UC-NRLF CO CD O AMERICA A FAMILY MATTER CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1920 z^\ ^ \> Copyright, 1920, By Charles W. Gould (Printed in the United States of America) Published in June, 1920 All Rights Reserved Copyright under the Articles of the Copyright Convention of the Pan-American Republics and the United States, August 11, 1910 THE DE VINNE TO THE BRETHREN G. H. G. F. S. G. i> "tJ •» t> yf *i Gentlemen : — The writer plans to print privately this paper and to send it to a few men of acknowledged ability and learning. The rule of selection is simple, for these men have selected themselves. Were not their capacity greater than their position, they would not hold their posi- tion. The writer makes no apology for thrusting himself into such a company, for he well knows that no matter what the condition in life, no matter how unimportant the effort, any earnest seeker will be received by such men with courtesy. No claim, of course, is made to original thought. No, all the facts stated are old and time-worn facts, all the phrases are old and time-worn phrases, all the dates are old and time-worn dates, and the simple method has been followed of putting two and two to- gether. Charles W. Gould. New York, 1920. 'A mongrel people never attain real prosperity." MAN controls his own career, but In common with the rest of the universe is subject to law. The greater his obedience to the Divine law, the greater his freedom. The Divine law is not only- moral — it is also physical.^ Man, so far as his physical nature is concerned, is an animal pure and simple. He must conform to the general animal law — he must eat — he must sleep — he must fulfill in all things the needs of the body. Never for one instant during the course of his exis- tence can man escape from the operation of law.^ The more thoroughly he understands the law both moral and physical — the more thoroughly he obeys it, the more splendid will be his intellectual and spiritual elevation. He is gifted with intelligence that he may learn the law in order better to obey it. The greater his intelligence the easier it will be for him to ascertain the law.^ The close connection between intelligence and the "grey matter" of the brain has been demonstrated.^ This "grey matter" is the physical basis and seat of intellectual life. Education may improve the action 1 Note I. 2 Note 2. ^ Note 3. * Note 4 and Intellectual Development of Europe, Draper, Chapter XXIV (the whole chapter). CO OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS of the "grey matter," but education cannot create it. A pint cannot by any known system be educated to contain more that a pint. Men differ in mental ca- pacity just as they differ in physical capacity. In no respect are men created equal. ^ The researches of scientists instruct us that all advancement comes through struggle and effort. It makes no difference whether science looks backwards a few hundreds or millions of years. Not without un- rest and upheaval was the earth's crust formed, and though the varieties of life upon its surface to-day are countless in number they are but the few survivals of untold myriads of forms which were their predeces- sors and from which they sprang.^ Struggle and stress are at the foundation of all ad- vancement. Lethargy and stagnation not only mean arrested development, but threaten existence itself. The physical frame of man depends for its best development upon proper exercise. The athlete is the exponent of the truth of this statement. The Holy Man of India who has held his arm above his head until he can no longer lower it is proof that even the muscles if idle become useless. Saint Simeon Stylites did not adopt the best method to develop his body, and he knew it. In animals even the brain itself shrinks in size from disuse, and it would seem that exercise is just as important for the proper develop- ment of the "grey matter" and the mental operations dependent upon it as it is for the mere muscular frame. Even in such a transitory thing as a fit of illness wise physicians often prescribe massage, thus counteract- 1 Folkways, Sumner, p. 43. 2 Lull, Evolution of the Earth, p. 2. [2] OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS ing the evil effects of protracted repose upon the hu- man system. In a wild state the mind of animals is exercised and educated by the struggle for food and the struggle to escape enemies. It is their education. Education is to the mind what exercise is to the body. So far as man is concerned, his whole life is his education.^ There is an absurd idea prevalent to-day that what is learned from books forms the greater part of man's education. This is pressed to the same extreme as were the brutal methods of training college boys for a boat race which were followed fifty years ago. Fortu- nately for the college boys, more scientific methods have been adopted in preparing them to endure the ordeal of the contest, but "book learning" is more and more thrust upon the world. It is supposed to be the makeall and the cureall, and great amounts of time and capital are wasted in the attempt to compel in- capable minds to do impossible things. The doctrine that all men are created equal is doing its deadly work, and no proper allowance is made for individual differences in mental capacity. While the mental and the physical are so inter- woven and so interdependent that it is impossible to separate them, let us begin by concentrating our at- tention so far as possible on the method of physical improvement in animals.^ With animals physical capacity can be improved by care in breeding. Man is no exception to this gen- 1 Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Folkways, p. 710. 2 \ote l3l OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS eral animal law. Physically fine specimens of the race of man are just as much the result of careful breeding as physically fine specimens among the ani- mals. The law of reproduction has been studied for many years with reference to animals. Among the domestic animals many breeds have notably im- proved even within the last hundred years. This shows that the law to some extent is understood. A study of the law of physical improvement by breeding in domestic animals will clearly indicate the course to be followed in the case of all animals,^ and this includes man. Successful breeders of animals need not necessarily be learned men. The law in its simple and funda- mental form is so easily understood that good com- mon sense coupled with trained and keen power of observation is all that is needed. The law in a general way is this : To better a par- ticular strain, adhere strictly to that strain — select of the particular strain the fine examples and take great care that they be strong, vigorous, healthy specimens. Utterly reject weaklings and foreigners.^ Let us take as an example the horse, which is said to have the least amount of "grey matter" in com- parison with its size of any of the domestic animals and which for practical use has always been trained or educated. Careful breeding of the horse has produced re- markable results. Some of these results have been obtained in a comparatively brief period of time. 1 Note I. 2 Note 2. • OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS Let the breeder, however, relax his effort, and the stock deteriorates, for there is a marked tendency among animals to revert to type;^ that is to say, re- vert to the size, color or other characteristics of the original wild stock. Our horses are supposed by many scientists to have originated on the Steppes. The only specimens of the wild horse of the Steppes we have in this country are at the New York Zoological Park. Four adult examples from Mongolia are exhibited. They meas- ure at the withers from eleven and one-half to twelve and one-half hands. A splendid thoroughbred to- day will stand sixteen or seventeen hands; that is to say, a foot and a half or more taller than the small- est specimen in the Bronx collection. On the other hand, the Indian pony which ran wild on the plains of North and South America was descended from horses brought over by the Span- iards, for we had no horses on the Western Con- tinent. The mustang has distinctly reverted toward the type of the Steppes. Darwin saysr "The history of the horse is lost in antiquity. Remains of this animal in a domesticated condition have been found in the Swiss Lake dwell- ings belonging to the latter part of the Stone Period." The horse seems to have been introduced into Egypt by the Hyksos, and was immediately adopted by those intelligent people.^ In a short time they learned the manufacture of chariots, and Pharaoh's stable contained thousands of the best horses to be 1 Note. - Animals and Plants under Domestication, Chapter II. 3 About 1550 B. c. Breasted, Egypt, p. 235. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS had in Asia. The Israelites seem to have been first acquainted with the horse in Egypt, and notwith- standing the fact that their King in time to come was prophetically forbidden, long before they had a King and while they were still in the wilderness, "to multiply horses to himself, or cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses,"^ Solomon had "forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots,"^ which he brought out of Egypt in defiance of the divine command. These horses seem to have been very small ani- mals. Even as late as the Parthenon frieze, the Greek horse must have been much smaller than the present Polo pony. It is thought we have on Alex- ander's sarcophagus the picture of Bucephalus, who is of the same size as the Persian horses represented in that curved marble, and they were all very small, the feet and ankles of the riders, although riding barebacked and with their legs bent up to grip the horse, projecting below the breast bone of the fiery little steeds. Homer's description of the horses of Achilles is well known. They were probably much smaller than the horses in Regnault's celebrated pic- ture. When Alexander reached the River Tanais and sent his cavalry across to engage the Scythians, he was compelled apparently to withdraw them^ on account of the superiority of the Scythian horse; but centuries later, when the Goths with Scythian horses made a demonstration against Constantinople, some Saracen mercenaries engaged by the Emperor Va- 1 Deut. XVII, i6. 3Arrian, Book IV, Chapter IV. 2 I Kings, IV, 26. I Kings, X, 28. :6] OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS lens defeated them on account of the superiority of the Arabian horses/ It would seem that between the time of Alexander, say 330 B. C, and Valens, 378 A. D., the Arabian horse had been bred and cared for better than the Scythian. The time allowed was ample to permit the improvement. As an indication of the esteem in which the horse was held by the Saracens it is to be noted that after the dearly bought victory on the banks of the Yer- muk the spoil was divided: "An equal share was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double portion was reserved for the noble coursers of the Arabian breed. "^ One of the most famous breeds of antiquity was the Cappadocian horse,^ a strain of which, the Palmatian, was particularly prized. The Emperor declared the owner a traitor, which he may possibly have been, and forfeited his stud. All these horses seem to have been small. From antiquity the horse has been carefully bred and carefully trained. That the results of breeding are manifest often in an exceedingly short period of time is shown by the fact that the great improvement in the English thor- oughbred has taken place since the time of Charles II. In the time of Henry VIP a Statute with the avowed purpose of improving the breed of the Eng- lish horse was enacted. Brood mares are mentioned in this Statute as thirteen hands high. To-day in England, with the exception of the Polo pony and 1 Gibbon, Chapter XXVI. 3 Gibbon, Chapter XVII. 2 Gibbon, Chapter LI, p. 407. * Henry VII, 1485 A.D. C7] OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS the Hackney pony, an animal thirteen hands high would be one hand below the maximum for ponies, which is fourteen hands. So the English brood mare mentioned in the Statute is four inches smaller than the present maximum general standard for ponies in England, and would be classed as a j^ony. Godolphin was introduced into the English stud about 1727. He was a Barb, not an Arabian, and the Barbs are larger than the Arabian horse. His height is given at fifteen hands. One of his descendants, and a famous one, Autocrat, in 1822 measured sixteen and one-half hands; thus Autocrat was six inches taller than his progenitor, and was separated from him by an interval of only one hundred years. "The pedigree of a race horse is of more value in judging of its probable success than its appearance: 'King Herod' gained in prizes 201,505/. Sterling and begot 497 winners; 'Eclipse' begot 334 winners."^ "The English race horse is known to have pro- ceeded from the commingled blood of Arabs, Turks and Barbs,^ but selection and training (education) have together made him a very different animal from his parent stock. The improvement is so marked that in running for the Goodwood Cup, 'the first descendants of Arabian, Turkish and Persian horses are allowed a discount of 18 pounds weight and when both parents are of these countries, a discount of 36 pounds. No instance has ever occurred of a three- part bred horse {i.e., a horse one of whose grand- 1 Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. I, p. 51. 2 Ibid., p. 54. Furthermore it must be noted that the English horse, through Spanish horses, had been infused with Arabian blood at least as early as Edward I, c. 1300. Green, History of English People, Vol. I, p. 325. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS parents was of impure blood) saving his distance in running two miles with thoroughbred racers.' " With respect to intelligence, the domestic horse has gradually acquired not only size and power, but mentality enough to be easily educated, that is to say, broken. The wild horse of the Steppes cannot be broken. Many instances might be cited to show the in- telligence which the horse has gained during all these centuries of contact with man. Our own fire horses are splendid animals. "The last horses purchased were selected because they were of good conformation, were sound, tract- able and intelligent. They were sent to the train- ing stables, where they were tried in harness and kept in the stables for a few days to determine their physical condition, their temperature, etc. If satis- factory, they were then tentatively accepted. The horses were then assigned to fire companies for a further trial in order to determine their intelligence and to see whether or not they could with prompt- ness take their places under the harness. . . . About 7% of them lacked intelligence."^ Had the horse remained as stupid as his original progenitor he would have been utterly unable to meet the requirements of the Fire Department, and instead of the moment or two needed to start the fire engine in movement, it would have taken a much longer time, and thus allowed the fire to get greater headway and made it more difficult to extinguish. On the other hand, let us take an instance where 1 Letter, May 21, 1919, Fire Commissioner Thomas J. Drennan. 191 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS breeding has not been accompanied by training. The domesticated rabbit is generally larger and heavier than the wild rabbit. It is relieved from the educat- ing effect of being compelled to be on the alert against hostile attack and is deprived of the edu- cating effect of hunting for its own food. The result is that its bony brain case is actually smaller in con- tent than that of the wild rabbit.^ It would seem therefore that for the improvement of the physical and the mental in animals not only must a pure healthy stock be secured, but also there must be continual mental exercise or striving if the mind is to be improved as well as the body; the necessary stimulant to the mind being furnished by education either in the strenuous conditions of life in the wild state, which tend to develop mental alert- ness, or by the direct education of the animal by man. We have taken almost the least intelligent of the domestic animals. In the dark backward and abysm of time thousands of years ago the first little wild horse was broken. Since that time not only has the physical stature of the horse been improved, but small as his "grey matter" is in comparison with his bulk, it has been more and more developed until to- day the real lover of a good horse loves him not only for his beauty but for his intelligence, which is often kindly and sympathetic. It would seem therefore that even the compara- tively stupid horse has been improved both phys- ically and mentally^ by breeding and persistent edu- 1 Darwin, Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. II, p. 298. 2 Note. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS cation, and it would seem also that the careful observ- ance of the same methods in all animals, including man, would lead not only to the improvement of the physical condition, but also to the improvement of mental capacity; in other words, that the amount of "grey matter" or its quality, or both, can be culti- vated even as the physical frame with which it is in- terwoven and with which it doth exist and cease to be has been bettered in the past and can be bettered in the future. So far as is known at present, there is no limit^ to the intellectual heights to which man can rise. No law has been discovered which limits him to the in- telligence of a Shakespeare, a Phidias, or an Alex- ander. The gulf fixed between the incapacity of the Australian black and the all-comprehending mind of Aristotle suggests a still greater gulf beyond and above Aristotelian intelligence. Such is the lofty elevation to which man may aspire. But to rise to higher planes of mental capacity man must unceasingly strive. He can do so only by thor- oughly learning and obeying the natural law in this behalf enacted. Divine Providence has placed the means in man's hand, but man must do the work. Divine Providence will not do the work for him. On the contrary, man is a free agent. He can elevate or degrade himself. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, "^ was not spoken of bread alone. The toil and struggle for achievement are as necessary for mental as for physical well-being and improve- ment. 1 Note. 2 Genesis III, 19. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS While man has bred animals for fleetness, size, wool, milk, he has never deliberately bred any ani- mal for broad and general intelligence,^ and this statement includes man himself. This is indeed strange, for of all animals he is born the most help- less. The chicken can fend for itself almost as soon as it breaks the shell, but man requires a long period of careful attention to survive at all. The little baby has no weapons and no wit; needs not days nor weeks but years of care. Very, very slowly his mind devel- ops and it seems as if the greater the brain power the more slowly it reaches its full capacity. The pickaninny at three or four years is often more alert than the white child. Kipling,^ a most acute observer, remarks upon the precocious ability of the Eurasian, that cross between the Portu- guese and the native in India. Up to the age of four- teen or fifteen years the lad's quickness in school is frequently notable, but then the limited energy of the "grey matter" is exhausted and the comparatively bright child becomes the inert, incapable half-caste man. Driving energy is not found in heart or lungs but in the wonderful generator protected by the strong box of the skull. No matter how precocious the Stone Age child may have been, the term for care and tending must have been protracted, and during all this time the parents were the guardians — guard- ians born also without weapons and no match in phys- ical strength for the huge cave bear, the wild bull and the mammoth. Their survival depended entirely upon their superior intelligence. Upon this only 1 Memories, Galton, p. 318. 2Kim. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS could they rely in their constant contests with beasts born with fangs, claws, horns and tusks. It is matter of wonderment that man has managed to survive. Not one of us to-day under such conditions, even if without the added care of wife and family, could remain alive a month, although the Socialistic "Ban- quet of Nature" was served every day without money and without price. It is clear therefore that from times the most remote man has depended for his very existence upon his brains. One would think that the experience of thousands and thousands of years would have given him innate, unspeakable re- spect for mental power. On the contrary, not only has man refused in his marriage customs to consider intelligently race improvement, physical and mental, but the amazing fact is that large numbers of the human race distrust and dislike intelligence.^ In France during the Revolution the terrorists — in Rus- sia the Bolsheviki murdered it on sight, and with us to-day it is rare to find men of commanding intel- ligence elected to public office. Mediocrity prefers mediocrity, and among us the gifted man is rarely politically popular. So far as man is concerned, he has expended more effort to keep his race stupid than to make it intel- ligent. It can be distinctly stated that from time to time he has been deliberately hostile to intellectual development, and great numbers of men are so yet. On the other hand, it can also be truly stated that from time to time a particular class of men have taken measures to improve the intellectual capacity 1 Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 348. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS of their class, but have never done so save by indirec- tion and accident; for the steps they took had another and a definite object in view, and the improvement in the mental capacity of that particular strain was not due to deliberate purpose, but was a mere by- product of their customs and their laws. Let us consider one of the many efforts to oppress intelligence. Long before civilization began, slavery was ; indeed it is claimed that the institution of slavery lies at the bottom of civilization, for it was not until man ob- tained cheap power that man could obtain a sufficient and regular food supply to insure him the leisure that enabled him to develop the useful arts. It is pointed out that slavery continued to exist until steam and water power were found to be cheaper,^ and when slave labor ceased to be able to compete, slave labor ceased to be. In former times a great part of mankind was en- slaved. The slave owner as a rule desired to keep the slave in ignorance. The more like an animal he was, the better. For the most part, any attempt to educate slaves was absolutely forbidden. In our own country, before the Civil War, enthusiasts who en- deavored to teach the Southern negro to read and write were driven from the community." For ages therefore a great part of mankind was continually enslaved and deliberately brutalized. The slow change from servitude to freedom may be said to have begun in Europe about the year looo A. D., when Christians ceased to hold Christians as slaves, al- 1 Sumner, Folkways, p. 274. ^Lgcky, Rationalism, Vol. II, p. 254. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS though they considered it perfectly right to own infidels and negroes. As steam power had not been applied to the culti- vation of crops, slavery lingered longer as a rule in agricultural communities than it did elsewhere. The dread result menaces us all to-day. The serf was never even nominally freed in Russia until 1861. The serf never really knew freedom. It is clear, therefore, that for thousands of years a large class in every community was not only habitu- ally deprived so far as possible of any opportunity to improve its mental faculty, but was thrust down deliberately and constantly to the level of the beast. The Greeks and Romans did this knowingly. The famous lines of Homer, "The Gods take half the worth away when once they make man slave,"^ were sung for centuries from Colchis to the Pillars of Hercules. During all these ages, however, there was a domi- nant class. The fortunes of war and other causes frequently made any particular dominant class in its turn a servile class. There never has been in the course of the world a continuously dominant class. Even had each dominant class in turn endeavored in- telligently to perpetuate the race, with a view to improving its intellectual power, that line of im- provement would have been continually broken down by the same disaster which subjected the class itself to servitude. There was another evil attendant upon slavery. Often the slaves were of a different stock, and often, 1 Odyssey, Book XVII, line 392. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS too, the stock was of a lower grade of humanity. This baser stock, forced into close contact and inter- course with the native population, led to mixed marriages and the consequent dilution and weak- ening of the blood. This has happened again and again and has broken down great empires. It is in great measure the explanation of the fall of Egypt and the fall of Rome. One historian speaks of the Byzantine emperors as ruling over a race of mon- grels. Our importation of multitudes of ignorant and utterly alien laborers will, among other calamities to our body politic, degrade it.^ But while we should be warned in time and take proper measures to control this evil, and do so instantly, our position is still strong, for there are yet left in America fifty million people the greater part of whom can trace their ancestry to Colonial days before pollution be- gan, and it behooves us to disregard every temptation, whether it be the threadbare plea of the need for cheap labor to develop our great resources, or the equally threadbare sentimentality which urges us to destroy ourselves under the specious and false assur- ance that out of mongrelism will arise perhaps some thousands of years hence a better strain. The labor thus imported will prove the most expensive ever em- ployed, for we shall pay its wages in our race life's blood. The promised elevation or uplift of the world shall merely result in our own degradation, for we will open Pandora's box and when its untold evils have rushed out and become wide-spread, happy in- 1 Note. [■6: OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS deed shall we be if, like Pandora, we have still left with us hope. Why fly in the face of the great natural law? Why not proceed along the path of least resistance? The man who would introduce the Indian pony into his racing stable for the purpose of producing the Derby winner would be committed by loving friends to an insane asylum. Shall we permit ignorant and emotional fanatics to persuade us to throw away our birthright and become like the fellaheen of Egypt, incapable, inert, demanding guidance from the world instead of conferring benefits upon it? Moreover, there is another point of view which should be considered. It is all very well for savages to give themselves a name which, being translated, signifies "men" or "the men," and which implies that all the surrounding tribes are inferior beings and not even to be considered as men.^ But for enlight- ened and civilized people to look down upon other races as altogether and in every respect inferior, evinces the narrow-mindedness of the savage rather than the broad-minded view of educated intelligence. It has taken thousands and thousands of years to pro- duce each great race and no one can deny that they differ from each other in material points, and even among nations or yet smaller subdivisions of the sarne race the differences are often so marked that they can be detected at a glance. In each case we find vary- ing characteristics, many of which are extremely val- uable, and each valuable characteristic should be prized 'knd nurtured by its possessors. It would be 1 Folkways, p. 14. C173 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS worse than folly to attempt to blot out such good qualities and melt them down into a homogeneous and characterless mass. It would indeed be folly- sublimated into madness. Now let us turn to a more cheerful view. Let us glance for a moment at an instance where ability was bred and fostered. Whether this was accomplished by accident or design makes no difference. The re- sult is all-important. For centuries the Egyptian, isolated not only by fear and deserts but also by his rigid exclusion of foreigners and by his own inherent and consequent power to repel invasion, kept his blood uncontam- inated. Of his condition of savagery we know nothing. We first encounter him as he is emerging from bar- barism. Already he weaves, makes and glazes pot- tery, and his flint knives are of such exquisite work- manship that their like cannot be reproduced to-day. By science helped, we can watch him as he mounts the steps of civilization until in elegance and refine- ment of living in art and in religion (Ikhnaton) he attains great heights and in power becomes supreme. His achievement lies at the bottom of our civiliza- tion to-day, and in many ways, now as in the days of old, sages look to Egypt for their lore. What is this curious thing called Race?^ Science insists that all mankind are really one, and yet the 1 Note. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS differences among men are great — not only color, size, and outward appearance, but even the solid bone, the very frame on w^hich the body is built, varies. Climatic influence is recognized as all-important, but its effect on people of different races to-day is not uniform, however it may have wrought in the past. The blue-eyed white man finds intolerable those conditions on which the negro and Dravidian do well. The Chinese live with seeming indifference in the hot, cold or temperate zone. Select an example from each, the negro, the Chinese and the white, and for twenty years feed them upon the same food, give them the same drink, and each remains unchanged. The same meats and vegetables are consumed and yet suffer different transformations, as the same pasture turns the thor- oughbred colt into the race horse, while at the same time turning the Clydesdale into a slow ponderous machine. Science tells us that races of men have come and gone on this earth for perhaps five hundred thousand years, and traces in a vague way (for it yet lacks facts) change and development, loss and gain in hu- manity, and indicates roughly during the same period grave alterations in climate and consequent changes in food supply and latterly in the method of its prep- aration^ for human consumption. As yet it can say no definite word as to the causes of the marked dif- ference in men. Some general matters seem to be determined. For » Note. ni93 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS instance, for the production of the White Race a place of abode for ages in the Temperate Zone; segregation of this stock from other peoples, thus conserving race purity; a consequent measurable uniformity of self-expression leading to a corre- sponding conformity of ideas and aspirations, for racial characteristics are not only physical but also mental. It must be borne in on the mind that this uniform- ity and conformity of ideas and aspirations was cul- tivated and enforced for ages: for thousands of years it was bred in the bone. The whole race throbbed with the same emotions, pulsated with the same ideas and gradually came to have, as it were, a race life, a peculiar and self-created aggregate individuality — attuned to vibrate in harmony and unison through- out the mass, and where developed and carried for- ward on any particular line, becoming a racial characteristic or a racial tendency. Of course the phrase "aggregate individuality" is but an attempt to express the result. It is hard to make real — to body forth in speech — that which is vital but yet impal- pable. Perhaps it would be best to call attention to one or two race manifestations and thus more clearly indicate the meaning. The White Race threw off many branches, and in each case, wherever it went, became the dominant class. It is a curious fact and one which has never been explained that about the year 500 B. C. in India, in Persia, in Athens and in Rome this race evinced remarkable energy. There could have been no concerted action, for there seems to have been 1:20] OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS little or no intercommunication. Then again each manifestation was original, betraying local charac- teristics. In three instances the movement was political : while each of these cases was differentiated from the other two, all three were along political lines, and the fact that the movement took place at the same time in widely separated regions and among people who had parted from each other ages before, would seem to indicate that the fundamental causes which produced these various results are to be looked for while they were still united and before the different tribes had emigrated to different lands — as if the impulse had been given before the sepa- ration and had gone as a living principle with each separate division to each new home. Without such common source of origin it is almost impossible to explain a uniformity of action so synchronous in time and so widely parted in space. A little before 500 B. C, the Medes and Persians, not thoroughly in accord, were hovering on the con- fines of the Semitic (Assyrian) Empire.' In the year 538 B. C. they were united under Cyrus the Great, and immediately conquered Mesopotamia and shortly thereafter Egypt. They forthwith reor- ganized the government — for they were builders, not destroyers — and one of the strange things about this conquest is that although they entered the country as barbarians and were surrounded by the magnificent structures of Semitic art, they preferred the Egyp- tian art, and forthwith in great measure adopted it and made it their own — in this respect following the 1 Historj' of Art in Persia, Perrot and Chipiez, p. 4. OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS example of the Greeks, whose art is a continuation and a development of that of Egypt. It is principally, however, to be noted that the gov- ernment they introduced was an immense improve- ment on the Semitic method; for, while despotic in form, it still breathed the free spirit of the North and the imperious mandate of the great King yields be- fore the "law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."^ About the year 510 B. c. the same White Race in Athens, imbued by the same free spirit which in com- mon with the Persians it brought from its northern home, overthrows the tyrants and establishes a democracy, a form of government absolutely new in the history of the world. In the same year the same race in Rome rises against foreign domination, expels the Tarquins and founds a republic — a form of government not only differing from the others but also absolutely novel. There is another remarkable and almost contem- poraneous event: A thousand years before,^ wave upon wave of the same White Race had passed into India and subdued it, had instituted and developed their own form of government and their own laws, had passed through the various stages of political life long in advance of that portion of the race which had later moved down to Persia, Greece and Rome. But these people, so far ahead. of and so far divided from their Western kinsfolk, still seem to have re- tained the rhythm and harmonious forward move- ment of the great race life and to have developed 1 Daniel, VI, 8. SjjooB.C. 1:223 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS about the same period, 500 B. C, a manifestation a far stage beyond mere politics. Buddha, whose ancestors had participated in the conquest of India, is supposed to have begun his religious life about the year 530 B. C. He laid aside his rank and wealth and family and forgot all those traditions of caste and lordship which a thousand years of domination had introduced among his people. He reverted at once to simpler methods. Under his dispensation, any man from the lowest to the highest might enter the army of the priesthood, thus entirely changing the former stringent rule which placed the order of priesthood in the hands of the Brahmins; and here again we have a manifesta- tion of the survival of the free spirit of the North which the habits and customs and love of power of a millennium could not subdue. As to the purity and elevation of his ideas it is un- necessary to speak. His was a religion of gentleness and love and met the usual persecution. It survived to be the hope and consolation of multitudes innu- merable and still to sustain and cheer, it is said, one quarter of all humanity. Such an epoch as that of the end of the VI cen- tury B. C. never occurred before nor since. Its vast influence on the whole world in varying directions seems never to have been appreciated. That in one form and another it presented ideas which to-day dominate mankind cannot be denied. That these ideas, differing as they did, contained more than one fundamental thought in common is also true, and appearing at the same time in widely separated 1:231 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS regions, they show synchronous race manifestations which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for save as the varying but rhythmical pulsation of race life, whose throb was that of the life of the united people before they knew parting and division.^ In this explanation there is nothing mystical, nothing strange. Every community develops its own peculiarities, and the greater its seclusion from the rest of the world and the longer the time this seclu- sion continues, the more marked, the more deeply implanted and the more enduring are its character- istics. Thousands of years were needed to establish the strain of large-limbed, light-haired, long-headed men. Is it possible that certain mental processes should not also have become to a certain extent stabil- ized? Such mental traits are in point of fact almost ineradicable. To men brought up for generations in the wild free life, individual liberty must have become dear, and small wonder if it endures in dif- ferent lands and under different skies. The wonder, after all, is not that people of the same race develop similar bodies and similar thoughts, but that they develop with so many individual differences — in point of fact, variation in similitude is constant mat- ter of amazement. When time began to be recorded it began by the recording of the effort to maintain race purity, — never, as has been said, for the direct and sole pur- 1 See a beautiful description of continued race life: Green, History of English People, Vol. I, p. 34. 1:24] OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS pose of increasing mental power, though this has almost invariably been the result, but for the pur- pose, in almost every instance, of obtaining or main- taining political power. Successful invaders have ever been few in number compared with the mass they subdued. Usually in olden times they brought their families^ with them and invariably established rules intended to make and keep them and theirs a distinct and dominant class. The methods varied but the result aimed at was always the same. In India, caste — in Persia, the noble — in Athens, the citizen — in Rome, the patrician — in later days, the nobility of all Europe, and by the segregation and solidarity of race, power was secured and power was transmitted. But this is not all. We must not think for a mo- ment that mere brute force sufficed. With this as a sole reliance how could the few continuously hold down the many? No, the force which sustained con- tinuous domination by the few was mental. Usually the lower class of the invaders gradually formed a middle class between the lords and the serfs, a daysman — a mediator, as it were, with a hand on the shoulder of each. Wherever this occurred it gave stability to the government; for as wealth increased and civilization advanced the middle class slowly became more numerous, intelligence became more diffused and from this middle class were drawn elements to perpetuate and sustain the governing body, for each added unit of trust and reliance tended to broaden its base of support and to fundamentally 1 Prescott Robertson, Charles V, Chapter I, p. 8. 1:253 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS Strengthen it, while unfortunate members of the no- bility plunged downward in the social grade.^ A story is told that a few years ago a descendant of the Plantagenets was a butcher in a London suburb.^ Only in recent times have historians condescended to write histories which take notice of the lower ranks of society and sympathetically discuss the situation, the sufferings and the advancement or retrogression of the people. Not yet has enough stress been laid upon the importance of the story of the middle class. Wherever this class has grown in numbers and enlightenment, the course of history has been upward. Where this class has been depressed, the tale is a tale of misfortune and misery, and where this class has been destroyed, the tale has not only lost its interest and significance, but has soon ended. The importance of the middle class cannot be overesti- mated. At about the same time in two favored spots control and sway were thrust upon it.^ It was for a brief space only. Its government was the best, most moderate, most just ever known. It is passing, and it is a question if its successor will better it or not. The curve of history of which Bunsen speaks and to which Draper alludes clearly indicates a period before us now of stress and strain — another great movement in the human drama to which this intoler- able war is but the prelude. There is one question which interests all men alike. It is the most important question which can be con- ^ Note. 2 Folkways, § 164. ^Foik^gyg^ §167. 1:263 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS sidered by the human race. It is the question of mankind's self-perpetuation.^ All concede that the study of the best method for the reproduction of humanity is beyond all other study important. It lies not only at the bottom of empire, sway and dominion, but of human progress — human happiness. The importance of keeping the strain pure is para- mount. It is the fundamental rule. Many instances are given by Darwin- of the strong tendency in hybrids to revert, and thus their offspring lose the benefit of the good traits which careful selection in breeding had given their respective parents. His ex- planation is thatthoughthe baser qualities are carried along from parents to offspring they are dominated by the good qualities and remain latent, but that in the hybrid the baser qualities are evoked — are liber- ated from the control of the better qualities, — and the stock at once deteriorates; He draws special atten- tion to the fact that deterioration is not limited to physical qualities. He refers to the fact that mules are notorious for obstinacy and vice and calls atten- tion to the statement so frequently made by travellers in all parts of the world, "on the degraded state and savage disposition of cross races of man. "Many years ago before I had a thought of the pres- ent subject I was struck with the fact that in South America men of complicated descent between ne- groes, Indians and Spaniards seldom had, whatever the cause might be, a good expression. Livingstone, — and a more unimpeachable authority cannot be 1 Folkways, § 532. 2 Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. II, Chapter XII. [27: OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS quoted, — after speaking of a half-caste man on the Zambesi described by the Portuguese as a rare mon- ster of inhumanity, remarks, 'It is unaccountable why half-castes such as he are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.' " An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, "God made white men and God made black men, but the devil made half-castes." When two races, both low in the scale, are crossed, the progeny seems to be eminently bad. Thus the noble-hearted Humboldt, who felt none of that prejudice against the inferior races now so current in England, speaks in strong terms of the bad and savage disposition of Zambos, or half-castes between Indians and negroes, and this conclusion has been arrived at by various observers. From these facts we may perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition induced by the act of crossing as well as to the unfavorable moral condi- tions under which they generally exist.^ Since Darwin's time investigations have been pressed forward which throw an entirely new light upon the question of the difference of races among men and it is now conceded that there are three great races inhabiting Europe: the Northern, or Nordic race, distinguished by long head, light hair, fair complexion and blue eyes; the Alpine race, round head, dark hair and dark eyes; and the Medi- terranean race, long head, dark hair and dark eyes. The difference between these three races while clear is not so important as the difference between the 1 Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. II, pp. 46, 47. [283 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS white man and the negro, or the white man and the Chinese. It nevertheless exists and is fundamental, ^ and it would seem to be unquestionably indicated that intermixture of the three European races should be discouraged rather than encouraged. The result of the marriage of an educated and refined white man with a beautiful South Italian peasant girl would probably be to put the children back in the stage of intellectual development many hundreds of years ; and while as little ones they might be as bright as any of their more favored companions, it is doubt- ful if in their case the "grey matter" would have the lasting quality which enables children of the pure stock to endure the strain of life and to be capable frequently of breaking into new lines of thought at the age of forty years, less frequently at the age of fifty years, still less frequently at the age of sixty years. It is a matter of no small wonder that Samuel Johnson, at the age of seventy years, was able to pro- duce what many critics considered his best work, for intelligence seems to vary not only in its quality but also in its durability. Henry George said that few men read after they were forty. By this he meant that after forty but few men were able to assimilate with ease new trains of thought and new ideas. An eminent scientist was severely criticized not many years ago for voicing this same idea, and of course was misquoted in order to be the more severely condemned, but the facts are so overwhelming that they cannot be doubted. Very few business men are able after forty to adapt themselves to radical changes, while still perfectly able to con- OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS duct their affairs in the routine method to which they have long been accustomed, and should disaster over- take them after they have reached that age it is rare indeed to find one with sufficient mental energy and alertness to reestablish himself and rebuild his shat- tered fortunes. Exceptions of course have occurred. One notable instance is in the mind of many where at the age of forty, misfortune having overtaken a busi- ness career, the man turned his attention to medicine and became the leading surgeon in one of the largest cities. The conclusion to which we may perhaps come is that the "grey matter" varies not only in its capacity but in its power of endurance, and if we looked to the fundamental cause for quality, capacity and en- durance in the "grey matter" we should probably find it in the pedigree. It would appear from the foregoing discussion that each race possesses valuable characteristics whose worth may be increased by care in reproduc- tion, and that as in the physical frame exercise improves the muscular development, so intelligence by like care in reproduction may be handed down and by the continuous training of education may be gradually improved. Notwithstanding the numer- ous facts which have been arrayed, it may be insisted that the discussion thus far has been theoretical and that actual results should be presented by which theory may be carefully tested. If the records of race life confirm the scientific investigations of the great 1:303 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS men who have testified in the preceding pages we may proceed to draw positive conclusions, and not till then. So be it. The records of race life referred to are contained in history. "But," the cautious man objects, "history is always biased and the point of view of the writer always intrudes. Macaulay is accused of writing 'The Great Whig Brief.' Froude is condemned as unreliable. History, in short, is under suspicion." Happily for this investigation, such suggestions have no weight, for the interest in this matter is of recent growth — of recent years. No one of the great his- torians has written from the point of view of the importance of race purity. The references to it are of the most casual nature, and when they occur, and it is very, very rarely that they do occur, have been forced by the facts on the writer, and never have been forced by the writer on the facts. Indeed, no history has ever been written by any of the great his- torians advocating any such idea. Nearly every other point of view has had its champions, but never this point of view. It will not be necessary there- fore for us to be on our guard. The testimony on which we rely is unbiased. We have behind us the records of five thousand years. During this long stretch of time nations and peoples pass across the stage. Their entrance on the scene, their vivid life, its triumphs and defeats, are all rehearsed. What was the cause of their transitory fame? Was it a single cause, or were there many causes? What was the cause of their decline — was it single or were C30 OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS there many? Doubtless there were many — some more important, some less so. Historians lay stress upon various matters which they hold have led to advancement and point to other causes which they maintain have led to decline. Some have indicated the rude virtues of a simple life untainted by wealth and luxury which made for betterment. Others sug- gest climatic changes or wide-spread diseases — malaria,^ for instance — as sapping pristine vigor. Slavery has been another matter of undoing on which much stress has been laid. Unjust taxation, crushing out the life of the people, is yet another. The more common method is for the historian to speak of hid- den causes of remote origin tending to undermine national strength, which, when the decline sets in, begin to effect their deadly work. But these causes are not specifically detailed. They are referred to as hidden and remote, and to the reader ever remain hidden and remote. In this complex of circumstances is there no one thing to be observed, no one thing to be noted, which is always present? Is there no one factor common to all race advancement, the passing or the absence of which is common to all race decline? It is not sug- gested that we should look for one sole factor, for in each case many though varying causes may be present. But if one factor is uniformly present with rising fortune, and its enfeeblement or removal coin- cides with the beginning of ill hap, may not this all- pervasive factor be the important factor, after all? 1 Jones, Malaria, A Neglected Factor, etc. 1:32: OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS Society is made up of individuals. If tlie individ- uals are supine and inert, so is the aggregation they form. If, on the other hand, each is alert and vigor- ous, such will be their mass. If the members of a tribe or people are of a com- mon stock, speaking a common tongue, holding in common ideals and animated by the same sentiments, the result of their united action v^^ill create manifes- tations much more important than those of a state composed of a jumbled mass of unrelated elements. Bearing in mind that history always shows many and for the most part varying causes of greatness and decay, let us examine the records to ascertain if by any chance one factor either in its presence or in its absence is constantly manifest. The story of humanity, its rise twenty-three hun- dred years ago to moral and intellectual heights which have in many respects never since been equalled, its fall to depths of misery which cannot be understood, is not much read and not much studied. It involved a world which is close to us as it is peculiarly our own. For us it is the tragedy of mankind, gigantic, all-embracing, which moved on in its measured gradation, its resistless, remorseless sequence, to its revolting climax a thousand years ago. Were this all, we ourselves, partakers and suf- ferers in the result, would be too sunken and de- graded to mark, learn, or understand; but from the depths a race of purer blood has risen — a race fashioned like those men of old; like them, capable of equally great attainment — of equally unutterable CssH OPINIONS OF SCIENTISTS abasement. The story of antiquity points its own moral. It is for us to profit by it or refuse to learn — to take it or to leave it; to take it if we possess, to leave it if we lack, intelligence. FIRST PERIOD 3500 B.C. TO 3000 B.C. Perhaps the greatest historic triumph of scientific scholarship has been the unfolding and development of the story of Egypt.^ It has been a wonderful rec- ord of achievement and we may rejoice that what was lost is found, that by the spade of the workman and the lore of the scholar the nebulous cloud of myth and legend has been resolved into brilliant stars of fact. The riddle of the Sphinx is answered. The story begins about three thousand five hun- dred years before Christ and ends three thousand years later in the conquest of Cambyses the Persian. No other race or nation can exhibit such a long con- tinuity of political life. It is unparalleled. But this is not all, for all scientists concur in suggesting a still more remote past for the origin of this strange people. The end we know, but the beginnings are not yet discovered. For ages the Egyptian kept his blood untainted. The decree upon the Nile Rock still stands re- corded,^ which, while it permits individual negroes to pass the forts for the purpose of trade, forbids any ship of negroes to pass down the Nile forever, 1 Note. - Infra, p. 43. 1:343 FIRST PERIOD 3500 B.C. TO 3000 B.C. and it is clearly but one of many similar precautions and restrictions. In those early days the horse was unknown and the difficulty and danger of desert travel on foot, or at best with a slow-moving ass, rendered lateral in- vasion by any great body of men practically impos- sible. Gradual infiltration, however, did occur. The mere fact that Petrie finds at Koptos, the west- ern end of the old caravan route from the Red Sea, three statues pointing to a Semitic form of worship would seem to indicate some infiltration from Arabia. Latterly examination of skeletal remains would seem to indicate an infiltration from the north- east into the Delta of a people akin perhaps to the Armenians one of the remarkable races of olden times. In the first dawn of its historic life Egyptian so- ciety seems to have been constituted on very much the same principle as the Scottish clan if it be granted that the chieftain owned all the land. The nobility and the Pharaoh seem to have formed one great fam- ily. At that time much of the valley of the Nile lay in swamp and morass and the great beasts now found only south of Khartoum were not infrequent. From the first the Egyptian seems to have been a farmer. The exact status of the great mass of inhabi- tants is not known, probably some form of serfdom. The peculiarities of the river, while they encouraged agriculture, also encouraged the science of engineer- ing;^ for after the floods subsided, the boundaries of each man's farm must have been reestablished, and 1 Story of Euclid Frankland, p. 17. FIRST PERIOD 3500 B.C. TO 3000 B.C. as population increased the swamps had to be drained and more and more of the fertile valley re- claimed. For its government the Pharaoh appointed from among the immediate family of nobles govern- ors or nomarchs who had no proprietary interest in their province as a province, but seem to have been appointed and removed at the pleasure of the King. Trees must have been plentiful, and wood the build- ing material, for it is not until about the year 3000 that stone construction begins. The Egyptian had no one to instruct him. He was alone, unaided. To overcome the difficulties of his situation he was forced to rely upon his own inbred genius. And the legend of the Greeks that geometry was understood before Menes, under whose sway the Kingdom of the North and the Kingdom of the South were brought together,^ seems to be justified by the facts; for so great was the engineering skill that within a century and a quarter^ after the first rude stone construction the Egyptian engineer built with exquisite nicety of adjustment one of the won- ders of the world — the great Pyramid. SECOND PERIOD 3000 B.C. TO 2500 B.C. The Thinites, as they were called, continued to rule Egypt until about the year 3000, at which time a change takes place and a new dynasty has its seat of government at Memphis. "The revolutions which ^ B.C. 3400. - B.C. 3000. n363 SECOND PERIOD 3000 B.C. TO 2500 B.C. brought to an end the dominion of the upper Egyp- tian dynasties of Thinis were the result of a subtle change which had taken place in the Egyptian people itself. We have seen that the population of the pre- historic period (before 3500) was of an unmixed stock. Foreign traits appear in rare individual bodies among the lower Egyptian graves of the early dynastic period, while the upper Egyptians still re- tain the race unmixed. A new element was thus be- ing infused slowly into the Nile people from North to South, and by the time of the Old Kingdom (3000 to 2500) the ruling classes of the Delta in the vicin- ity of Memphis were largely made up of newcomers, sturdy, muscular and vigorous, with evident Asiatic (Armenoid) traits. The foreigners had entered the Delta gradually — not in sufficient force to deflect the stream of Nilotic culture, but in time their infusion of new and virile blood stimulated the lower Egyp- tians to achieve the prominent place in the King- dom."^ This Northern blood, becoming dominant, infused fresh vigor, just as the Arabian and the Barb influenced the English race horse. The reinvigor- ated Egyptians push south into Nubia. They open intercourse with the oases on the west. This whole change makes the year 3000 an important date, and the race improvement punctuates itself not only by extending its frontiers, but by its scientific achieve- ments. The same creative mental power which con- structed the calendar which we now use, and which 1 MS. of H. E. Wmlock. 1:373 SECOND PERIOD 3000 B.C. TO 2500 B c. lay behind its other attainments, fitted Egypt for artistic and industrial life. She had no difficulty in finding foreign markets for her commerce, which expanded, but did not introduce much alien blood. The various activities did, however, add to the growth and importance of the middle class, and as the Tudors in England, taught by the bitter experi- ence of their predecessors with the great Barons, invoked the aid of the lesser nobility and the promi- nent members of the middle class,^ so we find at least one instance where an able man of humble origin becomes by a series of promotions confiden- tial adviser to the King. Uni, under Teti II and Pepi I, is such an one. This simply means more gen- eral diffusion of intelligence. Of all our earthly tasks thinking is probably the hardest work, and yet the splendid temples which now arose with their art and ritual are at once the result and the indication of concentrated mental effort. This, the most arduous toil known to man, was continuously involved in the production of the multifarious improvements and growing wealth which made the temples possible. Intelligent exer- tion constantly increased fullness of life, and this in turn increased the needs and necessities which fuller life demanded. These increased needs and neces- sities were met by ever increasing intelligence which was not the result of accident or chance, but of birth and breeding. The change of dynasty (2980 B.C.) must have disrupted the tie, almost that of family — in instances ' History of England (Oman), Vol. Ill, pp. 294, 481; Vol. IV, p. 7. 1:38a SECOND PERIOD 3000 B.C. TO 2500 B.C. really that of family — which existed between the previous line of Pharaohs and the local governors. We have a similar estrangement of the throne from the nobles when England imported the Hanoverians and broke the close connection between the old royal line and the great English landholders and nobles. The loyalty and devotion to the chief of the clan, the centralized unity of race action, evidenced by the vast pyramids, are gradually sapped and undermined. During the five hundred years we are considering the great barons of the nomes acquire them by fixed and hereditary right. This change is accomplished by 2750 B. C.^ and is followed by more and more clashes with the royal power. Thirty-five hundred years before the story of the English barons and their resistance to royalty was written in England it was written in Egypt. The royal power once weakened, the bickerings between the nomarchs began. THIRD PERIOD 2500 B.C. TO 2000 B.C. The feudal age in Egypt Is the great change which marks the year 2500 B. C. In long continued anarchy, "the child was smit- ten beside his mother, the citizen beside his wife. Evil doers were everywhere." A Warwick at last appears in the person of the Nomarch of Siut, and with his help order is at last restored. Peace once more brings with it plenty, at least in Siut, when a strange thing happens: Taxes 1:393 THIRD PERIOD 2500 B.C. TO 2000 B.C. are reduced! But internecine strife has meanwhile taken sad toll of the best blood of the land. A middle class is distinctly in evidence — a most important development. About 2200 B.C. Egypt is once again divided into two kingdoms which contend, and eventually Thebes in a way rules the whole land. The old order, how- ever, is forever gone. It must not be thought that three hundred years passed in utter anarchy. No; it would have been impossible. Flesh and blood could not have en- dured it. The nearest parallel we have to it is prob- ably that of England's unrest from 1200 to 1485, with the even greater sufifering which preceded under the early Normans interjected from time to time.^ National life kept its course and as one nomarch after another became strong enough he at least kept the peace within his own borders, and saw to it that farmer, artisan and artist were protected. They went further yet in carrying on public works in a limited way, and more than one instance is recorded of the Prince proud not only of the even-handed jus- tice he administered, but also of furnishing food for his people when the Nile failed in its accustomed bounty. The story of Joseph was an old, old story in Egypt long before Abraham departed from Ur of the Chaldees or lengthened his name. Pressure from East and West must have increased in times of weakness and confusion, and especially on the Western Delta, where the Libyans were always 1 Harrying of Northumberland, Norman Conquest, Freeman, Vol. IV, p. 289, Made a desert, and Vol. II, p. 174. n4o3 THIRD PERIOD 2500 B.C. TO 2000 B.C. a source of trouble and foreign blood must have increasingly mingled with that of the native. It must be reiterated that the horse had not been intro- duced and that desert journeys were slow, difficult and perilous. Just at the close of this period (2000 B. C. ) a strong man arises who moves the Seat of Empire from Thebes northward to somewhere near Memphis and dominates the feudal lords. FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. The Old Kingdom has passed away — the Middle Kingdom begins, and begins with a great man, Amenemhet I. Apparently he had been vizier under the preceding Pharaoh, and had obtained and organized his power so that even while vizier he was able to muster ten thousand men for a quarrying ex- pedition. It must be remembered that the organiza- tion which could lead ten thousand men into the desert, and keep them supplied with rations and water, must have been well thought out. This capa- city for organization must have stood Amenemhet in good stead in the warfare which he carried on against the nomarchs to consolidate his power. Great as had been the slaughter during the times of anarchy in the preceding period (2500 B.C.-2000 B.C.), there were still left many of the old barons who could trace their lineage back to a distant past. Apparently by conquest, as well as by negotiation, this great king FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. achieved the reorganization of the country, and must have stood towards his vassals very much as William the Norman stood toward his unruly and contentious barons. It is not of kings and rulers that we desire to speak, save as they illustrate the point we have under dis- cussion, but in this case the wonderful succession of great men who follow each other upon the throne of Egypt for two hundred years illustrates and con- firms the argument. It is not till 1801 B.C. that a change occurs in the royal line. The reason sug- gested is the untimely death of the son, prince and co-regent Ewibre, whose wooden statue testifies not only to the beauty and purity of his race, but also to the artistic genius of the sculptor. The death of Ewibre ends the powerful succession. He was the destined successor and brought up so to be. Though there were two more, they made but little mark. Of this long and splendid line the name Sesostris — there were three of them — became and is to-day a household word signifying greatness and power. History presents no other such instance. From gen- eration to generation for two hundred years it handed down from father to son its amazing hereditary genius. It is to be especially remarked that always in Egypt the natural line of succession was through the eldest daughter. The good side of the rule of the Nomarch, who felt personally interested in the advancement of his province, was the great impetus given to the local handicraftsman throughout the whole valley. We n42] FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. Still have specimens of jewelry of surpassing beauty, delicacy and workmanship. And it must always be remembered that in judging of these old Egyptian triumphs we have as a basis for our conclusion only such remains as the conditions south of the Delta preserved. The great works in the Delta itself have almost without exception perished. At the same time the Delta seems to have been the point of origin of culture and of power, and probably contained vast numbers of splendid works, great cities, magnificent temples, and all the evidences of a luxurious civilization. As to the character of the people and the physical expression of the force that was within them, one has but to glance at the statue of Amenemhet III to know that one is in the presence of a king of men. There is clear evidence that business operations in the absence of coined money were conducted with reference to value expressed in weight of copper. Gold, as always hitherto, was of less value than silver. And the various mines not only of precious metals (the term must also include quarries), which had hitherto been worked by transitory expeditions, were in many instances made permanent stations. Commerce flourished, a regular post was established between Egypt, Palestine and Syria. It is to be noted, however, that on the south, at the second cata- ract, commanding fortresses were built on each side of the river, and no negroes were allowed to pass save for the purposes of trade. Negroes were to be treated kindly, but no ship of the negroes was "to pass going down stream forever." [43] FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. The priests consolidate their interests, and from now on exert greater and greater influence: a bale- ful portent for Egypt. Ammon-Re becomes the leading divinity. They manufacture a mass of charms to preserve their votaries in health and for- tune in this life, and magical documents to bring their souls past the trying ordeal of judgment in the life to come, thus increasing their revenues and their power. Naturally the practical bent of Egypt asserted itself. The cataract is channelled. The nilometer and census regulate taxes. The Fayoum sees a vast engineering work which adds thousands of acres to the arable land, and whose great reservoir relieves the Delta during the hundred days of low Nile by doubling its volume. Literature springs up. A young Egyptian of the royal house flees for his life across the desert, is received by one of the little tribes, meets in combat and slays the champion of the op- posing tribe, and tells the tale nearly a thousand years before David slew Goliath. Under an Egyp- tian name Sinbad is rescued from shipwreck by the serpent queen of an island and sent home rich. Some beautiful poetry still survives, and the mystery plays of the middle ages have their precedent in the re- ligious dramas of this period. To study is regarded as meritorious. The ability to write, so despised by the European nobles of the middle ages, is valued, and wise saws and sayings are collected hundreds of years before Solomon thought of his proverbs. It is clear from the foregoing that information was more and more widely distributed, and that the mid- 1^1 FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. die class, among whom must be reckoned the large and constantly increasing official class, was steadily growing in mental capacity and political weight. The result will shortly appear. For a few years more the impetus given by the great monarchs keeps the vast machine of intricate administration in regular motion, then weak kings invite rebellion, and avarice and egotism incite the several nomarchs, or governors, to struggle for self- aggrandizement. Each becomes a petty king that "raught at sceptres with outstretched arms yet parted but the shadow with his hand."^ And now appears the result of the gradual trick- ling downward of intelligence. "Private individ- uals," writes Breasted, whose charming story we fol- low, "contended with the rest, and occasionally won the coveted goal." Neferhotep established a stable government. He frankly names his untitled parents. He is succeeded by his son, who is succeeded by his father's brother, Sebekhotep, the "greatest king of this dark age." That talent ran in this lowly family cannot be denied. Brains are not confined to aris- tocrats. In the confusion which followed, the tangled skein of events is not as yet unravelled. A hint is given of negro invasion from the south, and their dominance as far north as the first cataract; on the west the Libyans were doubtless raiding, and from the north and east came the Hyksos. During a century the race blood must have been seriously contaminated and the fact not dwelt on nor contemporaneously noted. 1 Henry VI, Part III, Act i. FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. The Egyptians spoke of the Eastern invaders as "men of ignoble birth." Nevertheless, the great currents of Egyptian life kept flowing on. Civilization was halted, not de- stroyed, and as some offset to calamity received an important assistant — the horse. What we must note is this: The long war which ended in the expulsion of the Hyksos changed the Egyptian mores. The nation of husbandmen became a nation of warriors whose success was their own undoing. In an incredibly brief time this wonderful people mastered the great principles of the art of war, which they were compelled first to invent. From strategy and tactics to information and transporta- tion, all was theirs. The instant adoption of the horse is to be remarked as bearing upon Egyptian brain-power. The horse and chariot constituted the armored tank of that time. The possession of this weapon by the Hyksos goes a long way in accounting for their triumph. It was assimilated at once by the Egyptians and used by Ahmose in driving out and following up the Hyksos. As the result Ahmose I (i 580-1 557 B.C.), with a disciplined and veteran army, is once again, as in the beginning, a Pharaoh, owning all the land of Egypt. One of the most deliciously humorous things in history is the contrast between the warlike story of the method of acquisition, dug out by scholars and the spade from contemporaneous Egyptian docu- ments, and the account of Joseph's bargaining pre- served for centuries as an oral legend and finally re- 1:46: FOURTH PERIOD 2000 B.C. TO 1500 B.C. corded in the Old Testament.^ In each case Pharaoh acquires the whole land. The contrast is that be- tween Ivanhoe and Isaac of York, each great in his own way. The barons, hereditary grandees for twelve hun- dred years, pass, and the large middle class furnishes the government officials, civil and military, and be- comes prominent. Already another one of the evils which destroy Egypt appears. Captives in war become slaves and intermingle and intermarry with the people, and as their number increases so does the evil. The stock deteriorates. FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. During the last cycle of five hundred years the old landed nobility almost disappeared, and even their families to a great extent ceased to exist. It was a tenacious and splendid stock. Its official place ap- pears to have been taken in some degree by fresh royal creations. A great fact stands out most forcibly: The middle class of Egyptians had gradually sprung up and now was ready to play its part in history. Three thousand years later we shall find in England the great barons passing away, and there also the middle class emerges, prepared in its turn to take up the burden of the government. 1 Genesis, XLVII. U7l FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Of the great achievements of the Emperor Thut- mose III ( 1 501-1447 B.C.), we have little or nothing to say. The race had suffered a large infusion of foreign blood. It had lost a large proportion of its old dominant class. It seems as if race manifestations are subject to two variables: The first is the relative purity of the race blood, and is to be noted in the punctuation of racial peculiarities. The second is dependent upon the amount of unity in the race action. Its characteristic may be found in the rapidity with which the race secures its objectives. To make up for the loss in blood power the Em- pire insisted upon the greatest possible unity of action. For many years his Queen secluded Thutmose from power. She was of the race royal, through whom he claimed the throne, and was backed by the remnant of the old nobility. She is the first woman of her own right Empress of Egypt. There is here a distinct departure from race custom. In her pre- eminent ability she clearly exhibits her ancestral traits. With her death the real career of this won- derful man begins, his realm stretching from the fourth cataract to the Euphrates. There is a matter to which particular attention should be called — the Egyptians were not a cruel race. True, captives were sacrificed to Ammon, but we must remember that less than a hundred years ago, a woman of education, breeding and culture in New England, when a little child was found com- mitting sin, urged upon him the moral expediency 1:48: FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. of hewing Agag to pieces before the Lord. That same woman would have been frightfully shocked at learning that the Egyptians from time to time sac- rificed captives. Although the Egyptians had before them the example of Semitic barbarities in con- quered territory, the treatment by the Egyptians of conquered lands seems always to have been humane. Thutmose III owed his elevation to the priests who in the temple of Ammon revealed his divinity, just as they did twelve hundred years later, in a temple of the same god, to Alexander. Naturally his gifts to the church were lavish and in this he began a course of royal giving which ultimately im- poverished the kingdom. His great victories even more than at any time before led to the capture of vast numbers of prisoners who became slaves and were distributed all over the land of Egypt to work with, marry among and dilute the purity of the blood of the old stock. Asiatics were not the only slaves. Negroes were brought in, and in these slave importations women are seen car- rying their little children with them. This is exactly the course followed by the Romans in Southern Italy; their great latifundia, worked entirely by slave labor, drove out the independent farmer, and as Rome drew her slaves from every quarter, the population of Southern Italy became hopelessly intermingled and for nearly two thousand years has produced no men of eminence. In our own country under the name immigrant the United States is following in the footsteps of Egypt and Rome. 1:493 FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Nor did the work of Thutmose III stop with eon- quest. He was a statesman as well as a great gen- eral. Many of his expeditions were for the purpose of organizing territory. Egypt became an industrial state of great consequence — commerce flourished, and wealth poured in. As a rule the Semite was not a creative artist.^ He could be a great builder, and the Phoenicians are notable traders and copyists. - On the other hand, Egypt was a creative artist, and therefore found a ready market everywhere for her wares. Asiatics and probably natives of the Medi- terranean Islands could be seen as visitors in the streets of Thebes. The barriers of ages were broken down. The Emperor's activities are especially noticeable in Egypt itself, where he labors to correct the evils which have grown up for years under corrupt tax gatherers, and also in his strenuous efforts to im- prove the administration of justice. He was a man of genius, recognized in his time as such, and so regarded by subsequent ages. He was succeeded by able men. Amenhotep II, his son, is one of them. He extends the frontier to the south, and is suc- ceeded by his son Thutmose IV. Returning from one expedition, Thutmose IV settles a colony of pris- oners in Egypt. He departs from the Pharaonic custom and evidently for reasons of state marries a woman of entirely different race who is the mother of Amenhotep III, his son and successor. Under him the foreign trade of Egypt is vastly increased and the industrial life of Egypt keeps even pace. 1 Perrot and Chlpiez, Phoenicia. - Bury, Greece, Vol. I, pp. 78-79. FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Naturally the wide interests of the great empire still further open the door to foreigners and the pres- ence of strangers in the streets of Thebes becomes common. As an indication of the great economic changes under way, silver, which had been double the worth of gold, fell below gold in value, and seems to have steadily continued to fall. Slaves continued to be brought in, were placed among the serfs, and became taxpayers as the serfs are taxpayers. The simple customs of the old Egyptian court vanish before the luxury of the day. The usual gifts of the Pharaoh become magnificent and the art of Egypt is expressed in great piles of masonry of beautiful form and new invention. The smaller work exhibits rare excellence of finish, while preserving great dignity. Art is one of the most prominent of race manifes- tations. It rises and falls with the ebb and flow of race capacity. Egyptian art is absolutely different in thought and expression from the Semitic art or the art of the Orient.^ In its early examples such as the ivory statuette brought together with such infinite labor by Flinders-Petrie and the Sheik El- Beled and perhaps the scribe in the Louvre, and in the beautiful models found in artists' studios of later date, not only the method of attack, but the artist's point of view, and above all the thought behind both the method of attack and the artist's view-point, is essentially the same as that of the Greek. The reign of Amenhotep marks the culmination of the splendor of the Empire, and it is probable that Thebes of this era, the hundred-gated, gave the 1 Pennithorne, The Geometry and Optics of Ancient Architecture. FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. powerful impression which has survived in legend and in song. For one hundred and twenty-five years an illus- trious son succeeds an illustrious father — another instance of the power of purity of blood. Civilization reaches a high point. Wealth greatly increases and luxury, its handmaiden, creeps in, undermining and weakening the powers of resist- ance of its votaries. The human race seems to be able to withstand almost any disease better than it can withstand the sudden and great changes wrought by its own advance in art and luxury. We now have to consider a peculiar manifestation which belongs to a class usually denominated spirit- ual and which is ever supposed to be personal to the individual exhibiting the manifestation. Is this entirely true? In Ikhnaton, the successor of his great father, reli- gious ideas of a very high order found expression.^ In a broad consideration of the subject a great moral teacher should be ranked with a great religious teacher. It is to be remarked that these great teach- ers occasionally spring from the dominant class and occasionally from the sacerdotal or even lower class. One of the great fonts of inspiration has ever been the desert of Arabia and has ever been associated with misery, want and hardship. Long before Ikhnaton, Abraham appeared. The divin- ity revealed by him may be attacked on the ground that it is a mere tribal god, and recognizes the exis- tence of other gods. But following him there is a 1 Breasted, Egypt. FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. long list of men directly associated with the desert of Arabia who show in their utterances of elevated thought a wonderful grasp of great truths^ and in their final expression (Mahomet) nearly conquer the world. Long before Ikhnaton,^ also appear the Vedic hymns,^ rivalling in passages the sublimity of his ideal, and it must not be forgotten that the great VI century, from this same race which produced the Vedic hymns, gave birth to a religious reformer (Buddha) whose disciples to-day in numbers sur- pass those of any other sect. Zoroaster belongs to this same race. China gave us Confucius. Is It pos- sible that religious manifestation or great moral ele- vation, as among the philosophers in Greece, can be purely Individual? Must it not be regarded as one of the highest manifestations of race power? Ikhnaton's revolt ushered in a brief but splendid outburst of art -and literature — the renaissance of Egypt; but his people were no longer the pure race, and lofty idealism was beyond the grasp of their dulled minds. Over his memory sacerdotalism drew its pall. His works were destroyed, his name was erased from monuments, and savage hatred blotted from the earth all memory of him and what he was. The power of the priest seems to be inversely as the vitality and force of the race. One of the many signs of decay in a people is the prominence of priestcraft In affairs. Placed as the priest is between finite man and the awful infinite, holding in his 1 E.g., see Micah (700 B.C.), VI, 6-8. 2 Ikhnaton's Hymn, Breasted's Egypt, p. 371. 3 Vedic hymns. See Social Environment and Moral Progress, A. R. Wallace, Chapter III. 1:533 FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. hands the gift of eternal life, he has a peculiar advantage in the race for wealth, and as the other forces which have built up the nation break down, the priest grasps that earthly dominion which afore- time he professed to scorn. The revolt of Ikhnaton may not have been the first, but it was the last. "The Golden Bough"^ explains how magic gave place to religion — how the sorcerer gave place to the priest — how the priest became the king — how the priest-king became the god. As nearly as can be described through the twilight of early Egyptian history, this seems to have been the development in the upward rush of race life. Menes was priest, king and god. After him, while the Pharaoh remained a god, the priestly office was withdrawn and became a separate institution; and as Egypt lost its race energy, the priesthood centralized its scat- tered forces, absorbed the wealth of the land and great regions of the land itself, until the pontiff as the representative of the dominant god Ammon repeats the age-long, hoary cycle, and once more, as we shall see, the priest becomes at the same time king and god. Thought could not thrive in priest-ridden Egypt.^ We find but little science as science. We find almost no philosophy. The same dreadful fate threatened Greece, but was mercifully averted. In his absorption in religious affairs Ikhnaton lost his empire. As his immediate successors were not strong enough to make head against the old Egyptian priesthood, his religious movement was blotted out. 1 J. G. Frazer. sprazer, Golden Bough, Vol. I, p. 231. CS43 FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Later Egypt became a prey to anarchy, to be again gathered together and united under Harmhab, who is seemingly not of the immediate Pharaonic family, although he was a member of the old nobility — the old dominant class. And again, his installation, it must be noted, is due to priestly influence, and his position as Pharaoh consolidated by his marriage. He recognizes the power which raised him to the throne and his gifts to the temples are large. He also reforms the administration of the taxes, a thing which, apparently, the Roman emperors were never able to accomplish, and most remarkable of all, arranges a regular income for the judges, thus for the first time in history introducing an independent judiciary. Egypt, thus organized, passed on to his successors, and under Seti I again plays the role of conqueror. Slaves in numbers are again introduced, and all the time in the Delta the Libyan blood is becoming more and more infused. Seti's generous treatment of the native Egyptian employed in the labor of public works is to be noted. Rameses II succeeds his father Seti and is widely known as a conqueror, but does not exhibit the great military genius of Thutmose III. He marries the daughter of the Hittite King. Mercenary troops are largely employed, foreign relations are close and wide, and it is suggested that another Hittite prin- cess was added to the harem of Rameses. With his reign the aggressive foreign policy of Egypt grad- ually ceases and the growing employment of merce- nary troops would indicate that foreign blood was ns53 FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. producing its bad effect and weakening and diluting the original stock. The Delta becomes more and more the seat of royal residence, thus taking some- what from the importance of Thebes, but the gifts of Seti and Rameses to the temples were enormous, so much so that the possessions of the priests in Egypt very properly may be compared with the pos- sessions of the Roman organization in France at the time of the French Revolution. The influence of the priesthood in Egyptian affairs becomes more and more marked. Foreigners hold- ing positions at court are numerous. The country drifts into anarchy. Assyria seizes the crown. Again the old Egyptian blood asserts itself and Setnakht sets the Egyptian house once more in order. Rameses III (1198-1167 B.C.) turns his attention to war, forced thereto probably by the pressure of outside peoples, among whom are the peoples of the sea. He repulses Libyan attacks on the Delta and manifests energy and capacity. Commerce is en- couraged and flourishes. He worked in harmony with the priests. Of the church property the priests of Ammon held by far the larger share. The historian to whom this brief account is deeply indebted, whose story is told convincingly, notes "at this time, while all was outward splendor and tran- quillity, and the whole nation was celebrating the King who had saved the Empire, the forces of decay which had for generations been slowly gathering in the state were rapidly reaching the acute stage."^ ^ For an instance of a similar statement, see Draper, Intellectual De- velopment of Europe, Vol. I, p. 77; and also Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of Rome, Vol. V, p. iv. 1:56: FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Rameses IV recognizes the power of the priests and our before quoted authority notes that "the sources of that virile political life that had sprung up with the expulsion of the Hyksos were now exhausted." What were the forces of decay which had been slowly gathering and which are referred to by our authority? What were the sources of that virile political life that had sprung up with the Hyksos? It would seem that these sources w^ere not far to seek. For over two thousand years Egypt in her isolation had retained and multiplied her original population, and for a great portion of the time her people had acted as a united race. First the broils of anarchy destroy many of the best, and in the loss of unity of action the kingdom sacrifices much of its momentum. Later the inroads of the foreigners, whether by hos- tile or peaceful intrusion, still further weaken the original blood. Her career of empire, foreign war, and conquest sweeps away thousands of her strong- est and best, introduces foreigners by the thousands as slaves, and we shall see in the succeeding period her degenerate blood permitting the destruction of a country whose career, owing to the original and continued impetus, is the longest of recorded time. Weakened as the race was at the beginning of this cycle, 1500 B.C., we have seen how unity of action enabled it to conquer from the Euphrates to the fourth cataract, almost the whole of the then known world; and Egypt was destroyed, as Assyria and Rome were later, not by foreign attack, but by her own act — race suicide. FIFTH PERIOD 1500 B.C. TO 1000 B.C. Under Rameses IX the high priest of Ammon seems to be a veritable ruler, and the Temple collects its own taxes. Under Rameses XII the Delta becomes separated from Egypt under a revolting ruler, and the high priest of Ammon remains master of Thebes, the Pharaoh seemingly having retired to Nubia. Finally the last of the Ramesids is followed by the high priest of Ammon, and as Pharaoh he becomes not only Priest but also King and GodP From this time on Egypt steadily declines, and in the year 945 B. C. the Libyans, who apparently had been all-powerful in Egypt for some years, became the titular sovereigns. SIXTH PERIOD 1000 B.C. TO 500 B.C. The Libyan power, dominant for some years, is acknowledged in the year 945. The Libyans are suc- ceeded by the Nubians. One foreigner succeeds another, while the country itself is a prey to all the calamities of anarchy. The Assyrians threaten Egypt. Esarhaddon finally becomes over-lord, at least of lower Egypt. With varying fortunes the Assyrians maintain their hold upon the land and plunder Thebes. But just at the close of this epoch, the sixth period of five hun- dred years, Psamtik I, a man of great ability, rises to power, and the XXVI Dynasty closes the history of ^ "The Golden Bough," Frazer. 1:58: SIXTH PERIOD 1000 B.C. TO 500 B.C. Egypt. A revival of Egyptian art punctuated the restoration of civil affairs. In the year 525 Egypt is conquered by the Per- sians. A few disturbances take place after this, but the story is told. This brief statement has of course been prepared with reference to the consideration of the direct influ- ence of race purity upon race life. We have seen in a rough way the unaided achieve- ment, the intellectual force of the Egyptian people. To-day in their degradation we despise them and for- get the benefits which they conferred upon us. It seems impossible — it seems incredible that the same people to whom we owe so much should be the peo- ple of whom at present we think so little. In point of fact, they are not the same people. Darwin notes that the result of cross-mating seems to be to evoke old-time characteristics which, in the pure stock of either parent, though carried along, are latent and dominated by the later and higher qualities.^ The Egyptian to-day is a thorough mon- grel, and while still called by the same name, has reverted to any number of prehistoric types, and has become utterly different from his great ancestors. In its pure state of olden time the race was won- derful in achievement, and to-day, whichever way we turn, we meet it in its ever enduring gifts to us. The architect who makes use of the disengaged column to support a weight must salute the Egyptian 1 Animals and Plants, etc., Vol. II, pp. 50, 51. Cited more fully above. 1:59: SIXTH PERIOD 1000 B.C. TO 500 B.C. who invented it/ for the architect in almost every instance would be incapable of so doing. Should he fling an arch across a void he must also make his obeisance to the Egyptian who taught him how to do it. Should any one of us date a letter he must pause to thank the Egyptian who, five thousand years ago, invented the calendar which we now use. The laundress who irons the table cloth or the linen sheet and is familiar with the tissue, never saw and could not dream of the gossamer fabric which the Egyptians wove thousands of years before she was born. The collegian who has failed in his exam- ination in geometry and abuses Euclid, has spoken ill of the wrong individual,^ for it was a nameless and long dead Egyptian who taught Euclid; and if by good hap the collegian should get as far as conic sections,^ and again deplore the unkindness of Provi- dence, who first gave some Greek a knowledge of their properties, he would again be mistaken, for it was an Egyptian who taught the Greek. Out on our Western plains the young American engineer has again and again fumbled over his plans for an irrigation scheme. Beside him stood the spirit of an old Egyptian sympathizing with his mistakes, rejoicing in his successes ; since, ages before the young American was thought of, the Egyptian had en- countered the same difficulties and solved the same problems. Shoulder to shoulder with our revered Washington, more than one great Egyptian spirit 1 Breasted, History of Egypt. 2Touraeff, from a papyrus dated about iSoo B.C., gives the formula for the cubic contents of a truncated pyramid, which is not in Euclid. 3 Story of Euclid, p. 17, Frankland. [:6o3 SIXTH PERIOD 1000 B.C. TO 500 B.C. Stands who had the fortitude to endure calamity, the faith to look beyond it, and, persevering unto the end, had rallied the last remnants of his race and re- deemed his country from internal discord or foreign domination. The Egyptian intelligence was one of the most wonderful faculties which ever animated and inspired man. Their statues, which wasteful war has overturned; their masonry, which broils have attempted to root out, still stand in their battered fragments to testify that the poet was right, nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn the living record of their memory. Can you think of such a race as this, a vital, breath- ing and inspiring force in the whole of our civiliza- tion, as dead and gone? It is well for us to pause and recall our deep debt. So sunken is the Egyptian of to-day, so fallen from his high estate, so thoroughly has he reverted to a prehistoric past, that Petrie says: "Each generation of men of low civilization can be advanced beyond the preceding one only by a very small percentage;" and referring to the present effort made by the Eng- lish to educate the fellaheen, and from observation and experience of Egyptian peasants, says:^ "The harm is that you manufacture idiots.^ Some of the peasantry are taught to read and write, and the result of this burden which their fathers bore not is that they become fools. I cannot say this too plainly: 1 Smithsonian Report, 1895, p. 596. Quoted by Sumner in Folkways, 630. 2 Confirme M. Lythgoe. p. 630. 2 Confirmed to the writer, after many years of observation, by Albert n6i3 SIXTH PERIOD 1000 B.C. TO 500 B.C. An Egyptian who has had reading and writing thrust on him is, in every case that I have met with, half witted, or incapable of taking care of himself. His intellect and health have been undermined by the forcing of education." If we should conclude that the purity of race blood so far as the Egyptians were concerned was all- important, would not this conclusion be just? We have now examined the story of one race. Let us turn to the examination of another — our own. In this we have a peculiar interest. We must not think for a moment that the race to which we belong is at present and for the first and only time dominating the world. It is not true. Long before we were thought of, the race had appeared upon the stage of history, and tribes or clans of it had waxed and waned. Our struggles, our vicissitudes for the last thousand years have by our elder brethren been faced before. SEVENTH PERIOD 500 B.C. TO THE Year One Persian — Greek — Roman — these three are one. And these three are blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh. First the Persian.^ In the conquest of Egypt the white race thrusts itself upon the scene, and for the next cycle of five hundred years from the year 525 B. C. to the year one. 1 "Persians, noblest of Iranians." Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 237. 1:623 SEVENTH PERIOD 500 B.C. TO THE Year One it occupies the stage. Three times during this com- paratively short period, in succession, its three branches or divisions conquer the known vv^orld. Assyria dominated the Near East. The Far East was out of touch and out of sight. , For a long time Nineveh had held sway. Her sturdy warriors, whose pictures unearthed by Layard reveal great muscular development and grim, merciless faces, subdued and laid waste cities and kingdoms until the whole world, revolting at unheard of cruelty, hated them and Nineveh and all her works with a perfect hatred. But her very victories caused her destruction. His- torians are a unit in ascribing her overthrow to the loss of the sturdiest of her population in her constant war. This left the feeble to continue and of necessity to destroy the race. Nineveh literally committed suicide; and when Cyrus, uniting the Medes and Persians, burst upon her there were none left to resist. That capacity for government and organization which is a distinguishing characteristic of the white race, remodelled the afflicted world and gave to it peace under universal sway, coupled with regularity and method in administration. Our knowledge of the Persians is largely derived from Greek sources, colored by Greek hatred, and the picture left on our minds is that of the wonderful resistance which a few free Greeks made to the onslaught of the untold myriads of the great King. To us it seems as if Themistocles had flung back the whole Persian empire in defeat and ruin. This is not so. For years that war was waged and when the [63] SEVENTH PERIOD 500 B.C. TO THE Year One Persian retired he withdrew the distant expedition with power scarcely abated and with vast resources so little touched that the experience seems to have been a painful incident rather than an irreparable calamity. SECOND THE GREEKS As for the Greeks, one of the amazing things in history is the suddenness of their downfall.^ In a few years after the time of Pericles the result of ignoring the wise customs which had preserved the purity of the Athenian blood became evident,^ and democracy, which always feels itself equal to any task, and often lacks judgment in men, had confided its greatest efifort to an incompetent and met destruc- tion, not at the hands of Xerxes, who had seized the city and destroyed the Temples of the Immortal Gods, but at the hands of the poor creature Nicias,^ and with him Athens perished politically in the agonies of the far distant quarries of Syracuse. Before 600 B. C the Greeks had colonized"* the western littoral of Asia Minor, the northern shore of the Black Sea; their same blood was found in Thrace and Macedon; they had pushed westward until Southern Italy was called Great Greece. Sicily iNote. 2 Demetrius, King of Macedon, 295-287 B.C., testifies: "There was not, in my time, in Athens, one great or noble mind." Draper, Intel. Dev. of Europe, Vol. I, p. 160. 3 Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 466. * Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 87. 1:64] SECOND THE GREEKS too was theirs. They had their settlement in Egypt (Naucratis, the mother of ships). Northern Africa at Cyrene knew them, and the iEgean Islands, Southern France and Eastern Spain. From the time of the Persian wars to the time of Alexander this population must have numbered all told seven mil- lions or more.^ "Most of the Grecian States required that their citizens should match with none but citi- zens; and the Athenians, if a citizen married a for- eigner, doomed the children to slavery; and if a foreigner married a free woman of Athens it was law- ful for any person to prosecute him, and if convicted he was sold for a slave. If a citizen married a woman that was not free he was fined a thousand drachmas."^ So long, therefore, as they kept their independence, the Greeks seem as a rule to have limited citizenship to Greeks and to have often re- stricted it to Greeks of the same community, and never while Greek independence lasted to have freely allowed barbarians (foreigners) to become citizens. On the other hand, from time immemorial, the venturesome, the daring quality of the white race had led sturdy young Greeks continually to engage themselves as mercenaries in foreign employment. We find them at a remote period serving as soldiers for the Pharaoh of Egypt.^ In later times large numbers took employment under the King of Persia. Of course this continual drain upon the strongest of the Greek youth had a deleterious effect iFinlay, Hist. Greece, Vol. I, p. 15. 2 Critical Essay on Marriage Rites of the Greeks, Thomas Salmon, p. 216. 2 And see Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 234, note i. 1:6? 3 SECOND THE GREEKS and in a small way repeated the experience of Assyria, which has already been noted. After the Persian wars Athens relaxed her rules and thereafter for about thirty years strangers were freely admitted as Athenian citizens/ It is reck- oned that thirty thousand at least were in this way added to the population, and, granting that the population of Athens numbered one hundred thou- sand, one authority states that out of every ten such inhabitants four were slaves, one or two were strangers, and four or five of the old stock. It is conceded nevertheless that the average intelli- gence in Athens at this time was very high, — so high that in the period of a hundred years after the Per- sian wars Athens alone produced more great men than the whole of Europe has since brought forth. This does not mean that the dregs^ of the Athenian popu- lation were any better than the dregs of any other population. The proportion of degenerates, crim- inal insane and the dependent class was probably greater in Athens in the time of Pericles than it was in Elizabeth's England. It merely means that many men of surpassing intelligence at Athens elevated the standard of the mass. Notwithstanding this, democ- racy in Athens was just as apt to be carried away by its emotions, just as incapable of pursuing for years a determined and fixed policy, as the population of a democratic state to-day. The able leader in Athens wasted the greater part of his force first in inciting his people to adopt a proper line of action, and sec- ond in constant effort to keep them resolute and 1 Note. - Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 421. [66] SECOND THE GREEKS Staunch, and then in addition he had to have suffi- cient energy left to conduct state affairs. This im- plied a man of great physical as well as intellectual power. Historians express regret that Pericles did not institute a form of government which would have been capable of surviving him. Not a single histo- rian indicates the form of government he should have instituted. In point of fact, Pericles could well have said with Roger Bacon that he would have contrib- uted more to the advancement of the world had he not been held back by the universal ignorance, and this ignorance does not refer to the absence of learn- ing from books. It refers to the absence of intellec- tual capacity, and the problem to-day is just the same as the problem of Athens two thousand three hun- dred years ago. To obtain greater intelligence the reproduction of the human race must be in accord- ance with the Divine law. Advancement must come slowly, little by little. No one can pass to his child his own personal attainments. If he could, our little ones would be born with the ability to read and write. All that can be given is a trifling matter, a predisposition perhaps to acquirement and not the acquirement itself, for Petrie is correct in his state- ment.^ The fall of Athens is a sad story. Immediately on the death of Pericles, power was sought by various demagogues. Cleon the tanner misled Athens for years. The average Athenian preferred the mis- takes of mediocrity, which he could understand and 1 See Supra, page 6i. SECOND THE GREEKS with which he could sympathize, to the achievements of genius, which were to him incomprehensible and with whose patient anticipation of benefits far in the future and to be obtained by long time and persis- tent effort he had no sympathy whatever. About 450 B. C. the Athenians passed a law limiting citizenship to those both of whose parents had been Athenian citizens. Pericles seems to have understood the importance of tradition, if not the question of race. Able men there were, born leaders of men, but these the Athenians in great measure murdered or banished. Even a partial list is appalling. The vic- tor at Salamis, the man who dreamed Athenian empire and laid the deep foundation on which later the Empire was built,^ the greatest leader in war and peace the city ever had, was condemned for treason, and although a man of dreams, Themistocles never dreamed treason. He ended his days the servant of the Persian king whose fleet he had destroyed. Cimon, who crushed the remnants of that fleet, was ostracized, as was Aristides. Phidias died in prison. Pericles was fined and cashiered, but as they were utterly unable to conduct affairs without him, he was "recalled," in the better sense of the term. Fortu- nately for him, he then died of the plague. His sur- viving son, one of the generals commanding the vic- torious Athenian fleet, was, on his return to Athens, immediately accused and put to death on a ridiculous charge, thus extinguishing this splendid line — and talent is hereditary! The citizens of Athens, like Death in Horace, 1 Bury, Greece, Vol. I, pp. 280, 354. 1:683 SECOND THE GREEKS Struck with an equal foot. The whole mass of the citizens of Mitylene, condemned to execution, was saved by a scant margin. To surpass the horror of this contemplated barbarity was reserved for a chosen few. Alcibiades was driven to the Spartans, who had the sense to follow his advice and Athens at Syracuse was undone. In her teeth he later, for a brief space, took command of her fleet, destroyed the fleet of her enemy and gave her once again control of the sea, whereupon the Athenians elected this same traitor General or Strategus, and gave him back his confis- cated fortune. They then again cashiered him, and he again fled. The closing incident surpasses the best effort of the comic and tragic Muse combined. Alcibiades had retired to his place on the Helles- pont. The Spartan fleet lay near by. Sent to attack them, the Athenian fleet made harbor near Alcibi- ades' place of retreat. Day after day the Athenians went forth, endeavoring to induce the Spartans to give battle. Battle was refused. The Athenians then returned and were accustomed to leave their ships and go ashore. Noting this, Alcibiades warned them, but to his advice they paid no attention. The Spar- tan leader, however, seized the opportunity and destroyed the Athenian fleet. It is said that no one in Athens slept the night word came of the final catastrophe.^ Too late Democracy was alert! The silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken. Ability must for its best expression be united with character, and an education which tends to pro- iBury, Greece, Vol. II, p. 58. 1:69] SECOND THE GREEKS duce or cultivate character is most to be desired. This was the opinion of Socrates, who felt that the character of the State was the expression of the character of the individual citizen taken in the aggre- gate, and that it was more important for the individ- ual citizen to be grounded in the principles of right and morality than in anything else. He was a coura- geous man, and a man of intelligence so exalted that the whole world could scarcely boast his like. Athe- nian democracy reached its culmination, said its last word, when it murdered him. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee!^ Athens! Jerusalem! It makes no difference whither you go or when. Date and place are alike indififerent. It is the same monotony of error; the same insistence on error's repetition. It is amazing that men will neither learn from the woes of others nor from their own calamities. Yes, it is easier for us to repeat mistakes than to undertake laborious study to avoid them. The percentage of talent in Athens was larger than in England or America to-day, but yet it was unable to leaven the mass and was lost in the igno- rant vote. The government was literally mob rule with few or none of the safeguards which our fore- fathers placed about the function of authority, and it was a signal failure. We may note in passing that our forefathers placed safeguards about the exercise or function of authority to protect authority from the populace and 1 Matthew, XXIII, 37. 1:70] SECOND THE GREEKS placed few or no safeguards about the populace, for with universal suffrage the populace needed none, but proper authority stood in sore need of guard and bulwark. The Athenian democracy could vote but could not govern, could declare war but could not conduct it, and having rashly ventured in, knew not when or how to make peace. But against the gloom of this dark background Greek genius glows effulgent. Supreme in art, in literature great, in philosophy immortal, Athens amazes at once in her dignity and in her baseness. The stock was splendid and could it have been con- served, the world might have told another and a bet- ter tale. Bury calls particular attention to a danger no less terrible than the Persian invasion which threatened Greece toward the close of the VI century.^ "This danger lay in the dissemination of a new religion, which, if it had gained the upper hand, as at one time it seemed likely to do, would have pressed with a dead and stifling weight upon Greece." The men- ace of its mysticism threatened the freedom of Greek thought. "Both scientific and religious movements have the same object — to solve the mystery of exis- tence; but the religious craving demands a shorter road and immediate satisfaction." The Orphic initiation and the Orphic rules saved man's soul alive. Thus and thus only could man escape judgment to come. The assurance was positive. Its influence enormous. Men yearned with an intoler- 1 Bury, History of Greece, Vol I, pp. 334 et seq. SECOND THE GREEKS able yearning to believe, and the belief swept through Greece itself. "The Delphic priesthood had, doubt- less, an instinct that the propagation of the Orphic doctrines might ultimately redound to its own ad- vantage. Although the new religion had arisen when the aristocracies were passing away, and had addressed itself to the masses, it is certain that, if it had gained the upper hand, it would have lent itself to the support of aristocracy and tyranny." . . . "The antidote to the Orphic religion was the philosophy of Ionia. In Asiatic Greece, that religion never took root; and most fortunately the philosophical move- ment, the separation of science from theology, had begun before the Orphic movement was dissemi- nated. . . . Ionia, having founded philosophy, res- cued Greece from the tyranny of a religion inter- preted by priests." Xenophanes of Colophon showed the absurdity of gods made in man's image. He refused to regard Homer and Hesiod as the Greek bible. His god was the whole cosmos, but he left the people their loved gods of the water and the wood — emanations from the great divinity. He scorned mysticism and so- called revelation, and named the Orphic priests the impostors which they were. Others took up the con- test, and from the struggle philosophy emerged tiumphant. "We may say with propriety that a great peril was averted from Greece by the healthful influence of the immortal thinkers of Ionia. But this, after all, is only a superficial way of putting the fact. If we look deeper we see that the victory of philosophy over the SECOND THE GREEKS doctrines of the priests was simply the expression of the Greek spirit, which Inevitably sought its highest satisfaction in the full expansion of its own powers and the free light of reason." It is to be observed that the struggle for freedom of thought took place in Greece at the period when its race vigor was unimpaired, when it was tri- umphantly thrusting back the Persian invasion and when its manifestations of race power had nearly reached their climax. Sparta^ gives us care in reproduction, but an edu- cation which destroyed even hope of man's capacity for intellectual betterment. Athens, reckless in reproduction, nevertheless gave us some education, however faulty. Her union of training and race purity gave results so splendid as to destroy even doubt of man's capacity for intellec- tual betterment. The confirmation of the fact of the possibility of man's intellectual elevation and improvement is above all other things the great gift of Greece to mankind.^ The Intense rivalry among the citizens of each Greek city and the intense rivalry between city and city prevented, save on the memorable occasion of the Persian invasion, anything like united action on the part of Greece Itself. But lingering among the Macedonian mountains a portion of the race had re- 1 See last paragraph of note, p. 64. Bury, Greece, Vol. I, pp. 141, 147. 2 Bury, Greece, Vol. II, p. 439. 1:731 SECOND THE GREEKS tained the simple manners of their forefathers and their kingly form of government. At the time of Philip the blood in Macedon and Thrace was probably more pure than that of any part of Greece proper.^ The philosopher Xenophanes, a contemporary of both Philip and his son, bears unintentional but con- vincing testimony to this fact. In discussing man's notion of God he insists that each race represents the Great Supreme under its own shape: the negro with a flat nose and black face, the Thracian with "blue eyes and a ruddy complexion" — our own character- istics! Alexander testifies in his great speech at Babylon that his people were shepherds and husbandmen, and probably he as a boy had heard the old folk-songs sung and the old folk-lore told by his nurse and her people, who still retained and handed down from gen- eration to generation, as the peasantry ever will, the legendary lore of their ancestors. And in those songs and in that folk-lore the Macedonian chieftain, like the Amal in "Hypatia," traced his descent from the gods. The mingling of God and man was no new idea to the white race.^ The Greeks had ever wor- shipped their heroes and the Macedonians kept the memory of their heroes green. And the hero was always of divine descent. Force was needed to unite Greece, and Philip applied it. Philip slain, foolish Greece thought to throw off the sway of his boyish successor, but en- countered a greater might than that of Philip, and the lesson of Thebes proved suflicient. 1 Alexander, Wheeler, p. lo. - The Golden Bough, Frazer. 1:74: SECOND THE GREEKS When Francis Galton wrote his great book on Hereditary Genius he premised by saying: "I have been conscious of no slight misgiving that I v^as com- mitting a kind of sacrilege whenever, in the prepa- ration of materials for this book, I had occasion to take the measurement of modern intellects vastly superior to my own, or to criticise the genius of the most magnificent historical specimens of our race. It is a process that constantly recalled to me a once familiar sentiment in byegone days of African travel, when I used to take altitudes of the huge cliffs that domineered above me as I travelled along their bases, or to map the mountainous landmarks of unvisited tribes, that loomed in faint grandeur beyond my actual horizon." For any man to concentrate for any length of time on a particular task is exhausting. The long training for the prize-fight, the struggle, the victory or defeat, is invariably followed by a physical re- action which almost always leads to dissipation. After the boat race as great care should be given to the college athlete to allow him slowly to relax and to permit his exaggerated muscles of heart and limb to resume their proper form, as is spent in cultivating them to a pitch above normal. It is the same with intense intellectual activity. No really able man can ever be idle. Even against his grain, the great self- exciting dynamo which is his brain compels him to active exertion whether he will or no, and frequently denies him the rest which he knows to be physically necessary. To sustain the unremitting toil or to be able to secure a moment's relaxation, great men in the SECOND THE GREEKS past have sought a counter-irritant in the shape of a stimulant, for to them repose is impossible, and their only relief is to match excitement by excitement. Alexander was one of these men. Dowered with supreme intelligence solidly founded upon prema- turely ripened judgment and common sense, he seems to have eagerly sought for and to have pa- tiently received and considered the advice given by the able men who had been his father's counsellors. The supreme test of ability is its capacity to receive, make use of and rise superior to the wisdom with which it is surrounded, for men truly great associate with themselves the greatest minds that they can find, and when a man of elevated position surrounds himself with those of inferior capacity, his own ac- tion at once condemns him and makes known his true worth. The intolerable pressure which the force of his own genius brought to bear upon Alexander ac- counts at once for his occasional excesses. The uni- form correctness of his judgment on great occasions when he overruled the advice of his most sagacious counsellors is overwhelming proof of the power of his mind. Like all men of vast intellectual resource, he too was a dreamer, and he dreamed true. The va- rious steps by which he sought and won the domin- ion of the world were but the preliminaries, and laid the foundation of an empire, which, had he been spared, he would doubtless have consolidated and so- lidified; for even as it was, the little information which remains to us concerning his initial steps seems to indicate that he was governed by a pro- 1:76:] SECOND THE GREEKS found knowledge of the true facts and applied a method which was fundamentally correct, since it was based upon the physical union of the two branches of the white race — Persian and Greek. We were taught to think that the many cities founded throughout his dominion from the Indus to the Nile, a dozen in Bactria alone,^ to many of which his own name was given, were but part of the display and ostentation of the conqueror, and that his marriage and the marriages^ which he encouraged between his Macedonian captains and the great Persian families, and those even of the common sol- diers with these same Persians, were a mere whim or fantasy and could not bring about that union which he called the marriage of the East and the West. Was there a better way? Was any other way pos- sible? Of all the critics has any one of them ever suggested an improvement on this plan? Is it not founded directly upon the natural law? It was no passing whim. It was the only way; and as for the many Alexandrias, Finlay pointed out three-quarters of a century ago that the introduction of the Greek city and the Greek city life into the Asiatic polity, even though the sudden death of Alexander pre- vented its full fruition, had an enormous effect upon the Asiatic world. And where will be found a con- queror who succeeds to an absolute despotism whose first step is the introduction of numberless central points where free institutions are implanted and whence their influence may be disseminated all 1 Justin, XII, 5. 2 "He looked forward to the offspring of these unions as a potent instru- ment for the further fusing of the races." Bury, Greece, Vol. II, p. 415. C773 SECOND THE GREEKS over the land? Despotism and free institutions con- tradict each other in direct terms, and no despot but Alexander has ever dared to mingle them. And it was entirely voluntary on his part, for a share in pol- itics or a voice in the government of the land had never been dreamed of since the foundation of the world by citizens of any Asiatic State. Moreover, his attempted education of the Persian youth^ in Greek methods and Greek ideas, and the splendid beginning he made with thirty thousand boys, was along the same lines and nothing could have been more eminently practical, for as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined. Perhaps the most sure indication of the great is the personal sway they exercise over men. Alex- ander's whole army revolts in Babylon in the heart of his newly conquered land, three months' journey or more from Macedon. They are called together and their treason frankly and sternly made plain. Two or three of the leaders of the mutiny he singles out. Leaping down from the platform, he bursts into the throng and personally arrests them. He then dis- charges the whole Greek army, confident that he can rely upon his loyal Persians.^ Of this his army is also fully convinced and Is furthermore crushed and heart-broken, and Alexander is, after some days, persuaded to yield to their entreaties to reinstate and forgive them. Alexander was In many respects the culmination, ^ This Bury regards as the most effective means of bringing the two races together. Greece, Vol. II, p. 415. 2 Among others, the 30,000 youth who had been drilled as Macedonians for five years. Bury, Greece, Vol. II, p. 415; and see pp. 420-21. [78: SECOND THE GREEKS the flower and fruit of that startling development which, founded in purity of blood and based upon tradition and education, elevated him so far above the common ranks of humanity that he stands su- preme in melancholy solitude. In his life many men and many kinds of men had been his companions and been known as his companions — a body of his troops bore that name, a number of successful cap- tains bore that name — and above all he drew to him a small group for all of whom he cared and some of whom he loved, but the best of them fell so far below him in capacity that although in constant and close intercourse he discussed with them his hopes and his plans, none of them seems to have understood either the one or the other, and immediately on his death, when all Babylon was shrouded in fear and trem- bling and darkness, for no light was lit, broke out the petty contention among those comparatively ignoble minds which wrecked an empire and extirpated his race. His wife Barsine and his son Heracles were put to death by Polysperchon.^ His wife Roxana and her son Alexander Aegus were put to death by Cassander;^ every member of his family was mur- dered — and talent is hereditary!^ And what were these hopes and what were these plans? Throw aside at once the idea of our dear old friend Fluellen and all that great group who look upon Alexander as a mere sworder. They do him justice so far as generalship is concerned, but do not touch upon his statecraft. Compared to him, Aris- totle, his teacher, was but a child. Aristotle's high- 1 B. c. 309. 2 B. c. 311. 3 Mahaflty, Ptolemies' Empire, p. 49 1:793 SECOND THE GREEKS est ideal was a small, very small Greek city, not on the sea but at a short and convenient distance from it, with a separate port like Athens so that commerce might be carried on, and foreigners with their ships pass in and out, and neither they nor trade contam- inate the citizens; whose wants should be ministered to by slaves, thus leaving them entirely at liberty to pursue higher things. The master of the world, rising far above this in- substantial vision, sought a practical and at the same time a profound solution. The merest outline or suggestion of his plan has come down to us. That little is enough, however, to claim our admiration. That it was to some extent known and understood at the time and remained common knowledge for four centuries at least, we have the testimony of Plutarch directly in point. It is in his oration concerning the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great. "The so much admired common-wealth of Zeno, first author of the Stoic-sect, aims singly at this, that neither in cities nor in towns we should live under laws, distinct one from another, but that we should look upon all men in general to be our fellow coun- try-men and citizens, observing one manner of living and one kind of order, like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture. This Zeno wrote, fancying to himself, as in a dream, a certain scheme of civil order and the image of a philosoph- ical common-w^ealth, but Alexander made good his words by his deeds; for he did not, as Aristotle advised him, rule the Grecians like a moderate prince, and insult the barbarians like an absolute ty- [So] SECOND THE GREEKS rant; nor did he take particular care of the first as his friends and domestics, and scorn the latter as mere brutes and vegetables, which would have filled his empire with fugitive incendiaries and perfidious tumults, but, believing himself sent from Heaven as the common moderator and arbiter of all nations, and subduing those by force whom he could not as- sociate to himself by fair offers, he laboured thus, that he might bring all regions, far and near, under the same dominion, and then, as in a festival goblet, mixing lives, manners, customs, wedlock all to- gether, he ordained that every one should take the whole habitable world for his country, of which his camp and army should be the chief metropolis and garrison, that his friends and kindred should be the good and virtuous, and that the vicious only should be accounted foreigners." "We follow," Plutarch makes Alexander say, "the example of Hercules, we emulate Perseus, and tread in the footsteps of Bacchus, our divine ancestor and founder of our race." Hercules, among other labors for mankind, cleaned the filthy Augean stable and perhaps repre- sented to antiquity an exalted Sanitary Corps: Per- seus slew the Gorgon, one glance at whom turned man to stone and which typified perhaps the para- lyzing horror of Plague, Pestilence and Famine: Bacchus introduced the vine (agriculture) by force where he could not persuade, and carried it in tri- umph to legendary regions unmapped, unknown, vaguely called India. These were the beneficent divinities in whose footsteps Alexander trod; these [Si] SECOND THE GREEKS were the great missionaries the redeemers of the world whose acts Alexander emulated. To weld together Greek and Persian was the fun- damental idea, for Alexander knew they were of the same race. White, blue veins {Sangre azul of the Spaniard), fair hair, and blue eyes marked both Greek and Persian, and distinguished them clearly from Asiatic and Egyptian. Moreover, the Persians were the dominant race and of course the only race to be considered politically, or from the point of view of marriage, for the subject peoples were sub- ject peoples in the fullest significance of the term and no free-born proud Macedonian would mate with them. The joint numbers, furthermore, would be so great as to insure control and make successful revolt impossible. To break down the remnants of antagonism between Greek and Persian was Alex- ander's great campaign, a campaign waged almost single-handed against Macedonian and Persian alike. To this end Greek cities were scattered over Asia — to this end the thirty thousand Persian youth were Greek instructed — to this end were Persians placed in high office and Alexander assumed the tiara and the Persian dress in State ceremonies — to this end the thousands of marriages between Mace- donian men and Persian women were dowered by him — ten thousand on a single occasion — to this end he himself married one daughter of the royal house and at the same time gave her sister in marriage to his dearest friend Hephaestion, in order that their children might be cousins, so highly did he think of blood kinship — to this end he faced conspiracy, mu- C82] SECOND THE GREEKS tiny, aye, death itself — and conquered. For before he died all opposition had been quelled — and although the earthly tabernacle of the flesh covered with wounds could not longer sustain the flame of the spirit, and his brief life ended before he could so- lidify the new realm of fact and thought which he had created, still historians trace to him the sudden unfolding of the world and find the foundations of his enduring monument cast deep in the eternal sub- stance of his greatness. At the time of Alexander's death Greek dominion stretched from the Delta of the Indus to the north- ern boundary of Sogdiana, well toward the heart of Central Asia, thence westward to Western Sicily, thence south to Cyrene, and covered all between — a greater land area probably than that of Imperial Rome. The natural result of territorial expansion was race expansion. The Seleucids continued Alexander's policy of founding Greek cities hither and yon in Asia. Ptolemy made Greeks welcome in Alexan- dria. As mercenaries they marched and died, or sailed and died, for each and every of Alexander's rival survivors. As merchants they pushed their commerce far and wide: their great bank at Rhodes had to be reckoned with by kings and pirates, both of whom flourished at that time. But all this was at the expense of Greece itself. True, Athens was still the school-mistress of the world, slowly yielding to Alexandria, but the population of Greece proper SECOND THE GREEKS rapidly declined. Rural Greece had for generations been losing its people to the cities and now its cities lost population to the world, while at the same time their laws restricting citizenship were breaking down. Internationalism radically sapped civic pride and civic patriotism and gave nothing to re- place. The Greeks, for whom love of the gods and love of their native town had been indeed religion, became atheists and egotists, no union among them — no Greek nation possible. Religion and patriotism died. But intelligence, which had been slowly developed through so many ages, did not pass at once. The Per- sian parks or paradises (game preserves) and Alex- ander's collections for Aristotle^ were doubtless hints to Ptolemy and led to the important collections of the University at Alexandria, whose group of In- dian white cattle is also reminiscent of Alexander's care in selecting the finest Indian cattle to improve the Macedonian herds (in regard to the laws of breeding he seems to have been peculiarly well in- formed) ; the astronomical instruments — the vast li- brary — the corps of lecturers — the faculty — all these multifarious activities grew from Ptolemy's founda- tion planned at about the time the ignorant Romans began butchering their way on a large scale to power.^ Athens at about this same time gives us the Stoics^ and the Epicureans, her last great contributions to philosophy. The torch is then taken up by Alex- 1 Pliny, Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII, p. i6. ^ (Stoa). 2 300 B. c, Samnite War. 1:84: SECOND THE GREEKS andria and Euclid prepares for all time snares and pitfalls for innocent and unborn youth. Eratos- thenes^ not only measures the earth but also maps it with remarkable correctness. The influence of the moon on the tides is discovered by an astronomer of Marseilles. Another of Samos antedates Galileo by seventeen centuries and shows that earth and planets revolve about the sun. Archimedes^ of Syracuse, one of millions slain by Roman soldiers, discovers specific gravity and is so proud of his mathematical re- searches that the solution of one important problem is placed upon his tombstone, and in recognizing this Cicero discovers his grave. Anatomists explain the brain's relation to the nerves. Books are care- fully edited, dictionaries compiled, and much later ( I20 B. C.) grammar is written. It is clear that the great and purely intellectual manifestations during this whole period from 500 B. C. to the year one were not confined to one spot, but, save the philosopher Zeno^ (a Semite), were confined to one race — the Greek. All over the Hel- lenistic world from Gaul^ to Thrace^ remarkable evidences of mental power accumulated, and as these manifestations grew less and less frequent the Greek blood became less and less pure. There may be no connection between the two facts, but it cannot be denied that the facts existed and that they were syn- chronous. Never yet has it been claimed that mon- grelism was the logical physical basis of mental elevation and intellectual distinction.'^ iC. 250 B.C. 2 212 B.C. 3 (Stoic). *Pytheas. ^ Aristotle. 6 Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 151. "Mongrel people . . . never attain real prosperity." SECOND THE GREEKS The wide dispersion of the Greeks, the relaxation of all the old rules looking toward the preserva- tion of race purity, the increasing refusal of the best stock to reproduce, luxury, vice, the lust of wealth and power, all combined, would have sufficed to break down and destroy this wonderful and deli- cate instrument — Greek mentality; but among the Alban Hills a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand lowered and little by little increased and spread — portentous — until about 200 B. C. it darkened Greece, later the East, and then — the intelligence of the world. THIRD THE ROMANS The Romans belonged to the same stock as the Persians and the Greeks.^ They were a pure race and kinsmen of the small tribes which peopled La- tium, all of whom before 500 B. C. were in a lower state of civilization than the Etruscans, who were of a different race. At the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins^ the Romans seem to have been even more pastoral than agricultural; they were ignorant and semi-barbarians, without manufactures and without commerce. Their numbers were few and the nobles still recognized their tribal divisions. From the ne- cessities of the case all the men were trained to war. In this they resembled the Spartans, but whereas the Spartans brought up their children to lie and steal, the Roman code was severe and moral. There was 1 Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, pp. 13, 15, 47, 127. * C. 510 b. c. 1:86: THIRD THE ROMANS little or no education, unless perhaps the youth were instructed in the twelve tables just as our children used to be taught the ten commandments. The Ro- mans had yet another advantage over the Spartans in that the family was an almost sacred institution and the gods of the hearth, the Lares and Penates, the closest divinities.^ Athens expelled the tyrants^ and instituted under the name of democracy what proved, often, mob rule, that is, the rule of whim and passion. Rome expelled her kings and chose to be governed by an intangible something above all and to be obeyed by all, which when later embodied in the twelve tables became to a great extent the rule of written law.^ In both cities at first the influence of the best (Aristos) largely controlled. It rapidly grew weak in Athens, where individualism gradually led to the demagogue. In Rome the patricians were an organized body and so long as the individuals composing the Senate re- tained their race vigor they conducted affairs. Very soon it was found difficult to keep its number up to three hundred, and to the "patres" were joined wealthy plebeians, "conscripti."^ Thus the ranks of the Senate constantly received fresh blood recruited from the ablest by the rough test of wealth. About 445 B. C. intermarriage between the nobles and ple- beians, theretofore forbidden, was legalized.'^ This was a great step forward because it broadened and deepened the source of supply and among people of iBury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 139. Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 90. See, for Lares, p. 185. 2 C. 510 B. c. 3 Momrasen, Rome, Vol. I, pp. 282 et seq. * Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 283. 5 Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 318. THIRD THE ROMANS pure race mental force is no more confined to one class than is bodily strength.^ Furthermore, the *'conscripti" could not address the Senate ; they voted by taking part in the divisions. As one haughty noble expressed it, they voted with their feet. In the popular meetings in the forum, moreover, free speech was not permitted in early Rome.^ The meeting could accept or reject a pro- posal; debate was strictly limited by the presiding officer and amendment was not allowed. The dema- gogue was not encouraged. A sternly practical workaday life for nobles and people alike long remained the Roman ideal, and so long as this ideal held sway Rome prospered. This was joined with insistence on conformity — all must be alike. To be different in small matters was a mis- demeanor; in large matters was a crime. A painter or a poet, like the play-actor then and in Elizabeth's time, would have been a vagabond had he existed. For literature and art the Roman in great measure substituted the gladiator and in so doing invoked upon himself and his posterity a curse. The Greek never really learned that a partial sur- render of individual liberty made for greater freedom to his community. The Roman surrendered much personal independence for the common weal and in obeying his father learned to obey the State.^ All were farmers, the noble and the plebeian alike, and all labored with their hands. The poor, the prole- tariat, seem to have been a comparatively small class. 1 Shakespeare, Lincoln, Darwin, Pitt. ^ Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 35. 2 Mommsen, Rome, Vol. I, p. 381. C88: THIRD THE ROMANS In the sturdy, self-respecting large middle class whose members revered authority and regarded the magistrate as empowered to govern them and not to be governed by them, lay the strength of Rome. As the Romans gradually beat back or overcame the neighboring tribes in Latium, they absorbed these people of the same race into their own commonwealth and pushed out farther and farther their agricultural development. With the Etruscans they never seem to have mingled closely. In a later and wider cam- paign Rome, curiously enough, secured the ascend- ancy of the Latin tribes in Italy in the same year which saw Philip of Macedon the master of Greece,^ but in this final success Rome refused to concede equality and became the overlord. Then came the contest with the Samnites, and after a long struggle Rome became the mistress of all Central Italy, and dominant from Cisalpine Gaul to the Greek cities on the south.2 One of the most picturesque figures of antiquity is Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. Called in by unreliable Tarentum to stem the Roman tide, he proved a bril- liant general.^ His plans brought him into conflict with the Carthaginians in Sicily, then leagued with the Romans; worthless Tarentum thwarted him and betrayed herself; Pyrrhus withdrew and what was left of Magna Graecia was swallowed up. The Greek cities almost uniformly seemed to prefer for- eign domination to reciprocal concessions and con- cord. Individualism gone mad! Up to this time Roman expansion had been along 1 Chaeronea, 338 B. c. 2 295 b. c. ^ 280 B. c. [89] THIRD THE ROMANS agricultural and pastoral lines. New lands had been constantly opened to her colonists and her growth in free farm land was very much like that of ours in the early part of the last century. Families were large, population rapidly increased, and not till 268 B. C. did Rome begin to coin silver, because her commercial relations were so limited that a good medium of exchange had not been needed. All this time the strong family relation had been constantly maintained. Manners were simple, wants few, lux- ury unknown — but now a change takes place. The lust for wealth and power begins. Carthage, which had joined hands to drive Pyrrhus from Italy, ham- pered Rome's commercial ambition, so Rome at- tacked Carthage.^ Mahan points out the disadvantage under which Rome labored in the first Punic war until she estab- lished her naval supremacy.^ This, among other things, compelled Hamilcar — since Rome could be attacked only through Gaul — to spend years in Spain, winning and developing resources, obtaining funds, materials and supplies, and building up his army. He did it in the teeth of the powerful party in Carthage who, in the lengths to which they went to secure peace at any price, proved that Carthage was already degenerate; since of this party the minority who led were in truth selfish traitors, and the majority of those who followed them lacked sense. Such men make the loathsome obstructionists we call professional conscientious objectors. ^ First Punic war, 264-241 B. c. 2 Influence of Sea Power on History, pp. 14 et seq. [903 THIRD THE ROMANS If Carthage refused supplies Hamilcar captured the Spanish silver mines and worked them. If Car- thage refused reinforcements he enlisted, trained and paid soldiers. "His achievements compelled Cato the elder, who a generation after Hamilcar's death beheld in Spain the still fresh traces of his working, to exclaim, not- withstanding all his hatred of the Carthaginians, that no king was worthy to be named by the side of Hamilcar Barca."^ This warrior and statesman met death just as the plans his genius drove on for nine years were matur- ing.^ Hasdrubal, his son-in-law, during the next eight years pressed on those plans.^ Between them, they built up for Carthage an empire in Spain which made up for all her losses in the first Punic war. His remittances to venal Carthage compelled the traitor- ous leaders to allow him to continue his work and bribed the corrupt rabble to sustain his policy. Rome, though warned time and again by the betrayers of Carthage, was lulled to false security as she con- sidered an invasion of Italy from Spain an impos- sibility by land, and, in the face of her fleet, an impos- sibility by sea. In 220 Hasdrubal was assassinated, and Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar, in his twenty-ninth year became general-in-chief. Each member of this distinguished family realized that the life of Carthage depended upon the death of Rome. It needed not the sanction of the dreadful oath which, as a mere lad nine years of age, Hannibal ^ Mommsen, Rome, Vol. II, p. 94. 2 236-228 B. c. ^ 227-220 B. c. 1:9a THIRD THE ROMANS swore, to deepen in him the family hatred of Rome, nor to strengthen the self-immolating patriotism which animated each of the three members of the "lion's brood" so long as life endured. Carthaginian traitors became more insistent in their warnings to Rome. Rome knew them to be traitors, and knew their hatred of Hannibal, and made undue allowance; and then again, without doubt, Hannibal's clever Roman spies kept suggest- ing the advisability of permitting Carthage to lose her army in attempting the impossible, for who would dream of forcing passage through northern Spain and southern Gaul, crossing great and un- bridged rivers, the unknown Pyrenees, the trackless Alps, and all the way pass through savage peoples whose only art was war? When Rome awoke Hannibal was on his way.^ Preparations had been made to send a Roman army into Africa, and Scipio to the Ebro to prevent Han- nibal from crossing that river. Scipio delayed. When he reached Marseilles on his way to Spain he found Hannibal at the Rhone. He again delayed. When he reached Avignon he found Hannibal had already slipped by and successful pursuit was out of the question. Scipio sent the main body of his troops to Spain in obedience to the original orders, and he himself with a small detachment returned to Italy, so that when Hannibal reached the valley of the Po there were no Roman legions ready to attack his exhausted and depleted army. 1 Second Punic war, 217-201 B. C. C92] THIRD THE ROMANS "The very devil of a man," said Napoleon, "he sacrificed half his force to reach the field of battle!" But we are not interested in details of war. We are, however, deeply interested in manifestations of supreme intelligence. The Semitic race in different branches, so long as pristine vigor was retained, has again and again proved to the world its eminence. From Hammurabi, the first lawmaker,^ to Mahomet" it has brought forth warriors, statesmen, prophets and kings — great warriors, great statesmen, great prophets and great kings — it has held universal sway — it has known the heights and depths and tasted the joys and woes of all degrees, from the exaltation of absolute dominion to the miseries of slavery. It has furnished the gauge or measure of human intelli- gence, from the abject superstition of the idolater to the awful agony of the attempt to "know thee, the one true God." In its mental processes it seems rad- ically different from the white race. Like the Nordic, however, it is moved, nay, it is swept along, by an insensate lust for wealth and power. It has shown itself beyond example cruel, and on the other hand, capable of self-sacrifice so unthinkable that mankind, wherever the story is told, bows down and adores. It has been the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and from its ranks, pure, spotless, unde- filed, has come the answer to that cry. Hannibal, whose very name'^ should have told his countrymen that he was their deliverer, was of splendid lineage. Illustrious sires begat illustrious sons. It was one of his family name, two hundred 1 2IOO B. c. 2 622 A. D. 2 "Grace of God." [93: THIRD THE ROMANS and fifty years before, who, at Himera, stood before the great altar invoking his God, while the battle raged against the Greek,^ and as victory poised doubtful and uncertain, the smoke grew darker and still more black while hecatombs w^ere cast upon the roaring flame, until, as evil tidings poured in, that he might compel his obdurate divinity to grant deliver- ance and triumph, he flung himself upon the pyre. From such wonderful tradition, from such devoted ancestry, Hannibal sprang forth. His was a mind for which no detail was too insignificant, no compre- hensive scheme too vast. His was imagination which seized the future on the instant, yet was ever based on caution which took a bond from fate. His judg- ment, unafifected by success or calamity, moved serenely to the best solution. He was a negotiator so able and so winning that he seemed to create allies, and was able to remain for thirteen years with a small and patchwork force, a force which never mutinied, a force as constant in disaster as it was in victory, amidst hundreds of thousands of foes, and would have saved Carthage had Carthage been worth sav- ing. But those degenerates were not worth salvation. They virtually betrayed Hannibal and at the same time betrayed themselves. From Rome he received the greatest tribute she ever paid to mortal man, because he inspired such terror that while he lived she could not sleep. She feared him, even when she had made him a homeless fugitive, more than she feared the armies and navies of the world, and when Flamininus persuaded 1 480 B. C. Bury, Greece, Vol. I, p. 328. 1:94: THIRD THE ROMANS the paltry prince on the confines of civilization with whom Hannibal had been finally driven to seek asy- lum and whom he had loyally and victoriously served, to murder him, and Hannibal, seeing his house surrounded by his butchers, took poison,^ Fla- mininus felt he had earned his proudest title to fame. Fame and infamy, so far as Flamininus is concerned, rub shoulders. But Hannibal, the defeated, the homeless wan- derer, the compulsory suicide, conquered Rome. His campaigns in Italy sealed her fate. Three hundred thousand Italians fell in those conflicts. The Senate, reduced to one hundred and twenty-three members, was with difficulty reconstituted. The proper ma- terial was lacking. One hundred and seventy-seven new senators had to be created. Four hundred towns, representing generations of slowly accumulated cap- ital, were destroyed. Large tracts, hitherto intensely cultivated, became desolations. The law-abiding Roman farmer was a thing of the past. If he sur- vived, years of camp life made him a desperado, and the destruction of home and farm made him, past redemption, a vagabond, a wanderer on the face of the earth. Bands of robbers to whom the slaves joined themselves ravaged far and wide. Seven thousand were executed in one province (Apulia) in a single year. The little farms were replaced by great reaches of pasture where foreign slaves, as wild as the cattle, tended the herds. The sturdy, self-re- specting middle class, the glory and stay of Rome, was no more. A wise, far-sighted government might ^183 B.C. Sixty-seven years old. C95: THIRD THE ROMANS even now have drawn together and unified all the Latins, have re-established the farmer, and with him the race. But the war had shown that corn could be imported from Greece and Egypt, and the genius in Rome who should propose large-minded measures to the mental mediocrity of the Senate or the mental imbecility of the mob could count absolutely upon ignominious failure and violent death. No integral part of a pure-blooded community can be degraded or blotted out without untold injury, because with well-bred stock intelligence is not lim- ited to any one class, but is indigenous in the whole race, and the wider the basis, the more numerous the population, the greater is the opportunity for the manifestation of mental power, and the more gen- eral the distribution of mental power the greater in turn is the opportunity for the manifestation of that rare quality we call genius. The whole advancement of the world has de- pended upon the driving power of a comparatively few great minds. Even at the best periods, and there are only two such periods in recorded history of which we have definite information, the mass of the population has been inert or opposed to improvement. At the close of the Hannibalic war no Roman fam- ily but mourned its dead. Ravaged Latium contrib- uted its quota to the four hundred townships which were destroyed, and its quota to their eight hundred thousand homeless or enslaved wanderers.^ Badly broken as were senate, nobles, knights and 1 The total population of Italy, south of the valley oi the Po, may be estimated (200 b. c.) at from 3,000,000 to 3,500,000, of which 300,000 were dead and 800,000 vagabonds, making one-third of all victims of the war. [:q6i THIRD THE ROMANS rich plebeians, they were yet a solidarity. So far as possible they seized upon the vacant lands and sub- stituted slaves for free farmers, and their rule was to select slaves from as many different nationalities as possible, since, strangers to each other, and speaking different languages, they would be deterred from uniting against their owners. The change from a state where noble, commoner, and peasant shared in governing to a state of but two classes, rich and poor, began at this time and went forward with constantly accelerated rapidity. The Senate tended more and more to become a mere oli- garchy bitterly hostile to new men, — new blood ;^ and its stupid and selfish policy of neglecting to re- constitute its middle class ^ deprived Rome of a great part of the sturdy basis of its race life, and in the slaughter during the war of the strongest and most vigorous, gravely impaired her power of high-bred reproduction. In the beginning of her history Rome fought to save herself, then fought to dominate as well as to secure her boundaries, and now finally, when her vic- tory over Carthage gave her, in addition to all Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and the best part of Spain, and her government gradually turned into an oligarchy, that oligarchy in its selfish, heavy-witted way slowly evolved the idea of living in luxury at the expense of the world. With Rome war had been a profession. She now made it a trade, and as a trade it became more and 1 Mommsen, Vol. Ill, p. 75. 2 "Where slavery exists there is no middle class." Rationalism in Eu- rope, Lecky, Vol. II, p. 251. 1:97] THIRD THE ROMANS more atrocious. Her soldiers no longer fought for the republic, but for loot. In Spain, Marcus Cato^ sold the whole mass of certain revolted communities into slavery. The war with the Boii became a slave hunt until the commanding general reported that of that powerful and numerous tribe only old men and children were left. In Sardinia^ the victor boasted he had slain or captured eighty thousand, and kept sending such droves of slaves to the Roman market that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb. In the war against Macedon, after humiliating experiences with incapable generals, Rome at last sent Lucius ^milianus Paulus, the son of the consul who fell at Cannae, a man of good stock, of the old nobility, but poor. On his merits alone the people elected him a second time consul.^ Instead of flat- tering them, he told them that as they had made him general he supposed they intended him to conduct the war, and he would thank them to let him alone and to abstain from the usual advice and interference, and he also told them to be silent and obey. This speech has given an impression that Romans were still of stern and upright character. As a matter of fact, he was "one of the only men in Rome to whom money could not be offered," and his election was all the more extraordinary as his poverty had hindered his political career, since the slogan was, No bribes, no votes. Venality! Corruption! The whole moral fibre had given way. The Senate gave Paulus secret instructions in obe- dience to which in one day he "gave up seventy town- 1 195 B.C. 2 177 B.C. 2j63b.c. :98] THIRD THE ROMANS ships of Epirus to plunder and sold the inhabitants — one hundred and fifty thousand — into slavery."^ The whole Senate was involved in this infamy. Their faithful ally, Eumenes, the Senate deliber- ately humiliated and robbed, nor did it dare to face him when he personally attempted to present his case. On the contrary, it hastily passed a law that, in future, no kings should be allowed to come to Rome, hiding its trepidation under republican demagogism. Rhodes, which from Alexander's time had been the great Greek bank, the leading commer- cial Greek city, rivalling Rome herself, was with baseness and cruelty deliberately ruined and her competition killed. The battle of Pydna^ against the Macedonians, the last surviving vigorous Greek stock, was followed by the execution of all Greeks who served in the Mace- donian army, and thousands supposed to be impli- cated with or favorable to the Macedonians were sentenced to transportation and carried ofif to Italy. Naturally informers plied a thriving trade. The son of Perseus, the defeated King of Macedon, came to earn his living in an Italian town (Alba on the Fu- cine Lake) as a clerk, a position usually filled by a slave or f reedman. Macedon was disarmed and left open to the incursions of the barbarians. In turning war into slave hunting, Rome's military spirit and discipline so declined that scandalous in- stances of cowardice occurred.^ Rumor of a slight skirmish was magnified on one occasion and both the Roman army and navy took to flight. The gilded iMommsen, Vol. II, p. 329. 2 jgg b. c. 3 jyiommsen, Vol. II, p. 367. 1:993 THIRD THE ROMANS youth, the sons of nobles, turned recreant, and public laws were passed against them as such. At this time, about 150 B. C, Mommsen, who wrote before Darwin's discoveries were known, and before Galton proved talent to be hereditary, with the power of divination granted to mental acumen states:^ "No doubt a certain hereditary character was inher- ent [in the Senate^] ... in so far as statesmanly wisdom and statesmanly experience are bequeathed from the able father to the able son, and the inspir- ing spirit of an illustrious ancestry fans every noble spark within the human breast into flame. . . . But, while in the earlier period the hereditary charac- ter of the dignity had been to a certain extent borne out by the inheritance of intrinsic worth, and the senatorial aristocracy had guided the state ... by virtue of the right of the superior, as contrasted with the mere ordinary man, it sank in this epoch (and with specially great rapidity after the end of the Hannibalic war) from its original high position into an order of lords filling up its ranks by heredi- tary succession, but exercising collegiate misrule." As the world is constituted, all society rests upon the family, which in turn rests upon the marriage tie. Degrade the family and you degrade mankind — elevate the family and you elevate mankind. Rome degraded the family. Severely as the demoralization caused by forty years of war had impaired, by the destruction of so many of the strongest and best, the capacity for its vigorous reproduction by the Roman race, another 1 Mommsen, Vol. II, p. 345. THIRD THE ROMANS result still more terrible now appears. The family tie, that citadel of Roman power, became relaxed. Cato had voiced the accepted and the right idea that in marriage one should "look to good descent." Marriage now became for both parties a mere busi- ness speculation. Women threw off the restraint of conservatism and from modest matrons became more and more brazen hussies. They too grasped at money and power. Cato accused them of endeavoring "to rule the rulers of the world. "^ Divorces multiplied. Men as early as 234 B. C. had been gravely re- proached for celibacy, for unwillingness to marry. "The evil of grisettes spread with the rapidity and virulent effect of the plague." The boy favorite was more and more eagerly purchased in the teeth of the heavy tax imposed by the censor Cato on this most abominable species of slaves.^ Indeed, the tax soon failed to be imposed at all, so strong and vile was opposing public opinion. "Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of the families of high rank. For instance, the consul Gains Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife and his stepson in order to occasion a supplementary election to the consulship, and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter — a plot which was successful."^ Asiatic and Greek luxury with its infamies was transferred to Rome. Wine was no longer mixed with water in the drinking bouts which constantly occurred, and these and dicing reached a point re- quiring legislative interference. Refusal to work 1 Mommsen, Vol. II, p. 433. ^ 180 B.C. Mommsen, Vol. II, p. 432. 2 184 B. c. THIRD THE ROMANS and the constant street loafer caused Cato to propose paving the market with pointed stones. Increase of gladiatorial shows whetted the appetite for cruelty of the whole people. "That under such a state of things plans for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of the authorities need excite no surprise."^ Nero, if he caused the great fire, was a mere plagiarist. The idea was old. He had been anticipated by two centuries. The year 151 B.C. saw Lucius Lucullus consul. On his arrival in Spain as commander-in-chief he found to his disgust and rage that Marcellus had already concluded peace. His hope of plunder and glory was dashed. The large tribe or nation next beyond the people with whom Marcellus had been at war were peacefully living on the best of terms with Rome. These were his selected victims. They asked what wrong they had done. Lucullus answered by suddenly attacking Cauca. The citi- zens paid him a large sum to spare them. Lucullus took their money and then massacred twenty thou- sand and enslaved the rest. It makes one's blood boil! He then advanced, pillaging and murdering, but suddenly found himself without supplies in the midst of a resolute and inflamed people. With diffi- culty he escaped. Meantime, in the South, Galba had been defeated by the Lusitanians.^ The next year he succeeded in obtaining what can now be called a characteristic Roman triumph, for with some of the victorious tribes he concluded a treaty 1 Mommsen, Vol. II, p. 438. 2 150 B.C. C1O23 THIRD THE ROMANS of peace, and then, having induced, by a promise of settlement on better land, seven thousand of them to come in, he disarmed and massacred or enslaved them all. In Africa Carthage, reconstituted and reinvigor- ated before his flight by the great Hannibal, was rapidly regaining her wealth and commanding com- mercial position, and this, too, in despite of Rome's best effort at perfidy and oppression. In Greece and Asia, Rome had already established her power for crime, more by reason of the fact that Eastern mon- grelism had proceeded further, and that the conse- quent disunion and weakness was greater than that of Rome, than because of any courage or capacity left in Rome. The outbreak of the third Macedonian war and the third Punic war^ stopped Rome's aggressive campaign in Spain, but not her campaign of guile. The Spanish rose under Viriathus, one of the few of the seven thousand who had escaped Galba. It is not unpleasant to read that Galba lost half his army and was himself captured and slain. ^ Five thousand men sent to reinforce him were destroyed. Gaius Plautius Praetor^ was so utterly defeated that he took to winter quarters in midsummer, and later Rome exiled him for disgracing her. She had no sense of humor! The army of Unimanus was de- stroyed and that of Negidius vanquished. ^milianus, on assuming command, found the sol- diers so demoralized^ that after a few defeats he had them build a wall around themselves lest the Span- 1 149 B. C. 2j^7B. C. 3 1^6 B.C. 4 14s B.C. THIRD THE ROMANS iards should do them bodily harm, and kept them within it for a year; and his cowardly successor was so continually defeated^ that he also was compelled in midsummer to shut himself up in Corduba. In turn, his, the coward's, successor Servilianus with large reinforcements was compelled to retreat. The next year after some success and the usual savage cruelty, massacres, cutting off of hands and so forth, he was utterly defeated and his army was completely at the Spaniards' mercy.^ Instead of butchering and enslaving them, the civilized Viriathus made peace with the barbarous Roman. It was a foolish thing to do, for the Senate as a matter of course authorized his successor Caepio to plot secretly against Viria- thus and sanctioned his breach of faith in attacking him.^ Viriathus resisted and the Senate and Caepio bribed assassins to murder him. In the case of Numantia, the consul Quintus Pom- peius was compelled to conclude peace.^ Hostages were given, the first payments made and received, and when the last payment was tendered, the consul disowned his word. The matter was referred to the Senate, who sanctioned the consul's shameless act and ordered the war to continue. At the moment it availed them little, for so cowardly had the Romans become that, on the false rumor that aid was coming to Numantia, the whole Roman army ran away. The Numantians caught up with them, surrounded them and again compelled them to make peace in- stead of exterminating them, and the Senate again reneged the peace. 1 143 B. C. 2 i^j B. c. 2 140 B. C. * 139 B.C. THIRD THE ROMANS Falsehood, cruelty and cowardice are conclusive evidence of degeneracy. The Roman story, on which so much moralizing has been based, is, in point of fact, a revolting tale of infamy. In the East "the government of Rome deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of the blessings of order."^ In Africa the tale of the destruction of Carthage is a long horror, and one looks forward eagerly to Marius and Sulla, Octavius and Antony, and the retribution of the carnage which they wrought among the Senators and the Romans. Not a tenth part of the population of Car- thage survived famine, pestilence and the sword. Thirty thousand men and twenty-five thousand women were all practically sold as slaves.^ At the time of the capture of the citadel a great part of the city was still standing. The Senate ordered the city levelled, together with all the townships loyal to it. The preliminary conflagration raged for seven- teen days, and when in the middle of the last century the city wall was excavated, the layer of ashes cover- ing it was four or five feet deep. Over the site the Senate ordered the plow passed, and having made a desolation called it peace. The Roman boorish ignorance of books is illus- trated by an incident at this time. The republican Senate, during its whole existence, authorized the publication of only one book. This was a book by Mago, a Carthaginian by the way, on agricul- ture.^ Now the libraries of Carthage which had been salvaged from the conflagration, came into the 1 Mommsen, III, p. 22. - 146 b. c. ■"' Mommsen, Vol. Ill, p. 87. n 105:1 THIRD THE ROMANS Senate's possession. These the Senate gave to their African allies in lieu of territory. In Greece the situation had become pitiable; in want and misery, the diminution of the population was emphasized by refusal to reproduce; the people beggared not only in character, honor, but also in purse — the shadow of her former self, Greece wasted away. Scarce a remnant of the old blood was left. Her history continues, but it is no longer Greek his- tory. There was but one thriving town left in all Greece. This, her only hope, "The Eye of Hellas," Corinth, met the fate of Carthage, and by the delib- erate act of the Senate itself. Notwithstanding reckless destruction, it yielded to the savage soldiery a wealth of beauty beyond the appreciation of their sodden minds. Even the tombs were violated, and so multitudinous were the objects placed there, that, great as the pillage had been, fresh discoveries of wonderful craftsmanship have been made in our own day. Commercial rivalry with Rome ceased. "From Rome national and manly honor had fled." So worthless was her government that it permitted a rival power to grow up unchecked. The navy of Rome had been allowed to rot, the subject provinces were disarmed and unable to protect themselves, and pirates growing in number and power commanded the seas. The great trade in the Eastern waters was the slave trade. The Roman mart at Delos was its centre. Ten thousand slaves are said to have been landed in one morning at the island of Delos and all sold before night. These slaves were procured by raids, just as our negro slaves were procured in Do6] THIRD THE ROMANS Africa, and Roman revenue farmers vied v^ith the pirates in securing victims. The King of Bithynia^ was called upon to furnish a contingent. He replied that he was unable to do so, because all the people capable of labor had been dragged from his king- dom by revenue farmers. In the old days Minos, King of Crete, was said to have rooted out piracy. Crete now became the centre of piratical operations, and Rhodes expended her last resources in her attempts to put down Cretan pirates. Crete itself is a singular exhibition of the awful results of mongrelism. In the mixture of races on that island the Greek had become so con- taminated that only his worst qualities were left. Constant internecine brawls had desolated the land. The Island of a Hundred Cities was marked with ruined sites. Robbery with violence had risen to brigandage, and brigandage had been sublimated into universal armed anarchy. The only point of union left was that cohesion in piracy which made Crete a terror to the East. Slave power was then what steam power is now, and the maw of the Roman capitalist for slaves could not be glutted. At the expense of the small farmers who were left the rich man increased his holdings and increased his slaves. A common method was, while the farmer was away from home at work, to turn his wife and children out into the fields, and when he returned he found a rich adversary in possession ready to in- voke the nine points of the law. The free laborer was often employed in unhealthy tasks, or unhealthy 1 lOO B. C. nio73 THIRD THE ROMANS localities, as his death would not impair the chattel inventory of his employer, for slaves were of course valued as cattle. The treatment which these poor people, ravaged from their homes and carried to a foreign land, re- ceived beggars description. Our own negro slavery was in comparison a merciful dispensation. The men, gentle and simple alike, branded in the cheek, and often working in the fields in fetters, were fre- quently confined for the night in underground pris- ons. The fate of the women was often even worse! Later, Rome bred slaves, but now it was less expen- sive to fill up the broken ranks by purchase. The fate of the slave was more dreadful in Sicily than in Italy, and there it was that the first slave revolt took place. This explains clearly why it was that the rem- nant of the middle class in Italy vanished. Just as in our own South before the war there were but two ranks in society, the planter and the poor white, so in Rome the poor white formed the proletariat. "Beasts had their lairs, but nothing was left to the Roman burgesses save the air and sunshine. The masters of the world had no longer a clod that they could call their own." Already Scipio ^milianus had recognized the in- capacity of the Roman government. In laying down their office the censors had been wont to ask the gods to grant greater power and glory to the state. The censor Scipio only entreated them to preserve the state. Tiberius Gracchus also appreciated this situ- ation and endeavored to restore the Roman farmer to the commonwealth. It of course meant revolu- CioS;] THIRD THE ROMANS tion, for it meant a change in the governmental power of the oligarchy, and he and three hundred of his followers were bludgeoned to death by the senators personally and their aristocratic friends. If ever at- tempt at civic revolution was justified, this one was, for the rule of the Senate was so infamous that any change would probably have been a benefit. And now the treatment of the allied Latin towns which had been so staunch to Rome in her periods of fearful distress becomes so bad that a serious insur- rection breaks out. Fregellae, the second city of Italy, declared war on Rome, but as usual was be- trayed, and the harsh treatment it received crushed the insurrection before it was fairly organized. The matter is alluded to merely to indicate that the mis- government, cruelty and injustice of the Roman gov- ernment knew no bounds. Gaius Gracchus,^ who seems to have been perhaps the ablest man up to this time Rome produced, with a vision more clear than that of his older brother Tiberius, took up the task left unfinished at his brother's death. He seems to have thoroughly under- stood that there was no governing ability left in any class in Rome. His mother Cornelia, still cherishing and worshipping the dead and gone ideal Roman state, adjured him to desist, but his resolution was unalterable, for he understood Rome's degeneracy. He was probably the greatest orator Rome ever had, and trusted to persuasion in part, but mostly to the purchase of the voters and not to arms to obtain his end. For this purpose he secured constant free dis- 1 151-121 B. C. n 109:1 THIRD THE ROMANS tribution of food to the proletariat. He separated, so far as possible, the rich mercantile class from the nobles and Senate by giving them unhampered the plunder of Asia. He knew that only one form of government was left for Rome, and that was a des- potism. But the Senate was a united body. His own forces were disorganized and could not resist the armed attack of the Senate, and the bounty offered for his head was paid. At the same time, to make their bargain good, the Senators are reported to have strangled in addition three thousand of his followers in prison. For the second time the Senate resorted to violence. They sowed the wind! Gaius Gracchus dead, once more the Senate "sat on the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, in- dignant at the institutions of the State which it ruled and yet incapable of systematically assailing them; vacillating in all its conduct save where its own ma- terial advantage called for a decision, a picture of faithlessness, of inconstancy, of woeful impotence, of the meanest selfishness — an unsurpassed ideal of mis- rule."^ Never had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of capacity, and the utter de- pravity of Roman nobles is made manifest by the fear- ful crimes which continued to come to light in rapid succession. In the hands of such creatures as this lay the so-called government of the world. It was at this time that the servile insurrection headed by the Roman knight Titus Vetius was sup- pressed,^ not by the legion which marched against it, but by insidious treachery. The plunder of the prov- 1 Mommsen, Vol. Ill, p. 142. - 104 B. c. [no] THIRD THE ROMANS inces went on unchecked, for the jury to try this of- fense was virtually composed of the plunderers themselves. In Sicily, the free provincials were by the rich reduced to slavery. The court inquired into the matter, and eight hundred processes were de- cided against the slave-owners. Such justice shocked the rich plunderers, who put so much pressure on the court that the rest were ordered to return instantly to those who called themselves their masters. In the rising which ensued Morgantia was besieged by the slaves and would have fallen but for its defense by the slaves in the town whose masters promised them legal freedom for their aid. The town saved by the valor of these slaves, the Roman governor declared the promises of liberty void! The war with Jugurtha is one long story of Roman venality, bribery and corruption — the whole Senate and its generals in the field bought — scarcely an hon- est man to be found. Cowardice and treachery dis- tinguished the Roman arms. It was during the prog- ress of this war that Sulla, one of the greatest minds Rome ever produced, came into notice. Marius also became conspicuous, and the change introduced by him in the method of raising the army turned the old burgess militia into mercenaries, hirelings whose own the sheep were not. A few only of the many instances have been given. Unnumbered crimes, the cruelties of weakness, have been passed over. One sole witness has been called against Rome. Rome herself testifies trumpet- tongued. The overwhelming evidence cannot be met or evaded. Consistent in dignity and moral ele- THIRD THE ROMANS vation so long as her stock was uncontaminated ; equally consistent as her race vigor declined in base- ness, she struts before us, callous to shame, proud even of her degradation. But the feet of the image were of clay! And lo! the stone cut out without hands is poised to smite/ The Cimbri moved upon Italy.^ They occupied the territory of a tribe friendly to Rome. Carbo ordered them away. Instead of attacking, they com- plied. Carbo gave them guides who led them into an ambush he had prepared for them. The only thing which preserved the treacherous Romans from being utterly annihilated was the bad weather. As it was, they succeeded with great loss in escaping. New levies were with difficulty made. With them the consul Silanus attacked in Southern Gaul.^ So thorough was the defeat that the Cimbri took the Roman camp. The disturbed conditions roused the Helvetii, who lured Longinus into an ambush, de- stroyed him and his legate and the greater portion of his soldiers,^ and having taken half of all the prop- erty and exacted hostages, passed the survivors under the yoke and let them go. Finally on the Rhone at Arausio, "Orange," the Romans met the Cimbri and another Cannae. One hundred and twenty thousand soldiers and camp followers were slain. Few escaped — ten, it is said. Terrified Rome lay open to the in- vaders. The Cimbri, however, turned to Spain and thus gave a delay of two years for Marius to raise, drill and discipline a fresh army. An alarming shortage of men fit for service was disclosed. 1 Daniel, II, 34. - 11^ b. c. ^ jq^ 3. c. * 107 B. c. THIRD THE ROMANS There was still virtue left in the old stock. Gaius Marius was the son of a poor day laborer born^ at what is to-day Casamare, "Marius' home." He was a man of but moderate ability, but in that day, when Rome was drained of generals as she was of soldiers, Marius ranked high. In spite of the folly of the oligarchy, which had constantly repressed talented men and was especially bitter against "new men," Marius was elected consul. The services of how many good men by this repression Rome had lost during all these years cannot be estimated. Rome's Lincolns were carefully kept splitting rails. On the Rhone at Aquae Sextiae,^ and a little later on the Po, where Hannibal fought his first battle, the peasant's son, chosen, not by the Senate, but by the people, saved Rome. Sulla was acting with him and showed marked ability. Race vigor, which had made up the loss in the first northern incursion, when Rome was taken and burnt,^ was now lacking. Rome drives her Italian allies into the social war, and Italy, saved from the Cimbri, is desolated by internecine strife. Marius is slighted and crowded to one side, and later in the strife of factions, burning with vengeance, sides with the demagogues. At first Sulla, who sides with the oligarchy, storms Rome with his army destined for Asia, and drives Marius into exile. Later Sulla, quite indifferent to the hostility towards him which had become manifest, embarks for Asia. Marius returns and the terror begins. The blood just shed by the proscriptions of the social war was scarce dry! 1 155 B.C. 2 102 B. C. 3 2JO B. C. ["33 THIRD THE ROMANS So hated were the Italians in Asia that Mithri- dates had no difficulty in arranging a general mas- sacre. The secret was wtU kept. In a day^ one hun- dred thousand were slain, and later, in the island of Delos, twenty thousand more, and that great mart of the Romans and of the pirates was wrecked. Mithridates was indeed formidable. Of vast re- sources, a capital Eastern politician of immense energy, his stupidity as a military man alone pre- vented disaster to Rome. As he had control of the sea, his commanding general proposed by slow star- vation to compel Sulla to retire. Mithridates over- ruled him and sent him imperative orders to attack instantly. Sulla, who had restored fighting disci- pline, defeated him, shut him up in Athens and be- sieged the city. At Rome the triumphant Marians burned Sulla's house, laid waste his country estate, outlawed him, compelled his wife and children to fly for their lives to his camp and appointed Marius general of the East in his stead. Sulla coolly continued the siege. Nothing seemed to disturb the plans of this remark- able man. In Africa, whither he went years before as a tyro and in an incredibly brief space mastered the art of war, Marius had sent him to negotiate for the sur- render of Jugurtha by the father-in-law to whom he had fled for protection. Sulla passed through the hos- tile army with a few attendants as calmly as if cross- ing the Forum and spent days in convincing the King 1 88 B. c. THIRD THE ROMANS that Rome's friendship was better worth than that of an able and crafty son-in-law. All the time Sulla's life hung by a thread. It was his head or Jugurtha's. He coolly diced with destiny and won. Later Marius led Jugurtha, apparelled in all his royal state, in triumph through Rome. But when Jugurtha had entered the *'bath of ice," as he called the chilly vault beneath the Capitol where he was strangled, and the African king sent a piece of sculpture to Rome to commemorate his pious surrender of his son-in-law — unveiled, it showed Sulla, not Ma- rius, receiving Jugurtha! The King understood the facts. Sulla's goddess was a combination of love and for- tune. He always carried her little golden image about him. He believed absolutely in her peculiar favor. He really cared but for pleasure and faced danger and arduous toil that he might win for him- self periods of luscious riot. Then he was easy, neg- ligent, diverted ; but with an object in view, intense, concentrated, alert. He passed through life tasting every excitement, unhampered by any scruple, equally amused by the bufifoon, perilous negotiation, or military conquest, his physical energy never jaded, his appetite for pleasure never satiated. Such was the man who, with a small, ill-supplied army, faced the most powerful sovereign of the East. To increase his peril, Flaccus, who on Marius' death had been appointed in his place, had with his army crossed into Greece and was moving toward Athens. Sulla pressed the siege with the greatest vigor and THIRD THE ROMANS finally took the place/ All other conquerors re- spected her aforetime glory. Sulla alone was indif- ferent to her glory as he was to all glory. Flaccus was killed later in a mutiny of his soldiers. His suc- cessor Fimbria, a demagogue who incited the revolt, when Sulla faced him committed suicide and the armies coalesced. With Mithridates peace was concluded. Indifferent to his fearful massacre, Sulla granted him the title of Friend and Ally of Rome, and her only dangerous foreign adversary, for the time being, was suppressed. Entirely at his leisure, Sulla made his arrangements to return. The Marians were confident. Did they not have Rome and all Italy at their back, a force to which that of Sulla was a mere bagatelle? Sulla crossed west- ward into Italy with a much smaller army compara- tively than that with which Caesar a few years later crossed eastward into Greece to meet Pompey. A brilliant campaign brought him to Rome.^ The struggle grew more horrible as it grew in length, and ended in a series of butcheries. The world lay at Sulla's feet. Notwithstanding the monstrous things he did, Sulla, so far as possible, acted in conformity with law. In general it was a simple process, for the Senate, learning his wish, enacted it. The vast powers he assumed, on his demand were sanctioned. The lives and property of all citizens were placed in his hands. His soldiers and his friends clamored for reward and there was plenty of property, prefer- ably that of the Marians. The Marians, in their 1 86 B. C. 2 g2 B. C. THIRD THE ROMANS days of triumph, had murdered wholesale. Marius himself had slain with vengeful fury. Now the Sul- lans slew, Sulla himself with the indifference of a machine. His personal vengeance was limited to a few. As a rule, not always by any means, the pro- scribed could see their names in the lists which were, more or less, duly posted. One quiet and unpretend- ing citizen, on finding his name, exclaimed, "My Al- ban farm hath denounced me!" Of course confisca- tion was fast and furious. Eighteen million dollars, which must be multiplied many times to reach the present equivalent, expresses some idea of the sum in which the wealthy were mulcted. The Marian fury had been fierce. That of the "conservatives" — think of such a title for such a party ! — was deliberate, cool, methodical, and all the more terrible because utterly remorseless. Was the boasted Roman Repub- lic governed by men or demons? Even during the terror Sulla found time for en- joyment. Tawny hair, piercing blue eyes, fair com- plexion readily suffused with color as emotion and red blood surged within, Norseman that he was, he presided over constant and splendid entertainments, taking more pleasure in a witty actor than in the de- generate men and women of the old nobility who elbowed their way in. Nevertheless on him was thrown the burden of reorganizing the Constitution. He hated the task, but there was no other mind of surpassing ability in Rome. What other Roman would have brought back from Athens Aristotle's works? Even Caesar was then but a stripling and, moreover, out of favor. D173 THIRD THE ROMANS He was not boasting, as he did later, of his family- connection with Marius, but took a foreign trip and probably learned at this time that to be a political power the condition precedent was to be the com- mander of an army. It is useless to detail Sulla's laws. These soon passed or were modified out of life. They restored the worthless oligarchy to power. It was too feeble to retain it. Sulla knew Rome's capacity for self- government was dead. Flooding the Senate with new creations gave numbers, but not character and mentality. He would not take the trouble to govern the world himself. All he would do was to buttress his Senate with the best props he could devise. In the first place, he allotted (not to the staunch old Ro- man husbandmen: they, alas! were no more) one hundred and twenty thousand small land-holdings whose title was linked to the existence of the govern- ment which created them. This gave the Senate all through Italy a wide support and at the same time gave Sulla's soldiers and adherents their reward. In the second place, he decreed freedom to ten thousand lusty young slaves, a civic army, a body-guard for the Senate. Finally, to make it clear to all that civil law and the Senate were supreme, even over the army, which had reestablished both, he, when Ofella, his leading general, offered himself illegally in the market-place as a candidate, had him cut down where he stood, and calmly explained to the people the why and wherefore. Then a little space and the deep blue dome of the Italian sky for the first and last time looked down THIRD THE ROMANS upon an astounding ceremony. In the unhampered exercise of absolute power, Sulla, with bitter enemies in every street of that great city — Rome — and in every town of Italy, called the people together and in conformity with the spirit of his own legislation laid down his office, dismissed his few guards of state, and having asked the assemblage if any had aught to say against him, and having been answered by complete silence, left the tribunal, and without any armed escort whatever, once more a private citi- zen, walked through the dense crowd to his own house. The whole transaction is unique in history. Sulla is a singular example, the first Rome pro- duced in the course of seven hundred years, of a man of genius who broke through rigid tradition and yet was constrained to conform to conditions which were the result of centuries of Roman life, conditions which he knew to be degenerate, weak, foolish, wicked, but which he recognized at the same time as imperative and not by any one man to be radically changed. Rome had taken generations to become degraded, and as he could not recreate he was forced to deal with her in her degradation. In early days the Romans revered the magistrate when he spake. Now they revered him when he butchered. For this reason they revered Sulla, and when he died a little later they gave him a funeral beyond comparison magnificent. This was the Sulla who, of the many which he fought, never lost a battle, who in affairs of state never took a backward step, who before considering his own interest invariably protected Rome, indeed, 1:1193 THIRD THE ROMANS did so more than once at the hazard of his life, who at a time when peace was impossible because the uni- versal treachery and falsehood barred the way, faith- fully kept his engagements, who snatched every free moment for pleasure, but under stress knew no relax- ation, who slew political opponents by the thousand, and then, upon reflection, by law abolished the death penalty for political crime — who held the kingdoms of this world in his hands, and at the first possible moment flung them all away. Like every great genius, Sulla lived a paradox and died an enigma. When Sulla died the Roman governmental ma- chine stood apparently in running order, but the driving power, the energizing force of Rome, died with him. There were but t^vo able Romans left, for Pompeius had reached the top of his intellectual bent, and henceforth barely held his own. One of these men, Caesar, was but twenty-four years of age, and his ability, unlike that of Alexander, was as yet undeveloped. The other, Sertorius, was making a war upon the oligarchy in Spain. Before Sulla died, Sertorius with a small force had fought his way through the Roman fleet at Gib- raltar and returned to Spain. ^ He immediately be- gan organizing and Romanizing that province, not by the Roman method of extirpation, but on lines of kindly affiliation, lines which in a general way Gaius Gracchus would fain have followed. He had origi- nally been sent by Marius as governor and general to Spain. He now resumed the titles and as a Roman officer formed from the immigrants a Senate and be- 1 80 B. C. D20:] THIRD THE ROMANS gan Roman instruction of high-born Spanish youth. His diplomacy won over the powerful organization of pirates which not only checked the Roman navy but cut ofif supplies for her army. His dealings even extended as far East as the court of Mithridates, — and his brilliant generalship left the oligarchy scarce a foothold in Spain. Broad-minded, kind, chivalrous, unRoman in that he was never brutal nor faithless, he stands forth, now that narrowing Roman tradition was breaking down, a winning and a solitary figure. Unfortunately he was compelled to act with other Romans. His loyal Spanish body-guard were all slain, and he was assassinated when Perpenna flung down the wine cup at the feast.^ It is a consolation to record that every one of those assassins died a violent death. Perpenna the first; for he did not endear himself to the army by his crime, and Pompeius easily defeated it, half-hearted as it was. Perpenna to save his life offered to sur- render Sertorius' correspondence, which involved all the leading democrats. Pompeius kept his good fame, burnt the papers unread, and sent the evil creature to execution. The feebleness and incapacity of the oligarchy can- not be believed. The pirates with a developed sys- tem plundered the eastern coasts of the Mediter- ranean and even Ostia. The population of islands and places accessible to the sea migrated. The old Greek temples, whose treasures had been accumu- lated for generations, were looted. Apollo had scarce a single gold piece left. What the pirates 1 72 B. C. THIRD THE ROMANS passed over, the Roman governors stole and the East was plunged into hopeless debt. Misery was univer- sal. Egypt was offered to the Senate, which dared not accept, as they knew they were too feeble to con- trol any representative backed by Egypt's resources. Mithridates declared war,^ but the murder of Serto- rius in Spain freed Rome's hands, and in Lucullus Rome fortunately found a bold and fearless general: a general, however, who after victories and defeats, at the end of eight years had not gained a foot. His army, grown weary of campaigns where hard knocks took the place of booty, became insubordinate and his brilliant hopes were blighted. After this he sought solace in villas, fish ponds, and perhaps peacocks' brains and ortolans' tongues! Spartacus, for whom Mommsen hints a royal descent, led a slave revolt which shook all Italy.^ Through the mirk we can discern Caesar struggling forward by devious ways, Cicero winning fame, and Pompeius prominent, but a prominence which but half met his vanity. So weak was the Senate that the mob had its own way. A revolution led by demagogues placed Pom- peius in supreme command.^ In six years the pirates were crushed, temporarily at least; Mithridates van- quished, the East reorganized, and Pompeius^ re- ceived regal honors and the magistracy for life. Caesar's wild beasts for the games were exhibited in solid silver cages. Catilina, at one time the public executioner for Sulla, emerged, malignant, criminal and furtive. He now ofifered at the hand of his con- spirators to murder a way to power before Pompeius 1 74 B.C. 273^1 B.C. 3 57 B.C. 4 61 B.C. 1:122: THIRD THE ROMANS should return. Facts seem to implicate Caesar and Crassus with Catilina in the sinister attempt which failed/ Again, two years later, the plot included a plan to seize Pompeius' children as hostages,^ but Cicero was elected consul and Catilina beaten. Again the next year Catilina attempted, was out- witted, fled to his little army, and died fighting.^ The audacity of the villains can be accounted for only by the fact that they had powerful and secret support. Indignation grew. Caesar's life was threat- ened and Crassus prepared to fly. All this was in reality a series of conspiracies levelled against Pom- peius, who was on the point of returning in great power to Italy at the head of his victorious army. Caesar and Crassus were desperate. There was but one resource — a league with Pompeius, and so the first triumvirate was formed. Caesar received Gaul and the longed-for legions, gave his fondly loved daughter Julia in marriage to Pompeius and the be- ginning of the end was in sight. How Caesar wrought in Gaul he tells us. It is a sordid and a sodden story.'* Thence by violence and rapine the treasures were secured which for years bought carefully selected and unscrupulous agents, built stately public edifices, silenced criticism and bribed voters. Cssar hints at a million slain and a million more sold into slavery. If this is true, he probably swept off a fifth, and that fifth the flower of a splendid population. Where Sulla slew his hun- dreds, Caesar slew his thousands. Crassus, the rich- 1 67 B. C. - 65 B. C. 3 62 B. C. *Oman, Hist. England, Vol. I, p. 34. THIRD THE ROMANS est man in Rome, grasping at all things, found that he and his insatiable desires could all be packed in a small Parthian grave.' Julia died,^ and Pompeius, joining hands with the Senate, was defeated at Phar- salia,^ slain in Egypt, and Caesar, his feet, his hands, his raiment one red, emerged supreme. During the years of Caesar's absence in Gaul the condition of Rome was indescribably pitiful. Bands of armed ruffians called the streets their own. Gladi- ators plied their trade outside the circus. Citizens were regularly besieged in their houses. Cato was a prisoner in his garden. Clodius had sharded his pa- trician rank and as a plebeian led the mad orgy. It paid him well, for through his command of votes he, like Caesar, kept on sale rights from sovereignty to tax collecting, and in riot found profitable rule. Of Pompeius he made a mock, perhaps not altogether to Caesar's misliking. Already the loudest shouts at the meetings of the burgesses were those of for- eigners, freedmen and slaves, and often they cast most of the votes. Clodius proposed to legalize his method of "developing" Rome's "resources" by giv- ing freedmen and nominal slaves the same rights and votes as free-born citizens. The page of history is stained by no name more infamous than that of Clodius. Perhaps some rem- nant of patriotism stirred faintly within him. He paused and never made the suggestion a law. He contemplated making Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Span- iards full members of the Roman brotherhood. These for the most part constituted in Rome the serv- 1 53 B.C. - 54 B-c. ^48 B.C. C124] THIRD THE ROMANS ile class. We took our negro slaves and not only gave them the franchise, but placed them by force and by statute for years in absolute control of our own kin — gallant men who had fought us fairly — splendid wo- men, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh. By means of the negro vote we plundered the South as Rome plundered the provinces. As late as the winter of 1 874-1 875, nine years after the war ended, at a session, largely attended, of the lower house of the legislature of the sovereign State of Louisiana not a white man was present to represent the great white race which owned the land. A huge negro, black as coal, presided and bellowed through his bull-necked throat his orders to his fellow blacks. Imitating Rome yet once again, we forced universal bank- ruptcy upon a proud and ruined people, our own blood kin. It ill becomes us to cast the first stone at Clodius. He had his day of reckoning many cen- turies ago. Ours is dragging on, but unless we can loose Orion's bands or stay the stars in their courses we cannot escape. Ten million malignant cankers gnaw the vitals of our body politic and to them we have wantonly added unnumbered other slaves — slaves of ignorance and vice — slaves who neither can nor will learn and understand free customs and free institutions. We can no more avoid the sweep of the eternal laws than could Rome. For us the infamous Clodius blushes. Of the same race, dowered with the same "grey matter," Athens, Sparta, Rome varied in education and varied in results. Athens, liberal in her training, freely produced great men, men great in art, litera- THIRD THE ROMANS ture, science, philosophy, war, statecraft. Sparta, hide-bound, narrow, prejudiced, in her whole career produced but two men of independent thought,^ and ultimately choked out her own very life." Rome, in- sistent on uniformity, bending over her muck-rake in perpetual search of gross physical good, despising in- tellectual pursuits as unpractical, bigoted in these false ideals as in a religion, produced in seven hun- dred fifty years many capable men, but among them only two at all worthy to rank with the great in- tellects of Greece. Mommsen names but one — Caesar, To him, however, may perhaps be added Sulla, of equally independent and, it may be, more original thought and of perhaps greater intuition, for he knew the Roman State was sick unto death, and that no general statute could purge the com- mon-weal. He realized the helplessness of one man in a combat with fundamental forces, and that therefore domination and power for such end in his hands would be futile, and so believing, flung away as a worthless bauble what Caesar died to keep. It must be noted also that neither Sulla nor Caesar appears until decaying race vigor permitted the bands of restraining discipline to drop to pieces and al- lowed in turmoil and confusion freer education, freer thought. As if to punctuate this important fact, the greater part of Latin literature was created in this period of change, and Roman philosophical science on mighty pinions soars but once in exalted flight: ^Cleomenes, died c. 489 B. c. Barsidas, c. 424 B.C. ^Sparta, 370 B.C., had but 1,500 male citizens. Bury, Greece, II, 174. D26] THIRD THE ROMANS the song Lucretius sang amid the din of civil strife, the shine of civil swords. It is interesting to remark all through this recital that in the face of the onrush of race life the individ- ual factor, hov^ever potent it may be, if in opposition is helpless — a mere anachronism. Cato the elder, had he lived two centuries earlier, would have been commonplace. As it was, he was born out of due time. Over him swept the advancing surge. And all these men and women, as they pass, even the great- est of them, act and speak seemingly of their own ini- tiative, but in reality their parts are written for them. They are but creatures of the moment — victims of the conditions created for them by immemorial an- cestry, each member of which has either somewhat mended or somewhat marred their fortune: of a truth a mighty power, a power in which they them- selves in their turn share and are at once created and creating. Our responsibilities begin with us and never die. The miracle play called "Rome" moves down the centuries unfolding with remorseless logic, each in- dividual a free agent, each individual subject to un- changing law. As he sows, so also shall he reap, and the multitudinous units, ever combined and ever sepa- rate, make the changeless record of the "Comedy Di- vine": deeply religious, declaring the Glory of God; deeply significant, showing His handiwork. As with earnest thought we search out the divine law and with willing heart and mind, or even unwit- tingly, obey, we rise on intellectual wing sublime; as, led astray by power, luxury, vice and sloth, we each THIRD THE ROMANS give up that intense individual striving (the throb- bing heart of vigorous race life), the struggle to search out and obey, the glory that was Greece de- parts, and even the arch of wide-ranged empire that was Rome crumbles into dust. Americans! there stands the record. He who runs may read. The wayfaring man may not err therein. Gird up your loins, make strong your hearts, the day of reckoning is upon us. It is not too late. Caesar owned his world. It was an evil world and with all the phases of that evil Caesar was thoroughly familiar. Heavy as was the price he had already paid, it was but an installment, and the insistent col- lector stood ever at his elbow. No Roman, high or low, worked. He could beg or steal, but to work he was ashamed. For the loafer in the small room in one of the many vast buildings, rabbit warrens, which were the tenements of Rome, for the loafer in the palace which might adjoin it and cover an acre or so of ground, all the toil was done by slaves — imported labor! For generations this particular process of de- energizing the Romans had gone on. At first trans- mitted as a tendency, incapacity for self-help was now transmitted as a condition of being. It pervaded all sides of life. Why investigate natural causes to learn labor-saving devices when the "speaking tool" stood at hand? The trifling amount of Roman philosophy was shorn of all attempt to study natural science. "We have heard the fame thereof with our ears," but it is both difficult and useless. The first sun-dial set 1:128:] THIRD THE ROMANS up in Rome was made for a place four degrees away, and the Romans did not find it out for a hundred years. Before the Civil War the vast majority of patents in the United States were taken out by North- ern men, including even the cotton gin. In Italy or America the same cause produced the same effects. Who could help Caesar in governmental work? Who was fitted to be his Secretary of State and per- form its duties? There was no Roman. Who was fitted to be Secretary of the Treasury and transact its business? There was no Roman. The huge burden fell on Csesar, and valiantly did he take up the task. Just as the Roman merchant for centuries had trans- acted his affairs, so Caesar, following his example, transacted the affairs of the Empire. For years a Phoenician had been his treasurer. The Phoenician continued so to act. Freedmen and slaves trained to somewhat equivalent work filled and overflowed the vast place he called his house, and these formed his official staff and conducted Roman affairs. Orna- mental offices could be filled by ornamental names. Real men were wanting. To construct the Ship of State there was no Roman timber left. A miserable second growth fit only for firewood had come up from the old stumps. Those great pillars of commerce which the wanton oligarchy had destroyed, Carthage and Corinth, must be rebuilt. The order was given. New blood, not by any means of necessity Roman, must be poured into the Senate. It was. The incapable poor of Rome must be fed. They were. Those capable must be taken off the pauper lists and sent out into col- 1:129:] THIRD THE ROMANS onies. This work was begun. Every little thing, even to the repairing of the rain holes in the streets, demanded his personal intervention. Every great thing of course was his work. The whole body of the law, which placed the control of affairs in his hands and which became the foundation for imperial rule for fifteen centuries, was originated and carried through by him. His incapable successors found a ready-made garment and slipped it on. They could not have invented it themselves. The whole plan must have been thought out by Caesar during his long upward struggle, for the length of his actual sojourn in Rome after his return from Egypt could better be measured by months than years — a vast labor volun- tarily assumed and involuntarily laid down! Perhaps the most statesmanlike measures — in any point of view, the most merciful, were those which attempted to prevent provincial pillage. These were the measures without any doubt which were the im- mediate cause of his death. The provinces, so long a prey to the infamous greed of the infamously greedy, were private property now and that "courtesy of the Senate" which in a sort of rotation commissioned the criminal, and for a large share of the plunder pro- tected him in his crime, was forbidden. The Senate, black with impotent rage, passed the laws. It is al- ways unsafe to snatch a bone from a cur. Cesar's Rome was the vilest spot on earth. The vilest houses were multiplied everywhere. The vilest inhabited them, the vilest thronged them. These abominations were the clubs, the social and civic cen- tres. In them public offices were sold, murders DsoU THIRD THE ROMANS planned, law suits decided, jurors bought, voters bribed. They were the headquarters of every kind of villainy. Suddenly the sale of public offices ceased. There was but one man who could appoint. Murder, for the first time in a generation or two, began to be a dangerous occupation. A past master in that art was recognized. The judges suddenly began to wash their hands. The jurors began to weigh evidence, and not gold pieces, and many choice spots of real estate rapidly declined in value. Thus far could one man go. But no man could cleanse Rome — at least not while its then inhabitants lived. Women were thoroughly enfranchised. The word "wife" to a great extent meant a thing which slipped on and off like an old shoe. The women had edu- cated the men to a curious mental attitude. Cato, to the last, had opposed Caesar. After the battue at Thapsus^ had counted fifty thousand corpses, Cato, holding Utica, recognizing that he was making the last stand on this earth for the oligarchy, and having facilitated those of his friends who wished — to de- part, and having assisted those of his friends who desired — to make their peace, retired to his own chamber and followed the admired Roman method of bidding farewell to this life and greeting the life to come.^ Cato, although not by any means a man of great intellectual force, was a man of charac- ter and a Roman gentleman. He learned that a friend was in love with his wife. He divorced her and gave her to his friend in marriage. Later, when she became a widow, Cato remarried her. No com- I46 B. C. 2^6 B, c. THIRD THE ROMANS ment is necessary. This incident throws light on his saying that it behooved the rich to insure family wealth by restricting offspring. Evidently it was well known that the offspring of those days could not win wealth for themselves. The woman of the day managed her own affairs through her own agent, whose only rival was the curled, mustached, bejew- elled, lisping, mincing-gaited fop, half lover and wholly pandar, who wore women's shoes and daw- dled about her. If she dabbled in politics she rose to the height of the corrupt pothouse politician. If she dabbled in murder she was a fiend incarnate. The Roman system, Sumner says, killed women. If it killed such women it had some admirable points. But the system created the women. Then by all means kill the system! To speak of motherhood would be to desecrate a sacred word. The Roman men of rank had been accustomed to serve as officers in the army. The custom still ob- tained. Caesar gives an amusing account of their wailings ^ when an advance was ordered, of the pre- paration of last wills, of the sudden development of incapacitating disease, of the applications for leave of absence! As for their morality, which we are now considering, it is impossible to describe it. The facts are so much worse than the English language can express that one may well hesitate to accept the testi- mony on which they are based. There is one author- ity, however, who writes a few years later than this time, whose word may not be doubted, an eyewitness 1 Commentaries, Chapter XXXIX. THIRD THE ROMANS of the manners of his time, a Roman citizen, a gentle- man, one who had mingled in society and knew its ways. Suddenly, by a remarkable interposition he was placed apart, and though in the world, was not of it. The dread sanction under which he spake and wrote was above and beyond any mere human device to en- force truth, no matter how solemn the function, and Paul was charged to bear testimony by an imposition more imperative than any mere laying on of hands. Turn to his first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — read from the twenty-fourth verse to the end. Re- member the sin that strikes at the root of the repro- duction of humanity and then remember the cities of the plain, remember Gomorrah, remember Sodom.^ In discussing the moral degradation of Rome it is unnecessary to remember that there were exceptions. There has been but one city where the Angel of the Lord could not find ten righteous men,^ and in the dreadful times which preceded and followed Caesar, devoted men and women of all ranks, from slaves to senators, faced death and worse for the love they bore each other, and self-sacrifice, burning with clear flame, wafted its incense, — a sweet savor, up to the throne of an infinite God. Had such people been in a majority, the awful things could not have occurred. That any at all existed in Rome at this period is a sure foundation for hope eternal. Let us turn from this revolting picture of immor- ality and consider intellectual matters. What was the mental capacity of the Romans at this time? We 1 Once high treason. Mommsen, Vol. I, p. i66. 2 Genesis, XVIII, XIX. THIRD THE ROMANS know Caesar was a man of rare ability. What of the rest? All admit he left no Caesar him surviving. He was the last man of genius for nearly two thou- sand years which the Mediterranean coasts pro- duced. For eighteen hundred years darkling stood the varying shore of the ancient world. Did he leave to succeed him any man approaching him in brain power? No, not one. He left nothing but little men with little brains. True, they differed in capacity. Men were no more "born equal" in Rome than in any other place, but intelligence, while some had more and some had less, never rose above rank mediocrity, and was even in the best a poor commodity. The proof is right before us. The general impression given by historians — take, for instance, those admirable text-books which are now written for our schools — is of a certain uniform- ity in human capacity. Attention is not called to changes. No standards are selected and referred to. The varying intelligence of nations or peoples is not remarked even when the data make plain the differ- ence between acumen at the beginning and at the end of each century described. In the study of man, and history is nothing else, growth or decline in mentality is really the whole story — beyond all other things the most important human manifestation. The Roman of Cato's day differed radically from the Roman un- der Caesar, and both from the so-called Roman under Constantine. Men prominent in any age are not by any true standard necessarily great. Their eminence indicates merely the gulf between them and their fellows, and where the general ability is [■34] THIRD THE ROMANS well below that of men who preceded them by two centuries, their leaders must be classed not as great men but as mediocrities who are distinguished only by reason of the littleness of their contemporaries. Among pygmies the ordinary man is a giant. In the realm of the blind the one-eyed man is king. No man then living in Rome had ever known it as a republic. No man then living in Rome knew what a republic was. A republic is a state of mind. So soon as Rome's military power put aside all fear of national calamity and corruption of blood and indi- vidual self-seeking replaced common self-abnegation for common exaltation of the commonwealth, the state of mind which alone makes possible a republic ceased to exist. While that state of mind endured a republic only was possible. When it ceased, tyranny by the many or by the one, only was possible. For one hundred and fifty years Rome, retaining many of the old names, had been governed by an oligarchy incredibly base. It merely meant, when it said "re- public," the plunder of the provinces for the benefit of the few, abject misery for the many. The Roman Senate in a full session numbered at this time between four and five hundred present. These were selected men — the very best. For weeks before Caesar's death plans were being matured to murder him. Of the carefully selected Senate, sixty men, the bravest, the boldest, the most capable, had been deliberately chosen. Every detail of the mur- der had been discussed, backward and forward. The whole plan had been elaborated and settled: what this individual man was to say, how and where he was THIRD THE ROMANS to Stand, and this other man, what he was to do and when. The various factions of the Senate were inti- mately and personally known to each of the sixty — its bickerings, animosities and jealousies. They knew its utter lack of cohesion, and they knew also that once the master hand was cold it would forthwith pass from unanimous servility to unanimous dis- cord. On the fatal morning, every detail had been at- tended to. The large band of gladiators, who, if need be, were to assist, had been assembled and were with- in instant call. Antony, whom Caesar had associated with him as consul for that year, was, as had been arranged, detained in conversation by one of the con- spirators, but Caesar did not come. Time dragged on. Not one of the sixty had had sixty minutes' sleep the night before. They were nervous, anxious, trem- ulous. Caesar was to start for the Parthian campaign on the morrow. Once with the army, he would be safe, to come back with fresh victories, more glori- ous, more unassailable than ever. Now was the last chance, for the sixty knew each other and knew that during the next few months the plot would surely be betrayed. They all were distinctly frightened. What was to be done? One of the many close, obliged, personal friends of Caesar among them was deputed to go to his house and fetch him to the slaughter. Yes, 'tis ever dangerous to take a bone from a cur. He went, found him indisposed and his attendance at the Senate House given up, rallied him, encouraged him, and having gotten him into good spirits brought him to another Aceldama, another D363 THIRD THE ROMANS field of blood/ The band fell on him. Armed only with a stylus, he fought them all to the last and fell covered with jagged wounds.^ The Senate House vomited forth those in atten- dance who had not linked up with the plot. In the scurrying crowd senatorial dignity was forgotten. What did the sixty noblest Romans do? They wrapped their togas around their left arms and with their drawn swords in their hands walked out in front of the Senate House. But the news had already preceded them. All was in wild tumult. Nobody paid any attention to their theatrical attitudinizing. They became fearfully alarmed at the uproar and rushed back into the Senate House. That was all. It does not seem credible, it does not seem possible. Absolutely ignorant of government in every detail, they could plan a murder, but beyond that their im- becility could not go. They had come to the end of their intellectual tether. The sixty sifted and chosen men of Rome had never considered what they would do next. They were not only in a state of agitation which at that time precluded thought, but never had had the brains to determine the few necessary steps to seize, on behalf of the government they proposed to install, the power of the government they had brutally destroyed. They were helpless as babies. There stood the official residence of Caesar. It was only a few blocks off. In it was a large amount of ready money. In it were the books and papers ab- solutely necessary to continue the public service and the whole working governmental staff of slaves and 1 Acts I, 19. 2^ B.C. CI37] THIRD THE ROMANS freedmen. There, in another building close by, was the public treasure chest, and swirling in and about these buildings was the whole city in wild uproar. Did they immediately detail the large band of armed gladiators under their orders and concealed close by to protect the public property? Did they take any steps whatever to protect it, or to insure for the Sen- ate the immediate control of affairs? No, not a single thing. They had unloosed the fateful cord which bound the sack of the storm winds and cow- ered before the tempest which issued forth. For weeks they had studied the situation — it was no sud- den matter — and for weeks the thought had never entered any one of their silly heads to make some provision against the consequences of their dreadful deed. It is useless to say that in striking down the dic- tator they had restored the republic. Each one of them knew better. Each one of them knew that many steps had to be taken to give effect to their rash act. To say that they lacked mental capacity is to bring a charge which cannot be refuted. To say that no one of them had any idea of the practical work- ings of governmental machinery is to state the truth, not to excuse, but to confound them. Nor did any- thing which any of them did afterwards justify in the slightest degree the imputation of intelligence to any one of them; and as the weeks dragged on, An- tony, who had been accused, and justly, of almost everything but never of being overburdened with brains, played his cards against the whole Senate and won. THIRD THE ROMANS The moment the uproar broke out he had walked home. There is no question but that he was a brave man, and until his dreadful excesses unnerved him remained so. He instantly compelled himself to think, and a little later went to the official residence, and received from Calpurnia one hundred million sesterces in ready money and Caesar's papers. The weeks dragged on — nothing was settled. Everything was in a state of tumult, and in the midst of se- dition and disorganization the Senate took its usual summer vacation. It is not possible to exaggerate the mental imbecility of the governing class. Octavius was a boy of less than nineteen years of age, sickly, pampered, but, curiously enough, pre- maturely bright. His little lamp dimmed later, but at this time threw enough light to enable him to see his way to ultimate dominion. Octavius had come to Rome. Antony was more than cool to him. Oc- tavius, contrary to his friends' advice, had the back- bone to raise a small army. He was Caesar's heir and found Caesar's name a tower of strength. The ghost did not wait to meet the sixty at Philippi. The sixty had already faded away. Cicero had almost as many minds as the con- spirators numbered. He talked and wrote, and wrote and talked— futilities. Atticus, perhaps the ablest of them all from one point of view, lent money to every side, even to Fulvia. Antony also raised an army. Cassius fled to the East and raised an army. Brutus fled to Greece. Some young enthusiastic friends of his urged him to seize a large sum of money in transit westward. D39!] THIRD THE ROMANS Brutus in reality was an empty drum. He posed. He had a well developed taste for usury. Four per cent, a month was his delight. Owing to his sena- torial rank and the law, this business had to be con- ducted under the rose. His agent a few years be- fore, to compel settlement of a usurious claim of this character, locked up a finance committee until several died, but could not collect. Brutus then came for- ward to secure confidentially Cicero's help, and the rose withered. Cicero gave him eloquent advice and adjourned his case. Brutus failed to find in philoso- phy, about which he talked a good deal, but which he did not understand, the consolation he would have derived from sesterces. Caesar had given him his life, made him what he was, had just given his mother a large estate, and appointed him in his will guardian of a hoped- for child. Francis Bacon had intelligence enough partly to understand that he was the "meanest of mankind." Brutus enters into competition with him unhampered by any such intelligence. Brutus never could make up the little mind he had. He needed constant prodding. His young friends prodded him with good will until Brutus stole the money, and then continued their pressure until Brutus with the stolen money raised an army. He moved it about, hither and yon, with trifling results. Lepidus was sent by the Senate to Gaul to command that province and that army and to hold all for the Senate. The world bristled with armies. Cadmus would have been confounded. Dragons' teeth had been sown broadcast. THIRD THE ROMANS Antony attacked Octavius. Octavius for the only time fought, and fought well. At this particular moment he fought on behalf of the Senate. Antony fought on behalf of Antony. Threatened by fresh forces, Antony broke away from Octavius, by won- derful marching threw off pursuit, and faced Lepi- dus in Gaul. A comedy was enacted, and Antony, conjuring with Caesar's name (the ghost still walked), brought about a union between the soldiers to which Lepidus gladly conformed. Between them and Rome stood Octavius. Lepidus negotiated an alliance with him. The main difficulty lay in ar- ranging a personal interview between Antony and Octavius. As the result of tedious conferences the two armies were brought to face each other on either side of a small stream, in the centre of which was an island. Each arm of the stream was bridged. An- tony advanced — Octavius advanced — they met on the island. In full view of their respective troops they searched each other for concealed weapons, and then conferred. "Punic faith" was no longer an expression of utter contempt. "Roman faith" was substituted. Vast as were the numbers of their armies, their promises of pay and reward were still more vast.^ In their utter ignorance of finance they knew of but one method of securing money — confiscation through slaughter. Nor did they even understand that num- bers of great estates suddenly thrown on the market would bring little or nothing, and were nonplussed to find this the result. A Roman always plundered. He never could evolve (and he kept at it for over two 1 43 B. c. THIRD THE ROMANS thousand years) a scientific method of taxation. As mentality dwindled in the Roman Empire the system of taxation became more and more infamous. In point of fact, at any time in any community the method of taxation indicates the amount of collective mental capacity. Applying this test, the method of raising money pursued by Antony and Octavius, Brutus and Cassius shows among them all a lack of mental ability which is appalling. Cassius and Bru- tus decreed ten years' taxes, payable in two years. It meant that practically the whole accumulated capital of the world was to be collected and paid in in that brief space. Antony, following close on their heels, decreed a further ten years' taxes of the world he absolutely owned, payable also in two years. It was not folly — it rose to the height of criminal lunacy; and now, at Rome, whither he and Octavius imme- diately repaired, their acts were those of madmen. Indeed, at that time many thought Octavius had gone mad. As for Antony, he never had had any rating as a well-balanced man. The accumulated punishment of centuries of Ro- man crime found its culmination. Marius and Sulla, vanward clouds of evil days, had spent their malice, and now the sullen rear was with its stored lightnings laboring up. At once murder and the flight from Rome began, but flight was as dangerous as tarrying. All the roads were crowded with soldiers who scented the carrion from afar. For them no proscription lists were needed. The fact of flight was proof posi- tive. The body lay by the wayside — the head was instantly returning in a sack to Rome. It was duly THIRD THE ROMANS listed and the reward paid. Wives easily obtained eternal divorce, senators in wild entreaty flung them- selves Weeping down before their slaves, or, disguised as slaves, hid in sewers. Among others, a story to this effect is told: A daughter, obedient to her father's summons, en- ters the room and pauses in frozen horror. There stands her father. She had left him shortly before, hale and vigorous. Now shrunken and tremulous, he wavers upon his feet, an old, old man. Beside him stands a ruffian with a drawn sword. Her father's face is ashen, his lips bloodless, and through their cloudy agony his eyes burn upon her. Twice he essays to speak, then passing over his dry lips his dry tongue, compels himself to utterance. The words come forth in a sibilant whisper: "My daughter, make no claim whatever upon my estate. Thus only canst thou save thy life. I asked this official for a little pause that I might speak with thy brother, my son, for he was a close friend of Marcus Antonius, and would in- stantly explain the mistake. He laughed and told me that it was because my son, thy brother, had already communed with Antonius that he was here. Fare- well!" At Philippi^ the four principal actors gathered. Neither the campaign which led up to it nor the series of engagements which took place showed any generalship whatever, and the discipline of the troops on both sides was exceedingly bad. Antony did try to flank Cassius by building a road through the swamp, and it was to check this that Cassius attacked. 1 42 B. C. [143: THIRD THE ROMANS Each took the other's camp. All discipline was at once thrown to the winds. The only thought was pil- lage. In the confusion Cassius was slain, and the irresolute and incompetent Brutus assumed com- mand. He could not control his troops, who forced him a little later to give battle. He was beaten and had himself slain. The ghost of Caesar walked no more! Octavius had gone hunting the morning of the battle. Hearing the uproar, he hid himself in the swamp till it was well over. Caesar's successor a poltroon! In the distribution of territory which followed, Antony gave Italy to Octavius and took the teem- ing East for himself. He found it wrung dry by previous exactions. Octavius' life at Rome was a stench in the nostrils of that abandoned capital, his cruelties earned him the title of the ''execu- tioner," his infamies surpassed his cruelties. In his campaign against Sextus Pompeius, the whole plan as well as the execution of his attack on the fleet was imbecile. He became terrified — he fled to the shore. His commander, unhampered by cowardly incapa- city, somewhat redeemed the situation. Antony in the East, a courageous fighting man trained under Caesar, conducted an unsuccessful campaign against the Parthians. Octavius made another attack on Pompeius, which he conducted with stupidity and irresolution. Suddenly finding his position some- what dangerous, and that he himself might possibly be taken, he left his army in Sicily and fled. But the united forces of Lepidus and Octavius were too great for Pompeius, who cut his way through the fleet and D44II THIRD THE ROMANS reached the East, where he was slain by Antony. Octavius then won over Lepidus' troops, deposed Lepidus, whose office of Pontifex Maximus probably saved his life, and Lepidus retired to spend his ill- gotten gains in Rome. But two were left, Octavius and Antony. They met at Actium^ and Antony, unnerved by debauchery, fled first. Octavius, young in years but old in every form of abhorrent vice and crime, irresolute, craven, cruel, stood forth, not by force of any real greatness in himself, but by reason of the fact that the world he dominated was a world of mongrels and slaves. The lassitude of exhaustion ushered in the vaunted Pax Romana, and the rem- nants of Rome and her subject states, all united at last in a common bond, a bond of unutterable misery, entered the new era doomed. What did Rome do for the intellectual betterment of mankind? In her early days she gave many splen- did examples of courage, fortitude and character; examples not winning but nevertheless commanding; examples marked by sturdy common sense. In her whole career, however, she never produced a single man distinguished for purely intellectual force. In later years she paraded her rich men with tedious it- eration and tedious monotony, and they in turn os- tentatiously and with tiresome sameness paraded their wealth. Her generals she worshipped. In her practical sordid life she limited her desires to what she could touch and taste and handle, and cared for 1 31 B.C. THIRD THE ROMANS only those physical things which could be obtained by force. As for producing — let slaves and Greeks and Syrians do that. Her great and unique gift was law. To the cohesion imparted by its administration Finlay attributes the longevity of the Empire. Rome's influence on the world she conquered was, from the point of view of study, knowledge, mental improvement, a hindrance, not a help. She did not elevate, she abased. This course she remorselessly followed for two centuries. Nearly every one of the Eastern courts upon which she laid her heavy hand was a centre of Hellenistic culture. Nearly every Eastern city nurtured and honored Greek tradition. One after another, these sacred fires were extin-. guished. "The dominion of the Romans degraded the human species."^ The loss to the intellectual life of mankind is not to be reckoned. From the physical point of view — the well-being of the subject people — respect for individuality of race or even mere nationality did not exist. On the contrary, the very land of the victims belonged to the Roman people. The inhabitants, if any survived, re- mained on it merely as tenants by sufferance — little better in Rome's eyes than cattle. Slavery became with her not an institution but an obsession. All round her Mediterranean Lake she gathered up tribes and peoples as an experienced card-player gathers up the scattered cards, and as he would shuffle the pack, so she intermixed kindreds and colors, the knave cheek by jowl with the king, black, white and red in inextricable confusion; and then, 1 Robertson's Charles V, § i, p. 5. L1463 THIRD THE ROMANS taking this mass of human beings, fashioned, we arc taught, in the likeness of the one eternal God, she ground them to the dust and made them beasts, and tossing them into one great cauldron, her much vaunted melting pot, left them to seethe and simmer, and with each succeeding generation to produce a worse hybridism than that of the generation which preceded. Years and years before this time Mahaffy notes that Alexandria had become a city of mongrels, while Ferrero notes blood contamination in Italy as early as 170 B.C. It must be remarked that these are entirely impartial statements. Neither of these au- thors had principally in mind the importance of race purity. They merely state the historic fact. Tacitus ^ says that in his time the Roman people were almost entirely freedmen, which is a distinct statement to the effect that they were not Romans. Sumner ^ draws a revolting picture of infanticide among the Greeks and Romans. In Greece the cities were empty and the land uncultivated. Plutarch^ states that the world in general, and Greece espe- cially, was depopulated. The whole country could hardly put three thousand infantry^ in the field — Megara alone had sent that many to face the Persians at Plataea.^ All through Pausanias runs the long list of ruined and deserted cities, ruined and deserted villages, ruined and roofless temples. The greater part of Thebes lay empty; a town of Euboea was, within the 1 Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 42. "* Frazer, Pausanias, Introduction. 2 Folkways, § 109. ^ 479 b. c. 3 C. 96 A. D. [1473 THIRD THE ROMANS walls, a farm, the gymnasium a fruitful field, sheep were grazing in the market-place. The site of one famous city was a vineyard, and this in the golden age^ of Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius. From the death of Alexander for nearly a thousand years, humanity steadily sank,^ and while there ever remained an interval between the ruler and the ruled, the interval constantly grew less. Intelligence dwin- dled. Capacity among those in high places turned to cunning, vigor to effeminacy, force to fraud, until ultimately, in the universal subsidence, women, eu- nuchs and ecclesiastics ruled the world — a world all sunk in common degradation. The Romans passed away, their language remained; the Greeks passed away, their language remained; and it was the so- called Greek Empire (which was not Greek) of By- zantium, not the Roman, which the Crusaders rav- aged and later the Turks overthrew. The Roman people,^ homogeneous, united, unceas- ingly striving, grew and developed as naturally as a plant. When they reached that point in growth and political training which made a republic possible, the magistrate was substituted for the king.^ But con- stant wars continually swept ofif the strongest and sturdiest, and the Hannibalic^ convulsion, destroy- ing as it did men and institutions, cut the race to the quick. They retrograded, and when capacity dwin- dled so that the complex of free institutions became too difficult the king naturally reappeared. 1 C. 170 A. D. 2 Oman, Hist. Eng., Vol. I, p. 318; see p. 332. 3 C. 750 B. c. * 509 B. c. ^ C. 200 B. c. THIRD THE ROMANS The cycle of five hundred years which we have been considering is accomplished/ Rome's early kings were high priests and were divine. For five hundred years, Rome, untrammelled, wrought out her own destiny, and once again Rome's king, under the new name, Caesar, is priest and is divine.^ The cycle is complete. EIGHTH PERIOD The Year One to 500 a.d. Another great cycle of five hundred years, and Rome, having been plundered by enemies from the Carthage she so hideously destroyed, fell, and with her fell the Western Empire.^ A few years later and the miserable inhabitants, shrunk to trifling numbers and still further reduced to a mere handful (some say twenty-five hundred, some say five hundred) by fam- ine and pestilence, were turned out into the Cam- pania by Totila/ For forty days Rome was empty, void, and then slowly there drifted in the dregs of humanity, the results of Rome's melting pot. They moved about, spectres and shadows among mighty monuments of whose use they were ignorant, whose builders' names they did not know, to whom they were no kin, barbarous, witless, with even the tradi- tions of aforetime greatness lost. To what cause may this and the continuing downfall of humanity during 1 500 B. c. to the year one. - Pontifex maximus, Divus. 3 Odoacer, 476 a.d.; Theodoric, 493 a.d. 4C. 546 A. D.; and see Gregorovius, Vol. I, Book II, Chapter V, p. 446; see p. 431. 1:149] EIGHTH PERIOD The Year One to 500 a.d. centuries be traced? Clearly to one — mongrelism. To gloze the truth the misguided humanitarian in- sists on using the term "melting pot." Tear from the phrase the softening metaphor and we recognize "melting pot" in its true, its unpleasant form — "mis- cegenation." "If a man were called to fix the period in the his- tory of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous ^ he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian - to the accession of Commodus."^ Perhaps the best of the four em- perors to whom Gibbon refers were Trajan^ and Hadrian.^ Both were foreigners — Spaniards. Four good men, selected from fifteen hundred years of em- perors, and two of them foreign to Rome! But note Gibbon's comment: "Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the Republic, had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational free- dom," and adds: "They [the princes] must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man," and refers Roman worthlessness directly to "corruption." The poet tells us the time has been that, when the brains were out, the man would die. In Rome men still lived. The brains were not entirely out, but so shrunken and enfeebled that all depended upon the character and energy of a "single man." Nor were there many of the old blood left. In passing they bequeathed a tainted inheritance. At the time^ of the 1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. I, Chapter III, p. 80. ~ 96 A. D. •' 180 A. D. 4 ^g A. D. to 1 17 A. D. •' 1 17 A. D. tO 138 A. D. ^ C. 260 A. D. [ISO] EIGHTH PERIOD The Year One to 500 a.d. thirty tyrants all the great families of Rome were ex- tinct save one, the Calpurnian.^ In 1845 the Irish nation was dependent for food upon a single root, the potato. Attention to this dangerous condition had been publicly called in parliament more than twenty years before. The blight occurred. We all know the dreadful result. The witless world may have been happy under a Trajan, a sole and single reliance, but this happiness was transitory. Two centuries pass, and now listen to the words of Robertson, the great historian:^ "If a man were called upon to fix upon a period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius the Great^ to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy." It may be that this was the nadir of suffering, but until the year eight hundred the frightful con- ditions showed little improvement, and so far as intellect was concerned men for the great part had be- come mere brutes, beasts of the field, incapable alike of thought or of action, indifferent as to whether they were ruled by Byzantine or Roman, German or Van- dal — indeed, often preferring the Northern to the Southern rule, because while under both the misery was intense, it may have been somewhat mitigated by the new oppressor — and that the Northern invaders were all equally cruel is not true.^ For a long time be- fore 500 A.D., centuries indeed, barbarians, so called, 1 Gibbon, Chapter X. " 395 A.D. to 571 a.d., 176 years. 2 Robertson's Charles V, § i. * Note. [>50 EIGHTH PERIOD The Year One to 500 a.d. had been drifting into the Empire. As men, nearly all of them were better than their contemporary so- called Romans, and in Tacitus' account of the Ger- mans, his Romans suffer by comparison. Dill draws a not unpleasing picture of the relations of the Northern invaders with the provincials in Gaul, but among the many inroads there was frequent ruth- lessness. Of the havoc and laying waste, the gradual change of once fertile regions to desolations, every author speaks. As the legions were defeated or disinte- grated or withdrawn the lamentations of the miser- able inhabitants, the wails of anguish, pierced even the insensible walls of Ravenna. One cry at least has come to us from that far-off wretchedness: ^ "We know not which way to turn us. The barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea forces us back on the barbarians ; between which we have only the choice of two deaths, either to be swallowed up by the waves, or to be slain by the sword." ^ The "groans of the Britons" were the groans of a helpless people. Five hundred years before, these same people with splendid courage had resisted Caesar, and now they were helpless against invaders of such small re- sources as the Picts and Scots.^ To dwell upon this phase of a situation which is well known to all is unnecessary. It is only needful here for us to stress the fact, and to note that the inva- sions themselves were the result, not the cause of Rome's feebleness. The fundamental cause of that ^ Green, History of English People, Vol. I, p. 21. ^ \.l>. 446. 8 "The Social Degradation Rome brought on Britain." Green, History of English People, Vol. I, p. 88. D523 EIGHTH PERIOD The Year One to 500 a.d. was mongrelism.^ No state can be erected on such a foundation. It is mere shifting sand. It lacks perma- nence. It cannot reproduce true to type, for there is no type. It is continually evoking from the past baleful qualities. The immemorial curse of Reuben is upon it: "unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." ^ It persists in evil because it lacks capacity for better choice and at the same time lacks persistence to ad- here to chance betterment. This, of course, was the fundamental cause of Rome's collapse, but running with it hand in hand and springing from itwere other causes, handmaidens to the first. Slavery has been mentioned. Next to this was probably Rome's dreadful system of taxa- tion. By the year 500 this was well on its way to the accomplishment of its perfect work. For its full fruition, however, it still took several hundred years. The capital of the world slowly gathered during gen- erations was being recklessly trenched upon. Eccle- siastical broils and raids by the barbarians destroyed fixed property. The taxes carried off all but the bare necessities of life from a great part of the population. The surplus which rebuilt farmsteads and replaced slain livestock or repaired piers, improved harbors, and kept up the public buildings, roads and bridges, was diverted to pay the personal bills of the Imperial Court. Communication became difficult, often im- possible. An abundance at one point could not be transported to relieve distress at another. Local 1 old Roman and Greek populations had disappeared; races of half- breeds and mongrels were substituted for them. Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe, Vol. I, p. 402. 2 Genesis, XLIX, 4. [153: EIGHTH PERIOD . The Year One to 500 a.d. famine with its consequent pestilence stalked at noon- day. Maladministration continued until ultimately it was found necessary to appoint the richest men in each community tax collectors and make them re- sponsible for the deficit, thus reducing all to a com- mon level of poverty; and then it was that those unfortunate laws were passed which fixed the shoe- maker to his bench and his son after him, the store- keeper to his counter and his son after him, the peas- ant to his plow and his son after him, a coercion from which there was no escape. The inhabitants could not take refuge in the army, for such enlistment was prohibited; could not take refuge in the monastery — thence they were dragged back. They must pro- duce, not for themselves but for the Treasury, which was above the law, so that finally the slave became free, not by being lifted into freedom, but by the vir- tual enslavement of the whole population. NINTH PERIOD 500 A.D. TO 1000 A.D. It is not possible for us to conceive of a degrada- tion so abject that the millions and millions, subjects of the Empire, should permit a comparatively few individuals to subdue the very nature of humanity and refashion men into cattle. Under the barbarous English law of olden time the traitor's sons were placed beneath the scaffold in order that the drops might fall upon them and work "corruption of blood." Mismating under Roman sway had worked [154] NINTH PERIOD 500 A.D. TO 1000 A.D. more surely, more efficiently and more thoroughly than law. Only corruption of blood could have made such a state of things possible. In the awful downfall, cannibalism, which had disappeared for so many thousand years that not one of the great religions found it necessary to forbid it,^ reappears. Both Gibbon and Finlay tell the tale: A traveller, stopping at an inn, narrowly escapes mur- der at the hands of two women who keep it. Investi- gation showed that seventeen of his predecessors had been killed and eaten. It may be barely possible that this illustrates the truth of Darwin's conclusion — the tendency of the hybrid to revert, to call up qualities carried forward latent for long periods of time and suddenly by cross-mating evoked to mark the un- happy victim as one born out of due time. It is needless to refer to human intelligence. It sank to the level of its brutalized possessor. Such was the situation, such the trend in the realm which still vaunted itself mistress of the world, when another of those remarkable men who had always distinguished the deserts of Arabia arose.- In oppo- sition to the idolaters who were his own countrymen he preached the doctrine of the one true God. After a brief struggle, the disunited tribes were united, and the desert whirlwind, gathering force as it swept on, smote the four corners of the imperial edifice. At the shock it shattered into dust. In an incredibly brief space of time conquest spread east and west, and 1 Folkways, § 356, p. 341. 2 Mohamet, Hegira, 622 A. D. ; Syria conquered, 634 A. D. ; Persia, 636 A.D. ; Jerusalem taken, 637 a. D. ; Egypt conquered, 641 A. D. ; Carthage taken, 698 A. D. ; North Africa subdued, 709 A. D. ; Arabs in Spain, 711 A. D, NINTH PERIOD 500 A.D. TO 1000 A.D. from Mesopotamia to the mountains of Atlas tlie pure race exulted over the subjugation of the hybrid hordes. They were but a handful at the most, but in such matters quality counts rather than numbers. Almost instantly the barbarous tribesmen turned to the cultivation of the arts and sciences, and the en- lightenment of Bagdad and Cordova, despised as in- fidel, may be well contrasted with the ignorance of the Roman and the effeminate luxury and heartless guile of the Byzantine. The Saracen invasion of France^ was checked partly by the whole-souled resistance of the Northern white race (in Spain the Northerners had been di- vided against themselves) and partly by dissensions in the Arab ranks. Musa, the conqueror of Spain, pressing on with the avowed object of preaching the one true God at Rome, was arrested at the head of his troops and taken to Bagdad. But while armed invasion ceased, the invasion of ideas continued. At the time of Charlemagne there were practically no books in Rome. None could be found for him because the splendid libraries had been destroyed. In Byzantium books abounded but were useless to the inert Byzantine mind. With difficulty the Arabs gathered together Greek works, translated them, and made brilliant use of them. To the Byzantine his own Greek books were no inspira- tion. A large part of classic learning comes to us from the Arab, who could and did utilize this rich mine of golden thought to build up great schools — universities whose scholars, European, Jew, Arab, 1 732 A.D. NINTH PERIOD 500A.D. TO 1000 A.D. were ever looked upon askance as necromancers by Europe and Byzantium and were hated in propor- tion to their eminence. Charlemagne's efiforts to educate, rudimentary as they were, broke down. Even with a rich mental soil, only a little can be done for any one generation; and when the soil is poor, as it is to-day among the peasants in Egypt, Russia, Poland, and Southern Italy, the herculean task is a labor of generations. But the Northern blood and brain and brawn could not be repressed, and more and more the individual sought enlighten- ment. Slowly, to the few knowledge came, and slowly spread in the teeth of bitter hostility. "I could have done more for humanity," repined that in- tellectual giant Roger Bacon,^ "but for its igno- TENTH PERIOD 1000 A.D. TO 1500 A.D. The one great fact which marks the millennium is the cessation of Northern migration.^ In a way, it is to us the most important of all historic facts. Many scholars considered the Sumerians, who brought the dawn of civilization to Mesopotamia, of Northern extraction. Since then almost all European im- provement has followed in the wake of Northern set- tlement. The flux and flow of the North began before history and never ceased till the year one thou- sand, at which time the various tribes are found 1 C. 1280 A.D. 2 Oman, Hist. England, Vol. I, p. 11. TENTH PERIOD 1000 A. D. TO 1500 A. D. • settled in their present abodes, slowly developing na- tional speech and national sentiment and gradually crystallizing within national boundaries. Nor does a fresh movement of large proportions begin for five hundred years,^ when the new continent calls forth fresh adventurers to fresh conquest. Although great migratory movements ceased with the millennium, Europe was far from tranquil. Every man's hand was against his neighbor. Wars and broils were constant and on this very account men became of some consequence, reproduction was some- what encouraged, and population, which had been steadily diminishing, began to increase. The feudal system needed soldiers and met its own needs, not by importing slaves, but by breeding its own men, thus to a great extent preserving race purity. The won- derful result is proof of the contention of this thesis, because wherever the pure Northern blood effected permanent settlement within the Roman Empire, there and there alone within those boundaries has the improvement we call our own civilization taken place. Spain, Northern Italy, France, England were all within the Empire, were all permanently settled, and no other portion of Roman territory can even at this late day be compared with them. Furthermore, the same race in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Hol- land, Norway and Sweden has shared in the great forward movement, and, combined with the powers named before, control the world — the modern world, which takes its whole impetus from their initiative, its whole movement from their impulse. 1 1492 A. D. TENTH PERIOD 1000 A. D. TO 1500 A. D. But the great reservoir is exhausted. No fresh hordes linger upon our frontiers. Either we must build up from our own resources, either we must con- serve our own race power, either we must face the facts and guard the purity of our stock with de- liberate determination, or we shall repeat history and invoke calamity. Upon ourselves alone can we rely, upon our own intelligence, which must convince judgment and inform heart and understanding. No statute that lacks enthusiastic support can help us — no political palliatives will be of any effect. The same splendid patriotism which has led hundreds of thou- sands of our men to face death will lead them gladly to face life — continuing American life for them and theirs. But this must be based on knowledge and on reason. CONCLUSION Would it not be wise for us to consider carefully our country's present situation? Events have oc- curred which would have seemed to our forefathers impossible. Doctrines have been widely preached subversive of their institutions, and this has been ac- complished by methods too contemptible and too base to be recited here. Americans of the old stock have still left some rights, are still entitled to some consideration, and failing to receive it, still hold in their hands the power to enforce respect and obe- dience to the institutions they love. Never yet have they failed to carry any great cause which they have D59l CONCLUSION espoused. The old American blood once roused can still be counted upon absolutely. How many of us are there at this moment of that grand old stock? How many are there who can trace their descent on both sides to Colonial days, or let us say the period which is commonly taken in considering the question — the year 1800? So nearly as can be ascertained from the census, for at first the census was not taken in a scientific manner, there are over forty millions, a number which, acting in concert, still controls af- fairs. It was not the Russian, nor the Pole, nor any other foreign element who, roused by infamous cru- elty, swept the country into the Spanish War. It was not the Russian, nor the Pole, nor any other foreign strain who swept the country into this last war — it was the old American stock which has ever stood for right and justice. And what did the careful exami- nation necessitated by our recent arming disclose? Was all well with us? Can we go back to our afore- time indifiference and self-satisfaction, or should we arouse and stand alert? If we knew that nearly one man in every ten we cas- ually meet on the street could not read or write Eng- lish ; Mf we knew that seven millions over ten years of age could not read or write at all ; if we knew that 3,000,000 farmers could not read the government cir- culars urging them to increase food production dur- ing the war, nor read the Liberty Loan appeals ; if we knew that 400,000 of the 1,600,000 conscripts had to be taught the meaning of the simple words of mili- tary command, how to sign payrolls, which was the 1 Secretary Lane before Senate Committee on Education and Labor, 1919. [:i6o] CONCLUSION left foot, would we be pleased and content? Yet such are the dreadful facts. It seems incredible! Fortunately for us, foreigners seem to be begin- ning to look upon American citizenship with indif- ference or scorn. The report from over a hundred business firms shows that two-thirds of their foreign- born laborers had not even taken out their so-called first papers ; and still more fortunate for us is the dis- closure of the fact that the more undesirable, the greater their aversion to becoming our fellow citi- zens. Nearly all the Mexicans and members of four other nationalities, lesser breeds without the law, re- fuse it.^ Benighted Americans insist that these people should be forced into becoming citizens as one would drive sheep into a pen, or as the Alsatians were forced to become Germans. They insist that such people must be compelled to love America, for, of course, failing that love, the fundamental basis of pa- triotic citizenship is wanting, and if they cannot be compelled to love America, the alternative must be presented to them of deportation, that is to say, banishment. Now, banishment has from time imme- morial always been one of the most terrible of all punishments — a worse punishment than temporary imprisonment. We who love our country and are proud that we are Americans are inclined to resent the suggestion that our citizenship shall be placed be- fore an unwilling Mexican in a worse light than a State's prison sentence. Nor can we stop here. We must also consider the 1 Secretary Lane. CONCLUSION claims advanced by sympathetic demagogues on be- half of the Filipino, who is picturesquely represented as already knocking at our door, he and his wife, or, in view of the large Mussulman population, his wives, each one eager to express political acumen by voting. At the time of the Spanish War the pop- ulation of the Philippines was estimated to be nine millions. Since that time, under favoring conditions such as the suppression of head hunting and slavery, we are promised a large increase. Naturally the demagogue favors additions to our ignorant vote, whether it be Filipino, or Russian, or Pole, or any other, for it is easily manipulated. It may well be doubted, however, if the demagogue is in this matter the patriotic statesman he so loudly claims to be. The statements just made are but a hint or sugges- tion of the vast mass of facts which a slight amount of consideration will array before each of us. Even this mere hint or suggestion may well give us pause — nay, more, for the moment we begin to consider the mess of pottage for which we are exchanging our birth- right, it becomes revolting. Our whole theory and our whole practice in regard to naturalization betray the sacred privileges won for us and sealed to us by the lifelong devotion, the hopes and aspirations, the trials, toil and suffering of all of our beloved and honored dead. The teachings of science, the records of history, the warnings of common sense, our own bitter pres- ent experience, cry out unto us. There is no ground on which utterly alien people, alien in race, in lan- guage, in customs, mature men, mature women, set- CONCLUSION tied in their foreign ways should be admitted to our citizenship. There is no line of reasoning on which such procedure can be justified. It is monstrous. We despise the wretched individual who wantonly wastes his patrimony, and yet among their equals his chil- dren may redeem their fortune. We have robbed and are robbing our children of their heritage. We dissipate our fortune of American freedom and con- demn the children to rub shoulders politically, not with their mates, but with strangers and foreigners whose sympathies are with each other and not with the American-born. We know that our institutions depend on the intel- ligence of each citizen. We know that a republic is possible only to men of homogeneous race, deter- mined and united in intelligent control of their own affairs. We know that the greater the common im- pulse, the greater the common intelligence, the more community of action and individual capacity are fos- tered, the better, the more splendid, the happier will be the result. We know that to sustain us in the efifort we need every ounce of power we can derive from birth, breeding, the nurture and admonition of loved and honored tradition, the memory of patient self- sacrifice in upbuilding, of courageous persistence in calamity, of deliberate purpose in statesmanship; and we know that such things cannot be taught, they must come to us with the mother's milk, the baby's lisping questions, and grow with our nerves and thews and sinews until they become part and parcel of our very being. No naturalization certificates can carry with them D63n CONCLUSION any part of this, our heritage, impalpable, intangible, and yet more worth on the great altar of our country than the suffrage of untold millions of the ignorant and debased. Already, seventy years ago, de Tocque- ville noted that the whole country east of the Missis- sippi was settled up, was teeming with vigorous race life; forests and prairies were giving way to home- steads and farms, mines were worked, factories busy, railroads and steamboats pushing forward rapid communication, and every community permeated with full knowledge and understanding of self- government by free institutions. There were then seventeen millions of Americans busily engaged in developing our resources. Were we helpless that we needed to call in thirty or forty million strangers to do the work? Suppose we had imported two hun- dred million Russians, Poles, Syrians, South Italians, Greeks, Negroes, and had cut down every suitable tree for lumber, mined every ounce of coal and ore, and exploited the land down to its rock foundations, what would it have profited us? Lost in these for- eign millions, America would be no more. Americans, the Philistines are upon us. Rend the fetters with which we have bound ourselves. Noth- ing but our own folly stands between us and freedom from alien invasion. Speak the word, repeal at once the naturalization laws which corrupt our institu- tions and destroy us. Repeal them, and the thing is done. Yet have we left fifty millions, the greater part of whom can trace descent to Colonial days, a number ample to keep, and which if uncontaminated by for- eign blood ever will keep, America for Americans! D64: NOTES NOTES Page i,Note i. "The life of individual man is of a mixed nature. In part he submits to the free-will impulses of himself and others — in part he is under the inex- orable dominion of law." "Intellectual Development of Europe," Vol. I, p. 2. "All mundane events are the results of the opera- tion of law. Every movement in the skies or upon the earth proclaims to us that the Universe is under government." Jhe same, p. 4. "To this doctrine of the control of physical agen- cies over organic forms I acknowledge no excep- tions, not even in the case of man." The same, p. 9. "Too commonly do we believe that the affairs of men are determined by spontaneous action or free will. We keep that overpowering influence which really controls them in the background — nor is it until the close of our days that we discern how great is the illusion, and that we have been swim- ming, playing and struggling in a stream which, in D67:] NOTES Spite of all our voluntary motions, has silently and resistlessly borne us to a predetermined shore." The same, p. i6. *'But in thus according to primordial laws and asserting their immutability, universality and para- mount control in the government of this world, there is nothing inconsistent with the free action of "^^"- The same, p. 20. "Not without difficulty do men perceive that there is nothing inconsistent betw^een invariable law and endlessly varying phenomena, and that it is a more noble view of the government of this world to impute its order to a penetrating primi- tive wisdom which could foresee consequences throughout a future eternity and provided for them in the original plan at the outset, than to involve the perpetual intervention of an ever acting spiritual agency for the purpose of warding ofif misfortunes that might happen and setting things to rights." The same, p. 96. "Human progress takes place under an unvary- ing law, and therefore in a definite way." The same. Vol. II, p. 181. "Kepler's discoveries . . . constitute a most im- portant step to the establishment of the doctrine of the government of the world by law." The same, Vol. II, p. 259. D68: NOTES Page i, Note 2. "One of the great lessons of biology is that man's physiological nature is essentially the same as that of the lower animals. The law which applies uni- versally to them applies also to him." "The Evolution of the Earth," Lull; p. 157. "We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature — with his God- like intellect which has penetrated into the move- ments and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted powers, man still bears in his bod- ily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." "Descent of Man," Darwin ; Vol. II, Chap. XXI, p. 441. Page i, Note 3. "The lot of man will be ameliorated and his power and dignity increased in proportion as he is able to comprehend the mechanism of the world, the action of the natural laws, and to apply physical forces to his use." "Intellectual Development of Europe," Draper; Vol. II, p. 147. Page i, Note 4. "The intelligence of an animal is in a general manner proportional to the relative size of the true 1:169] NOTES brain as compared with the sensory ganglia. . . . In proportion as this development has proceeded, the intellectual qualities have become more varied and more profound." "Intellectual Development of Europe," Draper; Vol. II, p. 340. "It is only through the physical that the meta- physical can be discovered." The same, Vol. II, p. 332. "Anatomically we find no provision in the nerv- ous system for the improvement of the morale save indirectly through the intellectual — the whole aim of development being for the sake of intelligence." The same, Vol. II, p. 347. Page 3, Note. "We may with correctness use the observations made on animals in our investigations of the human system." "Intellectual Development of Europe," Draper; Vol. II, p. 341. Page 4, Note i. "From . . . animal life . . . man is destined one day to learn what, in truth, he really is." "Intellectual Development of Europe," Draper; Vol. II, p. 182. Page 4, Note 2. "The principle of selection in the breeding of animals has been systematically acknowledged and followed to a far greater extent within the last hun- NOTES dred years than at any former period, and a corre- sponding result has been gained, but it would be a great error to suppose, as we shall immediately see, that its importance was not recognized and acted on during the most ancient times and by (even) semi-civilized people. . . ^ *'In a well-known passage in the thirtieth chapter of Genesis rules were given for influencing, as was then thought possible, the color of sheep. ... By the time of David the fleece was likened to snow. Youatt, who had discussed all the passages in rela- tion to breeding in the Old Testament, concludes that at this early period some of the best principles of breeding must have been steadily and long pur- sued. It was ordered, according to Moses, that 'thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind,' but mules were purchased, so that at this early period other nations must have crossed the horse and ass. It is said that Erichthonius, some generations before the Trojan war, had many brood mares 'which by his care and judgment in the choice of stallions produced a breed of horses supe- rior to any in the surrounding countries.' Homer (Book V) speaks of yEneas's horses as bred from mares which were put to the steeds of Laomedon. Plato in his 'Republic' says to Glaucus: 'I see that you raise at your house a great many dogs for the chase. Do you take care about breeding and pair- ing them? Among animals of good blood are there not always some which are superior to the rest?' To which Glaucus answers in the aflirmative. Alexander the Great selected the finest Indian CI?!] NOTES cattle to send to Macedonia to improve the breed. According to Pliny, King Pyrrhus had an espe- cially valuable breed of oxen ; and he did not suffer the bulls and cows to come together till four years old. Virgil, in his Georgics (Lib. Ill), gives as strong advice as any modern agriculturist could do, carefully to select the breeding stock, 'to note the tribe, the lineage, and the sire, whom to reserve for husband of the herd'; to brand the progeny; to select sheep of the purest white and to examine if their tongues are swarthy. . . .' Columella gives detailed instructions about breeding fowls: 'Let the breeding hens therefore be of a choice color, a robust body, square built, full breasted with large heads and upright and bright red combs. Those are believed to be the best breed which have five toes.' According to Tacitus, the Celts attended to the races of their domestic animals, and Caesar states that they paid high prices to merchants for fine imported horses. "Coming down the stream of time, we may be brief. About the beginning of the IX century Charlemagne expressly ordered his officers to take great care of his stallions, and if any proved bad or old, to forewarn him in good time before they were put to mares. Even in a country so little civilized as Ireland during the IX century ... it would appear . . . that animals from particular places or having a particular character were valued. . . . Athelstan, in 930, received as a present from Ger- many, running horses. . . . King John imported one hundred chosen stallions from Flanders. On NOTES June 1 6, 1305, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury begging for the loan of any choice stallion and promising its return at the end of the season. ... In the reign of Henry VII and VIII it was ordered that the magistrate at Michaelmas should scour the heaths and commons and destroy all mares beneath a certain size. . . . The effect on the average height of the men of France of the destructive wars of Napoleon, by which many tall men were killed, the short ones being left to be the fathers of families, is . . . that since Napoleon's time the standard for the army has been lowered two or three times." "Animals and Plants Under Domestication," Darwin; Vol. II, p. 201 et seq. Page 5, Note. "But from the tendency to reversion . . . highly bred animals, when neglected, soon degen- erate." "Animals and Plants Under Domestication," Darwin; Vol. II, p. 248. Page 10, Note. "The dog offers the most striking instance of changed mental attributes, and these differences cannot be accounted for by descent from distant wild types — new mental characters have certainly often been acquired, and natural ones lost, under domestication." "Animals and Plants Under Domestication," Darwin ; Vol. II, p. 409. [1733 NOTES Page II, Note. "Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen ... to the very summit of the or- ganic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future." "Descent of Man," Darwin; Vol. II, Chapter XXI, p. 440. Page 16, Note. "A democracy cannot endure unless it be com- posed of able citizens; therefore it must in self-de- fense withstand the free introduction of degener- ate stock." "Memories," Galton; p. 311. Page 18, Note. "What causes these racial differences? We can- not answer until the biologists give us more light on the origin of the new forms called mutants. If it be asked, however, what preserves the mutants and thus gives rise to new racial qualities, we can answer with considerable certainty. Environment, by means of natural selection, allows some types to perpetuate themselves indefinitely, while it rigidly exterminates others." "Evolution of the Earth," Lull; p. 148. Page 19, Note. "The use of fire has been traced back for about seventy-five thousand years." "Man of the Old Stone Age," Osborn; p. 165. NOTES Page 26, Note. The figure speaks for itself, but it must be under- stood clearly that society is a seething mass, rising and falling and never in repose. The grandson of Unskilled Defective GRAPH REPRESENTING STRATIFICATION OF SOCIETY a man of genius may be a criminal delinquent; the son of a proletarian may rise to a position of emi- nence. Galton estimates the total number of men of genius in all history at four hundred. This, if the figure is to represent the whole body of mankind in historic times, would be an infinitesimal speck at the point X. Moreover, Galton shows that an im- portant fraction of these men of genius were re- 1:1753 NOTES lated by blood. He reckons illustrious men as only one in a million, and, speaking loosely, each man is supposed to represent a family which is ordinar- ily reckoned at about five. An illustrious man would therefore be one man in five million of the inhabitants. Men who distinguish themselves pretty frequently, either by purely original work or as leaders of opinion, he reckons at two hundred fifty in a million, or, as explained before, five mil- lion inhabitants. The world owes its whole ad- vancement to those who are above the line P Q.^ Below the line P Q to the line R S the figure in- cludes the vast majority — the masses. "They are conservative — they accept life as they find it and live on by tradition and habit. In other words, the great mass of any society lives a purely instinctive life, just like animals." "The middle class in Western Europe has been formed out of the labor class within seven hundred years. The whole middle class, therefore, repre- sents the successful rise of the serfs; but since a la- bor class remains, it is asserted that there has been no change. On the other hand, there has been a movement of nobles and middle class grandees downward into the labor class and the proletariat. It is asserted that representatives of great mediaeval families are now to be found as small farmers, farm laborers or tramps in modern England. "The masses are not ... at the base of a social pyramid. They are the core of society. The con- servatism of the masses is due to inertia. Change i"The Men of Talent Serve the Rest," Folkways, p. 266. 1:1763 NOTES would make new effort necessary to win rou- tine and habit. It is therefore irksome. The masses, moreover, have not the power to reach out after 'improvements' or to plan steps of change by which needs might be better satisfied. "Thinking and understanding are too hard work."^ "Folkways," pp. 40, 42, 45, 166. In speaking of the mental unrest of the "Refor- mation," which, in the sudden fear of eternal dam- nation, compelled thought in all, including the in- ert, Lecky (Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I, p. 64) describes it as "a period of extreme suffering and terror . . . and in consequence the most painful of all transitions through which the human intel- lect has passed." Page 34, Note. Breasted's charming narrative is followed. Al- bert M. Lythgoe and H. E. Winlock have most kindly passed upon the statement of historic fact. Page 64, Note. "The decline of the Greeks in the three centuries before our era is so great and sudden that it is very difficult to understand it. The best estimate of the population of the Peloponnesus in the second cen- tury B. C. puts it at one hundred and nine per square mile. Yet the population was emigrating and pop- ulation was restricted. A pair would have but one or two children. The cities were empty and the iSee also Memories, Galton; Chapter XX, p. 287. NOTES land was uncultivated. There was neither war nor pestilence to account for this. It may be that the land was exhausted. There must have been a loss of economic power so that labor was unrewarded. The inores all sank together. There can be no achievement in the struggle for existence without an adequate force. Our civilization is built on steam. The Greek and Roman civilization was built on slavery, that is, on an aggregation of hu- man power. The result produced was, at first, very great, but the exploitation of men entailed other consequences besides quantities of useful products. It was these consequences which issued in the mores, for, in a society built on slavery as the form of productive in- dustry, all the mores, obeying the strain of con- sistency, must conform to that as the chief of the folkways. It was at the beginning of the empire that the Romans began to breed slaves because wars no longer brought in new supplies. Sex vice, lazi- ness, decline of energy and enterprise, cowardice and contempt for labor were consequences of slav- ery, for the free. The system operated, in both the classical states, as a selection against the superior elements in the population. The efifect was inten- sified by the political system. The city became an arena of political struggle for the goods of life which it was a shame to work for. Tyrannies and democracies alternated with each other, but both alike used massacre and proscription, and both thought it policy to get rid of troublesome persons, that is, of those who had convictions and had cour- NOTES age to avow them. Every able man became a vic- tim of terrorism, exerted by idle market-place loaf- ers. The abuse of democratic methods by those- who-had-not to plunder those-who-had must also have had much to do with the decline of economic power, and with the general decline of joy in life and creative energy. It would also make marriage and children a great and hopeless burden. Abor- tion and sex vice both directly and indirectly les- sened population, by undermining the power of re- production, while their effect to destroy all virile virtues could not fail to be exerted. It was another symptom of disease in the mores that the number of males in the Roman Empire greatly exceeded the number of females. "The case of Sparta is especially interesting be- cause the Spartan mores were generally admired and envied in the fourth century B. C. They were very artificial and arbitrary. They developed into a catastrophe. The population declined to such a point that it was like group suicide. The nation incased itself in fossilized mores and extremist con- servatism, by which its own energies were crushed. The institutions produced consequences which were grotesque compared with that which had been expected from them." "Folkways," Sumner; p. 105. Page 66, Note. "Antipater changed the constitution of Athens (c. 322 B.C.) by restricting the franchise to those whose property amounted to more than 2,000 drachms (£80 Sterling), thus depriving twelve D79l NOTES thousand of citizenship and leaving nine thousand citizens. To many of these disfranchised citizens he gave lands in Thrace." "Greece," Bury; Vol. II, p. 435. Page 151, Note. ' ^' ' ^ -<■•>:> "The extinction of the Roman Empire, from v^hich the Germans had already snatched one prov- ince after another, only set the seal to the inward decay of the Latin race and the ancient Roman traditions. Even the Christian religion, w^hich had everywhere replaced the old faith in the gods, no longer avv^oke any life in the people. The Gallic bishop Salvian casts a glance over the moral con- dition of these effete but now Christianised nations, and pronounces them all sunk in indolence and vice; only in the Goths, Vandals, and Franks, who had established themselves as conquerors in the Roman provinces, does he find purity of morals, vigour, and the energy of youth. 'These,' said he, 'wax daily, we wane; they advance, we decay; they bloom, we wither — and shall we therefore be sur- prised if God gives all our provinces to the bar- barians, in order that through their virtues these lands may be purified from the crimes of the Romans?' The great name of Roman, ay, even the title which was once the proudest among men, namely 'Roman citizen,' had already become contemptible. "The Empire, dying of the decrepitude of age, was finally destroyed by the greatest conflict of races recorded in history. Upon its ruins Teuton- ism established itself, bringing fresh blood and NOTES spirit into the Latin race, and reconstituting the Western world through the assertion of individual freedom. The overthrow of the Roman Empire was in reality one of the greatest benefits which mankind ever received. Through it Europe be- came reinvigorated, and from out of the chaos of barbarism a many-sided organism arose. . . . Amid terrible conflicts, through dark and dreary centuries, was accomplished the metamorphosis which is alike the grandest drama of history and the most noteworthy triumph of the ever-advan- cing, ever-developing Genius of Man." "Rome in the Middle Ages," Gregorovius, Vol. I, p. 252, citing Salvian, c. 476 A.D., "De vero judicio," Vol. XXXII, p. 53. [18O RET TO I LOA 6-mc R RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richrmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SENT ON ILL 03 iDesk te JAN 2 2 TO U. C. BERKELEY FOR) 12,000(11/95) CELEY U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARI^^^^ r cQsmBB'm UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY ;:' :