742 PROSPECTS OF THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION

which so advantageously distinguish, above the rest of Mankind, the
Europeans and their colonies. The savage nations of the globe are the
common enemies of Civilised Society; and we may inquire, with anxious
curiosity, whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those
calamities which formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome.
Perhaps the same reflections will illustrate the fall of that mighty empire,
and explain the probable causes of our actual security.'

In this paragraph Gibbon enunciates the argument that governs the
remainder of his observations: The Western World is now not exposed
to the possibility of a breakdown from within; the only danger by which
it might conceivably still be threatened is that of another attack by bar-
barians from the outer darkness; and, since this danger does not now ap-
pear to be a serious one, the Western World may consider itself secure.

The major premiss of this argument—a premise which Gibbon simply
takes for granted—would be challenged by a twentieth-century Western
inquirer who had lived to see the history of his own society demonstrate,
in its turn, that 'we are betrayed by what is false within,'1 In the light of
this first-hand experience it was easier for a twentieth-century Western
historian than it had been for his eighteenth-century predecessor to see
that the breakdowns of all the civilizations that had broken down by
Gibbon's time, not to speak of a date some 170 years later, had been due
to inward spiritual failures and not to outward physical blows. We need
not labour a point that we have already illustrated at length in an em-
pirical survey.2 If Gibbon had taken this point, he would have divined
that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire had been no more than
an episode, and this a late one, in the decline and fall of the Hellenic
Civilization; and he would have detected the cause of the downfall, not
in 'the triumph of Barbarism and Religion' in. the Roman Empire in the
fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian Era, but in the fratricidal war-
fare between the parochial city-states of Hellas in the fifth century B.C.3

After filing this notice of dissent we may go on to Paragraph Six:

'The Romans were ignorant of the extent of their danger and the
number of their enemies. Beyond the Rhine and Danube the northern
countries of Europe and Asia were filled with innumerable tribes of
hunters and shepherds, poor, voracious, and turbulent; bold in arms, and
impatient to ravish the fruits of industry. The Barbarian World was
agitated by the rapid impulse of war; and the peace of Gaul or Italy was
shaken by the distant revolutions of China. The Huns, who fled before
a victorious enemy, directed their march towards the West; and the
torrent was swelled by the gradual accession of captives and allies. The
flying tribes who yielded to the Huns assumed in their turn the spirit of
conquest; the endless column of barbarians pressed on the Roman Empire
with accumulated weight; and, if the foremost were destroyed, the vacant
space was instantly replenished by new assailants. Such formidable
emigrations no longer issue from the North; and the long repose, which
has been imputed to the decrease of population, is the happy consequence
of the progress of arts and agriculture. Instead of some rude villages thinly
scattered among its woods and morasses, Germany now produces a list of

* George Meredith, quoted in IV. iv. 120 and VI. vii. 46. n. 6.

* In IV. iv. 119-584. a gee IV. iv, 58-63.