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Title: A Short History of the World
Author: H. G. Wells
Release Date: March 2, 2011 [eBook #35461]
[Most recently updated: October 27, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Donald F. Behan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD ***
A SHORT
HISTORY OF THE WORLD
By H. G. WELLS
New York
THE MACMILLAN & COMPANY
1922
_Copyright 1922_
CONTENTS CHAPTER Page
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
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
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 DEVELOPMENTS 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
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
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
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
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
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
Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 283
Burgundian Nobility (Statuettes) 284
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
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
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
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 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.
LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER
“LUMINOUS SPIRAL CLOUDS OF MATTER”
(Nebula photographed 1910)
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
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 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.
THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE ON
THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE-ON
Note the central core which, through millions of years, is cooling to
solidity
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
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 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.
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.
THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA
THE GREAT SPIRAL NEBULA
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
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.
A DARK NEBULA
A DARK NEBULA
_Taken in 1920 with the aid of the largest telescope in the world. One
of the first photographs taken by the Mount Wilson telescope._
There are dark nebulæ and bright nebulæ. Prof. Henry Norris Russell,
against the British theory, holds that the dark nebulæ preceded the
bright nebulæ.
_Photo: Prof. Hale_
Slowly by degrees as one million of years followed another, this 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.
ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA
ANOTHER SPIRAL NEBULA
_Photo: G. W. Ritchey_
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 rocks below and
pools and lakes into which these streams would be carrying detritus and
depositing sediment.
LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE
LANDSCAPE BEFORE LIFE
“Great lava-like masses of rock without traces of soil”
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
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.
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.
MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD
MARINE LIFE IN THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD
1 and 8, Jellyfishes; 2, Hyolithes (swimming snail); 3, Humenocaris;
4, Protospongia; 5, Lampshells (Obolella); 6, Orthoceras; 7,
Trilobite (Paradoxides) — see fossil on page 13; 9, Coral
(Archæocyathus); 10, Bryograptus; 11, Trilobite (Olenellus); 12,
Palesterina
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 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.
FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED)
FOSSIL TRILOBITE (SLIGHTLY MAGNIFIED)
_Photo: John J. Ward, F.E.S._
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.
EARLY PALÆOLITHIC FOSSILS OF VARIOUS SPECIES OF LINGULA
EARLY PALÆOLITHIC FOSSILS OF VARIOUS SPECIES OF LINGULA
Species of this most ancient genus of shellfish still live to-day
_(In Natural History Museum, London)_
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 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 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.
FOSSILIZED FOOTPRINTS OF A LABYRINTHODONT CHEIROTHERIUM
FOSSILIZED FOOTPRINTS OF A LABYRINTHODONT CHEIROTHERIUM
_(In Natural History Museum, London)_
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 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.
SPECIMEN OF THE PTERICHTHYS MILLERI OR SEA SCORPION SHOWING BODY ARMOUR
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 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.
FOSSIL OF THE CLADOSELACHE, A DEVONIAN SHARK
FOSSIL OF THE CLADOSELACHE, A DEVONIAN SHARK
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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 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.
SHARKS AND GANOIDS OF THE DEVONIAN PERIOD
SHARKS AND GANOIDS OF THE DEVONIAN PERIOD
_By Alice Woodward_
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 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.
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 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.
A CARBONIFEROUS SWAMP
A CARBONIFEROUS SWAMP
_A Coal Seam in the Making_
Plants no doubt preceded animal forms in this invasion of the land, but
the animals probably followed up the plant emigration 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.
SKULL OF A LABYRINTHODONT, CAPITOSAURUS
SKULL OF A LABYRINTHODONT, CAPITOSAURUS
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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; 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.
SKELETON OF A LABYRINTHODONT: THE ERYOPS
SKELETON OF A LABYRINTHODONT: THE ERYOPS
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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 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.
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. This new land life needed only the
opportunity of favourable conditions to flourish and prevail.
A FOSSIL ICHTHYOSAURUS, A MESOZOIC FISH-LIZARD
A FOSSIL ICHTHYOSAURUS, A MESOZOIC FISH-LIZARD
Found in the Lower Lias in Somersetshire
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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), 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.
A PTERODACTYL
A PTERODACTYL
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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.
A BIG SWAMP-INHABITING DINOSAUR, THE DIPLODOCUS, OVER EIGHTY FEET FROM
SNOUT TO TAIL-TIP
A BIG SWAMP-INHABITING DINOSAUR, THE DIPLODOCUS, OVER EIGHTY FEET FROM
SNOUT TO TAIL-TIP
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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 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.
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 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.
FOSSIL OF THE ARCHEOPTERYX; ONE OF THE EARLIEST BIRDS
FOSSIL OF THE ARCHEOPTERYX; ONE OF THE EARLIEST BIRDS
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
And another thing he would probably never see, and that would be any
sign of a mammal. Probably the first mammals were in 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.
HESPERORNIS IN ITS NATIVE SEAS
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 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.
THE KI-WI, APTERYX, STILL FOUND IN NEW ZEALAND
THE KI-WI, APTERYX, STILL FOUND IN NEW ZEALAND
_Photo: Autotype Fine Art Co._
SLAB OF LOWER PLIOCENE MARL
SLAB OF LOWER PLIOCENE MARL
Discovered in Greece; it is rich in fossilized bones of early mammals
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 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.
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 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.
A MAMMAL OF THE EARLY CAINOZOIC PERIOD
A MAMMAL OF THE EARLY CAINOZOIC PERIOD
The Titanotherum (Brontops) Robustum
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. 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.
STENOMYLUS HITCHCOCKI--A GIRAFFE-CAMEL
STENOMYLUS HITCHCOCKI—A GIRAFFE-CAMEL
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
SKELETON OF PROTOHIPPUS VENTICOLUS—EARLY HORSE
SKELETON OF PROTOHIPPUS VENTICOLUS--EARLY HORSE
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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 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.
COMPARATIVE SIZES OF BRAINS OF RHINOCEROS AND DINOCERAS
COMPARATIVE SIZES OF BRAINS OF RHINOCEROS AND DINOCERAS
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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
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.
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 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.
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.
A MAMMOTH
A MAMMOTH
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 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.
FLINT IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN PILTDOWN REGION
FLINT IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN PILTDOWN REGION
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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.
A THEORETICAL RESTORATION OF THE PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS BY PROF. RUTOT
A THEORETICAL RESTORATION OF THE PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS BY PROF. RUTOT
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.
THE HEIDELBERG MAN
THE HEIDELBERG MAN
The Heidelberg Man, as modelled under the supervision of Prof. Rutot
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 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.
THE PILTDOWN SKULL, AS RECONSTRUCTED FROM ORIGINAL FRAGMENT
THE PILTDOWN SKULL, AS RECONSTRUCTED FROM ORIGINAL FRAGMENT
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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.
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 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.
THE NEANDERTHALER, ACCORDING TO PROF. RUTOT
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.
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 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.
COMPARISON OF (1) MODERN SKULL AND (2) RHODESIAN SKULL
COMPARISON OF (1) MODERN SKULL AND (2) RHODESIAN SKULL
_Nat. Hist. Mus._
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 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.
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.
ONE OF THE MARVELLOUS CAVE PAINTINGS OF ALTAMIRA, NORTH SPAIN
ONE OF THE MARVELLOUS CAVE PAINTINGS OF ALTAMIRA, NORTH SPAIN
The Walls of the Caves are covered in these representations of Bulls,
etc., painted in the soft tones of red shaded to black. They may be
fifteen or twenty thousand years old
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.
BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD
BONE CARVINGS OF THE PALÆOLITHIC PERIOD
(1 and 2) Mammoth tusk carved to shape of Reindeer, (3) Dagger Handle
representing Mammoth, and (4) Bone engraved with Horses’ Heads
_Brit. Mus._
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 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.”
THE RUTOT BUST OF A CRO-MAGNON MAN
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.
FIGHT OF BOWMEN
Among the most recent discoveries of Palæolithic Art are these
specimens found in 1920 in Spain. They are probably ten or twelve
thousand years old
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.
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 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 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.
RELICS OF THE STONE AGE
RELICS OF THE STONE AGE
Chert implements from Somaliland. In general form they are similar to
those found in Western and Northern Europe
_Brit. Mus._
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 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.
WIDESPREAD SIMILARITY OF MEN OF THE STONE AGE
WIDESPREAD SIMILARITY OF MEN OF THE STONE AGE
On the left is a flint implement excavated in Gray’s Inn Lane, London;
on the right one of similar form chipped by primitive men of Somaliland
_Brit. Mus._
In many cases it is not difficult to link cause and effect, in 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.
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.
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.
NEOLITHIC FLINT IMPLEMENTS
NEOLITHIC FLINT IMPLEMENTS
_Brit. Mus._
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 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.
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.
NEOLITHICISM OF TO-DAY
NEOLITHICISM OF TO-DAY
Spearheads, exactly as in the true Neolithic days, but made recently by
Australian Natives,
(1) Made from a telegraph insulator;
(2) from a piece of broken bottle glass.
_Brit. Mus._
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 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.
SPECIMEN OF NEOLITHIC POTTERY
SPECIMEN OF NEOLITHIC POTTERY
Dug up at Mortlake from the Thames Bed
_Brit. Mus._
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 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.”
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 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.
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” race or of a “European” race. But
nearly all the European nations are confused mixtures of brownish,
dark-white, white and Mongolian elements.
A MAYA STELE
A MAYA STELE
Showing a worshipper and a Serpent God. Note the grotesque faces in
the writing
_Brit. Mus._
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 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 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.
NEOLITHIC WARRIOR
NEOLITHIC WARRIOR
Modelled from drawing by Prof. Rutot
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 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.
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 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.
BRICK OF HAMMURABI, KING OF BABYLON ABOUT 2200 B.C.
BRICK OF HAMMURABI, KING OF BABYLON ABOUT 2200 B.C.
Note the cuneiform characters of the inscription, which records the
building of a temple to a Sun God
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).
EBONY CYLINDER SEALS OF FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY
EBONY CYLINDER SEALS OF FIRST EGYPTIAN DYNASTY
Recovered from the Tombs at Abydos in 1921 by the British School of
Archæology. They give evidence of early form of block printing
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.
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.
THE SAKHARA PYRAMIDS
THE SAKHARA PYRAMIDS
The Pyramid to the right, the step Pyramid, is the oldest stone
building in the world
_Photo: F. Boyer_
Bronze, copper, gold, silver and, as a precious rarity, meteoric iron
were known in both Sumeria and Egypt at a very early stage.
VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF CHEOPS
VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF CHEOPS
Showing how these great monuments dominate the plain
_Photo: D. McLeish_
THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDEREH
THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDEREH
_Photo: D. McLeish_
Daily life in those first city lands of the old world must have been
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.
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.
POTTERY AND IMPLEMENTS OF THE LAKE DWELLERS
POTTERY AND IMPLEMENTS OF THE LAKE DWELLERS
_Brit. Mus._
A CONTEMPORARY LAKE VILLAGE
A CONTEMPORARY LAKE VILLAGE
These Borneo dwellings are practically counterparts of the homes of
European neolithic communities 6000 B.C.
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.
NOMADS IN EGYPT
NOMADS IN EGYPT
NOMADS IN EGYPT
Egyptian wall painting in a tomb near ancient Beni Hassan, middle
Egypt. It depicts the arrival of a tribe of Semitic Nomads in Egypt
about the year of 1895 B.C.
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.
FLINT KNIVES OF 4500 B.C.
FLINT KNIVES OF 4500 B.C.
Excavated 1922 by the British School of Archæology in Egypt from First
Dynasty Tombs
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 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.
EGYPT PEASANTS GOING TO WORK
EGYPT PEASANTS GOING TO WORK
From an ancient and curiously painted model in the British Museum
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 as traders and as raiders. Finally there arose leaders among
them with bolder imaginations, and they became conquerors.
STELE GLORIFYING KING NARAM SIN, OF AKKAD
STELE GLORIFYING KING NARAM SIN, OF AKKAD
This monarch, son of Sargon I, was a great architecht as well as a
famous conqueror. Discovered in 1898 among the ruins of Susa, Persia
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.
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 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 Phœnicians, 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 Phœnician cities, we shall have
much more to tell later.
But the Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians grew strong, and as a new and more terrible breed of
pirates, the Greeks, came upon the sea from the north.
THE TREASURE HOUSE AT MYCENÆ
THE TREASURE HOUSE AT MYCENÆ
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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 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 Cretans was often astonishingly
beautiful. And they had a system of writing, but that still remains to
be deciphered.
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 Phœnicians 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 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.
THE PALACE AT CNOSSOS
THE PALACE AT CNOSSOS
The painted walls of the Throne Room
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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.
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 war and glory—had spread by
this time into the old civilizations from Central Asia.
TEMPLE AT ABU SIMBEL
TEMPLE AT ABU SIMBEL
Showing the statues of Rameses II at entrance
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 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.
AVENUE OF SPHINXES
AVENUE OF SPHINXES
Leading from the Nile to the great Temple of Karnak
_Photo: D. McLeish_
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 amœba 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 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.
THE GREAT HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK
THE GREAT HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK
_Photo: D. McLeish_
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 Phœnician 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 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.
FRIEZE SHOWING EGYPTIAN FEMALE SLAVES CARRYING LUXURIOUS FOODS
FRIEZE SHOWING EGYPTIAN FEMALE SLAVES CARRYING LUXURIOUS FOODS
_Photo: Jacques Boyer_
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 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 Phœnicians 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.
THE TEMPLE OF HORUS AT EDFU
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.
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 divine and regal order; from a very early
stage they distinguished certain families as leaderly and noble.
A BEAUTIFUL ARCHAIC AMPHORA
A BEAUTIFUL ARCHAIC AMPHORA
Compare the horses and other animals with the Altamira drawing on p.
54, and also with the Greek frieze, p. 140
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 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.
THE MOUND OF NIPPUR
THE MOUND OF NIPPUR
The site of a city which recent excavations have proved to date from at
least as early as 5000 B.C., and probably 1000 years earlier
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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 Phœnician 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 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 Phœnician 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. A.D. 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.
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.
A.D. 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 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.
Map showing the relation of the Median and Second Babylonian (Chaldæan)
Empires in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great
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: 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. 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.
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.
PERSIAN MONARCH
PERSIAN MONARCH
From the ruins of Persepolis
_Photo: Miss F. Biggs_
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.
THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS
THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS
The capital city of the Persian Empire; burnt by Alexander the Great
_Photo: Major W. F. P. Rodd_
THE GREAT PORCH OF XERXES, AT PERSEPOLIS
THE GREAT PORCH OF XERXES, AT PERSEPOLIS
_Photo: Major W. F. P. Rodd_
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 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.
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.
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 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
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.
MOUND AT BABYLON
THE MOUND AT BABYLON
Beneath which are the remains of a great palace of Nebuchadnezzar
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician trade went
to the Red Sea by Egypt, but Egypt was in a state of profound disorder
at this time; there may have been other obstructions to Phœnician 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 ISHTAR GATEWAY, BABYLON
THE ISHTAR GATEWAY, BABYLON
The bulls are in richly coloured enamel on baked brick
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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 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.
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.
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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician 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.
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 Phœnicians,
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
Phœnician cities, the Phœnicians suddenly vanish from history; and as
suddenly we find, not simply in Jerusalem but in Spain, Africa, Egypt,
Arabia, the East, wherever the Phœnicians 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 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.
THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II
THE BLACK OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II
This obelisk (in the British Museum) of the King of Assyria mentions,
in cuneiform, “Jehu the son of Omri.” Panel showing Jewish captives
bringing tribute
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 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.
ANOTHER PANEL OF THE BLACK OBELISK
ANOTHER PANEL OF THE BLACK OBELISK
Captive Princes making obeisance to Shalmaneser II
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 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.
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.
STATUE OF MELEAGER
STATUE OF MELEAGER
Note the progress in plastic power from the earlier wooden statue on
left
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
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 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 Phœnician 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 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.
RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA
RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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 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.
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PÆSTUM, SICILY
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON), PÆSTUM, SICILY
_Photo: Alinari_
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 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.
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 Phœnician 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 Phœnician 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 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.
FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY
FINE PIECE OF ATHENIAN POTTERY
Showing Greek merchant vesselswith sails and oars statue on left
_Brit. Mus._
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 Phœnician 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.
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.
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.
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH
ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF CORINTH
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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
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_.”
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON) AT CAPE SUNIUM
THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE (POSEIDON) AT CAPE SUNIUM
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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.
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.
PART OF THE FAMOUS FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, ATHENS
PART OF THE FAMOUS FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON, ATHENS
A specimen of Grecian sculpture in its finest expression. Compare the
advance of art with that seen in the animals shown on p. 105
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS
THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS
The marvellous group of Temples and monuments built under the
inspriration of Pericles
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
THE THEATRE AT EPIDAUROS, GREECE
THE THEATRE AT EPIDAUROS, GREECE
A wonderfully preserved specimen showing the vast auditorium
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
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 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.
THE CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEUM
THE CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEUM
The ancient sanctuary on the Acropolis at Athens
_Photo: Fred Boissonnas_
ATHENE OF THE PARTHENON
ATHENE OF THE PARTHENON
_Photo: Alinart_
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, 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 ....
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.
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
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.
BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
BUST OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
_(As in the British Museum)_
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.
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. 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.
ALEXANDER’S VICTORY OVER THE PERSIANS AT ISSUS
ALEXANDER’S VICTORY OVER THE PERSIANS AT ISSUS
_(From the Pompeian Mosaic)_
Alexander charges in on the left, Darius is in the chariot to the right
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 Phœnician cities was diverted. The Phœnicians 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, 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.
THE APOLLO BELVEDERE
THE APOLLO BELVEDERE
_(In the Vatican Museum)_
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 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.
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 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.
ARISTOTLE
ARISTOTLE
From Herculaneum, probably Fourth Century B.C.
_Photo: Dr. Singer_
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 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.
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.
STATUETTE OF MAITREYA: THE BUDDHA TO COME
STATUETTE OF MAITREYA: THE BUDDHA TO COME
A Græco-Buddhist sculpture of the Third Century A.D.
_(From Malakand, N. W. Province, now in the India Museum)_
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 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.
THE DEATH OF BUDDHA
THE DEATH OF BUDDHA
Græco-Buddhist carving from Sivat Valley, N. W. Province, probably A.D.
350
_India Mus._
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. 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.
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 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.
TIBETAN BUDDHA
TIBETAN BUDDHA
Gilt Brass Casting in India Museum, showing Gautama Buddha in the
“earth witness” attitude
_India Mus._
Very far he rode that night, and in the morning he stopped outside 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.
A BURMESE BUDDHA
A BURMESE BUDDHA
Marble Figure from Mandalay, eighteenth century work, now in the India
Museum
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 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.
THE DHAMÊKH TOWER
THE DHAMÊKH TOWER
In the Deer Park at Sarnath. Sixth Century A.D.
_(From a Painting in the India Museum)_
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
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 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.
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.
A LOHAN OR BUDDHIST APOSTLE (Tang Dynasty)
A LOHAN OR BUDDHIST APOSTLE (Tang Dynasty)
_(From the statue in the British Museum)_
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 speedily upon the pure and simple
teaching of the great Indian master. Missionaries went from Asoka to
Kashmir, to Persia, to Ceylon and Alexandria.
TRANSOME SHOWING THE COURT OF ASOKA
TRANSOME SHOWING THE COURT OF ASOKA
_India Mus._
ASOKA PANEL FROM BHARHUT
ASOKA PANEL FROM BHARHUT
_India Mus._
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 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.
THE PILLAR OF LIONS
THE PILLAR OF LIONS
Capital of the Pillar (column lying on side) erected in Deer Park in
the time of Asoka, where Buddha preached his first sermon
_(From a print in the India Museum)_
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 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.
CONFUCIUS
CONFUCIUS
Copy of stone carving in the Temple of Confucius at K’iu Fu
_(From the records of the Archæological Mission to North China
(Chavannes))_
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 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.
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA
As it crosses the mountains in Manchuria
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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 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 of Confucius was not so
overlaid because it was limited and plain and straightforward and lent
itself to no such distortions.
EARLY CHINESE BRONZE BELL
EARLY CHINESE BRONZE BELL
Inscribed in archaic characters: “made for use by the elder of Hing
village in Ting district;” latter half of the Chou Dynasty, Sixth
Century B.C.
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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.
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.
THE DYING GAUL
THE DYING GAUL
The statue in the National Museum, Rome, depicting a Gaul stabbing
himself, after killing his wife, in the presence of his enemies
_Photo: Anderson_
In the centuries following the sixth century B.C. we find everywhere a
great breaking down of ancient traditions and a new spirit 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 Phœnician 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 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.
REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT ROMAN CISTERNS AT CARTHAGE
REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT ROMAN CISTERNS AT CARTHAGE
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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. 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.A.D.) 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 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 Phœnician 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.
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 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 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.
HANNIBAL
HANNIBAL
Bust in the National Museum at Naples
_Photo: Mansell_
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.
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 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.
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 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 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 reversed
the old process of conquest and assimilation altogether. By the Roman
method the conquerors assimilated the conquered.
THE FORUM AT ROME AS IT IS TO-DAY
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 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.
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.
RELICS OF ROMAN RULE
RELICS OF ROMAN RULE
Ruins of Coliseum in Tunis
_Photo: Jacques Boyer_
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 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.
THE GREAT ROMAN ARCH AT CTESIPHON NEAR BAGDAD
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 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. 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 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.
THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN AT ROME
THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN AT ROME
Representing his conquests at Dacia and elsewhere
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 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 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.
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 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.
A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE
A CHINESE COVERED JAR OF GREEN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE
Han Dynasty (contemporary with the late Roman republic and early
Empire)
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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 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.
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.
VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE
VASE OF BRONZE FORM, UNGLAZED STONEWARE
Han Dynasty (B.C. 206 - A.D. 220)
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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 his eastern raid. They defeated and killed
Crassus. They replaced the Seleucid monarchy in Persia by a dynasty of
Parthian kings, the Arsacid dynasty.
CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE
CHINESE VESSEL IN BRONZE, IN FORM OF A GOOSE
Dating from before the time of Shi-Hwang-ti. Such a piece of work
indicates a high level of comfort and humour
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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.
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.
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 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; and it is recorded
that his sister never learnt Latin and conducted her Roman household in
the Punic language.
A Gladiator (contemporary representation)
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 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.
POMPEII
POMPEII
“Note the ruts in roadway worn by chariot wheels.”
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 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.
THE COLISEUM, ROME
THE COLISEUM, ROME
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY
INTERIOR OF THE COLISEUM AT IT APPEARS TO-DAY
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, 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.
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.
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 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 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.
MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN
MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL, ROMAN
_(In the British Museum)_
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 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.
ISIS AND HORUS
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 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.
BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192
BUST OF THE EMPEROR COMMODUS, A.D. 180-192
Represented as the God Mithras, Roman, Circa A.D. 190
_(In the British Museum)_
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 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.
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 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 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.
EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE
TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN
EARLY IDEAL PORTRAIT, IN GILDED GLASS, OF JESUS CHRIST IN WHICH THE
TRADITIONAL BEARD IS NOT SHOWN
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.? [1]
THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS
THE ROAD FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS
_Photo: Fannaway_
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 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.
DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM
DAVID’S TOWER AND WALL OF JERUSALEM
_Photo: Fannaway_
“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.
A STREET IN JERUSALEM
A STREET IN JERUSALEM
Along such a thoroughfare Christ carried his cross to the place of
execution
_Photo: Fannaway_
“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 easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
Kingdom of God.” [2]
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.” [3]
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
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. . . .
[1] Matt. xii, 46-50.
[2] Mark x, 17-25.
[3] Mark vii, 1-9.
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 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.
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND
From the Ninth Century original, in the Church of Sta. Prassede, Rome
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like
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.
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
_(Sixth Century Ivory Panel in the British Museum)_
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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
CONSTANTINE’S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE
CONSTANTINE’S PILLAR, CONSTANTINOPLE
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
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 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.
BASE OF THE “OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS,” CONSTANTINOPLE
BASE OF THE “OBELISK OF THEODOSIUS,” CONSTANTINOPLE
The obelisk of Thothmes, taken from Egypt to Constantinople by
Theodosius and placed upon the pedestal her shown; an interesting
example of early Byzantine art. The complete obelisk is seen on page
239.
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
HEAD OF BARBARIAN CHIEF
HEAD OF BARBARIAN CHIEF
_(In the British Museum)_
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
The obelisk of Theodosius in in the foreground statue on left
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
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.
THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA
THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA
_Photo: Sebah & Foaillier_
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 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.
THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT
THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT
_Photo: Alinari_
THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA
THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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 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.
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 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.”
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.
CHINESE EARTHENWARE ART OF THE TANG DYNASTY, 616-906
CHINESE EARTHENWARE ART OF THE TANG DYNASTY, 616-906
Specimens in glazed earthenware, in brown, green and buff, discovered
in tombs in China
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT
AT PRAYER IN THE DESERT
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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 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.
LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND
LOOKING ACROSS THE SEA OF SAND
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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 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.
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.
Map: The Growth of the Moslem Power in 25 Years
Map: The Moslem Empire, 750 A.D.
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 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.
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.
JERUSALEM, SHOWING THE MOSQUE OF OMAR
JERUSALEM, SHOWING THE MOSQUE OF OMAR
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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 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.
VIEW OF CAIRO MOSQUES
VIEW OF CAIRO MOSQUES
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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. 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 vitœ_, 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.
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; 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.
Map: Area more or less under Frankish dominion in the time of Charles
Martel
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 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.
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 manœuvred 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—manœuvred 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.
STATUE OF CHARLEMAGNE IN FRONT OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS
STATUE OF CHARLEMAGNE IN FRONT OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS
The figure is entirely imaginary and romantic. There is no
contemporary portrait of Charlemagne
_Photo: Rischgitz_
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 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.
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 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.
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 manœuvres 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 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.
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 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.
CRUSADER TOMBS IN EXETER CATHEDRAL
CRUSADER TOMBS IN EXETER CATHEDRAL
_Photo: Mansell_
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 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.
VIEW OF CAIRO
VIEW OF CAIRO
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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 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 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.
THE HORSES OF S. MARK, VENICE
THE HORSES OF S. MARK, VENICE
Originally on the arch of Trajan at Constantinople, the Doge Dandalo V
took them after the Fourth Crusade, to Venice, whence Napoleon I
removed them to Paris, but in 1815 they were returned to Venice.
During the Great War of 1914-18 they were hidden away for fear of air
raids.
_Photo: D. McLeish_
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.
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.
A COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA
A COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA
_Photo: Lehnert & Landrock_
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MILAN CATHEDRALA COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA
MILAN CATHEDRALA COURTYARD IN THE ALHAMBRA
View showing the exquisite carvings characteristic of the 98 spires of
the edifice
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 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.
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. 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.
A TYPICAL CRUSADER: DON RODRIGO DE CARDENAS
A TYPICAL CRUSADER: DON RODRIGO DE CARDENAS
From the Church of S. Pedro at Ocana, Spain
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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.
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 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 rôle 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 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.
COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY
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 offerings that
were deposited at the tomb of St. Peter.” [1] 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.
COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY
COSTUMES OF THE BURGUNDIAN NOBILITY: FLEMISH WORK OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY
This series is from casts in the Victoria and Albert Museum of the
original brass statuettes in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam
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 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 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.
[1] J. H. Robinson.
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 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 Ottoman Empire before 1453
“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 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 Empire of Jengis Khan at his death (1227)
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 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.
TARTAR HORSEMEN
TARTAR HORSEMEN
_(From a Chinese Print in the British Museum) _
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
AN EARLY PRINTING PRESS
AN EARLY PRINTING PRESS
_(From an old print) _
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
inœstimable_, 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 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 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.
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.
ANCIENT BRONZE FIGURE FROM BENIN, W. AFRICA
ANCIENT BRONZE FIGURE FROM BENIN, W. AFRICA
Note evidence in attire of knowledge of early European explorers
_(In the British Museum) _
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 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.
ANOTHER ANCIENT NEGRO BRONZE OF A EUROPEAN
ANOTHER ANCIENT NEGRO BRONZE OF A EUROPEAN
_(In the British Museum) _
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.
EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP
EARLY ITALIAN ENGRAVING OF A SAILING SHIP
_(In the British Museum) _
Two centuries later, among the readers of the Travels of Marco Polo was
a certain Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, who 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 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 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.
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 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.
PORTRAIT OF LUTHER
PORTRAIT OF LUTHER
_(From an early German engraving in the British Museum) _
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 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.
A MAJOLICA DISH PAINTED IN COLOURS
A MAJOLICA DISH PAINED IN COLOURS
An allegory of the Church triumphant over heretics and infidels.
Italian (Urbino), dated 1543
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
THE CHARLES V PORTRAIT BY TITIAN
THE CHARLES V PORTRAIT BY TITIAN
_(In the Gallery del Prado, Madrid)
Photo: Anderson_
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 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 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.
INTERIOR OF ST. PETER’S, ROME, SHOWING THE HIGH ALTAR
INTERIOR OF ST. PETER’S, ROME, SHOWING THE HIGH ALTAR
_Photo: Alinari_
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, 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 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.” ... [1]
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
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.
[1] Prescott’s Appendix to Robertson’s _History of Charles V_.
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
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 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 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.
CROMWELL DISSOLVES THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND SO BECOMES AUTOCRAT OF THE
ENGLISH REPUBLIC
CROMWELL DISSOLVES THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND SO BECOMES AUTOCRAT OF THE
ENGLISH REPUBLIC
_(From a contemporary satirical print in the British Museum)_
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 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, 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.
THE COURT AT VERSAILLES
THE COURT AT VERSAILLES
_(From the print after Watteau in the British Museum)_
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 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 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.
THE SACK OF A VILLAGE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
THE SACK OF A VILLAGE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
_(From Callot’s “Miseres de la Guerre”) _
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
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 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 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.
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 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: Central Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648
In the long run the English were the most successful in this scramble
for overseas possessions. The Danes and Swedes were too 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.
EUROPEANS TIGER HUNTING IN INDIA
EUROPEANS TIGER HUNTING IN INDIA
_(From the engraving of the picture by Zoffany in the British Museum)_
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 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.
THE LAST EFFORT AND FALL OF TIPPOO SULTAN
THE LAST EFFORT AND FALL OF TIPPOO SULTAN
_(From the engraving of the picture by Singleton in the British
Museum)_
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 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 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....
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 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.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
GEORGE WASHINGTON
_(From a painting by Gilbert Stuart)_
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). 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.
THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, NEAR BOSTON
THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, NEAR BOSTON
_(From the engraving of the picture by John Trumbull in the British
Museum)_
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 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.
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 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 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
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.
THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI
THE TRIAL OF LOUIS XVI
_(From a print in the British Museum)_
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 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, [1] “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 manœuvring, 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 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.
THE EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE, OCTOBER 16, 1793
THE EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE, OCTOBER 16, 1793
_(From a print in the British Museum)_
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 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 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.
[1] In his article, “French Revolutionary Wars,” in the Encyclopædia
Britannica.
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.
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 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!
PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)
PORTRAIT OF NAPOLEON (CORONATION)
_(From a print in the British Museum)_
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 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 ....
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 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.
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 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.
EARLY ROLLING STOCK ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY IN THE
FIRST DAYS OF THE RAILWAY
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.
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.
EARLY TRAVELLING ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY, 1833
EARLY TRAVELLING ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY, 1833
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 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.
THE STEAMBOAT: CLERMONT, 1807, U.S.A.
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 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 Phœnix, 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 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. 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 science was largely the
creation of Englishmen and Scotchmen working outside the ordinary
centres of erudition.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SPINNING WHEEL
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SPINNING WHEEL
_In the Ipswich Museum_
MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT’S SPINNING JENNY, 1769
MODEL OF ARKWRIGHT’S SPINNING JENNY, 1769
_From the specifications in the Patent Office_
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 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—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.
AN EARLY WEAVING MACHINE
AN EARLY WEAVING MACHINE
_From an engraving by W. Hincks in the British Museum_
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
INCIDENT IN THE DAYS OF THE SLAVE TRADE
INCIDENT IN THE DAYS OF THE SLAVE TRADE
_From a print after Morland in the British Museum_
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 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.
EARLY FACTORY, IN COLEBROOKDALE
EARLY FACTORY, IN COLEBROOKDALE
_From a print the British Museum_
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
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.
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
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.
CARL MARX
CARL MARX
_Photo: Linde & Co._
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 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
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.
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
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.
SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE
SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE
Portable Electric Loading Conveyor
_Photo: Jeffrey Manufacturing Company, Columbus, Ohio_
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. 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, and fluctuating in
detail and formulæ, yet it grows steadfastly clearer, and its main
lines change less and less.
CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE
CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE
_Photo: Baker & Hurtzig_
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.”
ONE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RIVER STEAMERS
ONE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RIVER STEAMERS
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 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 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.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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 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.
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 his fate—he was
shot by the Mexicans—when the victorious Federal Government showed its
teeth.
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. 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.
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. 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 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.
RAILWAY BRIDGE OVER THE GORGE, VICTORIA FALLS, OF THE ZAMBESI, SOUTHERN
RHODESIA
RAILWAY BRIDGE OVER THE GORGE, VICTORIA FALLS, OF THE ZAMBESI, SOUTHERN
RHODESIA
_Photo: British South African Co._
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. 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.
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.
Map: The British Empire in 1815
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 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.
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.
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 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.
JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
JAPANESE SOLDIER ON THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
_(In the Victoria and Albert Museum)_
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
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 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.
A STREET IN TOKIO
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.
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.
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;
Map: OVERSEAS EMPIRES of EUROPEAN POWERS, January 1914
Then the still more ambiguous “Anglo-Egyptian” Sudan province, 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);
GIBRALTAR
GIBRALTAR
_Photo: C. Sinclair_
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.
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 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.
STREET IN HONG KONG
STREET IN HONG KONG
_Photo: Underwood & Underwood_
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. 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.
BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD
BRITISH TANK IN THE BATTLE OF THE MENIN ROAD
The crew came out for a breath of fresh air during a lull
_Photo: British Official_
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 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.
THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH TOWN)
THE RUINS OF YPRES (ONCE A DELIGHTFUL OLD FLEMISH TOWN)
To show the complete destructiveness of modern war
_Photo: Topical_
THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR
THE DEVASTATION OF MODERN WAR
Wire entanglements in the foreground
_Photo: Photopress_
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 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 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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
A VIEW IN PETERSBURG UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE
A VIEW IN PETERSBURG UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE
A wooden house has been demolished for firewood
_By courtesy of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton_
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 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 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.
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 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.
PASSENGER AEROPLANE FLYING OVER NORTHOLT
PASSENGER AEROPLANE FLYING OVER NORTHOLT
_(Photo taken by another ’plane by the Central Aerophoto Co.)_
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 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 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 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.
A PEACEFUL GARDEN IN ENGLAND
A PEACEFUL GARDEN IN ENGLAND
Given wisdom, all mankind might live in such gardens
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 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 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.
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 Crœsus.
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.
490. Battle of Marathon.
480. Battles of Thermopylï 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 Chïronia.
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 Mylï.
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 Cïsar defeated Pompey at Pharsalos.
44. Julius Cïsar assassinated.
27. Augustus Cïsar 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 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 Nicïa.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 26
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, 442-23, 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, 338, 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, 245-47, 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, 421
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 Guianu. 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
Crœsus, 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
Dominician 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, 62, 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, 288 _et seq._, 289, 294, 304,
435
Frederick II, King of Sicily, 432
Frederick the Great of Prussia, 437, 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, 434
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
Phœnicians, 92, 94, 107, 123, 147
_Phœnix_, 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, 87X
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-analvsis, 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, 258
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, 323, 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
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