X. B (ii) (a), ANNEX IV

THE RELATION, IN RENAISSANCES OF UNI-
VERSAL STATES, BETWEEN EFFECTIVENESS
OF EVOCATION AND DEGREE OF GEOGRA-
PHICAL DISPLACEMENT

IN a preceding Annex to this chapter,1 in which we have compared the
renaissances of the Sinic and Hellenic universal states, we have found
that the renaissance of the Sinic universal state in the main body of the
Far Eastern World was remarkably more effective than was the renais-
sance of the Hellenic universal state hi either Western or Orthodox
Christendom, and also that, as between these two renaissances of the
Roman Empire in the histories of the two Christian Hellenistic civiliza-
tions, its renaissance in the shape of an East Roman Empire in the main
body of Orthodox Christendom fell less far short than its renaissance in
the shape of a Holy Roman Empire in the West fell short of the standard
of effectiveness set by the renaissance of the Ts'in and Han Empire in
the shape of the Sui and T'ang Empire. These findings suggest, as far
as they go—and they are, of course, based on a consideration of only
three cases—that the effectiveness of the evocation of an- antecedent
society's universal state varies in direct ratio with the tenacity of the
original universal state in surviving, or with its persistence in rallying,
during the death agonies of the moribund society of which it was a tardy
political embodiment, and in inverse ratio with the degree of the geo-
graphical displacement of the domain of the affiliated civilization, in
whose history the renaissance takes place, from the domain of its defunct
predecessor.

In Sinic and Far Eastern history the dissolution of the Posterior Han
Empire at the turn of the second and third centuries of the Christian
Era was ephemerally retrieved during the years A.D. 280-317 by a
reunion of the whole of its former territory under the rule of 'the United
Tsin'; and, when, thereafter, a nascent Far Eastern Society emerged
out of a post-Sinic interregnum, its domain was virtually coextensive
with its Sinic predecessor's, even though, within this domain, the Yellow
River Basin, which had been the Sinic Civilization's cradle, was now
rivalled in importance by a Yangtse Basin which had been incorporated
into the Sinic World only in the course of its Time of Troubles and its
universal state. In Hellenic and Orthodox Christian history a Roman
Empire which had dissolved at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries
of the Christian Era in the West survived till the turn of the sixth aad
seventh centuries in the central and eastern provinces with a tenacity
comparable to the persistence of a temporarily dissolved Sinic universal
state in reconstituting itself for a further spell under the auspices of the
United Tsin. On the other hand the domain of the Orthodox Christian
Society that emerged thereafter out of a post-Hellenic interregnum,

i On pp. 649-81, above.