual difference. There may be +many forces at work varying, destroying and preserving species, +about which science may still be unaware or undecided, but the man +who can deny the operation of this process of natural selection +upon life since its beginning must be either ignorant of the +elementary facts of life or incapable of ordinary thought. + +Many scientific men have speculated about the first beginning of +life and their speculations are often of great interest, but there +is absolutely no definite knowledge and no convincing guess yet of +the way in which life began. But nearly all authorities are +agreed that it probably began upon mud or sand in warm sunlit +shallow brackish water, and that it spread up the beaches to the +intertidal lines and out to the open waters. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL OF THE CLADOSELACHE, A DEVONIAN SHARK] + +That early world was a world of strong tides and currents. An +incessant destruction of individuals must have been going on +through their being swept up the beaches and dried, or by their +being swept out to sea and sinking down out of reach of air and +sun. Early conditions favoured the development of every tendency +to root and hold on, every tendency to form an outer skin and +casing to protect the stranded individual from immediate +desiccation. From the very earliest any tendency to sensitiveness +to taste would turn the individual in the direction of food, and +any sensitiveness to light would assist it to struggle back out of +the darkness of the sea deeps and caverns or to wriggle back out +of the excessive glare of the dangerous shallows. + +Probably the first shells and body armour of living things were +protections against drying rather than against active enemies. +But tooth and claw come early into our earthly history. + +We have already noted the size of the earlier water scorpions. +For long ages such creatures were the supreme lords of life. Then +{19} in a division of these Palaeozoic rocks called the Silurian +division, which many geologists now suppose to be as old as five +hundred million years, there appears a new type of being, equipped +with eyes and teeth and swimming powers of an altogether more +powerful kind. These were the first known backboned animals, the +earliest fishes, the first known Vertebrata. + +[Illustration: SHARKS AND GANOIDS OF THE DEVONIAN PERIOD] + +These fishes increase greatly in the next division of rocks, the +rocks known as the Devonian system. They are so prevalent that +this period of the Record of the Rocks has been called the Age of +{20} Fishes. Fishes of a pattern now gone from the earth, and +fishes allied to the sharks and sturgeons of to-day, rushed +through the waters, leapt in the air, browsed among the seaweeds, +pursued and preyed upon one another, and gave a new liveliness to +the waters of the world. None of these were excessively big by +our present standards. Few of them were more than two or three +feet long, but there were exceptional forms which were as long as +twenty feet. + +We know nothing from geology of the ancestors of these fishes. +They do not appear to be related to any of the forms that preceded +them. Zoologists have the most interesting views of their +ancestry, but these they derive from the study of the development +of the eggs of their still living relations, and from other +sources. Apparently the ancestors of the vertebrata were +soft-bodied and perhaps quite small swimming creatures who began first +to develop hard parts as teeth round and about their mouths. The +teeth of a skate or dogfish cover the roof and floor of its mouth +and pass at the lip into the flattened toothlike scales that +encase most of its body. As the fishes develop these teeth scales +in the geological record, they swim out of the hidden darkness of +the past into the light, the first vertebrated animals visible in +the record. + + + + +{21} + +V + +THE AGE OF THE COAL SWAMPS + + +The land during this Age of Fishes was apparently quite lifeless. +Crags and uplands of barren rock lay under the sun and rain. +There was no real soil--for as yet there were no earthworms which +help to make a soil, and no plants to break up the rock particles +into mould; there was no trace of moss or lichen. Life was still +only in the sea. + +Over this world of barren rock played great changes of climate. +The causes of these changes of climate were very complex and they +have still to be properly estimated. The changing shape of the +earth's orbit, the gradual shifting of the poles of rotation, +changes in the shapes of the continents, probably even +fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, now conspired to plunge +great areas of the earth's surface into long periods of cold and +ice and now again for millions of years spread a warm or equable +climate over this planet. There seem to have been phases of great +internal activity in the world's history, when in the course of a +few million years accumulated upthrusts would break out in lines +of volcanic eruption and upheaval and rearrange the mountain and +continental outlines of the globe, increasing the depth of the sea +and the height of the mountains and exaggerating the extremes of +climate. And these would be followed by vast ages of comparative +quiescence, when frost, rain and river would wear down the +mountain heights and carry great masses of silt to fill and raise +the sea bottoms and spread the seas, ever shallower and wider, +over more and more of the land. There have been "high and deep" +ages in the world's history and "low and level" ages. The reader +must dismiss from his mind any idea that the surface of the earth +has been growing steadily cooler since its crust grew solid. +After that much cooling had been achieved, the internal +temperature ceased to affect surface {22} conditions. There are +traces of periods of superabundant ice and snow, of "Glacial +Ages," that is, even in the Azoic period. + +It was only towards the close of the Age of Fishes, in a period of +extensive shallow seas and lagoons, that life spread itself out in +any effectual way from the waters on to the land. No doubt the +earlier types of the forms that now begin to appear in great +abundance had already been developing in a rare and obscure manner +for many scores of millions of years. But now came their +opportunity. + +[Illustration: A CARBONIFEROUS SWAMP] + +Plants no doubt preceded animal forms in this invasion of the +land, but the animals probably followed up the plant emigration +{23} very closely. The first problem that the plant had to solve +was the problem of some sustaining stiff support to hold up its +fronds to the sunlight when the buoyant water was withdrawn; the +second was the problem of getting water from the swampy ground +below to the tissues of the plant, now that it was no longer close +at hand. The two problems were solved by the development of woody +tissue which both sustained the plant and acted as water carrier +to the leaves. The Record of the Rocks is suddenly crowded by a +vast variety of woody swamp plants, many of them of great size, +big tree mosses, tree ferns, gigantic horsetails and the like. +And with these, age by age, there crawled out of the water a great +variety of animal forms. There were centipedes and millipedes; +there were the first primitive insects; there were creatures +related to the ancient king crabs and sea scorpions which became +the earliest spiders and land scorpions, and presently there were +vertebrated animals. + +[Illustration: SKULL OF A LABYRINTHODONT, CAPITOSAURUS] + +Some of the earlier insects were very large. There were dragon +flies in this period with wings that spread out to twenty-nine +inches. + +In various ways these new orders and genera had adapted themselves +to breathing air. Hitherto all animals had breathed air dissolved +in water, and that indeed is what all animals still have to do. +But now in divers fashions the animal kingdom was acquiring the +power of supplying its own moisture where it was needed. A man +with a perfectly dry lung would suffocate to-day; {24} his lung +surfaces must be moist in order that air may pass through them +into his blood. The adaptation to air breathing consists in all +cases either in the development of a cover to the old-fashioned +gills to stop evaporation, or in the development of tubes or other +new breathing organs lying deep inside the body and moistened by a +watery secretion. The old gills with which the ancestral fish of +the vertebrated line had breathed were inadaptable to breathing +upon land, and in the case of this division of the animal kingdom +it is the swimming bladder of the fish which becomes a new, +deep-seated breathing organ, the lung. The kind of animals +known as amphibia, the frogs and newts of to-day, begin +their lives in the water and breathe by gills; and subsequently +the lung, developing in the same way as the swimming +bladder of many fishes do, as a baglike outgrowth from the throat, +takes over the business of breathing, the animal comes out on +land, and the gills dwindle and the gill slits disappear. (All +except an outgrowth of one gill slit, which becomes the passage of +the ear and ear-drum.) The animal can now live only in the air, +but it must return at least to the edge of the water to lay its +eggs and reproduce its kind. + +[Illustration: SKELETON OF A LABYRINTHODONT; THE ERYOPS] + +All the air-breathing vertebrata of this age of swamps and plants +belonged to the class amphibia. They were nearly all of them +forms related to the newts of to-day, and some of them attained a +considerable size. They were land animals, it is true, but they +were land animals needing to live in and near moist and swampy +places, and all the great trees of this period were equally {25} +amphibious in their habits. None of them had yet developed fruits +and seeds of a kind that could fall on land and develop with the +help only of such moisture as dew and rain could bring. They all +had to shed their spores in water, it would seem, if they were to +germinate. + +It is one of the most beautiful interests of that beautiful +science, comparative anatomy, to trace the complex and wonderful +adaptations of living things to the necessities of existence in +air. All living things, plants and animals alike, are primarily +water things. For example all the higher vertebrated animals +above the fishes, up to and including man, pass through a stage in +their development in the egg or before birth in which they have +gill slits which are obliterated before the young emerge. The +bare, water-washed eye of the fish is protected in the higher +forms from drying up by eyelids and glands which secrete moisture. +The weaker sound vibrations of air necessitate an ear-drum. In +nearly every organ of the body similar modifications and +adaptations are to be detected, similar patchings-up to meet +aerial conditions. + +This Carboniferous age, this age of the amphibia, was an age of +life in the swamps and lagoons and on the low banks among these +waters. Thus far life had now extended. The hills and high lands +were still quite barren and lifeless. Life had learnt to breathe +air indeed, but it still had its roots in its native water; it +still had to return to the water to reproduce its kind. + + + + +{26} + +VI + +THE AGE OF REPTILES + + +The abundant life of the Carboniferous period was succeeded by a +vast cycle of dry and bitter ages. They are represented in the +Record of the Rocks by thick deposits of sandstones and the like, +in which fossils are comparatively few. The temperature of the +world fluctuated widely, and there were long periods of glacial +cold. Over great areas the former profusion of swamp vegetation +ceased, and, overlaid by these newer deposits, it began that +process of compression and mineralization that gave the world most +of the coal deposits of to-day. + +But it is during periods of change that life undergoes its most +rapid modifications, and under hardship that it learns its hardest +lessons. As conditions revert towards warmth and moisture again +we find a new series of animal and plant forms established, We +find in the record the remains of vertebrated animals that laid +eggs which, instead of hatching out tadpoles which needed to live +for a time in water, carried on their development before hatching +to a stage so nearly like the adult form that the young could live +in air from the first moment of independent existence. Gills had +been cut out altogether, and the gill slits only appeared as an +embryonic phase. + +These new creatures without a tadpole stage were the Reptiles. +Concurrently there had been a development of seed-bearing trees, +which could spread their seed, independently of swamp or lakes. +There were now palmlike cycads and many tropical conifers, though +as yet there were no flowering plants and no grasses. There was a +great number of ferns. And there was now also an increased +variety of insects. There were beetles, though bees and +butterflies had yet to come. But all the fundamental forms of a +new real land fauna and flora had been laid down during these vast +ages of severity. {27} This new land life needed only the +opportunity of favourable conditions to flourish and prevail. + +[Illustration: A FOSSIL ICHTHYOSAURUS, A MESOZOIC FISH-LIZARD] + +Age by age and with abundant fluctuations that mitigation came. +The still incalculable movements of the earth's crust, the changes +in its orbit, the increase and diminution of the mutual +inclination of orbit and pole, worked together to produce a great +spell of widely diffused warm conditions. The period lasted +altogether, it is now supposed, upwards of two hundred million +years. It is called the Mesozoic period, to distinguish it from +the altogether vaster Palaeozoic and Azoic periods (together +fourteen hundred millions) that preceded it, and from the +Cainozoic or new life period that intervened between its close and +the present time, and it is also called the Age of Reptiles +because of the astonishing predominance and variety of this form +of life. It came to an end some eighty million years ago. + +In the world to-day the genera of Reptiles are comparatively few +and their distribution is very limited. They are more various, it +is true, than are the few surviving members of the order of the +amphibia which once in the Carboniferous period ruled the world. +We still have the snakes, the turtles and tortoises (the +Chelonia), {28} the alligators and crocodiles, and the lizards. +Without exception they are creatures requiring warmth all the year +round; they cannot stand exposure to cold, and it is probable that +all the reptilian beings of the Mesozoic suffered under the same +limitation. It was a hothouse fauna, living amidst a hothouse +flora. It endured no frosts. But the world had at least attained +a real dry land fauna and flora as distinguished from the mud and +swamp fauna and flora of the previous heyday of life upon earth. + +[Illustration: A PTERODACTYL] + +All the sorts of reptile we know now were much more abundantly +represented then, great turtles and tortoises, big crocodiles and +many lizards and snakes, but in addition there was a number of +series of wonderful creatures that have now vanished altogether +from the earth. There was a vast variety of beings called the +Dinosaurs. Vegetation was now spreading over the lower levels of +the world, reeds, brakes of fern and the like; and browsing upon +this abundance came a multitude of herbivorous reptiles, which +increased in size as the Mesozoic period rose to its climax. Some +of these beasts exceeded in size any other land animals that have +ever lived; they were as large as whales. The _Diplodocus +Carnegii_ for example measured eighty-four feet from snout to +tail; the Gigantosaurus was even greater; it measured a hundred +feet. Living upon these monsters was a swarm of carnivorous +Dinosaurs of a corresponding size. One of these, the +Tyrannosaurus, is figured and described in many books as the last +word in reptilian frightfulness. + +{29} + +[Illustration: A BIG SWAMP-INHABITING DINOSAUR, THE DIPLODOCUS, +OVER EIGHTY FEET FROM SNOUT TO TAIL-TIP] + +While these great creatures pastured and pursued amidst the fronds +and evergreens of the Mesozoic jungles, another now vanished tribe +of reptiles, with a bat-like development of the fore limbs, +pursued insects and one another, first leapt and parachuted and +presently flew amidst the fronds and branches of the forest trees. +These were the Pterodactyls. These were the first flying creatures +with backbones; they mark a new achievement in the growing powers +of vertebrated life. + +Moreover some of the reptiles were returning to the sea waters. +Three groups of big swimming beings had invaded the sea from which +their ancestors had come: the Mososaurs, the Plesiosaurs, and +Ichthyosaurs. Some of these again approached the proportions of +our present whales. The Ichthyosaurs seem to have been quite +seagoing creatures, but the Plesiosaurs were a type of animal that +has no cognate form to-day. The body was stout and big with +paddles, adapted either for swimming or crawling through marshes, +or along the bottom of shallow waters. The comparatively small +{30} head was poised on a vast snake of neck, altogether outdoing +the neck of the swan. Either the Plesiosaur swam and searched for +food under the water and fed as the swan will do, or it lurked +under water and snatched at passing fish or beast. + +Such was the predominant land life throughout the Mesozoic age. +It was by our human standards an advance upon anything that had +preceded it. It had produced land animals greater in size, range, +power and activity, more "vital" as people say, than anything the +world had seen before. In the seas there had been no such advance +but a great proliferation of new forms of life. An enormous +variety of squid-like creatures with chambered shells, for the +most part coiled, had appeared in the shallow seas, the Ammonites. +They had had predecessors in the Palaeozoic seas, but now was their +age of glory. To-day they have left no survivors at all; their +nearest relation is the pearly Nautilus, an inhabitant of tropical +waters. And a new and more prolific type of fish with lighter, +finer scales than the plate-like and tooth-like coverings that had +hitherto prevailed, became and has since remained predominant in +the seas and rivers. + + + + +{31} + +VII + +THE FIRST BIRDS AND THE FIRST MAMMALS + + +In a few paragraphs a picture of the lush vegetation and swarming +reptiles of that first great summer of life, the Mesozoic period, +has been sketched. But while the Dinosaurs lorded it over the hot +selvas and marshy plains and the Pterodactyls filled the forests +with their flutterings and possibly with shrieks and croakings as +they pursued the humming insect life of the still flowerless +shrubs and trees, some less conspicuous and less abundant forms +upon the margins of this abounding life were acquiring certain +powers and learning certain lessons of endurance, that were to be +of the utmost value to their race when at last the smiling +generosity of sun and earth began to fade. + +A group of tribes and genera of hopping reptiles, small creatures +of the dinosaur type, seem to have been pushed by competition and +the pursuit of their enemies towards the alternatives of +extinction or adaptation to colder conditions in the higher hills +or by the sea. Among these distressed tribes there was developed +a new type of scale--scales that were elongated into quill-like +forms and that presently branched into the crude beginnings of +feathers. These quill-like scales layover one another and formed +a heat-retaining covering more efficient than any reptilian +covering that had hitherto existed. So they permitted an invasion +of colder regions that were otherwise uninhabited. Perhaps +simultaneously with these changes there arose in these creatures a +greater solicitude for their eggs. Most reptiles are apparently +quite careless about their eggs, which are left for sun and season +to hatch. But some of the varieties upon this new branch of the +tree of life were acquiring a habit of guarding their eggs and +keeping them warm with the warmth of their bodies. + +With these adaptations to cold other internal modifications {32} +were going on that made these creatures, the primitive birds, +warm-blooded and independent of basking. The very earliest birds +seem to have been seabirds living upon fish, and their fore limbs +were not wings but paddles rather after the penguin type. That +peculiarly primitive bird, the New Zealand Ki-Wi, has feathers of +a very simple sort, and neither flies nor appears to be descended +from flying ancestors. In the development of the birds, feathers +came before wings. But once the feather was developed the +possibility of making a light spread of feathers led inevitably to +the wing. We know of the fossil remains of one bird at least +which had reptilian teeth in its jaw and a long reptilian tail, +but which also had a true bird's wing and which certainly flew and +held its own among the pterodactyls of the Mesozoic time. +Nevertheless birds were neither varied nor abundant in Mesozoic +times. If a man could go back to typical Mesozoic country, he +might walk for days and never see or hear such a thing as a bird, +though he would see a great abundance of pterodactyls and insects +among the fronds and reeds. + +[Illustration: FOSSIL OF THE ARCHEOPTERYX; ONE OF THE EARLIEST +BIRDS] + +And another thing he would probably never see, and that would be +any sign of a mammal. Probably the first mammals were in {33} +existence millions of years before the first thing one could call +a bird, but they were altogether too small and obscure and remote +for attention. + +[Illustration: HESPERORNIS IN ITS NATIVE SEAS] + +The earliest mammals, like the earliest birds, were creatures +driven by competition and pursuit into a life of hardship and +adaptation to cold. With them also the scale became quill-like, +and was developed into a heat-retaining covering; and they too +underwent modifications, similar in kind though different in +detail, to become warm-blooded and independent of basking. +Instead of feathers they developed hairs, and instead of guarding +and incubating their eggs they kept them warm and safe by +retaining them inside their bodies until they were almost mature. +Most of them became altogether vivaparous and brought their young +into the world alive. And even after their young were born they +tended to maintain a protective and nutritive association with +them. Most {34} but not all mammals to-day have mammae and suckle +their young. Two mammals still live which lay eggs and which have +not proper mammae, though they nourish their young by a nutritive +secretion of the under skin; these are the duck-billed platypus +and the echidna. The echidna lays leathery eggs and then puts +them into a pouch under its belly, and so carries them about warm +and safe until they hatch. + +But just as a visitor to the Mesozoic world might have searched +for days and weeks before finding a bird, so, unless he knew +exactly where to go and look, he might have searched in vain for +any traces of a mammal. Both birds and mammals would have seemed +very eccentric and secondary and unimportant creatures in Mesozoic +times. + +[Illustration: THE KI-WI, APTERYX, STILL FOUND IN NEW ZEALAND] + +==================================================================== + +{35} + +[Illustration: SLAB OF LOWER PLIOCENE MARL] + +==================================================================== + +The Age of Reptiles lasted, it is now guessed, eighty million +years. Had any quasi-human intelligence been watching the world +through that inconceivable length of time, how safe and eternal +the sunshine and abundance must have seemed, how assured the +wallowing prosperity of the dinosaurs and the flapping abundance +of the flying lizards! And then the mysterious rhythms and +accumulating forces of the universe began to turn against that +quasi-eternal stability. That run of luck {36} for life was +running out. Age by age, myriad of years after myriad of years, +with halts no doubt and retrogressions, came a change towards +hardship and extreme conditions, came great alterations of level +and great redistributions of mountain and sea. We find one thing +in the Record of the Rocks during the decadence of the long +Mesozoic age of prosperity that is very significant of steadily +sustained changes of condition, and that is a violent fluctuation +of living forms and the appearance of new and strange species. +Under the gathering threat of extinction the older orders and +genera are displaying their utmost capacity for variation and +adaptation. The Ammonites for example in these last pages of the +Mesozoic chapter exhibit a multitude of fantastic forms. Under +settled conditions there is no encouragement for novelties; they +do not develop, they are suppressed; what is best adapted is +already there. Under novel conditions it is the ordinary type +that suffers, and the novelty that may have a better chance to +survive and establish itself.... + +There comes a break in the Record of the Rocks that may represent +several million years. There is a veil here still, over even the +outline of the history of life. When it lifts again, the Age of +Reptiles is at an end; the Dinosaurs, the Plesiosaurs and +Ichthyosaurs, the Pterodactyls, the innumerable genera and species +of Ammonite have all gone absolutely. In all their stupendous +variety they have died out and left no descendants. The cold has +killed them. All their final variations were insufficient; they +had never hit upon survival conditions. The world had passed +through a phase of extreme conditions beyond their powers of +endurance, a slow and complete massacre of Mesozoic life has +occurred, and we find now a new scene, a new and hardier flora, +and a new and hardier fauna in possession of the world. + +It is still a bleak and impoverished scene with which this new +volume of the book of life begins. The cycads and tropical +conifers have given place very largely to trees that shed their +leaves to avoid destruction by the snows of winter and to +flowering plants and shrubs, and where there was formerly a +profusion of reptiles, an increasing variety of birds and mammals +is entering into their inheritance. + + + + +{37} + +VIII + +THE AGE OF MAMMALS + + +The opening of the next great period in the life of the earth, the +Cainozoic period, was a period of upheaval and extreme volcanic +activity. Now it was that the vast masses of the Alps and +Himalayas and the mountain backbone of the Rockies and Andes were +thrust up, and that the rude outlines of our present oceans and +continents appeared. The map of the world begins to display a +first dim resemblance to the map of to-day. It is estimated now +that between forty and eighty million years have elapsed from the +beginnings of the Cainozoic period to the present time. + +At the outset of the Cainozoic period the climate of the world was +austere. It grew generally warmer until a fresh phase of great +abundance was reached, after which conditions grew hard again and +the earth passed into a series of extremely cold cycles, the +Glacial Ages, from which apparently it is now slowly emerging. + +But we do not know sufficient of the causes of climatic change at +present to forecast the possible fluctuations of climatic +conditions that lie before us. We may be moving towards +increasing sunshine or lapsing towards another glacial age; +volcanic activity and the upheaval of mountain masses may be +increasing or diminishing; we do not know; we lack sufficient +science. + +With the opening of this period the grasses appear; for the first +time there is pasture in the world; and with the full development +of the once obscure mammalian type, appear a number of interesting +grazing animals and of carnivorous types which prey upon these. + +At first these early mammals seem to differ only in a few +characters from the great herbivorous and carnivorous reptiles +that ages before had flourished and then vanished from the earth. +A {38} careless observer might suppose that in this second long +age of warmth and plenty that was now beginning, nature was merely +repeating the first, with herbivorous and carnivorous mammals to +parallel the herbivorous and carnivorous dinosaurs, with birds +replacing pterodactyls and so on. But this would be an altogether +superficial comparison. The variety of the universe is infinite +and incessant; it progresses eternally; history never repeats +itself and no parallels are precisely true. The differences +between the life of the Cainozoic and Mesozoic periods are far +profounder than the resemblances. + + +[Illustration: A MAMMAL OF THE EARLY CAINOZOIC PERIOD] + +The most fundamental of all these differences lies in the mental +life of the two periods. It arises essentially out of the +continuing contact of parent and offspring which distinguishes +mammalian and in a lesser degree bird life, from the life of the +reptile. With very few exceptions the reptile abandons its egg to +hatch alone. The young reptile has no knowledge whatever of its +parent; its mental life, such as it is, begins and ends with its +own experiences. {39} It may tolerate the existence of its +fellows but it has no communication with them; it never imitates, +never learns from them, is incapable of concerted action with +them. Its life is that of an isolated individual. But with the +suckling and cherishing of young which was distinctive of the new +mammalian and avian strains arose the possibility of learning by +imitation, of communication, by warning cries and other concerted +action, of mutual control and instruction. A teachable type of +life had come into the world. + +The earliest mammals of the Cainozoic period are but little +superior in brain size to the more active carnivorous dinosaurs, +but as we read on through the record towards modern times we find, +in every tribe and race of the mammalian animals, a steady +universal increase in brain capacity. For instance we find at a +comparatively early stage that rhinoceros-like beasts appear. +There is a creature, the Titanotherium, which lived in the +earliest division of this period. It was probably very like a +modern rhinoceros in its habits and needs. But its brain capacity +was not one tenth that of its living successor. + +The earlier mammals probably parted from their offspring as soon +as suckling was over, but, once the capacity for mutual +understanding has arisen, the advantages of continuing the +association are very great; and we presently find a number of +mammalian species displaying the beginnings of a true social life +and keeping together in herds, packs and flocks, watching each +other, imitating each other, taking warning from each other's acts +and cries. This is something that the world had not seen before +among vertebrated animals. Reptiles and fish may no doubt be +found in swarms and shoals; they have been hatched in quantities +and similar conditions have kept them together, but in the case of +the social and gregarious mammals the association arises not +simply from a community of external forces, it is sustained by an +inner impulse. They are not merely like one another and so found +in the same places at the same times; they like one another and so +they keep together. + +==================================================================== + +{40} + +[Illustration: STENOMYLUS HITCHCOCKI--A GIRAFFE-CAMEL] + +[Illustration: SKELETON OF PROTOHIPPUS VENTICOLUS--EARLY HORSE] + +==================================================================== + +This difference between the reptile world and the world of our +human minds is one our sympathies seem unable to pass. We cannot +conceive in ourselves the swift uncomplicated urgency of a +reptile's instinctive motives, its appetites, fears and hates. We +{41} cannot understand them in their simplicity because all our +motives are complicated; our's are balances and resultants and not +simple urgencies. But the mammals and birds have +self-restraint and consideration for other individuals, a social +appeal, a self-control that is, at its lower level, after our own +fashion. We can in consequence establish relations with almost +all sorts of them. When they suffer they utter cries and make +movements that rouse our feelings. We can make understanding pets +of them with a mutual recognition. They can be tamed to +self-restraint towards us, domesticated and taught. + +[Illustration: COMPARATIVE SIZES OF BRAINS OF RHINOCEROS AND +DINOCERAS] + +That unusual growth of brain which is the central fact of +Cainozoic times marks a new communication and interdependence of +individuals. It foreshadows the development of human societies of +which we shall soon be telling. + +As the Cainozoic period unrolled, the resemblance of its flora and +fauna to the plants and animals that inhabit the world to-day {42} +increased. The big clumsy Uintatheres and Titanotheres, the +Entelodonts and Hyracodons, big clumsy brutes like nothing living, +disappeared. On the other hand a series of forms led up by steady +degrees from grotesque and clumsy predecessors to the giraffes, +camels, horses, elephants, deer, dogs and lions and tigers of the +existing world. The evolution of the horse is particularly +legible upon the geological record. We have a fairly complete +series of forms from a small tapir-like ancestor in the early +Cainozoic. Another line of development that has now been pieced +together with some precision is that of the llamas and camels. + + + + +{43} + +IX + +MONKEYS, APES AND SUB-MEN + + +Naturalists divide the class _Mammalia_ into a number of orders. +At the head of these is the order _Primates_, which includes the +lemurs, the monkeys, apes and man. Their classification was based +originally upon anatomical resemblances and took no account of any +mental qualities. + +Now the past history of the Primates is one very difficult to +decipher in the geological record. They are for the most part +animals which live in forests like the lemurs and monkeys or in +bare rocky places like the baboons. They are rarely drowned and +covered up by sediment, nor are most of them very numerous +species, and so they do not figure so largely among the fossils as +the ancestors of the horses, camels and so forth do. But we know +that quite early in the Cainozoic period, that is to say some +forty million years ago or so, primitive monkeys and lemuroid +creatures had appeared, poorer in brain and not so specialized as +their later successors. + +The great world summer of the middle Cainozoic period drew at last +to an end. It was to follow those other two great summers in the +history of life, the summer of the Coal Swamps and the vast summer +of the Age of Reptiles. Once more the earth spun towards an ice +age. The world chilled, grew milder for a time and chilled again. +In the warm past hippopotami had wallowed through a lush +sub-tropical vegetation, and a tremendous tiger with fangs like +sabres, the sabre-toothed tiger, had hunted its prey where now the +journalists of Fleet Street go to and fro. Now came a bleaker age +and still bleaker ages. A great weeding and extinction of species +occurred. A woolly rhinoceros, adapted to a cold climate, and the +mammoth, a big woolly cousin of the elephants, the Arctic musk ox +and the reindeer passed across the scene. Then century by century +the Arctic ice cap, the wintry death of the great Ice Age, crept +{44} southward. In England it came almost down to the Thames, in +America it reached Ohio. There would be warmer spells of a few +thousand years and relapses towards a bitterer cold. + +[Illustration: A MAMMOTH] + +Geologists talk of these wintry phases as the First, Second, Third +and Fourth Glacial Ages, and of the interludes as Interglacial +periods. We live to-day in a world that is still impoverished and +scarred by that terrible winter. The First Glacial Age was coming +on 600,000 years ago; the Fourth Glacial Age reached its bitterest +some fifty thousand years ago. And it was amidst the snows of +this long universal winter that the first man-like beings lived +upon our planet. + +By the middle Cainozoic period there have appeared various apes +with many quasi-human attributes of the jaws and leg bones, but it +is only as we approach these Glacial Ages that we find traces of +creatures that we can speak of as "almost human." These traces +are not bones but implements. In Europe, in deposits of this +period, between half a million and a million years old, we find +flints {45} and stones that have evidently been chipped +intentionally by some handy creature desirous of hammering, +scraping or fighting with the sharpened edge. These things have +been called "Eoliths" (dawn stones). In Europe there are no bones +nor other remains of the creature which made these objects, simply +the objects themselves. For all the certainty we have it may have +been some entirely un-human but intelligent monkey. But at Trinil +in Java, in accumulations of this age, a piece of a skull and +various teeth and bones have been found of a sort of ape man, with +a brain case bigger than that of any living apes, which seems to +have walked erect. This creature is now called _Pithecanthropus +erectus_, the walking ape man, and the little trayful of its bones +is the only help our imaginations have as yet in figuring to, +ourselves the makers of the Eoliths. + +[Illustration: FLINT IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN PILTDOWN REGION] + +It is not until we come to sands that are almost a quarter of a +million years old that we find any other particle of a sub-human +being. But there are plenty of implements, and they are steadily +improving in quality as we read on through the record. They are +no longer clumsy Eoliths; they are now shapely instruments made +with considerable skill. _And they are much bigger than the +similar implements afterwards made by true man._ Then, in a +sandpit at Heidelberg, appears a single quasi-human jaw-bone, a +clumsy jaw-bone, absolutely chinless, far heavier than a true +human jaw-bone and narrower, so that it is improbable the +creature's tongue could have moved about for articulate speech. +On the strength of this jaw-bone, scientific men suppose this +creature to have been a heavy, almost human monster, possibly with +huge limbs and hands, possibly with a thick felt of hair, and they +call it the Heidelberg Man. + +{46} + +This jaw-bone is, I think, one of the most tormenting objects in +the world to our human curiosity. To see it is like looking +through a defective glass into the past and catching just one +blurred and tantalizing glimpse of this Thing, shambling through +the bleak wilderness, clambering to avoid the sabre-toothed tiger, +watching the woolly rhinoceros in the woods. Then before we can +scrutinize the monster, he vanishes. Yet the soil is littered +abundantly with the indestructible implements he chipped out for +his uses. + +[Illustration: A THEORETICAL RESTORATION OF THE PITHECANTHROPUS +ERECTUS BY PROF. RUTOT] + +[Illustration: THE HEIDELBERG MAN] + +Still more fascinatingly enigmatical are the remains of a creature +found at Piltdown in Sussex in a deposit that may indicate an age +between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, +though some authorities would put these particular remains back in +time to before the Heidelberg jaw-bone. Here there {47} are the +remains of a thick sub-human skull much larger than any existing +ape's, and a chimpanzee-like jaw-bone which may or may not belong +to it, and, in addition, a bat-shaped piece of elephant bone +evidently carefully manufactured, through which a hole had +apparently been bored. There is also the thigh-bone of a deer +with cuts upon it like a tally. That is all. + +[Illustration: THE PILTDOWN SKULL, AS RECONSTRUCTED FROM ORIGINAL +FRAGMENT] + +What sort of beast was this creature which sat and bored holes in +bones? + +Scientific men have named him Eoanthropus, the Dawn Man. He +stands apart from his kindred; a very different being either from +the Heidelberg creature or from any living ape. No other vestige +like him is known. But the gravels and deposits of from one +hundred thousand years onward are increasingly rich in implements +of flint and similar stone. And these implements are no longer +rude "Eoliths." The archaeologists are presently able to +distinguish scrapers, borers, knives, darts, throwing stones and +hand axes .... + +We are drawing very near to man. In our next section we shall +have to describe the strangest of all these precursors of +humanity, the Neanderthalers, the men who were almost, but not +quite, true men. + +But it may be well perhaps to state quite clearly here that no +scientific man supposes either of these creatures, the Heidelberg +Man or _Eoanthropus_, to be direct ancestors of the men of to-day. +These are, at the closest, related forms. + + + + +{48} + +X + +THE NEANDERTHALER AND THE RHODESIAN MAN + + +About fifty or sixty thousand years ago, before the climax of the +Fourth Glacial Age, there lived a creature on earth so like a man +that until a few years ago its remains were considered to be +altogether human. We have skulls and bones of it and a great +accumulation of the large implements it made and used. It made +fires. It sheltered in caves from the cold. It probably dressed +skins roughly and wore them. It was right-handed as men are. + +Yet now the ethnologists tell us these creatures were not true +men. They were of a different species of the same genus. They +had heavy protruding jaws and great brow ridges above the eyes and +very low foreheads. Their thumbs were not opposable to the +fingers as men's are; their necks were so poised that they could +not turn back their heads and look up to the sky. They probably +slouched along, head down and forward. Their chinless jaw-bones +resemble the Heidelberg jaw-bone and are markedly unlike human +jaw-bones. And there were great differences from the human +pattern in their teeth. Their cheek teeth were more complicated +in structure than ours, more complicated and not less so; they had +not the long fangs of our cheek teeth; and also these quasi-men +had not the marked canines (dog teeth) of an ordinary human being. +The capacity of their skulls was quite human, but the brain was +bigger behind and lower in front than the human brain. Their +intellectual faculties were differently arranged. They were not +ancestral to the human line. Mentally and physically they were +upon a different line from the human line. + +Skulls and bones of this extinct species of man were found at +Neanderthal {49} among other places, and from that place these +strange proto-men have been christened Neanderthal Men, or +Neanderthalers. They must have endured in Europe for many hundreds +or even thousands of years. + +[Illustration: THE NEANDERTHALER, ACCORDING TO PROF. RUTOT] + +At that time the climate and geography of our world was very +different from what they are at the present time. Europe for +example was covered with ice reaching as far south as the Thames +and into Central Germany and Russia; there was no Channel +separating Britain from France; the Mediterranean and the Red Sea +were great valleys, with perhaps a chain of lakes in their deeper +portions, and a great inland sea spread from the present Black Sea +across South Russia and far into Central Asia. Spain and all of +Europe not actually under ice consisted of bleak uplands under a +harder climate than that of Labrador, and it was only when North +Africa was reached that one would have found a temperate climate. +Across the cold steppes of Southern Europe with its sparse arctic +vegetation, drifted such hardy creatures as the woolly mammoth, +and woolly rhinoceros, great oxen and reindeer, no doubt following +the vegetation northward in spring and southward in autumn. + +{50} + +[Map: Possible Outline of Europe and Western Asia at the Maximum +of the Fourth Ice Age (about 50,000 years ago)] + +Such was the scene through which the Neanderthaler wandered, +gathering such subsistence as he could from small game or fruits +and berries and roots. Possibly he was mainly a vegetarian, +chewing twigs and roots. His level elaborate teeth suggest a +largely vegetarian dietary. But we also find the long marrow +bones of great animals in his caves, cracked to extract the +marrow. His weapons could not have been of much avail in open +conflict with great beasts, but it is supposed that he attacked +them with spears at difficult river crossings and even constructed +pitfalls for them. Possibly he followed the herds and preyed upon +any dead that were killed in fights, and perhaps he played the +part of jackal to the sabre-toothed tiger which still survived in +his day. Possibly in the bitter hardships of the Glacial Ages +this creature had taken to attacking animals after long ages of +vegetarian adaptation. + +We cannot guess what this Neanderthal man looked like. He may have +been very hairy and very unhuman-looking indeed. It is even +doubtful if he went erect. He may have used his knuckles as well +as his feet to hold himself up. Probably he went about {51} alone +or in small family groups. It is inferred from the structure of +his jaw that he was incapable of speech as we understand it. + +For thousands of years these Neanderthalers were the highest +animals that the European area had ever seen; and then some thirty +or thirty-five thousand years ago as the climate grew warmer a +race of kindred beings, more intelligent, knowing more, talking +and co-operating together, came drifting into the Neanderthaler's +world from the south. They ousted the Neanderthalers from their +caves and squatting places; they hunted the same food; they +probably made war upon their grisly predecessors and killed them +off. These newcomers from the south or the east--for at present +we do not know their region of origin--who at last drove the +Neanderthalers out of existence altogether, were beings of our own +blood and kin, the first True Men. Their brain-cases and thumbs +and necks and teeth were anatomically the same as our own. In a +cave at Cro-Magnon and in another at Grimaldi, a number of +skeletons have been found, the earliest truly human remains that +are so far known. + +So it is our race comes into the Record of the Rocks, and the +story of mankind begins. + +[Illustration: COMPARISON OF (1) MODERN SKULL AND (2) RHODESIAN +SKULL] + +The world was growing liker our own in those days though the +climate was still austere. The glaciers of the Ice Age were +receding in Europe; the reindeer of France and Spain presently +gave way to great herds of horses as grass increased upon the +steppes, and the {52} mammoth became more and more rare in +southern Europe and finally receded northward altogether .... + +We do not know where the True Men first originated. But in the +summer of 1921, an extremely interesting skull was found together +with pieces of a skeleton at Broken Hill in South Africa, which +seems to be a relic of a third sort of man, intermediate in its +characteristics between the Neanderthaler and the human being. +The brain-case indicates a brain bigger in front and smaller +behind than the Neanderthaler's, and the skull was poised erect +upon the backbone in a quite human way. The teeth also and the +bones are quite human. But the face must have been ape-like with +enormous brow ridges and a ridge along the middle of the skull. +The creature was indeed a true man, so to speak, with an ape-like, +Neanderthaler face. This Rhodesian Man is evidently still closer +to real men than the Neanderthal Man. + +This Rhodesian skull is probably only the second of what in the +end may prove to be a long list of finds of sub-human species +which lived on the earth in the vast interval of time between the +beginnings of the Ice Age and the appearance of their common heir, +and perhaps their common exterminator, the True Man. The +Rhodesian skull itself may not be very ancient. Up to the time of +publishing this book there has been no exact determination of its +probable age. It may be that this sub-human creature survived in +South Africa until quite recent times. + + + + +{53} + +XI + +THE FIRST TRUE MEN + + +The earliest signs and traces at present known to science, of a +humanity which is indisputably kindred with ourselves, have been +found in western Europe and particularly in France and Spain. +Bones, weapons, scratchings upon bone and rock, carved fragments +of bone, and paintings in caves and upon rock surfaces dating, it +is supposed, from 30,000 years ago or more, have been discovered +in both these countries. Spain is at present the richest country +in the world in these first relics of our real human ancestors. + +Of course our present collections of these things are the merest +beginnings of the accumulations we may hope for in the future, +when there are searchers enough to make a thorough examination of +all possible sources and when other countries in the world, now +inaccessible to archaeologists, have been explored in some detail. +The greater part of Africa and Asia has never even been traversed +yet by a trained observer interested in these matters and free to +explore, and we must be very careful therefore not to conclude +that the early true men were distinctively inhabitants of western +Europe or that they first appeared in that region. + +In Asia or Africa or submerged beneath the sea of to-day there may +be richer and much earlier deposits of real human remains than +anything that has yet come to light. I write in Asia or Africa, +and I do not mention America because so far there have been no +finds at all of any of the higher Primates, either of great apes, +sub-men, Neanderthalers nor early true men. This development of +life seems to have been an exclusively old world development, and +it was only apparently at the end of the Old Stone Age that human +beings first made their way across the land connexion that is now +cut by Behring Straits, into the American continent. + +{54} + +[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELLOUS CAVE PAINTINGS OF ALTAMIRA, +NORTH SPAIN] + +These first real human beings we know of in Europe appear already +to have belonged to one or other of at least two very distinct +races. One of these races was of a very high type indeed; it was +tall and big brained. One of the women's skulls found exceeds in +capacity that of the average man of to-day. One of the men's +skeletons is over six feet in height. The physical type resembled +that of the North American Indian. From the Cro-Magnon cave in +which the first skeletons were found these people have been called +Cro-Magnards. They were savages, but savages of a high order. +The second race, the race of the Grimaldi cave remains, was +distinctly negroid in its characters. Its nearest living +affinities are the Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa. It is +interesting to find at the very outset of the known human story, +that mankind was already racially divided into at least two main +varieties; and one is tempted to such unwarrantable guesses as +that the former race was probably brownish rather than black and +that it came from the East or North, and that the latter was +blackish rather than brown and came from the equatorial south. + +{55} + +[Illustration: BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD] + +{56} + +And these savages of perhaps forty thousand years ago were so +human that they pierced shells to make necklaces, painted +themselves, carved images of bone and stone, scratched figures on +rocks and bones, and painted rude but often very able sketches of +beasts and the like upon the smooth walls of caves and upon +inviting rock surfaces. They made a great variety of implements, +much smaller in scale and finer than those of the Neanderthal men. +We have now in our museums great quantities of their implements, +their statuettes, their rock drawings and the like. + +The earliest of them were hunters. Their chief pursuit was the +wild horse, the little bearded pony of that time. They followed +it as it moved after pasture. And also they followed the bison. +They knew the mammoth, because they have left us strikingly +effective pictures of that creature. To judge by one rather +ambiguous drawing they trapped and killed it. + +They hunted with spears and throwing stones. They do not seem to +have had the bow, and it is doubtful if they had yet learnt to +tame any animals. They had no dogs. There is one carving of a +horse's head and one or two drawings that suggest a bridled horse, +with a twisted skin or tendon round it. But the little horses of +that age and region could not have carried a man, and if the horse +was domesticated it was used as a led horse. It is doubtful and +improbable that they had yet learnt the rather unnatural use of +animal's milk as food. + +They do not seem to have erected any buildings though they may +have had tents of skins, and though they made clay figures they +never rose to the making of pottery. Since they had no cooking +implements their cookery must have been rudimentary or +nonexistent. They knew nothing of cultivation and nothing of any +sort of basket work or woven cloth. Except for their robes of skin +or fur they were naked painted savages. + +These earliest known men hunted the open steppes of Europe for a +hundred centuries perhaps, and then slowly drifted and changed +before a change of climate. Europe, century by century, was +growing milder and damper. Reindeer receded northward and +eastward, and bison and horse followed. The steppes gave way to +forests, and red deer took the place of horse and bison. There is +a {57} change in the character of the implements with this change +in their application. River and lake fishing becomes of great +importance to men, and fine implements of bone increased. "The +bone needles of this age," says de Mortillet, "are much superior +to those of later, even historical times, down to the Renaissance. +The Romans, for example, never had needles comparable to those of +this epoch." + +[Illustration: THE RUTOT BUST OF A CRO-MAGNON MAN] + +Almost fifteen or twelve thousand years ago a fresh people drifted +into the south of Spain, and left very remarkable drawings of +themselves upon exposed rock faces there. These were the Azilians +(named from the Mas d'Azil cave). They had the bow; they seem to +have worn feather headdresses; they drew vividly; but also they +had reduced their drawings to a sort of symbolism--a man for +instance would be represented by a vertical dab with two or three +horizontal dabs--that suggest the dawn of the writing idea. +Against hunting sketches there are often marks like tallies. One +drawing shows two men smoking out a bees' nest. + +{58} + +[Illustration: FIGHT OF BOWMEN] + +{59} + +These are the latest of the men that we call Palaeolithic (Old +Stone Age) because they had only chipped implements. By ten or +twelve thousand years a new sort of life has dawned in Europe, men +have learnt not only to chip but to polish and grind stone +implements, and they have begun cultivation. The Neolithic Age +(New Stone Age) was beginning. + +It is interesting to note that less than a century ago there still +survived in a remote part of the world, in Tasmania, a race of +human beings at a lower level of physical and intellectual +development than any of these earliest races of mankind who have +left traces in Europe. These people had long ago been cut off by +geographical changes from the rest of the species, and from +stimulation and improvement. They seem to have degenerated rather +than developed. They lived a base life subsisting upon shellfish +and small game. They had no habitations but only squatting +places. They were real men of our species, but they had neither +the manual dexterity nor the artistic powers of the first true +men. + + + + +{60} + +XII + +PRIMITIVE THOUGHT + + +And now let us indulge in a very interesting speculation; how did +it feel to be a man in those early days of the human adventure? +How did men think and what did they think in those remote days of +hunting and wandering four hundred centuries ago before seed time +and harvest began. Those were days long before the written record +of any human impressions, and we are left almost entirely to +inference and guesswork in our answers to these questions. + +The sources to which scientific men have gone in their attempts to +reconstruct that primitive mentality are very various. Recently +the science of psycho-analysis, which analyzes the way in which +the egotistic and passionate impulses of the child are restrained, +suppressed, modified or overlaid, to adapt them to the needs of +social life, seems to have thrown a considerable amount of light +upon the history of primitive society; and another fruitful source +of suggestion has been the study of the ideas and customs of such +contemporary savages as still survive. Again there is a sort of +mental fossilization which we find in folk-lore and the deep-lying +irrational superstitions and prejudices that still survive among +modern civilized people. And finally we have in the increasingly +numerous pictures, statues, carvings, symbols and the like, as we +draw near to our own time, clearer and clearer indications of what +man found interesting and worthy of record and representation. + +Primitive man probably thought very much as a child thinks, that +is to say in a series of imaginative pictures. He conjured up +images or images presented themselves to his mind, and he acted in +accordance with the emotions they aroused. So a child or an +uneducated person does to-day. Systematic thinking is apparently +a comparatively late development in human experience; it has not +{61} played any great part in human life until within the last +three thousand years. And even to-day those who really control +and order their thoughts are but a small minority of mankind. +Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion. + +Probably the earliest human societies, in the opening stages of +the true human story, were small family groups. Just as the +flocks and herds of the earlier mammals arose out of families +which remained together and multiplied, so probably did the +earliest tribes. But before this could happen a certain restraint +upon the primitive egotisms of the individual had to be +established. The fear of the father and respect for the mother +had to be extended into adult life, and the natural jealousy of +the old man of the group for the younger males as they grew up had +to be mitigated. The mother on the other hand was the natural +adviser and protector of the young. Human social life grew up out +of the reaction between the crude instinct of the young to go off +and pair by themselves as they grew up, on the one hand, and the +dangers and disadvantages of separation on the other. An +anthropological writer of great genius, J. J. Atkinson, in his +_Primal Law_, has shown how much of the customary law of savages, +the _Tabus_, that are so remarkable a fact in tribal life, can be +ascribed to such a mental adjustment of the needs of the primitive +human animal to a developing social life, and the later work of +the psycho-analysts has done much to confirm his interpretation of +these possibilities. + +Some speculative writers would have us believe that respect and +fear of the Old Man and the emotional reaction of the primitive +savage to older protective women, exaggerated in dreams and +enriched by fanciful mental play, played a large part in the +beginnings of primitive religion and in the conception of gods and +goddesses. Associated with this respect for powerful or helpful +personalities was a dread and exaltation of such personages after +their deaths, due to their reappearance in dreams. It was easy to +believe they were not truly dead but only fantastically +transferred to a remoteness of greater power. + +The dreams, imaginations and fears of a child are far more vivid +and real than those of a modern adult, and primitive man was +always something of a child. He was nearer to the animals {62} +also, and he could suppose them to have motives and reactions like +his own. He could imagine animal helpers, animal enemies, animal +gods. One needs to have been an imaginative child oneself to +realize again how important, significant, portentous or friendly, +strangely shaped rocks, lumps of wood, exceptional trees or the +like may have appeared to the men of the Old Stone Age, and how +dream and fancy would create stories and legends about such things +that would become credible as they told them. Some of these +stories would be good enough to remember and tell again. The +women would tell them to the children and so establish a +tradition. To this day most imaginative children invent long +stories in which some favourite doll or animal or some fantastic +semi-human being figures as the hero, and primitive man probably +did the same--with a much stronger disposition to believe his hero +real. + +[Illustration: RELICS OF THE STONE AGE] + +For the very earliest of the true men that we know of were +probably quite talkative beings. In that way they have differed +from the Neanderthalers and had an advantage over them. The +Neanderthaler may have been a dumb animal. Of course the primitive +{63} human speech was probably a very scanty collection of names, +and may have been eked out with gestures and signs. + +There is no sort of savage so low as not to have a kind of science +of cause and effect. But primitive man was not very critical in +his associations of cause with effect; he very easily connected an +effect with something quite wrong as its cause. "You do so and +so," he said, "and so and so happens." You give a child a +poisonous berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a valiant enemy +and you become strong. There we have two bits of cause and effect +association, one true one false. We call the system of cause and +effect in the mind of a savage, Fetish; but Fetish is simply +savage science. It differs from modern science in that it is +totally unsystematic and uncritical and so more frequently wrong. + +[Illustration: WIDESPREAD SIMILARITY OF MEN OF THE STONE AGE] + +In many cases it is not difficult to link cause and effect, in +{64} many others erroneous ideas were soon corrected by +experience; but there was a large series of issues of very great +importance to primitive man, where he sought persistently for +causes and found explanations that were wrong but not sufficiently +wrong nor so obviously wrong as to be detected. It was a matter +of great importance to him that game should be abundant or fish +plentiful and easily caught, and no doubt he tried and believed in +a thousand charms, incantations and omens to determine these +desirable results. Another great concern of his was illness and +death. Occasionally infections crept through the land and men +died of them. Occasionally men were stricken by illness and died +or were enfeebled without any manifest cause. This too must have +given the hasty, emotional mind of primitive man much feverish +exercise. Dreams and fantastic guesses made him blame this, or +appeal for help to that man or beast or thing. He had the child's +aptitude for fear and panic. + +Quite early in the little human tribe, older, steadier minds +sharing the fears, sharing the imaginations, but a little more +forceful than the others, must have asserted themselves, to +advise, to prescribe, to command. This they declared unpropitious +and that imperative, this an omen of good and that an omen of +evil. The expert in Fetish, the Medicine Man, was the first +priest. He exhorted, he interpreted dreams, he warned, he +performed the complicated hocus pocus that brought luck or averted +calamity. Primitive religion was not so much what we now call +religion as practice and observance, and the early priest dictated +what was indeed an arbitrary primitive practical science. + + + + +{65} + +XIII + +THE BEGINNINGS OF CULTIVATION + + +We are still very ignorant about the beginnings of cultivation and +settlement in the world although a vast amount of research and +speculation has been given to these matters in the last fifty +years. All that we can say with any confidence at present is that +somewhen about 15,000 and 12,000 B.C. while the Azilian people +were in the south of Spain and while the remnants of the earlier +hunters were drifting northward and eastward, somewhere in North +Africa or Western Asia or in that great Mediterranean valley that +is now submerged under the waters of the Mediterranean sea, there +were people who, age by age, were working out two vitally +important things; they were beginning cultivation and they were +domesticating animals. They were also beginning to make, in +addition to the chipped implements of their hunter forebears, +implements of polished stone. They had discovered the possibility +of basketwork and roughly woven textiles of plant fibre, and they +were beginning to make a rudely modelled pottery. + +They were entering upon a new phase in human culture, the +Neolithic phase (New Stone Age) as distinguished from the +Palaeolithic (Old Stone) phase of the Cro-Magnards, the Grimaldi +people, the Azilians and their like. [1] Slowly these Neolithic +people spread over the warmer parts of the world; and the arts +they had mastered, the plants and animals they had learnt to use, +spread by imitation and acquisition even more widely than they +did. By 10,000 B.C., most of mankind was at the Neolithic level. + +{66} + +Now the ploughing of land, the sowing of seed, the reaping of +harvest, threshing and grinding, may seem the most obviously +reasonable steps to a modern mind just as to a modern mind it is a +commonplace that the world is round. What else could you do? +people will ask. What else can it be? But to the primitive man +of twenty thousand years ago neither of the systems of action and +reasoning that seem so sure and manifest to us to-day were at all +obvious. He felt his way to effectual practice through a +multitude of trials and misconceptions, with fantastic and +unnecessary elaborations and false interpretations at every turn. +Somewhere in the Mediterranean region, wheat grew wild; and man +may have learnt to pound and then grind up its seeds for food long +before he learnt to sow. He reaped before he sowed. + +And it is a very remarkable thing that throughout the world +wherever there is sowing and harvesting there is still traceable +the vestiges of a strong primitive association of the idea of +sowing with the idea of a blood sacrifice, and primarily of the +sacrifice of a human being. The study of the original +entanglement of these two things is a profoundly attractive one to +the curious mind; the interested reader will find it very fully +developed in that monumental work, Sir J. G. Frazer's _Golden +Bough_. It was an entanglement, we must remember, in the +childish, dreaming, myth-making primitive mind; no reasoned +process will explain it. But in that world of 12,000 to 20,000 +years ago, it would seem that whenever seed time came round to the +Neolithic peoples there was a human sacrifice. And it was not the +sacrifice of any mean or outcast person; it was the sacrifice +usually of a chosen youth or maiden, a youth more often who was +treated with profound deference and even worship up to the moment +of his immolation. He was a sort of sacrificial god-king, and all +the details of his killing had become a ritual directed by the +old, knowing men and sanctioned by the accumulated usage of ages. + +==================================================================== + +{67} + +[Illustration: NEOLITHIC FLINT IMPLEMENTS] + +==================================================================== + +At first primitive men, with only a very rough idea of the +seasons, must have found great difficulty in determining when was +the propitious moment for the seed-time sacrifice and the sowing. +There is some reason for supposing that there was an early stage +in human experience when men had no idea of a year. The first {68} +chronology was in lunar months; it is supposed that the years of +the Biblical patriarchs are really moons, and the Babylonian +calendar shows distinct traces of an attempt to reckon seed time +by taking thirteen lunar months to see it round. This lunar +influence upon the calendar reaches down to our own days. If usage +did not dull our sense of its strangeness we should think it a +very remarkable thing indeed that the Christian Church does not +commemorate the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ on the +proper anniversaries but on dates that vary year by year with the +phases of the moon. + +[Illustration: NEOLITHICISM OF TO-DAY] + +It may be doubted whether the first agriculturalists made any +observation of the stars. It is more likely that stars were first +observed by migratory herdsmen, who found them a convenient mark +of direction. But once their use in determining seasons was +realized, their importance to agriculture became very great. The +seed-time sacrifice was linked up with the southing or northing of +some prominent star. A myth and worship of that star was for +primitive man an almost inevitable consequence. + +It is easy to see how important the man of knowledge and +experience, the man who knew about the blood sacrifice and the +stars, became in this early Neolithic world. + +The fear of uncleanness and pollution, and the methods of +cleansing that were advisable, constituted another source of power +for the knowledgeable men and women. For there have always been +witches as well as wizards, and priestesses as well as priests. +The early priest was really not so much a {69} religious man as a +man of applied science. His science was generally empirical and +often bad; he kept it secret from the generality of men very +jealously; but that does not alter the fact that his primary +function was knowledge and that his primary use was a practical +use. + +[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF NEOLITHIC POTTERY] + +Twelve or fifteen thousand years ago, in all the warm and fairly +well-watered parts of the Old World these Neolithic human +communities, with their class and tradition of priests and +priestesses and their cultivated fields and their development of +villages and little walled cities, were spreading. Age by age a +drift and exchange of ideas went on between these communities. +Eliot Smith and Rivers have used the term "Heliolithic culture" +for the culture of these first agricultural peoples. +"Heliolithic" (Sun and Stone) is not perhaps the best possible +word to use for this, but until scientific men give us a better +one we shall have to use it. Originating somewhere in the +Mediterranean and western Asiatic area, it spread age by age +eastward and from island to island across the Pacific until it may +even have reached America and mingled with the more primitive ways +of living of the Mongoloid immigrants coming down from the North. + +Wherever the brownish people with the Heliolithic culture went +they took with them all or most of a certain group of curious +ideas and practices. Some of them are such queer ideas that they +call for the explanation of the mental expert. They made pyramids +{70} and great mounds, and set up great circles of big stones, +perhaps to facilitate the astronomical observation of the priests; +they made mummies of some or all of their dead; they tattooed and +circumcized; they had the old custom, known as the _couvade_, of +sending the _father_ to bed and rest when a child was born, and +they had as a luck symbol the well-known Swastika. + +If we were to make a map of the world with dots to show how far +these group practices have left their traces, we should make a +belt along the temperate and sub-tropical coasts of the world from +Stonehenge and Spain across the world to Mexico and Peru. But +Africa below the equator, north central Europe, and north Asia +would show none of these dottings; there lived races who were +developing along practically independent lines. + +[1] The term Palaeolithic we may note is also used to cover the +Neanderthaler and even the Eolithic implements. The pre-human age +is called the "Older Palaeolithic;" the age of true men using +unpolished stones in the "Newer Palaeolithic." + + + + +{71} + +XIV + +PRIMITIVE NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATIONS + + +About 10,000 B.C. the geography of the world was very similar in +its general outline to that of the world to-day. It is probable +that by that time the great barrier across the Straits of +Gibraltar that had hitherto banked back the ocean waters from the +Mediterranean valley had been eaten through, and that the +Mediterranean was a sea following much the same coastlines as it +does now. The Caspian Sea was probably still far more extensive +than it is at present, and it may have been continuous with the +Black Sea to the north of the Caucasus Mountains. About this +great Central Asian sea lands that are now steppes and deserts +were fertile and habitable. Generally it was a moister and more +fertile world. European Russia was much more a land of swamp and +lake than it is now, and there may still have been a land +connexion between Asia and America at Behring Straits. + +It would have been already possible at that time to have +distinguished the main racial divisions of mankind as we know them +to-day. Across the warm temperate regions of this rather warmer +and better-wooded world, and along the coasts, stretched the +brownish peoples of the Heliolithic culture, the ancestors of the +bulk of the living inhabitants of the Mediterranean world, of the +Berbers, the Egyptians and of much of the population of South and +Eastern Asia. This great race had of course a number of +varieties. The Iberian or Mediterranean or "dark-white" race of +the Atlantic and Mediterranean coast, the "Hamitic" peoples which +include the Berbers and Egyptians, the Dravidians; the darker +people of India, a multitude of East Indian people, many +Polynesian races and the Maoris are all divisions of various value +of this great main mass of humanity. Its western varieties are +whiter than its eastern. In the forests of central and northern +Europe a more blonde variety {72} of men with blue eyes was +becoming distinguishable, branching off from the main mass of +brownish people, a variety which many people now speak of as the +Nordic race. In the more open regions of northeastern Asia was +another differentiation of this brownish humanity in the direction +of a type with more oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, a yellowish +skin, and very straight black hair, the Mongolian peoples. In +South Africa, Australia, in many tropical islands in the south of +Asia were remains of the early negroid peoples. The central parts +of Africa were already a region of racial intermixture. Nearly +all the coloured races of Africa to-day seem to be blends of the +brownish peoples of the north with a negroid substratum. + +[Illustration: A Diagrammatic Summary of Current Ideas of the +Relationship of Human Races] + +We have to remember that human races can all interbreed freely and +that they separate, mingle and reunite as clouds do. Human races +do not branch out like trees with branches that never come +together again. It is a thing we need to bear constantly in mind, +this remingling of races at any opportunity. It will save us from +many cruel delusions and prejudices if we do so. People will use +such a word as race in the loosest manner, and base the most +preposterous generalizations upon it. They will speak of a +"British" {73} race or of a "European" race. But nearly all the +European nations are confused mixtures of brownish, dark-white, +white and Mongolian elements. + +[Illustration: A MAYA STELE] + +It was at the Neolithic phase of human development that peoples of +the Mongolian breed first made their way into America. Apparently +they came by way of Behring Straits and spread southward. They +found caribou, the American reindeer, in the north and great {74} +herds of bison in the south. When they reached South America +there were still living the Glyptodon, a gigantic armadillo, and +the Megatherium, a monstrous clumsy sloth as high as an elephant. +They probably exterminated the latter beast, which was as helpless +as it was big. + +The greater portion of these American tribes never rose above a +hunting nomadic Neolithic life. They never discovered the use of +iron, and their chief metal possessions were native gold and +copper. But in Mexico, Yucatan and Peru conditions existed +favourable to settled cultivation, and here about 1000 B.C. or so +arose very interesting civilizations of a parallel but different +type from the old-world civilization. Like the much earlier +primitive civilizations of the old world these communities +displayed a great development of human sacrifice about the +processes of seed time and harvest; but while in the old world, as +we shall see, these primary ideas were ultimately mitigated, +complicated and overlaid by others, in America they developed and +were elaborated, to a very high degree of intensity. These +American civilized countries were essentially priest-ruled +countries; their war chiefs and rulers were under a rigorous rule +of law and omen. + +These priests carried astronomical science to a high level of +accuracy. They knew their year better than the Babylonians of +whom we shall presently tell. In Yucatan they had a kind of +writing, the Maya writing, of the most curious and elaborate +character. So far as we have been able to decipher it, it was +used mainly for keeping the exact and complicated calendars upon +which the priests expended their intelligence. The art of the +Maya civilization came to a climax about 700 or 800 A.D. The +sculptured work of these people amazes the modern observer by its +great plastic power and its frequent beauty, and perplexes him by +a grotesqueness and by a sort of insane conventionality and +intricacy outside the circle of his ideas. There is nothing quite +like it in the old world. The nearest approach, and that is a +remote one, is found in archaic Indian carvings. Everywhere there +are woven feathers and serpents twine in and out. Many Maya +inscriptions resemble a certain sort of elaborate drawing made by +lunatics in European asylums, more than any other +old-world work. It is as if the Maya mind {75} had developed upon +a different line from the old-world mind, had a different twist to +its ideas, was not, by old-world standards, a rational mind at +all. + +This linking of these aberrant American civilizations to the idea +of a general mental aberration finds support in their +extraordinary obsession by the shedding of human blood. The +Mexican civilization in particular ran blood; it offered thousands +of human victims yearly. The cutting open of living victims, the +tearing out of the still beating heart, was an act that dominated +the minds and lives of these strange priesthoods. The public +life, the national festivities all turned on this fantastically +horrible act. + +[Illustration: NEOLITHIC WARRIOR] + +The ordinary existence of the common people in these communities +was very like the ordinary existence of any other barbaric +peasantry. Their pottery, weaving and dyeing was very good. The +Maya writing was not only carven on stone but written and painted +upon skins and the like. The European and American museums +contain many enigmatical Maya manuscripts of which at present +little has been deciphered except the dates. In Peru there were +beginnings of a similar writing but they were superseded by a +method of keeping records by knotting {76} cords. A similar +method of mnemonics was in use in China thousands of years ago. + +In the old world before 4000 or 5000 B.C., that is to say three or +four thousand years earlier, there were primitive civilizations +not unlike these American civilizations; civilizations based upon +a temple, having a vast quantity of blood sacrifices and with an +intensely astronomical priesthood. But in the old world the +primitive civilizations reacted upon one another and developed +towards the conditions of our own world. In America these +primitive civilizations never progressed beyond this primitive +stage. Each of them was in a little world of its own. Mexico it +seems knew little or nothing of Peru, until the Europeans came to +America. The potato, which was the principal food stuff in Peru, +was unknown in Mexico. + +Age by age these peoples lived and marvelled at their gods and +made their sacrifices and died. Maya art rose to high levels of +decorative beauty. Men made love and tribes made war. Drought +and plenty, pestilence and health, followed one another. The +priests elaborated their calendar and their sacrificial ritual +through long centuries, but made little progress in other +directions. + + + + +{77} + +XV + +SUMERIA, EARLY EGYPT AND WRITING + + +The old world is a wider, more varied stage than the new. By 6000 +or 7000 B.C. there were already quasi-civilized communities almost +at the Peruvian level, appearing in various fertile regions of +Asia and in the Nile valley. At that time north Persia and +western Turkestan and south Arabia were all more fertile than they +are now, and there are traces of very early communities in these +regions. It is in lower Mesopotamia however and in Egypt that +there first appear cities, temples, systematic irrigation, and +evidences of a social organization rising above the level of a +mere barbaric village-town. In those days the Euphrates and +Tigris flowed by separate mouths into the Persian Gulf, and it was +in the country between them that the Sumerians built their first +cities. About the same time, for chronology is still vague, the +great history of Egypt was beginning. + +These Sumerians appear to have been a brownish people with +prominent noses. They employed a sort of writing that has been +deciphered, and their language is now known. They had discovered +the use of bronze and they built great tower-like temples of +sun-dried brick. The clay of this country is very fine; they used +it to write upon, and so it is that their inscriptions have been +preserved to us. They had cattle, sheep, goats and asses, but no +horses. They fought on foot, in close formation, carrying spears +and shields of skin. Their clothing was of wool and they shaved +their heads. + +Each of the Sumerian cities seems generally to have been an +independent state with a god of its own and priests of its own. +But sometimes one city would establish an ascendancy over others +and exact tribute from their population. A very ancient +inscription {78}at Nippur records the "empire," the first recorded +empire, of the Sumerian city of Erech. Its god and its +priest-king claimed an authority from the Persian Gulf to +the Red Sea. + +[Illustration: BRICK OF HAMMURABI, KING OF BABYLON ABOUT 2200 +B.C.] + +At first writing was merely an abbreviated method of pictorial +record. Even before Neolithic times men were beginning to write. +The Azilian rock pictures to which we have already referred show +the beginning of the process. Many of them record hunts and +expeditions, and in most of these the human figures are plainly +drawn. But in some the painter would not bother with head and +limbs; he just indicated men by a vertical and one or two +transverse strokes. From this to a conventional condensed picture +writing was an easy transition. In Sumeria, where the writing was +done on clay with a stick, the dabs of the characters soon became +unrecognizably unlike the things they stood for, but in Egypt +where men painted on walls and on strips of the papyrus reed (the +first paper) the likeness to the thing imitated remained. From +the fact that the wooden styles used in Sumeria made wedge-shaped +marks, the Sumerian writing is called cuneiform (= wedge-shaped). + +{79} + +[Illustration: EBONY CYLINDER SEALS OF FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY] + +An important step towards writing was made when pictures were used +to indicate not the thing represented but some similar thing. In +the rebus dear to children of a suitable age, this is still done +to-day. We draw a camp with tents and a bell, and the child is +delighted to guess that this is the Scotch name Campbell. The +Sumerian language was a language made up of accumulated syllables +rather like some contemporary Amerindian languages, and it lent +itself very readily to this syllabic method of writing words +expressing ideas that could not be conveyed by pictures directly. +Egyptian writing underwent parallel developments. Later on, when +foreign peoples with less distinctly syllabled methods of speech +were to learn and use these picture scripts they were to make +those further modifications and simplifications that developed at +last into alphabetical writing. All the true alphabets of the +later world derived from a mixture of the Sumerian cuneiform and +the Egyptian hieroglyphic (priest writing). Later in China there +was to develop a conventionalized picture writing, but in China it +never got to the alphabetical stage. + +{80} + +The invention of writing was of very great importance in the +development of human societies. It put agreements, laws, +commandments on record. It made the growth of states larger than +the old city states possible. It made a continuous historical +consciousness possible. The command of the priest or king and his +seal could go far beyond his sight and voice and could survive his +death. It is interesting to note that in ancient Sumeria seals +were greatly used. A king or a nobleman or a merchant would have +his seal often very artistically carved, and would impress it on +any clay document he wished to authorize. So close had +civilization got to printing six thousand years ago. Then the +clay was dried hard and became permanent. For the reader must +remember that in the land of Mesopotamia for countless years, +letters, records and accounts were all written on comparatively +indestructible tiles. To that fact we owe a great wealth of +recovered knowledge. + +[Illustration: THE SAKHARA PYRAMIDS] + +Bronze, copper, gold, silver and, as a precious rarity, meteoric +iron were known in both Sumeria and Egypt at a very early stage. + +==================================================================== + +{81} + +[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF +CHEOPS] + +==================================================================== + +{82} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDEREH] + +==================================================================== + +Daily life in those first city lands of the old world must have +been {83} very similar in both Egypt and Sumeria. And except for +the asses and cattle in the streets it must have been not unlike +the life in the Maya cities of America three or four thousand +years later. Most of the people in peace time were busy with +irrigation and cultivation--except on days of religious festivity. +They had no money and no need for it. They managed their small +occasional trades by barter. The princes and rulers who alone had +more than a few possessions used gold and silver bars and precious +stones for any incidental act of trade. The temple dominated +life; in Sumeria it was a great towering temple that went up to a +roof from which the stars were observed; in Egypt it was a massive +building with only a ground floor. In Sumeria the priest ruler was +the greatest, most splendid of beings. In Egypt however there was +one who was raised above the priests; he was the living +incarnation of the chief god of the land, the Pharaoh, the god +king. + +There were few changes in the world in those days; men's days were +sunny, toilsome and conventional. Few strangers came into the +land and such as did fared uncomfortably. The priest directed +life according to immemorial rules and watched the stars for seed +time and marked the omens of the sacrifices and interpreted the +warnings of dreams. Men worked and loved and died, not unhappily, +forgetful of the savage past of their race and heedless of its +future. Sometimes the ruler was benign. Such was Pepi II, who +reigned in Egypt for ninety years. Sometimes he was ambitious and +took men's sons to be soldiers and sent them against neighbouring +city states to war and plunder, or he made them toil to build +great buildings. Such were Cheops and Chephren and Mycerinus, who +built those vast sepulchral piles, the pyramids at Gizeh. The +largest of these is 450 feet high and the weight of stone in it is +4,883,000 tons. All this was brought down the Nile in boats and +lugged into place chiefly by human muscle. Its erection must have +exhausted Egypt more than a great war would have done. + + + +{84} + +XVI + +PRIMITIVE NOMADIC PEOPLES + + +It was not only in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley that men were +settling down to agriculture and the formation of city states in +the centuries between 6000 and 8000 B.C. Wherever there were +possibilities of irrigation and a steady all-the-year-round food +supply men were exchanging the uncertainties and hardships of +hunting and wandering for the routines of settlement. On the +upper Tigris a people called the Assyrians were founding cities; +in the valleys of Asia Minor and on the Mediterranean shores and +islands, there were small communities growing up to civilization. +Possibly parallel developments of human life were already going on +in favourable regions of India, and China. In many parts of +Europe where there were lakes well stocked with fish, little +communities of men had long settled in dwellings built on piles +over the water, and were eking out agriculture by fishing and +hunting. But over much larger areas of the old world no such +settlement was possible. The land was too harsh, too thickly +wooded or too arid, or the seasons too uncertain for mankind, with +only the implements and science of that age to take root. + +For settlement under the conditions of the primitive civilizations +men needed a constant water supply and warmth and sunshine. Where +these needs were not satisfied, man could live as a transient, as +a hunter following his game, as a herdsman following the seasonal +grass, but he could not settle. The transition from the hunting +to the herding life may have been very gradual. From following +herds of wild cattle or (in Asia) wild horses, men may have come +to an idea of property in them, have learnt to pen them into +valleys, have fought for them against wolves, wild dogs and other +predatory beasts. + +{85} + +[Illustration: POTTERY AND IMPLEMENTS OF THE LAKE DWELLERS] + +{86} + +[Illustration: A CONTEMPORARY LAKE VILLAGE] + +So while the primitive civilizations of the cultivators were +growing up chiefly in the great river valleys, a different way of +living, the nomadic life, a life in constant movement to and fro +from winter pasture to summer pasture, was also growing up. The +nomadic peoples were on the whole hardier than the +agriculturalists; they were less prolific and numerous, they had +no permanent temples and no highly organized priesthood; they had +less gear; but the reader must not suppose that theirs was +necessarily a less highly developed way of living on that account. +In many ways this free life was a fuller life than that of the +tillers of the soil. The individual was more +self-reliant; less of a unit in a crowd. The leader was more +important; the medicine man perhaps less so. + +[Illustration: NOMADS IN EGYPT] + +{87} + +Moving over large stretches of country the nomad took a wider view +of life. He touched on the confines of this settled land and +that. He was used to the sight of strange faces. He had to +scheme and treat for pasture with competing tribes. He knew more +of minerals than the folk upon the plough lands because he went +over mountain passes and into rocky places. He may have been a +better metallurgist. Possibly bronze and much more probably iron +smelting were nomadic discoveries. Some of the earliest +implements of iron reduced from its ores have been found in +Central Europe far away from the early civilizations. + +[Illustration: FLINT KNIVES OF 4500 B.C.] + +[Illustration: NOMADS IN EGYPT] + +On the other hand the settled folk had their textiles and their +pottery and made many desirable things. It was inevitable that as +the two sorts of life, the agricultural and the nomadic +differentiated, a certain amount of looting and trading should +develop between the two. In Sumeria particularly which had +deserts and seasonal {88} country on either hand it must have been +usual to have the nomads camping close to the cultivated fields, +trading and stealing and perhaps tinkering, as gipsies do to this +day. (But hens they would not steal, because the domestic +fowl--an Indian jungle fowl originally was not domesticated by man +until about 1000 B.C.) They would bring precious stones and things +of metal and leather. If they were hunters they would bring skins. +They would get in exchange pottery and beads and glass, garments +and suchlike manufactured things. + +[Illustration: EGYPT PEASANTS GOING TO WORK] + +Three main regions and three main kinds of wandering and +imperfectly settled people there were in those remote days of the +first civilizations in Sumeria and early Egypt. Away in the +forests of Europe were the blonde Nordic peoples, hunters and +herdsmen, a lowly race. The primitive civilizations saw very +little of this race before 1500 B.C. Away on the steppes of +eastern Asia various Mongolian tribes, the Hunnish peoples, were +domesticating the horse and developing a very wide sweeping habit +of seasonal movement between their summer and winter camping +places. Possibly the Nordic and Hunnish peoples were still +separated from one another by the swamps of Russia and the greater +Caspian Sea of that time. For very much of Russia there was swamp +and lake. In the deserts, which were growing more arid now, of +Syria and Arabia, tribes of a dark white or brownish people, the +Semitic tribes, were driving flocks of sheep and goats and asses +from pasture to pasture. It was these Semitic shepherds and +certain more negroid people from southern Persia, the Elamites, +who were the first nomads to come into close contact with the +early civilizations. They came {90} as traders and as raiders. +Finally there arose leaders among them with bolder imaginations, +and they became conquerors. + +==================================================================== + +{89} + +[Illustration: STELE GLORIFYING KING NARAM SIN, OF AKKAD] + +==================================================================== + +About 2750 B.C. a great Semitic leader, Sargon, had conquered the +whole Sumerian land and was master of all the world from the +Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. He was an illiterate +barbarian and his people, the Akkadians, learnt the Sumerian +writing and adopted the Sumerian language as the speech of the +officials and the learned. The empire he founded decayed after +two centuries, and after one inundation of Elamites a fresh +Semitic people, the Amorites, by degrees established their rule +over Sumeria. They made their capital in what had hitherto been a +small up-river town, Babylon, and their empire is called the first +Babylonian Empire. It was consolidated by a great king called +Hammurabi (circa 2100 B.C.) who made the earliest code of laws yet +known to history. + +The narrow valley of the Nile lies less open to nomadic invasion +than Mesopotamia, but about the time of Hammurabi occurred a +successful Semitic invasion of Egypt and a line of Pharaohs was +set up, the Hyksos or "shepherd kings," which lasted for several +centuries. These Semitic conquerors never assimilated themselves +with the Egyptians; they were always regarded with hostility as +foreigners and barbarians; and they were at last expelled by a +popular uprising about 1600 B.C. + +But the Semites had come into Sumeria for good and all, the two +races assimilated and the Babylonian Empire became Semitic in its +language and character. + + + + +{91} + +XVII + +THE FIRST SEAGOING PEOPLES + + +The earliest boats and ships must have come into use some +twenty-five or thirty thousand years ago. Man was probably +paddling about on the water with a log of wood or an inflated skin +to assist him, at latest in the beginnings of the Neolithic +period. A basketwork boat covered with skin and caulked was used +in Egypt and Sumeria from the beginnings of our knowledge. Such +boats are still used there. They are used to this day in Ireland +and Wales and in Alaska; sealskin boats still make the crossing of +Behring Straits. The hollow log followed as tools improved. The +building of boats and then ships came in a natural succession. + +Perhaps the legend of Noah's Ark preserves the memory of some +early exploit in shipbuilding, just as the story of the Flood, so +widely distributed among the peoples of the world, may be the +tradition of the flooding of the Mediterranean basin. + +There were ships upon the Red Sea long before the pyramids were +built, and there were ships on the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf +by 7000 B.C. Mostly these were the ships of fishermen, but some +were already trading and pirate ships--for knowing what we do of +mankind we may guess pretty safely that the first sailors +plundered where they could and traded where they had to do so. + +The seas on which these first ships adventured were inland seas on +which the wind blew fitfully and which were often at a dead calm +for days together, so that sailing did not develop beyond an +accessory use. It is only in the last four hundred years that the +well-rigged, ocean-going, sailing ship has developed. The ships +of the ancient world were essentially rowing ships which hugged +the shore and went into harbour at the first sign of rough +weather. As ships grew into big galleys they caused a demand for +war captives as galley slaves. + +We have already noted the appearance of the Semitic people as +wanderers and nomads in the region of Syria and Arabia, and how +they conquered Sumeria and set up first the Akkadian and then the +first Babylonian Empire. In the west these same Semitic peoples +{92} were taking to the sea. They set up a string of harbour +towns along the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean, of which Tyre +and Sidon were the chief; and by the time of Hammurabi in Babylon, +they had spread as traders, wanderers and colonizers over the +whole Mediterranean basin. These sea Semites were called the +Phoenicians, They settled largely in Spain, pushing back the old +Iberian Basque population and sending coasting expeditions through +the straits of Gibraltar; and they set up colonies upon the north +coast of Africa. Of Carthage, one of these Phoenician cities, we +shall have much more to tell later. + +But the Phoenicians were not the first people to have galleys in +the Mediterranean waters. There was already a series of towns and +cities among the islands and coasts of that sea belonging to a +race or races apparently connected by blood and language with the +Basques to the west and the Berbers and Egyptians to the south, +the AEgean peoples. These peoples must not be confused with the +Greeks, who come much later into our story; they were pre-Greek, +but they had cities in Greece and Asia Minor; Mycenae and Troy for +example, and they had a great and prosperous establishment at +Cnossos in Crete. + +It is only in the last half century that the industry of +excavating archaeologists has brought the extent and civilization +of the AEgean peoples to our knowledge. Cnossos has been most +thoroughly explored; it was happily not succeeded by any city big +enough to destroy its ruins, and so it is our chief source of +information about this once almost forgotten civilization. + +The history of Cnossos goes back as far as the history of Egypt; +the two countries were trading actively across the sea by 4000 +B.C. By 2500 B.C., that is between the time of Sargon I and +Hammurabi, Cretan civilization was at its zenith. + +Cnossos was not so much a town as a great palace for the Cretan +monarch and his people. It was not even fortified. It was only +fortified later as the Phoenicians grew strong, and as a new and +more terrible breed of pirates, the Greeks, came upon the sea from +the north. + +The monarch was called Minos, as the Egyptian monarch was called +Pharaoh; and he kept his state in a palace fitted with running +water, with bathrooms and the like conveniences such as we know of +in no other ancient remains. There he held great festivals and +shows. There was bull-fighting, singularly like the +bull-fighting that {93} still survives in Spain; there was +resemblance even in the costumes of the bull-fighters; and there +were gymnastic displays. The women's clothes were remarkably +modern in spirit; they wore corsets and flounced dresses. The +pottery, the textile manufactures, the sculpture, painting, +jewellery, ivory, metal and inlay work of these {94} Cretans was +often astonishingly beautiful. And they had a system of writing, +but that still remains to be deciphered. + +[Illustration: THE TREASURE HOUSE AT MYCENAE] + +This happy and sunny and civilized life lasted for some score of +centuries. About 2000 B.C. Cnossos and Babylon abounded in +comfortable and cultivated people who probably led very pleasant +lives. They had shows and they had religious festivals, they had +domestic slaves to look after them and industrial slaves to make a +profit for them. Life must have seemed very secure in Cnossos for +such people, sunlit and girdled by the blue sea. Egypt of course +must have appeared rather a declining country in those days under +the rule of her half-barbaric shepherd kings, and if one took an +interest in politics one must have noticed how the Semitic people +seemed to be getting everywhere, ruling Egypt, ruling distant +Babylon, building Nineveh on the upper Tigris, sailing west to the +Pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibraltar) and setting up +their colonies on those distant coasts. + +There were some active arid curious minds in Cnossos, because +later on the Greeks told legends of a certain skilful Cretan +artificer, Daedalus, who attempted to make some sort of flying +machine, perhaps a glider, which collapsed and fell into the sea. + +It is interesting to note some of the differences as well as the +resemblances between the life of Cnossos and our own. To a Cretan +gentleman of 2500 B.C. iron was a rare metal which fell out of the +sky and was curious rather than useful--for as yet only meteoric +iron was known, iron had not been obtained from its ores. Compare +that with our modern state of affairs pervaded by iron everywhere. +The horse again would be a quite legendary creature to our Cretan, +a sort of super-ass which lived in the bleak northern lands far +away beyond the Black Sea. Civilization for him dwelt chiefly in +AEgean Greece and Asia Minor, where Lydians and Carians and Trojans +lived a life and probably spoke languages like his own. There +were Phoenicians and AEgeans settled in Spain and North Africa, but +those were very remote regions to his imagination. Italy was +still a desolate land covered with dense forests; the +brown-skinned Etruscans had not yet gone there from Asia Minor. And +one day perhaps this Cretan gentleman went down to the harbour and saw +a captive who attracted his attention because he was very +fair-complexioned {95} and had blue eyes. Perhaps our Cretan tried to +talk to him and was answered in an unintelligible gibberish. This +creature came from somewhere beyond the Black Sea and seemed to be +an altogether benighted savage. But indeed he was an Aryan +tribesman, of a race and culture of which we shall soon have much +to tell, and the strange gibberish he spoke was to differentiate +some day into Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, German, English and +most of the chief languages of the world. + +[Illustration: THE PALACE AT CNOSSOS] + +Such was Cnossos at its zenith, intelligent, enterprising, bright +and happy. But about 1400 B.C. disaster came perhaps very +suddenly upon its prosperity. The palace of Minos was destroyed, +and its ruins have never been rebuilt or inhabited from that day +to this. We do not know how this disaster occurred. The +excavators note what appears to be scattered plunder and the marks +of the fire. But the traces of a very destructive earthquake have +also been found. Nature alone may have destroyed Cnossos, or the +Greeks may have finished what the earthquake began. + + + + +{96} + +XVIII + +EGYPT, BABYLON AND ASSYRIA + + +The Egyptians had never submitted very willingly to the rule of +their Semitic shepherd kings and about 1600 A.D. a vigorous +patriotic movement expelled these foreigners. Followed a new +phase or revival for Egypt, a period known to Egyptologists as the +New Empire. Egypt, which had not been closely consolidated before +the Hyksos invasion, was now a united country; and the phase of +subjugation and insurrection left her full of military spirit. +The Pharaohs became aggressive conquerors. They had now acquired +the war horse and the war chariot, which the Hyksos had brought to +them. Under Thothmes III and Amenophis III Egypt had extended her +rule into Asia as far as the Euphrates. + +We are entering now upon a thousand years of warfare between the +once quite separated civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile. +At first Egypt was ascendant. The great dynasties, the +Seventeenth Dynasty, which included Thothmes III and Amenophis III +and IV and a great queen Hatasu, and the Nineteenth, when Rameses +II, supposed by some to have been the Pharaoh of Moses, reigned +for sixty-seven years, raised Egypt to high levels of prosperity. +In between there were phases of depression for Egypt, conquest by +the Syrians and later conquest by the Ethiopians from the South. +In Mesopotamia Babylon ruled, then the Hittites and the Syrians of +Damascus rose to a transitory predominance; at one time the +Syrians conquered Egypt; the fortunes of the Assyrians of Nineveh +ebbed and flowed; sometimes the city was a conquered city; +sometimes the Assyrians ruled in Babylon and assailed Egypt. Our +space is too limited here to tell of the comings and goings of the +armies of the Egyptians and of the various Semitic powers of Asia +Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia. They were armies now provided with +vast droves of war chariots, for the horse--still used only for +{97} war and glory--had spread by this time into the old +civilizations from Central Asia. + +[Illustration: TEMPLE AT ABU SIMBEL] + +Great conquerors appear in the dim light of that distant time and +pass, Tushratta, King of Mitanni, who captured Nineveh, Tiglath +Pileser I of Assyria who conquered Babylon. At last the Assyrians +became the greatest military power of the time. Tiglath Pileser +III conquered Babylon in 745 B.C. and founded what historians call +the New Assyrian Empire. Iron had also come now into civilization +out of the north; the Hittites, the precursors of the Armenians, +had it first and communicated its use to the Assyrians, and an +Assyrian usurper, Sargon II, armed his troops with it. Assyria +became the first power to expound the doctrine of blood and iron. +Sargon's son Sennacherib led an army to the borders of Egypt, and +was defeated not by military strength but by the plague. +Sennacherib's grandson Assurbanipal (who is also known in history +{98} by his Greek name of Sardanapalus) did actually conquer Egypt +in 670 B.C. But Egypt was already a conquered country then under +an Ethiopian dynasty. Sardanapalus simply replaced one conqueror +by another. + +[Illustration: AVENUE OF SPHINXES] + +If one had a series of political maps of this long period of +history, this interval of ten centuries, we should have Egypt +expanding and contracting like an amoeba under a microscope, and +we should see these various Semitic states of the Babylonians, the +Assyrians, the Hittites and the Syrians coming and going, eating +each other up and disgorging each other again. To the west of +Asia Minor there would be little AEgean states like Lydia, whose +capital was Sardis, and Caria. But after about 1200 B.C. and +perhaps earlier, a new set of names would come into the map of the +ancient world from {100} the north-east and from the north-west. +These would be the names of certain barbaric tribes, armed with +iron weapons and using horse-chariots, who were becoming a great +affliction to the AEgean and Semitic civilizations on the northern +borders. They all spoke variants of what once must have been the +same language, Aryan. + +==================================================================== + +{99} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK] + +==================================================================== + +Round the north-east of the Black and Caspian Seas were coming the +Medes and Persians. Confused with these in the records of the +time were Scythians and Samatians. From north-east or +north-west came the Armenians, from the north-west of the +sea-barrier through the Balkan peninsula came Cimmerians, +Phrygians and the Hellenic tribes whom now we call the Greeks. +They were raiders and robbers and plunderers of cities, these +Ayrans, east and west alike. They were all kindred and similar +peoples, hardy herdsmen who had taken to plunder. In the east +they were still only borderers and raiders, but in the west they +were taking cities and driving out the civilized AEgean +populations. The AEgean peoples were so pressed that they were +seeking new homes in lands beyond the Aryan range. Some were +seeking a settlement in the delta of the Nile and being repulsed +by the Egyptians; some, the Etruscans, seem to have sailed from +Asia Minor to found a state in the forest wildernesses of middle +Italy; some built themselves cities upon the south-east coasts of +the Mediterranean and became later that people known in history as +the Philistines. + +Of these Aryans who came thus rudely upon the scene of the ancient +civilizations we will tell more fully in a later section. Here we +note simply all this stir and emigration amidst the area of the +ancient civilizations, that was set up by the swirl of the gradual +and continuous advance of these Aryan barbarians out of the +northern forests and wildernesses between 1600 and 600 B.C. + +And in a section to follow we must tell also of a little Semitic +people, the Hebrews, in the hills behind the Phoenician and +Philistine coasts, who began to be of significance in the world +towards the end of this period. They produced a literature of +very great importance in subsequent history, a collection of +books, histories, poems, books of wisdom and prophetic works, the +Hebrew Bible. + +In Mesopotamia and Egypt the coming of the Aryans did not cause +fundamental changes until after 600 B.C. The flight of {101} the +AEgeans before the Greeks and even the destruction of Cnossos must +have seemed a very remote disturbance to both the citizens of +Egypt and of Babylon. Dynasties came and went in these cradle +states of civilization, but the main tenor of human life went on, +with a slow increase in refinement and complexity age by age. In +Egypt the accumulated monuments of more ancient times--the +pyramids were already in their third thousand of years and a show +for visitors just as they are to-day--were supplemented by fresh +and splendid buildings, more particularly in the time of the +seventeenth and nineteenth dynasties. The great temples at Karnak +and Luxor date from this time. All the chief monuments of +Nineveh, the great temples, the winged bulls with human heads, the +reliefs of kings and chariots and lion hunts, were done in these +centuries between 1600 and 600 B.C., and this period also covers +most of the splendours of Babylon. + +[Illustration: FRIEZE SHOWING EGYPTIAN FEMALE SLAVES CARRYING +LUXURIOUS FOODS] + +Both from Mesopotamia and Egypt we now have abundant public +records, business accounts, stories, poetry and private +correspondence. We know that life, for prosperous and influential +people in such cities as Babylon and the Egyptian Thebes, was +already almost as refined and as luxurious as that of comfortable +and prosperous people to-day. Such people lived an orderly and +ceremonious life in beautiful and beautifully furnished and +decorated houses, wore richly decorated clothing and lovely +jewels; they had feasts and festivals, entertained one another +with music and dancing, were waited upon by highly trained +servants, were cared for by doctors and dentists. They did not +travel very much or very far, but boating {102} excursions were a +common summer pleasure both on the Nile and on the Euphrates. The +beast of burthen was the ass; the horse was still used only in +chariots for war and upon occasions of state. The mule was still +novel and the camel, though it was known in Mesopotamia, had not +been brought into Egypt. And there were few utensils of iron; +copper and bronze remained the prevailing metals. Fine linen and +cotton fabrics were known as well as wool. But there was no silk +yet. Glass was known and beautifully coloured, but glass things +were usually small. There was no clear glass and no optical use +of glass. People had gold stoppings in their teeth but no +spectacles on their noses. + +One odd contrast between the life of old Thebes or Babylon and +modern life was the absence of coined money. Most trade was still +done by barter. Babylon was financially far ahead of Egypt. Gold +and silver were used for exchange and kept in ingots; and there +were bankers, before coinage, who stamped their names and the +weight on these lumps of precious metal. A merchant or traveller +would carry precious stones to sell to pay for his necessities. +Most servants and workers were slaves who were paid not money but +in kind. As money came in slavery declined. + +A modern visitor to these crowning cities of the ancient world +would have missed two very important articles of diet; there were +no hens and no eggs. A French cook would have found small joy in +Babylon. These things came from the East somewhere about the time +of the last Assyrian empire. + +Religion like everything else had undergone great refinement. +Human sacrifice for instance had long since disappeared; animals +or bread dummies had been substituted for the victim. (But the +Phoenicians and especially the citizens of Carthage, their +greatest settlement in Africa, were accused, later of immolating +human beings.) When a great chief had died in the ancient days it +had been customary to sacrifice his wives and slaves and break +spear and bow at his tomb so that he should not go unattended and +unarmed in the spirit world. In Egypt there survived of this dark +tradition the pleasant custom of burying small models of house and +shop and servants and cattle with the dead, models that give us +to-day the liveliest realization of the safe and cultivated life +of these ancient people, three thousand years and more ago. + +{103} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF HORUS AT EDFU] + +Such was the ancient world before the coming of the Aryans out of +the northern forests and plains. In India and China there were +parallel developments. In the great valleys of both these regions +agricultural city states of brownish peoples were growing up, but +in India they do not seem to have advanced or coalesced so rapidly +as the city states of Mesopotamia or Egypt. They were nearer the +level of the ancient Sumerians or of the Maya civilization of +America. Chinese history has still to be modernized by Chinese +scholars and cleared of much legendary matter. Probably China at +this time was in advance of India. Contemporary with the +seventeenth dynasty in Egypt, there was a dynasty of emperors in +China, the Shang dynasty, priest emperors over a loose-knit empire +of subordinate kings. The chief duty of these early emperors was +to perform the seasonal sacrifices. Beautiful bronze vessels from +the time of the Shang dynasty still exist, and their beauty and +workmanship compel us to recognize that many centuries of +civilization must have preceded their manufacture. + + + + +{104} + +XIX + +THE PRIMITIVE ARYANS + + +Four thousand years ago, that is to say about 2000 B.C., central +and south-eastern Europe and central Asia were probably warmer, +moister and better wooded than they are now. In these regions of +the earth wandered a group of tribes mainly of the fair and +blue-eyed Nordic race, sufficiently in touch with one another to +speak merely variations of one common language from the Rhine to +the Caspian Sea. At that time they may not have been a very +numerous people, and their existence was unsuspected by the +Babylonians to whom Hammurabi was giving laws, or by the already +ancient and cultivated land of Egypt which was tasting in those +days for the first time the bitterness of foreign conquest. + +These Nordic people were destined to play a very important part +indeed in the world's history. They were a people of the +parklands and the forest clearings; they had no horses at first +but they had cattle; when they wandered they put their tents and +other gear on rough ox waggons; when they settled for a time they +may have made huts of wattle and mud. They burnt their important +dead; they did not bury them ceremoniously as the brunette peoples +did. They put the ashes of their greater leaders in urns and then +made a great circular mound about them. These mounds are the +"round barrows" that occur all over north Europe. The brunette +people, their predecessors, did not burn their dead but buried +them in a sitting position in elongated mounds; the "long +barrows." + +The Aryans raised crops of wheat, ploughing with oxen, but they +did not settle down by their crops; they would reap and move on. +They had bronze, and somewhen about 1500 B.C. they acquired iron. +They may have been the discoverers of iron smelting. And somewhen +vaguely about that time they also got the horse--which to begin +with they used only for draught purposes. Their social life did +not centre upon a temple like that of the more settled people +round the Mediterranean, and their chief men were leaders rather +than priests. They had an aristocratic social order rather than a +{106} divine and regal order; from a very early stage they +distinguished certain families as leaderly and noble. + +==================================================================== + +{105} + +[Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL ARCHAIC AMPHORA] + +==================================================================== + +They were a very vocal people. They enlivened their wanderings by +feasts, at which there was much drunkenness and at which a special +sort of man, the bards, would sing and recite. They had no +writing until they had come into contact with civilization, and +the memories of these bards were their living literature. This +use of recited language as an entertainment did much to make it a +fine and beautiful instrument of expression, and to that no doubt +the subsequent predominance of the languages derived from Aryan +is, in part, to be ascribed. Every Aryan people had its legendary +history crystallized in bardic recitations, epics, sagas and +vedas, as they were variously called. + +The social life of these people centred about the households of +their leading men. The hall of the chief where they settled for a +time was often a very capacious timber building. There were no +doubt huts for herds and outlying farm buildings; but with most of +the Aryan peoples this hall was the general centre, everyone went +there to feast and hear the bards and take part in games and +discussions. Cowsheds and stabling surrounded it. The chief and +his wife and so forth would sleep on a dais or in an upper +gallery; the commoner sort slept about anywhere, as people still +do in Indian households. Except for weapons, ornaments, tools and +suchlike personal possessions there was a sort of patriarchal +communism in the tribe. The chief owned the cattle and grazing +lands in the common interest; forest and rivers were the wild. + +This was the fashion of the people who were increasing and +multiplying over the great spaces of central Europe and west +central Asia during the growth of the great civilization of +Mesopotamia and the Nile, and whom we find pressing upon the +heliolithic peoples everywhere in the second millennium before +Christ. They were coming into France and Britain and into Spain. +They pushed westward in two waves. The first of these people who +reached Britain and Ireland were armed with bronze weapons. They +exterminated or subjugated the people who had made the great stone +monuments of Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge and Avebury in +England. They reached Ireland. They are called the Goidelic +Celts. The {107} second wave of a closely kindred people, perhaps +intermixed with other racial elements, brought iron with it into +Great Britain, and is known as the wave of Brythonic Celts. From +them the Welsh derive their language. + +[Illustration: THE MOUND OF NIPPUR] + +Kindred Celtic peoples were pressing southward into Spain and +coming into contact not only with the heliolithic Basque people +who still occupied the country but with the Semitic Phoenician +colonies of the sea coast. A closely allied series of tribes, the +Italians, were making their way down the still wild and wooded +Italian peninsula. They did not always conquer. In the eighth +century B.C. Rome appears in history, a trading town on the Tiber, +inhabited by Aryan Latins but under the rule of Etruscan nobles +and kings. + +At the other extremity of the Aryan range there was a similar +progress southward of similar tribes. Aryan peoples, speaking +Sanskrit, had come down through the western passes into North +{108} India long before 1000 B.C. There they came into contact +with a primordial brunette civilization, the Dravidian +civilization, and learnt much from it. Other Aryan tribes seem to +have spread over the mountain masses of Central Asia far to the +east of the present range of such peoples. In Eastern Turkestan +there are still fair, blue-eyed Nordic tribes, but now they speak +Mongolian tongues. + +Between the Black and Caspian Seas the ancient Hittites had been +submerged and "Aryanized" by the Armenians before 1000 B.C., and +the Assyrians and Babylonians were already aware of a new and +formidable fighting barbarism on the north-eastern frontiers, a +group of tribes amidst which the Scythians, the Medes and the +Persians remain as outstanding names. + +But it was through the Balkan peninsula that Aryan tribes made +their first heavy thrust into the heart of the old-world +civilization. They were already coming southward and crossing +into Asia Minor many centuries before 1000 B.C. First came a +group of tribes of whom the Phrygians were the most conspicuous, +and then in succession the AEolic, the Ionic and the Dorian Greeks. +By 1000 B.C. they had wiped out the ancient AEgean civilization +both in the mainland of Greece and in most of the Greek islands; +the cities of Mycenae and Tiryns were obliterated and Cnossos was +nearly forgotten. The Greeks had taken to the sea before 1000 +A.D., they had settled in Crete and Rhodes, and they were founding +colonies in Sicily and the south of Italy after the fashion of the +Phoenician trading cities that were dotted along the Mediterranean +coasts. + +So it was, while Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II and +Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia +and Syria and Egypt, the Aryan peoples were learning the methods +of civilization and making it over for their own purposes in Italy +and Greece and north Persia. The theme of history from the ninth +century B.C. onward for six centuries is the story of how these +Aryan peoples grew to power and enterprise and how at last they +subjugated the whole Ancient World, Semitic, AEgean and Egyptian +alike. In form the Aryan peoples were altogether victorious; but +the struggle of Aryan, Semitic and Egyptian ideas and methods was +continued long after the sceptre was in Aryan hands. It is indeed +a struggle that goes on through all the rest of history and still +in a manner continues to this day. + + + + +{109} + +XX + +THE LAST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE AND THE EMPIRE OF DARIUS I + + +We have already mentioned how Assyria became a great military +power under Tiglath Pileser III and under the usurper Sargon II. +Sargon was not this man's original name; he adopted it to flatter +the conquered Babylonians by reminding them of that ancient +founder of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon I, two thousand years +before his time. Babylon, for all that it was a conquered city, +was of greater population and importance than Nineveh, and its +great god Bel Marduk and its traders and priests had to be treated +politely. In Mesopotamia in the eighth century B.C. we are +already far beyond the barbaric days when the capture of a town +meant loot and massacre. Conquerors sought to propitiate and win +the conquered. For a century and a half after Sargon the new +Assyrian empire endured and, as we have noted, Assurbanipal +(Sardanapalus) held at least lower Egypt. + +But the power and solidarity of Assyria waned rapidly. Egypt by +an effort threw off the foreigner under a Pharoah Psammetichus I, +and under Necho II attempted a war of conquest in Syria. By that +time Assyria was grappling with foes nearer at hand, and could +make but a poor resistance. A Semitic people from south-east +Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans, combined with Aryan Medes and Persians +from the north-east against Nineveh, and in +606 B.C.--for now we are coming down to exact chronology--took +that city. + +There was a division of the spoils of Assyria. A Median Empire +was set up in the north under Cyaxares. It included Nineveh, and +its capital was Ecbatana. Eastward it reached to the borders of +India. To the south of this in a great crescent was a new +Chaldean Empire, the Second Babylonian Empire, which rose to a +very great degree of wealth and power under the rule of +Nebuchadnezzar the Great (the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible). The +last great days, the {110} greatest days of all, for Babylon +began. For a time the two Empires remained at peace, and the +daughter of Nebuchadnezzar was married to Cyaxares. + +Meanwhile Necho II was pursuing his easy conquests in Syria. He +had defeated and slain King Josiah of Judah, a small country of +which there is more to tell presently, at the battle of Megiddo in +608 B.C., and he pushed on to the Euphrates to encounter not a +decadent Assyria but a renascent Babylonia. The Chaldeans dealt +very vigorously with the Egyptians. Necho was routed and driven +back to Egypt, and the Babylonian frontier pushed down to the +ancient Egyptian boundaries. + +From 606 until 589 B.C. the Second Babylonian Empire flourished +insecurely. It flourished so long as it kept the peace with the +stronger, hardier Median Empire to the north. And during these +sixty-seven years not only life but learning flourished in the +ancient city. + +[Map: Map showing the relation of the Median and Second Babylonian +(Chaldaean) Empires in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great] + +[Map: The Empire of Darius (tribute-paying countries) at its +greatest extent] + +Even under the Assyrian monarchs and especially under +Sardanapalus, Babylon had been a scene of great intellectual +activity. {111} Sardanapalus, though an Assyrian, had been quite +Babylon-ized. He made a library, a library not of paper but of +the clay tablets that were used for writing in Mesopotamia since +early Sumerian days. His collection has been unearthed and is +perhaps the most precious store of historical material in the +world. The last of the Chaldean line of Babylonian monarchs, +Nabonidus, had even keener literary tastes. He patronized +antiquarian researches, and when a date was worked out by his +investigators for the accession of Sargon I he commemorated the +fact by inscriptions. But there were many signs of disunion in +his empire, and he sought to centralize it by bringing a number of +the various local gods to Babylon and setting up temples to them +there. This device was to be practised quite successfully by the +Romans in later times, but in Babylon it roused the jealousy of +the powerful priesthood of Bel Marduk, the dominant god of the +Babylonians. They cast about for a possible alternative to +Nabonidus and found it in Cyrus the Persian, the ruler of the +adjacent Median Empire. Cyrus had already distinguished himself +by conquering Croesus, the rich king of Lydia in Eastern Asia +Minor. {112} He came up against Babylon, there was a battle +outside the walls, and the gates of the city were opened to him +(538 B.C.). His soldiers entered the city without fighting. The +crown prince Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, was feasting, the +Bible relates, when a hand appeared and wrote in letters of fire +upon the wall these mystical words: _"Mene, Mene, Tekel, +Upharsin,"_ which was interpreted by the prophet Daniel, whom he +summoned to read the riddle, as "God has numbered thy kingdom and +finished it; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting and +thy kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians." Possibly the +priests of Bel Marduk knew something about that writing on the +wall. Belshazzar was killed that night, says the Bible. +Nabonidus was taken prisoner, and the occupation of the city was +so peaceful that the services of Bel Marduk continued without +intermission. + +[Illustration: PERSIAN MONARCH] + +Thus it was the Babylonian and Median empires were united. +Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, subjugated Egypt. Cambyses went mad +and was accidentally killed, and was presently succeeded by Darius +the Mede, Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, one of the chief +councillors of Cyrus. + +==================================================================== + +{113} + +[Illustration: THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS] + +[Illustration: THE GREAT PORCH OF XERXES, AT PERSEPOLIS] + +==================================================================== + +The Persian Empire of Darius I, the first of the new Aryan empires +in the seat of the old civilizations, was the greatest empire the +world had hitherto seen. It included all Asia Minor and Syria, +all the old Assyrian and Babylonian empires, Egypt, the Caucasus +and Caspian regions, Media, Persia, and it extended into India as +far as the Indus. Such an empire was possible because the horse +and rider and the chariot and the made-road had now been brought +into the world. Hitherto the ass and ox and the camel for desert +use had afforded the swiftest method of {114} transport. Great +arterial roads were made by the Persian rulers to hold their new +empire, and post horses were always in waiting for the imperial +messenger or the traveller with an official permit. Moreover the +world was now beginning to use coined money, which greatly +facilitated trade and intercourse. But the capital of this vast +empire was no longer Babylon. In the long run the priesthood of +Bel Marduk gained nothing by their treason. Babylon though still +important was now a declining city, and the great cities of the +new empire were Persepolis and Susa and Ecbatana. The capital was +Susa. Nineveh was already abandoned and sinking into ruins. + + + + +{115} + +XXI + +THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE JEWS + + +And now we can tell of the Hebrews, a Semitic people, not so +important in their own time as in their influence upon the later +history of the world. They were settled in Judea long before 1000 +B.C., and their capital city after that time was Jerusalem. Their +story is interwoven with that of the great empires on either side +of them, Egypt to the south and the changing empires of Syria, +Assyria and Babylon to the north. Their country was an inevitable +high road between these latter powers and Egypt. + +Their importance in the world is due to the fact that they +produced a written literature, a world history, a collection of +laws, chronicles, psalms, books of wisdom, poetry and fiction and +political utterances which became at last what Christians know as +the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. This literature appears in +history in the fourth or fifth century B.C. + +Probably this literature was first put together in Babylon. We +have already told how the Pharaoh, Necho II, invaded the Assyrian +Empire while Assyria was fighting for life against Medes, Persians +and Chaldeans. Josiah King of Judah opposed him, and was defeated +and slain at Megiddo (608 B.C.). Judah became a tributary to +Egypt, and when Nebuchadnezzar the Great, the new Chaldean king in +Babylon, rolled back Necho into Egypt, he attempted to manage +Judah by setting up puppet kings in Jerusalem. The experiment +failed, the people massacred his Babylonian officials, and he then +determined to break up this little state altogether, which had +long been playing off Egypt against the northern empire. +Jerusalem was sacked and burnt, and the remnant of the people was +carried off captive to Babylon. + +{116} + +There they remained until Cyrus took Babylon (538 B.C.). He then +collected them together and sent them back to resettle their +country and rebuild the walls and temple of Jerusalem. + +Before that time the Jews do not seem to have been a very +civilized or united people. Probably only a very few of them +could read or write. In their own history one never hears of the +early books of the Bible being read; the first mention of a book +is in the time of Josiah. The Babylonian captivity civilized them +and consolidated them. They returned aware of their own +literature, an acutely self-conscious and political people. + +Their Bible at that time seems to have consisted only of the +Pentateuch, that is to say the first five books of the Old +Testament as we know it. In addition, as separate books they +already had many of the other books that have since been +incorporated with the Pentateuch into the present Hebrew Bible, +Chronicles, the Psalms and Proverbs for example. + +The accounts of the Creation of the World, of Adam and Eve and of +the Flood, with which the Bible begins, run closely parallel with +similar Babylonian legends; they seem to have been part of the +common beliefs of all the Semitic peoples. So too the stories of +Moses and of Samson have Sumerian and Babylonian parallels. But +with the story of Abraham and onward begins something more special +to the Jewish race. + +Abraham may have lived as early as the days of Hammurabi in +Babylon. He was a patriarchal Semitic nomad. To the book of +Genesis the reader must go for the story of his wanderings and for +the stories of his sons and grandchildren and how they became +captive in the Land of Egypt. He travelled through Canaan, and +the God of Abraham, says the Bible story, promised this smiling +land of prosperous cities to him and to his children. + +And after a long sojourn in Egypt and after fifty years of +wandering in the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, the +children of Abraham, grown now to a host of twelve tribes, invaded +the land of Canaan from the Arabian deserts to the East. They may +have done this somewhen between 1600 B.C. and 1300 B.C.; there are +no Egyptian records of Moses nor of Canaan at this time to help +out the story. But at any rate they did not succeed in conquering +any {117} more than the hilly backgrounds of the promised land. +The coast was now in the hands, not of the Canaanites but of +newcomers, those AEgean peoples, the Philistines; and their cities, +Gaza, Gath, Ashdod, Ascalon and Joppa successfully withstood the +Hebrew attack. For many generations the children of Abraham +remained an obscure people of the hilly back country engaged in +incessant bickerings with the Philistines and with the kindred +tribes about them, the Moabites, the Midianites and so forth. The +reader will find in the book of Judges a record of their struggles +and disasters during this period. For very largely it is a record +of disasters and failures frankly told. + +[Map: The Land of the Hebrews] + +{118} + +For most of this period the Hebrews were ruled, so far as there +was any rule among them, by priestly judges selected by the elders +of the people, but at last somewhen towards 1000 B.C. they chose +themselves a king, Saul, to lead them in battle. But Saul's +leading was no great improvement upon the leading of the Judges; +he perished under the hail of Philistine arrows at the battle of +Mount Gilboa, his armour went into the temple of the Philistine +Venus, and his body was nailed to the walls of +Beth-shan. + +[Illustration: MOUND AT BABYLON] + +His successor David was more successful and more politic. With +David dawned the only period of prosperity the Hebrew peoples were +ever to know. It was based on a close alliance with the +Phoenician city of Tyre, whose King Hiram seems to have been a man +of very great intelligence and enterprise. He wished to secure a +trade route to the Red Sea through the Hebrew hill country. +Normally Phoenician trade went to the Red Sea by Egypt, but Egypt +was in a state of profound disorder at this {119} time; there may +have been other obstructions to Phoenician trade along this line, +and at any rate Hiram established the very closest relations both +with David and with his son and successor Solomon. Under Hiram's +auspices the walls, palace and temple of Jerusalem arose, and in +return Hiram built and launched his ships on the Red Sea. A very +considerable trade passed northward and southward through +Jerusalem. And Solomon achieved a prosperity and magnificence +unprecedented in the experience of his people. He was even given +a daughter of Pharaoh in marriage. + +But it is well to keep the proportion of things in mind. At the +climax of his glories Solomon was only a little subordinate king +in a little city. His power was so transitory that within a few +years of his death, Shishak the first Pharaoh of the twenty-second +dynasty, had taken Jerusalem and looted most of its splendours. +The account of Solomon's magnificence given in the books of Kings +and Chronicles is questioned by many critics. They say that it +was added to and exaggerated by the patriotic pride of later +writers. But the Bible account read carefully is not so +overwhelming as it appears at the first reading. Solomon's +temple, if one works out the measurements, would go inside a small +suburban church, and his fourteen hundred chariots cease to +impress us when we learn from an Assyrian monument that his +successor Ahab sent a contingent of two thousand to the Assyrian +army. It is also plainly manifest from the Bible narrative that +Solomon spent himself in display and overtaxed and overworked his +people. At his death the northern part of his kingdom broke off +from Jerusalem and became the independent kingdom of Israel. +Jerusalem remained the capital city of Judah. + +The prosperity of the Hebrew people was short-lived. Hiram died, +and the help of Tyre ceased to strengthen Jerusalem. Egypt grew +strong again. The history of the kings of Israel and the kings of +Judah becomes a history of two little states ground between, +first, Syria, then Assyria and then Babylon to the north and Egypt +to the south. It is a tale of disasters and of deliverances that +only delayed disaster. It is a tale of barbaric kings ruling a +barbaric people. In 721 B.C. the kingdom of Israel was swept away +into captivity by the Assyrians and its people utterly lost to +history. Judah struggled {121} on until in 604 B.C., as we have +told, it shared the fate of Israel. There may be details open to +criticism in the Bible story of Hebrew history from the days of +the Judges onward, but on the whole it is evidently a true story +which squares with all that has been learnt in the excavation of +Egypt and Assyria and Babylon during the past century. + +==================================================================== + +{120} + +[Illustration: THE ISHTAR GATEWAY, BABYLON] + +==================================================================== + +It was in Babylon that the Hebrew people got their history +together and evolved their tradition. The people who came back to +Jerusalem at the command of Cyrus were a very different people in +spirit and knowledge from those who had gone into captivity. They +had learnt civilization. In the development of their peculiar +character a very great part was played by certain men, a new sort +of men, the Prophets, to whom we must now direct our attention. +These Prophets mark the appearance of new and remarkable forces in +the steady development of human society. + + + + +{122} + +XXII + +PRIESTS AND PROPHETS IN JUDEA + + +The fall of Assyria and Babylon were only the first of a series of +disasters that were to happen to the Semitic peoples. In the +seventh century B.C. it would have seemed as though the whole +civilized world was to be dominated by Semitic rulers. They ruled +the great Assyrian empire and they had conquered Egypt; Assyria, +Babylon, Syria were all Semitic, speaking languages that were +mutually intelligible. The trade of the world was in Semitic +hands. Tyre, Sidon, the great mother cities of the Phoenician +coast, had thrown out colonies that grew at last to even greater +proportion in Spain, Sicily and Africa. Carthage, founded before +800 B.C., had risen to a population of more than a million. It +was for a time the greatest city on earth. Its ships went to +Britain and out into the Atlantic. They may have reached Madeira. +We have already noted how Hiram co-operated with Solomon to build +ships on the Red Sea for the Arabian and perhaps for the Indian +trade. In the time of the Pharaoh Necho, a Phoenician expedition +sailed completely round Africa. + +At that time the Aryan peoples were still barbarians. Only the +Greeks were reconstructing a new civilization of the ruins of the +one they had destroyed, and the Medes were becoming "formidable," +as an Assyrian inscription calls them, in central Asia. In 800 +B.C. no one could have prophesied that before the third century +B.C. every trace of Semitic dominion would be wiped out by +Aryan-speaking conquerors, and that everywhere the Semitic peoples +would be subjects or tributaries or scattered altogether. +Everywhere except in the northern deserts of Arabia, where the +Bedouin adhered steadily to the nomadic way of life, the ancient +way of life of the Semites before Sargon I and his Akkadians went +down to conquer Sumeria. But the Arab Bedouin were never +conquered by Aryan masters. + +{123} + +Now of all these civilized Semites who were beaten and overrun in +these five eventful centuries one people only held together and +clung to its ancient traditions and that was this little people, +the Jews, who were sent back to build their city of Jerusalem by +Cyrus the Persian. And they were able to do this, because they +had got together this literature of theirs, their Bible, in +Babylon. It is not so much the Jews who made the Bible as the +Bible which made the Jews. Running through this Bible were +certain ideas, different from the ideas of the people about them, +very stimulating and sustaining ideas, to which they were destined +to cling through five and twenty centuries of hardship, adventure +and oppression. + +Foremost of these Jewish ideas was this, that their God was +invisible and remote, an invisible God in a temple not made with +hands, a Lord of Righteousness throughout the earth. All other +peoples had national gods embodied in images that lived in +temples. If the image was smashed and the temple razed, presently +that god died out. But this was a new idea, this God of the Jews, +in the heavens, high above priests and sacrifices. And this God +of Abraham, the Jews believed, had chosen them to be his peculiar +people, to restore Jerusalem and make it the capital of +Righteousness in the World. They were a people exalted by their +sense of a common destiny. This belief saturated them all when +they returned to Jerusalem after the captivity in Babylon. + +Is it any miracle that in their days of overthrow and subjugation +many Babylonians and Syrians and so forth and later on many +Phoenicians, speaking practically the same language and having +endless customs, habits, tastes and traditions in common, should +be attracted by this inspiring cult and should seek to share in +its fellowship and its promise? After the fall of Tyre, Sidon, +Carthage and the Spanish Phoenician cities, the Phoenicians +suddenly vanish from history; and as suddenly we find, not simply +in Jerusalem but in Spain, Africa, Egypt, Arabia, the East, +wherever the Phoenicians had set their feet, communities of Jews. +And they were all held together by the Bible and by the reading of +the Bible. Jerusalem was from the first only their nominal +capital; their real city was this book of books. This is a new +sort of thing in history. It is something of which the seeds were +sown long before, when the Sumerians {124} and Egyptians began to +turn their hieroglyphics into writing. The Jews were a new thing, +a people without a king and presently without a temple (for as we +shall tell Jerusalem itself was broken up in 70 A.D.), held +together and consolidated out of heterogeneous elements by nothing +but the power of the written word. + +And this mental welding of the Jews was neither planned nor +foreseen nor done by either priests or statesmen. Not only a new +kind of community but a new kind of man comes into history with +the development of the Jews. In the days of Solomon the Hebrews +looked like becoming a little people just like any other little +people of that time clustering around court and temple, ruled by +the wisdom of the priest and led by the ambition of the king. But +already, the reader may learn from the Bible, this new sort of man +of which we speak, the Prophet, was in evidence. + +As troubles thicken round the divided Hebrews the importance of +these Prophets increases. + +[Illustration: THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II] + +What were these Prophets? They were men of the most diverse +origins. The Prophet Ezekiel was of the priestly caste and the +Prophet Amos wore the goatskin mantle of a shepherd, but all had +this in common, that they gave allegiance to no one but to the God +of Righteousness and that they spoke directly to the people. They +{125} came without licence or consecration. "Now the word of the +Lord came unto me;" that was the formula. They were intensely +political. They exhorted the people against Egypt, "that broken +reed," or against Assyria or Babylon; they denounced the indolence +of the priestly order or the flagrant sins of the King. Some of +them turned their attention to what we should now call "social +reform." The rich were "grinding the faces of the poor," the +luxurious were consuming the children's bread; wealthy people made +friends with and imitated the splendours and vices of foreigners; +and this was hateful to Jehovah, the God of Abraham, who would +certainly punish this land. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER PANEL OF THE BLACK OBELISK] + +These fulminations were written down and preserved and studied. +They went wherever the Jews went, and wherever they went they +spread a new religious spirit. They carried the common man past +priest and temple, past court and king and brought him face to +face with the Rule of Righteousness. That is their supreme +importance in the history of mankind. In the great utterances of +Isaiah the prophetic voice rises to a pitch of splendid +anticipation and foreshadows the whole earth united and at peace +under one God. Therein the Jewish prophecies culminate. + +All the Prophets did not speak in this fashion, and the +intelligent reader of the prophetic books will find much hate in +them, much prejudice, and much that will remind him of the +propaganda pamphlets {126}of the present time. Nevertheless it is +the Hebrew Prophets of the period round and about the Babylonian +captivity who mark the appearance of a new power in the world, the +power of individual moral appeal, of an appeal to the free +conscience of mankind against the fetish sacrifices and slavish +loyalties that had hitherto bridled and harnessed our race. + + + + +{127} + +XXIII + +THE GREEKS + + +Now while after Solomon (whose reign was probably about 960 B.C.) +the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah were suffering +destruction and deportation, and while the Jewish people were +developing their tradition in captivity in Babylon, another great +power over the human mind, the Greek tradition, was also arising. +While the Hebrew prophets were working out a new sense of direct +moral responsibility between the people and an eternal and +universal God of Right, the Greek philosophers were training the +human mind in a new method and spirit of intellectual adventure. + +The Greek tribes as we have told were a branch of the +Aryan-speaking stem. They had come down among the AEgean cities and +islands some centuries before 1000 B.C. They were probably +already in southward movement before the Pharaoh Thothmes hunted +his first elephants beyond the conquered Euphrates. For in those +days there were elephants in Mesopotamia and lions in Greece. + +It is possible that it was a Greek raid that burnt Cnossos, but +there are no Greek legends of such a victory though there are +stories of Minos and his palace (the Labyrinth) and of the skill +of the Cretan artificers. + +==================================================================== + +{128} + +[Illustration: STATUE OF MELEAGER] + +==================================================================== + +Like most of the Aryans these Greeks had singers and reciters +whose performances were an important social link, and these handed +down from the barbaric beginnings of their people two great epics, +the _Iliad_, telling how a league of Greek tribes besieged and +took and sacked the town of Troy in Asia Minor, and the _Odyssey_, +being a long adventure story of the return of the sage captain, +Odysseus, from Troy to his own island. These epics were written +down somewhen in the eighth or seventh century B.C., when the +Greeks had acquired the use of an alphabet from their more +civilized neighbours, but they {129} are supposed to have been in +existence very much earlier. Formerly they were ascribed to a +particular blind bard, Homer, who was supposed to have sat down +and composed them as Milton composed Paradise Lost. Whether there +really was such a poet, whether he composed or only wrote down and +polished these epics and so forth, is a favourite quarrelling +ground for the erudite. We need not concern ourselves with such +bickerings here. The thing that matters from our point of view is +that the Greeks were in possession of their epics in the eighth +century B.C., and that they were a common possession and a link +between their various tribes, giving them a sense of fellowship as +against the outer barbarians. They were a group of kindred +peoples linked by the spoken and afterwards by the written word, +and sharing common ideals of courage and behaviour. + +The epics showed the Greeks a barbaric people without iron, +without writing, and still not living in cities. They seem to +have lived at first in open villages of huts around the halls of +their chiefs outside the ruins of the AEgean cities they had +destroyed. Then they began to wall their cities and to adopt the +idea of temples from the people they had conquered. It has been +said that the cities of the primitive civilizations grew up about +the altar of some tribal god, and that the wall was added; in the +cities of the Greeks the wall preceded the temple. They began to +trade and send out colonies. By the seventh century B.C. a new +series of cities had grown up in the valleys and islands of +Greece, forgetful of the AEgean cities and civilization that had +preceded them; Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Samos, Miletus +among the chief. There were already Greek settlements along the +coast of the Black Sea and in Italy and Sicily. The heel and toe +of Italy was called Magna Graecia. Marseilles was a Greek town +established on the site of an earlier Phoenician colony. + +Now countries which are great plains or which have as a chief +means of transport some great river like the Euphrates or Nile +tend to become united under some common rule. The cities of Egypt +and the cities of Sumeria, for example, ran together under one +system of government. But the Greek peoples were cut up among +islands and mountain valleys; both Greece and Magna Graecia are +very mountainous; and the tendency was all the other way. When +the {130} Greeks come into history they are divided up into a +number of little states which showed no signs of coalescence. +They are different even in race. Some consist chiefly of citizens +of this or that Greek tribe, Ionic, AEolian or Doric; some have a +mingled population of Greeks and descendants of the pre-Greek +"Mediterranean" folk; some have an unmixed free citizenship of +Greeks lording it over an enslaved conquered population like the +"Helots" in Sparta. In some the old leaderly Aryan families have +become a close aristocracy; in some there is a democracy of all +the Aryan citizens; in some there are elected or even hereditary +kings, in some usurpers or tyrants. + +[Illustration: RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA] + +And the same geographical conditions that kept the Greek states +divided and various, kept them small. The largest states were +smaller than many English counties, and it is doubtful if the +population of any of their cities ever exceeded a third of a +million. Few came up even to 50,000. There were unions of +interest and sympathy but no coalescences. Cities made leagues +and alliances as {131} trade increased, and small cities put +themselves under the protection of great ones. Yet all Greece was +held together in a certain community of feeling by two things, by +the epics and by the custom of taking part every fourth year in +the athletic contests at Olympia. This did not prevent wars and +feuds, but it mitigated something of the savagery of war between +them, and a truce protected all travellers to and from the games. +As time went on the sentiment of a common heritage grew and the +number of states participating in the Olympic games increased +until at last not only Greeks but competitors from the closely +kindred countries of Epirus and Macedonia to the north were +admitted. + +The Greek cities grew in trade and importance, and the quality of +their civilization rose steadily in the seventh and sixth +centuries B.C. Their social life differed in many interesting +points from the social life of the AEgean and river valley +civilizations. They had splendid temples but the priesthood was +not the great traditional body it was in the cities of the older +world, the-repository of all knowledge, the storehouse of ideas. +They had leaders and noble families, but no quasi-divine monarch +surrounded by an elaborately organized court. Rather their +organization was aristocratic, with leading families which kept +each other in order. Even their so-called "democracies" were +aristocratic; every citizen had a share in public affairs and came +to the assembly in a democracy, but everybody was not a _citizen_. +The Greek democracies were not like our modern "democracies" in +which everyone has a vote. Many of the Greek democracies had a +few hundred or a few thousand citizens and then many thousands of +slaves, freedmen and so forth, with no share in public affairs. +Generally in Greece affairs were in the hands of a community of +substantial men. Their kings and their tyrants alike were just +men set in front of other men or usurping a leadership; they were +not quasi-divine overmen like Pharaoh or Minos or the monarchs of +Mesopotamia. Both thought and government therefore had a freedom +under Greek conditions such as they had known in none of the older +civilizations. The Greeks had brought down into cities the +individualism, the personal initiative of the wandering life of +the northern parklands. They were the first republicans of +importance in history. + +{132} + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PAESTUM, SICILY] + +And we find that as they emerge from a condition of barbaric +warfare a new thing becomes apparent in their intellectual life. +We find men who are not priests seeking and recording knowledge +and enquiring into the mysteries of life and being, in a way that +has hitherto been the sublime privilege of priesthood or the +presumptuous amusement of kings. We find already in the sixth +century B.C.--perhaps while Isaiah was still prophesying in +Babylon--such men as Thales and Anaximander of Miletus and +Heraclitus of Ephesus, who were what we should now call +independent gentlemen, giving their minds to shrewd questionings +of the world in which we live, asking what its real nature was, +whence it came and what its destiny might be, and refusing all +ready-made or evasive answers. Of these questionings of the +universe by the Greek mind, we shall have more to say a little +later in this history. These Greek enquirers {133} who begin to +be remarkable in the sixth century B.C. are the first +philosophers, the first "wisdom-lovers," in the world. + +And it may be noted here how important a century this sixth +century B.C. was in the history of humanity. For not only were +these Greek philosophers beginning the research for clear ideas +about this universe and man's place in it and Isaiah carrying +Jewish prophecy to its sublimest levels, but as we shall tell +later Gautama Buddha was then teaching in India and Confucius and +Lao Tse in China. From Athens to the Pacific the human mind was +astir. + + + + +{134} + +XXIV + +THE WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS + + +While the Greeks in the cities in Greece, South Italy and Asia +Minor were embarking upon free intellectual enquiry and while in +Babylon and Jerusalem the last of the Hebrew prophets were +creating a free conscience for mankind, two adventurous Aryan +peoples, the Medes and the Persians, were in possession of the +civilization of the ancient world and were making a great empire, +the Persian empire, which was far larger in extent than any empire +the world had seen hitherto. Under Cyrus, Babylon and the rich +and ancient civilization of Lydia had been added to the Persian +rule; the Phoenician cities of the Levant and all the Greek cities +in Asia Minor had been made tributary, Cambyses had subjected +Egypt, and Darius I, the Mede, the third of the Persian rulers +(521 B.C.), found himself monarch as it seemed of all the world. +His couriers rode with his decrees from the Dardanelles to the +Indus and from Upper Egypt to Central Asia. + +The Greeks in Europe, it is true, Italy, Carthage, Sicily and the +Spanish Phoenician settlements, were not under the Persian Peace; +but they treated it with respect and the only people who gave any +serious trouble were the old parent hordes of Nordic people in +South Russia and Central Asia, the Scythians, who raided the +northern and north-eastern borders. + +Of course the population of this great Persian empire was not a +population of Persians, The Persians were only the small +conquering minority of this enormous realm. The rest of the +population was what it had been before the Persians came from time +immemorial, only that Persian was the administrative language. +Trade and finance were still largely Semitic, Tyre and Sidon as of +old were the great Mediterranean ports and Semitic shipping plied +upon the seas. But many of these Semitic merchants and business +people as {135} they went from place to place already found a +sympathetic and convenient common history in the Hebrew tradition +and the Hebrew scriptures. A new element which was increasing +rapidly in this empire was the Greek element. The Greeks were +becoming serious rivals to the Semites upon the sea, and their +detached and vigorous intelligence made them useful and, +unprejudiced officials. + +[Illustration: FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY] + +It was on account of the Scythians that Darius I invaded Europe. +He wanted to reach South Russia, the homeland of the Scythian +horsemen. He crossed the Bosphorus with a great army and marched +through Bulgaria to the Danube, crossed this by a bridge of boats +and pushed far northward. His army suffered terribly. It was +largely an infantry force and the mounted Scythians rode all round +it, cut off its supplies, destroyed any stragglers and never came +to a pitched battle. Darius was forced into an inglorious +retreat. + +He returned himself to Susa but he left an army in Thrace and +Macedonia, and Macedonia submitted to Darius. Insurrections of +the Greek cities in Asia followed this failure, and the European +Greeks were drawn into the contest. Darius resolved upon the +subjugation of the Greeks in Europe. With the Phoenician fleet at +his disposal he was able to subdue one island after another, and +finally in 490 B.C. he made his main attack upon Athens. A +considerable Armada sailed from the ports of Asia Minor and the +eastern Mediterranean, and the expedition landed its troops at +Marathon to the north of Athens. There they were met and signally +defeated by the Athenians. + +{136} + +An extraordinary thing happened at this time. The bitterest rival +of Athens in Greece was Sparta, but now Athens appealed to Sparta, +sending a herald, a swift runner, imploring the Spartans not to +let Greeks become slaves to barbarians. This runner (the +prototype of all "Marathon" runners) did over a hundred miles of +broken country in less than two days. The Spartans responded +promptly and generously; but when, in three days, the Spartan +force reached Athens, there was nothing for it to do but to view +the battlefield and the bodies of the defeated Persian soldiers. +The Persian fleet had returned to Asia. So ended the first +Persian attack on Greece. + +The next was much more impressive. Darius died soon after the +news of his defeat at Marathon reached him, and for four years his +son and successor, Xerxes, prepared a host to crush the Greeks. +For a time terror united all the Greeks. The army of Xerxes was +certainly the greatest that had hitherto been assembled in the +world. It was a huge assembly of discordant elements. It crossed +the Dardanelles, 480 B.C., by a bridge of boats; and along the +coast as it advanced moved an equally miscellaneous fleet carrying +supplies. At the narrow pass of Thermopylae a small force of 1400 +men under the Spartan Leonidas resisted this multitude, and after +a fight of unsurpassed heroism was completely destroyed. Every +man was killed. But the losses they inflicted upon the Persians +were enormous, and the army of Xerxes pushed on to Thebes and +Athens in a chastened mood. Thebes surrendered and made terms. +The Athenians abandoned their city and it was burnt. + +==================================================================== + +{137} + +[Illustration: ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH] + +==================================================================== + +Greece seemed in the hands of the conqueror, but again came +victory against the odds and all expectations. The Greek fleet, +though not a third the size of the Persian, assailed it in the bay +of Salamis and destroyed it. Xerxes found himself and his immense +army cut off from supplies and his heart failed him. He retreated +to Asia with one half of his army, leaving the rest to be defeated +at Platea (479 B.C.) what time the remnants of the Persian fleet +were hunted down by the Greeks and destroyed at Mycalae in Asia +Minor. + +The Persian danger was at an end. Most of the Greek cities in +Asia became free. All this is told in great detail and with much +picturesqueness in the first of written histories, the _History_ +of {138} Herodotus. This Herodotus was born about 484 B.C. in the +Ionian city of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, and he visited Babylon +and Egypt in his search for exact particulars. From Mycalae onward +Persia sank into a confusion of dynastic troubles. Xerxes was +murdered in 465 B.C. and rebellions in Egypt, Syria and Media +broke up the brief order of that mighty realm. The history of +Herodotus lays stress on the weakness of Persia. This history is +indeed what we should now call propaganda--propaganda for Greece +to unite and conquer Persia. Herodotus makes one character, +Aristagoras, go to the Spartans with a map of the known world and +say to them: "These Barbarians are not valiant in fight. You on +the other hand have now attained the utmost skill in war .... No +other nations in the world have what they possess: gold, silver, +bronze, embroidered garments, beasts and slaves. _All this you +might have for yourselves, if you so desired._" + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON) AT CAPE SUNIUM] + + + + +{139} + +XXV + +THE SPLENDOUR OF GREECE + + +The century and a half that followed the defeat of Persia was one +of very great splendour for the Greek civilization. True that +Greece was torn by a desperate struggle for ascendancy between +Athens, Sparta and other states (the Peloponnesian War 431 to 404 +B.C.) and that in 338 B.C. the Macedonians became virtually +masters of Greece; nevertheless during this period the thought and +the creative and artistic impulse of the Greeks rose to levels +that made their achievement a lamp to mankind for all the rest of +history. + +The head and centre of this mental activity was Athens. For over +thirty years (466 to 428 B.C.) Athens was dominated by a man of +great vigour and liberality of mind, Pericles, who set himself to +rebuild the city from the ashes to which the Persians had reduced +it. The beautiful ruins that still glorify Athens to-day are +chiefly the remains of this great effort. And he did not simply +rebuild a material Athens. He rebuilt Athens intellectually. He +gathered about him not only architects and sculptors but poets, +dramatists, philosophers and teachers. Herodotus came to Athens +to recite his history (438 B.C.). Anaxagoras came with the +beginnings of a scientific description of the sun and stars. +AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides one after the other carried the +Greek drama to its highest levels or beauty and nobility. + +The impetus Pericles gave to the intellectual life of Athens lived +on after his death, and in spite of the fact that the peace of +Greece was now broken by the Peloponnesian War and a long and +wasteful struggle for "ascendancy" was beginning. Indeed the +darkling of the political horizon seems for a time to have +quickened rather than discouraged men's minds. + +Already long before the time of Pericles the peculiar freedom of +Greek institutions had given great importance to skill in +discussion. {140} Decision rested neither with king nor with +priest but in the assemblies of the people or of leading men. +Eloquence and able argument became very desirable accomplishments +therefore, and a class of teachers arose, the Sophists, who +undertook to strengthen young men in these arts. But one cannot +reason without matter, and knowledge followed in the wake of +speech. The activities and rivalries of these Sophists led very +naturally to an acute examination of style, of methods of thought +and of the validity of arguments. When Pericles died a certain +Socrates was becoming prominent as an able and destructive critic +of bad argument--and much of the teaching of the Sophists was bad +argument. A group of brilliant young men gathered about Socrates. +In the end Socrates was executed for disturbing people's minds +(399 B.C.), he was condemned after the dignified fashion of the +Athens of those days to drink in his own house and among his own +friends a poisonous draught made from hemlock, but the disturbance +of people's minds went on in spite of his condemnation. His young +men carried on his teaching. + +[Illustration: PART OF THE FAMOUS FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, ATHENS] + +==================================================================== + +{141} + +[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS] + +[Illustration: THE THEATRE AT EPIDAUROS, GREECE] + +==================================================================== + +Chief among these young men was Plato (427 to 347 B.C.) who +presently began to teach philosophy in the grove of the Academy. +His teaching fell into two main divisions, an examination of the +foundations and methods of human thinking and an examination of +political institutions. He was the first man to write a Utopia, +that is to say the plan of a community different from and better +than any {142} existing community. This shows an altogether +unprecedented boldness in the human mind which had hitherto +accepted social traditions and usages with scarcely a question. +Plato said plainly to mankind: "Most of the social and political +ills from which you suffer are under your control, given only the +will and courage to change them. You can live in another and a +wiser fashion if you choose to think it out and work it out. You +are not awake to your own power." That is a high adventurous +teaching that has still to soak in to the common intelligence of +our race. One of his earliest works was the Republic, a dream of +a communist aristocracy; his last unfinished work was the Laws, a +scheme of regulation for another such Utopian state. + +[Illustration: THE CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEUM] + +The criticism of methods of thinking and methods of government was +carried on after Plato's death by Aristotle, who had been his +pupil and who taught in the Lyceum. Aristotle came from the city +of Stagira in Macedonia, and his father was court physician to the +Macedonian king. For a time Aristotle was tutor to Alexander, +{144} the king's son, who was destined to achieve very great +things of which we shall soon be telling. Aristotle's work upon +methods of thinking carried the science of Logic to a level at +which it remained for fifteen hundred years or more, until the +mediaeval schoolmen took up the ancient questions again. He made +no Utopias. Before man could really control his destiny as Plato +taught, Aristotle perceived that he needed far more knowledge and +far more accurate knowledge than he possessed. And so Aristotle +began that systematic collection of knowledge which nowadays we +call Science. He sent out explorers to collect _facts_. He was +the father of natural history. He was the founder of political +science. His students at the Lyceum examined and compared the +constitutions of 158 different states .... + +{143} + +[Illustration: ATHENE OF THE PARTHENON] + +Here in the fourth century B.C. we find men who are practically +"modern thinkers." The child-like, dream-like methods of +primitive thought had given way to a disciplined and critical +attack upon the problems of life. The weird and monstrous +symbolism and imagery of the gods and god monsters, and all the +taboos and awes and restraints that have hitherto encumbered +thinking are here completely set aside. Free, exact and +systematic thinking has begun. The fresh and unencumbered mind of +these newcomers out of the northern forests has thrust itself into +the mysteries of the temple and let the daylight in. + + + + +{145} + +XXVI + +THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT + + +From 431 to 404 B.C. the Peloponnesian War wasted Greece. +Meanwhile to the north of Greece, the kindred country of Macedonia +was rising slowly to power and civilization. The Macedonians +spoke a language closely akin to Greek, and on several occasions +Macedonian competitors had taken part in the Olympic games. In +359 B.C. a man of very great abilities and ambition became king of +this little country--Philip. Philip had previously been a hostage +in Greece; he had had a thoroughly Greek education and he was +probably aware of the ideas of Herodotus--which had also been +developed by the philosopher Isocrates--of a possible conquest of +Asia by a consolidated Greece. + +He set himself first to extend and organize his own realm and to +remodel his army. For a thousand years now the charging +horse-chariot had been the decisive factor in battles, that and +the close-fighting infantry. Mounted horsemen had also fought, +but as a cloud of skirmishers, individually and without +discipline. Philip made his infantry fight in a closely packed +mass, the Macedonian phalanx, and he trained his mounted +gentlemen, the knights or companions, to fight in formation and so +invented cavalry. The master move in most of his battles and in +the battles of his son Alexander was a cavalry charge. The +phalanx _held_ the enemy infantry in front while the cavalry swept +away the enemy horse on his wings and poured in on the flank and +rear of his infantry. Chariots were disabled by bowmen, who shot +the horses. + +With this new army Philip extended his frontiers through Thessaly +to Greece; and the battle of Chaeronia (338 B.C.), fought against +Athens and her allies, put all Greece at his feet. At last the +dream of Herodotus was bearing fruit. A congress of all the Greek +states appointed Philip captain-general of the Graeco-Macedonian +confederacy {146} against Persia, and in 336 B.C. his advanced +guard crossed into Asia upon this long premeditated adventure. +But he never followed it. He was assassinated; it is believed at +the instigation of his queen Olympias, Alexander's mother. She +was jealous because Philip had married a second wife. + +But Philip had taken unusual pains with his son's education. He +had not only secured Aristotle, the greatest philosopher in the +world, as this boy's tutor, but he had shared his ideas with him +and thrust military experience upon him. At Chaeronia Alexander, +who was then only eighteen years old, had been in command of the +cavalry. And so it was possible for this young man, who was still +only twenty years old at the time of his accession, to take up his +father's task at once and to proceed successfully with the Persian +adventure. + +[Illustration: BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT] + +In 334 B.C.--for two years were needed to establish and confirm +his position in Macedonia and Greece--he crossed into Asia, +defeated a not very much bigger Persian army at the battle of the +Granicus and captured a number of cities in Asia Minor. He kept +along the sea-coast. It was necessary for him to reduce and +garrison all the coast towns as he advanced because the Persians +had control of the fleets of Tyre and Sidon and so had command of +the sea. {147} Had he left a hostile port in his rear the +Persians might have landed forces to raid his communications and +cut him off. At Issus (333 B.C.) he met and smashed a vast +conglomerate host under Darius III. Like the host of Xerxes that +had crossed the Dardanelles a century and a half before, it was an +incoherent accumulation of contingents and it was encumbered with +a multitude of court officials, the harem of Darius and many camp +followers. Sidon surrendered to Alexander but Tyre resisted +obstinately. Finally that great city was stormed and plundered +and destroyed. Gaza also was stormed, and towards the end of 332 +B.C. the conqueror entered Egypt and took over its rule from the +Persians. + +[Illustration: ALEXANDER'S VICTORY OVER THE PERSIANS AT ISSUS] + +At Alexandretta and at Alexandria in Egypt he built great cities, +accessible from the land and so incapable of revolt. To these the +trade of the Phoenician cities was diverted. The Phoenicians of +the western Mediterranean suddenly disappear from history--and as +immediately the Jews of Alexandria and the other new trading +cities created by Alexander appear. + +In 331 B.C. Alexander marched out of Egypt upon Babylon as +Thothmes and Rameses and Necho had done before him. But he +marched by way of Tyre. At Arbela near the ruins of Nineveh, +{148} which was already a forgotten city, he met Darius and fought +the decisive battle of the war. The Persian chariot charge +failed, a Macedonian cavalry charge broke up the great composite +host and the phalanx completed the victory. Darius led the +retreat. He made no further attempt to resist the invader but +fled northward into the country of the Medes. Alexander marched +on to Babylon, still prosperous and important, and then to Susa +and Persepolis. There after a drunken festival he burnt down the +palace of Darius, the king of kings. + +[Illustration: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE] + +Thence Alexander presently made a military parade of central Asia, +going to the utmost bounds of the Persian empire. At first he +turned northward. Darius was pursued; and he was overtaken at +dawn dying in his chariot, having been murdered by his own people. +He was still living when the foremost Greeks reached him. +Alexander came up to find him dead. Alexander skirted the Caspian +Sea, he went up into the mountains of western Turkestan, he came +down by Herat (which he founded) and Cabul and the Khyber Pass +into {149} India. He fought a great battle on the Indus with an +Indian king, Porus, and here the Macedonian troops met elephants +for the first time and defeated them. Finally he built himself +ships, sailed down to the mouth of the Indus, and marched back by +the coast of Beluchistan, reaching Susa again in 324 B.C. after an +absence of six years. He then prepared to consolidate and +organize this vast empire he had won. He sought to win over his +new subjects. He assumed the robes and tiara of a Persian +monarch, and this roused the jealousy of his Macedonian +commanders. He had much trouble with them. He arranged a number +of marriages between these Macedonian officers and Persian and +Babylonian women: the "Marriage of the East and West." He never +lived to effect the consolidation he had planned. A fever seized +him after a drinking bout in Babylon and he died in 323 B.C. + +Immediately this vast dominion fell to pieces. One of his +generals, Seleucus, retained most of the old Persian empire from +the Indus to Ephesus; another, Ptolemy, seized Egypt, and +Antigonus secured Macedonia. The rest of the empire remained +unstable, passing under the control of a succession of local +adventurers. Barbarian raids began from the north and grew in +scope and intensity. Until at last, as we shall tell, a new +power, the power of the Roman republic, came out of the west to +subjugate one fragment after another and weld them together into a +new and more enduring empire. + + + + +{150} + +XXVII + +THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA + + +Before the time of Alexander Greeks had already been spreading as +merchants, artists, officials, mercenary soldiers, over most of +the Persian dominions. In the dynastic disputes that followed the +death of Xerxes, a band of ten thousand Greek mercenaries played a +part under the leadership of Xenophon. Their return to Asiatic +Greece from Babylon is described in his Retreat of the _Ten +Thousand_, one of the first war stories that was ever written by a +general in command. But the conquests of Alexander and the +division of his brief empire among his subordinate generals, +greatly stimulated this permeation of the ancient world by the +Greeks and their language and fashions and culture. Traces of +this Greek dissemination are to be found far away in central Asia +and in north-west India. Their influence upon the development of +Indian art was profound. + +For many centuries Athens retained her prestige as a centre of art +and culture; her schools went on indeed to 529 A.D., that is to +say for nearly a thousand years; but the leadership in the +intellectual activity of the world passed presently across the +Mediterranean to Alexandria, the new trading city that Alexander +had founded. Here the Macedonian general Ptolemy had become +Pharaoh, with a court that spoke Greek. He had become an intimate +of Alexander before he became king, and he was deeply saturated +with the ideas of Aristotle. He set himself, with great energy +and capacity, to organize knowledge and investigation. He also +wrote a history of Alexander's campaigns which, unhappily, is lost +to the world. + +Alexander had already devoted considerable sums to finance the +enquiries of Aristotle, but Ptolemy I was the first person to make +a permanent endowment of science. He set up a foundation in +Alexandria which was formerly dedicated to the Muses, the Museum +{151} of Alexandria. For two or three generations the scientific +work done at Alexandria was extraordinarily good. Euclid, +Eratosthenes who measured the size of the earth and came within +fifty miles of its true diameter, Apollonius who wrote on conic +sections, Hipparchus who made the first star map and catalogue, +and Hero who devised the first steam engine are among the greater +stars of an extraordinary constellation of scientific pioneers. +Archimedes came from Syracuse to Alexandria to study, and was a +frequent correspondent of the Museum. Herophilus was one of the +greatest of Greek anatomists, and is said to have practised +vivisection. + +For a generation or so during the reigns of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy +II there was such a blaze of knowledge and discovery at Alexandria +as the world was not to see again until the sixteenth century A.D. +But it did not continue. There may have been several causes of +this decline. Chief among them, the late Professor Mahaffy +suggested, was the fact that the Museum was a "royal" college and +all its professors and fellows were appointed and paid by Pharaoh. +This was all very well when Pharaoh was Ptolemy I, the pupil and +friend of Aristotle. But as the dynasty of the Ptolemies went on +they became Egyptianized, they fell under the sway of Egyptian +priests and Egyptian religious developments, they ceased to follow +the work that was done, and their control stifled the spirit of +enquiry altogether. The Museum produced little good work after +its first century of activity. + +Ptolemy I not only sought in the most modern spirit to organize +the finding of fresh knowledge. He tried also to set up an +encyclopaedic storehouse of wisdom in the Library of Alexandria. +It was not simply a storehouse, it was also a book-copying and +book-selling organization. A great army of copyists was set to +work perpetually multiplying copies of books. + +Here then we have the definite first opening up of the +intellectual process in which we live to-day; here we have the +systematic gathering and distribution of knowledge. The +foundation of this Museum and Library marks one of the great +epochs in the history of mankind. It is the true beginning of +Modern History. + +{152} + +[Illustration: ARISTOTLE] + +Both the work of research and the work of dissemination went on +under serious handicaps. One of these was the great social gap +that separated the philosopher, who was a gentleman, from the +trader and the artisan. There were glass workers and metal +workers in abundance in those days, but they were not in mental +contact with the thinkers. The glass worker was making the most +beautifully coloured beads and phials and so forth, but he never +made a Florentine flask or a lens. Clear glass does not seem to +have interested him. The metal worker made weapons and jewellery +but he never made a chemical balance. The philosopher speculated +loftily about atoms and the nature of things, but he had no +practical experience of enamels and pigments and philters and so +forth. He was not interested in substances. So Alexandria in its +brief day of opportunity produced no microscopes and no +chemistry. And though Hero invented a steam engine it was never +set either to pump or drive a boat or do any useful thing. There +were few practical applications of science except in the realm of +medicine, and the progress of science was not stimulated and +sustained by the interest and excitement of practical +applications. There was nothing to keep the work going therefore +when the intellectual curiosity of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II {153} +was withdrawn. The discoveries of the Museum went on record in +obscure manuscripts and never, until the revival of scientific +curiosity at the Renascence, reached out to the mass of mankind. + +[Illustration: STATUETTE OF MAITREYA: THE BUDDHA TO COME] + +Nor did the Library produce any improvements in book making. That +ancient world had no paper made in definite sizes from rag pulp. +Paper was a Chinese invention and it did not reach the western +world until the ninth century A.D. The only book materials were +parchment and strips of the papyrus reed joined edge to edge. +These strips were kept on rolls which were very unwieldy to wind +to and fro and read, and very inconvenient for reference. It was +these things that prevented the development of paged and printed +books. Printing itself was known in the world it would seem as +early as the Old Stone Age; there were seals in ancient Sumeria; +but without abundant paper there was little advantage in printing +books, an improvement that may further have been resisted by +trades unionism on the part of the copyists employed. Alexandria +produced abundant books but not cheap books, and it never spread +knowledge into the population of the ancient world below the level +of a wealthy and influential class. + +So it was that this blaze of intellectual enterprise never reached +beyond a small circle of people in touch with the group of +philosophers collected by the first two Ptolemies. It was like +the light in a dark lantern which is shut off from the world at +large. Within the blaze may be blindingly bright, but +nevertheless it is unseen. The rest of the world went on its old +ways unaware that the seed of scientific knowledge that was one +day to revolutionize it altogether had been sown. Presently a +darkness of bigotry fell even upon {154} Alexandria. Thereafter +for a thousand years of darkness the seed that Aristotle had sown +lay hidden. Then it stirred and began to germinate. In a few +centuries it had become that widespread growth of knowledge and +clear ideas that is now changing the whole of human life. + +[Illustration: THE DEATH OF BUDDHA] + +Alexandria was not the only centre of Greek intellectual activity +in the third century B.C. There were many other cities that +displayed a brilliant intellectual life amidst the disintegrating +fragments of the brief empire of Alexander. There was, for +example, the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily, where thought and +science flourished for two centuries; there was Pergamum in Asia +Minor, which also had a great library. But this brilliant +Hellenic world was now stricken by invasion from the north. New +Nordic barbarians, the Gauls, were striking down along the tracks +that had once been followed by the ancestors of the Greeks and +Phrygians and Macedonians. They raided, shattered and destroyed. +And in the wake of the Gauls came a new conquering people out of +Italy, the Romans, who gradually subjugated all the western half +of the vast realm of Darius and Alexander. They were an able but +unimaginative people, preferring law and profit to either science +or art. {155} New invaders were also coming down out of central +Asia to shatter and subdue the Seleucid empire and to cut off the +western world again from India. These were the Parthians, hosts +of mounted bowmen, who treated the Graeco-Persian empire of +Persepolis and Susa in the third century B.C. in much the same +fashion that the Medes and Persians had treated it in the seventh +and sixth. And there were now other nomadic peoples also coming +out of the northeast, peoples who were not fair and Nordic and +Aryan-speaking but yellow-skinned and black-haired and with a +Mongolian speech. But of these latter people we shall tell more +in a subsequent chapter. + + + + +{156} + +XXVIII + +THE LIFE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA + + +But now we must go back three centuries in our story to tell of a +great teacher who came near to revolutionizing the religious +thought and feeling of all Asia. This was Gautama Buddha, who +taught his disciples at Benares in India about the same time that +Isaiah was prophesying among the Jews in Babylon and Heraclitus +was carrying on his speculative enquiries into the nature of +things at Ephesus. All these men were in the world at the same +time, in the sixth century B.C.--unaware of one another. + +This sixth century B.C. was indeed one of the most remarkable in +all history. Everywhere--for as we shall tell it was also the +case in China--men's minds were displaying a new boldness. +Everywhere they were waking up out of the traditions of kingships +and priests and blood sacrifices and asking the most penetrating +questions. It is as if the race had reached a stage of +adolescence--after a childhood of twenty thousand years. + +The early history of India is still very obscure. Somewhen +perhaps about 2000 B.C., an Aryan-speaking people came down from +the north-west into India either in one invasion or in a series of +invasions; and was able to spread its language and traditions over +most of north India. Its peculiar variety of Aryan speech was the +Sanskrit. They found a brunette people with a more elaborate +civilization and less vigour of will, in possession of the country +of the Indus and Ganges. But they do not seem to have mingled +with their predecessors as freely as did the Greeks and Persians. +They remained aloof. When the past of India becomes dimly visible +to the historian, Indian society is already stratified into +several layers, with a variable number of +sub-divisions, which do not eat together nor intermarry nor +associate freely. And throughout history this {157} +stratification into castes continues. This makes the Indian +population something different from the simple, freely +inter-breeding European or Mongolian communities. It is really a +community of communities. + +Siddhattha Gautama was the son of an aristocratic family which +ruled a small district on the Himalayan slopes. He was married at +nineteen to a beautiful cousin. He hunted and played and went +about in his sunny world of gardens and groves and irrigated +rice-fields. And it was amidst this life that a great discontent +fell upon him. It was the unhappiness of a fine brain that seeks +employment. He felt that the existence he was leading was not the +reality of life, but a holiday--a holiday that had gone on too +long. + +The sense of disease and mortality, the insecurity and the +un-satisfactoriness of all happiness, descended upon the mind of +Gautama. While he was in this mood he met one of those wandering +ascetics who already existed in great numbers in India. These men +lived under severe rules, spending much time in meditation and in +religious discussion. They were supposed to be seeking some +deeper reality in life, and a passionate desire to do likewise +took possession of Gautama. + +He was meditating upon this project, says the story, when the news +was brought to him that his wife had been delivered of his +first-born son. "This is another tie to break," said Gautama. + +He returned to the village amidst the rejoicings of his fellow +clansmen. There was a great feast and a Nautch dance to celebrate +the birth of this new tie, and in the night Gautama awoke in a +great agony of spirit, "like a man who is told that his house is +on fire." He resolved to leave his happy aimless life forthwith. +He went softly to the threshold of his wife's chamber, and saw her +by the light of a little oil lamp, sleeping sweetly, surrounded by +flowers, with his infant son in her arms. He felt a great craving +to take up the child in one first and last embrace before he +departed, but the fear of waking his wife prevented him, and at +last he turned away and went out into the bright Indian moonshine +and mounted his horse and rode off into the world. + +{158} + +[Illustration: TIBETAN BUDDHA] + +Very far he rode that night, and in the morning he stopped outside +{159} the lands of his clan, and dismounted beside a sandy river. +There he cut off his flowing locks with his sword, removed all his +ornaments and sent them and his horse and sword back to his house. +Going on he presently met a ragged man and exchanged clothes with +him, and so having divested himself of all worldly entanglements +he was free to pursue his search after wisdom. He made his way +southward to a resort of hermits and teachers in a hilly spur of +the Vindhya Mountains. There lived a number of wise men in a +warren of caves, going into the town for their simple supplies and +imparting their knowledge by word of mouth to such as cared to +come to them. Gautama became versed in all the metaphysics of his +age. But his acute intelligence was dissatisfied with the +solutions offered him. + +[Illustration: A BURMESE BUDDHA] + +The Indian mind has always been disposed to believe that power and +knowledge may be obtained by extreme asceticism, by fasting, +sleeplessness, and self-torment, and these ideas Gautama now put +to the test. He betook himself with five disciple companions to +the jungle and there he gave himself up to fasting and terrible +penances. His fame spread, "like the sound of a great {160} bell +hung in the canopy of the skies." But it brought him no sense of +truth achieved. One day he was walking up and down, trying to +think in spite of his enfeebled state. Suddenly he fell +unconscious. When he recovered, the preposterousness of these +semi-magical ways to wisdom was plain to him. + +[Illustration: THE DHAMEKH TOWER] + +He horrified his companions by demanding ordinary food and +refusing to continue his mortifications. He had realized that +whatever truth a man may reach is reached best by a nourished +brain in a healthy body. Such a conception was absolutely foreign +to the ideas of the land and age. His disciples deserted him, and +went off in a melancholy state to Benares. Gautama wandered +alone. + +When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it +makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of +the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt +illumination, it realizes its victory. So it happened to Gautama. +He had seated himself under a great tree by the side of a river to +eat, when this sense of clear vision came to him. It seemed to +him that he saw life plain. He is said to have sat all day and +all night in profound thought, and then he rose up to impart his +vision to the world. + +He went on to Benares and there he sought out and won back his +lost disciples to his new teaching. In the King's Deer Park at +Benares they built themselves huts and set up a sort of school to +which came many who were seeking after wisdom. + +The starting point of his teaching was his own question as a +fortunate {161} young man, "Why am I not completely happy?" It +was an introspective question. It was a question very different +in quality from the frank and self-forgetful _externalized_ +curiosity with which Thales and Heraclitus were attacking the +problems of the universe, or the equally self-forgetful burthen of +moral obligation that the culminating prophets were imposing upon +the Hebrew mind. The Indian teacher did not forget self, he +concentrated upon self and sought to destroy it. All suffering, +he taught, was due to the greedy desires of the individual. Until +man has conquered his personal cravings his life is trouble and +his end sorrow. There were three principal forms that the craving +for life took and they were all evil. The first was the desire of +the appetites, greed and all forms of sensuousness, the second was +the desire for a personal and egotistic immortality, the third was +the craving for personal success, worldliness, avarice and the +like. All these forms of desire had to be overcome to escape from +the distresses and chagrins of life. When they were overcome, +when self had vanished altogether, then serenity of soul, Nirvana, +the highest good was attained. + +This was the gist of his teaching, a very subtle and metaphysical +teaching indeed, not nearly so easy to understand as the Greek +injunction to see and know fearlessly and rightly and the Hebrew +command to fear God and accomplish righteousness. It was a +teaching much beyond the understanding of even Gautama's immediate +disciples, and it is no wonder that so soon as his personal +influence was withdrawn it became corrupted and coarsened. There +was a widespread belief in India at that time that at long +intervals Wisdom came to earth and was incarnate in some chosen +person who was known as the Buddha. Gautama's disciples declared +that he was a Buddha, the latest of the Buddhas, though there is +no evidence that he himself ever accepted the title. Before he +was well dead, a cycle of fantastic legends began to be woven +about him. The human heart has always preferred a wonder story to +a moral effort, and Gautama Buddha became very wonderful. + +Yet there remained a substantial gain in the world. If Nirvana +was too high and subtle for most men's imaginations, if the +myth-making impulse in the race was too strong for the simple +facts of Gautama's life, they could at least grasp something of +the intention {162} of what Gautama called the Eight-fold way, the +Aryan or Noble Path in life. In this there was an insistence upon +mental uprightness, upon right aims and speech, right conduct and +honest livelihood. There was a quickening of the conscience and +an appeal to generous and self-forgetful ends. + + + + +{163} + +XXIX + +KING ASOKA + + +For some generations after the death of Gautama, these high and +noble Buddhist teachings, this first plain teaching that the +highest good for man is the subjugation of self, made +comparatively little headway in the world. Then they conquered +the imagination of one of the greatest monarchs the world has ever +seen. + +We have already mentioned how Alexander the Great came down into +India and fought with Porus upon the Indus. It is related by the +Greek historians that a certain Chandragupta Maurya came into +Alexander's camp and tried to persuade him to go on to the Ganges +and conquer all India. Alexander could not do this because of the +refusal of his Macedonians to go further into what was for them an +unknown world, and later on (303 B.C.) Chandragupta was able to +secure the help or various hill tribes and realize his dream +without Greek help. He built up an empire in North India and was +presently (303 B.C.) able to attack Seleucus I in the Punjab and +drive the last vestige of Greek power out of India. His son +extended this new empire. His grandson, Asoka, the monarch of +whom we now have to tell, found himself in 264 B.C. ruling from +Afghanistan to Madras. + +Asoka was at first disposed to follow the example of his father +and grandfather and complete the conquest of the Indian peninsula. +He invaded Kalinga (255 B.C.), a country on the east coast of +Madras, he was successful in his military operations and--alone +among conquerors--he was so disgusted by the cruelty and horror of +war that he renounced it. He would have no more of it. He +adopted the peaceful doctrines of Buddhism and declared that +henceforth his conquests should be the conquests of religion. + +{164} + +[Illustration: A LOHAN OR BUDDHIST APOSTLE (Tang Dynasty)] + +His reign for eight-and-twenty years was one of the brightest +interludes in the troubled history of mankind. He organized a +great digging of wells in India and the planting of trees for +shade. He founded hospitals and public gardens and gardens for +the growing of medicinal herbs. He created a ministry for the +care of the aborigines and subject races of India. He made +provision for the education of women. He made vast benefactions +to the Buddhist teaching orders, and tried to stimulate them to a +better and more energetic criticism of their own accumulated +literature. For corruptions and superstitious accretions had +accumulated very {165} speedily upon the pure and simple teaching +of the great Indian master. Missionaries went from Asoka to +Kashmir, to Persia, to Ceylon and Alexandria. + +[Illustration: TRANSOME SHOWING THE COURT OF ASOKA] + +[Illustration: ASOKA PANEL FROM BHARHUT] + +Such was Asoka, greatest of kings. He was far in advance of his +age. He left no prince and no organization of men to carry on his +work, and within a century of his death the great days of his +reign had become a glorious memory in a shattered and decaying +India. The priestly caste of the Brahmins, the highest and most +privileged caste in the Indian social body, has always been +opposed to the frank and open teaching of Buddha. Gradually they +undermined the Buddhist influence in the land. The old monstrous +gods, the innumerable cults of Hinduism, resumed their sway. +Caste became {166} more rigorous and complicated. For long +centuries Buddhism and Brahminism flourished side by side, and +then slowly Buddhism decayed and Brahminism in a multitude of +forms replaced it. But beyond the confines of India and the +realms of caste Buddhism spread--until it had won China and Siam +and Burma and Japan, countries in which it is predominant to this +day. + +[Illustration: THE PILLAR OF LIONS] + + + + +{167} + +XXX + +CONFUCIUS AND LAO TSE + + +We have still to tell of two other great men, Confucius and Lao +Tse, who lived in that wonderful century which began the +adolescence of mankind, the sixth century B.C. In this history +thus far we have told very little of the early story of China. At +present that early history is still very obscure, and we look to +Chinese explorers and archaeolologists in the new China that is now +arising to work out their past as thoroughly as the European past +has been worked out during the last century. Very long ago the +first primitive Chinese civilizations arose in the great river +valleys out of the primordial heliolithic culture. They had, like +Egypt and Sumeria, the general characteristics of that culture, +and they centred upon temples in which priests and priest kings +offered the seasonal blood sacrifices. The life in those cities +must have been very like the Egyptian and Sumerian life of six or +seven thousand years ago and very like the Maya life of Central +America a thousand years ago. + +If there were human sacrifices they had long given way to animal +sacrifices before the dawn of history. And a form of picture +writing was growing up long before a thousand years B.C. + +And just as the primitive civilizations of Europe and western Asia +were in conflict with the nomads of the desert and the nomads of +the north, so the primitive Chinese civilizations had a great +cloud of nomadic peoples on their northern borders. There was a +number of tribes akin in language and ways of living, who are +spoken of in history in succession as the Huns, the Mongols, the +Turks and Tartars. They changed and divided and combined and +re-combined, just as the Nordic peoples in north Europe and central +Asia changed and varied in name rather than in nature. These +Mongolian nomads had horses earlier than the Nordic peoples, and +it may {168} be that in the region of the Altai Mountains they +made an independent discovery of iron somewhen after 1000 B.C. +And just as in the western case so ever and again these eastern +nomads would achieve a sort of political unity, and become the +conquerors and masters and revivers of this or that settled and +civilized region. + +It is quite possible that the earliest civilization of China was +not Mongolian at all any more than the earliest civilization of +Europe and western Asia was Nordic or Semitic. It is quite +possible that the earliest civilization of China was a brunette +civilization and of a piece with the earliest Egyptian, Sumerian +and Dravidian civilizations, and that when the first recorded +history of China began there had already been conquests and +intermixture. At any rate we find that by 1750 B.C. China was +already a vast system of little kingdoms and city states, all +acknowledging a loose allegiance and paying more or less +regularly, more or less definite feudal dues to one great priest +emperor, the "Son of Heaven." The "Shang" dynasty came to an end +in 1125 B.C. A "Chow" dynasty succeeded "Shang," and maintained +China in a relaxing unity until the days of Asoka in India and of +the Ptolemies in Egypt. Gradually China went to pieces during +that long "Chow" period. Hunnish peoples came down and set up +principalities; local rulers discontinued their tribute and became +independent. There was in the sixth century B.C., says one +Chinese authority, five or six thousand practically independent +states in China. It was what the Chinese call in their records an +"Age of Confusion." + +But this Age of Confusion was compatible with much intellectual +activity and with the existence of many local centres of art and +civilized living. When we know more of Chinese history we shall +find that China also had her Miletus and her Athens, her Pergamum +and her Macedonia. At present we must be vague and brief about +this period of Chinese division simply because our knowledge is +not sufficient for us to frame a coherent and consecutive story. + +==================================================================== + +{169} + +[Illustration: CONFUCIUS] + +==================================================================== + +And just as in divided Greece there were philosophers and in +shattered and captive Jewry prophets, so in disordered China there +were philosophers and teachers at this time. In all these cases +{170} insecurity and uncertainty seemed to have quickened the +better sort of mind. Confucius was a man of aristocratic origin +and some official importance in a small state called Lu. Here in +a very parallel mood to the Greek impulse he set up a sort of +Academy for discovering and teaching Wisdom. The lawlessness and +disorder of China distressed him profoundly. He conceived an +ideal of a better government and a better life, and travelled from +state to state seeking a prince who would carry out his +legislative and educational ideas. He never found his prince; he +found a prince, but court intrigues undermined the influence of +the teacher and finally defeated his reforming proposals. It is +interesting to note that a century and a half later the Greek +philosopher Plato also sought a prince, and was for a time adviser +to the tyrant Dionysius who ruled Syracuse in Sicily. + +Confucius died a disappointed man. "No intelligent ruler arises +to take me as his master," he said, "and my time has come to die." +But his teaching had more vitality than he imagined in his +declining and hopeless years, and it became a great formative +influence with the Chinese people. It became one of what the +Chinese call the Three Teachings, the other two being those of +Buddha and of Lao Tse. + +The gist of the teaching of Confucius was the way of the noble or +aristocratic man. He was concerned with personal conduct as much +as Gautama was concerned with the peace of self-forgetfulness and +the Greek with external knowledge and the Jew with righteousness. +He was the most public-minded of all great teachers. He was +supremely concerned by the confusion and miseries of the world, +and he wanted to make men noble in order to bring about a noble +world. He sought to regulate conduct to an extraordinary extent; +to provide sound rules for every occasion in life. A polite, +public-spirited gentleman, rather sternly self-disciplined, was +the ideal he found already developing in the northern Chinese +world and one to which he gave a permanent form. + +==================================================================== + +{171} + +[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA] + +==================================================================== +The teaching of Lao Tse, who was for a long time in charge of the +imperial library of the Chow dynasty, was much more mystical and +vague and elusive than that of Confucius. He seems to have +preached a stoical indifference to the pleasures and powers of +{172} the world and a return to an imaginary simple life of the +past. He left writings very contracted in style and very obscure. +He wrote in riddles. After his death his teachings, like the +teachings of Gautama Buddha, were corrupted and overlaid by +legends and had the most complex and extraordinary observances and +superstitious ideas grafted upon them. In China just as in India +primordial ideas of magic and monstrous legends out of the +childish past of our race struggled against the new thinking in +the world and succeeded in plastering it over with grotesque, +irrational and antiquated observances. Both Buddhism and Taoism +(which ascribes itself largely to Lao Tse) as one finds them in +China now, are religions of monk, temple, priest and offering of a +type as ancient in form, if not in thought, as the sacrificial +religions of ancient Sumeria and Egypt. But the teaching {173} of +Confucius was not so overlaid because it was limited and plain and +straightforward and lent itself to no such distortions. + +[Illustration: EARLY CHINESE BRONZE BELL] + +North China, the China of the Hwang-ho River, became Confucian in +thought and spirit; south China, Yang-tse-Kiang China, became +Taoist. Since those days a conflict has always been traceable in +Chinese affairs between these two spirits, the spirit of the north +and the spirit of the south, between (in latter times) Pekin and +Nankin, between the official-minded, upright and conservative +north, and the sceptical, artistic, lax and experimental south. + +The divisions of China of the Age of Confusion reached their worst +stage in the sixth century B.C. The Chow dynasty was so enfeebled +and so discredited that Lao Tse left the unhappy court and retired +into private life. + +Three nominally subordinate powers dominated the situation in +those days, Ts'i and Ts'in, both northern powers, and Ch'u, which +was an aggressive military power in the Yangtse valley. At last +Ts'i and Ts'in formed an alliance, subdued Ch'u and imposed a +general treaty of disarmament and peace in China. The power of +Ts'in became predominant. Finally about the time of Asoka in +India the Ts'in monarch seized upon the sacrificial vessels of the +Chow emperor and took over his sacrificial duties. His son, +Shi-Hwang-ti (king in 246 B.C., emperor in 220 B.C.), is called in +the Chinese Chronicles "the First Universal Emperor." + +More fortunate than Alexander, Shi-Hwang-ti reigned for +thirty-six years as king and emperor. His energetic reign marks +the beginning of a new era of unity and prosperity for the Chinese +people. He fought vigorously against the Hunnish invaders from +the northern deserts, and he began that immense work, the Great +Wall of China, to set a limit to their incursions. + + + + +{174} + +XXXI + +ROME COMES INTO HISTORY + + +The reader will note a general similarity in the history of all +these civilizations in spite of the effectual separation caused by +the great barriers of the Indian north-west frontier and of the +mountain masses of Central Asia and further India. First for +thousands of years the heliolithic culture spread over all the +warm and fertile river valleys of the old world and developed a +temple system and priest rulers about its sacrificial traditions. +Apparently its first makers were always those brunette peoples we +have spoken of as the central race of mankind. Then the nomads +came in from the regions of seasonal grass and seasonal migrations +and superposed their own characteristics and often their own +language on the primitive civilization. They subjugated and +stimulated it, and were stimulated to fresh developments and made +it here one thing and here another. In Mesopotamia it was the +Elamite and then the Semite, and at last the Nordic Medes and +Persians and the Greeks who supplied the ferment; over the region +of the AEgean peoples it was the Greeks; in India it was the +Aryan-speakers; in Egypt there was a thinner infusion of conquerors +into a more intensely saturated priestly civilization; in China, +the Hun conquered and was absorbed and was followed by fresh Huns. +China was Mongolized just as Greece and North India were Aryanized +and Mesopotamia Semitized and Aryanized. Everywhere the nomads +destroyed much, but everywhere they brought in a new spirit of +free enquiry and moral innovation. They questioned the beliefs of +immemorial ages. They let daylight into the temples. They set up +kings who were neither priests nor gods but mere leaders among +their captains and companions. + +==================================================================== + +{175} + +[Illustration: THE DYING GAUL] + +==================================================================== + +In the centuries following the sixth century B.C. we find +everywhere a great breaking down of ancient traditions and a new +spirit {176} of moral and intellectual enquiry awake, a spirit +never more to be altogether stilled in the great progressive +movement of mankind. We find reading and writing becoming common +and accessible accomplishments among the ruling and prosperous +minority; they were no longer the jealously guarded secret of the +priests. Travel is increasing and transport growing easier by +reason of horses and roads. A new and easy device to facilitate +trade has been found in coined money. + +Let us now transfer our attention back from China in the extreme +east of the old world to the western half of the Mediterranean. +Here we have to note the appearance of a city which was destined +to play at last a very great part indeed in human affairs, Rome. + +Hitherto we have told very little about Italy in our story. It +was before 1000 B.C. a land of mountain and forest and thinly +populated. Aryan-speaking tribes had pressed down this peninsula +and formed little towns and cities, and the southern extremity was +studded with Greek settlements. The noble ruins of Paestum +preserve for us to this day something of the dignity and splendour +of these early Greek establishments. A non-Aryan people, probably +akin to the AEgean peoples, the Etruscans, had established +themselves in the central part of the peninsula. They had +reversed the usual process by subjugating various Aryan tribes. +Rome, when it comes into the light of history, is a little trading +city at a ford on the Tiber, with a Latin-speaking population +ruled over by Etruscan kings. The old chronologies gave 753 B.C. +as the date of the founding of Rome, half a century later than the +founding of the great Phoenician city of Carthage and twenty-three +years after the first Olympiad. Etruscan tombs of a much earlier +date than 753 B.C. have, however, been excavated in the Roman +Forum. + +In that red-letter century, the sixth century B.C., the Etruscan +kings were expelled (510 B.C.) and Rome became an aristocratic +republic with a lordly class of "patrician" families dominating a +commonalty of "plebeians." Except that it spoke Latin it was not +unlike many aristocratic Greek republics. + +For some centuries the internal history of Rome was the story of a +long and obstinate struggle for freedom and a share in the +government on the part of the plebeians. It would not be +difficult to find {177} Greek parallels to this conflict, which +the Greeks would have called a conflict of aristocracy with +democracy. In the end the plebeians broke down most of the +exclusive barriers of the old families and established a working +equality with them. They destroyed the old exclusiveness, and +made it possible and acceptable for Rome to extend her citizenship +by the inclusion of more and more "outsiders." For while she +still struggled at home, she was extending her power abroad. + +[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT ROMAN CISTERNS AT CARTHAGE] + +The extension of Roman power began in the fifth century B.C. +Until that time they had waged war, and generally unsuccessful +war, with the Etruscans. There was an Etruscan fort, Veii, only a +few miles from Rome which the Romans had never been able to +capture. In 474 B.C., however, a great misfortune came to the +Etruscans. Their fleet was destroyed by the Greeks of Syracuse in +Sicily. {178} At the same time a wave of Nordic invaders came +down upon them from the north, the Gauls. Caught between Roman +and Gaul, the Etruscans fell--and disappear from history. Veii +was captured by the Romans, The Gauls came through to Rome and +sacked the city (390 B.C.) but could not capture the Capitol. An +attempted night surprise was betrayed by the cackling of some +geese, and finally the invaders were bought off and retired to the +north of Italy again. + +The Gaulish raid seems to have invigorated rather than weakened +Rome. The Romans conquered and assimilated the Etruscans, and +extended their power over all central Italy from the Arno to +Naples. To this they had reached within a few years of 300 B.C. +Their conquests in Italy were going on simultaneously with the +growth of Philip's power in Macedonia and Greece, and the +tremendous raid of Alexander to Egypt and the Indus. The Romans +had become notable people in the civilized world to the east of +them by the break-up of Alexander's empire. + +To the north of the Roman power were the Gauls; to the south of +them were the Greek settlements of Magna Graecia, that is to say of +Sicily and of the toe and heel of Italy. The Gauls were a hardy, +warlike people and the Romans held that boundary by a line of +forts and fortified settlements. The Greek cities in the south +headed by Tarentum (now Taranto) and by Syracuse in Sicily, did +not so much threaten as fear the Romans. They looked about for +some help against these new conquerors. + +We have already told how the empire of Alexander fell to pieces +and was divided among his generals and companions. Among these +adventurers was a kinsman of Alexander's named Pyrrhus, who +established himself in Epirus, which is across the Adriatic Sea +over against the heel of Italy. It was his ambition to play the +part of Philip of Macedonia to Magna Graecia, and to become +protector and master-general of Tarentum, Syracuse and the rest of +that part of the world. He had what was then it very efficient +modern army; he had an infantry phalanx, cavalry from +Thessaly--which was now quite as good as the original Macedonian +cavalry--and twenty fighting elephants; he invaded Italy and routed +the Romans in two considerable battles, Heraclea (280 B.C.) and +Ausculum (279 B.C.), and {179} having driven them north, he turned +his attention to the subjugation of Sicily. + +But this brought against him a more formidable enemy than were the +Romans at that time, the Phoenician trading city of Carthage, +which was probably then the greatest city in the world. Sicily +was too near Carthage for a new Alexander to be welcome there, and +Carthage was mindful of the fate that had befallen her mother city +Tyre half a century before. So she sent a fleet to encourage or +compel Rome to continue the struggle, and she cut the overseas +communications of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus found himself freshly assailed +by the Romans, and suffered a disastrous repulse in an attack he +had made upon their camp at Beneventum between Naples and Rome. + +And suddenly came news that recalled him to Epirus. The Gauls +were raiding south. But this time they were not raiding down into +Italy; the Roman frontier, fortified and guarded, had become too +formidable for them. They were raiding down through Illyria +(which is now Serbia and Albania) to Macedonia and Epirus. +Repulsed by the Romans, endangered at sea by the Carthaginians, +and threatened at home by the Gauls, Pyrrhus abandoned his dream +of conquest and went home (275 B.C.), and the power of Rome was +extended to the Straits of Messina. + +On the Sicilian side of the Straits was the Greek city of Messina, +and this presently fell into the hands of a gang of pirates. The +Carthaginians, who were already practically overlords of Sicily +and allies of Syracuse, suppressed these pirates (270 B.C.) and +put in a Carthaginian garrison there. The pirates appealed to +Rome and Rome listened to their complaint. And so across the +Straits of Messina the great trading power of Carthage and this +new conquering people, the Romans, found themselves in antagonism, +face to face. + + + + +{180} + +XXXII + +ROME AND CARTHAGE + + +It was in 264 B.C. that the great struggle between Rome and +Carthage, the Punic Wars, began. In that year Asoka was beginning +his reign in Behar and Shi-Hwang-ti was a little child, the Museum +in Alexandria was still doing good scientific work, and the +barbaric Gauls were now in Asia Minor and exacting a tribute from +Pergamum. The different regions of the world were still separated +by insurmountable distances, and probably the rest of mankind +heard only vague and remote rumours of the mortal fight that went +on for a century and a half in Spain, Italy, North Africa and the +western Mediterranean, between the last stronghold of Semitic +power and Rome, this newcomer among +Aryan-speaking peoples. + +That war has left its traces upon issues that still stir the +world. Rome triumphed over Carthage, but the rivalry of Aryan and +Semite was to merge itself later on in the conflict of Gentile and +Jew. Our history now is coming to events whose consequences and +distorted traditions still maintain a lingering and expiring +vitality in, and exercise a complicating and confusing influence +upon, the conflicts and controversies of +to-day. + +The First Punic War began in 264 B.C. about the pirates of +Messina. It developed into a struggle for the possession of all +Sicily except the dominions of the Greek king of Syracuse. The +advantage of the sea was at first with the Carthaginians. They +had great fighting ships of what was hitherto an unheard-of size, +quinqueremes, galleys with five banks of oars and a huge ram. At +the battle of Salamis, two centuries before, the leading +battleships had only been triremes with three banks. But the +Romans, with extraordinary energy and in spite of the fact that +they had little naval experience, set themselves to outbuild the +Carthaginians. They manned the new navy they created chiefly with +Greek seamen, and they invented {181} grappling and boarding to +make up for the superior seamanship of the enemy. When the +Carthaginian came up to ram or shear the oars of the Roman, huge +grappling irons seized him and the Roman soldiers swarmed aboard +him. At Mylae (260 B.C.) and at Ecnomus (256 B.C.) the +Carthaginians were disastrously beaten. They repulsed a Roman +landing near Carthage but were badly beaten at Palermo, losing one +hundred and four elephants there--to grace such a triumphal +procession through the Forum as Rome had never seen before. But +after that came two Roman defeats and then a Roman recovery. The +last naval forces of Carthage were defeated {182} by it last Roman +effort at the battle of the AEgatian Isles (241 B.C.) and Carthage +sued for peace. All Sicily except the dominions of Hiero, king of +Syracuse, was ceded to the Romans. + +[Illustration: HANNIBAL] + +For twenty-two years Rome and Carthage kept the peace. Both had +trouble enough at home. In Italy the Gauls came south again, +threatened Rome--which in a state of panic offered human +_sacrifices to the Gods!_--and were routed at Telamon. Rome +pushed forward to the Alps, and even extended her dominions down +the Adriatic coast to Illyria. Carthage suffered from domestic +insurrections and from revolts in Corsica and Sardinia, and +displayed far less recuperative power. Finally, an act of +intolerable aggression, Rome seized and annexed the two revolting +islands. + +Spain at that time was Carthaginian as far north as the river +Ebro. To that boundary the Romans restricted them. Any crossing +of the Ebro by the Carthaginians was to be considered an act of +war against the Romans. At last in 218 B.C. the Carthaginians, +provoked by new Roman aggressions, did cross this river under a +young general named Hannibal, one of the most brilliant commanders +in the whole of history. He marched his army from Spain over the +Alps into Italy, raised the Gauls against the Romans, and carried +on the Second Punic War in Italy itself for fifteen years. He +inflicted tremendous defeats upon the Romans at Lake Trasimere and +at Cannae, and throughout all his Italian campaigns no Roman army +stood against him and escaped disaster. But a Roman army had +landed at Marseilles and cut his communications with Spain; he had +no siege train, and he could never capture Rome. Finally the +Carthaginians, threatened by the revolt of the Numidians at home, +were forced back upon the defence of their own city in Africa, a +Roman army crossed into Africa, and Hannibal experienced his first +defeat under its walls at the battle of Zama (202 B.C.) at the +hands of Scipio Africanus the Elder. The battle of Zama ended +this Second Punic War. Carthage capitulated; she surrendered +Spain and her war fleet; she paid an enormous indemnity and agreed +to give up Hannibal to the vengeance of the Romans. But Hannibal +escaped and fled to Asia where later, being in danger of falling +into the hands of his relentless enemies, he took poison and died. + +{183} + +For fifty-six years Rome and the shorn city of Carthage were at +peace. And meanwhile Rome spread her empire over confused and +divided Greece, invaded Asia Minor, and defeated Antiochus III, +the Seleucid monarch, at Magnesia in Lydia. She made Egypt, still +under the Ptolemies, and Pergamum and most of the small states of +Asia Minor into "Allies," or, as we should call them now, +"protected states." + +Meanwhile Carthage, subjugated and enfeebled, had been slowly +regaining something of her former prosperity. Her recovery +revived the hate and suspicion of the Romans. She was attacked +upon the most shallow and artificial of quarrels (149 B.C.), she +made an obstinate and bitter resistance, stood a long siege and +was stormed (146 B.C.). The street fighting, or massacre, lasted +six days; it was extraordinarily bloody, and when the citadel +capitulated only about fifty thousand of the Carthaginian +population remained alive out of a quarter of a million. They +were sold into slavery, and the city was burnt and elaborately +destroyed. The blackened ruins were ploughed and sown as a sort +of ceremonial effacement. + +[Map: The Extent of the Roman Power & its Alliances about 150 +B.C.] + +So ended the Third Punic War. Of all the Semitic states and +cities that had flourished in the world five centuries before only +one little country remained free under native rulers. This was +Judea, which had liberated itself from the Seleucids and was under +the rule {184} of the native Maccabean princes. By this time it +had its Bible almost complete, and was developing the distinctive +traditions of the Jewish world as we know it now. It was natural +that the Carthaginians, Phoenicians and kindred peoples dispersed +about the world should find a common link in their practically +identical language and in this literature of hope and courage. To +a large extent they were still the traders and bankers of the +world. The Semitic world had been submerged rather than replaced. + +Jerusalem, which has always been rather the symbol than the centre +of Judaism, was taken by the Romans in 65 B.C.; and after various +vicissitudes of quasi-independence and revolt was besieged by them +in 70 A.D. and captured after a stubborn struggle. The Temple was +destroyed. A later rebellion in 132 A.D. completed its +destruction, and the Jerusalem we know to-day was rebuilt later +under Roman auspices. A temple to the Roman god, Jupiter +Capitolinus, stood in the place of the Temple, and Jews were +forbidden to inhabit the city. + + + + +{185} + +XXXIII + +THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE + + +Now this new Roman power which arose to dominate the western world +in the second and first centuries B.C. was in several respects a +different thing from any of the great empires that had hitherto +prevailed in the civilized world. It was not at first a monarchy, +and it was not the creation of any one great conqueror. It was +not indeed the first of republican empires; Athens had dominated a +group of Allies and dependents in the time of Pericles, and +Carthage when she entered upon her fatal struggle with Rome was +mistress of Sardinia and Corsica, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and +most of Spain and Sicily. But it was the first republican empire +that escaped extinction and went on to fresh developments. + +The centre of this new system lay far to the west of the more +ancient centres of empire, which had hitherto been the river +valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt. This westward position enabled +Rome to bring in to civilization quite fresh regions and peoples. +The Roman power extended to Morocco and Spain, and was presently +able to thrust north-westward over what is now France and Belgium +to Britain and north-eastward into Hungary and South Russia. But +on the other hand it was never able to maintain itself in Central +Asia or Persia because they were too far from its administrative +centres. It included therefore great masses of fresh Nordic +Aryan-speaking peoples, it presently incorporated nearly all the +Greek people in the world, and its population was less strongly +Hamitic and Semitic than that of any preceding empire. + +For some centuries this Roman Empire did not fall into the grooves +of precedent that had so speedily swallowed up Persian and Greek, +and all that time it developed. The rulers of the Medes and +Persians became entirely Babylonized in a generation or so; they +{186} took over the tiara of the king of kings and the temples and +priesthoods of his gods; Alexander and his successors followed in +the same easy path of assimilation; the Seleucid monarchs had much +the same court and administrative methods as Nebuchadnezzar; the +Ptolemies became Pharaohs and altogether Egyptian. They were +assimilated just as before them the Semitic conquerors of the +Sumerians had been assimilated. But the Romans ruled in their own +city, and for some centuries kept to the laws of their own nature. +The only people who exercised any great mental influence upon them +before the second or third century A.D. were the kindred and +similar Greeks. So that the Roman Empire was essentially a first +attempt to rule a great dominion upon mainly Aryan lines. It was +so far a new pattern in history, it was an expanded Aryan +republic. The old pattern of a personal conqueror ruling over a +capital city that had grown up round the temple of a harvest god +did not apply to it. The Romans had gods and temples, but like +the gods of the Greeks their gods were quasi-human immortals, +divine patricians. The Romans also had blood sacrifices and even +made human ones in times of stress, things they may have learnt to +do from their dusky Etruscan teachers; but until Rome was long +past its zenith neither priest nor temple played a large part in +Roman history. + +The Roman Empire was a growth, an unplanned novel growth; the +Roman people found themselves engaged almost unawares in a vast +administrative experiment. It cannot be called a successful +experiment. In the end their empire collapsed altogether. And it +changed enormously in form and method from century to century. It +changed more in a hundred years than Bengal or Mesopotamia or +Egypt changed in a thousand. It was always changing. It never +attained to any fixity. + +In a sense the experiment failed. In a sense the experiment +remains unfinished, and Europe and America to-day are still +working out the riddles of world-wide statescraft first confronted +by the Roman people. + +It is well for the student of history to bear in mind the very +great changes not only in political but in social and moral +matters that went on throughout the period of Roman dominion. +There is much too strong a tendency in people's minds to think of +the Roman {187} rule as something finished and stable, firm, +rounded, noble and decisive. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_, +S.P.Q.R. the elder Cato, the Scipios, Julius Caesar, Diocletian, +Constantine the Great, triumphs, orations, gladiatorial combats +and Christian martyrs are all mixed up together in a picture of +something high and cruel and dignified. The items of that picture +have to be disentangled. They are collected at different points +from a process of change profounder than that which separates the +London of William the Conqueror from the London of to-day. + +We may very conveniently divide the expansion of Rome into four +stages. The first stage began after the sack of Rome by the Goths +in 390 B.C. and went on until the end of the First Punic War (240 +B.C.). We may call this stage the stage of the Assimilative +Republic. It was perhaps the finest, most characteristic stage in +Roman history. The age-long dissensions of patrician and plebeian +were drawing to it close, the Etruscan threat had come to an end, +no one was very rich yet nor very poor, and most men were +public-spirited. It was a republic like the republic of the +South African Boers before 1900 or like the northern states of the +American union between 1800 and 1850; a free-farmers republic. At +the outset of this stage Rome was a little state scarcely twenty +miles square. She fought the sturdy but kindred states about her, +and sought not their destruction but coalescence. Her centuries +of civil dissension had trained her people in compromise and +concessions. Some of the defeated cities became altogether Roman +with a voting share in the government, some became self-governing +with the right to trade and marry in Rome; garrisons full of +citizens were set up at strategic points and colonies of varied +privileges founded among the freshly conquered people. Great +roads were made. The rapid Latinization of all Italy was the +inevitable consequence of such a policy. In 89 B.C. all the free +inhabitants of Italy became citizens of the city of Rome. +Formally the whole Roman Empire became at last an extended city. +In 212 A.D. every free man in the entire extent of the empire was +given citizenship; the right, if he could get there, to vote in +the town meeting in Rome. + +This extension of citizenship to tractable cities and to whole +countries was the distinctive device of Roman expansion. It {188} +reversed the old process of conquest and assimilation altogether. +By the Roman method the conquerors assimilated the conquered. + +[Illustration: THE FORUM AT ROME AS IT IS TO-DAY] + +But after the First Punic War and the annexation of Sicily, though +the old process of assimilation still went on, another process +arose by its side. Sicily for instance was treated as a conquered +prey. It was declared an "estate" of the Roman people. Its rich +soil and industrious population was exploited to make Rome rich. +The patricians and the more influential among the plebeians +secured the major share of that wealth. And the war also brought +in a large supply of slaves. Before the First Punic War the +population of the republic had been largely a population of +citizen farmers. Military service was their privilege and +liability. While they were on active service their farms fell +into debt and a new large-scale slave agriculture grew up; when +they returned they found their produce in competition with +slave-grown produce from Sicily and from the new estates at home. +Times had changed. The republic had {189} altered its character. +Not only was Sicily in the hands of Rome, the common man was in +the hands of the rich creditor and the rich competitor. Rome had +entered upon its second stage, the Republic of Adventurous Rich +Men. + +[Illustration: RELICS OF ROMAN RULE] + +For two hundred years the Roman soldier farmers had struggled for +freedom and a share in the government of their state; for a +hundred years they had enjoyed their privileges. The First Punic +War wasted them and robbed them of all they had won. + +The value of their electoral privileges had also evaporated. The +governing bodies of the Roman republic were two in number. The +first and more important was the Senate. This was a body +originally of patricians and then of prominent men of all sorts, +who were summoned to it first by certain powerful officials, the +consuls and censors. Like the British House of Lords it became a +gathering of great landowners, prominent politicians, big business +men and the {190} like. It was much more like the British House +of Lords than it was like the American Senate. For three +centuries, from the Punic Wars onward, it was the centre of Roman +political thought and purpose. The second body was the Popular +Assembly. This was supposed to be an assembly of _all_ the +citizens of Rome. When Rome was a little state twenty miles +square this was a possible gathering. When the citizenship of +Rome had spread beyond the confines in Italy, it was an altogether +impossible one. Its meetings, proclaimed by +horn-blowing from the Capitol and the city walls, became more and +more a gathering of political hacks and city riff-raff. In the +fourth century B.C. the Popular Assembly was a considerable check +upon the Senate, a competent representation of the claims and +rights of the common man. By the end of the Punic Wars it was an +impotent relic of a vanquished popular control. No effectual +legal check remained upon the big men. + +[Illustration: THE GREAT ROMAN ARCH AT CTESIPHON NEAR BAGDAD] + +Nothing of the nature of representative government was ever +introduced into the Roman republic. No one thought of electing +delegates to represent the will of the citizens. This is a very +important point for the student to grasp. The Popular Assembly +{191} never became the equivalent of the American House of +Representatives or the British House of Commons. In theory it was +all the citizens; in practice it ceased to be anything at all +worth consideration. + +The common citizen of the Roman Empire was therefore in a very +poor case after the Second Punic War; he was impoverished, he had +often lost his farm, he was ousted from profitable production by +slaves, and he had no political power left to him to remedy these +things. The only methods of popular expression left to a people +without any form of political expression are the strike and the +revolt. The story of the second and first centuries B.C., so far +as internal politics go, is a story of futile revolutionary +upheaval. The scale of this history will not permit us to tell of +the intricate struggles of that time, of the attempts to break up +estates and restore the land to the free farmer, of proposals to +abolish debts in whole or in part. There was revolt and civil +war. In 73 B.C., the distresses of Italy were enhanced by a great +insurrection, of the slaves under Spartacus. The slaves of Italy +revolted with some effect, for among them were the trained +fighters of the gladiatorial shows. For two years Spartacus held +out in the crater of Vesuvius, which seemed at that time to be an +extinct volcano. This insurrection was defeated at last and +suppressed with frantic cruelty. Six thousand captured +Spartacists were crucified along the Appian Way, the great highway +that runs southward out of Rome (71 B.C.). + +The common man never made head against the forces that were +subjugating and degrading him. But the big rich men who were +overcoming him were even in his defeat preparing a new power in +the Roman world over themselves and him, the power of the army. + +Before the Second Punic War the army of Rome was a levy of free +farmers, who, according to their quality, rode or marched afoot to +battle. This was a very good force for wars close at hand, but +not the sort of army that will go abroad and bear long campaigns +with patience. And moreover as the slaves multiplied and the +estates grew, the supply of free-spirited fighting farmers +declined. It was a popular leader named Marius who introduced a +new factor. North Africa after the overthrow of the Carthaginian +civilization had become a semi-barbaric kingdom, the kingdom of +Numidia. {192} The Roman power fell into conflict with Jugurtha, +king of this state, and experienced enormous difficulties in +subduing him. Marius was made consul, in a phase of public +indignation, to end this discreditable war. This he did by +raising _paid troops_ and drilling them hard. Jugurtha was +brought in chains to Rome (106 B.C.) and Marius, when his time of +office had expired, held on to his consulship illegally with his +newly created legions. There was no power in Rome to restrain +him. + +With Marius began the third phase in the development of the Roman +power, the Republic of the Military Commanders. For now began a +period in which the leaders of the paid legions fought for the +mastery of the Roman world. Against Marius was pitted the +aristocratic Sulla who had served under him in Africa. Each in +turn made a great massacre of his political opponents. Men were +proscribed and executed by the thousand, and their estates were +sold. After the bloody rivalry of these two and the horror of the +revolt of Spartacus, came a phase in which Lucullus and Pompey the +Great and Crassus and Julius Caesar were the masters of armies and +dominated affairs. It was Crassus who defeated Spartacus. +Lucullus conquered Asia Minor and penetrated to Armenia, and +retired with great wealth into private life. Crassus thrusting +further invaded Persia and was defeated and slain by the +Parthians. After a long rivalry Pompey was defeated by Julius +Caesar (48 B.C.) and murdered in Egypt, leaving Julius Caesar sole +master of the Roman world. + +The figure of Julius Caesar is one that has stirred the human +imagination out of all proportion to its merit or true importance. +He has become a legend and a symbol. For us he is chiefly +important as marking the transition from the phase of military +adventurers to the beginning of the fourth stage in Roman +expansion, the Early Empire. For in spite of the profoundest +economic and political convulsions, in spite of civil war and +social degeneration, throughout all this time the boundaries of +the Roman state crept outward and continued to creep outward to +their maximum about 100 A.D. There had been something like an ebb +during the doubtful phases of the Second Punic War, and again a +manifest loss of vigour before the reconstruction of the army by +Marius. The revolt of Spartacus {193} marked a third phase. +Julius Caesar made his reputation as a military leader in Gaul, +which is now France and Belgium. (The chief tribes inhabiting +this country belonged to the same Celtic people as the Gauls who +had occupied north Italy for a time, and who had afterwards raided +into Asia Minor and settled down as the Galatians.) Caesar drove +back a German invasion of Gaul and added all that country to the +empire, and he twice crossed the Straits of Dover into Britain (55 +and 54 B.C.), where however he made no permanent conquest. +Meanwhile Pompey the Great was consolidating Roman conquests that +reached in the east to the Caspian Sea. + +[Illustration: THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN AT ROME] + +At this time, the middle of the first century B.C., the Roman +Senate was still the nominal centre of the Roman government, +appointing consuls and other officials, granting powers and the +like; and a number of politicians, among whom Cicero was an +outstanding {194} figure, were struggling to preserve the great +traditions of republican Rome and to maintain respect for its +laws. But the spirit of citizenship had gone from Italy with the +wasting away of the free farmers; it was a land now of slaves and +impoverished men with neither the understanding nor the desire for +freedom. There was nothing whatever behind these republican +leaders in the Senate, while behind the great adventurers they +feared and desired to control were the legions. Over the heads of +the Senate Crassus and Pompey and Caesar divided the rule of the +Empire between them (The First Triumvirate). When presently +Crassus was killed at distant Carrhae by the Parthians, Pompey and +Caesar fell out. Pompey took up the republican side, and laws were +passed to bring Caesar to trial for his breaches of law and his +disobedience to the decrees of the Senate. + +It was illegal for a general to bring his troops out of the +boundary of his command, and the boundary between Caesar's command +and Italy was the Rubicon. In 49 B.C. he crossed the Rubicon, +saying "The die is cast" and marched upon Pompey and Rome. + +It had been the custom in Rome in the past, in periods of military +extremity, to elect a "dictator" with practically unlimited powers +to rule through the crisis. After his overthrow of Pompey, Caesar +was made dictator first for ten years and then (in 45 B.C.) for +life. In effect he was made monarch of the empire for life. +There was talk of a king, a word abhorrent to Rome since the +expulsion of the Etruscans five centuries before. Caesar refused +to be king, but adopted throne and sceptre. After his defeat of +Pompey, Caesar had gone on into Egypt and had made love to +Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, the goddess queen of Egypt. +She seems to have turned his head very completely. He had brought +back to Rome the Egyptian idea of a god-king. His statue was set +up in a temple with an inscription "To the Unconquerable God." +The expiring republicanism of Rome flared up in a last protest, +and Caesar was stabbed to death in the Senate at the foot of the +statue of his murdered rival, Pompey the Great. + +Thirteen years more of this conflict of ambitious personalities +followed. There was a second Triumvirate of Lepidus, Mark Antony +and Octavian Caesar, the latter the nephew of Julius Caesar. +Octavian like his uncle took the poorer, hardier western provinces +{195} where the best legions were recruited. In 31 B.C., he +defeated Mark Antony, his only serious rival, at the naval battle +of Actium, and made himself sole master of the Roman world. But +Octavian was a man of different quality altogether from Julius +Caesar. He had no foolish craving to be God or King. He had no +queen-lover that he wished to dazzle. He restored freedom to the +Senate and people of Rome. He declined to be dictator. The +grateful Senate in return gave him the reality instead of the +forms of power. He was to be called not King indeed, but +"Princeps" and "Augustus." He became Augustus Caesar, the first of +the Roman emperors (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.). + +He was followed by Tiberius Caesar (14 to 37 A.D.) and he by +others, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and so on up to Trajan (98 A.D.), +Hadrian (117 A.D.), Antonius Pius (138 A.D.) and Marcus Aurelius +(161-180 A.D.). All these emperors were emperors of the legions. +The soldiers made them, and some the soldiers destroyed. +Gradually the Senate fades out of Roman-history, and the emperor +and his administrative officials replace it. The boundaries of +the empire crept forward now to their utmost limits. Most of +Britain was added to the empire, Transylvania was brought in as a +new province, Dacia; Trajan crossed the Euphrates. Hadrian had an +idea that reminds us at once of what had happened at the other end +of the old world. Like Shi-Hwang-ti he built walls against the +northern barbarians; one across Britain and a palisade between the +Rhine and the Danube. He abandoned some of the acquisitions of +Trajan. + +The expansion of the Roman Empire was at an end. + + + + +{196} + +XXXIV + +BETWEEN ROME AND CHINA + + +The second and first centuries B.C. mark a new phase in the +history of mankind. Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean are +no longer the centre of interest. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt were +still fertile, populous and fairly prosperous, but they were no +longer the dominant regions of the world. Power had drifted to +the west and to the east. Two great empires now dominated the +world, this new Roman Empire and the renascent Empire of China. +Rome extended its power to the Euphrates, but it was never able to +get beyond that boundary. It was too remote. Beyond the +Euphrates the former Persian and Indian dominions of the Seleucids +fell under a number of new masters. China, now under the Han +dynasty, which had replaced the Ts'in dynasty at the death of +Shi-Hwang-ti, had extended its power across Tibet and over the +high mountain passes of the Pamirs into western Turkestan. But +there, too, it reached its extremes. Beyond was too far. + +China at this time was the greatest, best organized and most +civilized political system in the world. It was superior in area +and population to the Roman Empire at its zenith. It was possible +then for these two vast systems to flourish in the same world at +the same time in almost complete ignorance of each other. The +means of communication both by sea and land was not yet +sufficiently developed and organized for them to come to a direct +clash. + +Yet they reacted upon each other in a very remarkable way, and +their influence upon the fate of the regions that lay between +them, upon central Asia and India, was profound. A certain amount +of trade trickled through, by camel caravans across Persia, for +example, and by coasting ships by way of India and the Red Sea. +In 66 B.C. Roman troops under Pompey followed in the footsteps of +Alexander the Great, and marched up the eastern shores of the +{197} Caspian Sea. In 102 A.D. a Chinese expeditionary force +under Pan Chau reached the Caspian, and sent emissaries to report +upon the power of Rome. But many centuries were still to pass +before definite knowledge and direct intercourse were to link the +great parallel worlds of Europe and Eastern Asia. + +To the north of both these great empires were barbaric +wildernesses. What is now Germany was largely forest lands; the +forests extended far into Russia and made a home for the gigantic +aurochs, a bull of almost elephantine size. Then to the north of +the great mountain masses of Asia stretched a band of deserts, +steppes and then forests and frozen lands. In the eastward lap of +the elevated part of Asia was the great triangle of Manchuria. +Large parts of these regions, stretching between South Russia and +Turkestan into Manchuria, were and are regions of exceptional +climatic insecurity. Their rainfall has varied greatly in the +course of a few centuries They are lands treacherous to man. For +years they will carry pasture and sustain cultivation, and then +will come an age of decline in humidity and a cycle of killing +droughts. + +[Illustration: A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE] + +The western part of this barbaric north from the German forests to +South Russia and Turkestan and from Gothland to the Alps was the +region of origin of the Nordic peoples and of the Aryan speech. +The eastern steppes and deserts of Mongolia was the region of +origin of the Hunnish or Mongolian or Tartar or Turkish +peoples--for all these several peoples were akin in language, race, +and way of life. And as the Nordic peoples seem to have been +continually overflowing their own borders and pressing south upon +the developing civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean +coast, so the Hunnish {198} tribes sent their surplus as +wanderers, raiders and conquerors into the settled regions of +China. Periods of plenty in the north would mean an increase in +population there; a shortage of grass, a spell of cattle disease, +would drive the hungry warlike tribesmen south. + +[Illustration: VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE] + +For a time there were simultaneously two fairly effective Empires +in the world capable of holding back the barbarians and even +forcing forward the frontiers of the imperial peace. The thrust +of the Han empire from north China into Mongolia was strong and +continuous. The Chinese population welled up over the barrier of +the Great Wall. Behind the imperial frontier guards came the +Chinese farmer with horse and plough, ploughing up the grass lands +and enclosing the winter pasture. The Hunnish peoples raided and +murdered the settlers, but the Chinese punitive expeditions were +too much for them. The nomads were faced with the choice of +settling down to the plough and becoming Chinese tax-payers or +shifting in search of fresh summer pastures. Some took the former +course and were absorbed. Some drifted +north-eastward and eastward over the mountain passes down into +western Turkestan. + +This westward drive of the Mongolian horsemen was going on from +200 B.C. onward. It was producing a westward pressure upon the +Aryan tribes, and these again were pressing upon the Roman +frontiers ready to break through directly there was any weakness +apparent. The Parthians, who were apparently a Scythian people +with some Mongolian admixture, came down to the Euphrates by the +first century B.C. They fought against Pompey the Great in {199} +his eastern raid. They defeated and killed Crassus. They +replaced the Seleucid monarchy in Persia by a dynasty of Parthian +kings, the Arsacid dynasty. + +[Illustration: CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE] + +But for a time the line of least resistance for hungry nomads lay +neither to the west nor the east but through central Asia and then +south-eastward through the Khyber Pass into India. It was India +which received the Mongolian drive in these centuries of Roman and +Chinese strength. A series of raiding conquerors poured down +through the Punjab into the great plains to loot and destroy. The +empire of Asoka was broken up, and for a time the history of India +passes into darkness. A certain Kushan dynasty founded by the +"Indo-Scythians"--one of the raiding peoples--ruled for a time +over North India and maintained a certain order. These invasions +went on for several centuries. For a large part of the fifth +century A.D. India was afflicted by the Ephthalites or White Huns, +who levied tribute on the small Indian princes and held India in +terror. Every summer these Ephthalites pastured in western +Turkestan, every autumn they came down through the passes to +terrorize India. + +{200} + +In the second century A.D. a great misfortune came upon the Roman +and Chinese empires that probably weakened the resistance of both +to barbarian pressure. This was a pestilence of unexampled +virulence. It raged for eleven years in China and disorganized +the social framework profoundly. The Han dynasty fell, and a new +age of division and confusion began from which China did not +fairly recover until the seventh century A.D. with the coming of +the great Tang dynasty. + +The infection spread through Asia to Europe. It raged throughout +the Roman Empire from 164 to 180 A.D. It evidently weakened the +Roman imperial fabric very seriously. We begin to hear of +depopulation in the Roman provinces after this, and there was a +marked deterioration in the vigour and efficiency of government. +At any rate we presently find the frontier no longer invulnerable, +but giving way first in this place and then in that. A new Nordic +people, the Goths, coming originally from Gothland in Sweden, had +migrated across Russia to the Volga region and the shores of the +Black Sea and taken to the sea and piracy. By the end of the +second century they may have begun to feel the westward thrust of +the Huns. In 247 they crossed the Danube in a great land raid, +and defeated and killed the Emperor Decius in a battle in what is +now Serbia. In 236 another Germanic people, the Franks, had broken +bounds upon the lower Rhine, and the Alemanni had poured into +Alsace. The legions in Gaul beat back their invaders, but the +Goths in the Balkan peninsula raided again and again. The +province of Dacia vanished from Roman history. + +A chill had come to the pride and confidence of Rome. In 270-275 +Rome, which had been an open and secure city for three centuries, +was fortified by the Emperor Aurelian. + + + + +{201} + +XXXV + +THE COMMON MAN'S LIFE UNDER THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE + + +Before we tell of how this Roman empire which was built up in the +two centuries B.C., and which flourished in peace and security +from the days of Augustus Caesar onward for two centuries, fell +into disorder and was broken up, it may be as well to devote some +attention to the life of the ordinary people throughout this great +realm. Our history has come down now to within 2000 years of our +own time; and the life of the civilized people, both under the +Peace of Rome and the Peace of the Han dynasty, was beginning to +resemble more and more clearly the life of their civilized +successors to-day. + +In the western world coined money was now in common use; outside +the priestly world there were many people of independent means who +were neither officials of the government nor priests; people +travelled about more freely than they had ever done before, and +there were high roads and inns for them. Compared with the past, +with the time before 500 B.C., life had become much more loose. +Before that date civilized men had been bound to a district or +country, had been bound to a tradition and lived within a very +limited horizon; only the nomads traded and travelled. + +But neither the Roman Peace nor the Peace of the Han dynasty meant +a uniform civilization over the large areas they controlled. +There were very great local differences and great contrasts and +inequalities of culture between one district and another, just as +there are to-day under the British Peace in India. The Roman +garrisons and colonies were dotted here and there over this great +space, worshipping Roman gods and speaking the Latin language; but +where there had been towns and cities before the coming of the +Romans, they went on, subordinated indeed but managing their own +affairs, and, for a time at least, worshipping their own gods in +their own fashion. Over Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and the +Hellenized East {202} generally, the Latin language never +prevailed. Greek ruled there invincibly. Saul of Tarsus, who +became the apostle Paul, was a Jew and a Roman citizen; but he +spoke and wrote Greek and not Hebrew. Even at the court of the +Parthian dynasty, which had overthrown the Greek Seleucids in +Persia, and was quite outside the Roman imperial boundaries, Greek +was the fashionable language. In some parts of Spain and in North +Africa, the Carthaginian language also held on for a long time in +spite of the destruction of Carthage. Such a town as Seville, which +had been a prosperous city long before the Roman name had been heard +of, kept its Semitic goddess and preserved its Semitic speech for +generations, in spite of a colony of Roman veterans at Italica a few +miles away. Septimius Severus, who was emperor from 193 to 211 +A.D., spoke Carthaginian as his mother speech. He learnt Latin +later as a foreign tongue; {203} and it is recorded that his sister +never learnt Latin and conducted her Roman household in the +Punic language. + +[Illustration: A GLADIATOR] + +In such countries as Gaul and Britain and in provinces like Dacia +(now roughly Roumania) and Pannonia (Hungary south of the Danube), +where there were no pre-existing great cities and temples and +cultures, the Roman empire did however "Latinize." It civilized +these countries for the first time. It created cities and towns +where Latin was from the first the dominant speech, and where +Roman gods were served and Roman customs and fashions followed. +The Roumanian, Italian, French and Spanish languages, all +variations and modifications of Latin, remain to remind us of this +extension of Latin speech and customs. +North-west Africa also became at last largely Latin-speaking. +Egypt, Greece and the rest of the empire to the east were never +Latinized. They remained Egyptian and Greek in culture and +spirit. And even in Rome, among educated men, Greek was learnt as +the language of a gentleman and Greek literature and learning were +very, properly preferred to Latin. + +In this miscellaneous empire the ways of doing work and business +were naturally also very miscellaneous. The chief industry of the +settled world was still largely agriculture. We have told how in +Italy the sturdy free farmers who were the backbone of the early +Roman republic were replaced by estates worked by slave labour +after the Punic wars. The Greek world had had very various +methods of cultivation, from the Arcadian plan, wherein every free +citizen toiled with his own hands, to Sparta, wherein it was a +dishonour to work and where agricultural work was done by a +special slave class, the Helots. But that was ancient history +now, and over most of the Hellenized world the estate system and +slave-gangs had spread. The agricultural slaves were captives who +spoke many different languages so that they could not understand +each other, or they were born slaves; they had no solidarity to +resist oppression, no tradition of rights, no knowledge, for they +could not read nor write. Although they came to form a majority +of the country population they never made a successful +insurrection. The insurrection of Spartacus in the first century +B.C. was an insurrection of the special slaves who were trained +for the gladiatorial combats. The agricultural workers in Italy in +the latter days of {204} the Republic and the early Empire +suffered frightful indignities; they would be chained at night to +prevent escape or have half the head shaved to make it difficult. +They had no wives of their own; they could be outraged, mutilated +and killed by their masters. A master could sell his slave to +fight beasts in the arena. If a slave slew his master, all the +slaves in his household and not merely the murderer were +crucified. In some parts of Greece, in Athens notably, the lot of +the slave was never quite so frightful as this, but it was still +detestable. To such a population the barbarian invaders who +presently broke through the defensive line of the legions, came +not as enemies but as liberators. + +[Illustration: POMPEII] + +The slave system had spread to most industries and to every sort +of work that could be done by gangs. Mines and metallurgical +operations, the rowing of galleys, road-making and big building +operations were all largely slave occupations. And almost all +domestic service was performed by slaves. There were poor +free-men {205} and there were freed-men in the cities and upon the +country side, working for themselves or even working for wages. +They were artizans, supervisors and so forth, workers of a new +money-paid class working in competition with slave workers; but we +do not know what proportion they made of the general population. +It probably varied widely in different places and at different +periods. And there were also many modifications of slavery, from +the slavery that was chained at night and driven with whips to the +farm or quarry, to the slave whose master found it advantageous to +leave him to cultivate his patch or work his craft and own his +wife like a free-man, provided he paid in a satisfactory quittance +to his owner. + +There were armed slaves. At the opening of the period of the +Punic wars, in 264 B.C., the Etruscan sport of setting slaves to +fight for their lives was revived in Rome. It grew rapidly +fashionable; and soon every great Roman rich man kept a retinue of +gladiators, who sometimes fought in the arena but whose real +business it was to act as his bodyguard of bullies. And also +there were learned slaves. The conquests of the later Republic +were among the highly civilized cities of Greece, North Africa and +Asia Minor; and they brought in many highly educated captives. +The tutor of a young Roman of good family was usually a slave. A +rich man would have a Greek slave as librarian, and slave +secretaries and learned men. He would keep his poet as he would +keep a performing dog. In this atmosphere of slavery the +traditions of modern literary criticism were evolved. The slaves +still boast and quarrel in our reviews. There were enterprising +people who bought intelligent boy slaves and had them educated for +sale. Slaves were trained as book copyists, as jewellers, and for +endless skilled callings. + +But there were very considerable changes in the position of a +slave during the four hundred years between the opening days of +conquest under the republic of rich men and the days of +disintegration that followed the great pestilence. In the second +century B.C. war-captives were abundant, manners gross and brutal; +the slave had no rights and there was scarcely an outrage the +reader can imagine that was not practised upon slaves in those +days. But already in the first century A.D. there was a +perceptible improvement in the attitude of the Roman civilization +towards slavery. Captives were not so abundant for one thing, +{207} thing, and slaves were dearer. And slave-owners began to +realize that the profit and comfort they got from their slaves +increased with the self-respect of these unfortunates. But also +the moral tone of the community was rising, and a sense of justice +was becoming effective. The higher mentality of Greece was +qualifying the old Roman harshness. Restrictions upon cruelty +were made, a master might no longer sell his slave to fight +beasts, a slave was given property rights in what was called his +_peculium_, slaves were paid wages as an encouragement and +stimulus, a form of slave marriage was recognized. Very many +forms of agriculture do not lend themselves to gang working, or +require gang workers only at certain seasons. In regions where +such conditions prevailed the slave presently became a serf, +paying his owner part of his produce or working for him at certain +seasons. + +==================================================================== + +{206} + +[Illustration: THE COLISEUM, ROME] + +[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY] + +==================================================================== + +When we begin to realize how essentially this great Latin and +Greek-speaking Roman Empire of the first two centuries A.D. was a +slave state and how small was the minority who had any pride or +freedom in their lives, we lay our hands on the clues to its decay +and collapse. There was little of what we should call family +life, few homes of temperate living and active thought and study; +schools and colleges were few and far between. The free will and +the free mind were nowhere to be found. The great roads, the +ruins of splendid buildings, the tradition of law and power it +left for the astonishment of succeeding generations must not +conceal from us that all its outer splendour was built upon +thwarted wills, stifled intelligence, and crippled and perverted +desires. And even the minority who lorded it over that wide realm +of subjugation and of restraint and forced labour were uneasy and +unhappy in their souls; art and literature, science and +philosophy, which are the fruits of free and happy minds, waned in +that atmosphere. There was much copying and imitation, an +abundance of artistic artificers, much slavish pedantry among the +servile men of learning, but the whole Roman empire in four +centuries produced nothing to set beside the bold and noble +intellectual activities of the comparatively little city of Athens +during its one century of greatness. Athens decayed under the +Roman sceptre. The science of Alexandria decayed. The spirit of +man, it seemed, was decaying in those days. + + + + +{208} + +XXXVI + +RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENTS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE + + +The soul of man under that Latin and Greek empire of the first two +centuries of the Christian era was a worried and frustrated soul. +Compulsion and cruelty reigned; there were pride and display but +little honour; little serenity or steadfast happiness. The +unfortunate were despised and wretched; the fortunate were +insecure and feverishly eager for gratifications. In a great +number of cities life centred on the red excitement of the arena, +where men and beasts fought and were tormented and slain. +Amphitheatres are the most characteristic of Roman ruins. Life +went on in that key. The uneasiness of men's hearts manifested +itself in profound religious unrest. + +From the days when the Aryan hordes first broke in upon the +ancient civilizations, it was inevitable that the old gods of the +temples and priesthoods should suffer great adaptations or +disappear. In the course of hundreds of generations the +agricultural peoples of the brunette civilizations had shaped +their lives and thoughts to the temple-centred life. Observances +and the fear of disturbed routines, sacrifices and mysteries, +dominated their minds. Their gods seem monstrous and illogical to +our modern minds because we belong to an Aryanized world, but to +these older peoples these deities had the immediate conviction and +vividness of things seen in an intense dream. The conquest of one +city state by another in Sumeria or early Egypt meant a change or +a renaming of gods or goddesses, but left the shape and spirit of +the worship intact. There was no change in its general character. +The figures in the dream changed, but the dream went on and it was +the same sort of dream. And the early Semitic conquerors were +sufficiently akin in spirit to the Sumerians to take over the +religion of the Mesopotamian civilization they subjugated without +any profound alteration. Egypt was never {209} indeed subjugated +to the extent of a religious revolution. Under the Ptolemies and +under the Caesars, her temples and altars and priesthoods remained +essentially Egyptian. + +So long as conquests went on between people of similar social and +religious habits it was possible to get over the clash between the +god of this temple and region and the god of that by a process of +grouping or assimilation. If the two gods were alike in character +they were identified. It was really the same god under another +name, said the priests and the people. This fusion of gods is +called theocrasia; and the age of the great conquests of the +thousand years B.C. was an age of theocrasia. Over wide areas the +local gods were displaced by, or rather they were swallowed up in, +a general god. So that when at last Hebrew prophets in Babylon +proclaimed one God of Righteousness in all the earth men's minds +were fully prepared for that idea. + +But often the gods were too dissimilar for such an assimilation, +and then they were grouped together in some plausible +relationship. A female god--and the AEgean world before the coming +of the Greek was much addicted to Mother Gods--would be married to +a male god, and an animal god or a star god would be humanized and +the animal or astronomical aspect, the serpent or the sun or the +star, made into an ornament or a symbol. Or the god of a defeated +people would become a malignant antagonist to the brighter gods. +The history of theology is full of such adaptations, compromises +and rationalizations of once local gods. + +As Egypt developed from city states into one united kingdom there +was much of this theocrasia. The chief god so to speak was +Osiris, a sacrificial harvest god of whom Pharaoh was supposed to +be the earthly incarnation. Osiris was represented as repeatedly +dying and rising again; he was not only the seed and the harvest +but also by a natural extension of thought the means of human +immortality. Among his symbols was the wide-winged scarabeus +beetle which buries its eggs to rise again, and also the effulgent +sun which sets to rise. Later on he was to be identified with +Apis, the sacred bull. Associated with him was the goddess Isis. +Isis was also Hathor, a cow-goddess, and the crescent moon and the +Star of the sea. Osiris dies and she bears a child, Horus, who is +also a {210} hawk-god and the dawn, and who grows to become Osiris +again. The effigies of Isis represent her as bearing the infant +Horus in her arms and standing on the crescent moon. These are +not logical relationships, but they were devised by the human mind +before the development of hard and systematic thinking and they +have a dream-like coherence. Beneath this triple group there are +other and darker Egyptian gods, bad gods, the dog-headed Anubis, +black night and the like, devourers, tempters, enemies of god and +man. + +[Illustration: MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN] + +Every religious system does in the course of time fit itself to +the shape of the human soul, and there can be no doubt that out of +these illogical and even uncouth symbols, Egyptian people were +able to fashion for themselves ways of genuine devotion and +consolation. The desire for immortality was very strong in the +Egyptian mind, and the religious life of Egypt turned on that +desire. The Egyptian {211} religion was an immortality religion as +no other religion had ever been. As Egypt went down under foreign +conquerors and the Egyptian gods ceased to have any satisfactory +political significance, this craving for a life of compensations +here-after, intensified. + +[Illustration: ISIS AND HORUS] + +After the Greek conquest, the new city of Alexandria became the +centre of Egyptian religious life, and indeed of the religious +life of the whole Hellenic world. A great temple, the Serapeum, +was set up by Ptolemy I at which a sort of trinity of gods was +worshipped. These were Serapis (who was Osiris-Apis rechristened), +Isis and Horus. These were not regarded as separate gods but as +three aspects of one god, and Serapis was identified with the +Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter and the Persian sun-god. This +worship spread wherever the Hellenic influence extended, even into +North India and Western China. The idea of immortality, an +immortality of compensations and consolation, was eagerly received +by a world in which the common life was hopelessly wretched. +Serapis was called "the saviour of souls." "After death," said +the hymns of that time, "we are still in the care of his +providence." Isis attracted many devotees. Her images stood in +her temples, as Queen of Heaven, bearing the infant Horus in her +arms. Candles were burnt before her, votive offerings were made +to her, shaven priests consecrated to celibacy waited on her +altar. + +The rise of the Roman empire opened the western European world to +this growing cult. The temples of Serapis-Isis, the chanting of +the priests and the hope of immortal life, followed the Roman +standards to Scotland and Holland. But there were many rivals to +the Serapis-Isis religion. Prominent among these was Mithraism. +This was a religion of Persian origin, and it {212} centred upon +some now forgotten mysteries about Mithras sacrificing a sacred +and benevolent bull. Here we seem to have something more +primordial than the complicated and sophisticated Serapis-Isis +beliefs. We are carried back directly to the blood sacrifices of +the heliolithic stage in human culture. The bull upon the +Mithraic monuments always bleeds copiously from a wound in its +side, and from this blood springs new life. The votary to +Mithraism actually bathed in the blood of the sacrificial bull. +At his initiation he went beneath a scaffolding upon which a bull +was killed so that the blood could actually run down on him. + +Both these religions, and the same is true of many other of the +numerous parallel cults that sought the allegiance of the slaves +and citizens under the earlier Roman emperors, are personal +religions. They aim at personal salvation and personal +immortality. The older religions were not personal like that; +they were social. The older fashion of divinity was god or +goddess of the city first or of the state, and only secondarily of +the individual. The sacrifices were a public and not a private +function. They concerned collective practical needs in this world +in which we live. But the Greeks first and now the Romans had +pushed religion out of politics. Guided by the Egyptian tradition +religion had retreated to the other world. + +[Illustration: BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192] + +These new private immortality religions took all the heart and +emotion out of the old state religions, but they did not actually +replace them. A typical city under the earlier Roman emperors +would have a number of temples to all sorts of gods. There might +be a temple to Jupiter of the Capitol, the great god of Rome, and +there would probably be one to the reigning Caesar. For the Caesars +had learnt from the Pharaohs the possibility of being gods. In +such temples a cold and stately political worship went on; one +would go and make an offering and burn a pinch of incense to show +one's loyalty. But it would be to the temple of Isis, the dear +Queen of Heaven, one would go with the burthen {213} of one's +private troubles for advice and relief. There might be local and +eccentric gods. Seville, for example, long affected the worship +of the old Carthaginian Venus. In a cave or an underground temple +there would certainly be an altar to Mithras, attended by +legionaries and slaves. And probably also there would be a +synagogue where the Jews gathered to read their Bible and uphold +their faith in the unseen God of all the Earth. + +Sometimes there would be trouble with the Jews about the political +side of the state religion. They held that their God was a +jealous God intolerant of idolatry, and they would refuse to take +part in the public sacrifices to Caesar. They would not even +salute the Roman standards for fear of idolatry. + +In the East long before the time of Buddha there had been +ascetics, men and women who gave up most of the delights of life, +who repudiated marriage and property and sought spiritual powers +and an escape from the stresses and mortifications of the world in +abstinence, pain and solitude. Buddha himself set his face +against ascetic extravagances, but many of his disciples followed +a monkish life of great severity. Obscure Greek cults practised +similar disciplines even to the extent of self-mutilation. +Asceticism appeared in the Jewish communities of Judea and +Alexandria also in the first century B.C. Communities of men +abandoned the world and gave themselves to austerities and +mystical contemplation. Such was the sect of the Essenes. +Throughout the first and second centuries A.D. there was an almost +world-wide resort to such repudiations of life, a universal search +for "salvation" from the distresses of the time. The old sense of +an established order, the old confidence in priest and temple and +law and custom, had gone. Amidst the prevailing slavery, cruelty, +fear, anxiety, waste, display and hectic self-indulgence, went +this epidemic of self-disgust and mental insecurity, this agonized +search for peace even at the price of renunciation and voluntary +suffering. This it was that filled the Serapeum with weeping +penitents and brought the converts into the gloom and gore of the +Mithraic cave. + + + + +{214} + +XXXVII + +THE TEACHING OF JESUS + + +It was while Augustus Caesar, the first of the Emperors, was +reigning in Rome that Jesus who is the Christ of Christianity was +born in Judea. In his name a religion was to arise which was +destined to become the official religion of the entire Roman +Empire. + +Now it is on the whole more convenient to keep history and +theology apart. A large proportion of the Christian world +believes that Jesus was an incarnation of that God of all the +Earth whom the Jews first recognized. The historian, if he is to +remain historian, can neither accept nor deny that interpretation. +Materially Jesus appeared in the likeness of a man, and it is as a +man that the historian must deal with him. + +He appeared in Judea in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. He was a +prophet. He preached after the fashion of the preceding Jewish +prophets. He was a man of about thirty, and we are in the +profoundest ignorance of his manner of life before his preaching +began. + +Our only direct sources of information about the life and teaching +of Jesus are the four Gospels. All four agree in giving us a +picture of a very definite personality. One is obliged to say, +"Here was a man. This could not have been invented." + +But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been distorted +and obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded idol of +later Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous +personality of Jesus is much wronged by the unreality and +conventionality that a mistaken reverence has imposed upon his +figure in modern Christian art. Jesus was a penniless teacher, +who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon +casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed +and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect and with something +motionless about him as though {215} he was gliding through the +air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people +who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental +and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout. + +We are left, if we do strip this record of these difficult +accessories, with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest +and passionate, capable of swift anger, and teaching a new and +simple and profound doctrine--namely, the universal loving +Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He was +clearly a person--to use a common phrase--of intense personal +magnetism. He attracted followers and filled them with love and +courage. Weak and ailing people were heartened and healed by his +presence. Yet he was probably of a delicate physique, because of +the swiftness with which he died under the pains of crucifixion. +There is a tradition that he fainted when, according to the +custom, he was made to bear his cross to the place of execution. +He went about the country for three years spreading his doctrine +and then he came to Jerusalem and was accused of trying to set up +a strange kingdom in Judea; he was tried upon this charge, and +crucified together with two thieves. Long before these two were +dead his sufferings were over. + +The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching +of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines +that ever stirred and changed human thought. It is small wonder +if the world of that time failed to grasp its full significance, +and recoiled in dismay from even a half apprehension of its +tremendous challenges to the established habits and institutions +of mankind. For the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus +seems to have preached it, was no less than a bold and +uncompromising demand for a complete change and cleansing of the +life of our struggling race, an utter cleansing, without and +within. To the gospels the reader must go for all that is +preserved of this tremendous teaching; here we are only concerned +with the jar of its impact upon established ideas. + +The Jews were persuaded that God, the one God of the whole world, +was a righteous god, but they also thought of him as a trading god +who had made a bargain with their Father Abraham {216} about them, +a very good bargain indeed for them, to bring them at last to +predominance in the earth. With dismay and anger they heard Jesus +sweeping away their dear securities. God, he taught, was no +bargainer; there were no chosen people and no favourites in the +Kingdom of Heaven. God was the loving father of all life, as +incapable of showing favour as the universal sun. And all men +were brothers--sinners alike and beloved sons alike--of this +divine father. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus cast +scorn upon that natural tendency we all obey, to glorify our own +people and to minimize the righteousness of other creeds and other +races. In the parable of the labourers he thrust aside the +obstinate claim of the Jews to have a special claim upon God. All +whom God takes into the kingdom, he taught, God serves alike; +there is no distinction in his treatment, because there is no +measure to his bounty. From all moreover, as the parable of the +buried talent witnesses, and as the incident of the widow's mite +enforces, he demands the utmost. There are no privileges, no +rebates and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven. + +[Illustration: EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS +CHRIST IN WHICH THE TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN] + +{217} + +But it is not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews that +Jesus outraged. They were a people of intense family loyalty, and +he would have swept away all the narrow and restrictive family +affections in the great flood of the love of God. The whole +kingdom of Heaven was to be the family of his followers. We are +told that, "While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother +and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then +one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand +without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said +unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? +And he stretched forth his hands towards his disciples, and said, +Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will +of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and +sister, and mother." [2] + +[Illustration: THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS] + +And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds of +family loyalty in the name of God's universal fatherhood and +brotherhood of all mankind, but it is clear that his teaching +condemned all the gradations of the economic system, all private +wealth, and {218} personal advantages. All men belonged to the +kingdom; all their possessions belonged to the kingdom; the +righteous life for all men, the only righteous life, was the +service of God's will with all that we had, with all that we were. +Again and again he denounced private riches and the reservation of +any private life. + +[Illustration: DAVID'S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM] + +"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, +and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do +that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why +callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God. +Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not +kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour +thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master, +all these things have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus +beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou +lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the +poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up +the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went +away grieved; for he had great possessions. + +"And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How +hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God! +And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus +answered again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for +them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God! It is +{220} easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than +for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." [3] + +==================================================================== + +{219} + +[Illustration: A STREET IN JERUSALEM] + +==================================================================== + +Moreover, in his tremendous prophecy of this kingdom which was to +make all men one together in God, Jesus had small patience for the +bargaining righteousness of formal religion. Another large part +of his recorded utterances is aimed against the meticulous +observance of the rules of the pious career. "Then the Pharisees +and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the +tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He +answered and said unto them, Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you +hypocrites, as it is written, + +"This people honoureth me with their lips, + +"But their heart is far from me. + +"Howbeit in vain do they worship me, + +"Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. + +"For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of +men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such things +ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment +of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." [4] + +It was not merely a moral and a social revolution that Jesus +proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his +teaching had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true +that he said his kingdom was not of this world, that it was in the +hearts of men and not upon a throne; but it is equally clear that +wherever and in what measure his kingdom was set up in the hearts +of men, the outer world would be in that measure revolutionized +and made new. + +Whatever else the deafness and blindness of his hearers may have +missed in his utterances, it is plain they did not miss his +resolve to revolutionize the world. The whole tenor of the +opposition to him and the circumstances of his trial and execution +show clearly that to his contemporaries he seemed to propose +plainly, and did propose plainly, to change and fuse and enlarge +all human life. + +In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who +were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a +swimming of their world at his teaching? He was dragging out all +the little private reservations they had made from social service +into the light {221} of a universal religious life. He was like +some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug +burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of +this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no +pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love. Is +it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out +against him? Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare +them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realized that +between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or +priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman +soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their +comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take +refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in +purple and make a mock Caesar of him? For to take him seriously +was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, +to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible +happiness. . . . + +[2] Matt. xii, 46-50. + +[3] Mark x. 17-25. + +[4] Mark vii, 1-9. + + + + +{222} + +XXXVIII + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY + + +In the four gospels we find the personality and teachings of Jesus +but very little of the dogmas of the Christian church. It is in +the epistles, a series of writings by the immediate followers of +Jesus, that the broad lines of Christian belief are laid down. + +Chief among the makers of Christian doctrine was St. Paul. He had +never seen Jesus nor heard him preach. Paul's name was originally +Saul, and he was conspicuous at first as an active persecutor of +the little band of disciples after the crucifixion. Then he was +suddenly converted to Christianity, and he changed his name to +Paul. He was a man of great intellectual vigour and deeply and +passionately interested in the religious movements of the time. +He was well versed in Judaism and in the Mithraism and Alexandrian +religion of the day. He carried over many of their ideas and +terms of expression into Christianity. He did very little to +enlarge or develop the original teaching of Jesus, the teaching of +the Kingdom of Heaven. But he taught that Jesus was not only the +promised Christ, the promised leader of the Jews, but also that +his death was a sacrifice, like the deaths of the ancient +sacrificial victims of the primordial civilizations, for the +redemption of mankind. + +When religions flourish side by side they tend to pick up each +other's ceremonial and other outward peculiarities. Buddhism, for +example, in China has now almost the same sort of temples and +priests and uses as Taoism, which follows in the teachings of Lao +Tse. Yet the original teachings of Buddhism and Taoism were +almost flatly opposed. And it reflects no doubt or discredit upon +the essentials of Christian teaching that it took over not merely +such formal things as the shaven priest, the votive offering, the +altars, candles, chanting and images of the Alexandrian and +Mithraic faiths, but adopted even their devotional phrases and +their theological {223} ideas. All these religions were +flourishing side by side with many less prominent cults. Each was +seeking adherents, and there must have been a constant going and +coming of converts between them. Sometimes one or other would be +in favour with the government. But Christianity was regarded with +more suspicion than its rivals because, like the Jews, its +adherents would not perform acts of worship to the God Caesar. +This made it a seditious religion, quite apart from the +revolutionary spirit of the teachings of Jesus himself. + +[Illustration: MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, +ON GOLD BACKGROUND] + +St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like +{224} Osiris, was a god who died to rise again and give men +immortality. And presently the spreading Christian community was +greatly torn by complicated theological disputes about the +relationship of this God Jesus to God the Father of Mankind. The +Arians taught that Jesus was divine, but distant from and inferior +to the Father. The Sabellians taught that Jesus was merely an +aspect of the Father, and that God was Jesus and Father at the +same time just as a man may be a father and an artificer at the +same time; and the Trinitarians taught a more subtle doctrine that +God was both one and three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For a +time it seemed that Arianism would prevail over its rivals, and +then after disputes, violence and wars, the Trinitarian formula +became the accepted formula of all Christendom. It may be found +in its completest expression in the Athanasian Creed. + +We offer no comment on these controversies here. They do not sway +history as the personal teaching of Jesus sways history. The +personal teaching of Jesus does seem to mark a new phase in the +moral and spiritual life of our race. Its insistence upon the +universal Fatherhood of God and the implicit brotherhood of all +men, its insistence upon the sacredness of every human personality +as a living temple of God, was to have the profoundest effect upon +all the subsequent social and political life of mankind. With +Christianity, with the spreading teachings of Jesus, a new respect +appears in the world for man as man. It may be true, as hostile +critics of Christianity have urged, that St.. Paul preached +obedience to slaves, but it is equally true that the whole spirit +of the teachings of Jesus preserved in the gospels was against the +subjugation of man by man. And still more distinctly was +Christianity opposed to such outrages upon human dignity as the +gladiatorial combats in the arena. + +Throughout the first two centuries after Christ, the Christian +religion spread throughout the Roman Empire, weaving together an +ever-growing multitude of converts into a new community of ideas +and will. The attitude of the emperors varied between hostility +and toleration. There were attempts to suppress this new faith in +both the second and third centuries; and finally in 303 and the +following years a great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. +The considerable accumulations of Church property were {225} +seized, all bibles and religious writings were confiscated and +destroyed, Christians were put out of the protection of the law +and many executed. The destruction of the books is particularly +notable. It shows how the power of the written word in holding +together {226} the new faith was appreciated by the authorities. +These "book religions," Christianity and Judaism, were religions +that educated. Their continued existence depended very largely on +people being able to read and understand their doctrinal ideas. +The older religions had made no such appeal to the personal +intelligence. In the ages of barbaric confusion that were now at +hand in western Europe it was the Christian church that was mainly +instrumental in preserving the tradition of learning. + +[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST] + +The persecution of Diocletian failed completely to suppress the +growing Christian community. In many provinces it was ineffective +because the bulk of the population and many of the officials were +Christian. In 317 an edict of toleration was issued by the +associated Emperor Galerius, and in 324 Constantine the Great, a +friend and on his deathbed a baptized convert to Christianity, +became sole ruler of the Roman world. He abandoned all divine +pretensions and put Christian symbols on the shields and banners +of his troops. + +In a few years Christianity was securely established as the +official religion of the empire. The competing religions +disappeared or were absorbed with extraordinary celerity, and in +300 Theodosius the Great caused the great statue of Jupiter +Serapis at Alexandria to be destroyed. From the outset of the +fifth century onward the only priests or temples in the Roman +Empire were Christian priests and temples. + + + + +{227} + +XXXIX + +THE BARBARIANS BREAK THE EMPIRE INTO EAST AND WEST + + +Throughout the third century the Roman Empire, decaying socially +and disintegrating morally, faced the barbarians. The emperors of +this period were fighting military autocrats, and the capital of +the empire shifted with the necessities of their military policy. +Now the imperial headquarters would be at Milan in north Italy, +now in what is now Serbia at Sirmium or Nish, now in Nicomedia in +Asia Minor. Rome halfway down Italy was too far from the centre +of interest to be a convenient imperial seat. It was a declining +city. Over most of the empire peace still prevailed and men went +about without arms. The armies continued to be the sole +repositories of power; the emperors, dependent on their legions, +became more and more autocratic to the rest of the empire and +their state more and more like that of the Persian and other +oriental monarchs. Diocletian assumed a royal diadem and oriental +robes. + +All along the imperial frontier, which ran roughly along the Rhine +and Danube, enemies were now pressing. The Franks and other +German tribes had come up to the Rhine. In north Hungary were the +Vandals; in what was once Dacia and is now Roumania, the Visigoths +or West Goths. Behind these in south Russia were the East Goths +or Ostrogoths, and beyond these again in the Volga region the +Alans. But now Mongolian peoples were forcing their way towards +Europe. The Huns were already exacting tribute from the Alans and +Ostrogoths and pushing them to the west. + +In Asia the Roman frontiers were crumpling back under the push of +a renascent Persia. This new Persia, the Persia of the Sassenid +kings, was to be a vigorous and on the whole a successful rival of +the Roman Empire in Asia for the next three centuries. + +A glance at the map of Europe will show the reader the peculiar +weakness of the empire. The river Danube comes down to within +{228} a couple of hundred miles of the Adriatic Sea in the region +of what is now Bosnia and Serbia. It makes a square re-entrant +angle there. The Romans never kept their sea communications in +good order, and this two hundred mile strip of land was their line +of communication between the western Latin-speaking part of the +empire and the eastern Greek-speaking portion. Against this +square angle of the Danube the barbarian pressure was greatest. +When they broke through there it was inevitable that the empire +should fall into two parts. + +[Map: The Empire and the Barbarians] + +A more vigorous empire might have thrust forward and reconquered +Dacia, but the Roman Empire lacked any such vigour. Constantine +the Great was certainly a monarch of great devotion and +intelligence. He beat back a raid of the Goths from just these +vital Balkan regions, but he had no force to carry the frontier +across the Danube. He was too pre-occupied with the internal +weaknesses of the empire. He brought the solidarity and moral +force of Christianity to revive the spirit of the declining +empire, and he decided to create a new permanent capital at +Byzantium upon the Hellespont. This new-made Byzantium, which was +re-christened Constantinople in his honour, was still building +when he died. Towards the end of his reign occurred a remarkable +transaction. The {229} Vandals, being pressed by the Goths, asked +to be received into the Roman Empire. They were assigned lands in +Pannonia, which is now that part of Hungary west of the Danube, +and their fighting men became nominally legionaries. But these +new legionaries remained under their own chiefs. Rome failed to +digest them. + +[Illustration: CONSTANTINE'S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE] + +Constantine died working to reorganize his great realm, and soon +the frontiers were ruptured again and the Visigoths came almost to +Constantinople. They defeated the Emperor Valens at Adrianople and +made a settlement in what is now Bulgaria, similar to the +settlement of the Vandals in Pannonia. Nominally they were +subjects of the emperor, practically they were conquerors. + +From 379 to 395 A.D. reigned the Emperor Theodosius the Great, and +while he reigned the empire was still formally intact. Over the +armies of Italy and Pannonia presided Stilicho, a Vandal, over the +armies in the Balkan peninsula, Alaric, a Goth. When Theodosius +died at the close of the fourth century he left {230} two sons. +Alaric supported one of these, Arcadius, in Constantinople, and +Stilicho the other, Honorius, in Italy. In other words Alaric and +Stilicho fought for the empire with the princes as puppets. In +the course of their struggle Alaric marched into Italy and after a +short siege took Rome (410 A.D.). + +The opening half of the fifth century saw the whole of the Roman +Empire in Europe the prey of robber armies of barbarians. It is +difficult to visualize the state of affairs in the world at that +time. Over France, Spain, Italy and the Balkan peninsula, the +great cities that had flourished under the early empire still +stood, impoverished, partly depopulated and falling into decay. +Life in them must have been shallow, mean and full of uncertainty. +Local officials asserted their authority and went on with their +work with such conscience as they had, no doubt in the name of a +now remote and inaccessible emperor. The churches went on, but +usually with illiterate priests. There was little reading and +much superstition and fear. But everywhere except where looters +had destroyed them, books and pictures and statuary and such-like +works of art were still to be found. + +The life of the countryside had also degenerated. Everywhere this +Roman world was much more weedy and untidy than it had been. In +some regions war and pestilence had brought the land down to the +level of a waste. Roads and forests were infested with robbers. +Into such regions the barbarians marched, with little or no +opposition, and set up their chiefs as rulers, often with Roman +official titles. If they were half civilized barbarians they +would give the conquered districts tolerable terms, they would +take possession of the towns, associate and intermarry, and +acquire (with an accent) the Latin speech; but the Jutes, the +Angles and Saxons who submerged the Roman province of Britain were +agriculturalists and had no use for towns, they seem to have swept +south Britain clear of the Romanized population and they replaced +the language by their own Teutonic dialects, which became at last +English. + +It is impossible in the space at our disposal to trace the +movements of all the various German and Slavonic tribes as they +went to and fro in the disorganized empire in search of plunder +and a pleasant home. But let the Vandals serve as an example. +They came into {232} history in east Germany. They settled as we +have told in Pannonia. Thence they moved somewhen about 425 A.D. +through the intervening provinces to Spain. There they found +Visigoths from South Russia and other German tribes setting up +dukes and kings. From Spain the Vandals under Genseric sailed for +North Africa (429), captured Carthage (439), and built a fleet. +They secured the mastery of the sea and captured and pillaged Rome +(455), which had recovered very imperfectly from her capture and +looting by Alaric half a century earlier. Then the Vandals made +themselves masters of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and most of the +other islands of the western Mediterranean. They made, in fact, a +sea empire very similar in its extent to the sea empire of +Carthage seven hundred odd years before. They were at the climax +of their power about 477. They were a mere handful of conquerors +holding all this country. In the next century almost all their +territory had been reconquered for the empire of Constantinople +during a transitory blaze of energy under Justinian I. + +==================================================================== + +{231} + +[Illustration: BASE OF THE "OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS," +CONSTANTINOPLE] + +==================================================================== + +The story of the Vandals is but one sample of a host of similar +adventures. But now there was coming into the European world the +least kindred and most redoubtable of all these devastators, the +Mongolian Huns or Tartars, a yellow people active and able, such +as the western world had never before encountered. + + + + +{233} + +XL + +THE HUNS AND THE END OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE + + +This appearance of a conquering Mongolian people in Europe may be +taken to mark a new stage in human history. Until the last +century or so before the Christian era, the Mongol and the Nordic +peoples had not been in close touch. Far away in the frozen lands +beyond the northern forests the Lapps, a Mongolian people, had +drifted westward as far as Lapland, but they played no part in the +main current of history. For thousands of years the western world +carried on the dramatic interplay of the Aryan, Semitic and +fundamental brunette peoples with very little interference (except +for an Ethiopian invasion of Egypt or so) either from the black +peoples to the south or from the Mongolian world in the far East. + +It is probable that there were two chief causes for the new +westward drift of the nomadic Mongolians. One was the +consolidation of the great empire of China, its extension +northward and the increase of its population during the prosperous +period of the Han dynasty. The other was some process of climatic +change; a lesser rainfall that abolished swamps and forests +perhaps, or a greater rainfall that extended grazing over desert +steppes, or even perhaps both these processes going on in +different regions but which anyhow facilitated a westward +migration. A third contributary cause was the economic +wretchedness, internal decay and falling population of the Roman +Empire. The rich men of the later Roman Republic, and then the +tax-gatherers of the military emperors had utterly consumed its +vitality. So we have the factors of thrust, means and +opportunity. There was pressure from the east, rot in the west +and an open road. + +The Hun had reached the eastern boundaries of European Russia by +the first century A.D., but it was not until the fourth and {234} +fifth centuries A.D. that these horsemen rose to predominance upon +the steppes. The fifth century was the Hun's century. The first +Huns to come into Italy were mercenary bands in the pay of +Stilicho the Vandal, the master of Honorius. Presently they were +in possession of Pannonia, the empty nest of the Vandals. + +By the second quarter of the fifth century a great war chief had +arisen among the Huns, Attila. We have only vague and tantalizing +glimpses of his power. He ruled not only over the Huns but over a +conglomerate of tributary Germanic tribes; his empire extended +from the Rhine cross the plains into Central Asia. He exchanged +ambassadors with China. His head camp was in the plain of Hungary +east of the Danube. There he was visited by an envoy from +Constantinople, Priscus, who has left us an account of his state. +The way of living of these Mongols was very like the way of living +of the primitive Aryans they had replaced. The common folk were +in huts and tents; the chiefs lived in great stockaded timber +halls. There were feasts and drinking and singing by the bards. +The Homeric heroes and even the Macedonian companions of Alexander +would probably have felt more at home in the camp-capital of +Attila than they would have done in the cultivated and decadent +court of Theodosius II, the son of Arcadius, who was then reigning +in Constantinople. + +For a time it seemed as though the nomads under the leadership +of the Huns and Attila would play the same part towards the +Graeco-Roman civilization of the Mediterranean countries that the +barbaric Greeks had played long ago to the AEgean civilization. It +looked like history repeating itself upon a larger stage. But the +Huns were much more wedded to the nomadic life than the early +Greeks, who were rather migratory cattle farmers than true nomads. +The Huns raided and plundered but did not settle. + +For some years Attila bullied Theodosius as he chose. His armies +devastated and looted right down to the walls of Constantinople, +Gibbon says that he totally destroyed no less than seventy cities +in the Balkan peninsula, and Theodosius bought him off by payments +of tribute and tried to get rid of him for good by sending secret +agents to assassinate him. In 451 Attila turned his attention to +the remains of the Latin-speaking half of the empire and invaded +{235} Gaul. Nearly every town in northern Gaul was sacked. +Franks, Visigoths and the imperial forces united against him and +he was defeated at Troyes in a vast dispersed battle in which a +multitude of men, variously estimated as between 150,000 and +300,000, were killed. This checked him in Gaul, but it did not +exhaust his enormous military resources. Next year he came into +Italy by way of Venetia, burnt Aquileia and Padua and looted +Milan. + +[Illustration: HEAD OF BARBARIAN CHIEF] + +Numbers of fugitives from these north Italian towns and +particularly from Padua fled to islands in the lagoons at the head +of the Adriatic and laid there the foundations of the city state +of Venice, which was to become one of the greatest or the trading +centres in the middle ages. + +In 453 Attila died suddenly after a great feast to celebrate his +marriage to a young woman, and at his death this plunder +confederation of his fell to pieces. The actual Huns disappear +from history, mixed into the surrounding more numerous +Aryan-speaking populations. {236} But these great Hun raids +practically consummated the end of the Latin Roman Empire. After +his death ten different emperors ruled in Rome in twenty years, +set up by Vandal and other mercenary troops. The Vandals from +Carthage took and sacked Rome in 455. Finally in 476 Odoacer, the +chief of the barbarian troops, suppressed a Pannonian who was +figuring as emperor under the impressive name of Romulus +Augustulus, and informed the Court of Constantinople that there +was no longer an emperor in the west. So ingloriously the Latin +Roman Empire came to an end. In 493 Theodoric the Goth became +King of Rome. + +All over western and central Europe now barbarian chiefs were +reigning as kings, dukes and the like, practically independent but +for the most part professing some sort of shadowy allegiance to +the emperor. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands of such +practically independent brigand rulers. In Gaul, Spain and Italy +and in Dacia the Latin speech still prevailed in locally distorted +forms, but in Britain and east of the Rhine languages of the +German group (or in Bohemia a Slavonic language, Czech) were the +common speech. The superior clergy and a small remnant of other +educated men read and wrote Latin. Everywhere life was insecure +and property was held by the strong arm. Castles multiplied and +roads fell into decay. The dawn of the sixth century was an age +of division and of intellectual darkness throughout the western +world. Had it not been for the monks and Christian missionaries +Latin learning might have perished altogether. + +Why had the Roman Empire grown and why had it so completely +decayed? It grew because at first the idea of citizenship held it +together. Throughout the days of the expanding republic, and even +into the days of the early empire there remained a great number of +men conscious of Roman citizenship, feeling it a privilege and an +obligation to be a Roman citizen, confident of their rights under +the Roman law and willing to make sacrifices in the name of Rome. +The prestige of Rome as of something just and great and +law-upholding spread far beyond the Roman boundaries. But even as +early as the Punic wars the sense of citizenship was being +undermined by the growth of wealth and slavery. Citizenship +spread indeed but not the idea of citizenship. + +{237} + +The Roman Empire was after all a very primitive organization; it +did not educate, did not explain itself to its increasing +multitudes of citizens, did not invite their co-operation in its +decisions. There was no network of schools to ensure a common +understanding, no distribution of news to sustain collective +activity. The adventurers who struggled for power from the days +of Marius and Sulla onward had no idea of creating and calling in +public opinion upon the imperial affairs. The spirit of +citizenship died of starvation and no one observed it die. All +empires, all states, all organizations of human society are, in +the ultimate, things of understanding and will. There remained no +will for the Roman Empire in the World and so it came to an end. + +But though the Latin-speaking Roman Empire died in the fifth +century, something else had been born within it that was to avail +itself enormously of its prestige and tradition, and that was the +Latin-speaking half of the Catholic Church. This lived while the +empire died because it appealed to the minds and wills of men, +because it had books and a great system of teachers and +missionaries to hold it together, things stronger than any law or +legions. Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. while the +empire was decaying, Christianity was spreading to a universal +dominion in Europe. It conquered its conquerors, the barbarians. +When Attila seemed disposed to march on Rome, the patriarch of +Rome intercepted him and did what no armies could do, turning him +back by sheer moral force. + +The Patriarch or Pope of Rome claimed to be the head of the entire +Christian church. Now that there were no more emperors, he began +to annex imperial titles and claims. He took the title of +_pontifex maximus_, head sacrificial priest of the Roman dominion, +the most ancient of all the titles that the emperors had enjoyed. + + + + +{238} + +XLI + +THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES + + +The Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much +more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the +disasters of the fifth century A.D., which saw a complete and +final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila +bullied the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to +the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The +Nubians came down the Nile and looted Upper Egypt, but Lower Egypt +and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia +Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians. + +The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the +West, saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. +Justinian I (527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and +energy, and he was married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of +quite equal capacity who had begun life as an actress. Justinian +reconquered North Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy from +the Goths. He even regained the south of Spain. He did not limit +his energies to naval and military enterprises. He founded a +university, built the great church of Sta. Sophia in +Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to +destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools +of philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken +continuity from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a +thousand years. + +From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the +steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two empires kept Asia +Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. +In the first century A.D., these lands were still at a high level +of civilization, wealthy and with an abundant population, but the +continual coming and going of armies, massacres, looting and war +taxation wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous +{239} cities remained upon a countryside of scattered peasants. +In this melancholy process of impoverishment and disorder lower +Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest of the world. +Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a dwindling trade +between the east and the west. + +Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these +warring and decaying empires. The last philosophers of Athens, +until their suppression, preserved the texts of the great +literature of the past with an infinite reverence and want of +understanding. But there remained no class of men in the world, +no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought, to +carry on the tradition of frank statement and enquiry embodied in +these writings. The social and political chaos accounts largely +for the disappearance of this class, but there was also another +reason why the human intelligence was sterile and feverish during +this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it was all age of +intolerance. Both empires were religious empires in a new way, in +a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the human mind. + +[Illustration: THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, +CONSTANTINOPLE] + +{240} + +[Illustration: THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA] + +Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires, +centring upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander +was treated as a divinity and the Caesars were gods in so much as +they had altars and temples devoted to them and the offering of +incense was made a test of loyalty to the Roman state. But these +older religions were essentially religions of act and fact. They +did not invade the mind. If a man offered his sacrifice and bowed +to the god, he was left not only to think but to say practically +whatever he liked about the affair. But the new sort of religions +that had come into the world, and particularly Christianity, +turned inward. These new faiths demanded not simply conformity +but understanding belief. Naturally fierce controversy ensued +upon the exact meaning of the things believed. These new +religions were creed religions. The world was confronted with a +new word, Orthodoxy, and with a stern resolve to keep not only +acts but speech {241} and private thought within the limits of a +set teaching. For to hold a wrong opinion, much more to convey it +to other people, was no longer regarded as an intellectual defect +but a moral fault that might condemn a soul to everlasting +destruction. + +[Illustration: THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS +COURT] + +Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third +century A.D., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the +Roman Empire in the fourth, turned to religious organizations for +help, because in these organizations they saw a new means of using +and controlling the wills of men. And already before the end of +the fourth century both empires were persecuting free talk and +religious innovation. In Persia Ardashir found the ancient +Persian religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) with its priests +and temples and a sacred fire that burnt upon its altars, ready +for his purpose as a state religion. Before the end of the third +century Zoroastrianism was persecuting Christianity, and in 277 +A.D. Mani, the founder of {243} a new faith, the Manichaeans, was +crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was +busy hunting out Christian heresies. Manichaean ideas infected +Christianity and had to be fought with the fiercest methods; in +return ideas from Christianity affected the purity of the +Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas became suspect. Science, which +demands before all things the free action of an untroubled mind, +suffered a complete eclipse throughout this phase of intolerance. + +==================================================================== + +{242} + +[Illustration: THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA] + +==================================================================== + +War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind +constituted Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it +was romantic; it had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium +and Persia were not fighting the barbarians from the north, they +wasted Asia Minor and Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. +Even in close alliance these two empires would have found it a +hard task to turn back the barbarians and recover their +prosperity. The Turks or Tartars first come into history as the +allies first of one power and then of another. In the sixth +century the two chief antagonists were Justinian and Chosroes I; +in the opening of the seventh the Emperor Heraclius was pitted +against Chosroes II (580). + +At first and until after Heraclius had become Emperor (610) +Chosroes II carried all before him. He took Antioch, Damascus and +Jerusalem and his armies reached Chalcedon, which is in Asia Minor +over against Constantinople. In 619 he conquered Egypt. Then +Heraclius pressed a counter attack home and routed a Persian army +at Nineveh (627), although at that time there were still Persian +troops at Chalcedon. In 628 Chosroes II was deposed and murdered +by his son, Kavadh, and an inconclusive peace was made between the +two exhausted empires. + +Byzantium and Persia had fought their last war. But few people as +yet dreamt of the storm that was even then gathering in the +deserts to put an end for ever to this aimless, chronic struggle. + +While Heraclius was restoring order in Syria a message reached +him. It had been brought in to the imperial outpost at Bostra +south of Damascus; it was in Arabic, an obscure Semitic desert +language, and it was read to the Emperor, if it reached him at +all, by an interpreter. It was from someone who called himself +"Muhammad the Prophet of God." It called upon the Emperor to +{244} acknowledge the One True God and to serve him. What the +Emperor said is not recorded. + +A similar message came to Kavadh at Ctesiphon. He was annoyed, +tore up the letter, and bade the messenger begone. + +This Muhammad, it appeared, was a Bedouin leader whose +headquarters were in the mean little desert town of Medina. He +was preaching a new religion of faith in the One True God. + +"Even so, O Lord!" he said; "rend thou his Kingdom from Kavadh." + + + + +{245} + +XLII + +THE DYNASTIES OF SUY AND TANG IN CHINA + + +Throughout the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, there +was a steady drift of Mongolian peoples westward. The Huns of +Attila were merely precursors of this advance, which led at last +to the establishment of Mongolian peoples in Finland, Esthonia, +Hungary and Bulgaria, where their descendants, speaking languages +akin to Turkish, survive to this day. The Mongolian nomads were, +in fact, playing a role towards the Aryanized civilizations of +Europe and Persia and India that the Aryans had played to the +AEgean and Semitic civilizations ten or fifteen centuries before. + +In Central Asia the Turkish peoples had taken root in what is now +Western Turkestan, and Persia already employed many Turkish +officials and Turkish mercenaries. The Parthians had gone out of +history, absorbed into the general population of Persia. There +were no more Aryan nomads in the history of Central Asia; +Mongolian people had replaced them. The Turks became masters of +Asia from China to the Caspian. + +The same great pestilence at the end of the second century A.D. +that had shattered the Roman Empire had overthrown the Han dynasty +in China. Then came a period of division and of Hunnish conquests +from which China arose refreshed, more rapidly and more completely +than Europe was destined to do. Before the end of the sixth +century China was reunited under the Suy dynasty, and this by the +time of Heraclius gave place to the Tang dynasty, whose reign +marks another great period of prosperity for China. + +Throughout the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries China was the +most secure and civilized country in the world. The Han dynasty +had extended her boundaries in the north; the Suy and Tang +dynasties now spread her civilization to the south, and China +{247} began to assume the proportions she has to-day. In Central +Asia indeed she reached much further, extending at last, through +tributary Turkish tribes, to Persia and the Caspian Sea. + +==================================================================== + +{246} + +[Illustration: CHINESE EARTHENWARE ART OF THE TANG +DYNASTY, 616-906] + +==================================================================== + +The new China that had arisen was a very different land from the +old China of the Hans. A new and more vigorous literary school +appeared, there was a great poetic revival; Buddhism had +revolutionized philosophical and religious thought. There were +great advances in artistic work, in technical skill and in all the +amenities of life. Tea was first used, paper manufactured and +wood-block printing began. Millions of people indeed were leading +orderly, graceful and kindly lives in China during these centuries +when the attenuated populations of Europe and Western Asia were +living either in hovels, small walled cities or grim robber +fortresses. While the mind of the west was black with theological +obsessions, the mind of China was open and tolerant and enquiring. + +One of the earliest monarchs of the Tang dynasty was Tai-tsung, +who began to reign in 627, the year of the victory of Heraclius at +Nineveh. He received an embassy from Heraclius, who was probably +seeking an ally in the rear of Persia. From Persia itself came a +party of Christian missionaries (635). They were allowed to +explain their creed to Tai-tsung and he examined a Chinese +translation of their Scriptures. He pronounced this strange +religion acceptable, and gave permission for the foundation of a +church and monastery. + +To this monarch also (in 628) came messengers from Muhammad. They +came to Canton on a trading ship. They had sailed the whole way +from Arabia along the Indian coasts. Unlike Heraclius and Kavadh, +Tai-Tsung gave these envoys a courteous hearing. He expressed his +interest in their theological ideas and assisted them to build a +mosque in Canton, a mosque which survives, it is said, to this +day, the oldest mosque in the world. + + + + +{248} + +XLIII + +MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM + + +A prophetic amateur of history surveying the world in the opening +of the seventh century might have concluded very reasonably that +it was only a question of a few centuries before the whole of +Europe and Asia fell under Mongolian domination. There were no +signs of order or union in Western Europe, and the Byzantine and +Persian Empires were manifestly bent upon a mutual destruction. +India also was divided and wasted. On the other hand China was a +steadily expanding empire which probably at that time exceeded all +Europe in population, and the Turkish people who were growing to +power in Central Asia were disposed to work in accord with China. +And such a prophecy would not have been an altogether vain one. A +time was to come in the thirteenth century when a Mongolian +overlord would rule from the Danube to the Pacific, and Turkish +dynasties were destined to reign over the entire Byzantine and +Persian Empires, over Egypt and most of India. + +Where our prophet would have been most likely to have erred would +have been in under-estimating the recuperative power of the Latin +end of Europe and in ignoring the latent forces of the Arabian +desert. Arabia would have seemed what it had been for times +immemorial, the refuge of small and bickering nomadic tribes. No +Semitic people had founded an empire now for more than a thousand +years. + +Then suddenly the Bedouin flared out for a brief century of +splendour. They spread their rule and language from Spain to the +boundaries of China. They gave the world a new culture. They +created a religion that is still to this day one of the most vital +forces in the world. + +{249} + +The man who fired this Arab flame appears first in history as the +young husband of the widow of a rich merchant of the town of +Mecca, named Muhammad. Until he was forty he did very little to +distinguish himself in the world. He seems to have taken +considerable interest in religious discussion. Mecca was a pagan +city at that time worshipping in particular a black stone, the +Kaaba, of great repute throughout all Arabia and a centre of +pilgrimages; but there were great numbers of Jews in the +country--indeed all the southern portion of Arabia professed the +Jewish faith--and there were Christian churches in Syria. + +About forty Muhammad began to develop prophetic characteristics +like those of the Hebrew prophets twelve hundred years before him. +He talked first to his wife of the One True God, and of the +rewards and punishments of virtue and wickedness. There can be no +doubt that his thoughts were very strongly influenced by Jewish +and Christian ideas. He gathered about him a small circle of +believers and presently began to preach in the town against the +prevalent idolatry. This made him extremely unpopular with his +fellow townsmen because the pilgrimages to the Kaaba were the +chief source of such prosperity as Mecca enjoyed. He became +bolder and more definite in his teaching, declaring himself to be +the last chosen prophet of God entrusted with a mission to perfect +religion. Abraham, he declared, and Jesus Christ were his +forerunners. He had been chosen to complete and perfect the +revelation of God's will. + +He produced verses which he said had been communicated to him by +an angel, and he had a strange vision in which he was taken up +through the Heavens to God and instructed in his mission. + +As his teaching increased in force the hostility of his fellow +townsmen increased also. At last a plot was made to kill him; but +he escaped with his faithful friend and disciple, Abu Bekr, to the +friendly town of Medina which adopted his doctrine. Hostilities +followed between Mecca and Medina which ended at last in a treaty. +Mecca was to adopt the worship of the One True God and accept +Muhammad as his prophet, but the adherents of the new _faith were +still to make the pilgrimage to Mecca_ just as they had done when +they were pagans. So Muhammad established the One True God in +{251} Mecca without injuring its pilgrim traffic. In 629 Muhammad +returned to Mecca as its master, a year after he had sent out +these envoys of his to Heraclius, Tai-tsung, Kavadh and all the +rulers of the earth. + +==================================================================== + +{250} + +[Illustration: AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT] + +[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND] + +===================================================================== + +Then for four years more until his death in 632, Muhammad spread +his power over the rest of Arabia. He married a number of wives +in his declining years, and his life on the whole was by modern +standards unedifying. He seems to have been a man compounded of +very considerable vanity, greed, cunning, self-deception and quite +sincere religious passion. He dictated a book of injunctions and +expositions, the Koran, which he declared was communicated to him +from God. Regarded as literature or philosophy the Koran is +certainly unworthy of its alleged Divine authorship. + +Yet when the manifest defects of Muhammad's life and writings have +been allowed for, there remains in Islam, this faith he imposed +upon the Arabs, much power and inspiration. One is its +uncompromising monotheism; its simple enthusiastic faith in the +rule and fatherhood of God and its freedom from theological +complications. Another is its complete detachment from the +sacrificial priest and the temple. It is an entirely prophetic +religion, proof against any possibility of relapse towards blood +sacrifices. In the Koran the limited {252} and ceremonial nature +of the pilgrimage to Mecca is stated beyond the possibility of +dispute, and every precaution was taken by Muhammad to prevent the +deification of himself after his death. And a third element of +strength lay in the insistence of Islam upon the perfect +brotherhood and equality before God of all believers, whatever +their colour, origin or status. + +These are the things that made Islam a power in human affairs. It +has been said that the true founder of the Empire of Islam was not +so much Muhammad as his friend and helper, Abu Bekr. If Muhammad, +with his shifty character, was the mind and imagination of +primitive Islam, Abu Bekr was its conscience and its will. +Whenever Muhammad wavered Abu Bekr sustained him. And when +Muhammad died, Abu Bekr became Caliph (= successor), and with that +faith that moves mountains, he set himself simply and sanely to +organize the subjugation of the whole world to Allah--with little +armies of 3,000 or 4,000 Arabs--according to those letters the +prophet had written from Medina in 628 to all the monarchs of the +world. + + + + +{253} + +XLIV + +THE GREAT DAYS OF THE ARABS + + +There follows the most amazing story of conquest in the whole +history of our race. The Byzantine army was smashed at the battle +of the Yarmuk (a tributary of the Jordan) in 634; and the Emperor +Heraclius, his energy sapped by dropsy and his resources exhausted +by the Persian war, saw his new conquests in Syria, Damascus, +Palmyra, Antioch, Jerusalem and the rest fall almost without +resistance to the Moslim. Large elements in the population went +over to Islam. Then the Moslim turned east. The Persians had +found an able general in Rustam; they had a great host with a +force of elephants; and for three days they fought the Arabs at +Kadessia (637) and broke at last in headlong rout. + +The conquest of all Persia followed, and the Moslem Empire pushed +far into Western Turkestan and eastward until it met the Chinese. +Egypt fell almost without resistance to the new conquerors, who +full of a fanatical belief in the sufficiency of the Koran, wiped +out the vestiges of the book-copying industry of the Alexandria +Library. The tide of conquest poured along the north coast of +Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar and Spain. Spain was invaded +in 710 and the Pyrenees Mountains were reached in 720. In 732 the +Arab advance had reached the centre of France, but here it was +stopped for good at the battle of Poitiers and thrust back as far +as the Pyrenees again. The conquest of Egypt had given the Moslim +a fleet, and for a time it looked as though they would take +Constantinople. They made repeated sea attacks between 672 and +718 but the great city held out against them. + +The Arabs had little political aptitude and no political +experience, and this great empire with its capital now at +Damascus, which stretched from Spain to China, was destined to +break up very speedily. From the very beginning doctrinal +differences undermined {254} its unity. But our interest here +lies not with the story of its political disintegration but with +its effect upon the human mind and upon the general destinies of +our race. The Arab intelligence had been flung across the world +even more swiftly and dramatically than had the Greek a thousand +years before. The intellectual stimulation of the whole world +west of China, the break-up of old ideas and development of new +ones, was enormous. + +[Map: The Growth of the Moslem Power in 25 Years] + +[Map: the Moslem Empire, 750 A.D.] + +{255} + +In Persia this fresh excited Arabic mind came into contact not +only with Manichaean, Zoroastrian and Christian doctrine, but with +the scientific Greek literature, preserved not only in Greek but +in Syrian translations. It found Greek learning in Egypt also. +Every-where, and particularly in Spain, it discovered an active +Jewish tradition of speculation and discussion. In Central Asia +it met Buddhism and the material achievements of Chinese +civilization. It learnt the manufacture of paper--which made +printed books possible--from the Chinese. And finally it came +into touch with Indian mathematics and philosophy. + +[Illustration: JERUSALEM, SHOWING THE MOSQUE OF OMAR] + +Very speedily the intolerant self-sufficiency of the early days of +faith, which made the Koran seem the only possible book, was +dropped. Learning sprang up everywhere in the footsteps of the +Arab conquerors. By the eighth century there was an educational +{256} organization throughout the whole "Arabized" world. In the +ninth learned men in the schools of Cordoba in Spain were +corresponding with learned men in Cairo, Bagdad, Bokhara and +Samarkand. The Jewish mind assimilated very readily with the +Arab, and for a time the two Semitic races worked together through +the medium of Arabic. Long after the political break-up and +enfeeblement of the Arabs, this intellectual community of the +Arab-speaking world endured. It was still producing very +considerable results in the thirteenth century. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF CAIRO MOSQUES] + +So it was that the systematic accumulation and criticism of facts +which was first begun by the Greeks was resumed in this +astonishing renascence of the Semitic world. The seed of +Aristotle and the museum of Alexandria that had lain so long +inactive and neglected now germinated and began to grow towards +fruition. Very great advances were made in mathematical, medical +and physical science. {257} The clumsy Roman numerals were ousted +by the Arabic figures we use to this day and the zero sign was +first employed. The very name _algebra_ is Arabic. So is the +word chemistry. The names of such stars as Algol, Aldebaran and +Bootes preserve the traces of Arab conquests in the sky. Their +philosophy was destined to reanimate the medieval philosophy of +France and Italy and the whole Christian world. + +The Arab experimental chemists were called alchemists, and they +were still sufficiently barbaric in spirit to keep their methods +and results secret as far as possible. They realized from the +very beginning what enormous advantages their possible discoveries +might give them, and what far-reaching consequences they might +have on human life. They came upon many metallurgical and +technical devices of the utmost value, alloys and dyes, +distilling, tinctures and essences, optical glass; but the two +chief ends they sought, they sought in vain. One was "the +philosopher's stone"--a means of changing the metallic elements +one into another and so getting a control of artificial gold, and +the other was the _elixir vitoe_, a stimulant that would revivify +age and prolong life indefinitely. The crabbed patient +experimenting of these Arab alchemists spread into the Christian +world. The fascination of their enquiries spread. Very gradually +the activities of these alchemists became more social and +co-operative. They found it profitable to exchange and compare +ideas. By insensible gradations the last of the alchemists became +the first of the experimental philosophers. + +The old alchemists sought the philosopher's stone which was to +transmute base metals to gold, and an elixir of immortality; they +found the methods of modern experimental science which promise in +the end to give man illimitable power over the world and over his +own destiny. + + + + +{258} + +XLV + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATIN CHRISTENDOM + + +It is worth while to note the extremely shrunken dimensions of the +share of the world remaining under Aryan control in the seventh +and eighth centuries. A thousand years before, the Aryan-speaking +races were triumphant over all the civilized world west of China. +Now the Mongol had thrust as far as Hungary, nothing of Asia +remained under Aryan rule except the Byzantine dominions in Asia +Minor, and all Africa was lost and nearly all Spain. The great +Hellenic world had shrunken to a few possessions round the nucleus +of the trading city of Constantinople, and the memory of the Roman +world was kept alive by the Latin of the western Christian +priests. In vivid contrast to this tale of retrogression, the +Semitic tradition had risen again from subjugation and obscurity +after a thousand years of darkness. + +Yet the vitality of the Nordic peoples was not exhausted. +Confined now to Central and North-Western Europe and terribly +muddled in their social and political ideas, they were +nevertheless building up gradually and steadily a new social order +and preparing unconsciously for the recovery of a power even more +extensive than that they had previously enjoyed. + +We have told how at the beginning of the sixth century there +remained no central government in Western Europe at all. That +world was divided up among numbers of local rulers holding their +own as they could. This was too insecure a state of affairs to +last; a system of co-operation and association grew up in this +disorder, the feudal system, which has left its traces upon +European life up to the present time. This feudal system was a +sort of crystallization of society about power. Everywhere the +lone man felt insecure and was prepared to barter a certain amount +of his liberty for help and protection. He sought a stronger man +as his lord and protector; {259} he gave him military services and +paid him dues, and in return he was confirmed in his possession of +what was his. His lord again found safety in vassalage to a still +greater lord. Cities also found it convenient to have feudal +protectors, and monasteries and church estates bound themselves by +similar ties. No doubt in many cases allegiance was claimed +before it was offered; the system grew downward as well as upward. +So a sort of pyramidal system grew up, varying widely in different +localities, permitting at first a considerable play of violence +and private warfare but making steadily for order and a new reign +of law. The pyramids grew up until some became recognizable as +kingdoms. Already by the early sixth century a Frankish kingdom +existed under its founder Clovis in what is now France and the +Netherlands, and presently Visigothic and Lombard and Gothic +kingdoms were in existence. + +The Moslim when they crossed the Pyrenees in 720 found this +Frankish kingdom under the practical rule of Charles Martel, the +Mayor of the Palace of a degenerate descendant of Clovis, and +experienced the decisive defeat of Poitiers (732) at his hands. +This Charles Martel was practically overlord of Europe north of +the Alps from the Pyrenees to Hungary. He ruled over a multitude +of subordinate lords speaking French-Latin, and High and Low +German languages. His son Pepin extinguished the last descendants +of Clovis and took the kingly state and title. His grandson +Charlemagne, who began to reign in 768, found himself lord of a +realm so large that he could think of reviving the title of Latin +Emperor. He conquered North Italy and made himself master of +Rome. + +Approaching the story of Europe as we do from the wider horizons +of a world history we can see much more distinctly than the mere +nationalist historian how cramping and disastrous this tradition +of the Latin Roman Empire was. A narrow intense struggle for this +phantom predominance was to consume European energy for more than +a thousand years. Through all that period it is possible to trace +certain unquenchable antagonisms; they run through the wits of +Europe like the obsessions of a demented mind. One driving force +was this ambition of successful rulers, which Charlemagne (Charles +the Great) embodied, to become Caesar. The realm of Charlemagne +consisted of a complex of feudal German states at {260} various +stages of barbarism. West of the Rhine, most of these German +peoples had learnt to speak various Latinized dialects which fused +at last to form French. East of the Rhine, the racially similar +German peoples did not lose their German speech. On account of +this, communication was difficult between these two groups of +barbarian conquerors and a split easily brought about. The split +was made the more easy by the fact that the Frankish usage made it +seem natural to divide the empire of Charlemagne among his sons at +his death. So one aspect of the history of Europe from the days +of Charlemagne onwards is a history of first this monarch and his +family and then that, struggling to a precarious headship of the +kings, princes, dukes, bishops and cities of Europe, while a +steadily deepening antagonism between the French and German +speaking elements develops in the medley. There was a formality +of election for each emperor; and the climax of his ambition was +to struggle to the possession of that worn-out, misplaced capital +Rome and to a coronation there. + +[Map: Area more or less under Frankish dominion in the time of +Charles Martel] + +{261} + +The next factor in the European political disorder was the resolve +of the Church at Rome to make no temporal prince but the Pope of +Rome himself emperor in effect. He was already pontifex maximus; +for all practical purposes he held the decaying city; if he had no +armies he had at least a vast propaganda organization in his +priests throughout the whole Latin world; if he had little power +over men's bodies he held the keys of heaven and hell in their +imaginations and could exercise much influence upon their souls. +So throughout the middle ages while one prince manoeuvred against +another first for equality, then for ascendancy, and at last for +the supreme prize, the Pope of Rome, sometimes boldly, sometimes +craftily, sometimes feebly--for the Popes were a succession of +oldish men and the average reign of a Pope was not more than two +years--manoeuvred for the submission of all the princes to himself +as the ultimate overlord of Christendom. + +But these antagonisms of prince against prince and of Emperor +against Pope do not by any means exhaust the factors of the +European confusion. There was still an Emperor in Constantinople +speaking Greek and claiming the allegiance of all Europe. When +Charlemagne sought to revive the empire, it was merely the Latin +end of the empire he revived. It was natural that a sense of +rivalry between Latin Empire and Greek Empire should develop very +readily. And still more readily did the rivalry of +Greek-speaking Christianity and the newer Latin-speaking version +develop. The Pope of Rome claimed to be the successor of St. +Peter, the chief of the apostles of Christ, and the head of the +Christian community everywhere. Neither the emperor nor the +patriarch in Constantinople were disposed to acknowledge this +claim. A dispute about a fine point in the doctrine of the Holy +Trinity consummated a long series of dissensions in a final +rupture in 1054. The Latin Church and the Greek Church became and +remained thereafter distinct and frankly antagonistic. This +antagonism must be added to the others in our estimate of the +conflicts that wasted Latin Christendom in the middle ages. + +Upon this divided world of Christendom rained the blows of three +sets of antagonists. About the Baltic and North Seas remained a +series of Nordic tribes who were only very slowly and reluctantly +{263} Christianized; these were the Northmen. They had taken to +the sea and piracy, and were raiding all the Christian coasts down +to Spain. They had pushed up the Russian rivers to the desolate +central lands and brought their shipping over into the +south-flowing rivers. They had come out upon the Caspian and Black +Seas as pirates also. They set up principalities in Russia; they +were the first people to be called Russians. These Northmen +Russians came near to taking Constantinople. England in the early +ninth century was a Christianized Low German country under a king, +Egbert, a protege and pupil of Charlemagne. The Northmen wrested +half the kingdom from his successor Alfred the Great (886), and +finally under Canute (1016) made themselves masters of the whole +land. Under Rolph the Ganger (912) another band of Northmen +conquered the north of France, which became Normandy. + +==================================================================== + +{262} + +[Illustration: STATUE OF CHARLEMAGNE IN FRONT OF NOTRE DAME, +PARIS] + +==================================================================== + +Canute ruled not only over England but over Norway and Denmark, +but his brief empire fell to pieces at his death through that +political weakness of the barbaric peoples--division among a +ruler's sons. It is interesting to speculate what might have +happened if this temporary union of the Northmen had endured. +They were a race of astonishing boldness and energy. They sailed +in their galleys even to Iceland and Greenland. They were the +first Europeans to land on American soil. Later on Norman +adventurers were to recover Sicily from the Saracens and sack +Rome. It is a fascinating thing to imagine what a great northern +sea-faring power might have grown out of Canute's kingdom, +reaching from America to Russia. + +To the east of the Germans and Latinized Europeans was a medley of +Slav tribes and Turkish peoples. Prominent among these were the +Magyars or Hungarians who were coming westward throughout the +eighth and ninth centuries. Charlemagne held them for a time, but +after his death they established themselves in what is now +Hungary; and after the fashion of their kindred predecessors, the +Huns, raided every summer into the settled parts of Europe. In +938 they went through Germany into France, crossed the Alps into +North Italy, and so came home, burning, robbing and destroying. + +Finally pounding away from the south at the vestiges of the {264} +Roman Empire were the Saracens. They had made themselves largely +masters of the sea; their only formidable adversaries upon the +water were the Northmen, the Russian Northmen out of the Black Sea +and the Northmen of the west. + +[Map: Europe at the death of Charlemagne--814] + +Hemmed in by these more vigorous and aggressive peoples, amidst +forces they did not understand and dangers they could not +estimate, Charlemagne and after him a series of other ambitious +spirits took up the futile drama of restoring the Western Empire +under the name of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of +Charlemagne onward this idea obsessed the political life of +Western Europe, while in the East the Greek half of the Roman +power decayed and dwindled until at last nothing remained of it at +all but the corrupt trading city of Constantinople and a few miles +of territory about it. Politically the continent of Europe +remained traditional and uncreative from the time of Charlemagne +onward for a thousand years. + +{265} + +The name of Charlemagne looms large in European history but his +personality is but indistinctly seen. He could not read nor +write, but he had a considerable respect for learning; he liked to +be read aloud to at meals and he had a weakness for theological +discussion. At his winter quarters at +Aix-la-Chapelle or Mayence he gathered about him a number of +learned men and picked up much from their conversation. In the +summer he made war, against the Spanish Saracens, against the +Slavs and Magyars, against the Saxons, and other still heathen +German tribes. It is doubtful whether the idea of becoming Caesar +in succession to Romulus Augustulus occurred to him before his +acquisition of North Italy, or whether it was suggested to him by +Pope Leo III, who was anxious to make the Latin Church independent +of Constantinople. + +There were the most extraordinary manoeuvres at Rome between the +Pope and the prospective emperor in order to make it appear or not +appear as if the Pope gave him the imperial crown. The Pope +succeeded in crowning his visitor and conqueror by surprise in St. +Peter's on Christmas Day 800 A.D. He produced a crown, put it on +the head of Charlemagne and hailed him Caesar and Augustus. There +was great applause among the people. Charlemagne was by no means +pleased at the way in which the thing was done, it rankled in his +mind as a defeat; and he left the most careful instructions to his +son that he was not to let the Pope crown him emperor; he was to +seize the crown into his own hands and put it on his own head +himself. So at the very outset of this imperial revival we see +beginning the age-long dispute of Pope and Emperor for priority. +But Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, disregarded his +father's instructions and was entirely submissive to the Pope. + +The empire of Charlemagne fell apart at the death of Louis the +Pious and the split between the French-speaking Franks and the +German-speaking Franks widened. The next emperor to arise was +Otto, the son of a certain Henry the Fowler, a Saxon, who had been +elected King of Germany by an assembly of German princes and +prelates in 919. Otto descended upon Rome and was crowned emperor +there in 962. This Saxon line came to an end early in the +eleventh century and gave place to other German rulers. The +feudal princes and nobles to the west who spoke various French +dialects {266} did not fall under the sway of these German +emperors after the Carlovingian line, the line that is descended +from Charlemagne, had come to an end, and no part of Britain ever +came into the Holy Roman Empire. The Duke of Normandy, the King +of France and a number of lesser feudal rulers remained outside. +In 987 the Kingdom of France passed out of the possession of the +Carlovingian line into the hands of Hugh Capet, whose descendants +were still reigning in the eighteenth century. At the time of +Hugh Capet the King of France ruled only a comparatively small +territory round Paris. + +In 1066 England was attacked almost simultaneously by an invasion +of the Norwegian Northmen under King Harold Hardrada and by the +Latinized Northmen under the Duke of Normandy. Harold King of +England defeated the former at the battle of Stamford Bridge, and +was defeated by the latter at Hastings. England was conquered by +the Normans, and so cut off from Scandinavian, Teutonic and +Russian affairs, and brought into the most intimate relations and +conflicts with the French. For the next four centuries the +English were entangled in the conflicts of the French feudal +princes and wasted upon the fields of France. + + + + +{267} + +XLVI + +THE CRUSADES AND THE AGE OF PAPAL DOMINION + + +It is interesting to note that Charlemagne corresponded with the +Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid, the Haroun-al-Raschid of the _Arabian +Nights_. It is recorded that Haroun-al-Raschid sent ambassadors +from Bagdad--which had now replaced Damascus as the Moslem +capital--with a splendid tent, a water clock, an elephant and the +keys of the Holy Sepulchre. This latter present was admirably +calculated to set the Byzantine Empire and this new Holy Roman +Empire by the ears as to which was the proper protector of the +Christians in Jerusalem. + +These presents remind us that while Europe in the ninth century +was still a weltering disorder of war and pillage, there +flourished a great Arab Empire in Egypt and Mesopotamia, far more +civilized than anything Europe could show. Here literature and +science still lived; the arts flourished, and the mind of man +could move without fear or superstition. And even in Spain and +North Africa where the Saracenic dominions were falling into +political confusion there was a vigorous intellectual life. +Aristotle was read and discussed by these Jews and Arabs during +these centuries of European darkness. They guarded the neglected +seeds of science and philosophy. + +North-east of the Caliph's dominions was a number of Turkish +tribes. They had been converted to Islam, and they held the faith +much more simply and fiercely than the actively intellectual Arabs +and Persians to the south. In the tenth century the Turks were +growing strong and vigorous while the Arab power was divided and +decaying. The relations of the Turks to the Empire of the +Caliphate became very similar to the relations of the Medes to the +last Babylonian Empire fourteen centuries before. In the eleventh +century a group of Turkish tribes, the Seljuk Turks, came down +into Mesopotamia and made the Caliph their nominal ruler but +really their {268} captive and tool. They conquered Armenia. +Then they struck at the remnants of the Byzantine power in Asia +Minor. In 1071 the Byzantine army was utterly smashed at the +battle of Melasgird, and the Turks swept forward until not a trace +of Byzantine rule remained in Asia. They took the fortress of +Nicaea over against Constantinople, and prepared to attempt that +city. + +The Byzantine emperor, Michael VII, was overcome with terror. He +was already heavily engaged in warfare with a band of Norman +adventurers who had seized Durazzo, and with a fierce Turkish +people, the Petschenegs, who were raiding over the Danube. In his +extremity he sought help where he could, and it is notable that he +did not appeal to the western emperor but to the Pope of Rome as +the head of Latin Christendom. He wrote to Pope Gregory VII, and +his successor Alexius Comnenus wrote still more urgently to Urban +II. + +[Illustration: CRUSADER TOMBS IN EXETER CATHEDRAL] + +This was not a quarter of a century from the rupture of the Latin +and Greek churches. That controversy was still vividly alive in +men's minds, and this disaster to Byzantium must have presented +itself to the Pope as a supreme opportunity for reasserting the +supremacy of the Latin Church over the dissentient Greeks. +Moreover this occasion gave the Pope a chance to deal with two +other matters that troubled western Christendom very greatly. One +was the custom of "private war" which disordered social life, and +the other was the superabundant fighting energy of the Low Germans +and Christianized Northmen and particularly of the Franks and +Normans. A religious war, the Crusade, the War of the Cross, was +{269} preached against the Turkish captors of Jerusalem, and a +truce to all warfare amongst Christians (1095). The declared +object of this war was the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the +unbelievers. A man called Peter the Hermit carried on a popular +propaganda throughout France and Germany on broadly democratic +lines. He went clad in a coarse garment, barefooted on an ass, he +carried a huge cross and harangued the crowd in street or +market-place or church. He denounced the cruelties practised upon +the Christian pilgrims by the Turks, and the shame of the Holy +Sepulchre being in any but Christian hands. The fruits of +centuries of Christian teaching became apparent in the response. +A great wave of enthusiasm swept the western world, and popular +Christendom discovered itself. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF CAIRO] + +Such a widespread uprising of the common people in relation to a +single idea as now occurred was a new thing in the history of our +race. There is nothing to parallel it in the previous history of +the {270} Roman Empire or of India or China. On a smaller scale, +however, there had been similar movements among the Jewish people +after their liberation from the Babylonian captivity, and later on +Islam was to display a parallel susceptibility to collective +feeling. Such movements were certainly connected with the new +spirit that had come into life with the development of the +missionary-teaching religions. The Hebrew prophets, Jesus and his +disciples, Mani, Muhammad, were all exhorters of men's individual +souls. They brought the personal conscience face to face with +God. Before that time religion had been much more a business of +fetish, of pseudoscience, than of conscience. The old kind of +religion turned upon temple, initiated priest and mystical +sacrifice, and ruled the common man like a slave by fear. The new +kind of religion made a man of him. + +The preaching of the First Crusade was the first stirring of the +common people in European history. It may be too much to call it +the birth of modern democracy, but certainly at that time modern +democracy stirred. Before very long we shall find it stirring +again, and raising the most disturbing social and religious +questions. + +Certainly this first stirring of democracy ended very pitifully +and lamentably. Considerable bodies of common people, crowds +rather than armies, set out eastward from France and the Rhineland +and Central Europe without waiting for leaders or proper equipment +to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. This was the "people's crusade." +Two great mobs blundered into Hungary, mistook the recently +converted Magyars for pagans, committed atrocities and were +massacred. A third multitude with a similarly confused mind, +after a great pogrom of the Jews in the Rhineland, marched +eastward, and was also destroyed in Hungary. Two other huge +crowds, under the leadership of Peter the Hermit himself, reached +Constantinople, crossed the Bosphorus, and were massacred rather +than defeated by the Seljuk Turks. So began and ended this first +movement of the European people, as people. + +Next year (1097) the real fighting forces crossed the Bosphorus. +Essentially they were Norman in leadership and spirit. They +stormed Nicaea, marched by much the same route as Alexander had +followed fourteen centuries before, to Antioch. The siege of +Antioch {271} kept them a year, and in June 1099 they invested +Jerusalem. It was stormed after a month's siege. The slaughter +was terrible. Men riding on horseback were splashed by the blood +in the streets. At nightfall on July 15th the Crusaders had +fought their way into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and +overcome all opposition there: blood-stained, weary and "sobbing +from excess of joy" they knelt down in prayer. + +[Illustration: THE HORSES OF S. MARK, VENICE] + +Immediately the hostility of Latin and Greek broke out again. The +Crusaders were the servants of the Latin Church, and the Greek +patriarch of Jerusalem found himself in a far worse case under the +triumphant Latins than under the Turks. The Crusaders discovered +themselves between Byzantine and Turk and fighting both. Much of +Asia Minor was recovered by the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin +princes were left, a buffer between Turk and Greek, with Jerusalem +and a few small principalities, of which Edessa was one of the +chief, in Syria. Their grip even on these possessions was +precarious, and in 1144 Edessa fell to the Moslim, leading to an +ineffective Second Crusade, which failed to recover Edessa but +saved Antioch from a similar fate. + +{272} + +In 1169 the forces of Islam were rallied under a Kurdish +adventurer named Saladin who had made himself master of Egypt. He +preached a Holy War against the Christians, recaptured Jerusalem +in 1187, and so provoked the Third Crusade. This failed to +recover Jerusalem. In the Fourth Crusade (1202-4) the Latin +Church turned frankly upon the Greek Empire, and there was not +even a pretence of fighting the Turks. It started from Venice and +in 1204 it stormed Constantinople. The great rising trading city +of Venice was the leader in this adventure, and most of the coasts +and islands of the Byzantine Empire were annexed by the Venetians. +A "Latin" emperor (Baldwin of Flanders) was set up in +Constantinople and the Latin and Greek Church were declared to be +reunited. The Latin emperors ruled in Constantinople from 1204 to +1261 when the Greek world shook itself free again from Roman +predominance. + +The twelfth century then and the opening of the thirteenth was the +age of papal ascendancy just as the eleventh was the age of the +ascendancy of the Seljuk Turks and the tenth the age of the +Northmen. A united Christendom under the rule of the Pope came +nearer to being a working reality than it ever was before or after +that time. + +In those centuries a simple Christian faith was real and +widespread over great areas of Europe. Rome itself had passed +through some dark and discreditable phases; few writers can be +found to excuse the lives of Popes John XI and John XII in the +tenth century; they were abominable creatures; but the heart and +body of Latin Christendom had remained earnest and simple; the +generality of the common priests and monks and nuns had lived +exemplary and faithful lives. Upon the wealth of confidence such +lives created rested the power of the church. Among the great +Popes of the past had been Gregory the Great, Gregory I (590-604) +and Leo III (795-816) who invited Charlemagne to be Caesar and +crowned him in spite of himself. Towards the close of the +eleventh century there arose a great clerical statesman, +Hildebrand, who ended his life as Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085). +Next but one after him came Urban II (1087-1099), the Pope of the +First Crusade. These two were the founders of this period of +papal greatness during which the Popes lorded it over the +Emperors. From Bulgaria to Ireland and {274} from Norway to +Sicily and Jerusalem the Pope was supreme. Gregory VII obliged +the Emperor Henry IV to come in penitence to him at Canossa and to +await forgiveness for three days and nights in the courtyard of +the castle, clad in sackcloth and barefooted to the snow. In 1176 +at Venice the Emperor Frederick (Frederick Barbarossa), knelt to +Pope Alexander III and swore fealty to him. + +==================================================================== + +{273} + +[Illustration: A COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA] + +==================================================================== + +The great power of the church in the beginning of the eleventh +century lay in the wills and consciences of men. It failed to +retain the moral prestige on which its power was based. In the +opening decades of the fourteenth century it was discovered that +the power of the Pope had evaporated. What was it that destroyed +the naive confidence of the common people of Christendom in the +church so that they would no longer rally to its appeal and serve +its purposes? + +The first trouble was certainly the accumulation of wealth by the +church. The church never died, and there was a frequent +disposition on the part of dying childless people to leave lands +to the church. Penitent sinners were exhorted to do so. +Accordingly in many European countries as much as a fourth of the +land became church property. The appetite for property grows with +what it feeds upon. Already in the thirteenth century it was +being said everywhere that the priests were not good men, that +they were always hunting for money and legacies. + +The kings and princes disliked this alienation of property very +greatly. In the place of feudal lords capable of military +support, they found their land supporting abbeys and monks and +nuns. And these lands were really under foreign dominion. Even +before the time of Pope Gregory VII there had been a struggle +between the princes and the papacy over the question of +"investitures," the question that is of who should appoint the +bishops. If that power rested with the Pope and not the King, +then the latter lost control not only of the consciences of his +subjects but of a considerable part of his dominions. For also +the clergy claimed exemption from taxation. They paid their taxes +to Rome. And not only that, but the church also claimed the right +to levy a tax of one-tenth upon the property of the layman in +addition to the taxes he paid his prince. + +{275} + +The history of nearly every country in Latin Christendom tells of +the same phase in the eleventh century, a phase of struggle +between monarch and Pope on the issue of investitures and +generally it tells of a victory for the Pope. He claimed to be +able to excommunicate the prince, to absolve his subjects from +their allegiance to him, to recognize a successor. He claimed to +be able to put a nation under an interdict, and then nearly all +priestly functions ceased except the sacraments of baptism, +confirmation and penance; the priests could neither hold the +ordinary services, marry people, nor bury the dead. With these +two weapons it was possible for the twelfth century Popes to curb +the most recalcitrant princes and overawe the most restive +peoples. These were enormous powers, and enormous powers are only +to be used on extraordinary occasions. The Popes used them at +last with a frequency that staled their effect. Within thirty +years at the end of the twelfth century we find Scotland, France +and England in turn under an interdict. And also the Popes could +not resist the temptation to preach crusades against offending +princes--until the crusading spirit was extinct. + +It is possible that if the Church of Rome had struggled simply +against the princes and had had a care to keep its hold upon the +general mind, it might have achieved a permanent dominion over all +Christendom. But the high claims of the Pope were reflected as +arrogance in the conduct of the clergy. Before the eleventh +century the Roman priests could marry; they had close ties with +the people among whom they lived; they were indeed a part of the +people. Gregory VII made them celibates; he cut the priests off +from too great an intimacy with the laymen in order to bind them +more closely to Rome, but indeed he opened a fissure between the +church and the commonalty. The church had its own law courts. +Cases involving not merely priests but monks, students, crusaders, +widows, orphans and the helpless were reserved for the clerical +courts, and so were all matters relating to wills, marriages and +oaths and all cases of sorcery, heresy and blasphemy. Whenever +the layman found himself in conflict with the priest he had to go +to a clerical court. The obligations of peace and war fell upon +his shoulders alone and left the priest free. It is no great +wonder that jealousy and hatred of the priests grew up in the +Christian world. + +{276} + +Never did Rome seem to realize that its power was in the +consciences of common men. It fought against religious +enthusiasm, which should have been its ally, and it forced +doctrinal orthodoxy upon honest doubt and aberrant opinion. When +the church interfered in matters of morality it had the common man +with it, but not when it interfered in matters of doctrine. When +in the south of France Waldo taught a return to the simplicity of +Jesus in faith and life, Innocent III preached a crusade against +the Waldenses, Waldo's followers, and permitted them to be +suppressed with fire, sword, rape and the most abominable +cruelties. When again St. Francis of Assisi +(1181-1226) taught the imitation of Christ and a life of poverty +and service, his followers, the Franciscans, were persecuted, +scourged, imprisoned and dispersed. In 1318 four of them were +burnt alive at Marseilles. On the other hand the fiercely +orthodox order of the Dominicans, founded by St. Dominic +(1170-1221) was strongly supported by Innocent III, who with its +assistance set up an organization, the Inquisition, for the +hunting of heresy and the affliction of free thought. + +So it was that the church by excessive claims, by unrighteous +privileges, and by an irrational intolerance destroyed that free +faith of the common man which was the final source of all its +power. The story of its decline tells of no adequate foemen from +without but continually of decay from within. + + + + +{277} + +XLVII + +RECALCITRANT PRINCES AND THE GREAT SCHISM + + +One very great weakness of the Roman Church in its struggle to +secure the headship of all Christendom was the manner in which the +Pope was chosen. + +If indeed the papacy was to achieve its manifest ambition and +establish one rule and one peace throughout Christendom, then it +was vitally necessary that it should have a strong, steady and +continuous direction. In those great days of its opportunity it +needed before all things that the Popes when they took office +should be able men in the prime of life, that each should have his +successor-designate with whom he could discuss the policy of the +church, and that the forms and processes of election should be +clear, definite, unalterable and unassailable. Unhappily none of +these things obtained. It was not even clear who could vote in +the election of a Pope, nor whether the Byzantine or Holy Roman +Emperor had a voice in the matter. That very great papal +statesman Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085) did much to +regularize the election. He confined the votes to the Roman +cardinals and he reduced the Emperor's share to a formula of +assent conceded to him by the church, but he made no provision for +a successor-designate and he left it possible for the disputes of +the cardinals to keep the See vacant, as in some cases it was kept +vacant, for a year or more. + +The consequences of this want of firm definition are to be seen in +the whole history of the papacy up to the sixteenth century. From +quite early times onward there were disputed elections and two or +more men each claiming to be Pope. The church would then be +subjected to the indignity of going to the Emperor or some other +outside arbiter to settle the dispute. And the career of everyone +of the great Popes ended in a note of interrogation. At his death +the church might be left headless and as ineffective as a +decapitated {279} body. Or he might be replaced by some old rival +eager only to discredit and undo his work. Or some enfeebled old +man tottering on the brink of the grave might succeed him. + +==================================================================== + +{278} + +[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL] + +==================================================================== + +It was inevitable that this peculiar weakness of the papal +organization should attract the interference of the various German +princes, the French King, and the Norman and French Kings who +ruled in England; that they should all try to influence the +elections, and have a Pope in their own interest established in +the Lateran Palace at Rome. And the more powerful and important +the Pope became in European affairs, the more urgent did these +interventions become. Under the circumstances it is no great +wonder that many of the Popes were weak and futile. The +astonishing thing is that many of them were able and courageous +men. + +One of the most vigorous and interesting of the Popes of this +great period was Innocent III (1198-1216) who was so fortunate as +to become Pope before he was thirty-eight. He and his successors +were pitted against an even more interesting personality, the +Emperor Frederick II; _Stupor mundi_ he was called, the Wonder of +the world. The struggle of this monarch against Rome is a turning +place in history. In the end Rome defeated him and destroyed his +dynasty, but he left the prestige of the church and Pope so badly +wounded that its wounds festered and led to its decay. + +Frederick was the son of the Emperor Henry VI and his mother was +the daughter of Roger I, the Norman King of Sicily. He inherited +this kingdom in 1198 when he was a child of four years. Innocent +III had been made his guardian. Sicily in those days had been but +recently conquered by the Normans; the Court was half oriental and +full of highly educated Arabs; and some of these were associated +in the education of the young king. No doubt they were at some +pains to make their point of view clear to him. He got a Moslem +view of Christianity as well as a Christian view of Islam, and the +unhappy result of this double system of instruction was a view, +exceptional in that age of faith, that all religions were +impostures. He talked freely on the subject; his heresies and +blasphemies are on record. + +As the young man grew up he found himself in conflict with his +guardian. Innocent III wanted altogether too much from his ward. +{280} When the opportunity came for Frederick to succeed as +Emperor, the Pope intervened with conditions. Frederick must +promise to put down heresy in Germany with a strong hand. Moreover +he must relinquish his crown in Sicily and South Italy, because +otherwise he would be too strong for the Pope. And the German +clergy were to be freed from all taxation. Frederick agreed but +with no intention of keeping his word. The Pope had already +induced the French King to make war upon his own subjects in +France, the cruel and bloody crusade against the Waldenses; he +wanted Frederick to do the same thing in Germany. But Frederick +being far more of a heretic than any of the simple pietists who +had incurred the Pope's animosity, lacked the crusading impulse. +And when Innocent urged him to crusade against the Moslim and +recover Jerusalem he was equally ready to promise and equally +slack in his performance. + +[Illustration: A TYPICAL CRUSADER: DON RODRIGO DE CARDENAS] + +Having secured the imperial crown Frederick II stayed in Sicily, +which he greatly preferred to Germany as a residence, and did +nothing to redeem any of his promises to Innocent III, who died +baffled in 1216. + +{281} + +Honorius III, who succeeded Innocent, could do no better with +Frederick, and Gregory IX (1227) came to the papal throne +evidently resolved to settle accounts with this young man at any +cost. He excommunicated him. Frederick II was denied all the +comforts of religion. In the half-Arab Court of Sicily this +produced singularly little discomfort. And also the Pope +addressed a public letter to the Emperor reciting his vices (which +were indisputable), his heresies, and his general misconduct. To +this Frederick replied in a document of diabolical ability. It +was addressed to all the princes of Europe, and it made the first +clear statement of the issue between the Pope and the princes. He +made a shattering attack upon the manifest ambition of the Pope to +become the absolute ruler of all Europe. He suggested a union of +princes against this usurpation. He directed the attention of +the princes specifically to the wealth of the church. + +Having fired off this deadly missile Frederick resolved to perform +his twelve-year-old promise and go upon a crusade. This was the +Sixth Crusade (1228). It was as a crusade, farcical. Frederick +II went to Egypt and met and discussed affairs with the Sultan. +These two gentlemen, both of sceptical opinions, exchanged +congenial views, made a commercial convention to their mutual +advantage, and agreed to transfer Jerusalem to Frederick. This +indeed was a new sort of crusade, a crusade by private treaty. +Here was no blood splashing the conqueror, no "weeping with excess +of joy." As this astonishing crusader was an excommunicated man, +he had to be content with a purely secular coronation as King of +Jerusalem, taking the crown from the altar with his own hand--for +all the clergy were bound to shun him. He then returned to Italy, +chased the papal armies which had invaded his dominions back to +their own territories, and obliged the Pope to grant him +absolution from his excommunication. So a prince might treat the +Pope in the thirteenth century, and there was now no storm of +popular indignation to avenge him. Those days were past. + +In 1239 Gregory IX resumed his struggle with Frederick, +excommunicated him for a second time, and renewed that warfare of +public abuse in which the papacy had already suffered severely. +The controversy was revived after Gregory IX was dead, when +Innocent IV {282} was Pope; and again a devastating letter, which +men were bound to remember, was written by Frederick against the +church. He denounced the pride and irreligion of the clergy, and +ascribed all the corruptions of the time to their pride and +wealth. He proposed to his fellow princes a general confiscation +of church property--for the good of the church. It was a +suggestion that never afterwards left the imagination of the +European princes. + +We will not go on to tell of his last years. The particular +events of his life are far less significant than its general +atmosphere. It is possible to piece together something of his +court life in Sicily. He was luxurious in his way of living, and +fond of beautiful things. He is described as licentious. But it +is clear that he was a man of very effectual curiosity and +inquiry. He gathered Jewish and Moslem as well as Christian +philosophers at his court, and he did much to irrigate the Italian +mind with Saracenic influences. Through him the Arabic numerals +and algebra were introduced to Christian students, and among other +philosophers at his court was Michael Scott, who translated +portions of Aristotle and the commentaries thereon of the great +Arab philosopher Averroes (of Cordoba). In 1224 Frederick founded +the University of Naples, and he enlarged and enriched the great +medical school at Salerno University. He also founded a +zoological garden. He left a book on hawking, which shows him to +have been an acute observer of the habits of birds, and he was one +of the first Italians to write Italian verse. Italian poetry was +indeed born at his court. He has been called by an able writer, +"the first of the moderns," and the phrase expresses aptly the +unprejudiced detachment of his intellectual side. + +A still more striking intimation of the decay of the living and +sustaining forces of the papacy appeared when presently the Popes +came into conflict with the growing power of the French King. +During the lifetime of the Emperor Frederick II, Germany fell into +disunion, and the French King began to play the role of guard, +supporter and rival to the Pope that had hitherto fallen to the +Hohenstaufen Emperors. A series of Popes pursued the policy of +supporting the French monarchs. French princes were established +in the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, with the support and approval +of Rome, and the French Kings saw before them the possibility of +{283} restoring and ruling the Empire of Charlemagne. When, +however, the German interregnum after the death of Frederick II, +the last of the Hohenstaufens, came to all end and Rudolf of +Habsburg was elected first Habsburg Emperor (1273), the policy of +Rome began to fluctuate between France and Germany, veering about +with the sympathies of each successive Pope. In the East in 1261 +the Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latin emperors, and +the founder of the new Greek dynasty, Michael Palaeologus, Michael +VIII, after some unreal tentatives of reconciliation with the +Pope, broke away from the Roman communion altogether, and with +that, and the fall of the Latin kingdoms in Asia, the eastward +ascendancy of the Popes came to an end. + +[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK +OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY] + +In 1294 Boniface VIII became Pope. He was an Italian, hostile to +the French, and full of a sense of the great traditions and +mission of Rome. For a time he carried things with a high hand. +In 1300 he held a jubilee, and a vast multitude of pilgrims +assembled in Rome. "So great was the influx of money into the +papal treasury, that two assistants were kept busy with the rakes +collecting the {284} offerings that were deposited at the tomb of +St. Peter." [5] But this festival was a delusive triumph. +Boniface came into conflict with the French King in 1302, and in +1303, as he was about to pronounce sentence of excommunication +against that monarch, he was surprised and arrested in his own +ancestral palace at Anagni, by Guillaume de Nogaret. This agent +from the French King forced an entrance into the palace, made his +way into the bedroom of the frightened Pope--he was lying in bed +with a cross in his hands--and heaped threats and insults upon +him. The Pope was liberated a day or so later by the townspeople, +and returned to Rome; but there he was seized upon and again made +prisoner by the Orsini family, and in a few weeks' time the +shocked and disillusioned old man died a prisoner in their hands. + +[Illustration: COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK +OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY] + +The people of Anagni did resent the first outrage, and rose +against Nogaret to liberate Boniface, but then Anagni was the +Pope's native town. The important point to note is that the +French King {285} in this rough treatment of the head of +Christendom was acting with the full approval of his people; he +had summoned a council of the Three Estates of France (lords, +church and commons) and gained their consent before proceeding to +extremities. Neither in Italy, Germany nor England was there the +slightest general manifestation of disapproval at this free +handling of the sovereign pontiff. The idea of Christendom had +decayed until its power over the minds of men had gone. + +Throughout the fourteenth century the papacy did nothing to +recover its moral sway. The next Pope elected, Clement V, was a +Frenchman, the choice of King Philip of France. He never came to +Rome. He set up his court in the town of Avignon, which then +belonged not to France but to the papal See, though embedded in +French territory, and there his successors remained until 1377, +when Pope Gregory XI returned to the Vatican palace in Rome. But +Gregory XI did not take the sympathies of the whole church with +him. Many of the cardinals were of French origin and their habits +and associations were rooted deep at Avignon. When in 1378 +Gregory XI died, and an Italian, Urban VI, was elected, these +dissentient cardinals declared the election invalid, and elected +another Pope, the anti-Pope, Clement VII. This split is called +the Great Schism. The Popes remained in Rome, and all the +anti-French powers, the Emperor, the King of England, Hungary, +Poland and the North of Europe were loyal to them. The +anti-Popes, on the other hand, continued in Avignon, and were +supported by the King of France, his ally the King of Scotland, +Spain, Portugal and various German princes. Each Pope +excommunicated and cursed the adherents of his rival (1378-1417). + +Is it any wonder that presently all over Europe people began to +think for themselves in matters of religion? + +The beginnings of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, which we +have noted in the preceding chapters, were but two among many of +the new forces that were arising in Christendom, either to hold or +shatter the church as its own wisdom might decide. +Those two orders the church did assimilate and use, though with a +little violence in the case of the former. But other forces were +more frankly disobedient and critical. A century and a half later +{286} came Wycliffe (1320-1384). He was a learned Doctor at +Oxford. Quite late in his life he began a series of outspoken +criticisms of the corruption of the clergy and the unwisdom of the +church. He organized a number of poor priests, the Wycliffites, +to spread his ideas throughout England; and in order that people +should judge between the church and himself, he translated the +Bible into English. He was a more learned and far abler man than +either St. Francis or St. Dominic. He had supporters in high +places and a great following among the people; and though Rome +raged against him, and ordered his imprisonment, he died a free +man. But the black and ancient spirit that was leading the +Catholic Church to its destruction would not let his bones rest in +the grave. By a decree of the Council of Constance in 1415, his +remains were ordered to be dug up and burnt, an order which was +carried out at the command of Pope Martin V by Bishop Fleming in +1428. This desecration was not the act of some isolated fanatic; +it was the official act of the church. + +[5] J. H. Robinson. + + + + +{287} + +XLVIII + +THE MONGOL CONQUESTS + + +But in the thirteenth century, while this strange and finally +ineffectual struggle to unify Christendom under the rule of the +Pope was going on in Europe, far more momentous events were afoot +upon the larger stage of Asia. A Turkish people from the country +to the north of China rose suddenly to prominence in the world's +affairs, and achieved such a series of conquests as has no +parallel in history. These were the Mongols. At the opening of +the thirteenth century they were a horde of nomadic horsemen, +living very much as their predecessors, the Huns, had done, +subsisting chiefly upon meat and mare's milk and living in tents +of skin. They had shaken themselves free from Chinese dominion, +and brought a number of other Turkish tribes into a military +confederacy. Their central camp was at Karakorum in Mongolia. + +At this time China was in a state of division. The great dynasty +of Tang had passed into decay by the tenth century, and after a +phase of division into warring states, three main empires, that of +Kin in the north with Pekin as its capital and that of Sung in the +south with a capital at Nankin, and Hsia in the centre, remain. +In 1214 Jengis Khan, the leader of the Mongol confederates, made +war on the Kin Empire and captured Pekin (1214). He then turned +westward and conquered Western Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, India +down to Lahore, and South Russia as far as Kieff. He died master +of a vast empire that reached from the Pacific to the Dnieper. + +His successor, Ogdai Khan, continued this astonishing career of +conquest. His armies were organized to a very high level of +efficiency; and they had with them a new Chinese invention, +gunpowder, which they used in small field guns. He completed the +conquest of the Kin Empire and then swept his hosts right across +Asia to Russia (1235), an altogether amazing march. Kieff was +{288} destroyed in 1240, and nearly all Russia became tributary to +the Mongols. Poland was ravaged, and a mixed army of Poles and +Germans was annihilated at the battle of Liegnitz in Lower Silesia +in 1241. The Emperor Frederick II does not seem to have made any +great efforts to stay the advancing tide. + +[Map: The Empire of Jengis Khan at his death (1227)] + +"It is only recently," says Bury in his notes to Gibbon's _Decline +and Fall of the Roman Empire_, "that European history has begun to +understand that the successes of the Mongol army which overran +Poland and occupied Hungary in the spring of A.D. 1241 were won by +consummate strategy and were not due to a mere overwhelming +superiority of numbers. But this fact has not yet become a matter +of common knowledge; the vulgar opinion which represents the +Tartars as a wild horde carrying all before them solely by their +multitude, and galloping through Eastern Europe without a +strategic plan, rushing at all obstacles and overcoming them by +mere weight, still prevails. . . . + +"It was wonderful how punctually and effectually the arrangements +were carried out in operations extending from the Lower Vistula to +Transylvania. Such a campaign was quite beyond the {289} power of +any European army of the time, and it was beyond the vision of any +European commander. There was no general in Europe, from +Frederick II downward, who was not a tyro in strategy compared to +Subutai. It should also be noticed that the Mongols embarked upon +the enterprise with full knowledge of the political situation of +Hungary and the condition of Poland--they had taken care to inform +themselves by a well-organized system of spies; on the other hand, +the Hungarians and the Christian powers, like childish barbarians, +knew hardly anything about their enemies." + +[Map: The Ottoman Empire before 1453] + +But though the Mongols were victorious at Liegnitz, they did not +continue their drive westward. They were getting into woodlands +and hilly country, which did not suit their tactics; and so they +turned southward and prepared to settle in Hungary, massacring or +assimilating the kindred Magyar, even as these had previously +massacred and assimilated the mixed Scythians and Avars and Huns +before them. From the Hungarian plain they would probably have +made raids west and south as the Hungarians had done in the ninth +century, the Avars in the seventh and eighth and the Huns in the +fifth. But Ogdai died suddenly, and in 1242 there was trouble +{290} about the succession, and recalled by this, the undefeated +hosts of Mongols began to pour back across Hungary and Roumania +towards the east. + +Thereafter the Mongols concentrated their attention upon their +Asiatic conquests. By the middle of the thirteenth century they +had conquered the Sung Empire. Mangu Khan succeeded Ogdai Khan as +Great Khan in 1251, and made his brother Kublai Khan governor of +China. In 1280 Kublai Khan had been formally recognized Emperor +of China, and so founded the Yuan dynasty which lasted until 1368. +While the last ruins of the Sung rule were going down in China, +another brother of Mangu, Hulagu, was conquering Persia and Syria. +The Mongols displayed a bitter animosity to Islam at this time, +and not only massacred the population of Bagdad when they captured +that city, but set to work to destroy the immemorial irrigation +system which had kept Mesopotamia incessantly prosperous and +populous from the early days of Sumeria. From that time until our +own Mesopotamia has been a desert of ruins, sustaining only a +scanty population. Into Egypt the Mongols never penetrated; the +Sultan of Egypt completely defeated an army of Hulagu's in +Palestine in 1260. + +After that disaster the tide of Mongol victory ebbed. The +dominions of the Great Khan fell into a number of separate states. +The eastern Mongols became Buddhists, like the Chinese; the +western became Moslim. The Chinese threw off the rule of the Yuan +dynasty in 1368, and set up the native Ming dynasty which +flourished from 1368 to 1644. The Russians remained tributary to +the Tartar hordes upon the south-east steppes until 1480, when the +Grand Duke of Moscow repudiated his allegiance and laid the +foundation of modern Russia. + +In the fourteenth century there was a brief revival of Mongol +vigour under Timurlane, a descendant of Jengis Khan. He +established himself in Western Turkestan, assumed the title of +Grand Khan in 1369, and conquered from Syria to Delhi. He was the +most savage and destructive of all the Mongol conquerors. He +established an empire of desolation that did not survive his +death. In 1505, however, a descendant of this Timur, an +adventurer named Baber, got together an army with guns and swept +down upon the {292} plains of India. His grandson Akbar +(1556-1605) completed his conquests, and this Mongol (or "Mogul" +as the Arabs called it) dynasty ruled in Delhi over the greater +part of India until the eighteenth century. + +===================================================================== + +{291} + +[Illustration: TARTAR HORSEMEN] + +==================================================================== + +[Map: The Ottoman Empire at the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, +1566 A.D.] + +One of the consequences of the first great sweep of Mongol +conquest in the thirteenth century was to drive a certain tribe of +Turks, the Ottoman Turks, out of Turkestan into Asia Minor. They +extended and consolidated their power in Asia Minor, crossed the +Dardanelles and conquered Macedonia, Serbia and Bulgaria, until at +last Constantinople remained like an island amongst the Ottoman +dominions. In 1453 the Ottoman Sultan, Muhammad II, took +Constantinople, attacking it from the European side with a great +number of guns. This event caused intense excitement in Europe +and there was talk of a crusade, but the day of the crusades was +past. + +In the course of the sixteenth century the Ottoman Sultans +conquered Bagdad, Hungary, Egypt and most of North Africa, and +their fleet made them masters of the Mediterranean. They very +nearly took Vienna, and they exacted it tribute from the Emperor. +There were but two items to offset the general ebb of Christian +{293} dominion in the fifteenth century. One was the restoration +of the independence of Moscow (1480); the other was the gradual +reconquest of Spain by the Christians. In 1492, Granada, the last +Moslem state in the peninsula, fell to King Ferdinand of Aragon +and his Queen Isabella of Castile. + +But it was not until as late as 1571 that the naval battle of +Lepanto broke the prick of the Ottomans, and restored the +Mediterranean waters to Christian ascendancy. + + + + +{294} + +XLIX + +THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS + + +Throughout the twelfth century there were many signs that the +European intelligence was recovering courage and leisure, and +preparing to take up again the intellectual enterprises of the +first Greek scientific enquiries and such speculations as those of +the Italian Lucretius. The causes of this revival were many and +complex. The suppression of private war, the higher standards of +comfort and security that followed the crusades, and the +stimulation of men's minds by the experiences of these expeditions +were no doubt necessary preliminary conditions. Trade was +reviving; cities were recovering ease and safety; the standard of +education was arising in the church and spreading among laymen. +The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a period of growing, +independent or quasi-independent cities; Venice, Florence, Genoa, +Lisbon, Paris, Bruges, London, Antwerp, Hamburg, Nuremberg, +Novgorod, Wisby and Bergen for example. They were all trading +cities with many travellers, and where men trade and travel they +talk and think. The polemics of the Popes and princes, the +conspicuous savagery and wickedness of the persecution of +heretics, were exciting men to doubt the authority of the church +and question and discuss fundamental things. + +We have seen how the Arabs were the means of restoring Aristotle +to Europe, and how such a prince as Frederick II acted as a +channel through which Arabic philosophy and science played upon +the renascent European mind. Still more influential in the +stirring up of men's ideas were the Jews. Their very existence +was a note of interrogation to the claims of the church. And +finally the secret, fascinating enquiries of the alchemists were +spreading far and wide and setting men to the petty, furtive and +yet fruitful resumption of experimental science. + +{295} + +And the stir in men's minds was by no means confined now to the +independent and well educated. The mind of the common man was +awake in the world as it had never been before in all the +experience of mankind. In spite of priest and persecution, +Christianity does seem to have carried a mental ferment wherever +its teaching reached. It established a direct relation between +the conscience of the individual man and the God of Righteousness, +so that now if need arose he had the courage to form his own +judgment upon prince or prelate or creed. + +As early as the eleventh century philosophical discussion had +begun again in Europe, and there were great and growing +universities at Paris, Oxford, Bologna and other centres. There +medieval "schoolmen" took up again and thrashed out a series of +questions upon the value and meaning of words that were a +necessary preliminary to clear thinking in the scientific age that +was to follow. And standing by himself because of his distinctive +genius was Roger Bacon (circa 1210 to circa 1293), a Franciscan of +Oxford, the father of modern experimental science. His name +deserves a prominence in our history second only to that of +Aristotle. + +His writings are one long tirade against ignorance. He told his +age it was ignorant, an incredibly bold thing to do. Nowadays a +man may tell the world it is as silly as it is solemn, that all +its methods are still infantile and clumsy and its dogmas childish +assumptions, without much physical danger; but these peoples of +the middle ages when they were not actually being massacred or +starving or dying of pestilence, were passionately convinced of +the wisdom, the completeness and finality of their beliefs, and +disposed to resent any reflections upon them very bitterly. Roger +Bacon's writings were like a flash of light in a profound +darkness. He combined his attack upon the ignorance of his times +with a wealth of suggestion for the increase of knowledge. In his +passionate insistence upon the need of experiment and of +collecting knowledge, the spirit of Aristotle lives again in him. +"Experiment, experiment," that is the burthen of Roger Bacon. + +Yet of Aristotle himself Roger Bacon fell foul. He fell foul of +him because men, instead of facing facts boldly, sat in rooms and +pored over the bad Latin translations which were then all that was +{296} available of the master. "If I had my way," he wrote, in +his intemperate fashion, "I should burn all the books of +Aristotle, for the study of them can only lead to a loss of time, +produce error, and increase ignorance," a sentiment that Aristotle +would probably have echoed could he have returned to a world in +which his works were not so much read as worshipped--and that, as +Roger Bacon showed, in these most abominable translations. + +[Illustration: AN EARLY PRINTING PRESS] + +{297} + +Throughout his books, a little disguised by the necessity of +seeming to square it all with orthodoxy for fear of the prison and +worse, Roger Bacon shouted to mankind, "Cease to be ruled by +dogmas and authorities; _look at the world!_" Four chief sources +of ignorance he denounced; respect for authority, custom, the +sense of the ignorant crowd, and the vain, proud unteachableness +of our dispositions. Overcome but these, and a world of power +would open to men:-- + +"Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, so that +great ships suited to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be +borne with greater speed than if they were full of men. Likewise +cars may be made so that without a draught animal they may be +moved _cum impetu inoestimable_, as we deem the scythed chariots +to have been from which antiquity fought. And flying machines are +possible, so that a man may sit in the middle turning some device +by which artificial wings may beat the air in the manner of a +flying bird." + +So Roger Bacon wrote, but three more centuries were to elapse +before men began any systematic attempts to explore the hidden +stores of power and interest he realized so clearly existed +beneath the dull surface of human affairs. + +But the Saracenic world not only gave Christendom the stimulus of +its philosophers and alchemists; it also gave it paper. It is +scarcely too much to say that paper made the intellectual revival +of Europe possible. Paper originated in China, where its use +probably goes back to the second century B.C. In 751 the Chinese +made an attack upon the Arab Moslems in Samarkand; they were +repulsed, and among the prisoners taken from them were some +skilled papermakers, from whom the art was learnt. Arabic paper +manuscripts from the ninth century onward still exist. The +manufacture entered Christendom either through Greece or by the +capture of Moorish paper-mills during the Christian reconquest of +Spain. But under the Christian Spanish the product deteriorated +sadly. Good paper was not made in Christian Europe until the end +of the thirteenth century, and then it was Italy which led the +world. Only by the fourteenth century did the manufacture reach +Germany, and not until the end of that century was it abundant and +{298} cheap enough for the printing of books to be a practicable +business proposition. Thereupon printing followed naturally and +necessarily, for printing is the most obvious of inventions, and +the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far more +vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind to +mind; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and presently +scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated. + +One immediate result of this achievement of printing was the +appearance of an abundance of Bibles in the world. Another was a +cheapening of school-books. The knowledge of reading spread +swiftly. There was not only a great increase of books in the +world, but the books that were now made were plainer to read and +so easier to understand. Instead of toiling at a crabbed text +arid then thinking over its significance, readers now could think +unimpeded as they read. With this increase in the facility of +reading, the reading public grew. The book ceased to be a highly +decorated toy or a scholar's mystery. People began to write books +to be read as well as looked at by ordinary people. They wrote in +the ordinary language and not in Latin. With the fourteenth +century the real history of the European literature begins. + +So far we have been dealing only with the Saracenic share in the +European revival. Let us turn now to the influence of the Mongol +conquests. They stimulated the geographical imagination of Europe +enormously. For a time under the Great Khan, all Asia and Western +Europe enjoyed an open intercourse; all the roads were temporarily +open, and representatives of every nation appeared at the court of +Karakorum. The barriers between Europe and Asia set up by the +religious feud of Christianity and Islam were lowered. Great +hopes were entertained by the papacy for the conversion of the +Mongols to Christianity. Their only religion so far had been +Shumanism, a primitive paganism. Envoys of the Pope, Buddhist +priests from India, Parisian and Italian and Chinese artificers, +Byzantine and Armenian merchants, mingled with Arab officials and +Persian and Indian astronomers and mathematicians at the Mongol +court. We hear too much in history of the campaigns and massacres +of the Mongols, and not enough of their curiosity and desire for +learning. Not perhaps as an originative people, but as +transmitters {299} of knowledge and method their influence upon +the world's history has been very great. And everything one can +learn of the vague and romantic personalities of Jengis or Kublai +tends to confirm the impression that these men were at least as +understanding and creative monarchs as either that flamboyant but +egotistical figure Alexander the Great or that raiser of political +ghosts, that energetic but illiterate theologian Charlemagne. + +[Illustration: ANCIENT BRONZE FIGURE FROM BENIN, W. AFRICA] + +One of the most interesting of these visitors to the Mongol Court +was a certain Venetian, Marco Polo, who afterwards set down his +story in a book. He went to China about 1272 with his father and +uncle, who had already once made the journey. The Great Khan had +been deeply impressed by the elder Polos; they were the first men +of the "Latin" peoples he had seen; and he sent them back with +enquiries for teachers and learned men who could explain +Christianity to him, and for various other European things that +had aroused his curiosity. Their visit with Marco was their +second visit. + +The three Polos started by way of Palestine and not by the Crimea, +as in their previous expedition. They had with them a gold tablet +and other indications from the Great Khan that must have greatly +facilitated their journey. The Great Khan had asked for some oil +from the lamp that burns in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and +so thither they first went, and then by way of Cilicia into +Armenia. They went thus far north because the Sultan of Egypt was +raiding the Mongol domains at this time. Thence they came by way +of Mesopotamia to Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, as if they +contemplated a sea voyage. At Ormuz they met merchants from +India. For some reason they did not take ship, but instead turned +northward through the Persian deserts, and so by way of Balkh over +{300} the Pamir to Kashgar, and by way of Kotan and the Lob Nor +into the Hwang-ho valley and on to Pekin. At Pekin was the Great +Khan, and they were hospitably entertained. + +[Illustration: ANOTHER ANCIENT NEGRO BRONZE OF A EUROPEAN] + +Marco particularly pleased Kublai; he was young and clever, and it +is clear he had mastered the Tartar language very thoroughly. He +was given an official position and sent on several missions, +chiefly in south-west China. The tale he had to tell of vast +stretches of smiling and prosperous country, "all the way +excellent hostelries for travellers," and "fine vineyards, fields, +and gardens," of "many abbeys" of Buddhist monks, of manufactures +of "cloth of silk and gold and many fine taffetas," a "constant +succession of cities and boroughs," and so on, first roused the +incredulity and then fired the imagination of all Europe. He told +of Burmah, and of its great armies with hundreds of elephants, and +how these animals were defeated by the Mongol bowmen, and also of +the Mongol conquest of Pegu. He told of Japan, and greatly +exaggerated the amount of gold in that country. For three years +Marco ruled the city of Yang-chow as governor, and he probably +impressed the Chinese inhabitants as being little more of a +foreigner than any Tartar would have been. He may also have been +sent on a mission to India. Chinese records mention a certain +Polo attached to the imperial council in 1277, a very valuable +confirmation of the general truth of the Polo story. + +The publication of Marco Polo's travels produced a profound effect +upon the European imagination. The European literature, and +especially the European romance of the fifteenth century, echoes +with the names in Marco Polo's story, with Cathay (North China) +and Cambulac (Pekin) and the like. + +[Illustration: EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP] + +Two centuries later, among the readers of the Travels of Marco +Polo was a certain Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, who +{301} conceived the brilliant idea of sailing westward round the +world to China. In Seville there is a copy of the Travels with +marginal notes by Columbus. There were many reasons why the +thought of a Genoese should be turned in this direction. Until +its capture by the Turks in 1453 Constantinople had been an +impartial trading mart between the Western world and the East, and +the Genoese had traded there freely. But the "Latin" Venetians, +the bitter rivals of the Genoese, had been the allies and helpers +of the Turks against the Greeks, and with the coming of the Turks +Constantinople turned an {302} unfriendly face upon Genoese trade. +The long forgotten discovery that the world was round had +gradually resumed its sway over men's minds. The idea of going +westward to China was therefore a fairly obvious one. It was +encouraged by two things. The mariner's compass had now been +invented and men were no longer left to the mercy of a fine night +and the stars to determine the direction in which they were +sailing, and the Normans, Catalonians and Genoese and Portuguese +had already pushed out into the Atlantic as far as the Canary +Isles, Madeira and the Azores. + +Yet Columbus found many difficulties before he could get ships to +put his idea to the test. He went from one European Court to +another. Finally at Granada, just won from the Moors, he secured +the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was able to set out +across the unknown ocean in three small ships. After a voyage of +two months and nine days he came to a land which he believed to be +India, but which was really a new continent, whose distinct +existence the old world had never hitherto suspected. He returned +to Spain with gold, cotton, strange beasts and birds, and two +wild-eyed painted Indians to be baptized. They were called +Indians because, to the end of his days, he believed that this +land he had found was India. Only in the course of several years +did men begin to realize that the whole new continent of America +was added to the world's resources. + +The success of Columbus stimulated overseas enterprise enormously. +In 1497 the Portuguese sailed round Africa to India, and in 1515 +there were Portuguese ships in Java. In 1519 Magellan, a +Portuguese sailor in Spanish employment, sailed out of Seville +westward with five ships, of which one, the _Vittoria_, came back +up the river to Seville in 1522, the first ship that had ever +circumnavigated the world. Thirty-one men were aboard her, +survivors of two-hundred-and-eighty who had started. Magellan +himself had been killed in the Philippine Isles. + +Printed paper books, a new realization of the round world as a +thing altogether attainable, a new vision of strange lands, +strange animals and plants, strange manners and customs, +discoveries overseas and in the skies and in the ways and +materials of life burst upon the European mind. The Greek +classics, buried and forgotten for so {303} long, were speedily +being printed and studied, and were colouring men's thoughts with +the dreams of Plato and the traditions of an age of republican +freedom and dignity. The Roman dominion had first brought law and +order to Western Europe, and the Latin Church had restored it; but +under both Pagan and Catholic Rome curiosity and innovation were +subordinate to and restrained by organization. The reign of the +Latin mind was now drawing to an end. Between the thirteenth and +the sixteenth century the European Aryans, thanks to the +stimulating influence of Semite and Mongol and the rediscovery of +the Greek classics, broke away from the Latin tradition and rose +again to the intellectual and material leadership of mankind. + + + + +{304} + +L + +THE REFORMATION OF THE LATIN CHURCH + + +The Latin Church itself was enormously affected by this mental +rebirth. It was dismembered; and even the portion that survived +was extensively renewed. + +We have told how nearly the church came to the autocratic +leadership of all Christendom in the eleventh and twelfth +centuries, and how in the fourteenth and fifteenth its power over +men's minds and affairs declined. We have described how popular +religious enthusiasm which had in earlier ages been its support +and power was turned against it by its pride, persecutions and +centralization, and how the insidious scepticism of Frederick II +bore fruit in a growing insubordination of the princes. The Great +Schism had reduced its religious and political prestige to +negligible proportions. The forces of insurrection struck it now +from both sides. + +The teachings of the Englishman Wycliffe spread widely throughout +Europe. In 1398 a learned Czech, John Huss, delivered a series of +lectures upon Wycliffe's teachings in the university of Prague. +This teaching spread rapidly beyond the educated class and aroused +great popular enthusiasm. In 1414-18 a Council of the whole +church was held at Constance to settle the Great Schism. Huss was +invited to this Council under promise of a safe conduct from the +emperor, seized, put on trial for heresy and burnt alive (1415). +So far from tranquillizing the Bohemian people, this led to an +insurrection of the Hussites in that country, the first of a +series of religious wars that inaugurated the break-up of Latin +Christendom. Against this insurrection Pope Martin V, the Pope +specially elected at Constance as the head of a reunited +Christendom, preached a Crusade. + +Five Crusades in all were launched upon this sturdy little people +and all of them failed. All the unemployed ruffianism of Europe +was {305} turned upon Bohemia in the fifteenth century, just as in +the thirteenth it had been turned upon the Waldenses. But the +Bohemian Czechs, unlike the Waldenses, believed in armed +resistance. The Bohemian Crusade dissolved and streamed away from +the battlefield at the sound of the Hussites' waggons and the +distant chanting of their troops; it did not even wait to fight +(battle of Domazlice, 1431). In 1436 an agreement was patched up +with the Hussites by a new Council of the church at Basle in which +many of the special objections to Latin practice were conceded. + +[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LUTHER] + +In the fifteenth century a great pestilence had produced much +social disorganization throughout Europe. There had been extreme +misery and discontent among the common people, and peasant risings +against the landlords and the wealthy in England and France. +After the Hussite Wars these peasant insurrections increased in +gravity in Germany and took on a religious character. Printing +came in as an influence upon this development. By the middle of +the fifteenth century there were printers at work with movable +type {306} in Holland and the Rhineland. The art spread to Italy +and England, where Caxton was printing in Westminster in 1477. +The immediate consequence was a great increase and distribution of +Bibles, and greatly increased facilities for widespread popular +controversies. The European world became a world of readers, to +an extent that had never happened to any community in the past. +And this sudden irrigation of the general mind with clearer ideas +and more accessible information occurred just at a time when the +church was confused and divided and not in a position to defend +itself effectively, and when many princes were looking for means +to weaken its hold upon the vast wealth it claimed in their +dominions. + +In Germany the attack upon the church gathered round the +personality of an ex-monk, Martin Luther (1483-1546), who appeared +in Wittenberg in 1517 offering disputations against various +orthodox doctrines and practices. At first he disputed in Latin +in the fashion of the Schoolmen. Then he took up the new weapon +of the printed word and scattered his views far and wide in German +addressed to the ordinary people. An attempt was made to suppress +him as Huss had been suppressed, but the printing press had +changed conditions and he had too many open and secret friends +among the German princes for this fate to overtake him. + +For now in this age of multiplying ideas and weakened faith there +were many rulers who saw their advantage in breaking the religious +ties between their people and Rome. They sought to make +themselves in person the heads of a more nationalized religion. +England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, North Germany and +Bohemia, one after another, separated themselves from the Roman +Communion. They have remained separated ever since. + +The various princes concerned cared very little for the moral and +intellectual freedom of their subjects. They used the religious +doubts and insurgence of their peoples to strengthen them against +Rome, but they tried to keep a grip upon the popular movement as +soon as that rupture was achieved and a national church set up +under the control of the crown. But there has always been a +curious vitality in the teaching of Jesus, a direct appeal to +righteousness and a man's self-respect over every loyalty and +every subordination, lay or ecclesiastical. None of these +princely churches broke {307} off without also breaking off a +number of fragmentary sects that would admit the intervention of +neither prince nor Pope between a man and his God. In England and +Scotland, for example, there was a number of sects who now held +firmly to the Bible as their one guide in life and belief. They +refused the disciplines of a state church. In England these +dissentients were the Non-conformists, who played a very large +part in the polities of that country in the seventeenth {308} and +eighteenth centuries. In England they carried their objection to +a princely head to the church so far as to decapitate King Charles +I (1649), and for eleven prosperous years England was a republic +under Non-conformist rule. + +[Illustration: A MAJOLICA DISH PAINTED IN COLOURS] + +The breaking away of this large section of Northern Europe from +Latin Christendom is what is generally spoken of as the +Reformation. But the shock and stress of these losses produced +changes perhaps as profound in the Roman Church itself. The +church was reorganized and a new spirit came into its life. One +of the dominant figures in this revival was a young Spanish +soldier, Inigo Lopez de Recalde, better known to the world as St. +Ignatius of Loyola. After some romantic beginnings he became a +priest (1538) and was permitted to found the Society of Jesus, a +direct attempt to bring the generous and chivalrous traditions of +military discipline into the service of religion. This Society of +Jesus, the Jesuits, became one of the greatest teaching and +missionary societies the world has ever seen. It carried +Christianity to India, China and America. It arrested the rapid +disintegration of the Roman Church. It raised the standard of +education throughout the whole Catholic world; it raised the level +of Catholic intelligence and quickened the Catholic conscience +everywhere; it stimulated Protestant Europe to competitive +educational efforts. The vigorous and aggressive Roman Catholic +Church we know to-day is largely the product of this Jesuit +revival. + + + + +{309} + +LI + +THE EMPEROR CHARLES V + + +The Holy Roman Empire came to a sort of climax in the reign of the +Emperor Charles V. He was one of the most extraordinary monarchs +that Europe has ever seen. For a time he had the air of being the +greatest monarch since Charlemagne. + +His greatness was not of his own making. It was largely the +creation of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I +(1459-1519). Some families have fought, others have intrigued +their way to world power; the Habsburgs married their way. +Maximilian began his career with Austria, Styria, part of Alsace +and other districts, the original Habsburg patrimony; he +married--the lady's name scarcely matters to us--the Netherlands +and Burgundy. Most of Burgundy slipped from him after his first +wife's death, but the Netherlands he held. Then he tried +unsuccessfully to marry Brittany. He became Emperor in succession +to his father, Frederick III, in 1493, and married the duchy of +Milan. Finally he married his son to the weak-minded daughter of +Ferdinand and Isabella, the Ferdinand and Isabella of Columbus, +who not only reigned over a freshly united Spain and over Sardinia +and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, but over all America west of +Brazil. So it was that this Charles V, his grandson, inherited +most of the American continent and between a third and a half of +what the Turks had left of Europe. He succeeded to the +Netherlands in 1506. When his grandfather Ferdinand died in 1516, +he became practically king of the Spanish dominions, his mother +being imbecile; and his grandfather Maximilian dying in 1519, he +was in 1520 elected Emperor at the still comparatively tender age +of twenty. + +He was a fair young man with a not very intelligent face, a thick +upper lip and a long clumsy chin. He found himself in a world of +young and vigorous personalities. It was an age of brilliant +young {310} monarchs. Francis I had succeeded to the French +throne in 1515 at the age of twenty-one, Henry VIII had become +King of England in 1509 at eighteen. It was the age of Baber in +India (1526-1530) and Suleiman the Magnificent in Turkey (1520), +both exceptionally capable monarchs, and the Pope Leo X (1513) was +also a very distinguished Pope. The Pope and Francis I attempted +to prevent the election of Charles as Emperor because they dreaded +the concentration of so much power in the hands of one man. Both +Francis I and Henry VIII offered themselves to the imperial +electors. But there was now a long established tradition of +Habsburg Emperors (since 1273), and some energetic bribery secured +the election for Charles. + +At first the young man was very much a magnificent puppet in the +hands of his ministers. Then slowly he began to assert himself +and take control. He began to realize something of the +threatening complexities of his exalted position. It was a +position as unsound as it was splendid. + +From the very outset of his reign he was faced by the situation +created by Luther's agitations in Germany. The Emperor had one +reason for siding with the reformers in the opposition of the Pope +to his election. But he had been brought up in Spain, that most +Catholic of countries, and he decided against Luther. So he came +into conflict with the Protestant princes and particularly the +Elector of Saxony. He found himself in the presence of an opening +rift that was to split the outworn fabric of Christendom into two +contending camps. His attempts to close that rift were strenuous +and honest and ineffective. There was an extensive peasant revolt +in Germany which interwove with the general political and +religious disturbance. And these internal troubles were +complicated by attacks upon the Empire from east and west alike. +On the west of Charles was his spirited rival, Francis I; to the +east was the ever advancing Turk, who was now in Hungary, in +alliance with Francis and clamouring for certain arrears of +tribute from the Austrian dominions. Charles had the money and +army of Spain at his disposal, but it was extremely difficult to +get any effective support in money from Germany. His social and +political troubles were complicated by financial distresses. He +was forced to ruinous borrowing. + +{311} + +[Illustration: THE CHARLES V PORTRAIT BY TITIAN] + +{312} + +On the whole, Charles, in alliance with Henry VIII, was successful +against Francis I and the Turk. Their chief battlefield was North +Italy; the generalship was dull on both sides; their advances and +retreats depended mainly on the arrival of reinforcements. The +German army invaded France, failed to take Marseilles, fell back +into Italy, lost Milan, and was besieged in Pavia. Francis I made +a long and unsuccessful siege of Pavia, was caught by fresh German +forces, defeated, wounded and taken prisoner. But thereupon the +Pope and Henry VIII, still haunted by the fear of his attaining +excessive power, turned against Charles. The German troops in +Milan, under the Constable of Bourbon, being unpaid, forced rather +than followed their commander into a raid upon Rome. They stormed +the city and pillaged it (1527). The Pope took refuge in the +Castle of St. Angelo while the looting and slaughter went on. He +bought off the German troops at last by the payment of four +hundred thousand ducats. Ten years of such confused fighting +impoverished all Europe. At last the Emperor found himself +triumphant in Italy. In 1530, he was crowned by the Pope--he was +the last German Emperor to be so crowned--at Bologna. + +Meanwhile the Turks were making great headway in Hungary. They +had defeated and killed the king of Hungary in 1526, they held +Buda-Pesth, and in 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent very nearly took +Vienna. The Emperor was greatly concerned by these advances, and +did his utmost to drive back the Turks, but he found the greatest +difficulty in getting the German princes to unite even with this +formidable enemy upon their very borders. Francis I remained +implacable for a time, and there was a new French war; but in 1538 +Charles won his rival over to a more friendly attitude after +ravaging the south of France. Francis and Charles then formed an +alliance against the Turk. But the Protestant princes, the German +princes who were resolved to break away from Rome, had formed a +league, the Schmalkaldic League, against the Emperor, and in the +place of a great campaign to recover Hungary for Christendom +Charles had to turn his mind to the gathering internal struggle in +Germany. Of that struggle he saw only the opening war. It was a +struggle, a sanguinary irrational bickering of princes, for +ascendancy, now {313} flaming into war and destruction, now +sinking back to intrigues and diplomacies; it was a snake's sack +of princely policies that was to go on writhing incurably right +into the nineteenth century and to waste and desolate Central +Europe again and again. + +The Emperor never seems to have grasped the true forces at work in +these gathering troubles. He was for his time and station an +exceptionally worthy man, and he seems to have taken the religious +dissensions that were tearing Europe into warring fragments as +genuine theological differences. He gathered diets and councils +in futile attempts at reconciliation. Formulae and confessions +were tried over. The student of German history must struggle with +the details of the Religious Peace of Nuremberg, the settlement at +the Diet of Ratisbon, the Interim of Augsburg, and the like. Here +we do but mention them as details in the worried life of this +culminating Emperor. As a matter of fact, hardly one of the +multifarious princes and rulers in Europe seems to have been +acting in good faith. The widespread religious trouble of the +world, the desire of the common people for truth and social +righteousness, the spreading knowledge of the time, all those +things were merely counters in the imaginations of princely +diplomacy. Henry VIII of England, who had begun his career with a +book against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with +the title of "Defender of the Faith," being anxious to divorce his +first wife in favour of a young lady named Anne Boleyn, and +wishing also to loot the vast wealth of the church in England, +joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530. Sweden, Denmark +and Norway had already gone over to the Protestant side. + +The German religious war began in 1546, a few months after the +death of Martin Luther. We need not trouble about the incidents +of the campaign. The Protestant Saxon army was badly beaten at +Lochau. By something very like a breach of faith Philip of Hesse, +the Emperor's chief remaining antagonist, was caught and +imprisoned, and the Turks were bought off by the promise of an +annual tribute. In 1547, to the great relief of the Emperor, +Francis I died. So by 1547 Charles got to a kind of settlement, +and made his last efforts to effect peace where there was no +peace. In 1552 all Germany was at war again, only a precipitate +flight from Innsbruck {314} saved Charles from capture, and in +1552, with the treaty of Passau, came another unstable +equilibrium.... + +Such is the brief outline of the politics of the Empire for +thirty-two years. It is interesting to note how entirely the +European mind was concentrated upon the struggle for European +ascendancy. Neither Turks, French, English nor Germans had yet +discovered any political interest in the great continent of +America, nor any significance in the new sea routes to Asia. +Great things were happening in America; Cortez with a mere handful +of men had conquered the great Neolithic empire of Mexico for +Spain, Pizarro had crossed the Isthmus of Panama (1530) and +subjugated another wonder-land, Peru. But as yet these events +meant no more to Europe than a useful and stimulating influx of +silver to the Spanish treasury. + +It was after the treaty of Passau that Charles began to display +his distinctive originality of mind. He was now entirely bored +and disillusioned by his imperial greatness. A sense of the +intolerable futility of these European rivalries came upon him. +He had never been of a very sound constitution, he was naturally +indolent and he was suffering greatly from gout. He abdicated. +He made over all his sovereign rights in Germany to his brother +Ferdinand, and Spain and the Netherlands he resigned to his son +Philip. Then in a sort of magnificent dudgeon he retired to a +monastery at Yuste, among the oak and chestnut forests in the +hills to the north of the Tagus valley. There he died in 1558. + +Much has been written in a sentimental vein of this retirement, +this renunciation of the world by this tired majestic Titan, +world-weary, seeking in an austere solitude his peace with God. +But his retreat was neither solitary nor austere; he had with him +nearly a hundred and fifty attendants: his establishment had all +the splendour and indulgences without the fatigues or a court, and +Philip II was a dutiful son to whom his father's advice was a +command. + +[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S, ROME, SHOWING THE HIGH +ALTAR] + +And if Charles had lost his living interest in the administration +of European affairs, there were other motives of a more immediate +sort to stir him. Says Prescott: "In the almost daily +correspondence between Quixada, or Gaztelu, and the Secretary of +State at Valladolid, there is scarcely a letter that does not turn +more or less on the Emperor's eating or his illness. The one +seems naturally to follow, {315} like a running commentary, on the +other. It is rare that such topics have formed the burden of +communications with the department of state. It must have been no +easy matter for the secretary to preserve his gravity in the +perusal of despatches in which politics and gastronomy were so +strangely mixed together. The courier from Valladolid to Lisbon +was ordered to make a detour, so as to take Jarandilla in his +route, and bring supplies to the royal table. On {316} Thursdays +he was to bring fish to serve for the _jour maigre_ that was to +follow. The trout in the neighbourhood Charles thought too small, +so others of a larger size were to be sent from Valladolid. Fish +of every kind was to his taste, as, indeed, was anything that in +its nature or habits at all approached to fish. Eels, frogs, +oysters, occupied an important place in the royal bill of fare. +Potted fish, especially anchovies, found great favour with him; +and he regretted that he had not brought a better supply of these +from the Low Countries. On an eel-pasty he particularly +doted." ... [6] + +In 1554 Charles had obtained a bull from Pope Julius III granting +him a dispensation from fasting, and allowing him to break his +fast early in the morning even when he was to take the sacrament. + +Eating and doctoring! it was a return to elemental things. He had +never acquired the habit of reading, but he would be read aloud to +at meals after the fashion of Charlemagne, and would make what one +narrator describes as a "sweet and heavenly commentary." He also +amused himself with mechanical toys, by listening to music or +sermons, and by attending to the imperial business that still came +drifting in to him. The death of the Empress, to whom he was +greatly attached, had turned his mind towards religion, which in +his case took a punctilious and ceremonial form; every Friday in +Lent he scourged himself with the rest of the monks with such good +will as to draw blood. These exercises and the gout released a +bigotry in Charles that had hitherto been restrained by +considerations of policy. The appearance of Protestant teaching +close at hand in Valladolid roused him to fury. "Tell the grand +inquisitor and his council from me to be at their posts, and to +lay the axe at the root of the evil before it spreads +further." .... He expressed a doubt whether it would not be well, +in so black an affair, to dispense with the ordinary course of +justice, and to show no mercy; "lest the criminal, if pardoned, +should have the opportunity of repeating his crime." He +recommended, as an example, his own mode or proceeding in the +Netherlands, "where all who remained obstinate in their errors +were burned alive, and those who were admitted to penitence +were beheaded." + +And almost symbolical of his place and role in history was his +{317} preoccupation with funerals. He seems to have had an +intuition that something great was dead in Europe and sorely +needed burial, that there was a need to write Finis, overdue. He +not only attended every actual funeral that was celebrated at +Yuste, but he had services conducted for the absent dead, he held +a funeral service in memory of his wife on the anniversary of her +death, and finally he celebrated his own obsequies. + +"The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of +wax-lights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The +brethren in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor's +household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque, +shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the +chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then +performed; and, amidst the dismal wail of the monks, the prayers +ascended for the departed spirit, that it might be received into +the mansions of the blessed. The sorrowful attendants were melted +to tears, as the image of their master's death was presented to +their minds--or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by +this pitiable display of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark +mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his +household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful +ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of +the priest, in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the +Almighty." + +Within two months of this masquerade he was dead. And the brief +greatness of the Holy Roman Empire died with him. His realm was +already divided between his brother and his son. The Holy Roman +Empire struggled on indeed to the days of Napoleon I but as an +invalid and dying thing. To this day its unburied tradition still +poisons the political air. + +[6] Prescott's Appendix to Robertson's _History of Charles V_. + + + + +{318} + +LII + +THE AGE OF POLITICAL EXPERIMENTS; OF GRAND MONARCHY AND +PARLIAMENTS AND REPUBLICANISM IN EUROPE + + +The Latin Church was broken, the Holy Roman Empire was in extreme +decay; the history of Europe from the opening of the sixteenth +century onward is a story of peoples feeling their way darkly to +some new method of government, better adapted to the new +conditions that were arising. In the Ancient World, over long +periods of time, there had been changes of dynasty and even +changes of ruling race and language, but the form of government +through monarch and temple remained fairly stable, and still more +stable was the ordinary way of living. In this modern Europe +since the sixteenth century the dynastic changes are unimportant, +and the interest of history lies in the wide and increasing +variety of experiments in political and social organization. + +The political history of the world from the sixteenth century +onward was, we have said, an effort, a largely unconscious effort, +of mankind to adapt its political and social methods to certain +new conditions that had now arisen. The effort to adapt was +complicated by the fad that the conditions themselves were +changing with a steadily increasing rapidity. The adaptation, +mainly unconscious and almost always unwilling (for man in general +hates voluntary change), has lagged more and more behind the +alterations in conditions. From the sixteenth century onward the +history of mankind is a story of political and social institutions +becoming more and more plainly misfits, less comfortable and more +vexatious, and of the slow reluctant realization of the need for a +conscious and deliberate reconstruction of the whole scheme of +human societies in the face of needs and possibilities new to all +the former experiences of life. + +What are these changes in the conditions of human life that have +disorganized that balance of empire, priest, peasant and trader, +with {319} periodic refreshment by barbaric conquest, that has +held human affairs in the Old World in a sort of working rhythm +for more than a hundred centuries? + +They are manifold and various, for human affairs are +multitudinously complex; but the main changes seem all to turn +upon one cause, namely the growth and extension of a knowledge of +the nature of things, beginning first of all in small groups of +intelligent people and spreading at first slowly, and in the last +five hundred years very rapidly, to larger and larger proportions +of the general population. + +But there has also been a great change in human conditions due to +a change in the spirit of human life. This change has gone on +side by side with the increase and extension of knowledge, and is +subtly connected with it. There has been an increasing +disposition to treat a life based on the common and more +elementary desires and gratifications as unsatisfactory, and to +seek relationship with and service and participation in a larger +life. This is the common characteristic of all the great +religions that have spread throughout the world in the last twenty +odd centuries, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam alike. They have +had to do with the spirit of man in a way that the older religions +did not have to do. They are forces quite different in their +nature and effect from the old fetishistic blood-sacrifice +religions of priest and temple that they have in part modified and +in part replaced. They have gradually evolved a self-respect in +the individual and a sense of participation and responsibility in +the common concerns of mankind that did not exist among the +populations of the earlier civilizations. + +The first considerable change in the conditions of political and +social life was the simplification and extended use of writing in +the ancient civilizations which made larger empires and wider +political understandings practicable and inevitable. The next +movement forward came with the introduction of the horse, and +later on of the camel as a means of transport, the use of wheeled +vehicles, the extension of roads and the increased military +efficiency due to the discovery of terrestrial iron. Then +followed the profound economic disturbances due to the device of +coined money and the change in the nature of debt, proprietorship +and trade due to this convenient but dangerous convention. The +empires grew in size and range, and {320} men's ideas grew +likewise to correspond with these things. Came the disappearance +of local gods, the age of theocrasia, and the teaching of the +great world religions. Came also the beginnings of reasoned and +recorded history and geography, the first realization by man of +his profound ignorance, and the first systematic search for +knowledge. + +For a time the scientific process which began so brilliantly in +Greece and Alexandria was interrupted. The raids of the Teutonic +barbarians, the westward drive of the Mongolian peoples, +convulsive religious reconstruction and great pestilences put +enormous strains upon political and social order. When +civilization emerged again from this phase of conflict and +confusion, slavery was no longer the basis of economic life; and +the first paper-mills were preparing a new medium for collective +information and co-operation in printed matter. Gradually at this +point and that, the search for knowledge, the systematic +scientific process, was resumed. + +And now from the sixteenth century onward, as an inevitable +by-product of systematic thought, appeared a steadily increasing +series of inventions and devices affecting the intercommunication +and interaction of men with one another. They all tended towards +wider range of action, greater mutual benefits or injuries, and +increased co-operation, and they came faster and faster. Men's +minds had not been prepared for anything of the sort, and until +the great catastrophes at the beginning of the twentieth century +quickened men's minds, the historian has very little to tell of +any intelligently planned attempts to meet the new conditions this +increasing flow of inventions was creating. The history of +mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an +imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the +prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking +but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with +ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man +consciously awake to danger and opportunity. + +Since history is the story not of individual lives but of +communities, it is inevitable that the inventions that figure most +in the historical record are inventions affecting communications. +In the sixteenth century the chief new things that we have to note +are the appearance of printed paper and the sea-worthy, +ocean-going sailing ship using the new device of the mariner's +compass. The former {321} cheapened, spread, and revolutionized +teaching, public information and discussion, and the fundamental +operations of political activity. The latter made the round world +one. But almost equally important was the increased utilization +and improvement of guns and gunpowder which the Mongols had first +brought westward in the thirteenth century. This destroyed the +practical immunity of barons in their castles and of walled +cities. Guns swept away feudalism. Constantinople fell to guns. +Mexico and Peru fell before the terror of the Spanish guns. + +[Illustration: CROMWELL DISSOLVES THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND SO +BECOMES AUTOCRAT OF THE ENGLISH REPUBLIC] + +The seventeenth century saw the development of systematic +scientific publication, a less conspicuous but ultimately far more +pregnant innovation. Conspicuous among the leaders in this great +forward step was Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) afterwards Lord +{322} Verulam, Lord Chancellor of England. He was the pupil and +perhaps the mouthpiece of another Englishman; Dr. Gilbert, the +experimental philosopher of Colchester (1540-1603). This second +Bacon, like the first, preached observation and experiment, and he +used the inspiring and fruitful form of a Utopian story, _The New +Atlantis_, to express his dream of a great service of scientific +research. + +Presently arose the Royal Society of London, the Florentine +Society, and later other national bodies for the encouragement of +research and the publication and exchange of knowledge. These +European scientific societies became fountains not only of +countless inventions but also of a destructive criticism of the +grotesque theological history of the world that had dominated and +crippled human thought for many centuries. + +Neither the seventeenth nor the eighteenth century witnessed any +innovations so immediately revolutionary in human conditions as +printed paper and the ocean-going ship, but there was a steady +accumulation of knowledge and scientific energy that was to bear +its full fruits in the nineteenth century. The exploration and +mapping of the world went on. Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand +appeared on the map. In Great Britain in the eighteenth century +coal coke began to be used for metallurgical purposes, leading to +a considerable cheapening of iron and to the possibility of +casting and using it in larger pieces than had been possible +before, when it had been smelted with wood charcoal. Modern +machinery dawned. + +Like the trees of the celestial city, science bears bud and flower +and fruit at the same time and continuously. With the onset of +the nineteenth century the real fruition of +science--which indeed henceforth may never cease--began. First +came steam and steel, the railway, the great liner, vast bridges +and buildings, machinery of almost limitless power, the +possibility of a bountiful satisfaction of every material human +need, and then, still more wonderful, the hidden treasures of +electrical science were opened to men .... + +We have compared the political and social life of man from the +sixteenth century onward to that of a sleeping prisoner who lies +and dreams while his prison burns about him. In the sixteenth +century the European mind was still going on with its Latin +Imperial dream, {323} its dream of a Holy Roman Empire, united +under a Catholic Church. But just as some uncontrollable element +in our composition will insist at times upon introducing into our +dreams the most absurd and destructive comments, so thrust into +this dream we find the sleeping face and craving stomach of the +Emperor Charles V, while Henry VIII of England and Luther tear the +unity of Catholicism to shreds. + +[Illustration: THE COURT AT VERSAILLES] + +In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the dream turned to +personal monarchy. The history of nearly all Europe during this +period tells with variations the story of an attempt to +consolidate a monarchy, to make it absolute and to extend its +power over weaker adjacent regions, and of the steady resistance, +first of the landowners and then with the increase of foreign +trade and home industry, of the growing trading and moneyed class, +to the exaction and interference of the crown. There is no +universal victory of either side; here it is the King who gets the +upper hand while there it is the {324} man of private property who +beats the King. In one case we find a King becoming the sun and +centre of his national world, while just over his borders a sturdy +mercantile class maintains a republic. So wide a range of +variation shows how entirely experimental, what local accidents, +were all the various governments of this period. + +A very common figure in these national dramas is the King's +minister, often in the still Catholic countries a prelate, who +stands behind the King, serves him and dominates him by his +indispensable services. + +Here in the limits set to us it is impossible to tell these +various national dramas in detail. The trading folk of Holland +went Protestant and republican, and cast off the rule of Philip II +of Spain, the son of the Emperor Charles V. In England Henry VIII +and his minister Wolsey, Queen Elizabeth and her minister +Burleigh, prepared the foundations of an absolutism that was +wrecked by the folly of James I and Charles I. Charles I was +beheaded for treason to his people (1649), a new turn in the +political thought of Europe. For a dozen years (until 1660) +Britain was a republic; and the crown was an unstable power, much +overshadowed by Parliament, until George III (1760-1820) made a +strenuous and partly successful effort to restore its +predominance. The King of France, on the other hand, was the most +successful of all the European Kings in perfecting monarchy. Two +great ministers, Richelieu (1585-1642) and Mazarin +(1602-1661), built up the power of the crown in that country, and +the process was aided by the long reign and very considerable +abilities of King Louis XIV, "the Grand Monarque" (1643-1715). + +Louis XIV was indeed the pattern King of Europe. He was, within +his limitations, an exceptionally capable King; his ambition was +stronger than his baser passions, and he guided his country +towards bankruptcy through the complication of a spirited foreign +policy with an elaborate dignity that still extorts our +admiration. His immediate desire was to consolidate and extend +France to the Rhine and Pyrenees, and to absorb the Spanish +Netherlands; his remoter view saw the French Kings as the possible +successors of Charlemagne in a recast Holy Roman Empire. He made +bribery a state method almost more important than warfare. +Charles II of {325} England was in his pay, and so were most of +the Polish nobility, presently to be described. His money, or +rather the money of the tax-paying classes in France, went +everywhere. But his prevailing occupation was splendour. His +great palace at Versailles with its salons, its corridors, its +mirrors, its terraces and fountains and parks and prospects, was +the envy and admiration of the world. + +[Illustration: THE SACK OF A VILLAGE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION] + +He provoked a universal imitation. Every king and princelet in +Europe was building his own Versailles as much beyond his means as +his subjects and credits would permit. Everywhere the nobility +rebuilt or extended their chateaux to the new pattern. A great +industry of beautiful and elaborate fabrics and furnishings +developed. The luxurious arts flourished everywhere; sculpture in +alabaster, faience, gilt woodwork, metal work, stamped leather, +much music, magnificent painting, beautiful printing and bindings, +fine crockery, fine vintages. Amidst the mirrors and fine +furniture went a strange race of "gentlemen" in tall powdered +wigs, silks and laces, poised upon high red heels, supported by +amazing canes; and still more wonderful "ladies," under towers of +powdered hair and wearing vast expansions of silk and satin +sustained on wire. Through it all postured the great Louis, the +sun of his world, unaware of the meagre and sulky and bitter faces +that watched him from those lower darknesses to which his sunshine +did not penetrate. + +[Map: Central Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648] + +The German people remained politically divided throughout this +period of the monarchies and experimental governments, and a +considerable {326} number of ducal and princely courts aped the +splendours of Versailles on varying scales. The Thirty Years' War +(1618-48), a devastating scramble among the Germans, Swedes and +Bohemians for fluctuating political advantages, sapped the +energies of Germany for a century. A map must show the crazy +patchwork in which this struggle ended, a map of Europe according +to the peace of Westphalia (1648). One sees a tangle of +principalities, dukedoms, free states and the like, some partly in +and partly out of the Empire. Sweden's arm, the reader will note, +reached far into Germany; and except for a few islands of +territory within the imperial boundaries France was still far from +the Rhine. Amidst this patchwork the {327} Kingdom of Prussia--it +became a Kingdom in 1701--rose steadily to prominence and +sustained a series of successful wars. Frederick the Great of +Prussia (1740-86) had his Versailles at Potsdam, where his court +spoke French, read French literature and rivalled the culture of +the French King. + +In 1714 the Elector of Hanover became King of England, adding one +more to the list of monarchies half in and half out of the empire. + +The Austrian branch of the descendants of Charles V retained the +title of Emperor; the Spanish branch retained Spain. But now +there was also an Emperor of the East again. After the fall of +Constantinople (1453), the grand duke of Moscow, Ivan the Great +(1462-1505), claimed to be heir to the Byzantine throne and +adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle upon his arms. His +grandson, Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), assumed the +imperial title of Caesar (Tsar). But only in the latter half of +the seventeenth century did Russia cease to seem remote and +Asiatic to the European mind. The Tsar Peter the Great +(1682-1725) brought Russia into the arena of Western affairs. He +built a new capital for his empire, Petersburg upon the Neva, that +played the part of a window between Russia and Europe, and he set +up his Versailles at Peterhof eighteen miles away, employing a +French architect who gave him a terrace, fountains, cascades, +picture gallery, park and all the recognized appointments of Grand +Monarchy. In Russia as in Prussia French became the language of +the court. + +Unhappily placed between Austria, Prussia and Russia was the +Polish kingdom, an ill-organized state of great landed proprietors +too jealous of their own individual grandeur to permit more than a +nominal kingship to the monarch they elected. Her fate was +division among these three neighbours, in spite of the efforts of +France to retain her as an independent ally. Switzerland at this +time was a group of republican cantons; Venice was a republic; +Italy like so much of Germany was divided among minor dukes and +princes. The Pope ruled like a prince in the papal states, too +fearful now of losing the allegiance of the remaining Catholic +princes to interfere between them and their subjects or to remind +the world of the commonweal of Christendom. There remained indeed +no common {328} political idea in Europe at all; Europe was given +over altogether to division and diversity. + +All these sovereign princes and republics carried on schemes of +aggrandizement against each other. Each one of them pursued a +"foreign policy" of aggression against its neighbours and of +aggressive alliances. We Europeans still live to-day in the last +phase of this age of the multifarious sovereign states, and still +suffer from the hatreds, hostilities and suspicions it engendered. +The history of this time becomes more and more manifestly +"gossip," more and more unmeaning and wearisome to a modern +intelligence. You are told of how this war was caused by this +King's mistress, and how the jealousy of one minister for another +caused that. A tittle-tattle of bribes and rivalries disgusts the +intelligent student. The more permanently significant fact is +that in spite of the obstruction of a score of frontiers, reading +and thought still spread and increased and inventions multiplied. +The eighteenth century saw the appearance of a literature +profoundly sceptical and critical of the courts and policies of +the time. In such a book as Voltaire's _Candide_ we have the +expression of an infinite weariness with the planless confusion of +the European world. + + + + +{329} + +LIII + +THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE EUROPEANS IN ASIA AND OVERSEAS + + +While Central Europe thus remained divided and confused, the +Western Europeans and particularly the Dutch, the Scandinavians, +the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French and the British were +extending the area of their struggles across the seas of all the +world. The printing press had dissolved the political ideas of +Europe into a vast and at first indeterminate fermentation, but +that other great innovation, the ocean-going sailing ship, was +inexorably extending the range of European experience to the +furthermost limits of salt water. + +The first overseas settlements of the Dutch and Northern Atlantic +Europeans were not for colonization but for trade and mining. The +Spaniards were first in the field; they claimed dominion over the +whole of this new world of America. Very soon however the +Portuguese asked for a share. The Pope--it was one of the last +acts of Rome as mistress of the world--divided the new continent +between these two first-comers, giving Portugal Brazil and +everything else east of a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde +islands, and all the rest to Spain (1494). The Portuguese at this +time were also pushing overseas enterprise southward and eastward. +In 1497 Vasco da Gama had sailed from Lisbon round the Cape to +Zanzibar and then to Calicut in India. In 1515 there were +Portuguese ships in Java and the Moluccas, and the Portuguese were +setting up and fortifying trading stations round and about the +coasts of the Indian Ocean. Mozambique, Goa, and two smaller +possessions in India, Macao in China and a part of Timor are to +this day Portuguese possessions. + +The nations excluded from America by the papal settlement paid +little heed to the rights of Spain and Portugal. The English, the +Danes and Swedes, and presently the Dutch, were soon staking {330} +out claims in North America and the West Indies, and his Most +Catholic Majesty of France heeded the papal settlement as little +as any Protestant. The wars of Europe extended themselves to +these claims and possessions. + +[Map: Britain, France & Spain in America, 1750] + +In the long run the English were the most successful in this +scramble for overseas possessions. The Danes and Swedes were too +{331} deeply entangled in the complicated affairs of Germany to +sustain effective expeditions abroad. Sweden was wasted upon the +German battlefields by a picturesque king, Gustavus Adolphus, the +Protestant "Lion of the North." The Dutch were the heirs of such +small settlements as Sweden made in America, and the Dutch were +too near French aggressions to hold their own against the British. +In the far East the chief rivals for empire were the British, +Dutch and French, and in America the British, French and Spanish. +The British had the supreme advantage of a water frontier, the +"silver streak" of the English Channel, against Europe. The +tradition of the Latin Empire entangled them least. + +[Illustration: EUROPEANS TIGER HUNTING IN INDIA] + +France has always thought too much in terms of Europe. Throughout +the eighteenth century she was wasting her opportunities of +expansion in West and East alike in order to dominate Spain, Italy +and the German confusion. The religious and political dissensions +of Britain in the seventeenth century had driven many {332} of the +English to seek a permanent home in America. They struck root and +increased and multiplied, giving the British a great advantage in +the American struggle. In 1756 and 1760 the French lost Canada to +the British and their American colonists, and a few years later +the British trading company found itself completely dominant over +French, Dutch and Portuguese in the peninsula of India. The great +Mongol Empire of Baber, Akbar and their successors had now far +gone in decay, and the story of its practical capture by a London +trading company, the British East India Company, is one of the +most extraordinary episodes in the whole history of conquest. + +[Illustration: THE LAST EFFORT AND FALL OF TIPPOO SULTAN] + +This East India Company had been originally at the time of its +incorporation under Queen Elizabeth no more than a company of sea +adventurers. Step by step they had been forced to raise troops +and arm their ships. And now this trading company, with its +tradition of gain, found itself dealing not merely in spices and +dyes and tea and jewels, but in the revenues and territories of +princes {333} and the destinies of India. It had come to buy and +sell, and it found itself achieving a tremendous piracy. There +was no one to challenge its proceedings. Is it any wonder that +its captains and commanders and officials, nay, even its clerks +and common soldiers, came back to England loaded with spoils? + +Men under such circumstances, with a great and wealthy land at +their mercy, could not determine what they might or might not do. +It was a strange land to them, with a strange sunlight; its brown +people seemed a different race, outside their range of sympathy; +its mysterious temples sustained fantastic standards of behaviour. +Englishmen at home were perplexed when presently these generals +and officials came back to make dark accusations against each +other of extortions and cruelties. Upon Clive Parliament passed a +vote of censure. He committed suicide in 1774. In 1788 Warren +Hastings, a second great Indian administrator, was impeached and +acquitted (1792). It was a strange and unprecedented situation in +the world's history. The English Parliament found itself ruling +over a London trading company, which in its turn was dominating an +empire far greater and more populous than all the domains of the +British crown. To the bulk of the English people India was a +remote, fantastic, almost inaccessible land, to which adventurous +poor young men went out, to return after many years very rich and +very choleric old gentlemen. It was difficult for the English to +conceive what the life of these countless brown millions in the +eastern sunshine could be. Their imaginations declined the task. +India remained romantically unreal. It was impossible for the +English, therefore, to exert any effective supervision and control +over the company's proceedings. + +And while the Western European powers were thus fighting for these +fantastic overseas empires upon every ocean in the world, two +great land conquests were in progress in Asia. China had thrown +off the Mongol yoke in 1360, and flourished under the great native +dynasty of the Mings until 1644. Then the Manchus, another Mongol +people, reconquered China and remained masters of China until +1912. Meanwhile Russia was pushing East and growing to greatness +in the world's affairs. The rise of this great central power of +the old world, which is neither altogether of the East nor {334} +altogether of the West, is one of the utmost importance to our +human destiny. Its expansion is very largely due to the +appearance of a Christian steppe people, the Cossacks, who formed +a barrier between the feudal agriculture of Poland and Hungary to +the west and the Tartar to the east. The Cossacks were the wild +east of Europe, and in many ways not unlike the wild west of the +United States in the middle nineteenth century. All who had made +Russia too hot to hold them, criminals as well as the persecuted +innocent, rebellious serfs, religious secretaries, thieves, +vagabonds, murderers, sought asylum in the southern steppes and +there made a fresh start and fought for life and freedom against +Pole, Russian and Tartar alike. Doubtless fugitives from the +Tartars to the east also contributed to the Cossack mixture. +Slowly these border folk were incorporated in the Russian imperial +service, much as the highland clans of Scotland were converted +into regiments by the British government. New lands were offered +them in Asia. They became a weapon against the dwindling power of +the Mongolian nomads, first in Turkestan and then across Siberia +as far as the Amur. + +The decay of Mongol energy in the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries is very difficult to explain. Within two or three +centuries from the days of Jengis and Timurlane Central Asia had +relapsed from a period of world ascendancy to extreme political +impotence. Changes of climate, unrecorded pestilences, infections +of a malarial type, may have played their part in this +recession--which may be only a temporary recession measured by the +scale of universal history--of the Central Asian peoples. Some +authorities think that the spread of Buddhist teaching from China +also had a pacifying influence upon them. At any rate, by the +sixteenth century the Mongol, Tartar and Turkish peoples were no +longer pressing outward, but were being invaded, subjugated and +pushed back both by Christian Russia in the west and by China in +the east. + +All through the seventeenth century the Cossacks were spreading +eastward from European Russia, and settling wherever they found +agricultural conditions. Cordons of forts and stations formed a +moving frontier to these settlements to the south, where the +Turkomans were still strong and active; to the north-east, +however, Russia had no frontier until she reached right to the +Pacific .... + + + + +{335} + +LIV + +THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE + + +The third quarter of the eighteenth century thus saw the +remarkable and unstable spectacle of a Europe divided against +itself, and no longer with any unifying political or religious +idea, yet through the immense stimulation of men's imaginations by +the printed book, the printed map, and the opportunity of the new +ocean-going shipping, able in a disorganized and contentious +manner to dominate all the coasts of the world. It was a +planless, incoherent ebullition of enterprise due to temporary and +almost accidental advantages over the rest of mankind. By virtue +of these advantages this new and still largely empty continent of +America was peopled mainly from Western European sources, and +South Africa and Australia and New Zealand marked down as +prospective homes for a European population. + +The motive that had sent Columbus to America and Vasco da Gama to +India was the perennial first motive of all sailors since the +beginning of things--trade. But while in the already populous and +productive East the trade motive remained dominant, and the +European settlements remained trading settlements from which the +European inhabitants hoped to return home to spend their money, +the Europeans in America, dealing with communities at a very much +lower level of productive activity, found a new inducement for +persistence in the search for gold and silver. Particularly did +the mines of Spanish America yield silver. The Europeans had to +go to America not simply as armed merchants but as prospectors, +miners, searchers after natural products, and presently as +planters. In the north they sought furs. Mines and plantations +necessitated settlements. They obliged people to set up permanent +overseas homes. Finally in some cases, as when the English +Puritans went to New England in the early seventeenth {336} +century to escape religious persecution, when in the eighteenth +Oglethorpe sent people from the English debtors' prisons to +Georgia, and when in the end of the eighteenth the Dutch sent +orphans to the Cape of Good Hope, the Europeans frankly crossed +the seas to find new homes for good. In the nineteenth century, +and especially after the coming of the steamship, the stream of +European emigration to the new empty lands of America and +Australia rose for some decades to the scale of a great migration. + +So there grew up permanent overseas populations of Europeans, and +the European culture was transplanted to much larger areas than +those in which it had been developed. These new communities +bringing a ready-made civilization with them to these new lands +grew up, as it were, unplanned and unperceived; the statecraft of +Europe did not foresee them, and was unprepared with any ideas +about their treatment. The politicians and ministers of Europe +continued to regard them as essentially expeditionary +establishments, sources of revenue, "possessions" and +"dependencies," long after their peoples had developed a keen +sense of their separate social life. And also they continued to +treat them as helplessly subject to the mother country long after +the population had spread inland out of reach of any effectual +punitive operations from the sea. + +Because until right into the nineteenth century, it must be +remembered, the link of all these overseas empires was the +oceangoing sailing ship. On land the swiftest thing was still the +horse, and the cohesion and unity of political systems on land was +still limited by the limitations of horse communications. + +Now at the end of the third quarter of the eighteenth century the +northern two-thirds of North America was under the British crown. +France had abandoned America. Except for Brazil, which was +Portuguese, and one or two small islands and areas in French, +British, Danish and Dutch hands, Florida, Louisiana, California +and all America to the south was Spanish. It was the British +colonies south of Maine and Lake Ontario that first demonstrated +the inadequacy of the sailing ship to hold overseas populations +together in one political system. + +These British colonies were very miscellaneous in their origin and +character. There were French, Swedish and Dutch settlements {337} +as well as British; there were British Catholics in Maryland and +British ultra-Protestants in New England, and while the New +Englanders farmed their own land and denounced slavery, the +British in Virginia and the south were planters employing a +swelling multitude of imported negro slaves. There was no natural +common unity in such states. To get from one to the other might +mean a coasting voyage hardly less tedious than the transatlantic +crossing. But the union that diverse origin and natural +conditions denied the British Americans was forced upon them by +the selfishness and stupidity of the British government in London. +They were taxed without any voice in the spending of the taxes; +their trade was sacrificed to British interests; the highly +profitable slave trade was maintained by the British government in +spite of the opposition of the Virginians +who--though quite willing to hold and use slaves--feared to be +swamped by an ever-growing barbaric black population. + +[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON] + +Britain at that time was lapsing towards an intenser form of +monarchy, and the obstinate personality of George III (1760-1820) +did much to force on a struggle between the home and the colonial +governments. + +The conflict was precipitated by legislation which favoured the +London East India Company at the expense of the American shipper. +Three cargoes of tea which were imported under the new conditions +were thrown overboard in Boston harbour by a band of men disguised +as Indians (1773). {338} Fighting only began in 1775 when the +British government attempted to arrest two of the American leaders +at Lexington near Boston. The first shots were fired in Lexington +by the British; the first fighting occurred at Concord. + +[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, NEAR BOSTON] + +So the American War of Independence began, though for more than a +year the colonists showed themselves extremely unwilling to sever +their links with the mother land. It was not until the middle of +1776 that the Congress of the insurgent states issued "The +Declaration of Independence." George Washington, who like many of +the leading colonists of the time had had a military training in +the wars against the French, was made commander-in-chief. In 1777 +a British general, General Burgoyne, in an attempt to reach New +York from Canada, was defeated at Freemans Farm and obliged to +surrender at Saratoga. In the same year the French and Spanish +declared war upon Great Britain, greatly hampering her sea +communications. A second British army under General Cornwallis +was caught in the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia and obliged to +capitulate in 1781. In 1783 peace was made in Paris, and the +Thirteen Colonies from Maine to Georgia became a union of +independent sovereign States. So the United States of America +came into existence. Canada remained loyal to the British flag. + +[Map: The United States, showing extent of settlement in 1790] + +For four years these States had only a very feeble central +government under certain Articles of Confederation, and they +seemed destined to break up into separate independent communities. +Their immediate separation was delayed by the hostility of the +British and a certain aggressiveness on the part of the French +which brought {340} home to them the immediate dangers of +division. A Constitution was drawn up and ratified in 1788 +establishing a more efficient Federal government with a President +holding very considerable powers, and the weak sense of national +unity was invigorated by a second war with Britain in 1812. +Nevertheless the area covered by the States was so wide and their +interests so diverse at that time, that--given only the means of +communication then available--a disintegration of the Union into +separate states on the European scale of size was merely a +question of time. Attendance at Washington meant a long, tedious +and insecure journey for the senators and congressmen of the +remoter districts, and the mechanical impediments to the diffusion +of a common education and a common literature and intelligence +were practically insurmountable. Forces were at work in the world +however that were to arrest the process of differentiation +altogether. Presently came the river steamboat and then the +railway and the telegraph to save the United States from +fragmentation, and weave its dispersed people together again into +the first of great modern nations. + +Twenty-two years later the Spanish colonies in America were to +follow the example of the Thirteen and break their connection with +Europe. But being more dispersed over the continent and separated +by great mountainous chains and deserts and forests and by the +Portuguese Empire of Brazil, they did not achieve a union among +themselves. They became a constellation of republican states, +very prone at first to wars among themselves and to revolutions. + +Brazil followed a rather different line towards the inevitable +separation. In 1807 the French armies under Napoleon had occupied +the mother country of Portugal, and the monarchy had fled to +Brazil. From that time on until they separated, Portugal was +rather a dependency of Brazil than Brazil of Portugal. In 1822 +Brazil declared itself a separate Empire under Pedro I, a son of +the Portuguese King. But the new world has never been very +favourable to monarchy. In 1889 the Emperor of Brazil was shipped +off quietly to Europe, and the United States of Brazil fell into +line with the rest of republican America. + + + + +{341} + +LV + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE RESTORATION OF MONARCHY IN FRANCE + + +Britain had hardly lost the Thirteen Colonies in America before a +profound social and political convulsion at the very heart of +Grand Monarchy was to remind Europe still more vividly of the +essentially temporary nature of the political arrangements of the +world. + +We have said that the French monarchy was the most successful of +the personal monarchies in Europe. It was the envy and model of a +multitude of competing and minor courts. But it flourished on a +basis of injustice that led to its dramatic collapse. It was +brilliant and aggressive, but it was wasteful of the life and +substance of its common people. The clergy and nobility were +protected from taxation by a system of exemption that threw the +whole burden of the state upon the middle and lower classes. The +peasants were ground down by taxation; the middle classes were +dominated and humiliated by the nobility. + +In 1787 this French monarchy found itself bankrupt and obliged to +call representatives of the different classes of the realm into +consultation upon the perplexities of defective income and +excessive expenditure. In 1789 the States General, a gathering of +the nobles, clergy and commons, roughly equivalent to the earlier +form of the British Parliament, was called together at Versailles. +It had not assembled since 1610. For all that time France had +been an absolute monarchy. Now the people found a means of +expressing their long fermenting discontent. Disputes immediately +broke out between the three estates, due to the resolve of the +Third Estate, the Commons, to control the Assembly. The Commons +got the better of these disputes and the States General became a +National Assembly, clearly resolved to keep the crown in order, as +the British {342} Parliament kept the British crown in order. The +king (Louis XVI) prepared for a struggle and brought up troops +from the provinces. Whereupon Paris and France revolted. + +The collapse of the absolute monarchy was very swift. The +grim-looking prison of the Bastille was stormed by the people of +Paris, and the insurrection spread rapidly throughout France. In +the east and north-west provinces many chateaux belonging to the +nobility were burnt by the peasants, their title-deeds carefully +destroyed, and the owners murdered or driven away. In a month the +ancient and decayed system of the aristocratic order had +collapsed. Many of the leading princes and courtiers of the +queen's party fled abroad. A provisional city government was set +up in Paris and in most of the other large cities, and a new armed +force, the National Guard, a force designed primarily and plainly +to resist the forces of the crown, was brought into existence by +these municipal bodies. The National Assembly found itself called +upon to create a new political and social system for a new age. + +It was a task that tried the powers of that gathering to the +utmost. It made a great sweep of the chief injustices of the +absolutist regime; it abolished tax exemptions, serfdom, +aristocratic titles and privileges and sought to establish a +constitutional monarchy in Paris. The king abandoned Versailles +and its splendours and kept a diminished state in the palace of +the Tuileries in Paris. + +For two years it seemed that the National Assembly might struggle +through to an effective modernized government. Much of its work +was sound and still endures, if much was experimental and had to +be undone. Much was ineffective. There was a clearing up of the +penal code; torture, arbitrary imprisonment and persecutions for +heresy were abolished. The ancient provinces of France, Normandy, +Burgundy and the like gave place to eighty departments. Promotion +to the highest ranks in the army was laid open to men of every +class. An excellent and simple system of law courts was set up, +but its value was much vitiated by having the judges appointed by +popular election for short periods of time. This made the crowd a +sort of final court of appeal, and the judges, like the members of +the Assembly, were forced to play to the gallery. And the whole +vast property of the church was seized and administered {343} by +the state; religious establishments not engaged in education or +works of charity were broken up, and the salaries of the clergy +made a charge upon the nation. This in itself was not a bad thing +for the lower clergy in France, who were often scandalously +underpaid in comparison with the richer dignitaries. But in +addition the choice of priests and bishops was made elective, +which struck at the very root idea of the Roman Church, which +centred everything upon the Pope, and in which all authority is +from above downward. Practically the National Assembly wanted at +one blow to make the church in France Protestant, in organization +if not in doctrine. Everywhere there were disputes and conflicts +between the state priests created by the National Assembly and the +recalcitrant (non-juring) priests who were loyal to Rome. + +In 1791 the experiment of Constitutional monarchy in France was +brought to an abrupt end by the action of the king and queen, +working in concert with their aristocratic and monarchist friends +abroad. Foreign armies gathered on the Eastern frontier and one +night in June the king and queen and their children slipped away +from the Tuileries and fled to join the foreigners and the +aristocratic exiles. They were caught at Varennes and brought +back to Paris, and an France flamed up into a passion of patriotic +republicanism. A Republic was proclaimed, open war with Austria +and Prussia ensued, and the king was tried and executed (January, +1793) on the model already set by England, for treason to his +people. + +And now followed a strange phase in the history of the French +people. There arose a great flame of enthusiasm for France and +the Republic. There was to be an end to compromise at home and +abroad; at home royalists and every form of disloyalty were to be +stamped out; abroad France was to be the protector and helper of +all revolutionaries. All Europe, all the world, was to become +Republican. The youth of France poured into the Republican +armies; a new and wonderful song spread through the land, a song +that still warms the blood like wine, the Marseillaise. Before +that chant and the leaping columns of French bayonets and their +enthusiastically served guns the foreign armies rolled back; +before the end of 1792 the French armies had gone far beyond the +utmost achievements of Louis XIV; everywhere they stood on {344} +foreign soil. They were in Brussels, they had overrun Savoy, they +had raided to Mayence; they had seized the Scheldt from Holland. +Then the French Government did an unwise thing. It had been +exasperated by the expulsion of its representative from England +upon the execution of Louis, and it declared war against England. +It was an unwise thing to do, because the revolution which had +given France a new enthusiastic infantry and a brilliant artillery +released from its aristocratic officers and many cramping +conditions had destroyed the discipline of the navy, and the +English were supreme upon the sea. And this provocation united +all England against France, whereas there had been at first a very +considerable liberal movement in Great Britain in sympathy with +the revolution. + +[Illustration: THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI] + +Of the fight that France made in the next few years against a +European coalition we cannot tell in any detail. She drove the +Austrians for ever out of Belgium, and made Holland a republic. +The Dutch fleet, frozen in the Texel, surrendered to a handful of +{345} cavalry without firing its guns. For some time the French +thrust towards Italy was hung up, and it was only in 1796 that a +new general, Napoleon Bonaparte, led the ragged and hungry +republican armies in triumph across Piedmont to Mantua and Verona. +Says C. F. Atkinson, [7] "What astonished the Allies most of all +was the number and the velocity of the Republicans. These +improvised armies had in fact nothing to delay them. Tents were +unprocurable for want of money, untransportable for want of the +enormous number of wagons that would have been required, and also +unnecessary, for the discomfort that would have caused wholesale +desertion in professional armies was cheerfully borne by the men +of 1793-94. Supplies for armies of then unheard-of size could +not be carried in convoys, and the French soon became familiar +with 'living on the country.' Thus 1793 saw the birth of the +modern system of war--rapidity of movement, full development of +national strength, bivouacs, requisitions and force as against +cautious manoeuvring, small professional armies, tents and full +rations, and chicane. The first represented the +decision-compelling spirit, the second the spirit of risking +little to gain a little ... ." + +And while these ragged hosts of enthusiasts were chanting the +Marseillaise and fighting for _la France_, manifestly never quite +clear in their minds whether they were looting or liberating the +countries into which they poured, the republican enthusiasm in +Paris was spending itself in a far less glorious fashion. The +revolution was now under the sway of a fanatical leader, +Robespierre. This man is difficult to judge; he was a man of poor +physique, naturally timid, and a prig. But he had that most +necessary gift for power, faith. He set himself to save the +Republic as he conceived it, and he imagined it could be saved by +no other man than he. So that to keep in power was to save the +Republic. The living spirit of the Republic, it seemed, had +sprung from a slaughter of royalists and the execution of the +king. There were insurrections; one in the west, in the district +of La Vendee, where the people rose against the conscription and +against the dispossession of the orthodox clergy, and were led by +noblemen and priests; one in the south, where Lyons and Marseilles +had risen and the royalists of Toulon {346} had admitted an +English and Spanish garrison. To which there seemed no more +effectual reply than to go on killing royalists. + +The Revolutionary Tribunal went to work, and a steady slaughtering +began. The invention of the guillotine was opportune to this +mood. The queen was guillotined, most of Robespierre's +antagonists were guillotined, atheists who argued that there was +no Supreme Being were guillotined; day by day, week by week, this +infernal new machine chopped off heads and more heads and more. +The reign of Robespierre lived, it seemed, on blood; and needed +more and more, as an opium-taker needs more and more opium. + +[Illustration: THE EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE, +OCTOBER 16, 1793] + +Finally in the summer of 1794 Robespierre himself was overthrown +and guillotined. He was succeeded by a Directory of five men +which carried on the war of defence abroad and held France +together at home for five years. Their reign formed a curious +interlude in this history of violent changes. They took things +{347} as they found them. The propagandist zeal of the revolution +carried the French armies into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, +south Germany and north Italy. Everywhere kings were expelled and +republics set up. But such propagandist zeal as animated the +Directorate did not prevent the looting of the treasures of the +liberated peoples to relieve the financial embarrassment of the +French Government. Their wars became less and less the holy wars +of freedom, and more and more like the aggressive wars of the +ancient regime. The last feature of Grand Monarchy that France +was disposed to discard was her tradition of foreign policy. One +discovers it still as vigorous under the Directorate as if there +had been no revolution. + +Unhappily for France and the world a man arose who embodied in its +intensest form this national egotism of the French. He gave that +country ten years of glory and the humiliation of a final defeat. +This was that same Napoleon Bonaparte who had led the armies of +the Directory to victory in Italy. + +Throughout the five years of the Directorate he had been scheming +and working for self-advancement. Gradually he clambered to +supreme power. He was a man of severely limited understanding but +of ruthless directness and great energy. He had begun life as an +extremist of the school of Robespierre; he owed his first +promotion to that side; but he had no real grasp of the new forces +that were working in Europe. His utmost political imagination +carried him to a belated and tawdry attempt to restore the Western +Empire. He tried to destroy the remains of the old Holy Roman +Empire, intending to replace it by a new one centring upon Paris. +The Emperor in Vienna ceased to be the Holy Roman Emperor and +became simply Emperor of Austria. Napoleon divorced his French +wife in order to marry an Austrian princess. + +He became practically monarch of France as First Consul in 1799, +and he made himself Emperor of France in 1804 in direct imitation +of Charlemagne. He was crowned by the Pope in Paris, taking the +crown from the Pope and putting it upon his own head himself as +Charlemagne had directed. His son was crowned King of Rome. + +For some years Napoleon's reign was a career of victory. He {348} +conquered most of Italy and Spain, defeated Prussia and Austria, +and dominated all Europe west of Russia. But he never won the +command of the sea from the British and his fleets sustained a +conclusive defeat inflicted by the British Admiral Nelson at +Trafalgar (1805). Spain rose against him in 1808 and a British +army under Wellington thrust the French armies slowly northward +out of the peninsula. In 1811 Napoleon came into conflict with +the Tsar Alexander I, and in 1812 he invaded Russia with a great +conglomerate army of 600,000 men, that was defeated and largely +destroyed by the Russians and the Russian winter. Germany rose +against him, Sweden turned against him. The French armies were +beaten back and at Fontainebleau Napoleon abdicated (1814). He +was exiled to Elba, returned to France for one last effort in 1815 +and was defeated by the allied British, Belgians and Prussians at +Waterloo. He died a British prisoner at St. Helena in 1821. + +The forces released by the French revolution were wasted and +finished. A great Congress of the victorious allies met at Vienna +to restore as far as possible the state of affairs that the great +storm had rent to pieces. For nearly forty years a sort of peace, +a peace of exhausted effort, was maintained in Europe. + +[7] In his article, "French Revolutionary Wars," in the +Encyclopaedia Britannica. + + + + +{349} + +LVI + +THE UNEASY PEACE IN EUROPE THAT FOLLOWED THE FALL OF NAPOLEON + + +Two main causes prevented that period from being a complete social +and international peace, and prepared the way for the cycle of +wars between 1854 and 1871. The first of these was the tendency +of the royal courts concerned, towards the restoration of unfair +privilege and interference with freedom of thought and writing and +teaching. The second was the impossible system of boundaries +drawn by the diplomatists of Vienna. + +The inherent disposition of monarchy to march back towards past +conditions was first and most particularly manifest in Spain. +Here even the Inquisition was restored. Across the Atlantic the +Spanish colonies had followed the example of the United States and +revolted against the European Great Power System, when Napoleon +set his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne in 1810. The George +Washington of South America was General Bolivar. Spain was unable +to suppress this revolt, it dragged on much as the United States +War of Independence had dragged on, and at last the suggestion was +made by Austria, in accordance with the spirit of the Holy +Alliance, that the European monarch should assist Spain in this +struggle. This was opposed by Britain in Europe, but it was the +prompt action of President Monroe of the United States in 1823 +which conclusively warned off this projected monarchist +restoration. He announced that the United States would regard any +extension of the European system in the Western Hemisphere as a +hostile act. Thus arose the Monroe Doctrine, the doctrine that +there must be no extension of extra-American government in +America, which has kept the Great Power system out of America for +nearly a hundred years and permitted the new states of Spanish +America to work out their destinies along their own lines. + +{350} + +But if Spanish monarchism lost its colonies, it could at least, +under the protection of the Concert of Europe, do what it chose in +Europe. A popular insurrection in Spain was crushed by a French +army in 1823, with a mandate from a European congress, and +simultaneously Austria suppressed a revolution in Naples. + +In 1824 Louis XVIII died, and was succeeded by Charles X. Charles +set himself to destroy the liberty of the press and universities, +and to restore absolute government; the sum of a billion francs +was voted to compensate the nobles for the chateau burnings and +sequestrations of 1789. In 1830 Paris rose against this +embodiment of the ancient regime, and replaced him by Louis +Philippe, the son of that Philip, Duke of Orleans, who was +executed during the Terror. The other continental monarchies, in +face of the open approval of the revolution by Great Britain and a +strong liberal ferment in Germany and Austria, did not interfere +in this affair. After all, France was still a monarchy. This man +Louis Philippe (1830-48) remained the constitutional King of +France for eighteen years. + +Such were the uneasy swayings of the peace of the Congress of +Vienna, which were provoked by the reactionary proceedings of the +monarchists. The stresses that arose from the unscientific +boundaries planned by the diplomatists at Vienna gathered force +more deliberately, but they were even more dangerous to the peace +of mankind. It is extraordinarily inconvenient to administer +together the affairs of peoples speaking different languages and +so reading different literatures and having different general +ideas, especially if those differences are exacerbated by +religious disputes. Only some strong mutual interest, such as the +common defensive needs of the Swiss mountaineers, can justify a +close linking of peoples of dissimilar languages and faiths; and +even in Switzerland there is the utmost local autonomy. When, as +in Macedonia, populations are mixed in a patchwork of villages and +districts, the cantonal system is imperatively needed. But if the +reader will look at the map of Europe as the Congress of Vienna +drew it, he will see that this gathering seems almost as if it had +planned the maximum of local exasperation. + +It destroyed the Dutch Republic, quite needlessly, it lumped {351} +together the Protestant Dutch with the French-speaking Catholics +of the old Spanish (Austrian) Netherlands, and set up a kingdom of +the Netherlands. It handed over not merely the old republic of +Venice, but all of North Italy as far as Milan to the +German-speaking Austrians. French-speaking Savoy it combined with +pieces of Italy to restore the kingdom of Sardinia. Austria and +Hungary, already a sufficiently explosive mixture of discordant +nationalities, Germans, Hungarians, Czecho-Slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, +Roumanians, and now Italians, was made still more impossible by +confirming Austria's Polish acquisitions of 1772 and 1795. The +Catholic and republican-spirited Polish people were chiefly given +over to the less civilized rule of the +Greek-orthodox Tsar, but important districts went to Protestant +Prussia. The Tsar was also confirmed in his acquisition of the +entirely alien Finns. The very dissimilar Norwegian and Swedish +peoples were bound together under one king. Germany, the reader +will see, was left in a particularly dangerous state of muddle. +Prussia and Austria were both partly in and partly out of a German +confederation, which included a multitude of minor states. The +King of Denmark came into the German confederation by virtue of +certain German-speaking possessions in Holstein. Luxembourg was +included in the German confederation, though its ruler was also +King of the Netherlands, and though many of its peoples talked +French. + +Here was a complete disregard of the fact that the people who talk +German and base their ideas on German literature, the people who +talk Italian and base their ideas on Italian literature, and the +people who talk Polish and base their ideas on Polish literature, +will all be far better off and most helpful and least obnoxious to +the rest of mankind if they conduct their own affairs in their own +idiom within the ring-fence of their own speech. Is it any wonder +that one of the most popular songs in Germany during this period +declared that wherever the German tongue was spoken, there was the +German Fatherland! + +In 1830 French-speaking Belgium, stirred up by the current +revolution in France, revolted against its Dutch association in +the kingdom of the Netherlands. The powers, terrified at the +possibilities of a republic or of annexation to France, hurried in +to pacify {353} this situation, and gave the Belgians a monarch, +Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. There were also ineffectual +revolts in Italy and Germany in 1830, and a much more serious one +in Russian Poland. A republican government held out in Warsaw for +a year against Nicholas I (who succeeded Alexander in 1825), and +was then stamped out of existence with great violence and cruelty. +The Polish language was banned, and the Greek Orthodox church was +substituted for the Roman Catholic as the state religion .... + +==================================================================== + +{352} + +[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)] + +==================================================================== + +[Map: Europe after the Congress of Vienna] + +In 1821 there was an insurrection of the Greeks against the Turks. +For six years they fought a desperate war, while the governments +of Europe looked on. Liberal opinion protested against this +inactivity; volunteers from every European country joined the +insurgents, and at last Britain, France and Russia took joint +action. The Turkish fleet was destroyed by the French and English +at the battle of Navarino (1827), and the Tsar invaded Turkey. By +the treaty of Adrianople (1829) Greece was declared free, but +{354} she was not permitted to resume her ancient republican +traditions. A German king was found for Greece, one Prince Otto +of Bavaria, and Christian governors were set up in the Danubian +provinces (which are now Roumania) and Serbia (a part of the +Jugo-Slav region). Much blood had still to run however before +the Turk +was altogether expelled from these lands. + + + + +{355} + +LVII + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE + + +Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the +opening years of the nineteenth century, while these conflicts of +the powers and princes were going on in Europe, and the patchwork +of the treaty of Westphalia (1648) was changing kaleidoscopically +into the patchwork of the treaty of Vienna (1815), and while the +sailing ship was spreading European influence throughout the +world, a steady growth of knowledge and a general clearing up of +men's ideas about the world in which they lived was in progress in +the European and Europeanized world. + +It went on disconnected from political life, and producing +throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no striking +immediate results in political life. Nor was it affecting popular +thought very profoundly during this period. These reactions were +to come later, and only in their full force in the latter half of +the nineteenth century. It was a process that went on chiefly in +a small world of prosperous and +independent-spirited people. Without what the English call the +"private gentleman," the scientific process could not have begun +in Greece, and could not have been renewed in Europe. The +universities played a part but not a leading part in the +philosophical and scientific thought of this period. Endowed +learning is apt to be timid and conservative learning, lacking in +initiative and resistent to innovation, unless it has the spur of +contact with independent minds. + +We have already noted the formation of the Royal Society in 1662 +and its work in realizing the dream of Bacon's _New Atlantis_. +Throughout the eighteenth century there was much clearing up of +general ideas about matter and motion, much mathematical advance, +a systematic development of the use of optical glass in microscope +and telescope, a renewed energy in classificatory natural {356} +history, a great revival of anatomical science. The science of +geology--foreshadowed by Aristotle and anticipated by Leonardo da +Vinci (1452-1519)--began its great task of interpreting the Record +of the Rocks. + +[Illustration: EARLY ROLLING STOCK ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER +RAILWAY IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE RAILWAY] + +The progress of physical science reacted upon metallurgy. +Improved metallurgy, affording the possibility of a larger and +bolder handling of masses of metal and other materials, reacted +upon practical inventions. Machinery on a new scale and in a new +abundance appeared to revolutionize industry. + +[Illustration: EARLY TRAVELLING ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER +RAILWAY, 1833] + +In 1804 Trevithick adapted the Watt engine to transport and made +the first locomotive. In 1825 the first railway, between Stockton +and Darlington, was opened, and Stephenson's "Rocket," with a +thirteen-ton train, got up to a speed of forty-four miles per +hour. From 1830 onward railways multiplied. By the middle of the +century a network of railways had spread all over Europe. + +Here was a sudden change in what had long been a fixed condition +of human life, the maximum rate of land transport. After the +Russian disaster, Napoleon travelled from near Vilna to Paris in +312 hours. This was a journey of about 1,400 miles. He was +travelling with every conceivable advantage, and he averaged {357} +under 5 miles an hour. An ordinary traveller could not have done +this distance in twice the time. These were about the same +maximum rates of travel as held good between Rome and Gaul in the +first century A.D. Then suddenly came this tremendous change. +The railways reduced this journey for any ordinary traveller to +less than forty-eight hours. That is to say, they reduced the +chief European distances to about a tenth of what they had been. +They made it possible to carry out administrative work in areas +ten times as great as any that had hitherto been workable under +one administration. The full significance of that possibility in +Europe still remains to be realized. Europe is still netted in +boundaries drawn in the horse and road era. In America the +effects were immediate. To the United States of America, +sprawling westward, it meant the possibility of a continuous +access to Washington, however far the frontier travelled across +the continent. It meant unity, sustained on a scale that would +otherwise have been impossible. + +[Illustration: THE STEAMBOAT: _CLERMONT_, 1807, U.S.A.] + +The steamboat was, if anything, a little ahead of the steam engine +in its earlier phases. There was a steamboat, the _Charlotte +Dundas_, on the Firth of Clyde Canal in 1802, and in 1807 an +American {358} named Fulton had a steamer, the Clermont, with +British-built engines, upon the Hudson River above New York. The +first steamship to put to sea was also an American, the Phoenix, +which went from New York (Hoboken) to Philadelphia. So, too, was +the first ship using steam (she also had sails) to cross the +Atlantic, the Savannah (1819). All these were paddle-wheel boats +and paddle-wheel boats are not adapted to work in heavy seas. The +paddles smash too easily, and the boat is then disabled. The +screw steamship followed rather slowly. Many difficulties had to +be surmounted before the screw was a practicable thing. Not until +the middle of the century did the tonnage of steamships upon the +sea begin to overhaul that of sailing ships. After that the +evolution in sea transport was rapid. For the first time men +began to cross the seas and oceans with some certainty as to the +date of their arrival. The transatlantic crossing, which had been +an uncertain adventure of several weeks--which might stretch to +months--was accelerated, until in 1910 it was brought down, in the +case of the fastest boats, to under five days, with a practically +notifiable hour of arrival. + +Concurrently with the development of steam transport upon land and +sea a new and striking addition to the facilities of human +intercourse arose out of the investigations of Volta, Galvani and +Faraday into various electrical phenomena. The electric telegraph +came into existence in 1835. The first underseas cable was laid +in 1851 between France and England. In a few years the telegraph +system had spread over the civilized world, and news which had +hitherto travelled slowly from point to point became practically +simultaneous throughout the earth. + +These things, the steam railway and the electric telegraph, were +to the popular imagination of the middle nineteenth century the +most striking and revolutionary of inventions, but they were only +the most conspicuous and clumsy first fruits of a far more +extensive process. Technical knowledge and skill were developing +with an extraordinary rapidity, and to an extraordinary extent +measured by the progress of any previous age. Far less +conspicuous at first in everyday life, but finally far more +important, was the extension of man's power over various +structural materials. Before the middle of the eighteenth century +iron was reduced from its ores by {359} means of wood charcoal, +was handled in small pieces, and hammered and wrought into shape. +It was material for a craftsman. Quality and treatment were +enormously dependent upon the experience and sagacity of the +individual iron-worker. The largest masses of iron that could be +dealt with under those conditions amounted at most (in the +sixteenth century) to two or three tons. (There was a very +definite upward limit, therefore, to the size of cannon.) The +blast-furnace rose in the eighteenth century and developed with +the use of coke. Not before the eighteenth century do we find +rolled sheet iron (1728) and rolled rods and bars (1783). +Nasmyth's steam hammer came as late as 1838. + +The ancient world, because of its metallurgical inferiority, could +not use steam. The steam engine, even the primitive pumping +engine, could not develop before sheet iron was available. The +early engines seem to the modern eye very pitiful and clumsy bits +of ironmongery, but they were the utmost that the metallurgical +science of the time could do. As late as 1856 came the Bessemer +process, and presently (1864) the open-hearth process, in which +steel and every sort of iron could be melted, purified and cast in +a manner and upon a scale hitherto unheard of. To-day in the +electric furnace one may see tons of incandescent steel swirling +about like boiling milk in a saucepan. Nothing in the previous +practical advances of mankind is comparable in its consequences to +the complete mastery over enormous masses of steel and iron and +over their texture and quality which man has now achieved. The +railways and early engines of all sorts were the mere first +triumphs of the new metallurgical methods. Presently came ships +of iron and steel, vast bridges, and a new way of building with +steel upon a gigantic scale. Men realized too late that they had +planned their railways with far too timid a gauge, that they could +have organized their travelling with far more steadiness and +comfort upon a much bigger scale. + +Before the nineteenth century there were no ships in the world +much over 2,000 tons burthen; now there is nothing wonderful about +a 50,000-ton liner. There are people who sneer at this kind of +progress as being a progress in "mere size," but that sort of +sneering merely marks the intellectual limitations of those who +indulge in it. {360} The great ship or the steel-frame building +is not, as they imagine, a magnified version of the small ship or +building of the past; it is a thing different in kind, more +lightly and strongly built, of finer and stronger materials; +instead of being a thing of precedent and +rule-of-thumb, it is a thing of subtle and intricate calculation. +In the old house or ship, matter was dominant--the material and +its needs had to be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter had been +captured, changed, coerced. Think of the coal and iron and sand +dragged out of the banks and pits, wrenched, wrought, molten and +cast, to be flung at last, a slender glittering pinnacle of steel +and glass, six hundred feet above the crowded city! + +We have given these particulars of the advance in man's knowledge +of the metallurgy of steel and its results by way of illustration. +A parallel story could be told of the metallurgy of copper and +tin, and of a multitude of metals, nickel and aluminium to name +but two, unknown before the nineteenth century dawned. It is in +this great and growing mastery over substances, over different +sorts of glass, over rocks and plasters and the like, over colours +and textures, that the main triumphs of the mechanical revolution +have thus far been achieved. Yet we are still in the stage of the +first fruits in the matter. We have the power, but we have still +to learn how to use our power. Many of the first employments of +these gifts of science have been vulgar, tawdry, stupid or +horrible. The artist and the adaptor have still hardly begun to +work with the endless variety of substances now at their disposal. + +Parallel with this extension of mechanical possibilities the new +science of electricity grew up. It was only in the eighties of +the nineteenth century that this body of enquiry began to yield +results to impress the vulgar mind. Then suddenly came electric +light and electric traction, and the transmutation of forces, the +possibility of sending power, that could be changed into +mechanical motion or light or heat as one chose, along a copper +wire, as water is sent along a pipe, began to come through to the +ideas of ordinary people.... + +The British and French were at first the leading peoples in this +great proliferation of knowledge; but presently the Germans, who +had learnt humility under Napoleon, showed such zeal and +pertinacity in scientific enquiry as to overhaul these leaders. +British {361} science was largely the creation of Englishmen and +Scotchmen working outside the ordinary centres of erudition. + +[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SPINNING WHEEL] + +[Illustration: MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT'S SPINNING JENNY, 1769] + +The universities of Britain were at this time in a state of +educational retrogression, largely given over to a pedantic +conning of the Latin and Greek classics. French education, too, +was dominated by the classical tradition of the Jesuit schools, +and consequently it was not difficult for the Germans to organize +a body of investigators, small indeed in relation to the +possibilities of the case, but large in proportion to the little +band of British and French inventors and experimentalists. And +though this work of research and experiment was making Britain and +France the most rich and {362} powerful countries in the world, it +was not making scientific and inventive men rich and powerful. +There is a necessary unworldliness about a sincere scientific man; +he is too preoccupied with his research to plan and scheme how to +make money out of it. The economic exploitation of his +discoveries falls very easily and naturally, therefore, into the +hands of a more acquisitive type; and so we find that the crops of +rich men which every fresh phase of scientific and technical +progress has produced in Great Britain, though they have not +displayed quite the same passionate desire to insult and kill the +goose that laid the national golden eggs as the scholastic and +clerical professions, have been quite content to let that +profitable creature starve. Inventors and discoverers came by +nature, they thought, for cleverer people to profit by. + +In this matter the Germans were a little wiser. The German +"learned" did not display the same vehement hatred of the new +learning. They permitted its development. The German business +man and manufacturer again had not quite the same contempt for the +man of science as had his British competitor. Knowledge, these +Germans believed, might be a cultivated crop, responsive to +fertilizers. They did concede, therefore, a certain amount of +opportunity to the scientific mind; their public expenditure on +scientific work was relatively greater, and this expenditure was +abundantly rewarded. By the latter half of the nineteenth century +the German scientific worker had made German a necessary language +for every science student who wished to keep abreast with the +latest work in his department, and in certain branches, and +particularly in chemistry, Germany acquired a very great +superiority over her western neighbours. The scientific effort of +the sixties and seventies in Germany began to tell after the +eighties, and the German gained steadily upon Britain and France +in technical and industrial prosperity. + +A fresh phase in the history of invention opened when in the +eighties a new type of engine came into use, an engine in which +the expansive force of an explosive mixture replaced the expansive +force of steam. The light, highly efficient engines that were +thus made possible were applied to the automobile, and developed +at last to reach such a pitch of lightness and efficiency as to +render flight--{363} long known to be possible--a practical +achievement. A successful flying machine--but not a machine large +enough to take up a human body--was made by Professor Langley of +the Smithsonian Institute of Washington as early as 1897. By 1909 +the aeroplane was available for human locomotion. There had +seemed to be a pause in the increase of human speed with the +perfection of railways and automobile road traction, but with the +flying machine came fresh reductions in the effective distance +between one point of the earth's surface and another. In the +eighteenth century the distance from London to Edinburgh was an +eight days' journey; in 1918 the British Civil Air Transport +Commission reported that the journey from London to Melbourne, +halfway round the earth, would probably in a few years' time be +accomplished in that same period of eight days. + +[Illustration: AN EARLY WEAVING MACHINE] + +Too much stress must not be laid upon these striking reductions in +the time distances of one place from another. They are merely one +aspect of a much profounder and more momentous enlargement of +human possibility. The science of agriculture and agricultural +chemistry, for instance, made quite parallel advances during the +nineteenth century. Men learnt so to fertilize the soil as to +produce quadruple and quintuple the crops got from the same area +in the seventeenth century. There was a still more extraordinary +advance in medical science; the average duration of life rose, the +daily efficiency increased, the waste of life through ill-health +diminished. + +{364} + +Now here altogether we have such a change in human life as to +constitute a fresh phase of history. In a little more than a +century this mechanical revolution has been brought about. In +that time man made a stride in the material conditions of his life +vaster than he had done during the whole long interval between the +palaeolithic stage and the age of cultivation, or between the days +of Pepi in Egypt and those of George III. A new gigantic material +framework for human affairs has come into existence. Clearly it +demands great readjustments of our social, economical and +political methods. But these readjustments have necessarily +waited upon the development of the mechanical revolution, and they +are still only in their opening stage +to-day. + + + + +{365} + +LVIII + +THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION + + +There is a tendency in many histories to confuse together what we +have here called the mechanical revolution, which was an entirely +new thing in human experience arising out of the development of +organized science, a new step like the invention of agriculture or +the discovery of metals, with something else, quite different in +its origins, something for which there was already an historical +precedent, the social and financial development which is called +the _industrial revolution_. The two processes were going on +together, they were constantly reacting upon each other, but they +were in root and essence different. There would have been an +industrial revolution of sorts if there had been no coal, no +steam, no machinery; but in that case it would probably have +followed far more closely upon the lines of the social and +financial developments of the later years of the Roman Republic. +It would have repeated the story of dispossessed free cultivators, +gang labour, great estates, great financial fortunes, and a +socially destructive financial process. Even the factory method +came before power and machinery. Factories were the product not +of machinery, but of the "division of labour." Drilled and +sweated workers were making such things as millinery cardboard +boxes and furniture, and colouring maps and book illustrations and +so forth, before even water-wheels had been used for industrial +purposes. There were factories in Rome in the days of Augustus. +New books, for instance, were dictated to rows of copyists in the +factories of the book-sellers. The attentive student of Defoe and +of the political pamphlets of Fielding will realize that the idea +of herding poor people into establishments to work collectively +for their living was already current in Britain before the close +of the seventeenth century. There are intimations of it even as +early as More's _Utopia_ (1516). It was a social and not a +mechanical development. + +{366} + +Up to past the middle of the eighteenth century the social and +economic history of western Europe was in fact retreading the path +along which the Roman state had gone in the last three centuries +B.C. But the political disunions of Europe, the political +convulsions against monarchy, the recalcitrance of the common folk +and perhaps also the greater accessibility of the western European +intelligence to mechanical ideas and inventions, turned the +process into quite novel directions. Ideas of human solidarity, +thanks to Christianity, were far more widely diffused in the newer +European world, political power was not so concentrated, and the +man of energy anxious to get rich turned his mind, therefore, very +willingly from the ideas of the slave and of gang labour to the +idea of mechanical power and the machine. + +The mechanical revolution, the process of mechanical invention and +discovery, was a new thing in human experience and it went on +regardless of the social, political, economic and industrial +consequences it might produce. The industrial revolution, on the +other hand, like most other human affairs, was and is more and +more profoundly changed and deflected by the constant variation in +human conditions caused by the mechanical revolution. And the +essential difference between the amassing of riches, the +extinction of small farmers and small business men, and the phase +of big finance in the latter centuries of the Roman Republic on +the one hand, and the very similar concentration of capital in the +eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the other, lies in the +profound difference in the character of labour that the mechanical +revolution was bringing about. The power of the old world was +human power; everything depended ultimately upon the driving power +of human muscle, the muscle of ignorant and subjugated men. A +little animal muscle, supplied by draft oxen, horse traction and +the like, contributed. Where a weight had to be lifted, men +lifted it; where a rock had to be quarried, men chipped it out; +where a field had to be ploughed, men and oxen ploughed it; the +Roman equivalent of the steamship was the galley with its bank of +sweating rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early +civilizations were employed in purely mechanical drudgery. At its +onset, power-driven machinery did not seem to promise any release +from such unintelligent toil. Great gangs {367} of men were +employed in excavating canals, in making railway cuttings and +embankments, and the like. The number of miners increased +enormously. But the extension of facilities and the output of +commodities increased much more. And as the nineteenth century +went on, the plain logic of the new situation asserted itself more +clearly. Human beings were no longer wanted as a source of mere +indiscriminated power. What could be done mechanically by a human +being could be done faster and better by a machine. The human +being was needed now only where choice and intelligence had to be +exercised. Human beings were wanted only as human beings. The +_drudge_, on whom all the previous civilizations had rested, the +creature of mere obedience, the man whose brains were superfluous, +had become unnecessary to the welfare of mankind. + +[Illustration: INCIDENT IN THE DAYS OF THE SLAVE TRADE] + +This was as true of such ancient industries as agriculture and +mining as it was of the newest metallurgical processes. For +ploughing, sowing and harvesting, swift machines came forward to +do the work of scores of men. The Roman civilization was built +upon cheap and degraded human beings; modern civilization is being +rebuilt upon {368} cheap mechanical power. For a hundred years +power has been getting cheaper and labour dearer. If for a +generation or so machinery has had to wait its turn in the mine, +it is simply because for a time men were cheaper than machinery. + +[Illustration: EARLY FACTORY, IN COLEBROOKDALE] + +Now here was a change-over of quite primary importance in human +affairs. The chief solicitude of the rich and of the ruler in the +old civilization had been to keep up a supply of drudges. As the +nineteenth century went on, it became more and more plain to the +intelligent directive people that the common man had now to be +something better than a drudge. He had to be educated--if only to +secure "industrial efficiency." He had to understand what he was +about. From the days of the first Christian propaganda, popular +education had been smouldering in Europe, just as it had +smouldered in Asia wherever Islam has set its foot, because of the +necessity of making the believer understand a little of the belief +by which he is {369} saved, and of enabling him to read a little +in the sacred books by which his belief is conveyed. Christian +controversies, with their competition for adherents, ploughed the +ground for the harvest of popular education. In England, for +instance, by the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, +the disputes of the sects and the necessity of catching adherents +young had produced a series of competing educational organizations +for children, the church "National" schools, the dissenting +"British" schools, and even Roman Catholic elementary schools. +The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid +advance in popular education throughout all the Westernized world. +There was no parallel advance in the education of the upper +classes--some advance, no doubt, but nothing to correspond--and so +the great gulf that had divided that world hitherto into the +readers and the non-reading mass became little more than a +slightly perceptible difference in educational level. At the back +of this process was the mechanical revolution, apparently +regardless of social conditions, but really insisting inexorably +upon the complete abolition of a totally illiterate class +throughout the world. + +The economic revolution of the Roman Republic had never been +clearly apprehended by the common people of Rome. The ordinary +Roman citizen never saw the changes through which he lived, +clearly and comprehensively as we see them. But the industrial +revolution, as it went on towards the end of the nineteenth +century, was more and more distinctly _seen_ as one whole process +by the common people it was affecting, because presently they +could read and discuss and communicate, and because they went +about and saw things as no commonalty had ever done before. + + + + +{370} + +LIX + +THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS + + +The institutions and customs and political ideas of the ancient +civilizations grew up slowly, age by age, no man designing and no +man foreseeing. It was only in that great century of human +adolescence, the sixth century B.C., that men began to think +clearly about their relations to one another, and first to +question and first propose to alter and rearrange the established +beliefs and laws and methods of human government. + +We have told of the glorious intellectual dawn of Greece and +Alexandria, and how presently the collapse of the slave-holding +civilizations and the clouds of religious intolerance and +absolutist government darkened the promise of that beginning. The +light of fearless thinking did not break through the European +obscurity again effectually until the fifteenth and sixteenth +centuries. We have tried to show something of the share of the +great winds of Arab curiosity and Mongol conquest in this gradual +clearing of the mental skies of Europe. And at first it was +chiefly material knowledge that increased. The first fruits of +the recovered manhood of the race were material achievements and +material power. The science of human relationship, of individual +and social psychology, of education and of economics, are not only +more subtle and intricate in themselves but also bound up +inextricably with much emotional matter. The advances made in +them have been slower and made against greater opposition. Men +will listen dispassionately to the most diverse suggestions about +stars or molecules, but ideas about our ways of life touch and +reflect upon everyone about us. + +And just as in Greece the bold speculations of Plato came before +Aristotle's hard search for fact, so in Europe the first political +enquiries of the new phase were put in the form of "Utopian" +stories, directly imitated from Plato's _Republic_ and his _Laws_. +Sir Thomas {371} More's _Utopia_ is a curious imitation of Plato +that bore fruit in a new English poor law. The Neapolitan +Campanella's _City of the Sun_ was more fantastic and less +fruitful. + +By the end of the seventeenth century we find a considerable and +growing literature of political and social science was being +produced. Among the pioneers in this discussion was John Locke, +the son of an English republican, an Oxford scholar who first +directed his attention to chemistry and medicine. His treatises +on government, toleration and education show a mind fully awake to +the possibilities of social reconstruction. Parallel with and a +little later than John Locke in England, Montesquieu +(1689-1755) in France subjected social, political and religious +institutions to a searching and fundamental analysis. He stripped +the magical prestige from the absolutist monarchy in France. He +shares with Locke the credit for clearing away many of the false +ideas that had hitherto prevented deliberate and conscious +attempts to reconstruct human society. + +The generation that followed him in the middle and later decades +of the eighteenth century was boldly speculative upon the moral +and intellectual clearings he had made. A group of brilliant +writers, the "Encyclopaedists," mostly rebel spirits from the +excellent schools of the Jesuits, set themselves to scheme out a +new world (1766). Side by side with the Encyclopaedists were the +Economists or Physiocrats, who were making bold and crude +enquiries into the production and distribution of food and goods. +Morelly, the author of the _Code de La Nature_, denounced the +institution of private property and proposed a communistic +organization of society. He was the precursor of that large and +various school of collectivist thinkers in the nineteenth century +who are lumped together as Socialists. + +What is Socialism? There are a hundred definitions of Socialism +and a thousand sects of Socialists. Essentially Socialism is no +more and no less than a criticism of the idea of property in the +light of the public good. We may review the history of that idea +through the ages very briefly. That and the idea of +internationalism are the two cardinal ideas upon which most of our +political life is turning. + +{372} + +[Illustration: CARL MARX] + +The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of the +species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was a +proprietor. Primitive property is what a beast will fight for. +The dog and his bone, the tigress and her lair, the roaring stag +and his herd, these are proprietorship blazing. No more +nonsensical expression is conceivable in sociology than the term +"primitive communism." The Old Man of the family tribe of early +palaeolithic times insisted {373} upon his proprietorship in his +wives and daughters, in his tools, in his visible universe. If +any other man wandered into his visible universe he fought him, +and if he could he slew him. The tribe grew in the course of +ages, as Atkinson showed convincingly in his _Primal Law_, by the +gradual toleration by the Old Man of the existence of the younger +men, and of their proprietorship in the wives they captured from +outside the tribe, and in the tools and ornaments they made and +the game they slew. Human society grew by a compromise between +this one's property and that. It was a compromise with instinct +which was forced upon men by the necessity of driving some other +tribe out of its visible universe. If the hills and forests and +streams were not _your_ land or _my_ land, it was because they had +to be our land. Each of us would have preferred to have it _my_ +land, but that would not work. In that case the other fellows +would have destroyed us. Society, therefore, is from its +beginning a _mitigation of ownership_. Ownership in the beast and +in the primitive savage was far more intense a thing than it is in +the civilized world to-day. It is rooted more strongly in our +instincts than in our reason. + +In the natural savage and in the untutored man to-day there is no +limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you can fight +for, you can own; women-folk, spared captive, captured beast, +forest glade, stone-pit or what not. As the community grew, a +sort of law came to restrain internecine fighting, men developed +rough-and-ready methods of settling proprietorship. Men could own +what they were the first to make or capture or claim. It seemed +natural that a debtor who could not pay should become the property +of his creditor. Equally natural was it that after claiming a +patch of land a man should exact payments from anyone who wanted +to use it. It was only slowly, as the possibilities of organized +life dawned on men, that this unlimited property in anything +whatever began to be recognized as a nuisance. Men found +themselves born into a universe all owned and claimed, nay! they +found themselves born owned and claimed. The social struggles of +the earlier civilization are difficult to trace now, but the +history we have told of the Roman Republic shows a community +waking up to the idea that debts may become a public inconvenience +and should then be repudiated, and that the unlimited ownership of +land is also an inconvenience. We {374} find that later Babylonia +severely limited the rights of property in slaves. Finally, we +find in the teaching of that great revolutionist, Jesus of +Nazareth, such an attack upon property as had never been before. +Easier it was, he said, for a camel to go through the eye of a +needle than for the owner of great possessions to enter the +kingdom of heaven. A steady, continuous criticism of the +permissible scope of property seems to have been going on in the +world for the last twenty-five or thirty centuries. Nineteen +hundred years after Jesus of Nazareth we find all the world that +has come under the Christian teaching persuaded that there could +be no property in human beings. And also the idea that a man may +"do what he likes with his own" was very much shaken in relation +to other sorts of property. + +But this world of the closing eighteenth century was still only in +the interrogative stage in this matter. It had got nothing clear +enough, much less settled enough, to act upon. One of its primary +impulses was to protect property against the greed and waste of +kings and the exploitation of noble adventurers. It was largely +to protect private property from taxation that the French +Revolution began. But the equalitarian formulae of the Revolution +carried it into a criticism of the very property it had risen to +protect. How can men be free and equal when numbers of them have +no ground to stand upon and nothing to eat, and the owners will +neither feed nor lodge them unless they toil? Excessively--the +poor complained. + +To which riddle the reply of one important political group was to +set about "dividing up." They wanted to intensify and +universalize property. Aiming at the same end by another route, +there were the primitive socialists--or, to be more exact, +communists--who wanted to "abolish" private property altogether. +The state (a democratic state was of course understood) was to own +all property. + +It is paradoxical that different men seeking the same ends of +liberty and happiness should propose on the one hand to make +property as absolute as possible, and on the other to put an end +to it altogether. But so it was. And the clue to this paradox is +to be found in the fact that ownership is not one thing but a +multitude of different things. + +{375} + +It was only as the nineteenth century developed that men began to +realize that property was not one simple thing, but a great +complex of ownerships of different values and consequences, that +many things (such as one's body, the implements of an artist, +clothing, toothbrushes) are very profoundly and incurably one's +personal property, and that there is a very great range of things, +railways, machinery of various sorts, homes, cultivated gardens, +pleasure boats, for example, which need each to be considered very +particularly to determine how far and under what limitations it +may come under private ownership, and how far it falls into the +public domain and may be administered and let out by the state in +the collective interest. On the practical side these questions +pass into politics, and the problem of making and sustaining +efficient state administration. They open up issues in social +psychology, and interact with the enquiries of educational +science. The criticism of property is still a vast and passionate +ferment rather than a science. On the one hand are the +Individualists, who would protect and enlarge our present freedoms +with what we possess, and on the other the Socialists who would in +many directions pool our ownerships and restrain our proprietory +acts. In practice one will find every gradation between the +extreme individualist, who will scarcely tolerate a tax of any +sort to support a government, and the communist who would deny any +possessions at all. The ordinary socialist of +to-day is what is called a collectivist; he would allow a +considerable amount of private property but put such affairs as +education, transport, mines, land-owning, most mass productions of +staple articles, and the like, into the hands of a highly +organized state. Nowadays there does seem to be a gradual +convergence of reasonable men towards a moderate socialism +scientifically studied and planned. It is realized more and more +clearly that the untutored man does not co-operate easily and +successfully in large undertakings, and that every step towards a +more complex state and every function that the state takes over +from private enterprise, necessitates a corresponding educational +advance and the organization of a proper criticism and control. +Both the press and the political methods of the contemporary state +are far too crude for any large extension of collective +activities. + +But for a time the stresses between employer and employed and +{376} particularly between selfish employers and reluctant +workers, led to a world-wide dissemination of the very harsh and +elementary form of communism which is associated with the name of +Marx. Marx based his theories on a belief that men's minds are +limited by their economic necessities, and that there is a +necessary conflict of interests in our present civilization +between the prosperous and employing classes of people and the +employed mass. With the advance in education necessitated by the +mechanical revolution, this great employed majority will become +more and more class-conscious and more and more solid in +antagonism to the (class-conscious) ruling minority. In some way +the class-conscious workers would seize power, he prophesied, and +inaugurate a new social state. The antagonism, the insurrection, +the possible revolution are understandable enough, but it does not +follow that a new social state or anything but a socially +destructive process will ensue. Put to the test in Russia, +Marxism, as we shall note later, has proved singularly uncreative. + +[Illustration: SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE] + +{377} + +Marx sought to replace national antagonism by class antagonisms; +Marxism has produced in succession a First, a Second and a Third +Workers' International. But from the starting point of modern +individualistic thought it is also possible to reach international +ideas. From the days of that great English economist, Adam Smith, +onward there has been an increasing realization that for +world-wide prosperity free and unencumbered trade about the earth +is needed. The individualist with his hostility to the state is +hostile also to tariffs and boundaries and all the restraints upon +free act and movement that national boundaries seem to justify. +It is interesting to see two lines of thought, so diverse in +spirit, so different in substance as this class-war socialism of +the Marxists and the individualistic free-trading philosophy of +the British business men of the Victorian age heading at last, in +spite of these primary differences, towards the same intimations +of a new world-wide treatment of human affairs outside the +boundaries and limitations of any existing state. The logic of +reality triumphs over the logic of theory. We begin to perceive +that from widely divergent starting points individualist theory +and socialist theory are part of a common search, a search for +more spacious social and political ideas and interpretations, upon +which men may contrive to work together, a search that began again +in Europe and has intensified as men's confidence in the ideas of +the Holy Roman Empire and in Christendom decayed, and as the age +of discovery broadened their horizons from the world of the +Mediterranean to the whole wide world. + +To bring this description of the elaboration and development of +social, economic and political ideas right down to the discussions +of the present day, would be to introduce issues altogether too +controversial for the scope and intentions of this book. But +regarding these things, as we do here, from the vast perspectives +of the student of world history, we are bound to recognize that +this reconstruction of these directive ideas in the human mind is +still an unfinished task--we cannot even estimate yet how +unfinished the task may be. Certain common beliefs do seem to be +emerging, and their influence is very perceptible upon the +political events and public acts of to-day; but at present they +are not clear enough nor convincing enough to compel men +definitely and systematically towards their realization. {378} +Men's acts waver between tradition and the new, and on the whole +they rather gravitate towards the traditional. Yet, compared with +the thought of even a brief lifetime ago, there does seem to be an +outline shaping itself of a new order in human affairs. It is a +sketchy outline, vanishing into vagueness at this point and that, +{379} and fluctuating in detail and formulae, yet it grows +steadfastly clearer, and its main lines change less and less. + +[Illustration: CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE] + +It is becoming plainer and plainer each year that in many respects +and in an increasing range of affairs, mankind is becoming one +community, and that it is more and more necessary that in such +matters there should be a common world-wide control. For example, +it is steadily truer that the whole planet is now one economic +community, that the proper exploitation of its natural resources +demands one comprehensive direction, and that the greater power +and range that discovery has given human effort makes the present +fragmentary and contentious administration of such affairs more +and more wasteful and dangerous. Financial and monetary +expedients also become world-wide interests to be dealt with +successfully only on world-wide lines. Infectious diseases and +the increase and migrations of population are also now plainly +seen to be world-wide concerns. The greater power and range of +human activities has also made war disproportionately destructive +and disorganizing, and, even as a clumsy way of settling issues +between government and government and people and people, +ineffective. All these things clamour for controls and +authorities of a greater range and greater comprehensiveness than +any government that has hitherto existed. + +But it does not follow that the solution of these problems lies in +some super-government of all the world arising by conquest or by +the coalescence of existing governments. By analogy with existing +institutions men have thought of the Parliament of Mankind, of a +World Congress, of a President or Emperor of the Earth. Our first +natural reaction is towards some such conclusion, but the +discussion and experiences of half a century of suggestions and +attempts has on the whole discouraged belief in that first obvious +idea. Along that line to world unity the resistances are too +great. The drift of thought seems now to be in the direction of a +number of special committees or organizations, with world-wide +power delegated to them by existing governments in this group of +matters or that, bodies concerned with the waste or development of +natural wealth, with the equalization of labour conditions, with +world peace, with currency, population and health, and so forth. + +{380} + +The world may discover that all its common interests are being +managed as one concern, while it still fails to realize that a +world government exists. But before even so much human unity is +attained, before such international arrangements can be put above +patriotic suspicions and jealousies, it is necessary that the +common mind of the race should be possessed of that idea of human +unity, and that the idea of mankind as one family should be a +matter of universal instruction and understanding. + +For a score of centuries or more the spirit of the great universal +religions has been struggling to maintain and extend that idea of +a universal human brotherhood, but to this day the spites, angers +and distrusts of tribal, national and racial friction obstruct, +and successfully obstruct, the broader views and more generous +impulses which would make every man the servant of all mankind. +The idea of human brotherhood struggles now to possess the human +soul, just as the idea of Christendom struggled to possess the +soul of Europe in the confusion and disorder of the sixth and +seventh centuries of the Christian era. The dissemination and +triumph of such ideas must be the work of a multitude of devoted +and undistinguished missionaries, and no contemporary writer can +presume to guess how far such work has gone or what harvest it may +be preparing. + +Social and economic questions seem to be inseparably mingled with +international ones. The solution in each case lies in an appeal +to that same spirit of service which can enter and inspire the +human heart. The distrust, intractability and egotism of nations +reflects and is reflected by the distrust, intractability and +egotism of the individual owner and worker in the face of the +common good. Exaggerations of possessiveness in the individual +are parallel and of a piece with the clutching greed of nations +and emperors. They are products of the same instinctive +tendencies, and the same ignorances and traditions. +Internationalism is the socialism of nations. No one who has +wrestled with these problems can feel that there yet exists a +sufficient depth and strength of psychological science and a +sufficiently planned-out educational method and organization for +any real and final solution of these riddles of human intercourse +and cooperation. We are as incapable of planning a really +effective peace organization of the world to-day as were men in +1820 to plan an {381} electric railway system, but for all we know +the thing is equally practicable and may be as nearly at hand. + +No man can go beyond his own knowledge, no thought can reach +beyond contemporary thought, and it is impossible for us to guess +or foretell how many generations of humanity may have to live in +war and waste and insecurity and misery before the dawn of the +great peace to which all history seems to be pointing, peace in +the heart and peace in the world, ends our night of wasteful and +aimless living. Our proposed solutions are still vague and crude. +Passion and suspicion surround them. A great task of intellectual +reconstruction is going on, it is still incomplete, and our +conceptions grow clearer and more exact--slowly, rapidly, it is +hard to tell which. But as they grow clearer they will gather +power over the minds and imaginations of men. Their present lack +of grip is due to their lack of assurance and exact rightness. +They are misunderstood because they are variously and confusingly +presented. But with precision and certainty the new vision of the +world will gain compelling power. It may presently gain power +very rapidly. And a great work of educational reconstruction will +follow logically and necessarily upon that clearer understanding. + + + + +{382} + +LX + +THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES + + +The region of the world that displayed the most immediate and +striking results from the new inventions in transport was North +America. Politically the United States embodied, and its +constitution crystallized, the liberal ideas of the middle +eighteenth century. It dispensed with state-church or crown, it +would have no titles, it protected property very jealously as a +method of freedom, and--the exact practice varied at first in the +different states--it gave nearly every adult male citizen a vote. +Its method of voting was barbarically crude, and as a consequence +its political life fell very soon under the control of highly +organized party machines, but that did not prevent the newly +emancipated population developing an energy, enterprise and public +spirit far beyond that of any other contemporary population. + +Then came that acceleration of locomotion to which we have already +called attention. It is a curious thing that America, which owes +most to this acceleration in locomotion, has felt it least. The +United States have taken the railway, the river steamboat, the +telegraph and so forth as though they were a natural part of their +growth. They were not. These things happened to come along just +in time to save American unity. The United States of to-day were +made first by the river steamboat, and then by the railway. +Without these things, the present United States, this vast +continental nation, would have been altogether impossible. The +westward flow of population would have been far more sluggish. It +might never have crossed the great central plains. It took nearly +two hundred years for effective settlement to reach from the coast +to Missouri, much less than halfway across the continent. The +first state established beyond the river was the steamboat state +of Missouri in 1821. But the rest of the distance to the Pacific +was done in a few decades. + +{383} + +If we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to +show a map of North America year by year from 1600 onward, with +little dots to represent hundreds of people, each dot a hundred, +and stars to represent cities of a hundred thousand people. + +For two hundred years the reader would see that stippling creeping +slowly along the coastal districts and navigable waters, spreading +still more gradually into Indiana, Kentucky and so forth. Then +somewhere about 1810 would come a change. Things would get more +lively along the river courses. The dots would be multiplying and +spreading. That would be the steamboat. The pioneer dots would +be spreading soon over Kansas and Nebraska from a number of +jumping-off places along the great rivers. + +Then from about 1850 onward would come the black lines of the +railways, and after that the little black dots would not simply +creep but run. They would appear now so rapidly, it would be +almost as though they were being put on by some sort of spraying +machine. And suddenly here and then there would appear the first +stars to indicate the first great cities of a hundred thousand +people. First one or two and then a multitude of cities--each +like a knot in the growing net of the railways. + +The growth of the United States is a process that has no precedent +in the world's history; it is a new kind of occurrence. Such a +community could not have come into existence before, and if it +had, without railways it would certainly have dropped to pieces +long before now. Without railways or telegraph it would be far +easier to administer California from Pekin than from Washington. +But this great population of the United States of America has not +only grown outrageously; it has kept uniform. Nay, it has become +more uniform. The man of San Francisco is more like the man of +New York to-day than the man of Virginia was like the man of New +England a century ago. And the process of assimilation goes on +unimpeded. The United States is being woven by railway, by +telegraph, more and more into one vast unity, speaking, thinking +and acting harmoniously with itself. Soon aviation will be +helping in the work. + +This great community of the United States is an altogether new +thing in history. There have been great empires before with +populations exceeding 100 millions, but these were associations of +divergent {384} peoples; there has never been one single people on +this scale before. We want a new term for this new thing. We +call the United States a country just as we call France or Holland +a country. But the two things are as different as an automobile +and a one-horse shay. They are the creations of different periods +and different conditions; they are going to work at a different +pace and in an entirely different way. The United States in scale +and possibility is halfway between a European state and a United +States of all the world. + +But on the way to this present greatness and security the American +people passed through one phase of dire conflict. The river +steamboats, the railways, the telegraph, and their associate +facilities, did not come soon enough to avert a deepening conflict +of interests and ideas between the southern and northern states of +the Union. The former were slave-holding states; the latter, +states in which all men were free. The railways and steamboats at +first did but bring into sharper conflict an already established +difference between the two sections of the United States. The +increasing unification due to the new means of transport made the +question whether the southern spirit or the northern should +prevail an ever more urgent one. There was little possibility of +compromise. The northern spirit was free and individualistic; the +southern made for great estates and a conscious gentility ruling +over a dusky subject multitude. + +Every new territory that was organized into a state as the tide of +population swept westward, every new incorporation into the fast +growing American system, became a field of conflict between the +two ideas, whether it should become a state of free citizens, or +whether the estate and slavery system should prevail. From 1833 +an American anti-slavery society was not merely resisting the +extension of the institution but agitating the whole country for +its complete abolition. The issue flamed up into open conflict +over the admission of Texas to the Union. Texas had originally +been a part of the republic of Mexico, but it was largely +colonized by Americans from the slave-holding states, and it +seceded from Mexico, established its independence in 1835, and was +annexed to the United States in 1844. Under the Mexican law +slavery had been forbidden in Texas, but now the South claimed +Texas for slavery and got it. + +{385} + +Meanwhile the development of ocean navigation was bringing a +growing swarm of immigrants from Europe to swell the spreading +population of the northern states, and the raising of Iowa, +Wisconsin, Minnesota and Oregon, all northern farm lands, to state +level, gave the anti-slavery North the possibility of predominance +both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The +cotton-growing South, irritated by the growing threat of the +Abolitionist movement, and fearing this predominance in Congress, +began to talk of secession from the Union. Southerners began to +dream of annexations to the south of them in Mexico and the West +Indies, and of great slave state, detached from the North and +reaching to Panama. + +[Illustration: ONE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RIVER STEAMERS] + +The return of Abraham Lincoln as an anti-extension President in +1860 decided the South to split the Union. South Carolina passed +an "ordinance of secession" and prepared for war. Mississippi, +Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas joined her, and a +convention met at Montgomery in Alabama, elected Jefferson Davis +president of the "Confederated States" of America, and adopted a +constitution specifically upholding "the institution of negro +slavery." + +{386} + +Abraham Lincoln was, it chanced, a man entirely typical of the new +people that had grown up after the War of Independence. His early +years had been spent as a drifting particle in the general +westward flow of the population. He was born in Kentucky (1809), +was taken to Indiana as a boy and later on to Illinois. Life was +rough in the backwoods of Indiana in those days; the house was a +mere log cabin in the wilderness, and his schooling was poor and +casual. But his mother taught him to read early, and he became a +voracious reader. At seventeen he was a big athletic youth, a +great wrestler and runner. He worked for a time as clerk in a +store, went into business as a storekeeper with a drunken partner, +and contracted debts that he did not fully pay off for fifteen +years. In 1834, when he was still only five and twenty, he was +elected member of the House of Representatives for the State of +Illinois. In Illinois particularly the question of slavery flamed +because the great leader of the party for the extension of slavery +in the national Congress was Senator Douglas of Illinois. Douglas +was a man of great ability and prestige, and for some years +Lincoln fought against him by speech and pamphlet, rising steadily +to the position of his most formidable and finally victorious +antagonist. Their culminating struggle was the presidential +campaign of 1860, and on the fourth of March, 1861, Lincoln was +inaugurated President, with the southern states already in active +secession from the rule of the federal government at Washington, +and committing acts of war. + +This civil war in America was fought by improvised armies that +grew steadily from a few score thousands to hundreds of +thousands--until at last the Federal forces exceeded a million +men; it was fought over a vast area between New Mexico and the +eastern sea, Washington and Richmond were the chief objectives. +It is beyond our scope here to tell of the mounting energy of +that epic struggle that rolled to and fro across the hills and +woods of Tennessee and Virginia and down the Mississippi. There +was a terrible waste and killing of men. Thrust was followed by +counter thrust; hope gave way to despondency, and returned and was +again disappointed. Sometimes Washington seemed within the +Confederate grasp; again the Federal armies were driving towards +Richmond. The Confederates, outnumbered and far poorer in +resources, fought under {387} a general of supreme ability, +General Lee. The generalship of the Union was far inferior. +Generals were dismissed, new generals appointed; until at last, +under Sherman and Grant, came victory over the ragged and +depleted South. In October, 1864, a Federal army under Sherman +broke through the Confederate left and marched down from Tennessee +through Georgia to the coast, right across the Confederate +country, and then turned up through the {388} Carolinas, coming in +upon the rear of the Confederate armies. Meanwhile Grant held Lee +before Richmond until Sherman closed on him. On April 9th, 1865, +Lee and his army surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and within +a month all the remaining secessionist armies had laid down their +arms and the Confederacy was at an end. + +[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN] + +This four years' struggle had meant an enormous physical and moral +strain for the people of the United States. The principle of +state autonomy was very dear to many minds, and the North seemed +in effect to be forcing abolition upon the South. In the border +states brothers and cousins, even fathers and sons, would take +opposite sides and find themselves in antagonistic armies. The +North felt its cause a righteous one, but for great numbers of +people it was not a full-bodied and unchallenged righteousness. +But for Lincoln there was no doubt. He was a clear-minded man in +the midst of much confusion. He stood for union; he stood for the +wide peace of America. He was opposed to slavery, but slavery he +held to be a secondary issue; his primary purpose was that the +United States should not be torn into two contrasted and jarring +fragments. + +When in the opening stages of the war Congress and the Federal +generals embarked upon a precipitate emancipation, Lincoln opposed +and mitigated their enthusiasm. He was for emancipation by stages +and with compensation. It was only in January, 1865, that the +situation had ripened to a point when Congress could propose to +abolish slavery for ever by a constitutional amendment, and the +war was already over before this amendment was ratified by the +states. + +As the war dragged on through 1862 and 1863, the first passions +and enthusiasms waned, and America learnt all the phases of war +weariness and war disgust. The President found himself with +defeatists, traitors, dismissed generals, tortuous party +politicians, and a doubting and fatigued people behind him and +uninspired generals and depressed troops before him; his chief +consolation must have been that Jefferson Davis at Richmond could +be in little better case. The English government misbehaved, and +permitted the Confederate agents in England to launch and man +three swift privateer ships--the _Alabama_ is the best remembered +of them--which {389} chased United States shipping from the seas. +The French army in Mexico was trampling the Monroe Doctrine in the +dirt. Came subtle proposals from Richmond to drop the war, leave +the issues of the war for subsequent discussion, and turn, Federal +and Confederate in alliance, upon the French in Mexico. But +Lincoln would not listen to such proposals unless the supremacy of +the Union was maintained. The Americans might do such things as +one people but not as two. + +He held the United States together through long weary months of +reverses and ineffective effort, through black phases of division +and failing courage; and there is no record that he ever faltered +from his purpose. There were times when there was nothing to be +done, when he sat in the White House silent and motionless, a grim +monument of resolve; times when he relaxed his mind by jesting and +broad anecdotes. + +He saw the Union triumphant. He entered Richmond the day after +its surrender, and heard of Lee's capitulation. He returned to +Washington, and on April 11th made his last public address. His +theme was reconciliation and the reconstruction of loyal +government in the defeated states. On the evening of April 14th +he went to Ford's theatre in Washington, and as he sat looking at +the stage, he was shot in the back of the head and killed by an +actor named Booth who had some sort of grievance against him, and +who had crept into the box unobserved. But Lincoln's work was +done; the Union was saved. + +At the beginning of the war there was no railway to the Pacific +coast; after it the railways spread like a swiftly growing plant +until now they have clutched and held and woven all the vast +territory of the United States into one indissoluble mental and +material unity--the greatest real community--until the common folk +of China have learnt to read--in the world. + + + + +{390} + +LXI + +THE RISE OF GERMANY TO PREDOMINANCE IN EUROPE + + +We have told how after the convulsion of the French Revolution and +the Napoleonic adventure, Europe settled down again for a time to +an insecure peace and a sort of modernized revival of the +political conditions of fifty years before. Until the middle of +the century the new facilities in the handling of steel and the +railway and steamship produced no marked political consequences. +But the social tension due to the development of urban +industrialism grew. France remained a conspicuously uneasy +country. The revolution of 1830 was followed by another in 1848. +Then Napoleon III, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, became first +President, and then (in 1852) Emperor. + +He set about rebuilding Paris, and changed it from a picturesque +seventeenth century insanitary city into the spacious Latinized +city of marble it is to-day. He set about rebuilding France, and +made it into a brilliant-looking modernized imperialism. He +displayed a disposition to revive that competitiveness of the +Great Powers which had kept Europe busy with futile wars during +the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Tsar Nicholas I of +Russia (1825-1856) was also becoming aggressive and pressing +southward upon the Turkish Empire with his eyes on Constantinople. + +After the turn of the century Europe broke out into a fresh cycle +of wars. They were chiefly "balance-of-power" and ascendancy +wars. England, France and Sardinia assailed Russia in the Crimean +war in defence of Turkey; Prussia (with Italy as an ally) and +Austria fought for the leadership of Germany, France liberated +North Italy from Austria at the price of Savoy, and Italy +gradually unified itself into one kingdom. Then Napoleon III was +so ill advised as to attempt adventures in Mexico, during the +American Civil War; he set up an Emperor Maximilian there and +abandoned him hastily to {391} his fate--he was shot by the +Mexicans--when the victorious Federal Government showed its teeth. + +[Map: Map of Europe, 1848-1871] + +In 1870 came a long-pending struggle for predominance in Europe +between France and Prussia. Prussia had long foreseen and +prepared for this struggle, and France was rotten with financial +corruption. Her defeat was swift and dramatic. The Germans +invaded France in August, one great French army under the Emperor +capitulated at Sedan in September, another surrendered in October +at Metz, and in January 1871, Paris, after a siege and +bombardment, fell into German hands. Peace was signed at +Frankfort surrendering the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the +Germans. {392} Germany, excluding Austria, was unified as an +empire, and the King of Prussia was added to the galaxy of +European Caesars, as the German Emperor. + +For the next forty-three years Germany was the leading power upon +the European continent. There was a Russo-Turkish war in 1877-8, +but thereafter, except for certain readjustments in the Balkans, +European frontiers remained uneasily stable for thirty years. + + + + +{393} + +LXII + +THE NEW OVERSEAS EMPIRES OF STEAMSHIP AND RAILWAY + + +The end of the eighteenth century was a period of disrupting +empires and disillusioned expansionists. The long and tedious +journey between Britain and Spain and their colonies in America +prevented any really free coming and going between the home land +and the daughter lands, and so the colonies separated into new and +distinct communities, with distinctive ideas and interests and +even modes of speech. As they grew they strained more and more at +the feeble and uncertain link of shipping that had joined them. +Weak trading-posts in the wilderness, like those of France in +Canada, or trading establishments in great alien communities, like +those of Britain in India, might well cling for bare existence to +the nation which gave them support and a reason for their +existence. That much and no more seemed to many thinkers in the +early part of the nineteenth century to be the limit set to +overseas rule. In 1820 the sketchy great European "empires" +outside of Europe that had figured so bravely in the maps of the +middle eighteenth century, had shrunken to very small dimensions. +Only the Russian sprawled as large as ever across Asia. + +The British Empire in 1815 consisted of the thinly populated +coastal river and lake regions of Canada, and a great hinterland +of wilderness in which the only settlements as yet were the +fur-trading stations of the Hudson Bay Company, about a third of +the Indian peninsula, under the rule of the East India Company, +the coast districts of the Cape of Good Hope inhabited by blacks +and rebellious-spirited Dutch settlers; a few trading stations on +the coast of West Africa, the rock of Gibraltar, the island of +Malta, Jamaica, a few minor slave-labour possessions in the West +Indies, British Guiana in South America, and, on the other side of +the world, two dumps for convicts at Botany Bay in Australia and +in Tasmania. Spain retained Cuba and a few settlements in the +Philippine Islands. {394} Portugal had in Africa some vestiges of +her ancient claims. Holland had various islands and possessions +in the East Indies and Dutch Guiana, and Denmark an island or so +in the West Indies. France had one or two West Indian islands and +French Guiana. This seemed to be as much as the European powers +needed, or were likely to acquire of the rest of the world. Only +the East India Company showed any spirit of expansion. + +While Europe was busy with the Napoleonic wars the East India +Company, under a succession of Governors-General, was playing much +the same role in India that had been played before by Turkoman and +such-like invaders from the north. And after the peace of Vienna +it went on, levying its revenues, making wars, sending ambassadors +to Asiatic powers, a quasi-independent state, however, with a +marked disposition to send wealth westward. + +We cannot tell here in any detail how the British Company made its +way to supremacy sometimes as the ally of this power, sometimes as +that, and finally as the conqueror of all. Its power spread to +Assam, Sind, Oudh. The map of India began to take on the outlines +familiar to the English schoolboy of to-day, a patchwork of native +states embraced and held together by the great provinces under +direct British rule. . . . + +In 1859, following upon a serious mutiny of the native troops in +India, this empire of the East India Company was annexed to the +British Crown. By an Act entitled _An Act for the Better +Government of India_, the Governor-General became a Viceroy +representing the Sovereign, and the place of the Company was taken +by a Secretary of State for India responsible to the British +Parliament. In 1877, Lord Beaconsfield, to complete the work, +caused Queen Victoria to be proclaimed Empress of India. + +Upon these extraordinary lines India and Britain are linked at the +present time. India is still the empire of the Great Mogul, but +the Great Mogul has been replaced by the "crowned republic" of +Great Britain. India is an autocracy without an autocrat. Its +rule combines the disadvantage of absolute monarchy with the +impersonality and irresponsibility of democratic officialdom. The +Indian with a complaint to make has no visible monarch to go to; +his Emperor is a golden symbol; he must circulate pamphlets in +England {395} or inspire a question in the British House of +Commons. The more occupied Parliament is with British affairs, +the less attention India will receive, and the more she will be at +the mercy of her small group of higher officials. + +[Illustration: RAILWAY BRIDGE OVER THE GORGE, VICTORIA FALLS, OF +THE ZAMBESI, SOUTHERN RHODESIA] + +Apart from India, there was no great expansion of any European +Empire until the railways and the steamships were in effective +action. A considerable school of political thinkers in Britain +was disposed to regard overseas possessions as a source of +weakness to the kingdom. The Australian settlements developed +slowly until in 1842 the discovery of valuable copper mines, and +in 1851 of gold, gave them a new importance. Improvements in +transport were also making Australian wool an increasingly +marketable commodity in Europe. {396} Canada, too, was not +remarkably progressive until 1849; it was troubled by dissensions +between its French and British inhabitants, there were several +serious revolts, and it was only in 1867 that a new constitution +creating a Federal Dominion of Canada relieved its internal +strains. It was the railway that altered the Canadian outlook. +It enabled Canada, just as it enabled the United States, to expand +westward, to market its corn and other produce in Europe, and in +spite of its swift and extensive growth, to remain in language and +sympathy and interests one community. The railway, the steamship +and the telegraph cable were indeed changing all the conditions of +colonial development. + +Before 1840, English settlements had already begun in New Zealand, +and a New Zealand Land Company had been formed to exploit the +possibilities of the island. In 1840 New Zealand also was added +to the colonial possessions of the British Crown. + +Canada, as we have noted, was the first of the British possessions +to respond richly to the new economic possibilities that the new +methods of transport were opening. Presently the republics of +South America, and particularly the Argentine Republic, began to +feel in their cattle trade and coffee growing the increased +nearness of the European market. Hitherto the chief commodities +that had attracted the European powers into unsettled and barbaric +regions had been gold or other metals, spices, ivory, or slaves. +But in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century the increase +of the European populations was obliging their governments to look +abroad for staple foods; and the growth of scientific +industrialism was creating a demand for new raw materials, fats +and greases of every kind, rubber, and other hitherto disregarded +substances. It was plain that Great Britain and Holland and +Portugal were reaping a great and growing commercial advantage +from their very considerable control of tropical and sub-tropical +products. After 1871 Germany, and presently France and later +Italy, began to look for unannexed raw-material areas, or for +Oriental countries capable of profitable modernization. + +So began a fresh scramble all over the world, except in the +American region where the Monroe Doctrine now barred such +adventures, for politically unprotected lands. + +{397} + +[Map: The British Empire in 1815] + +Close to Europe was the continent of Africa, full of vaguely known +possibilities. In 1850 it was a continent of black mystery; only +Egypt and the coast were known. Here we have no space to tell the +amazing story of the explorers and adventurers who first pierced +the African darkness, and of the political agents, administrators, +traders, settlers and scientific men who followed in their track. +Wonderful races of men like the pygmies, strange beasts like the +okapi, marvellous fruits and flowers and insects, terrible +diseases, astounding scenery of forest and mountain, enormous +inland seas and gigantic rivers and cascades were revealed; a +whole new world. Even remains (at Zimbabwe) of some unrecorded +and vanished civilization, the southward enterprise of an early +people, were discovered. Into this new world came the Europeans, +and found the rifle already there in the hands of the Arab +slave-traders, and negro life in disorder. + +By 1900, in half a century, all Africa was mapped, explored, +estimated and divided between the European powers. Little heed +was given to the welfare of the natives in this scramble. The +Arab slaver was indeed curbed rather than expelled, but the greed +for rubber, which was a wild product collected under compulsion by +the natives in the Belgian Congo, a greed exacerbated by the clash +of inexperienced European administrators with the native {398} +population, led to horrible atrocities. No European power has +perfectly clean hands in this matter. + +We cannot tell here in any detail how Great Britain got possession +of Egypt in 1883 and remained there in spite of the fact that +Egypt was technically a part of the Turkish Empire, nor how nearly +this scramble led to war between France and Great Britain in 1898, +when a certain Colonel Marchand, crossing Central Africa from the +west coast, tried at Fashoda to seize the Upper Nile. + +Nor can we tell how the British Government first let the Boers, or +Dutch settlers, of the Orange River district and the Transvaal set +up independent republics in the inland parts of South Africa, and +then repented and annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877; nor how +the Transvaal Boers fought for freedom and won it after the battle +of Majuba Hill (1881). Majuba Hill was made to rankle in the +memory of the English people by a persistent press campaign. A +war with both republics broke out in 1899, a three years' war +enormously costly to the British people, which ended at last in +the surrender of the two republics. + +Their period of subjugation was a brief one. In 1907, after the +downfall of the imperialist government which had conquered them, +the Liberals took the South African problem in hand, and these +former republics became free and fairly willing associates with +Cape Colony and Natal in a Confederation of all the states of +South Africa as one self-governing republic under the British +Crown. + +In a quarter of a century the partition of Africa was completed. +There remained unannexed three comparatively small countries: +Liberia, a settlement of liberated negro slaves on the west coast; +Morocco, under a Moslem Sultan; and Abyssinia, a barbaric country, +with an ancient and peculiar form of Christianity, which had +successfully maintained its independence against Italy at the +battle of Adowa in 1896. + + + + +{399} + +LXIII + +EUROPEAN AGGRESSION IN ASIA AND THE RISE OF JAPAN + + +It is difficult to believe that any large number of people really +accepted this headlong painting of the map of Africa in European +colours as a permanent new settlement of the worlds affairs, but +it is the duty of the historian to record that it was so accepted. +There was but a shallow historical background to the European mind +in the nineteenth century, and no habit of penetrating criticism. +The quite temporary advantages that the mechanical revolution in +the west had given the Europeans over the rest of the old world +were regarded by people, blankly ignorant of such events as the +great Mongol conquests, as evidences of a permanent and assured +European leadership of mankind. They had no sense of the +transferability of science and its fruits. They did not realize +that Chinamen and Indians could carry on the work of research as +ably as Frenchmen or Englishmen. They believed that there was +some innate intellectual drive in the west, and some innate +indolence and conservatism in the east, that assured the Europeans +a world predominance for ever. + +The consequence of this infatuation was that the various European +foreign offices set themselves not merely to scramble with the +British for the savage and undeveloped regions of the world's +surface, but also to carve up the populous and civilized countries +of Asia as though these people also were no more than raw material +for exploitation. The inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid +imperialism of the British ruling class in India, and the +extensive and profitable possessions of the Dutch in the East +Indies, filled the rival Great Powers with dreams of similar +glories in Persia, in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and in +Further India, China and Japan. + +{400} + +In 1898 Germany seized Kiau Chau in China. Britain responded by +seizing Wei-hai-wei, and the next year the Russians took +possession of Port Arthur. A flame of hatred for the Europeans +swept through China. There were massacres of Europeans and +Christian converts, and in 1900 an attack upon and siege of the +European legations in Pekin. A combined force of Europeans made a +punitive expedition to Pekin, rescued the legations, and stole an +enormous amount of valuable property. The Russians then seized +Manchuria, and in 1904, the British invaded Tibet.... + +But now a new Power appeared in the struggle of the Great Powers, +Japan. Hitherto Japan has played but a small part in this +history; her secluded civilization has not contributed very +largely to the general shaping of human destinies; she has +received much, but she has given little. The Japanese proper are +of the Mongolian race. Their civilization, their writing and +their literary and artistic traditions are derived from the +Chinese. Their history is an interesting and romantic one; they +developed a feudal system and a system of chivalry in the earlier +centuries of the Christian era; their attacks upon Korea and China +are an Eastern equivalent of the English wars in France. Japan +was first brought into contact with Europe in the sixteenth +century; in 1542 some Portuguese reached it in a Chinese junk, and +in 1549 a Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, began his teaching +there. For a time Japan welcomed European intercourse, and the +Christian missionaries made a great number of converts. A certain +William Adams became the most trusted European adviser of the +Japanese, and showed them how to build big ships. There were +voyages in Japanese-built ships to India and Peru. Then arose +complicated quarrels between the Spanish Dominicans, the +Portuguese Jesuits, and the English and Dutch Protestants, each +warning the Japanese against the political designs of the others. +The Jesuits, in a phase of ascendancy, persecuted and insulted the +Buddhists with great acrimony. In the end the Japanese came to +the conclusion that the Europeans were an intolerable nuisance, +and that Catholic Christianity in particular was a mere cloak for +the political dreams of the Pope and the Spanish monarchy--already +in possession of the Philippine Islands; there was a great +persecution of the Christians, and in 1638 Japan was absolutely +{401} closed to Europeans, and remained closed for over 200 years. +During those two centuries the Japanese were as completely cut off +from the rest of the world as though they lived upon another +planet. It was forbidden to build any ship larger than a mere +coasting boat. No Japanese could go abroad, and no European enter +the country. + +[Illustration: JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY] + +For two centuries Japan remained outside the main current of +history. She lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism in +which about five per cent of the population, the _samurai_, or +fighting men, and the nobles and their families, tyrannized +without restraint over the rest of the population. Meanwhile the +great world outside went on to wider visions and new powers. +Strange shipping became more frequent, passing the Japanese +headlands; sometimes ships were wrecked and sailors brought +ashore. Through the Dutch settlement in the island of Deshima, +their one link with the outer universe, came warnings that Japan +was not keeping pace with the power of the Western world. In 1837 +a ship sailed into Yedo Bay flying a strange flag of stripes and +stars, and carrying some Japanese sailors she had picked up far +adrift in the Pacific. She was driven off by cannon shot. This +flag presently reappeared on other ships. One in 1849 came to +demand the liberation {402} of eighteen shipwrecked American +sailors. Then in 1853 came four American warships under Commodore +Perry, and refused to be driven away. He lay at anchor in +forbidden waters, and sent messages to the two rulers who at that +time shared the control of Japan. In 1854 he returned with ten +ships, amazing ships propelled by steam, and equipped with big +guns, and he made proposals for trade and intercourse that the +Japanese had no power to resist. He landed with a guard of 500 +men to sign the treaty. Incredulous crowds watched this +visitation from the outer world, marching through the streets. + +Russia, Holland and Britain followed in the wake of America. A +great nobleman whose estates commanded the Straits of Shimonoseki +saw fit to fire on foreign vessels, and a bombardment by a fleet +of British, French, Dutch and American warships destroyed his +batteries and scattered his swordsmen. Finally an allied squadron +(1865), at anchor off Kioto, imposed a ratification of the +treaties which opened Japan to the world. + +The humiliation of the Japanese by these events was intense. With +astonishing energy and intelligence they set themselves to bring +their culture and organization to the level of the European +Powers. Never in all the history of mankind did a nation make +such a stride as Japan then did. In 1866 she was a medieval +people, a fantastic caricature of the extremest romantic +feudalism; in 1899 hers was a completely Westernized people, on a +level with the most advanced European Powers. She completely +dispelled the persuasion that Asia was in some irrevocable way +hopelessly behind Europe. She made all European progress seem +sluggish by comparison. + +We cannot tell here in any detail of Japan's war with China in +1894-95. It demonstrated the extent of her Westernization. She +had an efficient Westernized army and a small but sound fleet. +But the significance of her renascence, though it was appreciated +by Britain and the United States, who were already treating her as +if she were a European state, was not understood by the other +Great Powers engaged in the pursuit of new Indias in Asia. Russia +was pushing down through Manchuria to Korea. France was already +established far to the south in Tonkin and Annam, Germany was +{403} prowling hungrily on the look-out for some settlement. The +three Powers combined to prevent Japan reaping any fruits from the +Chinese war. She was exhausted by the struggle, and they +threatened her with war. + +[Illustration: A STREET IN TOKIO] + +Japan submitted for a time and gathered her forces. Within ten +years she was ready for a struggle with Russia, which marks an +epoch in the history of Asia, the close of the period of European +arrogance. The Russian people were, of course, innocent and +ignorant of this trouble that was being made for them halfway +round the world, and the wiser Russian statesmen were against +these foolish thrusts; but a gang of financial adventurers, +including the Grand Dukes, his cousins, surrounded the Tsar. They +had gambled deeply in the prospective looting of Manchuria and +China, and they would suffer no withdrawal. So there began a +transportation of great armies of Japanese soldiers across the sea +to Port Arthur and Korea, and the sending of endless trainloads of +Russian peasants along the Siberian railway to die in those +distant battlefields. + +{404} + +The Russians, badly led and dishonestly provided, were beaten on +sea and land alike. The Russian Baltic Fleet sailed round Africa +to be utterly destroyed in the Straits of Tshushima. A +revolutionary movement among the common people of Russia, +infuriated by this remote and reasonless slaughter, obliged the +Tsar to end the war (1905); he returned the southern half of +Saghalien, which had been seized by Russia in 1875, evacuated +Manchuria, resigned Korea to Japan. The European invasion of Asia +was coming to an end and the retraction of Europe's tentacles was +beginning. + + + + +{405} + +LXIV + +THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN 1914 + + +We may note here briefly the varied nature of the constituents of +the British Empire in 1914 which the steamship and railway had +brought together. It was and is a quite unique political +combination; nothing of the sort has ever existed before. + +First and central to the whole system was the "crowned republic" +of the United British Kingdom, including (against the will of a +considerable part of the Irish people) Ireland. The majority of +the British Parliament, made up of the three united parliaments of +England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, determines the headship, +the quality and policy of the ministry, and determines it largely +on considerations arising out of British domestic politics. It is +this ministry which is the effective supreme government, with +powers of peace and war, over all the rest of the empire. + +Next in order of political importance to the British States were +the "crowned republics" of Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (the +oldest British possession, 1583), New Zealand and South Africa, +all practically independent and self-governing states in alliance +with Great Britain, but each with a representative of the Crown +appointed by the Government in office; + +Next the Indian Empire, an extension of the Empire of the Great +Mogul with its dependent and "protected" states reaching now from +Beluchistan to Burma, and including Aden, in all of which empire +the British Crown and the India Office (under Parliamentary +control) played the role of the original Turkoman dynasty; + +Then the ambiguous possession of Egypt, still nominally a part of +the Turkish Empire and still retaining its own monarch, the +Khedive, but under almost despotic British official rule; + +Then the still more ambiguous "Anglo-Egyptian" Sudan province, +{407} occupied and administered jointly by the British and by the +(British controlled) Egyptian Government; + +Then a number of partially self-governing communities, some +British in origin and some not, with elected legislatures and an +appointed executive, such as Malta, Jamaica, the Bahamas and +Bermuda; + +Then the Crown colonies, in which the rule of the British Home +Government (through the Colonial Office) verged on autocracy, as +in Ceylon, Trinidad and Fiji (where there was an appointed +council), and Gibraltar and St. Helena (where there was a +governor); + +Then great areas of (chiefly) tropical lands, raw-product areas, +with politically weak and under-civilized native communities which +were nominally protectorates, and administered either by a High +Commissioner set over native chiefs (as in Basutoland) or over a +chartered company (as in Rhodesia). In some cases the Foreign +Office, in some cases the Colonial Office, and in some cases the +India Office, has been concerned in acquiring the possessions that +fell into this last and least definite class of all, but for the +most part the Colonial Office was now responsible for them. + +[Illustration: GIBRALTAR] + +==================================================================== + +{406} + +[Map: OVERSEAS EMPIRES of EUROPEAN POWERS, January 1914] + +==================================================================== + +It will be manifest, therefore, that no single office and no +single brain had ever comprehended the British Empire as a whole. +It was a mixture of growths and accumulations entirely different +from anything that has ever been called an empire before. It +guaranteed a wide peace and security; that is why it was endured +and sustained by many men of the "subject" races--in spite of +official tyrannies {408} and insufficiencies, and of much +negligence on the part of the "home" public. Like the Athenian +Empire, it was an overseas empire; its ways were sea ways, and its +common link was the British Navy. Like all empires, its cohesion +was dependent physically upon a method of communication; the +development of seamanship, ship-building and steamships between +the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had made it a possible and +convenient Pax--the "Pax Britannica," and fresh developments of +air or swift land transport might at any time make it +inconvenient. + +[Illustration: STREET IN HONG KONG] + + + + +{409} + +LXV + +THE AGE OF ARMAMENT IN EUROPE, AND THE GREAT WAR OF 1914-18 + + +The progress in material science that created this vast +steamboat-and-railway republic of America and spread this +precarious British steamship empire over the world, produced +quite other effects upon the congested nations upon the continent +of Europe. They found themselves confined within boundaries fixed +during the horse-and-high-road period of human life, and their +expansion overseas had been very largely anticipated by Great +Britain. Only Russia had any freedom to expand eastward; and she +drove a great railway across Siberia until she entangled herself +in a conflict with Japan, and pushed south-eastwardly towards the +borders of Persia and India to the annoyance of Britain. The rest +of the European Powers were in a state of intensifying congestion. +In order to realize the full possibilities of the new apparatus of +human life they had to rearrange their affairs upon a broader +basis, either by some sort of voluntary union or by a union +imposed upon them by some predominant power. The tendency +of modern thought was in the direction of the former alternative, +but all the force of political tradition drove Europe towards the +latter. + +The downfall of the "empire" of Napoleon III, the establishment of +the new German Empire, pointed men's hopes and fears towards the +idea of a Europe consolidated under German auspices. For +thirty-six years of uneasy peace the polities of Europe centred +upon that possibility. France, the steadfast rival of Germany for +European ascendancy since the division of the empire of +Charlemagne, sought to correct her own weakness by a close +alliance with Russia, and Germany linked herself closely with the +Austrian Empire (it had ceased to be the Holy Roman Empire in the +days of Napoleon I) and less successfully with the new kingdom of +Italy. {410} At first Great Britain stood as usual half in and +half out of continental affairs. But she was gradually forced +into a close association with the Franco-Russian group by the +aggressive development of a great German navy. The grandiose +imagination of the Emperor William II (1888-1918) thrust Germany +into premature overseas enterprise that ultimately brought not +only Great Britain but Japan and the United States into the +circle of her enemies. + +[Illustration: BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD] + +All these nations armed. Year after year the proportion of +national production devoted to the making of guns, equipment, +battleships and the like, increased. Year after year the balance +{411} of things seemed trembling towards war, and then war would +be averted. At last it came. Germany and Austria struck at +France and Russia and Serbia; the German armies marching through +Belgium, Britain immediately came into the war on the side of +Belgium, bringing in Japan as her ally, and very soon Turkey +followed on the German side. Italy entered the war against +Austria in 1915, and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in the +October of that year. In 1916 Rumania, and in 1917 the United +States and China were forced into war against Germany. It is not +within the scope of this history to define the exact share of +blame for this vast catastrophe. The more interesting question is +not why the Great War was begun but why the Great War was not +anticipated and prevented. It is a far graver thing for mankind +that scores of millions of people were too "patriotic," stupid, or +apathetic to prevent this disaster by a movement towards European +unity upon frank and generous lines, than that a small number of +people may have been active in bringing it about. + +[Illustration: THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH +TOWN)] + +It is impossible within the space at our command here to trace the +intricate details of the war. Within a few months it became +apparent that the progress of modern technical science had changed +{412} the nature of warfare very profoundly. Physical science +gives power, power over steel, over distance, over disease; +whether that power is used well or ill depends upon the moral and +political intelligence of the world. The governments of Europe, +inspired by antiquated policies of hate and suspicion, found +themselves with unexampled powers both of destruction and +resistance in their hands. The war became a consuming fire round +and about the world, causing losses both to victors and vanquished +out of all proportion to the issues involved. The first phase of +the war was a tremendous rush of the Germans upon Paris and an +invasion of East Prussia by the Russians. Both attacks were held +and turned. Then the power of the defensive developed; there was +a rapid elaboration of trench warfare until for a time the +opposing armies lay entrenched in long lines right across Europe, +unable to make any advance without enormous losses. The armies +were millions strong, and behind them entire populations were +organized for the supply of food and munitions to the front. Then +was a cessation of nearly every sort of productive activity except +such as contributed to military operations. All the able-bodied +manhood of Europe was drawn into the armies or navies or into the +improvised factories that served {413} them. There was an +enormous replacement of men by women in industry. Probably more +than half the people in the belligerent countries of Europe +changed their employment altogether during this stupendous +struggle. They were socially uprooted and transplanted. +Education and normal scientific work were restricted or diverted +to immediate military ends, and the distribution of news was +crippled and corrupted by military control and "propaganda" +activities. + +[Illustration: THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR] + +The phase of military deadlock passed slowly into one of +aggression upon the combatant populations behind the fronts by the +destruction of food supplies and by attacks through the air. And +also there was a steady improvement in the size and range of the +guns employed and of such ingenious devices as poison-gas shells +and the small mobile forts known as tanks, to break down the +resistance of troops in the trenches. The air offensive was the +most revolutionary of all the new methods. It carried warfare +from two dimensions into three. Hitherto in the history of +mankind war had gone on only where the armies marched and met. +Now it went on everywhere. First the Zeppelin and then the +bombing aeroplane carried war over and past the front to an +ever-increasing area of civilian activities beyond. The old +distinction maintained in civilized warfare between the civilian +and combatant population disappeared. Everyone who grew food, or +who sewed a garment, everyone who felled a tree or repaired a +house, every railway station and every warehouse was held to be +fair game for destruction. The air offensive increased in range +and terror with every month in the war. At last great areas of +Europe were in a state of siege and subject to nightly raids. +Such exposed cities as London and Paris passed sleepless night +after sleepless night while the bombs burst, the anti-aircraft +guns maintained an intolerable racket, and the fire engines and +ambulances rattled headlong through the darkened and deserted +streets. The effects upon the minds and health of old people and +of young children were particularly distressing and destructive. + +Pestilence, that old follower of warfare, did not arrive until the +very end of the fighting in 1918. For four years medical science +staved off any general epidemic; then came a great outbreak of +{414} influenza about the world which destroyed many millions of +people. Famine also was staved off for some time. By the +beginning of 1918 however most of Europe was in a state of +mitigated and regulated famine. The production of food throughout +the world had fallen very greatly through the calling off of +peasant mankind to the fronts, and the distribution of such food +as was produced was impeded by the havoc wrought by the submarine, +by the rupture of customary routes through the closing of +frontiers, and by the disorganization of the transport system of +the world. The various governments took possession of the +dwindling food supplies, and, with more or less success, rationed +their populations. By the fourth year the whole world was +suffering from shortages of clothing and housing and of most of +the normal gear of life as well as of food. Business and economic +life were profoundly disorganized. Every-one was worried, and +most people were leading lives of unwonted discomfort. + +The actual warfare ceased in November, 1918. After a supreme +effort in the spring of 1918 that almost carried the Germans to +Paris, the Central Powers collapsed. They had come to an end of +their spirit and resources. + + + + +{415} + +LXVI + +THE REVOLUTION AND FAMINE IN RUSSIA + + +But a good year and more before the collapse of the Central Powers +the half oriental monarchy of Russia, which had professed to be +the continuation of the Byzantine Empire, had collapsed. The +Tsardom had been showing signs of profound rottenness for some +years before the war; the court was under the sway of a fantastic +religious impostor, Rasputin, and the public administration, civil +and military, was in a state of extreme inefficiency and +corruption. At the outset of the war there was a great flare of +patriotic enthusiasm in Russia. A vast conscript army was called +up, for which there was neither adequate military equipment nor a +proper supply of competent officers, and this great host, ill +supplied and badly handled, was hurled against the German and +Austrian frontiers. + +There can be no doubt that the early appearance of Russian armies +in East Prussia in September, 1914, diverted the energies and +attention of the Germans from their first victorious drive upon +Paris. The sufferings and deaths of scores of thousands of +ill-led Russian peasants saved France from complete overthrow in +that momentous opening campaign, and made all western Europe the +debtors of that great and tragic people. But the strain of the +war upon this sprawling, ill-organized empire was too heavy for +its strength. The Russian common soldiers were sent into battle +without guns to support them, without even rifle ammunition; they +were wasted by their officers and generals in a delirium of +militarist enthusiasm. For a time they seemed to be suffering +mutely as the beasts suffer; but there is a limit to the endurance +even of the most ignorant. A profound disgust for Tsardom was +creeping through these armies of betrayed and wasted men. From +the close of 1915 onward Russia was a source of deepening anxiety +to her Western Allies. Throughout 1916 she remained largely on +{416} the defensive, and there were rumours of a separate peace +with Germany. + +On December 29th, 1916, the monk Rasputin was murdered at a dinner +party in Petrograd, and a belated attempt was made to put the +Tsardom in order. By March things were moving rapidly; food riots +in Petrograd developed into a revolutionary insurrection; there +was an attempted suppression of the Duma, the representative body, +there were attempted arrests of liberal leaders, the formation of +a provisional government under Prince Lvoff, and an abdication +(March 15th) by the Tsar. For a time it seemed that a moderate +and controlled revolution might be possible--perhaps under a new +Tsar. Then it became evident that the destruction of popular +confidence in Russia had gone too far for any such adjustments. +The Russian people were sick to death of the old order of things +in Europe, of Tsars and wars and of Great Powers; it wanted +relief, and that speedily, from unendurable miseries. The Allies +had no understanding of Russian realities; their diplomatists were +ignorant of Russian, genteel persons with their attention directed +to the Russian Court rather than to Russia, they blundered +steadily with the new situation. There was little goodwill among +these diplomatists for republicanism, and a manifest disposition +to embarrass the new government as much as possible. At the head +of the Russian republican government was an eloquent and +picturesque leader, Kerensky, who found himself assailed by the +forces of a profounder revolutionary movement, the "social +revolution," at home and cold-shouldered by the Allied governments +abroad. His Allies would neither let him give the Russian +peasants the land for which they craved nor peace beyond their +frontiers. The French and the British press pestered their +exhausted ally for a fresh offensive, but when presently the +Germans made a strong attack by sea and land upon Riga, the +British Admiralty quailed before the prospect of a Baltic +expedition in relief. The new Russian Republic had to fight +unsupported. In spite of their naval predominance and the bitter +protests of the great English admiral, Lord Fisher (1841-1920), it +is to be noted that the British and their Allies, except for some +submarine attacks, left the Germans the complete mastery of the +Baltic throughout the war. + +{417} + +The Russian masses, however, were resolute to end the war. At any +cost. There had come into existence in Petrograd a body +representing the workers and common soldiers, the Soviet, and this +body clamoured for an international conference of socialists at +Stockholm. Food riots were occurring in Berlin at this time, war +weariness in Austria and Germany was profound, and there can be +little doubt, in the light of subsequent events, that such a +conference would have precipitated a reasonable peace on +democratic lines in 1917 and a German revolution. Kerensky +implored his Western allies to allow this conference to take +place, but, fearful of a worldwide outbreak of socialism and +republicanism, they refused, in spite of the favourable response +of a small majority of the British Labour Party. Without either +moral or physical help from the Allies, the unhappy "moderate" +Russian Republic still fought on and made a last desperate +offensive effort in July. It failed after some preliminary +successes, and there came another great slaughtering of Russians. + +The limit of Russian endurance was reached. Mutinies broke out in +the Russian armies, and particularly upon the northern front, and +on November 7th, 1917, Kerensky's government was overthrown and +power was seized by the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik +socialists under Lenin, and pledged to make peace regardless of +the Western powers. On March 2nd, 1918, a separate peace between +Russia and Germany was signed at Brest-Litovsk. + +==================================================================== + +{418} + +[Illustration: A VIEW IN PETERSBURG UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE] + +==================================================================== + +It speedily became evident that these Bolshevik socialists were +men of a very different quality from the rhetorical +constitutionalists and revolutionaries of the Kerensky phase. +They were fanatical Marxist communists. They believed that their +accession to power in Russia was only the opening of a world-wide +social revolution, and they set about changing the social and +economic order with the thoroughness of perfect faith and absolute +inexperience. The western European and the American governments +were themselves much too ill-informed and incapable to guide or +help this extraordinary experiment, and the press set itself to +discredit and the ruling classes to wreck these usurpers upon any +terms and at any cost to themselves or to Russia. A propaganda of +abominable and disgusting inventions went on unchecked in the +press of the {419} world; the Bolshevik leaders were represented +as incredible monsters glutted with blood and plunder and living +lives of sensuality before which the realities of the Tsarist +court during the Rasputin regime paled to a white purity. +Expeditions were launched at the exhausted country, insurgents and +raiders were encouraged, armed and subsidized, and no method of +attack was too mean or too monstrous for the frightened enemies of +the Bolshevik regime. In 1919, the Russian Bolsheviks, ruling a +country already exhausted and disorganized by five years of +intensive warfare, were fighting a British Expedition at +Archangel, Japanese invaders in Eastern Siberia, Roumanians with +French and Greek contingents in the south, the Russian Admiral +Koltchak in Siberia and General Deniken, supported by the French +fleet, in the Crimea. In July of that year an Esthonian army, +under General Yudenitch, almost got to Petersburg. In 1920 the +Poles, incited by the French, made a new attack on Russia; and a +new reactionary raider, General Wrangel, took over the task of +General Deniken in invading and devastating his own country. In +March, 1921, the sailors at Cronstadt revolted. The Russian +Government under its president, Lenin, survived all these various +attacks. It showed an amazing tenacity, and the common people of +Russia sustained it unswervingly under conditions of extreme +hardship. By the end of 1921 both Britain and Italy had made a +sort of recognition of the communist rule. + +But if the Bolshevik Government was successful in its struggle +against foreign intervention and internal revolt, it was far less +happy in its attempts to set up a new social order based upon +communist ideas in Russia. The Russian peasant is a small +land-hungry proprietor, as far from communism in his thoughts and +methods as a whale is from flying; the revolution gave him the +land of the great landowners but could not make him grow food for +anything but negotiable money, and the revolution, among other +things, had practically destroyed the value of money. +Agricultural production, already greatly disordered by the +collapse of the railways through war-strain, shrank to a mere +cultivation of food by the peasants for their own consumption. +The towns starved. Hasty and ill-planned attempts to make over +industrial production {420} in accordance with communist ideas +were equally unsuccessful. By 1920 Russia presented the +unprecedented spectacle of a modern civilization in complete +collapse. Railways were rusting and passing out of use, towns +were falling into ruin, everywhere there was an immense mortality. +Yet the country still fought with its enemies at its gates. In +1921 came a drought and a great famine among the peasant +cultivators in the war-devastated south-east provinces. Millions +of people starved. + +But the question of the distresses and the possible recuperation +of Russia brings us too close to current controversies to be +discussed here. + + + + +{421} + +LXVII + +THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORLD + + +The scheme and scale upon which this History is planned do not +permit us to enter into the complicated and acrimonious disputes +that centre about the treaties, and particularly of the treaty of +Versailles, which concluded the Great War. We are beginning to +realize that that conflict, terrible and enormous as it was, ended +nothing, began nothing and settled nothing. It killed millions of +people; it wasted and impoverished the world. It smashed Russia +altogether. It was at best an acute and frightful reminder that +we were living foolishly and confusedly without much plan or +foresight in a dangerous and unsympathetic universe. The crudely +organized egotisms and passions of national and imperial greed +that carried mankind into that tragedy, emerged from it +sufficiently unimpaired to make some other similar disaster highly +probable so soon as the world has a little recovered from its war +exhaustion and fatigue. Wars and revolutions make nothing; their +utmost service to mankind is that, in a very rough and painful +way, they destroy superannuated and obstructive things. The great +war lifted the threat of German imperialism from Europe, and +shattered the imperialism of Russia. It cleared away a number of +monarchies. But a multitude of flags still waves in Europe, the +frontiers still exasperate, great armies accumulate fresh stores +of equipment. + +The Peace Conference at Versailles was a gathering very ill +adapted to do more than carry out the conflicts and defeats of the +war to their logical conclusions. The Germans, Austrians, Turks +and Bulgarians were permitted no share in its deliberations; they +were only to accept the decisions it dictated to them. From the +point of view of human welfare the choice of the place of meeting +was particularly unfortunate. It was at Versailles in 1871 that, +with every circumstance of triumphant vulgarity, the new German +{422} Empire had been proclaimed. The suggestion of a +melodramatic reversal of that scene, in the same Hall of Mirrors, +was overpowering. + +Whatever generosities had appeared in the opening phases of the +Great War had long been exhausted. The populations of the +victorious countries were acutely aware of their own losses and +sufferings, and entirely regardless of the fact that the defeated +had paid in the like manner. The war had arisen as a natural and +inevitable consequence of the competitive nationalisms of Europe +and the absence of any Federal adjustment of these competitive +forces; war is the necessary logical consummation of independent +sovereign nationalities living in too small an area with too +powerful an armament; and if the great war had not come in the +form it did it would have come in some similar form--just as it +will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in twenty +or thirty years' time if no political unification anticipates and +prevents it. States organized for war will make wars as surely as +hens will lay eggs, but the feeling of these distressed and +war-worn countries disregarded this fact, and the whole of the +defeated peoples were treated as morally and materially +responsible for all the damage, as they would no doubt have +treated the victor peoples had the issue of war been different. +The French and English thought the Germans were to blame, the +Germans thought the Russians, French and English were to blame, +and only an intelligent minority thought that there was anything +to blame in the fragmentary political constitution of Europe. The +treaty of Versailles was intended to be exemplary and vindictive; +it provided tremendous penalties for the vanquished; it sought to +provide compensations for the wounded and suffering victors by +imposing enormous debts upon nations already bankrupt, and its +attempts to reconstitute international relations by the +establishment of a League of Nations against war were manifestly +insincere and inadequate. + +[Illustration: PASSENGER AEROPLANE FLYING OVER NORTHOLT] + +So far as Europe was concerned it is doubtful if there would have +been any attempt whatever to organize international relations for +a permanent peace. The proposal of the League of Nations was +brought into practical politics by the President of the United +States of America, President Wilson. Its chief support was in +America. So far the United States, this new modern state, had +{423} developed no distinctive ideas of international relationship +beyond the Monroe Doctrine, which protected the new world from +European interference. Now suddenly it was called upon for its +mental contribution to the vast problem of the time. It had none. +The natural disposition of the American people was towards a +permanent world peace. With this however was linked a strong +traditional distrust of old-world polities and a habit of +isolation from old-world entanglements. The Americans had hardly +begun to think out an American solution of world problems when the +submarine campaign of the Germans dragged them into the war on the +side of the anti-German allies. President Wilson's scheme of a +League of Nations was an attempt at short notice to create a +distinctively American world project. It was a sketchy, +inadequate and dangerous scheme. In Europe however it was taken +as a matured American point of view. The generality of mankind in +1918-19 was intensely weary of war and anxious at almost any +sacrifice to erect {424} barriers against its recurrence, but +there was not a single government in the old world willing to +waive one iota of its sovereign independence to attain any such +end. The public utterances of President Wilson leading up to the +project of a World League of Nations seemed for a time to appeal +right over the heads of the governments to the peoples of the +world; they were taken as expressing the ripe intentions of +America, and the response was enormous. Unhappily President +Wilson had to deal with governments and not with peoples; he was a +man capable of tremendous flashes of vision and yet when put to +the test egotistical and limited, and the great wave of enthusiasm +he evoked passed and was wasted. + +Says Dr. Dillon in his book, _The Peace Conference_: "Europe, when +the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the +creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow +a Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars +are prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he +was just that great leader. In France men bowed down before him +with awe and affection. Labour leaders in Paris told me that they +shed tears of joy in his presence, and that their comrades would +go through fire and water to help him to realize his noble +schemes. To the working classes in Italy his name was a heavenly +clarion at the sound of which the earth would be renewed. The +Germans regarded him and his doctrine as their sheet-anchor of +safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said: 'If President Wilson were +to address the Germans and pronounce a severe sentence upon them, +they would accept it with resignation and without a murmur and set +to work at once.' In German-Austria his fame was that of a +saviour, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the +suffering and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted ... ." + +Such were the overpowering expectations that President Wilson +raised. How completely he disappointed them and how weak and +futile was the League of Nations he made is too long and too +distressful a story to tell here. He exaggerated in his person +our common human tragedy, he was so very great in his dreams and +so incapable in his performance. America dissented from the acts +of its President and would not join the League Europe accepted +from him. There was a slow realization on the part of the +American {425} people that it had been rushed into something for +which it was totally unprepared. There was a corresponding +realization on the part of Europe that America had nothing ready +to give to the old world in its extremity. Born prematurely and +crippled at its birth, that League has become indeed, with its +elaborate and unpractical constitution and its manifest +limitations of power, a serious obstacle in the way of any +effective reorganization of international relationships. The +problem would be a clearer one if the League did not yet exist. +Yet that world-wide blaze of enthusiasm that first welcomed the +project, that readiness of men everywhere round and about the +earth, of men, that is, as distinguished from governments, for a +world control of war, is a thing to be recorded with emphasis in +any history. Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and +mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and world +order exists and grows. + +From 1918 onward the world entered upon an age of conferences. Of +these the Conference at Washington called by President Harding +(1921) has been the most successful and suggestive. Notable, too, +is the Genoa Conference (1922) for the appearance of German and +Russian delegates at its deliberations. We will not discuss this +long procession of conferences and tentatives in any detail. It +becomes more and more clearly manifest that a huge work of +reconstruction has to be done by mankind if a crescendo of such +convulsions and world massacres as that of the great war is to be +averted. No such hasty improvisation as the League of Nations, no +patched-up system of Conferences between this group of states and +that, which change nothing with an air of settling everything, +will meet the complex political needs of the new age that lies +before us. A systematic development and a systematic application +of the sciences of human relationship, of personal and group +psychology, of financial and economic science and of education, +sciences still only in their infancy, is required. Narrow and +obsolete, dead and dying moral and political ideas have to be +replaced by a clearer and a simpler conception of the common +origins and destinies of our kind. + +[Illustration: A PEACEFUL GARDEN IN ENGLAND] + +But if the dangers, confusions and disasters that crowd upon man +in these days are enormous beyond any experience of the past, it +is because science has brought him such powers as he never had +{426} before. And the scientific method of fearless thought, +exhaustively lucid statement, and exhaustively criticized +planning, which has given him these as yet uncontrollable powers, +gives him also the hope of controlling these powers. Man is still +only adolescent. His troubles are not the troubles of senility +and exhaustion but of increasing and still undisciplined strength. +When we look at all {427} history as one process, as we have been +doing in this book, when we see the steadfast upward struggle of +life towards vision and control, then we see in their true +proportions the hopes and dangers of the present time. As yet we +are hardly in the earliest dawn of human greatness. But in the +beauty of flower and sunset, in the happy and perfect movement of +young animals and in the delight of ten thousand various +landscapes, we have some intimations of what life can do for us, +and in some few works of plastic and pictorial art, in some great +music, in a few noble buildings and happy gardens, we have an +intimation of what the human will can do with material +possibilities. We have dreams; we have at present undisciplined +but ever increasing power. Can we doubt that presently our race +will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will +achieve unity and peace, that it will live, the children of our +blood and lives will live, in a world made more splendid and +lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from +strength to strength in an ever widening circle of adventure and +achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his +present state, and all this history we have told, form but the +prelude to the things that man has got to do. + + + + +{429} + +CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE + + +About the year 1000 B.C. the Aryan peoples were establishing +themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy and the Balkans, and +they were established in North India; Cnossos was already +destroyed and the spacious times of Egypt, of Thothmes III, +Amenophis III and Rameses II were three or four centuries away. +Weak monarchs of the XXIst Dynasty were ruling in the Nile Valley. +Israel was united under her early kings; Saul or David or possibly +even Solomon may have been reigning. Sargon I (2750 B.C.) of the +Akkadian Sumerian Empire was a remote memory in Babylonian +history, more remote than is Constantine the Great from the world +of the present day. Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. +The Assyrians were already dominating the less military +Babylonians. In 1100 B.C. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. +But there was no permanent conquest; Assyria and Babylonia were +still separate empires. In China the new Chow dynasty was +flourishing. Stonehenge in England was already some hundreds of +years old. + +The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the XXIInd +Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew kingdom of +Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Balkans, South Italy +and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan predominance in Central +Italy. We begin our list of ascertainable dates with + + B.C. + 800. The building of Carthage. + 790. The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth Dynasty). + 776. First Olympiad. + 753. Rome built. + 745. Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded the New + Assyrian Empire. + 722. Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons. + 721. He deported the Israelites. + 680. Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the Ethiopian + XXVth Dynasty). + 664. Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and founded the + XXVIth Dynasty (to 610). + 608. Necho of Egypt defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at the battle + of Megiddo. + 606. Capture of Nineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes. + Foundation of the Chaldean Empire. + 604. Necho pushed to the Euphrates and was overthrown by + Nebuchadnezzar II. + (Nebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon.) + 550. Cyrus the Persian succeeded Cyaxares the Mede. + Cyrus conquered Croesus. + Buddha lived about this time. + So also did Confucius and Lao Tse. + 539. Cyrus took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire. + 521. Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, ruled from the Hellespont + to the Indus. + His expedition to Scythia. + +{430} + + 490. Battle of Marathon. + 480. Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis. + 479. The battles of Platea and Mycale completed the repulse of + Persia. + 474. Etruscan fleet destroyed by the Sicilian Greeks. + 431. Peloponnesian War began (to 404) + 401. Retreat of the Ten Thousand. + 359. Philip became king of Macedonia. + 338. Battle of Chaeronia. + 336. Macedonian troops crossed into Asia. Philip murdered. + 334. Battle of the Granicus. + 333. Battle of Issus. + 331. Battle of Arbela. + 330. Darius III killed. + 323. Death of Alexander the Great. + 321. Rise of Chandragupta in the Punjab. + The Romans completely beaten by the Samnites at the battle of + the Caudine Forks. + 281. Pyrrhus invaded Italy. + 280. Battle of Heraclea. + 279. Battle of Ausculum. + 278. Gauls raided into Asia Minor and settled in Galatia. + 275. Pyrrhus left Italy. + 264. First Punic War. (Asoka began to reign in Behar--to 227.) + 260. Battle of Mylae. + 256. Battle of Ecnomus. + 246. Shi-Hwang-ti became King of Ts'in. + 220. Shi-Hwang-ti became Emperor of China. + 214. Great Wall of China begun. + 210. Death of Shi-Hwang-ti. + 202. Battle of Zama. + 146. Carthage destroyed. + 133. Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to Rome. + 102. Marius drove back Germans. + 100. Triumph of Marius. (Chinese conquering the Tarim valley.) + 89. All Italians became Roman citizens. + 73. The revolt of the slaves under Spartacus. + 71. Defeat and end of Spartacus. + 66. Pompey led Roman troops to the Caspian and Euphrates. He + encountered the Alani. + 48. Julius Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalos. + 44. Julius Caesar assassinated. + 27. Augustus Caesar princeps (until 14 A.D.). + 4. True date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth. + + A.D. Christian Era began. + + 14. Augustus died. Tiberius emperor. + 30. Jesus of Nazareth crucified. + 41. Claudius (the first emperor of the legions) made emperor by + pretorian guard after murder of Caligula. + 68. Suicide of Nero. (Galba, Otho, Vitellus, emperors in + succession.) + 69. Vespasian. + 102. Pan Chau on the Caspian Sea. + 117. Hadrian succeeded Trajan. Roman Empire at its greatest + extent. + 138. (The Indo-Scythians at this time were destroying the last + traces of Hellenic rule in India.) + 161. Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antoninus Pius. + 164. Great plague began, and lasted to the death of M. Aurelius + (180). This also devastated all Asia. + (Nearly a century of war and disorder began in the Roman + Empire.) + 220. End of the Han dynasty. Beginning of four hundred years of + division in China. + 227. Ardashir I (first Sassanid shah) put an end to Arsacid line + in Persia. + 242. Mani began his teaching. + 247. Goths crossed Danube in a great raid. + 251. Great victory of Goths. Emperor Decius killed. + 260. Sapor I, the second Sassanid shah, took Antioch, captured the + Emperor Valerian, and was cut up on his return from Asia {431} + Minor by Odenathus of Palmyra. + 277. Mani crucified in Persia. + 284. Diocletian became emperor. + 303. Diocletian persecuted the Christians. + 311. Galerius abandoned the persecution of the Christians. + 312. Constantine the Great became emperor. + 323. Constantine presided over the Council of Nicaea. + 337. Constantine baptized on his deathbed. + 361-3. Julian the Apostate attempted to substitute Mithraism for + Christianity. + 392. Theodosius the Great emperor of east and west. + 395. Theodosius the Great died. Honorius and Arcadius redivided + the empire with Stilicho and Alaric as their masters and + protectors. + 410. The Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome. + 425. Vandals settling in south of Spain. Huns in Pannonia, Goths + in Dalmatia. Visigoths and Suevi in Portugal and North Spain. + English invading Britain. + 439. Vandals took Carthage. + 451. Attila raided Gaul and was defeated by Franks, Alemanni and + Romans at Troyes. + 453. Death of Attila. + 455. Vandals sacked Rome. + 470. Odoacer, king of a medley of Teutonic tribes, informed + Constantinople that there was no emperor in the West. End of + the Western Empire. + 493. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, conquered Italy and became King of + Italy, but was nominally subject to Constantinople. (Gothic + kings in Italy. Goths settled on special confiscated lands as a + garrison.) + 527. Justinian emperor. + 529. Justinian closed the schools at Athens, which had flourished + nearly a thousand years. Belisarius (Justinian's general) took + Naples. + 531. Chosroes I began to reign. + 543. Great plague in Constantinople. + 553. Goths expelled from Italy by Justinian. Justinian died. The + Lombards conquered most of North Italy (leaving Ravenna and Rome + Byzantine). + 570. Muhammad born. + 579. Chosroes I died. + (The Lombards dominant in Italy.) + 590. Plague raged in Rome. Chosroes II began to reign. + 610. Heraclius began to reign. + 619. Chosroes II held Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, and armies on + Hellespont. Tang dynasty began in China. + 622. The Hegira. + 627. Great Persian defeat at Nineveh by Heraclius. Tai-tsung + became Emperor of China. + 628. Kavadh II murdered and succeeded his father, Chosroes II. + Muhammad wrote letters to all the rulers of the earth. + 629. Muhammad returned to Mecca. + 632. Muhammad died. Abu Bekr Caliph. + 634. Battle of the Yarmuk. Moslems took Syria. Omar second + Caliph. + 635. Tai-tsung received Nestorian missionaries. + 637. Battle of Kadessia. + 638. Jerusalem surrendered to the Caliph Omar. + 642. Heraclius died. + 643. Othman third Caliph. + 655. Defeat of the Byzantine fleet by the Moslems. + 668. The Caliph Moawija attacked Constantinople by sea. + 687. Pepin of Hersthal, mayor of the palace, reunited Austrasia + and Neustria. + 711. Moslem army invaded Spain from Africa. + +{432} + + 715. The domains of the Caliph Walid I extended from the Pyrenees + to China. + 717-18. Suleiman, son and successor of Walid, failed to take + Constantinople. + 732. Charles Martel defeated the Moslems near Poitiers. + 751. Pepin crowned King of the French. + 768. Pepin died. + 771. Charlemagne sole king. + 774. Charlemagne conquered Lombardy. + 786. Haroun-al-Raschid Abbasid Caliph in Bagdad (to 809). + 795. Leo III became Pope (to 816). + 800. Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West. + 802. Egbert, formerly an English refugee at the court of + Charlemagne, established himself as King of Wessex. + 810. Krum of Bulgaria defeated and killed the Emperor Nicephorus. + 814. Charlemagne died. + 828. Egbert became first King of England. + 843. Louis the Pious died, and the Carlovingian Empire went to + pieces. Until 962 there was no regular succession of Holy Roman + Emperors, though the title appeared intermittently. + 850. About this time Rurik (a Northman) became ruler of Novgorod + and Kieff. + 852. Boris first Christian King of Bulgaria (to 884). + 865. The fleet of the Russians (Northmen) threatened + Constantinople. + 904. Russian (Northmen) fleet off Constantinople. + 912. Rolf the Ganger established himself in Normandy. + 919. Henry the Fowler elected King of Germany. + 936. Otto I became King of Germany in succession to his father, + Henry the Fowler. + 941. Russian fleet again threatened Constantinople. + 962. Otto I, King of Germany, crowned Emperor (first Saxon + Emperor) by John XII. + 987. Hugh Capet became King of France. End of the Carlovingian + line of French kings. + 1016. Canute became King of England, Denmark and Norway. + 1043. Russian fleet threatened Constantinople. + 1066. Conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy. + 1071. Revival of Islam under the Seljuk Turks. Battle of + Melasgird. + 1073. Hildebrand became Pope (Gregory VII) to 1085. + 1084. Robert Guiscard, the Norman, sacked Rome. + 1087-99. Urban II Pope. + 1095. Urban II at Clermont summoned the First Crusade. + 1096. Massacre of the People's Crusade. + 1099. Godfrey of Bouillon captured Jerusalem. + 1147. The Second Crusade. + 1169. Saladin Sultan of Egypt. + 1176. Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged supremacy of the Pope + (Alexander III) at Venice. + 1187. Saladin captured Jerusalem. + 1189. The Third Crusade. + 1198. Innocent III Pope (to 1216). Frederick II (aged four), King + of Sicily, became his ward. + 1202. The Fourth Crusade attacked the Eastern Empire. + 1204. Capture of Constantinople by the Latins. + 1214. Jengis Khan took Pekin. + 1226. St. Francis of Assisi died. (The Franciscans.) + 1227. Jengis Khan died. Khan from the Caspian to the Pacific, and + was succeeded by Ogdai Khan. + 1228. Frederick II embarked upon the Sixth Crusade, and acquired + Jerusalem. + 1240. Mongols destroyed Kieff. Russia tributary to the Mongols. + +{433} + + 1241. Mongol victory in Liegnitz in Silesia. + 1250. Frederick II, the last Hohenstaufen Emperor, died. German + interregnum until 1273. + 1251. Mangu Khan became Great Khan. Kublai Khan governor of + China. + 1258. Hulagu Khan took and destroyed Bagdad. + 1260. Kublai Khan became Great Khan. + 1261. The Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latins. + 1273. Rudolf of Habsburg elected Emperor. The Swiss formed their + Everlasting League. + 1280. Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty in China. + 1292. Death of Kublai Khan. + 1293. Roger Bacon, the prophet of experimental science, died. + 1348. The Great Plague, the Black Death. + 1360. In China the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty fell, and was succeeded + by the Ming dynasty (to 1644). + 1377. Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. + 1378. The Great Schism. Urban VI in Rome, Clement VII at Avignon. + 1398. Huss preached Wycliffism at Prague. + 1414-18. The Council of Constance. + Huss burnt (1415). + 1417. The Great Schism ended. + 1453. Ottoman Turks under Muhammad II took Constantinople. + 1480. Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, threw off the Mongol + allegiance. + 1481. Death of the Sultan Muhammad II while preparing for the + conquest of Italy. + 1486. Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. + 1492. Columbus crossed the Atlantic to America. + 1498. Maximilian I became Emperor. + 1498. Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape to India. + 1499. Switzerland became an independent republic. + 1500. Charles V born. + 1509. Henry VIII King of England. + 1513. Leo X Pope. + 1515. Francis I King of France. + 1520. Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan (to 1566), who ruled from + Bagdad to Hungary. Charles V Emperor. + 1525. Baber won the battle of Panipat, captured Delhi, and founded + the Mogul Empire. + 1527. The German troops in Italy, under the Constable of Bourbon, + took and pillaged Rome. + 1529. Suleiman besieged Vienna. + 1530. Charles V crowned by the Pope. Henry VIII began his quarrel + with the Papacy. + 1539. The Society of Jesus founded. + 1546. Martin Luther died. + 1547. Ivan IV (the Terrible) took the Title of Tsar of Russia. + 1556. Charles V abdicated. Akbar, Great Mogul (to 1605). + Ignatius of Loyola died. + 1558. Death of Charles V. + 1566. Suleiman the Magnificent died. + 1603. James I King of England and Scotland. + 1620. _Mayflower_ expedition founded New Plymouth. First negro + slaves landed at Jamestown (Va.). + 1625. Charles I of England. + 1626. Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) died. + 1643. Louis XIV began his reign of seventy-two year's. + 1644. The Manchus ended the Ming dynasty. + 1648. Treaty of Westphalia. There-by Holland and Switzerland were + recognized as free republics and Prussia became important. The + treaty gave a complete victory neither to the Imperial Crown nor + to the Princes. + +{434} + + 1648. War of the Fronde; it ended in the complete victory of the + French crown. + 1649. Execution of Charles I of England. + 1658. Aurungzeb Great Mogul. Cromwell died. + 1660. Charles II of England. + 1674. Nieuw Amsterdam finally became British by treaty and was + renamed New York. + 1683. The last Turkish attack on Vienna defeated by John III of + Poland. + 1689. Peter the Great of Russia. (To 1725.) + 1701. Frederick I first King of Prussia. + 1707. Death of Aurungzeb. The empire of the Great Mogul + disintegrated. + 1713. Frederick the Great of Prussia born. + 1715. Louis XV of France. + 1755-63. Britain and France struggled for America and India. + France in alliance with Austria and Russia against Prussia and + Britain (1756-63); the Seven Years' War. + 1759. The British general, Wolfe, took Quebec. + 1760. George III of Britain. + 1763. Peace of Paris; Canada ceded to Britain. British dominant + in India. + 1769. Napoleon Bonaparte born. + 1774. Louis XVI began his reign. + 1776. Declaration of Independence by the United States of America. + 1783. Treaty of Peace between Britain and the new United States of + America. + 1787. The Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia set up the + Federal Government of the United States. France discovered to + be bankrupt. + 1788. First Federal Congress of the United States at New York. + 1789. The French States-General assembled. Storming of the + Bastille. + 1791. Flight to Varennes. + 1792. France declared war on Austria. Prussia declared war on + France. Battle of Valmy. France became a republic. + 1793. Louis XVI beheaded. + 1794. Execution of Robespierre and end of the Jacobin republic. + 1795. The Directory. Bonaparte suppressed a revolt and went to + Italy as commander-in-chief. + 1798. Bonaparte went to Egypt. Battle of the Nile. + 1799. Bonaparte returned to France. He became First Consul with + enormous powers. + 1804. Bonaparte became Emperor. Francis II took the title of + Emperor of Austria in 1805, and in 1806 he dropped the title of + Holy Roman Emperor. So the "Holy Roman Empire" came to an end. + 1806. Prussia overthrown at Jena. + 1808. Napoleon made his brother Joseph King of Spain. + 1810. Spanish America became republican. + 1812. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. + 1814. Abdication of Napoleon. Louis XVIII. + 1824. Charles X of France. + 1825. Nicholas I of Russia. First railway, Stockton to + Darlington. + 1827. Battle of Navarino. + 1829. Greece independent. + 1830. A year of disturbance. Louis Philippe ousted Charles X. + Belgium broke away from Holland. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha + became king of this new country, Belgium. Russian Poland + revolted ineffectually. + 1835. The word "socialism" first used. + 1837. Queen Victoria. + 1840. Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. + 1852. Napoleon III Emperor of the French. + 1854-56. Crimean War. + +{435} + + 1856. Alexander II of Russia. + 1861. Victor Emmanuel First King of Italy. Abraham Lincoln became + President, U. S. A. The American Civil War began. + 1865. Surrender of Appomattox Court House. Japan opened to the + world. + 1870. Napoleon III declared war against Prussia. + 1871. Paris surrendered (January). The King of Prussia became + "German Emperor." The Peace of Frankfort. + 1878. The Treaty of Berlin. The Armed Peace of forty-six years + began in western Europe. + 1888. Frederick II (March), William II (June), German Emperors. + 1912. China became a republic. + 1914. The Great War in Europe began. + 1917. The two Russian revolutions. Establishment of the Bolshevik + regime in Russia. + 1918. The Armistice. + 1920. First meeting of the League of Nations, from which Germany, + Austria, Russia and Turkey were excluded and at which the United + States was not represented. + 1921. The Greeks, in complete disregard of the League of Nations, + make war upon the Turks. + 1922. Great defeat of the Greeks in Asia Minor by the Turks. + + + + +{439} + + INDEX + + + A + + ABOLITIONIST movement, 384 + Abraham the Patriarch, 116 + Abu Bekr, 249, 252, 431 + Abyssinia, 398 + Actium, battle of, 195 + Adam and Eve, 116 + Adams, William, 400 + Aden, 405 + Adowa, battle of, 398 + Adrianople, 229 + Adrianople, Treaty of, 353 + Adriatic Sea, 178, 228 + AEgatian Isles, 182 + AEgean peoples, 92, 94, 100, 108, 117, 174 + AEolic Greeks, 108, 130 + Aeroplanes, 4, 363, 413 + AEschylus 139 + Afghanistan, 163 + Africa, 72, 92, 122, 123, 182, 253, 258, 302 + Africa, Central, 397 + Africa, North, 65, 94, 180, 192, 232, 292, 394, 397, 431 + Africa, South, 72, 335, 398, 405 + Africa, West, 393 + "Age of Confusion," the, 168, 173 + Agriculturalists, primitive, 66, 68 + Agriculture, 203; slaves in, 203 + Ahab, 119 + Air-breathing vertebrata, 23, 24 + Air-raids, 413 + Aix-la-Chapelle, 265 + Akbar, 292, 332, 433 + Akkadian and Akkadians, 90, 122, 429 + Alabama, 385 + _Alabama_, the, 388 + Alani, 227, 430 + Alaric, 230, 232, 431 + Albania, 179 + Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Prince Consort), 434 + Alchemists, 257, 294 + Aldebaran, 257 + Alemanni, 200, 431 + Alexander I, Tsar, 348 + Alexander II of Russia, 435 + Alexander III, Pope, 274, 432 + Alexander the Great, 142, 146 _et seq._, 163, 186, 240, 299, 430 + Alexandretta, 147 + Alexandria, 147, 151, 209, 222, 239 + Alexandria, library at, 151 + Alexandria, museum of, 150, 180 + Alexius Comnenus, 268 + Alfred the Great, 263 + Algae, 13 + Algebra, 257, 282 + Algiers, 185 + Algol, 257 + Allah, 252 + Alligators, 28 + Alphabets, 79, 127 + Alps, the, 37, 197 + Alsace, 200, 309, 391 + Aluminium, 360 + Amenophis III, 96, 429 + Amenophis IV, 96 + America, 263, 302, 309, 314, 324, 335, 336, 422-23, 434 + America, North, 12, 330, 336, 382 + American Civil War, 386, 435 + American civilizations, primitive, 73 _et seq._ + American warships in Japanese waters, 402 + Ammonites, 30, 36 + Amorites, 90 + Amos, the prophet, 124 + Amphibia, 24 + Amphitheatres, 208 + Amur, 334 + Anagni, 284 + Anatomy, 24, 355 + Anaxagoras, 138 + Anaximander of Miletus, 132 + Andes, 37 + Angles, 230 + Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 405 + Animals, (_See_ Mammalia) + Annam, 402 + Anti-aircraft guns, 413 + Antigonus, 149 + Antioch, 243, 271, 431 + Antiochus III, 183 + Anti-Slavery Society, 384 + Antoninus Pius, 195, 430 + Antony, Mark, 194 + Antwerp, 294 + Anubis, 210 + Apes, 43, 44; anthropoid, 45 + Apis 209, 211 + Apollonius, 151 + Appian Way, 191 + Appomattox Court House, 388, 435 + Aquileia, 235 + Arabia, 77, 88, 91, 122, 123, 248 + Arabic figures, 257 + Arabic language, 243 + Arabs, 253 _et seq._, 294; culture of, 267 + Arbela, battle of, 147, 431 + Arcadius, 230, 431 + Archangel, 419 + Archimedes, 151 + Ardashir I, 241, 430 + Argentine Republic, 396 + Arians, 224 + Aristocracy, 130 + Aristotle, 142, 144, 146, 256, 282, 294, 295, 356, 370 + Armadillo, 74 + Armenia, 192, 268, 287, 299 + Armenians, 100, 108 + Armistice, the, 435 + Arno, the, 178 + Arsacid dynasty, 199, 431 + Artizans, 152 + Aryan language, 95, 100, 106 + Aryans, 95, 104 _et seq._, 122, 128, 151, 174, 176, 185, 197, 198, + 233, 303, 429 + Ascalon, 117 + Asceticism, 158-60, 213 + Ashdod, 117 + Asia, 72, 197, 227, 287, 298, 329 _et seq._, 333, 399 _et seq._, + 403 _et seq._, 430 + Asia, Central, 108, 122, 134, 148, 185, 245-247, 255, 334 + Asia Minor, 92, 94, 108, 127, 134, 148, 180, 192-93, 238, 243, + 258, 271, 292, 429, 430, 431 + Asia, Western, 65 + Asoka, King, 163 _et seq._, 180, 430 + Assam, 394 + Asses, 77, 83, 102, 112 + Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus), 97, 98, 109, 110 + Assyria, 109, 115, 119, 121, 122, 429 + Assyrians, 84, 96, 97, 98, 108, 429 + Astronomy, early, 70, 74 + Athanasian Creed, 224 + Athenians, 135 + Athens, 129, 135-36, 139, 150, 185, 204, 431 + Athens, schools of philosophy in, 238 + Atkinson, C. F., 345 + Atkinson, J. J., 61, 373 + Atlantic, 122, 302 + Attalus, 430 + Attila, 234, 235, 238, 431 + Augsburg, Interim of, 313 + Augustus Caesar, Roman Emperor, 195, 214 + Aurelian, Emperor, 200 + Aurochs, 197 + Aurungzeb, 434 + Ausculum, battle of, 178, 430 + Australia, 72, 322, 336, 395, 405 + Austrasia, 431 + Austria, 309, 327, 347-48, 349-52, 390, 411, 434 + Austrian Empire, 409 + Austrians, 344, 351 + Automobiles, 362 + Avars, 289 + Avebury, 106 + Averroes, 282 + Avignon, 285, 433 + Axis of earth, 1, 2 + Azilian age, 57, 65 + Azilian rock pictures, 57, 78 + Azoic rocks, 11 + Azores, 302 + + B + + Baber, 290, 310, 332, 433 + Baboons, 43 + Babylon, 90, 94, 96, 97, 101, 102, 111, 112, 114, 115-16, 119, + 121, 122, 134, 147, 148, 373, 429 + Babylonian calendar, 68 + Babylonian Empire, 90, 91, 109, 110 + Babylonians, 108 + Bacon, Roger, 293-97, 433 + Bacon, Sir Francis, 321, 355, 433 + Bagdad, 256, 267, 290, 292, 432, 433 + Bahamas, 407 + Baldwin of Flanders, 272 + Balkan peninsula, 108, 200, 230, 392, 429 + Balkh, 299 + Balloons, altitude attained by, 4 + Baltic, 415 + Baltic Fleet, Russian, 404 + Baluchistan, 405 + Barbarians, 227 _et seq._, 230, 320 + Barbarossa, Frederick, (_See_ Frederick I) + Bards, 106, 234 + Barrows, 104 + Barter, 83, 102 + Basketwork, 65 + Basle, Council of, 305 + Basque race, 92, 107 + Bastille, 342, 434 + Basutoland, 407 + Beaconsfield, Lord, 394 + Bedouins, 122, 248 + Beetles, 26 + Behar, 180, 430 + Behring Straits, 52, 71, 73 + Bel Marduk, 109, 111, 112, 114 + Belgium, 185, 344, 347, 352, 411, 434 + Belisarius, 431 + Belshazzar, 112 + Beluchistan, 149 + Benares, 156, 160 + Beneventum, 179 + Berbers, 71, 92 + Bergen, 294 + Berlin, Treaty of, 435 + Bermuda, 407 + Bessemer process, 359 + Beth-shan, 118 + Bible, 1, 68, 100, 112, 115, 116, 119, 121, 122, 184, 286, 298, + 306-07, (_Cf._ Hebrew Bible) + Birds, flight of, 4; the earliest, 31; development of, 32 + Bison, 56 + Black Death, the, 433 + Black Sea, 71, 94-95, 108, 129, 200 + Blood sacrifice, 167, 186, 212 (_See also_ Sacrifice) + Boats, 91, 136 + Boer republic, 187 + Boers, 398 + Bohemia, 236, 306 + Bohemians, 304-05, 326 + Bokhara, 256 + Boleyn, Anne, 313 + Bolivar, General, 349 + Bologna, 295, 312 + Bolsheviks (and Bolshevism), 417-19, 435 + Bone carvings, 53 + Bone implements, 45, 46 + Boniface VIII, Pope, 283-84 + "Book religions," 226 + Books, 153, 298, 302 + Bootes, 257 + Boris, King of Bulgaria, 432 + Bosnia, 228 + Bosphorus, 135 + Boston, 337-38 + Bostra, 243 + Botany Bay, 393 + Bourbon, Constable of, 312, 433 + Bowmen, 145, 155, 300 + Brahmins and Brahminism, 165, 166 + Brain, 42 + Brazil, 329, 336, 340 + Breathing, 24 + Brest-Litovsk, 417 + Britain, 106, 122, 174, 185, 203, 236, 349, 353, 402, 431, 434, + (_See also_ England, Great Britain) + British, 329, 331 + British Civil Air Transport Commission, 363 + British East Indian Company, (_See_ East India Company) + British Empire, 407; (in 1815) 393; (in 1914) 405 + British Guiana, 393 + British Navy, 408 + "British schools," the, 369 + Brittany, 309 + Broken Hill, South Africa, 52 + Bronze, 80, 87, 102, 104 + Bruges, 294 + Brussels, 344 + Brythonic Celts, 107 + Buda-Pesth, 312 + Buddha, 133, 156, 172, 213, 429; life of, 158; his teaching, + 161-62 + Buddhism (and Buddhists), 166, 172, 222, 255, 290, 319, 334, 400, + (_See also_ Buddha) + Bulgaria, 135, 229, 245, 292, 411, 432 + Bull fights, Cretan, 93 + Burgoyne, General, 338 + Burgundy, 309, 342 + Burial, early, 102, 104 + Burleigh, Lord, 324 + Burma, 166, 300, 405 + Burning the dead, 104 + Bury, J, B, 288 + Bushmen, 54 + Byzantine Army, 253 + Byzantine Empire, 238, 271-72 + Byzantine fleet, 431 + Byzantium, 228, 243, 267, 268, (_See also_ Constantinople) + + C + + Cabul, 148 + Caesar, Augustus, 430 + Caesar, Julius, 187, 192, 193, 194, 195, 430 + Caesar, title, etc., 212, 223, 240, 327 + Cainozoic period, 37 _et seq._ + Cairo, 256 + Calendar, 68 + Calicut, 329 + California, 336, 383 + Caligula, 195, 430 + Caliphs, 252 + "Cambulac," 300 + Cambyses, 112, 134 + Camels, 42, 102, 112, 196, 319 + Campanella, 371 + Canaan, 116 + Canada, 332, 396, 405, 434 + Canary Islands, 302 + Cannae, 182 + Canossa, 274 + Canton, 247 + Canute, 263, 432 + Cape Colony, 398 + Cape of Good Hope, 336, 393, 433 + Capet, Hugh, 266, 432 + Carboniferous age, (_See_ Coal swamps) + Cardinals, 277 _et seq._ + Caria, 98 + Carians, 94 + Caribou, 73 + Carlovingian Empire, 432 + Carnac, 106 + Carolinas, 388 + Carrhae, 194 + Carthage, 92, 122, 123, 134, 176, 179, 182, 183, 185, 232, 429-30, + 431 + Carthaginians, 179, 182 + Caspian Sea, 71, 88, 108, 148, 193, 197, 430 + Caste, 157, 165 + Catalonians, 302 + "Cathay," 300 + Catholicism, 237, 337, 351. (_See also_ Papacy, Roman Catholic) + Cato, 187 + Cattle, 77, 83 + Caudine Forks, 430 + Cavalry, 145, 148, 178 + Cave drawings, 53, 56, 57 + Caxton, William, 306 + Celibacy, 275 + Celts, 106, 107, 193 + Centipedes, 23 + Ceylon, 165, 407 + Chaeronia, battle of, 145, 146, 430 + Chalcedon, 243 + Chaldean Empire, 109 + Chaldeans, 109, 110-11, 115, 429 + Chandragupta, 163, 430 + Chariots, 96, 100, 101-02, 112, 119, 145, 148 + Charlemagne, 259, 261, 264-65, 272, 309, 432 + Charles I, King of England, 308, 314, 433 + Charles II, King of England, 324, 434 + Charles V, Emperor, 309, 310, 314, 316, 433 + Charles X, King of France, 350, 434 + Charles the Great, (_See_ Charlemagne) + _Charlotte Dundas_, steamboat, 357 + Chelonia, 27 + Chemists, Arab, 257. (_Cf._ Alchemists) + Cheops, 83 + Chephren, 83 + China, 76, 84, 103, 166, 167 _et seq._, 173, 174, 233, 245 et + seq., 248, 287, 290, 297, 333, 399-400, 402-03, 411, 429-31, + 432, 433, 435. (_See also_ Chow, Han, Kin, Ming, Shang, Sung, + Suy, Ts'in, and Yuan dynasties) + China, culture and civilization in, 247 + China, Empire of, 196 _et seq._ + China, Great Wall of, 173, 430 + China, North, 173 + Chinese picture writing, 79, 167 + Chosroes I, 243, 431 + Chosroes II, 243, 431 + Chow dynasty, 168, 173, 429 + Christ. (_See_ Jesus) + Christian conception of Jesus, 214 + Christianity (and Christians), 224, 255, 272, 295, 319, 400, 431 + Christianity, doctrinal, development of, 222 _et seq._ + Christianity, spirit of, 224 + Chronicles, book of, 116, 119 + Chronology, primitive, 68 + Ch'u, 173 + Church, the, 68 + Cicero, 193 + Cilicia, 299 + Cimmerians, 100 + Circumcision, 70 + Circumnavigation, 302 + Cities, Sumerian, 78 + Citizenship, 187 _et seq._, 236, 237 + City states, Greek, 129 _et seq._, Chinese, 168 + Civilization, 100 + Civilization, Hellenic, 139, 150 _et seq._ + Civilization, Japanese, 400 + Civilization, pre-historic, 71 + Civilization, primitive, 76, 167 + Civilization, Roman, 185 + Claudius, Emperor, 195, 430 + Clay documents, 77, 80, 111 + Clement V, Pope, 285 + Clement VII, Pope, 285, 433 + Cleopatra, 194 + Clermont, 432 + _Clermont_, steamboat, 358 + Climate, changes of, 21, 37 + Clive, 333 + Clothing, 77 + Clothing of Cretan women, 93 + Clouds, 8 + Clovis, 259 + Clyde, Firth of, 357 + Cnossos (Crete), 92, 94, 95, 101, 108, 127, 429 + Coal, 26 + Coal swamps, the age of, 21 _et seq._ + Coinage, 114, 176, 201, 319 + Coke, 322 + Collectivists, 375 + Colonies, 394 _et seq._, 407 + Columbus, Christopher, 300-01, _et seq._, 335, 433 + Communism (and Communists), 374-75, 417 + Comnenus, Alexius. (_See_ Alexius) + Comparative anatomy, science of, 25, (_Cf._ Anatomy) + Concord, Mass., 338 + Confederated States of America, 385 + Confucius, 133, 168 _et seq._, 173, 429 + Congo, 397 + Conifers, 26, 36 + Constance, Council of, 286, 304,.433 + Constantine the Great, 187, 226, 228, 229, 241, 429, 431 + Constantinople, 229, 238, 239, 243, 253, 258, 263-64, 270 _et + seq._, 272, 283, 292, 301, 321, 327, 431, 432, 433. (_See also_ + Byzantium) + Consuls, Roman, 193 + Copper, 74, 80, 102, 360, 395 + Cordoba, 256 + Corinth, 129 + Cornwallis, General, 338 + Corsets, 93 + Corsica, 182, 185, 232 + Cortez, 314 + Cossacks, 334 + Cotton fabrics, 102 + Couvade, the, 70 + Crabs, 23 + Crassus, 192, 194, 199 + Creation of the world, story of, 1, 116 + Creed religions, 240 + Cretan script, 94 + Crete, 92, 108 + Crimea, 419 + Crimean War, 390, 434 + Crocodiles, 28 + Croesus, 111, 429 + Cro-Magnon race, 51, 54, 65 + Cromwell, Oliver, 434 + Cronstadt, 419 + Crucifixion, 204 + Crusades, 267 _et seq._, 281, 304-05, 432 + Crustacea, 13 + Ctesiphon, 244 + Cuba, 393 + Cultivation, the beginnings of, 65 _et seq._ + Culture, Heliolithic, 69 + Culture, Japanese, 402 + Cuneiform, 78 + Currents, 18 + Cyaxares, 109-10, 429 + Cycads, 26, 36 + Cyrus the Persian, 111, 116, 121, 123, 134, 429 + Czech language, 236 + Czecho-Slovaks, 351 + Czechs, 304 + + D + + Dacia, 195, 200, 203, 227, 236 + Daedalus, 94 + Dalmatia, 431 + Damascus, 243, 253, 431 + Danes, 329, 330 + Danube, 135, 200, 227, 430 + Dardanelles, 136, 147, 292 + Darius I, 112, 134, 135, 136, 429 + Darius III, 147, 148,.430 + Darlington, 356, 434 + David, King, 118-19, 429 + Da Vinci, Leonardo, 356 + Davis, Jefferson, 385, 388 + Dawn Man. (_See_ Eoanthropus) + Dead, burning the, 104; burial of (_See_ Burial) + Debtors' prisons, 336 + Deciduous trees, 36 + Decius, Emperor, 200, 432 + Declaration of Independence, 334, 434 + _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Gibbon's), 288-89 + Deer, 42, 56 + Defender of the Faith, title of, 313 + Defoe, Daniel, 365 + Delhi, 292, 433 + Democracy, 131, 132, 270 + Deniken, General, 419 + Denmark, 306, 313, 394, 432 + Deshima, 401 + Devonian system, 19 + Diaz, 433 + Dictator, Roman, 194 + Dillon, Dr., 424 + Dinosaurs, 28, 31, 36 + Diocletian, Emperor, 224, 226, 227 + Dionysius, 170 + Diplodocus Carnegii, measurement of, 28 + Diseases, infectious, 379 + Ditchwater, animal and plant life in, 13 + Dogs, 42 + Domazlice, battle of, 305 + Dominic, St., 276 + Dominican Order, 276, 285, 400 + Dorian Greeks, 108, 130 + Douglas, Senator, 386 + Dover, Straits of, 193 + Dragon flies, 23 + Drama, Greek, 139 + Dravidian civilization, 108 + Dravidians, 71 + Duck-billed platypus, 34 + Duma, the, 416 + Durazzo, 268 + Dutch, 329, 331, 332, 399 + Dutch Guiana, 394 + Dutch Republic, 350 + Dyeing, 75 + + E + + Earth, the, shape of, 1; rotation of, 1; distance from the sun, 2; + age and origin of, 5; surface of, 21 + Earthquakes, 95 + East India Company, 332, 337, 393, 394 + East Indies, 394, 399 + Ebro, 182 + Ecbatana, 109, 114 + Echidna, the, 34 + Eclipses, 8 + Ecnomus, battle of, 181, 430 + Economists, French, 371 + Edessa, 271 + Education, 294, 361, 368, 369 + Egbert, King of Wessex, 263, 432 + Egg-laying mammals, 34 + Eggs, 24, 26, 31, 102 + Egypt (and Egyptians), 71, 78, 90, 91, 92, 96, 98, 100-101, 115, + 119, 121, 122, 123, 124, 134, 138, 147, 174, 208, 209, 210, 238, + 253, 267, 290, 292, 396, 398, 405, 429, 431, 434 + Egyptian script, 78, 79 + Elamites, 88, 90, 174 + Elba, 348 + Electric light, 360 + Electric traction, 360 + Electricity, 322, 358, 360 + Elephants, 42, 127, 149, 178, 181, 253, 300 + Elixir of life, 257 + Elizabeth, Queen, 324, 332 + Emigration, 336 + Emperor, title of, 327 + Employer and employed, 375 + "Encyclopaedists," the, 371 + England (and English), 306, 390, 431 + England, Norman Conquest of, 266 + England, overseas possessions, 330 + English Channel, 331 + English language, 95 + Entelodonts, 42 + Eoanthropus, 47 + Eoliths, 45 + Ephesus, 149 + Ephthalites, 199 + Epics, 106, 127, 129, 131 + Epirus, 131, 178, 179 + Epistles, the, 222 + Eratosthenes, 151 + Erech, Sumerian city of, 78 + Esarhaddon, 429 + Essenes, 213 + Esthonia, 245 + Esthonians, 419 + Ethiopian dynasty, 429 + Ethiopians, 96, 233 + Etruscans, 94, 100, 176, 430 + Euclid, 151 + Euphrates, 77, 110, 127, 129, 174, 196, 429, 430 + Euripides, 139 + Europe, 200 + Europe, Central, 329 + Europe, Concert of, 350 + Europe, Western, 53, 298 + European overseas populations, 336 + Europeans, intellectual revival of, 294 _et seq._ + Europeans, North Atlantic, 329 + Europeans, Western, 329 + Everlasting League, 433 + Evolution, 16, 42 + Excommunication, 275, 281, 285 + Execution, Greek method of, 140 + Ezekiel, 124 + + F + + Factory system, 365 + Family groups, 61 + Famine, 420 + Faraday, 358 + Fashoda, 398 + Fatherhood of God, the, 215, 224, 251 + Fear, 61 + Feathers, 32 + Ferdinand of Aragon, King, 293, 302, 309 + Ferns, 23, 26 + Fertilizers, 363 + Fetishism, 63, 64 + Feudal system, 258, 400, 401, 402 + Fielding, Henry, 365 + Fiji, 407 + Finance, 134 + Finland, 245 + Finns, 351 + Fish, the age of, 16 _et seq._; the first known vertebrata, 19; + evolution of, 30 + Fisher, Lord, 416 + Fishing, 57 + Fleming, Bishop, 286 + Flint implements, 44, 47 + Flood, story of the, 91, 116 + Florence, 294 + Florentine Society, 322 + Florida, 336, 385 + Flying machines, 94, 363 + Fontainebleau, 348 + Food, rationing of, 414 + Food riots, 417 + Forests, 56, 197 + Fossils, 13, 43. (_Cf._ Rocks) + Fowl, the domestic, 88, 102 + France, 106, 185, 230, 259, 263, 312, 336, 342, 353, 390, 391, + 394, 396, 402, 409, 411, 434 + Francis I, King of France, 310, 312, 313, 433 + Francis II, Emperor of Austria, 434 + Francis of Assisi, St., 276, 432 + Franciscan Order, 276, 285, 432 + Frankfort, Peace of, 391, 435 + Franks, 200, 227, 235, 259, 265, 431 + Frazer, Sir J. G., 66 + Frederick I (Barbarossa), 274, 432 + Frederick I, King of Prussia, 434 + Frederick II, German Emperor, 279, 280 _et seq._, 288, 289, 294, + 304, 435 + Frederick II, King of Sicily, 432 + Frederick the Great of Prussia, 327, 434 + Freeman's Farm, 338 + French, 329, 331, 332, 419 + French Guiana, 394 + French language, 203, 327, 328, 419 + French Revolution, 342 _et seq._, 374 + Frogs, 24 + Fronde, war of the, 434 + Fulton, Robert, 358 + Furnace, blast, 359; electric, 359 + Furs, 335 + + G + + Galatia, 430 + Galatians, 193 + Galba, 430 + Galerius, Emperor, 226, 431 + Galleys, 91, 92, 181, 263 + Galvani, 258 + Gamma, Vasco da, 329, 335, 433 + Ganges, 156 + Gath, 117 + Gaul, 203, 235, 236, 357, 431 + Gauls, 154, 178, 179, 180, 182, 193, 430 + Gautama. (_See_ Buddha) + Gaza, 117, 147 + Gaztelu, 314 + Genoa (and Genoese), 294, 300, 301, 302 + Genoa Conference, 425 + Genseric, 232 + Geology, 11 _et seq._, 356 + George III, King of England, 324, 337, 434 + Georgia, 336, 339, 385, 387 + German Empire, 409 + German language, 95, 236, 260 + Germans, 268, 288, 310, 351, 360-61, 362 + Germany, 197, 326, 347, 348, 362, 390, 396, 402, 409, 410, 411 + Germany, North, 306 + Gibbon, E., 234, 288 + Gibraltar, 71, 92, 94, 253, 393, 407 + Gigantosaurus, measurement of, 28 + Gilbert, Dr., 322 + Gilboa, Mount, 118 + Gills, 24 + Giraffes, 42 + Gizeh, pyramids at, 83 + Glacial Ages, 22, 37, 44 + Gladiators, 205 + Glass, 102 + Glyptodon, 74 + Goa, 329 + Goats, 77 + God, idea of one true, 249 + God of Judaism, 123, 209, 213, 214, 215 + Godfrey of Bouillon, 432 + Gods, 111, 123, 129, 165, 184, 186, 201 _et seq._, 208 _et seq._, + 240 + Goidelic.Celts, 106 + Gold, 74, 80, 83, 102, 300, 395 + _Golden Bough_, Frazer's, 66 + Good Hope, Cape of. (See Cape) + Gospels, the, 214 _et seq._, 222 + Gothic kingdom, 259 + Gothland, 197, 200 + Goths, 181, 200, 227, 228, 430, 431 + Granada, 293, 301 + Granicus, battle of the, 146, 430 + Grant, General, 387, 388 + Graphite, 15 + Grass, 37, 51 + Great Britain, 396, 410 + Great Mogul, Empire of, 394, 434 + Great Powers, 399 _et seq._ + Great Schism. (_See_ Papal schism) + Great War, the, 411 _et seq._, 421, 435 + Greece, 92, 94, 108, 127, 139 _et seq._, 145 _et seq._, 434 + Greece, war with Persia, 134 _et seq._ + Greek language, 95, 202, 203 + Greeks, 92, 100, 101, 108, 122 _et seq._, 135, 150, 174, 186, 271, + 272, 301, 353, 419, 429, 430, 433 + Greenland, 263 + Gregory I, Pope, 263 + Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand), 268, 272, 274, 275, 278, 432 + Gregory IX, Pope, 281 + Gregory XI, Pope, 285, 433 + Gregory the Great, 272 + Grimaldi race, 51, 54, 65 + Guillotine, the, 346 + Guiscard, Robert, 432 + Gunpowder, 287, 321 + Guns, 321, 413 + Gustavus Adolphus, 331 + Gymnastic displays, Cretan, 93 + + H + + Habsburgs, 283, 309, 310 + Hadrian, 174, 430 + Halicarnassus, 138 + Hamburg, 294 + Hamitic people, 71 + Hammurabi, 90, 92, 104, 429 + Han dynasty, 196, 200, 245, 430 + Hannibal, 182 + Hanover, Elector of, 327 + Harding, President, 425 + Harold Hardrada, 266 + Harold, King of England, 266 + Haroun-al-Raschid, 267, 432 + Hastings, battle of, 266 + Hastings, Warren, 333 + Hatasu, Queen of Egypt, 96 + Hathor, 209 + Heaven, Kingdom of, 216, 217 + Hebrew Bible, 1, 115, 116. (Cf. Bible) + Hebrew literature, 100 + Hebrews, 100, 115. (_See also_ Jews) + Hegira, 431 + Heidelberg man, 45 + Heliolithic culture, 69, 71, 167, 174 + Heliolithic peoples, 107 + Hellenic tribes, 100. (_See also_ Greeks) + Hellespont, 430, 431 + Helots, 130, 203 + Hen. (_See_ Fowl) + Henry IV, King, 274 + Henry VI, Emperor, 279 + Henry VIII, King of England, 310, 312, 313, 324, 433 + Henry the Fowler, 265, 432 + Heraclea, battle of, 178, 430 + Heraclitus of Ephesus, 132, 156, 161 + Heraclius, Emperor, 243, 247, 253, 431 + Herat, 148 + Herbivorous reptiles, 28 + Hercules, Pillars of, (_See_ Gibraltar) + Hero, 151, 152 + Herodotus, 138, 139 + Herophilus, 151 + Hiero, 182 + Hieroglyphics, 79, 124 + Hildebrand. (_See_ Gregory VII) + Himalayas, the, 37 + Hipparchus, 151 + Hippopotamus, 43 + Hiram, King of Sidon, 118, 119, 122 + _History of Charles V_, 316 + Hittites, 96, 97, 98, 108 + Hohenstaufens, 283 + Holland, 306, 344, 347, 394, 396, 402, 433, 434 + Holstein, 351 + Holy Alliance, 349 + Holy Roman Empire, 264, 309, 317, 323, 347, 377, 409, 432, 434 + Homer, 129 + Honorius, 230, 431 + Honorius III, Pope, 281 + Horse, 51, 56, 94, 96, 97, 112, 167, 319, 336; evolution of the, + 42 + Horsetails, 23 + Horus, 209, 210, 211 + Hottentots, 54 + Hsia, 287 + Hudson Bay Company, 393 + Hudson River, 358 + Hulagu Khan, 290, 433 + Human sacrifice, 182, 186. (_Cf._ Blood Sacrifice, Sacrifice) + Hungarians, 263, 289, 351 + Hungary, 185, 203, 227, 245, 258, 263, 289, 290, 292, 310, 312, + 351 + Hungary, plain of, 234 + Huns, 88, 167, 168, 174, 197, 198, 227, 232, 233, 245, 263, 289, + 431 + Hunting, 56 + Huss, John, 304, 433 + Hussites, 305 + Hwang-ho river, 173 + Hwang-ho valley, 300 + Hyksos, 90, 96 + Hyracodons, 42 + Hystaspes, 430 + + I + + Iberians, 71, 92 + Ice age, 43. .(_Cf._ Glacial ages) + Iceland, 263 + Ichthyosaurs, 29, 36 + Ignatius of Loyola, St., 308, 434 + _Iliad_, 127 + Illinois, 386 + Illyria, 179, 182 + Immolation of human beings, 102 + Immortality, idea of, 210, 211, 224 + Imperialism, 399 + Implements, 46, 48, 56, 57, 65, 87 + Implements, use of, by animals, 44, 45 + India, 71, 84, 104, 108, 122, 149, 156, 163, 164, 196, 199, 287, + 302, 335, 394-95, 399, 409, 433, 434 + Indian Empire, 405 + Indian Ocean, 329 + Indiana, 383, 386 + Individualists, 375 _et seq._ + Individuality in reproduction, 16 _et seq._ + Indo-Scythians, 199, 430 + Indus, 149, 429 + Industrial revolution, 365 _et seq._ + Infantry, 178 + Influenza, 414 + Innocent III, Pope, 276, 279, 280, 432 + Innocent IV, Pope, 281 + Innsbruck, 313 + Inquisition, the, 276, 349 + Insects, 26, 31 + Interdicts, papal, 275 + Interglacial period, 44 + Internationalism, 380 + Invertebrata, 13 + Investitures, 275 + Ionic Greeks, 108, 130 + Iowa, 385 + Ireland, 106, 405 + Iron, 80, 87, 94, 97, 102, 104, 168, 319, 321, 358, 359 + Irrigation, 290 + Isabella of Castile, Queen, 293, 302, 309 + Isaiah, 125, 133, 156 + Isis, 209, 210, 211, 212 + Islam, 251, 252, 432 + Islamism, 267, 319. (_See also_ Moslem, Muhammedanism) + Isocrates, 145 + Israel, judges of, 118 + Israel, kings of, 118, 119, 121 + Issus, battle of, 147, 430 + Italian language, 203 + Italians, 107, 351 + Italica, 202 + Italy, 94, 108, 129, 134, 176, 180, 230, 236, 312, 327, 347, 390, + 396, 409, 411, 429, 431, 434 + Italy, Central, 429 + Italy, North, 263, 312, 351, 390, 429, 431 + Italy, South, 429 + Ivan III (the Great), 327, 433 + Ivan IV (the Terrible), 327, 433 + + J + + Jacobin republic, 434 + Jamaica, 393, 407 + James I, King of England and Scotland, 324, 433 + Jamestown (Va.), 433 + Japan, 166, 300, 399, 400-01 _et seq._, 409, 410, 435 + Japanese, 419 + Jarandilla, 315 + Java, 302, 329 + Jaw-bone, Heidelberg, 45-46; Piltdown, 46 + Jehovah, 125 + Jena, 434 + Jengis Khan, 287, 298, 334, 432 + Jerusalem, 115, 116, 119, 121, 123, 124, 184, 215, 243, 267, 271, + 272, 299, 431, 432 + Jerusalem, Temple of, 119, 184 + Jesuits, 308, 400, 433 + Jesus, life and teaching of, 214 _et seq._, 224, 270, 306, 374, + 430 + Jews, 123, 124, 147, 184, 213, 215, 255, 256, 270, 294 + Jews, early history of, 115 _et seq._ + Jews, literature of, 115 + Jewish religion and sacred books, 116 + John III of Poland, 434 + John XI, Pope, 272 + John XII, Pope, 272, 432 + Joppa, 117 + Joseph, King of Spain, 349, 434 + Josiah, King of Judah, 110, 115, 116, 429 + Judah, 115, 119 + Judah, kings of, 119 + Judea, 115, 183, 214 + Judea, priests and prophets in, 122 _et seq._ + Judges, book of, 117 + Judges of Israel, 118 + Jugo-Slavia, 354 + Jugo-Slavs, 351 + Jugurtha, 192 + Julian the Apostate, 431 + Julius III, 316 + Junks, Chinese, 400 + Jupiter (god), 211, 212 + Jupiter (planet), 2, 3 + Jupiter Capitolinus, 184 + Jupiter Serapis, 226 + Justinian I, 232, 238, 243, 431 + Jutes, 230 + + K + + Kaaba, the, 249 + Kadessia, battle of, 253, 431 + Kalinga, 163 + Kansas, 383 + Karakorum, 287, 298 + Karnak, 101 + Kashgar, 300 + Kashmir, Buddhists in, 165 + Kavadh, 243, 244, 431 + Kentucky, 383, 386 + Kerensky, 416, 417 + Khans, 287 _et seq._ + Khyber Pass, 148, 199 + Kiau Chau, 400 + Kieff, 287, 432 + Kin dynasty, 287 + Kings, book of, 119 + Kioto, 402 + Ki-wi, the, 32 + Koltchak, Admiral, 419 + Koran, the, 251, 255 + Korea, 400, 402 + Kotan, 300 + Krum of Bulgaria, 432 + Kublai Khan, 290, 298, 300, 433 + Kushan dynasty, 199 + + L + + Labyrinth, Cretan, 127 + Lahore, 287 + Lake Ontario, 336 + Land scorpions, 23 + Langley, Professor, 363 + Languages of mankind, 94, 95, 100, 106, 107, 108, 134, 145, 156, + 176, 201, 202, 203, 230, 236, 243, 245, 259, 325, 328 + Lao Tse, 133, 170 _et seq._, 222, 429 + Lapland, 233 + Latin Emperor, 259 + Latin language, 201, 202, 203, 236, 259. (_Cf. also_ Languages) + Latins, the, 271, 272, 432 + Law, 238 + _Laws_, Plato's, 142 + League of Nations, 422, 423, 424, 425, 435 + Learning, 255 + Lee, General, 387, 389 + Legionaries, 229 + Lemurs, 43 + Lenin, 417, 419 + Leo III, Pope, 265, 272, 432 + Leo X, Pope, 310, 312, 433 + Leonidas, 136 + Leopold I, 353 + Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 434 + Lepanto, battle of, 293 + Lepidus, 194 + Lexington, 338 + Liberia, 398 + Libraries, 151, 164, 170 + Liegnitz, battle of, 288, 289, 433 + Life, beginnings of, the Record of the Rocks, 11 _et seq._; + progressive nature of, 16; of what it consists, 16; theory of + Natural Selection, 18; a teachable type: advent of, 39 + Lincoln, Abraham, 385, 386, 388, 389, 435; assassination of, 389 + Linen, 102 + Lions, 42, 127 + Lisbon, 294, 315, 329 + Literary criticism, evolution of, 205 + Literature, European, 298 + Literature, pre-historic, 115 + Lizards, 27, 28 + Llamas, 42 + Lob Nor, 300 + Lochau, battle of, 313 + Locke, John, 371 + Logic, science of, 144 + Lombard kingdom, 259 + Lombards, 431 + Lombardy, 431 + London, 294, 413 + Lopez de Recalde, Inigo, 308, (_See also_ Ignatius of Loyola) + Lorraine, 391 + Louis XIV, 324, 433 + Louis XV, 434 + Louis XVI, 342, 343, 434 + Louis XVIII, 350, 434 + Louis Philippe, 350, 434, + Louis the Pious, 265, 432 + Louisiana, 336, 385 + Lu, state of, 170 + Lucretius, 294 + Lucullus, 192 + Lunar month, 68 + Lung, the, 24 + Luther, Martin, 306, 310, 433 + Luxembourg, 351 + Luxor, 101 + Lvoff, Prince, 416 + Lyceum, Athens, 142, 144 + Lydia, 98, 134 + Lydians, 94 + Lyons, 345 + + M + + Macao, 329 + Macaulay, Lord, 187 + Maccabeans, 184 + Macedonia and Macedonians, 131, 135, 139, 145, 179, 292, 350 + Machinery, 322, 356 + Madeira, 122, 302 + Madras, 163 + Magellan, Ferdinand, 302 + Magic, 172 + Magna Graecia, 129, 178 + Magnesia, battle of, 183 + Magyars, 263, 264, 270, 289 + Mahaffy, Professor, 151 + Maine, 336, 339 + Majuba Hill, battle of, 398 + Malta, 393, 407 + Mammals, the earliest, 33; viviparous, 33; egg-laying, 34; the Age + of, 37 _et seq._ + Mammoth, 43, 49 + Man, brotherhood of, 216, 224, 380 + Man, 43; Heidelberg, 45; Eoanthropus, 47; Neanderthal, 47, 48 _et + seq._; earliest known, 53 _et seq._ + Manchu, 333, 433 + Manchuria, 197, 400,.402, 403, 404 + Mangu Khan, 290, 433 + Mani, 241, 270, 430, 431 + Manichaeans, 243, 255 + Mankind, racial divisions of, 54, 71 + Mantua, 345 + Maoris, 71 + Marathon, 136 + Marathon, battle of, 430 + Marchand, Colonel, 398 + Marcus Aurelius, 174, 430 + Marie Antoinette, 343, 346 + Mariner's compass, 302, 320 + Marius, 191, 192, 237, 430 + "Marriage of East and West," 149 + Mars (planet), 2, 3 + Marseillaise, the, 343, 345 + Marseilles, 129, 182, 312, 345 + Martel, Charles, 259, 432 + Marlin V, Pope, 286, 304 + Marx, 376 + Maryland, 337 + Mas d'Azil cave, 57 + Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 390, 391 + Maximilian I, Emperor, 309, 433 + Maya writing, 74, 75 + Mayence, 265, 344 + _Mayflower_ expedition, 433 + Mazarin, Cardinal, 324 + Mecca, 248, 249, 251, 431 + Mechanical revolution, 256 _et seq._, 366, 369 + Medes, 100, 108, 109, 115, 122, 134, 155, 174, 429 + Media, rebellion in, 136 + Median Empire, 109, 110, 112 + Medicine man, the, 64 + Medina, 249 + Mediterranean, 71, 91, 176, 292, 293; valley, 71 + "Mediterranean" people, pre-Greek, 130 + Megatherium, 74 + Megiddo, battle of, 110, 115, 429 + Melasgird, battle of, 268, 432 + Mentality, primitive, 60, _et seq._ + Mercury (planet), 2, 3 + Mesopotamia, 77, 80, 96, 100, 109, 127, 174, 267, 290, 299 + Mesozoic period, 27; land life of, 28; sea life of, 30; scarcity + of bird and mammal life in, 32, 34; its difference from + Cainozoic period, 38 + Messina, 179, 180 + Messina, Straits of, 179 + Metallurgy, 356, 359, 360 + Metals, transmutation of, 257 + Meteoric iron, 80, 94 + Metz, 391 + Mexico, 74, 76, 324, 321, 384, 385, 389, 399 + Michael VII, Emperor, 268 + Michael VIII. (_See_ Palaeologus) + Microscope, 355 + Midianites, 117 + Milan, 227, 235, 309, 312, 351 + Miletus, 129 + Millipedes, 23 + Milton, 129 + Ming dynasty, 290, 333, 433 + Mining, 335 + Minnesota, 385 + Minos, 92, 95, 127, 131 + Missionaries, 236, 247, 380, 400, 431 + Mississippi (state), 385 + Mississippi River, 386 + Missouri, 382 + Mithraism, 211, 212, 213, 222, 431 + Mithras, 211, 213 + Mnemonics, Chinese and Peruvian method of, 76 + Moabites, 117 + Moawija, Caliph, 431 + Mogul dynasty, 292, 433 + Moluccas, 329 + Monarchy, 323, 341, 347 + Monasticism, 213, 236 + Money, 114, 176, 201, 319 + Mongol conquests, influence of, 298 + Mongol Court, the, 299 + Mongol Empire, 332 + Mongolia, 197 + Mongolian language, 108 + Mongolian peoples, 72, 73, 88, 167, 197, 227, 232, 233 _et seq._, + 245, 258, 287 _et seq._, 298, 320, 333, 400, 433 + Mongoloid tribes, 69 + Monkeys, 43, 45 + Monotheism, 251. (_See also_ Muhammad) + Monroe doctrine, 349, 389, 396, 423 + Monroe, President, 349 + Montesquieu, 371 + Montgomery, 385 + Month, the lunar, 68 + Moon, the, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 68 + Moorish paper-mills, 297 + More, Sir Thomas, 365, 371 + Morelly, 371 + Morocco, 185, 398 + Mortillet, 57 + Moscow, 293, 434 + Moscow, Grand Duke of, 290 + Moses, 116 + Moslem Empire, 253 + Moslems, 297, 431, 432 + Moslim, the, 253, 269, 271, 290 + Mososaurs, 29 + Moses, 23 + Mounds, Neolithic, 70 + Mountains, 197 + Mozambique, 329 + Muehlon, Herr, 424 + Muhammad, prophet, 243, 247, 248 _et seq._, 270, 431 + Muhammad II, Sultan, 292, 433 + Mules, 102 + Mummies, 70 + Munitions, 412 + Musk ox, 43 + Mycalae, battle of, 136, 430 + Mycenae, 92, 108 + Mycerinus, 83 + Mylae, battle of, 181, 430 + + N + + Nabonidus, 111, 112 + Nankin, 173 + Naples, 178, 350, 431 + Napoleon Bonaparte, 345, 347, 348, 356, 434 + Napoleon III, 390, 434, 435 + Nasmyth, 359 + Natal, 398 + "National schools," 369 + Natural history, father of, 144 + Natural Selection, theory of, 17 + Nautilus, the pearly, 39 + Navarino, battle of, 353, 434 + Neanderthaler Man, 47, 48 _et seq._ + Nebraska, 383 + Nebuchadnezzar II (the Great), 102, 110, 115, 429 + Nebulae, 4, 5 + Necho II, 109, 110, 115, 122, 147, 429 + Needles, bone, 57 + Negroid tribes, 72, 88 + Nelson, Horatio, 348 + Neolithic age, 59, 65 + Neolithic civilizations, primitive, 71 _et seq._ + Neptune (planet), 2, 3 + Nero, 195, 430 + Nestorian missionaries, 431. (_Cf._ Missionaries) + Netherlands, 259, 309, 351 + Neustria, 431 + Neva, 327 + New Assyrian Empire, 97 + _New Atlantis, The_, 322, 355 + New England, 335, 337 + New Mexico, 433 + New Plymouth, 433 + Newts, 24 + New York, 358, 434 + New Zealand, 322, 396, 405 + Newfoundland, 405 + Nicaea, 268, 270 + Nicaea, Council of, 431 + Nicephorus, Emperor, 432 + Nicholas I, Tsar, 351, 390, 434 + Nicholas II, Tsar, 416 + Nickel, 360 + Nicomedia, 227 + Nieuw Amsterdam, 434. (_Cf._ New York) + Nile, 83, 100, 129, 398; valley 90, 429 + Nile, battle of the, 434 + Nineveh, 94, 97, 101, 109, 114, 243, 429, 431 + Nippur, 78 + Nirvana, 161 + Nish, 227 + Noah's Ark, 91 + Nogaret, Guillaume de, 284 + Nomadic peoples, primitive, 84 _et seq._, (_Cf._ Nomads) + Nomads, 122, 155, 167, 168, 174, 198-200, 233-34, 245, 287, 334 + Nonconformity, 307, 308 + Nordic race, 72, 88, 104, 108, 134, 154, 155, 174, 178, 185, 197, + 200, 233, 258, 261 + Normandy, 263, 342, 432 + Normandy, Duke of, 266 + Normans, 263, 266, 279, 302 + Northmen, 263, 264, 266, 268, 432 + Norway, 306, 313, 432 + Norwegians, 351 + Novgorod, 294, 432 + Nubians, 238 + Numerals, Arabic, 282 + Numidia, 191 + Numidians, 182 + Nuremberg, 294 + Nuremberg, Peace of, 313 + + O + + Ocean dredgings, deepest, 4 + Ocean liners, 322, 336 + Octavian. (_See_ Augustus) + Odenathus of Palmyra, 431 + Odoacer, 236, 431 + _Odyssey_, 127 + Ogdai Khan, 287, 289, 432 + Oglethorpe, 336 + Okapi, 397 + "Old Man," 372, 373 + Old Testament, 115, 116 + Olympiad, first, 176, 429 + Olympian games, 131 + Olympias, Queen, 146 + Omar, Caliph, 431 + Open-hearth process, 359 + Orange River, 398 + "Ordinance of secession," 385 + Oregon, 385 + Organic Evolution, 16 + Ormuz, 299 + Orsini family, 284 + Orthodoxy, 240 + Osiris, 200, 210, 211 + Ostrogoths, 227, 431 + Othman, 432 + Otho, 430 + Otto I, King of Germany, 265, 432 + Otto of Bavaria, Prince, 354 + Ottoman Empire, 202. (_See also_ Turkey, Turks) + Oudh, 394 + Ownership, 373, 374, 375 + Oxen, 49, 104, 112 + Oxford, 295 + + P + + Padua, 235 + Paestum, 176 + Palaeologus, Michael (Michael VIII), 283 + Palaeolithic age, 13, 59, 66 (note) + Palermo, 181 + Palestine, 290, 299 + Pamirs, 196, 300 + Panama, 385 + Panama, Isthmus of, 314 + Pan Chau, 197, 430 + Panipat, battle of, 433 + Pannonia, 203, 229, 232, 234, 431 + Papacy (including Popes), 237, 261, 265, 277 _et seq._, 329 _et + seq._, 343 + Papal schism (the Great Schism), 285, 394, 433 + Paper, 153, 236, 255, 297, 320, 322 + Papyrus, 78, 153 + Parables, 216 + _Paradise Lost_, 129 + Parchment, 153 + Paris, 294, 295, 342, 350, 356, 390, 391, 412, 413, 415, 435 + Paris, Peace of, 338, 434 + Parthian dynasty, 202 + Parthians, 155, 192, 194, 198, 199, 245 + Passau, Treaty of, 314 + Patricians, Roman, 176, 188 + Paul, St., 202, 223 + Pavia, siege of, 312 + _Peace Conference_, Dr. Dillon's, 424 + Peasant revolts, 305, 310 + Peculium, 206 + Pedro I, 340 + Pegu, 300 + Pekin, 173, 287, 300, 383, 400, 432 + Peloponnesian War, 139, 145, 430 + Pentateuch, the, 116 + "People's crusade," the, 270, 432. (_Cf._ Crusades) + Pepi II, 83 + Pepin I, 259 + Pepin of Hersthal, 431 + Pergamum, 154, 180, 183, 430 + Pericles, 139, 140 + Perry, Commodore, 402 + Persepolis, 114, 148, 155 + Persia, 77, 134 _et seq._, 165, 185, 192, 227, 243, 253, 255, 287, + 399, 409, 430, 431 + Persian Empire, 112, 134, 238, 429 + Persian Gulf, 77, 78, 91, 299 + Persian language, 95 + Persians, 100, 108, 109, 115, 155, 174, 431 + Peru, 74, 75, 314, 321 + Pestilence, 305, 320, 334, 413, 430, 431, 433 + Peter the Great, 327, 434 + Peter the Hermit, 269, 270 + Peterhof, 327 + Petersburg, 127, 419. (_See also_ Petrograd) + Petrograd, 416, 417. (_See also_ Petersburg) + Petschenegs, 268 + Phalanx, 145, 178 + Pharaohs, the, 90, 96, 119, 131, 150, 188 + Pharsalos, 430 + Philadelphia, 358, 434 + Philip, Duke of Orleans, 350 + Philip, King of France, 285 + Philip II, King of Spain, 314, 324 + Philip of Hesse, 313 + Philip of Macedon, 145, 146, 430 + Philippine Islands, 302, 393, 400 + Philistines, 100, 117 + Philosopher's stone, 257 + Philosophers and Philosophy, 133, 139, 152, 168, 239, 294, 295 + Phoenicians, 92, 94, 107, 123, 147 + _Phoenix_, steamship, 358 + Phrygians, 100, 108 + Physiocrats, 371 + Picture writing, 56, 57, 78, 79, 167 + Piedmont, 345 + Pirates and Piracy, 92, 179, 180, 200, 263 + Pithecanthropus erectus, 45 + Pizarro, 314 + Plague, (_See_ Pestilence) + Planetoids, 2 + Planets, 2 + Plant lice, 13 + Plants, 22, 23, 36 + Platea, battle of, 136, 430 + Plato, 140, 142, 144, 170, 370-71 + Platypus, duck-billed, 34 + Plebeians, Roman, 176, 177, 187-88 + Plesiosaurs, 29, 30, 36 + Poison-gas, 413 + Poitiers, 432 + Poitiers, battle of, 253, 259 + Poland, 288, 327, 353, 434 + Poles, 288, 419 + Political experiment, age of, 318 _et seq._ + Political ideas, development of, 370 _et seq._ + Political science, founder of, 144 + Political worship, 412 + Polo, Marco, 299-300 + Polynesian races, 71 + Pompey the Great, 192, 193, 196, 198, 430 + Pontifex maximus, 237, 261 + Popes. (_See_ Papacy) + Population, 379, 383 + Port Arthur, 400, 403 + Portugal, 340, 394, 396, 431 + Portuguese, 302, 329, 332, 400 + Porus, King, 149 + Potato, 76 + Potsdam, 327 + Pottery, 75, 87 + Prague, 433 + Prescott, 314 + Priestcraft (including Priests), 64, 68, 69, 74, 75, 77, 83, 111, + 114 _et seq._, 122, 131, 132, 167, 174, 275, 277 + _Primal Law_, 61 + Primates, 43. (_Cf._ Mammalia) + Printing, 80 153, 247, 255, 298, 302, 305, 306, 320, 322, 329 + Priscus, 234 + Property, 274, 372, 374, 375 + Prophet, Muhammad as, 249 + Prophets, Jewish, 118, 122 _et seq._ + Proprietorship, 373 + Protestantism, 316, 324, 327, 351, 400 + Proverbs, book of, 116 + Prussia, 327, 348, 351, 390, 391, 392, 434, 435 + Prussia, East, 412, 415 + Psalms, 116 + Psammetichus I, 109, 429 + Psycho-analysis, 69 + Pterodactyls, 28, 29, 31, 36 + Ptolemy I, 149, 150, 151, 186, 211 + Ptolemy II, 151, 186 + Punic language, 203 + Punic Wars, 180 _et seq._, 187, 188, 430 + Punjab, 163, 199 + Puritans, 335 + Pygmies, 397 + Pyramids, 69, 83, 100 + Pyrenees, 253, 432 + Pyrrhus, 178, 179, 430 + + Q + + Quebec, 434 + Quinqueremes, 180 + Quixada, 314 + + R + + Races of mankind, 71 _et seq._ + Railways, 322, 350, 357, 382, 383, 384, 389, 395, 396, 409, 434 + Rain, 9, 10 + Rameses II, 96, 147, 429 + Rasputin, 415, 416 + Ratisbon, Diet of, 313 + Ravenna, 431 + Reading, 176 + Rebus, 79 + Red deer, 56 + Red Sea, 91, 118, 122, 196 + Reformation, the, 308 + Reindeer, 43, 49, 51, 56, 73 + Religion, and the creation of the world, 1; and organic evolution, + 16; primitive, 61, 64 + Religions, 172, 222 _et seq._, 240 _et seq._, 319. (_Cf._ + Buddhism, Christianity, etc.) + Religious developments under the Roman Empire, 208 _et seq._ + Religious wars, 270, 304, 313. (_Cf._ Crusades) + Reptiles, the age of, 26 _et seq._; mental life of, 38 + Reproduction, 17 _et seq._ + _Republic_, Plato's, 142 + Republic, the Assimilative, 187 + Republics, 187 _et seq._, 236, 308, 324, 328, 340, 343, 344, 416, + 433, 434, 435 + Republicans, the first, 131 + _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_, 150 + Revolution, 342 _et seq._, 349 _et seq._, 390, 404, 416, 435 + Rhine, 200, 227 + Rhine languages, 236 + Rhineland, 270, 306 + Rhinoceros, 43, 49 + Rhodes, 108 + Rhodesia, 407 + Rhodesian man, 52 + Richelieu, Cardinal, 324 + Richmond, U.S.A., 386, 388, 389 + Roads, 114, 187 + Robertson, 316 + Robespierre, 345, 346, 434 + Robinson, J. H., 284 + "Rocket," Stephenson's, 356 + Rock pictures, 57, 78 + Rocks as record of beginnings of life, 11 _et seq._ + + S + + Sabellians, 224 + Sabre-toothed tiger, 43 + Sacrifice, 102, 103, 167, 174, 182, 186, 211, 212. (_Cf._ also + Blood sacrifice, Human sacrifice) + Sagas, 106 + Saghalien, 404 + Sailing ships, 91, 336 + St. Angelo, castle of, 312 + St. Helena, 407 + St. Sophia, church of, 238 + Saladin, 272, 432 + Salamis, battle of, 180, 430 + Salamis, bay of, 136 + Salerno, 282 + Samarkand, 256, 297 + Samnites, 430 + Samos, 129 + Samson, 116 + Samurai, 401 + San Francisco, 383 + Sandstones, 26 + Sanskrit, 95, 107, 156 + Sapor I, 430 + Saracens, 264, 265, 297 + Saratoga, 338 + Sardanapalus (Assurbanipal), 98, 109, 111 + Sardinia, 182, 185, 232, 309, 351, 390 + Sardis, 98 + Sargon I, 90, 92, 109, 122, 429 + Sargon II, 97, 109, 429 + Sarmatians, 100 + Sassanid dynasty, 227, 241, 430 + Saturn (planet), 2, 3 + Saul, King of Israel, 118, 429 + Saul of Tarsus. (_See_ Paul, St.) + _Savannah_, steamship, 358 + Savoy, 334, 351, 390 + Saxons, 230, 265 + Saxony, Elector of, 310 + Scandinavians, 329 + Scarabeus beetle, 209 + Scheldt, 344 + Schmalkaldic League, 312 + Science, 144 + Science and religion, 243 + Science, exploitation of, 362 + Science, physical, 412 + Scientific societies, 322 + Scipio Africanus, 182, 187 + Scorpion, sea, 13, 18, 23 + Scotland, 306, 307 + Scott, Michael, 282 + Scythia, 429 + Scythians, 100, 108, 134, 135 + Sea trade, 91 + Sea worms, 13 + Seasons, the, 68 + Seaweed, 13 + Sedan, 391 + Seed-bearing trees, 26 + Seleucid dynasty, 183, 186, 196, 199 + Seleucus I, 149, 163 + Seljuks, 267, 268, 272, 432 + Semites and Semitic peoples, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 107, 115, 122, + 134, 174, 233, 256, 258 + Semitic language, 202, 243 + Sennacherib, 97 + Serapeum, 211, 213 + Serapis, 211, 212 + Serbia, 179, 200, 227, 228, 292, 354, 411 + Serfdom, 207 + Seven Years' War, 434 + Severus, Septimius, 202 + Seville, 202, 213, 302 + Shang dynasty, 103, 168 + Sheep, 77 + Shell necklaces, 56 + Shellfish, 13 + Shells, as protection against drying, 18 + Sherman, General, 387, 388 + Shi Hwang-ti, 173, 180, 430 + Shimonoseki, Straits of, 402 + Shipbuilding, 359, 360, 400 + Ships, 91, 119, 122, 149, 180, 196, 320, 322, 336 + Shishak, 119 + Shrubs, 16 + Shumanism, 298 + Siam, 166 + Siberia, 334 + Siberia, Eastern, 419 + Siberian railway, 403, 409 + Sicilies, Two, 287 + Sicily, 108, 122, 129, 134, 178, 179, 182, 185, 188, 232, 263, + 279, 280 + Sidon, 92, 122, 123, 134, 147 + Silurian system, 19 + Silver, 80, 102, 335 + Sind, 394 + Sirmium, 227 + Skins, use of; for clothing, 56 for writing, 75; inflated as + boats, 91 + Skull, Rhodesian, 52 + Slavery (and slaves), 94, 102, 188, 191, 194, 203 _et seq._, 236, + 320, 337, 373, 374, 384-86, 388, 430, 433 + Slavonic language, 236 + Slavs, 263, 265 + Smelting, 87, 104, 322 + Smith, Adam, 377 + Smith, Eliot, 69 + Snakes, 27, 28 + Social reform, 125 + Socialism, 371, 416, 417, 434 + Socialists, 375 _et seq._ + Socialists, primitive, 374 + Society, primitive, 60 + Socrates, 140 + Solomon, King, 119, 122, 127, 429 + Solomon's temple, 119 + Sophists, 140 + Sophocles, 139 + South Carolina, 385 + Soviets, 417 + Space, the world in, 1 _et seq._ + Spain, 93, 106, 122, 123, 180, 185, 230, 232, 236, 253, 255, 256, + 309, 348, 349, 350, 393, 429, 431; relics of first true man in, + 53 + Spain, North, 431 + Spanish, 329, 331 + Spanish language, 203 + Sparta, 129, 130, 136, 203 + Spartacus, 191, 192, 203, 430 + Spartans, 136 + Species, generation of, 17; new, 36 + Speech, primitive human, 63 + Spiders, 23 + Spiral nebulae, 5 + Spores, 24 + Stagira, 142 + Stamford Bridge, battle of, 286 + Stars, 68, 257 + State, modern idea of a, 375 + State ownership, 374 + States General, the, 341, 434 + Steamboat, 340, 357 _et seq._, 374, 382, 395, 396 + Steam engine, 151, 152, 359 + Steam hammer, 359 + Steam power, 322 + Steel, 322, 359-60 + Stephenson, George, 356 + Stilicho, 230, 234, 431 + Stockholm, 417 + Stockton, 356, 434 + Stone age, 53, 59 + Stone implements, 45, 65 + Stonehenge, 106, 429 + Story-telling, primitive, 62 + Styria, 309 + Submarine campaign, 423 + Subutai, 289 + Sudan, the, 405 + Suevi, 431 + Suleiman the Magnificent, 310, 312, 432, 433 + Sulla, 192, 237 + Sumeria and Sumerians, 77, 78 _et seq._, 87, 88, 90, 91, 122 + Sumerian Empire, 429 + Sumerian language and writing, 77, 78, 79 + Sun, the, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 + Sun worship, 211 + Sung dynasty, 290 + Susa, 114, 135, 148, 149, 155 + Suy dynasty, 245 + Swastika, 70 + Sweden, 306, 313, 348 + Swedes, 326, 329, 330, 351 + Swimming bladder, 24 + Switzerland, 327, 347, 350, 433 + Syracuse, 151, 154, 170, 178 + Syria, 88, 91, 115, 119, 122, 138, 238, 243, 249, 290, 431 + Syrians, 96, 98 + + T + + _Tabus_, the, 61 + Tadpoles, 26 + Tagus valley, 314 + Tai-Tsung, 247, 431 + Tang dynasty, 200, 245, 247, 287, 431 + "Tanks," 413 + Taoism, 174, 222. (_See also_ Lao Tse) + Taranto, 178 + Tarentum, 178 + Tarim valley, 430 + Tartars, 167, 197, 232, 243, 288, 290, 334 + Tasmania, 59, 322, 393 + Tattooing, 70 + Taxation, 271, 337 + Tea, 247, 337 + Teeth, 19, 20 + Telamon, battle of, 182 + Telegraph, electric, 340, 358, 382, 384, 396 + Telescope, 355 + Temples, 77, 83, 101, 129, 131, 167, 174, 184, 186, 211, 212, 213, + 240 + Tennessee, 386 + Testament, Old, 115, 116 + Teutons, 431 + Texas, 384, 385 + Texel, 344 + Thales, 131, 161 + Thebes, 101, 102, 129, 136 + Theocrasia, 209 + Theodora, Empress, 238 + Theodoric the Goth, 236, 431 + Theodosius II, 234, 238 + Theodosius the Great, 226, 229, 431 + Thermopylae, battle of, 136, 430 + Thessaly, 145, 178 + Thirty Years' War, 326 + Thothmes III, 96, 127, 147, 429 + Thought and research, 140 + Thought, primitive, 60 _et seq._ + Thrace, 135 + Three Estates, council of the, 285 + Three Teachings, the, 170 + Tiberius Caesar, 195, 214, 430 + Tibet, 196, 400 + Tides, 18 + Tigers, 42, 43 + Tiglath Pileser I, 97, 429 + Tiglath Pileser III, 97, 108, 109, 429 + Tigris, 77, 84 + Time, 5, 6 + Timor, 329 + Timurlane, 290, 334 + Tin, 360 + Tiryns, 108 + Titanotherium, the, 39, 42 + Tonkin, 402 + Tortoises, 27, 28 + Toulon, 345 + Trade, early, 83, 88 + Trade, Grecian, 129 + Trade routes, 119 + Traders, 132, 335 + Traders, sea, 92 + Trafalgar, battle of, 348 + Trajan, 195, 430 + Transport, 319, 358, 382 + Transvaal, 398 + Transylvania, 195 + Trasimere, Lake, 182 + Trench warfare, 412 + Trevithick, 356 + Tribal life, 61 + Trilobites, 13 + Trinidad, 407 + Trinil, Java, 45 + Trinitarians, 224 + Trinity, doctrine of the, 224, 261 + Triremes, 180 + Triumvirates, 194 + Trojans, 94 + Troy, 92, 127 + Troyes, battle of, 235, 431 + Tsar, title of, 327 + Tshushima, Straits of, 404 + Ts'i, 173 + Ts'in, 173, 431 + Tuileries, 342, 343 + Tunis, 185 + Turkestan, 77, 108, 148, 196, 197, 198, 199, 245, 253, 287, 290, + 292, 334 + Turkey, 390, 411 + Turkoman dynasty, 405 + Turkomans, 334 + Turks, 167, 197, 243, 245, 263, 267, 287, 292, 310, 312, 334, 353, + 354, 434 + Turtles, 27, 28 + Tushratta, king of Mitanni, 97 + Twelve tribes, the, 116 + Tyrannosaurus, 28 + Tyre, 92, 118, 119, 122, 123, 134, 147 + + U + + Uintatheres, 42 + Uncleanness, 68 + United States, 357, 410, 411, 422, 434; Declaration of + Independence, 338; treaty with Britain, 339; expansion of, 382 + _et seq._ + Universities, 295, 304, 355, 361 + Uranus, 2, 3 + Urban II, Pope, 268, 272, 432 + Urban VI, Pope, 285, 433 + Utopias, 140, 142, 144 + + V + + Valens, Emperor, 229 + Valerian, 430 + Valladolid, 314, 315, 316 + Valmy, battle of, 434 + Vandals, 227, 229, 230, 232, 431 + Varennes, 343, 434 + Vassalage, 259 + Vatican, 265, 266, 272, 285 + Vedas, 106 + Vegetation of Mesozoic period, 28 + Veii, 177, 178 + Vendee, 345 + Venetia, 235 + Venetians, 301 + Venice, 235, 272, 274, 294, 327, 351, 432 + Venus (goddess), 213 + Venus (planet), 2, 3 + Verona, 345 + Versailles, 325, 327, 341, 342 + Versailles, Peace Conference of, 421 + Versailles, Treaty of, 421, 422 + Vertebrata, 19; ancestors of, 20 + Verulam, Lord, (_See_ Bacon, Sir Francis) + Vespasian, 430 + Vesuvius, 191 + Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 435 + Victoria, Queen, 394, 434 + Vienna, 292, 312, 433, 434 + Vienna, Congress of, 348, 349, 350 + Vienna, Treaty of, 355 + Vilna, 356 + Vindhya Mountains, 159 + Virginia, 337, 383, 386 + Visigoths, 227, 229, 232, 235, 259, 431. (_Cf._ Goths) + Vitellus, 430 + _Vittoria_, ship, 302 + Viviparous mammals, 33 + Vivisection, Herophilus and, 151 + Volcanoes, 37 + Volga, 200, 227 + Volta, 358 + Voltaire, 328 + Votes, 382 + + W + + Waldenses, 276, 280, 305 + Waldo, 276 + Walid I, 432 + War and Warfare, 96, 344, 390, 422 + War of American Independence, 338 _et seq._ + Warsaw, 353 + Washington, 340, 357, 383, 386, 389 + Washington, Conference of, 425 + Washington, George, 338 + Waterloo, battle of, 348 + Watt engine, 356 + Weapons, 100, 106 + Weaving, 65, 75 + Wei-hai-wei, 400 + Wellington, Duke of, 348 + West Indies, 330, 385, 393, 394 + Western Empire, 431 + Westminster, 306 + Westphalia, Peace of, 326, 355, 433 + Wheat, 66, 104 + White Huns. (_See_ Ephthalites) + William Duke of Normandy (William I), 432 + William II, German Emperor, 410, 435 + Wilson, President, 422, 423, 424 + Wings, birds', 32 + Wisby, 294 + Wisconsin, 385 + "Wisdom lovers," the first, 133 + Witchcraft, 68 + Wittenberg, 306 + Wolfe, General, 434 + Wolsey, Cardinal, 324 + Wood blocks for printing, 247 + Wool, 102, 395 + Workers' Internationals, 377 + World, The, creation of, 1; in time, 5 _et seq._ + Wrangel, General, 419 + Writing, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 94, 124, 176; dawn of, 57 + Wycliffe, John, and his followers, 286, 304, 433 + + X + + Xavier, Francis, 400 + Xenophon, 150 + Xerxes, 136, 138, 147, 150 + + Y + + Yang-Chow, 300 + Yang-tse-Kiang, 173 + Yangtse valley, 173 + Yarmuk, battle of, the, 253, 431 + Yedo Bay, 401 + Yorktown, 338 + Yuan dynasty, 290, 433 + Yucatan, 74 + Yudenitch, General, 419 + Yuste, 314, 317 + + Z + + Zama, battle of, 182, 430 + Zanzibar, 329 + Zarathustra, 241 + Zeppelins, 413 + Zero sign, 257 + Zeus, 211 + Zimbabwe, 397 + Zoophytes, fossilized, 13 + Zoroaster (and Zoroastrianism), 241, 243, 255 + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Short History of the World, by H. 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