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Cornell University Library
D 21.W45 1922a
Outline oj hjstor
Cornell University
Library
The original of tiiis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028328866
THE OUTLINE OE HISTORY
THE OUTLINE OF
HISTORY
Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
BY
H. G. WELLS
WBITTEN OMGINAIXT WITH THE ADVICE AND EDITOBIAL HELP OF
MR. ERNEST BARKER,
SIR H. H. JOHNSTON, SIR E. RAY LANKBSTER,
AND PROrESSOR GILBERT MURRAY
Am) IIXtrSTBATED BY
J. P. HORRABIN
The Entibe Work, Revised and
REABEAB-dsD BY THE AtlTHOll
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
FOB THE
EEVIEW O:^' EEVIEWS COMPANY
New; York
1922
All Rights Reserved
E.h,
doptRIGliT, 1920 4ND 1921,
Bt the MACMItLAN COMPANY.
COPTMOHT, 1920 AND 1921,
By H, G. wells.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1920,
Third Edition revjsed' 'and' reatrapged- September, 1921.
A-1<W- 33-
INTRODUCTION
.. "A- phildsophy of the history of the human race, worthif
of its' name, must ietiin with the heavens and descend to
' the earth, must be charged with the conviction that aU
■ existence is one — a single conception sustained from be-
ginning to end upon one identical law."
— Friedrich BaTZEIi.
THIS Outline of History, of which this is. a third edition,
freshly revised and rearranged, is an attempt to tell,
truly and clearly, in one continuous narrative, .the whole
story of life and mankind so far as it is known to-day. It is
written plainly for the general reader, but its aim goes beyond
its use as merely interesting reading matter. There is a feeling
abroad that the teaching of history considered as a part of gen-
eral education is in an unsatisfactory condition, and particu-
larly that the ordinary treatment of this "subject" by the class
and teacher and examiner is too partial and narrow. But the
desire to extend the general range of historical ideas is con-
fronted by the argument that the available time for instruction
is already consumed by that partial and narrow treatment, and
that therefore, however desirable this extension of range may
be, it is in practice impossible. If an Englishman, for example,
has found the history of England quite enough for his powers
of assimilation, then it seems hopeless to expect his sons and
daughters to master universal history, if that is to consist of
the history of England, plus the history of France, plus the
history of Germany, plus the history of Eussia, and so on. To
which the only possible answer is that universal history is at
once something more and something less than the aggregate
of the national histories to which we are accustomed, that it
must be approached in a different spirit and dealt with, in a
different manner. This book seeks to justify that answer. It
has been written primarily to show that history as one whole
is amenable to a more broad and comprehensive handling than
is the history of special nations and periods, a broader handling
Ti INTRODUCTION
that will bring it -within the normal limitations of time and
energy set to the reading and education of an ordinary citizen.
This outline deals with ages and races and nations, where the
ordinary history deals with reigns and pedigrees and campaigns ;
but it will not be found to be more crowded with names and
dates, nor more difficult to follow and understand. _ History is
no exception amongst the sciences ; as the gaps fill in, the out-
line simplifies; as the outlook broadens, the clustering multitude
of details dissolves into general laws. And many topics of quite
primary interest to mankind, the first appearance and the growth
of scientific knowledge for example, and its effects upon human
life, the elaboration of the ideas of money and credit, or the
story of the origins and spread and influence of Christianity,
which must be treated f ragmentarily or by elaborate digressions
in any partial history, arise and flow completely and naturally
in one general record of the world in which we live.
The need for a common knowledge of the general fapts of
human history throughout 'the world has become very evidept
during the tragic happenings of the last few years. Swifter
means of communication have brought all men closer to one
another for good or for evil. War becomes a universal disaster,
blind and monstrously destructive; it bombs the baby in its
cradle and sinks the food-ships that cater for the non-combatant
and the neutral. There can be no peace now, we realize, but a
common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general
prosperity. But ihere can he no common peace and prosperity
without common historical ideas. Without such ideas to hold
them together in harmonious co-operation, with nothing but nar-
row, selfish, and conflicting nationalist traditions, races and
peoples are bound to drift towards conflict and destruction. This
truth, which was apparent to that great philosopher Kant a
century or more ago — it is the gist of his tract upon universal
peace — is now plain to the man in the street. Our internal
policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly
vitiated at present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin
and historical relationship of social classes. A sense of history
as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for
peace within as it is for peace between the nations.
The writer will offer no apology for making this experiment.
His disqualifications are manifest. But such work needs to be
done- by as many people as possible, he was free to make his
INTRODUCTION vii
contribution, and lie was greatly attracted by the task. He
has read sedulously and made the utmost use of all the help
he could obtain. There is not a chapter that has not been
examined by some more competent person than himself and
very carefully revised. He has particularly to thank his friends
Sir E. Kay Lankester, Sir H. H. Johnston, Professor Gilbert
Murray, and Mr. Ernest Barker for much counsel and direc-
tion and editorial help. Mr. Philip Guedalla has toiled most
eflBciently and kindly through all the proofs. Mr. A. Allison,
Professor T. W. Arnold, Mr. Arnold Bennett, the Eev. A. H.
Trevor Benson, Mr. Aodh de Blacam, Mr. Laurence Binyon,
the Eev. G. W. Broomfield, Sir William Bull, Mr. L. Cranmer
Byng, Mr. A. J. D. Campbell, Mr. A. Y. Campbell, Mr. L. Y.
Chen, Mr. A. R. Cowan, Mr. O. G. S. Crawford, Dr. W. S.
Culbertson, Mr. E. Langton Cole, Mr. B. G. Collins, Mr.
J. J. L. DuyveHdak, Mr. O. W. Ellis, Mr. G. S. Ferrier, Mr.
David Freeman, Mr. S. N. Fu, Mr. G. B. Gloyne, Sir Eichard
Gregory, Mr. F. H. Hayward, Mr. Sydney Herbert, Dr. Fr.
Krupicka, Mr. H. Lang Jones, Mr. C. H. B. Laughton, Mr.
B. I. Macalpin, Mr. G. H. Mair, Mr. F. S. Marvin, Mr. J. S.
Mayhew, Mr. B. Stafford Morse, Professor J. L. Myres, the
Hon. W. Ormsby-Gore, Sir Sydney Olivier, Mr. E. I. Pocock,
Mr. J. Pringle, Mr. W. H. E. Eivers, Sir Denison Eoss, Dr:
E. J. Eussell, Dr. Charles Singer, Mr. A. St. George Sanford,
Dr. C. O. Stallybrass, Mr. G. H. Walsh, Mr. G. P. Wells, Miss
Eebecca West, and Mr. George Whale have all to be thanked for
help, either by reading parts of the MS. or by pointing out
errors in the published parts, making suggestions, answering
questions or giving advice. Numerous other helpful corre-
spondents have pointed out printer's errors and minor slips in
the serial publication which preceded the book edition, and
they have added many useful items of information, and to those
writers also the warmest thanks are due. Mr. C. M. Anton
Belaiew, Mr.' Henry Coates, Mr. J. A. Corry, Mr. Archibald
Craig, Mr. W. V. Cruden, Mr. A. H. Dodd, Mr. T. B. Gold-
smith, Mr. F. E. Green, Mr> F. S. Hare, Mr. Homer B. Hul-
bert, Mr. Walter Ingleby, Mr. J. H. Leviton, Mr. H. Comyn
Maitland, Mr. Karsten" Meyer, Mr. William Piatt, Mr. F.
Gordon Eoe, Mr. Alden Sampson, Mr. Neville H. Smith, Mr.
M. Timur, Mr. W. H. Thompson, Mr. A. J. Vogan, Mr. W. A.
Voss, Mr. G. F. Wates, and one or two correspondents with
viii INTRODUCTION
illegible . signatures, have made valuable suggestions since the
publication of the second edition. Pamphlets against the Ovi-
line by Mr, Gomme and Dr. Downey have also been useful in
this later revision. But of course none of these helpers, are to
be held responsible for the judgments, tone, arrangement or
writing of this Outline. In the relative importance of the
parts, in the moral and political implications of the story,; the
final decision has necessarily fallen to the writer. The problem
of illustrations was a very difficult one for him, for he, had
had no previous experience in the production of an illustrated
book. In Mr. J. F. Horrabin he has had the good fortune to
find not only an illustrator but a collaborator. Mr. Horrabin
has spared no pains to make this work informative and exact.
His maps and drawings are a part of the text, the most vital
and decorative part. Some of them represent the reading and
inquiry of many laborious days.
The index to this edition is the work of Mr. Strickland Gib-
son of Oxford. Several correspondents have asked for a pro-
nouncing index and accordingly this has been provided.
The writer owes a word of thanks to that living index of
printed books, Mr. J. F. Cox^ of the London Library., He
would also like to acknowledge here the help he has received
from Mrs. Wells. Without her labour in typing and re-typing
the drafts of the various chapters as they have been revised and
amended, in checking references, finding suitable quotations,
hunting up illustrations, and keeping in order the whole mass
of material for this bistoi-y, and without her constant help and
watchful criticism, its completion would have been impossible.
H. G. Wells.'
§ 2. Flying dragons
§ 3. The first birds
§4. An age of hardship and death ,
§5. The first appearance of fur and feathers
SCHEME OF CONTENTS
Chaptbk I. The Eakth in Space and Time ''*°1
Chapter II. The Record of the Rocks
§ 1. The first living things .5
§2. How old is the world? 10
Chaptee III. Natitbai. Selection and the Changes or Species . 13
Chapteh IV. The Invasion of the Dkt Land by Life
§ 1. Life and water ........ .19
§2. The earliest animals 21
Chapter V. The Age or Reptiles
§ 1. The age of lowland life 25
29
30
32
34
Chapter VI. The Age of Mammals
§ 1. A new age of life . . . . . . . . .37
§2. Tradition comes into the world 38
§ 3. An age of brain growth . ... . . .42
§4. The world grows hard again ..... .44
Chapter VII. The Ancestry of Man
§ 1. Man descended from a walking ape 46
§2. First traces of man-like creatures ,51
§3. The Heidelberg sub-man ,52
§ 4. The Piltdown sub-man 53
Chapter VIII. The Neanderthal Men, an Extinct Race. (The
Early PALiEOLiTHio Age)
§ 1. The world 50,000 years ago 55
§2. The daily life of the first men 59
Chapter IX. The Later Postglacial Palaeolithic Men, the First
Trpe Men. (Later Paleolithic Age)
§ 1. The coming of men like ourselves .65
§ 2. Hunters give place to herdsmen 7i
§3. No sub-men in America 75
X SCHEME OF CONTENTS
FAGS
Chapteb X. Neolithic Man in Europe
§ 1. The age of cultivation begins 77
§2. Where did the Neolithic culture arise? .... 81
§3. Everyday Neolithic life 81
§ 4. Primitive trade ' 87
§ 5. The flooding of the Mediterranean valley . ... 88
Chaptee XI. Eaelt Thought
§ 1. Primitive philosophy 92
§2. The Old Man in religion 94
§ 3. Fear and hope in religion 96
§ 4. Stars and seasons 97
§ 5. Story-telling and myth-making 99
§ 6. 'Complex origins of religion 100
Chapteb XII. The Eaces of Mankind
§ 1. Ib mankind still differentiating? 106
§2. The main races of mankind 110
§ 3. The Heliolithic culture of the Brunet peoples . . . Ill
Chapteb XIII. The Languages of Mankind
§ 1. No one primitive language 117
§2. The Aryan languages 118
§ 3. The Semitic languages 120
§ 4. The Hamitic languages 121
§5. The Ural-Altaic languages 123
§ 6. The Chinese languages 123
§7. Other language groups 124
§ 8. A possible primitive language group .... 127
§ 9. Some isolated languages 129
Chapteb XIV. The First Civilizations
§ 1. Early cities and early nomads 131
§2a. The Sumerians 135
§ 2b. The empire of Sargon the First 137
§ 2c. The empire of Hammurabi . 137
§ 2d. The Assyrians and their empire . . . , . .138
§2e. The Chaldean empire 140
§3. The early history of Egypt 141
§ 4. The early civilization of India 147
§ 5. The early history of China 147
§ 6. While the civilizations were growing 152
Chapter XV. Sea Peoples and Trading Peoples
§ 1. The earliest ships and sailors 155
§ 2. The ^gean cities before history 158
SCHEME OF CONTENTS
zi
IPAOB
§ 3. The first voyages of exploration . ' 162
§4. Early- traders 164
§5. Early travellers 166
Chaptee XVI. Wbiting^
§ 1. Picture wHting 168
§2. Syirdble writing 171
§ S. AlpMb'et -WTitiilg .172
§ 4. THe pkee of Wi-iting ijl human life 173
Chaptkb XVll. God's and Stabs, Pkiests and Kings
§ i. Thfe priest cottifeB into history 177
§2. Priests and thfe stars 181
§ 3. Priests and the dawn Of Ifearning 184
§ 4. King against priests 185
§5. How Bel-liarduk struggled against the kings . . .188
§6. The god-kings of Egypt 191
§7. Shi Hwang-ti destroys the books 195
Chaptee XVIII. Serfs, Slaves, Social Classes, and Free In-
dividuals
§ 1. The common man in ancient times 196
§ 2. The earliest slaves . 198
§ 3. The first "independent" persons 201
§4. Social classes three thousand years ago .... 204
§ 5. Classes hardening into castes 207
§ 6. Caste in India 210
§ 7. The system of the Mandarins 212
§ 8. A s'ummUry of flVe thousand years 214
Cha*teb XIX, The Hebbew Scbiptubes and the Pbophets
§ 1. The place of the Isritfilitfes in history 217
§2. Saul, IJavid, and SolomOn 225
§3. The Jfew6 a people 6f mixfed origin 230
§4. liie importance of the Hebrew prophets . , . > 232
Chai'teb XX. The Aetan-speAkino Peoples in Prehistobic Times
§ 1. The spreading of the Aryan-speakers ..... 236
§2. Primitive Aryan life 240
§ '3. Early Aryan daily life 245
Chapter XXI. The Gbeeks and the Pebsians
§ 1. The Hellenic peoples 252
§ 2. Distinctive features of the Hellenic civilization . . . 255
§3. Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in Greece . . 258
§ 4. The kingdom of Lydia 265
§ 5. The rise of the Persians in the East 266
§6. The story of Croesus 270
xii SCHEME OF CONTENTS
PAGE
§7. DariuB invades Russia; . . . • ; ■• • ■ 274
§8. The battle of Marathon . . ....-• . . 280
§ 9. Thermopylae and Salamis , , . • . ■ 282
§10. Platsea and Mycale - . ..... 288
CtAPTEE XXII. Greek Thought in Relation ToHuMAjf Sooibtt-
§1. The Athens of Pericles . . . ,. ■ . . . . 291
§2. Socrates .: .- • . • ■• . . '■■ . 298
" ■ p3. Plato and the Academy , , . •'..,.. ., ...,■■.. , . .299
8 4. Aristotle and. the Lyceum . . . . ._ , . .301
§5. Philosophy becomes unworldly , , . ,. , '. • ,- 303
§6. The quality and lim.itations of Greek thought . . . 304
Chapteb XXIU. The Cabebe OF AxEstANDEB THE Great ..
§ 1. Philip of .Macedonia , . . . . ■ . .. . ■ . 310
§2. The murder of King Philip . •: ;■,.■■•. • • . • 3^5
§3. Alexander's first conquests . ... ■ - . . 319
§4. The wanderings of Alexander. . .• . . . 327
§5. Was Alexander indeed great? ..... . 331
§6." The successors of Alexander . . •.,.'■ • ' • 337
§7. Pergamum a refuge of culture. ...... ..... • . 338
§ 8. Alexander as a portent of world unity . . , . . , 340
Chapter XXIV. Science and Religion at Alexandria .
' §1. The science of Alexandria . . .• '; . '. ■ ; ' ; 342
§2. Philosophy of Alexandria . '■. ■ '. ■ '■■■;■ . . . 349
§3. Alexandria as a factory of religions •;''.• i-'- : . . 349
Chapter XXV. The Rise and Spread or Buddhx.sm ' ''
§ 1. The story of Gautama .' 354
§2. Teaching and legend in conflict . . . ..'s . ■. ,359
§3. The gospel of Gautama Buddha ■ . ■.'■■.••';•"■. ;' 361
§4. Buddhism and Asoka . .■ '. ■;- .'■;■• .. ■■■ . . 365
§5. Two great Chinese teachers ' . ' . •■■-•- ,■ ■ . . 371
§6. The corruptions of Buddhism". ■ ;■ '. : , 376
§7. The present range of Buddhism ,. . .,.,.,. . . 378
Chapter XXVI. The Two Webtben Repltblics
§1. The beginnings of the Latins . . . •• . . . 330
§ 2. A new sort of state . . . ' . . • . . _ 338
§ 3. The Carthaginian republic . of rich men .... 399
§4. The First Punie War . . . . . 400
§5. Cato the Elder and the spiri^ of. Catp,. .... , . . 404
§6. The Second Punic, War ,,, . . .., ' . 407
§7. The Third Punic War . . . -,.. . ..'."..'. '. 412
■ ■ §8. How the Punic War. undermined Roman.,liber4;y. , . . .. 417
§ 9, Comparison of the Roman republic Xfith a. modern state ., 418
SCHEME OF CONTENTS
xui
CHAPTEat
§1-
§2.
§3.
§4.
§5-
§6.
§7.
Ceaftes
il-
ia,
ia.
i4.
§5.
§6.
Chapteb
il-
ia.
§3.
i4.
§5.
§6.
i7.
§8.
§9.
§10.
Chapter
il-
ia.
i3.
i4.
§5.
§6.
i7.
§8.
i9-
Chapteb
il-
ia.
crumples up
XXVII. Feom TiBEBius Gkacchtts to the God-Empebob
IN Rome
The science of thwarting the common man
Finance in the Boman state .
The last years of republican politics .
The era of the adventurer generals
The end of the republic
The coming of the Princeps .
Why the Boman republic failed .
XXVIII. The C^esaes between the Sea and the Great
Plains of the Old World
A short catalogue of emperors
Roman civilization at its zenith .
Limitations of the Roman mind .
The stir of the great plains .
The Western (true Roman) Empire
The Eastern (revived Hellenic) Empire
XXIX. The Beginnings, the Rise, and the Divisions
OF Christianity
Judea at the Christian era ....
The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth .
The universal religions ....
The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth .
Doctrines added to the teachings of Jesus .
The struggles and persecutions of Christianity
Constantino the Great
The establishment of official Christianity .
The map of Europe, a.d. 500
The salvation of learning by Christianity .
XXX. Sb^ten Centuries in Asia (cieca 50
A.D. 650)
Justinian the Great ....
The Sassanid empire in Persia .
The decay of Syria under the Sassanids
The first message from Islam
Zoroaster and Mani ....
Hunnish peoples in central Asia and India
The great age of China ....
Intellectual fetters of China
The travels of Yuan Chwang
XXXI. Muhammad and Islam
Arabia before Muhammad .
Life of Muhammad to the Hegira .
Muhammad becomes a fighting prophet
424
427
429
435
439
443
446
451
458
467
469
480
487
493
496
505
507
509
516
520
522
526
530
535
537
540
544
545
547
550
555
561
567
570
574
XIV
SCHEME OF CONTENTS
§4.
§5.
§6.
§7.
§8.
Chapter
§1-
§2.
§3.
§4.
§5.
§6.
§7.
§8.
§9.
§10.
§11.
§12.
§13.
§14.
The teachings of Islam ....
The caliphs Abu Bekr and Omar
The great days of the Omayyads .
The decay of Islam under the Abbasids
The intellectual life of Arab Islam
XXXII. Christendom and the Cetjsades
The Western world at its lowest ebb .
The feudal system .....
The Prankish kingdom of the Merovingians
The Christianization of the western barbarians
Charlemagne becomes emperor of the West .
The personality of Charlemagne .
The French and the Germans become distinct
The Nprmans, the Saracens, the Hungarians, and
I'lirks
How Qqnstantinople appealed to Rome
The Crusades
The Crusades a te^t of Christianity .
The Emperor Frederick II .
Defects and limitations of the papacy
A list of leading popes ....
the S.
eljuk
PAGB
579
582
588
596
599
605
607
610
613
619
623
626
028
637
640
648
650
654
660
Chapter XXXIII. The Great Empire of Jengis Khan and his
§1-
§2.
§3.
§4.
§5.
§5A.
§5b.
§.5o.
§5D.
§5e.
§5F.
Successors (The Age of the Land Ways)
Asia at the end of the twelfth century
The rise and victories of the Mongols .
The travels of Marco Polo ....
The Ottoman Turks and Constantinople
Why the Mongols were not Christianized .
Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty
The Mongols revert to tribalism .
The Kipchak empire and the Tsar of Muscovy
Timurlane
The Mongol empire of India ....
The Mongols and the Gipsies
Chapter XXXIV. The Renascence op Western Civilization
(Land Ways Give Place to Sea Ways)
§ 1. Christianity and popular education
§ 2. Europe begins to think for itself
§ 3. The Great Plague and the dawn of communism .
§ 4. How paper liberated the human mind
§5. Protestantism of the princes and Protestantism of the
peoples
666
609
675
681
687
688
688
688
690
693
697
699
707
712
717
719
§ 6. The reawakening of science 725
SCHEME OF CONTENTS
XT
§ 7. The new growth of European towns .
§ 8. America comes into history .
§9. What Machiavelli thought of the world
§10. The republic of Switzerland
§ llA. The life of the Emperor Charles V .
§ 11b. Protestants if the prince wills it .
§ lie. The intellectual under-tow .
Chapteb
§1-
§2.
§3.
§4-
§S.
§6.
§7.
§8.
§9.
§10.
§11.
§12.
Chapter
Il-
§3.
§4.
§5.
§6.
§7.
§8.
§9.
§10.
§11.
§12.
§13.
XXXV. Princes, Parliaments, and Power?
Princes and foreign policy .
The Dutch republic ....
The English republic ....
The break-up and disorder of Germany
The splendours of Grand Monarchy in Europe
The growth of the idea of Great Powers
The crowned republic of Poland and its f:
The first scramble for empire overseas .
Britain dominates India
Russia's ride to the Pacific .
What Gibbon thought of the world in 1780
The social truce draws to an end
te
PAOE
734
740
749
753
754
765
765
767
769
773
783
786
793
798
801
805
809
811
818
XXXVI. The New Democratic Kepubi,ics or America
AND France
Inconveniences of the Great Power system .... 826
The thirteen colonies before their revolt . . . . 828
Civil war is forced upon the colonies 833
The War of Independence 838
The constitution of the United States 840
Primitive features of the United States constitution . . 847
Eevolutionary ideas in France 853
The Revolution of the year 1789 856
The French "crowned republic" of '89-'91 . . . .859
The Revolution of the Jacobins 866
The Jacobin republic, 1792-94 876
The Directory 881
The pause in reconstruction and the dawn of modern
Socialism 883
Chapter XXXVII. The Career or Napoleow Eonapabte
§ 1. The Bonaparte family in Corsica .
§2. Bonaparte as a republican general
§3. Napoleon First Consul, 1799-1804
§4. Napoleon I Emperor, 1804-14
§5. The Hundred Days ....
§ 6. The map of Europe in 1815 .
892
893
898
903
911
916
xvi SCHEME OF CONTENTS
PAOK
Chapter XXXVIII. The Kbalities and Imaginations of the
Nineteenth Centuby
§1. The mechanical revolution • .922
§ 2. Relation of the mechanical to the industrial revolution . 931
§3. The fermentation of ideas, 1848 . . ' . • • .936
§4. The development of the idea of Socialism . . . .938
§ 5. Shortcomings of Socialism as a scheme of human society . 946
§6. How Darwinism affected religious and political ideas . 951
§7. The idea of Nationalism 959
§ 8. Europe between 1848 and 1878 963
§9. The (second) scramble for overseas empires . . .977
§ 10. The Indian precedent in Asia 987
§ 11. The history of Japan 991
§ 12. Close of the period of overseas expansion . . . • . 996
§13. The British Empire in 1914 997
Chapter XXXIX. The Inteenationai, Catastrophe of 1914
§ 1. The armed peace before the Great War .... 1000
§2. Imperial Germany 1002
§3. The spirit of Imperialism in Britain and Ireland . . 1011
§ 4. Imperialism in France, Italy, and the Balkans . . . 1023
§5. Russia still a Grand Monarchy in 1914 .... 1025
§ 6. The tTnited States and the Imperial idea .... 1027
§7. The immediate causes of the Great War .... 1031
§ 8. A summary of the Great War up to 1917 .... 1036
§9. The Great War from the Russian collapse to the armistice 1Q46
§ 10. The political, economic, and social disorganization caused
by the Great War 1053
§ 11. President Wilson and the problems of Versailles . . . 1061
§ 12. Summary of the first Covenant of the League of Nations 1072
§ 13. A general outline of the treaties of 1919 and 1920 . . 1076
§ 14. A forecast of the next war 1081
Chapter XL. The Next Stage op History
§ 1. The possible unification of men's wills in political matters 1086
§ 2. How a, Federal World Government may come about . . 1090
§3. Some fundamental characteristics of a modern world state 1092
§ 4. What this world might be were it under one law and justice 1094
A Crbonolooicai, Table fboii 800 b.c. to 1920 .... .1102
Five Time Charts of the World's Affairs from 1000 B.C. to
A.D. 1920 1122
lOTJKX . . . 1127
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Life in the Early Palaeozoic 9
Time Cliart from earliest life to present age 11
Life in the Later Palseozoic Age 16
Australian Lung Fish . . .22
Some Keptiles of the Later Paleozoic Age 23
Some Mesozoic Reptiles . . . . . ■. . . .27
Later Mesozoic Reptiles . 30
Pterodactyls and Archaeopteryx . . ' 31
Hesperornis 35
Some Oligocene Mammals . . . . . • • • .39
Miocene Mammals . . . ...... .41
Time Diagram of the Glacial Ages • .47
Early Pleistocene Animals, contemporary with Earliest Man . . 48
The Sub-Man Pithecanthropus 49
Map of Europe and Western Asia 50,000 Years Ago .... 56
Neanderthal Man 58
Early Stone Implements . . . ... . . .60
Australia and the Western Pacific in the Glacial Age ... 62
Cro-magnon Man ^^
Europe and Western Asia in the Later Palaeolithic Age ... 68
Reindeer Age Articles ®^
A Reindeer Age Masterpiece . . . . ■• . • .72
Reindeer Age Engravings and Carvings 73
Neolithic Implements . . "^
Pottery from Lake Dwellings . . . • • • ' ' ^^
Hut Urns ' " os
A'Meahir of the Neolithic Period . . . . . . . ' . 98
•Bronze Age Implements . . . .■.-.. . . 1 i
Diagram showing the Duration of the' Neolithic Period . . .' 103
Heads of Australoid Types "^
Bushwoman
Negro Types ' ' 113
Mongolian Types • * -nq
Caucasian Types
Map of Europe, Asia, Africa 15,000 Years Ago ..... 114
The Swastika ]]^
Belationship of Human Races (Diagrammatic Summary) . . .lib
xvii
XVIU
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
FAQB
Possible Belationship of Languages 122
Racial Types (after ChampoUion) 128
The Cradle of Western Civilization 133
Sumerian Warriors in Phalanx 136
Assyrian Warrior (temp. Sargon II) 139
Time Chart 6000 B.C. to A.D. 142
Egyptian Hippopotamus Goddess 143
The Cradle of Chinese Civilization (Map) 149
Boats on Nile, 2500 b.c ' 1S7
Egyptian Ship on Eed Sea, 1250 b.o. 158
-SIgean Civilization (Map) . . . 160
A Votary of the Snake Goddess 161
American Indian Picture-Writing 171
Egyptian Gods — Set, Anubis, Typhon, Bes 179
Egyptian Gods — ^Thoth-lunus, Hathor, Chnemu ..... 182
An Assyrian King and his Chief Minister 186
Pharaoh Chephren 190
Pharaoh Eameses III as Osiris (Sarcophagus relief) . . . 192
Pharaoh Akhnaton . . .194
Egyptian Peasants (Pyramid Age) .,■..... 199
Brawl among Egyptian Boatmen (Pyramid Age) . . . ; 201
Egyptian Social Types (from Tombs) 203
The Land of the Hebrews 219
Aryan-speaking Peoples 1000-500 B.C. (Map) 237
Combat between Menelaus and Hector 246
Archaic Horses and Chariots 247
Hellenic Races 1000-800 B.C. (Map) 253
Greek Sea Fight, 550 B.C. 254
Atheniaa Warship, 400 b.c 257
Scythian Types 269
Median and Second Babylonian Empires (in Nebuchadnezzar's Reign) 270
The Empire of Darius 276
Wars of the Greeks and Persians (Map) 280
Athenian Foot-soldier 282
Persian Body-guard (from Frieze at Susa) 286,
The World according to Herodotus 287
Athene of the Parthenon 296
Philip of Macedon 311
Growth of Macedonia under Philip 313
Macedonian Warrior (Bas-relief from Pella) ..... 316
Campaigns of Alexander the Great ....... 323
Alexander the Great 333
Break-up of Alexander's Empire 335
Seleucus I 336
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xk
Later State of Alexander's Empire 339
The World according to Eratosthenes, 200 B.o 344
The Known World, 250 b.c , 346
lais and Horua 35I
Serapis 352
The Rise of Buddhism . 358
Hariti 366
Chinese Image of Kuan-yin 369
The Spread of Buddhism 370
Indian Gods — Vishnu, Brahma, Siva 374
Indian Gods — ^Krishna, Kali, Ganesa 377
The Western Mediterranean, 800-600 u.c 381
Early Latium 382
Burning the Dead: Etruscan Ceremony 384
Statuette of a Gaul 385
Ronian Power after the Sanmitc Wars 386
Italy after 275 B.c • . ... 387
Koman Coin Celehrating the Victory over Pyrrhus .... 389
Mercury 391
Carthaginian Coins 400
Boman As ...'. 404
Rome and its Alliances, 150 B.c 414
Gladiators 421
■ Roman Power, 50 B.O. 438
Julius Caesar ... 442
Roman Empire at Death of Augustus 448
Roman Empire in ■ Time of Trajan 453
Asia and Europe: Life of the Period (Map) 471
Central Asia, 200-100 b.c. 477
Tracks of Migrating and Raiding Peoples, a.d. 1.-700 . . . .483
Eastern Roman Empire 488
Constantinople (Map to show value of its position) .... 490
Galilee 495
Map of Europe, a.d. 500 529
The Eastern Empire and the Sassanids ...... 541
Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia 543
Ephthalite Coin . . , 549
Chinese Empire, Tang Dynasty 552
Yuan Chwang's Route from China to India 562
Arabia and Adjacent Couptries 569
The Beginnings of Moslem Power 583
The Growth of Moslem Pov/er in 25 Years 587
The Moslem Empire, A.D. 750 590
Europe, a.d. 600 609
XX LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATION'S
PAGE
Frankish DominionB in the Time of Charles Martei ' . . . .611
England, a.d. 640 ' . . . • .615
England, a.d. 878 . . . 617
Europe at the Death of Charlemagne 620
France at the Close of 10th Century 629
Empire of Otto the Great 633
The Coming of the Seljuks (Map) 634
The First Crusade (Map) 641
Europe and Asia, 1200 668
Empire of Jengis Khan, 1227 . . ' 671
Travels of Marco Polo 676
Ottoman Empire, 1453 684
Ottoman Empire, 1566 686
Empire of Timurlane . . . . ' 692
Europe at the Fall of Constantinople 701
"We have the payne . . ." John Ball's Speech . , . . . .714
Ignatii^ of Loyola '^22
European Trade Icoutes in the 14th Century 738
The Chief Voyages' of Exploration up to 1522 . . . . 745
Mexico and Peru 748
Switzerland 753
Europe in the Time of Charles V 756
Martin Luther 757
Francis I 759
Henry VIII 760
Charles V 761
Central Europe, 1648 784
Louis XIV 787
Europe in 1714 790
The Partitions of Poland 800
Britain, France and Spain in America, 1750 804
Chief Foreign Settlements in India, 17th Century .... 807
India in 1750 810
American Colonies, 1760 830
Boston in 1775 837
U.S.A. in 1790 .841
The U.S.A., showing Dates of the Chief Territorial Extensions . . 845
Benjamin Franklin g4g
George Washington 850
The Flight to Varennes (Map) 867
North Eastern Frontier of France, 1792 874
Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign 89j
Napoleon as Emperor qq^
Tsar Alexander 1 _ _ gQg
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS xxi
Napoleon's Empire, 1810 908
Trail of Napoleon 912
Europe after the Congress of Vienna 918
Tlie Natural Political Map of Europe 921
Tribal gods of the 19th Century 961
Map of Europe, 1848-1871 966
Italy, 1861 967
Bismarck 970
The Balkans, 1878 974
Comparative Maps of Asia under different projections . . . 976
The British Empire in 1815 978
Africa in the Middle of 19th Century 985
Africa, 1914 986
Japan and the East Coast of Asia 995
Overseas Empires of European Powers, 1914 999
Emperor William II 1006
Ireland 1016
The Balkan States, 1913 . 1024
The Original German Plan, 1914 . . . . , . . .1035
The Western Front, 1915-18 1039
Time Chart of the Great War, 1914-18 1052-53
President Wilson 1066
M. Clemenceau 1067
Mr. Lloyd George 1068
Germany after the Peace Treaty, 1919 1075
The Turkish Treaty, 1920 1077
The Break-up of Austria-Hungary 1079
Time Chart 1000 B.C.-300 b.c 1122
400 B.C.-A.D. 300 1123
A.D. 200-A.D. 900 1124
" " A.D. 800-A.D. 1500 1125
« « A.D. 1220-A.D. 1920 1126
,THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE EAKTH m SPACE AND TIME
THE earth on which we live is a spinning globe. Vast
though it seems to us, it is a mere speck of matter in
the greater vastness of space.
Space is, for the most part, emptiness. At great intervals
there are in this emptiness flaring centres of heat and . light,
the "fixed stars." They are all moving about in space, not-
withstanding that they are called fixed stars, but for a long
time men did not realize their motion. They are so vast and
at such tremendous distances that their motion is not per-
ceived. Only in the course of many thousands of years is it
appreciable. These fixed stars are so far off that, for all their
immensity, they seem to be, even when we look at them through
the most powerful telescopes, mere points of light, brighter
or less bright. A few, however, when we turn a telescope upon
them, are seen to be whirls and clouds of shining vapour
which we call nebulse. They are so far off that a movement of
millions of miles would be imperceptible.
One star, however, is so near to us that it is like a great ball
of flame. This one is the sun. The sun is itself in its nature
like a fixed, star, but it differs from the other fixed stars in
appearance because it is beyond comparison nearer than they
are ; and because it is nearer men have been able to learn some-
thing of its nature. Its mean distance from the earth is
ninety-three million miles. It is a mass of flaming matter, hav-
ing a diameter of 866,000 miles. Its bulk is a million and
a quarter times the bulk of our earth.
These are difficult figures for the imagination. If a bullet
fired from a Maxim gun at the sun kept its muzzle velocity
unimpaired, it would take seven years to reach the sun. And
1
2 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
yet we say the sun is near, measured by the scale of the stars.
If the earth were a small ball, one inch in diameter, the sun
would be a globe of nine feet diameter; it would fill a small
bedroom. It is spinning round on its axis, but since it is an in-
candescent fluid, its polar regions do not travel with the same
velocity as its equator, the surface of which rotates in about
twenty-five days. The surface visible to us consists of clouds
of incandescent metallic vapour. At what lies below we can
only guess. So hot is the sun's atmosphere that iron, nickel,
copper, and tin are present in it in a gaseous state. About
it at great distances circle not only our earth, but certain
kindred bodies called the planets. These shine in the sky
because they reflect the light of the sun ; they are near enough
for us to note their movements quite easily. ITight by night
their positions change with regard to the fixed stars.
It is well to understand how empty is space. If, as we have
said, the sun were a ball nine feet across, our earth would, in
proportion, be the size of a one-inch ball, and at a distance
of 323 yards from the sun. The moon would be a speck the
size of a small pea, thirty inches from the earth. Nearer
to the sun than the earth would be two other very similar specks,
the planets Mercury and Venus, at a distance of 125 and 250
yards respectively. Beyond the earth would come the planets
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, at distances of
500, 1,680, 3,000, 6,000, and 9,500 yards respectively. There
would also be a certain number of very much smaller specks,
flying about amongst these planets, more particularly a num-
ber called the asteroids circling between Mars and Jupiter,
and occasionally a little puff of more or less luminous vapour
and dust would drift into the system from the almost limit-
less emptiness beyond. Such a puff is what we call a comet.
All the rest of the space about us and around us and for un-
fathomable distances beyond is cold, lifeless, and void. The
nearest fixed star to us, on this minute scale, be it remem-
bered— ^the earth as a one-inch ball, and the moon a little pea —
would be over 40,000 miles away. Most of the fixed stars we
see would still be scores and hundreds of millions of miles away.
The science that tells of these things and how men have
come to know about them is Astronomy, and to books of
astronomy the reader must go to learn more about the sun and
TRE EARTH l^ SP^CE AND TIJVIE 3
stars. The science and degcription Off th.e world on which we
live are called respectively Geology and Geography.
The diameter of our world is a little under 8,000 miles. Its
surface is rough, the more projecting parts of the roughness
are mountains, and in the hollows of its surface there is a
film of water, the oceans and seas. This film of water is about
five miles thick at its deepest part — that is to say, the deepest
oceans have a depth of five miles. This is very little in com-
parison with the bulk of the world.
About this sphere is a thin covering of air, the atmosphere.
As we ascend in a balloon or go up a mountain from the level
of the sea-shore the air is continually less dense, until at last it
becomes so thin that it cannot support life. At a height of
twenty miles there is scarcely any air at all — not one hun-
dredth part of the density of air at the* surface of the sea. The
highest point to which a bird can fly is about four miles up — ■
the condor, it is said, can struggle up to that ; but most small
birds and insects which are carried up by aeroplanes or bal-
loon^ drop off insensible at a much lower level, and the greatest
height to which any mountaineer has ever climbed is under
five miles. Men have flown in aeroplanes to a height of over
four miles, and balloons with men in them have reached very
nearly seven miles, but at the cost of considerable physical
suffering. Small experimental balloons, containing not men,
but recording instruments, have gone as high as twenty-two
miles.
It is in the upper few hundred feet of the crust of the earth,
in the sea, and in the lower levels of the air below four miles
that life is found. We do not know of any life at all except in
these films of air and water upon our planet. So far as we
kno^y, all the rest of space is as yet without life. Scientific
men have discussed the possibility of life, or of some process
of a similar kind, occurring upon such kindred bodies as the
planets Venus and Mars. But they point merely to question-
able possibilities.
Astronomers and geologists and those who study physics
have been able to tell us something of the origin and history
of the earth. They consider that, vast ages ago, the sun was a
spinning, flaring mass of matter, not yet concentrated into a
compast centre of heat and light, considerably larger than it is
now, and spinning very much faster, and that as it whirled,
4 . THE OUTLINE OF HIST^OBY
a series of fragments -detaehed themselves from it, which. lie-
came the planets. Our earth is one of these planets. , The
flaring mass that was the material of the earth broke into two
masses as it spun; a larger, the earth itself, and a smaller,
which is now the dead, still moon. Astronomers give us- con-
vincing reasons for supposing that sun and earth and moon
and all that system were then whirling about at a speed much
greater than the speed at which they are moving to-day, and
that' at first our earth was a flaming thing upon which no
life could live. The way in which they have reached these
conclusions is by a very beautiful and interesting series of
observations and reasoning, too long and elaborate for us to
deal with here. But they oblige us to believe that the sim,
incandescent though it is, is now much cooler than it was,
and that it spins more slowly now than it did, and that it
continues to. cool and slow down. And they also show that
the rate at which the earth spins is diminishing and con-
tinues to diminish — ^that is to say, that our day is growing
longer and longer j and that the heat at the centre of the earth
wastes slowly. There was a time when the day was not a half
and not a third of what it is to-day; when a blazing hot sun,
much greater than it is now, must have moved visibly — ^had
there been an eye to mark it— from its rise to its setting
across the skies. There will be a time when the day will be
as long as a year is now, and the cooling sun, shorn of its beams,
will hang motionless in the heavens.
It must have been in dstys of a much hotter sun, a far
swifter- day and night, high tides, great heat,, tremendous
storms and earthquakes, that life, of which we are a part, begaii
upon the world. The moon also was nearer and brighter in
those days and had a changing face.
n
THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS
^'1. The First Living Things. § 2. How OU Is -the World?
§ 1
WE do not know how life began upon the earth.^
Biologists,,, that is to say, students of life, have
made guesses about these beginnings, but we will
not discuss theni here. Let us only note that they all agree
that life began where the tides of those swift days spread and
receded over the steaming beaches of mud and sand.
> The atmosphere was much denser then, usually great cloM
masses obscured the sun, frequent storms darkened the heavens.
The land of those days, upheaved by violent volcanic forces,
-was. a barren land, without vegetation, without soil. The
almost .incees,ant rain7Storrns. swept, down upon it, and rivers
.and. torrents ■ .ca.rri.ed. ..great loads ,of seclimesnt out 'to sea,' to
become muds that hardened later into slates and' shales/ and
sandsu. that, became sandstones.. The geologists have' studied
the whole accum.u.lfttign of these .pediments, as it remains to-
day, ..from those ..of the earliest ages to the most recent. Of
course the oldegj, deposits are the most distorted and changed
and worn, an,d in them there, is now no certain trace to be
found: of life at all. Probably the earliest forms of life were
small and soft, leaving no evid.enee of their existence' behind
'Here iii this history of life we are doing our best to give only known
and established facts in the broadest way, and to reduce to' a minimum
the speculative element that must necessarily enter into our account. The
reader who 1b curious upon this question of life's beginning will find a very
good.-summary .of ,current suggestions done by Professor L. L. Woodruff
in. President Lull's exce.llent compilation The Evolution of the Earths (YaXe
University Ptess);' Professor H. F. Osborn's Origin and Evolution of. Life
is-also avery .dgorous-and suggestive book upon -this subject, but it de-
mands .a fair knowl^dge of physics and chemistry. Two very stimulating
essays for the ktudent"a.T'e A. H. Church's SotcmtdoJ MemoirB. NoolSS,
-els'.' -tlliiv;- Press.' ' -•" ' ---'•.-• . ....,■,.. . . ,
(B THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
them. It was only when some of these living things developied
skeletons and shells of lime and suoh-like hard material that
they left fossil vestiges after they died, and so put themselves
on record for examination.
The literature of geology is very largely an account of the
fossils that are fofiifd ifl thy r'ocks, aifd of tHe order in which
Uyfeir'^ kfter layers of rtoclii lid bnti on tooifier. Th^ very
olde'at i^dckg must have Ijeell formed before there was ariy sea
at sllf .when the earth was iao hot for a sea id exist, ktii when
the Wate thai iS fiow sea was kn atliiospliere of sfeam mixed with
the air. tt'S highet levels were dense with clouds, from which
a hot rain fell towards the roeks below, to be eonve!rted again
into Steam long before it reached their incandescence. Be-
low this steam atmosphere the molten world-stuff solidified ias
the first rocks. These first rocks must have solidified as a
cake over glowing liquid material beneath, much as cooling
lava does. They must have appeared first aa crusts and
clinkers. They must have been constantly remelted and re-
crystallized before any thickness of them became permanently
solid. The name of Fundamental Gneiss is given to a great
underlying system of crystalline rocks which probably formed
age by age as this hot youth of the world drew to its close.
THe scenery of the world in the days when the Fundamental
Gneiss was formed must Have been more like the interior of a
fiiriiace thttn anything else to be fburid ttpdn earth at the pres-
ent time.
After long ages the steam in the atmrtsi^here beg;an also to
condense ahd fkll right down tb ^arthj poufiiig at la^^ over
theS"^ warm liriitiordial tdckS iji riiriilets df hot watgl* arid
gdtHei-irig iri depressions as peels arid lake^ ahd the flr^t sfes.
Into those seas the streams that poured over the rocks' brbc'ght
with them dust and particles to form a sediment, and this sedi-
ment accumulated in layers. Or as geologists call them, strata,
and formed the first Sedimentary Rocks. Those earliest s'edi^
mentary rocks sank into depressions and were covered by
others; they were bent, tilted upj and torn by great volcanic
disturbances and by tidal strains that swept through the rocky
crust of the earth. We find these first sedimentary rocks still
coming to the surface of the land here arid there, either not
covered by later strata or exposed after vast ages of conc^al-
ment by the weairing off of the rock that covered them iaier —
THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS 7
there are great surfaces of them in Canada especially; they
are cleft and bent, partially remelted, recryatallized, hardened
and compressed, but rect^izable for what they are. And
they contain no single certain trace of life at all. They are
frequently called Azoic (lifeless) Eocks. But since in some
of these earliest sedimentary rocks a substance called graphite
(black lead) occurs, and also red and black oxide of iron, and
since it is asserted that these substances need the activity of
living things for their production, which may or may not be
the case, some geologists prefer to call these earliest sedi-
mentary rocks ArchoBozoic (primordial life). They suppose
that the first life was soft living matter that had no shells or
skeletons or any such structure that could remain as a recog-
nizable fossil after its death, and that its chemical influence
caused the deposition of graphite and iron oxide. This is pure
guessing, of course, and there is at least an equal probability
that in the time of formation of the Azoic Eocks, life had
not yet begun.
Overlying or overlapping these Azoic or Archseozoic rocks
come others, manifestly also very ancient and worn, which do
contain traces of life. These first remains are of the simplest
description ; they are the vestiges of simple plants called algae,
or marks like the tracks made by worms in the sea mud. There
are also the skeletons of the microscopic creatures called Eadio-
laria. This second series of rocks is called the Proterozoic (be-
ginning of life) series, and marks a long age in the world's
history. Lying over and above the Proterozoic rocks is a third
series, which is found to contain a considerable number and
variety of traces of living things. First comes the evidence
of a diversity of shellfish, crabs, and such-like crawling
things, worms, seaweeds, and the like ; then of a multitude of
fishes and of the beginnings of land plants and land creatures.
These rocks are called the Palaeozoic (ancient life) rocks.
They mark a vast era, during which life was slowly spreading,
increasing, and developing in the sea^ of our world. Through
long ages, through the earliest Palaeozoic time, it was no more
than a proliferation of such swimming and creeping things
in the water. There were creatures called trilobites ; they were
crawling things like big sea woodlice that were probably re-
lated to the American king-crab of to-day. There were also
sea scorpions, the prefects of that ear}y world. The individuals
8 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of feertain species of these were nine feet long. These were
the very highest sorts of life. There, were abundant different
sorts of an order of shellfish called brachiopods, . There were
plant animals, rooted and joined together like plants, and loose
weeds that waved in the waters.
It was not a display of life to excite our imaginations. There
was nothing that ran or flew or even swam swiftly or skiKuUy,
Except for the size of some of the creatures, it was. not very
different from, and rather less various than, the kind of lifi
a student would gather from any summer-time ditch nowadays
for microscopic examination. Such was the life of the shallow
sieas through a hundred million years or more in the early
Palaeozoic period. The land during that time was apparently
absolutely barren. We find no trace nor hint of land lifa
Everything that lived in those days lived under water for most,
or all of its life.
Between the formation of these Lower Palaeozoic rocks in
which the sea scorpion and trilobite ruled, and our own time,
there have intervened almost immeasurable ages, represented
by layers and masses of sedimentary rocks. There axe first
the Upper Palaeozoic rocks, and above these the geologists dis-
tinguish two great divisions. Next above the Palaeozoic come
the Mesozoic (middle life) rocks, a second vast system of fossil-
bearing rocks, representing perhaps a hundred millions of
swift years, and containing a wonderful array of fossil re-
mains, bones of giant reptiles and the like, which we will pres-
ently describe ; and above these again are the Cainozoic (recent
life) rocks, a third great volume in the history of life, an un-
finished volume of which the sand and mud that was carried
out to sea yesterday by the rivers of the world, to bury the bones
and scales and bodies and tracks that will become at last fossils of
the things of to-day, constitute the last written leaf.
These markings and fossils in the rocks and the rocks them-
selves are our first historical documents. The history of life
that men have puzzled out and are still puzzling out from them
is called the Eecord of the Rocks, By studying this record
men are slowly piecing together a story of life's beginnings,
and of the beginnings of our kind, of which our ancestors a
century or so ago had no suspicion. But when we call these
rocks and the fossils a record and a history, it must not be
supiposed that there is any sign of an orderly keeping of a
THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS
10 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
record. It is merely that whatever happens leaves some trace,
if only we are intelligent enough to detect the meaning of that
trace. 'Not are the rocks of the world in orderly layers one
above the other, convenient for men to read. They are not
like the books and pages of a library. They are torn, dis-
rupted, interrupted, flung about, defaced, like a carelessly ar-
ranged office after it has experienced in succession a bombard-
ment, a hostile military occupation, looting, an earthquake,
riots, and a fire. And so it is that for countless generations
this Record of the Eocks lay unsuspected beneath the feet
of men. Fossils were known to the Ionian Greeks in the sixth
century b.c, they were discussed at Alexandria by Eratos-
thenes and others in the third century B.C., a discussion which
is summarised in Strabo's Geography ( ?20-10 B.C.). They
were known to the Latin poet Ovid, but he did not understand
their nature. He thought they were the first rude efforts of
creative power. They were noted by Arabic writers in the
tenth century. Leonardo da Vinci, who lived so recently as
the opening of the sixteenth century (1452-1519), was one
of the first Europeans to grasp the real significance of fossils,
and it has been only within the last century and a half that
man has begun the serious and sustained deciphering of these
long-neglected early pages of his world's history.
§ 2.
Speculations about geological time vary enormously. Esti-
mates of the age of the oldest rocks by geologists and
astronomers starting from different standpoints have varied
between 1,600,000,000, and 25,000,000. That the period of
time has been vast, that it is to be counted by scores and pos-
sibly by hundreds of millions of years, is the utmost that can
be said with certainty in the matter. It is quite open to the
reader to divide every number in the appended time diagram
by ten or multiply it by two; no one can gainsay him. Of
the relative amount of time as between one age and another
we have, however, stronger evidence; if the reader cuts down
the 800,000,000 we have given here to 400,000,000, then he
must reduce the 40,000,000 of the Cainozoic to 20,000,000.
And be it noted that whatever the total sum may be, most
geologists are in agreement that half or more than half of the
THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS
11
whole of geological time had passed before life had developed
to ike Later Palmozoic level. The reader reading quickly
through these opening chapters may be apt to think of them
roQO
'S/so
600,
%0 ^ '
t^4 "
> Azottf or Archaeosottf
^ossihh -wi&iovtt U& cctaR
If/tdioixb' vLffiiZe traces df lonxia steads
ura. 3a» cP^PcxaxaalxxxLae.,Jeij^ ■RskiT'
Green, Sctaci caicL liia. Ixka
' Se&m -Ae appeartaiea. oPamf vertiirais.
aiaauJsOjge. of Sea Scairpiaas if TxiiotniM.
"haa oP'ReMjes.
}CiaxiOZOVC ^^ioa c^Mxmmdls, C^vass, &
LcccidL 'Farasts.
as a mere swift prelude of preparation to the apparently much
longer history that follows, but in reality that subsequent his-
tory is longer only because it is more detailed and more in-
teresting to us. It looms larger in perspective. For ages
that stagger the imagination this earth spun hot and lifeless,
12 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and again for ages of equal vastness it held no life above the
level of the animalculse in a drop of ditch-water.
Not only is Space from the point of view of life and human-
ity empty, but Time is empty also. Life is like a little glow,
scarcely kindled yet, in these void immensities.
Ill
NATUEAL SELECTION AND THE CHANGES
OF SPECIES
NOW here it will be well to put plainly certain general
facts about this new thing, life, that was creeping in
thei shallow waters and intertidal muds of the early
Palaeozoic period, and which is perhaps confined to our planet
alone in all the immensity of space.
Life differs from all things whatever that are without life
in certain general aspects. There are the most wonderful dif-
ferences among living things to-day, but all living things past
and present agree in possessing a certain power of growth, all
living things tdke nourishment, all living things wMve about
as they feed and grow, though the movement be no more
than the spread of roots through the soil, or of branches in the
air. Moreover, living things reprpduce; they give rise to
other living things, either by growing and then dividing or
by means of seeds or spores or eggs or other ways of producing
young. Reproduction is a characteristic of life.
No living thing goes on living for ever. There seems to
be a limit of growth for every kind of living thing. Among
very small and simple living things, such as that microscopic
blob of living matter the Anuxba, an individual may grow and
then divide completely into 1;wo new individuals, which again
may divide in their turn. Many other microscopic creatures
live actively for a time, grow, and then become quiet and
inactive, enclose themselves in an outer covering and break
up wholly into a number of still smaller things, spores, which
are released and scattered and again grow into the likeness
of their parent. Among more complex creatures the reproduc-
tion is not usually such simple division, though division does
occur even in the case of many creatures big enough to be
visible to the unassisted eye. But the rule with almost all
13
14 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
larger beings is that the individual grows up to a certain limit
of size. Then, before it becomes unwieldy, its growth declines
and stops. As it reaches its full size it matures, it begins to
produce young, which are either bom alive or hatched from
eggs. But all of its body does not produce young. Only a
special part does that. After the individual has lived and
produced offspring for some time, it ages and dies. It does
so by a sort of necessity. There is a practical limit to its
life as well as to its growth. These things are as true of plants
as they are of animals. And they are not true of things that
do not live. Non-living things, such as crystals, grow, but
they, have no set limits of growth or size, they do not move of
their own accord and there is no stir within thenw Crystals
once formed may last unchanged for millions of years. There
is no reprodiiction for any non-living thing.
This growth and dying and reproduction of living things
leads to some very wonderful consequences. The young which
a living thing produces are either directly, or after some inter-
mediate stages and changes (such as the changes of a cater-
pillar and butterfly), like the parent living thing. But they
are never exactly like it or like each other. There is always
a slight difference, which we speak of as individvulity. A
thousand butterflies this year may produce two or three thou-
sand next year; these latter will look to us almost exactly
like their predecessors, but each one will have just that slight
difference. It is hard for us to see individuality in butter-
flies because we do not observe them very closely, but it is easy
for us to see it in men. All the men and women in the world
now are descended from the men and women of a.d. 1800, but
not one of us now is exactly the same as one of that vanished
generation. And what is true of men and butterflies is true
of every sort of living thing, of plants as of animals. Every
species changes all its individualities in each generation. That
is true of all the minute creatures that swarmed and repro-
duced and died in the Archseozoic and Proterozoic seas, as it is
of men to-day.
Every species of living things is continually dying and
being born again, as a multitude of fresh individuals.
Consider, then, what must happen to a new-born generation
of living things of any species. Some of the individuals will
be stronger or sturdier or better suited to succeed in life in
NATURAL SELECTION 15
some way than the rest, many individuals will be weaker or
less suited. In particular single cases any sort of luck or
accident may occur, but on the whole the better equipped in-
dividuals will live and grow up and reproduce themselves and
the weaker will as a rule go under. The latter will be' less able
to get food, to fight their enemies and pull through. So that
in each generation- there is as it were a picking over of a
species, a picking out of most of the weak or unsuitable and
a preference for the strong and suitable. This process is called
Natural Selection or the Survival of the Fittest.^
It follows, therefore, from the fact that living things grow
and breed and die, that every species, so long as the conditions
under which it lives remain the same, becomes more and more
perfectly fitted to those conditions in every generation.
But now suppose those conditions change, then the sort of
individual that used to succeed may now fail to succeed and a
sort of individual that could not get on at all under the old
conditions may now find its opportunity. These species will
change, therefore, generation by generation; the old sort of
individual that used to prosper and dominate will fail and die
out and the new sort of individual will become the rule, —
until the general character of the species changes.
Suppose, for example, there is some little furry whitey-
brown animal living in a bitterly cold land which is usually
under snow. Such individuals as have the thickest, whitest
fur will be least hurt by the cold, less seen by their enemies,
and less conspicuous as they seek their prey. The fur of this
species will thicken and its whiteness increase with every gen-
eration, until there is no advantage in carrying any more fur.
Imagine now a change of climate that brings warmth into
the land, sweeps away the snows, makes white creatures glar-
ingly visible during the greater part of the year and thick
fur an encumbrance. Then every individual with a touch of
brown in its colouring and a thinner fur will find itself at
an advantage, and very white and heavy fur will be a handi-
cap. There will be a weeding out of the white in favour of
the brown in each generation. If this change of climate
come about too quickly, it may of course exterminate the
species altogether; but if it come about gradually, the species,
although it may have a hard time, may yet be able to change
' It mig^t IJe called v?ith mgre exactn?s? the Swvivgi of the Fitter,
16
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
NATURAL SELECTION H
itself and adapt itself generation by generation. This change
and adaptation is called the Modification of Species.
Perhaps this change of climate does not occur all over the
lands inhabited by the species ; maybe it occurs only on one side
of some great arm of the sea or some great mountain range
or such-like divide, and not on the other. A warm ocean cur-
rent like the Gulf Stream may be deflected, and flow so as
to warm one side of the barrier, leaving the other still cold.
Then on the cold side this species will still be going on to its
utmost possible furriness and whiteness and on the other side
it will be modifying towa,rds brownness and a thinner coat.
,At the same time there will probably be other changes going
on;, a difference in the paws perhaps, because one half
of ,th?! species will be frequently scratching through snow for
it^ food, while the other will be scampering over brown earth.
Probably also the difference of climate will mean differences in
the sort of food available, and that may produce differences
in the teeth and the digestive organs. And there may be
changes in the, sweat and oil glands of the skin due to the
changes in the fur, and these will affect the .excretory organs
and all the internal chemistry of the body. And so through
all the structure of the creature. , A time will come when
the two separated varieties of this formerly single species will
become so unlike each other as to be recognizably different
species. Such a splitting up of a species in the course of gen-
erations into two or more species is called the Differentiation
of Species.
And it should be clear to the reader that given these ele
mental facts of life, given growth and death and reproduction
with individual variation in a world that changes, life must
change in this way, modification and differentiation mvist
occur, old species miist disappear, and new ones appear. We
have chosCTi for our instance here a familiar sort of animal,
but what, is true of furry beasts in snow and ice is true of
all life, and equally true of the soft jellies and simple be-
ginnings that flowed and crawled for hundreds of millions of
years between the tidal levels and in the shallow, warm waters
of the Proterozoic seas.
The early life of the early world, when the blazing sun
rose and set in only a quarter of the time it now takes, when
the warm seas poured in great tides over the sandy and
18 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
muddy shores of the rocky lands and the air was full of
clouds and steam, must have been modified and varied and
species must have developed at a great pace. Life v?as prob-
ably as swift and short as the days and years ; the generations,
which natural selection picked over, followed one another in
rapid succession.
l!fatural selection is a slower process with man than with
any other creature. It takes twenty years or more before an
ordinary human being in western Europe grows up and re-
produces. In the case of most animals the new generation
is on trial in a year or less. With such simple and lowly be-
ings, however, as first appeared in the primordial seas, growth
and reproduction was probably a matter of a few brief hours
or even of a few brief minutes. Modification and differentia-
tion of species must accordingly have been esctremely rapid,
and life had already developed a great variety of widely con-
trasted forms before it began to leave traces in the rocks.
The Eecord of the Eocks does not begin, therefore, with any
group of closely related forms from which all subsequent and
esxisting creatures are descended. It begins in the midst of
the game, with nearly every main division of the animal
kingdom already represented. Plants are already plants, and
animals animals. The curtain rises on a drama in the sea
that has already begun, and has been going on for some time.
The brachiopods are discovered already in their shells, accept-
ing and consuming much the same sort of food that oysters
and mussels do now; the great water scorpions crawl among
the seaweeds, the trilobites roll up into balls and unroll and
scuttle away. In that ancient mud and among those early
weeds there was probably as rich and abundant and active
a life of infusoria and the like as one "finds in a drop of ditch-
water to-day. In the ocean waters, too, down to the utmost
downward limit to which light could filter, then as now, there
was an abundance of minute and translucent, and in many
cases phosphorescent, beings.
But though the ocean and intei-tidal waters already swarmed
with life, the land above the high-tide line was still, so .far as
we can guess, a stony wilderness without a trace of life.
IV
THE INVASION OF THE DRY LAND BY LIFE
§ 1. Life and Water. § 2. The Earliest Animals.
WHEREVER the shore line ran there was life, and
that life went on in and by and with water as its
home, its medium, and its fundamental necessity.
The first jeUy-like .beginnings of life must have pferished
whenever they got out of the water, as jelly-fish dry up and
perish on our beaches to-day. Drying up was the fatal thing
for life in those days, against which at first it had no protec-
tion. But in a world of rain-pools and shallow seas and tides,
any variation that enabled a living thing to hold out and keep
its moisture during hours of low tide or drought met with
every encouragement in the circumstances of the time. There
must have been a constant risk of stranding. And, on the
other hand, life had to keep rather near the shore and beaches
in the shallows because it had need of air (dissolved of course
in the water) and light.
No creature can breathe, no creature can digest its food,
without water. We talk of breathing air, but what all living
things really do is to breathe oxygen dissolved in water. The
air we ourselves breathe must first be dissolved in the moisture
in our lungs; and all our food must be liquefied before it
can be assimilated. Water-living creatures which are always
under water, wave the freely exposed gills by which they
breathe in that water, and extract tiie air dissolved in it. But
a creature that is to be exposed for any time out of the water
must have its body and its breathing apparatus protected from
drying up. Before the seaweeds could creep up out of the
Early Palaeozoic seas into the intertidal line of the beach, they
had to develop a tougher outer skin to hold their moisture.
19
20 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Before the ancestor of the sea scorpion could survive being
left by the tide it had to develop its casing and armour. The
trilobites probably developed their tough covering and rolled
up into balls, far less as a protection against each other and
any other enemies they may have possessed, than as a precau-
tion against drying. And when presently, as we ascend the
Palaeozoic rocks, the fish appear, first of all the back-boned
or vertebrated animals, it is evident that a number of them
are already adapted by the protection of their gills with gill
covers and by a sort of primitive lung swimming-bladder, to
face the same risk of temporary stranding.
Now the weeds and plants that were adapting themselves
to intertidal conditions were also bringing themselves into a
region of brighter light, and light is very necessary and
precious to all plants. Any development of structure that
would stiffen them and hold them up to the light, so that in-
stead of crumping and flopping when the waters receded, they
would stand up outspread, was a great advantage. And so
we find them developing fibre and support, and the beginning
of woody fibre in them. The early plants reproduced by soft
spores, or half-animal "gametes," that were released in water,
were distributed by water and could only germinate under
water. The early plants were tied, and most lowly plants to-
day are tied, by the conditions of their life cycle, to water.
But here again there was a great advantage to be got by the
development of some protection of the spores from drought
that would enable reproduction to occur without submergence.
So soon as a species could do that, it could live and reproduce
and spread above the high-water mark, bathed in light and
out of reach of the beating and distre-ss of the waves. The
main classificatory divisions of the larger plants mark stages
in the release of plant life from the necessity of submergence
by the development of woody support and of a method of
reproduction that is more and more defiant of drying up. The
lower plants are still the prisoner attendants of water. The
lower mosses must live in damp, and even the development of
the spore of the ferns demands at certain stages extreme wet-
ness. The highest plants have carried freedom from water
so far that they can live and reproduce if only there is some
moisture in the soil below them. They have solved their
problem of living out of water altogether.
THE mVASlOM Of THE DRY LAND 21
The essentials of that problem were worked out through
the vast aeons of the Proterozoic Age and the early Palaeozoic
Age by nature's method of experiment and trial. Then slowly,
but in great abundance, a variety of new plants began to
swarm away from the sea and over the lower lauds, still keep-
ing to swamp and lagoon and water-course as they spread.
§ 2
And after the plants came the animal life.
There is no sort of land animal in the world, as there is
no sort of land plant, whose structure is not primarily that of
a water-inhabiting being which has been adapted through
the modification and differentiation of species to life out of the
water. This adaptation is attained in various ways. In the
case of the land scorpion the gill-plates of the primitive sea
scorpion are sunken into the body so as to make the lung-
books secure from rapid evaporation. The gills of crustaceans,
such as the crabs which run about in the air, are protected
by the gill-cover extensions of the back shell or carapace. The
ancestors of the insects developed a system of air pouches
and air tubes, the tracheal tubes, which carry the air all over
the body before it is dissolved. In the case of the vertebrated
land animals, the gills of the ancestral fish were first supple-
mented and then replaced by a bag-like growth from the throat,
the primitive lung swimming-bladder. To this day there sur-
vive certain mudfish which enable us to understand very clearly
the method hj which the vertebrated land animals worked
their way out of the water. These creatures (e.g. the African
lung fish) are found in tropical regions in which there is a
rainy full season and a dry season, during which the rivers
become mere ditches of baked mud. During the rainy season
these fish swim about and breathe by gills like any other fish.
As the waters of the river evaporate, these fish bury them-
selves in the mud, their gills go out of action, and the creature
keeps itself alive until the waters return by swallowing air,
which passes. into its swimming-bladder. The Australian lung
fish, when it is caught by the drying up of the river in stagnant
pools, and the water has become deaerated and foul, rises to
the surface and gulps air. A newt in a pond does exactly
the same thing. These creatures still remain at the transition
^s
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
stage, the stage at which the ancestors of the higher vertebrated
animals were released from their restriction to an under-water
life.
The amphibia (frogs, newts, tritons, etc.) still show in their
life history all the stages in the process of this liberation.
They are still dependent on water for their reproduction ; their
eggs must be laid in sunlit water, and there they must develoj>.
The young tadpole has branching external gills that wave m
the water; then a
gill cover grows
back over them and
forms a gill cham-
ber. Then as the
creature'si legs ap-
pear and its tail is
absorbed, it begins
to use its lungs, and
its gills dwindle
and vanish. The
adult frog can live all the rest of its days in the air, but
it can be drowned if it is kept steadfastly below water. When
we come to the reptile, however, we find an egg which is pro-
tected from evaporation by a tough egg case, and this egg
produces young which breathe by lungs from the very moment
of hatching. The reptile is on all fours with the seeding plant
in its freedom from the necessity to pass any stage of its life
cycle in water.
The later Palaeozoic Eocks of the northern hemisphere give
us the materials for a series of pictures of this slow spreading
of life over the land. Geographibally, all round the northern
half of the world it was an age of lagoons and shallow seas
very favourable to this invasion. The new plants, now that
they had acquired the power to live this new aerial life, de-
veloped with an extraordinary richness and variety.
There were as yet no true flowering plants,^ no grasses nor
trees that shed their leaves in winter ; ^ the first "flora" con-
sisted of great tree ferns, gigantic equisetums, cycad ferns,
and kindred vegetation. Many of these plants took the form
of huge-stemmed trees, of which great multitudes of trunks
survive fossilized to this day. Some of these trees were over
'Phanerogams. 'Deciduous trees.
THE INVASION OF THE DRY LAND
23
a hundred feet high, of orders and classes now vanished from
the world. They stood with their stems in the water, in which
no doubt there was a thick tangle of soft mosses and green
Gahlosaax'
J.F.H.
slime and fungoid growths that left few plain vestiges behind
them. The abundant remains of these first swamp forests
constitute the main coal measures of the world to-day.
Amidst this luxuriant primitive vegetation crawled ,and
glided and flew the first insects. They were rigid-winged, four-
winged creatures, often very big, some of them having wings
84 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
measuring a foot in length. There were numerous dragon flies
— one found in the Belgian coal-measures had a wing span
of twenty-nine inches ! There were also a great variety of
flying cockroaches. Scorpions abounded, and a number of
early spiders, which, however, had no spinnerets for web mak-
ing. Land snails appeared; So, too, did the first-known step
of our own ancestry upon land, the amphibia. As we ascend
the higher levels of the Later Palaeozoic record, we find the
process of air adaptation has gone as far as the appearance of
true reptiles amidst the abundant and various amphibia.
The land life of the Upper Palaeozoic Age was the life of
a green swamp forest without flowers or birds or the noises
of modern insects. There were no big land beasts at all ; wal-
lowing amphibia and primitive reptiles were the very highest
creatures that life had so far produced. Whatever land lay
away from the water or high above the water was still alto-
gether barren and lifeless. But steadfastly, generation by
generation, life was creeping away from the shallow sea-water
of its beginning.
V
THE AGE OF EEPTILES
§ 1. The Age of Lowland Life. § 2. Flying [Dragons.
§ 3. The First Birds. § 4. An age .of Hardship, amd^
Death. § 5. The first appearance of Fur arid Feathers.
WE know that for hundreds of thousands of years the
wetness and ■ -warmth, the shallow lagoon • conditions
that made possible- the vast accumulations of vegetable
matter which, compressed and mummified,^ are now coal', pre-
vailed over most of the world. There were some cold intervals,
it is true; but they did not last long enough to destroy the
growths. Then that long age of luxuriant low-grade vegetation
drew to its end, and for a time life on the earth seems to have
undergone a period of world-wide bleakness.
We cannot dispuss fully here the changes that have gone
on and are going on in the climate of the earth. A great variety '
of causes, astronomical movements, changes in the sun and
changes upon and within the earth, combine to produce a cease- '
less ;fluctuation of the conditions under which life existsi As
these conditions change, life, tooj must change or perish.
When the story resumes again after this arrest at the end
of the Palaeozoic period we find life entering upon a fresh
phase of richness and expansion. Vegetation has made great
advances in the art. of living out of water. While this Palseozodc
plants of the coal measures probably gi'ew with swamp water
flowing over their roots, the Mesozoic flora from its very out-
set included palm-like cycads and low-grown conifers that were
distinctly land plants growing on soil above the water level.
'Dr. Marie Stopes, Monograph on the Constitution of Coal.
25
26 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The lower levels of the Mesozoic land were no doubt covered
by great fern brakes and shrubby bush and a kind of jungle
growth of trees. But there existed as yet no grass, no small
flowering plants, no turf nor greensward. Probably the Mes-
ozoic was not an age of very brightly coloured vegetation. It
must have had a flora green in the wet season and brown and
purple in the dry. There were no gay flowers, no bright autumn
tints before the fall of the leaf, because there was as yet no
fall of the leaf. And beyond the lower levels the world was
still barren, still unclothed, still exposed without any mitigation
to the wear and tear of the wind and rain.
When one speaks of conifers in the Mesozoic the reader
must not think of the pines and firs that clothe the high moun-
tain slopes of our time. He must think of low-growing ever-
greens. The mountains were still as bare and lifeless as ever.
The only colour effects among the mountains were the colour
effects of naked rock, such colours as make the landscape of
Colorado so marvellous to-day.
Amidst this spreading vegetation of the lower plains the
reptiles were increasing mightily in multitude and variety.
They were now in many cases absolutely land animals. There
are numerous anatomical points of distinction between a reptile
and an amphibian; they held good between such reptiles and
amphibians as prevailed in the carboniferous time of the Upper
Palaeozoic; but the fundamental difference between reptiles
and amphibia which matters in this history is that the am-
phibian must go back to the water to lay its eggs, and that in
the early stages of its life it must live in and under water.
The reptile, on the other hand, has cut out all the tadpole stages
from its life cycle, or, to be more exact, its tadpole stages are
got through before the young leave the egg case. The reptile
has come out of the water altogether. Some had gone back to
it again, just as the hippopotamus and the otter among mam-
mals have gone back, but that is a further extension of the
story to which we cannot give much attention in this Outline.
In the Palaeozoic period, as we have said, life had not spread
beyond the swampy river valleys and the borders of sea lagoons
and the like; but in the Mesozoic, life was growing ever more
accustomed to the thinner medium of the air, was sweeping
boldly up over the plains and towards the hill-sides. It is well
for the student of human history and the human future to
THE AGE OF REPTILES
27
28 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
note that. If a disembodied intelligence with no knowledge
of the future had come to earth and studied life during the early
Palaeozoic age, he might very reasonably have concluded that
life was absolutely confined to the water, and that it could never
spread over the land. It found a way. In the Later Palae-
ozoic Period that visitant might have been equally sure that
life coujd not go beyond the edge of a swamp. The Mesozoic
Period would still have found him- setting bounds to life far
more limited than the bounds that, are set to-day. And so
to-day, though we mark how life and man are still limited to
five miles of air and a depth of perhaps a mile or so of sea,
we must not conclude from that present limitation that life,
through man, may not presently spread out and up and down
to a range of living as yet inconceivable.
The earliest known reptiles were beasts with great bellie?
and not very powerful legs, very like their kindred amphibia^,
wallowing as the crocodile wallows to this day; but in the
Mesozoic they soon began to stand up and go stoutly on all
fours, and several great sections of them begali to balance them-
selves on tail and hind-legs, rather as the kangaroos do now,
in order to release the fore limtej for grasping food. The bones
of one notable division of reptiles which retained a quadrupedal
habit, a division of which many remains have been found in
South African and Eussian Early Mesozoic deposits, display
a number of characters which approach those of the mammalian
skeleton, and because of this resemblance to the mammals
(beasts) this division is called the Theriomorpha, (beastlike).
Ailother division was the crocodile branch, and another devel-
oped towards the tortoises and turtles. The Plesiosaurs and
IcMhyosaurs were two groups which have left no living repre-
sentatives; they were huge reptiles returning to a whale-like
life in the sea. Pliosaurus, one of the largest plesiosaurs,
measured thirty feet from snout to tail tip — of which half was
neckj The Mosasaurs were a third group of great porpoise-like
marine lizards. But the largest and most diversified group of
these Mesozoic reptiles was the group we have spoken of as
)lsangaroo-like, the Dinosaurs, many of which, attained' enor-
mous proportions. In bigness these greater Dinosaurs have
never been exceeded, although the sea can still show in the
whales creatures as great. Some of these, and the largest
among them, were herbivorous animals; they browsed on the
THE AGE OF REPTILES 29
rushy vegetation and among the ferns and bushes, or they stood
up and grasped trees with their fore-legs while they devoured
the foliage. Among the browsers, for example, were the
Diplodocus camegii, which measured eighty-four feet in length,
and the Atlantosaurus. The Oigantosaurus, disinterred by a
German expedition in 1912 from rocks in East Africa, was
still more colossal. It measured well oyer a hundred feet!
These greater monsters had legs, and they are usually figured
as standing up on them ; but it is very doubtful if they could
have supported their weight in this way, out of water. Buoyed
up by water or mud, they may have got along. Another note-
worthy type we have figured is the Triceratops. There were
also a number of great flesh-eaters who preyed upon these
herbivores. Of these, Tyrannosauriis seems almost the last
word in "frightfulness" among living things. Some species of
this genus measured forty feet from snout to tail. Appar-
entlyit carried this vast body kangaroo fashion on its tail and
hindlegs. Probably it reared itself up. Some authorities
even suppose that it leapt through the air. If so, it pos-
sessed muscles of a quite miraculous quality. A leaping
elephant would be a far less astounding idea. Much more
probably it waded half submerged in pursuit of the herbivorous
river saurians.
, § 3
One special development of the dinosaurian type of reptile
was a light, hopping, climbing group of creatures which de-
veloped a bat-like web between the fifth finger and the side
of the body, which was used in gliding from tree to tree after
the fashion of the flying squirrels. These bat-lizards were the
Pterodactyls. They are often described as flying jreptiles, and
pictures are drawn of Mesozoic scenery in which they are
seen soaring and swooping about. But their breastbone has
no keel such as the breastbone of a bird has for the attachment
of muscles strong enough for long sustained flying. They
must have flitted about like bats. They must have had a
grotesque resemblance to heraldic dragons, and they played the
part of bat-like birds in the Mesozoic jungles. But bird-like
though they were, they were not birds nor the ancestors of
birds. The structure of their wings was altogether different
from that of birds. The structure of their wings was that of
30
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a hand with one long finger and a weh; the wing of a bird
13 like an arm with feathers projecting from its hind edge.
And these Pterodactyls had no feathers.
Sovaa, ^y.
lUptilc^
.At......
Six-'&ctftiuia.
dtaxm ii) rama- ^
seaJU
§ 3
Far less prevalent at this time were certain other truly bird-
like creatures, of which the earlier sorts also hopped and
THE AGE OF REPTILES
SI
clambered and the later sorts skimmed and flew. These were
at first — ^by all the standards of classification — Eeptiles. They
developed into true birds as they developed wings and as their
reptilian scales became long and complicated, fronds rather
than scales, and so at last, by much spreading and Splitting,
feathers. Feathers are the distinctive covering of birds, and
they give a power of resisting heat and cold far greater than
32 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
that of any other integumentary covering except perhaps the
thickest fur. At a very early stage this , novel covering of
feathers, this new heat-proof contrivance that life had chanced
upon, enabled many species of birds to invade a province for
which the pterodactyl was ill equipped. They took to sea fish-
ing— if indeed they did not begin with it— and spread to the
north and south polewards beyond the temperature limits set
to the true reptiles. The earliest birds seem to have been car-
nivorous divers and water birds. To this day some of the
most primitive hird forms are found among the sea birds of
the Arctic and Antarctic seas, and it is among these sea birds
that zoologists still find lingering traces of teeth, which have
otherwise vanished completely from the beak of the bird.
The earliest known bird (the ArchoBopteryx) had no beak;
it had a row of teeth in a jaw like a reptile's. It had three
claws at the forward comer of its wing. Its tail, too, was pe-
culiar. All moderli birds havt their tail feathers set in a
short compact bony rump ; the Archoeopteryx had a long bony
tail with a row of feathers along each side.
; ;~ .- § 4
' Thi^. great period of Mesozoie life, this second volume of
the book of life, is indeed an amazing story of reptilian life
proliferating and developing. But the most striking thing of
all the story rcimains to be told. Eight up to the latest Meso-
zoic Eocks we find all these reptilian orders we have enumerated
still flourishing unchallenged. There is no hint of an enemy
or competitor to them in the relics we find of their world.
Then .'thie record is broken. We do not know how long a time
the break represents ; many pages may be missing here, pages
that may represent some great cataclysmal climatic change.
When next we find abundant traces of the. land plants and the
land animals of the earth, this great multitude of reptile species
had gone. For the most part they have left no descendants.
They have been "wiped out." The pterodactyls have gone ab-
solutely, of the plesiosaurs and ichtkyosaurs none is alive ; the
mosasaurs have gone; of thp lizards a few remain, the moni-
tors of the Dutch East Indies are the largest ; all the multitude
and diversity of the dinosaurs have vanished. Only the croco-
,dijes and the turtles and tortoises carry on in any quantity into
THE AGE OF REPTILES 33
Cainozoic times. The place of all these types in the picture that
the Cainozoic fossils presently unfold to us is taken by other
animals not closely related to the Mesozoic reptiles and cer-
tainly not descended from any of their ruling types. A new
kind of life is in possession of the world.
This apparently abrupt ending up of the reptiles is, beyond
all question, the most striking revolution in the whole history
of the earth before the coming of mankind. It is probably
connected with the close of a vast period of equable warm
conditions and the onset of a new austerer age, in which the
winters were bitterer and the summers brief but hot. The
Mesozoic life, animal and vegetable alike, was adapted to warm
conditions and capable of little resistance to cold. The new
life, on the other hand, was before all things capable of re-
sisting great changes of temperature.
Whatever it was that led to the extinction of the Mesozoic
reptiles, it was probably some very far-reaching change indeed,
for the life of the seas did at the same time undergo a similar
catastrophic alteration. The crescendo and ending of the
Reptiles on land was paralleled by the crescendo and ending
of the Ammonites, a division of creatures like squids with coiled
shells which swarmed in those ancient seas. All through the
rocky record of this Mesozoic period there is a vast multitude
and variety of these coiled' shells ; there are hundreds of species,
and towards the end of the Mesozoic period they increased in
diversity and produced exaggerated types. When the record
resumes these, too, have gone. So far as the reptiles are con-
cerned, people may perhaps be inclined to argue that they were
exterminated because the Mammals that replaced them, com-
peted with them, and were more fitted to survive; but nothing
of the sort can be true of the Ammonites, because to this day
their place has not been taken. Simply they are gone. Un-
known conditions made it possible for them to live in the
Mesozoic seas, and then some unknown change made life im-
possible for them. 'No genus of Ammonite survives to-day
of all that vast variety, but there still exists one isolated genus
very closely related to the Ammonites, the Pearly Nautilus. It
is found, it is to be noted, in the warm waters of the Indian
and Pacific oceans.
And as for the Mammals competing with and ousting the
less fit reptiles, a struggle of which people talk at times, there
34 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
is not a scrap of evidence of any such direct competition. To
judge by the Record of the Rocks as we know it to-day, there
is much more reason for believing that first the reptiles in
some inexplicable way perished, and then that later on, after a
very hard time for all life upon the earth, the mammals, as
conditions became more genial again, developed and spread
to fill the vacant world.
"Were there mammals in the Mesozoic period?
This is a question not yet to be answered precisely. Pa-
tiently and steadily the geologists gather fresh evidence and
reason out completer conclusions. At any time some new
deposit may reveal fossils that will illuminate this question.
Certainly either mammals, or the ancestors of the mammals,
must have lived throughout the Mesozoic period. In the very
opening chapter of the Mesozoic volume of the Record there
were those Theriomorphous Reptiles to which we have already
alluded, and in the later Mesozoic a number of small jaw-
bones are found, entirely mammalian in character. But there
is not a scrap, not a bone, to suggest that there lived any
Mesozoic Mammal which could look a dinosaur in the face.
The Mesozoic mammals or mammal-like reptiles — for we do not
know clearly which they were — seem to have been all obscure
little beasts of the size of mice and rats, more like a down-
trodden order of reptiles than a distinct class; probably they
still laid eggs and were developing only slowly their distinctive
covering of hair. They lived away from big waters, and per-
haps in the desolate uplands, as marmots do now ; probably they
lived there beyond the pursuit of the carnivorous dinosaurs.
Some perhaps went on all fours, some chiefly went on their
hind-legs and clambered with their fore limbs. They became
fossils only so occasionally that chance has not yet revealed
a single complete skeleton in the whole vast record of the
Mesozoic rocks by which to check these guesses.
These little Theriomorphs, these ancestral mammals, de-
veloped hair. Hairs, like feathers, are long and elaborately
specialized scales. Hair is perhaps the clue to the salvation
of the early mammals. Leading liveS' upon the margin of ex-
istence, away from the marshes mi the warmth, they developed
THE AGE OF REPTILES
35
an outer covering only second in its warmth-holding (or heat-
resisting) powers to the down and feathers of the Arctic sea-
birds. And so they held out through the age of hardship be-
jt^espi
'iVOl'lUS
(JimQitm. vuu^,z6s waite'-iird)
jr.RH.
tween the Mesozoic and Oainozoic ages, to which most of the
true reptiles succumbed.
All the main characteristics of this flora and sea and land
fauna that came to an end with the end of the Mesozoic age
were such as were adapted to an equable climate and to shallow
86 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and swampy regions. But in the case of their Oainozoic suc-
cessors, both hair and feathers gave a power of resistance to
variable temperatures such as no reptile possessed, and with it
they gave a range far greater than any animal had hitherto
attained.
The range of life of the Lower Palaeozoic Period was con-
fined to warm water.
The range of life of the Upper Palaeozoic Period was con-
fined to warm water or to warm swamps and wet ground.
The range of life of the Mesozoic Period as we know it
was confined to water and fairly low-lying valley regions under
equable conditions.
Meanwhile in each of these periods there were types in-
voluntarily extending the range of life beyond the limits pre-
vailing in that period; and when ages of extreme conditions
prevailed, it was these marginal types which survived to in-
herit the depopulated world.
That perhaps is the most general statement we can make
about the story of the geological record ; it is a story of widen-
ing range. Classes, genera, and species of animals appear and
disappear, but the range widens. It widens always. Life
has never had so great a range as it has to-day. Life to-day,
in the form of man, goes higher in the air than it has ever
done before; man's geographical range is from pole to pole,
he goes under the water in submarines, he sounds the cold,
lifeless darkness of the deepest seas, he burrows into virgin
levels of the rocks, and in thought and knowledge he pierces
to the centre of the earth and reaches out to the uttermost star.
Yet in all the relics of the Mesozoic time we find no certain
memorials of his ancestry. His ancestors, like the ancestors
of all the kindred mammals, must have been creatures so rare,
so obscure, and so remote that they have left scarcely a trace
amidst the abundant vestiges of the monsters that wallowed
rejoicing in the steamy air and lush vegetation of the Meso-
zoic lagoons, or crawled or hopped or fluttered over the great
river plains of that time.
VI
THE AGE OF MAMMALS
§ 1. A New Age of Life. § 2. Tradition Comes into the-
World. § 3. An Age of Brain Qrowih. § 4. The World
Grows Hard Again.
§ 1
THE third great division of the geological record, the
Cainozoic, opens "with a world already physically very
like the world we live in to-day. Probably the day
was at first still perceptibly shorter, but the scenery had be-
come very modern in its character. Climate was, of course,
undergoing, age by age, its incessant and irregular variations ;
lands that are temperate to-day have passed, since the Cainozoic
age began, through phases of great warmth, intense cold, and
extreme dryness; but the landscape, if it altered, altered to
nothing that cannot still be paralleled to-day in some part of
the world or other. In the place of the cycads, sequoias, and
strange conifers of the Mesozoic, the plant names that now
appear in the lists of fossils include birch, beech, holly, tulip
trees, ivy, sweet gum, bread-fruit trees. Flowers had developed
concurrently with bees and butterflies. Palms were now very
important. Such plants had already been in evidence in the
later levels of the (American Cretaceous) Mesozoic, but now
they dominated the scene altogether. Grass was becoming a
great fact in the world. Certain grasses, too, had appeared in
the later Mesozoic, but only with the Cainozoic period came
grass plains and turf spreading wide over a world that was
once barren stone.
The period opened with a long phase of considerable warmth ;
then the world cooled. And in the opening of this third part
of the record, this Cainozoic period, a gigantic crumpling of
37
38 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the earth's crust and an upheaval of mountain ranges was in
progress. The Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, are all Cain-
ozoic mountain ranges; the background of an early Cainozoic
scene to be typical should display an active volcano or so. It
must have been an age of great earthquakes.
Geologists make certain main divisions of the Cainozoic
period, and it will be convenient to name them here and to
indicate their climate. First comes the Eocene (dawn of re-
cent life), an age of exceptional warmth in the world's his-
tory, subdivided into an older and newer Eocene; then the
Oligocene (but little of recent life), in which the climate was
still equable. The Miocene (with living species still in a
minority) was the great age of mountain building, and the
general temperature was falling. In the Pliocene (more living
than extinct species), climate was very much as its present
phase; but with the Pleistocene (a great majority of living
species) there set in a long period of extreme conditions — i^;
was the Great Ice Age. Glaciers spread from the poles towards
the equator, until England to the Thames was covered in ice.
Thereafter to our own time came a period of partial recovery.
We may be moving now towards a warmer phase. Half a mil-
lion years hence this may be a much sunnier and pleasanter
world to live in than it is to-day.
§ 2
In the forests and following the grass over the Eocene plains
there appeared for the first time a variety and abundance of
mammals. Before we proceed to any description of these mam-
mals, it may be well to note in general terms what a mammal is.
From the appearance of the vertebrated animals in the Lower
Palaeozoic Age, when the fish first swarmed out into the sea,
there has been a steady progressive development of vertebrated
creatures. A fish is a vertebrated animal that breathes by
gills and can live only in water. An amphibian may be de-
scribed as a fish that has added to its gill-breathing the power
of breathing air with its swimming-bladder in adult life, and
that has also developed limbs with five toes to them in place
of the fins of a fish. A tadpole is for a time a fish, it becomes
a land creature as it develops. A reptile is a further stage in
this detachment from water; it is an amphibian that is no
THE AGE OF MAMMALS
3d
longer amphibious ; it passes through its tadpole stage — its fish
stage that is — in an egg. From the beginning it must breathe
in air; it can never breathe under water as a tadpole can do.
Sovac OKgpcctie jVIeutitttals'
> '\ I
_ilK.__
Stx-^oattma
Jraxm-to
ssxac ecsLe
Tltiuumi^re
(cxarsacuiL
C^uant pig)
Uuthiili
Ixeum
(cormvorouf J
J.T'.H.
Now a modem mammal is really a sort of reptile that has de-
veloped a peculiarly effective protective covering, hair ; and
that also retains its eggs in the body until they hatch so that
40 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
it brings forth living young (viviparous), and even after
birth it cares for them and feeds them by its mammae for a
longer or shorter period. Some reptiles, some vipers for ex-
ample, are viviparous, but none stand by their young as the real
mammals do. Both the birds and the mammals, which escaped
whatever destructive forces made an end to the Mesozoic rep-
tiles, and which survived to dominate the Cainozoic world,
have these two things in common; first, a far more effective
protection against changes of temperature than any other
variation of the reptile type ever produced, and, secondly, a
peculiar care for their eggs, the bird by incubation and the
mammal by retention, and a disposition to look after the young
for a certain period after hatching or birth. There is by com-
parison the greatest carelessness about offspring in the reptile.
'• Hair was evidently the earliest distinction of the mammals
from the rest of the reptiles. It is doubtful if the particular
Theriodont reptiles who were developing hair in the early
Mesozoic were viviparous. Two mammals survive to this day
which not only do not suckle their young,^ but which lay ^gs,
the Omithorhynchus and the Echidna, and in the Eocene there
were a number of allied forms. They are the survivors of
what was probably a much larger number and variety of small
egg-laying hairy creatures, hairy reptiles, hoppers, climbers,
and runners, which included the Mgsozoic ancestors of all ex-
isting mammals up to and including man.
Now we may put the essential facts about mammalian re-
production in another way. The mammal is a famdly animal.
And the family habit involved the possibility of a new sort of
continuity of experience in the world. Compare the com-
pletely closed-in life of an individual lizard with the life of
even a quite lowly mammal of almost any kind. The former
has no mental continuity with anything beyond itself; it is a
little self-contained globe of experience that serves its purpose
and ends; but the latter "picks up" from its mother, and
"hands on" to its offspring. All the mammals, except for the
two genera we have named, had already before the lower Eocene
age arrived at this stage of pre-adult dependence and imitation.
'They secrete a nutritive fluid on which the young feeds from glands
scattered over the skin. But the glands are not gathered together Into
mammse with nipples for suckling. The stuff oozes out, the mother lies
on her back, and the young browse upon her moist skin.
THE AGE OF MAMMALS
41
They were all more or less imitative in youth and capable of a
certain modicum of education ; they all, as a part of their de-
2Asuxuxials
(prunijtive
auraii^'cameL)
'Dicrorerzis
1ctrabalc>d<yn.
Six-iootr man
clrawn. -ba
sazcLz scale.
'Dutcti^ere
a.F".H.
velopment, received a certain amount of care and example and
even direction from their mother. This is as true of the hyaena
and rhinoceros as it is of the dog or man; the difference of
42 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
educability is enormous, but the fact of protection and educa-
bility in the young stage is undeniable. So far as the verte-
brated animals go, these new mammals, with their viviparous,
young-protecting disposition, and these new birds, with their
incubating, young-protecting disposition, introduce at the open-
ing of the Cainozoic period a fresh thing into the expanding
story of life, namely, social association, the addition to hard
and inflexible instinct of tradition, and the nervous organisa-
tion necessary to receive tradition.
AH the innovations that come into the history of life begin
very humbly. The supply of blood-vessels in the swimming-
bladder of the mudfish in the lower Palseozoic torrent-river,
that enabled it to pull through a season of drought, would
have seemed at that time to that bodiless visitant to our planet
we have already imagined, a very unimportant side fact in
that ancient world of great sharks and plated fishes, sea
scorpions, and coral reefs and seaweed; but it opened the nar-
row way by which the land vertebrates arose to predominance.
The mudfish would have seemed then a poor refugee from the
too cl?owded and aggressive life of the sea. But once lungs
were launched into the world, every line of descent that had
lungs went on improving them. So, too, in the upper Palaeozoic,
the fact that some of the Amphibia were losing their "amphibi-
ousness" by a retardation of hatching of their eggs, would have
appeared a mere response to the distressful dangers that threat-
ened the young tadpole. Yet that prepared the conquest of
the dry land for the triumphant multitude of the Mesozoic
reptiles. It opened a new direction towards a free and vigor-
ous land-life along which all the reptilian animals moved. And
this viviparous, young-tending training that the ancestral mam-
malia underwent during that age of inferiority and hardship
for them, set going in the world a new continuity of percep-
tion, of which even man to-day only begins to appreciate the
significance.
§ 3
A number of types of mammal already appear in the Eocene.
Some are differentiating in one direction, and some in another,
some are perfecting themselves as herbivorous quadrupeds,
some leap and climb among the trees, some turn back to the
water to swim, but all types are unconsciously exploiting and
THE AGE OF MAMMALS 43
developing the brain which is the instrument of ^s new power
of acquisition and educability. In the Eocene rocks are found
small early predecessors of the horse j^ohippus), tiny camels,
pigs, early tapirs, early hedgehogs, moiikeys and lemurs,
opossums and carnivores. Now, all these were more or less
ancestral to living forms, and all have brains relatively much
smaller than their living representatives. There is, for in-
stance, an early rhinoceros-like beast, Titanotherium, with a
brain not one tenth the size of that of the existing rhinoceros.
The latter is by no means a perfect type of the attentive and
submissive student, but even so it is ten times more observant
and teachable than its predecessor. This sort of thing is true
of all the orders and families that survive until to-day. All
the Cainozoic mammals were doing this one thing in common
under the urgency of a common necessity ; they were all grow-
ing brain. It was a parallel advance. In the same order or
family to-day, the brain is usually from six to ten times what
it was in the Eocene ancestor.
The Eocene period displayed a series of herbivorous brutes
of which no representative survives to-day. Such were the
Uintatheres and the Titanotheres. They were ousted by more
specialized graminivorous forms as grass spread over the world.
In pursuit of such beasts came great swarms of primitive dogs,
some as big as bears, and the first cats, one in particular (Smi-
lodon), a small fierce-looking creature with big knife-like
canines, the first sabre-toothed tiger, which was to develop into
greater things. American deposits in the Miocene display a
great variety of camels, giraffe camels with long necks, gazelle
camels, llamas, and true camels. North America, throughout
most of the Cainozoic period, appears to have been in open and
easy continuation with Asia, and when at last the glaciers of
the Great Ice Age, and then the Bering Strait, came to separate
the two great continental regions, the last camels were left in the
old world and the llamas in the new.
In the Eocene the first ancestors of the elephants appear in
northern Africa as snouted creatures ; the elephant's , trunk
dawned on the world in the Miocene.
One group of creatures is of peculiar interest in a history that
is mainly to be the story of mankind. We find fossils in the
Eocene of monkeys and lemurs, but of one particular creature
we have as yet not a single bone. It must have been a creature
44 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
half ape, Ahal%nonkey ; it clambered about the trees and ran,
and probably ran well, on its hind-legs upon the ground. It
was small-brained by oil* present standards, but it had clever
hands with which it handled fruits and beat nuts upon the
rocks and caught up sticks and stones to smite its fellows.
Spite of the lack of material evidence, the facts of biological
science almost compel us to believe that such a creature existed,
the common ancestor of the anthropoid apes and the two species
of men we will describe in the next chapter,
§ 4
Through millions of simian generations the spinning world
circled about the sun; slowly its orbit, which may have been
nearly circular during the equable days of the early Eocene,
was drawn by the attraction of the circling outer planets into
a more elliptical form. Its axis of rotation, which had always
heeled over to the plane of its orbit, as the mast of a yacht under
sail heels over to the level of the water, heeled over by imper-
ceptible degrees a little more and a little more. And each year
its summer point shifted a little further from perihelion round
its path. These were small changes to happen to a one-inch ball,
circling at a distance of 330 yards from a flaming sun nine feet
across, in the course of a few million years. They were changes
an immortal astronomer in Neptune, watching the. earth from
age to age, would have found almost imperceptible. But from
the point of view of the siirviving mammalian life of the
Miocene, they mattered profoundly. Age by age the winters
grew on the whole colder and harder and a few hours longer
relatively to the summers in a thousand years; age by age
the summers grew briefer. On an average the winter snow
lay a little later in the spring in each century, and the glaciers
in the northern mountains gained an inch this year, receded
half an inch next, came on again a few inches. . . .
The Kecord of the Eocks tells of the increasing chill. The
Pliocene was a temperate time, and many of the warmth-loving
plants and animals had gone. Then, rather less deliberately,
some feet or some inches every year, the ice came on.
An arctic fauna, musk ox, woolly mammoth, woolly rhino-
ceros, lemming, ushers in the Pleistocene. Over North Amer-
ica, and Europe and Asia alike, the ice advanced. Eor thou-
THE AGE OF MAIilkALS 45
sands of years it advanced, and then for thousands of years it
receded, to advance again. Europe down to the Baltic shores,
Britain down to the Thames, North America down to New
England, and more centrally as far south as Ohio, lay for ages
under the glaciers. Enormous volumes of water were with-
drawn from the ocean and locked up in those stupendous ice
caps so as to cause a world-wide change in the relative levels
of land and sea. Vast areas were exposed that are now again
sea bottom.
The world to-day is still coming slowly out of the last of four
great waves of cold. It is not growing warmer steadily. There
have been fluctuations. Remains of bog oaks, for example,
which grew two or three thousand years ago, are found in Scot-
land at latitudes in which not even a stunted oak will grow at
the present time. And it is amidst this crescendo and diminu-
endo of frost and snow that we first recognize forms that are
like the forms of men. The Age of Mammals culminated in ice
and hardship and man.
to
VII
THE ANCESTKY OF MAK
1. Man Descended from a WaXkmg Ape. § 2. First Traces
of Mavrlike Creatures. § 3. The Heidelberg Svb-Man. § 4.
The Piltdown Sub-Man. § 5. The Middle of the Piltdown
Remains.
THE origin of man is still very obscure. It is commonly
asserted that he is "descended" from some man-like ape
such as the chimpanzee, the orang-utang, or the gorilla,
but that of course is as reasonable as saying that I am "de-
scended" from some Hottentot or Esquimau as young or
younger than myself. Others, alive to this objection, say that
man is descended from the common ancestor of the chimpanzee,
the orang-utang, and the gorilla. Some "anthropologists" have
even indulged in a speculation whether mankind may not have
a double or treble origin; the negro being descended from a
gorilla-like ancestor, the Chinese from a chimpanzee-like an-
cestor, and so on. These are very fanciful ideas, to be men-
tioned only to be dismissed. It vs^as formerly assumed that the
human ancestor vs^as "probably arboreal," but the current idea
among those who are qualified to form an opinion seems to be
that he was a "ground ape," and that the existing apes have
developed in the arboreal direction.
Of course if one puts the skeleton of a man and the skeleton
of a gorilla side by side, their general resemblance is so great
that it is easy to jump to the conclusion that the former is
derived from such a type as the latter by a process of brain
growth and general refinement. But if one examines closely
into one or two differences, the gap widens. Particular stress
has recently been laid upon the tread of the foot. Man walks
46
THE ANCESTRY OF MAN
47
.81
X A V Q
%
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
on his toe and his heel; his great toe is his chief lever in walk-
ing, as the reader may see for himself if he examines his own
footprints on the bathroom floor and notes where the pressure
tvitti. eaxiicst "Miax
HfftiM'
M'
'Rem^e«r
VV!
'A '
Sisc-^at tnatv
axawtfto
same scale..
|i.,l..i.C^^
'W^olUr "Rlunocero,^
falls as the footprints become fainter. His great toe is the
king of his toes.
Among all the apes and monkeys, the only group that have
THE ANCESTRY OF MAN
49
their great toes developed on anything like the same fashion
as man are some of the lemurs. The baboon walks on a flat foot
and all his toes, using his middle toe as his chief throw-off,
much as the bear does. And the three great apes all walk on
the outer side of the foot in a very different manner from the
walking of man.
The great apes are forest dwellers; their walking even now
is incidental; they
are at their happiest
among trees. They
have very distinctive
methods of climb-
ing; they swing by
the arms much more
than the monkeys do,
and do not, like the
latter, take off with
a spring from the
feet. They have a
specially developed
climbing style of
their own. But man
walks so well and
runs so swiftly as to
suggest a very long
ancestry upoja the
ground. Also, he
does not climb well
now; he climbs with
caution and hesita-
tion. His ancestors may have been running creatures for
long ages. Moreover, it is to be noted that he does not
swim naturally; he has to learn to swim, and that seems to
point to a long-standing separation from rivers and lakes and
the sea. Almost certainly that ancestor was a smaller and
slighter creature than its human descendants. Conceivably the
human ancestor at the opening of the Cainozoic period was a
running ape living chiefly on the ground, hiding among rocks
rather than trees. It could still climb trees well and hold things
between its great to« and its second toe (as the Japanese can
to .this day),, but it was already coming down to the ground
Possible Appeaeance of the Sub-Mait
Pithecanthropus.
The face, jaws, and teeth are mere guess-work
(see text). The creature may have been much
less human-looking than this.
60 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
again from a still remoter, a Mesozoic arboreal ancestry. It is
quite understandable that sueh a creature would very rarely die
in water in such circumstances as to leave bones to become
fossilized.
It must always be borne in mind that among its many other
imperfections the Geological Record necessarily contains abun-
dant traces only of water or marsh creatures or of creatures
easily and frequently drowned. The same reasons that make
any traces of the ancestors of the mammals rare and relatively
unprocurable in the Mesozoic rocks, probably make the traces
of possible human ancestors rare and relatively unprocurable
in the Cainozoic rocks. Such knowledge as we have of the
earliest men, for example, is almost entirely got from a few
caves, into which they went and in which they left their traces.
Until the hard Pleistocene times they lived and died in the
open, and their bodies were consumed or decayed altogether.
But it is well to bear in mind also that the record of the rocks
has still to be thoroughly examined. It has been studied only
for a few generations, and by only a few men in each genera-
tion. Most men have been too busy making war, making profits
out of their neighbours, toiling at work that machinery could
do for them in a tenth of the time, or simply playing about,
to give any attention to these more interesting things. There
may be, there probably are, thousands of deposits still untouched
containing countless fragments and vestiges of man and his
progenitors. In Asia particularly, in India or the East Indies,
there may be hidden the most illuminating clues. What we
know to-day of early men is the merest scrap of what will
presently be known.
The apes and monkeys already appear to have been differen-
tiated at the beginning of the Cainozoic Age, and there are a
number of Oligocene and Miocene apes whose relations to one
another and to the human line have still to be made out. Among
these we may mention Dryopithecus of the Miocene Age, with
a very human-looking jaw. In the Siwalik Hills of northern
India remains of some very interesting apes have been found,
of which Sivapithecus and Palceopithecus were possibly related
closely to the human ancestor. Possibly these animals already
used implements. Charles Darwin represents baboons as open-
ing nuts by breaking them with stones, using stakes to prise
up rocks in the hunt for insects, and striking blows with sticks
THE ANCESTRY OF MAN 51
and stones. The chimpanzee makes itself a sort of tree hut
by intertwining branches. Stones apparently chipped for use
have been found in strata of Oligocene Age at Boncelles in
Belgium. Possibly the impiement-using disposition was al-
ready present in the Mesozoic ancestry from which we are
descended.
§ 2-
Among the earliest evidences of some creature, either human
or at least more manlike than any living ape upon earth, are a
number of flints and stones very roughly chipped and shaped
so as to be held in the hand. These were probably used as hand-
axes. These early implements ("Eoliths") are often so crude
and simple that there was for a long time a controversy whether
they were to be regarded as natural or artificial productions.
The date of the earliest of them is put by geologists as
Pliocene — that is to say, before the First Glacial Age. They
occur also throughout the First Interglacial period. We know
of no bones or other remains in Europe or America of the quasi-
human beings .of half a million years ago, who made and used
these implements. They used them to hammer with, perhaps
they used them to fight with, and perhaps they used bits of
wood for similar purposes.-^
But at Trinil, in Java, in strata which are said to correspond
either to the later Pliocene or to the American and European
First Ice Age, there have been found some scattered bones of
a creature, such as the makers of these early implements may
have been. The top of a skull, some teeth, and a thigh-bone
have been found. The skull shows a brain-case about half-way
in size between that of the chimpanzee and man, but the thigh-
bone is that of a creature as well adapted to standing and run-
ning as a man, and as free, therefore, to use its hands. The
creature was not a man, nor was it an arboreal ape like the
chimpanzee. It was a walking ape. It has been named by
naturalists Pithecanthropus erectus (the walking ape-man).
"We cannot say that it is a direct human ancestor, but we may
guess that the creatures who scattered these first stone tools
*Some writers suppose that a Wood and Shell Age preceded the earliest
Stone Age. South Sea Islanders, Negroes, and Bushmen still make use
of wood and the sharp-edged shells of land and water molluscs as im,-
plements.
52 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
over tlie world must have been closely similar and kindred, and
that our ancestor was a beast of like kind. This little trayful
of bony fragments from Trinil is, at present, apart from stone
implements, the oldest relic of early humanity, or of the close
blood relations of early humanity, that is known.
While these early men or "sub-men" were running about
Europe four or five hundred* thousand years ago, there were
mammoths, rhinoceroses, a huge hippopotamus, a giant beaver,
and a bison and wild cattle in their world. There were also
wild horses, and the sabre-toothed tiger still abounded. There
are no traces of lions or true tigers at that time in Europe, but
there were bears, otters, wolves, and a wild boar. It may be
that the early sub-man sometimes played jackal to the sabre-
toothed tiger, and finished up the bodies on which the latter
had gorged itself.
§ 3
After this first glimpse of something at least sub-human in the
record of geology, there is not another fragment of human or
man-like bone yet known from that record for .an interval of
hundreds of thousands of years. It is not until we reach de-
posits which are stated to be of the Second Interglacial period,
200,000 years later, 200,000 or 250,000 years ago, that another
little scrap of bone comes to hand. Then we find a jaw-bone.
This jaw-bone was found in a sand-pit near Heidelberg, at a
depth of eighty feet from the surface, and it is not the jaw-
bone of a man as we understand man, but it is man-like in
every respect, except that it has absolutely no trace of a chin ;
it is more massive than a man's, and its narrowness behind
could not, it is thought, have given the tongue sufficient play
for articulate speech. It is not an ape's jaw-bone; the teeth
are human. The owner of this jaw-bone has been variously
named Homo Heidelhergensis and Palmoanthrojms Heidelher-
gensis, according to the estimate formed of his humanity or
sub-humanity by various authorities. He lived in a world not
remotely unlike the world of the still earlier sub-man of the
first implements; the deposits in which it is found show that
there were elephants, horses, rhinoceroses, bison, a moose and
so forth with it in the world, but the sabre-toothed tiger waa
declining and the lion was spreading over Europe. The imple-
ments of this period (known as the Chellean period) are a very
THE ANCESTRY OF MAN S3
considerable advance upon those of the Pliocene Age. They
are well made but very much bigger than any truly human
implements. The Heidelberg man may have had a very big
body and large fore limbs. He may have been a woolly, strange-
looking creature.
§ 4
We must turn over the Record for, it may be, another 100,000
years for the next remains of anything human or sub-human.
Then in a deposit ascribed to the Third Interglacial period,
which may have begun 100,000 years ago and lasted 50,000
years, the smashed pieces of a whole skull turn up. The de-
posit is a gravel which may have been derived from the washing
cut of still earlier gravel strata, and this skull fragment may
be in reality as old as the First Glacial Period. The bony re-
mains discovered at Piltdown in Sussex display a creature still
ascending only very gradually from the sub-human.
The first scraps of this skull were found in an excavation
for road gravel in Sussex. Bit by bit other fragments of this
skull were hunted out from the quarry heaps until most of it
could be pieced together. It is a thick skull, thicker than that
of any living race of men, and it has a brain capacity inter-
mediate between that of Pithecanthropus and man. This crea-
ture has been named Eoanthropus, the dawn man. In the
same gravel-pits were found teeth of rhinoceros, hippopotamus,
and the leg-bone of a deer with marks upon it that may be cuts.
A curious bat-shaped instrument of elephant bone has also been
found.
There was moreover a jaw-bone among these scattered re-
mains, which was at first assumed naturally enough to belong to
EoantJiropus, but which it was afterwards suggested was prob-
ably that of a chimpanzee. It is extraordinarily like that of a
'chimpanzee, but Dr. Keith, one of the greatest authorities in
these questions, assigns it, after an exhaustive analysis in his
Antiquity of Man (1915), to the skull with which it is found.
It is, as a jaw-bone, far less human in character than the jaw
of the much more ancient Homo Heidelbergensis, but the teeth
are in some respects more like those of living men.
Dr. Keith, swayed by the jaw-bone, does not think that
Eoanthropus, in spite of its name, is a creature in the direct
ancestry of man. Much less is it an intermediate form between
54 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the Heidelberg man and the Neandertlial man we shall pres-
ently describe. It was only related to the true ancestor of man
as lie orang is related to the chimpanzee. It was one of a
number of sub-human running apes of more than ape-like in-
telligence, and if it was not on the line royal, it was at any
rate a very close collateral.
After this glimpse of a skull, the Kecord for very many
centuries gives nothing but flint implements, which improve
steadily in quality. A very characteristic form is shaped like a
sole, with one flat side stricken off at one blow and the other
side worked. The archaeologists, as the Eecord continues, are
presently able to distinguish scrapers, borers, knives, darts,
throwing stones, and the like. Progress is now more rapid;
in a few centuries the shape of the hand-axe shows distinct
and recognizable improvements. And then comes quite a num-
ber of remains. The Fourth Glacial Age is rising towards its
maximum. Man is taking to caves and leaving vestiges there;
at Krapina in Croatia, at Neanderthal near Diisseldorf, at
Spy, human remains have been found, skulls and bones of a
creature that is certainly a man. Somewhen about 50,000
years ago, if not earlier, appeared Homo Neanderthalensis
(also called Homo antiquus and Homo primigenius) , a quite
passable human being. His thumb was not quite equal in flexi-
bility and usefulness to a human thumb, he stooped forward
and could not hold his head erect, as all living men do, he was
chinless and perhaps incapable of speech, there were curious
differences about the enamel and the roots of his teeth from
those of all living men, he was very thick-set, he was, indeed,
not quite of the human species; but there is no dispute about
his attribution to the genus Homo. He was certainly not de-
scended from Eoanthropus, but his jaw-bone is so like the
Heidelberg jaw-bone, as to make it possible that the clumsier
and heavier Homo HeideTbergensis, a thousand centuries before
him, was of his blood and race.
VIII
THE NEANDERTHAL MEN, AN EXTINCT RACE
(The Early Palaeolithic Age ^)
§ 1. The World 50,000 Years Ago. § 2. The Daily Life of
the First Men. % 3. The Last Palceolithic Men.
IN the time of the Third Interglacial period the outline of
Europe and Western Asia was very different from what it
is to-day. Vast areas to the west and north-west which
are now under the Atlantic waters were then dry land; the
Irish Sea and the North Sea were river valleys. Over these
northern areas there spread and receded and spread again a
great ice cap such as covers central Greenland to-day (see Map
on p. 56). This vast ice cap, which covered both polar regions
of the earth, withdrew huge masses of water from the ocean,
and the sea-level consequently fell, exposing great areas of land
that are now submerged again. The Mediterranean area was
probably a great valley below the general sea-level, containing
two inland seas cut off from the general ocean. The climate
of this Mediterranean basin was perhaps cold temperate, and
the region of the Sahara to the south was not then a desert of
baked rock and blown sand, but a well-watered and fertile coun-
try. Between the ice sheets to the north and the Alps and
Mediterranean valley to the south stretched a bleak wilderness
* Three phases of human history before the knowledge and use of metals
are often distinguished. First there is the so-called Eolithic Age (dawn
of stone implements), then the Palaeolithic Age (old stone implements),
and finally an age in which the implements are skilfully made and fre-
quently well finished and polished (Neolithic Age). The Palaeolithic
Period is further divided into an earlier (sub-human) and a later (fully
human) period. We shall comment on these divisions later.
55
56
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE NEANDERTHAL MEN 57
whose climate changed from harshness to a mild kindliness
and then hai-dened again for the Fourth Glacial Age.
Across this "wilderness, which is now the great plain of
Europe, wandered a various fauna. At first there were hippo-
potami, rhinoceroses, mammoths, and elephants. The sabre^
toothed tiger was diminishing towards extinction. Then, as
the air chilled, the hippopotamus, and then other warmth-loving
creatures, ceased to come so far north, and the sabre-toothed
tiger disappeared altogether. The woolly mammoth, the woolly
rhinoceros, the musk ox, the bison, the aurochs, and the reindeer
became prevalent, and the temperate vegetation gave place to
plants of a more arctic type. The glaciers spread southward to
the maximum of the Fourth Glacial Age (about 50,000 years
ago), and then receded again. In the earlier phase, the Third
Interglacial period, a certain number of small family groups
of men (Homo Neanderthalensis) and probably of sub-men
(Eoanihropus) wandered over the land, leaving nothing but
their flint implements to witness to their presence. They prob-
ably used a multitude and variety of wooden implements also;
they had probably learnt much about the shapes of objects and
the use of different shapes from wood, knowledge which they
afterwards applied to stone; but none of this wooden material
has survived; we can only speculate about its forms and uses.
As the weather hardened to its maximum of severity, the
!Keanderthal men, already it would seem acquainted with the
use of fire, began to seek shelter under rock ledges and in caves
— and so leave remains behind them. Hitherto they had been
accustomed to squat in the open about the fire, and near their
water supply. But they were sufficiently intelligent to adapt
themselves to the new and harder conditions. (As for the sub-
men, they seem to have succumbed to the stresses of this Fourth
Glacial Age altogether. At any rate, the rudest type of Palaeo-
lithic implements presently disappears.)
ISat merely man was taking to the caves. This period also
had a cave lion, a cave bear, and a cave hysena. These creatures
had to be driven out of the caves and kept out of the caves in
which these early men wanted to squat and hide ; and no doubt
fire was an effective method of eviction and protection. Prob-
ably, early men did not go deeply into the caves, because they
had no means of lighting their recesses. They got in far
enough to be out of the weather, and stored wood and food in odd
5S
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
comers. Perhaps they harricaded the cave mouths. Their
only available light for going deeply into the caverns would be
torches.
What did these Neanderthal men hunt ? Their only possible
weapons for killing such giant creatures as the mammoth or
the cave bear, or even the reindeer, were spears of wood, wooden
clubs, and those big pieces of flint they left behind them, the
"Chellean" and "Mousterian" implements ; ^ and probably their
usual quarry was smaller game. But they did certainly eat
the flesh of the big beasts when they had a chance,, and perhaps
they followed them
when sick or when,
wounded by combats,
or took advantage of
them when they were
bogged or in trouble
with ice or water.
(The Labrador Indi^
ans still kill the cari-
bou with spears at
awkward river cross-
ings.) At Dewlish,
in Dorset, an artifi-
cial trench has been
found which is sup-
posed to have been a
Palaeolithic trap for
elephants.^ "We know
that the Neanderthalers partly ate their kill where it fell ; but
they brought back the big narrow bones to the cave to crack and
eat at leisure, because few ribs and vertebrae are found in the
caves, but great quantities of cracked and split long bones.
They used skins to wrap about them, and the women probably
dressed the skins.
We know also that they were right-handed like modern men,
because the left side of the brain (which serves the right side
of the body) is bigger than the right. But while the back parts
of the brain which deal with sight and touch and the energy
of the body are well developed, the front parts, whici' are con-
'From Chellea and Le Moustier in France.
•Osmond Fisher, quoted in Wright's Quatemari/ Ice Age.
THE NEANDERTHAL MEN 59
nected witli thouglijt and speech, are comparatively small. It
was as big a brain as oura, but different. This species of Homo
had certainly a very different mentality from ours; its indi-
viduals were not merely simpler and lower than we are, they
were on another line. It may be they did not speak at all,
or very sparingly. They had nothing that we should call a
language.
§2
In Worthington Smith's Mom the Primeval Savage there is
a very vividly written description of early Palaeolithic life,
from which much of the following account is borrowed. In
the original, Mr. Worthington Smith assumes a more extensive
social life, a larger community, and a more definite division of
labour among its members than is altogether justifiable in the
face of such subsequent writings as J. J. Atkinson's memorable
essay on Primal Law.^ For the little tribe Mr. Worthington
Smith described, there has been substituted, therefore, a family
group under the leadership of one Old Man, and the suggestions
of Mr. Atkinson as to the behaviour of the Old Man have been
worked into the sketch.
Mr. Worthington Smith describes a squatting-place near a
stream, because primitive man, having no pots or other vessels,
must needs have kept close to a water supply, and with some
chalk cliffs adjacent from which flints could be got to work.
The air was bleak, and the fire was of great importance, be-
cause fires once out were not easily relit in those days. When
not required to blaze it was probably banked down with ashes.
The most probable way in which fires were started was by
hacking a bit of iron pyrites with a flint amidst dry dead leaves ;
concretions of iron pyrites and flints are found together in
England where the gault and chalk approach each other.^ The
little group of people would be squatting about amidst a litter
of fern, moss, and such-like dry material. Some of the women
and children would need to be continually gathering fuel to
keep up the fires. It would be a tradition that had grown up.
^Social Origins, by Andrew Lang, and Primal 'Law, by J. J. Atkinson.
(Longmans, 1903.)
'This first origin of fire was suggested by Sir Jobn Lubbock (Ptehistorio
Times), and Ludwig Hopf, in The Htiman Species, says that "Flints and
pieces of pyrites are found in close proximity in palaeolithic settlements
neai the remains of mammoths."
60
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
u--ChelUsux
TeJLseAiiidc Stone Irxx^^lemeaiS
(all rcfoghly to
scale of hAnd
shown)
Xhre£ meyfs of a tTW#t*0*
carinate (earliest perwd)
unplement
Chopping
[N.B.This xs
a modern. — not a. Ncajif^ar-
Hajid-axes
Point /^i'^^Moustirum.
' S^KiTcer
Eablt Stone Implements.
The Mousterian Age implements, and all above it, are those of
Neanderthal men or, possibly in the case of the rostro-carinates, of
sub-men. The lower row (Reindeer Age) are the work of true men.
The student should compare this diagram with the time diagram
attached to Chapter VII, § 1, and he should note the relatively large
size of the pre-human implements.
THE NEANDERTHAL MEN 61
The young would imitate their elders in this task. Perhaps
there would be rude wind shelters of boughs on one side of
the encampment.
The Old Man, the father and master of the group, would
perhaps be engaged in hammering flints beside the fire. The
children would imitate him and learn to use the sharpened
fragments. Probably some of the women would hunt good
flints; they would fish them out of the chalk with sticks and
bring them to the squatting-place.
There would be skins about. It seems probable that at a
very early time primitive men took to using skins. Probably
they were wrapped about the children, and used to lie upon
when the ground was damp and cold. A woman would perhaps
be preparing a skin. The inside of the skin would be well
scraped free of superfluous flesh with trimmed flints, and then
strained and pulled and pegged out flat on the grass, and dried
in the rays of the sun.
Away from the fire other members of the famiJy group prowl
in search of food, but at night they all gather closely round
the fire and build it up, for it is their protection against the
wandering bear and such-like beasts of prey. The Old Man
is the only fully adult male in the little group. There are
women, boys and girls, but so soon as the boys are big enough
to rouse the Old Man's jealousy, he will fall foul of them and
either drive them off or kill them. Some girls may perhaps go
off with these exiles, or two or three of these youths may keep
together for a time, wandering until they come upon some other
group, from which they may try to steal a mate. Then they
would probably fall out among themselves. Some day, when
he is forty years old perhaps or even older, and his teeth are
worn down and his energy abating, some younger male will
stand up to the Old Man and kill him and reign in his stead.
There is probably short shrift for the old at the squatting-
place. So soon as they grow weak and bad-tempered, trouble
and death come upon them.
"What did they eat at the squatting-place ?
"Primeval man is commonly described as a hunter of the
great hairy mammoth, of the bear, and the lion, but it is in the
highest degree improbable that the human savage ever hunted
animals much larger than the hare, the rabbit, and the rat.
Man was probably the hunted rather than the hunter.
62
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
AUSTRALIA
Westam
Peuri-fic
Glacial Swj«
(77^ 100-fsthom
line as cossiiuie . .)
"The primeval savage was both herbivorous and carnivorous.
He had for food hazel-nute, beech-nuts, sweet chestnuts, earth-
nuts, and acorns. He had crab-apples, wild pears, wild cherries,
wild gooseberries, bullaces, sorbs, sloes, blackberries, yewberries,
hips and haws, watercress, fungi, the larger and softer leaf-,
buds, Nostoc (the vegetable substance called 'fallen stars' by
countryfolk), the fleshy, juicy, asparagus-like rhizomes or sub-
terranean stems of the Labiates and like plants, as well as other
delicacies of the vegetable kingdom. He had birds' eggs, young
birds, and the honey
and honeycomb of
wild bees. He had
newts, snails, and
frogs — ^the two latter
delicacies are still
highly esteemed in
Normandy and Brit-
tany. He had fish,
dead and alive, and
fresh-water mussels;
he could easily catch,
fish with his hands
and paddle and dive
for and trap them.
By the seaside he
would have fish, mol-
lusca, and seaweed.
He would have many
of the larger birds
and smaller mam-
mals, which he could easily secure by throwing stones and sticks,
or by setting simple snares. He would have the snake, the
slow worm, and the crayfish. He would have various grubs
and insects, the large larvae of beetles and vfarious cater-
pillars. The taste for caterpillars still survives in China, where
they are sold in dried bundles in the markets. A chief and
highly nourishing object of food would doubtlessly be bones
smashed up into a stiff and gritty paste.
"A fact of great importance is this — primeval man would
not be particular about having his flesh food over-fresh. He
would constantly find it in a dead state, and, if semi-putrid, he
Whxlz thz nraiizPS ujere helA i^ in
ihe Polar Ice C&ps , th^ sea-Zepei
was ?£W ennujgh in enaile PaZ^o-
IjBiic Maji to reach Tasm^nui.
THE NEANDERTHAL MEN 63
would relish it none the less — ^the taste for high or half-putrid
game still survives. If driven by hunger and hard pressed, he
would perhaps sometimes eat his weaker companions or un-
healthy children who happened to be feeble or unsightly or
burthensome. The larger animals in a weak and dying state
would no doubt be much sought for ; when these were not forth-
coming, dead and half -rotten examples would be made to suffice.
An unpleasant odour would not be objected to; it is not ob-
jected to now in many continental hotels.
"The savages sat huddled close together round their fire,
with fruits, bones, and half-putrid flesh. We can imagine
the old man and his women twitching the skin of their shoul-
ders, brows, and muzzles as they were annoyed or bitten by
flies or other insects. We can imagine the large human nostrils,
indicative of keen scent, giving rapidly repeated sniffs at the
foul meat before it was consumed ; the bad odour of the meat,
and the various other disgusting odours belonging tO' a haunt
of savages, being not in the least disapproved.
"Man at that time was not a degraded animal, for he had
never been higher; he was therefore an exalted animal, and,
low as we esteem him now, he yet represented the highest
stage of development of the animal kingdom of his time."
That is at least an acceptable sketch of a ^Neanderthal squat-
ting-place. But before extinction overtook them, even the Nean-
derthalers learnt much and went far.
Whatever the older Palaeolithic men did with their dead, there
is reason to suppose that the later Homo Neanderthalensis
buried some individuals at least with respect and ceremony.
One of the best-known JSTeanderthal skeletons is that of a youth
who apparently had been deliberately interred. He had been
placed in a sleeping posture, head on the right fore-arm. The
head lay on a number of flint fragments carefully piled to-
gether "pillow fashion." A big hand-axe lay near his head,
and around him were numerous charred and split ox bones,
as though there had been a feast or an offering.
To this appearance of burial during the later ^STeanderthal
age we shall return when we are considering the ideas that were
inside the heads of primitive men.
This sort of men may have wandered, squatted about their
fires, and died in Europe for a period extending over 100,000
years, if we assume, that is, that the Heidelberg jaw-bone
64 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
belongs to a member of the species, a period so vast that all the
subsequent history of our race becomes a thing of yesterday.
Along its own line this species of men was accumulating a dim
tradition, and working out its limited possibilities. Its thick
skull imprisoned its brain, and to the end it was low-browed
and brutish.
IX
THE LATER POSTGLACIAL PALEOLITHIC MEN,
THE FIEST TRUE MEN
(Later Palseolithic Age)
§ 1. The Coming of Men Like Ourselves. § 2. Hunters Give
Place to Herdsmen. § 3. No Sub-Men in America.
§ 1
THE Neanderthal type of man prevailed in Euro-pe at
least for tens of thousands of years. For ages that make
all history seem a thing of yesterday, these nearly human
creatures prevailed. If the Heidelberg jaw was that of a
Neanderthaler, and if there is no error in the estimate of the
age of that jaw, then the Neanderthal Race lasted out for more
than 200,000 years! Finally, between 40,000 and 25,000
years ago, as the Fourth Glacial Age softened towards more
temperate conditions (see Map on p. 68), a different human
type came upon the scene, and, it would seem, exterminated
Homo Neanderthalensis.^ This new type was probably de-
veloped in South Asia or North Africa, or in lands now sub-
^The opinion tliat the Neanderthal race {Homo Neanderthalensis) is
an extinct species which did not interbreed with the true men {Bomo
sapiens) is held by Professor Osborn, and it is the view to which the
writer inclines and to which he has pointed in the treatment of this
section; but it is only fair to the reader to note that many writers do not
share this view. They write and speak of living "Neanderthalers" in
contemporary populations. One observer has written in the past of such
types in the west of Ireland; another has observed them in Greece. These
so-called "living Neanderthalers" have neither the peculiarities of neck,
thumb, nor teeth that distinguish the Neanderthal race of pre-men. The
cheek teeth of true men, for instance, have what we call fangs, long fangs;
the Neanderthaler's cheek tooth is a more oomplioated amd specialized
cheek tooth, a long tooth with short fangs, and his canine teeth were Jess
marked, less like dog-teeth, than ours. Nothing could show more clearly
that he was on a different line of development. We must remember that
so far only western Europe has been properly explored for Palseolitbie
65
66
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
merged in the Mediterranean basin, and, as more remains are
collected and evidence accumulates, men will learn more of
their early stages. At present we can only guess where and
how, through the slow ages, parallel with the Neanderthal
cousin, these first trv^ men arose out of some more ape-like
progenitor. For hundreds of centuries they were acquiring
skill of hand and limb, and power and bulk of brain, in that
still unknown environment. They were already far above the
Neanderthal level of achievement and intelligence, when first
they come into our
ken, and they had al-
ready split into two
or more very distinc-
tive races.
These newcomers
did not migrate into
Europe in the strict
sense of the word,
but rather, as cen-
tury by century the
climate ameliorated,
they followed the
food and plants to
which they were ac-
customed, as those
spread into the new
realms that opened
to them. The ice was receding, vegetation was increasing,
big game of all sorts was becoming more abundant. Steppe-
like conditions, conditions of pasture and shrub, were bringing
with them vast herds of wild horse. Ethnologists (students of
race) class these new human races in one same species as our-
selves, and with all human races subsequent to them, under one
remains, and that practically all we know of the Neanderthal species
comes from that area (see Map, p. 56). No doubt the ancestor of
Homo sapiens (which species includes the Tasmanians) was a very similar
and parallel creature to Homo neanderthalensis. And we are not so
far from that ancestor as to have eliminated not indeed "Neanderthal,"
but "Neanderthaloid" types. The existence of such types no more proves
that the Meanderthal species, the makers of the Chellean and Mousterian
implements, interbred with Homo sapiens in the European area than do
monkey-faced people testify to an interbreeding with monkeys; or people
with faces Ukg horses, that th?re i§ an e<}uine strain iii our population.
THE FIRST TRUE MEN 67
common specific name of Homo sapiens. They had quite human
brain-casts and hands. Their teeth and their necks were
anatomically aa ours are.
We know of two distinct sorts of skeletal remains in this
period, the first of these known as the Cro-Magnon race, and
the second the Grimaldi race; but the great bulk of the human
traces and appliances we find are either without human bones
or with insufficient bones for us to define their associated phys-
ical type. There may have been many more distinct races than
these two. There may have been intermediate types. In the
grotto of Cro-Magnon it was that complete skeletons of one
main type of these Newer Palseolithic men, these true men,
were first found, and so it is that they are spoken of as Cro-
Magnards.
These Cro-Magnards were a tall people with very broad faces,
prominent noses, and, all things considered, astonishingly big
brains. The brain capacity of the woman in the Cro-Magnon
cave exceeded that of the average male to-day. Her head had
been smashed by a heavy blow. There were also in the same
cave with her the complete skeleton of an older man, nearly six
feet high, the fragments of a child's skeleton, and the skeletons
of two young men. There were also flint implements and
perforated sea-shells, used no doubt as ornaments. Such is one
sample of the earliest true men. But at the Grimaldi cave,
near Mentone, were discovered two skeletons also of the later
Palseolithic Period, but of a widely contrasted type, with
negroid characteristics that point rather to the negroid type.
There can be no doubt that we have to deal in this period with
at least two, and probably more, highly divergent races of true
men. They may have overlapped in time, or Cro-Magnards
may have followed the Grimaldi race, and either or both may
have been contemporary with the late iN^eanderthal men. Vari-
ous authorities have very strong opinions upon these points,
but they are, at most, opinions.
The appearance of these truly human postglacial Palaeolithic
peoples was certainly an enormous leap forward in the history
of mankind. Both of these main races had a human fore-
brain, a human hand, an intelligence very like our own. They
dispossessed Homo NcanvJerthalensis from his caverns and his
stone quarries. And they agreed with modem ethnologists, it
would seem, in regarding him as a different species. Unlike
68
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE FIRST TRUE MEN
69
most savage conquerors, who take tie women of the defeated
side for their own and interbreed with them, it would seem that
the true men would have nothing to do with the Ifeanderthal
Arfcictcr scales)
'Bonepcfiitts
(JixUiazi-'
pierced
tiaz-poons ozTetncLaec horn
cap
mortal'
Tkfi
J.F.H.
•omna
■stick
(remAearhom)
race, women or men. There is no trace of any intermixture
between the races, in spite of the fact that the newcomers, being
also flint users, were establishing themselves in the very same
spots that their predecessors had occupied. We know nothing
70 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of the appearance of the Neanderthal man, but this ahsence of
intermixture seems to suggest an extreme hairiness, an ugliness,
or a repulsive strangeness in his appearance over and above his
low forehead, his beetle brows, his ape neck, and his inferior
stature. Or he — and she — may have been too fierce to tame.
Says Sir Harry Johnston, in a survey of the rise of modem
man in his Views and Reviews: "The dim racial remeinbrance
of such gorilla-like monsters, with cunning brains, shambling
gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tend-
encies, may be the germ of the ogre in folklore. . . ."
These true men of the Palseolithic Age, who replaced the
Neanderthalers, were coming into a milder climate, and al-
though they used the caves and shelters of their predecessors,
they lived largely in the open. They were hunting peoples,
and some or all of them appear to have hunted the mammoth
and the wild horse as well as the reindeer, bison, and aurochs.
They ate much horse. At a great open-air camp at Solutre,
where they seem to have had annual gatherings for many cen-
turies, it is estimated that there are the bones of 100,000 horses,
besides reindeer, mammoth, and bison- bones. They probably
followed herds of horses, the little bearded ponies of that age,
as these moved after pasture. They hung about on the flanks
of the herd, and became very wise about its habits and disposi-
tions. A large part of these men's lives must have been spent
in watching animals.
"Whether they tamed and domesticated the horse is still an
open qi;iestion. Perhaps they learnt to do so by degrees as the
centuries passed. At any rate, we find late Palaeolithic draw-
ings of horses with marks about the heads that are strongly
suggestive of bridles, and there exists a carving of a horse's
head showing what is perhaps a rope of twisted skin or tendon.
But even if they tamed the horse, it ia still more doubtful
whether they rode it or had much use for it when it was tamed.
The horse they knew was a wild pony with a beard under its
chin, not up to carrying a man for any distance. It is improb-
able that these men had yet learnt the rather unnatural use of
animal's milk as food. If they tamed the horse at last, it
was the only animal they seem to have tamed. They had no
dogs, and they had little to do with any sort of domesticated
sheep or cattle.
It greatly aids us to realize their common humanity that
THE FiilST TRUE MEN n
these earliest true men could draw. Both races, it would seem,
drew astonishingly well. They were by all standards savages,
but they were artistic savages. They drew better than any of
their successors down to the beginnings of history. They drew
and painted on the cliffs and cave walla th^t they had wrested
from the Neanderthal men. And the surviving drawings come
to the ethnologist, puzzling over bones and scraps, with the
effect of a plain message shining through guesswork and dark-
ness. They drew on bones and antlers; they carved little
figures.
These later Palaeolithic people not only drew remarkably well
for our information, and with an increasing skill as the cen-
turies passed, but they have also left us other information about
their lives in their graves. They buried. They buried their
dead, often with ornaments, weapons, and food; they used a
lot of colour in the burial, and evidently painted the body.
From that one may infer that they painted their bodies during
life. Paint was a big fact in their lives. They were inveterate
painters; they used black, brown, red, yellow, and white pig-
ments, and the pigments they used endure to this day in the
caves of France and Spain. Of all modern races, none have
shown so pictorial a disposition ; the nearest approach to it has
been among the American Indians.
These drawings and paintings of the later Palaeolithic people
went on through a long period of time, and present wide fluctua-
tions in artistic merit. We give here some early sketches, from
which we learn of the interest taken by these early men in the
bison, horse, ibex, cave bear, and reindeer. In its early stages
the drawing is often primitive like the drawing of clever chil-
dren; quadrupieds are usually drawn with one hind-leg and
one fore-leg, as children draw them to this day. The legs on
the other side were too much for the artist's technique. Possi-
bly the first drawings began as children's drawings begin, out
of idle scratchings. The savage scratched with a flint on a
smooth rock surface, and was reminded of some line or gesture.
But their solid carvings are at least as old as their first pic-
tures. The earlier drawings betray a complete incapacity to
group animals. As the centuries progressed, more skilful artists
appeared. The representation of beasts became at last astonish-
ingly vivid and like. But even at the crest of their artistic
time they still drew in profile as children do; perspective and
72
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the fore-shortening needed for back and front views were too
much for them.^ They rarely drew themselves. The vast
majority of their drawings represent animals. The mammoth
and the horse are among the commonest themes. Some of the
people, whether Grimaldi people or Cro-Magnon people, also
made little ivory and soapstone statuettes, and among these are
some very fat female figures. These latter suggest the physique
of Grimaldi rather than of Cro-Magnon artists. They are like
J.P.H.
fainting rti -(mar coLonrs (Save cf^Hbuahra. , SpMti)
Bushmen women. The human sculpture of the earlier time£
inclined to caricature, and generally such human figures as
they represent are far below the animal studies in vigour and
veracity.
Later on there was more grace and leas coarseness in the
human representations. One little ivory head discovered is
that of a girl with an elaborate coiffure. These people at a
later stage also scratched and engraved designs on ivory and
bone. Some of the most interesting groups of figures are
»R. I. Pocock.
THE FIRST TRUE MEN
73
carved very curiously round bone, and especially round rods
of deer bone, so that it is impossible to see the entire design
Stxa a2u2 sshiwti
etuttaved on
peiiia£cr iWtn
Horse's
had.
carvaii
Head, cfa woman, carved in. ivorjr "*^
Pamted. pMiUs (ftxUian. A^e)
S'tone stabxetttf
altogeliier. Figures have also been found modelled in clay,
although no Palaeolithic people made any use of pottery.
Many of the paintings are found in the depths of unlit
caves. They are often difficult of access. The artists must
74 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
have employed lamps to do their work, and shallow soapstone
lamps in which fat could have been burnt have been found.
Whether the seeing of these cavern paintings was in some way
ceremonial or under what circumstances they were seen, we
are now altogether at a loss to imagine.
At last it would seem that circumstances began to turn alto-
gether against these hunting Newer Palaeolithic people who had
flourished for so long in Europe. They disappeared. New
kinds of men appeared in Europe, replacing them. These
latter seem to have brought in bow and arrows; they had do-
mesticated animals and cultivated the soil. A new way of
living, the Neolithic way of living, spread over the European
area ; and the life of the Reindeer Age and of the races of Kein-
deer men, the Later Palaeolithic men, after a reign vastly greater
than the time between ourselves and the very earliest begin-
nings of recorded history, passed off the European stage.
§ 2
It was about 12,000 or fewer years ago that, with the spread
of forests and a great change of the fauna, the long prevalence
of the hunting life in Europe drew to its end. Reindeer van-
ished. Changing conditions . frequently bring with them new
diseases. There may have been prehistoric pestilences. Eor
many centuries there may have been no men in Britain or
Central Europe (Wright). For a time there were in Southern
Europe drifting communities of some little known people who
are called the Azilians.^ They may have been transition gen-
erations; they may have been a different race. We do not
know. Some authorities incline to the view that the Azilians
were the first wave of a race which, as we shall see later, has
played a great part in populating' Europe, the dark-white or
Mediterranean or Iberian race. These Azilian people have
left behind them a multitude of pebbles, roughly daubed with
markings of an unknown purport (see illus. p. 73). The use or
significance of these Azilian pebbles is still a pi'ofound mystery.
Was this some sort of token writing ? Were they counters in
some game ? Did the Azilians play with these pebbles or tell a
story with them, as imaginative diildren will do with bits of
'From the eavq of Mas d'Azil.
THE FIRST TRUE MEN 75
wood and stone nowadays ? At present we are unable to cope
with any of these questions.
We will not deal here with the other various peoples who
left their scanty traces in the world during the close of the
New Palaeolithic period, the spread of the forests where for-
merly there had been' steppes, and the wane of the hunters,
some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. We will go on to describe
the new sort of human community that was now spreading over
the northern hemisphere, whose appearance marks what is called
the Neolithic Age. The map of the world was assuming some-
thing like its present outlines, the landscape and the flora and
fauna were taking on their existing characteristics. The pre-
vailing animals in the spreading woods of Europe were the royal
stag, the great ox, and the bison ; the mammoth and the musk
ox had gone. The great ox, or aurochs, is now extinct, but it
survived in the German forests up to the time of the Koraan
Empire. It was never domesticated.^ It stood eleven feet
high at the shoulder, as high as an elephant. There were still
lions in the Balkan peninsula, and they remained there until
about 1,000 or 1,200 b.c. The lions of Wiirtemberg and South
Germany in those days were twice the size of the modern lion.
South Kussia and Central Asia were thickly wooded then, and
there were elephants in Mesopotamia and Syria, and a fauna
in Algeria that was tropical African in character.
Hitherto men in Europe had never gone farther north than
the Baltic Sea or the British Isles, but now the Scandinavian
peninsula and perhaps Great Kussia were becoming possible
regions for human occupation. There are no Palaeolithic re-
mains in Sweden or Norway. Man, when he entered these
countries, was apparently already at the Neolithic stage of
social development.
§ 3
Nor is there any convincing evidence of man in America
before the end of the Pleistocene.^ The same relaxation of the
'But our domestic cattle are derived from some form of aurochs —
probably from some lesser Central Asiatic variety. — H. H. J.
""The various finds of human remains in North America for which
the geological antiquity has been claimed have been thus briefly passed
under review. In every instance where enough of the bones is preserved
for comparison, the evidence bears witness against the geological antiquity
of the remains and for their close aflnnity to or identity with the modern
76 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
climate that permitted the retreat of the reindeer hunters into
Kussia and Siberia, as the Neolithic tribes advanced, may have
allowed them to wander across the land that is now cut by
Bering Strait, and so reach the American continent. They
spread thence southward, age by age. When they reached
South America, they found the giant sloth (the Megatherium),
the glyptodon, and many other extinct creatures, still flourish-
ing. The glyptodon was a monstrous South American arma-
dillo, and a human skeleton has been found by Eoth buried
beneath its huge tortoise-like shell. ^
All the human remains in America, even the earliest, it is
to be noted, are of an Amer-Indian character. In America
there does not seem to have been any preceding races of sub-
men. Man was fully man when he entered America. The old
world was the nursery of the sub-races of mankind.
Indian." (Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bul-
letin 33. Dr. Hrdlicka.)
But J. Deniker quotes evidence to show that eoliths and early paleeoliths
have been found in America. See his compact but full summary of the
evidence and views for and against in his Races of Man, pp. 510, 511.
' "Questioned by some authorities," says J. Deniker in The Races of Man.
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE
§ 1. The Age of CuUivcdion Begins. § 2. Where Did the
Neolithic Culture Arise? § 3. Everyday Neolithic Life.
§ 4. Primitive Trade. § 5. The Flooding of the Medi-
terranean Valley.
§ 1
THE Neolithic phase of human affairs began in Europe
about 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. But probably men
had reached the Neolithic stage elsewhere some thou-
sands of years earlier. Neolithic men came slowly into Europe
from the south or south-east as the reindeer and the open
steppes gave way to forest and modern European conditions,
The Neolithic stage in culture is characterized by: (1) the
presence of polished stone implements, and in particular! the
stone axe, which was perforated so as to be the more effectually
fastened to a wooden handle, and which was probably used
rather for working wood than in conflict. There are also abun-
dant arrow-heads. The fact that some implements are polished
does not preclude the presence of great quantities of implements
of unpolished stone. But there are differences in the make
between even the unpolished tools of the Neolithic and of the
Palaeolithic Period. (2) The beginning of a sort of agricul-
ture, and the use of plants and seeds. But at first there are
abundant evidences that hunting was still of great importance
in the Neolithic Age. Neolithic man did not at first sit down
to his agriculture. He took snatch crope. He settled later.
(3) Pottery and proper cooking. The horse is no longer eaten.
(4) Domesticated animals. The dog appears very early. The
Neolithic man had domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.
77
78 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
He was a huntsman turned herdsman of the herds he once
hunted. (5) Plaiting and weaving.
These Neolithic people probably "migrated" into Europe,
in the same way that the Keindeer Men had migrated befcH-e
them ; that is to say, generation by generation and century by
century, as the climate changed, they spread after their accus-
tomed food. They were not "nomads." Nomadism, like civili-
zation, had still to be developed. At present we are quite un-
able to estimate how far the Neolithic peoples were new-comers
and how far their arts were developed or acquired by the de-
scendants of some of the hunters and fishers of the Later
Palaeolithic Age.
Whatever our conclusions in that matter, this much we may
say with, certainty; there is no great break, no further sweeping
away of one kind of man and replacement by another kind be-
tween the appearance of the Neolithic way of living and ou^^
own time. There are invasions, conquests, extensive emigra-
tions and intermixtures, but the races as a whole carry on and
continue to adapt themselves to the areas into which they b^aji
to settle in the opening of the Neolithic Age. The Neolithic
men of Europe were white men ancestral to the modern Euro-
peans. They may have been of a darker complexion than many
of their descendants; of . that we cannot speak with certainty.
But there is no real, break in culture from their time onward
until we rfealch the age of coal, steam, and power-driven ma-
chinery that began in the eighteenth century.
After a long time gold, the first known of the metals, appears
among the bone ornaments with jet and amber. Irish Neolithic
remains are particularly rich in. gold. Then, perhaps 6,000
or 7jOOO years ago in Europe, . Neolithic people began to use
copper in certain centres, making out of it implements of much
the same pattern as their stone ones. They cast, the copper in
moulds made to the shape of the stone implements. Possibly
they first found native copper and hammered it into shape. ^
Later^^-we will not venture upon figures — men had found out
how to get copper from its ore. Perhaps, as Lord Avebury sug-
gested, they discovered the secret of smelting by the chance put-
ting of lumps of copper ore among the ordinary stones with
which they built the fire pits they used for cooking. In China,
'Native copper is still found to-day in Italy, Hungary, Cornwall and
many other places. '
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE
79
Hungary, Gornwall, and elsewhere copper ore and tinstone
occur in the same veins ; it is a very common association, and
so, Tather through dirtiness -than skill, the ancient smelters, it
(orawn to
diffirma
scales)
diui luym
2ixc una.
at poUshed stone
Flint-
airow-heaAs
may he, hit upon the harder and better bronze, which is an
alloy of copper and tin. Bronze is not only harder than copper,
but the mixture of tin and copper is more fusible and easier to
reduce. The so-called "pure-copper" implements usually con-
80 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tain a small proportion of tin, and there are no tin implements -
knovm, nor very much evidence to show that early men knew
of tin as a separate metal.^ ^ The plant of a prehistoric copper
smelter has been found in Spain, and the material of bronze
foundries in various localities. The method of smelting re-
vealed by these finds carries out Lord Avebury's suggestion.
In India, where zinc and copper ore occur together, brass
(which is an alloy of the two metals) was similarly hit upon.
So slight was the change in fashions and methods produced
by the appearance of bronze, that for a long time such bronze
axes and so forth as were made were cast in moulds to the shape
of the stone implements they were superseding.
Finally, perhaps as early as 3,000 years ago in Europe, and
even earlier in Asia Minor, men began to smelt iron. Once
smelting was known to men, there is no great marvel in the
finding of iron. They smelted iron by blowing up a charcoal
fire, and wrought it by heating and hammering. They produced
it at first in comparatively small pieces ; ' its appearance
worked a gradual revolution in weapons and implements ; but it
did not suffice to change the general character of men's sur-
roundings. Much the same daily life that was being led by
the more settled Neolithic men 10,000 years ago, was being led
by peasants in out-of-the-way places all over Europe at the be-
ginning of the eighteenth century.
People talk of the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron
Age in Europe, but it is misleading to put these ages as if they
were of equal importance in history. Much truer is it to say
thit there was:
(1) An Early Palwolithic Age, of vast duration; (2) a
Laier Palaeolithic Age, that lasted not a tithe of the time ; and
^Ridgeway (Early Age of Greece) says a lump of tin has been found
in the Swiss pile-dwelling deposits.
'Tin was known as a foreign import in Egypt under the XVIIIth
Dynasty; there is (rare) Mycenaean tin,' and there are (probably later,
but not clearly dated) tin objects in the Caucasus. But it is very diffi-
cult to distinguish tin from antimony. There is a good deal of Cyprus
bronze which contains antimony; a good, deal which seems to be tin is
antimony — ^the ancients trying to get tin, but actually getting antimony
and thinking it was tin. — J. L. M.
'In connection with iron, note the distinction of ornamental and useful
iron. Ornamental iron, a rarity, perhaps meteoric, as jewellery or magical
stuff, occurs in east Europe sporadically in the time of the XVnith
Dynasty. This must be distinguished from the copious useful iron
which appears in Greece much later from the North. — J. I,. M.
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 81
(3) the Age of Cultivation, the age of the white men in Europe,
which began 10,000 or at most 12,000 years ago, of which the
Neolithic Period was the beginning, and which is still going on.
§ 2
"We do not know yet the region in which the ancestors of the
brownish Neolithic peoples worked their way up from the
Palaeolithic stage of human development. Probably it was some-
where about south-western Asia, or in some region now sub-
merged beneath the Mediterranean Sea or the Indian Ocean,
that, while the Neanderthal men still lived their hard lives in
the bleak climate of a glaciated Europe, the ancestors of the
white men developed the rude arts of their Later Palaeolithic
period. But they do not seem to have developed the artistic
skill of their more northerly kindred, the, European L^er
Palaeolithic races. And through the hundred centuries or so
while Eeindeer men were living under comparatively unprogres-
sive conditions upon the steppes of France, Germany, and
Spain, these more favoured and progressive people to the south
were mastering agriculture, learning to develop their appli-
ances, taming the dog, domesticating cattle, arid, as the climate
to the north mitigated and the equatorial climate grew more
tropical, spreading northward. All these early chapters' of
our story have yet to be disinterred. They will probably be
found in Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia, India, or north Africa,
or they lie beneath the Mediterranean waters. Twelve thou-
sand years ago, or thereabouts — ^we are still too early for any-
thing but the roughest chronology — ^Neolithic peoples were scat-
tered all over Europe, north Africa, and Asia. They were
peoples at about the level of many of the Polynesian islanders
of the last century, and they were the most, advanced peoples
in the world.
§ 3
It will be of interest here to give a brief account of the life
of the European Neolithic people before the appearance of
metals. We get our light upon that life from various sources.
They scattered their refuse about, and in some places (e.g. on
: the Danish coast) it accumulated in great heaps, known as the
kitchen-middens. They buried some of their people, but not
82 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the common herd, with great care and distinction, and made
.hiige heaps of earth over their sepulchres ; these heaps are the
barrows or dolmens which contribute a feature to the Euro-
pean, Indian, and American scenery in many districts to this
day. In connection with these mounds, or independently of
them, they set up great stones (megaliths), either singly or
in groups, of which Stonehenge in Wiltshire and Carnae in
Brittany are among the best-known examples. In various
places their villages are still traceable.
• One fruitful source of knowledge about Neolithic life comes
from Switzerland, and was first revealed by the very dry winter
of 1854, when the water level of one of the lakes, sinking to
an unheard-of lowness, revealed the foundations of prehistoric
pile dwellings of the !N"eolithic and early Bronze Ages, built
out over the water after the fashion of similar homes that exist
to-day in Celebes and elsewhere. Not only were the timbers
of those ancient platforms preserved, but 5 great multitude of
wooden, bone, stone, and earthenware utensils and ornaments,
remains of food and the like, were found in the peaty accumu-
lations below them. Even pieces of net and garments have
been recovered. Similar lake dwellings existed in Scotland,
Ireland, and elsewhere — there are well-known remains at Glas-
tonbury in Somersetshire; in Ireland lake dwellings were in-
habited' from prehistoric times up to the days when O'Neil of
Tyrone was fighting against the English before the plantation
of Scotch colonists to replace the Irish in Ulster in the reign
of James I of England. These lake villages had considerable
defensive value, and there was a sanitary advantage in living
over flowing water.
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 63
Probably these Neolithic Swiss pile dwellings did not shelter
the largest communities that existed in those days. They were
the homes of small patriarchal groups. Elsewhere upon fertile
plains and in more open country there were probably already
much larger assemblies of homes than in those mountain valleys.
There are traces of such a large community of families in Wilt-
shire in England, for example; the remains of the stone circle
of Avebury near Silbury mound were once the "finest mega-
lithic ruin in Europe." It consisted of two circles of stones
surrounded by a larger circle and a ditch, and covering alto-
gether twenty-eight and a half acres. From it two avenues of
stones, each a mile and a half long, ran west and south on either
side of Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric
artificial mound in England. The dimensions of this centre of
a faith and a social life now forgotten altogether by men indi-
cate the concerted efforts and interests of a very large number
of people, widely scattered though they may have been over
the west and south and centre of England. Possibly they as-
sembled at some particular season of the year in a primitive
sort of fair. The whole community "lent a hand" in building
the mounds and hauling the stones. The Swiss pile dwellers,
on the contrary, seem to have lived in practically self-contained
villages.
These lake-village people were considerably more advanced
in methods and knowledge, and probably much later in time
than the early IN^eolithic people who accumulated the shell
mounds, known as kitchen-middens, on the Danish and Scotch
coasts. These kitchen-midden folk may have been as early as
10,000 B.C. or earlier; the lake dwellings were probably occu-
pied continuously from 5,000 or 4,000 b.c. down almost to his-
toric times. Those early kitchen-midden people were among
the most barbaric of Neolithic peoples, their stone axes were
rough, and they had no domesticated animal except the dog.
The lake dwellers, on the other hand, had, in addition to the
dog, which was of a medium-sized breed, oxen, goats, and sheep.
Later on, as they were approaching the Bronze Age, they got
swine. The remains of cattle and goats prevail in their debris,
and, having regard to the climate and country about them, it
seems probable that these beasts were sheltered in the buildings
upon the piles in winter, and that fodder was stored for. them.
Probably the beasts lived in the same houses with the people,
84 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
as the men and beasts do now in Swiss chalets. The people
in the houses possibly milked the cows and goats, and milk per-
haps played as important a part in their economy as it does
in that: of the mountain Swiss of to-day. But of that we are
not sure at present.. Milk is not a natural food for adults; it
must have seemed queer stuff to take at first ; and it may have
been only after much breeding that a continuous supply of
milk was secured from cows and goats. Some people think that
the use of milk, cheese, butter, and other milk products came
later into human life when men became nomadic. The writer
is, however, disposed to give the Neolithic, men credit for hav-
ing discovered milking. The milk, if they did use it (and,
no doubt, in that case sour curdled milk also, but not well-
made cheese and butter), they must have kept in earthenware
pots, for they had pottery, though it was roughly hand-made
pottery and not the shapely product of the pottery's wheel. They
eked out this food supply by hunting. They killed and ate
red deer and roe deer, bison and wild boar. And they ate the
fox, a rather high-flavoured meat, and not what any one would
eat in a world of plenty. Oddly enough, they do not seem to
have eaten the hare, although it was available as food.
They are supposed to have avoided eating it, as some savages
are said to avoid eating it to this day, because they feared that
the flesh of so timid a creature might make them, by a sort of
infection, cowardly.^
Of their agricultural methods we know very little. No
ploughs and no hoes have been found. They were of wood and
have perished. Neolithic men cultivated and ate wheat, barley,
and millet, but they knew nothing of oats or rye. Their grain
they roasted^ ground between stones and stored in pots, to be
eaten when needed. And they made exceedingly solid and heavy
bread, because round flat slabs of it have been got out of these
deposits; Apparently they had no yeast. If they had no yeast,
then they had no fermented drink. One sort of barley that
they had is the sort that was cultivated by the ancient Greeks,
Romans, and Egyptians, and they also had an Egyptian variety
of wheat, showing that their ancestors had brought or derived
this cultivation from the south-east. The centre of diffusion of
wheat was somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean region. A
* Csieaar d6 Bella OalUoo says the Britons tabooed hare, fowl and
gooae.--TG. Wh. '
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 85
wild form is still found in the neighbourhood of Mt. Hermon
(see Footnote to Chap. XIV, § 1). When the lake dwellers
sowed their little patches of wheat in Switzerland, they were
already following the immemorial practice of mankind. The
seed must have been brought age by age from that distant centre
of diffusion. In the ancestral lands of the south-east men had
already been sowing wheat perhaps for thousands of years.^
Those lake dwellers also ate peas, and crab-apples — -the only
apples that then existed in the world. Cultivation and selection
had not yet produced the apple of to-day.
They dressed chiefly in skins, but they also made a rough
cloth of flax. Fragments of that flaxen cloth have been dis-
covered. Their nets were made of flax; they had as yet no
knowledge of hemp and hempen rope. With the coining of
bronze, their pins and ornaments increased in number. There
is reason to believe they set great store upon their hair,
wearing it in large shocks with pins of bone and afterwards
of metal. To judge from the absence of realistic carvings or
engravings or paintings, they either did not decorate their gar-
ments or decorated them with plaids, spots, interlacing designs,
or similar conventional ornament. Before the coming of bronze
there is no evidence of stools or tables; the Neolithic people
probably squatted on their clay floors. There were no cats in
these lake dwellings; no mice or rats had yet adapted them-
selves to human dwellings ; the cluck of the hen was not as yet
added to the sounds of human life, nor the domestic egg to its
diet.2
The chief tool and weapon of Neolithic man was his axe;
his next the bow and arrow. His arrow-heads were of flint,
'AH Old World peoples who had entered upon the Neolithic stage grew
and ate wheat, but the American Indians must have developed agriculture
independently in America after their separation from the Old World
populations. They never had wheat. Their cultivation was maize, In-
dian corn, a New World grain. '
"Poultry and hens' eggs were late additions to the human cuisine, in
spite of the large part they now play in our dietary. The hen is not
mentioned in the Old Testament (but note the allusion to an egg, Job
vi, 6) nor by Homer. Up to about 1,500 B.C. the only fowls in the World
were jungle denizens in India and Burmah. The crowing of jungle cocks
is noted by Grlasfurd in his admirable accounts of tiger shooting as the
invariable preliminary of dawn in the Indian jungle. Probably poultry
were first domesticated in Burmah. They got to China, according to the
records, only about 1,100 b.c. They reached Greece via Persia before the
time of Socrates. In the New Testament the crowning of the cock re-
proaches Peter, for his desertion of the Master.
86
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
beautifully made, and he lashed them tightly to their shafts.
Probably he prepared the ground for his sowing with a pole,
or a pole upon which he had stuck a stag's horn. Eish he
hooked or harpooned. These implements no doubt stood about
in the interior of the house, from the walls of which hung his
fowling-nets. On the floor, which was of clay or trodden cow-
dung (after the fashion of hut floors in India to-day), stood'
pots and jars and woven baskets containing grain, milk, and
such-like food. Some of the pots and pans hung by rope loops
to the walls. At one end of the room, and helping to keep it
warm in winter by their animal heat, stabled the beasts. The
Uvir urns, lite &rst
prohahhj represetiiizig a hike.-dnmlmcr,,.
Mia- lubhock,..
children took the cows and goats out to graze, and brought them
in at night before the wolves and bears came prowling.
Since Neolithic man had the bow, he probably also had
stringed instruments, for the rhythmic twanging of a bow-
string seems almost inevitably to lead to that. He also had
earthenware drums across which skins were stretched ; perhaps
also he made drums by stretching skins over hollow tree sterns.^
We do not know when man began to sing, but evidently he was
making music, and since he had words, songs were no doubt
being made. To begin with, perhaps, he just let his voice loose
as one may hear Italian peasants now behind their ploughs
singing songs without words. After dark in the winter he sat
in his house and talked and sang and made implements by
'Later Palseolithic bone whistles are known. One may guess that reed
pipes were an early invention.
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 87
touch rather than sight. His lighting must have been poor^
and chiefly firelight, but there was probably always some fire
in the village, summer or winter. Fire was too troublesome to
make for men to be willing to let it out readily. Sometimes a
great disaster happened to those pile villages, the fire got free,
and they were burnt out. The Swiss deposits contain clear
evidence of such catastrophes.
All this we gather from the remains of. the Swiss pile dwell-
ings, and such was the character of the human life that spread
over Europe, coming from the south and from the east with
the forests as, 10,000 or ,12,000 years ago, the reindeer and
the Eeindeer men passed away. It is evident that we have here
a way of life already separated by a great gap of thousands of
years of invention from its original Palaeolithic stage. The
steps by which it rose from that condition we can only guess
at. From, being a hunter hovering upon the outskirts of flocks
and herds of wild cattle and sheep, and from being a co-hunter
with the dog, man by insensible degrees may have developed a
sense of proprietorship in the beasts and struck up a friendship
with his canine competitor. He learnt to turn the cattle when
they wandered too far; he brought his better brain to bear to
guide them to fresh pasture. He hemmed the beasts into
valleys and enclosures where he could be sure to find them again.
He fed them when they starved, and so slowly he tamed them.
Perhaps his agriculture b^an with the storage of fodder. He
reaped, no doubt, before he sowed. The Palaeolithic ancestor
away in that unknown land of origin to the south-east first sup-
plemented the precarious meat supply of the hunter by eating
roots and fruits and wild grains. Man storing graminifesrous
grasses for his cattle might easily come to beat out the grain
for himself.
§4
All these early beginnings must have taken place far back
in time, and in regions of the world that have still to be effec-
tively explored by the archaeologists. They were probably going
on in Asia or Africa, in what is now the bed of the Mediter-
ranean, or in the region of the Indian Ocean, while the Rein-
deer man was developing his art in Europe. The Neolithic
men who drifted over Europe and Western Asia 12,000 or
10,000 years ago were long past these beginnings; they were
88 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
already close, a few thousand yeaxs, to the dawn of written
tradition and the remembered history of mankind. Without
any very great shock or break, bronze came at last into human
life, giving a great advantage in warfare to those tribes who
first obtained it. Written history had already begun before
weapons of iron came into Europe to supersede bronze.
Already in those days a sort of primitive trade had sprung
up. Bronze and bronze weapons, and such rare and hard stones
as jade, gold because of its plastic and ornamental possibilities,
and skins and flax-net and cloth, were being swapped and stolen
and passed from hand to hand over great stretches of country.
Salt also was probably being traded. On a meat dietary men
can live without salt, but grain-consuming people need it just
as herbivorous animals need it. Hopf says that bitter tribal wars
have been carried on by the desert tribes of the Soudan in re-
cent years for the possession of the salt deposits between Fezzan
and Murzuk. To begin with, barter, blackmail, tribute, and
robbery by violence passed into each other by insensible de-
grees. Men got what they wanted by such means as they could.
§ 5
So far we have been telling of a history without events, a
history of ages and periods and stages in development. But be-
fore we conclude this portion of the human story, we must
record what was probably an event of primary importance and
at first perhaps of tragic importance to developing mankind,
and that was the breaking in of the Atlantic waters to the great
Mediterranean valley.
The reader must keep in mind that we are endeavouring to
give him plain statements that he can take hold of comfortably.
But both in the matter of our time charts and the three maps
we have given of prehistoric geography there is necessarily much
speculative matter. We have dated the last Glacial Age aid
the appearance of the true men as about 40,000 or 35,000 years
ago. Please bear that "about" in mind. The truth may be
60,000 or 20,000. But it is no good saying "a very long time"
or "ages" ago, because then the reader will not know whether
we mean centuries or millions of years. And similarly in these
maps we give, they represent not the truth, but something like
the truth. The outline of the land was "some such outline."
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 80
There were such seas and such land masses. But both Mr.
Horrabin, who has drawn these maps, and I, who have incited
him to do so, have preferred to err on the timid side. We are
not geologists enough to launch out into original research in
these matters, and so we have stuck to the 40-f athom line and
the recent deposits as our guides for our postglacial map and
for the map of 12,000 to 10,000 b.c. But in one matter we
have gone beyond these guides. It is practically certain that
at the end of the last Glacial Age the Mediterranean was a
couple of land-locked sea basins, not connected — or only con-
nected by a torrential overflow river. The eastern basin was
the fresher ; it was fed by the Nile, the "Adriatic' river, the
"Eed-Sea" river, and perhaps by a river that poured down
amidst the mountains that are now the Greek Archipelago
from the very much bigger Sea of Central Asia that then existed.
Almost "certainly human beings, and possibly even Neolithic
men, wandered over that now lost Mediterranean valley.
The reasons for believing this are very good and plain. To
this day the Mediterranean is a sea of evaporation. The rivers
that flow into it do not make up for the evaporation from its
surface. There is a constant current of water pouring into
the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, and another current
streaming in from the Bosporus and Black Sea. For the
Black Sea gets more water than it needs from the big rivers
that flow into it; it is an overflowing sea, while the Mediter-
ranean is a thirsty sea. From which it must be plain that when
the Mediterranean was cut off both from the Atlantic Ocean
and the Black Sea it must have been a shrinking sea with its wa-
ters sinking to a much lower level than those of the ocean out-
side. This is the case of the Caspian Sea to-day. Still more
so is it the case with the Dead Sea.
But if this reasoning is sound, then where to-day roll the
blue waters of the Mediterranean there must once have been
great areas of land, and land with a very agreeable climate.
This was probably the case during the last Glacial Age, and
we do not know how near it was to our time when the change
occurred that brought back the ocean waters into the Mediter-
ranean basin. Certainly there must have been Grimaldi peo-
ple, and perhaps even Azilian and Neolithic people going about
in the valleys and forests of these regions that are now sub-
merged. The Neolithic Dark Whites, the people of the Mediter-
90 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ranean race, may have gone far towards the beginnings of settle-
ment and civilization in that great lost Mediterranean valley.
Mr. W. B. Wright^ gives us some very stimulating sugges-
tions here. He suggests that in the Mediterranean basin there
were two lakes, "one a fresh-water lake, in the eastern depres-
sion, which drained into the other in j;he western depression. It
is interesting to think what must have happened when the
ocean level rose once more as a result of the dissipation of the
ice-sheets, and its waters began to pour over into the Mediter-
ranean area. The inflow, small at first, must have ultimately
increased to enormous dimensions, as the channel was slowly
lowered by erosion and the ocean level slowly rose. If there
were any unconsolidated materials on the sill of the Strait,
the result must have been a genuine debacle, and if we consider
the, length of time which even an enormous torrent would take
to fill such a basin as that of the Mediterranean, we must con-
clude that this result was likely to have been attained in any
case. Now, this may seem all the wildest speculation, but it
is not entirely so, for if we examine a submarine contour map
of the Straits of Gibraltar, we find there is an enormous valley
running up from the Mediterranean deep, right through the
Straits, and trenching some distance out on to the Atlantic
shelf. This valley or gorge is probably the work of the inflow-
ing waters of the ocean at the termination of the period of
interior drainage."
This refilling of the Mediterranean, which by the rough
chronology we are employing in this book may have happened
somewhen between 30,000 and 10,000 e.g., must have been one
of the greatest single events in the pr&-history of our race. If
the later date is the truer, then, as the reader will see plainly
enough after reading the next two chapters, the crude be-
ginnings of civilization, the first lake dwellings and the first
cultivation, were probably round that eastern Levantine Lake
into which there flowed not only the Nile, but the. two great
rivers that are now the Adriatic and the Red Sea. Suddenly
the ocean waters began to break through over the westward hills
and to pour in upon these primitive peopl^s-^-the lake that
had been their home and friend became their enemy ; its waters
rose and never abated; their settlements wore submerged; the
waters pursued them in their flight. Day by day and year by
Tfce Qiiatemaiy Ice Age.
NEOLITHIC MAN IN EUROPE 91
year the waters spread up the valleys and drove mankind be-
fore them. Many must have been surrounded and caught by
the continually rising salt flood. It knew no check; it came
faster and faster ; it rose over the tree-tops, over the hills, until
it had filled the whole basia of the present Mediterranean and
until it lapped the mountain cliffs of Arabia and Africa. Far
away, long before the dawn of history, this catastrophe occurred.
XI
EAELY THOUGHT
§ 1. Primitive Philosophy. § 2. The Old Man in Religion.
§ 3. Fear and Hope in Religion. § 4. Stars and Seasons.
§ 5. Story-telling and Myth^mahing. § 6. Complex Ori-
gins of Religion.
% 1
BEFOKE we go on to tell how 6,000 or 7,000 years ago
men began to gather into the first towns and to develop
something more than the loose-knit tribes that had
hitherto been their highest political association, something must
be said about the things that were going on inside these brains
of which we have traced the growth and development through
a period o£ 500,000 years from the ape-man stage.
What was man thinking about himself and about the world
in those remote days ?
At first he thought very little about anything but inamedi-
ate things. At first he was busy thinking such things as : "Here
is a bear; what shall I do?" Or "There is a squirrel; how
can I get it?" Until language had developed to some extent
there could have been little thinking beyond the range of actual
experience, for language is the instrument of thought as book-
keeping is the instrument of business. It records and fixes and
enables thought to get on to more and more complex ideas. It
is the hand of the mind to hold and ke^. Primordial man, be-
fore he could talk, probably saw very vividly, mimicked very
cleverly, gestured, laughed, danced, and lived, without much
speculation about whence he came or why he lived. Hfe feared
the dark, no doubt, and thunderstorms and big animals and
queer things and whatever he dreamt about, and no doubt he did
things to propitiate what he feared or to change his luck and
92
EARLY THOUGHT 93
please the imaginary powers in rock' and beast and river. He
made no dear distinction between animate and inanimate
things; if a stick hurt him, he kicked it; if the river foamed
and flooded, he thought it was hostile. His thought was prob-
ably very much at the level of a bright little contemporary,
boy of four or five. He had the same subtle unreasonableness
of transition and the same limitations. But since he had little
or no speech he would do little to pass on the fancies that came
to him, and develop any tradition or concerted acts about them.
The drawings even of Late PalsBolithic man do not suggest
that he paid any attention to sun or moon or stars or trees. He
was preoccupied only with animals and men. Probably he
took day and night, sun and stars, trees and mountains, as
being in the nature of things — as a child takes its meal times
and its nursery staircase for granted. So far as we can judge,
he drew no fantasies, no ghosts or anything of that sort. The
Reindeer men's drawings are fearless familiar things, with no
hint about them of any religions or occult feelings. There is
scarcely anything that we can suppose to be a religious or mysti-
cal symbol at all in his productions. No doubt he had a cer-
tain amount of what is called fetishism in his life; he did things
we should now think unreasonable to produce desired ends, for
that is all fetishism amounts to; it is only incorrect science
based on guess-work or false analogy, and entirely different in
its nature from religion. No doubt he was excited by his
dreams, and his dreams mixed up at times in his mind with his
waking impressions and puzzled him. Since he buried his dead,
and since even the later Neanderthal men seem to have buried
their dead, and apparently with food and weapons, it has been
argued that he had a belief in a future life. But it is just as
reasonable to suppose that early men buried their dead with food
and weapons because they doubted if they were dead, which is
not the same thing as believing them to have immortal spirits,
and that their belief in their continuing vitality was reinforced
by dreams of the departed. They may have ascribed a sort of
were-wolf existence to the dead, and wished to propitiate them.
The Eelndeer man, we feel, was too intelligent and too like
ourselves not to have had some speech, but quite probably it
was not very serviceable for anything beyond direct statement
or matter-of-fact narrative. He lived in a larger community
thian the Neanderthaler, , but how large we do not know. Ex-
g* THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
cept when game is swarming, hunting communities must not
keep together in large bodies or they will starve. The Indians
who depend upon the caribou in Labrador must be living under
circumstances rather like those of the Reindeer men. They
scatter in small family groups, as the caribou scatter in search
of food; but when the deer collect for the seasonal migration,
the Indians also collect. That is the time for trade and feasts
and marriages. The simplest American Indian is 10,000 years
more sophisticiated than the Keindeer man, but probably-that
sort of gathering- and dispersal was also the way of Keindeer
men. At Solutre in France there are traces of &. great camping
and feasting place. There was no doubt an exchange of news
there, but one may doubt if there was anything like an exchange
of ideas. One sees no scope in such a life for theology or philos-
ophy or superstition or speculation. Fears, yes; but unsystem-
atic fears ; fancies and freaks of the imagination, but personal
and transitory freaks and fancies.
Perhaps there was a certain power of suggestion in these en-
coimters. A fear really felt needs few words for its transmisr
sion ; a value set upon something may be very simply conveyed.
In these questions of primitive thought and religion, we
must remember that the lowly and savage peoples of to-day prob-
ably throw very little light on the mental state of men before
the days of fully developed language. Primordial man could
have had little or no tradition before the development of speech.
AH savage and primitive peoples of to-day, on the contrary, are
soaked in tradition — the tradition of thousands of generations.
They may have weapons like their remote ancestors and methods
like them, but what were slight and shallow impressions on
the minds of their predecessors are now deep and intricate
grooves worn throughout the intervening centuries generation
by generation.
§2
Certain very fundamental things there may have been in
men's minds long before the coming of speech. Chief among
these must have been fear of the Old Man of the tribe. The
young of the primitive squatting-place grew up under that fear.
Objects associated with him were probably forbidden. Every
one was forbidden to touch his spear or to sit ill his place, just
EARLY THOUGHT 95
as to-day little boys must not touch father's pipe or sit in his
chair. He was probably the master of all the women. The
youths of the little community had to remember that. The idea
of something forbidden, the idea of things being, as it is called,
tabu, not to be touched, not to be looked at, may thus have got
well into the human mind at a very early stage indeed. J. J.
Atkinson, in his Primal Law, an ingenious analysis of these
primitive tabus which are found among savage peoples all over
the world, the tabus that separate brother and sister, the tabus
that make a man run and hide from his step-mother, traces them
to such a fundamental cause as this. Only by respecting this
primal law could the young male hope to escape the Old Man's
wrath. And the Old Man must have been an actor in many
a primordial nightmare. A disposition to propitiate him even
after he was dead is quite understandable. One was not sure
that he was dead. He might only be asleep or shamming.
Long after an Old Man was dead, when there was nothing to
represent him but a mound and a megalith, the women would
convey to their children how awful and wonderful he was. And
being still a terror to his own little tribe, it was easy to go on
to hoping that he would be a terror to other and hostile people.
In his life he had fought for his tribe, even if he had bullied
it. Why not when he was dead ? One sees that the Old Man
idea was an idea very natural td the primitive mind and capable
of great development. And opposed to the Old Man, more
human and kindlier, was the Mother, who helped and sheltered
and advised. The psycho-analysis of Freud and Jung has done
much to help us to realize how great a part Father fear and
Mother love still play in the adaptation of the human mind
to social needs. They have made an exhaustive study of child-
ish and youthful dreams and imaginations, a study which has
done much to help in the imaginative reconstruction of the soul
of primitive man. It was, as it were, the soul of a powerful
child. He saw the universe in terms of the family herd. His
fear of, his abjection before, the Old Man mingled with his
'fea:r of the dangerous animals about him. But the women god-
desses were kindlier and more subtle. They helped, they pro-
' teeted, they gratified and consoled. Yet at the same time there
was something about them less comprehensible than the direct
brutality of the Old Man, a greater mystery. So that the
Woman also had her vestiture of fear for him.
96 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 3
Another idea probably arose early out of the mysterious visita-
tion of infectious diseases, and that was the idea of unclean-
ness and of being accurst. From that, too, there may have
come an idea of avoiding particular places and persons, and
persons in particular phases of health. Here -was the root of
another set of tabus. Then man, from the very dawn of his
mental life, may have had a feeling of the sinister about places
and things. AJiimals who dread traps, have that feeling. A
tiger will abandon its usual jungle route at the sight of a few
threads of cotton.^ Like most young animals, young buman
beings are easily made fearful of this or that by their nurses
and seniors. Here is another set of ideas, ideas of repulsion and
avoidance, that sprang up almost inevitably in men.
As soon as speech began to develop, it must have got to work
upon such fundamental feelings and begun to systematize them,
and keep them in mind. By talking together men would re-
inforce each other's fears, and establish a common tradition of
tabus of things forbidden and of things unclean. With the
idea of uncleanness would come ideas of cleansing and of re-
moving a curse. The cleansing would be conducted through
. the advice and with the aid of wise old men or wise old women,
and in such cleansing would lie the germ of the earliest priest-
craft and witchcraft.
Speech from the first would be a powerful supplement to
the merely imitative education and to the .education of cuffs and
blows conducted by a speechless parent. Mothers would tell their
young and scold Aeir young. As speech developed, men would
find they had experiences and persuasions that gave them or
seemed to give them power. They would make secrets of these
things. There is a double streak in the human mind, a streak of
cunning secretiveness and a streak perhaps of later origin that
makes us all anxious to tell and astonish and impTess each other.
Many people make secrets in order to have secrets to tell. These
secrets of early men they would convey to younger, more im-
pressionable people, more or less honestly and impressively in
some process of initiation. Moreover, the pecjagpgic spirit
overflows in the human mind; most people like "telling other
people not to." Extensive arbitrary prohibitions for the boys,
' Glasfurd'a Bifle and Romance m the Indian Jungle, 1915.
EARLY THOUGHT 97
for the girls, for the women, also probably came very early into
human history.
Then the idea of the sinister has for its correlative the idea
of the propitious, and from that to the idea of making things
propitious by ceremonies is an easy step.
§ 4
Out of such ideas and a jumble of kindred ones grew the
first quasi-religious elements in human life. With every de-
velopment of speech it became possible to intensify and de-
velop the tradition of tabus and restraints and ceremonies.
There is not a savage or barbaric race to-day that is not held
in a net of such tradition. And with the coming of the primi-
tive herdsman there would be a considerable broadening out
of all this sort of practice. Things hitherto unheeded would
be found of importance in human affairs. Neolithic man was
nomadic in a different spirit from the mere daylight drift after
food of the primordial hunter. He was a herdsman upon whose
mind a sense of direction and the lie of the land had been
forced. He watched his flock by night as well as by day. The
sun by day and presently the stars by night helped to guide
his migrations ; he began to find after many ages that the stars
are steadier guides than the sun. He would begin to note
particular stars and star groups, and to distinguish any in-
dividual thing was, for primitive man, to believe it individu-
alized and personal. He would begin to think of the chief
stars as persons, very shining and dignified and trustworthy
persons looking at him like bright eyes in the night. His primi-
tive tillage strengthened his sense of the seasons. Particular
stars ruled his heavens when seedtime was due. Up to a cer-
tain point, a mountain peak or what not, a bright star moved,
night after night. It stopped there, and then night after night
receded. Surely this was a sign, a silent, marvellous warning
to the wise. The beginnings of agriculture, we must remember,
were in the sub-tropical zone, or even nearer the equator, where
stars of the first magnitude shine with a splendour unknown
in more temperate latitudes.
And Neolithic man was counting, and falling under the spell
of numbers. There are savage languages that have no word
for any number above five. Some peoples cannot go above
98
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"KeolxAdc sts±ajz
('mezihir^)
two. But N^eolithic man in the lands of his origin in Asia and
Africa even more than in Europe was already, counting his
accumulating possessions. He was heginning to use tallies,
and wondering at the triangularity of three and the squareness
of four, and why some quantities like twelve were easy to
divide in all sorts of ways, and others, like thirteen, impossible.
Twelve became a
aioble, generous, and
familiar number to
him, and thirteen
rather an outcast and
•disreputable one.
Probably man be-
gan reckoning time
by the clock of the
full and new moons.
Moonlight is an im-
Iportant thing to herds-
men who no longer
merely hunt their
herds, but watch and
guard them. Moon-
light, too, was, per-
haps, his time for
love-making, as in-
deed it may have been
;for primordial man
and the ground ape
ancestor before him.
But from the phases
of the moon, as his
tillage increased,
man's attitude would
go on to the greater cycle of the seasons. Primordial man prob-
ably only drifted before the winter as the days grew cold. Neo-
lithic man knew surely that the winter would come, and stored
his fodder and presently his grain. He had to fix a seedtime,
a propitious seedtime, or his sowing was a failure. The earliest
recorded reckoning is by moons and by generations of men.
The former seems to be the case in the Book of Genesis, where,
if one reads the great ages of the patriarchs who lived before
J.F.CT.
A Cabved Statuib ("Menhib") of the Neo-
UTHic Pebiod — ^A Contrast to the Fbbedom
AND VlGOTTB OP PALaiOLITHIO ABT.
EARLY THOUGHT 99
the flood as lunar months instead of years, Methusaleh and the
others are reduced to a credible length of life. But with agri-
culture began the difficult task of squaring the lunar month
-with the solar year; a task which has left its scars on our
calendar to-day. Easter shifts uneasily from year to year, to
the great discomfort of holiday-makers; it is now inconveni-
ently early and now late in the season because of this ancient
reference of time to the moon.
And when men began to move with set intention from place
to place with their animal and other possessions, then they
would begin to develop the idea of other places in which they
were not, and to think of what might be in those other places.
And in any valley where they lingered for a time, they would,
remembering how they got there, ask, "How did this or that
other thing get here ?" They would begin to wonder what was
beyond the mountains, and where the sun went when it set,
and what was above the clouds.
§ 5
The capacity for telling things increased with their vocabu-
lary. The simple individual fancies, the unsystematic fetish
tricks and fundamental tabus of Palaeolithic man began to be
handed on and made into a more consistent system. Men be-
gan to tell stories about themselves, about the tribe, about its
tabus and why they had to be, about the world and the why
for the world. A tribal mind came into existence, a tradition.
Palaeolithic man was certainly more of a free individualist,
more of an artist, as well as more of a savage than Neolithic
man. IN'eolithic man was coming under prescription ; he could
be trained from his youth and told to do things and not to do
things; he was not so free to form independent ideas of his
own about things. He had thoughts given to him ; he was under
a new power of suggestion. And to have more words and to
attend more to words is not simply to increase mental power;
words themselves are powerful things and dangerous things.
Palaeolithic man's words, perhaps, were chiefly just names. He
used them for what they were. But Neolithic man was think-
ing about these words, he was thinking about a number of things
with a great deal of verbal confusion, and getting to some odd
conclusions. In speech he had woven a net to bind his race
100 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
together, but also it was a net about his feet. Man was bind-
ing himself into new and larger and more efficient combina-
tions indeed, but at a price. One of the most notable things
about the Neolithic Age is the total absence of that free, direct
artistic impulse which was the supreme quality of later Palaeo-
lithic man. We find much industry, much skill, polished im-
plements, pottery with conventional designs, co-operation upon
all sorts of things, but no evidence of personal creativeness.^
Self-suppression is beginning for men. Man has entered upon
the long and tortuous and difficult path towards a life for the
common good, with all its sacrifice of personal impulse, which he
is still treading to-day.
Certain things appear in the mythology of mankind again
and again. Neolithic man was enormously impressed by ser-
pents— and he no longer took the sun for granted. Nearly
everywhere that Neolithic culture went, there went a disposition
to associate the sun and the serpent in decoration and worship.
This primitive serpent worship spread ultimately far beyond
the regions where the snake is of serious practical importance in
human life.
§ 6
With the beginnings of agriculture a fresh set of ideas arose
in men's minds. We have already indicated how easily and
naturally men may have come to' associate the idea of sowing
with a burial. Sir J. G. Frazer has pursued the development
of this association in the human mind, linking up with it the
conception of special sacrificial persons who are killed at seed-
time, the conception of a specially purified class of people to
kill these sacrifices, the first priests, and the conception of a
sacrament, a ceremonial feast in which the tribe eats portions
of the body of the victim in order to share in the sacrificial
benefits.
Out of all these factors, out of the Old Man tradition, out of
the emotions that surround Women for men and Men for
'Ludwig Hopf, in The Human Species, calls the later PalEeolithic art
"masculine" and the Neolithic "feminine." The pottery was made by-
women, he says, and that accounts for it. But the arrow-heads were made
by men, and there was nothing to prevent Neolithic men from taking
scraps of bone or slabs of rock and carving them — had they dared. We
suggest they did not dare to do so.
EARLY THOUGHT
101
women, out of the desire to escape infection and uncleanness,
out of the desire for power and success through magic, out of
the sacrificial tradition of seedtime, and out of a number of like
"Sxron-z^ AoLC- I-ttvpLsttietvfcs'
( arswn. to dixKruur sales /
Srcnfe celts-
(axes-)
beliefs and mental experiments and misconceptions, a complex
something was growing up in the lives of men which was be-
ginping to bind' them together mentally and emotionally in a
common life and action. This something we may call religion
102 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
(Lat. reUgare, to bind ^). It was not a simple or logical some-
thing; it was a tangle of ideas about commanding beings and
spirits, about gods, about all sorts of "musts" and "must-nots."
Like all other human matters, religion has grown.. It must
be clear from what has gone before that primitive man — ^much
less his ancestral apes and his ancestral Mesozoic mammals —
could have had no idea of God or Eeligion; only very slowly
did' his brain and his powers of comprehension become capable
of such general conceptions. Eeligion is something that has
grown up with and- through human association, and God has
been and is still being discovered by man.
This book is not a theological book, and it is not for us to
embark upon theological discussion; but it is a part, a neces-
sary and central part, of the history of man to describe the
dawn and development of his religious ideas and their influ-
ence upon his activities. All these factors we have noted must
have contributed to this development, and various writers have
laid most stress upon one or other of them. Sir J. G. Frazer
has been the leading student of the derivation of sacraments
from magic sacrifices. Grant Allen, following Herbert Spencer,
in hia Evolution of the Idea of God, laid stress chiefly on the
posthumous worship of the "Old Man." Sir E. B. Tylor
(Primitive Gvlture) gave his attention mainly to the disposi-
tion of primitive man to ascribe a soul to every object animate
and inanimate. Mr. A. E. Crawley, in The Tree of Life, has
called attention to other centres of impulse and emotion, and
particularly to sex as a source of deep excitement. The thing
we have to bear in mind is that IN'eolithic man was still mentally
undeveloped, he could be confused and illogical to a degree
quite impossible to an educated modern person. Conflicting
and contradictory ideas could lie in his mind without challeng-
ing one another; now one thing ruled his thoughts intensely
and vividly and now another; his fears, his acts, were still
disconnected as children's are.
Confusedly under the stimulus of the need and possibility of
co-operation and a combined life, Neolithic mankind was feel-
ing out for guidance and knowledge. Men were becoming aware
that personally they needed protection and direction, cleansing
'But Cicero says relegere, "to read over," and the "binding" by those
who accept reUgare is often- written of as being merely the binding of a
EARLY THOUGHT
103
from impurity, power beyond their own strength. Confusedly
in response to that demand, bold men, wise men, shrewd and
cunning men were arising to become magicians, priests, chiefs.
1 EUROPE 1
EGYPT IMESOPOTAMIA
15,000 ae-r
Stippe
Men entering upon "NeoUliuc
Awcicalhire Ixmnnuig
HeiniWr men
15.000 . --
3°^
i3.ooo.-
1 Terest (tratiaiiim)
9eriol
' AxvUarv
'
10,000'"
'Meoliduc tnen.
sprBa<£iig wib
Europe l^y.
oUtKic
8,000 "■
culture
developui
Stmaian. civiliz-
3 alum, daumf
Sronza
6,000--
'Mippur & "BnAxL
5.000 ...
ijOOO -■■
Fitst THpuLS^
Fvnrb ^umerun
3000 ...
Vvtnizc
Iriwt
2.000 . »■
1.000 . .
A3).
. SpreaijxtQ of Aegaa.
satbaa.M XatigaaQer
Iron
■A I ex a.Ti.<3.<
■ J u. 1 X u
, r- tke G- r' c
r Caesar*
tt 6 tra.
tgsg -J
LJ
Time Diagbam Showing the Genebal Dubation of the Neolithic
Period in which Early Thought Developed.
By this scale, the diagram on p. 47 of the period since the earliest
subhuman traces would be 12 feet long, and the diagram of geological
time (ch. ii, § 2) somewhere between 1,500 feet and three miles.
and kings. They are not to be thought of as cheats or usurpers
of power, nor the rest of mankind as their dupes. All men
are mixed in their motives; a hundred things move men to
104 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
seek asceBdancy over other men, but not all such motives are
base or bad. The magicians usually believed more or less
in their own magic, the priests in their ceremonies, the chiefs
in their right. The history of mankind henceforth is a history
of more or less blind endeavours to conceive a common purpose
in relation to which all men may live happily, and to create and
develop a common consciousness and a common stock of knowl-
edge which may serve and illuminate that purpose. In a vast
variety of forms this appearance of kings and priests and magic
men was happening all over the world under Neolithic condi-
tions. Everywhere mankind was seeking where knowledge and
mastery and magic power might reside; everywhere individual
men were willing, honestly or dishonestly, to rule, to direct, or to
be the magic beings who would reconcile the confusions of the
community. Another queer development of the later Palseo-
lithie and !N"eolithic ages was the development of self-mutilation.
Men began to cut themselves about, to excise noses, ears, fingers,
teeth and the like, and to attach all sorts of superstitious ideas
to these acts. Many children to-day pass through a similar
phase in their mental development. There is a phase in the life
of most little girls when they are not to be left alone with a pair
of scissors for fear that they will cut off their hair. No ani-
mal does anything of this sort.
In many ways the simplicity, directness, and detachment of
a later Palaeolithic rock-painter appeal more to modern sympa-
thies than does the state of mind of these Neolithic men, full
of the fear of some ancient Old Man who had developed into
a tribal God obsessed by ideas of sacrificial propitiations, mutila-
tions, and magic murder. No doubt the reindeer hunter was
a ruthless hunter and a combative and passionate creature, but
he killed for reasons we can still understand ; Neolithic man,
under the sway of talk and a confused thought process, killed
on theory, he killed for monstrous and now incredible ideas, he
killed those he loved through fear and under direction. Those
Neolithic men not only made human sacrifices at seedtime;
there is every reason to suppose they sacrificed wives and slaves
at the burial of their chieftains ; they killed men, women, and
children whenever they were under adversity and thought the
gods were athirst. They practised infanticide. All these things
passed on into the Bronze Age.
Hitherto a social consciousness had been asleep and not even
EARLY THOUGHT 105
dreaming in human history. Before it awakened it produced
nightmares.
Away beyond the dawn of history, 8,000 or 4,000 years ago,
one thinks of the Wiltshire uplands in the twilight of a mid-
summer day's morning. The torches pale in the growing light.
One has a dim apprehension of a procession through the avenue
of stone, of priests, perhaps fantastically dressed with skins
and horns and horrible painted masks^ — -not the robed and
bearded dignitaries our artists represent the Druids to have
been — of chiefs in skins adorned with necklaces of teeth and
bearing spears and axes, their great heads of hair held up with
pins of bone, of women in skins or flaxen robes, of a great
peering crowd of shock-headed men and naked children. They
have assembled from many distant places ; the ground between
the avenues and Silbury Hill is dotted with their encamp-
ments. A certain festive cheerfulness prevails. And amidst
the throng march the appointed human victims, submissive,
helpless, staring towards the distant smoking altar at which
they are to die — that the harvests may be good and the tribe
increase. ... To that had life progressed 3,000 or 4,000 years
ago from its starting-place in the slime of the tidal beaches.
XII
THE KAOES OF MANKIND
X. Is Mankind Still Differentiating? § 2. The Main Races
of Mankind. § 3. The Brunet Peoji^es.
IT is necessary now to discuss plainly what is meant by a
phrase, used often very carelessly, "The Races of Man-
kind."
It must be evident from what has already been explained
in Chapter III that man, so widely spread and subjected there-
fore to great differences of climate, consuming very different
food in different regions, attacked by different enemies, must
always have been undergoing considerable local modification
and differentiation. Man, like every other species of living
thing, has constantly been tending to differaitiate into several
species; wherever a body of men has been cut off, in islands
or oceans or by deserts or mountains, from the rest of humanity,
it must have begun very soon to develop special characteristics,
specially adapted to the local conditions. But, on the other
hand, man is usually a wandering and enterprising animal
for whom there exist few insurmountable barriers. Men imi-
tate men, fight and conquer them, interbreed, one people with
another. Concurrently for thousands of years there have been
two sets of forces at work, one tending to separate men into a
multitude of local varieties, and another to remix and blend
these varieties together before a separate series has been
established.
These two sets of forces may have fiuctuated in this relative
effect in the past. Palaeolithic man, for instance, may have
been more of a wanderer, he may have drifted about over a
much greater area, than later Neolithic man ; he was less fixed
to any sort of home or lair, he was tied by fewer possessions.
Being a himter, he was obliged to follow the migrations of his
106
THE RACES OF MANKIND 107
ordinary quarry. A few bad seasons may have shifted him
hundreds of miles. He may therefore have mixed very widely
and developed few varieties over the greater part of the world.
The appearance of agriculture tended to tie those com-
munities of mankind that took it up to the region in which it
was most conveniently carried on, and so to favour differentia-
tion. Mixing or differentiation is not dependent upon a higher
or lower stage of civilization ; many savage tribes wander now
for hundreds of miles ; many English villagers in the eighteenth
century, on the other hand, had never been more than eight
or ten miles from their villages, neither they nor their fathers
nor grandfathers before them. Hunting peoples often have
enormous range. The Labrador country, for instance, is in-
habited by a few thousand Indians, who follow the one great
herd of caribou as it wanders yearly north and then south
again in pursuit of food. This mere handful of people covers
a territory as large as France. Nomad peoples also range very
widely. Some Kalmuck tribes are said to travel nearly a thou-
sand miles between summer and winter pasture.
It carries out this suggestion, that Palaeolithic man ranged
widely and was distributed thinly indeed but uniformly,
throughout the world, that the Palaeolithic remains we find are
everywhere astonishingly uniform. To quote Sir John Evans,
"The implements in distant lands are so identical in form and
character with the British specimens that they might have been
manufactured by the same hands. . . . On the banks of the
Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements
of the European types have been discovered; while in Soma-
liland, in an ancient river-valley at a great elevation above the
sea, Sir H. W. Seton-Karr has collected a large number of
implements formed of flint and quartzite, which, judging from
their form and character, might have been dug out of the drift-
deposits of the Somme and the Seine, the Thames or the ancient
Solent."
Phases of spreading and intermixture have probably alter-
nated with phases of settlement and specialization in the history
of mankind. But up to a few hundred years ago it is probable
that since the days of the Palaeolithic Age at least mankind has
on the whole been differentiating. The species has differentiated
in that period into a very great number of varieties, many of
which have reblended with others, which have spread and under-
108 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
gone further differentiation, or become extinct. Wherever
there has been a strongly marked local difference of condi-
tions and a check upon intermixture, there one is almost obliged
to assume a variety of mankind must have appeared. Of such
local varieties there must have been a great multitude.
In one remote corner of the world, Tasmania, a little cut-
off population of people remained in the early Palaeolithic
stage until the discovery of that island by the Dutch in 1642.
They are now, unhappily, extinct. The last Tasmanian died in
1877. They may have been cut off from the rest of mankind
for 15,000 or 20,000 or 25,000 years.
But among the numerous obstacles and interruptions to in-
termixture there have been certain main barriers, such as the
Atlantic Ocean, the highlands, once higher, and the now van-
ished seas of Central Asia and the like, which have cut off great
groups of varieties from other great groups of varieties, over
long periods of time. These separated groups of varieties devel-
oped very early certain broad resemblances and differences.
Most of the varieties of men in eastern Asia and America,
but not all, have now this in common, that they have yellowish
buff skins, straight black hair, and often high cheek-bones.
Most of the native peoples of Africa south of the Sahara, but not
all, have black or blackish skins, flat noses, thick lips, and
frizzy hair. In north and western Europe a great number of
peoples have fair hair, blue eyes, and ruddy complexions; and
about the Mediterranean there is a prevalence of white^skinned
peoples with dark eyes and black hair. The black hair of many
of these dark whites is straight, but never so strong and wave-
less as the hair of the yellow peoples. It is straighter in
the east than in the west. In southern India we find brownish
and darker peoples with straight black hair, and these as we
pass eastward give place to more distinctly yellow peoples.
In scattered islands and in Papua and ISTew Guinea we find
another series of black and brownish peoples of a more lowly
type with frizzy hair.
But it must be borne in mind that these are very loose-
fitting generalizations. Some of the areas and isolated pockets
of mankind in the Asiatic area may have been under conditions
more like those in the European area; some of the African
areas are of a more Asiatic and less distinctively African type.
We find a wavy-haired, fairish, hairy-skinned race^ the Ainu.
THE RACES OF MANKIND
109
in Japan. They are more like the Europeans in their facial
type than the surrounding yellow Japanese. They may be
a drifted patch of the whites or they may be a quite distinct
people. We find primitive black people in the Andaman Islands
far away from Australia and far away from Africa. There is
a streak of very n^roid blood traceable in south Persia and
some parts of India. These are the "Asiatic" negroids. There
'^ustcaloiX ^i»jvc^
is little or no pi'oof that all black people, the Australians, the
Asiatic negroids, and the negToes, derive from one origin, but
only that they have lived for vast periods under similar con-
ditions. "We must not assume that human beings in the east-
ern Asiatic area were all differentiating in one direction and
all the human beings in Africa in another. There were great
currents of tendency, it is true, but there were also backwaters,
eddies, admixtures, readmixtures, and leakages from one main
area to the other. A coloured map of the world to show the
races would not present just four great areas of colour; it
would have to be dabbed over with a multitude of tints and
intermediate shades, simple here, mixed and overlapping there.
In the early Neolithic Period in Europe — it may be 10,000
or 12,000 years ago or so — man was differentiating all over the
world, and he had already differentiated into a number of
varieties, but he has never differentiated into different species.
A "species," we must remember, in biological language is dis-
no THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tinguished from a "variety" by the fact that varieties can
interbreed, while species either do not do so or produce off-
spring which, like mules, are sterile. All mankind can inter-
breed freely, can learn to understand the same speech, can
adapt itself to co-operation. And in the present age, man is
probably no longer undergoing diffetrentiation at all. Ke-
admixture is now a far stronger force than differentiation. Men
mingle more and more. Mankind from the view of a biologist
is an animal species in a state of arrested differentiation and
possible readmixture.
§2
It is only in the last fifty or sixty years that the varieties
of men came to be regarded in this light, as a tangle of differ-
entiations recently arrested or still in progress. Before that
time students of mankind, influenced, consciously or uncon-
sciously, by the story of Noah and the Ark and his three sons,
Shem, Ham, and Japhet, were inclined to classify men into
three or four great races and they were disposed to regard these
races as having always been separate things, descended from
originally separate ancestors. They ignored the great possi-
bilities of blended races and of special local isolations and varia-
tions. The classification has varied considerably, but there
has been rather too much readiness to assume that mankind
must be completely divisible into three or four main groups.
Ethnologists (students of race) have fallen into grievous dis-
putes about a multitude of minor peoples, as to whether they
were of this or that primary race or "mixed," or strayed early
forms, or what not. But all races are more or less mixed. There
are, no doubt, four main groups, but each is a miscellany, and
there are little groups that will not go into any of the four
main divisions.
Subject to these reservations, when it is clearly understood
that when we speak of these main divisions we mean not simple
and pure races, but groups of races, then they have a certain
convenience in discussion. Over the European and Mediter-
ranean area and western Asia there are, and have been for many
thousand years, white peoples, usually called the Caucasians,
subdivided into two or three subdivisions, the northern blonds
or Nordic race, an alleged intermediate race about which many
authorities are doubtful, the so-called Alpine race, and the
THE RACES OF MANKIND
111
southern dark whites, the Mediterranean or Iberian race; over
eastern Asia and America a second group of races prevails, the
Mongolians, generally with yellow skias, straight black hair,
and sturdy bodies; over Africa the Negeoes, and in the region
of Australia and New Guinea the black, primitive Aus-
TEAiOLDs. These are convenient terms, provided the student
bears in mind that they are not exactly defined terms. They
represent only the common characteristics of certain main
groups of races ; they leave out a number of little peoples who
belong properly to none of these divisions, and they disregard
the perpetual mixing where the main groups overlap.
§ 3
The Mediterranean or
Iberian division of the
Caucasian race had a
wider range in early
times, and was a less spe-
cialized and distinctive
type than the IN'ordic. It
is very hard to define its
southward boundaries
from the Negro, or to
mark off its early traces
in Central Asia from
those of early Mongolians.
Wilfred Scawen Blunt ^ says that Huxley "had long suspected
a common origin of the Egyptians and the Dravidians of India,
perhaps a long belt of brown-skinned men from India to Spain
in very early days."
It is possible that this "belt" of Huxley's of dark-white and
brown-skinned men, this race of brunet-brown folk, ultimately
spread even farther than India ; that they reached to the shores
of the Pacific, and that they were everywhere the original
possessors of the Neolithic culture and the beginners of what
we call civilization. It is possible that these Brunet peoples
are so to speak the basic peoples of our modern world. The
Nordic and the Mongolian peoples may have been but north-
western and north-eastern branches from this more funda-
^My Diaries, under date of July 25, 1894.
112
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
mental stem. Or the I^ordic race may have been, a . branch,
while the Mongolian, like the Negro, may have been another
equal and distinct stem with which the brunet-browns met and
mingled in South China- Or "the if ordic peoples also may
have developed separately from a palaeolithic stage.
At some period in human history (see Elliot Smith's Migra-
tions of Early, Culture) there seems to have been a special type
of Neolithic culture widely distributed in the world which had
a group of features so curious and so unlikely to have been
indepeaidently developed in different ^regions of the earth.
as to compel us to believe that it was in effect -one culture. It
reached through all the regions inhabited by the brunet Medi-
terranean race, and beyond through India, * Further India, up
the Pacific coast of China, and it spread at last across the
Pacific and to Mexico and Peru. It was a coastal culture not
reaching deeply inland.
This peculiar development of the Neolithic culture, which
Elliot Smith called the heliolithic ^ culture, included many or
all of the following odd practices: (1) circumcision, (2) the
very queer custom of sending the father to bed when a child
'"Sunstone" culture became of the sun Worship and the megaliths.
This is not a very happily chosen term. It suggests a division equivalent
to palaeolithic (old stone) and neolithic (new stone), whereas it is a sub-
division of the neolithic culture.
THE RACES OF MANKIND
113
is born, known as the couvade, (3) the practice of massage,
(4) the making of mummies, (5) megalithic monuments ^ {e.g.
Stonehenge), (6) artificial deformation of the heads of the
"M^nxcuUxzax ■faj-p<a5'
Atncruidiaiv
young bj bandages, (7) tattooing, (8) teligious association of
the sun and the serpent, and (9) the use of the symbol known
as 'the swastika (see figure) for good luck. This odd little
Caucasian. \»xipes
(Jew ofMgiers) (Englishman) (Berber)^
symbol spiiis gaily round the world; it seems incredible that
men would have invented and made a pet of it twice over.
Elliot Smith traces these associated practices in a sort of
' Megalithic monuments have been made quite recently by primitive
Indian peoples.
114
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE RACES OF MANKIND 115
constellation all over this great Mediterranean-India Ocean-Pa-
cific area. Where one occurs, most of the others occur. They
link Brittany with Borneo and Peru. But this constellation-
of practices does not crop up in the primitive homes of Nordic
or Mongolian peoples, nor does it extend southward much be-
yond equatorial Africa.
For thousands of years, from 15,000 to 1,000 b.c, such a
heliolithie E'eolithic culture and its brownish possessors may
have been oozing round the world through
the warmer regions of the world, drifting by
canoes often across wide stretches of sea.
It was then the highest culture in the world ;
it sustained the largest, most highly de-
veloped communities. And its region of
origin may have been, as Elliot Smith sug-
gests, the Mediterranean and North African _, _ „
region. It migrated slowly age by age. It
must have been spreading up the Pacific Coast and across the
island stepping-stones to America, long after it had passed
on into other developments in its areas of origin. Many of
the peoples of the East Indies, Melanesia and Polynesia were
still in this heliolithie stage of development when they were
discovered by European navigators in the eighteenth centuiy.
The first civilizations in Egypt and the Euphrates-Tigris val-
ley probably developed directly out of this widespread culture.
We will discuss later whether the Chinese civilization had a
different origin. The Semitic nomads of the Arabian desert
seem also to have had a heliolithie stage.
11©
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
XIII
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND
§ 1. No One Primitive Lcmguage. § 2. The Aryan Lorn-
guages. § 3. The Semitic Languages. § 4. The HamMic
Languages. § 5. The Ural- Altaic Languages. § 6. The
Chinese Languages. § 7. Other Language Groups. % 8. A
Possible Primitive Language Group. § 9, Some Isolated
Languages.
IT is improbable that there was ever such a thing as a com-
mon human language. We know nothing of the language
of Palaeolithic man; we do not even know whether Palaeo-
lithic man talked freely.
We know that Palaeolithic man had a keen sense of form
and attitude, because of his drawings ; and it has been sug-
gested that he communicated his ideas very largely by, gesture. \
Probably such words as the earlier men used were mainly cries
of alarm or passion or names for concrete things, and in many
cases they were probably imitative sounds made by or associ-
ated with the things named. -^
The first languages were probably smair collections of such
words ; they consisted of interjections and nouns. Probably the
nouns were said in different intonations to convey different
meanings. If Palaeolithic man had a word for "horse" or
"bear," he probably showed by tone or gesture whether he
meant "bear is coming," "bear is goijig," "bear is to be hunted,"
"dead bear," "bear has been here," "bear did this," and so
on. Only very slowly did the human mind develop methods
of indicating action and relationship in a formal manner.
'Sir Arthur Evans suggests that in America, sign-language arose before
speech, because the sign-language is common to all Indians in North
America, whereas the languages are different. See his Anthropology and
the Classics. — G. M.
117
118 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Modern languages contain many thousands of ■words, but the
earlier languages could have consisted only of a few hundred.
It is said that even modern European peasants can get along
with something less than a thousand words, and it is quite
conceivable that so late as the Early Neolithic Period that was
the limit of the available vocabulary. Probably men did not
indulge in those days in conversation or description. For nar-
rative purposes they danced and acted rather than told. They
had no method of counting beyond a method of indicating two
by a dual number, and some way of expressing many. The
growth of speech was at first a very slow process indeed, and
grammatical forms and the expression of abstract ideas may
have come very late in human history, perhaps only 400 or
500 generations ago.
§ 2
The students of languages (philologists) tell us that they are
unable to trace with certainty any common features in all the
languages of mankind. They cannot even find any elements
common to all the Caucasian languages. They find over great
areas groups of languages which have similar root words and
similar ways of expressing the same idea, but then they find
in other areas languages which appear to be dissimilar down
to their fundamental structure, which express action and rela-
tion by entirely dissimilar devices, and have an altogether dif-
ferent grammatical scheme. One great group of languages,
for example, now covers nearly all Europe and stretches out to
India; it includes English, French, German, Spanish, Italian,
Greek, Russian, Armenian, Persian, and various Indian tongues.
It is called the Indo-European or Aryan family. The same
fundamental roots, the same grammatical ideas, are traceable
through all this family. Compare, for example, English father,
mother, German vater, mutter, Latin pater, mater, Greek pater,
meter, French pere, mere, Armenian hair, mair, Sanscrit pitwr,
matar, etc., etc. In a similar manner the Aryan languages ring
the changes on a great number of fundamental words, / in the
Germanic languages becoming p in Latin, and so on. They
follow a law of variation called Grimm's Law. These languages
are not different things, they are variations of one thing. The
people who use these languages think in the same way.
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 119
At one time in the remote past, in the Neolithic Age, that is
to say 6,000 years or more ago, there may have been one simple
original speech from which all these Aryan languages have
differentiated. Somewhere between Central Europe and West-
em Asia there must have wandered a number of tribes suflS-
ciently intermingled to develop and use one tongue. It is
convenient here to call them the Aryan peoples. Sir H. H.
Johnston has called them "Aryan Russians." They belonged
mostly to the Caucasian group of races and to the blond
and northern subdivision of the group, to the Nordic race
that is.
Here one must sound a note of warning. There was a time
when the philologists were disposed to confuse languages and
races, and to suppose that people who once all spoke the same
tongue must be ^1 of the same blood. That, however, is not
the case, as the reader will understand if he will think of the
n^oes of the United States who now all speak English, or of
the Irish, who — except for purposes of political demonstration
— no longer speak the old Erse language but English, or of
the Cornish people, who have lost their ancient Keltic speech.
But what a common language does do, is to show that a com-
mon intercourse has existed, and the possibility of intermix-
ture; and if it does not point to a common origin, it points
at least to a common future.
But even this original Aryan language, which was a spoken
speech perhaps 4,000 or 3,000 B.C., was by no means a
primordial language or the language of a savage race. Its
earliest speakers were in or past the Neolithic stage of civiliza-
tion; It had grammatical forms and verbal devices of some com-
plexity. The vanished methods of expression of the later Palaeo-
lithic peoples, of the Azilians, or of the early Neolithic kitchen-
midden people for instance, were probably much cruder than
the most elementary form of Aryan.
Probably the Aryan group of languages became distinct in
a wide region of which the Danube, Dnieper, Don, and Volga
were the main rivers, a region that extended eastward beyond
the Ural mountains north of the Caspian Sea. The area over
which the Aryan speakers roamed probably did not for a long
time reach to the Atlantic or to the south of the Black Sea be-
yond Asia Minor. There was no effectual separation of Europe
from Asia then at the Bosporus. The Danube flowed east-
120 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
•ward to a great sea that extended across the Volga region of
south-eastern Russia right into Turkestan, and included the
Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas of to-day. Perhaps it sent out
arms to the Arctic Ocean. It must have been a pretty effec-^
tive barrier between the Aryan speakers and the people in north-
eastern Asia. South of this sea stretched a continuous shore
from the Balkans to Afghanistan. ISrorth-west of it a region
of swamps and lagoons reached to the Baltic.
§ 3
iN'ext to Aryan, philologists distinguish another group of
languages which seem to have been made quite separately from
the Aryan languages, the Semitic. Hebrew and Arabic are
kindred, but they seem to have even a different set of root
words from the Aryan, tongues; they express their ideas of rela-
tionship in a different way ; the fundamental ideas of their
grammars are generally different. They were in all probability
made by human communities quite out of touch with the Aryans,
separately and independently. Hebrew, Arabic, Abyssinian,
ancient Assyrian, ancient Phoenician, and a number of associated
tongues are put together, therefore, as being derived from a sec-
ond primary language, which is called the Semitic. In the
very beginnings of recorded history we find Aryan-speaking
peoples and Semitic-speaking peoples carrying on the liveliest
intercourse of war and trade round and about the eastern end
of the Mediterranean, but the fundamental differences of the
primary Aryan and primary Semitic languages oblige us to
believe that in early Neolithic times, before the historical
period, there must for thousands of years have been an almost
complete separation of the Aryan-speaking and the Semitic-
speaking peoples. The latter seem to have lived either in south
Arabia or in north-east Africa. In the opening centuries of the
ITeolithic Age the original Aryan speakers and the original
Semitic speakers were probably living, so to speak, in different
worlds with a minimum of intercourse. Racially, it would
seem, they had a remote common origin ; both Aryan speakers
and Semites are classed as Caucasians ; but while the original
Aryan speakers seem to have been of Nordic race, the original
Semites were rather of the Mediterranean type.
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 121
§ 4
Philologists speak with less unanimity of a third group of
languages, the Hamitic, which some declare to be distinct from,
and others allied to, the Semitic. The weight of opinion in-
clines now towards the idea of some primordial connection of
these two groups. The Hamitic group is certainly a much
wider and more various language group than the Semitic or the
Aryan, and the Semitic tongues are more df a family, have
more of a common likeness, than the Aryan. The Semitic
languages may have arisen as some specialized proto-Hamitic
group, just as the birds arose from a special group pi roptiles
(Chap. IV). It is a tempting speculation, but one for which
there is really no basis of justifying fact, to suppose that the
rude primordial ancestor group of the Aryan tongues branched
off from the proto-Hamitic speech forms at some still earlier
date than the separation and specialization of Semitic. The
Hamitic speakers to-day, like the Semitic speakers, are mainly
of the Mediterranean Caucasian race. Among the Hamitic
languages are the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, the Berber
languages (of the mountain people of UTorth Africa, the Masked
Tuaregs, and other such peoples), and what are called the
Ethiopic group of African languages in eastern Africa, includ-
ing the speech of the Gallas and the Somalis. The general
grouping of these various tongues suggests that they originated
over some great area to the west, as the primitive Semitic ma.y
have arisen to the east, of the lied Sea divide. That divide was
probably much more effective in Pleistocene times ; the sea ex-
tended across to the west of the Isthmus of Suez, and a greatt
part of lower Egypt was under water. Long before the dawn
of history, however, Asia and Africa had joined at Suez, and
these two language systems were in contact in that region. And
if Asia and Africa were separated then at Suez, they may,
on the other hand, have been joined by way of A.rabia and
Abyssinia.
; These Hamitic languages may have radiated from a centre
on the African coast of the Mediterranean, and th^y may havte
extended over the then existing land connections very widely
into western Europe.
All these three great groups of languages, it may be noted,
the Aryan, Semitic, and Hlamitic, have one feature in common
122
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 123
which they do not share with any other language, and that
is grammatical gender ; but whether that has much weight
as evidence of a remote common origin of Aryan, Semitic, and
Hamitic, is a question for the philologist rather than for the
general student. It does not affect the clear evidence of a very
long and very ancient prehistoric separation of the speakers of
these three diverse groups of tongues.
The bulk of the Semitic and Hamitic-speaking peoples are
put by ethnologists with the Aryans among the Caucasian group
of races. They are "white." The Semitic and ]!^ordic "races",
have a much more distinctive physiognomy; they seem, like
their characteristic languages, to be more marked and specialized
than the Hamitic-speaking peoples.
§ 5
Across to the north-east of the Aryan and Semitic areas there
must once have spread a further distinct language system which
is now represented by a group of languages known as the
TuEANiAw, or Ueal-altaig group. This includes the Lappish
of Lapland and the Samoyed speech of Siberia, the Finnish lan-
guage, Magyar, Turkish or Tartar, Manchu and Mongol; it
has not as a group been so exhaustively studied by European
philologists, and there is insufficient evidence yet whether it does
or does not include the Korean and Japanese languages. H. B.
Hulbert has issued a comparative grammar of Korean and cer-
tain of the Dravidian languages of India to demonstrate the
close affinity he finds between them.
§ 6
A fifth region of language formation was south-eastern Asia,
where there still prevails a group of languages consisting of
monosyllables without any inflections, in which the tone used
in uttering a word determines its meaning. This may be called
the Chinese or Mowosyxlabio group, and it includes Chinese,
Burmese, Siamese, and Tibetan. The difference between any
of these Chinese tongues and the more western languages is pro-
found. In the Pekinese form of Chinese there are only about
420 primary monosyllables, and consequently each of these has
to do duty for a great number of things, and the different mean-
124 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ingB are indicated either by the context or by saying the word
in a distinctive tone. The relations of these words to each other
are expressed by quite different methods from the Aryan
methods ; Chinese grammar is a thing different in nature from
English grammar; it is a separate and different invention.
Many writers declare there is no Chinese grammar at all, and
that is true if we mean by grammar anything in the European
sense of inflections and concords. Consequently any such thing
as a literal translation from Chinese into English is an impossi-
bility^ ' The very method of the thought is different.-^ Their
philosophy remains still largely a sealed book to the European
on this account and vice versa, because of the different nature
of the expressions.
§ 7
In addition, the following other great language families are
distinguished by the philologist. All the American-Indian lan-
guages, which vary widely among themselves, are separable
from any Old World group. Here we may lump them together
not so inuch as a family as a miscellany. There is one great
group of languages in Africa, from a little way north of the
equator to its southern extremity, the Bajsttu, and in addition
a complex of other languages across the centre of the continent
about which we will not trouble here. There are also two prob-
ably separate groups, the Deavidian in South India, and the
Malay-Polynesian stretched over Polynesia, and also now in-
cluding Indian tongues.
Now it seems reasonable to conclude irom these fundamental
differences that about the time when men were beginning to
form rather larger communities than the family tribe, when
they were beginning to tell each other long stories and argue
and exchange ideas, human beings were distributed about the
•The four characters indicating "Affairs, query, imperative, old," placed
in that order, for example, represent "Why walk in the ancient wayst"
The Chinaman gives the bare cores of his meaning; the Englishman gets
to it by a bold metaphor. He may be talking of conservatism in cooking
or in book-binding, but he will say: "Why walk in the ancient ways?"
Mr. Arthur Waley, in the interesting essay on Chinese thought and
poetry which precedes his hook, 170 Chinese Poems (Constable, 1918),
makes it clear how in these fields Chinese thought is kept practical and
restricted by the limitations upon metaphor the contracted structure of
(Chinese imposes.
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 125
world" :in a number of areas whieli communicated very little
with each other. They were separated by oceans, seas, thick
forests, deserts or mountains from one another. There may
have been in that remote time, it may be 15,000 years ago or
more, Aryan, Semitic, Hamitic, Turanian, American and
Chinese-speaking tribes and families, wandering over their sev-
eral areas of hunting and pasture, all at very much the same
stage of culture, and each developing its linguistic instrument
in its own way. Probably each of these original tribes was not
more numerous altogether than the Indians in Hudson , Bay
Territory to-day. Systematic agriculture was barely beginning
then, and until agriculture made a denser population possible
men may have been almost as rare as the great apes have always
been. If agriculture was becoming at all important in human
life at that time, and if population was anywhere denser, it
was probably in the Mediterranean region and possibly in areas
now submerged.
In addition to these Neolithic tribes, there must, have been
various still more primitive forest folks in Africa and in India.
Central Africa, from- the Upper Nile, was then a vast forest, im-
penetrable to ordinary human life, a forest of which the Congo
forests of to-day are the last shrunken remains.
Possibly the spread of men of a race higher than priniitive
Australoids into the East Indies,^ and the development of the
languages of the Malay-Polynesian type came later in time than
the origination of these other language groups.
The language divisions of the philologist do tally, it is mani-
fest, in a broad sort of way with the main race classes of the
ethnologist, and they carry out the same idea of age-long sepa-
rations between great division^ of mankind. In the ' Glacial
Age^ ice, or at least a climate too severe for the free spreading
of peoples, extended from the north pole into Central Europe
and across Russia and Siberia to the great tablelands of Central
Asia. After the last Glacial Age, this cold north mitigated its
severities very slowly, and was for long without any other popu-
lation than the wandering hunters who spread eastward and
across Bering Strait. North and Central Europe and Asia did
not become sufficiently temperate for agriculture until quite
recent times, times that is within the limit of 12,000 or possibly
* The Polynesians appear to be a later eastward extension of the dark
whites or brown peoples. • ;; ■ ' ,!, ,, ^■-'.
126 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
even 10,000 yeara, and a dense forest period intervened between
the age of the hunter and the agricultural clearings.
This forest period was also a very wet period. It has been
called the Pluvial or Lacustrine Age, the rain or pond period.
It has to be remembered that the outlines of the land of the
world have changed greatly even in the last hundred centuries.
Across European Hussia, from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea,
as the ice receded there certainly spread much water and many
impassable swamps ; the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral and
parts of the Desert of Turkestan, are the vestiges of a great
extent of sea that reached far up to the Volga valley and sent
an arm westward to join the Black Sea. Mountain barriers
much higher than they are now, and the arm of the sea that is
now the region of the Indus, completed the separation of the
early Nordic races from the Mongolians and the Dravidians,
and made the broad racial differentiation of those groups
possible.
Again the blown-sand Desert of Sahara — it is not a dried-up
sea, but a wind desert, and was once fertile and rich in life —
becoming more and more dry and sandy, cut the Caucasians off
from the sparse primitive Negro population in the central forest
region of Africa.
The Persian Gulf extended very far to the north of its pres-
ent headj and combined with the Syrian desert to cut off the
Semitic peoples from the eastern areas, while on the other hand
the south of Arabia, much more fertile than it is to-day, may
have reached across what is now the Gulf of Aden towards
Abyssinia and Somaliland. The Mediterranean and Ked Sea
may even have been fertile valleys containing a string of fresh-
water lakes during the Pluvial Age. The Himalayas and the
higher and vaster massif of Central Asia and the northward
extension of the Bay of Bengal up to the present Ganges valley
divided off the Dravidians from the Mongolians, the canoe was
the chief link between Dravidian and Southern Mongol, and
the Gobi system of seas and lakes which presently became the
Gobi desert, and the great system of mountain chains which
follow one another across Asia from the centre to the north-
east, split the Mongolian races into the Chinese and the Ural-
Altaic language groups.
Bering Strait, when this came into existence, before or after
the Pluvial Period, isolated the Amerindians.
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 127
We are not suggesting here, be it noted, that these ancient
separations were absolute separations, but that they were
effectual enough at least to prevent any great intermixture of
blood or any great intermixture of speech in those days of
man's social beginnings. There was, nevertheless, some amount
of meeting and exchange even then, some driff of knowledge
that spread the crude patterns and use of various implements,
and the seeds pf a primitive agriculture about the world.
The fundamental tongues of these nine main language groups
we have noted were not by any means all the human speech
beginnings of the Neolithic Age. They are the latest languages,
the survivors, which have ousted their more primitive predeces-
sors. There may have been other, and possibly many other,
ineffective centres of speech which were afterwards overrun
by the speakers of still surviving tongues, and of elementary
languages which faded out. We find strange little patches of
speech still in the world which do not seem to be connected
with any other language about them. Sometimes, however, an
exhaustive inquiry seems to affiliate these disconnected patches,
seems to open out to us tantalizing glimpses of some simpler,
wider, and more fundamental and universal form of human
speech. One language group that has been keenly discussed is
the Basque group of dialects. The Basques live now on the
north and south slopes of the Pyrenees; they number perhaps
600,000 altogether in Europe, and to this day they are a very
sturdy and independent-spirited people. Their language, as
it exists to-day, is a fully developed one. But it is developed
upon lines absolutely different from those of the Aryan lan-
guages about it. Basque newspapers have been published in
the Argentine and in the United States to supply groups of
prosperous emigrants. The earliest "French" settlers in Canada
were Basque, and Basque names are frequent among the
French Canadians to this day. Ancient remains point to a
much wider distribution of the Basque speech and people over
Spain. For a long time this Basque language was a profound
perplexity to scholars, and its structural character led to the
suggestion that it might be related to some Amerindian tongue.
A, H. Keane, in Man, Past and Present, assembles reasons for
128
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
linking it — though remotely — with the Berber language of
North Africa, and through the Berber with the general body
of Hamitic languages, but
this relationship is ques-
tioned by other philolo-
gists. They find Basque
more akin to certain
similarly stranded ves-
tiges of speech found in
the Caucasian Mountains,
and they are disposed to
regard it as a last surviv-
ing member, much
changed and specialized,
of a once very widely ex-
tended group of pre-
Hamitic languages, other-
wise extinct, spoken chief-
ly by peoples of that
brunet Mediterranean race
which once occupied most
of western and southern'
Europe and western Asia,
and which may have been
very closely related to the
Dravidians of India and
the peoples with a helio-
lithic culture who spread
eastward, thence through
the East Indies to Poly-
nesia and beyond.
It is quite possible that
over western and southern
Europe language groups
extended eight or ten thou-
sand years ago that have
completely vanished be-
fore Aryan tongues. Later on we shall note, in passing, the
possibility of three lost language groups represented by (1)
Ancient Cretan, Lydian, and the like (though these may have
THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND 129
belonged, says Sir H. H. Johnston, to the "Basque — Caucasian
— Dravidian [!] group"), (2) Sumprian, and (3) Elamite.
The suggestion has been mader— it is a mere guess; — that an-
cient Sumerian may have been a linking language between the
early Basque-Caucasian and early Mongolian groups. If this
is true, then we have in this "Basque-Caucasian-Dravidian-
Sumerian-proto-Mongolian" group a still more ancient and
more ancestral system of speech than the fundamental Hamitic.
We have something more like the linguistic "missing link,"
more like an ancestral language than anything else we can
imagine at the present time. It may have been related to the
Aryan and Semitic and Hamitic languages much as the primi-
tive lizards of later Palaeozoic times were related to the mam-
mals, birds, and dinosaurs respectively.
§ 9
The Hottentot language is said to have affinities with the
Hamitic tongues, from which it is separated by the whole
breadth of Bantu-speaking Central Africa. A Hottentot-like
language with Bushman affinities is still spoken in equatorial
East Africa, and this strengthens the idea that the whole of
East Africa was once Hamitic-speaking. The Bantu languages
and peoples spread, in comparatively recent times, from some
centre of origin in West Central Africa and cut off the Hotten-
tots from the other Hamitic peoples. But it is at least equally
probable that the Hottentot is a separate language group.
Among other remote and isolated little patches of language
are the Papuan speech of New Guinea and the native Aus-
tralian. The now extinct Tasmanian language is but little
known. What we do know of it is in support of what we have
guessed about the comparative speechlessness of Palaeolithic
man.
We may quote a passage from Hutchinson's Living Boxes of
Mankind upon this matter: —
"The language of the natives is irretrievably lost, only im-
perfect indications of its structure and a small proportion of
its words having been preserved. In the absence of sibilants
and some other features, their dialects resembled the Australian,
but were of ruder, of less developed structure, and so imperfect
that, according to Joseph Milligan, our best authority on the
130 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
subject, they observed no settled order or arrangement of words
in the construction of their sentences, but conveyed in a supple-
mentary fashion by tone, manner, and gesture those modifica-
tions of meaning which we express by mood, tense, number, etc.
Abstract terms were rare; for every variety of gum-tree or
wattle-tree there was a name, but no word for 'tree' in general,
nor for qualities such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short,
round, etc. Anything hard was 'like a stone,' anything round
'like the moon,' and so on, usually suiting the action to the
word and confirming by some sign the meaning . to be
understood."
XIV
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
1. Early Cities and Early Nomads. % 2 a. The Swnverians.
§ 2b. The Empire of Sargon the First. § 2c. The Empire
of Hammurabi. § 2d. The Assyrians and their Empire.
§ 2e. The Chaldeam, Empire. § 3. The Early History of
Egypt. § 4. The Early Civilization of India. § 5. The
Early History of China. § 6. While the Civilisations were
Grovnng.
IT was out Of the so-called heliolithio culture we have
described in Chapter XII that the first beginnings of any-
thing that we can call a civilization arose. It is still doubt-
ful whether we are to consider Mesopotamia or Egypt the earlier
scene of the two parallel beginnings of settled communities liv-
ing in towns. By 4,000 B.C., in both these regions of the earth,
such communities existed, and had been going on for a very
considerable time. The excavations of the American expedition
at If ippur have unearthed evidence of a city community ex-
isting there at least as early as 5,000 b.c., and probably as early
as 6,000 B.C., an earlier date than anything we know of in
Egypt. The late Mr. Aaron Aaronson found a real wild wheat
upon the slopes of Mt. Hermon, and it must be that somewhere
in that part of the world its cultivation began. It may be that
from the western end of the Mediteranean, possibly ' in some
region now submerged, as a centre that the cultivation of wheat
spread over the entire eastern hemisphere. But cultivation is
not civilization ; the growing of wheat had spread from the At-
lantic to the Pacific coast with the distribution of the Neolithic
culture by perhaps 15,000 or 10,000 b.c, before the beginnings
of civilization. Civilization is something more than the occa-
sional seasonal growing of wheat. It is the settlement of men
upon an area continuously cultivated and possessed, who live in
131
132 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
buildings continuously inhabited with a common rule and a com-
mon city or citadel. For a long time civilization may quite pos-
sibly have developed in Mesopotamia -without any relations with
the parallel beginnings in Egypt. The two settlements may
have been quite independent, arising separately out of the
widely diffused Efeliolithic Neolithic culture. . Or they may
have had a common origin in the region of the Mediterranean,
the Red Sea, and southern Arabia.
The first condition necessary to a real settling down of ITeo-
lithic men, as distinguished from a mere temporary settlement
among a,l?undant food, was of course a trustworthy all-the-year-
round supply of wat^r, fodder for the animals, food for them-
selves, and, building material for their homes. There had to
be everything they could need at any season, and no want that
would tempt them to wander further. This was a possible state
of affairs, no doubt, in many, European and Asiatic valleys-;
and in many such valleys, as in the case of the Swiss lake dwell-
ings/ men settled from a very early date indeed ; but nowhere,
of any countries now known, to us, were these favourable con-
ditions found upon such a scale, and nowhere did they hold
good so surely year in and year out as in Egypt and in the
country between the upper waters, of the Euphrates and Tigris
and the Persian Gulf.^ Here was a constant water supply un-
der enduring sunlight ; trus,tworthy harvests year by yjear ; in
Mesopotamia wheat yielded, says Herodotus, two hundresdfold
to the sower; Pliny says that it was cut twice and afterwards
yielded good fodder for sheep ; there were abundant pabns and
many sorts of fruits; and as for building material, in Egypt
there was -clay and easily worked stone, and in Mesopotamia a
clay that' becomes a brick in the sunshine. In such countries
men would cease to wander and settle down almost unawares ;
they would multiply and discover themselves numerous and by
their numbers safe from any casual assailant. They multiplied,
producing a denser human population than the earth had ever
known before ; their houses became more substantial, wild beasts
•We shall use "Mesopotamia" here loosely for the Euphrates-Tigris
country gpnerally. Strictly, of course, as its name indicates, Mesopotamia
(mid-rivers) ineans only the country between those two great rivers. That
country in the fork was probably very marshy and unhealthy in early
times (Sayce), until it was drained by man, and the early cities grfew
up west of the Euphrates and east of the Tigris. Probably these rivers
then flowed separately into the Persian Gulf.
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
133
were exterminated over great areas, the security of life in-
creased so that ordinary men went about in the towns, and fields
without encumbering themselves with weapons, and, among
themselves, at least, they became peaceful peoples. Men took
root as man had never taken root before.
^RiSjgav, I
!i5?*J*'w
CIVILIZATION
6,000 to 4.000 B.C.
g^&
But in the less fertile and more seasonal lands outside these
favoured areas, in the forests of Europe, the Arabian deserts,
and the seasonal pastures' of Central Asia, there developed on
the other hand a thinner, more active population of peoples,
the primitive noniadic peoples. In contrast with the settled folk,
the agriculturists, '■these nomads lived freely -and 'dangerously.
184 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
They were in comparison lean and hungry men. Their herding
was still blended with hunting ; they fought constantly for their
pastures against hostile families. The discoveries in the elabora-
tion of implements and the use of metals made by the settled
peoples spread to them and improved their weapons. They
followed the settled folk from Neolithic phase to Bronze phase.
It is possible that in the case of iron, the first users were no-
madic. They became more warlike with better arms, and more
capable of rapid movements with the improvement of their
transport. One must not think of a nomadic stage as a pre-
decessor of a settled stage in human affairs. To begin with,
man was a slow drifter, following food. Then one sort, of men
began to settle down, and another sort became more distinctly
nomadic. The settled sort began to rely more and more upon
grain for food ; the nomad began to make a greater use of milk
for food. He bred his cows for milk. The two ways of life
specialized in opposite directions. It was inevitable that nomad
folk and the settled folk should clash, that the nomads should
seem hard barbarians to the settled peoples, and the settled
peoples soft and effeminate and very good plunder to the nomad
peoples. Along the fringes of the developing civilizations there
must have been a constant raiding and bickering between hardy
nomad tribes and mountain tribes and the more numerous and
less warlike peoples in the towns and villages.
For the most part this was a mere raiding of the borders.
The settled folk had the weight of numbers on their side ; the
herdsmen might raid and loot, but they could not stay. That
sort of mutual friction might go on for many generations. But
ever and again we find some leader or some tribe amidst the
disorder of free and independent nomads, powerful enough to
force a sort of unity upon its kindred tribes, and then woe be-
tide the nearest civilization. Down pour the united nomads on
the unwarlike, unarmed plains, and there ensues a war of con-
quest. Instead of carrying off the booty, the conquerors settle
down on the conquered land, which becomes all booty for them ;
the villagers and townsmen are reduced to servitude and tribute-
paying, they become hewers of wood and drawers of water, and
the leaders of the nomads become kings and princes, masters
and aristocrats. They, too, settle down, they learn many of the
arts and refinements of the conquered, they cease to be lean and
hungry, but for many generations they retain traces of their
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 135
old nomadic habits, they hunt and indulge in open-air sports,
they drive and race chariots, they regard work, especially agri-
cultural work, as the lot of an inferior race and class.
This in a thousand variations has been one of the main stories
in history for the last seventy centuries or more. In the first
history that we can clearly decipher we find already in all the
civilized regions a distinction between a non-working ruler class
and the working mass of the population. And we find, too, that
after some generations, the aristocrat, having settled down, be-
gins to respect the arts and refinements and lawabidingness of
settlement, and to lose something of his original hardihood. He
intermarries, he patches up a sort of toleration between con-
queror and conquered; he exchanges religious ideas and learns
the lessons upon which soil and climate insist. He becomes a
part of the civilization he has captured. And as he do^ so,
events gather towards a fresh invasion by the free adventurers
of the outer world.
§ 3a
This alternation of settlement, conquest, refinement, fresh
conquest, refinement, is particularly to be noted in the region of
the Euphrates and Tigris, which lay open in every direction to
great areas which are not arid enough to be complete deserts,
but which were not fertile enough to support civilized popula-
tions. Perhaps the earliest people to form real cities in this part
of the world, or indeed in any part of the world, were a people
of mysterious origin called the Sumerians. They were probably
brunets of Iberian or Dravidian affinities. They used a kind of
writing which they scratched upon clay, and their language has
been deciphered.^ It was a language more like the unclassified
Caucasio language groups than any others that now exist. These
languages may be connected with Basque, and may represent
what was once a widespread primitive language group extend-
ing from Spain and western Europe to eastern India, and reach-
* Excavations conducted at Eridu by Capt. E. Campbell Thompson during
the recent war have revealed an early Neolithic agricultural stage, before
the invention of writing or the use of bronze beneath the earliest Sumerian
foundations. The crops were cut by sickles of earthenware. Capt. Thomp-
son thinks that these pre-Sumerian people were not of Sumerian race,
but proto-Elamites. Entirely similar Neolithic remains have been
found at Susa, once the chief city of Elam.
1S6
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ing' southwards to 'Central Africa. These people shaved their
heads and wore simple tunic-libe garments of wool. They set-
tled first on the lower courses of the great river and not very-
far from the Persian Grulf, which in those days ran up for a
hundred and thirty miles ^ and more beyond its present head.
They fertilized their fields by letting water run through irriga^
tion trenches, and they gradually became very skilful hydraulic
engineers ; they had cattle, asses, sheep, and goats, but mo horses ;
their collections of mud huts grew into towns, and their religion
raised up tower-like temple buildings.
Clay, dried in the sun, was a very great fact in the lives; of
these people. This lower country of the Euphrates-Tigris val-
2k vtrij ea^Af Simuriaa sbona imvitig shotting Simiaiaa oarrinV in. p2ui2aiur
leys had little or no stone. They built of brick, they made pot-
tery ^nd earthenware images, and they drew and presently wrote
upqn thin tile-like cakes of clay. They do not seem to have
had paper or to have used parchment. Their books and mem-
oranda, even their letters, were potsherds.
At Nippur they built a great tower of brick to their chief
god, El-lil (Enlil), the memory of which is supposed to be pre^
served in the gtory of the Tower of Babel. They seem to have
been divided up into city states, which warred among them-
selves and maintained for many centuries their military ca-
pacity. Their soldiers carried long spears and shields, and
fought in close formation. Sumerians conquered Sumerians.
Sumeria remained unconquered by any stranger race for a very
'Sayce, in Babylonian and Assyrian Life, estimates that in 6,500 B.C.'
Eridu was on the sea-coast.
THE FIIIST ClVlLrZATlONS 137
long period of time indeed. They developed their civilization,
their writing, and their shipping, through a period that may be
twice as long as the whole period from the Christian era to the
present time.
The first of all known empires was that founded by the high
priest of the god of the Sumerian city of Erech. It reached,
says an inscription at Nippur, from the Lower (Persian Gulf)
to the Upper (Mediterranean or Eed ?) Sea. Among the mud
heaps of the Euphrates-Tigris valley the record of that vast
period of history, that first half of the Age of Cultivation, is
buried. There flourished the first temples and the first priest-
rulers that we know of among mankind.
§ 2b
Upon the western edge of this country appeared nomadic
tribes of Semitic-speaking peoples who traded, raided, and
fought with the Sumerians for many generations. Then arose
it last a great leader among these Semites, Sargon (2,750 b.c),
who united them, and not only conquered the Sumerians, but
extended his rule from beyond the Persian Gulf on the east
to the Mediterranean on the west. His own people were called
the Akkadians and his empire is called the Sumerian Akkadian
empire. It endured for over two hundred years.
But though the Semites conquered and gave a king to the
Sumerian cities, it was the Sumerian civilization which pre-
vailed over the simpler Semitic culture. The newcomers learni
the Sumerian writing (the "cuneiform" writing) and the
Sumerian language; they set up no Semitic writing of their
own. The Sumerian language became for tiiese barbarians the
language of knowledge and power, as Latin was the language
of knowledge and power among the barbaric peoples of the mid-
dle ages in Europe. This Sumerian learning had a very great
vitality. It was destined to survive through a long series of
conquests and changes that now began in the valley of tie two
rivers.
§ 2c
As the people of the Sumerian Akkadian empire lost theiif
political and military vigour, fresh inundations of a warlike
138 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
people began from the east, the Elamites,^ while from the west
came the Semitic Amorites, pinching the Smnerian Akkadian
empire between them. The Amorites settled in what was at
first a small up-river town, named Babylon ; and after a hundred
years of warfare became masters of all Mesopotamia under a
great king, Hammurabi (2,100 B.C.), who founded the first
Babylonian empire.
Again came peace and security and a decline in aggressive
prowess, and in another hundred years fresh nomads from the
east were invading Babylonia, bringing with them the horse and
the war chariot, and setting up their own king in Babylon. . . ,
§ 2d
Higher up the Tigris, above the clay lands and with easy
supplies of workable stone, a Semitic people, the Assyrians,
while the Sumerians were still unconquered by the Semites, were
settling about a number of cities of which Assur and Nineveh
were the chief. Their peculiar physiognomy, the long nose and
thick lips, was very like that of the commoner type of Polish
Jew to-day. They wore great beards and ringletted long hair,
tall caps and long robes. They were constantly engaged in
mutual raiding with the Hittites to the west; they were con-
quered by Sargon I and became free again ; a certain Tushratta,
King of Mitanni, to the north-west, captured and held their
capital, Nineveh, for a time ; they intrigued with Egypt against
Babylon and were in the pay of Egypt ; they developed the mili-
tary art to a very high pitch, and became mighty raiders and
exactors of tribute; and at last, adopting the horse and the
war chariot, they settled accounts for a time with the Hittites,
and then, under Tiglath Pileser I, conquered Babylon for them-
selves (about 1,100 B.C.). But their hold on the lower, older,
and more civilized land was not secure, and Nineveh, the stone
city, as distinguished from Babylon, the brick city, remained
their capital. For many centuries power swayed between Nine-
veh and Babylon, and sometimes it was an Assyrian and some-
times a Babylonian who claimed to be "king of the world."
•Of unknown language and race, "neither Sumerians nor Semiteu,"
says Sayce. Their central city was Susa. Their archaeology is still largely
an unworked mine. They are believed by some, says Sir H. H. Johnston,
to have been negroid in type. There is a strong negroid strain in the mod-
em people of Elam.
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
139
For four centuries Assyria was restrained from expansion
towards Egypt by a fresh northward thrust and settlement of
another group of Semitic peoples, the Arameans, whose chief
city was Damascus, and whose descendants are the Syrians of
to-day. (There is, we may note, no connection whatever be-
tween the words Assyrian and Syrian. It is an accidental
similarity.) Across these Syrians the Assyrian kings fought
for power and expansion south-westward. In 745 b.c.
arose another Tiglath Pileser,
Tiglath Pileser III, the Tiglath
Pileser of the Bible. ^ He not
only directed the transfer of the
Israelites to Media (the "Lost
Ten Tribes" whose ultimate fate
has exercised so many curious
minds) but he conquered and
ruled Babylon, so founding what
historians know as the New
Assyrian Empire. His son, Shal-
maneser IV,^ died during the
siege of Samaria, and was suc-
ceeded by a usurper, who, no
doubt to flatter Babylonian sus-
ceptibilities, took the ancient
Akkadian Sumerian name of Sar-
gon, Sargon II. He seems to have
armed the Assyrian forces for the
first time with iron weapons. It
was probably Sargon II who
actually carried out the deporta-' Jtwipum n»rru>r
tion of the Ten Tribes. OSasstiuffrcmthefolaec t£ SuroonU
Such shif tings about of popula-
tion became a very distinctive part of the political methods
of the Assyrian new empire. Whole nations who were difficult
to control in their native country would be shifted en masse
to unaccustomed regions and amidst strange neighbours, where
theii" only hope of survival would lie in obedience to the
supreme power.
Sargon's son, Sennacherib, led the Assyrian hosts to the
borders of Egypt. There Sennacherib's army was smitten by
•II. Kings, XV. 29, and xvi. 7 et seq. *II. Kings xvii. 3.
140 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a pestilence, a disaster described in the nineteenth chapter of the
Second Book of Kings,
"And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord
went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred
fourscore and five Ifcousand : and when they arose early in the
morning, behold, flEiey were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib
king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt
at Mneveh." ^
Sennacherib's grandson, Assurbanipal (called by the Greeks
Sardanapalus), did succeed in conquering and for a time hold-
ing lower Egypt. ,
§ 2e
The Assyrian empire lasted only a hundred and fifty years
after Sargon II. Fresh nomadic Semites coming from the
south-east, the Chaldeans, assisted by two Aryan-speaking peo-
ples from the north, the Medes and Persians, combined against
it, and took ISTineveh in 606 b.c.
The Chaldean Empire, with its capital at Babylon (Second
Babylonian Empire), lasted under Nebuchadnezzar the Great
(Nebuchadnezzar II) and his successors until 539 B.C., when it
collapsed before the attack of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian
power. . . .
So the story goes on. In 330 b.c., as we shall tell later in
some detail, a Greek conqueror, Alexander the Great, is looking,
on the murdered body of the last of the Persian rulers.
The story of the Tigris and Euphrates civilizations, of which
we have given as yet only the bare outline, is a story of con-
quest following after conquest, and each conquest replaces old
rulers and ruling classes by new ; races like the Sumerian and
the Elamite are swallowed up, their languages vanish, they
interbreed and are lost, the Assyrian melts away into, Chaldean
and Syrian, the Hittites become Aryanized and lose distinc-
tion, the Semites who swallowed up the Sumeriana give place to
Aryan rulers, Medes and Persians appear in the place of the
Elamites, the Aryan Persian language dominates the empire
until the Aryan Greek ousts it from ofiicial life. Meanwhile
•To be murdered by hia sons.
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 141
the plough does its work year by year, the harvests are gathered,
the builders build as they are told, the tradesmen work and
acquire fresh devices; the knowledge of writing spreads, novel
things, the horse and wheeled vehicles and iron, are introduced
and become part of the permanent inheritance of mankind; the
volume of trade upon sea and desert increases, men's ideas
widen, and knowledge grows. There are set-backs, massacres,
pestilence; but the story is, on the whole, one of enlargement.
For four thousand years this new thing, civilization, which
had set its root into the soil of the two rivers, grew as a tree
grows ; now losing a limb, now stripped by a storm, but always
growing and resuming its growth. After four thousand years
the warriors and conquerors were still going to and fro over
this growing thing they did not understand, but men had now
(330 B.C.) got iron, horses, writing and computation, money, a
greater variety of foods and textiles, a wider knowledge of their
world.
The time that elapsed between the empire of Sargon I and
the conquest of Babylon by Alexander the Great was as long,
be it noted, at the least estimate, as the time from Alexander
the Great to the present day. And before the time of Sargon,
men had been settled in the Sumerian land, living in tovras,
worshipping in temples, following an orderly Neolithic agri-
cultural life in an organized community for at least as long
again. "Eridu, Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Larsa, have already an im-
memorial past when first they appear in history." ^
One of the most difficult things for both the writer and stu-
dent of history is to sustain the sense of these time-intervals
and prevent these ages becoming shortened by perspective in his
imagination. Half the duration of human civilization and the
keys to all its chief institutions are to be found before Sargon
I. Moreover, the reader cannot too often compare the scale
of the dates in these latter fuller pages of man's history with
the succession of countless generations to which the time dia-
grams given on pages 11 and 47, bear witness.
§ 3
Parallel with the ancient beginnings of civilization in
Sumeria, a parallel process was going on in Egypt. It is still
' Winckler (Craig), History of Babylonia and Assyria.
142
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
14,8
a matter of discussion which was the most ancient of these two
beginnings, or how far they had a common origin or derived
one from the other.
The story of the Nile valley from the dawn of its trace-
able history until the time of Alexander the Great is not very
dissimilar from that of Babylonia; but while Babylonia lay
open on every side to invasion, Egypt was protected by desert
to the west and by desert and sea to
the east, while to the south she had
only negro peoples. Consequently
her history is less broken by the in-
vasions of strange races than is the
history of Assyria and Babylon, and
until towards the eighth century
B.C., when she fell under an Ethio-
pian dynasty, whenever a conqueror
did come into her story, he came in
from Asia by way of the Isthmus of
Suez.
The Stone Age remains in Egypt
are of very uncertain date ; there are
Palaeolithic and then Neolithic re-
mains. It is not certain whether the
Neolithic pastoral people who left
those remains were the direct ances-
tors of the later Egyptians. In many
respects they differed entirely from
their successors. They buried their
dead, but before they buried them
they cut up the bodies and appar-
ently ate portions of the flesh. They
seem to have done this out of a feel-
ing of reverence for the departed;
the dead were "eaten with honour"
according to the phrase of Mr. Flinders Petrie. It may have
been that the survivors hoped to retain thereby some vestige
of the strength and virtue that had died. Traces of similar
savage customs have been found in the long barrows that were
scattered over western Europe before the spreading of liie
Aryan peoples, and they have pervaded negro Africa, where
they are only dying out at the present time.
^•arhf Kgure ofikg Tgavtiiui
hippcpotaxttus ^fSUStss
144 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
About 5,000 B.C., or earlier, the traces of these primitive
peoples cease, and the true Egyptians appear on the scene. The
former people were hut builders and at a comparatively low
stage of iN^eolithic culture, the latter were already a civilized
Neolithic people;, they used brick and wood buildings instead
of their predecessors' hovels, and they were working stone.
Very soon they passed into the Bronze Age. They possessed a
system of picture writing almost as developed as the con-
temporary writing of the Sumerians, but quite different in char-
acter. Possibly there was an irruption from southern Arabia
by way of Aden, of a fresh people, who came into upper Egypt
and descended slowly towards the delta of the Nile. Dr. Wallis
Budge writes of them as "conquerors from the East." But
their gods and their ways, like their picture writing, were very
different indeed from the Sumerian. One of the earliest known
figures of a deity is that of a hippopotamus goddess, and so very
distinctively African.
The clay of the Nile is not so fine and plastic as the Sumerian
clay, and the Egyptians made no use of it for writing. But they
early resorted to strips of the papyrus reed fastened together,
from whose name comes our word "paper."
The broad outline of the history of Egypt is simpler than
the history of Mesopotamia. It has long been the custom to
divide the rulers of Egypt into a succession of Dynasties, and
in speaking of the periods of Egyptian history it is usual to
speak of the first, fourth, fourteenth, and so on, Dynasty. The
Egyptians were ultimately conquered by the Persians after
their establishment in Babylon, and when finally Egypt fell to
Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., it was Dynasty XXXI that
came to an end. In that long history of over 4,000 years, a
much longer 'period than that between the career of Alexander
the Great and the present day, certain broad phases of de-
velopment may be noted here. There was a phase known as
the "old kingdom," which culminated in the IVth Dynasty;
this Dynasty marks a period of wealth and splendour, and its
monarchs were obsessed by such a passion for making monu-
ments for themselves as no men have ever before or since had
a chance to display and gratify. It was Cheops ^ and Chephren
and Mycerinus of this IVth Dynasty who raised the vast piles
of the great and the second and the third pyramids at Gizeh.
'3,733 B.C., Wallis Budge.
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS U5
These unmeaning sepulchral piles, of an almost incredible vast-
ness,^ erected in an age when engineering science had scarcely
begun, exhausted the resources of Egypt through three long
reigns, and left her wasted as if by a war.
The story of Egypt from the IVth to the XV th Dynasty is a
story of conflicts between alternative capitals and competing
religions, of separations into several kingdoms and reunions.
It is, so to speak, an internal history. Here we can name only
one of that long series of Pharaohs, Pepi II, who reigned ninety
years, the longest reign in history, and left a great abundance
of inscriptions and buildings. At last there happened to Egypt
what happened so frequently to the civilizations of Mesopo-
tamia. Egypt was conquered by nomadic Semites, who founded
a "shepherd" dynasty, the Hyksos (XVIth), which was finally
expelled by native Egyptians. This invasion probably hap-
pened while that first Babylonian Empire which Hammurabi
founded was flourishing, but the exact correspondences of dates
between early Egypt and Babylonia are still very doubtful.
Only after a long period of servitude did a popular uprising
expel these foreigners again.
After the war of liberation (circa 1,600 B.C.) there followed a
period of great prosperity in Egypt, the New Empire. Egypt
became a great and united military state, and pushed her expedi-
tions at last as far as the Euphrates, and so the age-long struggle
between the Egyptian and Babylonian-Assyrian power began.
For a time Egypt was the ascendant power. Thothmes III "
'The great pyramid is 450 feet high and its aide 700 feet long. It is
calculated (says Wallis Budge) to weigh 4,883,000 tons. All this stone
was lugged into place chiefly by human muscle.
' There are variants to these names, and to most Egyptian names, for
few self-respecting Egyptologists will tolerate the spelling of their col-
leagues. One may find, for instance, Thethmosis, Thoutmosis, Tahutmes,
Thutmose, or Tethraosis; Amunothph, Amenhotep or Amenothes. A pleas-
ing variation is to break up the name, as, for instance. Amen Hetep.
This particular little constellation of variants is given here not only be-
cause it is amusing, but because it is desirable that the reader should
know such variations exist. For most names the rule of this book has
been to follow whatever usage has established itself in English literature,
regardless of the possible contemporary pronunciation. Amenophis, for
example, has been so written in English books for two centuries. It
came into the language by indirect routes, but it is now as fairly estab-
lished as is Damascus as the English name of a Syrian town. Neverthe-
less, there are limits to this classicism. The writer, after some vacilla-
tion, has abandoned Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson in the case of
"Peisistratus" and "Keltic," which were formerly spelt "Pisistratus" and
"Celtic."
146 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and Amenophis III (XVIIIth Dynasty) ruled from Ethiopia
to the Euphrates in the fifteenth century b.c. For various
reasons these names stand out with unusual distinctness in the
Egyptian record. They were great builders, and left many
monuments and inscriptions. Amenophis III founded Luxor,
and added greatly to Karnak. At Tel-el-Amarna a mass of
letters has been found, the royal correspondence with Babylonian
and Hittite and other monarchs, including that Tushratta who
took Nineveh, throwing a flood of light upon the political and
social affairs of this particular age. Of Amenophis IV we
shall have more to tell later, but of one, the most extraordinary
and able of Egyptian monarchs. Queen Hatasu, we have no
space to tell. She is represented upon her monuments in mas-
culine garb, and with a long beard as a symbol of wisdom.
Thereafter there was a brief Syrian conquest of Egypt, a
series of changing dynasties, among which we may note the
XlXth, which included Kameses II, a great builder of temples,
who reigned seventy-seven years (about 1,317 to 1,250 e.g.),
and who is supposed by some to have been the Pharaoh of
Moses, and the XXIInd, which included Shishak, who
plundered Solomon's temple (circa 930 b.c). An Ethiopian
conqueror from the Upper Nile founded the XXVth Dynasty,
a foreign dynasty, which went down (670 b.c.) before the new
Assyrian Empire created by Tiglath Pileser III, Sargon II,
and Sennacherib, of which we have already made mention.
The days of any Egyptian predominance over foreign nations
were drawing to an end. For a time under Psammetichus I
of the XXVIth Dynasty (664-610 b.c.) native rule was re-
stored, and Necho II recovered for a time the old Egyptian
possessions in Syria up to the Euphrates while the Medes and
Chaldeans were attacking Nineveh. From those gains Necho II
was routed out again after the fall of Nineveh and the Assyrians
by Nebuchadnezzar II, the great Chaldean king, the Nebuchad-
nezzar of the Bible. The Jews, who had been the allies of
Necho II, were taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar to
Babylon,
When, m the sixth century b.c, Chaldea fell to the Persians,
Egypt followed suit, a rebellion later made Egypt independent
once more for sixty years, and in 332 b. c she welcomed Alex-
ander the Great as her conqueror, to be ruled thereafter by for-
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 147
eigners, first by Greeks, tlien by Eomans, then in succession
by Arabs, Turks, and British, until the present day. •
Such briefly is the history of Egypt from its beginnings;
a history first of isolation and then of increasing entanglement
with the affairs of other nations, as increasing facilities of
communication drew the peoples of the world into closer and
closer interaction.
The history we need to tell here of India is simpler eiven
than this brief record of Egypt. The Dravidian peoples in
the Ganges valley developed upon parallel lines to the Sumerian
and Egyptian societies. But it is doubtful if they ever got to
so high a stage of social development ; they have left few monu-
ments, and they never achieved any form of writing.
Somewhere about the time of Hammurabi or later, a branch
of the Aryan-speaking people who then occupied North Persia
and Afghanistan pushed down the north-west passes into India.
They conquered their way until they prevailed over all the
darker populations of North India, and spread their rule or
influence over the whole peninsula. They never achieved any
unity in India ; their history is a history of warring kings and
republics.
The Persian empire, in the days of its expansion after the
capture of Babylon, pushed its boundaries beyond the Indus,
and later Alexander the Great marched as far as the border of
the desert that separates the Punjab from the Ganges valley.
But with this bare statement we will for a time leave the history
of India.
§ 5
Meanwhile, as this triple system of White Man civilization
developed in India and in the lands about the meeting-places
of Asia, Africa, and Europe, another and quite distinct civiliza-
tion was developing and spreading out from the then fertile
but now dry and desolate valley of the Tarim and from the
slopes of the Kuen-lun mountains in two directions down the
course of the Hwang-ho, and later into the valley of the Yang-
tse-kiang. We know practically nothing as yet of the archseol-
148 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ogy of China, we do not know anything of the Stone Age in
that part of the world, and at present our ideas of this early
civilization are derived from the still very imperfectly ex-
plored Chinese literature. It has evidently been from the first
and throughout a Mongolian civilization. Until after the time
of Alexander the Great there are few traces of any Aryan
or Semitic, much less of Hamitic influence. All such influ-
ences were still in another world, separated by mountains,
deserts, and wild nomadic tribes until that time. The Chinese
seem to have made their civilization spontaneously and un-
assisted. Some recent writers suppose indeed a connection with
ancient Sumeria. Of course both China and Sumeria arose
on the basis of the almost world-wide early Neolithic culture,
but the Tarim valley and the lower Euphrates are separated by
such vast obstacles of mountain and desert as to forbid the idea
of any migration or interchange of peoples who had once settled
down. Perhaps the movement from the north met another
movement of culture coming from the south.
Though the civilization of China is wholly Mongolian (as
we have defined Mongolian), it does not follow that the north-
em roots are the only ones from which it grew. If it grew
first in the Tarim valley, then unlike all other civilization^
(including the Mexican and Peruvian) it did not grow out
of the heliolithic culture. We Europeans know very little as
yet of the ethnology and pre-history of southern China. There
the Chinese mingle with such kindred peoples as the Siamese
and Burmese, and seem to bridge over towards the darker
Dravidian peoples and towards the Malays. It is quite clear
from the Chinese records that there were southern as well as
northern beginnings of a civilization, and that the Chinese civ-
ilization that comes into history 2,000 years b.c. is the result of
a long process of conflicts, minglings and interchanges between
a southern and a northern culture of which the southern may
have been the earlier and more highly developed. The southern
Chinese perhaps played the role towards the northern Chinese
that the Hamites or Sumerians played to the Aryan and Semitic
peoples in the west, or that the settled Dravidians played to-
wards the Aryans in India. They may have been the first
agriculturists and the first temple builders. But so little is
known as yet of this attractive chapter in pre-history, that
we cannot dwell upon it further here.
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
149
150 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The chief foreigners mentioned in the early annals of China
were a Ural-Altaic people on the north-east frontier, the Huns,
against whom certain of the earlier emperors made war.
Chinese history is still very little known to European stu-
dents, and our accounts of the eaily records arc particularly un-
satisfactory. About 2,700 to 2,400 B.C. reigned five emperors,
who seem to have been almost incredibly exemplary beings.
There follows upon these first five emperors a series of
dynasties, of which the accounts become more and more exact
and convincing as they become more recent. China has to
tell a long history of border warfare and of graver struggles
between the settled and nomad peoples. To begin with, China,
like Sumer and like Egypt, was a land of city states. The
government was at first a government of numerous kings ; they
became loosely feudal under an emperor, as the Egyptians did ;
and then later, as with the Egyptians, came a centralizing
empire. Shang (1,750 to 1,125 b.c.) and Chow (1,125 to
250 B.C.) are named as being the two great dynasties of the
feudal period. Bronze vessels of these earlier dynasties, beau-
tiful, splendid, and with a distinctive style of their own, still
exist, and there can be no doubt of the existence of a high state
of culture even before the days of Shang.
It is perhaps a sense of symmetry that made the later his-
torians of Egypt and China talk of the earlier phases of their
national history as being under dynasties comparable to the
dynasties of the later empires, and of such early "Emperors"
as Menes (in Egypt) or the First Five Emperors (in China).
The early dynasties exercised far less centralized powers than
the later ones. Such unity as China possessed under the Shang
Dynasty was a religious rather than an effective political union.
The "Son of Heaven" offered sacrifices for all the Chinese.
There was a common script, a common civilization, and a com-
mon enemy in the Huns of the north-western borders.
The last of the Shang Dynasty was a cruel and foolish mon-
arch who burnt himself alive (1,125 b.c.) in his palace after a
decisive defeat by Wu Wang, the founder of the Chow Dynasty.
Wu Wang seems to have been helped by allies from among
the south-western tribes as well as by a popular revolt.
For a time China remained loosely united under the Chow
emperors, as loosely united as was Christendom under the popes
in the Middle Ages ; the Chow emperors had become the tradi-
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 15J
tional high priests of the land in the place of the Shang
Dynasty and claimed a sort of overlordship in Chinese affairs,
but gradually the loose ties of usage and sentiment that held
the empire together lost their hold upon men's minds. Hunnish
peoples to the north and west took on the Chinese civilization
without acquiring a sense of its unity. Feudal princes began
to regard themselves as independent. Mr. Liang-Chi-Ohao,^
one of the Chinese representatives at the Paris Conference of
1919, states that between the eighth and fourth centuries b.c.
"there were in the Hwang-ho and Yang-tse valleys no less than
five or six thousand small states w'ith about a dozen powerful
states dominating over them." The land was subjected to per-
petual warfare ("Age of Confusion"). In the sixth century
B.C. the great powers in conflict were Ts'i and Ts'in, which
were northern Hwang-ho states, and Ch'u, which was a vigorous,
aggressive power in the Yang-tse valley. A confederation
against Ch'u laid the foundation for a league that kept the
peace for a hundred years ; the league subdued and incorporated
Ch'u and made a general treaty of disarmament. It became
the foundation of a new pacific empire.
The knowledge of iron entered China at some unknown date,
but iron weapons began to be commonly used only about 500
B.C., that is to say two or three hundred years or more after
this had become customary in Assyria, Egypt, and Europe.
Iron was probably introduced from the north into China by the
Huns.
The last rulers of the Chow Dynasty were ousted by the
kings of Ts'in, the latter seized upon the sacred sacrificial
bronze tripods, and so were able to take over the imperial duty
of offering sacrifices to Heaven. In this manner was the Ts'in
Dynasty established. It ruled with far more vigour and effect
than any previous family. The reign of Shi Hwang-ti (mean-
ing "first universal emperor") of this dynasty is usually taken
to mark the end of feudal and divided China. He seems to
have played the unifying role in the east that Alexander the
Great might have played in the west, but he lived longer, and
the unity he made (or restored) was comparatively permanent,
while the empire of Alexander the Great fell to pieces, as we
shall tell, at his death. Shi Hwang-ti, among other feats in the
' China and the League of Nations, a pamphlet by Mr. liiang-Chi-Chao.
{Pekin Leader Office.)
152 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
direction of common effort, organized the building of the Great.
Wall of China against the Huns. A civil war followed close
upon his reign, and ended in the establishment of the Han
Dynasty. Under this Han Dynasty the empire gtew greatly
beyond its original two river valleys, the Huns were effectively
restrained, and the Chinese penetrated westward until they
began to learn at last of civilized races and civilizations other
than their own.
By 100 B.C. the Chinese had. heard of India, their power
had spread across Tibet and into Western Turkestan, and they
were trading by camel caravans with Persia and the western
world. So much for the present must suffice for our account of
China. We shall return to the distinctive characters of its
civilization later.
§ 6
And in these thousands of years during which man was
making his way step by step from the barbarism of the helio-
lithic culture to civilization at these old-world centres, what was
happening in the rest of the world? To the north of these
centres, from the Ehine to the Pacific, the Nordic and Mon-
golian peoples, as we have told, were also learning the use
of metals ; but while the civilizations were settling down these
men of the great plains were becoming migratory and de-
veloping from a slow wandering life towards a complete seasonal
nomadism. To the south of the civilized zone, in central and
southern Africa, the negro was making a slower progress, and
that, it would seem, under the stimulus of invasion by whiter
tribes from the Mediterranean regions, bringing with them
in succession cultivation and the use of metals. These white
men came to the black by two routes : across the Sahara to the
west as Berbers and Tuaregs and the like, to mix with the negro
and create such quasi-white races as the Fulas; and also by
way of the Nile, where the Baganda (= Gandafolk) of Uganda,
for example, may possibly be of remote white origin. The
African forests were denser then, and spread eastward and
northward from the Upper Nile.
The islands of the East Indies, three thousand years ago,
were probably still only inhabited here and there by stranded
patches of Palaeolithic Australoids, who had wandered thither
THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 153
in those immemorial ages when there was a nearly complete
land bridge by way of the East Indies to Australia. The
islands of Oceania were uninhabited. The spreading of the
heliolithic peoples by sea-going canoes into the islands of the
Pacific came much later in the history of man, at earliest a
thousand years b.c. Still later did they reach Madagascar.
The beautiy of New Zealand also was as yet wasted upon man-
kind ; its highest living creatures were a great ostrich-like bird,
the moa, now extinct, and the little kiwi which has feathers
like coarse hair and the merest rudiments of wings.
In North America a group of Mongoloid tribes were now
cut off altogether from the old world. They were spreading
slowly southward, hunting the innumerable bison of the
plains. They had still to learn for themselves the secrets of a
separate agriculture based on maize, and in South America,
to tame the lama to their service, and so biiild up in Mexico
and Peru two civilizations roughly parallel in their nature tc
that of Sumer, but different in many respects, and later by six
or seven thousand years. . , .
When men reached the southern extremity of America, the
Meffatheriwm, the giant sloth, and the Glyptodon, the giant
armadillo, were still living.
There is a considerable imaginative appeal in the obscure
story of the early American civilizations. It was largely a
separate development. Somewhen at last the southward drift
of the Amerindians must have met and mingled ^with the east-
ward, canoe-borne drift of the heliolithic culture. But it was
the heliolithic culture still at a very lowly stage and probably
before the use of metals. It has to be noted as evidence of
this canoe-borne origin of American culture, that elephant-
headed figures are found in Central American drawings. Amer-
ican metallurgy may have arisen independently of the old-
world use of metal, or it may have been brought by these ele-
phant carvers. These American peoples got to the use of
bronze and copper, but not to the use of iron; they had gold
and silver; and their stonework, their pottery, weaving, and
dyeing were carried to a very high level. In all these things
the American product resembles the old-world product generally,
but always it has characteristics that are distinctive. The
American civilizations had picture-writing of a primitive sort,
but it never developed even to the pitch of the earliest Egyptian
154 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
hieroglyphics. In Yucatan only was there a kind of script,
the Maya writing, but it was used simply for keeping a cal-
endar. In Peru the beginnings of writing were superseded
by a curious and complicated method of keeping records by
means of knots tied upon strings of various colours and shapes.
It is said that even laws and orders could be conveyed by this
code. These string bundles were called quipus, but though
qwipus are still to be found in collections, the art of reading
them is altogether lost. The Chinese histories, Mr. L. Y. Chen
informs us, state that a similar method of record by knots was
used in China before the invention of writing there. The
Peruvians also got to making maps and the use of counting-
frames. "But with all this there was no means of handing
on knowledge and experience from one generation to another,
nor was anything done to fix and summarize these intellectual
possessions, which are the basis of literature and science." ^
When the Spaniards came to America, the Mexicans knew
nothing of the Peruvians nor the Peruvians of the Mexicans.
Intercourse there was none. Whatever links had ever existed
were lost and forgotten. The Mexicans had never heard of
the potato which was a principal article of Peruvian diet. In
5,000 B.C. the Sumerians and Egyptians probably knew as
little of one another. American was 6,000 years behind the
Old World.
*F. Batzel, History of Mankind.
XY
SEA PEOPLES AND TKADING PEOPLES
§ 1. The Earliest Ships and Sailors. § 2. The ^gean Cities
before History. § 3. The First Voyages of Exploration.
§ 4. Early Traders. § 5. Early Travellers.
§ 1
THE first toats were made very early indeed in the Neo-
lithic stage of culture by riverside and lakeside peoples.
They were no more than trees and floating wood, used
to assist the imperfect natural swimming powers of men. Then
came the hollowing out of the trees, and then, with the de-
velopment of tools and a primitive carpentry, the building of
boats. Men in Egypt and Mesopotamia also, developed a primi-
tive type of basketwork boat, caulked with bitumen. Such
was the "ark of bulrushes" in which Moses was hidden by his
mother. A kindred sort of vessel grew up by the use of
skins and hides expanded upon a wicker framework. To this
day cow-hide wicker boats (coracles) are used upon the west
coast of Ireland where there is plenty of cattle and a poverty
of big trees. They are also still used on the Euphrates, and
on the Towy in South Wales. Inflated skins may have preceded
the coracle, and are still used on the Euphrates and upper
Ganges. In the valleys of the great rivers, boats must eiarly
have become an important means of communication; and it
seems natural to suppose that it was from the mouths of the
great rivers that man, already in a reasonably seaworthy vessel,
first ventured out upon what must have seemed to him then
the trackless and homeless sea.
'No doubt he ventured at first as a fisherman, having learnt
the elements of seacraft in creeks and lagoons. Men may have
navigated boats upon the Levantine lake before the refilling
of the Mediterranean by the Atlantic waters. The canoe was
an integral part of the heliolithic culture, it drifted with the
155
166 THE OLftLlNE OF HiSfOHY
culture upon the warm waters of liio earth from the Mediter-
ranean to (at last) America. There were not only canoes, but
Sumerian boats and ships upon the Euphrates and Tigris, when
these rivers in 7,000 e.g. fell by separate mouths into the
Persian Gulf. The Sumerian city of Eridu, which stood at the
head of the Persian Gulf (from which it is now separated by a
hundred and thirty miles of alluvium ^), had ships upon the sea
then. We also find evidence of a fully developed sea life six
thousand years ago at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and
possibly at that time there were already canoes on the seas
among the islands of the nearer East Indies. There are pre-
dynastic Neolithic Egyptian representations of Nile ships of a
fair size, capable of carrying elephants.^
Very soon the seafaring men must have realized the peculiar
freedom and opportunities the ship gave them. They could
get away to islands ; no chief nor king could pursue a boat or
ship with any certainty; every captain was a king. The sea-
men would find it easy to make nests upon islands and in strong
positions on the mainland. There they could harbour, there
they could carry on a certain agriculture and fishery ; but their
specialty and their main business was, of course, the expedition
across the sea. That was not usually a trading expedition;
it was much more frequently a piratical raid. From what
we know of mankind, we are bound to conclude that the first
sailors plundered when they could, and traded when they had to.
Because it developed in the comparatively warm and tran-
quil waters of the eastern Mediterranean, the Ked Sea, the
Persian Gulf, and the western horn of the Indian Ocean, the
shipping of the ancient world retained throughout certain char-
acteristics that make it diifer very widely from the ocean-going
sailing shipping, with its vast spread of canvas, of the last four
hundred years. "The Mediterranean," says Mr. Torr,* "is a
sea where a vessel with sails may lie becalmed for days to-
gether, while a vessel with oars would easily be traversing the
smooth waters, with coasts and islands everywhere at hand
to give her shelter in case of storm. In that sea, therefore, oars
became the characteristic instruments of navigation, and the
arrangement of oars the chidE problem in shipbuilding. And
» Sayce.
'Mosso, The DaiBn of Mediterranean Owilieation. — R. L. C.
'Cecil Torr, Ancient Ships.
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES
157
so long as the Mediterranean nations dominated Western Eu-
rope, vessels of the southern type were built upon the northern
coasts, though there generally was wind
enough here for sails and too much wave
for oars. . . . The art of rowing can
first be discerned upon the Nile. Boats
with oars are represented in the earliest
pictorial monuments of Egypt, dating
from about 2,500 b.c. ; and although
some crews are paddling with their
faces towards the bow, others are row-
ing with their faces towards the stem.
The paddling is certainly the older
practice, for the hieroglyph chen depicts
two arms grasping an oar in the attitude
of paddling, and the hieroglyphs were
invented in the earliest ages. And that
practice may really have ceased before
2,500 B.C., despite the testimony of
monuments of that date; for in monu-
ments dating from about 1,250 B.C.,
crews are represented unmistakably
rowing with their faces towards the
stem and yet grasping their oars in the
attitude of paddling, so that even then
Egyptian artists mechanically followed
the turn of the hieroglyph to which
their hands were accustomed. In these
reliefs there are twenty rowers on the
boats on the iN'ile, and thirty on the
ships on the Red Sea ; but in the earliest
reliefs the number varies considerably,
and seems dependent on the amount of
space at the sculptor's disposal."
The Aryan peoples came late to the
sea. The earliest ships on the sea were
either Sumerian or Hamitic; the
Semitic peoples followed close upon
these pioneers. Along the eastern end
of the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians, a Semitic people, set
up a string of independent harbour towns of whicli -4p?"e>,
158
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Tyre, and Sidon were the chief; and later they pushed their
voyages westward and founded Carthage and tJtica. in North
Africa. Possibly
Phcenician keels
were already in
the Mediterra-
nean by 2,000 B. c.
Both Tyre and
Sidon were origi-
nally on islands,
and , so easily de-
fensible against a
land raid. But he-
fore we go on to
the marine ex-
ploits of this great
sea-going race, we
must note a very
remarkable and
curious nest of
early sea people
whose remains
have been discov-
ered in Crete.
§ 2
These early
Cretans were of a
race akin to the
Iberians of Spain
and Western Eu-
rope and the dark
whites of Asia
Minor and I^orth
Africa, and their
language is un-
known. This race
lived not only in
Crete, but in Cyprus, Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, and South
Italy. It was a civilized people for long ages before the
fair N'ordic Greeks spread southward through Macedonia. At
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES 159
Cnosaos, in Crete, ttere have been found the most astonishing
JTiina and remains, and Cnossos, therefore, is apt to overshadow
the rest of these settlements in. people's imaginations, but it is
well to bear in mind that though Cnossos was no doubt a chief
city of this ^gean civilization, these "^geans" had in the full-
ness of their time many cities and a wide range. Possibly, all
that we know of them now are but the vestiges of the far more
extensive heliolithic Neolithic civilization which is now sub-
merged under the waters of the Mediterranean.
At Cnossos there are !N"eolithic remains as old or older than
any of the pre-dynastic remains of Egypt. The Bronze Age
began in Crete as soon as it did in Egypt, and there have been
vases found by Elinders Petrie in Egypt and referred by
him to the 1st Dynasty, which he declared to be importations
from Crete. Stone vessels have been found in Crete of forms
characteristic of the IVth (pyramid-building) Dynasty, and
there can be no doubt that there was a vigorous trade between
Crete and Egypt in the time of the Xllth Dynasty. This con-
tinued until about 1,000 b.c. It is clear that this island civiliza-
tion arising upon the soil of Crete is at least as old as the
Egyptian, and that it was already launched upon the sea as
early as 4,000 b.c.
The great days of Crete were not so early as this. It was
only about 2,500 b.c. that the island appears to have been
unified under one ruler. Then began an age of peace and pros-
perity unexampled in the history of the ancient world. Secure
from invasion, living in a delightful climate, trading with every
civilized community in the world, the Cretans were free to de-
velop all the arts and amenities of life. This Cnossos was not
so much a town as the vast palace of the king and his people.
It was not even fortified. The kings, it would seem, were called
Minos always, as the kings of Egypt were all called Pharaoh ;
the king of Cnossos figures in the early legends of the Greeks
as King Minos, who lived in the Labyrinth and kept there a
horrible monster, half man, half bull, the Minotaur, to feed
which he levied a tribute of youths and maidrais from the
Athenians. Those stories are a part of Greek literature, and
have always been known, but it is only in the last few decades
that the excavations at Cnossos have revealed how close these
legends were to the reality. The Cretan labyrinth was a build-
ing as stately, complex, and luxurious as any in the ancient
160
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
world. Among other details we find water-pipes, bathrooms,
and the like conveniences, such as have hitherto been regarded
as the latest refinements of modern life. The pottery, the textile
manufactures, the sculpture and painting of these people, their
gem and ivory work, their metal and inlaid work, is as ad-
mirable as any that mankind has produced. They were much
given to festivals and shows, and, in particular, they were
addicted to bull-fights and gymnastic entertainments. Their
female costume became astonishingly "modern" in style; their
women wore corsets and flounced dresses. They had a system
of writing which has not yet been deciphered.
It is the custom nowadays to make a sort of wonder of these
achievements of the Cretans, as though they were a people
of incredible artistic ability living in the dawn of civilization.
But their great time was long past that dawn ; as late as 2,000
B.C. It took them many centuries to reach their best in art
and skill, and their art and luxury are by no means so great
a wonder if we reflect that for 3,000 years they were immune
from invasion, that for a thousand years they were at peace.
Century, after century their artizans could perfect their skill,
and their men and women refine upon refinement. Wherever
men of almost any race have been comparatively safe in this
fashion for such a length of time, they have developed much
artistic beauty. Given the opportunity, all races are artistic.
Greek legend has it that it was in Crete that Daedalus at-
tempted to make the first fiying machine. Daedalus (= cunning
artificer) was a sort of personified summary of mechanical
"^
— -=.=1.
^
1 ^
i ' ^ ^=g=;aS&i^r^
^ fk.^^EEEES^^:^'—"
% '^^3asfH^s.ariJ<
fe#g
t^^^?=
^^^^^m^
^^^s=
CIVILIZATION
^
^i — f-
-1 ■ "
a. F. 1 1
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES
161
skill. It is curious to speculate what germ of fact lies behind
him and those waxen wings that, according to the legend, melted
and plunged his son Icarus in the sea.
There came at last a change in the condition of the lives of
these Cretans, for other peoples, the Greeks and the Phoenicians,
were also coming out with powerful fleets upon the seas. We
do not know what led to the disaster nor who inflicted it ; but
sbmewhen about 1,400 b.c. Cnossos was sacked and burnt, and
though the Cretan life
struggled on there
rather lamely for an-
other four centuries,
there came at last a
final blow about 1,000
B.C. (that is to say, in
the days of the As-
syrian ascendancy in
the East). The palace
at CnOssos was de-
stroyed, and never re-
built nor reinhabited.
Possibly this was done
by the ships of those
new-comers into the
Mediterranean, the
barbaric Greeks, a
group of Aryan-speak-
ing tribes from the
north, who may have
■T.F3 H. ^om photos, by
BriUs ■■SchaoLxtAQvais
Tidctux ^gare Ami Giossos..... 7^
votar\£ ot'tiie Snake Goddear....,
wiped out Cnossos as they wiped out the city of Troy. The
legend of Theseus tells of such a raid. He entered the Laby-
rinth (which may have been the Cnossos Palace) by the aid of
Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, and slew the Minotaur.
The Iliad makes it clear that destruction came upon Troy
because the Trojans stole Greek women. Modern writers, with
modem ideas in their heads, have tried to make out that the
Greeks assailed Troy in order to secure a trade route or some
such fine-spun commercial advantage. If so, the authors of
the Iliad hid the motives of their characters very skilfully.
It would be about as reasonable to say that the Homeric Greeks
went to war with the Trojans in order to be well ahead with
162 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a station on the Berlin to Bagdad rail"way. The Homeric
Greeks were a healthy barbaric Aryan people, with very poor
ideas about trade and "trade routes"; they went to war with
the Trojans because they were thoroughly annoyed about this
stealing of women. It is fairly clear from the Minos legend
and from the evidence of the Cnossos remains, that the Cretans
kidnapped or stole youths and maidens to be slaves, bull-fighters,
athletes, and perhaps sacrifices. They traded fairly with the
Egyptians, but it may be they did not realize the gathering
strength of the Greek barbarians ; they "traded'" violently with
them, and so brought sword and flame upon themselves.
Another great sea people were the Phoenicians. They were
great seamen because they were great traders. Their colony
of Carthage (founded before 800 b.c. by Tyre) became at last
greater than any of the older Phoenician cities, but already
before 1,500 b.c. both Sidon and Tyre had settlements upon
the African coast. Carthage was comparatively inaccessible
to the Assyrian and Babylonian hosts, and, profiting greatly
by the long siege of Tyre by itsTebuchadnezzar II, became the
greatest maritime power the world had hitherto seen. She
claimed the Western Mediterranean as her own, and seized
every ship she could catch west of Sardinia. Eoman writers
accuse her of great cruelties. She fought the Greeks for Sicily,
and later (in the second century b.c.) she fought the Romans.
Alexander the Great formed plans for her conquest; but he
died, as we shall tell later, before he could carry them out.
§ 3
At her zenith Carthage probably had the hitherto unheard-of
population of a million. This population was largely indus-
trial, and her woven goods were universally famous. As well
as a coasting trade, she had a considerable land trade with
Central Africa,^ , and she sold negro slaves, ivory, metals,
precious stones and the like, to all the Mediterranean people ; she
worked Spanish copper mines, and her ships went out into
'There were no domesticated camels in Africa until after the Persian
conquest of Egypt. This must have greatly restricted the desert routes.
(See Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, note to Chap. VIII.) But
the Sahara desert of 3,000 or 2,000 years ago was less parched and
sterile than it is to-day. From rock engravings we may deduce the theory
that the desert was crossed from oasis to oasis by riding oxen and by
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES 163
the Atlantic and coasted along Portugal and France northward
as far as the Cassiterides (the Scilly Isles, or Cornwall, in
England) to get tin. About 520 b.c. a certain Hanno made a
voyage that is still one of the most notable in the world. This
Hanno, if we may trust the Periplus of Hwnno, the Greek trans-
lation of his account which still survives, followed the African
coast southward from the Straits of Gibraltar as far as the
confines of Liberia. He had sixty big ships, and his main
task was to found or* reinforce certain Carthaginian stations
upon the Morocco, coast. Then he pushed southward. He
founded a settlement in the Eio de Oro (on Kerne or Heme
Island), and sailed on past the Senegal Eiver. The voyagers
passed on for seven days beyond the Gambia, and landed at
last upon some island. This they left in a panic, because, al-
though the day was silent with the silence of the tropical for-
ests, at night they heard the sound of flutes, drums, and gongs,
and the sky was red with the blaze of the bush fires. The
coast country for the rest of the voyage was one blaze of fire,
from the burning of the bush. Streams of fire ran down the
hills into the sea, and at length a blaze arose so loftily that it
touched the skies. Three days further brought them to an
island containing a lake ( ?Sherbro Island) . In this lake was
another island ( ?Macaulay Island) , and on this were wild,
hairy men and women, "whom the interpreters called gorilla."
The Carthaginians, having caught some of the females of these
"gorillas" — they were probably chimpanzees — ^turned back and
eventually deposited the skins of their captives — ^who had proved
impossibly violent guests to entertain on board ship — in the
Temple of Juno.
A still more wonderful Phoenician sea voyage, long doubted,
but now supported by some archseological evidence, is related
by Herodotus, who declares that the Pharaoh Necho of the
XXVIth Dynasty commissioned some Phoenicians to attempt
the circumnavigation of Africa, and that starting from the
Gulf of Suez southward, they. did finally come back through
ox-carts: perhaps, also, on horses and asses. The camel as a beast of
transport was seemingly not introduced into North Africa till the Arab
invasions of the seventh century a.d. The fossil remains of camels are
found in Algeria, and vcild camels may have lingered in the wastes of the
Sahara and Somaliland till the domesticated camel was introduced. The
Nubian wild ass also seems to have extended its range to the Sahara. —
H. H. J.
164 THE OUTLINE OF HlSTORy
the Mediterranean to the Nile delta. They took nearly three
years to complete their voyage. Each year they landed, and
sowed and harvested a crop of wheat before going on.
§ 4
The great trading cities of the Phoenicians are the most strik-
ing of the early manifestations of the peeuliar and character-
istic gift of the Semitic peoples to mankind, trade and exchange.^
While the Semitic Phcenician peoples were spreading them-
selves upon the seas, another kindred Semitic people, the
Arameans, whose occupation of Damascus we have already
noted, were developing the caravan routes of the Arabian and
Persian deserts, and becoming the chief trading people of
Westeirn Asia. The Semitic peoples, earlier civilized than the
Aryan, have always shown, and still show to-day, a far greater
sense of quality and quantity in marketable goods than the
latter; it is to their need' of account-keeping that the develop-
ment of alphabetical writing is to be ascribed, and it is to theni
that most of the great advances in computation are due. Our
modern numerals are Arabic; our arithmetic and algebra are
essentially Semitic sciences.
The Semitic peoples, we may point out here, are to this
day counting peoples strong in their sense of equivalents and
reparation. The moral teaching of the Hebrews was saturated
by such ideas. "With what measure ye mete, the same shall
be meted unto you." Other races and peoples have imagined
diverse and fitful and marvellous gods, but it was the trad-
ing Semites who first began to think of God as a Kighteous
Dealer, whose promises were kept, who failed not the humblest
creditor, and called to account every spurious act.
The trade that was going on in the ancient world before the
sixth or seventh century b.c. was almost entirely a barter
trade. There was little or no credit or coined money. The
ordinary standard bf value with the early Aryans was cattle,
as it still is with the Zulus and Kaffirs to-day. In the Iliad,
the respective values of two shields are stated in head of cattle,
and the Roman word for moneys, pecunia, is derived from
* There was Sumerian trade organized round the temples before the
Semites got into Babylonia. See Hall and King, Arohoeologioal Discoveries
in, Western Asia. — E. B.
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES 165
pecus, cattle. Cattle as money had this advantage; it did not
need to be carried from one owner to another, and if it needed
attention and food, at any rate it bred. But it was incon-
venient for ship or caravan transit. Many other substances
have at various times been found convenient as a standard;
tobacco was once legal tender in the colonial days in l^orth
America, and in West Africa fines are paid and bargains made
in bottles of trade gin. The early Asiatic trade included
metals; and weighed lumps of metal, since they were in gen-
eral demand and were convenient for hoarding and storage,
costing nothing for fodder and needing small houseroom, soon
asserted their superiority over cattle and sheep. Iron, which
seems to have been first reduced from its ores by the Hittites,
was, to begin with, a rare and much-desired substance.^ It is
stated by Aristotle to have supplied the first currency. In
the collection of letters found at Tel-el-Amarna, addressed to
and from Amenophis III (already mentioned) and his succes-
sor Amenophis IV, one from a Hittite king promises iron as
an extremely valuable gift. Gold, then as now, was the most
precious, and therefore most portable, security. In early Egypt
silver was almost as rare as gold until after the XVIIIth
Dynasty. Later the general standard of value in the Eastern
world became silver, measured by weight.
To begin with, metals were handed about in ingots and
weighed at each transaction. Then they were stamped to
indicate their fineness and guarantee their purity. The first
recorded coins were minted about 600 b.c. in Lydia, a gold-
producing country in the west of Asia Minor. The first-known
gold coins were minted in Lydia by Croesus, whose name has
become a proverb for wealth; he was conquered, as we shall
tell later, by that same Cyrus the Persian who took Babylon in
539 B.C. But very probably coined money had been used in
Babylonia before that time. The "sealed shekel," a stamped
piece of silver, came very near to being a coin. The promise
to pay so much silver or gold on "leather" (= parchment) with
the seal of some established firm is probably as old or older
than coinage. The Carthaginians used such "leather money."
We know very little of the way in which small trafiic was con-
ducted. Common people, who in those ancient times were in
^ Iron bars of fixed weight were used for coin in Britain. Caesar, De
Bella Gallioo. — G. Wli.
166 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
dependent positions, seem to have had no money at all; they
did their business by barter. Early Egyptian paintings show
this going on.^
§ 5
When one realizes the absence of small money or of any
conveniently portable means of exchange in the pr&-Alexandrian
world, one perceives how impossible was private travel in those
days.^ The first "inns" — ^no doubt a sort of caravanserai — are
commonly said to have come into existence in Lydia in the third
or fourth century B.C. That, however, is too late a date. They
are certainly older than that. There is good evidence of them
at least as early as the sixth century. iEschylus twice mentions
inns. His word is "all-receiver," or "all-receiving house." *
Private travellers must have been fairly common in the Greek
world, including its colonies, by this time. But such private
travel was a comparatively new thing then. The early histo-
rians Hecatseus and Herodotus travelled widely. "I suspect,"
says Professor Gilbert Murray, "that this sort of travel 'for
Historic' or 'for discovery' was rather a Greek invention. Solon
is supposed to have practised it; and even Lycurgus." . . .
The earlier travellers were traders travelling in a caravan or in
a shipload, and carrying their goods and their minas and
shekels of metal or gems or bales of fine stuff with them, or
government officials travelling with letters of introduction and
a proper retinue. Possibly there were a few mendicants, and,
in some restricted regions, religious pilgrims.
That earlier world before 600 b.c. was one in which a lonely
"stranger" was a rare and suspected and endangered being.
He might suffer horrible cruelties, for there was little law to
protect such as he. Few individuals strayed therefore. One
' The earliest coinage of the west coast of Asia Minor was in electrum,
a mixture of gold and silver, and there is an interesting controversy as to
whether the first issues were stamped by cities, temples, or private bank-
ers.— P. G.
^ Small change was in existence before the time of Alexander. The
Athenians had a range of exceedingly small silver coins running almost
down to the size of a pinhead which were generally carried in the mouth;
a character in Aristophanes was suddenly assaulted, and swallowed his
change in consequence. — P. G.
'There is an inn-keeper in Aristophanes, but it may be inferred from
the circumstance that she is represented as letting lodgings in hell, that
the early inn left much to be desired. — P. G.
SEA PEOPLES AND TRADING PEOPLES 167
lived and died attached and tied to some patriarchal tribe,
if one was a nomad, or to some great household if one was
civilized or to one of the big temple establishments which we
will presently discuss. Or one was a herded slave. One knew
nothing, except for a few monstrous legends, of the rest of the
world in which one lived. We know more to-day, indeed, of
the world of 600 b.c. than any single living being knew
at that time. We map it out, see it as a whole in relation to
past and future. We begin to learn precisely what was going
on at the same time in Egypt and Spain and Media and India
and China. We can share in imagination, not only the won-
der of Hanno's sailors, but of the men who lit the warning
beacons on the shore. We know that those "mountains flam-
ing to the sky" were only the customary burning of the dry
grass at that season of the year. Year by year, more and more
rapidly, our common knowledge increases. In the years to
come men will understand still more of those lives in the past,
until peihaps they will understand them altogether.
XVI
WETTING
§ 1. Picture-Writing. § 2. SyllaUe-Writing. § 3. Alpha-
bet-Writing. § 4. The Place of Writing in Human Life.
§ 1
IN the four preceding chapters (XII to XV) we have
sketched in broad outline the development of the chief
human communities from the primitive beginnings of the
helioHthic culture to the great historical kingdoms and empires
in the sixth century b.c. We must now study a little more closely
the general process of social change, the growth of human ideas,
and the elaboration of human relationships that was going on
during these ages between 10,000 b.c. and 500 b.c. What we
have done so far is to draw the map and name the chief kings
and empires, to define the relations in time and space of
Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Cnossos, and the like;
we come now to the real business of history, which is to get down
below these outer forms to the thoughts and lives of individual
men.
By far the most important thing that was going on during
those fifty or sixty centuries of social development was the
invention of writing and its gradual progress to importance in
human affairs. It was a new instrument for the human mind,
an enormous enlargenient of its range of action, a new means
of continuity. We have seen how in later Palseolithic and early
Neolithic times the elaboration of articulate speech gave men
a mental handhold for consecutive thought, and a vast en-
largement of their powers of co-operation. For a time this new
acquirement seems to have overshadowed their earlier achieve-
ment of drawing, and possibly it checked the use of gesture.
But drawing presently reappeared again, for record, for signs,
for the joy of drawing. Before real writing came picture-
writing, such as is still practised by the Amerindians, the Bush-
168 '
WRITING 169
men, and savage and barbaric people in all parts of the world.
It is essentially a drawing of things and acts, helped out by
heraldic indications of proper names, and by strokes and dots
to represent days and distances and such-like quantitative ideas.
Quite kindred to such picture-writing is the pictograph that
one finds still in use to-day in international railway time-tables
upon the continent of Europe, where a little black sign of a
cap indicates a stand-up buffet for light refreshments ; a crossed
knife and fork, a restaurant; a little steamboat, a "transfer to
a steamboat ; and a postilion's horn, a diligence. Similar signs
are used in the well-known Michelin guides for automobilists
in Europe, to show a postofSce (envelope) or a telephone (tele-
phone receiver). The quality of hotels is shown by an inn
with one, two, three, or four gables, and so forth. Similarly,
the roads of Europe are marked with wayside signs represent-
ing a gate, to indicate a level crossing ahead, a sinuous bend
for a dangerous curve, and the like. From such pictographic
signs to the first elements of Chinese writing is not a very long
stretch.
In Chinese writing there are still traceable a number of picto-
graphs. Most are now difficult to recognize. A mouth was
originally written as a mouth-shaped hole, and is now, for
convenience of brushwork, squared; a child, originally a rec-
ognizable little mannikin, is now a hasty wriggle and a cross;
the sun, originally a large circle with a dot in the centre, has
been converted, for the sake of convenience of combination, into
a crossed oblong, which is easier to make with a brush. By
combining these pictographs, a second order of ideas is ex-
pressed. For example, the pictograph for mouth combined
with pictograph for vapour expressed "words." ^
From such combinations one passes to what are called ideo-
grams: the sign for "words" and the sign for "tongue" combine
to make "speech" ; the sign for "roof" and the sign for "pig"
make "home" — for in the early domestic economy of China the
pig was as important as it used to be in Ireland. But, as we
have already noted earlier, the Chinese language consists of a
comparatively few elementary monosyllabic sounds, which are
all used in a great variety of meanings, and the Chinese soon
discovered that a number of these pictographs and ideographs
could be used also to express other ideas, not so conveniently
' See the Encyolopcedia Brit., Article China, p. 218.
170 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pictured, but having the same sound. Characters so used are
called phonograms. For example, the sound fang meant not
only "boat," but "a place," "spinning," "fragrant," "inquire,"
and several other meanings according to the context: But while
a boat is easy to draw, most of the other meanings are undraw-
able. Hovr can one draw "fragrant" or "inquire" ? The
Chinese, therefore, took the same sign for all these meanings
of "fang," but added to each of them another distinctive sign,
the determi'native, to show what sort of fang was intended. A
"place" was indicated by the same sign as for "boat" (fang)
and the determinative sign for "earth" ; "spinning" by the sign
for fang and the sign for "silk" ; "inquire" by the sign for fang,
and the sign for "words," and so on.
One may perhaps make this development of pictographs, ideo-
grams, and phonograms a little clearer by taking an analogous
case in English. Suppose we were making up a sort of picture-
writing in English, then it would be very natural to use a square
with a slanting line to suggest a lid, for the word and thing
box. That would be a pictograph. But now suppose we had a
round sign for money, and suppose we put this sign inside the
box sign, that would do for "cash-box" or "treasury." That
would be an ideogram. But the word "box" is used for other
things than boxes. There is the box shrub which gives us box-
wood. It would be hard to draw a recognizable box-tree dis-
tinct from other trees, but it is quite easy to put our sign "box,"
and add our sign for shrub as a determinative to determine that
it is that sort of box and not a common box that we want to
express. And then there is "box," the verb, meaning to fight
with fists. Here, again, we need a determinative; we might
add the two crossed swords, a sign which is used very often
upon maps to denote a battle. A box at a theatre needs yet an-
other determinative, and so we go on, through a long series of
phonograms. .
Wow it is manifest that here in the Chinese writing is a very
peculiar and complex system of sign-writing. A very great
number of characters have to be learnt and the mind habituated
to their use. The power it possesses to carry ideas and discus-
sion is still ungauged by western standards, but we may doubt
whether with this instrument it will ever be possible to establish
such a wide^ common mentality as the simpler and swifter
alphabets' of the western civilizations permit. In China it
WRITING
171
created a special reading-class, the mandarins, wlio were also
the ruling and official class. Their necessary concentration
upon words and classical forms, rather than upon ideas and
realities, seems, in
spite of her com-
parative peaceful-
ness and the very
high individual in-
tellectual quality
of her people, to
have greatly ham-
pered the social
and economic de-
velopment of
China. Protahly
it is the complex-
ity of her speech
and writing, more
than any other
imaginable cause,
that has made
China to-day po-
litically, socially,
and individually a
vast pool of back-
ward people rather
than the foremost
power in the whole
world. ^
§ 2
But while the
Chinese mind thus
made for itself an
instrument which
^ ^^ 1
/j^^2
f.
]Ji''!>'7rZ^« yi^
^^__^^^^^%i^^ \<
^f J
Speaimns cf Tiraericaxi Indian. fnjoioTe-iwiticiff
(after SiiuxJLcraft,.)
No. 1, painted on a rock on the shore of Lake
Superior, records an expedition across the lake, in
which five canoes took part. The upright strokes
in each indicate the number of the crew, and the
bird represents a chief, "The Kingfisher." The
three circles (suns) under the arch (of heaven)
indicate that the voyage lasted three days, and the
tortoise, a symbol of land, denotes a safe arrival.
No. 2 is a petition sent to the United States Con-
gress by a group of Indian tribes, asking for fish-
ing rights in certain small lakes. The tribes are
represented by their totems, martens, bear, man-
fish, and catfish, led by the crane. Lines running
from the heart and eye of each animal to the heart
and eyS' of the crane denote that they are all of
one mind; and a line runs from the eye of the
crane to the lakes, shown in the crude little "map"
in the lower left-hand corner.
'The writer's friend, Mr. L. Y. Chen, thinks that this is only partially
true. He thinks that the emperors insisted upon a minute and rigorous
study of the set classics in order to check intellectual innovation. This
was especially the case with the Ming emperors, the first of whom, when
reorganizing the examination system on a narrower basis, said definitely, *
"This will bring all the intellectuals of the world into my trap." The
Five Classics and the Four Books have imprisoned the mind of China.
172 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
is probably too elaborate in structure, too laborious in use, and
too inflexible in its form to meet the modern need for simpje,
swift, exact, and lucid communications, the growing civiliza-
tions of the west were working out the pi'oblem of a
Written record upon rather different and, on the whole, more
advantageous lines. They did not seek to improve their script
to make it swift and easy, but circumstances conspired to make
it so. The Sumerian picture writing, which had to be done
upon clay and with little styles, which made curved marks
with difficulty and inaccurately, rapidly degenerated by a con-
ventionalized dabbing down of wedged-shaped marks (cunei-
form = wedge-shaped) into almost unrecognizable hints of the
shapes intended. It helped the Sumerians greatly to learn to
write, that they had to draw so badly. They got , very soon
to the Chinese pictographs, ideographs, and phonograms, and
beyond them.
Most people know a sort of puzzle called a rebus. It is a way
of representing words by pictures, not of the things the words
represent, but by the pictures of other things having a similar
sound. For example, two gates and a head is a rebus for Gates-
head ; a little streamlet (beck) , a crowned monarch, and a ham,
Beckingham. The Sumerian language was a language well
adapted to this sort of representation. It was apparently a
language of often quite vast polysyllables, made up of very dis-
tinct inalterable syllables; and many of the syllables taken
separately were the names of concrete things. So that this
cuneiform writing developed very readily into a syllabic way
of writing, in which each sign conveys a syllable just as each
act in a charade conveys a syllable. When presently the Semites
conquered Sumeria, they adapted the syllabic system to their
own speech, and so this writing became entirely a sign-for-a-
sound writing. It was so used by the Assyrians and by the
Chaldeans, But it was not a letter-writing, it was a syllable-
writing. This cuneiform script prevailed for long ages over
Assyria, Babylonia, and the Near East generally; there are
vestiges of it in some of the letters of our alphabet to-day.
§ 3
But, meanwhile, in Egypt and upon the Mediterranean coast
yet another system of writing grew up. Its beginnings are
WRITING 173
probably to be found in the priestly picture-writing: (hiero-
glyphics) of the Egyptians, which alac in the usual ■s'ay became
partly a sound-sign system. As we see it on the Egyptian
monuments, the hieroglyphic writing consists of decorative but
stiff and elaborate forms, but for such purpose as letter-writing
and the keeping of recipes and the like, tlie Egyptian priests
used a much simplified and flowing form of these characters,
the hieratic script. Side by side with this hieratic script rose
another, probably also derivative from the hieroglyphs, a script
now lost to use, which was taken over by various non-Egyptian
peoples in the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians, Libyans,
Lydians, Cretans, and Celt-Iberians, and used for business pur-
poses. Possibly a few letters were borrowed from the later
cuneiform. In the hands of these foreigners this writing was,
so to speak, cut off from its roots ; it lost all but a few traces
of its early pictorial character. It ceased to be pictographic
or ideographic ; it became simply a pure sound-sign system, an
alphabet.
There were a number of such alphabets in the Mediterranean
differing widely from each other. It may be noted that the
Phoenician alphabet (and perhaps others) omitted vowels.
Possibly they pronounced their consonants very hard and had
rather indeterminate vowels, as is said to be still the case with
tribes of South Arabia. Quite probably, too, the Phoenicians
used their alphabet at first not so much for writing as for single
initial letters in their business accounts and tallies. One of
these Mediterranean alphabets reached the Greeks, long after
the time of the Iliad, who presently set to work to make it
express the clear and beautiful sounds of their own highly
developed Aryan speech. It consisted at first of consonants,
and the Greeks added the vowels. They began to write for
record, to help and fix their bardic tradition. . . .
§ 4
So it was by a series of very natural steps that writing grew
out of the life of man. At first and for long ages it was the
interest and the secret of only a few people in a special class,
a mere accessory to the record of pictures. But there were cer-
tain very manifest advantages, quite apart from the increased
expressiveness of mood and qualification, to be gained by making
174 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
writing a little less plain than straightforward pictures, and in
conventionalizing and codifying it. One of these was that so
messages might he sent understandable by the sender and re-
ceiver, but not plain to the uninitiated. Another was that so
one might put down various matters and help one's memory and
the memory of one's friends, without giving away too much
to the common herd. Among some of the earliest Egyptian
writings, for example, are medical recipes and magic formulae.
Accounts, letters, recipes, name lists, itineraries; these were
the earliest of written documents. Then, as the art of writing
and reading spread, came that odd desire, that pathetic desire
so common among human beings, to astonish some strange and
remote person by writing dovsra something striking, some secret
one knew, some strange thought, or even one's name, so that
long after one had gone one's "Wslj, it might strike upon the
sight and mind of another reader. Even in Sumeria men
scratched on walls, and all that remains to us of the ancient
world, its rocks, its buildings, is plastered thickly with the
names and the boasting of those foremost among human adver-
tisers, its kings. Perhaps half the early inscriptions in that
ancient world are of this nature, if, that is, we group with the
name-writing and boasting' the epitaphs, which were probably
in many cases pre-arranged by the deceased.
For long the desire for crude self-assertion of the name-
scrawling sort and the love of secret understandings kept writ-
ing within a narrow scope; but that other, more truly social
desire in men, the desire to tell, was also at work. The pro-
founder possibilities of writing, the possibilities of a vast exten-
sion and definition and settlement of knowledge and tradition,
only grew apparent after long ages. But it will be interesting
at this point and in this connection to recapitulate certain ele-
mental facts about life, upon which we laid stress in our earlier
chapters, because they illuminate not only the huge value of
writing in the whole field of man's history, but also the role
it is likely to play in his future.
1. Life had at first, it must be remembered, only a discon-
tinuous repetition of consciousness, as the old died and the
young were born.
Such a creature as a reptile has in its brain a capacity for
experience, but when the individual dies, its experience dies
with it. Most of its motives are purely instinctive, and all
WRITING 175
the mental life that it has is the result of heredity (birth
inheritance).
2. But ordinary mammals have added to pure instinct tradi-
tion, a tradition of experience imparted by the imitated ex-
ample of the mother, and in the case of such mentally developed
animals as dogs, cats, or apes, by a sort of mute precept also.
For example, the mother cat chastises her young for misbe-
haviour. So do mother apes and baboons.
3. Primitive man added to his powers of transmitting ex-
perience, representative art and speech. Pictorial and sculp-
tured record and verbal tradition began.
Verbal tradition was developed to its highest possibility by
the bards. They did much to make language what it is to the
world to-day.
4. With the invention of writing, which developed out of
pictorial record, human tradition was able to become fuller and
much more exact. Verbal tradition, which had hitherto
changed from age to age, began to be fixed. Men separated by
hundreds of miles could now communicate their thoughts. An
increasing number of human beings began to share a common
written knowledge and a common sense of a past and a future.
Human thinking became a larger operation in which hundreds
of minds in different places and in different ages could react,
upon one another; it became a process constantly more con-
tinuous and sustained. . . .
5. For hundreds of generations the full power of writing
was not revealed to the world, because for a long time the idea
of multiplying writings by taking prints of a first copy did not
become effective. The only way of multiplying writings was
by copying one copy at a time, and this made books costly and
rare. Moreover, the tendency to keep things secret, to make a
cult and mystery of them, and so to gain an advantage over the
generality of men, has always been very strong in men's minds.
It is only nowadays that the' great masses of mankind are learn-
ing to read, and reaching out towards the treasures of knowledge
and thought already stored in books.
IN'evertheless, from the first writings onward a new sort of
tradition, an enduring and immortal tradition, began in the
minds of men. Life, through mankind, grew thereafter more
and more distinctly conscious of itself and its world. It is a
thin streak of intellectual growth we trace in history, at first in
176 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a world of tumultuous ignorance and f orgetf ulness ; it is like a
mere line of light coming through the chink of an opening door
into a darkened room ; but slowly it widens, it grows. At last
came a time in the history of Europe when the door, at the push
of the printer, began to open more rapidly. Knowledge flared
up, and as it flared it ceased to be the privilege of a favoured
minority. For us now that door swings wider, and the light
behind grows brighter. Misty it is still, glowing through clouds
of dust and reek.
The door is not half open ; the light is but a light new lit.
Our world to-day is only in the beginning of knowledge.
XVII
GODS AlifD STAES, PEIESTS AND KINGS
§ 1. The Priest Comes into History. § 2. Priests and the
Stars. § 3. Priests and the Dawn of Learning. § 4. King
against Priest. § 5. How Bel-MarduJc Struggled against the
Kings. § 6. The God-Kings of Egypt. § Y. Shi Hwang-ti
Destroys the Boohs.
§ 1.
WHEN -we direct our attention to these new accumula-
tions of human beings that were beginning in Egypt
and Mesopotamia, we find that one of the most con-
spicuous and constant objects in all these cities is a temple or
a group of temples. In some cases there arises beside it in
these regions a royal palace, but as often the temple towers over
the palace. This presence of the temple is equally true of the
Phoenician cities and of the Greek and Roman as they arise.
The palace of Cnossos, with its signs of comfort and pleasure-
seeking, and the kindred cities of the ^gean peoples, include
religious shrines, but in Crete there are also temples standing
apart from the palatial city-households. All over the ancient
civilized world we find them; wherever primitive civilization
set its foot in Africa, Europe,, or western Asia, a temple arose,
and where the civilization is most ancient, in Egypt and in
Sumer, there the temple is most in evidence. When Hanno
reached what he thought was the most westerly point of Africa,
he set up a temple to Hercules. The beginnings of civilization
and the appearance of temples is siniultaneous in history. The
two things belong together. The beginning of cities is the
temple stage of history.
In all these temples there was a shrine; dominating the
shrine there was commonly a great figure usually of some
monstrous half-animal form, befpre .which stood an altar for
sacrifices. In the Greek and Roman temples however the image
was generally that of a divinity in human form. This figure
177
178 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
was either regarded as the god or as the image or symbol of the
god, for whose worship the temple existed. And connected
with the temple there .were a number, and often a considerable
number, of priests or priestesses, and temple servants, generally
wearing a distinctive costume and forming an important part
of the city population. They belong to no household; they
made up a new kind of household of their own. They were
a caste and a class apart, attracting intelligent recruits from
the general population. .
The primary duty of this priesthood was concerned with the
worship of and the sacrifices to the god of the temple. And
these things were done, not at any time, but at particular times
and seasons. There had come into the life of man with his
herding and agriculture a sense of a difference between the
parts of the year and of a difference between day and day. Men
were beginning to work — and to need days of rest. The temple,
by its festivals, kept count." The temple in the ancient city was
like the clock and calendar upon a writing-desk.
But it was a centre of other functions. It was in the early
temples that the records and tallies of events were kept and
that writing began. And there was knowledge there. The
people went to the temple not only en masse for festivals, but
individually for help. The early priests were also doctors and
magicians. In the earliest temples we already find those little
offerings for some private and particular end, which are still
made in the chapels of Catholic churches to-day, ex votos, little
models of hearts relieved and limbs restored, acknowledgment
of prayers answered and accepted vows.
It is clear that here we have that comparatively unimportant
element in the life of the early nomad, the medicine-man, the
shrine-keeper, and the memorist, developed, with the develop-
ment of the community and as a part of the development of the
community from barbarism to civilized settlement, into some-
thing of very much greater importance. And it is equally evi-
dent that those primitive fears of (and hopes of help from)
strange beings, the desire to propitiate unknown forces, the
primitive desire for cleansing and the primitive craving for
power and knowledge have all contributed to crystallize out this
new social fact of the temple.
The temple was accumulated by complex necessities, it grew
from many roots and needs, and the god or goddess that, domi-
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 179
180 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Dated the temple was the creation of many imaginations and
made up of all sorts of impulses, ideas, and half ideas. Here
there was a god in which one sort of ideas predominated, and
there another. It is necessary to lay some stress upon this
confusion and variety of origin in gods, because there is a. very
abundant literature now in existence upon religious origins,
in which a number of writers insist, some on this leading idea
and some on that — we have noted several in our chapter on
"Early Thought" — as though it were the only idea. Professor
Max Miiller in his time, for example, harped perpetually on
the idea of sun stories and sun worship. He would have had
us think that early man never had lusts or fears, cravings for
power, nightmares or fantasies, but that he meditated per-
petually on the beneficent source of light and life in the sky.
Now 'dawn and sunset are very moving facts in the daily life,
but they are only two among many. Early men, three or four
hundred generations ago, had brains very like our own. The
fancies of our childhood and youth are perhaps the best clue
we have to the ground-stuff of early religion, and anyone who
can recall those early mental experiences will understand^ very
easily the vagueness, the monstrosity, and the incoherent variety
of the first gods. There were sun gods, no doubt, early in the
history of temples, but there were also hippopotamus gods and
hawk gods ; there were cow deities, there were monstrous male
and female gods, there were gods of terror and gods of an ador-
able quaintness, there were gods who were nothing but lumps
of meteoric stone that had fallen amazingly out of the sky, and
gods who were mere natural stones that had chanced to have
a queer and impressive shape. Some gods, like Marduk of
Babylon and the Baal (== the Lord) of the Phoenicians,
Canaanites, and the like, were quite probably at bottom just
legendary wonder beings, such as little boys will invent for
themselves to-day. The settled peoples, it is said, as soon as
they thought of a god, invented a wife for him; most of the
Egyptian and Babylonian gods were married. But the gods
of the nomadic Semites had not this marrying disposition.
Children were less eagerly sought by the inhabitants of the food-
grudging steppes.
Even more natural than to provide a wife for a god is to
give him a house to live in to which offerings can be brought.
Of this house the knowing man, the magician, would naturally
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 181
become the custodian. A certain seclusion, a certain aloofness,
would add greatly to the prestige of the god. The steps by
which the early temple and the early priesthood developed so
soon as an agricultural population settled and increased are all
quite natural and understandable, up to the stage of the long
temple with the image, shrine and altar at one end and the
long nave in which the worshippers stood. And this temple,
because it had records and secrets, because it was a centre of
power, advice, and instruction, because it sought and attracted
imaginative and clever people for its service, naturally became
a kind of brain in the growing community. The attitude of
the common people who tilled the fields and herded the beasts
towards the temple would remain simple and credulous. There,
rarely seen and so imaginatively enhanced, lived the god whose
approval gave prosperity, whose anger meant misfortune; he
could be propitiated by little presents and the help of his
servants could be obtained. He was wonderful, and of such
power and knowledge that it did not do to be disrespectful to
him even in one's thoughts. Within the priesthood, however, a
certain amount of thinking went on at a rather higher level
than that.
§ 2
We may note here a very interesting fact about the chief
temples of Egypt and, so far as we know — because the ruins are
not so distinct — of Babylonia, and that is that they were
"oriented" — that is to say, that the same sort of temple was
built so that the shrine and entrance always faced in the same
direction. In Babylonian temples this was most oftenj due
east, facing the sunrise on March 21st and September 21st,
the equinoxes; and it is to be noted that it was at the spring
equinox that the Euphrates and Tigris came down in flood.
The Pyramids of Gizeh are also oriented east and west, and
the Sphinx faces due east, but very many of the Egyptian
temples to the south of the delta of the Nile do not point due
east, but to the point where the sun rises at the longest day —
and in Egypt the inundation comes close to that date. Others,
however, pointed nearly northward, and others again pointed
to the rising of the star Sirius or to* the rising-point of other
conspicuous stars. The fact of orientation links up with the
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 183
fact that there early arose a close association between various
gods and the sun and various fixed stars. Whatever the mass
of people outside were thinking, the priests of the temples were
beginning to link the movements of those heavenly bodies with
the power in the shrine. They were thinking about the gods
they served and thinking new meanings into them. They were
brooding upon the mystery of the stars. It was very natural
for them to suppose that these shining bodies, so irregularly
distributed and circling so solemnly and silently, must be
charged with portents to mankind.
Among other things, this orientation of the temples served
to fix and help the great annual festival of the New Year. On
one morning in the year, and one morning alone, in a temple
oriented to the rising-place of the sun at Midsummer Day, the
sun's first rays would smite down through the gloom of the
temple and the long alley of the temple pillars, and light up
the god above the altar and irradiate him with glory. The
narrow, darkened structure of the ancient temples seems to
be deliberately planned for such an effect. No doubt the people
were gathered in the darkness before the dawn ; in the darkness
there was chanting and perhaps the offering of sacrifices ; the
god alone stood mute and invisible. Prayers and invocations
would be made. Then upon the eyes of the worshippers,
sensitized by the darkness, as the sun rose behind them, the
god would suddenly shine.
So, at least, one explanation of orientation is found by such
students of orientation as Sir Norman Lockyer.^ Not only is
orientation apparent in most of the temples of Egypt, Assyria,
Babylonia, and the east, it is found in the Greek temples;
Stonehenge is oriented to the midsummer sunrise, and so are
most of the megalithic circles of Europe; the Altar of Heaven
in Peking is oriented to midwinter. In thfe days of the Chinese
Empire, up to a few years ago onfe of the most important of
all the duties of the Emperor of China was to sacrifice and pray
in this temple upon midwinter's day for a propitious year.
The Egyptian priests had mapped out the stars into the
constellations, and divided up the zodiac into twelve signs by
3,000 B.C. . . .
'In his Davm of Astronomy.
184 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
This clear evidence of astronomical inquiry and of a develop-
ment of astronomical ideas is the most obvious, but only the
most obvious evidence of the very considerable intellectual
activities that went on within the temple precincts in ancient
times. There is a curious disposition among many modem
writers to deprecate priesthoods and to speak of priests as though
they had always been impostors and tricksters, preying upon the
simplicity of mankind. But, indeed, they were for long the
only writing class, the only reading public, the only learned
and the only thinkers ; they were all the professional classes of
the time. You could have no intellectual life at all, you could
not get access to literature or any knowledge except through
the priesthood. The temples were not only observatories and
libraries and clinics, they were museums and treasure-houses.
The original Periplus of Hanno hung in one temple in Car-
thage, skins of his "gorillas" were hung and treasured in an-
other. Whatever there was of abiding worth in the life of
the community sheltered there. Herodotus, the early Greek
historian (485-425 B.C.), collected most of his material from
the priests of the countries in which he travelled, and it is
evident they met him generously and put their very considerable
resources completely at his disposal. Outside the temples the
world was still a world of blankly illiterate and unspeculative
human beings, living from day to day entirely for themselves.
Moreover, there is little evidence that the commonalty felt
cheated by the priests, or had anything but trust and affection
for the early priesthoods. Even the great conquerors of later
times were anxious to keep themselves upon the right side of
the priests of the nations and cities whose obedience they de-
sired, because of the immense popular influence of these priests.
ISTo doubt there were great differences between temple and
temple and cult and \;ult in the spirit and quality of the priest-
hood. Some probably were cruel, some vicious and greedy,
many dull and doctrinaire, stupid with tradition, but it has to
be kept in mind that there were distinct limits to the degeneracy
or inefficiency of a priesthood. It had to keep its grip upon
the general mind. It could not go beyond what people would
stand — either towards the darkness or towards the light. Its
authority rested, in the end, on the persuasion that its activities
were propitious.
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 186
§ 4
The earliest civilized goverfiments were essentially priestly
governments. It was not kings and captains who first set men
to the plough and a settled life. It was the ideas of the gods
and plenty, working with the acquiescence of common men.
The early rulers of Sumer we know were all priests, kings
only because they were chief priests. And priestly government
had its own weaknesses as well as its peculiar deep-rooted
strength. The power of a priesthood is a power over their own
people alone. It is a subjugation through mysterious fears and
hopes. The priesthood can gather its people together for war,
but its traditionalism and all its methods unfit it for military
control. Against the enemy without, a priest-led people is feeble.
Moreover, a priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated,
a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an
intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple
and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal
vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives or dies
for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or
village is another temple with another god. It is his constant
preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Eeligious cults
and priesthoods are sectarian by nature ; they will convert, they
will overcome, but they will never coalesce. Our first percep-
tions of events in Sumer, in the dim uncertain light before
history began, is of priests and gods in conflict; until the
Sumerians were conquered by the Semites they were never
united; and the same incurable conflict of priesthoods scars all
the temple ruins of Egypt. It was impossible that it could
have been otherwise, having regard to the elements out of which
religion arose.
It was out of those two main weaknesses of all priesthoods,
namely, the incapacity for efiicient military leadership and their
inevitable jealousy of all other religious cults, that the power
of secular kingship arose. The foreign enemy either prevailed
and set up a king over the people, or the priesthoods who would
not give way to each other set up a common fighting captain,
who retained more or less power in peace time. This secular
king developed a group of ofiicials about him and began, in
relation to military organization, to take a share in the priestly
administration of the people's affairs. So, growing out of
priestcraft and beside the priest, the king, the protagonist of
186
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the priest, appears upon the stage of human history, and a
very. large amount of the subsequent experiences of mankind
is only to be understood as an elaboration, complication, and
J.*<.TI.
7^n 2Wifrtan. King S his Chief T^izusber
distortion of the struggle, unconscious or deliberate, between
these two systems of human control, the temple and the palace.
And it was in the original centres of civilization that this
antagonism was most completely developed. The barbaric
Aryan peoples, who became ultimately the masters of all the
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 187
ancient civilizations of the Orient and of the western world,
never passed through a phase of temple rule on their way to
civilization; they came to civilization late; they found that
drama already half-played. They took over the ideas of hoth
temple and kingship, when those ideas were already elaborately
developed, from the more civilized Hamitic or Semitic people
they conquered.
The greater importance of the gods and the priests in the
earlier history of the Mesopotamian civilization is very appar-
ent, but gradually the palace won its way until it was at last
in a position to struggle definitely for the supreme power. At
first, in the story, the palace is ignorant and friendless in the
face of the temple ; the priests alone read, the priests alone know
the people are afraid of them. But in the dissensions of the
various cults comes the opportunity of the palace. From other
cities, from among captives, from defeated or suppressed re-
ligious cults, the palace gets men who also can read and who
can do magic things.-^ The court also becomes a centre of
writing and record; the king thinks for himself and becomes
politic. Traders and foreigners drift to the court, and if the
king has not the full records and the finished scholarship of the
priests, he has a wider and fresher first-hand knowledge of
many things. The priest comes into the temple when he is
very young; he passes many years as a neophyte; the path of
learning the clumsy letters of primitive times is slow and toil-
some ; he becomes erudite and prejudiced rather than a man of
the world. Some of the more activ&minded young priests may
even cast envious eyes at the king's service. There are many
complications and variations in this ages-long drama of the
struggle going on beneath the outward conflicts of priest and
king, between the made man and the born man, between learn-
ing and originality, between established knowledge and settled
usage on the one hand, and creative will and imagination on
the other. It is not always, as we shall find later, the priest
who is the conservative and unimaginative antagonist. Some-
times a king struggles against narrow and obstructive priest-
hoods; sometimes priesthoods uphold the standards of civiliza-
tion against savage, egotistical, or reactionary kings.
*Cp. Moses and the Egyptian Magicians.
188 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
One or two outstanding facts and incidents of the early stages
of this fundamental struggle in political affairs are all that we
can note here between 4,000 b.c. and the days of Alexander.
§ 5
In the early days of Sumeria and Akkadia the city-kings
were priests and medicine-men rather than, kings, and it was
only when foreign conquerors sought to establish their hold in
relation to existing institutions that the distinction of priest and
king became definite. But the god of the priests remained as
the real overlord of the land and of priest and king alike. He
was the universal landlord; the wealth and authority of his
temples and establishments outshone those of the king. Espe-
cially was this the case within the city walls. Hammurabi, the
founder of the first Babylonian empire, is one of the earlier
monarehs whom we find taking a firm grip upon the affairs of
the 6onmiunity, He does it with the utmost politeness to the
gods. In an inscription recording his irrigation work in
Sumeria and Akkadia, he begins: "When Anu and Bel en-
trusted me with the rule of Sumer and Akkad ." We
possess a code of laws made by this same Hammurabi — it is
the earliest known code of law — and at the head of this code
we see the figure of Hammurabi receiving the law from its
nominal promulgator, the god Shamash.
An act of great political importance in the conquest of any
city was the carrying off of its god to become a subordinate in
the temple of its conqueror. This was far more important than
the subjugation of king by king. Merodach, the Babylonian
Jupiter, was carried off by the Elamites, and Babylon
did not feel independent until its return. But sometimes a
conqueror was afraid of the god he had conquered. In the col-
lection of letters addressed to Amenophis III and IV at Tel-
Amarna in Egypt, to which allusion has already been made,
is one from a certain king, Tushratta, King of Mitanni, who
has conquered Assyria and taken the statue of the goddess
Ishtar, Apparently he has sent this statue into Egypt, partly
to acknowledge the overlordship of Amenophis, but partly be-
cause he fears her anger. (Winckler.) In the Bible is related
(Sam. i. v. 1) how the Ark of the Covenant of the God of the
Hebrews was carried off by the Philistines, as a token of con-
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 189
quest, into the temple of the fish god, Dagon, at Ashdod, and
how Dagon fell down and was broken, and how the people of
Ashdod were smitten with disease. In the latter story par-
ticularly, the gods and priests fill the scene ; there is no king in
evidence at all.
Eight through the history of the Babylonian and Assyrian
empires no monarch seems to have felt his tenure of power
secure in Babylon until he had "taken the hand of Bel" —
that is to say, that he had been adopted by the priesthood of
"Bel" as the god's son and representative. As our knowledge
of Assyrian and Babylonian history grows clearer, it becomes
plainer that the politics of that world, the revolutions, usurpa-
tions, changes of dynasty, intrigues with foreign powers, turned
largely upon issues between the great wealthy priesthoods and
the growing but still inadequate power of the monarchy. The
king relied on his army, and this was usually a mercenary army
of foreigners, speedily mutinous if there was no pay or plunder,
and easily bribed.. We have already noted the name of Sen-
nacherib, the son of Sargon II, among the monarchs of the
Assyrian empire. Sennacherib was involved in a violent quar-
rel with the priesthood of Babylon ; he never "took the hand of
Bel" ; and finally stnick at that power by destroying altogether
the holy part of the city of Babylon (691 b.c.) and removing
the statue of Bel-Marduk to Assyria. He was assassinated by
one of his sons, and his successor, Esar-haddon (his son, but
not the son who was his assassin), found it expedient to restore
Bal-Marduk and rebuild his temple, and make his peace with
the god.
Assurbanipal (Greek, Sardanapalus), the son of this Esar-
haddon, is a particularly interesting figure from this point of
view of the relationship of priesthood and king. His father's
reconciliation with the priests of Bel-Marduk went so far that
Sardanapalus was given a Babylonian instead of a military
Assyrian education. He became a great collector of the clay
documents of the past, and his library, which has been un-
earthed, is now the most precious source of historical material
in the world. But for all his learning hei kept his grip on the
Assyrian army ; he made a temporary conquest of Egypt, sup-
pressed a rebellion in Babylon, and carried out a number of
successful expeditions. As we have already told in Chapter
XIV, he was almost the last of the Assyrian monarchs. The
190
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Aryan tribes, who knew more of war than of priestcraft, and
particulariy the Scythians, the Medes and Persians, had long
been pressing upon Assyria from the north and north-east.
The Medes and Persians formed an alliance with the nomadic
Semitic Chaldeans of the south for the joint undoing of Assyria.
Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, fell to these Aryans in 606 B.C.
Sixty-seven years after the taking of Nineveh by the Aryans,
which left Babylonia to the Semitic Chaldeans, the last mon-
arch of the Chal-
dean Empire (the
Second Babylonian
Empire); Naboni-
dus, the father of
Belshazzar, was
overthrown by Cy-
rus, the Persian.
This Nabonidus,
again, was a highly
educated monarch,
who brought far too
much intelligence
and imagination
and not enough of
the short range wis-
dom of this world to
affairs of state. He
conducted antiqua-
rian researches, and
to his researches it
is that we owe the date of 3,750 e.g., assigned to Sargon I
and still accepted by many authorities. He was proud of this
determination, and left inscriptions to record it. It is clear he
was a religious innovator; he built and rearranged temples and
attempted to centralize religion in Babylon by bringing a num-
ber of local gods to the temple of Bel-Marduk. No doubt he
realized the weakness and disunion of his empire due to these
conflicting cults, and had some conception of unification in
his mind.
Events were marching too rapidly for any such development.
His innovation had manifestly raised the suspicion and hos-
tility of the priesthood of Bel. They sided with the Persians.
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 191
■'The soldiers of Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting."
Kabonidus was taken prisoner, and Persian sentinels were set
at the gates of the temple of Bel, "where the services continued
without intermission."
Cyrus did, in fact, set up the Persian Empire in Babylon
with the blessing of Bel-Marduk. He gratified the conservative
instincts of the priests by packing ofE the local gods back to
their ancestral temples. He also restored the Jews to Jerusa-
lem.^ These were merely matters of immediate policy to him.
But in bringing in the irreligious Aryans, the ancient priest-
hood was paying too highly for the continuation of its temple
services. It would have been wiser to have dealt with the inno-
vations of Nabonidus, that earnest heretic, to have listened
to his ideas, and to have met ,the needs of a changing world.
Cyrus entered Babylon 539 b.c. ; by 521 B.C. Babylon was in
insurrection again, and in 520 b.c. another Persian monarch,
Darius, was pulling down her walls. Within two hundred
years the life had altogether gone out of those venerable rituals
of Bel-Marduk, and the temple of Bel-Marduk was being used
by builders as a quarry.
§ 6
The story of priest and king in Egypt is similar to, but by
no means parallel with, that of Babylonia. The kings of
Sumeria and Assyria were priests who had become kings ; they
were secularized priests. The Pharaoh of Egypt does not ap-
pear to have followed precisely that line. Already in the very
oldest records the Pharaoh has a power, and importance ex-
ceeding that of any priest. He is, in fact, a god, and more
than either priest or king. We do not know how he got to
that position., No monarch of Sumeria or Babylonia or Assyria
could have induced his people to do for him what the great
pyramid-building Pharaohs of the IVth Dynasty made their
people do in those vast erections. The earlier Pharaohs were
Qot improbably regarded as incarnations of the dominant god.
The falcon god Horus sits behind the head of the great statue of
Chephren. So late a monarch as Rameses III (XlXth
Dynasty) is represented upon his sarcophagus (now at Cam-
'See the last two verses of the Second Book of Chroniolesi and Ezra,
Jh. i.
192
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
bridge) bearing the distinctive symbols of tbe three great gods
of the Egyptian system. He carries the two sceptres of Osiris,
the god of Day and Resurrection ; upon his head are the horns
of the cow goddess Hathor, and also the sun ball and feathers
of Ammon Ka. He
is not merely
wearing the sym-
bols of these gods
as a devout Babyr
Ionian might wear
the symbols of Bei-
M a r d 11 k; he is
these three gods in
one.
We find also a
number of sculp-
tures and paintings
to enforce the idea
that the Pharaohs
were the actual
sons of gods. The
divine fathering
and birth of Ame-
nophis III, for in-
stance (ofthe
XVIIIth Dynas-
ty) , is displayed
i n extraordinary
detail in a series
of sculptures at
Luxor. Moreover,
it was held that
the Pharaohs, be-
ing of so divine a
strain, could not
marry common
as-Osivis- —
hebvam live
apAAess-es'
"Naphiiajs-
axuL Isis...
"RelieP otx tJi* covev oC iiie. s'a.'coophamis- (air
Caxtihri^M)' Imar ohax^e..
Inscription (round the edges of cover) as far as
decipherable: —
"Osiris, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, lord
of the two countries . . . son of the Sun, beloved
of the gods, lord of diadems, Rameses, prince of
Heliopolis, triumphant! Thou art in the condi-
tion of a god, thou shalt arise as Usr, there is no
enemy to thee, 1 give to thee triumph among
them. . . ." Budge, Catalogue, Egyptian Collec-
tion, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
clay, and consequently they were accustomed to marry blood
relations within the degrees of consanguinity now prohibited,
even marrying their sisters.
. The struggle between palace and temple came into Egyptian
history, therefore, at a different angle from that at which it came
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 193
into Babylonia. Nevertheless, it came in. Professor Maspero
(in his New Light on Ancient Egypt) gives a very interesting
account of the struggle of Amenophis IV with the priesthoods,
and particularly with priests of the great god, Ammon Ra, Lord
of Karnak. The mother of Amenophis IV was not of the race
of Pharaoh; it would seerd that his father, Amenophis III,
made a love match with a subject, a beautiful Syrian named
Tii, and Professor Maspero finds in the possible opposition to
and annoyance of this queen by the priests of Ammon Ea the
beginnings of the quarrel. She may, he thinks, have inspired
her son with a fanatical hatred of Ammon Ea. But Amenophis
IV may have had a wider view. Like the Babylonian Nabo-
nidus, who lived a thousand years later, he may have had in
mind the problem of moral unity in his empire. We have al-
ready noted that Amenophis III ruled from Ethiopia to the
Euphrates, and that the store of letters to himself and his
son found at Tel-Amarna show a very wide range of interest and
influence. At any rate, Amenophis IV set himself to close all
the Egyptian and Syrian temples, to put an end to all sectarian
worship throughout his dominions, and to establish everywhere
the worship of one god, Aton, the solar disk. He left his capital,
Thebes, which was even more the city of Ammon Ea than later
Babylon was the city of Bel-Marduk, and set up his capital
at Tel-Amarna ; he altered his name from "Amenophis," which
consecrated him to Ammon (Amen) to "Akhnaton," the Sun's
Glory ; and he held his own against all the priesthoods of his
empire for eighteen years and died a Pharaoh.
Opinions upon Amenophis IV, or Akhnaton, differ very
widely. There are those who regard him as the creature of his
mother's hatred of Ammon and the uxorious spouse of a beauti-
ful wife. Certainly he loved his wife very passionately; he
showed her great honour — Egypt honoured women, and was
ruled at different times by several queens — and he was sculp-
tured in one instance with his wife seated upon his knees, and
in another in the act of kissing her in a chariot; but men who
live under the sway of their womenkind do not sustain great
empires in the face of the bitter hostility of the most influential
organized bodies in their realm. Others write of him as a
"gloomy fanatic." Matrimonial bliss is rare in the cases of
gloomy fanatics. It is much more reasonable to regard him
as the Pharaoh who refused to be a god. It is not simply his
194
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
religious policy and Ms frank display of natural affection that
seem to mark a strong and very original personality. His
aesthetic ideas were his own. He refused to have his portrait
conventionalized into the customary smooth beauty of the
Pharaoh god, and his face looks out at us across an interval of
thirty-four centu-
ries, a man amidst
ranks of divine in-
sipidities.
A reign of eigh-
teen years was not
long enough for
the revolution he
contemplated, and
his son-in-law who
succeeded him
went back to
Thebes and made
his peace with
Ammon E,a.
To the very end
of the story the di-
vinity of kings
haunted the Egyp-
tian mind, and in-
fected the thoughts
of intellectually
healthier races.
When Alexander
the Great reached
Babylon, the pres-
tige of Bel-Marduk
was already far gone in decay, but in Egypt, Ammon Ha was
still god enough to make a snob of the conquering Grecian.
The priests of Ammon Ea, about the time of the XVIIIth or
XlXth Dynasty (circa 1,400 B.C.), had set up in an oasis of
the desert a temple and oracle. Here was an image of the god
which could speak, move its head, and accept or reject scrolls
of inquiry. This oracle was still flourishing in 332 b.c. The
young master of the world, it is related, made a special journey
to visit it ; he came into the sanctuary, and the image advanced
[basedon,-the cast a± Cairo , & t?ie reUjifs in iluz
Berlia. Museum. J
GODS AND STARS, PRIESTS AND KINGS 195
out of the darkness at the back to meet him. There was an
impressive exchange of salutations. Some such formula as this
must have been used (says Professor Maspero) : "Come, son
of my loins, who loves me so that I give thee the royalty of
Ka and the royalty of Horus ! I give thee valiance, I give
thee to hold all countries and all religions under thy feet ; I give
thee to strike all the peoples united together with thy arm!"
So it was that the priests of Egypt conquered their conqueror,
and an Aryan monarch first became a god.
§ 7
The struggle of priest and king in China cannot be discussed
here at any length. It was different again, as in Egypt it was
different from Babylonia, but we find the same effort on the
part of the ruler to break up tradition because it divides up the
people. The Chinese Emperor, the "Son of Heaven," was
himself a high-priest, and his chief duty was sacrificial ; in the
more disorderly phases of Chinese history he ceases to rule and
continues only to sacrifice. The literary class was detached
from the priestly class at an early date. It became a bureau-
cratic body serving the local kings and rulers. That is a funda-
mental difference between the history of China and any Western
history. While Alexander was overrunning Western Asia,
China, under the last priest-emperors of the Chow Dynasty, was
sinking into a state of great disorder. Each province clung to
its separate nationality and traditions, and the Huns spread
from province to province. The King of T'sin (who lived about
eighty years after Alexander the Great) , impressed by the mis-
chief tradition was doing in the land, resolved to destroy the
entire Chinese literature, and his son, Shi Hwang-ti, the "first
universal Emperor," made a strenuous attempt to seek out and
destroy all the existing classics. They vanished while he ruled,
and he ruled without tradition, a^d welded China into a unity
that endured for some centuries ; but when he had passed, the
hidden books crept out again. China remained united, though
not under his descendants, but after a civil war under a fresh
dynasty, the Han Dynasty (206 e.g.). The first Han mon-
arch did not sustain this campaign of Shi Hwang-ti against the
litercdi, and his successor made his peace with them and restored
the texts of the classics.
XVIII
SEEFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES, AND FKEE
INDIVIDUALS
§ 1. The Common Man in Ancient Times. § 2. The Earliest
Slaves. § 3. The First "Independent" Persons. § 4. So-
cial Classes Three Thousand Years Ago. § 5. Classes Hard-
ening into Castes. § 6. Caste in India. § 7. The System,
of the Mandarins. § 8. A Summary of Five Thousand
Years.
§ 1
WE have been sketching in the last four chapters the
growth of civilized states out of the primitive Neolithic
agriculture that began in Mesopotamia perhaps 15,000
years ago. It was at first horticulture rather than agriculture ;
it was done with the hoe before the plough, and at first it was
quite supplementary to the sheep, goat, and cattle tending that
made the "living" of the family tribe. We have traced the broad
outlines of the development in regions of exceptional fruitful-
ness of the first settled village communities into more populous
towns and cities, and the growth of the village shrine and the
village medicine-man into the city temple and the city priest-
hood. We have noted the beginnings of organized war, first as
a fiickering between villages, and then as a more disciplined
struggle between the priest-king and god of one city and those
of another. Our story has passed on rapidly from the first
indications of conquest and empire in Sumer, 6,000 or 7,000
B.C., to the spectacle of great empires growing up, with roads
and armies, with inscriptions and written documents, with edu-
cated priesthoods and kings and rulers sustained by a tradition
already ancient. We have traced in broad outline the appear-
ance and conflicts and replacements of these empires of the
great rivers. We have directed attention, in particular, to the
evidence of a development of still wider political ideas as we
196
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 197
find it betrayed by the actions and utterances of such men as
Nabonidus and Amenophis IV. It has been an outline of the
accuinulations of human experience for ten or fifteen thousand
years, a vast space of time in comparison with all subsequent
history, but a brief period when we measure it against the suc-
cession of endless generations that intervenes between us and the
first rude flintrusing human creatures of the Pleistocene dawn.
But for these last four chapters we have been writing almost
entirely not about mankind generally, but only about the men
who thought, the men who could draw and read and write, the
men who were altering their world. Beneath their activities
what was the life of the mute multitude?
The life of the common man was, of course, affected and
changed by these things, just as the lives of the domestic animals
and the face of the cultivated country were changed ; but for the
most part it was a change suffered and not a change in which
the common man upon the land had any voice or will. Eeading
and writing were not yet for the likes of him. He went on
cultivating his patch, loving his wife and children, beating his
dog and tending his beasts, grumbling at hard times, fearing
the magic of the priests and the power of the gods, desiring
little more except to be left alone by the powers above him. So
he was in 10,000 b.c. ; so he was, unchanged in nature and out-
look, in the time of Alexander the Great; so over the greater
part of the world he remains to-day. He got rather better tools,
better seeds, better methods, a slightly sounder house, he sold
his produce in a more organized market as civilization pro-
gressed. A certain freedom and a certain equality passed out
of human life when men ceased to wander. Men paid in liberty
for safety, shelter, and regular meals. By imperceptible de-
grees the common man found the patch he cultivated was not
his own; it belonged to the god; and he had to pay a fraction
of his produce to the god. Or. the god had given it to the king,
who exacted his rent and tax. Or the king had given it to an
official, who was the lord of the common man. And sometimes
the god or the king or the noble had work to be done, and then
the common man had to leave his patch and work for his master.
How far the patch he cultivated was his own was never very
clear to him. In ancient Assyria the land seems to have been
held as a sort of freehold and the occupier paid taxes ; in Baby-
lonia the land was the god's, and he permitted the cultivator to
198 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
work thereon. In Egypt the temples or Pharaoh-the-god or tihe
nobles under Pharaoh were the owners and rent receivfers. But
the cultivator was not a slave ; he was a peasant, and only bound
to the land in so far that there was nothing else for him to do
but cultivate, and nowhere else for him to go. He lived in a
village or town, and went out to his work. The village, to begin
with, was often merely a big household of related people under
a patriarch headman, the early town a group of householders
under its elders. There was no process of enslavement as
civilization grew, but the headmen and leaderly men grew
in power and authority, and the common men did not keep
pace with them, and fell into a tradition of dependence and
subordination.
On the whole, the common men were probably well content
to live under lord or king or god and obey their bidding. It
was safer. It was easier. All animals — and man is no excep-
tioii — ^begin life as dependents. Most men never shake them-
selves loose from the desire for leading and protection.^
§ 2
The earlier wars did not involve remote or prolonged cam-
paigns, and they were waged by levies of the common people.
But war brought in a new source of possessions, plunder, and a
new social factor, the captive. In the earlier, simpler days of
war, the captive man was kept only to be tortured or sacrificed
to the victorious god; the captive women and children were
assimilated into the tribe. But later many captives were spared
to be slaves because they had exceptional gifts or peculiar arts.
It would be the kings and captains who would take these slaves
at first, and it would speedily become apparent to them that
these men were much more their own than were the peasant
cultivators and common men of their own race. The slave could
be commanded to do all sorts of things for his master that the
quasi-free common man would not do so willingly because of
his attachment to his own patch of cultivation. From a very
early period the artificer was often a household slave, and the
'There were literary expressions of social discontent in Egypt before
2,000 B.C. See "Social Forces and Religion" in Breasted's Religion <md
Thought in Ancient Egypt for some of the earliest complaints of the com-
mon man under the ancient civilizations.
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES
199
manufacture of trade goods, pottery, textiles, metal ware, and
60 forth, such as went on vigorously in the household city of the
Minos of Cnossos, was probably a slave industry from the be-
ginning. Sayce, in his Babylonians and Assyrians, quotes
Babylonian agreements for the teaching of trades to slaves, and
dealing with the exploitation of slave products. Slaves pro-
duced slave children, enslavement in discharge of debts added
to the slave population; it is probable that as the cities grew
larger, a larger part of the new population consisted of these
slave artificers and slave servants in the large households. They
were by no means abject slaves; in later Babylon their lives
and property were protected by elaborate laws. Nor were
£^fptiazi peasants- seizecLiop tion-paipmtit of taxes'... (Pip-amicL S^)
they all outlanders. Parents might sell their children into
slavery, and brothers their orphan sisters. Free men who had
no means of livelihood would even sell themselves into slavery.
And slavery was the fate of the insolvent debtor. Craft ap-
prenticeship, again, was a sort of fixed-term slavery. Out of
the slave population, by a converse process, arose the freed-man
and freed-woman, who worked for wages and had still more
definite individual rights. Since in Babylon slaves could them-
selves own property, many slaves saved up and bought
themselves. Probably the town slave was often better off and
practically as free as the cultivator of the soil, and as the rural
population increased, its sons and daughters came to mix with
and swell the growing ranks of artificers, some bound, some
free.
As the eixtent and complexity of government increased, the
number of households multiplied. Under the king's household
grew up the households of his great ministers and officials, under
200 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the temple grew up the personal households of temple func-
tionaries; it is not difficult to realize how houses and patches
of land would become more and more distinctly the property
of the occupiers, and more and more definitely alienated from
the original owner-god. The earlier empires in Egypt and
China both passed into a feudal stage, in which families, origi-
nally official, became for a time independent noble families. In
the later stages of Babylonian civilization we find an increasing
propertied class of people appearing in the social structure,
neither slaves nor peasants nor priests nor officials, but widows
and descendants of such people, or successful traders and the
like, and all masterless folk. Traders came in from the out-
side. Babylon was full of Aramean traders, who had great
establishments, with slaves, freed-men, employees of all sorts.
Their book-keeping was a serious undertaking. It involved
storing a great multitude of earthenware tablets in huge earthen-
ware jars.) Upon this gathering mixture of more or less free
and detached people would live other people, traders, merchants,
small dealers, catering for their needs. Sayce (op. cit.) gives
the particulars of an agreement for the setting up and stocking
of a tavern and beerhouse, for example. The passer-by, the man
who happened to be about, had come into existence.
But another and far less kindly sort of slavery also arose in
the old civilization, and that was gang slavery. If it did not
figure very largely in the cities, it was very much in evidence
elsewhere. The king was, to begin with, the chief entrepreneur.
He made the canals and organized the irrigation (e.g. Ham-
murabi's enterprises noted in the previous chapter). He ex-
ploited mines. He seems (at Cnossos, e.g.) to have organized
manufactures for export. The Pharaohs of the 1st Dynasty
were already working the copper and turquoise mines in the
peninsula of Sinai. For many such purposes gangs of captives
were cheaper and far more controllable than levies of the king's
own people. From an early period, too, captives may have
tugged the oars of the galleys, though Torr (Ancient Ships)
notes that up to the age of Pericles (450 b.c.) the free Athenians
were not above this task. And the monarch also found slaves
convenient for his military expeditions. They were uprooted
men ; they did not fret to go home, because they had no homes
to go to. The Pharaohs hunted slaves in itfubia, in order to
have black troops for their Syrian expeditions. Closely allied
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES
201
to such slave troops were the mercenary barbaric troops the
monarchs caught into their service, not by .positive compulsion,
but by the bribes of food and plunder and under the pressure
of need. As the old civilization developed, these mercenary
armies replaced the national levies of the old order more and
more, and servile gang labour became a mere and more impor-
tant and significant factor in the economic system. From mines
and canal and wall building, the servile gang spread into culti-
BraivL among; boatmen... (From, tomb of Ptah-heisSp — — Piji-amid A<gc)«
vation. TsTobles and temples adopted the gang-slave system for
their works. Plantation gangs began to oust the patch cultiva-
tion of the labourer-serf in the case of some staple products. . . .
§ 3
So, in a few paragraphs, we trace the development of the
simple social structure of the early Sumerian cities to the com-,
plex city crowds, the multitude of individuals varying in race,
tradition, education, and function, varying in wealth, free-
dom, authority, and: usefulness, in the great cities of the last
thousand years B.C. The most notable thing of all is the gradual
increase amidst this heterogeneous multitude of what we may
call free individuals, detached persons who are neither priests,
nor kings, nor officials, nor serfs, nor slaves, who are under
no great pressure to work, who have time to read and inquire.
They appear side by side with the development of social security
and private property. Coined money and monetary reckoning
developed. The operations of the Arameans and such-like
Semitic trading people led to the organization of credit and
monetary security. In the earlier days almost the only prop-
erty, except a few movables, consisted of rights in land and in
202 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
houses; later, one could deposit and lend securities, could go
away and return to find one's property faithfully held and
secure. Towards the middle of the period of the Persian Em-
pire there lived one free individual, Herodotus, who has a great
interest for us because he was among the first writers of critical
and intelligent history, as distinguished from a mere priestly
or court chronicle. It is worth while to glance here very briefly
at the circumstances of his life. Later on we shall quote from
his history.
We have already noted the conquest of Babylonia by the
Aryan Persians under Cyrus in 539 b.c. We have noted,
further, that the Persian Empire spread into Egypt, where its
hold was precarious; and it extended also over Asia Minor.
Herodotus was bom about 484 b.c. in a Greek city of Asia
Minor, Halicarnassus, which was under the overlordship of the
Persians, and directly under the rule of a political boss or
tyrant. There is no sign that he was obliged either to work
for a living or spend very much time in the administration of
his property. We do not know the particulars of his affairs,
but it is clear that in this minor Greek city, under foreign
rule, he was able to obtain and read and study manuscripts
of nearly everything that had been written in the Greek lan-
guage before his time. He travelled, so far as one can gather,
with freedom and comfort about the Greek archipelagoes; he
stayed wherever he wanted to stay, and he seems to have found
comfortable accommodation; he went to Babylon and to Susa,
the new capital the Persians had set up in Babylonia to the
east of the Tigris ; he toured along the coast of the Black Sea,
and accumulated a considerable amount of knowledge about
the Scythians, the Aryan people who were then distributed over
South Russia; he went to the south of Italy, explored the
antiquities of Tyre, coasted Palestine, landed at Gaza, and made
a long stay in Egypt. He went about Egypt looking at temples
and monuments and gathering information. We know not only
from him, but from other evidence, that in those days the older
temples and the pyramids (which were already nearly three
thousand years old) were visited by strings of tourists, a special
sort of priests acting as guides. The inscriptions the sightseers
scribbled upon the walls remain to this day, and many of them
have been deciphered and published.
As his knowledge accumulated, he conceived the idea of writ-
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES
203
204 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ing a great history of tlie attempts of Persia to sutdue Greece,
But in order to introduce that history he composed an account
of the past of Greece, Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt,
Scythia, and of the geography and peoples of those countries.
He then set himself, it is said, to make his history known among
his friends in Halicamassus by reciting it to them, but they
failed to appreciate it ; and he, then betook himself to Athens,
the most flourishing of all Greek cities at that time. There his
work was received with applause. We find him in the centre
of a brilliant circle of intelligent and active-minded people, and
the city authorities voted him a reward of ten talents (a sum
of money equivalent to £2,400), in recognition of his literary
achievement. ... . " •
But we will not complete the biography of this most inter-
esting man, nor will we enter into any criticism of his gjarrulous,
marvel-telling, and most entertaining history. It is a book to
which all intelligent readers come sooner or later, abounding aa
it does in illuminating errors and Boswellian charm. We give
these particulars here simply to show that in the fifth century
B.C. a new factor was becoming evident in human affairs. Eead-
ing and writing had already long escaped from the teihple pre-
cincts and the ranks of the court scribes. Record was no longer
confined to court and temple. A new sort of people, these peo-
ple of leisure and independent means, were asking questions,
exchanging knowledge and views, and developing ideas. So be-
neath the march of armies and the policies of monarchs, and
above the common lives of illiterate and incurious men, we
note the beginnings of what is becoming at last nowadays a
dominant power in human affairs, the free intelligence of
mankind.
Of that free intelligence we shall have more to say when in
a subsequent chapter we tell, of the Greeks.
§ 4
We may summarize the discussion of the last two chapters
here by making a list of the chief elements in this complicated
accumulation of human beings which made up the later Baby-
lonian and Egyptian civilizations of from two thousand five
hundred to three thousand years ago. These elements grew up
and became distinct one from another in the great river valleys
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 205
of the A^orid in the course of five or six thousand years. They
developed mental dispositions and traditions and attitudes of
thought one to another. The civilization in which we live to-
day is simply carrying on and still further developing and work-
ing out and rearranging these relationships. This is the world
from which we inherit. It is only by the attentive study of
their origins that we can detach ourselves from the prejudices
and immediate ideas of the particular class to which we may
belong, and begin to understand the social and political questions
of our own time.
(1) First, then, came the priesthood, the temple system,
which was the nucleus and the guiding intelligence about which
the primitive civilizations grew. It was still in these later days
a great power in the World, the chief repository of knowledge
and tradition, an influence over the lives of every one, and a
binding force to hold the community together. But it was no
longer all-powerful, because its nature made it conservative and
iniadaptable. It no longer monopolized knowledge nor initiated
fresh ideas.' Learning had already leaked out to other less
pledged and controlled people, who thought for themselves.
About the temple system were grouped its priests and priestesses,
its scribes, its physicians, its magicians, its lay brethren, treas-
urers, managers, directors, and the like. It owned great prop-
erties and often hoarded huge treasures.
(2) Over against the priesthood, and originally arising out
of it, was the court system, headed by a king or a "king of
kings," who was in later Assyria and Babylonia a sort of cap-
tain and lay controller of affairs, and in Egypt a god-man, who
had released himself from the control of his priests. About
the monarch were accumulated his scribes, counsellors, record
keepers, agents, captains, and guards. Many of his officials,
particularly- his provincial officials, had great subordinate estab-
lishments, and were constantly tending to become independent.
The nobility of the old river valley civilizatioiis arose out of
the court system. It was, therefore, a different thing in its
origins from the nobility of the early Aryans, which was a re-
publican nobility of elders and leading men.
(3) At the base of the social pyramid was the large and most
necessary class in the community, the tillers of the soil. Their
status varied from age to age and in different lands ; they were
206 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
free peasants paying taxes, or serfs of tlie god, or serfs op
tenants of king or noble, or of a private owner, paying him a
rent; in most cases tax or rent was paid in produce. In the
states of the river valleys they were high cultivators, cultivating
comparatively small holdings; they. lived together for safety
in villages, and had a common interest in maintaining their irri-
gation channels and a sense of community in their village life
The cultivation of the soil is an exacting occupation; the sea-
sons and the harvest sunsets will not wait for men ; children can
be utilized at an early age, and so the cultivator class is gen-
erally a poorly educated, close-toiling class, superstitious by
reason of ignorance and the uncertainty of the seasons, ill-in-
formed and easily put upon. It is capable at times of great
passive resistance, but it has no purpose in its round but crops
and crops, to keep out of debt and hoard against bad times. So
it has remained to our own days over the greater part of Europe
and Asia.
(4) Differing widely in origin and quality from the tillers
of the soil was the aHisan class. At first, this was probably
in part a town-slave class, in part it consisted of peasants who
had specialized upon a craft; But in developing an art and
mystery of its own, a technique that had to be learnt before it
could be practised, each sort of craft probably developed a cer-
tain independence and a certain sense of community of its own.
The artisans were able to get together and discuss their affairs
more readily than the toilers on the land, and they were able
to form guilds to restrict output, maintain rates of pay, and
protect their common interest.
(5) As the power of the Babylonian rulers spread out beyond
the original areas of good husbandry into grazing regions and
less fertile districts, a class of herdsmen came into existence.
In the case of Babylonia these were nomadic Semites, the
Bedouin, like the Bedouin of to-day. They probably grazed
their flocks over great areas much as the sheep ranchers of
California do. They were paid and esteemed much more highly
than the husbandmen.
(6) The first merchants in the world were shipowners like
the people of Tyre and Onossos, or nomads who carried and
traded goods as they wandered between one area of primitive
civilization and another. In the Babylonian and Assyrian
world the traders were predominantly the Semitic Arameans,
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 207
the ancestors of the modem Syrians. They became a distinct
factor in the life of the community; they formed great house-
holds of their own. Usury developed largely in the last thou-
sand years b.c. Traders needed accommodation; cultivators
wished to anticipate their crops. Sayce {op. cit.) gives an ac-
count of the Babylonian banking-house of Egibi, which lasted
through several generations and outlived the Chaldean Empire.
(7) A class of small retailers, one must suppose, came into
existence with the complication of society during the later
days of the first empires, but it was not probably of any great
importance.
(8) A growing class of independent property owners.
(9) As the amenities of life increased, there grew up in the
court, temples, and prosperous private houses a class of domestic
servants, slaves or freed slaves, or young peasants taken into
the household.
(10) Crang worhers. — These were prisoners of war or debt
slaves, or impressed or deported men.
(li) Mercenary soldiers. — These were also often captives or
impressed men. Sometimes they were enlisted from friendly
foreign populations in which the military spirit still prevailed.
(12) Seamen.
In modem political and economic discussions we are apt to
talk rather glibly of "labour." Much has been made of the
solidarity of labour and its sense of community. It is well to
note that in these first civilizations, what we speak of as
"labour" is represented by five distinct classes dissimilar in
origin, traditions, and outlook — ^namely, classes 3, 4, 5, 9, 10,
and the oar-tugging part of 12. The "solidarity of labour" is, we
shall find when we come to study the mechanical revolution of
the nineteenth century a.d., a new idea and a new possibility in
human affairs.
§5
Let us, befpTe we leave this discussion of the social classes
that were developing in these first civilizations, devote a little
attention to their fixity. How far did they stand aloof from
each other, and how far did they intermingle ? So far as the
classes we have counted as 9, 10, 11, and 12 go, the servants,
the gang labourers and slaves, the gang soldiers, and to a lesser
208 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
extent the sailors, or at any rate the galley rowers amoUg the
sailors, they were largely recruited classes, they did not readily
and easily form homes, they were not distinctively breeding
classes J they were probably replenished generation after genera-
tion by captives, by the failures of other classes, and especially
from the failures of the class of small retailers, and by perfeiia-
sion and impressment from among the cultivators. But so far
as the sailors go, we have to distinguish between the mere rower
and the navigating and shipowning seaman of such ports as Tyre
and Sidon. The shipowners pass, no doubt, by insensible grada-
tions into the mercantile class, but the navigators must have
made a peculiar community in the great seaports, having homes
there and handing on the secrets of seacraft to their sons. ' The
eighth class we have distinguished was certainly a precarious
class, continually increased by the accession of the heirs and de-
pendents, the widows and retired members of the wealthy and
powerful, and continually diminished by the deaths or specula-
tive losses of these people and the dispersal of their properties.
The priests and priestess, too, so far as all this world west of
India went, were not a very reproductive class; many priest-
hoods were celibate, and that class, too, may also be counted
as a recruited class. Nor are servants, as a rule, reproductive.
They live in the households of other people; they do not have
households and rear large families of their own. This leaves us
as the really vital classes of the ancient civilized community:
(a.) The royal and aristocratic class, officials, military offi-
cers, and the like;
(h) The mercantile class ;
(c) The town artisans;
(d) The cultivators of the soil ; and
(e) The herdsmen.
Each of these classes reared its own children in its own
fashion, and so naturally kept itself more or less continuously
distinct from the others. General education was not organized
in those ancient states, education was mainly a household mat-
ter (as it is still in many parts of India to-day), and so it
was natural and necessary for the sons to follow in the footsteps
of their father and to marry women accustomed to their own'
sort of household. Except during times of great political dis-
turbance, therefore, there would be a natural and continuous
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 209
separation of classes; which would not, however, prevent ex-
ceptional individuals from intermarrying or passing from one
class to another. Poor aristocrats would marry rich members
of the mercantile class ; ambitious herdsmen, artisans, or sailors
would become rich merchants. So far as one can gather, that
was the general state of affairs in both Egypt and Babylonia.
The idea was formerly entertained that in Egypt there was a
fixity of classes, but this appears to be a misconception due to
a misreading of Herodotus. The only exclusive class in Egypt
which did not intermarry was, as in England to-day, the semi-
divine royal family.
At various points in the social system there were probably
developments of exclusiveness, an actual barring out of inter-
lopers. Artisans of particular crafts possessing secrets, for ex-
ample, have among all races and in all ages tended to develop
guild organizations restricting the practice of their craft and
the marriage of members outside their guild. Conquering peo-
ple have also, and especially when there were marked physical
differences of race, been disposed to keep themselves aloof from
the conquered peoples, and have developed an aristocratic ex-
clusiveness. Such organizations of restriction upon free inter-
course have come and gone in great variety in the history of all
long-standing civilizations. The natural boundaries of func-
tion were always there, but sometimes they have been drawn
sharply and laid stress upon, and sometimes they have been
made little of. There has been a general tendency among the
Aryan peoples to distinguish noble (patrician) from common
(plebeiian) families; the traces of it are evident throughout
the literature and life of Europe to-day, and it has received a
picturesque enforcement in the "science" of heraldry. This
tradition is still active even in democratic America. Germany,
the most methodical of European countries, had in the Middle
Ages a very clear conception of the fixity of such distinctions.
Below the princes (who themselves constituted an exclusive class
whicb did not marry beneath itself) there were the :
(a) Knights, the military and ofiicial caste, with heraldic
coats-of-arms ;
(b and c) The Biirgerstand, the merchants, shipping people,
and artisans; and
(d) The Bauemstand, the cultivating serfs or peasants.
Mediaeval Germany went as far as any of the Western heirs
210 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of the first great civilizations towards a fixation of classy. The
idea is far less congenial both to the English-speaking people
and to the French and Italians, who, by a sort of instinct,
favour a free movement from class to class. Such exclusive
ideas began at first among, and were promoted chiefly by, the
upper classeS^, but it is a natural response and a natural Nemesis
to such ideas that the mass of the excluded should presently
range themselves in antagonism to their superiors. It was in
Germany, as we shall see in the concluding chapters of this story,
that the conception of a natural and necessary conflict, "the
class war," between the miscellaneous multitudes of the dis-
inherited ("the class-conscious proletariat" of the Marxist) and
the rulers and merchants first arose. It was an idea more ac-
ceptable to the German mind than to the British or French.
. . . But before we come to that conflict, we must traverse a
long history of many centuries.
§ 6
If now we turn eastward from this main development of civ-
ilization in the world between Central Asia and the Atlantic,
to the social development of India in the 2,000 years next be-
fore the Christian era, we find certain broad and very interest-
ing differences. The first of these is that we find such a fixity
of classes in process of establishment as no other part of the
world can present. This fixity of classes is known to Euro-
peans as the institution of caste; ^ its origins are still in com-
plete obscurity, but it was certainly well rooted in the Ganges
valley before the days of Alexander the Great. It is a com-
plicated horizontal division of the social structure into classes
or castes, the members of which may neither eat nor intermarry
with persons of a lower caste under penalty of becoming out-
casts, and who may also "lose caste" for various ceremonial
negligences and defilements. By losing caste a man does not
sink to a lower caste; he becomes outcast. The various sub-
divisions of caste are very complex ; many are practically trade
organizations. Each caste has its local organization which main-
tains discipline, distributes various charities, looks after its
own poor, protects the common interests of its members, and
•From casta, a word of Portuguese origin; the Indian word is vama,
colour.
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 211
examines the credentials of new-comers from other districts.
(There is little to check the pretensions of a travelling Hindu
to be of a higher caste than is legitimately his.) Originally,
the four main castes seem to have been :
The Brahmins — the priests and teachers ;
The Kshatriyas — ^the warriors ;
The Vaisyas — ^herdsmen, merchanta, moneylenders, and land-
owners ;
The Sudras ;
And, outside the castes, the Pariahs.
But these primary divisions have long been complicated by
subdivision into a multitude of minor castes, all exclusive, each
holding its members to one definite way of living and one group
of associates. In Bengal the Kshatriyas and Vaisyas have
largely disappeared. But this is too intricate a question for us
to deal with here in any detail.
Next to this extraordinary fission and complication of the
social body we have to note that the Brahmins, the priests and
teachers of the Indian world, unlike so many Western priestr
hoods, are a reproductive and exclusive class, taking no recruits
from any other social stratum.
Whatever may have been the original incentive to this ex-
tensive fixation of class in India, there can be little doubt of
the role played by the Brahmins as the custodians of tradition
and the only teachers of the people in sustaining it. By some
it is supposed that the first three of the four original castes,
known also as the "twice born," were the descendants of the
Vedic Aryan conquerors of India, who established these hard-
and-fast separations to prevent racial mixing with the conquered
Sudras and Pariahs. The Sudras are represented as a previous
wave of northern conquerors, and the Pariahs are the original
Dravidian inhabitants of India. But these speculations are not
universally accepted, and it is, perhaps, rather the case that
the uniform conditions of life in the Ganges valley throughout
long centuries served to stereotype a difference of classes that
have never had the same steadfastness of definition under the
more various and variable conditions of the greater world to
the west.
However caste arose, there can be no doubt of its extraordi-
nary hold upon the Indian mind. In the sixth century B.C.
arose Gautama, the great teacher of Buddhism, proclaimingj
212 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"As the four streams that flow into the Ganges lose their names
as soon as they mingle their waters in the holy river, so all who
believe in Buddha cease to be Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas,
and Sudras." His teaching prevailed in India for some cen-
turies; it spread over China, Tibet, Japan, Burmah, Ceylon,
Turkestan, Manchuria ; it is to-day the religion of a large frac-
tion of the human race, but it was finally defeated and driven
out of Indian life by the vitality and persistence of the Brah-
mins and of their caste ideas. . .
§ 7
In China we find a social system travelling along yet another,
and only a very roughly parallel line to that followed by the
Indian and Western civilizations. The Chinese civilization
even more than the Hindu is organized for peace, and the war-
rior plays a small part in its social scheme. As in the Indian
civilization, the leading class is an intellectual one ; less priestly
than the Brahmin and more official. But unlike the Brahmins,
the mandarins, who are the literate men of China, are not a
caste ; one is not a mandarin by birth, but by education ; they
are drawn by education and examination from all classes of
the community, and the son of a mandarin has no prescriptive
right to succeed his father.^ As a consequence of these differ-
ences, while the Brahmins of India are, as a class, ignorant
even of their own sacred books, mentally slack, and full of a
pretentious assurance, the Chinese mandarin has the energy
that comes from hard mental work. But since his education so
far has been almost entirely a scholarly study of the classical
Chinese literature, his influence has been entirely conservative.
Before the days of Alexander the Great, China had already
formed itself and set its feet in the way in which it was still
walking in the year 1,000 a. d. Invaders and dynasties had come
and gone, but the routine of life of the yellow civilization re-
mained unchanged.
The traditional Chinese social system recognized four main
classes below the priest-emperor.
'In the time of Confucius classes were much more fixed than later.
Under the Han dynasty the competitive examination system was not yet
established. Scholars were recommended for appointments by local, dig-
nitaries, etc. — L. Y, C.
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 213
(a) The literary class, -which was equivalent partly to the
officials of the Western world and partly to its teachers and
clerics. In the time of Confucius its education included archery
and horsemanship. Eites and music, history and mathematics
completed the "Six Accomplishments."
(b) The cultivators of the land.
(c) The artisans.
(d) The mercantile class.
But since from the earliest times it has been the Chinese way
to divide the landed possessions of a man among all his sons,
there has never been in Chinese history any class of great land-
owners, renting their land to tenants, such as most other coun-
tries have displayed. The Chinese -land has always been cut
up into small holdings, which are chiefly freeholds, and culti-
vated intensively. There are landlords in China who own one
or a few farms and rent them to tenants, but there are no
great, permanent estates. When a patch of land, by repeated
division, is too small to sustain a man, it is sold to some prosper-
ing neighbour, and the former owner drifts to one of the great
towns of China to join the mass of wage-earning workers there.
In China, for many centuries, there have been these masses of
town population with scarcely any property at all, men neither
serfs nor slaves, but held to their daily work by their utter
impecuniousness. From such masses it is that the soldiers
needed by the Chinese Government are recruited, and also such
gang labour as has been needed for the making of canals, the
building of walls, and the like has been drawn. The war cap-
tive and the slave class play a smaller part in Chinese history
than in any more westerly record of these ages before the
Christian era.
One fact, we may note, is common to all these three stories
of developing social structure and that is the immense power
exercised by the educated class in the early stages before the
crown or the commonalty began to read and, consequently, to
think for itself. In India, by reason of their exclusiveness, the
Brahmins, the educated class, retain their influence to this day ;
over the masses of China, along entirely different lines and be-
cause of the complexities of the written language, the man-
darinate has prevailed. The diversity of race and tradition in
the more various and eventful world of the West has delayed,
and perhaps arrested for ever, any parallel organization of the
314 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
specially intellectual elements of society into a class ascendancy.
In the Western world, as we have already noted, education early
"slopped over," and soaked away out of the control of any spe-
cial class; it escaped from the limitation of castes and priest-
hoods and traditions into the general life of the community.
Writing and reading had been simplified down to a point when
it was no longer possible to make a cult and mystery of them.
It may be due to the peculiar elaboration and difficulty of the
Chinese characters, rather than to any racial difference, that the
same thing did not happen to the same extent in China.
§ 8
In these last six chapters we have traced in outline the whole
process by which, in the course of 5,000 or 6,000 years — rthat
is to say, in something between 150 and 200 generations — ^man-
kind passed from the stage of early Neolithic husbandry, in
which the primitive skin-clad family tribe reaped and stored
in their rude mud huts the wild-growing fodder and grain-bear-
ing grasses with sickles oi stone, to the days of the fourth cen-
tury B.C., when all round the shores of the Mediterranean and
up the Nile, and across Asia to India, and again over the great
alluvial areas of China, spread the fields of human cultivation
and busy cities, great temples, and the coming and going of
human commerce. Galleys and lateen-sailed ships entered and
left crowded harbours, and made their careful way from head-
land to headland and from headland to island, keeping always
close to the land. Phoenician shipping under Egyptian owners
was making its way into the East Indies and perhaps even
further into the Pacific. Across the deserts of Africa and
Arabia and through Turkestan toiled the caravans with their re-
mote trade; silk was already coming from China, ivory from
Central Africa, and tin from Britain to the centres of this new
life in the world. Men had learnt to weave fine linen ^ and
delicate fabrics of coloured wool; they could bleach and dye;
they had iron as well as copper, bronze, silver, and gold;_they
had made the most beautiful pottery and porcelain ; there was
hardly a variety of precious stone in the world that they had
not found and cut and polished; they could read and write;
divert the course of rivers, pile pyramids, and make walls a
'Damascus was already making Damask, and "Damascening" steel.
SERFS, SLAVES, SOCIAL CLASSES 215
thousand miles long. The fifty or sixty centuries in which all
this had to be achieved may seem a long time in comparison
with the threescore and ten years of a single human life, but
it is utterly inconsiderable in comparison with the stretches of
geological time. Measuring backward from these Alexandrian
cities to the days of the first stone implements, the rostro-carinate
implements of the Pliocene Age, gives us an extent of time fully
a hundred times as long.
We have tried in this account, and with the help of maps
and figures and time charts, to give a just idea of the order and
shape of these fifty or sixty centuries. Our business is with
that outline. We have named but a few names of individuals ;
though henceforth the personal names must increase in number.
But the content of this outline that we have drawn here in
a few diagrams and charts cannot but touch the imagination.
If only we could look closelier, we should see through all these
sixty centuries a procession of lives more and more akin in their
fashion to our own. We have shown how the naked Palaeo-
lithic savage gave place to the Neolithic cultivator, a type of
man still to be found in the backward places of the world. We
have given an illustration of Sumerian soldiers copied from a
carved stone that was set up long before the days when the
Semitic Sargon I conquered the land. Day by day some busy
brownish man carved those figures, and, no doubt, whistled as
he carved. In those days the plain of the Egyptian delta was
crowded with gangs of swarthy workmen unloading the stone
that had come down the Nile to add a fresh course to the cur-
rent pyramid. One might paint a thousand scenes from those
ages: of some hawker merchant in Egypt spreading his stock
of Babylonish garments before the eyes of some pretty, rich
lady; of a miscellaneous crowd swarming between the pylons
to some temple festival at Thebes; of an excited, dark-eyed
audience of Cretans like the Spaniards of to-day, watching a
bull-fight, with the bull-fighters in trousers and tightly girded,
exactly like any contemporary bull-fighter ; of children learning
their cuneiform signs — at Nippur the clay exercise tiles of a
school have been found; of a woman with a sick husband at
home slipping into some great temple in Carthage to make a
vow for his recovery. Or perhaps it is a wild Greek, skin-clad
and armed with a bronze axe, standing motionless on some
lUyrian mountain crest, struck with amazement at his first
216 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
vision of a many-oared Cretan galley crawling like a great in-
sect across the amethystine mirror of the Adriatic Sea. He
went home to tell his folk a strange story of a monster, Briareus
with his hundred arms. Of millions of such stitches in each
of these 200 generations is the fabric of this history woven. But
unless they mark the presence of a primary seam or join, we
cannot pause now to examine any of these stitches.
XIX
THE HEBEEW SCEIPTUEES AND THE PEOPHETS
§ 1. The Place of the Israelites in History. § 2. Saul, David,
and Solomon. § 3. The Jews a. People of Mixed Origin.
§ 4. The Importance of the Hebrew Prophets.
§ 1
WE are now in a position to place in their proper re-
lationship to this general outline of human history the
Israelites, and the most remarkable collection of an-
cient documents in the world, that collection which is known to
all Christian peoples as the Old Testament. We find in these
documents the most interesting and valuable lights upon the
development of civilization, and the clearest indications of a
new spirit that was coming into human affairs during the strug-
gles of Egypt and Assyria for predominance in the world of
men.
All the books that constitute the Old Testament were cer-
tainly in existence, and in very much their present form, at latest
by the year 100 B.C. Most of them were probably recognized
as sacred writings in the time of Alexander the Great (330
B.C.)'. They were the sacred literature of a people, the Jews,
who, except for a small remnant of common people, had re-
cently been deported to Babylonia from their own country in
587 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldean. They had re-
turned to their city, Jerusalem, and had rebuilt their temple
there under the auspices of Cyrus, that Persian conqueror who,
we have already noted, in 539 b.c. overthrew Nabonidus, the
last of the Chaldean rulers in Babylon. The Babylonian Cap-
tivity had lasted about fifty years, and many authorities are of
opinion that there was a considerable admixture during that
period both of race and ideas with the Babylonians.
The position of the land of Judea and of Jerusalem, its
217
218 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
capital, is a peculiar one. The country is a band-shaped strip
between the Mediterranean to the west and the desert beyond
the Jordan to the east ; through it lies the natural high-road be-
tween the Hittites, Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia to the north
and Egypt to the south. It was a country predestined, there-
fore, to a stormy history. Across it Egypt, and whatever power
was ascendant in the north, fought for empire ; against its people
they fought for a trade route. It had itself neither the area,
the agricultural possibilities, nor the mineral wealth to be im-
portant. The story of its people that these scriptures have
preserved runs like a commentary to the greater history of the
two systems of civilization to the north and south and of the
sea peoples to the west.
These scriptures consist of a number of different? elements.
The first five books, the Pentateuch, were early regarded with
peculiar respect. They begin in the form of a universal his-
tory with a double account of the Creation of the world and
niankind, of the early life of the race, and of a great Elood
by which, except for certain favoured individuals, mankind
was destroyed. This flood story is very widely distributed in
ancient traditions ; it may be a memory of that flooding of the
Mediterranean valley which occurred in the Neolithic age of
mankind. Excavations have revealed Babylonian versions of
both the Creation story and the Flood story of prior date to
the restoration of the Jews, and it is therefore argued by Bibli-
cal critics that these opening chapters were acquired by the
Jews during their captivity. They constitute the first ten chap-
ters of GeJnesis.
There follows a history of the fathers and founders of the
Hebrew nation, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are presented
as patriarchal Bedouin chiefs, living the life of nomadic shep-
herds in the country between Babylonia and Egypt. The ex-
isting Biblical account is said by the critics to be made up out
of several pre-existing versions; but whatever its origins, the
story, as we have it to-day, is full of colour and vitality. "What
is called Palestine to-day was at that time the land of Canaan,
inhabited by a Semitic people called the Canaanites, closely
related to the Phoenicians who founded Tyre and Sidon, and to
the Amorites who took Babylon and, under Hammurabi, founded
the first Babylonian Empire. The Canaanites were a settled
folk in the days — ^which were perhaps contemporary with the
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS
^Id
220 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
days of Hammurabi — ^when Abraham's flocks and herds passed
through the land. The God of Abraham, says the Bible narra-
tive, promised this smiling land of prosperous cities to hini and
to his children. To the book of Genesis the reader must go
to read how Abraham, being childless, doubted this promise,
and of the births of Ishmael and Isaac. And in Genesis, too,
he will find the lives of Isaac and Jacob, whose name was
changed to Israel, and of the twelve sons of Israel; and
how, in the days of a great famine they went down into
Egypt. With that, Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch,
ends.' The next book, Exodus, is concerned with the story of
Moses.
The story of the settlement and slavery of the children of
Israel in Egypt is a difficult one. There is an Egyptian rec-
ord of a settlement of certain Semitic peoples in the land of
Goshen by the Pharaoh Rameses II, and it is stated that they
were drawn into Egypt by want of food. But of the life and
career of Moses there is no Egyptian record at all; there is
no account of any plagues of Egypt or of any Pharaoh who
was drowned in the Eed Sea.
Very perplexing is the discovery of a clay tablet written by
the Egyptian governors of a city in Canaan to the Pharaoh
Amenophis IV, who came in the XVIIIth Dynasty before
Eameses II, apparently mentioning the Hebrews by name and
declaring that they are overrunning Canaan. Manifestly, if
the Hebrews were conquering Canaian in the time of the
XVIIIth Dynasty, they could not have been made captive and
oppressed, before they conquered Canaan, by Eameses II of
the XlXth Dynasty. But it is quite understandable that the
Exodus story, written long after the events it narrates, may
have concentrated and simplified, and perhaps personified and
symbolized, what was really a long and complicated history
of tribal invasions. One Hebrew tribe may have drifted down
into, Egypt and become enslaved, while the others were already
attacking the outlying Canaanite cities. It is even possible
that the land of the captivity was not Egypt (Hebrew, Misraiija),
but Misrim in the north of Arabia, on the other side of the
Red Sea. These questions are discussed fully and acutely in
the Encyclopcedia Bihlica (articles Moses and Exodus), to
which the curious reader must be referred.^
'See also G. B. Gray, A Critical Introduotion to the Old Testament.
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 221
Two other books of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy and Leviti-
cus, are concerned with the Law and the priestly rules. The
book of Numbers takes up the wanderings of the Israelites in the
desert and their invasion of Canaan.
Whatever the true particulars of the Hebrew invasion of
Canaan may be, there can be no doubt that the country they
invaded had changed very greatly since the days of the legend-
ary promise, made centuries before, to Abraham. Then it
seems to have been largely a Semitic land, with many pros-
perous trading cities. But great waves of strange peoples had
washed along this coast. We have already told how the dark
Iberian or Mediterranean peoples of Italy and Greece, the peo-
ples of that -^gean civilization which culminated at Cnossos,
were being assailed by the southward movement of Aryan-speak-
ing races, such as the Italians and Greeks, and how Cnossos
was sacked about 1,400 B.C., and destroyed altogether about
1,000 B.C. It is now evident that the people of these ^gean
seaports were crossing the sea in search of securer land
nests. They invaded the Egyptian delta and the African
coast to the west, they formed alliances with the Hittites and
other Aryan or Aryanized races. This happened after the time
of Eameses II, in the time of Eameses III. Egyptian monu-
ments record great sea fights, and also a march of these peo-
ple along the coast of Palestine towards Egypt. Their trans-
port was in the ox-carts characteristic of the Aryan tribes, and
it is clear that these Cretans were acting in alliance with some
early Aryan invaders. !N"o connected narrative of these conflicts
that went on between 1,300 b.c. and 1,000 b.c. has yet been
made out, but it is evident from the Bible narrative, that when
the Hebrews under Joshua pursued their slow subjugation of
the promised land, they came against a new people, the Phil-
istines, unknown to Abraham,^ who were settling along the
coast in a series of cities of which Gaza, Gath, Ashdod, Ascalon,
and Joppa became the chief, who were really, like the Hebrews,
new-comers, and probably chiefly these Cretans from the sea and
from the north. The invasion, therefore, that began as an at-
tack upon the Canaanites, speedily became a long and not very
successful struggle for the coveted and promised land with
these much more formidable new-comers, the Philistines.
' This may seem to contradict Genesis xx. 15, and xx;i. and xxvi. various
verses, but compare with this the Ehcyclopwdia Bihlioa article Philistines.
222 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
It cannot be said that the promised land was ever completely
in the grasp of the Hebrews. Following after the Pentateuch
in the Bible come the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth (a di-
gression), Samuel I and II, and Kings I and II, with Chronicles
repeating with variation much of the matter of Samuel II and
Kings; there is a growing flavour of reality in most of this
latter history, and in these books we find the Philistines
steadfastly in possession of the fertile lowlands of the southj
and the Oanaanites and Phoenicians holding out against the
Israelites in the north. The first triumphs of Joshua are not
repeated. The book of Judges is a melancholy catalogue of
failures. The people lose heart. They desert the worship of
their own god Jehovah, and worship Baal and Ashtaroth
(=Bel and Ishtar). They mixed their race with the Philistines,
with the Hittites, and so forth, and became, as they have always
subsequently been, a racially mixed people. Under a series
of wise men and heroes they wage a generally unsuccessful and
never very united warfare against their enemies. In succession
they are conquered by the Moabites, the Oanaanites, the Midi-
anites, and the Philistines. The story of these conflicts, of
Gideon and of Samson and the other heroes who now and then
cast a gleam of hope upon the distress of Israel, is told in the
book of Judges. In the first book of Samuel is told the story
of their great disaster at Ebenezer in the days when Eli was
judge.
This was a real pitched battle in which the Israelites lost
30,000 ( !) men. They had previously suffered a reverse and
lost 4,000 men, and then they brought out their most sacred
symbol, the Ark of the Covenant of God.
"And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into
the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the
earth rang again. And when the Philistines heard the noise
of the shout, they said, 'What meaneth the noise of this great
shout in the camp of the Hebrews V And they understood that
the ark of the Lord was come into the camp. And the Phil-
istines were afraid, for they said, 'God is come into the camp.'
And they said, 'Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a
thing heretofore. Woe, unto us ! who shall deliver us out of
the hand of these mighty Gods ? these are the Gods that smote
the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be
strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 223
be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you:
quit yourselves like men, and fight.'
"And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and
they fled every man into his tent : and there was a very great
slaughter for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.
And the ark of God was taken ; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni
and Phinehas, were slain.
"And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and
came to Shiloh the same day, with his clothes rent, and with
earth upon his head. And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon
a seat by the wayside watching : for his heart trembled for the
ark of God. And when the man came into the city, and told
it, all the city cried out. And when Eli heard the noise of the
crying, he said, 'What meaneth the noise of this tumult ?' And
the man came in hastily, and told Eli. Now Eli was ninety
and eight years old; and his eyes were dim that he could not
see. And the man said unto Eli, 'I am he that came out of
the army, and I fled to-day out of the army.' And he said,
'What is there done, my son?' And the messenger answered
and said, 'Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath
been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two
sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of
God is taken.' And it came to pass, when he made mention
of the ark of God, that Eli fell from off the seat backward,
by the side of the gate, and his neck brake, and he died: for
he was an old man, and heavy. And he had judged Israel
forty years.
"And his daughter in law, Phinehas' wife, was with child,
near to be delivered : and when she heard the tidings that the
ark of God was taken, and that her father in law and her
husband were dead, she bowed herself and travailed: for her
pains came upon her. And about the time of her death the
women that stood by her said unto her, 'Fear not, for thou
hast borne a son.' But she answered not, neither did she regard
it. And she named the child I-chabod,^ saying, 'The glory
is departed from Israel' : because the ark of God was taken,
and because of her father in law and her husband." (I. Sam.,
chap, iv.)
The successor of Eli and the last of the judges was Samuel,
and at the end of his rule came an event in the history of
•That is, where is the glory?
224 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Israel ■which, paralleled and was suggested by the experience
of the greater nations around. A king arose. We are told in
vivid language the plain issue between the more ancient rule
of priestcraft and the newer fashion in human affairs. It is
impossible to avoid a second quotation.
"Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together,
and came to Samuel unto Eamah, and said unto him: 'Be-
hold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now
make us a king to judge us like all the nations.'
"But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, 'Give
us a king to judge us.' And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
And the Lord said unto Samuel, 'Hearken unto the voice of
the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not
rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign
over them. According to all the works which they have done
since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto
this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and serve other
gods, so do they also unto thee. Now, therefore, hearken unto
their voice : howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew,
them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.'
"And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people
that asked of him a king. And he said, 'This will be the man-
ner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your
sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his
horsemen ; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will
appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties ;
and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest,
and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his
chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectioners,
and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields,
and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the b^t of them,
and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth pf
your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his ofiicers, and
to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your
maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses,
and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your
sheep : and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in
that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you ;
and the Lord will not hear you in that day.'
"Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel ;
and they said, 'Nay ; but we will have a king over us ; that we
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 225
also may be like all the nations ; and that our king may judge
us^ and go out before us, and fight our battles.' " (L Sam.,
chap, viii.)
§ 2
But the nature and position of their land was against the
Hebrews, and thfeir first king Saul was no more successful than
their judges. The long intrigues of the adventurer David
against Saul are told in the rest of the first book of Samuel,
and the end of Saul was utter defeat upon Mount Gilboa. His
army was overwhelmed by the Philistine archers.
"And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines
came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his three
sons fallen in Mount Gilboa. And they cut off his head, and
stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines
round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and
among the people. And they put his armour in the house of
Ashtaroth; and they fastened his body to the wall of Beth-
shan." (I. Sam., chap, xxxi.)
David (990 b.c. roughly) was more politic and successful
than his predecessor, and he seems to have placed himself under
the protection of Hiram, King of Tyre. This Phoenician
alliance sustained him, and was the essential element in the
greatness of his son Solomon. His story, with its constant
assassinations and executions, reads rather like the history of
some savage chief than of a civilized monarch. It is told with
great vividness in the second book of Samuel.
The first book of Kings begins with the reign of King
Solomon (960 b.c. roughly). The most interesting thing in
that story, from the point of view of the general historian, is
the relationship of Solomon to the national religion and the
priesthood, and his dealings with the tabernacle, the priest
Zadok, and the prophet Nathan.
The opening of Solomon's reign is as bloody as his father's.
The last recorded speech of David arranges for the murder
of Shimei; his last recorded word is "blood." "But his hoar
head bring thou down to the grave with blood," he says, point-
ing out that though old Shimei is protected by a vow, David
had made to the Lord so long as David lives, there is nothing
to bind Solomon in that matter. Solomon proceeds to murder
his brother, who has sought the throne but quailed and made
226 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
submission. He then deals freely with his brother's party.
The weak hold of religion upon the racially and mentally con-
fused Hebrews at that time is shown by the ease with which
he replaces the hostile chief priest by his own adherent Zadok,
and still more strikingly by the murder of Joab by Benaiah,
Solomon's chief ruffian, in the tabernacle, while the victim is
claiming sanctuary and holding to the very horns of Jehovah's
altar. Then Solomon sets to work, in what was for that time
a thoroughly modem spirit, to recast the religion of his people.
He continues the alliance with Hiram, King of Sidon, who
uses Solomon's kingdom as a high road by which to reach and
build shipping upon the Eed Sea, and a hitherto unheard of
wealth accumulates in Jesusalem as a result of this partner
ship. Gang labour appears in Israel ; Solomon sends relays of
men to cut cedarwood in Lebanon under Hiram, and organizes a
service of porters through the land. (There is much in all
this to remind the reader of the relations of some Central
African chief to a European trading concern.) Solomon then
builds a palace for himself, and a temple not nearly as big for
Jehovah. Hitherto, the Ark of the Covenant, the divine symbol
of these ancient Hebrews, had abode in a large tent, which had
been shifted from one high place to another, and sacrifices had
been offered to the God of Israel upon a number of different
high places. Now the ark is brought into the golden splendours
of the inner chamber of a temple of cedar-sheathed stone, and
put between two great winged figures of gilded olivewood, and
sacrifices are henceforth to be made only upon the altar be-
fore it.
This centralirzing innovation will remind the reader of both
Akhnaton and Nabonidus. Such things as this are done suc-
cessfully only when the prestige and tradition and learning
of the priestly order has sunken to a very low level.
"And he appointed, according to the order of David his
father, the courses of the priests to their service, and the
Levites to their charges, to praise and minister before the priests,
as the duty of every day required; the porters also by their
courses at every gate; for so had David the man of God com-
manded. And they departed not from the commandment of
the king unto the priest and Levites concerning any matter, or
concerning the treasures."
Neither Solomon's establishment of the worship of Jehovah
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 227
in Jerusalem upon this new footing, nor his vision of and con-
versation with his God at the opening of his reign, stood in
the way of his developing a sort of theological flirtatiousness
in his declining years. He married widely, if only for reasons
of state and splendour, and he entertained his numerous wives
by sacrificing to their national deities, to the Sidonian god-
dess Ashtaroth (Ishtar), to Chemosh (a Moabitish god),
to Moloch, and so forth. The Bible account of Solomon
does, in fact, show us a king and a confused people, both
superstitious and mentally unstable, in no way more religious
than any other people of the surrounding World.
A point of considerable interest in the story of Solomon,
because it marks a phase in Egyptian affairs, is his marriage
to a daughter of Pharaoh. This must have been one of the
Pharaohs of the XXIst Dynasty. In the great days of Ameno-
phis III, as the Tel-Amarna letters witness, Pharaoh could con-
descend to receive a Babylonian princess into his harem, but
he refused absolutely to grant so divine a creature as an Egyp-
tian princess in marriage to the Babylonian monarch. It points
to the steady decline of Egyptian prestige that now, three cen-
turies later, such a petty monarch as Solomon could wed on
equal terms with an Egyptian princess. There was, however,
a revival with the next Egyptian dynasty (XXII) ; and the
Pharaoh Shishak, the founder, taking advantage of the cleavage
between Israel and Judah, which had been developing through
the reigns of both David and Solomon, took Jerusalem and
looted the all-too-brief splendours both of the new temple and
of the king's house.
Shishak seems also to have subjugated Philistia. From this
time onward it is to be noted that the Philistines fade in im-
portance. They had already lost their Cretan language and
adopted that of the Semites they had conquered, and although
their cities remain more or less independent, they merge grad-
ually into the general Semitic life of Palestine.
There is evidence that the original rude but convincing narra-
tive of Solomon's rule, of his various murders, of his associa-
tion with Hiram, of his palace and temple building, and the
extravagances that weakened and finally tore his kingdom in
twain, has been subjected to extensive interpolations and ex-
pansions by a. later virriter, anxious to exaggerate his prosperity
and glorify his wisdom. It is not the place here to deal with
228 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
the criticism of Bible origins, but it is a matter of ordinary
common sense rather than of scholarship to note the manifest
reality and Veracity of the main substance of the account of
David and Solomon, an account explaining sometimes and justi-
fying sometimes, but nevertheless relating facts, even the harsh-
est facts, as only a contemporary or almost contemporary writer,
convinced that they cannot be concealed, would relate them, and
then to remark the sudden lapse into adulation when the in-
serted passages occur. It is a striking tribute to the power of the
written assertion over realities in men's minds that this Bible
narrative has imposed, not only upon the Christian but upon the
Moslem world, the belief that King Solomon was not only one
of the most magnificent, but one of the wisest of men. Yet
the first book of Kings tells in detail his utmost splendours, and
beside the beauty and wonder of the buildings and organizations
of such great monarchs as Thotmes III or Kameses II or half
a dozen other Pharaohs, or of Sargon II or Sardanapalus or
Nebuchadnezzar the Great, they are trivial. His temple meas-
ured internally was twenty cubits broad, about 35 feet ^ — ^that
is, the breadth of a small villa residence — and sixty cubits, say
100 feet, long. And as for his wisdom and statescraft, one
need go no further than the Bible to see that Solomon was a
mere helper in the wide-reaching schemes of the trader-king
Hiram, and his kingdom a pawn between Phoenicia and Egypt.
His importance was due largely to the temporary enfeeblement
of Egypt, which encouraged the ambition of the Phoenician
and made it necessary to propitiate the holder of the key to
an alternate trade route to the East. To his own people
Solomon was a wasteful and oppressive monarch, and already
before his death his kingdom was splitting, visibly to all
men.
With the reign of King Solomon the brief glory of the He-
brews ends; the northern and richer section of his kingdom,
long oppressed by taxation to sustain his splendours, breais off,
from Jerusalem to become the separate kingdom of Israel, and
this split ruptures that linking connection between Sidon and
the Red Sea by which Solomon's gleam of wealth was possible.
There is no more wealth in Hebrew history. Jerusalem re-
mains the capital of one tribe, the tribe of Judah, the capital
' Estimates of the cubit vary. The greatest is 44 inches. This would
extend the width to seventy-odd feet.
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 229
of a land of barren hills, cut off by Philistia from the sea and
surrounded by enemies.
The tale of wats, of religious conflicts, of usurpations, as-
sassinations, and of fratricidal murders to secure the throne
goes on for three centuries. It is a tale frankly barbaric. Israel
wars with Judah and the neighbouring states; forms alliances
first with one and then with the other. The power of Aramean
Syria bums like a baleful star over the affairs of the Hebrews,
and then there rises behind it the great and growing power of
the last Assyrian empire. For three centuries the life of the
Hebrews was like the life of a man who insists upon living in
the middle of a busy thoroughfare, and is consequently being
run over constantly by omnibuses and motor-lorries.
"Pul" (apparently the same person as Tiglath Pileser III)
is, according to the Bible narrative, the first Assyrian monarch
to appear upon the Hebrew horizon, and Menahem buys him
off with a thousand talents of silver (Y38 e.g.). But the power
of Assyria is heading straight for the now aged and decadent
land of Egypt, and the line of attack lies through Judea ; Tiglath
Pileser III returns and Shalmaneser follows in his steps, the
King of Israel intrigues for help with Egypt, that "broken
reed," and in 721 e.g., as we have already noted, his kingdom
is swept off into captivity and utterly lost to history. The same
fate hung over Judah, but for a little while it was averted. The
fate of Sennacherib's army in the reign of King Hezekiah (701
B.C.), and how he was murdered by his sons (II. Kings xix. 37),
we have already mentioned. The subsequent subjugation ®f
Egypt by Assyria finds no mention in Holy Writ, but it is
clear that before the reign of Sennacherib, King Hezekiah had
carried on a diplomatic correspondence with Babylon (700
B.C.), which was in revolt against Sargon II of Assyria. There
followed the conquest of Egypt by Esarhaddon, and then for a
time Assyria was occupied with her own troubles ; the Scythians
and Medes and Persians were pressing her on the north, and
Babylon was in insurrection. As we have already noted, Egypt,
relieved for a time from Assyrian pressure, entered upon a
phase of revival, first under Psammetichus and then under
Necho II.
Again the little country in between made mistakes in its
alliances. But on neither side was there safety. Josiah op-
posed Necho, and was slain at the battle of Megiddo (608 b.c.).
230 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The king of Judah became an Egyptian tributary. Then when
Necho, after pushing as far as the Euphrates,: fdl before
Nebuchadnezzar II, Judah fell with him (604 b.c). Nebuchad-
nezzar, after a trial of three puppet kings, carried off the greater
part of the people into captivity in Babylon (586 b.c.), and the
rest, after a rising and a massacre of Babylonian officials, took
refuge from the vengeance of Chaldea in Egypt.
"And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and
the ia:easures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the
king, and of his princes ; all these he brought to Babylon. And
they burnt the house of God and brake down the wall of Jerusa-
lem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed
all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from
the sword carried he away to Babylon ; where they were servants
to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia."
(II. Chron. xxxvi. 18, 19, 20.)
So the four centuries of Hebrew kingship comes to an end.
From first to last it was a mere incident in the larger and greater
history of Egypt, Syria, Assyria, and Phoenicia. But out of
it there were now to arise moral and intellectual consequences
of primary importance to all mankind.
§ 3
The Jews who returned, after an interval of more than two
generations, to Jerusalem from Babylonia in the time of Cyrus
were a very different people from the warring Baal worshippers
and Jehovah worshippers, the sacrificers in the high places and
sacrificers at Jerusalem of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
The plain fact of the Bible narrative is that the Jews went to
Babylon barbarians and came back civilized. They went a
confused and divided multitude, with no national self-con-
aciousness; they came back with an intense and exclusive na-
tional spirit. They went with no common literature generally
known to them, for it was only about forty years before the
captivity that King Josiah is said to have discovered "a book of
the law" in the temple (II. Kings xxii), and, besides that,
there is not a hint in the record of any reading of books ; and
they returned with most of their material for the Old Testa-
ment. It is manifest that, relieved of their bickering and mur-
derous kings, restrained from politics and in the intellectually
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 231
stimulating atmospliere of that Babylonian world, the Jewish
mind made a great step forward during the Captivity.
It was an age of historical inquiry and learning in Baby-
lonia. The Babylonian influences that had made Sardanapalus
collect a great library of ancient writings in Nineveh were still
at work. We have already told how Nabonidus was so pre-
occupied with antiquarian research as to neglect the defence of
his kingdom against Cyrus. Everything, therefore, contributed
to set the exiled Jews inquiring into their own history, and they
found an inspiring leader in the prophet Ezekiel. From such
hidden and forgotten records as they had with them, genealogies,
contemporary histories of David, Solomqp, and their other kings,,
legends and traditions, they made out and amplified their own
story, and told it to Babylon and themselves. The story of the
Creation and the Flood, much of the story of Moses, much of
Samson, were probably incorporated from Babylonian sources.^
When the Jews returned to Jerusalem, only the Pentateuch had
been put together into one book, but the grouping of the rest
of the historical books was bound to follow.
The rest of their literature remained for some centuries as
separate books, to which a very variable amount of respect was
paid. Some of the later books are frankly post-captivity com-
p6sitions. Over all this literature were thrown certain leading
ideas. There was an idea, which even these books themselves
gainsay in detail, that all the people were pure-blooded children
of Abraham; there was next an idea of a promise made by
Jehovah to Abraham that he would exalt the Jewish race above
all other races; and, thirdly, there was the belief first of all
that Jehovah was the greatest and most powerful of tribal gods,
and then that he was a god above all other gods, and at last
that he was the only true god. The Jews became convinced
at last, as a people, that they were the chosen people of the
one God of all the earth.
And arising very naturally out of these three ideas, was a
fourth, the idea of a coming leader, a saviour, a Messiah who
would realize the long-postponed promises of Jehovah.
This welding together of the Jews into one tradition-cemented
people in the course of the "seventy years" is the first instance
*But one version of the Creation story and the Eden story, though
originally from- Babylon, seem to have been known to the Hebrews before
the exile.— G, W. B.
232 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
in history of the new power of the written word in human
affairs. It was a mental consolidation that did much more than
unite the people who returned to Jerusalem. This idea of he-
longing to a chosen race predestined to pre-eminence was a very
attractive one. It possessed also those Jews who remained in
Babylonia. Its literature reached the Jews now established,
in Egypt. It affected the mixed people who had been placed
in Samaria, the old capital of the kings of Israel when the ten
tribes were deported to Media. It inspired a great number
of Babylonians and the like to claim Abraham as their father,
and thrust their company upon the returning Jews. Am-
monites and Moabites became adherents. The book of Nehe-
miah is full of the distress occasioned by this invasion of the
privileges of the chosen. The Jews were already a people dis-
persed in many lands and cities, when their minds and hopes
were unified and they became an exclusive people. But at first
their exclusiveness is merely to preserve soundness of doctrine
and worship, warned by such lamentable lapses as those of King
Solomon. To genuine proselytes of whatever race, Judaism
long held out welcoming arms.
To Phoenicians after the falls of Tyre and Carthage, con-
version to Judaism must have been particularly easy and at-
tractive. Their language was closely akin to Hebrew. It is
possible that the gi'eat majority of African and -Spanish Jews
are really; of Phoenician origin. There were also great Arabian
accessions. In South Russia, as we shall note later, there were
even Mongolian Jews.
The historical books from Genesis to Nehemiah, upon which
the idea of the promise to the chosen people had been imposed
later, were no doubt the backbone of Jewish mental unity, but
they by no means complete the Hebrew literature from which
finally the Bible was made up. Of such books as Job, said to be
an imitation of Greek tragedy, the Song of Solomon, the
Psalms, Proverbs, and others, there is no time to write in this
Outline, but it is necessary to deal with the books known as
"the Prophets" with some fullness. For those books are almost
the. earliest and certainly the best evidence of the appearance
of a new kind of leading in human affairs.
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 233
These prophets are not a new class in the community; they
are of the most various origins — Ezekiel was of the priestly
caste and of priestly sympathies, and Amos was a shepherd;
but they have this in common, that they bring into life a re-
ligious force outside the sacrifices and formalities of priesthood
and temple. The earlier prophets seem most like the earlier
priests, they are oracular, they give advice and foretell events ;
it is quite possible that at first, in the days when there were
many high places in the land and religious ideas were com-
paratively unsettled, there was no great distinction between
priest and prophet. The prophets danced, it would seem, some-
what after the Dervish fashion, and uttered oracles. Generally
they wore a distinctive mantle of rough goatskin. They kept
up the nomadic tradition as against the "new ways" of the set-
tlement. But after the building of the temple and the organi-
zation of the priesthood the prophetic type remains over and
outside the formal religious scheme. They were probably al-
ways more or less of an annoyance to the priests. They became
informal advisers upon public affairs, denouncers of sin and
strange practices, "self-constituted," as we should say, having
no sanction but an inner light. "Now the word of the Lord
came unto" — so and so; that is the formula.
In the latter and most troubled days of the kingdom of Judah,
as Egypt, North Arabia, Assyria, and then Babylonia closed
like a vice upon the land, these prophets became very significant
and powerful. Their appeal was to anxious and fearful minds,
and at first their exhortation was chiefiy towards repentance,
the pulling down of this or that high place, the restoration of
worship in Jerusalem, or the like. But through some of the
prophecies there runs already a note like the note of what we
call nowadays a "social reformer." The rich are "grinding the
faces of the poor" ; the luxurious are consuming the children's
bread; influential and wealthy people make friends with and
imitate the splendours and vices of foreigners, and sacrifice the
common people to these new fashions; and this is hateful to
Jehovah, who will certainly punish the land.
But with the broadening of ideas -that came with the Cap-
tivity, the tenor of prophecy broadens and changes. The jealous
pettiness that disfigures the earlier tribal ideas of God gives
place to a new idea of a god of universal righteousness. It is
clear that the increasing influence of prophets was not confined
234 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to the Jewish people; it was something that was going on in
those days all over the Semitic world. The breaking down of
nations and kingdoms to form the great and changing empires
of that age, the smashing up of cults and priesthoods, the mutual
discrediting of temple by temple in their rivalries and disputes
— all these influences were releasing men's minds to a freer and
wider religious outlook. The temples had accumulated great
stores of golden vessels and lost their hold upon the imaginations
of men. It is difiicult to estimate whether, amidst these con-
stant wars, life had become more uncertain and unhappy than
it had ever been before, but there can be no doubt that men
had become more conscious of its miseries and insecurities.
Except for the weak and the women, there remained little com-
fort or assurance in the sacrifices, ritual, and formal devotions
of the temples. Such was the world to which the later prophets
of Israel began to talk of the One God, and of a Promise that
some day the world should come to peace and unity and happi-
ness. This great God that men were now discovering lived in a
temple "riot made with hands, eternal in the heavens." There
can be little doubt of a great body of such thought and utter-
ance in Babylonia, Egypt, and throughout the Semitic east.
The prophetic books of the Bible can be but specimens of the
prophesyings of that time. ...
We have already drawn attention to the gradual eecape of
writing and knowledge from their original limitation to the
priesthood and the temple precincts, from the shell in which
they were first developed and chCTished. We have taken Herod-
otus as an interesting specimen of what we have called the free
intelligence of mankind. Now here we are dealing with a
similar overflow of moral ideas into the general community.
The Hebrew prophets, and the steady expansion of their ideas
towards one God in all the world, is a parallel development of
the free conscience of mankind. From this time onward there
runs through human thought, now weakly and obscurely, now
gathering power, the idea of one rule in the world, and of a
promise and possibility of an active and splendid peace and
happiness in human affairs. From being a temple religion
of the old type, the Jewish religion becomes, to a large extent,
a prophetic and creative religion of a new type. Prophet suc-
ceeds prophet. Later on, as we shall tell, there was bom a
prophet of unprecedented power, Jesus, whose followers founded
THE SCRIPTURES AND THE PROPHETS 235
the great universal religion of Christianity. Still later Mu-
hammad, another prophet, appears in Arabia and founds Islam.
In spite of very distinctive features of their own, these two
teachers do in a manner arise out of and in succession to these
Jewish prophets. It is not the place of the historian to discuss
the truth and falsity of religion, but it is his business to record
the appearance of great constructive ideas. Two thousand four
hundred years ago, and six or seven or eight thousand years
after the walls of the first Sumerian cities arose, the ideas of
the moral unity of mankind and of a world peace had come
into the world. ^
* Fletcher H. Swift's Education in Ancient Israel from Earliest Times to
A.D. 70 is an interesting account of the way in which the Jewish religion,
because it was a literature-sustained religion, led to the first efforts to
provide elementary education for all the children in the community.
XX
THE AEYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES IN PKE-
HISTOEIC TIMES
1. The Spreading of the Aryan-Speakers. § 2. Prvmitwe
Aryan Life. § 3. Early Aryan Daily Life.
WE have spoken of the Aryan language as probably aris-
ing in the region of the Danube and South Russia and
spreading from that region of origin. We say "prob-
ably," because it is by no means certainly proved that that was
the centre; there have been vast discussions upon this point
and wide divergences of opinion. We give the prevalent view.
It was originally the language of a group of peoples of the
Nordic race. As it spread widely, Aryan began to differentiate
into a number of subordinate languages. To the west and south
it encountered the Basque language, which was then widely
spread in Spain, and also possibly various other Mediterranean
languages.
Before the spreading of the Aryans from their lands of
origin southward and westward, the Iberian race was dis-
tributed over Great Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, north
Africa, south Italy, and, in a more civilized state, Greece and
Asia Minor. It was closely related to the Egyptian. To judge
by its European vestiges it was a rather small human type,
generally with an oval face and a long head. It buried its
chiefs and important people in megalithic chambers — i.e. made
of big stones — covered over by great mounds of earth ; and these
mounds of earth, being much longer than they are broad, are
spoken of as the long barrows. These people sheltered at times
in caves, and also buried some of their dead therein ; and from
the traces of charred, broken, and cut human bones, including
the bones of children, it is inferred that they were cannibals.
236
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES
&B7
238 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
These short dark Iberian tribes (and the Basques also if they
were a different race) were thrust back westward, and con-
quered and enslaved by slowly advancing waves of the taller
and fairer Aryan-speaking people, coming southward and west-
ward through Central Europe, who are spoken of as the Kelts.
Only the Basque resisted the conquering Aryan speech. Grad-
ually these Keltic-speakers made their way to the Atlantic, and
all that now remains of the Iberians is mixed into the Keltic
population. How far the Keltic invasion affected the Irish
population is a matter of debate at the present time; in that
island the Kelts may have been a mere caste of conquerors
who imposed their language on a larger subject population. It
is even doubtful if the north of England is more Aryan than
pre-Keltic in blood. There is a sort of short dark Welshman,
and certain types of Irishmen, who are Iberians by race. The
modern Portuguese are also largely of Iberian blood.
The Kelts spoke a language, Keltic,^ which was also in its
turn to differentiate into the language of Gaul, Welsh, Breton,
Scotch and Irish Gaelic, and other tongues. They buried the
ashes of their chiefs and important people in round barrows.
While these Nordic Kelts were spreading westward, other
Nordic Aryan peoples were pressing dovsTi upon the dark white
Mediterranean race in the Italian and Greek peninsulas, and
developing the Latin and Greek groups of tongues. Certain
other Aryan tribes were drifting towards the Baltic and across
into Scandinavia, speaking varieties of the Aryan which be-
came anciefit Norse— the parent of ' Swedish, Danish, Nor-
wegian, and Icelandic — Gothic, and Low and High German.
While the primitive Aryan speech was thus spreading and
breaking up into daughter languages to the west, it was also
spreading and breaking up to the east. North of the Car-
pathians and the Black Sea, Aryan-speaking tribes were in-
creasing and spreading and using a distinctive dialect called
Slavonian, from which came Eussian, Serbian, Polish, Bul-
garian, and other tongues ; other variations of Aryan distributed
over Asia Minor and Persia were also being individualized as
Armenian and Indo-Iranian, the parent of Sanscrit and
Persian. In this book we have used the word Aryan for all
'"The Keltic group of languages, of which it has been said that they
combined an Aryan vocabulary with a Berber (or Iberian) grammar."
— Sir Harry Johnston.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 239
this family of languages, but the term Indo-European is some-
times used for the entire family, and "Aryan" itself restricted
in a narrower sense to the Indo-Iranian speech. This Indo-
Iranian speech was destined to split later into a number of
languages, including Persian and Sanscrit, the latter being the
language of certain tribes of fair-complexioned Aryan speakers
who pushed eastward into India somewhen between 3,000 and
1,000 B.C. and conquered dark Dravidian peoples who were
then in possession of that land.
From their original range of wandering, other Aryan
tribes spread to the north as well as to the south of the Black
Sea, and ultimately, as these seas shrank and made way
for them, to the north and east of the Caspian, and so
began to come into conflict with and mix also with Mongolian
peoples of the Ural-Altaic linguistic group the horse-keeping
people of the grassy steppes of Central Asia. From these Mon-
golian races the Aryans seem to haTe acquired the use of the
horse for riding and warfare. There were three or four pre-
historic varieties or sub-species of horse in Europe and Asia,
but it was the steppe or semi-desert lands that first gave horses
of a build adapted to other than food uses.^ All these peoples,
it must be understood, shifted their ground rapidly, a succesr-
sion of bad seasons might drive them many hundreds. of miles,
and it is only in a very rough and provisional manner that their
"beats" can now be indicated. Every summer they went north,
every winter they swung south again. This annual swing cov-
ered sometimes hundreds of miles. On our maps, for the sake
of simplicity, we represent the shifting of nomadic peoples by
a straight line ; but really they moved in annual swings, as the
broom of a servant who is sweeping out a passage swishes from
side to side as she advances. Spreading round the north of the
Black Sea, and probably to the north of the Caspian, from
the range of the original Teutonic tribes of Central and North-
central Europe to the Iranian peoples who became the Medes
and Persians and (Aryan) HinduSj were the grazing lands
of a confusion of tribes, about whom it is truer to be vague than
precise, such as the Cimmerians, the Sarmatians, and those
Scythians who, together with the Medes and Persians, came into
effective contact with the Assyrian Empire by 1,000 B.C. or
earlier.
'Eoger Pocock's Horses ia a good and readable book on these questions.
240 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Ea8t and south of tlie Black Sea, between the Danube and
the Medes and Persians, and to the north of the Semitic and
Mediterranean peoples of the sea-coasts and peninsulas, ranged
another series of equally ill-defined Aryan tribes, moving easily
from place to place and intermixing freely — to the great con-
fusion of historians. They seem, for instance, to have broken'
up and assimilated the Hittite civilization, which was probably,
pre-Aryan in its origin. These latter Aryans were, perhaps,
not so far advanced along the nomadic line as the Scythians of
the great plains.
§ 2
What sort of life did these prehistoric Aryans lead, these
Nordic Aryans who were the chief ancestors of most Europeans
and most white Americans and European colonists of to-day,
as well as of the Armenians,^ Persians, and high-caste Hindus?
In answering that question in addition to the dug-up remains
and vestiges upon which we have had to rely in the case of the
predecessors of the Aryans, we have a new source of knowledge.
We have language. By careful study of the Aryan languages
it has been found possible to deduce a number of conclusions
about the life of these Aryan peoples 5,000 or 4,000 years ago.
All these languages have a common resemblance, as each, as
we have already explained, rings the changes upon a number
of common roots. When we find the same root word running
through all or most of these tongues, it seems reasonable to
conclude that the thing that root word signifies must have been
known to the common ancestors. Of course, if they have ex-
actly the same word in their languages, this may not be the
case ; it may be the new name of a new thing or of a new idea
that has spread over the world quite recently. "Gas," for
instance, is a word that was made by Van Helmont, a Dutch
chemist, about 1625, and has spread into most civilized tongues,
and "tobacco" again is an American-Indian word which fol-
lowed the introduction of smoking almost everywhere. But if
the same word turns up in a number of languages, and if it
follows the characteristic modifications of each language, we
may feel sure that it has been in that language, and a part of
that language, since the beginning, suffering the same changes
'But these may have been an originally Semitic people who learnt an
Aryan speech.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 241
with the rest of it. We know, for example, that the words for •
waggon and wheel run in this fashion through the Aryan
tongues, and so we are able to conclude that the primitive
Aryans, the more purely Nordic Aryans, had waggons, though
it would seem from the absence of any common roots for spokes,
rim, or axle that their wheels were not wheelwright's wheels
with spokes, but made of the trunks of trees shaped out with ,
an axe between the ends.
These primitive waggons were drawn by oxen. The early
Aryans did not ride or drive horses ; they had very little to do
with horses. The Reindeer men were a horse-people, but the
Neolithic Aryans were a cow-people. They ate beef, not horse ;
and after many ages they began this use of draught cattle.
They reckoned wealth by cows. They wandered, following
pasture, and "trekking" their goods, as the South African Boers
do, in ox-waggons, though of course their waggons were much
clumsier than any to be found in the world to-day. They prob-
ably ranged over very wide areas. They were migratory, but
not in the strict sense of the word "nomadic" ; they moved' in a
slower, clumsier fashion than did the later, more specialized
nomadic peoples. They were forest and parkland people with-
out horses. They were developing a migratory life out of the
more settled "forest clearing" life of the earlier Neolithic
period. Changes of climate which were replacing forest by
pasture, and the accidental burning of forests by fire, may have
assisted this development.
We have already described the sort of home the primitive
Aryan occupied and his household life, so far as the remains
of the Swiss pile dwellings enable us to describe these things.
Mostly his houses were of too flimsy a sort, probably of wattle
and mud, to have survived, and possibly he left them and
trekked on for very slight reasons. The Aryan peoples burnt
their dead, a custom they still preserve in India, but their
predecessors, the long-barrow people, the Iberians, buried their
dead in a sitting position. In some ancient Aryan burial
mounds (round barrows) the urns containing the ashes of the
departed are shaped like houses, and these represent rounded
huts with thatched roofs. (See Fig., page 86.)
The grazing of the primitive Aryan was far more important
to him than his agriculture. At first he cultivated with a rough
wooden hoe ; then, after he had found out the use of cattle for
242 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
draught purposes, he began real ploughing with oxen^ using
at first a suitably bent tree bough as his plough. His first
cultivation before that came about must have been rather in
the form of garden patches near the house buildings than of
fields. Most of the land his tribe occupied was common land
on which the cattle grazed together.
He never used stone for building house walls until upon
the very verge of history. He used stone for hearths (e. g. at
Glastonbury), and sometimes stone sub-structures. He did,
however, make a sort of stone house in the centre of the gi'eat
mounds in which he buried the ashes of his illustrious dead.
He may have learnt this custom from his Iberian neighbours
and predecessors. It was these dark whites of the heliolithic
culture, and not the primitive Aryans, who were responsible
for such temples as Stonehenge or Oarnac in Brittany.
These Aryans were congregated not in cities but in distrioia
of pasturage, as clans and tribal communities. They formed
loose leagues of mutual help under chosen leaders, they had
centres where they could come together with their cattle in
times of danger, and they made camps with walls of earth and
palisades, many of which are still to be traced in the history-
worn contours of the European scenery. The leaders under
whom men fOught in war were often the same men as the sacri-
ficial purifiers who were their early priests.
The knowledge of bronze spread late in Europe. The i^ordic
European had been making his slow advances age by age for
7,000 or 8,000 years before the metals came. By that time
his social life had developed so that there were men of variovis
occupations and men and women of different ranks in the com-
munity. There were men who worked wood and leather, pot-
ters and carvers. The women span and wove and embroidered.
There were chiefs and families that were distinguished as
leaderly and noble. The Aryan tribesman varied the monotony
of his herding and wandering, he consecrated undertakings and
celebrated triumphs, held funeral assemblies, and distinguished
the traditional seasons of the year, by feasts. His meats we
have already glanced at; he was an eager user of intoxicating
drinks. He made these of honey, of barley, and, as the Aryan-
speaking tribes spread southward, of the grape. And he got
merry and drunlten. Whether he first used yeast to make his
bread light or to ferment his drink we do not know.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 243
At Ms feasts there were individuals with a gift for "playing
the fool," who did so no doubt to win the laughter of their
friends, but there was also another sort of men, of great im-
portance in their time, and still more important to the historian,
certain singers of songs and stories, the bards or rhapsodists.
These hards existed among all the Aryan-speaking peoples ; they
were a consequence of and a further factor in that development
of spoken language which was the chief of all the human ad-
vances made in Neolithic, times. They chanted or recited stories
of the past, or stories of the living chief and his people ; they told
other stories that they invented; they memorized jokes and
catches. They found and seized upon and improved the
rhythms, rhymes, alliterations, and such-like possibilities latent
in language; they probably did much to elaborate and fix gram-
matical forms. They were the first great artists of the ear, as
the later Aurignacian rock painters were the first great artists
of the eye and hand. 'Eo doubt they used much gesture; prob-
ably they learnt appropriate gestures when they learnt their
songs ; but the order and sweetness and power of language was
their primary concern.
And they mark a new step forward in the power and range
of the human mind. They sustained and developed in men's
minds a sense of a greater something than themselves, the tribe,
and of a life that extended back into the past. They not only
recalled old hatreds and battles, they recalled old alliances &nd
a common inheritance. The feats of dead heroes lived again.
The Aryans began to live in thought before they were born
and after they were dead.
Like most human things, this bardic tradition grew first
slowly and then more rapidly. By the time bronze was coming
into Europe there was not an Aryan people that had not a
profession and training of bards. In their hands language
became as beautiful as it is ever likely to be. These bards were
living books, man-histories, guardians and makers of a new
and more powerful tradition in human life. Every Aryan peo-
ple had ita long poetical records thus handed down, its sagas
(Teutonic), its epics (Greek), its vedas (Old Sanscrit). The
earliest Aryan people were essentially a people of the voice. The
recitation seems to have predominated even in those ceremonial
and dramatic dances and that "dressing-up" which among most
human races have also served for the transmission of tradition.
244 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
At that time there was no writing, and when first the art
of writing crept into Europe, as we shall tell later, it must
have seemed far too slow, clumsy, and lifeless a method of
record for men to trouble very much about writing down these
glowing and beautiful treasures of the memory. Writing was
at first kept for accounts and matters of fact. The bards and
rhapsodists flourished for long after the introduction of writing.
They survived, indeed, in Europe as the minstrels into the
Middle Ages.
Unhappily their tradition had not the fixity of a written
record. They amended and reconstructed, they had their
fashions and their phases of negligence. Accordingly we have
now only the very much altered and revised vestiges of that
spoken literature of prehistoric times. One of the most inter-
esting and informing of these prehistoric compositions of the
Aryans survives in the Greek Iliad. An early form of Iliad
was probably recited by 1,000 b.c, but it was not written down
until perhaps YOO or 600 B.C. Many men must have had to do
with it as authors and improvers, but later Greek tradition
attributed it to a blind bard named Homer, to whom also is
ascribed -the Odyssey, a composition of a very different spirit
and outlook. It is possible that many of the Aryan bards were
blind men. According to Professor J. L. Myres their bards
were blinded to prevent their straying from the tribe. Mr.
L. Lloyd has seen in Khodesia the musician of a troupe of
native dancers who had been blinded by his chief for this very
reason. The Slavs called all bards sliepac, which was also their
word for a blind man. The original recited version pf the Iliad
was older than that of the Odyssey. "The Iliad as a complete
poem is older than the Odyssey, though the material of the
Odyssey, being largely undatable folk-lore, is older than any of
the historical material in the Iliad." Both epics were prob-
ably written over and rewritten at a later date, in much the
same manner that Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of Queen
Victoria, in his Idylls of the King, wrote over the Morte
d' Arthur (which was itself a writing over by Sir Thomas
Malory, circ. 1450, of pre-existing legends), making the
speeches and sentiments and the characters more in accordance
with those of his own time. But the events of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, the way of living they describe, the spirit of the acts
recorded, belong to the closing centuries of the prehistoric age.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 245
These sagas, epics, and vedas'do supply, in. addition to arcliseol-
ogy and philology, a third source of information about those
vanished times.
Here, for example, is the concluding passage of the Iliad,
describing very exactly the making of a prehistoric barrow.
(We have taken here Chapman's rhymed translation, correct-
ing certain words with the help of the prose version of Lang,
Leaf, and Myers.)
"... Thus oxen, mules, in waggons straight they put,
Went forth, and an unmeasur'd pile of sylvan matter cut;
Nine days employ'd in carriage, but when the tenth morn shin'd
On wretched mortals, then they brought the bravest of his kind
Forth to be burned. Troy swam in tears. Upon the pile's most height
They laid the body, and gave fire. All day it burn'd, all night.
But when th' eleventh morn let on earth her rosy fingers shine.
The people fiock'd about the pile, and first with gleaming wine
Quench'd aU the flames. His brothers then, and friends, the snowy
bones
Gather'd into an urn of gold, still pouring out their moans.
Then wrapt they in soft purple veils the rich um, digg'd a pit,
Grav'd it, built up the grave "with stones, and quickly piled on it
A barrow. ...
. . . The barrow heap'd once, all the town
In Jove-nurs'd Priam's Court partook a sumptuous fun'ral feast.
And so horse-taming Hector's rites gave up his soul to rest."
There remains also an old English saga, Beovntlf, made long
before the English had crossed from Germany into England,
which winds up with a similar burial. The preparation of a
pyre is first described. It is hung round with shields and coats
of mail. The body is brought and the pyre fired, and then for
ten days the warriors built a mighty mound to be seen afar
by the traveller on sea or land. Beowulf, which is at least a
thousand years later than the Iliad, is also interesting because
one of the main adventures in it is the looting of the treasures
of a barrow already ancient in those days.
§ 3
The Greek epics reveal the early Greeks with no knowledge
of iron, without writing, and before any Greek-founded cities
existed in the land into which they had evidently come quite
recently as conquerors. They were spreading southward from
£46
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the Aryan region of origin. They seem to have been a fair peo-
ple, new-comers in Grreece, new-comers to a land that had been
held hitherto by the Mediterranean or Iberian peoples.
Let ^xs, at the risk of a slight repetition, be perfectly clear
upon one point. The Iliad does not give ns the primitive neo-
lithic life of that Aryan region of origin j it gives ns that life
already well on the move towards a new state of affairs. The
primitive neolithic way of living, with its tame and domesti-
cated animals, its pottery and cooking, and its transitory patches
of rude cultivation, we have already sketched. Between 15,000
and 6,000 B.C. the
neolithic way of liv-
ing had spread with
the forests and abun-
dant vegetation of the
Pluvial Period, over
the greater part of the
old world, from the
Niger to the Hwang-
ho and from Ireland
to the south of India.
Now, as the climate
of great portion^ of
the earth was swing-
ing towards drier and
more open conditions
again, the earlier,
simpler, neolithic life
was developing along
two divergent directions. One was leading to a more wander-
ing life, towards at last a constantly migratory life between
summer and winter pasture, which is called Nomadism; the
other, in certain sunlit river valleys, was towards a water-treas-
uring life of irrigation, in which men gathered into the first
towns and made the first Civixizatioit. We have already de-
scribed the first civilizations and their liability to recurrent
conquests by nomadic peoples. We have already noted that for
many thousands of years there has been an almost rhythmic re-
currence of conquest of the civilizations by the nomads. Here we
have to note that the Greeks, as the Iliad presents them, are
neither simple neolithic nomads, innocent of civilization, nor are
(tambat iebveaa'Maulittts- & 'Hector L in ^im Hiatl)
From a platter ascribed to the end of the
seventh century in the British Museum. This
is probably the earliest known vase bearing a
Greek inscription. Greek writing was just be-
ginning. Note the Swastika.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES
247
mimsmmiwmmmmmkwamm
they civilized men. They are nomads in an excited state, be-
cause they have just come upon civilization, and regard it as an
opportunity for war and loot.
These early Greeks of the Iliad are sturdy fighters, but with-
out discipline — their battles are a confusion of single combats.
They have horses, but no cavalry; they use the horse, which is
a comparatively recent addition to Aryan resources, to drag a
rude fighting chariot into battle. The horse is still novel enough
to be something of a terror in itself. For ordinary draught pur-
poses, as in the quo-
tation from the Iliad
we have just made,
oxen were employed.
The only priests of
these Aryans are the
keepers of shrines
and sacred places.
There are chiefs, who
are heads of families
and who also perform
sacrifices, but there
does not seem to be
much mystery or sac-
ramental feeling in
their religion. When the Greeks go to war, these heads and
elders meet in council and appoint a king, whose powers are
very loosely defined. There are no laws, but only customs;
and no exact standards of conduct.
The social life of the early Greeks centred about the house-
holds of these leading men. There were no doubt huts for herds
and the like, and outlying farm buildings; but the hall of
the chief was a comprehensive centre, to which everyone went
to feast, to- hear the bards, to take part in games and exercises.
The primitive craftsmen were gathered there. About it were
cowsheds and stabling and such-like offices. Unimportant peo-
ple slept about anywhere as retainers did in the mediseval castles
and as people still do in Indian households. Except for quite
personal possessions, there was still an air of patriarchal com-
munism about the tribe. The tribe, or the chief as the head of the
tribe, owned the grazing lands ; forest and rivers were the wild.
The Aryan social organization seems, and indeed all early
Horses & ckaviais-'-^
(fi-om, an. anAaic Qrei3x. vase)
248 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
communities seem, to have been without the little separate
households that make up the mass of the population in western
Europe or America to-day. The tribe was a big family; the
nation a group of tribal families ; a household often contained
hundreds of people. Human society began, just as herds
and droves begin among animals, by the family delaying its
breaking up. Nowadays the lions in East Africa are apparently
becoming social animals in this way, by the young keeping with
the mother after they are fully grown, and hunting in a group.
Hitherto the lion has been much more of a solitary beast. If
men and women do not cling to their families nowadays as
much as they did, it is because the state and the community
supply now safety and help and facilities that were once only
possible in the family group.
In the Hindu community of to-day these great households
of the earlier stages of human society are still to be found. Mr.
Bhupendranath Basu has recently described a typical Hindu
household.^ It is an Aryan household refined and made gentle
by thousands of years of civilization, but its social structure
is the same as that of the households of which the Aryan epics
tell.
"The joint family system," he said, "has descended to us from
time immemorial, the Aryan patriarchal system of old still
holding sway in India. The structure, though ancient, remains
full of life. The joint family is a co-operative corporation, in
which men and women have a well-defined place. At the head
of the corporation is the senior member of the family, generally
the eldest male member, but in his absence the senior female
member often assumes control." (Cp. Penelope in the
Odyssey.)
"All able-bodied members must contribute their labour and
earnings, whether of personal skill or agriculture and trade, to
the common stock ; weaker members, widows, orphans,' and desti-
tute relations, all must be maintained and supported; sons,
nephews, brothers, cousins, all must be treated equally, for any
undue preference is apt to break up the family. We have no
word for cousins — ^they are either brothers or sisters, and we
do not know what are cousins two degrees removed. The chil-
dren of a first cousin are your nephews and nieces, just the same
' Some Aspects of Hindu Life in India. Paper read to the Koyal Society
of Arts, Nov. 28, 1918.
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 249
as the children of your brothers and sisters. A man can no
more marry a cousin, however removed, than he can marry
his ov(fn sister, except in certain parts of Madras, v^here a man
may marry his maternal uncle's daughter. The family affec-
tions, the family ties, are always very strong, and therefore
the maintenance of an equal standard among so many members
is not so difficult as it may appear at first sight. Moreover,
life is very simple. Until recently shoes were not in general
use at home, but sandals without any leather fastenings. I
have known of a well-to-do middle^class family of several
brothers and cousins who had two or three pairs of leather shoes
between them, these shoes being only used when they had occa-
sion to go out, and the same practice is still followed in the case
of the more expensive garments, like shawls, which last for
generations, and with their age are treated with loving care, as
having been used by ancestors of revered memory.
"The joint family remains together sometimes for several
generations, until it becomes too unwieldy, when it breaks up
into smaller families, and you thus see whole villages peopled
by members of the same clan. I have said that the family is a
co-operative society, and it may be likened to a small state, and
is kept in its place by strong discipline based on love and obedi-
ence. You see nearly every day the younger members coming
to the head of the family and taking the dust of his feet as a
token of benediction; whenever they go on an enterprise, they
take his leave and carry his blessing. . . . There are many
bonds which bind the family together — ^the bonds of sympathy,
of common pleasures, of common sorrows ; when a death occurs,
all the members go into mourning; when there is a birth or a
wedding, the whole family rejoices. Then above all is the
family deity, some image of Vishnu, the preserver; his place
is in a separate room, generally knovra as the room of God, or
in well-to-do families in a temple attached to the house, where
the family performs its daily worship. There is a sense of per-
sonal attachment between this image of the deity and the family,
for the image generally comes down from past generations, often
miraculously acquired by a pious ancestor at some remote time.
. . , With the household gods is intimately associated the
family priest. . . . The Hindu priest is a part of the family
life of his flock, between whom and himself the tie has existed
for many generations. The priest is not generally a man of
230 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
much learning ; he knows, however, the traditions of his faith.
. . . He is not a very heavy burden, for he is satisfied with
little — a few handfuls of rice, a few home-grown bananas or
vegetables, a little unrefined sugar made in the village, and
sometimes a few pieces of copper are all that is needed. ... A
picture of our family life would be incomplete without the
household servants. A female servant is known as the 'jhi,' or
daughter, in Bengal — she is like the daughter of the house;
she calls the master and the mistress father and mother, and
the young men and women of the family brothers and sisters.
She participates in the life of the family; she goes to the holy
places along with her mistress, for she could not go alone, and
generally she spends her life with the family of her adoption;
her children are looked after by the family. The treatment of
men servants is very similar. These servants, men and women,
are generally people of the humbler castes, but a sense of per-
sonal attachment grows up between them and the members of
the family, and as they get on in years they are affectionately
called by the younger members elder brothers, uncles, aunts,
etc. ... In a well-to-do house there is always a resident
teacher, who instructs the children of the family as well as
other boys of the village; there is no expensive school building,
but room is found in some veranda or shed in the courtyard for
the children and their teacher, and into this school low-caste
boys are freely admitted. These indigenous schools were not of
a very high order, but they supplied an agency of instruction
for the masses which was probably not available in many other
countries. ...
"With Hindu life is bound up its traditional duty of hos^
pitality. It is the duty of a householder to offer a meal to any
stranger who may come before midday and ask for one; the
mistress of the house does not sit down to her meal until every
member is fed, and, as sometimes her food is all that is left,
she does not take her meal until well after midday lest a hungry
stranger should come and claim one." . . .
We have been tempted to quote Mr. Basu at some length,
because here we do get to something like a living understanding
of the type of household which has prevailed in human com-
munities since IsTeolithic days, which still prevails to-day in
THE ARYAN-SPEAKING PEOPLES 251
India, China, and the Far East, but which in the west is rapidly
giving ground before a state and municigal organization of
education and a large-scale industrialism within which an
amount of individual detachment and freedom is possible, such
as these great households never knew. . . .
But let us return now to the history preserved for us in the
Aryan epics.
The Sanscrit epics tell a very similar story to that under
lying the Iliad, the story of a fair, beef-eating people — only
later did they become vegetarians — coming down from Persia
into the plain of ISTorth India and conquering their way slowly
towards the Indus. From the Indus they spread over India,
but as they spread they acquired much from the dark Dravidians
they conquered, and they seem to have lost their bardic tradi-
tion. The vedas, says Mr. Basu, were transmitted chiefly in
the households by the women. . . .
The oral literature of the Keltic peoples who pressed west-
ward has not been preserved so completely as that of the Greeks
or Indians; it was written down many centuries later, and so,
like the barbaric, primitive English Beowulf, has lost any clear
evidence of a period of migration into the lands of an antece-
dent people. If the pre-Aryans figure in it at all, it is as the
fairy folk of the Irish stories. Ireland, most cut off of all
the Keltic-speaking communities, retained to the latest date its
primitive life ; and the Tain, the Irish Iliad, describes a cattle-
keeping life in which war chariots are still used, and war dogs
also, and the heads oif the slain are carried off slung round the
horses' necks. The Tain is the story of a cattle raid. Here,
too, the same social order appears as in the Iliad; the chiefs sit
and feast in great halls, they build halls for themselves, there
is singing and story-telling by the bards, and drinking and in-
toxication. Priests are not very much in evidence, but there
is a aort of medicine-man who deals in spells and prophecy.
XXI
THE GEEEKS AKTD THE PERSIANS
§ 1. The Hellenic Peoples. § 2. Distinctive Featwres of Hel-
lenic Civilization. § 3. Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democ-^
racy in Greece. § 4. The Kingdom of Lydia. § 5. The
Rise of the Persians in the East. § 6. The Story of Crcesus.
§ 7. Darius Invades Russia. § 8. The Battle of Marathon.
§ 9. ThemwpylcB and Salamis. § 10. Platcea and Mycale.
§ 1
THE Greeks appear in the dim light before the dawn of
history (say, 1,500 b.c.) as one of the wandering im-
perfectly nomadic Aryan peoples who were gradually
extending the range of their pasturage southward into the Bal-
kan peninsula and coming into conflict and mixing with that
preceding JEgean civilization of which Cnossos was the crown.
In the Homeric poems these Greek tribes speak one common
language, and a common tradition upheld by the epic poems
keeps them together in a loose unity; they call their various
tribes by a common name, Hellenes. They probably came in
successive waves. Three main variations of the ancient Greek
speech are distinguished : the lonioj the -iEolic, and the Doric.
There was a great variety of dialects. The lonians seem to
have preceded the other Greeks, and to have mixed very inti-
mately with the civilized peoples they overwhelmed. Racially
the people of such cities as Athens and Miletus may have, been
less Nordic than Mediterranean. The Doric apparently con-
stituted the last most powerful and least civilized wave of the
migration. These Hellenic tribes conquered and largely de-
stroyed the -iEgean civilization that had preceded their arrival ;
upon its ashes they built up a civilization of their own. They
took to the sea and crossed by way of the islands to Asia Minor;
and, sailing through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, spread
252 _
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS
253
their settlements along the south, and presently along the north
borders of the Black Sea. They spread also over the south of
Italy, which was called at last Magna Grsecia, and round the
'HSLLSKie imess
lOOO to 800 B.e.
northern coast of the Mediterranean. They founded the town
of Marseilles on the site of an earlier Phoenician colony. They
began settlements in Sicily in rivalry with the Carthaginians
as early as 735 B.C.
In the rear of the Greeks proper came the kindred Mace-
donians and Thracians; on their left wing, the Phrygians
crossed by the Bosphorus into Asia Minor.
We find all this distribution of the Greeks effected before the
254
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
^ beginnings of written history,
(^ By the seventh century B.q.
S — that is to say, by the time
»H of the Babylonian captivity of
il the Jews — ^the landmarks of';
J the ancient world of the pre-
^ Hellenic civilization in Eu-:
8 rope have been obliterated;!
> Tiryns and Cnossos are unim-
Iportant sites; Mycenae and
Troy survive in legend; the
great cities of this new Greek
2 world are Athens, Sparta (the
i capital of Lacedemon),
^ Corinth, Thebes, Samos,
Miletus. The world our
grandfathers called "Ancient
Greece" had arisen on the,
forgotten ruins of a still more
Ancient Greece, in many
ways as civilized and artistic,
of which to-day we are only
beginning to leam through
the labours of the excavator.
But the newer Ancient
/ Greece, of which we are now
^ telling, still lives vividly in
'^ the imaginations and institu-
I tions of men because it spoke;
^ a beautiful and most expres-
I sive Aryan tongue akin to our
**^ own, and because it had taken
'g*. over the Mediterranean alpha-
i bet and perfected it by the a,d-
8 dition of vowels, so that read-
ing and writing were now
easy arts to leam and practise, and great numbers of
people could master them and make a record for later ages.^
'Vowels were lees necessary for the expression of a Semitic language.
In the early Semitic alphabets only A, I, and U were provided with sym-
bols, but for such a language as Greek, in which many of the inflectional
endings are vow«1b, a variety of vowel signs was indispensable.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 255
§ 2
IsTow this Greek civilization that we find growing up in South
Italy and Greece and Asia Minor in the seventh ctotury b.c,
is a civilization differing in many important respects from the
two great civilized systems whose growths we have already
traced, that of the Nile and that of the Two Eivers of Mesopo-
tamia. These civilizations grew through long ages where they
are found ; they grew slowly about a temple life out of a primi-
tive agriculture; priest-kings and god-kings consolidated such
early city states into empires. But the barbaric Greek herds-
men raiders came southward into a world whose civilization
was already an old story. Shipping and agriculture, walled
cities and writing were already there. The Greeks did not
grow a civilization of their own; they wrecked one and put
another together upon and out of the ruins.
To this we must ascribe the fact that there is no temple-
state stage, no stage of priest-kings, in the Greek record. The
Greeks got at once to the city organization that in the east had
grown round the temple. They took over the association of
temple and ctty ; the idea was ready-made for them. What im-
pressed them most about the city was probably its wall. It is
doubtful if they took to city life and citizenship straight away.
At first they lived in open villages outside the ruins of the cities
they had destroyed, but there stood the model for them, a con-
tinual suggestion. They thought first of a city as a safe place
in a time of strife, and of the temple uncritically as a proper
feature of the city. They came into this inheritance of a pre-
vious civilization with the ideas and traditions of the wood-
lands still strong in their minds. The heroic social system of
the Iliad took possession of the land, and adapted itself to the
new conditions. As history goes on the Greeks became more
religious and superstitious as the faiths of the conquered welled
up from below.
We have already said that the social structure of the primi-
tive Aryans was a two-class system of nobles and commoners,
the classes not very sharply marked off from each other, and
led in warfare by a king who was simply the head of one of the
noble families, primus inter pares, a leader among his equals.
With the conquest of the aboriginal population and with the
building of towns there was added to this simple social arrange-
256 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ment of two classes a lower stratum of farm-workers and skilled
and unskilled workers, who were for the most part slaves. But
all the Greek communities were not of this "conquest" type.
Some were "refugee" cities representing smashed communities,
and in these the aboriginal substratum would be missing.
In many of the former cases the survivors of the earlier popu-
lation formed a subject class, slaves of the state as a whole, aa,
for instance, the Helots in Sparta. The nobles and commoners
became landlords and gentlemen farmers; it was they who
directed the shipbuilding and engaged in trade. But some of
the poorer free citizens followed mechanic arts, and, as we have
already noted, would even pull an oar in a galley for pay.
Such priests as there were in this Greek world were either the
guardians of shrines and temples or sacrificial functionaries;
Aristotle, in his Politics, makes them a mere subdivision of
his official class. The citizen served as warrior in youth, ruler
in his maturity, priest in his old age. The priestly class, in
comparison with the equivalent class in Egypt and Babylonia,
was small and insignificant. The gods of the Greeks proper,
the gods of the heroic Greeks, were, as we have already noted,
glorified human heingS; and they were treated without very
much fear or awe; but beneath these gods of the conquering
freemen lurked other gods of the subjugated peoples, who found
their furtive followers among slaves and women. The original
Aryan gods were not expected to work miracles or control men's
lives. But Greece, like most of the Eastern world in the thou-
sand years B.C., was much addicted to consulting oracles or
soothsayers. Delphi was particularly famous for its oracle.
"When the Oldest Men in the tribe could not tell you the right
thing to do," says Gilbert Murray, "you went to the blessed
dead. All oracles were at the tombs, of Heroes. They told you
what was 'Themis,' what was the right thing to do, or, as re-
ligious people would put it now, what was the Will of the God."
The priests and priestesses of these temples were not united
into one class, nor did they exercise any power as a class. It
was the nobles and free commoners, two classes which, in some
cases, merged into one common body of citizens, who consti-
tuted the Greek state. In many cases, especially in great city
states, the population of slaves and unenfranchised strangers
greatly outnumbered the citizens. But for them the state
existed only by courtesy; it existed legally for the select body
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS
257
of citizens alone. It might or might not tolerate the outsider
and the slave, but they had no legal voice in their treatment
— any more than if it had been a despotism.
This is a social structure differing widely from that of the
Eastern monarchies. The exclusive importance of the Greek
citizen reminds one a little of the exclusive importance of the
children of Israel in the later Jewish state, but there is no
equivalent on the Greek side to the prophets and priests, nor
to the idea of an overruling Jehovah.
Another contrast between the Greek states and any of the
human communities to which we have hitherto given attention
■^^flpp""
IZfwertf in an. ^cBienian xoarslap, about 400 "3.6. (.frsbonaeab
oF TelieF foaai. on.-die7kcrsrpolis)
is their continuous and incurable division. The civilizations
of Egypt, Sumeria, China, and no doubt North India, all began
in a niimber of independent «ity states, each one a city with a
few miles of dependent agricultural villages and cultivation
around it, but out of this phase they passed by a process of
coalescence into kingdoms and empires. But to the "very end
of their independent history the Greeks did not coalesce. Com-
monly, this is ascribed to the geographical conditions under
which they lived. Greece is a country cut up into a multitude
of valleys by mountain masses and arms of the sea that render
intercommunication difficult; so difficult that few cities were
able to hold many of the others in subjection for any length
of time. Moreover, many Greek cities were on islands and
scattered along remote coasts. To the end the largest city states
of Greece remained smaller than many English counties; and
258 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
some had an area of only a few square miles. Athens, one of
the largest of the Greek cities, at the climax of its power had
a populatiojQ of perhaps a third of a million. Few other Greek
cities exceeded 50,000. Of this, half or more were slaves and
strangers, and two-thirds of the free body women and children.
§ 3
The government of these city states varied very widely in its
nature. As they settled down after their conquests the Greeks
retained for a. time the rule of their kings, hut these kingdoms
drifted back more and more to the rule of the aristocratic class.
In Sparta (Lacedemon) kings were still distinguished in the
sixth century B.C. The Lacedemonians had a curious system
of a double kingship; two kings, drawn from different royal
families, ruled together. But most of the Greek city states
had become aristocratic republics long before the sixth century.
There is, however, a tendency towards slackness and inefficiency
in most families that rule by hereditary right; sooner or later
they decline; and as the Greeks got out upon the seas and set
up colonies and commerce extended, new rich families arose to
jostle the old and bring new personalities into power. These
nouveaiuv riches became members of an expanded ruling class,
a mode of government known as oligarchy — in opposition to
aristocracy — ^though, strictly, the term oligarchy (= govern-
ment by the few) should of course include hereditary aristocracy
as a special case.
In many cities persons of exceptional energy, taking advan-
tage of some social conflict or cla^s grievance, secured a more
or less irregular power in the state. This combination of
personality and opportunity has occurred in the United States
of America, for example, where men exercising various kinds
of informal power are called bosses. In Greece they were
called tyrants. But the tyrant was rather more than a boss;
he was recognized as a monarch, and claimed the authority
of a monarch. The modern boss, on the other hand, shelters
behind legal forms which he has "got hold of" and uses for
his own ends. Tyrants were distinguished from kings, who
claimed some sort of right, some family priority, for example,
to rule. They were supported, perhaps, by the poorer class
with a grievance; Peisistratus, for example, who was tyrant of
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 259
Athens, with two intervals of exile, between 560 and 527 b.c.,
was supported by the poverty-struck Athenian hillmen. Some-
times, as in Greek Sicily, the tyrant stood for the rich against
the poor. When, later on, the Persians began to subjugate the
Greek cities of Asia Minor, they set up pro-Persian tyrants.
Aristotle, the great philosophical teacher, who was born under
the hereditary Macedonian monarchy, and who was for some
years tutor to the king's son, distinguishes in his Politics be-
tween kings who ruled by an admitted and inherent right, such
as the King of Macedonia, whom he served, and tyrants who
ruled without the consent of the governed. As a matter of
fact, it is hard to conceive of a tyrant ruling without the con-
sent of many, and the active participation of a substantial num-
ber of his subjects ; and the devotion and unselfishness of your
"true kings" has been known to rouse resentment and question-
ing. Aristotle was also able to say that while the king ruled
for the good of the state, the tyrant ruled for his own good.
Upon this point, as in his ability to regard slavery as a natural
thing and to consider women unfit for freedom and political
rights, Aristotle was in harmony with the trend of events about
him.
A third form of government that prevailed increasingly in
Greece in the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries B.C., was known
as democracy. As the modem world nowadays is constantly
talking of democracy, and as the modem idea of democracy is
something widely different from the democracy of the Greek
city states, it will be well to be very explicit upon the meaning
of democracy in Greece. Democracy then was government by
the commonalty, the Demos; it was government by the whole
body of the citizens, by the many as distinguished from the few.
But let the modem reader mark that word "citizen." The slave
was excluded, the freedman was excluded, the stranger; even
the Greek born in the city, whose father had come eight or ten
miles from the city beyond the headland, was excluded. The
earlier democracies (but not all) demanded a property qualific^i-
tion from the citizen, and property in those days was land; this
was subsequently relaxed, but the modem reader will grasp
that here was something very different from modern democracy.
At the end of the fifth century B.C. this property qualification
had been abolished in Athens, for example; but Pericles, a
great Athenian statesman of whom we shall have more to tell
teo THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
later, had established a law (451 b.c.) restricting citizenship to
those who could establish Athenian descent on both sides. Thus,
in the Greek democracies quite as much as in the oligarchies,
the citizens formed a close corporation, ruling sometimes, as in
the case of Athens in its great days, a big population of serfs^
slaves, and "outlanders." A modem politician used to the idea,
the entirely new and different idea, that democracy in its per-
fected form means that every adult man and woman shall have
a voice in the government, would, if suddenly spirited back to
the extremist Greek democracy, regard it as a kind of oligarchy,
The only real difference between a Greek "oligarchy" and a
Greek democracy was that in the former the poorer and less
important citizens had no voice in the government, and in the
latter every citizen had. Aristotle, in his Politics, betrays very
clearly the practical outcome of this difference. Taxation set
lightly on the rich in the oligarchies; the democracies, on the
other hand, taxed the rich, and generally paid the impecunious
citizen a maintenance allowance and special fees. In Athens
fees were paid to citizens even for attending the general as-
sembly. But the generality of people outside the happy order
of citizens worked and did what they were told, and if one
desired the protection of the law, one sought a citizen to plead
for one. For only the citizen had any standing in the law
courts. The modern idea, that any one in the state should be
a citizen, would have shocked the privileged democrats of
Athens profoundly.
One obvious result of this monopolization of the state by the
class of citizens was that the patriotism of these privileged
people took an intense and narrow form. They would form
alliances, but never coalesce with other city states. That would
have obliterated every advantage by which they lived, The
narrow geographical limits of these Greek states added to the
intensity of their feeling. A man's love for his country was
reinforced by his love for his native town, his religion, and his
home; for these were all one. Of course the slaves did not
share in these feelings, and in the oligarchic states very often
the excluded class got over its dislike of foreigners in its greater
dislike of the class at home which oppressed it. But in the
main, patriotism in the Greek was a personal passion of an
inspiring and dangerous intensity. Like rejected love, it was
apt to turn into something very like hatred. The Greek exile
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 261
resembled the French or Eussian emigre in being ready to treat
his beloved country pretty roughly in order to save her from
the devils in human form who had taken possession of her and
turned him out.
In the fifth century b.c. Athens formed a system of relation-
ships with a number of other Greek city states which is often
spoken of by historians as the Athenian Empire. But all the
other city states retained their own governments. One "new
fact" added by the Athenian Empire was the coraplete and
effective suppression of piracy; another was the institution of
a sort of international law. The law indeed was Athenian law ;
but actions could now be brought and justice administered be-
tween citizens of the different states of the League, which of
course had not been possible before. The Athenian Empire had
really developed out of a league of mutual defence against
Persia ; its seat had originally been in the island of Delos, and
the allies had contributed to a common treasure at Delos; the
treasure of Delos was carried off to Athens because it was ex-
posed to a possible Persian raid. Then one city after another
offered a monetary contribution instead of military service, with
the result that in the end Athens was doing almost all the work
and receiving almost all the money. She was supported by
one or two of the larger islands. The "League" in thii> way
became gradually an "Empire," but the citizens of the allied
states remained, except where there were special treaties of
intermarriage and the like, practically foreigners to one an-
other. And it was chiefly the poorer citizens of Athens who
sustained this empire by their most vigorous and incessant per-
sonal service. Every citizen was liable to military service at
home or abroad between the ages of eighteen and sixty, some-
times on purely Athenian affairs and sometimes in defence of
the cities of the Empire whose citizens had bought themselves
off. There was probably no single man over twenty-five in the
Athenian Assembly who had not served in several campaigns
in different parts of the Mediterranean or Black Sea, and who
did not expect to serve again. Modern imperialism is denounced
by its opponents as the exploitation of the world by the rich ;
Athenian imperialisia was the exploitation of the world by the
poorer citizens of Athens.
Another difference from modem conditions, due to the small
»ize of the Greek city states, was that in a democracy every
262 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
citizea had the right to attend and speak and vote in the popular
assemhly. For most cities this meant a gathering of only a
few hundred people ; the greatest had no more than some thou-
sands of citizens. Nothing of this sort is possible in a modem
"democracy" with, perhaps, several million voters. The mod-
ern "citizen's" voice in public affairs is limited to the right
to vote for one or other of the party candidates put before
him. He, or she, is then supposed to have "assented" to the
resultant government. Aristotle, who would have enjoyed the
electoral methods of our modem democracies keenly, points out
very subtly how the outlying farmer class of citizens in a
democracy can be virtually disenfranchised by calling the popu-
lar assembly too frequently for their regular attendanca In
the later Greek democracies (fifth century) the appointment
of public ofiicials, except in the case of officers requiring very
special knowledge, was by casting lots. This was supposed to
protect the general corporation of privileged citizens from the
continued predominance of rich, influential, and conspicuously
able men.
Some democracies (Athens and Miletus, e.g.) had an insti-
tution called the ostracism,^ by which in times of crisis and
conflict the decision was made whether some citizen should go
into exile for ten years. This may strike a modem reader as
an envious institution, but that was not its essential quality.
It was, says Gilbert Murray, a way of arriving at a decision
in a case when political feeling was so divided as to threaten a
deadlock. There were in the Greek democracies parties and
party leaders, but no regular government in office and no regu-
lar opposition. There was no way, therefore, of carrying out
a policy, although it might be the popular policy, if a strong
leader or a strong group stood out against it. But by the
ostracism, the least popular or the least trusted of the chief
leaders in the divided community was made to retire for a
period without loss of honour or property. Professor Murray
suggests' that a Greek democracy, if it had found itself in such
a position of deadlock as the British Empire did upon the
question of Home Eule for Ireland in 1914, would have prob-
ably first ostracized Sir Edward Carson, and then proceeded
to carry out the provisions of the Home Rule Bill.
This institution of the ostracism has immortalized one ob-
' From ostrakon, a tile; the voter wrote the name on a tile or shell.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 263
scure and rather illiterate member of the democracy of Athens.
A certain Aristides had gained a great reputation in the law
court for his righteous dealing. He fell into a dispute with
Themistocles upon a question of naval policy ; Aristides was for
the army, Themistocles was a "strong navy" man, and a dead-
lock was threatened. There was resort to an ostracism to
decide between them. Plutarch relates that as Aristides walked
through the streets while the voting was in progress, he was
accosted by a strange citizen from the agricultural environs
unaccustomed to the art of writing, and requested to write his
own name on the proffered potsherd.
"But why?" he asked. "Has Aristides ever injured you?"
"^0," said the citizen. "Wo. Never have I set eyes on
him. But, oh ! I am so hored by hearing him called Aristides
the Just."
Whereupon, says Plutarch, without further parley Aristides
wrote as the man desired. . . .
When one understands the true meaning of these Greek con-
srtitutions, and in particular the limitation of all power, whether
in the democracies or the oligarchies, to a locally privileged
class, one realizes how impossible was any effective union of
the hundreds of Greek cities scattered about the Mediterranean
region, or even of any effective co-operation between them for
a common end. Each city was in the hands of a few or a few
hundred men, to whom its separateness meant everything that
was worth having in life. Only conquest from the outside could
unite the Greeks, and until Greece was conquered they had no
political unity. When at last they were conquered, they were
conquered so completely that their unity ceased to be of any
importance even to themselves ; it was a unity of subjugation.
Yet there was always a certain tradition of unity between
all the Greeks, based on a common language and script, on
the common possession of the heroic epics, and on the con-
tinuous intercourse that the maritime position of the states
made possible. And in addition, there were certain religieus
bonds of a unifying kind. Certain shrines, the shrines of the
god Apollo in the island of Delos and at Delphi, for example,
were sustained not by single states, but by leagues of states or
Amphictyonies (= League of neighbours), which in such in-
stances as the Delphic amphictyony became very wide-reaching
unions. The league protected the shrine and the safety . of
264 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pilgrims, kept up the roads leading thereunto, secured peace at
the time of special festivals, upheld certain rules to mitigate
the usages of war among its memhers, and — ^the Delian league
especially— suppressed piracy. A still more important link of
Hellenic union was the Olympian games that were held every
four years at Olympia. Foot races, boxing, wrestling, javelin
throwing, quoit throwing, jumping, and chariot and horse racing
were the chief sports, and a record of victors and distinguished
visitors was kept. From the year 776 B.C. onward ^ these games
were held regularly for over a thousand years, and they di'il
much to maintain that sense of a common Greek life (pan-
Hellenic) transcending the narrow politics of the city states.
Such links of sentiment and association were of little avail
against the intense "separatism" of the Greek political institu-
tions. From the History of Herodotus the student will be able
to gather a sense of the intensity and persistence of the feuds
that kept the Greek world in a state of chronic warfare. In the
old days (say, to the sixth century b.c.) fairly large families
prevailed in Greece, and something of the old Aryan great
household system (see Chap, XX), with its strong clan feeling
and its capacity for maintaining an enduring feud, still re-
mained. The history of Athens circles for many years about
the feud of two great families, the Alcmseonidse and the Peisis-
tratidse ; the latter equally an aristocratic family, but founding
its power on the support of the poorer class of the populace
and the exploitation of their grievances. Later on, in the sixth
and fifth centuries, a limitation of births and a shrinkage of
families to two or three members — a process Aristotle notes
without perceiving its cause — ^led to the disappearance of the
old aristocratic clans, and the later wars were due rather to
trade disputes and grievances caused and stirred up by indi-
vidual adventurers than to family vendettas.
It is easy to understand, in view of this intense separatism
of the Greeks, how readily the lonians of Asia and of the
islands fell first under the domination of the kingdom of Lydia,
and then under that of the Persians when Cyrus overthrew
Crcesus, the king of Lydia. They rebelled only to be recon-
quered. Then came the turn of European Greece. It is a
matter of astonishment, the Greeks themselves were astonished,
' 776 B.C. is the year of the First Olympiad, a valuable starting-point in
Greek chronology.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 265
to find that Greece itself did not fall under the dominion of
the Persians, these harbario Aryan masters of the ancient civili-
zations of Western Asia. But before we tell of this struggle
we must give some attention to these Asiatics against whom they
were pitted ; and particularly to these Medes and Persians who,
by 538 B.C., were already in possession of the ancient civiliza-
tions of Assyria, Babylonia and about to subjugate Egypt.
§4
We have had occasion to mention the kingdom of Lydia, and
it may be well to give a short note here upon the Lydians before
proceeding with our story. The original population of the
larger part of Asia Minor may perhaps have been akin to the
original population of Greece and Crete. If so, it was of
"Mediterranean" race. Or it may have been another branch of
those still more generalized and fundamental darkish peoples
from whom arose the Mediterranean race to the west and the
Dravidians to the east. Remains of the same sort of art that
distinguishes Cnossos and Mycenae are to be found scattered
over Asia Minor. But just as the Nordic Greeks poured south-
ward into Greece to conquer and mix with the aborigines, so
did other and kindred Nordic tribes pour over the Bosphorus
into Asia Minor. Over some areas these Aryan peoples pre-
vailed altogether, and became the bulk of the inhabitants and
retained their Aryan speech. Such were the Phrygians, a peo-
ple whose language was almost as close to that of the Greeks as
the Macedonian. But over other areas the Aryans did not so
prevail. In Lydia the original race and their language held
their own. The Lydians were a non-Aryan people speaking a
non-Aryan speech, of which at the present time only a few
words are known. Their capital city was Sardis.
Their religion was also non-Aryan. They worshipped a
Great Mother goddess. The Phrygians also, though retaining
their Greek-like language, became infected with mysterious
religion, and much of the mystical religion and secret cere-
monial that pervaded Athens at a later date was Phrygian
(when not Thraeian) in origin.
At first the Lydians held the western sea-coast of Asia Minor,
but they Were driven back from it by the establishment of
Ionian Greeks coming by the sea and founding cities. Later
266 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
on, however, these Ionian Greek cities were brought into sub-
jection by the Lydian kings.
The history of this country is not clearly known, and were
it known it would scarcely be of sufficient importance to be
related in this historical outline, but in the eig'hth century b.c.
one monarch, named Gyges, becomes noteworthy. The country
under his rule was subjected to another Aryan invasion; certain
nomadic tribes called the Cimmerians came pouring across Asia
Minor, and they were driven back with difficulty by Gyges and
his son and grandson. Sardis was twice taken and burnt by
these barbarians. And it is on record that G-yges paid tribute
to Sardanapalus, which serves to link him up with our general
ideas of the history of Assyria, Israel, and Egj'pt^ Later Gyges
rebelled against Assyria, and sent troops to help Psammetichus I
to liberate Egypt from its brief servitude to the Assyrians.
It was Alyattes, the grandson of Gyges, who»made Lydia into
a considerable power. He reigned for seven years, and he re-
duced most of the- Ionian cities of Asia Minor to subjection.
The country became the centre of a great trade between Asia
and Europe; it had always been productive and rich in gold,
and now the Lydian monarch was reputed the richest in Asia.
There was a great coming and going between the Black and
Mediterranean Seas, and between the East and West. We have
already noted that Lydia was reputed to be the first country in
the world to produce coined money, and to provide the conven-
ience of inns for travellers and traders. The Lydian dynasty
seems to have been a trading dynasty of the type of Minos, in
Crete, with a banking and financial development. ... So much
we may note of Lydia by way of preface to the next section.
§5
Now while one series of Aryan-speaking invaders had de-
veloped along the lines we have described in Greece, Magna
GrsBcia, and around the shores of the Black Sea, another series
of Aryan-speaking peoples, whose originally Nordic blood was
perhaps already mixed with a Mongolian element, were settling
and spreading to the north and east of the Assyrian and Baby-
Ionian empires. We have already spdten of the arc-like dis-
persion of the Nordic Aryan peoples to the north of the Black
and Caspian Seas; it was probably by this route that the Aryan-
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 267
speaking races gradually came down into what is no^ the
Persian country, and spread, on the one hand, eastward to India
( ? 3,000 to 1,000 B.C.), and on the other, increased and multi-
plied in the Persian uplands until they were strong enough to
assail first^ssyria (650 B.C.) and then Babylon (538 B.C.).
There is much that is not yet clear about the clianges of
elimate that have been going on in Europe and Asia during the
last 10,000 years. The ice of the last glacial age receded grad-
ually, and gave way to a long period of steppe or prairie-like
conditions over the great plain of Europe. About 12,000 or
10,000 years ago, as.it is reckoned now, this state of affairs
was giving place to forest conditions. We have already noted
how, as a consequence of these changes, the Solutrian horse
hunters gave place to Magdalenian fishers and forest deer
hunters ; and these, again, to the Neolithic herdsmen and agri-
culturists. For some thousands of years the European climate
seems to have been warmer than it is to-day. A great sea spread
from the coast of the Balkan peninsula far into Central Asia
and extended northward into Central Eussia, and the shrinkage
of that sea and the consequent hardening of the climate of South
Russia and Central Asia was going on contemporaneously with
the development of the first civilizations in the river valleys.
Many facts seem to point to a more genial climate in Europe
and Western Asia, and still more strongly to a greater luxuri-
ance of plant and. vegetable life, 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, than
we find to-day. There were forests then in South Kussia and
in the country which is now Western Turkestan, where now
steppes and deserts prevail. On the other hand, between 1,500
and 2,000 years ago, the Aral-Caspian region was probably
drier and those seas smaller than they axe at the present time.
We may note in this connection that Thotmes III (say, the
fifteenth century B.C.), in his expedition beyond the Euphrates,
hunted a herd of 120 elephants in that region. Again, an
.^gean dagger from Mycenae, dating about 2,000 B.C., shows a
lion-hunt in progress. The hunters carry big shields and spears,
and stand in rows one behind the other. The first man spears
the lion, and when the wounded beast leaps at him, drops flat
under the protection of his big shield, leaving the next man to
repeat his stroke, and so on, until the lion is speared to death.
.This method of hunting is practised by the Masai to-day, and
could only have been worked out by a people in a land where
268 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
lions were abundant. But abundant lions imply abundant game,
and that again means abundant vegetation. About 2,000 b.c.
the hardening of the climate in the central parts of the Old
World, to which we have already referred, which put an end
to elephants and lions in Asia Minor and Greece,^ was turning
the faces of the nomadic Aryan peoples southward towards the
fields and forests of the more settled and civilized nations.
These Aryan peoples come down from the East Caspian
regions into history about the time that Mycense and Troy and
Cnossos are falling to the Greeks. It is difficult to disentangle
the different tribes and races that appear under a multitude of
names in the records and inscriptions that record their first ap*
pearance, but, fortunately, these distinctions are not needed in
an elementary outline such as this present history. A people
called the Cimmerians appear in the districts of Lake Urumiya
and Van, and shortly after Aryans have spread from Armenia
to Elam. In the ninth century B.C., a people called the Medes,
very closely related to the Persians to the east of them, appear
in the Assyrian inscriptions. Tiglath Pileser III and Sargop
II, names already familiar in this story, profess to have made
them pay tribute. They are spoken of in the inscriptions as the
"dangerous Medes." They are as yet a tribal people, not united
under one king.
About the ninth century B.C. Elam and the Elamites, whose
capital was Susa, a people which possessed a tradition and
civilization at least as old as the Sumerian, suddenly vanish
from history. We do not know what happened. They seem
to have been overrun and the population absorbed by the con-
querors. Susa is in the hands of the Persians.
A fourth people, related to these Aryan tribes, who appear
at this time in the narrative of Herodotus, are the "Scythians."
Eor a while the monarchs of Assyria play off these various
kindred peoples, the Cimmerians, the Medes, the Persians, and
' It is, at least, doubtful whether any change of climate expelled either
lion or elephant from southeast Europe and Asia Minor; the cause of
their gradual disappearance was — I think — ^nothing but Man, increasingly
well armed for the chase. Lions lingered in the Balkan peninsula till
about the fourth century B.C., if not later. Elephants had perhaps dis-
appeared from western Asia by the eighth century B.C. The lion (much
bigger than the existing form) stayed on in southern Germany till the
Neolithic period. The panther inhabited Greece, southern Italy, and
southern Spain likewise till the beginning of the historical period (say
1,000 B.C.).— H. H. J.
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS
the Scythians, against each other. Assyrian princesses (a
daughter of Esarhaddon, e,g.) are married to Scythian chiefs.
Kehuchadnezzar the Great, on the
Other hand, marries a daugh-
ter of Cyaxares, who has hecome
king of all the Medes. The Aryan
Scythians are for the Semitic
Assyrians; the Aryan Medes for
the Semitic Babylonians. It was
this Cyaxares who took Nine-
veh, the Assyrian capital, in 606
B.C., and so released Babylon from
the Assyrian yoke to establish,
under Ohaldean rule, the Second
Babylonian Empire. The Scyth-
ian allies of Assyria drop out of
the story after this. They go on
living their own life away to the
north without much interference
with the peoples to the south. A
glance at the map of this
period shows how, for two-thirds
of a century, the Second Baby-
lonian Empire lay like a lamb
within the embrace of the Median
lion.
Into the internal struggles of
the Medes and Persians, that
ended at last in the accession of
Cyrus "the Persian" to the
throne of Cyaxares in 550 b.c.,
we will not enter. In that year
Cyrus was ruling over an empire
that reached from the boundaries
of Lydia to Persia and perhaps
to India. Wabonidus, the last of
the Babylonian rulers, was, as we have already told, digging up
old records and building temples in Babylonia,
f^
270
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 6
But one monaroh in tlie world was alive to the threat of the
new power that lay in the hands of Cyrus. This was Croesus,
the Lydian king. His son had been killed in a very tragic man-
ner, which Herodotus relates, but which we will not describe
here. Says Herodotus :
"For two years then, Croesus remained quiet in great mourn-
ing, because he was deprived of his son; but after this period
of time, the overthrowing of the rule of the son of Cyaxares
by Cyrus, and the growing greatness of the Persians, caused
Croesus to cease from his mourning, and led him to .a care of
cutting short the power of the Persians if by any means he
might, while yet it was in growth and before they should have
become great."
He then made trial of the various oracles.
"To the Lydians who were to carry these gifts to the temples
Croesus gave charge that they- should ask the Oracles this, ques-
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 271
tion: whether Croesus should march against the Persians, and,
if so, whether he should join with himself any army of men
as his friends. And when the Lydians had arrived at the places
to which they had been sent and had dedicated the votive offer-
ings, they inquired of the Oracles, and said : 'Croesus, king of
the Lydians and of other nations, considering that these are
the only true Oracles among men, presents to you gifts such
as your revelations deserve, and asks you again now whether
he shall march against the Persians, and, if so, whether he shall
join with himself any army of men as allies.' They inquired
thus, and the answers of both the Oracles agreed in one, de-
elaring to Croesus that if he should march against the Persians
he should destroy a great empire. ... So when the answers
were brought back and Croesus heard them, he was delighted
with the Oracles, and expecting that he would certainly destroy
the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent again to Pytho, and presented
to the men of Delphi, having ascertained the number of them,
two staters of gold for each man: and in return for this the
Delphians gave to Croesus and to. the Lydians precedence in
consulting the Oracle and freedom from all payments, and the
right to front seats at the games, with this privilege also for
all time, that any one of them who wished should be allowed
to become a citizen of Delphi."
So Croesus made a defensive alliance both with the Lace-
demonians and the Egyptians. And Herodotus continues,
"while Croesus was preparing to march against the Persians,
one of the Lydians, who even before this time was thought to
be a vsase man, but in consequence of this opinion got a very
great name for wisdom among the Lydians, advised Croesus
as follows: 'O king, thou art preparing to march against men
who wear breeches of leather, and the rest of their clothing is of
leather also; and they eat food not such as they desire, but such
as they can obtain, dwelling in a land which is rugged; and,
moreover, they make no use of wine but drink water; and no
figs have they for dessert, nor any other good thing. On the
one hand, if thou shalt overcome them, what wilt thou take
away from them, seeing they have nothing? and, on the other
hand, if thou shalt be overcome, consider how many good things
thou wilt lose ; for once having tasted our good things, they will
cling to them fast, and it will not be possible to drive them away.
I, for my own part, feel gratitude to the gods that they do not
272 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
put it into the minds of the Persians to march against the
Lydians.' Thus he spoke not persuading Croesus ; for it is true
indeed that the Persians before they subdued the Lydians had
no luxury nor any good thing."
Croesus and Cyrus fought an indecisive battle at Pteria, from
which Croesus retreated. Cyrus followed him up, and he gave
battle outside his capital town of Sardis. The chief strength
of the Lydians lay in their cavalry; they were excellent, if
undisciplined, horsemen, and fought with long spears.
"Cyrus, when he saw the Lydians being arrayed for battle,
fearing their horsemen, did on the suggestion of Harpagos, a
Mede, as follows: All the camels which were in the train of
his army carrying provisions and baggage he gathered together
and he took off their burdens and set men upon them provided
with the equipment of cavalry; and, having thus furnished
them, forth he appointed them to go in front of the rest of
the a-rmy towards the horsemen of Croesus ; and after the camel-
troop he ordered the infantry to follow ; and behind the infantry
he placed his whole force of cavalry. Then, when all his men
had been placed in their several positions, he charged them
to spare none of the other Lydians, slaying all who might come
in their way, feut Croesus himself they were not to slay, not even
if he should make resistance when he was being captured. Such
was his charge : and he set the camels opposite the horsemen for
this reason — ^because the horse has a fear of the camel and
cannot endure either to see his form or to scent his smell: for
this reason then the trick had been devised, in order that the
cavalry of Croesus might be useless, that very force wherewith
the Lydian king was expecting most to shine. And as they
were coming together to the battle, so soon as the horses scented
the camels and saw them, they turned away back, and the hopes
of Cioesus were at once brought to nought."
In fourteen days Sardis was stormed and Croesus taken
prisoner. . . .
"So the Persians having taken him brought him into the
presence of Cyrus; and he piled up a great pyre and caused
Croesus to go up upon it bound in fetters, and along with him
twice seven sons of Lydians, whether it was that he meant to
dedicate this offering as first-fruits of his •victory to some god,
or whether he desired to fulfil a vow, or else had heard that
CrcEsus was a god-fearing man, and so caused him to go up on
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 273
the pyre because he wished to know if any one of the divine
powers would save him, so that he should not be burnt alive.
He, they say, did this ; but to Croesus as he stood upon the pyre
there came, although he was in such evil case, a memory of
the saying of Solon, how he had said with divine inspiration
that no one of the living might be called happy. And when
this thought came into his mind, they say that he sighed deeply
and groaned aloud, having been for long silent, and three times
he uttered the name of Solon. Hearing this, Cyrus bade the
interpreters ask Croesus who was this person on whom he called ;
and they came near and asked. And Crcesus for a time, it is
said, kept silence when he was asked this, but afterwards, being
pressed, he said : 'One whom more than much wealth I should
have desired to have speech with all monarchs.' Then, since his
words were of doubtful import, they asked again of that which
he said; and as they were urgent with him and gave him no
peace, he told how once Solon, an Athenian, had come and
having inspected all his wealth had made light of it, with such
and such words; and- how all had turned out for him according
as Solon had said, not speakimg at all especially with a view to
Croesus himself, but with a view to the whole human race, and
especially those who seem to themselves to be happy men. And
while Croesus related these things, already the pyre was lighted
and the edges of it round about were burning. Then they say
that Cyrus, hearing from the interpreters what Croesus had
said, changed his purpose and considered that he himself also
was but a man, and that he was delivering another man, who
had been not inferior to himself in felicity, alive to the fire;
and, moreover, he feared the requital, and reflected that there
was nothing of that which men possessed which was secure;
therefore, they say, he ordered them to extinguish as quickly
as possible the fire that was burning, and to bring down Croesus
and those who were with him from the pyre; and they, using
endeavours, were not able now to get the mastery of the flaines.
Then it is related by the Lydians that Croesus, having learned
how Cyrus had changed his mind, and seeing that every one was
trying to put out the fire, but that they were no longer able
to check it, cried aloud, entreating Apollo that if any gift had
ever been given by him which was acceptable to the god, he
would come to his aid and rescue him from the evil which was
now upon him. So he with tears entreated the god, and sud-
274 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
denly, tiiey say, after clear sky and calm weather clouds gathered
and a storm burst, and it rained with, a very violent shower,
and the pyre was extinguished.
"Then Cyrus, having perceived that Croesus was a lover of
the gods and a good man, caused him to be brought down from
the pyre and asked him as follows: 'Croesus, tell me who of
all men was it who persuaded thee to march upon my land and
so to become an enemy to me instead of a friend ?' And he said :
'O king, I did this to thy felicity and to my own misfortune,
and the causer of this was the god of the Hellenes, who incited
me to march with my army. For no one is so senseless as to
choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace
the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their
sons. But it was pleasing, I suppose, to the divine yoweTs that
these things should come to pass thus.' "
So Croesus became a councillor of Cyrus, and lived in Baby-
lon. When Lydia was subdued, Cyrus turned his attention to
Nabonidus in Babylon. He defeated the Babylonian army,
under Belshazzar, outside Balbylon, and then laid siege to the
town. He entered the town (538 b.c), probably as we have
already suggested, with the connivance of the priests of Bel.
§ 7
Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who took an army
into Egypt (525 b.c). There was a battle in the delta, in
which Greek mercenaries fought on both sides. Herodotus
declares that he saw the bones of the slain still lying on the
field fifty or sixty years later, and comments on the comparative
thinness of the Persian skulls. After this battle Cambyses took
Memphis and most of Egypt.
In Egypt, we are told, Cambyses went mad. He took great
liberties with the Egyptian temples, and remained at Memphis
"opening ancient tombs and examining the dead bodies." He
had already murdered both Croesus, ex-king of Lydia, and his
own brother Smerdis before coming to Egypt, and he died in
Syria on the way back to Susa of an accidental wound, leaving
no heirs to succeed him. He was presently succeeded by Darius
the Mede (521 b.c), the son of Hystaspes, one of the chief
councillors of Cyrus.
The empire of Darius I was larger than any one of the pre-
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 275
ceding empires whose growtli we have traced. It included all
Asia Minor and Syria, that is to say, the ancient Lydian and
Hittite empires, all the old Assyrian and Bahylonian empires,
Egypt, the Caucasus and Caspian regions, Media, Persia, and
it extended, perhaps, into India to the Indus. The nomadic
;Arabians alone of all the peoples of what is nowadays called the
Near East, did not pay tribute to the satraps (provincial gover-
nors) of Darius. The organization of this great empire seems
to have been on a much higher level of efficiency than any of
its precursors. Great arterial roads joined province to prov-
ince, and there was a system of royal posts ; ^ at stated intervals
post horses stood always ready to carry the government messen-
ger, or the traveller if he had a government permit, on to the
next stage of his journey. Apart from this imperial right-of-
way and the payment of tribute, the local governments possessed
a very considerable amount of local freedom. They were re-
strained from internecine conflict, which was all to their own
good. And at first the Greek cities of the mainland of Asia
paid the tribute and shared in this Persian Peace.
Darius was first incited to attack the Greeks in Europe by a
homesick Greek physician at his court, who wanted at any
cost to be back in Greece. Darius had already made plans for
an expedition into Europe, aiming not at Greece, but to the
northward of Greece, across the Bosphorus and Danube. He
wanted to strike at South Kussia, which he believed to be the
home country of the Scythian nomads who threatened him on
'his northern and north-eastern frontiers. But he lent an at-
tentive ear to the tempter, and sent agents into Greece.
This great expedition of Darius opens out our view in this
history. It lifts a curtain upon the Balkan country behind
Greece' about which we have said nothing hitherto ; it carries
us to and over the Danube. The nucleus of his army marched
front Susa, gathering up contingents as they made their way
to the Bosphorus. Here Greek allies (Ionian Greeks from
Asia) had made a bridge of boats, and the army crossed over
while the Greek allies sailed on in their ships to the Danube^
and, two days' sail up from its mouth, landed to make anothpr
floating bridge. Meanwhile, Darius and his host advanced along
the coast of what is now Bulgaria, but which was then called
* But a thousand years earlier the Hittites seem to have had paved high-
roads running across their country.
276
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE GftEEKS AND THE PERSIANS 277
Thrace. They crossed the Danubcj and prepared to give battle
to the Scythian army and take the cities of the Scythians.
But the Scythians had no cities, and they evaded a battle,
and the war degenerated into a tedious and hopeless pursuit of
more mobile enemies. Wells were stopped up and pastures
destroyed by the nomads. The Scythian horsemen hung upon
the skirts of the great army, which consisted mostly of foot
soldiers, picking off stragglers and preventing foraging; and
they did their best to persuade the Ionian Greeks, who had
made and were guarding the bridge across the Danube, to break
up the bridge, and so ensure the destruction of Darius. So
long as Darius continued to advance, however, the loyalty of
his Greek allies remained unshaken.
But privation, fatigue, and sickness hindered and crippled
the Persian army; Darius lost many stragglers and consumed
his supplies, and at last the melancholy conviction dawned upon
him that a retreat across the Danube was necessary to save
him from complete exhaustion and defeat.
In order to get a start in his retreat he sacrificed his sick and
wounded. He had these men informed that he was about to
attack the Scythians at nightfall, and under this pretence stole
out of the camp with the pick of his troops and made off south-
ward, leaving the camp fires burning and the usual noises and
movements of the camp behind him. !N"ext day the men left
in the camp realized the trick their monarch had played upon
them, and surrendered themselves to the mercy of the Scythians ;
but Darius had got his start, and was able to reach the bridge
of boats before his pursuers came upon him. They were more
mobile than his troops, but they missed their quarry in the
darkness. At the river the retreating Persians "were brought '
to an extremity of fear," for they found the bridge partially
broken down and its northern end destroyed.
At this point a voice echoes down the centuries to us. We
see a group of dismayed Persians standing about the Great
King upon the bank of the streaming river ; we see the masses
of halted troops, hungry and war-worn; a trail of battered
transport stretches away towards the horizon, upon which at
any time the advance guards of the pursuers may appear. There
is not much noise in spite of the multitude, but rather an in-
quiring silence. Standing out like a pier from the further side
of the great stream are the remains of the bridge of boats, an
278 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
enigma. . . . We cannot discern whether there are men over
there or not. The shipping of the Ionian Greeks seems still to
be drawn up on the further shore, hut it is all very far away.
"Now there was with Darius an Egyptian who had a voice
louder than that of any other man on earth, and this man Darius
ordered to take his stand upon the bank of the Ister (Danube)
and to call Histiseus of Miletus."
This worthy — a day is to come, as we shall presently tell,
when his decapitated head will be sent to Darius at Susa —
appears approaching slowly across the waters in a boat.
There is a parley, and we gather that it is "all right."
The explanation Histiseus has to make is a complicated one.
Some Scythians have been and have gone again. Scouts, per-
haps, these were. It would seem there had been a discussion
between the Scythians and the Greeks. The Scythians wanted
the bridge broken down ; they would then, they said, undertake
to finish up the Persian army and make an end of Darius and
his empire, and the Ionian Greeks of Asia could then free
their cities again. Miltiades, the Athenian, was for accepting
this proposal. But Histiseus had been more subtle. He would
prefer, he said, to see the Persians completely destroyed before
definitely abandoning their cause. Would the Scythians go
back and destroy the Persians to make sure of them while the
Greeks on their part destroyed the bridge? Anyhow, which-
ever side the Greeks took finally, it was clear to him that it
would be wise to destroy the northern end of the bridge, because
otherwise the Scythians might rush it. Indeed, even as they
, parleyed the Greeks set to work to demolish the end that linked
them to the Scythians as quickly as possible. In accordance
with the suggestions of Histiseus the Scythians rode off in search
of the Persians, and so left the Greeks safe in either event.
If Darius escaped, they could be on his side; if he were
destroyed, there was nothing of which the Scythians could
complain.
Histiseus did not put it quite in that fashion to Darius. He
had at least kept the shipping and most of the bridge. He
^ represented himself as the loyal friend of Persia, and Darius
was not disposed to be too critical. The Ionian ships came
over. With a sense of immense relief the remnant of the
wasted Persians were presently looking back at the steely flood
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 279
of the Danube streaming wide between themselves and their
pursuers. . . .
The pleasure and interest had gone out of the European
expedition for Darius. He returned to Susa, leaving an army
in Thrace, under a trusted general Megabazus. This Mega-
bazus set himself to the subjugation of Thrace, and among other
states which submitted reluctantly to Darius was a kingdom,
which thus comes into our history for the first time, the kingdom
of Macedonia, a country inhabited by a people so closely allied
to the Greeks that one of its princes had already been allowed
to compete and take a prize in the Olympian games.
Darius was disposed to reward Histiseus by allowing him
to build a city for himself in Thrace, but Megabazus had a dif-
ferent opinion of the trustworthiness of Histiseus, and pre-
vailed upon the king to take him to Susa, and, under the title
of councillor, to keep him a prisoner there. Histiseus was at
first flattered by this court position, and then realized its true
meaning. The Persian court bored him, and he grew homesick
for Miletus. He set himself to make mischief, and was able
to stir up a revolt against the Persians among the Ionian Greeks
on the mainland. The twistings and turnings of the story, which
included the burning of Sardis by the lonians and the defeat
of a Greek fleet at the battle of Lade (495 B.C.), are too com-
plicated to follow here. It is a dark and intricate story of
treacheries, cruelties, and hate, in which the death of the wily
Histiseus shines almost cheerfully. The Persian governor of
Sardis, through which town he was being taken on his way back
to Susa as a prisoner, having much the same opinion of him
as Megabazus had, and knowing his ability to humbug Darius,
killed him there and then, and sent on the head only to his
master.
Cyprus and the Greek islands were dragged into this contest
that Histiseus had stirred up, and at last Athens. Darius
realized the error he had made in turning to the right and not
to the left when he had crossed the Bosphorus, and he now
set himself to the conquest of all Greece. He began with the
islands. Tyre and Sidon were subject to Persia, and ships of
the Phoenician and of the Ionian Greeks provided the Persians
with a fleet by means of which one Greek island after another
was subjugated.
280
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 8
The first attack upon Greece proper was made in 490 B.C. It
was a sea attack upon Athens, with a force long and carefully
prepared for the task, the fleet being provided with specially
^^WAJi^ cPt£c GREEK5 m^ PERSIAM5^
built transports for the conveyance of horses. This expedition
made a landing near Marathon in Attica. The Persians were
guided into Marathon by a renegade Greek, Hippias, the son
of Peisistratus, who had been tyrant of Athens. If Athens
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 281
fell, then Hippias was to be its tyrant, under the protection
of the Persians. Meanwhile, so urgent was the sense of a
crisis in the affairs of Hellas, that a man, a herald and runner,
went from Athens to Sparta, forgetful of all feuds, to say:
"Lacedemonians, the Athenians make request of you to come to
their help, and not to allow a city most anciently established
among the Hellenes to fall into slavery by the means of Bar-
barians ; for even now Eretria has been enslaved and Hellas has
become the weaker by a city of renown." This man, Pheidip-
■pides, did the distance from Athens to Sparta, nearly a hundred
miles as the crow flies, and much more if we allow for the
contours and the windings of the way, in something under
eight and forty hours.
But before the Spartans could arrive on the scene the battle
was joined. The Athenians charged the enemy. They fought
— "in a memorable fashion: for they were the first of all the
Hellenes about whom we know who went to attack the enemy
at a run, and they were the first also who endured to face the
Median garments and the men who wore them, whereas up to
this time the very name of the Medes was to the Hellenes a
terror to hear."
The Persian wings gave before this impetuous attack, but
the centre held. The Athenians, however, were cool as well
as vigorous; they let the wings run and closed in on the flanks
of the centre, whereupon the main body of the Persians fled
to their ships. Seven vessels fell into the hands of the Athe-
nians; the rest got away, and, after a futile attempt to sail
round to Athens and seize the city before the army returned
thither, the fleet made a retreat to Asia. Let Herodotus close
the story with a paragraph that still further enlightens us upon
the tremendous prestige of the Medes at this time :
"Of the Lacedemonians there came to Athens two thousand
after the full moon, making great haste to be in time, so that
they arrived in Attica on the third day after leaving Sparta:
and though they had come too late for the battle, yet they de-
sired to behold the Medes; and accordingly they went on to
Marathon and looked at the bodies of the slain : then afterwards
they departed home, commending the Athenians and the work'
which they had done."
282
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
. § 9
So Greece, unified for a while by fear, gained her first victory
over Persia. The news came to Darius simultaneously with
the news of a rebellion in
Egypt, and he died while still
undecided in which direction
to turn. His son and succes-
sor, Xerxes, turned first to
Egypt and set up a Persian
satrap there; then for four
years he prepared a second
attack upon Greece. Says
Herodotus, who was, one must
remember, a patriotic Greek,
approaching now to the climax
of his History :
, "For what nation did
Xerxes not lead out of Asia
against Hellas? and what
water was not exhausted,
being drunk by his host, ex-
cept only the great rivers?
For some supplied ships, and
others were appointed to serve
in the land army; to some it
was apipointed to furnish
cavalry, and to others vessels
to carry horses, while they
served in the expedition them-
selves also ; others were or-
dered to furnish ships of war
for the bridges, and others
again ships with provisions."
Xerxes .passed into Europe,
not as Darius did at the half-
mile crossing of the Bos-
phorus, but at the Hellespont
(== the Dardanelles). In his account of the assembling of the
great army, and its march from Sardis to the Hellespont, the
poet in Herodotus takes possession of the historian. The great
■r.F.H.
2/Cciuxmant of Aiiicaiaxi foot
foldLzr. fotmd ziear'Mixra&cn/rf
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 283
host passes in splendour by Troy, and Xerxes, who although a
Persian and a Barharian, seems to have had the advantages of a
classical education, turns aside, says our historian, to visit the
citadel of Priam. The Hellespont vras bridged at Abydos, and
upon a hill was set a marble throne from which Xerxes sur-
veyed the whole array of his forces.
"And seeing all the Hellespont covered over with the ships
and all the shores and the plains of Abydos full of men, then
Xerxes pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he
fell to weeping. Artabanus, his uncle, therefore perceiving
him — ^the same who at first boldly declared his opinion advising
Xerxes not to march against Hellas — ^this man, I say, having
observed Xerxes wept, asked as follows: 'O king, how far
different from one another are the things which thou hast
done now and a short while before now ! for having pronounced
thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears.' He said:
'Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to
feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man,
seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a
hundred years have gone by.' "
This may not be exact histbry, but it is great poetry. It is
as splendid as anything in The Dynasts.
The Persian fleet, coasting from headland to headland, ac-
companied this land multitude during its march southward ; but
a violent storm did the fleet great damage and 400 ships were
lost, including much com transport. At first the united Hellenes
marched out to meet the invaders at the Vale of Tempe near
Mount Olympus, but afterwards retreated through Thessaly,
and chose at last to await the advancing Persians at a place
called Thermopylae, where at that time — 2,300 years have
altered these things greatly — there was a great cliff on the land-
ward side and the sea to the east, with a track scarcely wide
enough for a chariot between. The great advantage to the
Greeks of this position at Thermopylae was that it prevented the
use of either cavalry or chariots, and narrowed the battle front
so as to minimize their numericar inequality. And there the
Persians joined battle with them one summer day in the year
480 B.C.
Por three days the Greeks held this great army, and did
them much damage with small loss to themselves, and then
on the third day a detachment of Persians appeared upon the
§84 THE OUTLINE OE HISTORY
rear of the Greeks, having learnt of a way over the mountain^
from a peasant. There were hasty discussions among the Greeks ;
some were for withdrawing, some for holding out. The leader
of the whole force, Leonidas, was for staying; and with him
he would keep, he said, 300 Spartans. The rest of the Greek
army could, meanwhile, make good its retreat to the next de-
fensible pass. The Thespian contingent of TOO, however, re-
fused to fall back. They preferred to stay and die with the
Spartans. Also a contingent of 400 Thebans remained. As
Thebes afterwards joined the Persians, there is a story that
these Thebans were detained by force against their will, which
seems on military as well as historical grounds improbable.
These 1,400 stayed, and were, after a conflict of heroic quality,
slain to a man. Two Spartans happened to be away, sick with
ophthalmia. When they heard the news, one was too ill to
move; the other made his helot guide hin||to the battle, and
there struck blindly until he was killed. The other, -Aristo-
demus, was taken away with the retreating troops, and returned
to Sparta, where he was not actually punished for his conduct,
but was known as Tresas, "the man who retreated." It was
enough to distinguish him from all other Spartans, and he got
himself killed at the Battle of Platssa a year later, performing
prodigies of reckless courage. . . . For a whole day this little
band had held the pass, assailed in front and rear by the whole
force of the Persians. They had covered the retreat of the
main Greek army, they had inflicted great losses on the in-
vaders, and they had raised the prestige of the Greek warrior
over that of the Mede higher even than the victory of Marathon
had done.
The Persian cavalry and transport filtered slowly through
the narrow passage of Thermopylae, and marched on towards
Athens, while a series of naval encounters went on at sea. The
Hellenic fleet retreated before the advance of the Persian ship-
ping, which suffered seriously through its comparative ignorance
of the intricate coasts and of the tricks of the local weather.
Weight of numbers carried the Persian army forward to
Athens; now that Thermopylae was lost, there was no line of
defence nearer than the Isthmus of Corinth, and this meant
the abandonment of all the intervening territory, including
Athens. The population had either to fly or submit to the
Persians. Thebes with all Boeotia submitted, and was pressed
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 285
into the Persian army, except one town, Platsea, whose in-
habitants fled to Athens. The turn of Athens came next, and
great eiforts were made to persuade her to make terms; but,
instead, the whole population determined to abandon everything
and take to the shipping. The women and no9.-combatants were
carried to Salamis and various adjacent islands. Only a few
people too old to move and a few dissentients remained in the
town, which was occupied by the Persians and burnt. The
sacred objects, statues, etc., which were burnt at this time, were
afterwards buried in the Acropolis by the returning Athenians,
and have been dug up in our own day with the marks of burn-
ing visible upon them. Xerxes sent off a mounted messenger
to Susa with the news, and he invited the sons of Peisistratus,
whom he had brought back with him, to enter upon their in-
heritance and sacrifice after the Athenian manner upon the
Acropolis.
Meanwhile, the Hellenic confederate fleet had come round to
Salamis, and in the council of war there were bitter differences
of opinion. Corinth and the states behind the Isthmus wanted
the fleet to fall back to that position, abandoning the cities of
Megara and ^gina. Themistocles insisted with all his force
on fighting in the narrows of Salamis. The majority was
steadily in favour of retreat, when there suddenly arrived the
news that retreat was cut off. The Persians had sailed round
Salamis and held the sea on the other side. This news was
brought by that Aristides the Just, of whose ostracism we have
already told; his sanity and eloquence did much to help
Themistocles to hearten the hesitating commanders. These two
men had formerly been bitter antagonists ; but, with a generos-
ity rare in those days, they forgot their differences before the
common danger. At dawn the Greek ships pulled out to battle.
The fleet before them was a fleet more composite and less
united than their own. But it was about three times as great.
On one wing were the Phoenicians, on the other Ionian Greeks
from Asia and the Islands. Some of the latter fought stoutly ;
others remembered that they, too, were Greeks. The Greek ships,
on the other hand, were mostly manned by freemen fighting for
their homes. Throughout the early hours the battle raged con-
fusedly. Then it became evident to Xerxes, watching the combat,
that his fleet was attempting flight. The flight became disaster.
Xerxes had taken his sieat to watch the battle. He saw his
236
TH^ OUTLINE OF HISTORY
galleys rammed by the sharp prows of other galleys; his fight-
ing-men shot down ; his ships boarded. Much of the sea-fighting
in those days was done by ramming ; the big galleys bore down
their opponents by superior weight of impact, or sheared off
their oars and so destroyed their manoeuvring power and left
them helpless. Presently, Xerxes saw that some of his broken
SolALsrff eP iS^t A (Fronv£:neze. w. fJw
Tersism. boJii-gusrd 1 1 awdiemx. hall oF
Darius at Susa,.)
0
ships were surrendering. In the water he could see the heads
of Greeks swimming to land ; but "of the Barbarians the greater
number perished in the sea, not knowing how to swim." The
clumsy attempt of the hard-pressed first line of the Persian
fleet to put about led to indescribable confusion. Some were
rammed by the rear ships of their own side. This ancient ship-
ping was poor, unseaworthy stuff by any modern standards.
The west wind was blowing and many of the broken ships of
Xerxes were now drifting away out 'of his sight to be wrecked
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS
287
on the coast beyond. Others were being towed towards Salamis
hj the Greeks. Others, less injured and still in fighting trim,
were making for the beaches close beneath him that would bring
them under the protection of his army. Scattered over the
further sea, beyond the headlands, remote and vague, were ships
in flight and Greek ships in pursuit. Slowly, incident by in-
cident, the disaster had unfolded under his eyes. We can
imagine something of the coming and going of messengers, the
issuing of futile orders, the changes of plan, throughout the
day. In the morning Xerxes had come out provided with tables
to mark the most successful of his commanders for reward. In
the gold of the sunset he beheld the sea power of Persia utterly
scattered, sunken and destroyed, and the Greek fleet over against
■HSRcmarus
Salamis unbroken and triumphant, ordering its ranks, as if
still incredulous of victory.
The Persian army remained as if in indecision for some days
close to the scene of this sea fight, and then began to retreat to
Thessaly, where it was proposed to winter and resume tiie cam-
paign. But Xerxes, like Darius I before him, had conceived a
disgust for European campaigns. He was afraid of the de-
struction of the bridge of boats. With part of the army he went
on to the Hellespont, leaving the main force in Thessaly under
a general, Mardonius. Of his own retreat the historian relates :
"Whithersoever they came on the march and to whatever
nation they seized the crops of that people and used them for
provisions ; and if they found no crops, then they took the grass
288 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
which was growing up from the earth, and stripped off the bark
from the trees and plucked down the leaves and devoured them;
alike of the cultivated trees and of those growing wild ; and they
left nothing behind them : thus they did by reason of famine.
Then plague too seized upon the army and dysentery, which de-
stroyed them by the way, and some of them also who were sick
the king left behind, laying charge upon the cities where at the
time he chanced to be in his march, to take care of them and
support them ; of these be left some in Thessaly, and some at
Siris in Paionia, and some in Macedonia. , . . When, passing
on from Thrace they came to the passage, they crossed over the
Hellespont in baste to Abydos by means of the ships, for they
did not find the floating bridges still stretched across, but
broken up by a storm. While staying there for a time they had
distributed to them an allowance of food more abundant than
they had had by the way, and from satisfying their hunger with-
out restraint and also from the changes of water there died many
of those in the army who bad remained safe till then. The
rest arrived with Xerxes at Sardis."
§ 10
The rest of the Persian army remained in Thessaly under
the command of Mardonius, and for a year he maintained an
aggressive compaign against the Greeks. Finally, he was de-
feated and killed in a pitched battle at Platsea (479 e.g.), and
on the same day the Persian fleet and a land army met with
joint disaster under the shadow of Mount Mycale on the Asiatic
mainland, between Ephesus and Miletus. The Persian ships,
being in fear of the Greeks, had been drawn up on shore and
a wall built about them; but the Greeks disembarked and
stormed this enclosure. They then sailed to the Hellespont
to destroy what was left of the bridge of boats, so that later
the Persian fugitives, retreating from Platsea, had to cross
by shipping at the Bosphorus, and did so with difficulty.
Encouraged by these disasters of the imperial power, says
Herodotus, the Ionian cities in Asia began for a second time
to r'^ToIt against, the Persians.
''Vith this the ninth book of the History of Herodotus comes
\o an end. He was bom about 484 e.g., so that at the time
pf the battle of Platsea he was a child of five years old. Much
THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS 289
of the substance of his story was gathered by him from actors
in, and eye-witnesses of, the great events he relates. The war
still dragged on for a long time; the Greeks supported a re-
bellion against Persian rule in Egypt, and tried unsuccessfully
to take Cyprus ; it did not end until about 449 B.C. Then the
Greek coasts of Asia Minor and the Greek cities in the Black
Sea remained generally free, but Cyprus and Egypt continued
under Persian rule. Herodotus, who had been born a Persian
subject in the Ionian city of Halicamassus, was five and thirty
years old by that time, and he must have taken an early op-
portunity after this peace of visiting Babylon and Persia. He
probably went to Athens, with his History ready to recite,
about 438 B.C.
The idea of a great imion of Greece for aggression against
Persia was not altogether strange to Herodotus. Some of his
readers suspect him of writing to enforce it. It was certainly
in the air at that time. He describes Aristagoras, the son-in-
law of Histiseus, as showing the Spartans "a tablet of bronze
on which was engraved a map of the whole earth with all the
seas and rivers." He makes Aristagoras say: "These Bar-
barians are not valiant in fight. You, on the other hand, have
now attained to the utmost skill in war. They fight with bows
and arrows and a short spear: they go into battle wearing
trousers and having caps on their heads. You have perfected
your weapons and discipline. They are easily to be conquered.
Not all the other nations of the -world have what they possess ;
gold, silver, bronze, embroidered garments, beasts and slaves;
all this you might have for yourselves, if you so desired."
It was a hundred years before these suggestions bore fruit.
Xerxes was murdered in his palace about 465 b.c, and there-
after Persia made no further attempts at conquest in Europe.
We have no such knowledge of the things that were happening
in the empire of the Great King as we have of the occurrences
in the little states of Central Greece. Greece had suddenly be-
gun to produce literature, and put itself upon record as no other
nation had ever done hitherto. After 479 b.c. (Platsea) the
spirit seems to have gone out of the government of the Modes
and Persians. The empire of the Great King enters upon a
period of decay. An Artaxerxes, a second Xerxes, a second
Darius, pass across the stage; there are rebellions in
Egypt and Syria; the Medes rebel; a second Arta-
290 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
xerxes and a second Cyrus, his brother, fight for the throne.
This history is even as the history of Babylonia, Assyria, and
Egypt in the older times. It is autocracy reverting to its nor-
mal state of palace crime, blood-stained magnificence, and moral
squalor. But the last-named struggle produced a Greek master-
piece, for this second Cyrus collected an army of Greek mer-
cenaries and marched into Babylonia, and was there killed at
the moment of victory over Artaxerxes II. Thereupon, the
Ten Thousand Greeks, left with no one to employ them, made
a retreat to the coast again (401 e.g.), and this retreat was
immortalized in a book, one of the first of personal war books,
the Anabasis, by their leader Xenophon.
Murders, revolts, chastisements, disasters, cunning alliances,
and base betrayals, and no Herodotus to record them. Such is
the texture of Persian history. An Artaxerxes III, covered
with blood, flourishes dimly for a time. "Artaxerxes III is
said to have been murdered by Bagoas, who places Arses, the
youngest of the king's sons, on the throne only to slay him
in turn when he seemed to be contemplating independent ac-
tion." ^ So it goes on.
Athens, prospering for a time after the Persian repulse, was
smitten by the plague in which Pericles, its greatest ruler, died
(428 B.C.). But, as a noteworthy fact amidst these confusions,
the Ten Thousand of Xenophon were scattering now among
the Greek cities, repeating from their own experience the
declaration of Aristagoras that the Persian empire was a rich
confusion which it would be very easy for resolute men to
conquer.
•Winckler, in Helmolt'a Universal Eistory.
XXII
GEEEK THOUGHT IN EELATION TO HUMAN
SOCIETY
§ 1. The Athens of Pericles. § 2. Socrates. § 3, Plato and
the Academy. § 4. Aristotle and the Lyceum. § 5. Phi-
losophy becomes Unworldly. § 6. The Quality and Limita-
tions of Greek Thought.
% 1
GEEEK history for the next forty years after Platsea and
Mycale is a story of comparative peace and tranquillity.
There were wars, but they were not intense wars. For
a little while in Athens, for a section of the prosperous, there
was leisure and opportimity. And by a combination of acci-
dents and through the character of a small group of people,
this leisure and opportunity produced the most memorable re-
sults. Much beautiful literature was produced; the plastic
arts flourished, and the foundations of modern science,
already laid by the earlier philosophers of the Ionian Greek
cities, were consolidated. Then, after an interlude of fifty odd
years, the long-smouldering hostility between Athens and
Sparta broke out into a fierce and exhausting war, which sapped
at last the vitality of this creative movement.
This war is known in history as the Peloponnesian War ; it
went on for nearly thirty years, and wasted all the power of
Greece. At first Athens was in the ascendant, then Sparta.
Then arose Thebes, a city not fifty miles from Athens, to over-
sbadow Sparta. Once more Athens flared into importance as
the head of a confederation. It is a story of narrow rivalries
and inexplicable hatreds that would have vanished long ago out
of the memories of men, were it not that it is recorded and
reflected in a great literature.
Through all this time Persia appears and reappears as the
ally first of this league and then of that. About the middle of
2a
292 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the fourth century B.C., Greece becomes aware of a new in-
fluence in its affairs, that of Philip, King of Macedonia. Mace-
donia does, indeed, arise in the background of this incurably
divided Greece, as the Medes and Persians arose behind the
Chaldean Empire. A time comes when the Greek mind turns
round, so to speak, from its disputes, and stares in one united
dismay at the Macedonian.
Planless and murderous squabbles are still planless and mur-
derous squabbles even though Thucydides tells the story, even
though the great beginnings of a new civilization are wrecked
by their disorders; and in this general outline we can give
no space at all to the particulars of these internecine feuds, to
the fights and flights that sent first this Greek city and then
that up to the sky in flames. Upon a one-foot globe Greece
becomes a speck almost too small to recognize; and in a short
history of mankind, all this century and more of dissension
between the days of Salamis and Platsea and the rise of King
Philip shrinks to a little, almost inaudible clash of disputa-
tion, to a. mere note upon the swift passing of opportunitiy
for nations as for men.
But what does not shrink into insignificance, because it has
entered into the intellectual process of all subsequent nations,
because it is inseparably a part of our mental foundation, is
the literature that Greece produced during such patches and
gleams of tranquillity and security as these times afforded her.
Says Professor Gilbert Murray: ^
"Their outer political history, indeed, like that of all other
nations, is filled with war and diplomacy, with cruelty and de-
ceit. It is the inner history, the history of thought and feeling
and character, that is so grand. They had some difficulties to
contend with which are now almost out of our path. They had
practically no experience, but were doing everything for the
first time; they were utterly weak in material resources, and
their emotions, their 'desires and fears and rages/ were prob-
ably wilder and fiercer than ours. Yet they produced the Athens
of Pericles and of Plato."
This remarkable culmination of the long-gathering creative
power of the Greek mind, which for three and twenty centuries
has been to men of intelligence a guiding and inspiring beacon
out of the past, flared up after the battles of Marathon and
^Ancient Greek Literature, by Gilbert Murray (Heinemann, 1911).
GREEK THOUGHT 29S
Salamis had made Athens free and fearless, and, without any
great excesses of power, predominant in her world. It was
the work of a quite small group of men. A number of her
citizens lived for the better part of a generation under con-
ditions which, in all ages, have disposed men to produce good
and beautiful work; they were secure, they were free, and they
had pride; and they were without that temptation of appar-
ent and unchallenged power which disposes all of us to inflict
wrongs upon our fellow men. When political life narrowed
down again to the waste and crimes of a fratricidal war with
Sparta, there was so broad and well-fed a flame of intellectual
activity burning that it lasted through all the windy distresses
of this war and beyond the brief lifetime of Alexander the
Great, for a period altogether of more than a hundred years
after the wars began.
Flushed with victory and the sense of freedom fairly won,
the people of Athens did for a time rise towards nobility. Un-
der the guidance of a great demagogue, Pericles, the chief offi-
cial of the Athenian general assembly, and a politician states-
man rather of the calibre of Gladstone or Lincoln in modem
history, they were set to the task of rebuilding their city and
expanding their commerce. For a time they were capable of
following a generous leader generously, and Fate gave them a
generous leader. In Pericles there was mingled in the strang-
est fashion political ability with a real living pa:ssion for deep
and high and beautiful things. He kept in power for over
thirty years. He was a man of extraordinary vigour and lib-
erality of mind. He stamped these qualities upon his time.
As Winckler has remarked, the Athenian democracy had for
a. time "the face of Pericles." He was sustained by what was
probably a very great and noble friendship. There was a woman
of unusual education, Aspasia, from Miletus, whom he could
not marry because of the law that restricted the citizenship of
Athens to the home-bom, but who was in effect his wife. She
played a large part in gathering about him men of unusual
gifts. All the great writers of the time knew her, and sev-
eral have praised her wisdom. Plutarch, it is true, accuses
her of instigating a troublesome and dangerous but finally suc-
cessful war against Samos, but, as he himself shows later, this
was necessitated by the naval hostility of the Samians, which
394 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY ^
threatened the overseas trade of Athens, upon which all the
prosperity of the republic depended.
Men's ambitions are apt to reflect the standards of their in^
timates. Pericles was content, at any rate, to serve as a leader
in Athens rather than to dominate as a tyrant. Alliances were
formed under his guidance, new colonies and trading stations
were established from Italy to the Black Sea ; and the treasures
of the league at Delos were brought to Athens. Convinced of
his security from Persia, Pericles spent the war hoard of the
allies upon the beautification of his city. This was an unright-
eous thing to do by our modem standards, but it was not a
base or greedy thing to do. Athens had accomplished the work
of the Delian League, and is not the labourer worthy of his
hire? This sequestration made a time of exceptional oppor-
tunity for architects and artists. The Parthenon of Athens,;
whose ruins are still a thing of beauty, was but the crown set
upon the clustering glories of the Athens Pericles rebuilt. Such
sculptures as those of Phidias, Myron, and Polyclitus that still
survive, witness to the artistic quality of the time.
The reader must bear in mind that illuminating remark of
Winckler's, which says that this renascent Athens bore for a
time the face of Pericles. It was the peculiar genius of this
man and of his atmosphere that let loose the genius of men
about him, and attracted men of great intellectual vigour to
Athens. Athens wore his face for a time as one wears a mask,
and then became restless and desired to put him aside. There
was very little that was great and generous about the common
Athenian. We have told of the spirit of one sample voter for
the ostracism of Aristides, and Lloyd (in his Age of Pericles)
declares that the Athenians would not suffer the name of
Miltiades to be mentioned in connection with the battle of
Marathon. The sturdy self-respect of the common voters re-
volted presently against the beautiful buildings risings about
them; against the favours shown to such sculptors as Phidias
over popular worthies in the same line of business; against
the donations made to a mere foreigner like Herodotus of
Halicamassus ; against the insulting preference of Pericles
for the company and conversation of a Milesian woman. The
public life of Pericles was conspicuously orderly, and that pres-
ently set the man in the street thinking that his private life
must be very corrupt. One gathers that Pericles was "superior"
GREEK THOUGHT 29S
in his demeanour; he betrayed at times a oontsmpt for the
citizens he served.
"Pericles acquired not only an elevation of sentiment, and
a loftiness and purity of style far removed from the low ex-
pression of the vulgar, but likewise a gravity of countenance
which relaxed not into laughter, a firm and even tone of voice,
an easy deportment, and a decency of dress which no vehemence
of speaking ever put into disorder. These thing?, and others
of a like nature, excited admiration in all that saw him. Such
was his conduct, when a vile and abandoned fellow loaded him
a whole day with reproaches and abuse ; he bore it with patience
and silence, and continued in public for the despatch of some
urgent affairs. In the evening he walked softly home, this
impudent wretch following, and insulting him all the way with
the most scurrilous language. And as it was dark when he
came to his own door, he ordered one of his servants to take
a torch and light the man home. The poet Ion, however, says
he was proud and supercilious in conversation, and that there
was a great deal of vanity and contempt of others mixed with,
his dignity of manner. . . . He appeared not in the streets
except when he went to the forum or the senate house. He
declined the invitations of his friends, and all social entertain-
ments and recreations; insomuch that in the whole time of bis
administration, which was a considerable length, he never went
to sup with any of his friends but once, which was at the mar-
riage of his nephew Euryptolemus, and he stayed there only
until the ceremony of libation was ended. He considered
that the freedom of entertainments takes away all distinction
of office, and that dignity is but little consistent with
familiarity. . . ." ^
There was as yet no gutter journalism to tell the world of
the vileness of the conspicuous and successful; but the com-
mon man, a little out of conceit with himself, found much con-
solation in the art of comedy, which flourished exceedingly. The
writers of comedy satisfied that almost universal craving for
the depreciation of those whose apparent excellence offends
our self-love. They threw dirt steadily and industriously at
Pericles and his friends. Pericles was portrayed in a helmet;
a helmet became him, and it is to be feared he knew as much.
This led to much joy and mirth over the pleasant suggestion
' Plutarch.
/i96
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
afiiu
Pap0icti0ii
>f a frightfully distorted head, an onion head. The "goings
)n" of Aspasia were of course a fruitful vineyard for the in-
dentions of the street. . . ,
Dreaming souls, weary of the vulgarities of our time, have
desired to be transferred to the sublime Age of Pericles. But,
plumped down into that Athens, they would have found them-
selves in very much the atr
mosphere of the lower sort of
contemporary music-hall, very
much in the vein of our popu-
lar newspapers; the same hot
blast of braying libel, foul im-
putation, g r e e dy "patri-
otism," and general baseness
would have blown upon them,
the "modem note" would
have pursued them. As the
memories of Plataea and
Salamis faded and the new
buildings grew familiar,
Pericles and the pride of
Athens became more and
more offensive to the homely
humour of the crowd. He
was never ostracized — ^his
prestige with the quieter citi-
zens saved him from that ; but
he was attacked with increas-
ing boldness and steadfast-
ness. He lived and died a poor man ; he was perhaps the most
honest of demagogues; but this did not save him from an
abortive prosecution for peculation. Defeated in that, his
enemies resorted to a more devious method; they began to lop
away his friends.
Religious intolerance and moral accusations are the natural
weapons of the envious against the leaders of men. His friend
Damon was ostracized. Phidias was attacked for impiety. On
the shield of the great statue of the goddess Athene, Phidias
had dared to put, among the combatants in a fight between
Greeks and Amazons, portraits of Pericles and himself. Phidias
died in prison. Anaxagoras, a stranger welcomed to Athens
jr.F.H.
GREEK THOUGHT 297
by Pericles — when there were plenty of honest fellows already
there quite willing to satisfy any reasonable curiosities — was
saying the strangest things about the sun and stars, and hint-
ing not obscurely that there were no gods, but only one animat-
ing spirit (nous) in the world. ^ The comedy writers suddenly
found they had deep religious feelings that could be profoundly
and even dangerously shocked, and Anaxagoras fled the threat
of a prosecution. Then came the turn of Aspasia. Athens
seemed bent upon deporting her, and Pericles was torn be-
tween the woman who was the soul of his life and the un-
gracious city he had saved, defended, and made more beautiful
and unforgettable than any other city in history. He stood up
to defend Aspasia, he was seized by a storm of very human
emotion, and as he spoke he wept — a gleeful thing for the
rabble. His tears saved Aspasia for a time.
The Athenians were content to humiliate Pericles, but he
had served them so long that they were indisposed to do without
him. He had been their leader now for a third of a century.
In 431 B.C. came the war with Sparta. Plutarch accuses
Pericles of bringing it on, because he felt his popularity waned
so fast that a war was needed to make him indispensable.
"And as he himself was become obnoxious to the people upon
Phidias's account, and was afraid of being called in question
for it, he urged on the war, which as yet was uncertain, and
blew up that flame which till then was stifled and suppressed.
By this means he hoped to obviate the accusations that threat-
ened him, and to mitigate the rage of envy, because such was his
dignity and power, that in all important affairs, and in every great
danger, the republic could place its confidence in him alone."
But the war was a slow and dangerous war, and the Athenian
people were impatient. A certain Cleon arose, ambitious to
oust Pericles from his leadership. There was a great clamour
for a swift ending of the war. Cleon set out to be "the man who
won the war." The popular poets got to work in this fashion :
"Thou king of satyrs . . . why boast thy prowess,
Yet shudder at the sound of sharpened swords.
Spite of the flaming Cleon ?"
An expedition under the leadership of Pericles was unsuc-
cessful, and Cleon seized the opport.unity for a prosecution.
* For an account of his views, see Burnet's Early Qreek Philosophy.
Gomperz' Qreek Thinkers is also a good book for this section.
298 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Pericles was supended from his command and fined. The story
goes that his oldest son — ^this was not the son of Aspasia, but
of a former wife — turned against him, and pursued him with
vile and incredible accusations. This young man was carried
off by the plague. Then the sister of Pericles died, and then
his last legitimate son. When, after the fashion of the time,
he put the funeral garlands on the boy he wept aloud. Presently
he himself took the contagion and died (428 b.c).
The salient facts of this brief summary will serve to show
how discordant Pericles was with much of the life of his city.
This intellectual and artistic outbreak in Athens was no doubt
favoured by the conditions of the time, but it was also due in
part to the appearance of some very unusual men. It was not
a general movement; it was the movement of a small group of
people exceptionally placed and gifted.
§ 2
Another leading figure in this Athenian movement, a figure
still more out of harmony with the life around him, and quite
as much an original source and stimulant of the enduring great-
ness of his age, was a man called Socrates, a son of a stone-
mason. He was bom about sixteen years later than Herodotus,
and he was beginning to be heard of about the time when
Pericles died. He himself wrote nothing, but it was his cus-
tom to talk in public places. There was in those days a great
searching for wisdom going on ; there was a various multitude
of teachers called sophists who reasoned upon truth, beauty, and
right living, and instructed the developing curiosities and im-
aginations of youth. This was so because there were no great
priestly schools in Greece. And into these discussions this
man came, a clumsy and slovenly figure, barefooted, gathering
about him a band of admirers and disciples.
His method was profoundly sceptical; he believed that the
only possible virtue was true knowledge ; he would tolerate no
belief, no hope that could not pass the ultimate acid test. For
himself this meant virtue, but for many of his weaker followers
it meant the loss of beliefs and moral habits that would have
restrained their impulses. These weaklings became self-excus-
ing, self-indulging scoundrels. Among his young associates
were Plato, who afterwards immortalized his method in a series
GREEK THOUGHT 299
of philosophical dialogues, and founded the philosophical school
of the Academy, which lasted nine hundred years, Xenophon, of
the Ten Thousand, who described his death, and Isoerates, one
of the wisest of Greek political thinkers; but there were also
Critias, who, when Athens was utterly defeated by Sparta,
was leader among the Thirty Tyrants appointed by the Spartans
to keep the crushed city under ; ^ Charmides, who was killed
beside Critias when the Thirty were overthrown ; and Alcibiades,
a brilliant and complex traitor, who did much to lead Athens
into the disastrous expedition against Syracuse which destroyed
her strength, who betrayed her to the Spartans, and who was
at last assassinated while on his way to the Persian court to
contrive mischief against Greece. These latter pupils were not
the only young men of promise whose vulgar faith and patriotism
Socrates destroyed, to leave nothing in its place. His most
inveterate enemy was a certain Anytus, whose son, a devoted
disciple of Socrates, had become a hopeless drunkard. Through
Anytus it was that Socrates was at last prosecuted for "cor-
rupting" the youth of Athens, and condemned to death by drink-
ing a poisonous draught made from hemlock (399 B.C.).
His death is described with great beauty in the dialogue of
Plato called by the name of Phwdo.
§ 3
Plato was born 427 b.c, and he lived for eighty years.
In mental temperament Plato was of an altogether different
'"But it was not only against the lives, properties, and liberties of
Athenian citizens that the Thirty made war. They were not leas solicitous
to extinguish the intellectual force and education of the city, a project so
perfectly in harmony both with the sentiment and practice of Sparta,
that they counted on the support of their foreign allies. Among the or-
dinances which they promulgated was one, expressly forbidding any one
'to teach the art of words.' The edict of the Thirty was, in fact, a general
suppression of the higher class of teachers or professors, above the rank of
the elementary (teacher of letters or) grammatist. If such an edict could
have been maintained in force for a generation, combined with the other
mandates of the Thirty — the city out of which Sophocles and Euripides
had just died, and in which Plato and Isoerates were in vigorous age, would
have been degraded to the intellectual level of the meanest community in
Greece. It was not uncommon for a Grecian despot to suppress all those
assemblies wherein youths came together for the purpose of common
training, either intellectual or gymnastic, . as well as the public banquets
and clubs or associations, as being dangerous to his authority, tending to
elevation of courage, and to a consciousness of political rights among the
citizens." — Grote's History of Greece, '
SOO THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
type from Socrates. He was a most artistic and delicate writer,
and Socrates could write nothing consecutive. He cared for
beautiful things and Socrates despised them. He was supremely
concerned with the ordering of public affairs and the scheming
of happier human relationships, while Socrates, heedless of heat
and cold and the opinion of his fellow creatures, concentrated
his mind upon a serene disillusionment. Life, said Socrates,
was deception; only the Soul lived. Plato had a very great
affection for this rugged old teacher, he found his method of
the utmost value in disentangling and cleaning up opinions,
and he made him the central figure of his immortal dialogues ;
but his own thoughts and disposition turned him altogether
away from the sceptical attitude. In many of the dialogues
the voice is the voice of Socrates, but the thought is the thought
of Plato.
Plato was living in a time of doubt and questioning about
all human relationships. In the great days of Pericles, be-
fore 450 B.C., there seems to have been a complete satisfaction
in Athens with social and political institutions. Then there
seemed no reason for questioning. Men felt free; the com-
munity prospered; one suffered chiefly from jealousy. The
History of Herodotus displays little or no dissatisfaction with
Athenian political institutions.
But Plato, who was born about the time Herodotus died,
and who grew up in the atmosphere of a disastrous war and
great social distress and confusion, was from the first face to
face with human discord and the misfit of human institutions.
To that challenge his mind responded. One of his earlier
works and his latest are bold and penetrating discussions of
the possible betterment of social relations. Socrates had taught
him to take nothing for granted, not even the common relations
of husband and wife or parent and child. His Republic, the
first of all Utopian books, is a young man's dream of
a city in which human life is arranged according to
a novel and a better plan ; his last unfinished work, the Laws,
is a discussion of the regulation of another such Utopia. There
is much in Plato at which we cannot even glance here, but it
is a landmark in this history, it is a new thing in the develop-
ment of mankind, this appearance of the idea of wilfully and
completely recasting human conditions. So far mankind has
been living by tradition under the fear of the gods. Here is
GUnm THOUGHT gOl
a man wko says boldly to our race, and as if it were a quite
reasonable and natural thing to say, "Take hold of your lives.
Most of these things that distress you, you can avoid ; most of
these things that dominate you, you can overthrow. You can
do as you will with them."
One other thing besides the conflicts of the time perhaps
stimulated the mind of Plato in this direction. In the days of
Pericles Athens had founded many settlements overseas, and
the setting up of these settlements had familiarized men with
the idea that a community need not grow, it could also be made.
Closely associated with Plato was a younger man, who later
also maintained a school in Athens and lived to an even greater
age. This was Isocrates. He was what we should call a pub-
licist, a writer rather than an orator, and his peculiar work was
to develop the idea of Herodotus, the idea of a unification of
Greece against the Persian Empire, as a remedy for the base-
ness and confusion of her politics and the waste and destruc-
tion of her internecine wars. His political horizon was in
some respects broader than Plato's, and in his later years he
looked towards monarchy, and particularly towards the Macer
donian monarchy of Philip, as a more unifying and broadening
method of government than city democracy. The same drift to
monarchist ideas had occurred in the case of that Xenophon
whose Anabasis we have already mentioned. In his old age
Xenophon wrote the Cyro-pwdia, a "vindication both theoreti-
cally and practically of absolute monarchy as shown in the
organization of the Persian Empire." ^
§ 4
Plato taught in the Academy. To him in his old age came
a certain good-looking youngster from Stagira in Macedonia,
Aristotle, who was the son of the Macedonian king's physician,
and a man with a very different type of mind from that of
the great Athenian. He was naturally sceptical of the imagina-
tive will, and with a great respect for and comprehension of
established fact. Later on, after Plato was dead, he set up
a school at the Lyceum in Athens and taught, criticizing Plato
and Socrates with a certain hardness. When he taught, the
shadow of Alexander the Great lay across the freedom of
• Mahaffy.
302 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Greece, and he favoured slavery and constitutional kings. He
had previously been the tutor of Alexander for several years
at the court of Philip of Macedon. Intelligent ' men were
losing heart in those days, their faith in the power of men
to make their own conditions of life was fading. There were
no more Utopias. The rush of events was manifestly too power-
ful for such organized effort as was then practicable between
men of fine intelligence^ It was possible to think of recasting
human society when human society was a little city of a few
thousand citizens, but what was happening about them •vyas
something cataclysmal; it was the political recasting of the
whole known world, of the affairs of what even then must have
amounted to something between fifty and a hundred million
people. It was recasting upon a scale no human mind was
yet equipped to grasp. It drove thought back upon the idea
of a vast and implacable Fate. It made men snatch at what-
ever looked stable and unifying. Monarchy, for instance, for
all its manifest vices, was a conceivable government for mil-
lions ; it had, to a certain extent, worked; it imposed a ruling
will where it would seem that a collective will was impossible.
This change of the general intellectual mood harmonized with
Aristotle's natural respect for existing fact. If, on the one
hand, it made him approve of monarchy and slavery and the
subjection of women as reasonable institutions, on the other
hand it made him eager to understand fact and to get some
orderly knowledge of these realities of nature and human nature
that were now so manifestly triumphant over the creative dreams
of the preceding generation. He is terribly sane and luminous,
and terribly wanting in self-sacrificial enthusiasm. He ques-
tions Plato when Plato would exile poets from his Utopia, for
poetry is a power; he directs his energy along a line dia-
metrically opposed to Socrates' depreciation of Anaxagoras.
He anticipates Bacon and the modem scientific movement in his
realization of the importance of ordered knowledge. He set
himself to the task of gathering together and setting down
knowledge. He was the first natural historian. Other men
before him had speculated about the nature of things, but he,
with every young man he could win over to the task, set him-
self to classify and compare things. Plato says in effect : "Let
us take hold of life and remodel it"; this soberer successor:
"Let us first know more of life and meanwhile serve the king."
GREEK THOUGHT 303
It was not so much a contradiction as an immense qualification
of the master.
The peculiar relation of Aristotle to Alexander the Great
enabled him to procure means for his work such as were not
available again for scientific inquiry for long ages. He could
command hundreds of talents (a talent = about £240) for his
expenses. At one time he had at his disposal a thousand men
scattered throughout Asia and Greece, collecting matter for
his natural history. They were, of course, very untrained obser-
vers, collectors of stories rather than observers ; but nothing
of the kind had ever been attempted, had even been thought of,
so far as we know, before his time. Political as well as natural
science began. The students of the Lyceum under his direc-
tion made an analysis of 158 political constitutions. . . .
This was the first gleam of organized science in the world.
The early death of Alexander and the breaking up of his empire
almost before it had b^un, put an end to endowments on this
scale for 2,000 years. Only in Egypt at the Alexandria Museum
did any scientific research continue, and that only for a few
generations. Of that we will presently tell. Fifty years
after Aristotle's death the Lyceum had already dwindled to
insignificance.
§ 5
The general drift of thought in the concluding years of the
fourth century b.c. was not with Aristotle, nor towards the
laborious and necessary accumulation of ordered knowledge,
It is possible that without his endowments from the king he
would have made but a small figure in intellectual history.
Through them he was able to give his splendid intelligence sub-
stance and effect. Tbe ordinary man prefers easy ways so
long as they may be followed, and is almost wilfully heedless
whether they end at last in a cul-de-sac. Finding the stream
of events too powerful to control at once, the generality of
philosophical teachers drifted in those days from the scheming
of model cities and the planning of new ways of living into the
elaboration of beautiful and consoling systems of evasion.
Perhaps that is putting things coarsely and unjustly* But
let Professor Gilbert Murray speak upon this matter.^
^Ancient Oreek Literatv/re.
304 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"The Cynics cared only for virtue and the relation of the
soul to God ; the world and its learning and its honours were
as dross to them. The Stoics and Epicureans, so far apart at
first sight, were very similar in their ultimate aim. What they
really cared about was ethics — the practical question how a
man should order his life. Both, indeed, gave themselves to some
science — the Epicureans to physics, the Stoics to logic and
rhetoric — but only as a means to an end. The Stoic tried to
win men's hearts and convictions by sheer subtlety of abstract
argument and dazzling sublimity of thought and expression.
The Epicurean was determined to make Humanity go its way
without cringing to capricious gods and without sacrificing
Free- Will. He condensed his gospel into four maxims : "God
is not to be feared ; Death cannot be felt ; the Good can be won ;
all that we dread can be borne and conquered."
And meanwhile the stream of events flowed on, with a
reciprocal indifference to philosophy.
§ 6
If the Greek classics are to be read with any benefit by mod-
ern men, they must be read as the work of men like ourselves.
Kegard must be had to their traditions, their opportunities, and
their limitations. There is a disposition to exaggeration in all
human admiration; most of our classical texts are very much
mangled, and all were originally the work of human beings in
difficulties, living in a time of such darkness and narrowness
of outlook as makes our own age by comparison a period of
dazzling illumination. What we shall lose in reverence by this
familiar treatment, we shall gain in sympathy for that group
of troubled, uncertain, and very modern minds. The Athenian
writers were, indeed, the first of modem men. They were
discussing questions that we still discuss ; they began to struggle
with the great problems that confront us to-day. Their writ-
ings are our dawn.^
' Jung in his Psychology of the Unconscious is very good in his Chapter
I on the differences between ancient ( pre- Athenian ) thought and modern
thought. The former he calls Undirected Thinking, the latter Directed
Thinking. The former was a thinking in images, akin to dreaming; the
latter a thinking in words. Science is an organization of directed thinking.
The Antique spirit (before the Greek thinkers i.e.) created not science
but mythology. The ancient human world was a world of subjective
fantasies like the world of children and uneducated young people to-day,
GREEK THOUGHT 305
They began an inquiry, and they arrived at no solutions.
We cannot pretend to-day that we have arrived at solutions
to most of the questions they asked. The mind of the Hebrews,
as we have already shown, awoke suddenly to the endless
miseries and disorders of life, saw that these miseries and
disorders were largely due to the lawless acts of men, and con-
cluded that salvation could come only through subduing our-
selves to the service of the one God who rules heaven and
earth. The Greek, rising to the same perception, was not pre-
pared with the same idea of a patriarchal deity ; he lived in a
world in which there was not God but the gods; if perhaps
he felt that the gods themselves were limited, then he thought
of Fate behind them, cold and impersonal. So he put his
problem in the form of an inquiry as to what was right living,
without any definite correlation of the right-living man with
the will of God. ... To us, looking at the matter from a
standpoint purely historical, the common problem can now
be presented in a form that, for the purposes of history, covers
both the Hebrew and Greek way of putting it. We have seen
our kind rising out of the unconsciousness of animals to a
continuing racial self -consciousness, realizing the unhappiness
of its wild diversity of aims, realizing the inevitable tragedy of
individual self-seeking, and feeling its way blindly towards some
linking and subordinating idea to save it from the pains and
accidents of mere individuality. The gods, the god-king, the
idea of the tribe, the idea of the city ; here are ideas that have
claimed and held for a time the devotion of men, ideas in which
they have a little lost their individual selfishness and escaped
to the realization of a more enduring life. Yet, as our wars
and disasters prove, none of these greater ideas have yet been
great enough. The gods have failed to protect, the tribe has
proved itself vile and cruel, the city ostracized one's best and
truest friends, the god-king made a beast of himself. . . .
As we read over the speculative literature of this great period
and like the world of savages and dreams. Infantile thought and dreams
are a re-echo of prehistoric and savage methods of thinking. Myths,
says Jung, are the mass dreams of peoples, and dreams the myths of in-
dividuals. We have already directed the reader's attention to the re-
semblance of the early gods of civilization to the fantasies of children.
The work of hard and disciplined thinking by means of carefully analyzed
words and statements which was begun by the Greek thinkers and re-
sumed by the scholastic philosophers of whom we shall tell in the middle
ages, was a necessary preliminary to the development of modern science.
S06 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of the Greeks, we realize three barriers set about the Greek
mind, from which it rarely escaped, but from which we now
perhaps are beginning to escape.
The first of these limitations was the obsession of the Greek
mind by the idea of the city as' the ultimate state. In a world
in which empire had followed empire, each greater than its pre-
decessor, in a world through which men and ideas drove ever
more loosely and freely, in a world visibly unifying even then,
the Greeks, because of their peculiar physical and political cir-
cumstances, were still dreaming impossibly of a compact little
city state, impervious to outer influences, valiantly secure
against the whole world. Plato's estimate of the number of citi-
zens in a perfect state varied between 1,000 (the Republic) and
5,040 (the Lawsi) citizens. ^ This state was to go to war and
hold its own against other cities of the same size. And this
was not a couple of generations after the hosts of Xerxes had
crossed the Hellespont !
Perhaps these Greeks thought the day of world empires had
passed for ever, whereas it was only beginning. At the utmost
their minds reached out to alliances and leagues. There must
have been men at the court of Artaxerxes thinking far away
beyond these little ideas of the rocky creek, the island, and the
mountain-encircled valley. But the need for unification against
the greater powers that moved outside the Greek-speaking world,
the Greek mind disregarded wilfully. These outsiders were
barbarians, not to be needlessly thought about ; they were barred
out now from Greece for ever. One took Persian money ; every-
body took Persian money; what did it matter? Or one en-
listed for a time in their armies (as Xenophon did) and hoped
for his luck with a rich prisoner. Athens took sides in Egyptian
affairs, and carried on minor wars with Persia, but there was
no conception of a common policy or a common future for
Greece. . . . Until at last a voice in Athens began to shout
"Macedonia !" to clamour like a watch-dog, "Macedonia !" This
was the voice of the orator and demagogue, Demosthenes, hurl-
ing warnings and threats and denunciations at King Philip
• "For the proper administration of justice and for the distribution of
authority it is necessary that the citizens be acquainted with each other's
characters, so that, where this cannot be, much mischief ensues, both in
the use of authority and in the administration of justice; for It is not
just to decide arbitrarily, as must be the case with excessive population."
Aristotle: PoUtios.
GREEK THOUGHT 807
of Macedon, wlio had learnt his politics not only from Plato
and Aristotle, but also from Isocrates and Xenophon, and from
Babylon and Susa, and who was preparing quietly, ably, and
steadfastly to dominate all Greece, and through Greece to con-
quer the known world. . . .
There was a second thing that cramped the Greek mind, the
institution of domestic slavery. Slavery was implicit in Greek
life ; men could conceive of neither comfort nor dignity without
it. But slavery shuts off one's sympathy not only from a class
of one's fellow subjects ; it puts the slave-owner into a class and
organization against all stranger men. One is of an elect tribe.
Plato, carried by his clear reason and the noble sanity of his
spirit beyond the things of the present, would have abolished
slavery; much popular feeling and the New Comedy were
against it; the Stoics and Epicureans, many of whom were
slaves, condemned it as unnatural, but finding it too strong to
upset, decided that it did not affect the soul and might be
ignored. With the wise there was no bound or free. To the
matter-of-fact Aristotle, and probably to most practical men,
its abolition was inconceivable. So they declared that there
were in the world men "naturally slaves." ...
Finally, the thought of the Greeks was hampered by a want
of knowledge that is almost inconceivable to us to-day. They
had no knowledge of the past of mankind at all; at best they
had a few shrewd guesses. They had no knowledge of geography
beyond the range of the Mediterranean basin and the frontiers
of Persia. We know far more to-day of what was going on
in Susa, Persepolis, Babylon, and Memphis in the time of
Pericles than he did. Their astronomical ideas were still in the
state of rudimentary speculations. Anaxagoras, greatly daring,
thought the sun and moon were vast globes, so vast that the sun
was probably "as big as all the Peloponnesus." Their ideas
in physics and chemistry were the results of profound cogita-
tion; it is wonderful that they did guess at atomic structure.
One has to remember their extraordinary poverty in the matter
of experimental apparatus. They had coloured glass for orna-
ment, but no white glass ; no accurate means of measuring the
minor intervals of time, no really efficient numerical notation,
no very accurate scales, no rudiments of telescope or microscope.
A modern scientific man dumped down in the Athens of Pericles
would have found the utmost difficulty in demonstrating the
308 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
elements of Ms knowledge, however crudely, to the men he would
have found there. He would have had to rig up the simplest
apparatus under every disadvantage, while Socrates pointed
out the absurdity of seeking Truth with pieces of wood and
string and metal such as small boys use for fishing. And our
professor of science would also have been in' constant danger
of a prosecution for impiety.
Our world to-day draws upon relatively immense accumula-
tions of knowledge of fact. In the age of Pericles scarcely the
first stone of our comparatively tremendous cairn of things
recorded and proved had been put in place. When we reflect
upon this difference, then it ceases to be remarkable that the
Greeks, with all their aptitude for political speculation, were
blind to the insecurities of their civilization from without and
from within, to the necessity for effective unification, to the
swift rush of events that was to end for long ages these first
brief freedoms of the human mind.
It is not in the results it achieved, but in the attempts it
made, that the true value for us of this group of Greek talkers
and writers lies. It is not that they answered questions, but
that they dared to ask them. IsTever before had man challenged
his world and the way of life to which he found his birth had
brought him. Never had he said before that he could alter his
conditions. Tradition and a seeming necessity had held him
to life as he had found it grown up about his tribe since time
immemorial. Hitherto he had taken the world as children still
take the homes and habits in which they have been reared.
So in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. we perceive, most
plainly in Judea and in Athens, but by no means confined to
those centres, the beginnings of a moral and an intellectual
process in mankind, an appeal to righteousness and an appeal
to the truth from the passions and confusions and immediate
appearances of existence. It is like the davra. of the sense of
responsibility in a youth, who suddenly discovers that life is
neither easy nor aimless. Mankind is growing up. The rest
of history for three and twenty centuries is threaded with the
spreading out and development and interaction and the clearer
and more effective statement of these main leading ideas. Slowly
more and more men apprehend the reality of human brother-
hood, the needlessness of wars and cruelties and oppression,
the possibilities of a common purpose for the whole of our
GREEK THOUGHT 309
kind. In every generation thereafter there is the evidence
of men seeking for that better order to which they feel out
world must come. But everywhere and wherever in any man
the great constructive ideas have taken hold, the hot greeds,
the jealousies, the suspicions and impatience that are in the
nature of every one of us, war against the struggle towards
greater and broader purposes. The last twenty-three centuries
of history are like the efforts of some impulsive, hasty immortal
to think clearly and live rightly. Blunder follows blunder;
promising beginnings end in grotesque disappointments ; streams
of living water are poisoned by the cup. that conveys them to
the thirsty lips of mankind. But the hope of men rises again
at last after every disaster. . . .
We pass on now to the story of one futile commencement,
one glorious shattered beginning of human unity. There was
in Alexander the Great knowledge and imagination, power and
opportunity, folly, egotism, detestable vulgarity, and an im-
mense promise broken by the accident of his early death while
men were still dazzled by its immensity.
xxm
THE OAEEEK OF ALEXAl^DER THE GEEAT
§ 1, Philip of Macedonia. § 2. The Murder of King Philip.
§ 3. Alexanders First Conquests. § 4. The Wanderings of
Alexander. § 5. Was Alexander Indeed Great? § 6. The
Successors of Alexander. § 7. Pergamum a. Refuge of Cul-
ture. § 8. Alexander as a Portent of World Unity.
§ 1
THE true hero of the story of Alexander is not so much
Alexander as his father Philip. The author of a piece
does not shine in the limelight as the actor does, and
it was Philip who planned much of the greatness that his son
achieved, who laid the foundations and forged the tools, who
had indeed already begun the Persian expedition at the time
of his death. Philip, beyond doubting, was one of the greatest
monarchs the world has ever seen ; he was a man of the utmost
intelligence and ability, and his range of ideas was vastly
beyond the scope of his time. He made Aristotle his friend;
he must have discussed with him those schemes for the organ-
ization of real kniawledge which the philosopher was to realize
later through Alexander's endowments. Philip, so far as we
can judge, seems to have been Aristotle's "Prince"; to him
Aristotle turned as men turn only to those whom they admire
and trust. To Philip also Isocrates appealed as the great leader
who should unify and ennoble the chaotic public life of Greece.
In many books it is stated that Philip was a man of in-
credible cynicism and of uncontrolled lusts. It is true that at
feasts, like all the Macedonians of his time, he was a hard
drinker and sometimes drunken — it was probably considered
unamiable not to drink excessively at feasts; but of the other
accusations there is no real proof, and for evidence we have
only the railings of such antagonists as Demosthenes, the
Athenian demagogue and orator, a man of reckless rhetoric.
310
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
3U
The quotation of a phrase or so will serve to show to what the
patriotic anger of Demosthenes could bring him. In one of
the Philippics, as his denunciations of Philip are called, he
gives vent in this style:
"Philip — a man who not only is no Greek, and no way
akin to the Greeks, but is not even a barbarian from a re-
spectable country — ^no, a pestilent fellow of Macedon, a country
from which we never
get even a decent
slave." And so on and
so on. We know, as a
matter of fact, that
the Macedonians were
an Aryan people very
closely akin to the
Greeks, and that
Philip was probably
the best educated man
of his time. This was
the spirit in which the
adverse accounts of
Philip were written.
When Philip be-
came king of Mace-
donia in 359 B.C., his
country was a little
country without a seaport or industries or any considerable
city. It had a peasant population, Greek almost in lan-
guage and ready to be Greek in sympathies, but more purely
Nordic in blood than any people to the south of it. Philip
made this little barbaric state into a great one; he cre-
ated the most efficient military organization the world
had so far seen, and he had brought most of Greece into one
confederacy under ];iis leadership at the time of his death. And
his extraordinary quality, his power of thinking out beyond
the current ideas of his time, is shoven not so much in those
matters as in the care with which he had his son trained to carry
on the policy he had created. He is one of the few monarchs
in history who cared for his successor. Alexander was, as few
other monarchs have ever been, a specially educated king;
he was educated for empire. Aristotle was but one of the sev-
ThUip af'Mkce3Lorx
312 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
eral able tutors his father chose for him. Philip confided his
policy to him, and entrusted him with commands and authority
by the time he was sixteen. He commanded the cavalry at
Chaeronea under his father's eye. He was nursed into power
— -generously and unsuspiciously.
To any one who reads his life with care it is evident that
Alexander started with an equipment of training and ideas
of unprecedented value. As he got beyond the wisdom of his
upbringing he began to blunder and misbehave — sometimes with
a dreadful folly. The defects of his character had triumphed
over his upbringing long before he died.
Philip was a king after the old pattern, a leader-king, first
among his peers, of the ancient l^ordio Aryan type. The army
he found in Macedonia consisted of a general foot levy and
a noble equestrian order called the "companions." The people
were farmers and hunters and somewhat drunken in their
habits, but ready for discipline and good fighting stuff. And
if the people were homely, the government was intelligent and
alert. For some generations the court language had been Attic
(=: Athenian) Greek, and the court had been sufficiently civi-
lized to shelter and entertain such great figures as Euripides,
who died there in 406 b.c, and Zeuxis the artist. Moreover,
Philip, before his accession, had spent some years as a hostage
in Greece. He had had as good an education as Greece could
give at that time. He was, therefore, quite familiar with what
we may call the idea of Isocrates — the idea of a great union
of the Greek states in Europe to dominate the Eastern world;
and he knew, too, how incapable was the Athenian democracy,
because of its constitution and tradition, of taking the op-
portunity that lay before it. For it was an opportunity that
would have to be shared. To the Athenians or the Spartans
it would mean letting in a "lot of foreigners" to the advantages
of citizenship. It would mean lowering themselves to the level
of equality and fellowship with Macedonians — a people from
whom "we" do not get "even a decent slave."
There was no way to secure unanimity among the Greeks
for the contemplated enterprise except by some revolutionary
political action. It was no love of peace that kept the Greeks
from such an adventure; it was their political divisions. The
resources of the several states were exhausted in a series of
internecine wars — ^wars arising out of the merest excuses and
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
313
fanned by oratorical wind. The ploughing of certain sacred
lands near Delphi hy the Phocians was, for example, the pre-
text for a sanguinary Sacred War.
Philip's first years of kingship were devoted to the discipline
of his army. Hitherto most of the main battle fighting in the
world had been done by footmen in formation. In the very
ancient Sumerian battle-pieces we see spearmen in close order
forming the main battle, just as they did in the Zulu armies
of the nineteenth century; the Greek troops of Philip's time
were still fighting in that same style ; the Theban phalanx was
a mass of infantry holding spears, the hinder ranks thrusting
their longer spears between the front-line men. Such a forma-
tion went through anything less disciplined that opposed it.
814 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Mounted arcHers could, of course, inflict considerable losses
on such a mass of men, and accordingly, as the horse came into
warfare, horsemen appeared on either side as an accessory to
this main battle. The reader must remember that the horse
did not come into very effective use in -western war until the
rise of the Assyrians, and then at first only as a chariot horse.
The chariots drove full tilt at the infantry mass and tried to
break it. Unless its discipline was very solid they succeeded.
The Homeric fighting is chariot fighting. It is not until the
last tiiousand years B.C. that we begin to find mounted soldiers,
as distinct from charioteers, playing a part in warfare. At first
they appear to have fought in a scattered fashion, each man
doing his personal feats. So the Lydians fought against Cyrus.
It was Philip who seems to have created charging cavalry.
He caused his "companions" to drill for a massed charge.
And also he strengthened his phalanx by giving the rear men
longer spears than had been used hitherto, and so deepening
its mass. The Macedonian phalanx was merely a more solid
version of the Theban phalanx. !N^one of these massed in-
fantry formations was flexible enough to stand a flank or rear
attack. They had very slight manoeuvring power. Both
Philip's and his son's victories followed, therefore, with varia-
tions, one general scheme of co-operation between these two
arms. The phalanx advanced in the centre and held the
enemy's main body; on one wing or the other the cavalry
charges swept away the enemy cavalry, and then swooped round
upon the flank and rear of the enemy phalanx, the front of
which the Macedonian phalanx was already smiting. The
enemy main battle then broke and was massacred. As Alex-
ander's military experience grew, he also added a use of catar
pults in the field, big stone-throwing affairs, to break up
the enemy infantry. Before his time catapults had been
used in sieges, but never in battles. He invented "artillery
preparation."
With the weapon of his new army in his hand, Philip first
turned his attention to the north of Macedonia. He carried
expeditions into Illyria and as far as the Danube; he also
spread his power along the coast as far as the Hellespont. He
secured possession of a port, Amphipolis, and certain gold
mines adjacent. After several Thracian expeditions he turned
southward in good earnest. He took up the cause of the Delphic
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 815
amphictyony against those sacrilegious Phocians, and so ap-
peared as the champion of Hellenic religion.
There was a strong party of Greeks, it must he understood,
a Pan-Hellenic party, in favour of the Greek headship of Philip.
The chief writer of this Pan-Hellenic movement was Isocrates.
Athens, on the other hand, was the head and front of the op-
position to Philip, and Athens was in open sympathy with
Persia, even sending emissaries to the Great King to warn
him of the danger to him of a united Greece. The comings
and goings of twelve years cannot be related here. In 338 b.'c.
the long struggle between division and pan-Hellenism came to a
decisive issue, and at the battle of Ohseronea Philip inflicted
a crushing defeat upon Athens and her allies. He gave Athens
peace upon astonishingly generous terms; he displayed him-
seK steadfastly resolved to propitiate and favour that im-
placable city; and in 338 b.c. a congress of Greek states recog-
nized him as captain-general for the war against Persia.
He was now a man of forty-seven. It seemed as though the
world lay at his feet. He had made his little country into
the leading state in a great Grseco-Macedonian confederacy.
That unification was to be the prelude to a still greater one,
the unification of the Western world with the Persian empire
into one world state of all known peoples. Who can doubt he
had that dream ? The writings of Isocrates convince us that
he had it. Who can deny that he might have realized it ? He
had a reasonable hope of living for perhaps another quarter
century of activity. In 336 b.c. his advanced guard crossed
into Asia. . . .
But he never followed with his main force. He was
assassinated.
§ 2
It is necessary now to tell something of the domestic life of
"King Philip. The lives of both Philip and his son were per-
vaded by the personality of a restless and evil woman, Olympias,
the mother of Alexander.
She was the daughter of the king of Epirus, a country to
the west of Macedonia, and, like Macedonia, a semi-Greek land.
She met Philip, or was thrown in his way, at some religious
gathering in Samothrace. Plutarch declares the marriage was
S16
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a love-match, and there seems to be at least this much in the
charges against Ptilip that, like many energetic and imaginative
men, he was prone to impatient love impulses. He married
her when he was already a king, and Alexander was bom
to him three years later.
It was not long before Olympias and Philip were bitterly
estranged. She was jealous of him, but there was another
and graver source of trouble in her
passion for religious mysteries. We
have already noted that beneath the
fine and restrained Nordic religion
of the Greeks the land abounded
with religious cults of a darker and
more ancient kind, aboriginal cults
with secret initiations, orgiastic
celebrations, and often with cruel
and obscene rites. These religions
of the shadows, these practices of
the women and peasants and slaves,
gave Greece her Orphic, Dionysic,
and Demeter cults; they have
lurked in the tradition of Europe
down almost to our own times. The
witchcraft of the Middle Ages, with
its resort to the blood of babes,
scraps of executed criminals, incan-
tations and magic circles, seems to have been little else than
the lingering vestiges of these solemnities of the dark whites.
In these matters Olympias was an expert and an enthusiast,
and Plutarch mentions that she achieved considerable celebrity
by use of tame serpents in these pious exercises. The
snakes invaded her domestic apartments, and history is not
clear whether Philip found in them matter for exasperation
or religious awe. These occupations of his wife must have
been a serious inconvenience to Philip, for the Macedonian
people were still in that sturdy stage of social development in
which neither enthusiastic religiosity nor uncontrollable wives
are admired.
The evidence of a bitter hostility between mother and father
peeps out in many little things in the histories. She was evi-
dently jealous of Philip's conquests ; she hated his fame. There
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 317
are many signs that Olympias did her best to set her son against
his father and attach him wholly to herself. A story survives
(in Plutarch's Life) that "whenever news was brought of
Philip's victories, the capture of a . city or the winning of
some great battle, he never seemed greatly rejoiced to hear
it ; on the contrary he used to say to his play-fellows : 'Father
will get everything in advance, boys; he won't leave any
great task for me to share with you.' "...
It is not a natural thing for a boy to envy his father in
this fashion without some inspiration. That sentence sounds
like an echo.
We have already pointed out how manifest it is that Philip
planned the succession of Alexander, and how eager he was
to thrust fame and power into the boy's hands. He was think-
ing of the political structure he was building — ^but the mother
was thinking of the glory and pride of that wonderful lady,
Olympias. She masked her hatred of her husband under the
cloak of a mother's solicitude for her son's future. When in
33Y B.C. Philip, after the fashion of kings in those days, mar-
ried a second wife who was a native Macedonian, Cleopatra, "of
whom he was passionately enamoured," Olympias made much
trouble.
Plutarch tells of a pitiful scene that occurred at Philip's
marriage to Cleopatra. There was much drinking of wine at
the banquet, and Attains, the father of the bride, being "in-
toxicated with liquor," betxayed the general hostility to
Olympias and Epirus by saying he hoped there would be a
child by the marriage to give them a truly Macedonian heir.
Whereupon Alexander, taut for such an insult, cried out,
"What then am I?" and hurled his cup at Attains. Philip,
enraged, stood up and, says Plutarch, drew his sword, only to
stumble and fall. Alexander, blind with rage and jealousy,
taunted and insulted his father.
"Macedonians," he said. "See there the general who would
go from Europe to Asia ! Why ! he cannot get from one table
to another!"
How that scene lives still, the sprawl, the flushed faces, the
angry voice of the boy! Next day Alexander departed with
his mother — and Philip did nothing to restrain them. Olympias
went home to Epirus ; Alexander departed to lUyria. Thence
Philip persuaded him to return.
S18 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Fresh trouble arose. Alexander had a brother of weak in-
tellect, Aridseus, whom the Persian governor of Oaria sought
as a son-in-law. "Alexander's friends and his mother now
infused notions into him again, though perfectly groundless,
that by so noble a match, and the support consequent upon it,
Philip designed the crown for Aridseus. Alexander, in the
uneasiness these suspicions gave him, sent one Thessalus, a
player, into Caria, to desire the grandee to pass by Aridseus,
who was of spurious birth, and deficient in point of under-
standing, and to take the lawful heir to the crown into his
alliance. Pixodarus was infinitely more pleased with this pro-
posal. But Philip no sooner had intelligence of it, than he
went to Alexander's apartment, taking along with him Philotas,
the son of Parmenio, one of his most intimate friends and
companions, and, in his presence, reproached him with his
degeneracy and meanness of spirit, in thinking of being son-
in-law to a man of Oaria, one of the slaves of a barbarian king.
At the same time he wrote to the Corinthians, insisting that they
should send Thessalus to him iu chains. Harpalus and
Niarehus, Phrygius and Ptolemy, some of the other companions
of the prince, he banished. But Alexander afterwards recalled
them, and treated them with great distinction."
There is something very touching in this story of the father
pleading with the son he manifestly loved, and baffled by the
web of mean suggestion which had been spun about the boy's
imagination.
It was at the marriage of his daughter to her unde, the king
of Epirus and the brother of Olympias, that Philip was stabbed.
He was walking in a procession into the theatre unarmed, in
a white robe, and he was cut down by one of his bodyguard.
The murderer had a horse waiting, and would have got away,
but the foot of his horse caught in a wild vine and he was
thrown from the saddle by the stumble and slain by his
pursuers. . . .
So at the age of twenty Alexander was at the end of
his anxiety about the succession, and established king, in
Macedonia.
Olympias then reappeared in Macedonia, a woman proudly
vindicated. It is said that she insisted upon paying the ;Same
funeral honours to the memory of the murderer as to Philip.
In Greece there were great rejoicings over this auspicious
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 319
event, and Demosthenes, when he had the news, although it
was but seven days after the death of his own daughter, went
into the public assembly at Athena in gay attire wearing a
chaplet.
Whatever Olympias may have done about ber busband's
assassin, history does not doubt about ber treatment of ber sup-
planter, Cleopatra. So soon as Alexander was out of tbe way
— and a revolt of the billmen in tbe north called at once for
bis attention — Cleopatra's newly bom child was killed in its
mother's arms, and Cleopatra — ^no doubt after a little taunting
— was then strangled. These excesses of womanly feeling are
said to have shocked Alexander, but they did not prevent him.
from leaving bis mother in a position of considerable authority
in Macedonia. She wrote letters to him upon religious and
political questions, and he showed a dutiful disposition in send-
ing her always a large share of tbe plunder he made.
§3
These stories have to be told because history cannot be un-
derstood without them. Here was the great world of men be-
tween India and the Adriatic ready for union, ready as it had
never been before for a unifying control. Here was the wide
order of the Persian empire with its roads, its posts, its gen-
eral peace and prosperity, ripe for the fertilizing influence of
the Greek mind. And these stories display the quality of
the human beings to whom those great opportunities came.
Here was this Philip who was a very great and noble man, and
yet he was drunken, he could keep no order in his household.
Here was Alexander in many ways gifted above any man
of his time, and be was vain, suspicious, and passionate, with
a mind set awry by bis mother.
We are beginning to understand something of what the
world might be, something of what our race might become,
were it not for our still raw humanity. It is barely a matter
of seventy generations between ourselves and Alexander; and
between ourselves and the savage hunters, our ancestors, who
charred their food in tbe embers or ate it raw, intervene some
four or five hundred generations. There is not much scope for
the modification of a species in four or five hundred gen-
erations. Make men and women only sufficiently jealous or
820 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
fearful or drunken or angry, and the hot red eyes of the cave-
men will glare out at us to-day. We have writing and teach-
ing, science and power ; we have tamed the heasts and schooled
the lightning ; hut we are still only shamhling towards the light.
We have tamed and bred the beasts, but we have still to tame
and breed ourselves.
From the very beginning of his reign the deeds of Alexander
showed how well he had assimilated his father's plans, and
how great were his own abilities. A map of the known world
is needed to show the course of his life. At first, after re-
ceiving assurances from Greece that he was to be captain-gen-
eral of the Grecian forces, he marched through Thrace to the
Danube; he crossed the river and burnt a village, the second
great monarch to raid the Scythian country beyond the Danube;
then reerossed it and marched westward and so came down by
Illyria. By that time the city of Thebes was in rebellion, and
his next blow was at Greece. Thebes — ^unsupported of course
by Athens — ^was taken and looted; it was treated with ex-
travagant violence; all its buildings, except the temple and
the house of the poet Pindar, were razed, and thirty thousand
pieople sold into slavery. Greece was stunned, and Alexander
was free to go on with the Persian campaign.
This destruction of Thebes betrayed a streak of violence in
the new master of human destinies^ It was too heavy a blow
to have dealt. It was a barbaric thing to do. If the spirit of
rebellion was killed, so abo was the spirit of help. The Greek
states remained inert thereafter, neither troublesome nor help-
ful. They would not support Alexander with their shipping,
a thing which was to prove a very grave embarrassment to him.
There is a story told by Plutarch about this Theban massacre,
as if it redounded to the credit of Alexander, but indeed it
shows only how his saner and his crazy sides were in con-
flict. It tells of a Macedonian officer and a Theban lady. This
officer was among the looters, and he entered this wom.an's house,
inflicted unspeakable insults and injuries upon her, and at
last demanded whether she had gold or silver hidden. She
told him all her treasures had been put into the well, conducted
him thither, and, as he stooped to peer down, pushed him sud-
denly in and killed him by throwing great stones upon him.
Some allied soldiers came upon this scene and took her forth-
with to Alexander for judgment.
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 321
Slie defied him. Already the extravagant impulse that had
ordered the m.assacre was upon the wane, and . he not only
spared her, but had her family and property and freedom re-
stored to her. This Plutarch makes out to be a generosity,
but the issue is more complicated than that. It was Alex-
ander who was outraging and plundering and enslaving all
Thebes. That poor crumpled Macedonian brute in the well
had been doing only what he had been told he had full lib-
erty to do. Is a commander first to give cruel orders, and then
to forgive and reward those who slay his instruments? This
gleam of remorse at the instance of one woman who was not
perhaps wanting in tragic dignity and beauty, is a poor set-
off to the murder of a great city.
Mixed with the craziness of Olympias in Alexander was
the sanity of Philip and the teachings of Aristotle. This The-
ban business certainly troubled the mind of Alexander. When-
ever afterwards he encountered Thebans, he tried to show them
special favour. Thebes, to his credit, haunted him.
Yet the memory of Thebes did not save three other great
cities from similar brain storms ; Tyre he destroyed, and Gaza,
and a city in India, in the storming of which he was knocked
down in fair fight and wounded; and of the latter place not
a soul, not a child, was spared. He must have been badly
frightened to have taken so evil a revenge.
At the outset of the war the Persians had this supreme ad-
vantage, they were practically masters of the sea. The ships
of the Athenians and their allies sulked unhelpfully. Alex-
ander, to get at Asia, had to go round by the Hellespont ; and
if he pushed far into the Persian empire, he ran the risk of
being cut off completely from his base. His first task, there-
fore, was to cripple the enemy at sea, and this he could only
do by marching along the coast of Asia Minor and capturing
port after port until the Persian sea bases were destroyed. If
the Persians had avoided battle and hung upon his lengthening
line of comuiunications they could probably have destroyed
him, but this they did not do. A Persian army not very much
greater than his own gave battle on the banks of the Granicus
(334 B.C.) and was destroyed. This left him free to take
Sardis, Ephesus, Miletus, and, after a fierce struggle, Halicar-
nassus. Meanwhile the Persian fleet was on his right flank and
S22 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
between him and Greece, threatening much but accomplishing
nothing.
In 333 B.C., pursuing this attack upon the sea bases, he
marched along the coast as far as the head of the gulf now called
the Gulf of Alexandretta. A huge Persian army, under the
great king Darius III, was inland of his line of march, sep-
arated from the coast by mountains, and Aleixander went right
beyond this enemy force before he or the Persians realized
their proximity. Scouting was evidently very badly done by
Greek and Persian alike. The Persian army was a vast, ill-
organized assembly of soldiers, transport, camp followers, and
so forth. Darius, for instance, was accompanied by his harem,
and there was a great multitude of harem slaves, musicians,
dancers, and cooks. Many of the leading officers had brought
their families to witness the hunting down of the Macedonian
invaders. The troops had been levied from every province in
the empire; they had no tradition or principle of combined
action. Seized by the idea of cutting off Alexander from Greece,
Darius moved this multitude over the mountains to the sea ; he
had the luck to get through the passes without opposition, and
he encamped on the plain of Issus between the mountains and
the shore. And there Alexander, who had turned back to fight,
struck him. The cavalry charge and the phalanx smashed this
great brittle host as a stone smashes a bottle. It was routed.
Darius escaped from his war chariot — ^that out-of-date instru-
ment— and fled on horseback, leaving even his harem in the
hands of Alexander.
All the accounts of Alexander after this battle show him at
his best. He was restrained and magnanimous. He treated
the Persian princesses with the utmost civility. And he kept
his head ; he held steadfastly to his plan. He let Darius escape,
unpursued, into Syria, and he continued his march upon the
naval bases of the Persians — ^that is to say, upon the Phoenician
ports of Tyre and Sidon.
Sidon surrendered to him; Tyre resisted.
Here, if anywhere, we have the evidence of great military
ability on the part of Alexander. His army was his father's
creation, but Philip had never shone in the siege of cities.
When Alexander was a boy of sixteen, he had seen his father
repulsed by the fortified city of Byzantium upon the Bosphorus.
Now he was face to face with an inviolate city which had stood
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
S23
824 THE OUTLmE OF HISTORY
siege after siege, which had resisted Nebuchadnezzar the Great
for fourteen years. For the standing of sieges Semitic peoples
hold the palm. Tyre was then an island half a mile from the
shore, and her fleet was unbeaten. On the other hand, Alex-
ander had already learnt much by the siege of the citadel of
Halicamassus ; he had gathered to himself a corps of engineers
from Cyprus and Phoenicia, the Sidonian fleet was with him,
and presently the king of Cyprus came over to him with a
hundred and twenty ships, which gave him the command of the
sea. Moreover, great Carthage, either relying on the strength
of the mother city or being disloyal to her, and being further-
more entangled in a war in Sicily, sent no help.
The first measure of Alexander was to build a pier from the
mainland to the island, a dam which remains to this day; and
on this, as it came close to the walls of Tyre, he set up his
towers and battering-rams. Against the walls he also moored
ships in which towers and rams were erected. The Tyrians
used fire-ships against this flotilla, and made sorties from their
two harbours. In a big surprise raid that they made on the
Cyprian ships they were caught and badly mauled; many of
their ships were rammed, and one big galley of five banks of
oars and one of four were captured outright. Finally a breach
in the walls was made, and the Macedonians, clambering up the
debris from their ships, stormed the city.
The siege had lasted seven months. Gaza held out for two.
In each case there was a massacre, the plundering of the city,
and the selling of the survivors into slavery. Then towards the
end of 332 B.C. Alexander entered Egypt, and the command
of the sea was assured. Greece, which all this while had been
wavering in its policy, decided now at last that it was on the
side of Alexander, and the council of the Gre^ek states at Corinth
voted its "captain-general" a golden crown of victory. From
this time onward the Greeks were with the Macedonians.
The Egyptians also were with the Macedonians. But they
had been for Alexander from the beginning. They had lived
under Persian rule for nearly two hundred years, and the com-
ing of Alexander meant for them only a change of masters;
on the whole, a change for the better. The country surrendered
without a blow. Alexander treated its religious feelings with
extreme respect. He unwrapped no mummies as Cambyses
had done; he took no liberties with Apis, the sacred bull of
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 825
Memphis. Here, in great temples and upon a vast scale, Alex-
ander found tlie evidences of a religiosity, mysterious and ir-
rational, to remind him of the secrets and mysteries that had
entertained his mother and impressed his childhood. During
his four months in Egypt he flirted with religious emotions.
He was still a very young man, we must remember, divided
against himself. The strong sanity he inherited from his father
had made him a great soldier; the teaching of Aristotle had
given him something of the scientific outlook upon the world.
He had destroyed Tyre ; in Egypt, at one of the mouths of the
ISTile, he now founded a new city, Alexandria, to replace that
ancient centre of trade. To the north of Tyre, near Issus, he
founded a second port, Alexandretta. Both of these cities
flourish to this day, and for a time Alexandria was perhaps
the greatest city in the world. The sites, therefore, must have
been wisely chosen. But also Alexander had the unstable emo-
tional imaginativeness of his mother, and side by side with
such creative work he indulged in religious adventures. The
gods of Egypt took possession of his mind. He travelled four
hundred miles, to the remote oasis of the oracle of Ammon.
He wanted to settle certain doubts about his true parentage.
His mother had inflamed his mind by hints and vague speeches
of some deep mystery about his parentage. "Was so ordinary a
human being as Philip of Macedon really his rather ?
For nearly four hundred years Egypt had been a country
politically contemptible, overrun now by Ethiopians, now by
Assyrians, now by Babylonians, now by Persians. As the in-
dignities of the present became more and more disagreeable to
contemplate, the past and the other world became more splendid
to Egyptian eyes. It is from the festering humiliations of peo-
ples that arrogant religious propagandas spring; To the tri-
umphant the downtrodden can say, "It is naught in the sight
of the true gods." So the son of Philip of Macedon, the master-
general of Greece, was made to feel a small person amidst the
gigantic temples. And he had an abnormal share of youth's
normal ambition to impress everybody. How gratifying then
for him to discover presently that he was no mere successful
mortal, not one of these modem vulgar Greekish folk, but an-
cient and divine, the son of a god, the Pharaoh god, son of
Ammon Ra!
826 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Already in a previous chapter we have given a description
of that encounter in the desert temple.
Ifot altogether was the young man convinced. He had his
moments of conviction ; he had his saner phases when the thing
was almost a jest. In the presence of Macedonians and Greeks
he douhted if he was divine. When it thundered loudly, the
ribald Aristarchus could ask him: "Won't jfou do something
of the sort, oh Son of Zeus ?" But the crazy notion was, never-
theless, present henceforth in his brain, ready to be inflamed
by wine or flattery.
INText spring (331 b.c.) he returned to Tyre, and marched
thence round towards Assyria, leaving the Syrian desert on his
right. Near the ruins of forgotten Nineveh he found a great
Persian army, that had been gathering since the battle of Issus,
awaiting him. It was another huge medley of contingents, and
it relied for its chief force upon that now antiquated weapon,
the war chariot. Of these Darius had a force of two hundred,
and each chariot had scythes attached to its wheels and to the
pole and body of the chariot. There seem to have been four
horses to each chariot, and it will be obvious that if one of those
horses was wounded by javelin or arrow, that chariot was held
up. The outer horses acted chiefly as buffers for the inner
wheel horses ; they were hitched to the chariot by a single out-
side trace which could be easily cut away, but the loss of one
of the wheel horses completely incapacitated the whole affair.
Against broken footmen or a crowd of individualist fighters
such vehicles might be formidable ; but Darius began the battle
by flinging them against the cavalry and light infantry. Few
reached their objective, and those that did were readily disposed
of. There was some manoeuvring for position. The well-drilled
Macedonians moved obliquely across the Persian front, keeping
good order ; the Persians, following this movement to the flank,
opened gaps in their array. Then suddenly the disciplined
Macedonian cavalry charged at one of these torn places and
smote the centre of the Persian host. The infantry followed
close upon their charge. The centre and left of the Persians
crumpled up. For a while the light cavalry on the Persian right
gained ground against Alexander's left, only to be cut to pieces
by the cavalry from Thessaly, which by this time had become
almost as good as its Macedonian model. The Persian forces
ceased to resemble an army. They dissolved into a vast multi-
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT S27
tude of fugitives streaming under great dust clouds and without
a single rally across the hot plain towards Arbela. Through
the dust and the flying crowd rode the victors, slaying and
slaying until darkness stayed the slaughter. Darius led the
retreat.
Such was the battle of Arbela. It was fought on October
the 1st, 331 B.C. We know its date so exactly, because it is
recorded that, eleven days before it began, the soothsayers on
both sides had been greatly exercised by an eclipse of the moon.
Darius fled to the north into the country of the Medes. Alex-
ander marched on to Babylon. The ancient city of Hammurabi
(who had reigned seventeen hundred years before) and of
N"ebuchadnezzar the Great and of Nabonidus was still, unlike
Nineveh, a prosperous and important centre. Like the Egyp-
tians, the Babylonians were not greatly concerned at a change
of rule to Macedonian from Persian. The temple of Bel-
Marduk was in ruins, a quarry for building material, but the
tradition of the Chaldean priests still lingered, and Alexander
promised to restore the building.
Thence he marched on to Susa, once the chief city of the van-
ished and forgotten Elamites, and now the Persian capital.
He went on to Persepolis, where, as the climax of a drunken
carouse, he burnt down the great palace of the king of kings.
This he afterwards declared was the revenge of Greece for the
burning of Athens by Xerxes,
§4
And now begins a new phase in the story of Alexander. For
the next seven years he wandered with an army chiefly of Mace-
donians in the north and east of what was then the known world.
At first it was a pursuit of Darius. Afterwards it became ?
Was it a systematic survey of a world he meant to consolidate
into one great order, or was it a wild-goose chase? His own
soldiers, his own intimates, thought the latter, and at last stayed
his career beyond the Indus. On the map it looks very like a
wild-goose chase; it seems to aim at nothing in particular and
to get nowhere.
The pursuit of Darius III soon came to a pitiful end. After
the battle of Arbela his own generals seem to have revolted
against his weakness and incompetence; they made him a pris-
328 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
oner, and took him with them in spite of his desire to throw
himself upon the generosity of his conqueror. Bessus,- the
satrap of Bactria, they made their leader. There was at last a
hot and exciting chase of the flying caravan which conveyed the
captive king of kings. At dawn, after an all-night pursuit, it
was sighted far ahead. The flight became a headlong bolt.
Baggage, women, everything was abandoned by Bessus and
his captains; and one other impediment also they left behind.
By the side of a pool of water far away from the road a Mace-
donian trooper presently found a deserted mule-cart with its
mules still in the traces. In this cart lay Darius, stabbed in a
score of places and bleeding to death. He had refused to go on
with Bessus, refused to mount the horse that was brought to
him. So his captains had run him through with their spears and
left him. . . . He asked his captors for water. What else he
may have said we do not know. The historians have seen fit
to fabricate a quite impossible last dying speech for him. Prob-
ably he said very little. . . .
When, a little after sunrise, Alexander came up, Darius was
already dead. . . .
To the historian of the world the wanderings of Alexander
have an interest of their own quite apart from the light they
throw upon his character. Just as the campaign of Darius I
lifted the curtain behind Greece and Macedonia, and showed us
something of the silent background to the north of the audible
and recorded history of the early civilizations, so now Alex-
ander's campaigns take us into regions about which there had
hitherto been no trustworthy record made.
We discover they were not desert regions, but full of a
gathering life of their own.
He marched to the shores of the Caspian, thence he travelled
eastward across what is now called Western Turkestan. He
founded a city that is now known as Herat; whence he went
northward by Cabul and by what is now Samarkand, right up
' into the mountains of Central Turkestan. He returned south-
ward, and came down into India by the Khyber Pass. He
fought a great battle on the Upper Indus against a very tall
and chivalrous king, Porus, in which the Macedonian infantry
encountered an array of elephants and defeated them. Possi-
bly he would have pushed eastward across the deserts to the
Ganges valley, but his troops refused to go further. Possibly,
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT S29
had they not done so, then or later he would have gone on until
he vanished eastward out of history. But he was forced to turn
about. He built a fleet and descended to the mouth of the Indus.
There he divided his forces. The main army he took along
the desolate coast back to the Persian Gulf, and on the way it
suffered dreadfully and lost many men through thirst. The
fleet followed him by sea, and rejoined him at the entrance to
the Persian Gulf. In the course of this six-year tour he fought
battles, received the submission of many strange peoples, and
founded cities. He saw the dead body of Darius in June, 330
B.C. ; he returned to Susa in 324 B.C. He found the empire in
disorder: the provincial satraps raising armies of their own,
Bactria and Media in insurrection, and Olympias making gov-
ernment impossible in Macedonia. Harpalus, the royal treas-
urer, had bolted with all that was portable of the royal treas-
ure, and was making his way, bribing as he went, towards
Greece. Some of the Harpalus money is said to have reached
Demosthenes.
But before we deal with the closing chapter of the story of
Alexander, let us say a word or so about these northern regions
into which he wandered. It is evident that from the Danube
region right across South Eussia, right across the country to
the north of the Caspian, right across the country to the east of
the Caspian, as far as the mountain masses of the Pamir
Plateau and eastward into the Tarim basin of Eastern Turkes-
tan, there spread then a series of similar barbaric tribes and
peoples all at about the same stage of culture, and for the most
part Aryan in their language and possibly Nordic in their race.
They had few cities, mostly they were nomadic; at times they
settled temporarily to cultivate the land. They were certainly
already mingling in Central Asia with Mongolian tribes, but
the Mongolian tribes were not then prevalent there.
An immense process of drying up and elevation has been
going on in these parts of the world during the last ten thou-
sand years. Ten thousand years ago there was probably a con
tinuous water barrier between the basin of the Obi and the
Aral-Caspian sea. As this had dried up and the marshy land
had become steppe-like country, Nordic nomads from the west
and Mongolian nomads from the east had met and mixed,
and the. riding horse had come back into the western world.
It is evident this great stretch of country was becoming a region
330 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of accumulation for these barbaric peoples. They were very
loosely attached to the lands they occupied. They lived ill tents
and wagons rather than houses. A brief cycle of plentiful and
healthy years, or a cessation of tribal warfare under some strong
ruler, would lead to considerable increases of population; then
two or three hard years would suffice to send the tribes wander-
ing again in search of food.
Prom before the dawn of recorded history this region of
human accumulation between the Danube and China had been,
as it were, intermittently raining out tribes southward and
westward. It was like a cloud bank behind the settled landscape
that accumulated and then precipitated invaders. We have
noted how the Keltic peoples drizzled westward, how the Ital-
ians, the Greeks, and their Epirote, Macedonian, and Phrygian
kindred came routh. We have noted, too, the Cimmerian drive
from the east, like a suddeil driving shower of barbarians across
Asia Minor, the southward coming of the Scythians and Medes
and Persians, and the Aryan descent into India.- About a cen-
tury before Alexander there had been a fresh Aryan invasion
of Italy by a Keltic people, the Gauls, who had settled in the
valley of the Po. Those various races came down out of their
northern obscurity into the light of history; and meanwhile
beyond that light the reservoir accumulated for fresh discharges.
Alexander's march in Central Asia brings now into our history
names that are fresh to us; the Parthians, a race of mounted
bowmen who were destined to play an important role in history
a century or so later, and the Bactrians who lived in the sandy
native land of the camel. Everywhere he seems to have met
Aryan-speaking peoples. The Mongolian barbarians to the
north-eastward were still unsuspected, no one imagined there
was yet another great cloud bank of population beyoiid the
Scythians and their kind, in the north of China, that was pres-
ently also to begin a drift westward and southward, mixing as it
came with the Nordic Scythians and every other people of
kindred habits that it encountered. As yet only China knew
of the Huns ; there were no Turks in Western Turkestan or any-
where else then, no Tartars in the world.
This glimpse of the state of affairs in Turkestan in the fourth
century b.c. is one of the most interesting aspects of the wan-
derings of Alexander; another is his raid through the Punjab.
From the point of view of the teller of the human story it ils
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 331
provocative that he did not go on into the Ganges country, and
that consequently we have no independent accounts by Greek
writers of the life in ancient Bengal. But there is a consider-
able literature in various Indian languages dealing with Indian
history and social life that still needs to be made accessible to
European readers.
§ 5
Alexander had been in undisputed possession of the Persian
empire for six years. He was now thirty-one. In those six
years he had created very little. He had retained most of the
organization of the Persian provinces, appointing fresh satraps
or retaining the former ones ; the roads, the ports, the organiza-
tion of the empire was still as Cyrus, his greater predecessor,
had left them ; iii Egypt he had merely replaced old provincial
governors by new ones; in India he had defeated Porus, and
then left him in power much as he found him, except that Porus
was now called a satrap by the Greeks. Alexander had, it is
true, planned out a number of towns, and some of them were
to grow into great towns ; seventeen Alexandrias he founded al-
together; ^ but he had destroyed Tyre, and with Tyre the se-
curity of the sea routes which had hitherto been the chief west-
ward outlet for Mesopotamia. Historians say that he Hellenized
the east. But Babylonia and Egypt swarmed with Greeks
before his time; he was not the cause, he was a part of the
Hellenization. Eor a time the whole world, from the Adriatic
to the Indus, was under one ruler ; so far he had realized the
dreams of Isocrates and Philip his father. But how far was
he making this a permanent and enduring union ? How far as
yet was it anything more than a dazzling but transitory flourish
of his own magnificent self ?
He was making no great roads, setting up no sure sea com-
munications. It is idle to accuse him of leaving education alone,
because the idea that empires must be cemented by education
was still foreign to human thought. But he was forming no
group of statesmen about him ; he was thinking of no successor ;
he was creating no tradition — ^nothing more than a personal
legend. The idea that the world would have to go on after
'Mahaflfy. Their names have undergone various changes — e.g., Candahar
(Iskender) and Secunderabad.
332 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Alexander, engaged in any other employment than the discus-
sion of his magnificence, seems to have been outside his mental
range. He was still young, it is true, hut well before Philip
was one and thirty he had been thinking of the education of
Alexander.
Was Alexander a statesman at all ?
Some students of his career assure us that he was ; that now
at Susa he planned a mighty world empire, seeing it not simply
as a Macedonian conquest of the world, but as a melting to-
gether of racial traditions. He did one thing, at any rate,
that gives colour to this idea ; he held a great marriage feast,
in which he and ninety of his generals and friends were mar-
ried to Persian brides. He himself married a daughter of
Darius, though already he possessed an Asiatic wife in Roxana,
the daughter of the king of Samarkand. This wholesale wed-
ding was made a very splendid festival, and at the same time
all of his Macedonian soldiers, to the number of several thou-
sands, who had married Asiatic brides, were given wedding
gifts. This has been called the Marriage of Europe and Asia ;
the two continents were to be joined, wrote Plutarch, "in lawful
wedlock and by community of offspring." And next he began
to train recruits from Persia and the north, Parthians, Bao-
trians, and the like, in the distinctive disciplines of the phalanx
and the cavalry. Was that also to assimilate Europe and Asia,
or was it to make himself independent of his Macedonians?
They thought the latter, at any rate, and mutinied, and it was
with some difficulty that he brought them to a penitent mood
and induced them to take part in a common feast with the Per-
sians. The historians have made a long and eloquent speech
for him on this occasion, but the gist of it was that he bade his
Macedonians begone, and gave no sign of how he proposed they
should get home out of Persia. After three days of dismay they
submitted to him and begged his forgiveness.
Here i^ the matter for a very pretty discussion. Was Alex-
ander really planning a racial fusion or had he just fallen in
love with the pomp and divinity of an Oriental monarch, and
wished to get rid of these Europeans to whom he was only a
king-leader ? The writers of his own time, and those who lived
near to his time, lean very much to the latter alternative. They
insist upon his immense vanity. They relate how he began
to wear the robes and tiara of a Persian monarch. "At first
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
S33
only before the barbarians and privately, but after^.ards be
came to wear it in public when he sat for the dispatch of busi-
ness." And presently he demanded Oriental prostrations from
his friends.
One thing seems to support the suggestion of great personal
vanity in Alexander. His portrait was painted and sculptured
frequently, and always he is represented as a beautiful youth,
with wonderful locks flowing backward from a broad forehead.
Previously most men had worn beards. But Alexander, en-
amoured of his own
youthful loveliness,
would not part with
it; he remained a
sham boy at thirty-
two; he shaved his
face, and so set a
fashion in Greece
and Italy that lasted
many centuries.
The stories of vio-
lence and vanity in
his closing years
cluster thick upon his
memory. He listened
to tittle-tattle about
Philotas, the son of
Parmenio, one of his
most trusted and
faithful generals.
Philotas, it was said,
had boasted to some woman he was making love to that Alex-
ander was a mere boy ; that, but for such men as his father and
himself, there would have been no conquest of Persia, and the
like. Such assertions had a certain element of truth in them.
The woman was brought to Alexander, who listened to hei
treacheries. Presently Philotas was accused of conspiracy, and,
upon very insufficient evidence, tortured and executed. Then
Alexander thought of Parmenio, whose other two sons had
died for him in battle. He sent swift messengers to assas-
sinate the old man before he could hear of his son's death!
'Now Parmenio had '/cen one of the most trusted of Philip's
(silver coin of hjsimaclms , 321- 2S1B.C)
SS4 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
generals ; it was Parmenio who had led the Macedonian armies
into Asia before the murder of Philip. There can be little
donbt of the substantial truth of this story, nor about the
execution of Oallisthenes, the nephew of Aristotle, who re-
fused Alexander divine honours, and "went about with as
much pride as if he had demolished a tyranny, while the young
men followed him as the only freeman among thousands,"
Mixed with such incidents we have the very illuminating story
of the drunken quarrel in which he killed Clitus. The monarch
and his company had been drinking hard, and the drink had
made the talk loud and free. There was much flattery of the
"young god," much detraction of Philip, at which Alexander
had smiled with satisfaction.^ This drunken self-complacency
was more than the Macedonians could stand; it roused Clitus,
his foster-brother, to a frenzy. Clitus reproached Alexander
with his Median costume and praised Philip, there was a loud
quarrel, and, to end it, Clitus was hustled out of the room by
his friends. He was, however, in the obstinate phase of drunk-
enness, and he returned by another entrance. He was heard
outside quoting Euripides "in a bold and disrespectful tone" :
"Are these your cTistoms? Is it thus that Greece
Rewards her combatants? Shall one man claim
The trophies won by thousands?"
Whereupon Alexander snatched a spear from one of his
guards and ran Clitus through the body as he lifted the curtain
to come in. . . .
One is forced to believe that this was the real atmosphere of
the young conqueror's life. Then the story of his frantic and
cruel display of grief for Hephsestion can scarcely be all in-
vention. If it is true, or in any part true, it displays a mind
ill-balanced and altogether wrapped up in personal things, to
whom empire was no more than opportunity for egoistic display,
and all the resources of the world, stuff for freaks of that sort
of "generosity" which robs a thousand people to extort the ad-
miration of one astounded recipient.
Hephsestion, being ill, was put upon a strict diet, but in the
absence of his physician at the theatre he ate a roasted fowl and
drank a flagon of iced wine, in consequence of which he died.
'D. G. Hogarth.
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
335
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Thereupon Alexander decided upon a display of grief. It was
the grief of a lunatic. He had the physician crucified! He
ordered every horse and mule in Persia to be shorn, and pulled
down the battlements of the neighbouring cities. He prohibited
All music in his camp for a long time, and, having taken certain
villages of the Cusseans, he caused all the adults to be massacred,
as a sacrifice to the manes of Hephsestion. Finally he set aside
ten thousand talents (a talent == £240) for a tomb. For those
days this was an enormous sum of money. None of which
things did any real honour to Hephsestion, but they served to
demonstrate to an awe-stricken
world what a tremendous thing
the sorrow of Alexander could be.
This last story and many such
stories may be lies or distortions or
exaggerations. But they have a
vein in common. After a bout of
hard drinking in Babylon a sud-
den fever came upon Alexander
(323 B.C.), and he sickened and
died. He was still only thirty-
three years of age. Forthwith the
world empire he had snatched at
and Ifeld in his hands, as a child
might snatch at and hold a precious
vase, fell to the ground and was shattered to pieces.
Whatever appearance of a worldwide order may have gleamed
upon men's imaginations, vanished at his death. The story be-
comes the story of a barbaric autocracy in confusion. Every-
where the provincial rulers set up for themselves. In the course
of a few years the entire family of Alexander had been de-
stroyed. Eoxana, his barbarian wife, wag" prompt tO murder,
as a rival, the daughter of Darius. She herself presently bore
Alexander a posthumous son, who was also called Alexander.
He was murdered, with her, a few years later (311 e.g.). Her-
cules, the only other son of Alexander, was murdered also. So,
top, was Aridseus, the weak-minded half-brother (see § 2).
Plutarch gives a last glimpse of Olympias during a brief in-
terval of power in Macedonia, accusing first this person and
then that of poisoning her wonderful son. Many she killed in
her fury. The bodies of some of his circle who had died after
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 837
his death she caused to be dug up, but we do not know if any
fresh light was shed upon his death by these disinterments.
Finally Olympias was killed in Macedonia by the friends of
those she had slain.
From this welter of crime there presently emerged three
leading figures. Much of the old Persian empire, as far as
the Indus eastward and almost to Lydia in the west, was held
by one general Seleucus, who founded a dynasty, the Seleucid
Dynasty ; Macedonia fell to another Macedonian general, Anti-
gonus; a third Macedonian, Ptolemy, secured Egypt, and
making Alexandria his chief city, established a sufficient naval
ascendancy to keep also Cyprus and most of the coast of
Phoenicia and Asia Minor. The Ptolemaic and Seleucid em-
pires lasted for a considerable time ; the forms of government in
Asia Minor and the Balkans were more unstable. Two maps
will help the reader to a sense of the kaleidoscopic nature of
the political boundaries of the third century B.C. Antigonus
was defeated and killed at the battle of Ipsus (301), leaving
Lysimachus, the governor of Thrace, and Cassander, of Mace-
donia and Greece, as equally transitory successors. Minor gov-
ernors carved out smaller states. Meanwhile the barbarians
swung down into the broken-up and enfeebled world of civiliza-
tion from the west and from the east. From the west came tlie
Gauls, a people closely related to the Kelts. They raided down
through Macedonia and Greece to Delphi, and (227 b.c.) two
sections of them crossed the Bosphorus into Asia Minor, being
first employed as mercenaries and then setting up for them-
selves as independent plunderers; and after raiding almost to
the Taurus, they settled in the old Phrygian land, holding the
people about them to tribute. (These Gauls of Phrygia be-
came the Galatians of St. Paul's Epistle.) Armenia and the
southern shores of the Black Sea became a confusion of chang-
ing rulers. Kings with Hellenistic ideas appeared in Cappa-
docia, in Pontus (the south shore of the Black Sea), in Bithynia,
and in Pergamum. From the east the Scythians and the
Parthians and Bactrians also drove southward. . . . For a time
tkere were Greek-ruled Bactrian states becoming more and more
Orientalized; in the second century b.c. Greek adventurers from
338 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
Bactria raided down into North India and founded short-lived
kingdoms there, the last eastward fling of the Greek; then
gradually barbarism fell again like a curtain between the West-
ern civilizations and India.
§ 7
Amidst all these shattered fragments of the burst bubble of
Hellenic empire one small state stands out and demands at
least a brief section to itself, the kingdom of Pergamum. We
hear first of this town as an independent centre during the
struggle that ended in the battle of Ipsus. While the tide of
the Gaulish invasion swirled and foamed to and fro about Asia
Minor between the years 277 and 241, Pergamum for a time
paid them tribute, but she retained her general independence,
and at last, under Attains I, refused her tribute and defeated
them in two decisive battles. For more than a century there-
after (until 133 B.C.) Pergamum remained free, and was per-
haps during that period the most highly civilized state in the
world. On the hill of the Acropolis was reared a rich group of
buildings, palaces, temples, a museum, and a library, rivals of
those of Alexandria of which we shall presently tell, and almost
the first in the world. Under the princes of Pergamum, Greek
art blossomed afresh, and the reliefs of the altar of the temple
of Zeus and the statues of the fighting and dying Gauls which
were made there, are among the great artistic treasures of
mankind.
In a little while, as we shall tell later, the influence of a
new power began to be felt in the Eastern Mediterranean, the
power of -the Roman republic, friendly to Greece and to Greek
civilization; and in this power the Hellenic communities of
Pergamum and Rhodes found a natural and useful ally and
supporter against the Galatians and against the Orientalized
Seleucid empire. We shall relate how at last the Roman power
came into Asia, how it defeated the Seleucid empire at the
battle of Magnesia (190 b.c), and drove it out of Asia Minor
and beyond the Taurus mountains, and how finally in 133 b.c.
Attains III, the last king of Pergamum, bowing to his sense of
an inevitable destiny, made the Roman republic the heir to
his kingdom, which became then the Roman province of "Asia."
CAEEER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT
839
340 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 8
Nearly all historians are disposed to regard the career of
Alexander the Great as marking an epoch in human affairs.
It drew together all the known world, excepting only the west-
em Mediterranean, into one drama. But the opinions men
have formed of Alexander himself vary enoimously. They
fall, most of them, into two main schools. One type of scholar
is fascinated by the youth and splendour of this young man.
These Alexander-worshippers seem disposed to take him at his
own valuation, to condone every crime and folly either as the
mere ebullience of a rich nature or as the bitter necessity to
some gigantic scheme, and to regard his life as framed i^pon a
design, a scheme of statesmanship, such as all the wider knowl-
edge and wider ideas of these later times barely suffice to bring
into the scope of our tmderstanding. On the other hand, there
are those who see him only as a vsrrecker of the slowly maturing
possibilities of a free and tranquil Hellenized world.
Before we ascribe to Alexander or to his father Philip
schemes of world policy such as a twentieth-century historian-
philosopher might approve, we shall do well to consider very
carefully the utmost range of knowledge and thought that was
possible in those days. The world of Plato, Isocrates, and
Aristotle had practically no historical perspective at all; there
had not been such a thing as history in the world, history, that
is, as distinguished from mere priestly chronicles, until the last
couple of centuries. Even highly educated men had the most
circumscribed ideas of geography and foreign countries. For
most men the world was still flat and limitless. The only sys-
tematic political philosophy was based on the experiences of
minute city states, and took no thought of empires. Nobody
knew anything of the origins of civilization. No one had specu-
lated upon economics before that time. No one had worked
out the reaction of one social class upon another. We are too
apt to consider the career of Alexander as the crown of some
process that li^d long been afoot; as the climax of a crescendo.
In a sense, no doubt, it was that; but much more true is it
that it was not so much an end as a beginning ; it was the first
revelation to the human imagination of the oneness of human
affairs. The utmost reach of the thought of Greece before his
time was of a Persian empire Hellenized, a predominance in
CAREER OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT 341
the world of Macedonians and Greeks. But before Alexander
was dead, and much more after he was dead and there had
been time to think him over, the conception of a world law
and organization was a practicable and assimilable idea for
the minds of men.
For some generations Alexander the Great was for mankind
the symbol and embodiment of world order and world dominion.
He became a fabulous being. His head, adorned with the
divine symbols of the demi-god Hercules or the god Ammon
Ka, appears on the coins of such among his successors as could
claim to be his heirs. Then the idea of world dominion was
taken up by another great people, a people who for some cen-
turies exhibited considerable political genius, the Eomans ; and
the figure of another conspicuous adventurer, Caesar, eclipsed
for the western half of the old world the figure of Alexander.
So by the beginning of the third century B.C. we find already
arisen in the Western civilization of the old world three of the
great structural ideas that rule the mind of contemporary man-
kind. We have already traced the escape of writing and knowl-
edge from the secrets and mysteries and initiations of the old-
world priesthoods, and the development of the idea of a uni-
versal knowledge, of a universally understandable and com-
municable history and philosophy. We have taken the figures
of Herodotus and Aristotle as typical exponents of this first
great idea, the idea of science — ^using the word science in its
widest and properest sense, to include history and signify a
clear vision of man in relation to the things about him. We
have traced also the generalization of religion among the Baby-
lonians, Jews, and other Semitic peoples, from the dark worship
in temples and consecrated places of some local or tribal god
to the open service of one universal God of Righteousness,
whose temple is the whf "e world. And now we have traced
also the first germination of the idea of a, world polity. The
rest of the history of mankind is very largely the history of
those three ideas of science, of a universal righteousness, and
of a human commonweal, spreading out from the minds of the
rare and exceptional persons and peoples in which they first
originated, into the general consciousness of the race, and giving
first a new colour, then a new spirit, and then a new direction
to human affairs.
XXIV
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA
1. The Science of Alexandria,. § 2. Philosophy of Alexarir
dria» § 3. Alexandria, as a Factory of Religions.
ONE of the most prosperous fragments of the brief world
empire of Alexander the Great was Egypt, which fell
to the shiare of the Ptolemy whose name we have al-
ready noted as one of the associates of Alexander whom King
Philip had banished. The country was at a secure distance
from plundering Gaul or Parthian, and the destruction of Tyre
and the Phoenician navy, and the creation of Alexandria, gave
Egypt a temporary naval ascendancy in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean. Alexandria grew to proportions that rivalled Car-
thage; eastward she had an overseas trade through the Red Sea
with Ara,bia and India ; and westward her traffic competed with
the Carthaginian. In the Macedonian and Greek governors of
the Ptolemies, the Egyptians found a government more sympa-
thetic and tolerable than any they had ever knovsoi since they
ceased to be a self-governing empire. Indeed it is rather that
Egypt conquered and annexed the Ptolemies politically, than
that the Macedonians ruled Egypt^
There was a return to Egyptian political ideas, rather than
any attempt to Hellenize the government of the country.
Ptolemy became Pharaoh, the god-king, and his administration
continued the ancient tradition of Pepi, Thotmes, Rameses,
and Necho. Alexandria, however, for her town affairs, and
subject to the divine overlordship of Pharaoh, had a constitu-
tion of the Greek city type. And the language of the court and
administration was Attic Greek. Greek became so much the
general language of educated people in Egypt that the Jewish
community there found it necessary to translate their Bible into,
the Greek language, many men of their own people being no
342
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA 348
longer able to understand Hebrew. Attic Greek for some cen-
turies before and after Christ was the language of all educated
men from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf.
Of all Alexander's group of young men, Ptolemy seems to
have done most to carry out those ideas of a systematic organi-
zation of knowledge with which Aristotle had no doubt
familiarized the court of Philip of Macedon. Ptolemy was a
man of very extraordinary intellectual gifts, at once creative
and modest, with a certain understandable cynicism towards
the strain of Olympias in the mind of Alexander. His contem-
porary history of Alexander's campaigns has perished; but it
was a source to which all the surviving accounts are deeplj
indebted.
The Museum he set up in Alexandria was in effect the first
university in the world. As its name implies, it was dedicated
to the service of the Muses, which was also the case with the
Peripatetic school at Athens. It was, however, a religious body
only in form, in order to meet the legal difficulties of endow-
ment in a world that had never foreseen such a thing as a
secular intellectual process. It was essentially a college of
learned men engaged chiefly in research and record, but also
to a certain extent in teaching. At the outset, and for two or
three generations, the Museum at Alexandria presented such a
scientific constellation as even Athens at its best could not rival.
Particularly sound and good was the mathematical and geo-
graphical work. The names of Euclid, familiar to every school-
boy, Eratosthenes, who measured the size of the earth and came
within fifty miles of the true diameter, ApoUonius, who wrote
on conic sections, stand out. Hipparchus made the first attempt
to catalogue and map the stars with a view to checking any
changes that might be occurring in the heavens. Hero devised
the first steam engine. Archimedes came to Alexandria to
study, and remained a frequent correspondent of the Museum.
The medical school of Alexandria was equally famous. For
the first time in the world's history a standard of professional
knowledge was set up. Herophilus, the greatest of the Alexan-
drian anatomists, is said to have conducted vivisections upon
condemned criminals. Other teachers, in opposition to Hero-
philus, condemned the study of anatomy and developed the sci-
ence of drugs. But this scientific blaze at Alexandria did not
endure altogether for more than a century. The organization
344
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of the Museum was not planned to ensure its mental continuity.
It was a "royal" college ; its professors and fellows (as we may
call them) were appointed and paid by Pharaoh. "The repub-
lican character of the
private corporations
called the schools or
academies at Athens
was far more stable
and independent."
Koyal patronage was
all very well so long
as Pharaoh was Ptol-
emy I, or Ptolemy
II, but the strain de-
generated, and the
long tradition o f '
Egyptian priestcraft
presently swallowed
up the Ptolemies —
and destroyed the
Aristotelian mental-
ity of the Museum
altogether. The
Museum had not ex-
isted for a hundred
years before its sci-
entific energy was
extinct.
Side by side with
the Museum, Ptol-
emy I created a more
enduring monument
to himself in the
great library. This
was a combination of
state library and
state publishing upon
a scale hitherto unheard of. It was to be altogether encyclopae-
dic. If any stranger brought an unknown book to Egypt, he
had to have it copied for the collection, and a considerable staff
of copyists was engaged continually in making duplicates of all
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA S45
the more popular and necessary works. The library, like a
university press, had an outward trade. It was a book-selling
affair. Under Callimachus, the head of the library during the
time of Ptolemy II and III, the arrangement and cataloguing
of the accumulations was systematically undertaken. In those
days, it must be remembered, books were not in pages, but rolled
like the music-rolls of the modem piano-player, and in order
to refer to any particular passage, a reader had to roll back
or roll forward very tediously, a process which wore out books
and readers together. One thinks at once of a simple and
obvious little machine by which such a roll could have been
quickly wound to and fro for reference, but nothing of the sort
seems to have been used. Every time a roll was read it was
handled by two perspiring hands. It was to minimize the waste
of time and trouble that Callimachus broke up long works, such
as the History of Herodotus, into "books" or volumes, as we
should call them, each upon a separate roll. The library of
Alexandria drew a far vaster crowd of students than the teachers
of the Museum. The lodging and catering for these visitors
from all parts of the world became a considerable business
interest for the Alexandrian population.
It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the in-
tellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities
of a middle-class English home,' such as the present writer is
now working in, with the inconveniences and deficiencies of
the equipment of an Alexandrian writer, and one realizes the
enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention that
went on through all the centuries during which that library flour-
ished. Before the present writer lie half a dozen books, and
there are good indices to three of them. He can pick up any
one of these six books, refer quickly to a statement, verify a
quotation, and go on writing. Contrast with that the tedious
unfolding of a rolled manuscript. Close at hand are two
encyclopaedias, a dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biograph-
ical dictionary, and other books of reference. They have no
marginal indices, it is true ; but that perhaps is asking for tor
much at present. There were no such resources in the world in
300 B.C. Alexandria had still to produce the first grammar
and the first dictionary. This present book is being written in
manuscript; it is then taken by a typist and typewritten very
accurately. It can then, with the utmost convenience, be read
346
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
over, corrected amply, rearranged freely, retyped, and recor-
rected. The Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every
word he wrote. Before he could turn back to what he had
written previously, he had to dry his last words by waving them
in the air or pouring sand over them ; he had not even blotting-
paper. Whatever an author wrote had to be recopied again
and again before it could reach any considerable circle of
readers, and every copyist introduced some new error. When-
ever a need for maps or diagrams arose, there were fresh diffi-
culties. Such a science as anatomy, for example, depending as
it does upon accurate drawing, must have been enormously
hampered by the natural limitations of the copyist. The trans-
mission of geographical fact again must have been almost in-
credibly tedious. No doubt a day will come when a private
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA 347
library and writing-desk of the year a.d. 1919 will seem quaintly
clumsy and difficult; but, measured by the standards of Alex-
andria, they are astonishingly quick, efficient, and economical
of nervous and mental energy,
No attempt seems to have been made at Alexandria to print
anything at all. That strikes one at first as a very remarkable
fact. The world was crying out for books, and not simply for
books. There was an urgent public need for notices, proclama-
tions, and the like. Yet there is nothing in the history of
the Western civilizations that one can call printing until the
fifteenth century a.d. It is not as though printing was a
recondite art or dependent upon any precedent and preliminary
discoveries. Printing is the most obvious of dodges. In prin-
ciple it has always been known. As we have already stated,
there is ground for supposing that the Palaeolithic men of the
Magdalenian period may have printed designs on their leather
garments. The "seals" of ancient Sunieria again were printing
devices. Coins are print. Illiterate persons in all ages have
Used wooden or metal stamps for their signatures; William I,
the Norman Conqueror of England, for example, used such a
stamp with ink to sign documents. In China the classics were
being printed by the second century a.d. Yet either because of
a complex of small difficulties about ink or papyrus or the form
of books, or because of some protective resistance on the part
of the owners of the slave copyists, or because the script was
too swift and easy to set men thinking how to write it still more
easily, as the Chinese character or the Gothic letters did, or
because of a gap in the social system between men of thought
and knowledge and men of technical skill, printing was not used
— ^not even used for the exact reproduction of illustrations.
The chief reason for this failure to develop printing sys-
tematically lies, no doubt, in the fact that there was no abundant
supply of printable material of a uniform texture and con-
venient form. The supply of papyrus was strictly limited,
strip had to be fastened to strip, and there was no standard size
of sheet. Paper had yet to come from China to release the
mind of Europe. Had there been presses, they would have
had to stand idle while the papyrus rolls were slowly made.
But this explanation does not account for the failure to use
block printing in the case of illustrations and diagrams.
These limitations enable us to understand why it was that
S48 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
Alexandria could at once achieve the most extraordinary intel-
lectual triumphs — for such a feat as that of Eratosthenes, for
instance, having regard to his poverty of apparatus, is suflS-
cient to put him on a level vfith Newton or Pasteur — and yet
have little, or no effect upon the course of politics or the lives
and thoughts of people round about her. Her Museum and
library were a centre of light, but it was light in a dark lantern
hidden from the general world. There were no means of carry-
ing its results even to sympathetic men abroad except by tedious,
letter-writing. There was no possibility of communicating what
was known there to the general body of men. Students had to
come at great cost to themselves to this crowded centre because
there was no other way of gathering even scraps of knowledge.
At Athens and Alexandria there were bookstalls where manu-
script note-books of variable quality could be bought at reason-
able prices, but any extension of education to larger classes and
other centres would have produced at once a restrictive shortage
of papyrus. Education did not reach into the masses at all;
to become more than superficially educated one had to abandon
the ordinary life of the times and come for long years to live a
hovering existence in the neighbourhood of ill-equipped and
overworked sages. Learning was not indeed so complete a
withdrawal from ordinary life as initiation into a priestlfood,
but it was still something in that nature.
And very speedily that feeling of freedom, that openness and
directness of statement which is the vital air of the true intel-
lectual life, faded out of Alexandria. From the first the patron-
age even of Ptolemy I set a limit to political discussion. Pres-
ently the dissensions of the schools let in the superstitions and
prejudices of the city mob to scholastic affairs.
Wisdom passed away from Alexandria and left pedantry be-
hind. For the use of books was substituted the worship of
books. Very speedily the learned became a specialized queer
class with unpleasant characteristics of its ovstq. The Museum
had not existed for half a dozen generations before Alexandria
was familiar with a new type of human be^ng; shy, eccentric,
unpractical, incapable of essentials, strangely fierce upon trivi-
alities of literary detail, as bitterly jealous of the colleague
within as of the unlearned without, the bent Scholarly Man.
He was as intolerant as a priest, though he had no altar; as
obscurantist as a magician, though he had no cave. For him
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA 849
no method of copying was sufficiently tedious and no fare book
sufficiently inaccessible. He was a sort of by-product of the
intellectual process of mankind. For many precious genera-
tions the new-lit fires of the human intelligence were to be seri-
ously banked down by this by-product.
Right thinking is necessarily an open process, and the only
science and history of full value to men consist of what is gen-
erally and clearly known ; this is surely a platitude, but we have
still to discover how to preserve our centres of philosophy and
research from the caking and darkening accumulations of nar-
row and dingy-spirited specialists. We have still to ensure that
a man of learning shall be none the less a man of affairs, and
that all that can be thought and known is kept plainly, honestly,
and easily available to the ordinary men and women who are
the substance of mankind.
At first the mental activities of Alexandria centred upon
the Museum, and were mainly scientific. Philosophy, which in
a more vigorous age had been a doctrine of power over self and
the material world, without abandoning these pretensions, be-
came in reality a doctrine of secret consolation. The stimulant
changed into an opiate. The philosopher let the world, as the
vulgar say, ripj the world of which he was a part, and consoled
himself by saying in very beautiful and elaborate forms that the
world was illusion and that there was in him something quintes-
sential and sublime, outside and above the world. Athens,
politically insignificant, but still a great and crowded mart
throughout the fourth century, decaying almost imperceptibly
so far as outer seeming went, and treated with a strange respect
that was half contempt by all the warring powers and adven-
turers of the world, was the fitting centre of such philosophical
teaching. It was quite a couple of centuries before the schools
of Alexandria became as important in philosophical discussion.
§ 3
If Alexandria was late to develop a distinctive philosophy,
she was early prominent as a great factory and exchange of
religious ideas.
350 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Tte Museum and Library represented only one of the three
aides of the triple city of Alexandria. They represented the
Aristotelian, the Hellenic, and Macedonian element. But
Ptolemy I had brought together two other factors to this strange
centre. First there was a great number of Jews, brought partly
from Palestine, but largely also from those settlements in Egypt
which had never returned to Jerusalem; these latter were the
Jews of the Diaspora or Dispersion, a race of Jews who, as we
have already noted in Chapter XIX, had not shared the Baby-
lonian Captivity, but who were nevertheless in possession of the
Bible and in close correspondence with their co-religionists
throughout the world. These Jews' populated so great a quarter
of Alexandria that the town became the largest Jewish city
in the world, with far more Jews in it than there were in
Jerusalem. We have already noted that they had found
it necessary to translate their scriptures into Greek. And,
finally, there was a great population of native Egyptians, also
for the most part speaking Greek, but with the superstitious
temperament of the dark whites and with the vast tradition of
forty centuries of temple religion and temple sacrifices at the
back of their minds. In Alexandria three types of mind and
spirit met, the three main types of the white race, the clear-
headed criticism of the Aryan Greek, the moral fervour and
monotheism of the Semitic Jew, and the deep Mediterranean
tradition of mysteries and sacrifices that we have already seen
at work in the secret cults and occult practices of Greece, ideas
which in Hamitic Egypt ruled proudly in great temples in the
open light of day.
These three were the permanent elements of the Alexandrian
blend. But in the seaport and markets mingled men of every
known race, comparing their religious ideas and customs. It
is even related that in the third century b.c. Buddhist mis-
sionaries came from the court of King Asoka in India. Aris-
totle remarks in his Politics that the religious beliefs of men
are apt to borrow their form from political institutions, "men
assimilate the lives no less than the bodily forms of the gods
to their own," and this age of Greek-speaking great empires
under autocratic monarchs was bearing hardly upon those merely
local celebrities, the old tribal and city deities. Men were
requiring deities with an outlook at least as wide as the em-
pires, and except where the interests of powerful priesthoods
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA 351
TsiS and
Hants
stood in the way, a curious process of assimilation of gods was
going on. Men found that though there were many gods, they
were all very much alike. Where there had been many gods,
men came to think there must be really only one god under a
diversity of names. He had been everywhere — under an alias.
The Koman Jupiter, the Greek Zeus, the Egyptian Ammon, the
putative father of Alexander and the old antagonist of Ameno-
phis IV the Babylonian Bel-Marduk, were all sufficiently sim-
ilar to be identified.
"Father of all in every age, in every clime adored
By saint, by savage and by sage, Jehovah, Jove
or Lord."
Where there were distinct differences, the difficulty was met
by saying that these were different aspects of the same god.
Bel-Marduk, however, was now a very decadent god indeed,
who hardly survived as a pseudonym;
Assur, Dagon, and the like, poor old gods
of fallen nations, had long since passed
out of memory, and did not come into the
amalgamation. Osiris, a god popular
with the Egyptian commonalty, was al-
ready identified with Apis, the sacred
bull in the temple of Memphis, and some-
what confused with Ammon. Under the
name of Serapis he became the great
god of Hellenic Alexandria. He was
Jupiter-Serapis. The Egyptian cow
goddess, Hathor or Isis, was also repre-
sented now in human guise as the wife
of Osiris, to whom she bore the infant
Horus, who gi-ew up to be Osiris again.
These bald statements sound strange,
no doubt, to a modem mind, but these
identifications and mixing up of one god
with another are very illustrative of the
struggle the quickening human intelligence was making to cling
still to religion and its emotional bonds and fellowship, while
making its gods more reasonable and universal.
This fusing of one god with another is called iheocrasia, and
nowhere was it more vigorously going on than in Alexandria.
352
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Only two peoples resisted it in this period: the Jews, who al-
ready had their faith in the One God of Heaven and Earth,
Jehovah, and the Persian" who had a monotheistic sun worship.
It was Ptolemy I who set up
not only the Museum in Alex-
andria, but the Serapeum, de-
voted to the worship of a trinity
of god which represented the re-
sult of a process of theocrasia ap-
plied more particularly to the
gods of Greece and Egypt.
This trinity consisted of the
god Serapis (= Osiris + Apis),
the goddess Isis (= Hathor, the
cow-moon goddess), and the child-
god Horns. In one way or an-
other almost every other god was
identified with one or other of
these three aspects of the one
God, even the sun god Mithras of
the Persians. And they were
each other; they were three, but
they were also one. They were
worshipped with great fervour,
and the jangling of a peculiar in-
strument, the sistram, a frame set with bells and used rather
after the fashion of the tambourine in the proceedings of the
modern Salvation Army, was a distinctive accessory to the cere-
monies. And now for the first time we find the idea of immor-
tality; becoming the central idea of a religion that extended be-
yond Egypt. JS^Teither the early Aryans nor the early Semites
seem to have troubled very much about immortality, it has af-
fected the Mongolian mind very little, but the continuation of
the individual life after death had been from the earliest times
an intense preecupation of the Egyptians. It played now a
large part in the worship of Serapis. In the devotional litera-
ture of his cult he is spoken of as "the saviour and leader of
souls, leading souls to the light and receiving them again." It
is stated that "he raises the dead, he shows forth the longed-for
Vght of the sun to those who see, whose holy tombs contain multi-
tudes of sacred books" ; and again, "we never can escape him,
Secapis'
SCIENCE AND RELIGION AT ALEXANDRIA 353
he will save us, after death we shall still be the care of his
providence." ^
The ceremonial burning of candles and the offering of ex-
votos, that is to say of small models of parts of the human body
in need of succour, was a part of the worship of the Serapeum.
Isis attracted many devotees, who vowed their lives to her.
Her images stood in the temple, crowned as the Queen of
Heaven and bearing the infant Horus in her arms. The candles
flared and guttered before her, and the wax ex-votos hung about
the shrine. The novice was put through a long and careful prep-
aration, he took vows of celibacy, and when he was initiated his
head was shaved and he was clad in a linen garment. . . .
In this worship of Serapis, which spread very widely through-
out the civilized world in the third and second centuries b.c,
we see the most remarkable anticipations of usages and forms
of expression that were destined to dominate the European
world throughout the Christian era. The essential idea, the
living spirit, of Christianity was, as we shall presently show,
a new thing in the history of the mind and will of man; but
the garments of ritual and symbol and formula that Christianity
has worn, and still in many countries wears to this day, were
certainly woven in the cult and temples of Jupiter, Serapis, and
Isis that spread now from Alexandria throughout the civilized
world in the age of theocrasia in the second and first centuries
before Christ.
'Legge, Forerunners and Bwals of Christianity.
XXV
THE EISE AND SPKEAD OF BUDDHISM
1. The Story of Gautama. § 2. Teaching and Legend in
Conflict. § 3. The Gospel of Gautama Buddha. § 4. Bud-
dhism and Asoka.^ § 5. Two Great Chinese Teachers. § 6.
The Corruptions of Buddhism. § 7. The Present Range of
Buddhism.
IT is interesting to turn from tlie mental and moral activities
of Athens and Alexandria, and the growth of human ideas
in the Mediterranean world, to the almost entirely separate
intellectual life of India. Here was a civilization which from
the first seems to have grown up upon its own roots and with a
character of its own. It was cut off from the civilizations to
the west and to the east by vast mountain barriers and desert
regions. The Aryan tribes who had come down into the penin-
sula soon lost touch with their kindred to the west and north,
and developed upon lines of their own. This was more particu-
larly the case with those who had passed on into the Ganges
country and beyond. They found a civilization already scat-
tered over India, the Dravidian civilization. This had arisen
independently, just as the Sumerian, Cretan, and Egyptian
civilizations seem to have arisen, out of that widespread de-
velopment of the neolithic culture, the heliolithic culture, whose
characteristics we have already described. They revived and
changed this Dravidian civilization much as the Greeks did the
.^gean or the Semites the Sumerian.
These Indian Aryans were living under different conditions
from those that prevailed to the north-west. They were living
in a warmer climate, in which a diet of beef and fermented
liquor was destructive; they were forced, therefore, to a gen-
erally vegetarian dietary, and the prolific soil, almost unasked,
gave them all the food they needed. There was no further
■Pronounced Ashoka.
354
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM ^55
reason for them to wander; the crops and seasons were trust-
worthy. They wanted little clothing or housing. They wanted
so little that trade was undeveloped. There was still land for
every one who desired to cultivate a patch — and a little patch
sufficed. Their political life was simple and comparatively
secure ; no great conquering powers had arisen as yet in India,
and her natural barriers sufficed to stop the early imperialisms
to the west of her and to the east. Thousands of comparatively
pacific little village republics and chieftainships were spread
over the land. There was no sea life, there were no pirate
raiders, no strange traders. One might write a history of India
coming down to four hundred years ago and hardly mention
the sea.
The history of India for many centuries had been happier,
less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. The
noblemen, the rajahs, hunted; life was largely made up of love
stories. Here and there a maharajah arose amidst the rajahs
and built a city, caught and tamed many elephants, slew many
tigers, and left a tradition of his splendour and his wonderful
processions.
It was somewhen between 500 and 600 e.g., when Croesus
was flourishing in Lydia and Cyrus was preparing to snatch
Babylon from Nabonidus, that the founder of Buddhism was
born in India. He was born in a small republican tribal com-
munity in the north of Bengal under the Himalayas, in what is
now overgrown jungle country on the borders of Nepal. The
little state was ruled by a family, the Sakya clan, of which
this man, Siddhattha Gautama, was a member. Siddhattha
was his personal name, like Caius or John; Gautama, or
Gotama, his family name, like Caesar or Smith ; Sakya his clan
name, like Julius. The institution of caste was not yet fully
established in India, and the Brahmins, though they were privi-
leged and influential, had not yet struggled to the head of the
system; but there were already strongly marked class distinc-
tions and a practically impermeable partition between the noble
Aryans and the darker common people. Gautama belonged to
the former race. His teaching, we may note, was called the
Aryan Path, the Aryan Truth.
It is only within the last half-century that the increasing
study of the Pali language, in which most of the original sources
were written, has given the world a real knowledge of the life
356 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and actual thought of Gautama. Previously his story was over-
laid by monstrous accumulations of legend, and his teaching
violently misconceived. But now we have a very human and
understandable account of him.
He was a good-looking, capable young man of fortune, and
until he was twenty-nine he lived the ordinary aristocratic life
of his time. It was not a very satisfying life intellectually.
There was no literature except the oral tradition of the Vedas,
and that was chiefly monopolized by the Brahmins ; there was
even less knowledge. The world was bound by the snowy
Himalayas to the north and spread indefinitely to the south.
The city of Benares, which had a king, was about a hundred
miles away. The chief amusements were hunting and love-
making. All the good that life seemed to offer, Gautama en-
joyed. He was married at nineteen to a beautiful cousin. For
some years they remained childless. He hunted and played and
went about in his sunny world of gardens and groves and
irrigated rice-fields. And it was amidst this life that a great
discontent fell upon him. It was the unhappiness of a fine
brain that seeks employment. He lived amidst plenty and
beauty, he passed from gratification to gratification, and his soul
was not satisfied. It was as if he heard the destinies of the
race calling to him. He felt that the existence he was leading
was not the reality of life, but a holiday — a holiday that had
gone on too long.
While he was in this mood he saw four things that served to
point his thoughts. He was driving on some excursion of
pleasure, when he came upon a man dreadfully broken down
by age. The poor bent, enfeebled creature struck his imagina-
tion. "Such is the way of life," said Channa, his charioteer,
and "to that we must all come." While this was yet in his mind
he chanced upon a man suffering horribly from some loathsome
disease. "Such is the way of life," said Channa. The third
vision was of an unburied body, swollen, eyeless, mauled by
passing birds and beasts and altogether terrible. "That is the
way of life," said Channa.
The sense of disease and mortality, the insecurity and the
unsatisfactoriness of all happiness, descended upon the mind of
Gautama. And then he and Channa saw one of those wander-
ing ascetics who already existed in great number^ in India.
These men lived under severe rules, spending much time in
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 357
meditation and in religious discussion. For many men before
Gautama in that land of uneventful sunshine had found life
distressing and mysterious. These ascetics were all supposed
to be seeking some deeper reality in life, and a passionate desire
to do likewise took possession of Gautama.
He was meditating upon this project, says the story, when
the news was brought to him that his wife had been delivered
of his first-born son, "This is another tie to break," said
Gautama.
He returned to the village amidst the rejoicings of his fel-
low clansmen. There was a great feast and a Nautch dance
to celebrate the birth of this new tie, and in the night Gautama
awoke in a great agony of spirit, "like a man who is told that
his house is on fire." In the ante-room the dancing girls were
lying in strips of darkness and moonlight. He called Channa,
and told him to prepare his horse. Then he went softly to the
threshold of his wife's chamber, and saw her by the light of a
little oil lamp, sleeping sweetly, surrounded by flowers, with
his infant son in her arm. He felt a great craving to take up
the child in one first and last embrace before he departed, but
the fear of waking his wife prevented him, and at last he
turned away and went out into the bright Indian moonshine to
Channa waiting with the horses, and mounted and stole away.
As he rode through the night with Channa, it seemed to him
that Mara, the Tempter of Mankind, filled the sky and disputed,
with him. "Eetum," said Mara, "and be a king, and I will
make you the greatest of kings. Go on, and you will fail.
Never will I cease to dog your footsteps. Lust or malice or
anger will betray you at last in some unwary moment; sooner
or later you will be mine."
Very far they rode that night, and in the morning he stopped
outside the lands of his clan, and dismounted beside a sandy
river. There he cut off his flowing locks with his sword, re-
moved all his ornaments, and sent them and his horse and sword
back to his house by Channa. Then going on he presently met
a ragged man and exchanged clothes with him, and so having
divested himself of all worldly entanglements, he was free to
pursue his search after wisdom. He made his way southward
to a resort of hermits and teachers in a hilly spur ruiining into
Bengal northward from the Vindhya Mountains, close to the
town of Eajgir. There a number of wise men lived in a warren
35£
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
BUDDHI5M
J.F.H,
of caves, going into the town for their simple supplies and
imparting their knowledge by word of mouth to such as cared
to come to them.
This instruction must have been very much in the style of
the Socratic discussions that were going on in Athens a couple
of centuries later. Gautama became versed in all the meta-
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 369
physics of his age. But his acute intelligence was dissatisfied
with the solutions offered him.
The Indian mind has always been disposed to believe that
power and knowledge may be obtained by extreme asceticism,
by fasting, sleeplessness, and self-torment, and these ideas Gau-
tama now put to the test. He betook himself with five disciple
companions to the jungle in a gorge in the Vindhya Mountains,
and there he gave himself up to fasting and terrible penances.
His fame spread, "like the sound of a great bell hung in the
canopy of the skies." ^ But it brought him no sense of truth
achieved. One day he was walking up and down, trying to
think in spite of his enfeebled state. Suddenly he staggered
and fell unconscious. When he recovered, the preposterousness
of these semi-magic ways of attempting wisdom was plain to
him.
He amazed and horrified his five companions by demanding
ordinary food and refusing to continue his self-mortifications.
He had realized that whatever truth a man may reach is reached
best by a nourished brain in a healthy body. Such a conception
was absolutely foreign to the ideas of the land and age. His
disciples deserted him, and went off in a melancholy state to
Benares. The boom of the great bell ceased. Gautama the
wonderful had fallen.
For a time Gautama wandered alone, the loneliest figure in
history, battling for light.
When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem,
it makes its advances, it secures its positions step by step, with
but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly,
with an effect of abrupt illumination, it realizes its victory. So
it would seem it happened to Gautama. He had seated himself
under a great tree by the side of a river to eat, when this sense
of clear vision came to him. It seemed to him that he saw life
plain. He is said to have sat all day and all night in profound
thought, and then he rose up to impart his vision to the world.
§ 2
Such is the plain story of Gautama as we gather it from a
comparison of early writings. But common men must have
their cheap marvels and wonders.
* The Bwmeae Chronicle, quoted by Rhys Davids.
860 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
It is nothing to them that this little planet should at last pro-
duce upon its surface a man thinking of the past and the future
and the essential nature of existence. And so we must have
this sort of thing by some worthy Pali scribe, making the most
of it:
"When the conflict began between the Saviour of the World
and the Prince of Evil a thousand appalling meteors fell. . . .
Rivers flowed back towards their sources ; peaks and lofty moun-
tains where countless trees had grown for ages rolled crumbling
to the earth . . . the sun enveloped itself in awful darkness,
and a host of headless spirits filled the air." ^
Of which phenomena history has preserved no authentication.
Instead we have only the figure of a lonely man walking towards
Benares.
Extraordinary attention has been given to the tree under
which Gautama had this sense of mental clarity. It was a
tree of the fig genus, and from the first it was treated with
peculiar veneration. It was called the Bo Tree. It has long
since perished, but close at hand lives another great tree which
may be its descendant, and in Ceylon there grows to this day
a tree, the oldest historical tree in the world, which we know
certainly to have been planted as a cutting from the Bo Tree
in the year 245 b.o. From that time to this it has been care-
fully tended and watered; its great branches are supported by
pillars, and the earth has been terraced up about it so that it.
has been able to put out fresh roots continually. It helps us
to realize the shortness of all human history to see so many
generations spanned by the endurance of one single tree. Gau-
tama's disciples unhappily have cared more for the preservation
of his tree than of his thought, which from the first they mis-
conceived and distorted.
At Benares Gautama sought out his five pupils, who were
still leading the ascetic life. There is an account of their hesi-
tation to receive him when they saw him approaching. He was
a backslider. But there was some power of personality in him
that prevailed over their coldness, and he made them listen to
his new convictions. For five days the discussion was carried
on. When he had at last convinced them that he was now
enlightened, they hailed him as the Buddha. There was already
in those days a belief in India that at long intervals Wisdom
'The Madhiurattha Tilasini, quoted by Ehys Davirta,
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 861
returned to the earth and was revealed to mankind through
a chosen person known as the Buddha. According to Indian
belief there have been many such Buddhas; Gautama Buddha
is only the latest one of a series. But it is doubtful if he him-
self accepted that title or recognized that theory. In his dis-
courses he never called himself the Buddha.
He and his recovered disciples then formed a sort of Academy
in the Deer Park at Benares. They made themselves huts, and
accumulated other followers to the number of threescore or
more. In the rainy season they remained in discourse at this
settlement, and during the dry weather they dispersed about
the country, each giving his version of the new teachings. All
their teaching was done, it would seem, by word of mouth. There
was probably no writing yet in India at all. We must remem-
ber that in the time of Buddha it is doubtful if even the Iliad
had been committed to writing. Probably the Mediterranean
alphabet, which is the basis of most Indian scripts, had not yet
reached India. The master, therefore, worked out and com-
posed pithy and bripf verses, aphorisms, and lists of "points,"
and these were expanded in the discourse of his disciples. It
greatly helped them to have these points and aphorisms num-
bered. The modern mind is apt to be impatient of the tendency
of Indian thought to a numerical statement of things, the Eight-
fold Path, the Four Truths, and so on, but this enumeration
was a mnemonic necessity in an undocumented world.
§ 3
The fundamental teaching of Gautama, as it is now being
made plain to us by the study of original sources, is clear and
simple and in the closest harmony with modem ideas. It is
beyond all dispute the achievement of one of the most penetrat-
ing intelligences the world has ever known.
We have what are almost certainly the authentic heads of
his discourse to the five disciples which embodies his essential
doctrine. All the miseries and discontents of life he traces to
insatiable selfishness. Suffering, he teaches, is due to the
craving individuality, to the torment of greedy desire. Until a
man has overcome every sort of personal craving his life is
trouble and his end sorrow. There are three principal forms
the craving of life takes, and all are evil. The first is the desire
862 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to gratify; the senses, sensuousness. The second is the desire
for personal immortality. The third is the desire for prosperity,
worldliness. All these must be overcome — ;that is to say, a man
must no longer be. living for himself — before life can become
serene. . But when they are indeed overcome and no longer rule
a man's life, when the first personal pronoun has vanished from
his private thoughts, then he has reached the higher wisdom.
Nirvana, serenity of soul. For Nirvana does not mean, as many
people wrongly, believe, extinction, but the extinction of the
f 1:1 tile personal aims that necessarily make life base or pitiful ,
or dreadful. , ;
Now here, surely we have the completest analysis of the
problem of the soul's peace.. Every religion that is worth the
name, every. philosophy, warns us to lose ourselves in something
greater than ourselves. "Whosoever would save his life, shall
lose it ;" there is exactly the same lesson.
The teaching of history, as we are unfolding it in this book,
is strictly in accordance with this teaching of Buddha. There
is, as we are seeing, no social order, no security, no peace or
happiness, no righteous leadership or kingship, unless men lose
themselves in something greater: than themselves. The study
of biological progress again reveals exactly the same process — ,
the merger of the narrow globe of the individual experience in
a wider being (compare what has been, said in Chaps. XI and
XVI). To forget oneself in greater interests is to escape
from a prison.
The self-abnegation must be complete.- From the point of
view of Gautama, that dread of death, that greed for an endless
continuation of .his mean litjtle individual life which drove the
Egyptian and those who learnt from him with propitiations and
charms into the temples, was as mortal and ugly and evil a
thing as lust or avarice or hate. The religion of Gautama is
flatly opposite to the "immortality" religions. And his teach-
ing is set like flint against asceticism, as a mere attempt to win
personal power by personal pains.
But when we come to the rule of life, the Aryan Path, by
which we are ;to escape from the threefold base cravings that
dishonour human life, then the teaching is not so clear. It is
not so clear for one very manifest reason, Gautama had no
knowledge nor vision of history; he had no clear sense of the
vast and many-sided adventure of life opening out in space and
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 363
time. His mind was confined within the ideas of his age and
people, and their minds were shaped into notions of perpetual
recurrence, of world following world and of Buddha following
Buddha, a stagnant circling of the universe. The idea of man-
kind as a great Brotherhood pursuing an endless destiny under
the God of Kighteousness, the idea that was already dawning
upon the Semitic consciousness in Babylon at this time, did not
exist in his world. Yet his account of the Eightfold Path is,
nevertheless, within these limitations, profoundly wise;
Let us briefly recapitulate the eight elements of the Aryan
Path. First, Right Views ; Gautama placed the stern examina-
tion of views and ideas, the insistence upon truth as the first
research of his followers. There was to be no clinging to
tawdry superstitions. He condemned, for instance, the preva-
lent belief in the transmigration of souls. In a well-known
early Buddhist dialogue there is a destructive analysis of the
idea of an enduring individual soul. Next to Eight Views
came Eight Aspirations ; because nature abhors a vacuum, and
since base cravings are to be expelled, other desires must b^
encouraged — ^love for the service of others, desire to do and
secure justice and the like. Primitive and uncorrupted Bud-
dhism aimed not at the destruction of desire, but at the change
of desire. Devotion to science and art, or to the betterment of
things manifestly falls into harmony with the Buddhistic Eight
Aspirations, provided such aims are free from jealousy or
the craving for fame. Eight Speech, Eight Conduct, and Eight
Livelihood, need no expansion here. Sixthly in this list came
Eight Effort, for Gautama had no toleration for good intentions
and slovenly application; the disciple had to keep a keenly
critical eye upon his activities. The seventh element of the
path, Eight Mindfulness, is the constant guard against a lapse
into personal feeling or glory for whatever is done or not done.
And, finally, comes Eight Eapture, which seems to be aimed
against the pointless ecstacies of the devout, such witless glory-
ings, for instance, as those that went to the jingle of the Alex-
andrian sistrum.
We will not discuss here the Buddhistic doctrine of Karma,
because it belongs to a world of thought that is passing away.
The good or evil of every life was supposed to determine the
happiness or misery of some subsequent life, that was in some
inexplicable way identified with its predecessor. Nowadays we
S6* THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
realize that a life goes on in its consequences for ever, but we
find no necessity to suppose that any particular life resumes
again. The Indian mind was full of the idea of cyclic re-
currence ; everything was supposed to come round again. This
is a very natural suppositio;j for men to make; so things seem
to be until we analyze them. Modern science has made clear
to us that there is no such exact recurrence as we are apt to
suppose; every day is by an infinitesimal quantity a little
longer than the day before; no generation repeats the previous
generation precisely; history never repeats itself; change, we
realize now, is inexhaustible; all things are eternally new. But
these differences between our general ideas and those Buddha
must have possessed need not in any way prevent us from
appreciating the unprecedented wisdom, the goodness, and the
greatness of this plan of an emancipated life as Gautama laid
it down somewhen in the sixth century before Christ.
And if he failed in theory to gather together all the wills
of the converted into the one multifarious activity of our race,
battling against death and deadness in time and space, he did
in practice direct his own life and that of all his immediate
disciples into one progressive adventure, which was to preach
and spread the doctrine and methods of Nirvana or soul-
serenity throughout our fevered world. For them at least his
teaching was complete and full. But all men cannot preach or
teach ; doctrine is but one of many of the functions of life that
are fundamentally righteous. To the modern mind it seems at
least equally acceptable that a man may, though perhaps against
greater difficulties, cultivate the soil, rule a city, make roads,
build houses, construct engines, or seek and spread knowledge,
in perfect self-forgetfulness and serenity. As much was in-
herent in Gautama's teaching, but the stress was certainly laid
upon the teaching itself, and upon withdrawal from rather than
upon the ennoblement of the ordinary affairs of men.
In certain other respects this primitive Buddhism differed
from any of the religions we have hitherto considered. It was
primarily a religion of conduct, not a religion of observances
and sacrifices. It had no temples, and since it had no sacrifices,
it had no sacred order of priests. Nor had it any theology. It
neither asserted nor denied the reality of the innumerable and
often grotesque gods who were worshipped in India at that
time. It passed them by.
THE RISE AND SPREAD OP BUDDHISM 365
§4
From the very first this new teaching was misconceived. One
corruption was perhaps inherent in its teaching. Because the
world of men had as yet no sense of the continuous progressive
effort of life, it was very easy to slip from the idea of renouncing
self to the idea of renouncing active life. As Gautama's own
experiences had shown, it is easier to flee from this world than
from self. His early disciples were strenuous thinkers and
teachers, but the lapse into mere monastic seclusion was a very
easy one, particularly easy in the climate of India, where an
extreme simplicity of living is convenient and attractive, and
exertion more laborious than anywhere else in the world.
And it was early the fate of Gautama, as it has been the fate
of most religious founders since his days, to be made into a
wonder by his less intelligent disciples in their efforts to impress
the outer world. We have already noted how one devout fol-
lower could not but believe that the moment of the master's
mental irradiation must necessarily have been marked by an
epileptic fit of the elements. This is one small sample of the
vast accumulation of vulgar marvels that presently sprang up
about the memory of Gautama.
There can be no doubt that for the great multitude of human
beings then as now the mere idea of an emancipation from self
is a very difficult one to grasp. It is probable that even among
the teachers Buddha was sending out from Benares there were
many who did not grasp it and still less were able to convey it to
their hearers. Their teaching quite naturally took on the aspect
of salvation not from oneself — that idea was beyond them — ^but
from misfortunes and sufferings here and hereafter. In the
existing superstitions of the people, and especially in the idea
of the transmigration of the soul after death, though this idea
was contrary to the Master's own teaching, they found stuff of
fear they could work upon. They urged virtue upon the people
lest they should live again in degraded or miserable forms, or fall
into some one of the innumerable hells of torment with which
the Brahminical teachers had already familiarized their minds.
They represented Buddha as the saviour from almost unlimited
torment.
There seems to be no limit to the lies that honest but stupid
disciples will tell for the glory of their master and for what they
366
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
regard as tiie success of their propaganda. Hen who would
scorn to tell a lie in everyday life will become unscrupulous
cheats and liars when they have given themselves up to propa-
gandist work; it is one of the perplexing absurdities of our
human nature. Such honest souls, for most of them were in-
dubitably honest, were presently telling their hearers of the
miracles that attended the Buddha's birth — ^they no longer called
him Gautama, because that was too familiar a name — of his
youthful feats of
Haritl
Chinese
TupJcestan,
e^CmtyAD.)
strength, of the marvels
of his everyday life,
winding up with a sort
of illumination of his
body at the moment of
death. Of course it was
impossible to believe
that Buddha was the
son of a mortal father.
He was miraculously
conceived through his
mother dreaming of a
beautiful white ele-
phant! Previously he
had himself been a mar-
vellous elephant with
six tusks; he had gen-
erously given them all
to a needy hunter —
and even helped him to
saw them off. And so
on.
Moreover, a theology
grew up about Buddha.
He was discovered to
be a god. He was one
of a series of divine beings, the Buddhas. There was an un-
dying "Spirit of all the Buddhas"; there was a great series
of Buddhas past and Buddhas (or Buddisatvas) yet to come.
But we cannot go further into these complications of Asiatic
theology. "Under the overpowering influence of these sickly
imaginations the moral teachings of Gautama have been almost
[/ifbirTbudherl
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM S67
hid from view. The theories grew and flourished; each new
step, each new hypothesis, demanded another ; until the whole
sky was filled with forgeries of the brain, and the nobler and
simpler lessons of the founder of the religion were smothered
beneath the glittering mass of metaphysical subtleties." ^
In the third century B.C. Buddhism was gaining wealth and
power, and the little groups of simple huts in which the teachers
of the Order gathered in the rainy season were giving place to
substantial monastic buildings. To this period belong the begin-
nings of Buddhistic art. ~Now if we remember how recent was
the adventure of Alexander, that all the Punjab was still under
Seleucid rule, that all India abounded with Greek adventurers,
and that there was still quite open communication by sea and
land with Alexandria, it is no great wonder to find that this
early Buddhist art was strongly Greek in character, and that the
new Alexandrian cult of Serapis and Isis was extraordinarily
influential in its development.
The kingdom of Gandhara on the north-west frontier near
Peshawar, which flourished in the third century e.g., was a typ-
ical meeting-place of the Hellenic and Indian worlds. Here are
to be found the earliest Buddhist sculptures, and interwoven
with them are figures which are recognizably the figures of
Serapis and Isis and Horus already worked into the legendary
net that gathered about Buddha. ISTo doubt the Greek artists
who came to Gandhara were loth to relinquish a familiar theme.
But Isis, we are txjld, is no longer Isis but Hariti, a pestilence
goddess whom Buddha converted and made benevolent. Foucher
traces Isis from this centre into China, but here other influences
were also at work, and the story becomes too complex for us
to disentangle in this Outline.^ China had a Taoist deity, the
Holy Mother, the Queen of Heaven, who took on the name
(originally a male name) of Kuan-yin and who came to re-
semble the Isis figure very closely. The Isis figures, we feel,
must have influenced the treatment of Kuan-yin. Like Isis
she was also Queen of the Seas, Stella Maris. In Japan she
was called Kwannon. There seems to have been a constant
exchange of the outer forms of religion between east and west.
We read in Hue's Travels how perplexing he and his fellow
*Ehys Davids, BvMhism.
" See K. F. Johnston, Buddhist Ohma. — Jj. C. B,
368 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
missionary found this possession of a common tradition of wor-
ship. "The cross," he says, "the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope,
which the Grand Lamas wear on their journeys, or when they are
performing some ceremony out of the temple; the service with
double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer, suspended
from five chains, which you can open or close at pleasure; the
benedictions given by the Lamas by extending the right hand
over the heads of the faithful ; the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy,
spiritual retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the
processions, the litanies, the holy water, all these are analogies
between the Buddhists and ourselves." ^
The cult and doctxine of Gautama, gathering corruptions and
variations from Brahminism and Hellenism alike, was spread
throughout India by an increasing multitude of teachers in the
fourth and third centuries B.C. For some generations at least
it retained much of the moral beauty and something of the
simplicity of the opening phase. Many people who have no
intellectual grasp upon the meaning of self-abnegation and dis-
interestedness have nevertheless the ability to appreciate a splen-
dour in the reality of these qualities. Early Buddhism was
certainly producing noble lives, and it is not only through rea-
son that the latent response to nobility is aroused in our minds.
It spread rather in spite of than because of the concessions that
it made to vulgar imaginations. It spread because many of
the early Buddhists were sweet and gentle, helpful and noble
and admirable people, who compelled belief in their sustaining
faith.
Quite early in its career Buddhism came into conflict with
the growing pretensions of the Brahmins. As we have already
noted, this priestly caste was still only struggling to dominate
Indian life in the days of Gautama. They had already great
advantages. They had the monopoly of tradition and religious
sacrifices. But their power was being challenged by the de-
velopment of kingship, for the men who became clan leaders and
kings were usually not of the Brahminical caste.
Kingship received an impetus from the Persian and Greek
invasions of the Punjab. We have already noted the name of
King Porus whom, in spite of his elephants, Alexander de-
feated and turned into a satrap. There came also to the Greek
camp upon the Indus a certain adventurer named Chandra-
" Hue's Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China.
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 369
gupta Maurya, whom the Greeks called Sandracottus, with a
scheme for conquering the Ganges coimtry. The scheme was
not welcome to the Macedonians, who were in revolt against
marching any further into India, and he had to fly the camp.
He wandered among the tribes upon the north-west frontier, se-
cured their support, and after Alexander
had departed, overran the Punjab, ousting
the Macedonian representatives. He then
conquered the Ganges country (321 B.C.),
waged a successful war (303 b.c.) against
Seleucus (Seleucus I) when the latter at-
tempted to recover the Punjab, and con-
solidated a great empire reaching across
all the plain of northern India from the
western to the eastern sea. And this King
Chandragupta came into much the same
conflict with the growing power of the
Brahmins, into the conflict between crown
and priesthood, that we have already noted
as happening in Babylonia and Egypt and
China. He saw in the spreading doctrine
of Buddhism an ally against the growth
of priestcraft and caste. He supported
and endowed the Buddhistic Order, and
encouraged its teachings.
He was succeeded by his son, who con-
quered Madras and was in turn succeeded by Asoka (264 to
227 B.C.), one of the great monarchs of history, whose do-
minions extended from Afghanistan to Madras. He is th« only
military monarch on record who abandoned warfare after vic-
tory. He had invaded Kalinga (255 b.c), a country along the
east coast of Madras, perhaps with some intention of completing
the conquest of the tip of the Indian peninsuln. The expedi-
tion was successful, but he was disgusted by what he saw of
the cruelties and horrors of war. He declared, in certain in-
scriptions that still exist, that he would no longer seek conquest
by war, but by religion, and the rest of his life was devoted to
the spreading of Buddhism throughout the world.
He seems to have ruled his vast empire in peace and with
great ability. He was no mere religious fanatic. But in the
Chinese Image
KuAN-YlN
870
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
year of his one and only war he joined the Buddhist commuaity
as a layman, and some years later he became a full member
of the Order, and devoted himself to the attainment of Nirvana
by the Eightfold Path. How entirely compatible that way of
living then was with the most useful and beneficent activities his
life shows. Eight Aspiration, Eight Effort, and Eight Liveli-
'Map'fca ilUiftiate
"tiic ^prcaA up"
BUDDHISM
Present extent d ^,
Bujdditlsui ,.
rarmscexteni; .:
'.n. (after'ShrsDa.vuls)
hood distinguished his career. He organized a great digging o5
wells in India, and the planting of trees for shade. He ap-
pointed officers for the supervision of charitable works. He
founded hospitals and public gardens. He had gardens made
for the growing of medicinal herbs. Had he had an Aristotle to
inspire him, he would no doubt have endowed scientific research
upon a great scale. He created a ministry for the care of the
aborigines and subject races. He made provision for the educa-
tion of women. He made, he was the first monarch to make,
an attempt to educate his people into a common view of the ends
and way of life. He made vast benefactions to the Buddhist
teaching orders, and tried to stimulate them to a better study
of their own literature. All over the land he set up long inscrip-
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 371
tions rehearsing the teaching of Gautama, and it is the simple
and human teaching and not the preposterous accretions. Thir-
ty-five of his inscriptions survive to this day. Moreover, he sent
missionaries to spread the nohle and reasonable teaching of his
master throughout the world, to Kashmir, to Ceylon, to the
Seleucids, and the Ptolemies. It was one of these missions which
carried that cutting of the Bo Tree, of which we have already
told, to Ceylon.
For eight and twenty years Asoka worked sanely for the real
needs of men. Amidst the tens of thousands of names of mon-
archs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and
graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the Hke,
the name of Asoka shines, and shines almost alone, a star. From
the Volga to Japan his name is still honoured. China, Tibet,
and even India, though it has left his doctrine, preserve the
tradition of his greatness. More living men cherish his memory
to-day than have ever heard the names of Constantino or
Charlemagne.
§ 5
It is thought that the vast benefactions of Asoka finally cor-
rupted Buddhism by attracting to its Order great numbers of
mercenary and insincere adherents, but there can be no doubt
that its rapid extension throughout Asia was very largely due
to his stimulus.
It made its way into Central Asia through Afghanistan and
Turkestan, and so reached China. Buddhist teaching had
spread widely in China before 200 b.c. Buddhism found there
a popular and prevalent religion, Taoism, a development of very
ancient and primitive magic and occult practices. It was reor-
ganized as a distinctive cult by Chang Daoling in the days
of the Han dynasty. Tao means the Way, which corresponds
closely, with the idea of the Aryan Path. The two religions
spread side by side and underwent similar changes, so that
nowadays their outward practice is very similar. Buddhism
also encountered Confucianism, which was even less theological
and even more a code of personal conduct. And finally it en-
countered the teachings of Lao Tse, "anarchist, evolutionist,
pacifist and moral philosopher," ^ which were not so much a
'S. N. Fu.
'372 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
religion as a philosophical rule of life. The teachings of this
Lao Tse were later to become incorporated with the Taoist re-
ligion hy Chen Tuan, the founder of modern Taoism.
Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, like the great south-
ern teacher Lao Tse and Gautama, lived also in the sixth cen-
tury B.C. His life has some interesting parallelisms with that
of some of the more political of the Greek philosophers of the
fifth and fourth. The sixth century b.c. falls into the period
assigned by Chinese historians to the Chow Dynasty, but in those
days the rule of that dynasty had become little more than
nominal ; the emperor conducted the traditional sacrifices of the
Son of Heaven, and received a certain formal respect. Even
his nominal empire was not a sixth part of the China of to-day.
In Chapter XIV we have already glanced at the state of affairs
in China at this time; practically China was a multitude of
warring states open to the northern barbarians. Confucius was
a subject in one of those states, Lu ; he was of aristocratic birth,
but poor; and, after occupying various ofiicial positions, he set
up a sort of Academy in Lu for the discovery and imparting
of Wisdom. And we also find Confucius travelling from state
to state in China, seeking a prince who would make him. his
counsellor and become the centre of a reformed world. Plato,
two centuries later, in exactly the same spirit, went as ad-
viser to the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, and we have already
noted the attitudes of Aristotle and Isocrates towards Philip
of Macedonia.
The teaching of Confucius centred upon the idea of a noble
life which he embodied in a standard or ideal, the Aristocratic
Man. This phrase is often translated into English as the
Superior Person, but as "superior" and "person," like "re-
spectable" and "genteel," have long become semi-humorous
terms of abuse, this rendering is not fair to Confucianism. He
did present to his time the ideal of a devoted public man. The
public side was very important to him. He was far more
of a constructive political thinker than Gautama or Lao Tse.
His mind was full of the condition of China, and he sought to
call the Aristocratic Man into existence very largely in order
to produce the noble state. One of his sayings may be quoted
here: "It is impossible to withdraw from the world, and asso-
ciate with birds and beasts that have no afiinity with us. With
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 378
whom should I associate but with suffering men ? The disorder
that prevails is what requires my efforts. If right principles
ruled through the kingdom, there would be no necessity for me
to change its state."
The political basis of his teaching seems to be characteristic
of Chinese moral ideas; there is a much directer reference to
the State than is the case with most Indian and European moral
and religious doctrine. For a time he was appointed magis-
trate in Chung-tu, a city of the dukedom of Lu, and here he
sought to regulate life to an extraordinary extent, to subdue
every relationship and action indeed to the rule of an elaborate
etiquette. "Ceremonial in every detail, such as we are wont
to see only in the courts of rulers and the households of high
dignitaries, became obligatory on the people at large, and all
matters of daily life were subject to rigid rule. Even the food
which the different classes of people might eat was regulated ;
males and females were kept apart in the streets ; even the thick-
ness of cofiBns and the shape and situation of graves were made
the subject of regulations.^
This is all, as people say, very Chinese. !N"o other people
have ever approached moral order and social stability through
the channel of manners. Yet in China, at any rate, the methods
of Confucius have had an enormous effect, and no nation in the
world to-day has such a universal tradition of decorum and
self-restraint.
Later on the influence of Confucius over his duke was under-
mined, and he withdrew again into private life. His last days
were saddened by the deaths of some of his most promising
disciples. "No intelligent ruler," he said, "arises to take me
as his master, and my time has come to die." . . .
But he died to live. Says Hirth, "There can be no doubt
that Confucius has had a greater influence on the development
of the Chinese national character than many emperors taken
together. He is, therefore, one of the essential figures to be
considered in connection with any history of China. That he
could influence his nation to such a degree was, it appears to me,
due more to the peculiarity of the nation than to that of his
own personality. Had he lived in any other part of the world,
his name would perhaps be forgotten. As we have seen, he had
'Hirth's The Ancient History of Ghma.
S74
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 875
formed his character and his personal views on man's life from
a careful study of documents closely connected with the moral
philosophy cultivated by former generations. What he preached
to his contemporaries was, therefore, not all new to them ; but,
having himself, in the study of old records, heard the dim voice
of the sages of the past, he became, as it were, the megaphone
phonograph through which were expressed to the nation those
views which he had derived from the early development of the
nation itself. . . . The great influence of Confucius's person-
ality on national life in China was due not only to his writings
and his teachings as recorded by others, but also to his doings.
His personal character, as described by his disciples and in the
accounts of later writers, some of which may be entirely legen-
dary, has become the pattern for millions of those who are bent
on imitating the outward manners of a great man. . . . What-
ever he did in public was regulated to the minutest detail by
ceremony. This was no invention of his own, since ceremonial
life had been cultivated many centuries before Confucius ; but
his authority and example did much to perpetuate what he con-
sidered desirable social practices."
The Chinese speak of Buddhism and the doctrines of Lao
Tse and Confucius as the Three Teachings. Together they con-
stitute the basis and point of departure of all later Chinese
thought Their thorough study is a necessary preliminary to
the establishment of any real intellectual and moral commu-
nity between the great people of the East and the Western
world.
There are certain things to be remarked in common of all
these three teachers, of whom Gautama was indisputably the
greatest and profoundest, whose doctrines to this day dominate
the thought of the great majority of human beings ; there are
certain features in which their teaching contrasts with the
thoughts and feelings that were soon to take possession of the
Western world. Primarily they are personal and tolerant doc-
trines ; they are doctrines of a Way, of a Path, of a Nobility,
and not doctrines of a church or a general rule. And they
offer nothing either for or against the existence and worship
of the current gods. The Athenian philosophers, it is to be
noted, had just the same theological detachment ! Socrates was
quite willing to bow politely or sacrifice formally to almost any
divinity,-7-reserving his private thoughts. This attitude is flatly
376 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
antagonistic to the state of mind that was growing up in the
Jewish oommunities of Judea, Egypt, and Babylonia, in
which the thought of the one God was first and foremost. Neither
Gautama nor Lao Tse nor Confucius had any inkling of this
idea of a jealous God, a God who would have "none other gods,"
a God of terrible Truth, who would not tolerate any lurking be-
lief in magic, witchcraft, or old customs, or any sacrificing to
the god-king or any trifling with the stern unity of things.
§ 6
The intolerance of the Jewish mind did keep its essential faith
clear and clean. The theological disregard of the great Eastern
teachers, neither assenting nor denying, did on the other hand
permit elaborations of explanation and accumulations of ritual
from the very beginning. Except for Gautama's insistence
upon Eight Views, which was easily disregarded, there was no
self-cleansing element in either Buddhism, Taoism, or Confu-
cianism. There was no effective prohibition of superstitious
practices, spirit raising, incantations, prostrations, and sup-
plementary worships. At an early stage a process of encrusta-
tion began, and continued. The new faiths caught almost every
disease of the corrupt religions they sought to replace;, they
took over the idols and the temples, the altars and the censers.
Tibet to-day is a Buddhistic country, yet Gautama, could he
return to earth, might go from end to end of Tibet seeking his
own teaching in vain. He would find that most ancient type
of human ruler, a god-king, enthroned, the Dalai Lama, the
"living Buddha." At Lhassa he would find a huge temple filled
with priests, abbots, and lamas — ^he whose only buildings were
huts and who made no priests — and above a high altar he would
behold a huge golden idol, which he would learn was called
"Gautama Buddha" ! He would hear services intoned before
this divinity, and certain precepts, which would be dimly famil-
iar to him, murmured as responses. Bells, incense, prostrations,
would play their part in these amazing proceedings. At one
point in the service a bell would be rung and a mirror lifted up,
while the whole congregation, in an access of i:everence, bowed
lower. . . .
About this Buddhist countryside he would discover a num-
ber of curious little mechanisms, little wind-wheels and water-
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDDHISM 377
378 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
wheels spinning, on which brief prayers were inscribed. Every
time these things, spin, he would learn, it counts as a prayer.
"To whom ?" he would ask. Moreover, there would be a number
of flagstaffs in the land carrying beautiful silk flags, silk flags
which bore the perplexing inscription, "Om Mani padme hum"
"the jewel is in the lotus." Whenever the flag flaps, he would
learn, it was a prayer also, very beneficial to the gentleman who
paid for the flag, and to the land generally.' Gangs of workmen,
employed by pious persons, would be going about the country
cutting this precious formula on cliff and stone. And this, he
would realize at last, was what the world had made of his re-
ligion ! Beneath this gaudy glitter was buried the Aryan Way
to serenity of soul.
We have already noted the want of any progressive idea in
primitive Buddhism. In that again it contrasted with Judaism.
The idea of a Promise gaVe to Judaism a quality no previous
or contemporary religion displayed ; it made Judaism historical
and dramatic. It justified its fierce intolerance because it
pointed to an aim. In spite of the truth and profundity of the
psychological side of Gautama's teaching. Buddhism stagnated
and corrupted for the lack of that directive idea. Judaism, it
must be confessed, in its earlier phases, entered but little into
the souls of men ; it let them remain lustful, avaricious, worldly
or superstitious ; but because of its persuasion of a promise and
of a divine leadership to serve divine ends, it remained in
comparison with Buddhism bright and expectant, like a cared-
for sword.
§ 7
For some time Buddhism flourished in India. But Brahmin-
ism, with its many gods and its endless variety of cults, always
flourished by its side, and the organization of the Brahmins grew
more powerful, until at last they were able to turn upon this
caste-denying cult and oust it from India altogether. The story
of that struggle is not to be told here; there were persecutions
and reactions, but by the eleventh century, except for Orissa,
Buddhist teaching was extinct in India. Much of its gen-
tleness and charity had, however, become incorporated with
Brahminism,
Over great areas of the world, as our map has shown, it still
survives; and it is quite possible that in contact with western
THE RISE AND SPREAD OF BUDbHISM 379
science, and inspired by the spirit of history, the original teach-
ing of Gautama, revived and purified, may yet play a large part
in the direction of human destiny.
But with the loss of India the Aryan Way ceased to rule the
lives of any Aryan peoples. It is curious to note that while the
one great Aryan religion is now almost exclusively confined to
Mongolian peoples, the Aryans themselves are under the sway of
two religions, Christianity and Islam, which are, as we shall see,
essentially Semitic. And both Buddhism and Christianity wear
garments of ritual and formula that seem to be derived through
Hellenistic channels from that land of temples and priestcraft,
Egypt, and from the more primitive and fundamental mentality
of the brown Hamitic peoples.
XXVI
THE TWO WESTERN EEPUBLICS
1, The Beginnings of the Latins. § 2. J. New Sort of
State. § 3. The Carthaginian Republic of Rich Men. § 4.
The First Punic War. § 5. Cato the Elder and the Spirit
of Cato. § 6. The Second Punic War. § 7. The Third
Punic War. § 8. How the Punic War Undermined Roman
Liberty. § 9. Comparison of the Roman Republic with a
Modem State.
IT is now necessary to take up the history of the two great
republics of the Western Mediterranean, Eome and Car-
thage, and to tell how Eome succeeded in maintaining for
some centuries an empire even greater than that achieved by
the conquests of Alexander. But this new empire was, as we
shall try to make clear, a political structure differing very pro-
foundly in its nature from any of the great Oriental empires
that had preceded it. Great changes in the texture of human
society and in the conditions of social interrelations had been
going on for some centuries. The flexibility and transferability
of money was becoming a power and, like all powers in inexpert
hands, a danger in human affairs. It was altering the relations
of rich men to the state and to their poorer fellow citizens. This
new empire, the Eoman empire, unlike all the preceding em-
pires, was not the creation of a great conqueror. No Sargon,
no Thothmes, no Nebuchadnezzar, no Cyrus nor Alexander nor
Chandragupta, was its fountain head. It was made by a repub-
lic. It grew by a kind of necessity through new concentrating
and unifying forces that were steadily gathering power in human
affairs.
But first it is necessary to give some idea of the state of affairs
in Italy in the centuries immediately preceding the appearance
of Eome in the world's story.
380
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
381
Before 1200 b.c, that is to say before the rise of the Assyrian
empire, the siege of Troy, and the final destruction of Cnossos,
but after the time of Amenophis IV, Italy, like Spain, was
probably still inhabited mainly by dark white people of the
more fundamental Iberian or Mediterranean race. This ab-
original population was probably a thin and backward one.
But already in Italy, as in Greece, the Aryans were coming
southward. By 1000 b.c. immigrants from the north had set-
tled over most of the north and centre of Italy, and, as in
Greece, they had intermarried witli their darker predecessors
TRc WE5TERN MEDITERRATsTEAIM , 800'600B.e.
Latms i
8t Fbasniriprns,
and established a group of Aryan languages, the Italian group,
more akin to the Keltic (Gaelic) than to any other, of which the
most interesting from the historical point of view was that
spoken by the Latin tribes in the plains south and east of the
river Tiber. Meanwhile the Greeks had been settling down in
Greece, and now they were taking to the sea and crossing over
to South Italy and Sicily and establishing themselves there.
Subsequently they established colonies along the French Kiviera
and founded Marseilles upon the site of an older Phoenician
colony. Another interesting people also had come into Italy by
sea. These were a brownish sturdy people, to judge from the
382
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pictures they have left of themselves ; very prohably they were
a tribe of those ^gean "dark whites" who were being driven oiit
of Greece and Asia Minor and the islands in between by the
Greeks. We have already told the tale of Onossos (Chapter
XV) and of the settlement of the kindred Philistines in Pales-
tine (Chapter XIX, § 1). These Etruscans, as they were
called in Italy, were known even in ancient times to be of
Asiatic origin, and it is tempting, but probably unjustifiable, to
connect this tradition with the ^neid, the sham epic of the
Latin poet Virgil, in which the Latin civilization is ascribed
to Trojan immigrants from Asia Minor. (But the Trojans
themselves were probably an Aryan people allied to the Phty
gians,) These Etruscan people conquered most of Italy north
of the Tiber from the Aryan tribes who were scattered over
that country. Probably the Etruscans ruled over a subjugated
Italian population, so reversing the state of affairs in Greece,
in which the Aryans were uppermost.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 383
Our map, which may be taken to represent roughly the state
of affairs about 750 b.c, also shows the establishments of the
Phoenician traders, of which Carthage was the chief, along
the shores of Africa and Spain.
Of all the peoples actually in Italy, the Etruscans were by
far the most civilized. They built sturdy fortresses of the
Myesenean type of architecture; they had a metal industry;
they used imported Greek pottery of a very fine type. The
Latin tribes on the other side of the Tiber were by comparison
barbaric.
The Latins were still a rude farming people. The centre of
their worship was a temple to the tribal god Jupiter, upon the
Alban Mount. There they gathered for their chief festivals
very much after the fashion of the early tribal gathering we
have already imagined at Avebury. This gathering- place was
not a town. It was a high place of assembly. There was no
population permanently there. There were, however, twelve
townships in the Latin league. At one point upon the Tiber
there was a ford, and here there was a trade between Latins
and Etruscans. At this ford Rome had its beginnings. Trad-
ers assembled there, and refugees from the twelve towns found
an asylum and occupation at this trading centre. Upon the
seven hills near the ford a number of settlements sprang up,
which finally amalgamated into one city.
Most people have heard the story of the two brothers Romulus
and Remus, who founded Rome, and the legend of how they
were exposed as infants and sheltered and suckled by a wolf.
Little value is now attached to this tale by modem historians.
The date 753 b.c. is given for the founding of Rome, but there
are Etruscan tombs beneath the Roman Forum of a much
earlier date than that, and the so-called tomb of Romulus bears
an indecipherable Etruscan inscription.
The peninsula of Italy was not then the smiling land of
vineyards and olive orchards it has since become. It was still
a rough country of marsh and forest, in which the farmers grazed
their cattle and made their clearings. Rome, on the boundary
between Latin and Etruscan, was not in a very strong position
for defence. At first there were perhaps Latin kings in Rome,
then it would seem the city fell into the hands of Etruscan
rulers whose tyrannous conduct led at last to their expulsion,
and Rome became a Latin-speaking republic. The Etruscan
384
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
kings were expelled from Eome in the sixth century b.c, while
the successors of Nebuchadnezzar were ruling by the sufferance
of the Medes in Babylon, while Confucius was seeking a king
to reform the disorders of China, and while Gautama
teaching the Aryan Way to his disciples at Benares.
was
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilii'liiiiiiiiiiiili
£iras'can pamtin^ of a. Ceremoaial 'Burning of ■Aa'Daajd/-'
Of the struggle between the Eomans and the Etruscans we
cannot tell in any detail here. The Etruscans were the better
armed, the more civilized, and the more numerous, and it would
probably have gone hard with the Eomans if they had had to
fight them alone. But two disasters happened to the Etruscans
which so weakened them that the Eomans were able at last to
master them altogether. The first of these was a war with
the Greeks of Syracuse in Sicily which destroyed the Etruscan
fleet (474 b.c), and the second was a great raid of the Gauls
from the north into Italy. These latter people swarmed into
Isl'orth Italy and occupied the valley of the Po towards the end
of the fifth century b.c, as a couple of centuries later their
kindred were to swarm down into Greece and Asia Minor and
settle in Galatia. The Etruscans were thus caught between
hammer and anvil, and after a long and intermittent war the
Eomans were able to capture Veii, an Etruscan fortress, a few
miles from Eome, which had hitherto been a great threat and
annoyance to them.
It is to this period of struggle against the Etruscan monarchs,
the Tarquins, that Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Borne, familiar
to every schoolboy, refer.
But the invasion of the Gauls was one of those convulsions
of the nations that leave nothing as it has been before. They
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 385
carried their raiding right down the Italian peninsula, devastat-
ing all Etruria. They took and sacked Eome (390 b.c).
According to Eoman legends — on which douht is thrown — ^the
citadel on the Capitol held out, and this also the Gauls would
have taken by surprise at night, if certain geese had not been
awakened by their stealthy movements and set up such a cack-
ling as to arouse the garrison. After that the Gauls, who were
ill-equij^d for siege operations, and perhaps suffering from dis-
ease in their camp, were bought off, and departed to the north-
ward again, and, though they made subsequent raids, they never
again reached Home.
The leader of the Gauls who sacked Eome was named Bren-
nus. It is related of him that as the gold of the ransom was
being weighed, there was some dispute about the justice of the
counterpoise, whereupon he flung his sword into the scale, saying,
"VcB victis!" ("Woe to the vanquished!") — a phrase that has
haunted the discussions of aU subsequent ransoms and indem-
nities down to the present time.
For half a century after this experience Eome was engaged
in a series of wars to establish herself at the head of the Latin
tribes. For the burning of the chief city seems to have stim-
ulated rather than crippled her energies. However much she
had suffered, most of her neighbours seem to have suffered
more. By 290 b.c. Eome was the mistress city of all Central
Italy from the Amo to south of Naples. She. had conquered
the Etruscans altogether, and her boundaries marched with
those of the Gauls to the north and with the regions of Italy
under Greek dominion (Magna Grsecia) to the south. Along
the Gaulish boundary she had planted garrisons and colonial
cities, and no doubt it was because of that line of defence that
the raiding enterprises of the Gauls were deflected eastward
into the Balkans.
After what we have already told of the history of Greece
and the constitutions of her cities, it will not surprise the reader
to learn that the Greeks of Sicily and Italy were divided up
into a number of separate city governments, of which Syracuse
and Tarentum (the modem Taranto) were the chief, and that
they had no common rule of direction or policy. But now,
alarmed at the spread of the Eoman power, they looked across
the Adriatic for help, and found it in the ambitions of Pyrrhus,
388 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the king of Epirus. Between the Komans and Pyrrhus these
Greeks of Magna Grsecia were very much in the same position
that Greece proper had been in, between the Macedonians and
the Persians half a century before.
The reader will remember that Epirus, the part of Greece
'yfe T5QM?iN PCWER after the 5AMNITE WAR5
[BeginTun^ of thiz. -3^
Century. .Compare wkh.
J.TlH.
that is closest to the heel of Italy, was the native land of
Olympias, the mother of Alexander. In the kaleidoscopic
changes of the map that followed the death of Alexander,
Epirus was sometimes swamped by Macedonia, sometimes in-
dependent. This Pyrrhus was a kinsman of Alexander the
Great, and a monarch of ability and enterprise, and he seema
to have planned a career of conquest in Italy and Sicily. He
commanded an admirable army, against which the oompara-
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
S87
tively inexpert Eoman levies could at first do little. His army
included all the establislied military devices of the time, an
infantry phalanx, Thessalian cavalry, and twenty fighting ele-
phants from the east. He routed the Komans at Heraclea (280
B.C.), and, pressing after them, defeated them again at Auscu-
lum (279 B.C.) in their own territory. Then, instead of pursu-
ing the Romans further, he made a truce with them, turned his
attention to the subjugation of Sicily, and so brought the sea
power of r Carthage iato alliance against him. For Carthage
could not afford to have a strong power established so close to
her as Sicily. Kome in those days seemed to the Carthaginians
a far less serious threat than the possibility of another Alexan-
der the Great ruling Sicily. A Carthaginian fleet appeared off
the mouth of the Tiber, therefore, to encourage or induce the
S88 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Romans to renew the struggle, and Rome and Cartilage were
definitely allied against the invader.
This interposition of Carthage was fatal to Pyrrhus. With-
out any decisive battle his power wilted, and, after a disastrous
repulse in an attack upon the Roman camp of Beneventum, he
had to retire to Epirus (275 e.g.).
It is recorded that when Pyrrhus left Sicily, he said he left
it to he the battleground of Rome and Carthage. He was
killed three years later in a battle in the streets of Argos. The
war against Pyrrhus was won by the Carthaginian fleet, and
Rome reaped a full half of the harvest of victory. Sicily fiell
completely to Carthage, and Rome came down to the toe and
heel of Italy, and looked across the Straits of Messina at her
new rival. In eleven years' time (264 e.g.) the prophecy of
Pyrrhus was fulfilled, and the first war with Carthage, the first
of the three Punic^ Wars, had begun.
§2
But we write "Rome" and the "Romans," and we have still
to explain what manner of people these were who were playing
a role of conquest that had hitherto been played only by able
and aggressive monarchs.
Their state was, in the fifth, century e.g., a republic of the.
Aryan type very similar to a Greek aristocratic republic. The
earliest accounts of the social life of Rome give us a picture
of a very primitive Aryan community "In the second half
of the fifth century before Christ, Rome was still an aristocratic
community of free peasants, occupying an area of nearly 400
square miles, with a population certainly not exceeding 150,000,
almost entirely dispersed over the country-side and divided into
seventeen districts or rural tribes. Most of the families had a
small holding and a cottage of their own, where father and
sons lived and worked together, growing corn for the most part,
with here and there a strip of vine or olive. Their few head of
cattle were kept at pasture on the neighbouring common land;
their clothes and simple implements of husbandry they made
for themselves at home. Only at rare intervals and on special
'Latin Poeni = Carthaginians. Punious {adj.) = Carthaginian, i,e.
Phoenician.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
889
Roman Coin Struck to Commemo-
rate THE ViCTOET OVER PtRRHXJS
AND His Elephants.
occasions would they make their way into the fortified town,
which was the centre at once of their religion and their govern-
ment. Here were the temples of the gods, the houses of the
wealthy, and the shops of the
artizans and traders, where
corn, oil, or wine could be
bartered in small quantities
for salt or rough tools and
weapons of iron." ^
This community followed
the usual tradition of a di-
vision into aristocratic and
common citizens, who were
called in Rome patricians
and plebeians. These were the citizens; the slave or out-
lander had no more part in the state than he had in Greece.
■ But the constitution differed from any Greek constitution in the
fact that a great part of the ruling power was gathered into
the hands of a body called the Senate, which was neither purely
a body of hereditary members nor directly an elected and rep-
resentative one. It was a nominated one, and in the earlier
period it was nominated solely from among the patricians. It
existed before the expulsion of the kings, and in the time of the
kings it was the king who nominated the senators. But after
the expulsion of the kings (510 B.C.), the supreme government
was vested in the hands of two elected rulers, the consulsj and
it was the consuls who took over the business of appointing
senators. In the early days of the Eepublic only patricians
were eligible as consuls or senators, and the share of the plebeians
in the government consisted merely in a right to vote for the
consuls and other public officials. Even for that purpose their
votes did not have the same value as those of their patrician
fellow citizens. But their votes had at any rate sufficient
weight to induce many of the patrician candidates to profess
a more or less sincere concern for plebeian grievances. In the
early phases of the Roman state, moreover, the plebeians were
not only excluded from public office, but from intermarriage
with the patrician class. The administration was evidently
primarily a patrician affair.
' Ferrero, The Oreatness and Decline of Rome.
S90 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The early phase of Eoman affairs was therefore an aristocracy
of a very pronounced type, and the internal history of Rome
for the two centuries and a half between the expulsion of the
last Etruscan king, Tarquin the Proud, and the beginning of
the first Punic War (264 e.g.), was very largely a struggle for
mastery between those two orders, the patricians and the plebe^
ians. It was, in fact, closely parallel with the struggle of
aristocracy and democracy in the city states of Greece, and,
as in the case of Greece, there were whole classes in the com-
munity, slaves, freed slaves, unj)ropertied free men, outlanders,
and the like, who were entirely outside and beneath
the struggle. We have already noted the essential differ-
ence of Greek democracy and what is called demoeracy in
the world to-day. Another misused word is the Eoman term
proletariat J which in modem jargon means all the unpropertied
people in a modem state. In Rome the proletarii were a vot-
ing division of fully qualified citizens whose property was lesS'
than 10,000 copper asses (=£275). They were an enrolled
class ; their value to the state consisted in their raising families
of citizens (proles = offspring), and from their ranks were
drawn the colonists who went to form new Latin cities or to
garrison important points. But the proletarii were quite dis-
tinct in origin from slaves or freedmen or the miscellaneous
driftage of a town slum, and it is a great pity that modem po-
litical discussion should be confused by an inaccurate use of a
term which has no exact modern equivalent and which expresses
nothing real in modern social classification.
The mass of the details of this struggle between patricians
and plebeians we can afford to ignore in this outline. It was
a struggle which showed the Romans to be a people of a
curiously shrewd character, never forcing things to a destruc-
tive crisis, but being within the limits of their discretion grasp-
ing hard dealers. The patricians made a mean use of their
political advantages to grow rich through the national conquests
at the expense not only of the defeated enemy, but of the poorer
plebeian, whose farm had been neglected and who had fallen
into debt during his military service. The plebeians were ousted
from any share in the conquered lands, which the patricians
divided up among themselves. The introduction of money
probably increased the facilities of the usurer and the difficulties
of the borrowing debtor.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
891
Three sorts of pressure won the plebeians a greater share in
the government of the country and the good things that were
coming to Home as she grew powerful. The first of these (1)
was the general strike of plebeians. Twice they actually
marched right out of Eome, threatening to make a new city
higher up the Tiber, and
j^ehaan. goj of
comjiterCQ,
twice this threat proved con-
clusive. The second method
of pressure (2) was the threat
of a tyranny. Just as in
Attica (the little state of
which Athens was the capi-
tal), Peisistratus raised him-
self to power on the support
of the poorer districts, so
there was to be found in most
periods of plebeian discontent
some ambitious man ready to
figure as a leader and wrest
power from the Senate. For
a long time the Koman patri-
cians were clever enough to
beat every such potential tyrant by giving in to a certain extent
to the plebeians. And finally (3) there were patricians big-
minded and far-seeing enough to insist upon the need of
reconciliation with the plebeians.
Thus in 509 e.g., Valerius Poplicola (3), the consul, enacted
that whenever the life or rights of any citizen were at stake,
there should be an appeal from the magistrates to the general
assembly. This Lex Valeria was "the Habeas Corpus of
Home," and it freed the Eoman plebeians from the worst dan-
gers of class vindictiveness in the law courts.
In 494 B.C. occurred a strike (1). "After the Latin war the
.pressure of debt had become excessive, and the plebeians saw
with indignation their friends, who had often served the state
bravely in the legions, thrown into chains and reduced to
slavery at the demand of patrician creditors. War was raging
against the Volscians; but the legionaries, on their victorious
return, refused any longer to obey the consuls, and marched,
though without any disorder, to the Sacred Mount beyond the
Anio (up the Tiber). There they prepared to found a new city,
392 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
since the rights of citizens were denied to them in the old one.
The patricians were compelled to give way, and the plebeians,
returning to Eome from the "First Secession," received the privi-
lege of having officers of their own, tribunes and sediles." ^
In 486 B.C. arose Spurius Cassius (2), a consul who carried
an Agrarian Law securing public land for the plebeians. But
the next year he was accused of aiming at royal power, and
condemned to death. His law never came into operation.
There followed a long struggle on the part of the plebeians
to have the laws of Rome written down, so that they would
no longer have to trust to patrician memories. In 451-450 B.C.
the law of the Twelve Tables was published, the basis of all
Koman law.
But in order that the Twelve Tables should be formulated,
a committee of ten (the decemvirate) was appointed in the
place of the ordinary magistrates. A second decemvirate, ap-
pointed in succession to the first, attempted a sort of aristocratic
counter-revolution under Appius Claudius. The plebeians
withdrew again a second time to the Sacred Mount, and Appius
Claudius committed suicide in prison.
In 440 came a famine, and a second attempt to found a pop-
ular tyranny upon the popular wrongs, by Spurius Mselius, a
wealthy plebeian, which ended in his assa'ssination.
After the sack of Eome by the Gauls (390 b.c), Marcus
Manlius, who had been in command of the Capitol when the
geese had saved it, came forward as a popular leader. The
plebeians were suffering severely from the after-war usury and
profiteering of the patricians, and were incurring heavy debts
in rebuilding and restocking their farms. Manlius spent his
fortune in releasing debtors. He was accused by the patricians
of tyrannous intentions, condemned, and suffered the fate of
condemned traitors in Home, being flung from the Tarpeian
Eock, the precipitous edge of that same Oapitoline Hill he
had defended.
In 376 B.C., Licinius, who was one of the ten tribunes for
the people, began a long struggle with the patricians by making
certain proposals called the Licinian Rogations, that there
should be a limit to the amount of public land taken by any
single citizen, so leaving some for everybody, that outstanding
*i. Wells, Short History of Rome to the Death of Augustus.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 39S
debts should be forgiven without interest upon the repayment
of the principal, and that henceforth one at least of the two con-
suls should be a plebeian. This precipitated a ten-year strug-
gle. The plebeian power to stop business by the veto of their
representatives, the tribunes, was fully exercised. In cases of
national extremity it was the custom to set all other magistrates
aside and appoint one leader, the Dictator. Eome had done
such a thing during times of military necessity before, but now
the patricians set up a Dictator in a time of pr'ofound peace,
with the idea of crushing Licinius altogether. They appointed
Camillus, who had besieged and taken Veil from the Etruscans.
But Camillus was a wiser man than his supporters ; he brought
about a compromise between the two orders in which most of
the demands of the plebeians were conceded (366 B.C.), dedi-
cated a temple to Concord, and resigned his power.
Thereafter the struggle between the orders abated. It abated
because, among other influences, the social differences between
patricians and plebeians were diminishing. Trade was coming
to Eome with increasing political power, and many plebeians
were growing rich and many patricians becoming relatively
poor. Intermarriage had been rendered possible by a change
in the law, and social intermixture was going on. While the
rich plebeians were becoming, if not aristocratic, at least oligar-
chic in habits and sympathy, new classes were springing up
in Rome with fresh interests and no political standing. Par-
ticularly abundant were the freedmen, slaves set free, for the
most part artisans, but some of them traders, who were grow-
ing wealthy. And the Senate, no longer a purely patrician
body — since various official positions were now open to plebe-
ians, and such plebeian officials became senators — ^was becoming
now an assembly of all the wealthy, able, energetic, and influen-
tial men in the state. The Eoman power was expanding, and
as it expanded these old class oppositions of the early Latin
community were becoming unmeaning. They were being re-
placed by new associations and new antagonisms. Eich men
of all origins were being drawn together into a common interest
against the communistic ideas of the poor.
In 390 B.C. Eome was a miserable little city on the borders
of Etruria, being sacked by the Gauls ; in 275 b.c. she was ruliiig
and unifying all Italy, from the Arno to the Straits of Mes-
394 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
sina. The compromise of Camillus (367 B.C.) had put' an end
to internal dissensions, and left her energies free for expansion.
And the same queer combination of sagacity and aggressive
selfishness that had distinguished the war of her orders at home
and enabled her population to worry out a balance of power
without any catastrophe, marks her policy abroad. She under-
stood the value of allies; she could assimilate; abroad as at
home she could in those days at least "give and take" with a
certain fairness and sanity. There lay the peculiar power of '
Rome. By that it was she succeeded where Athens, for example,
had conspicuously failed.
The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrow-
ness of "patriotism," which is the ruin of all nations. Athens
was disliked and envied by her own empire because she domi-
nated it in a spirit of civic egotism ; her disasters were not felt
and shared as disasters by her subject-cities. The shrewder,
nobler Eoman senators of the great years of Eome, before
the first Punic War overstrained her moral strength and began
her degeneration, were not only willing in the last resort to
share their privileges with the mass of their ovm people, but
eager to incorporate their sturdiest antagonists upon terms of
equality with themselves. They extended their citizenship
cautiously but steadily. Some cities became Eoman, with even
a voting share in the government. Others had self-government
and the right to trade or marry in Rome, without full Roman
citizenship. Garrisons of full citizens were set up at strategic
points, and colonies with variable privileges established amidst
the purely conquered peoples. The need to keep communica-
tions open in this great and growing mass of citizenship was
evident from the first. Printing and paper were not yet avail-
able for intercourse, but a system of high roads followed the
Latin speech and the Roman rule. The first of these, the Appian
Way, ran from Rome ultimately into the heel of Italy. It was
begun by the censor Appius Claudius (who must not be con-
fused with the decemvir Appius Claudius of a century earlier)
in 312 B.C.
According to a census made in 265 b.c, there were already in
the Roman dominions, that is to say in Italy south of the Amo,
300,000 citizens. They all had a common interest in the wel-
fare of the state ; they were all touched a little with the diffused
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS S95
kingship of the republic. This was, we have to note, an abso-
lutely new thing in tjie history of mankind. All considerable
states and kingdoms and empires hitherto had been communities
by mere obedience to some head, some monarch, upon whose
moods and character the public welfare was helplessly depend-
ent. No republic had hitherto succeeded in being anything more
than a city state. The so-called Athenian "empire" was simply
a city state directing its allies and its subjugated cities. In a
few decades the Roman republic was destined to extend its
citizenship into the valley of the Po, to assimilate the kindred
Gauls, replacing their language by Latin, and to set up a Latin
city, Aquileia, at the very head of the Adriatic Sea. In 89 b.c.
all free inhabitants of Italy became Roman citizens ; in 212 a.d.
the citizenship was extended to all free men in the empire.
This extraordinary political growth was manifestly the pre-
cursor of all modern states of the western type. It is as inter-
esting to the political student, therefore, as a carboniferous
amphibian or an archceopteryx to the student of zoological de-
velopment. It is the primitive type of the now dominant order.
Its experiences throw light upon all subsequent political history.
One natural result of this growth of a democracy of hun-
dreds of thousands of citizens scattered over the greater part of
Italy was the growth in power of the Senate. , There had been
in the development of the Roman constitution a variety of
forms of the popular assembly, the plebeian assembly, the
assembly by tribes, the assembly by centuries, and the like, into
which variety we cannot enter here with any fullness ; but the
idea was established that with the popular assembly lay the
power of initiating laws. It is to be noted that there was a sort
of parallel government in this system. The assembly by tribes
or by centuries was an assembly of the whole citizen body,
patrician and plebeian together; the assembly of the plebeians
was of course an assembly only of the plebeian class. Each as-
sembly had its own oiScials ; the former, the consuls, etc. ; the
latter, the tribunes. While Rome was a little state, twenty
miles square, it was possible to assemble something like a repre-
sentative gathering of the people, but it will be manifest that
with the means of communication existing in Italy at that time,
it was now impossible for the great bulk of the citizens even
to keep themselves informed of what was going on at Rome,
396 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
much less to take any effective part in political life there.
Aristotle in his Politics had already ppinted out the virtual
disenfranchisement of voters who lived out of the city and were
preoccupied with agricultural pursuits, and this sort of disen-
franchisement by mechanical difficulties applied to the vast
majority of Roman citizens. With the growth of Rome an
unanticipated weakness crept into political life through these
causes, and the popular assembly became more and more a
gathering of political hacks and the city riffraff, and less and
less a representation of the ordinary worthy citizens. The
popular assembly came nearest to power and dignity in the
fourth century b.c. From that period it steadily declined in
influence, and the new Senate, which was no longer a patrician
body, with a homogeneous and on the whole a noble tradition,
but a body of rich men, ex-magistrates, powerful oflBcials, bold
adventurers and the like, pervaded by a strong disposition to
return to the idea of hereditary qualification, became for three
centuries the ruling power in the Roman world.
There are two devices since known to the world which might
have enabled the popular government of Rome to go on de-
veloping beyond it^ climax in the days of Appius Claudius the
Censor, at the close of the fourth century B.C., but neither of
them occurred to the Roman mind. The first of these devices
was a proper use of print. In our account of early Alexandria
we have already remarked upon the strange fact that printed
books did not come into the world in the fourth or third cen-
tury B.C. This account of Roman affairs forces us to repeat
that remark. To the modern mind it is clear that a widespread
popular government ^ demands, as a necessary condition for
health, a steady supply of correct information upon public
affairs to all the citizens and a maintenance of interest. The
popular governments in the modern states that have sprung
up on either side of the Atlantic during the last two centuries
have been possible only through the more or less honest and
thorough ventilation of public affairs through the press. But
in Italy the only way in which the government at Rome could
communicate with any body of its citizens elsewhere was by
sending a herald, and with the individual citizen it could hold
no communication by any means at all.
The second device, for which the English are chiefly respon-
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 397
sible in the history of mankind, which the Romans never used,
was the ahnost equally obvious one of representative govern-
ment. -For the old Popular Assembly (in its threefold form) it
would have been possible to have substituted a gathering of
delegates. Later on in history, the English did, as the state
grew, realize this necessity. Certain men, the Knights of the
Shire, were called up to Westminster to speak and vote for
local feeling, and were more or less formally elected for that
end. The Roman situation seems to a modern mind to have
called aloud for such a modification. It was never made.
The method of assembling the comitia tributa (one of the
three main forms of the Popular Assembly) was by the proc-
lamation of a herald, who was necessarily inaudible to most of
Italy, seventeen days before the date of the gathering. The
augurs, the priests of divination whom Rome had inherited from
the Etruscans, examined the entrails of sacrificial beasts on the
night before the actual assembly, and if they thought fit to say
that these gory portents were unfavourable, the comitia tributa
dispersed. But if the augurs reported that the livers were
propitious, there was a great blowing of horns from the Capitol
and from the walls of the city, and the assembly went on. It
was held in the open air, either in the little Eorum beneath the
Capitol or in a still smaller recess opening out of the Forum,
or in the military exercising ground, the Campus Martius, now
the most crowded part of modem Rome, but then an open space.
Business began at dawn with prayer. There were no seats,
and this probably helped to reconcile the citizen to the rule that
everything ended at suAset.
After the opening prayer came a discussion of the measures
to be considered by the assembly, and the proposals before the
meeting were read out. Is it not astonishing that there were no
printed copies distributed? If any copies were handed about,
they must have been in manuscript, and each copy must have
been liable to errors and deliberate falsification. No questions
seem to have been allowed, but private individuals might ad-
dress the gathering with the permission of the presiding magis-
trate.
The multitude then proceeded to go into enclosures like cattle-
pens according to their tribes, and each tribe voted upon the
measure under consideration. The decision was then taken
S98 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
not by the majority of the citizens, but by the majority of tribes,
and it was announced by the heralds.
The Popular Assembly by centuries, comitia cerduridtw, was
very similar in its character, except that instead of thirty-five
tribes there' vrere, in the third century B.C., 373 centuries, and
there was a sacrifice as well as prayer to begin with. The cen-
turies, originally military (like the "hundreds" of primitive
English local government), had long since lost any connection
with the number one hundred. Some contained only a few
people; some very many. There were eighteen centuries of
knights (equites), who were originally men in a position to
maintain a horse and serve in the cavalry, though later the
Eoman knighthood, like knighthood in England, became a vul-
gar distinction of no military, mental, or moral significance.
(These equites became a very important class as Home traded
and grew rich ; for a time they were the real moving class in the
community. There was as little chivalry left among them at
last as there is in the "honours list" knights of England of
to-day. The senators from about 200 b.c. were excluded from
trade. The equites became, therefore, the great business men,
negotiatores, and as publioani they farmed the taxes.) There
were, in addition, eighty ( !) centuries of wealthy men (worth
over 100,000 asses), twenty-two of men worth over 75,000 asses,
and so on. There were two centuries each of mechanics and
musicians, and the proletarii made up one century. The deci-
sion in the comitia centuriata was by the majority of centuriesi
Is it any wonder that with the growth of the Eoman state
and the complication of its business, power shifted back from
such a Popular Assembly to the Senate, which was a compara-
tively compact body varying between three hundred as a mini-
mum, and, at the utmost, nine hundred members (to which
it was raised by Osesar), men who had to do with affairs and
big business, who knew each other more or less, and had a
tradition of govemmealt and policy ? The power of nominating
and calling up the senators vested in the Republic first with the
consuls, and when, some time after, "censors" were created, and
many of the powers of the consuls had been transferred to
them, they were also given this power. Appius Claudius, one
of the first of the censors to exercise it, enrolled freedmen in
the tribes and called sons of freedmen to the Senate. But this
THE TWO WESTERN BEPUBLICS 399
was a stocking arrangement to the conservative instincts of the
time; the consuls would not recognize his Senate, and the next
censors (304 b.c.) set aside his invitations. His attempt, how-
ever, serves to show how far the Senate had progressed from
its original condition as a purely patrician body. Like the con-
temporary British House of Lords, it had become a gathering
of big business men, energetic politicians, successful adven-
turers, great landowners, and the like ; its patrician dignity was
a picturesque sham; but, unlike the British House of Lords,
it was unchecked legally by anything but the inefficient Popular
Assembly we have already described, and by the tribunes elected
by the plebeian assembly. Its legal control over the consuls
and proconsuls was not great; it had little executive power;
but in its prestige and experience lay its strength -and influence.
The interests of its members were naturally antagonistic to
the interests of the general body of citizens, but for some genera^
tions that great mass of ordinary men was impotent to express
its dissent from the proceedings of this oligarchy. Direct pop-
ular government of a state larger than a city state had already
failed therefore in Italy, because as yet there was no public
education, no press, and no representative system; it had failed
through these mere mechanical difficulties, before the first Punic
War. But its appearance is of enormous interest, as the first
appearance of a set of problems with which the whole political
intelligence of the world wrestles at the present time.
The Senate met usually in a Senate House in the Forum,
but on special occasions it would be called to meet in this or
that temple ; and when it had to deal with foreign ambassadors
or its own generals (who were not allowed to enter the city
while in command of troops), it assembled in the Campus
Martins outside the walls.
§ 3
It has been necessary to deal rather fully with the political
structure of the Roman republic because of its immense im-
portance to this day. The constitution of Carthage need not
detain us long.
Italy under Home was a republican country; Carthage was
that much older thing, a republican city. She had an "em-
pire," as Athens had an "empire," of tributary states which
400
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
did not love her, and she had a great and naturally disloyal
industrial slave population.
In the city there were two elected "kings," as Aristotle calls
them, the mfetes, who were really equivalent to the Eoman
censors ; their Sem-
itic name was the
same as that used
for the Jewish
judges. There was
an impotent public
assembly and a sen-
ate of leading per-
sonages ; but two
committees of this
senate, nominally
elected, but elected
by easily controlled
methods, the Hun-
dred and Four and
the Thirty, really
constituted a close
oligarchy of the rich-
est and most influen-
tial men. They told as little as they could to their allies and
fellow citizens, and consulted them as little as possible. They
pursued schemes in which the welfare of Carthage was no
doubt subordinated to the advantage of their own group. They
were hostile to new men or novel measures, and confident that
a sea ascendancy that had lasted two centuries must be in the
very nature of things.
§4
It would be interesting, and not altogether idle, to speculate
what might have happened to mankind if Rome and Carthage
could have settled their differences and made a permanent
alliance in the Western world. If Alexander the Great had
lived, he might have come westward and driven these two pow-
ers into such a fusion of interests. But that would not have
suited the private schemes and splendours of the Carthaginian
oligarchy^ and the new Senate of greater Home, was now grow-
ing fond of the taste of plunder and casting covetous eyes across
eartJut^ini^ (»bi^.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 401
the Straits of Messina upon the Carthaginian possessions in
Sicily. They were covetous, but they were afraid of the
Carthaginian sea-power. Eoman popular "patriotism," how-
ever, was also jealous and fearful of these Carthaginians, and
less inclined to count the cost of a conflict. The alliance
Pyrrhus had forced upon Rome and Carthage held good for
eleven years, but Rome was ripe for what is called in modern
political jargon an "offensive defensive" war. The occasion
arose in 264 B.C.
At that time Sicily was not completely in Carthaginian hands.
The eastward end was still under th^ power of the Greek king
of Syracuse, Hiero, a successor of that Dionysius to whom
Plato had gone as resident court philosopher. A band of
mercenaries who had been in the service of Syracuse seized
upon Messina (289 B.C.), and raided the trade of Syracuse so
that at last Hiero was forced to take measures to suppress them
(270 B.C.). Thereupon Carthage, which was also vitally con-
cerned in the suppression of piracy, came to his aid, and put
in a Carthaginian garrison at Messina. This was an alto-
gether justifiable proceeding. Now that Tyre had been de-
stroyed, the only capable guardian of sea law in the Mediter-
ranean was Carthage, and the suppression of piracy was her
task by habit and tradition.
The pirates of Messina appealed to Eome, and the accumu-
lating jealousy and fear of Carthage decided the Roman people
to help them. An expedition was dispatched to Messina under
the consul Appius Claudius (the third Appius Claudius we
have had to mention in this history) .
So began the first of the most wasteful and disastrous series
of wars that has ever darkened the history of mankind. But
this is how one historian, soaked with the fantastic political
ideas of our times, is pleased to write of this evil expedition.
"The Romans knew they were entering on war with Carthage ;
but the political instincts of the people were right, for a Car-
thaginian garrison on the Sicilian Straits would have been a
dangerous menace to the peace of Italy." So they protected
the peace of Italy from this "menace" by a war that lasted
nearly a quarter of a century. They wrecked their own slowly
acquired political moral in the process.
The Romans captured Messina, and Hiero deserted from
the Carthaginians to the Romans. Then for some time the
402 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
struggle centred upon the town Agrigentum. This the Romans
besieged, and a period of trench warfare ensued. Both sides
suifered greatly from plague and irregular supplies; the
Romans lost 30,000 men; but in the end (261 b.c.) the Car-
thaginians evacuated the place and retired to their fortified
towns on the western coast of the island of which Lilybaeum
was the chief. These they could supply easily from the African
mainland, and, as long as their sea ascendancy held, they could
exhaust any Roman effort against them.
And now a new and very extraordinary phase of the war
began. The Romans came out upon the sea, and to the aston-
ishment of the Carthaginians and themselves defeated the
Carthaginian fleet. Since the days of Salamis there had been
a considerable development of naval architecture. Then the
ruling type of battleship was a trireme, a galley with three
banks (rows) of oars; now the leading Carthaginian battleship
was a quinquereme, a much bigger galley witli five banks of
oars, which could ram jr shear the oars of any feebler vessel.
The Romans had come into the war with no such shipping. Now
they set to work to build quinqueremes, being helped, it is said,
in their designing by one of these Carthaginian vessels coming
ashore. In two months they built a hundred quinqueremes and
thirty triremes. But they had no skilled navigators, no experi-
enced oarsmen, and these deficiencies they remedied partly
with the assistance of their Greek allies and partly by the in-
vention of new tactics. Instead of relying upon ramming or
breaking the oars of the adversary, which demanded more sea-
manship than they possessed, they decided to board the enemy,
and they constructed a sort of long draw-bridge on their ships,
held up to a mast by a pulley and with grappling-hooks and
spikes at the end. They also loaded their galleys with soldiers.
Then as the Carthaginian rammed or swept alongside, this
corvus, as it was called, could be let down and the boarders
could swarm aboard him.
Simple as this device was, it proved a complete success. It
changed the course of the war and the fate of the world. The
small amount of invention needed to counteract the corvus
was not apparently within the compass of the Carthaginian
rulers. At the battle of Mylse (260 b.c.) the Romans gained
their first naval victory and captured or destroyed fifty vessels.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 403
At the great battle of Ecnomus (256 B.C.), "probably the
greatest naval engagement of antiquity," ^ in which seven or
eight hundred big ships were engaged, the Carthaginians
showed that they had learnt nothing from their former dis-
aster. According to rule they outmanceuvred and defeated the
Romans, but the corvus again defeated them. The Romans
sank thirty vessels and captured sixty-four.
Thereafter the war continued with violent fluctuations of
fortune, but with a continuous demonstration of the greater
energy, solidarity, and initiative of the Romans. After
Ecnomus the Romans invaded Africa by sea, and sent an in-
sufficiently supported army, which after many successes and
the capture of Tunis (within ten miles of Carthage) was com-
pletely defeated. They lost their sea ascendancy through a
storm, and regained it by building a second fleet of two hun-
dred and twenty ships within three months. They captured
Palermo, and defeated a great Carthaginian army there (251
B.C.), capturing one hundred and four elephants, and making
such a triumphal procession into Rome as that city had never
seen before. They made an unsuccessful siege of Lilybseum,
the chief surviving Carthaginian stronghold in Sicily. They
lost their second fleet in a great naval battle at Drepanum (249
B.C.), losing one hundred and eighty out of two hundred and
ten vessels ; and a third fleet of one hundred and twenty battle-
ships and eight hundred transports was lost in the same year
partly in battle and partly in a storm.
For seven years a sort of war went on between the nearly
exhausted combatants, a war of raids and feeble sieges, during
which the Carthaginians had the best of it at sea. Then by a
last supreme effort Rome launched a fourth fleet of two hun-
dred keels, and defeated the last strength of the Carthaginians
at the battle of the ^^gatian Isles (241 b.c), after which Car-
thage (240 B.C.) sued for peace.
By the terms of this peace, all Sicily, except for the do-
minions of Hiero of Syracuse, became an "estate" of the Roman
people. There was no such process of assimilation as had been
practised in Italy ; Sicily became a conquered province, paying
tribute and yielding profit like the provinces of the older em-
pires. And, in addition, Carthage paid a war indemnity of
3,200 talents (=£788,000).
'J. Wells, op. oit.
404
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 5
For twenty-two years there was peace between Kome and
Carthage. It was peace without prosperity. Both combatants
were suffering from the want and disorganization that follow
naturally and necessarily upon all great wars. The territories
of Carthage seethed with violent disorder; the returning sol-
diers could not get their pay, and mutinied and looted; the
land went uncultivated. We read of horrible cruelties in the
suppression of these troubles by Hamilcar, the Carthaginian
general; of men
being crucified
by the thousand.
Sardinia and
Corsica revolted.
The "peace of
Italy" was
scarcely happier.
The Gauls rose
and marched
south ; they were
defeated, and
40,000 of them
killed at Telamon. It is manifest that Italy was incomplete
until it reached the Alps. Eoman colonies were planted in
the valley of the Po, and the great northward artery, the Via
riaminia, was begun. But it shows the moral and intellectual
degradation of this post-war period that when the Gauls were
threatening Kome, human sacrifices were proposed and carried
out. The old Carthaginian sea law was broken up — it may
have been selfish and monopolistic, but it was at least orderly
— the Adriatic swarmed with Illyrian pirates, and as the result
of a quarrel arising out of this state of affairs, lUyria, after
two wars, had to be annexed as a second "province." By send-
ing expeditions to annex Sardinia and Corsica, which were
Carthaginian provinces in revolt, the Romans prepared the way
for the Second Punic War.
The First Punic War had tested and demonstrated the rela-
tive strength of Rome and Carthage. With a little more wis-
dom on either side, with a little more magnanimity on the part
of Rome, there need never have been a renewal of the struggle.
But Rome was an ungracious conqueror. She seized Corsica
"Raman. As OfvociacA^Caxde.'B.Z. Half«ixe^
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 405
and Sardinia on no just grounds, she increased the indemnity
by 1,200 talents, she set a limit, the Ebro, to Carthaginian det-
velopments in Spain. There was a strong party in Carthage,
led by Hanno, for the propitiation of Eome ; but it was natural
that many Carthaginians should come to regard their national
adversary with a despairing hatred.
Hatred is one of the passions that can master a life, and
there is a type of temperament very prone to it, ready to see
life in terms of vindictive melodrama, ready to find stimulus
and satisfaction in frightful demonstrations of "justice" and
revenge. The fears and jealousies of the squatting-place and
the cave still bear their dark blossoms in our lives ; we are not
four hundred generations yet from the old Stone Age. Great
wars, as all Europe knows, give this "hating" temperament the
utmost scope, and the greed and pride and cruelty that the First
Punic War had released were now producing a rich crop of
anti-foreign monomania. The outstanding figure upon the
side of Carthage was a great general and administrator, Hamil-
car Barca, who now set himself to circumvent and shatter
Eome. He was the father-in-law of Hasdrubal and the father
of a boy Hannibal, destined to be the most dreaded enemy that
ever scared the Roman Senate. The most obvious course be-
fore Carthage was the reconstruction of its fieet and naval
administration, and the recovery of sea power, but this, it
would seem, Hamilcar could not effect. As an alternative he
resolved to organize Spain as the base of a land attack upon
Italy. He went to Spain as governor in 236 b.c, and Hannibal
related afterwards that his father then — ^he was a boy of eleven
— ^made him vow deathless hostility to the Eoman power.
This quasi-insane concentration of the gifts and lives of the
Barca family upon revenge is but one instance of the narrow-
ing and embitterment of life that the stresses and universal
sense of insecurity of this great struggle produced in the minds
of men. A quarter of a century of war had left the whole
western world miserable and harsh. While the eleven-year-old
Hannibal was taking his vow of undying hatred, there was run-
ning about a farmhouse of Tusculum a small but probably very
disagreeable child of two named Marcus Porcius Cato. This
boy lived to be eighty-five years old, and his ruling passion
seems to have been hatred for any human happiness but his
own. He was a good soldier, and had a successful political
406 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
career. He held a command in Spain, and distinguished him-
self by his cruelties. He posed as a champion of religion and
public morality, and under this convenient cloak carried on a
lifelong war against everything that was young, gracious, or
pleasant. Whoever roused his jealousy incurred his moral dis-
approval. He was energetic in the support and administration
of all laws against dress, against the personal adornment of
women, against entertainments and free discussion. He was
so fortunate as to be made censor, which gave him great power
over the private lives of public people. He was thus able to
ruin public opponents through private scandals. He expelled
Manlius from the Senate for giving his wife a kiss in the day-
time in the sight of their daughter. He persecuted Greek
literature, about which, until late in life, he was totally igno-
rant. Then he read and admired Demosthenes. He wrote in
Latin upon agriculture and the ancient and lost virtues of
Eome. From these writings much light is thrown upon his
qualities. One of his maxims was that when a slave was not
sleeping he should be working. Another was that old oxen
and slaves should be sold off. He left the war hors© that had
carried him through his Spanish campaigns behind him when
he returned to Italy in order to save freight. He hated other
people's gardens, and cut off the supply of water for garden
use in Eome. After entertaining company, when dinner was
over he would go out to correct any negligence in the service
with a leather thong. He admired his own virtues very greatly,
and insisted upon them in his writings. There was a battle, at
Thermopylae against Antiochus the Great, of which he wrote,
"those who saw him charging the enemy, routing and pursuing
them, declared that Cato owed less to the people of Eome, than
the people of Eome owed to Cato." ^ In his old age Cato be-
came lascivious and misconducted himself with a woman slave.
Finally, when his son protested against this disorder of their
joint household, he married a young wife, the daughter of
his secretary, who was not in a position to refuse his offer.
(What became of the woman slave is not told. Probably he
sold her.) This compendium of all the old Eoman virtues
died at an advanced age, respected and feared. Almost his
last public act was to urge on the Third Punic War and the
final destruction of Carthage. He had gone to Carthage as a
'Plutarch, Life of Cato.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 407
commissioner to settle certain differences between Carthage
and Numidia, and he had been shocked and horrified to find
some evidences of prosperity and even of happiness in that
country.
From the time of that visit onward Cato concluded every
speech he made in the Senate by croaking out "Delenda est
Carthago" ("Carthage must be destroyed").
Such was the type of man that rose to prominence in Kome
during the Punic struggle, such was the protagonist of Hanni-
bal and the Carthaginian revanche, and by him and by Hannibal
we may judge the tone and quality of the age.
The two gr'jat western powers, and Rome perhaps more
than Carthage, were strained mentally and morally by the
stresses of the First "War. The evil side of life was uppermost.
The history of the Second and Third Punic Wars (219 to 201
and 149 to 146 b.c), it is plain, is not the history of perfectly
sane peoples. It is nonsense for historians to write of the
"political instincts" of the Romans or Carthaginians. Quite
other instincts were loose. The red eyes of the ancestral ape
had come back into the world. It was a time when reasonable
men were howled down or murdered; the true spirit of the
age is shown in the eager examination for signs and portents
of the still quivering livers of those hum,an victims' who were
sacrificed in Rome during the panic before the battle of Tela-
mon. The western world was indeed black with homicidal
monomania. Two great peoples, both very necessary to the
world's development, fell foul of one another, and at last Rome
succeeded in murdering Carthage.
We can only tell very briefly here of the particulars of the
Second and Third Punic Wars. We have told how Hamilcar
began to organize Spain, and how the Romans forbade him
to cross the Ebro. He died in 228 b.c, and was followed by
his son-in-law^ Hasdrubal, who was assassinated in 221 b.c. and
succeeded by Hannibal, who was now twenty-six. The actual
war was precipitated by the Romans making a breach of their
own regulations, and interfering with affairs south of the Ebro.
Whereupon Hannibal marched straight through the south of
Gaul, and crossed the Alps (218 b.c.) into Italy.
408 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The history of the next fifteen years is the story of the most
brilliant and futile raid in history. For fifteen years Hannibal
held out in Italy, victorious and unconquered. The Roman
generals were no match for the Carthaginian, and whenever
they met him they were beaten. But one Roman general, P.
Cornelius Scipio, had the strategic sense to take a course that
robbed all Hannibal's victories of fruit. At the outbreak of
the war he had been sent by sea to Marseilles to intercept
Hannibal; he arrived three days late, and, instead of pursuing
him, he sent on his army into Spain to cut up Hannibal's sup-
plies and reinforcements. Throughout all the subsequent war
there remained this Roman army of Spain between Hannibal
and his base. He was left "in the air," incapable of conducting
sieges or establishing conquests.
Whenever he met the Romans in open fight he beat them.
He gained two great victories in North Italy, and won over
the Gauls to his side. He pressed south into Etruria, and am-
bushed, surrounded, and completely destroyed a Roman army
at Lake Trasimene. In 216 b.c. he was assailed by a vastly
superior Roman force under Varro at Cannse, and destroyed
it utterly. Fifty thousand men are said to have been killed
and ten thousand prisoners taken. He was, however, unable to
push on and capture Rome because he had no siege equipment.
But Cannse produced other fruits. A large part of Southern
Italy came over to Hannibal, including Capua, the city next
in size to Rome, and the Macedonians allied themselves with
him. Moreover, Hiero of Syractise, the faithful ally of Rome,
was now dead, and his successor Hieronymus turned over to
the Carthaginians. The Romans carried on the war, however,
with great toughness and resolution ; they refused to treat with
Hannibal after Cannse, they pressed a slow but finally suc-
cessful blockade and siege of Capua, and a Roman army set
itseK to reduce Syracuse. The siege of Syracuse is chiefly
memorable for the brilliant inventions of the philosopher Archi-
medes, which long held the Romans at bay. We have already
named this Archimedes as one of the pupils and oorrespondents
of the school of the Alexandrian Museum. He was killed
in the final storm of the town. Tarentum (209 e.g.), Hanni-
bal's chief port and means of supply from Carthage, at last fol-
lowed Syracuse (212 b.c.) and Capua (211 b.c), and his com-
numications became irregular.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 409
Spain also was wrested bit by bit from the Carthaginian
grip. When at last reinforcements for Hannibal under his
brother Hasdrubal (not to be confused with his brother-in-
law of the same name who was assassinated) struggled through
into Italy, they were destroyed at the battle of the Metaurus
(207 B.C.), and the first news that came to Hannibal of the
disaster was the hacked-off head of his brother thrown into his
camp.
Thereafter Hannibal was blockaded into Calabria, the heel
of Italy. He had no forces for further operations of any magni-
tude, and he returned at last to Carthage in time to command
the Carthaginians, in the last battle of the war.
This last battle, the battle of Zama (202 b.c), was fought
close to Carthage.
It was the first defeat Hannibal experienced and so it is
well to give a little attention to the personality of his con-
queror, Scipio Africanus the Elder, who stands out in history
as a very fine gentleman indeed, a great soldier and a generous
man. We have already mentioned a certain P. Cornelius Scipio
who struck at Hannibal's base in Spain ; this was his son ; until
after Zama this son bore the same name of P. Cornelius Scipio,
and then the surname of Africanus was given him. (The
younger Scipio Africanus, Scipio Africanus Minor, who was
later to end the Third Punic War, was the adopted son of the
son of this first Scipio Africanus the Elder.) Scipio Africanus
was everything that aroused the distrust, hatred, and opposi-
tion of old-fashioned Romans of the school of Cato. He was
young, he was happy and able, he spent money freely, he was
well versed in Greek literature, and inclined rather to Phrygian
novelties in religion than to the sterner divinities of Rome.
And he did not believe in the extreme discretion that then ruled
Roman strategy.
After the early defeats of the Second Punic War, Roman
military operations were dominated by the personality of a
general, Eabius, who raised the necessity of avoiding battle
with Hannibal into a kind of sacred principle. Eor ten years
"Fabian tactics" prevailed in Italy. The Romans blockaded,
cut up convoys, attacked stragglers, and ran away whenever
Hannibal appeared. No doubt it was wise for a time after their
first defeats to do this sort of thing, but the business of the
stronger power, and Rome was the stronger power throughout
410 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the Second Punic War, is not to tolerate an interminable war,
but to repair losses, discover able generals, train better armies,
and destroy the enemy power. Decision is one of the duties
of strength.
To such men as young Scipio, the sly, ineffective artfulness
of Fabianism, which was causing both Italy and Carthage to
bleed slowly to death, was detestable. He clamoured for an
attack upon Carthage itself.
"But Fabius, on this occasion, filled the city with alarms,
as if the commonwealth was going to be brought into the most
extreme danger by a rash and indiscreet young man ; in short,
he scrupled not to do or say anything he thought likely to dis-
suade his countrymen from embracing the proposal. With the
Senate he carried his point. But the people believed that his
opposition to Scipio proceeded either from envy of his success,
or from a secret fear that if this young hero should perform
some signal exploit, put an end to the war, or even remove it
out of Italy, his own slow proceedings through the course of
so many years might be imputed to indolence or timidity. . . .
He applied to Crassus, the colleague of Scipio, and endeavoured
to persuade him not to yield that province to Scipio, but, if
he thought it proper to conduct the war in that manner, to go
himself against Carthage. Nay, he even hindered the raising
of money for that expedition, so that Scipio was obliged to find
the supplies as he could. . . . He endeavoured to prevent the
young men who offered to go as volunteers from giving in their
names, and loudly declared, both in the Senate and Forum,
'That Scipio did not only himself avoid Hannibal, but intended
to carry away with him the remaining strength of Italy, per:
suading the young men to abandon their parents, their wives,
and native city, while an unsubdued and potent enemy was
still at their doors.' With these assertions he so terrified the
people, that they allowed Scipio to take with him only the
legions that were in Sicily, and three hundred of those men
who had served him with so much fidelity in Spain. . . . After
Scipio was gone over into Africa, an account was soon brought
to Kome of his glorious and wonderful achievements. This
account was followed by rich spoils, which confirmed it. A
l^Tumidian king was taken prisoner; two camps were burned
and destroyed ; and in them a vast number of men, arms, and
horses; and the Carthaginians sent orders to Hannibal to quit
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 411
his fruitless hopes in Italy, and return home to defend his
own country. Whilst every tongue was applauding these ex-
ploits of Scipio, Fabius proposed that his successor should be
appointed, without any shadow of reason for it, except what
this well-known maxim implies: viz., 'That it is dangerous to
trust affairs of such importance to the fortune of one man,
because it is not likely that he will be always successful.' . . .
Nay, even when Hannibal embarked his army and quitted
Italy, Fabius ceased not to disturb the general joy and to damp
the spirits of Eome, for he took the liberty to affirm, 'That the
commonwealth was now come to her last and worst trial ; that
she had the most reason to dread the efforts of Hannibal when
he should arrive in Africa, and attack her sons under the walls
of Carthage; that Scipio would have to do with an army yet
warm with the blood of so many Eoman generals, dictators,
and consuls.' The city was alarmed with these declamations,
and though the war was removed into Africa, the danger seeraed
to approach nearer Eome than ever."
Before the battle of Zama there were a brief truce and
negotiations, which broke down through the fault of the Car-
thaginians. As with the battle of Arbela, so the exact day of
the battle of Zama can be fixed by an eclipse, which in this
case occurred during the fighting. The Komans had been
joined by the Numidians, the hinierland people of Carthage,
under their king Massinissa, and this gave them — for the first
time in any battle against Hannibal — a great superiority of
cavalry. Hannibal's cavalry wings were driven off, while at
the same time the. sounder discipline of Scipio's infantry en-
abled them to open lanes for the charge of the Carthaginian
war elephants without being thrown into confusion. Hannibal
attempted to extend his infantry line to envelop the Eoman in-
fantry mass, but while at Cannse all the advantage of training
and therefore of manoeuvring power had been on his side, and
he had been able to surround and massacre a crowd of infantry,
he now found against him an infantry line better than his own.
His own line broke as it extended, the Eoman legion charged
home, and the day was lost. The Eotnan cavalry came back
from the pursuit of Hannibal's horse to turn what was already
a defeat into a disastrous rout.
Carthage submitted without any further struggle. The
terms were severe, but they left it possible for her to hope for
412 THE OUTLINE OE HISTORY
an honourable future. She had to abandon Spain to Eome,
to give up all her war fleet except ten vessels, to pay 10,000
talents (£2,400,000), and, vphat V7as the most difficult condi-
tion of all, to agree not to wage war without the permission of
Kome. Finally a condition was added that Hannibal, as the
great enemy of Home, should be surrendered. But he saved his
countrymen from this humiliation by flying to Asia.
These were exorbitant conditions, with which Eome should
have been content. But there are nations so cowardly that they
dare not merely conqtier their enemies; they must mak siccar
and destroy them. The generation of Eomans that saw great-
ness and virtue in a man like Cato the Censor, necessarily
made their country a mean ally and a cowardly victor.
The history of Eome for the fifty-six years that elapsed be-
tween the battle of Zama and the last act of the tragedy, the
Third Punic War, tells of a hard ungracious expansion of
power abroad and of a slow destruction, by the usury and greed
of the rich, of the free agricultural population at home.
The spirit of the nation had become harsh and base; there
was no further extension of citizenship, no more generous at-
tempts at the assimilation of congenial foreign populations.
Spain was administered badly and settled slowly and with great
difficulty. Complicated interventions led to ^e reduction of
Illyria and Macedonia to the position of tribute-paying prov-
inces; Eome, it was evident, was going to "tax the foreigner"
now and release her home population from taxation. After
168 B.C. the old land tax was no longer levied in Italy, and the
only revenue derived from Italy was from the state domains
and through a tax on imports from overseas. The revenues
from the province of "Asia" defrayed the expenses of the
Eoman state. At home men of the Cato type were acquiring
farms by loans and foreclosure, often the farms of men
impoverished by war service; they were driving the
free citizens off their land, and running their farms with
the pitilessly driven slave labour that was made cheap and
abundant. Such men regarded alien populations abroad merely
as unimported slaves. Sicily was handed over to the greedy
enterprise of tax-farmers. Com could be grown there by rich
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 413
men using slaves, and imported very profitably into Kome, and
so the home land could he turned over to cattle and sheep feed-
ing. Consequently a drift of the uprooted Italian population
to the towns, and particularly to Kome, hegan.
Of the first conflicts of the spreading power of Eome with
the Seleucids, and how she formed an alliance with Egypt, we
can tell little here, nor of the tortuous fluctuations of the Greek
cities under the shadow of her advance until they fell into
actual subjugation. A map must suffice to show the extension
of her empire at this time.
The general grim baseness of the age was not without its
protesting voices. We have already told how the wasting dis-
ease of the Second Punic War, a disease of the state which was
producing avaricious rich men exactly as diseases of the body
will sometimes produce great pustules, was ended by the vigour
of Scipio Africanus. When it had seemed doubtful whether
the Senate would let him go as the Eoman general, he had
threatened an appeal to the people. Thereafter he was a
marked man for the senatorial gang, who were steadily chang-
ing Italy from a land of free cultivators to a land of slave-
worked cattle ranches; they attempted to ruin him before ever
he reached Africa; they gave him forces insufficient, as they
hoped, for victory ; and after the war they barred him strictly
from office. Interest and his natural malice alike prompted
Cato to attack him.
Scipio Africanus the Elder seems to have been of a generous
and impatient temperament, and indisposed to exploit the popu-
lar discontent with current tendencies and his own very great
popularity to his own advantage. He went as subordinate to
his brother Lucius Scipio, when the latter commanded the first
Eoman army to pass into Asia. At Magnesia in Lydia a great
composite army under Antiochus III, the Seleucid monarch,
suffered the fate (190 b.c.) of the very similar Persian armies
of a hundred and forty years before. This victory drew down
upon Lucius Scipio the hostility of the Senate, and he was
accused of misappropriating moneys received from Antiochus.
This filled Africanus with honest rage. As Lucius stood up
in the Senate with his accounts in his hands ready for the
badgering of his accusers, Africanus snatched the documents
from him, tore them up, and flung the fragments down. His
brother, he said, had paid into the treasury 200,000 sestertia
iU
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 415
(= £2,000,000). Was he now to be pestered and tripped up
upon this or that item ? When, later on, Lucius was prosecuted
and condemned, Africanus rescued him by force. Being im-
peached, he reminded the people that the day was the anni-
versary of the battle of Zama, and defied the authorities amidst
the plaudits of the crowd.
The Roman people seem to have liked and supported Scipio
Africanus, and, after an interval of two thousand years, men
must like him still. He was able to throw torn paper in the
face of the Senate, and when Lucius was attacked again, one
of the tribunes of the people interposed his veto and quashed
the proceedings. But Scipio Africanus lacked that harder
alloy which makes men great democratic leaders. He was no
Csesar. He had none of the qualities that subdue a man to
the base necessities of political life. After these events he
retired in disgust from Eome to his estates, and there he died
in the year 183 b.c.
In the same year died Hannibal. He poisoned himself in
despair. The steadfast fear of the Eoman Senate had hunted
him from court to court. In spite of the indignant protests of
Scipio, Rome in the peace negotiations had demanded his sur-
render from Carthage, and she continued to make this demand
of every power that sheltered him. When peace was made with
Antiochus III, this was one of the conditions. He was run to
earth at last in Bithynia; the king of Bithynia detained him
in order to send him to Eome, but he had long carried the
poison he needed in a ring, and by this he died.
It adds to the honour of the name of Scipio that it was an-
other Scipio, Scipio Nasica, who parodied Cato's Delenda est
Carthago by ending all his speeches in the Senate with "Car-
thage must stand." He had the wisdom to see that the exist-
ence and stimulus of Carthage contributed to the general pros-
perity of Eome.
Yet it was the second Scipio Africanus, grandson by adoption
of Scipio Africanus the Elder, who took and destroyed Car-
thage. The sole ofFence of the Carthaginians, which brought
about the third and last Punic War, was that they continued
to trade and prosper. Their trade was not a trade that com-
peted with that of Eome ; when Carthage was destroyed, much
of her trade died with her, and North Africa entered upon a
phase of economic retrogression; but her prosperity aroused
416 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
that passion of envy which was evidently more powerful even
than avarice in the "old Eoman" type. The rich Equestrian
order resented any wealth in the world but its own. Eome
provoked the war by encouraging the Numidians to encroach
upon Carthage until the Carthaginians were goaded to fight in
despair. Rome then pounced upon Carthage, and declared
she had broken the treaty! She had made war without
permission.
The Carthaginians sent the hostages Rome demanded, they
surrendered their arms, they prepared to surrender territory.
But submission only increased the arrogance of Rome and the
pitiless greed of the rich Equestrian order which swayed her
counsels. She now demanded thaj, Carthage should be aban-
doned, and the population removed to a spot at least ten miles
from the sea. This demand they made to a population that sub-
sisted almost entirely by overseas trade!
This preposterous order roused the Carthaginians to despair.
They recalled their exiles and prepared for resistance. The
military efficiency of the Romans had been steadily declining
through a half -century of narrow-minded and base-spirited gov-
ernment, and the first attacks upon the town in 149 b.c. almost
ended in disaster. Young Scipio, during these operations, dis-
tinguished himself in a minor capacity. The next year was also
a year of failure for the incompetents of the Senate. That
august body then passed from a bullying mood to one of ex-
treme panic. The Roman populace was even more seriously
scared. Young Scipio, chiefly on account of his name, although
he was under the proper age, and in other respects not qualified
for the office, was made consul, and bundled off to Africa to
save his precious country.
There followed the most obstinate and dreadful of sieges.
Scipio built a mole across the harbour, and cut off all supplies
by land or sea. The Carthaginians suffered horribly from
famine; but they held out until the town was stormed. The
street fighting lasted for six days, and when at last the citadel
capitulated, Qiere were fifty thousand Carthaginians left alive
out of an estimated populatioti of half a million. These sur-
vivors went into slavery, the whole city was burnt, the ruins
were ploughed to express final destruction, and a curse was
invoked with great solemnitiea upon anyone who might attempt
to rebuild it. ' '.!
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 417
In the same year (146 b.c.) the Eoman Senate and Eques-
trians also murdered another great city that seemed to limit
their trade monopolies, Corinth. They had a justification, for
Corinth had been in arms against them, but it was an inade-
quate justification.
§ 8
We must note here, in a brief section, a change in the mili-
tary system of Kome, after the Second Punic War, that was of
enormous importance in her later development. Up to that
period the Roman armies had been levies of free citizens.
Fighting power and voting power were closely connected; the
public assembly by centuries followed the paraphernalia of a
military mobilization, and marched, headed by the Equestrian
centuries, to the Campus Martins. The system was very like
that of the Boers before the last war in South Africa. The
ordinary Eoman citizen, like the ordinary Boer, was a farmer ;
at the summons of his country he went "on commando." The
Boers were, indeed, in many respects, the last survivors of
Aryanism. They fought extraordinarily well, but at the back
of their minds was an anxious desire to go back to their farms.
For prolonged operations, such as the siege of Veil, the Romans
reinforced and relieved their troops in relays; the Boers did
much the same at the siege of Ladysmith.
The necessity for subjugating Spain after the Second Punic
War involved a need for armies of a different type. Spain
was too far off for periodic reliefs, and the war demanded a
more thorough training than was possible with these on and off
soldiers. Accordingly men were enlisted for longer terms and
paid. So the paid soldier first appeared in Roman affairs.
And to pay was added booty. Cato distributed silver treasure
among his command in Spain; and it is also on record that he
attacked Scipio Africanus for distributing booty among his
troops in Sicily. The introduction of military pay led on to a
professional army, and this, a century later, to the disarma-
ment of the ordinary Roman citizen, who was now drifting in
an impoverished state into Rome and the larger towns. The
great wars had been won, the foundations of the empire had
been well and truly laid by the embattled fanners of Rome
418 THE OUTLINE .OF HISTORY
before 200 b.c. In the process the embattled farmers of Kome
had already largely disappeared. The change that began after
the Second Punic War was completed, towards the close of
the century in the reorganization of the army by Marius, as
we will tell in its place. After his time we shall begin to write
of "the army," and then of "the legions," and we shall find
we are dealing with a new kind of army altogether, no longer
held together in the solidarity of a common citizenship. As
that tie fails, the legions discover another in esprit de corps,
in their common difference from and their common interest
against the general community. They begin to develop a
warmer interest in their personal l.eaders, who secure them pay
and plunder. Before the Punic Wars it was the tendency of
ambitious men in Rome to court the plebeians ; after that time
they began to court the legions.
§ 9
The history of the Eoman Eepublic thus far, is in many
respects much more modern in flavour, especially to the Ameri-
can or Western European reader, than anything that has pre-
ceded it. For the first time we have something like a self-gov-
erning "nation," something larger than a mere city state,
seeking to control its own destinies. For the first time we
have a wide countryside under one conception of law. We get
in the Senate and the popular assembly a conflict of groups and
personalities, an argumentative process of control, far more
stable and enduring than any autocracy can he, and far more
flexible and adaptable than any priesthood. For the first time
also we encounter social conflicts comparahle to our own.
Money has superseded barter, and financial capital has become
fluid and free ; not perhaps so fluid and free as it is to-day, but
much more so than it had ever been before. The Punic Wars
were wars of peoples, such as were no other wars we have yet
recorded. Indubitably the broad lines of our present world,
the main ideas, the chief oppositions, were appearing in those
days.
But, as we have already pointed out, certain of the elemen-
tary facilities and some of the current political ideas of our
time were still wanting in the Eome of the Punic Wars. There
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 419
were no newspapers,^ and there was practically no use of
elected representatives in the popular assemblies. And an-
other deficiency, very understandable to us nowadays, but quite
beyond the scope of anyone then, was the absence of any general
elementary political education at all. The plebeians of Rome
had shown some glimmering of the idea that without knowledge
votes cannot make men free, when they had insisted upon the
publication of the law of the Twelve Tables; but they had
never been able, it was beyond the possibilities of the time, to
imagine any further extension of knowledge to the bulk of the
people. It is only nowadays that men are beginning to, under-
stand fully the political significance of the maxim that "knowl-
edge is power." Two British Trade Unions, for example, have
recently set up a Labour College to meet the special needs of
able working-men in history, political and social science, and
the like. But education in republican Home was the freak of
the individual parent, and the privilege of wealth and leisure.
It was mainly in the hands of Greeks, who were in many cases
slaves. There was a thin small stream of very fine learning
and very fine thinking up to the first century of the monarchy,
let Lucretius and Cicero witness, but it did not spread into the
mass of the people. The ordinary Roman was not only blankly
ignorant of the history of mankind, but also of the conditions
of foreign peoples ; he had no knowledge of economic laws nor
of social possibilities. Even his own interests he did not
clearly understand.
Of course, in the little city states of Greece and in that early
Roman state of four hundred square miles, men acquired by
talk and observation a sufficient knowledge for the ordinary
duties of citizenship, but by the beginning of the Punic Wars
the business was already too big and complicated for illiterate
men. Yet nobody seems to have observed the gap that was
'Julius Csesar (60 B.C.) caused the proceedings of the Senate to be pub-
lished by having them written up upon bulletin boards, in alho (upon
the white). It had been the custom to publish the annual edict of the
prcetor in this fashion. There were professional letter-writers who sent
news by special courier to rich country correspondents, and these would
copy down the stuff upon the Album (white board). Cicero, while he
was governor in Cilicia, got the current news from such a professional
correspondent. He complains in one letter that it was not what be
wanted; the expert was too. full of the chariot races and other sporting
intelligence, and failed to give any view of the political situation. Ob-
viously this news-letter system was available only for public men in pros-
perous circumstances.
420 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
opening between the citizen and his state, and so there is no
record at all of any attempt to enlarge the citizen by instruc-
tion to meet his enlarged duties. From the second century b.c.
and onward everyone is remarking upon the ignorance of the
common citizen and his lack of political wisdom, everything is
suffering from the lack of political solidarity due to this igno-
rance, but no one goes on to what we should now consider the
inevitable corollary, no one proposes to destroy the ignorance
complained of. There existed no means whatever for the in-
struction of the masses of the people in a common political and
social ideal. It was only with the development of the great
propagandist religions in the Eoman world, of which Chris-
tianity was the chief and the survivor, that the possibility of
such a systematic instruction of great masses of people became
apparent in the world. That very great political genius, the
Emperor Constantine the Great, six centuries later, was the
first to apprehend and to attempt to use this possibility for the
preservation and the mental and moral knitting-together of the
world community over which he ruled.
But it is not only in these deficiencies of news and of educa-
tion and of the expedient of representative government that
this political system of Eome differed from our own. True,
it was far more like a modern civilized state than any other
state we have considered hitherto, but in some matters it was
strangely primordial and "sub-civilized." Every now and then
the reader of Eoman history, reading it in terms of debates
and measures, policies and campaigns, capital and labour,
comes upon something that gives him much the same shock
he would feel if he went down to an unknown caller in his
house and extended his hand to meet the misshapen hairy paw
of Homo Neanderthalensis and looked up to see a chinless,
bestial face. We have noted the occurrence of human sacrifice
in the third century B.C., and much that we learn of the religion
of republican Eome carries us far back beyond the days of
decent gods, to the age of shamanism and magic. We talk of a
legislative gathering, and the mind flies to. Westminster; but
how should we feel if we went to see the beginning of a session
of the House of Lords, and discovered the Lord Chancellor,
with bloody fingers, portentously fiddling about among the
entrails of a newly killed sheep ? The mind would recoil from
Westminster to the customs of Benin. And the slavery of
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS
421
Rome was a savage slavery, altogether viler than the slavery of
Babylon. We have had a glimpse of the virtuous Cato among
his slaves in the second century b.c. Moreover, in the third
century b.c, when King Asoka was ruling India in light and
gentleness, the Eomans were reviving an Etruscan sport, the
setting on of slaves to fight for their lives. One is reminded
of West Africa again in the origin of this amusement; it grew
out of the prehistoric custom of a massacre of captives at the
Glaciiaiuvs
CBvai a waZl-painiing' at TampaiJ
burial of a chief. There was a religious touch about this sport ;
the slaves with hooks, who dragged the dead bodies out of the
arena, wore masks to represent the infernal ferryman-god,
Charon. In 264 b.c, the very year in which Asoka began to
reign and the First Punic War began, the first recorded gladia-
torial combat took place in the forum at Home, to celebrate
the funeral of a member of the old Roman family of Brutus.
This was a modest display of three couples, but soon gladiators
were fighting by the hundred. The taste for these combats
grew rapidly, and, the wars supplied an abundance of captives.
The old Roman moralists, who were so severe upon kissing and
women's ornaments and Greek philosophy, had nothing but
good to say for this new development. So long as pain was
inflicted, Roman morality, it would seem, was satisfied.
If republican Rome was the first of modern self-governing
national communities, she was certainly the "Neanderthal"
form of them.
In the course of the next two or three centuries the gladia-
torial shows of Rome grew to immense proportions. To begin,
422 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Tvitli, while wars were frequent, tlie gladiators were prisoners
of war. They came with their characteristic national weapons,
tattooed Britons, Moors, Scythians, negroes, and the like, and
there was perhaps some military value in these exhibitions.
Then criminals of the lower classes condemned to death were
also used. The ancient world did not understand, that a crimi-
nal condemned to death still has rights, and at any rate the use
of a criminal as a gladiator was not so bad as his use as "mate-
rial" for the vivisectors of the Museum at Alexandria. But
as the profits of this sort of show business grew and the demand
for victims increased, ordinary slaves were sold to the trainers
of gladiators, and any slave who had aroused his owner's spite
might find himself in an establishment for letting out gladia-
tors. And dissipated young men who had squandered their
prpperty, and lads of spirit would go voluntarily into the trade
for a stated time, trusting to their prowess to survive. As the
business developed, a new use was found' for gladiators as
armed retainers; rich men would buy a band, and employ it
as a bodyguard or hire it out for profit at the shows. The
festivities of a show began with a ceremonial procession
(pompa) and a sham fight (prceliisio) . The real fighting was
heralded by trumpets. Gladiators who objected to fight for any
reason were driven on by whips and hot irons. A wounded
man would sometimes call for pity by holding up his forefinger.
The spectators would then either wave their handkerchiefs in
token of mercy, or condemn him to death by holding out their
clenched fists with the thumbs down.^ The slain and nearly
dead were dragged out to a particular place, the spoliarium,
where they were stripped of their arms and possessions, and
those who had not already expired were killed.
This organization of murder as a sport and show serves to
measure the great gap in moral standards between the Eoman
community and our own. No doubt cruelties and outrages
upon human dignity as monstrous as this still go on in the
world, but they do not go on in the name- of the law and without
a single dissentient voice. For it is true that until the time
of Seneca (first, century a.d.) there is no record of any plain
protest against this business. The conscience of mankind was
'Authorities differ here. Mayor says thumbs up (to the breast) meant
death and thumbs down meant "Lower that sword." The popular per-
suasion is that thumbs down meant death.
THE TWO WESTERN REPUBLICS 428
weaker and less intelligent then than now. Presently a new
power was to come into the human conscience through the
spread of Christianity. The spirit of Jesus in Christianity
became the great antagonist in the later Roman state of these
cruel shows and of slavery, and, as Christianity spread, these
two evil things dwindled and disappeared.^
* "A little more needs to be said on this matter. The Greeks cited gladia-
torial shows as a reason for regarding the Romans as Bwrharoi, and there
were riots when some Roman proconsul tried to introduce them in Corinth.
Among Romans, the better people evidently disliked them, but a sort of
shyness prevented them from frankly denouncing them as cruel. For
instance, Cicero, when he had to attend the Circus, took his tablets and
his secretary with him, and didn't look. He expresses particular disgust
at the killing of an elephant; and somebody in Tacitus (Drusus, Ann. 1,
76) was unpopular because he was too fond of gladiatorial bloodshed —
'quwmquam vili sanguine nimis gaudens' ('rejoicing too much in blood,
worthless blood though it was'). The games were unhesitatingly con-
demned by Greek philosophy, and at different times two Cynics and one
Christian gave their lives in the arena, protesting against them, before
they were abolished.
, "I do not think Christianity had any such relation to slavery as is
here stated. St. Paul's action in sending back a slave to his master, and
his injunction, 'Slaves, obey your masters,' were regularly quoted on the
pro-slavery side, down to the nineteenth century; on tlie other hand, both
the popular philosophies and the Mystery religions were against slavery
in their whole tendency, and Christianity of course in time became the chief
representative of these movements. Probably the best test is the number
of slaves who occupied posts of honour in the religious and philosbphic
systems, like Epictetus, for instance, or the many slaves who hold offices
in the Mithraic Inscriptions. I do not happen to know if any slaves
were made Christian bishops, but by analogy I should think it likely that
some were. In all the Mystery religions, as soon as you entered the
community, and had communion with God, earthly distinctions shrivelled
away." — G. M.
XXVII
FEOM TIBEEIUS GEACCHUS TO THE GOD
EMPEEOE m EOME
§ 1. The Science of Thwarting the Common Man. § 2.
Finance in the Roman State. § 3. The Last Years of Re-
publican Polictics. § 4. The Era of the Adventurer Gen-
erals. § 5. The End of the Republic. § 6. The Coming of
the Princeps. § 7. Why the Roman Republic Failed.
§ 1
WE have already twice likened the self-governing com-
munity of Eome to a "^Neanderthal" variety of the
modern "democratic" civilized state, and we shall
recur again to this comparison. In form the two things, the
first great primitive essay and its later relations, are extraordi-
narily similar; in spirit they differ very profoundly. Eoman
political and. social life, and particularly Eoman political and
social life in the century between the fall of Carthage and the
rise of Caesar and Csesarism, has a very marked general re-
semblance to the political and social life in such countries as
the United States of America or the British Empire to-day.
The resemblance is intensified by the common use, with a cer-
tain inaccuracy in every case, of such terms as "senate," "democ-
racy," "proletariat," and the like. But everything in the
Eoman state was earlier, cruder, and clumsier; the injustices
were more glaring, the conflicts harsher. There was compara-
tively little knowledge and few general ideas. Aristotle's sci-
entific works were only beginning to be read in Eome in the
first century B.C. ; Eerrero,^ it is true, makes Caesar familiar
with the Politics of Aristotle, and ascribes to him the dream
of making a "Periclean Eome," but in doing so, Ferrero seems
to be indulging in one of those lapses into picturesque romanc-
' Greatness and Deoline of Rome, bk. i. ch. zi.
424
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 425
ing whicli are at once the joy and the snare of all historical
writers.
Attention has already been drawn to the profound difference
between Roman and modern conditions due to the absence of a
press, of any popular educatibn or of the representative idea
in the popular assembly. Our world to-day is still far from
solving the problem of representation and from producing a
public assembly which will really summarize, crystallize, and
express the thought and will of the community; our elections
are still largely an ingenious mockery of the common voter who
finds himsef helpless in the face of party organizations which
reduce his free choice of a representative to the less unpalatable
of two political hacks, but, even so, his vote, in comparison
with the vote of an ordinary honest Roman citizen, is an effec-
tive instrument. Too many of our histories dealing with this
period of Roman history write of "the popular party," and of
the votes of the people and so forth, as though such things
were as much working realities as they are to-day. But the
senators and politicians of Rome saw to it that such things
never did exist as clean and wholesoine realities. These modem
phrases are very misleading unless they are carefully qualified.
We have already described the gatherings of the popular
comitia; but that clumsy assembly in sheep pens does not con-
vey the full extent to which the gerrymandering of popular
representation could be carried in Rome. Whenever there was
a new enfranchisement of citizens in Italy, there would be the
most elaborate trickery and counter-trickery to enrol- the new
voters into as few or as many of the thirty old "tribes" as possi-
ble, or to put then\ into as few as possible new tribes. Since
the vote was taken by tribes, it is obvious tha;t however great
the number of new additions made, if they were all got to-
gether into one tribe, their opinion would only count for one
tribal vote, and similarly if they were crowded into just a few
tribes, old or new. On the other hand, if they were put into
too many tribes their effect in any particular tribe might be
inconsiderable. Here was the sort of work to fascinate ^very
smart knave in politics. The comitia tributa could be worked
at times so as to vote right counter to the general feeling of
the people. And as we have already noted, the great mass of
voters in Italy were also disenfranchised by distance. About
the middle period of the Carthaginian wars there were upwards
426 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of 300,000 Roman citizens ; about 100 B.C. there were more
than 900,000, but in effect the voting of the popular assembly
was confined to a few score thousand resident in and near
Eome, and mostly men of a base type. And the Roman voters
were "organized" to an extent that makes the Tammany ma-
chine of New York seem artless and honest. They belonged
to clubs, collegia sodalicia, having usually some elegant re-
ligious pretensions; and the rising politician working his way
to ofiice went first to the usurers and then with the borrowed
money to these clubs. If the outside voters were moved enough
by any question to swarm into the city, it was always possible
to put off the voting by declaring the omens unfavourable. If
they came in unarmed, they could be intimidated; if they
brought in arms, theii the cry was raised that there was a plot
to overthrow the republic, and a massacre would be organized.
There can be no doubt that all Italy, all the empire was
festering with discomfort, anxiety, and discontent in the cen-
tury after the destruction of Carthage; a few men were grow-
ing very rich, and the majority of people found themselves
entangled in , an inexplicable net of uncertain prices, jumpy
markets, and debts ; but yet there was no way at all of stating
and clearing up the. general dissatisfaction. There is no record
of a single attempt to make the popular assembly a straightfor-
ward and workable public organ. Beneath the superficial ap-
pearances of public affairs struggled a mute giant of public
opinion and public will, who sometimes made some great po-
litical, effort, a rush to vote or such like, and sometimes broke
into actual violence. ■ So long as there was no actual violence,
the Senate and the financiers kept on in their own disastrous
way. Only when they were badly frightened would governing
cliques or parties desist from some nefarious policy and heed
the common good. The real method of popular expression in
Italy in those days was not the comitia tributa, \)\xt the strike
and insurrection, the righteous and necessary methods of all
cheated or suppressed peoples. We have seen in our own days
in Great Britain a decline in the prestige of parliamentary
government and a drift towards unconstitutional methods on
the part of the masses through exactly the same cause, through
the incurable disposition of politicians to gerrymander the elec-
toral machine until the community is driven to explosion.
For insurrectionary purposes a discontented population needs
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 427
a leader, and the political history of the concluding century of
Eoman republicanism is a history of insurrectionary leaders
and counter-revolutionary leaders. Most of the former are
manifestly unscrupulous adventurers who try to utilize the
public necessity and unhappiness for their own advancement.
Many of the historians of this period betray a disposition to
take sides, and are either aristocratic in tone or fiercely demo-
cratic ; but, indeed, neither side in these complex and intricate
disputes has a record of high aims or clean hands. The Senate
and the rich Equestrians were vulgar and greedy spirits; hostile
and contemptuous towards the poor mob; and the populace
was ignorant, unstable, and at least equally greedy. The
Scipios in all this record shine by comparison, a group of gentle-
men. To the motives of one or the other figures of the time,
to Tiberius Gracchus, for example, we may perhaps extend
the benefit of the doubt. But for the rest, they do but demon-
strate how clever and cunning men may be, how subtle in con-
tention, how brilliant in pretence, and how utterly wanting in
wisdom or grace of spirit. "A shambling, hairy, brutish, but
probably very cunning creature with a big brain hehmdj" so
someone, I think it was Sir Harry Johnston, has described
Homo Neanderthalensis.
To this day we must still use similar terms to describe the
soul of the politician. The statesman has still to oust the
politician from his lairs and weapon heaps. History has still
to become a record of human dignity.
§ 2
Another respect in which the Roman system was a crude
anticipation of our own, and different from any preceding
political system we have considered, was that it was a cash
and credit-using system. Money had been in the world as yet
for only a few centuries. But its use had been growing; it
was providing a fluid medium for trade and enterprise, and
changing economic conditions profoundly. In republican Eome,
the financier and the "money" interest began to play a part
recognizably similar to their roles to-day.
We have already noted — in our account of Herodotus — ^that
a first effect of money was to give freedom of movement and
leisure to a number of people who could not otherwise have
428 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
enjoyed these privileges. And that is the peculiar value of
money to mankind. Instead of a worker or helper being paid
in kind and in such a way that he is tied as much in his en-
joyment as in his labour, money leaves him free to do as he
pleases amidst a wide choice of purchasable aids, eases, and
indulgences. He may eat his money or drink it or give it to a
temple or spend it in learning something or save it against
some unforeseen occasion. That is the good of moneys the free-
dom of its universal convertibility. But the freedom money
gives the poor man is nothing to the freedom money has given
the rich man. With money rich men ceased to be tied to
lands, houses, stores, flocks and herds. They could change the
nature and locality, of their possessions with an unheard-of
frieedom. In the third and second century B.C., this release,
this untethering of wealth, began to tell upon the general eco-
nomic life of the Roman and Hellenized world. People began
to buy land and the like not for use, but to sell again at a pTofit ;
people borrowed to buy, speculation developed. No doubt there
were bankers in the Babylon of 1000 B.C., but they lent
in a far more limited and solid way, bars of metal and stocks
of goods. That earlier world was a world of barter and pay-
ment in kind, and it went slowly — and much more staidly and
stably — for that reason. In that state the vast realm of China
has remained almost down to the present time.
The big cities before Rome were trading and manufacturing
cities. Such were Coiinth and Carthage and Syracuse. But
Rome never produced a very considerable industrial popula-
tion, and her warehouses never rivalled those of Alexandria.
The little port of Ostia was always big enough for her needs.
Rome was a political and financial capital, and in the latter
respect, at least, she was a new sort of city. She imported
profits and tribute, and very little went out from her in return.
The wharves of Ostia were chiefly busy unloading corn from
Sicily and Africa and loot from all the world.
After the fall of Carthage the Roman imagination went wild
with the hitherto unknown possibilities of finance. Money,
like most other inventions, had "happened" to mankind, and
men had still to develop — to-day they have still to perfect —
the science and morality of money. One sees the thing "catch-
ing on" in the recorded life and the writings of Cato the Censor.
PROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 4^^
In his early days he was bitterly virtuous against usury; in
his later he was devising ingenious schemes for safe usury.
In this curiously interesting century of Koman history we
find man after man asking, "What has happened to Rome?"
Various answers are made — a decline in religion, a decline from
the virtues of the Roman forefathers, Greek "intellectual
poison," and the like. We who can look at the problem with a
large perspective, can see that what had happened to Rome
was "money" — the new freedoms and chances and opportunities
that money opened out. Money floated the Romans off the
firra ground, everyone was getting hold of money, the majority
by the simple expedient of running into debt ; the eastward ex-
pansion of the empire was very largely a hunt for treasure in
strong rooms and temples to keep pace with the hunger of the
new need. The Equestrian order, in particular, became the
money power. Everyone was developing property. Farmers
were giving up com and cattle, borrowing money, buying
slaves, and starting the more intensive cultivation of oil and
wine. Money was young in human experience and wild, no-
body had it under control. It fluctuated greatly. It was now
abundant and now scarce. Men made sly and crude schemes
to corner it, to hoard it, to send up prices by releasing hoarded
metals. A small body of very shrewd men was growing im-
mensely rich. Many patricians were growing poor and irritated
and unscrupulous. Among the middle sort of peoples there was
much hope, much adventure, and much more disappointment.
The growing mass of the expropriated was permeated by that
vague, baflled, and hopeless sense of being inexplicably bested,
which is the preparatory condition for all great revolutionary
movements.
§ 3
The first conspicuous leader to appeal to the gathering revolu-
tionary feeling in Italy was Tiberius Gracchus. He looks more
like an honest man than any other figure in this period of
history, unless it be Scipio Africanus the Elder. At first
Tiberius Gracchus was a moderate reformer of a rather reac-
tionary type. He wished to restore the yeoman class to prop-
erty, very largely because he believed that class to be the back-
bone of the army, and his military experience in Spain before
430 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and after the destruction of Carthage had impressed upon him
the declining efficiency of the legions. He was what we should
call nowadays a "Back-to-the-land" man. He did not under-
stand and few people understand to-day, how much easier it is
to shift population from the land into the towns, than to return
it to the laborious and simple routines of agricultural life. He
wanted to revive the Licinian laws, which had been established
when Camillus built his temple of Concord nearly two centuries
and a half before (see Chap, xxvi, § 2), so far as they broke up
great estates and restrained slave labour.
-These Licinian laws had repeatedly been revived and re-
peatedly lapsed to a dead letter again. It was only when the
big proprietors in the Senate opposed this proposal that Tibe-
rius Gracchus turned to the people and began a furious agitation
for popular government. He created a commission to inquire
into the title of all landowners. In the midst of his activities
occurred one of the most extraordinary incidents in history.
Attains, the king of the rich country of Pergamum in Asia
Minor, died (133 b.c), and left his kingdom to the Roman
people.
It is difficult for us to ujiderstand the motives of this bequest.
Pergamum was a country allied to Rome, and so moderately
secure from aggression; and the natural consequence of such
a will was to provoke a violent scramble among the senatorial
gangs and a dispute between them and the people for the spoils
of the new acquisition. Practically Attains handed over his
country to be looted. There were of course many Italian busi-
ness people established in the country and a strong party of
native rich men in close relations with Home. To them, no
doubt, a coalescence with the Roman system would have been
acceptable. Josephus bears witness to such a desire for an-
nexation among the rich men of Syria, a desire running counter
to the wishes of both king and people. This Pergamum bequest,
astonishing in itself, had the still more astonishing result of
producing imitations in other quarters. In 96 B.C. Ptolemy
Apion bequeathed Cyrenaica, in North Africa, to the Roman
people; in 81 b.c. Alexander II, King of Egypt, followed suit
with Egypt, a legacy too big for the courage if not for the
appetite of the Senators, and they declined it; in 74 b.c.
N^icomedes, King of Eithynia, demised Bithynia. Of these
latter testamentary freaks we will say no more here. But it
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR, 481
will be manifest how great an opportunity was given Tiberius
Gracchus by the bequest of Attalus, of accusing the rich of
greed and of proposing to decree the treasures of Attalus to
the commonalty. He proposed to use this new wealth to provide
seed, stock, and agricultural implements for the resettlement
of the land.
His movement was speedily entangled in the complexities of
the Koman electoral system — ^without a simple and straight-
forward electoral method, all popular movements in all ages
necessarily become entangled and maddened in constitutional
intricacies, and almost as necessarily lead to bloodshed. It was
needed, if his work was to go on, that Tiberius Gracchus should
continue to be tribune, and it was illegal for him to be tribune
twice in succession. He overstepped the bounds of legality, and
stood for the tribuneship a second time; the peasants who
came in from the countryside to vote for him came in armed;
the cry that he was aiming at a tyranny, the cry that had long
ago destroyed Mselius and Manlius, was raised in the Senate,
the friends of "law and order" went to the Capitol in state, ac-
companied by a rabble of dependents armed with staves and
bludgeons; there was a conflict, or .rather a massacre of the
revolutionaries, in which nearly three hundred people were
killed, and Tiberius Gracchus was beaten to death with the
fragments of a broken bench by two Senators.
Thereupon the Senators attempted a sort of counter-revolu-
tion, and proscribed many of the followers of Tiberius Gracchus ;
but the state of public opinion was so sullen and threatening
that this movement was dropped and Scipio Nasica, who was
implicated in the death of Tiberius, though he occupied the
position of pontifex maximus and should have remained in
Rome for the public sacrifices which were the duties of that
official, went abroad to avoid trouble.
The uneasiness of Italy next roused Scipio Africanus the
Younger to propose the enfranchisement of all Italy. But he
died suddenly before he could carry the proposal into efEect.
Then followed the ambiguous career of Oaius Gracchus, the
brother of Tiberius, who followed some tortuous "policy" that
still exercises the mind of historians. He increased the burthens
of taxation laid upon the provinces, it is supposed with the idea
of setting the modern financiers (the Equites) against the sena-
torial landowners. He gave the fonser th^ newly bequeathed
432 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
taxes of Asia to farm, and, what is worse, he gave them control
of the special courts spt up to prevent extortion. He started
enormous public works and particularly the construction of
new roads, and he is accused of making a political use of the
contracts. He revived the proposal to enfranchise Italy. He
increased the distribution of subsidized cheap com to tlie Koman
citizens. . . . Here we cannot attempt to disentangle his
schemes, much less to judge him. But that his policy was offen-
sive to the groups that controlled the Senate there can be no
doubt whatever. He was massacred by the champions of "law
and order," with about three thousands of his followers, in
the streets of Rome in 121 b.c. His decapitated head was
carried to the Senate on the point of a pike.
(A reward of its weight in gold, says Plutarch, , had been
offered for this trophy : and its captor, acting in the true spirit
of a champion of "big business," filled the brain-case with lead
on its way to the scales.)
"In spite of these prompt firm measures the Senate was not
to enjoy the benefits of peace and the advantages of a control
of the imperial resources for long. Within ten years the people
were in revolt again.
In 118 B.C. the throne of Numidia, the semi-barbaric king-
dom that had arisen in North Africa upon the ruins of the
civilized Carthaginian power, was seized by a certain able
Jugurtha, who had served with the Roman armies in Spain, and
had a knowledge of the Roman character. He provoked the
military intervention of Rome. But the Romans found that
their military power, under a Senate of financiers and land-
lords, was very different from what it had been even in the days
of the younger Scipio Africanus. "Jugurtha bought over the
Commissioners sent out to watch him, the Senators charged
with their prosecution, and the generals in command against
him." ^ There is a mistaken Roman proverb : "pecunia- non
olet" (money does not stink), for the money of Jugurtha stank
even in Rome. There was an angry agitation; and a capable
soldier of lowly origin, Marius, was carried to the consulship
(107 B.C.) on the wave of popular indignation. Marius made
no attempt on the model of the Gracchi to restore the backbone
of the army by rehabilitating the yeoman class. He was a
professional soldier with a high standard of eflBciency and a
" Ferrero.
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 433
disposition to take short cuts. He simply raised troops from
among tlie poor, whether countrymen or townsmen, paid them
well, disciplined them thoroughly, and (106 b.c.) ended the
seven years' war with Jugurtha by bringing that chieftain in
chains to Eome. It did not occur to anybody that incidentally
Marius had also created a professional army with no interest
to hold it together but its pay. He then held on to the consul-
ship more or less illegally for several years, and in 102 and 101
B.C. repelled a threatening move of the Germans (who thus
appear in our history for the first time), who were raiding
through Gaul towards Italy. He gained two victories; one on
Italian soil. He was hailed as the saviour of his country, a
second Camillus (100 b.c).
The social tensions of the time mocked that comparison with
Camillus. The Senate benefited by the greater energy in for-
eign affairs and the increased military efficiency that Marius
had introduced, but the sullen, shapeless discontent of the mass
of the people was still seeking some effective outlet. The rich
grew richer and the poor poorer. It was impossible to stifle
the consequences of that process for ever by political trickery.
The Italian people were still unenfranchised. Two extreme
democratic leaders, Satuminus and Glaucia, were assassinated,
but that familiar senatorial remedy failed to assuage the popu-
lace on this occasion. In 92 b.c. an aristocratic official, Rutilius
Eufus, who had tried to restrain the exactions of the financiers
in Asia Minor, was condemned on a charge of corruption so
manifestly trumped up that it deceived no one ; and in 91 b.c,
Livius Drusus, a newly elected tribune of the people, who was
making capital out of the trial of Eutilius Kufus, 'was assassi-
nated. He had proposed a general enfranchisement of the
Italians, and he had foreshadowed not only another land law,
but a general abolition of debts. Yet for all this vigour on
the part of the senatorial usurers, landgrabbers, and forestallers,
the hungry and the anxious were still insurgent. The murder
of Drusus was the last drop in the" popular cup ; Italy blazed into
a desperate insurrection.
There followed two years of bitter civil war, the Social War.
It was a war between the idea of a united Italy and the idea of
the rule of the Eoman Senate. It was' not a "social" war in
the modem sense, but a war between Rome and her Italian
allies (allies = Socii). "Eoman generals, trained in the tradi-
434 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tions of colonial warfare, marched ruthlessly up and down Italy,
burning farms, sacking towns, and carrying off men, women,
and children, to sell them in the open market or work thena
in gangs upon their estates." ^ Marius and an aristocratic gen-
eral, Sulla, who had been with him in Africa and who was
his bitter rival, both commanded on the side of Rome. But
though the insurgents experienced defeats and looting, neither
of these generals brought the war to an end. It was ended in
a manner (89 b.c.) by the practical surrender of the Roman
Senate to the idea of reform. The spirit was taken out of the
insurrection by the concession of their demands "in principle" ;
and then as soon as the rebels had dispersed, the usual cheating
of the new voters, by such methods as we have explained in § 1
of this chapter, was resumed.
By the next year (88 b.c.) the old round had begun again. It
was mixed up with the personal intrigues of Marius and Sulla
against each other ; but the struggle had taken on another com-
plexion through the army reforms of Marius, which had created
a new type of legionary, a landless professional soldier with no
interest in life but pay and plunder, and with no feeling of loy-
alty except to a successful general. A popular tribune, Siil-
picius, was bringing forward some new laws affecting debt, and
the consuls were dodging the storm by declaring a suspension
of public business. Then came the usual resort to violence, and
the followers of Sulpicius drove the consuls from the forum.
But here it is that the new forces which the new army had
made possible came into play. King Mithridates of Pontus,
the Hellenized king of the southern shores of the Black Sea
east of Bithynia, was pressing Eome into war. One of the
proposed laws of Sulpicius was that Marius should command
the armies sent against this Mithridates. Whereupon Sulla
marched the army he had commanded throughout the Social
War to Eome, Marius and Sulpicius fled, and a new age, an
age of military pronunciamentos, began.
Of how Sulla had himself made commander against Mithri-
dates and departed, and of how legions friendly to Marius then
seized power, how Marius returned to Italy and enjoyed a
thorough massacre of his political opponents and died, sated,
of fever, we cannot tell in any detail. But one measure dur-
ing the Marian reign of terror did much to relieve the social
* Ferrero.
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 485
tension, and that was the abolition of three-quarters of all out-
standing debts. Nor can we tell here how Sulla made a dis-
creditable peace with Mithridates (who had massacred a
hundred thousand Italians in Asia Minor) in order to bring his
legions back to Eome, defeat the Marians at the battle of the
Collins Gate of Kome, and reverse the arrangements of Marius.
Sulla restored law and order by the proscription and execu-
tion of over five thousand people. He desolated large parts of
Italy, restored the Senate to power, repealed many of the
recent laws, though he was unable to restore the cancelled
burden of debt, and then, feeling bored by politics and having
amassed great riches, he retired with an air of dignity into
private life, gave himself up to abominable vices, and so pres^
ently died, eaten up with some disgusting disease produced
by debauchery.^
Political life in Italy was not so much tranquillized as
stunned by the massacres and confiscations of Marius and Sulla.
The scale upon which this history is planned will not permit us
to tell here of the great adventurers who, relying more and
more on the support of the legions, presently began to scheme
and intrigue again for dictatorial power in Kome. In 73 b.c.
all Italy was terrified by a rising of the slaves, and particularly
of the gladiators, led by a gladiator from Thessaly, Spartacus.
He and seventy others had fled out from a gladiatorial "farm"
at Capua. Similar risings had already occurred in Sicily.
The forces under Spartacus necessarily became a miscellaneous
band drawn from east and west, without any common idea
except the idea of dispersing and getting home ; nevertheless, he
held out in southern Italy for two years, using the then ap-
parently extinct crater of Vesuvius for a time as a natural
fortress. The Italians, for all their love of gladiatorial display,
failed to appreciate this conversion of the whole country into
an arena, this bringing of the gladiatorial sword to the door,
and when at last Spartacus was overthrown, their terror changed
to frantic cruelty, six thousand of his captured followers were
•Plutarch. To which, however, G. M. adds the following note: "It is
generally believed that Sulla died through bursting a blood-vessel in a fit
of temper. The story of abominable vices seems to be only the regular
slander of the Roman mob against anyone who did not live in public."
436 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
crucified — ^long. milea of nailed and drooping victims — along
the Appian Way.
Here we cannot deal at any length with LucuUus, who in-
vaded Pontus and fought Mithridates, and brought the culti-
vated cherry-tree to Europe; nor can we tell how ingeniously
Pompey the Great stole the triumph and most of the prestige
Lucullus had won in Armenia beyond Pontus. LucuUus, like
Sulla, retired into an opulent private life, but with more ele-
gance and with a more gracious end. We cannot relate in any
detail how Julius Csesar accumulated reputation in the west,
by . conquering Gaul, defeating the German tribes upon the
Rhine, and pushing a punitive raid across the Straits of Dover
into Britain. More and more important grow the legions;
less and less significant are the Senate and the assemblies of
Eome. But there is a certain grim humour about the story
of Crassus that we cannot altogether neglect.
This Crassus was a great money-lender and forestaller. He
was a typical man of the new Equestrian type, the social equiva-
lent of a modem munition profiteer. He first grew rich by
buying up the property of those proscribed by Sulla. His
earliest exploits in the field were against Spartacus, whom
finally he crushed by great payments and exertions after a
prolonged and expensive campaign. He then, as the outcome of
complicated bargains, secured the command in the east and
prepared to emulate the glories of Lucullus, who had pushed east
from Pergamum and Bithynia into Pontus, and of Pompey,
who had completed the looting of Armenia.
His experiences serve to demonstrate the gross ignorance
with which the Romans were conducting their affairs at that
time. He crossed the Euphrates, expecting to find in Persia
another Hellenized kingdom like Pontus. But, as we have
already intimated, the great reservoirs of nomadic peoples that
stretched round from the Danube across Russia into Central
Asia, had been raining back into the lands between the Caspian
Sea and the Indus that Alexander had conquered for Hellenism.
Crassus found himself against the "Scythian" again; against
mobile tribes of horsemen led by a monarch in Median costume.^
The particular variety of "Scythian" he encountered was called
the Parthian. It is possible that in the Parthians a Mongo-
lian (Turanian) element was now mingled with the Aryan
' Plutarch.
FROM TIBEBIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 437
strain J but the campaign of Crassus beyond the Euphrates is
curiously like the campaign of Darius beyond the Danube ; there
is the same heavy thrusting of an infantry force against elu-
sive light horsemen. But Crassus was less quick than Darius
to realize the need of withdrawal, and the Parthians were bet-
ter bowmen than the Scythians Darius met. They seem to
have had some sort of noisy projectile of unusual strength and
force, something different from an ordinary arrow. -^ The cam-
paign culminated in that two days' massacre of the hot, thirsty,
hungry, and weary Roman legions which is known as the
battle of'Carrhse (53 e.g.). They toiled through the sand, charg-
ing an enemy who always evaded their charge and rode round
them and shot them to pieces. Twenty thousand of them were
killed, and ten thousand marched on eastward as prisoners into
slavery in Iran.
What became of Crassus is not clearly known. There is a
story, probably invented for our moral benefit and suggested
by his usuries, that he fell alive into the hands of the Parthians
and was killed by having molten gold poured down his throat.
But this disaster has a very great significance indeed to our
general history of mankind. It serves to remind us that from
the Ehine to the Euphrates, all along to the north of the Alps
and Danube and Black Sea, stretched one continuous cloud
of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, whom the statescraft
of imperial Rome was never able to pacify and civilize, nor
her military science subdue. We have already called atten-
tion to a map showing how the Second Babylonian Empire,
the Chaldean Empire, lay like a lamb in the embrace of the
Median power. In exactly the same way the Roman Empire
lay like a lamb in the embrace of this great crescent of outer
barbarians. Not only was Rome never able to thrust back
or assimilate that superincumbent crescent, but she was never
able to organize the Mediterranean Sea into a secure and
*The bow. was probably the composite bow, so-called because it is made
of several plates (five or so) of horn, like the springs of a carriage: it
discharges a high-speed arrow with a. twang. This was the bow the Mon-
gols used. This short composite bow (it was not a long bow) was quite
old in human experience. It was the bow of Odysseus ; the Assyrians had
it in a modified form. It went out in Greece, but it survived as
the Mongol bow. It was quite short, very stiff to pull, with a flat
trajectory, a remarkable range, and a great noise (cp. Homer's
reference to the twang of the bow). It went out in the Mediterranean
because the climate was not good for it, and because there were insuffi-
cient animals to supply the horn. — J. L. M.
438
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 439
orderly system of communication between one part of her em-
pire and another. Quite unknown as yet to Eome, the Mon-
golian tribes from North-eastern Asia, the Huns and their
kin, walled back and driven out from China by the Tsi and
Han dynasties, were drifting and pressing westward, mixing
with the Parthians, the Scythians, the Teutons and the like,
or driving them before them.
Never at any time did the Romans succeed in pushing their
empire beyond Mesopotamia, and upon Mesopotamia their hold
was never very secure. Before the close of the republic that
power of assimilation which had been the secret of their success
was giving way to "patriotic" exclusiveness and "patriotic"
greed. Eome plundered and destroyed Asia Minor and Baby-
lonia, which were the necessary basis for an eastward extension
to India, just as she had destroyed and looted Carthage and
so had no foothold for extension into Africa, and just as she had
destroyed Corinth and so cut herself off from an easy way into
the heart of Greece. Western European writers, impressed
by the fact that later on Rome Romanized and civilized Gaul
and South Britain and restored the scene of her earlier devasta-
tions in Spain to prosperity, are apt to ignore that over far
greater areas to the south and east her influence was to weaken
and so restore to barbarism the far wider conquests of Hellenic
civilization.
§ 5
But among the politicians of Italy in the first century b.c.
there were no maps of Germany and Russia, Africa and Cen-
tral Asia, and no sufficient intelligence to study -them had they
existed. Rome never developed the fine curiosities that sent
Hanno and the sailors of Pharaoh Necho down the coasts of
Africa. When, in the first century B.C., the emissaries of the
Han dynasty reached the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, they
found only stories of a civilization that had receded. The
memory of Alexander still lived in these lands, but of Rome
men only knew that Pompey had come to the western shores
of the Caspian and gone away again, and that Crassus had
been destroyed^ Eome was pre-occupied at home. What men-
tal energy remained over in the Roman citizen from the at-
tempt to grow personally rich and keep personally safe wa?
440 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
intent upon the stratagems and strokes and counter-strokes of
the various adventurers who were now manifestly grappling for
the supreme power.
It is the custom of historians to treat these struggles with
extreme respect. In particular the figure of Julius Caesar
is set up as if it were a star of supreme brightness and impor-
tance in the history of mankind. Yet a dispassionate considerar
tion of the known facts fails altogether to justify this demi-
god theory of Caesar. ISTot even that precipitate wrecker of
splendid possibilities, Alexander the Great, has been so magni-
fied and dressed up for the admiration of careless and uncritical
readers. There is a type of scholar who, to be plain, sits and
invents marvellous world policies for the more conspicuous
figures in history with the merest scraps of justification or with
no justification at all. We are told that Alexander planned
the conquest of Carthage and Rome and the complete subjuga-
tion of India and that only his death shattered these schemes.
What we know for certain is that he conquered the Persian
Empire, and never went far beyond its boundaries; and tha:t
when he was supposed to be making these vast and noble plans,
he was in fact indulging in such monstrous antics as his mourn-
ing for his favourite Hephsestion, and as his main occupation he
was drinking himself to death. So, too, Julius Caesar is cred-
ited with the intention of doing just that one not impossible
thing which would have secured the Roman Empire from its
ultimate collapse — namely, the systematic conquest and civiliza-
tion of Europe as far as the Baltic and the Dnieper. He was
to have marched upon Germany, says Plutarch, through Par-
thia and Scythia, round the north of the Caspian and Black Seas.
Yet the fact we have to reconcile with this wise and magnificent
project is that at the crest of his power, Csesar, already a bald,
middle-aged man, past the graces and hot impulses of youthful
love, spent the better part of a year in Egypt, feasting and
entertaining himself in amorous pleasantries with the Egyptian
queen, Cleopatra. And afterwards he brought her with him to
Rome, where her influence over him was bitterly resented.
Such complications with a woman mark the elderly sensualist
or sentimentalist — he was fifty-four at the commencement of
the affaire— ^Tather than the master-ruler of men.
On the side of the superman idea of Csesar, we have to count
a bust in the Naples Museum. It represents a fine- and in-
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 44.1
tellectual face, very noble in its expression, and we can couple
with that the story that his head, even at birth, was nnnsually
large and finely formed. But there is really no satisfying
evidence that this well-known bust does represent Csesar, and
it is hard to reconcile its austere serenity with the reputation
for violent impulse and disorderliness that clung to him. Other
busts of a quite different man are also, with more probability,
ascribed to him.
There can be little doubt that he was a dissolute and extrava-
gant young man — ^the scandals cluster thick about his sojourn
in Bithynia, whither he. fled from Sulla ; he was the associate
of the reprobate Clodius and the conspirator Catiline, and
there is nothing in his political careey to suggest any aim
higher or remoter than his own advancement to power, and all
the personal glory and indulgence that power makes possible.
We will not attempt to tell here of. the turns and devices of his
career. Although he was of an old patrician family, hescame
into politics as the brilliant darling of the people. He spent
great sums and incurred heavy debts, to provide public festival?
on the most lavish scale. He opposed the tradition of SuUa, and
cherished the memory of Marius, who vras his uncle by mar*-
riage. For a time he worked in conjunction with Crassus and
Pompey, but after the death of Crassus he and Pompey camf
into conflict. By 49 b.c. he and Pompey, with their legions,
he from the west and Pompey from the east, were fighting
openly for predominance in the Roman state. He had broken
the law by bringing his legions across the Rubicon, which was
the boundary between his command "and Italy proper. At the
battle of Pharsalos in Thessaly (48 b.c), Pompey was routed,
and, fleeing to Egypt, was murdered, leaving Csesai more
master of the Roman world than ever Sulla had been. ■
He was then created dictator for ten years in 46 B.C., and
early in 45 b.c. he was made dictator for life. This was mon-
archy ; if not hereditary monarchy, it was at least electoral life
monarchy. It was unlimited opportunity to do his best for the
world. And by the spirit and quality of his use of this dicta-
torial power during these four years we are bound to judge
him. A certain reorganization of local administration he ef-
fected, and he seems to have taken up what was a fairly obvi-
ous necessity of the times, a project for the restoration of the
two murdered seaports of Corinth and Carthage, whose destruc-
442
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tion had wrecked the sea-life of the Mediterranean. But much
more evident was the influence of Cleopatra and Egypt upon
his mind. Like Alexander hefore him, his head seems to have
been turned by the king-god tradition, assisted no doubt in his
case by the adulation of that charming hereditary goddess,
Cleopatra. We find evidence of exactly that same conflict upon
the score of divine pretensions, between him and his personal
friends, that we have already recorded in the case of Alexander.
So far as the Hellenized east was concerned, the paying of divine
honours to rulers
was a familiar idea;
but it was still re-
pulsive to the linger-
ing Aryanism of
Home.
Antony, who had
been his second in
command at Phar-
salos, was one of the
chief of his flat-
terers. Plutarch de-
scribes a scene at the
public games in
which Antony tried
to force a crown
upon Caesar, which
Csesar, after a little
coyness and in face
of the manifested
displeasure of the
crowd, refused. But
he had adopted th^
ivory sceptre and throne, which were the traditional insignia
of the ancient kings of Rome. His image was carried amidst
that of the gods in the opening pompa of the arena, and his
statue was set up in a temple with an inscription, "To the
Unconquerable God!" Priests even were appointed for his
godhead. These things are not the symptoms of great-minded-
ness, but of a common man's megalomania. Csesar's record
of vulgar scheming for the tawdriest mockeries of personal
■worship is a silly and shameful record j it is incompatilale with
JVLIV5 C^5'AR
(■fiom the l^aples hast)
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 443
the idea that he was a wise and wonderful superman setting
the world to rights.
Finally (44 b.c.) he was assassinated by a group of his own
friends and supporters, to whom these divine aspirations had
become intolerable. He was beset in the Senate, and stabbed
in three and twenty places, dying at the foot of the statue of
his fallen rival Pompey the Great. The scene marks the com-
plete demoralization of the old Roman governing body. Brutus,
the ringleader of the murderers, would have addressed the
senators, but, confronted by this crisis, they were scuttling off
in every direction. For the best part of a day Eome did not
know what to make of this event; the murderers marched
about with their bloody weapons through an undecided city,
with no one gainsaying them and only a few joining them;
then public opinion turned against them, some of their houses
were attacked, and they had to hide and fly for their lives.
'§ 6
But tlie trend of things was overwhelmingly towards mon-
archy. For thirteen years more the struggle of personalities
went on. One single man is to be noted as inspired by broad
ideas and an ambition not entirely egoistic, Cicero. He was a
man of modest origin, whose eloquence and literary power had
won him a prominent place in the Senate. He was a little
tainted by the abusive tradition of Demosthenes, nevertheless
he stands out, a noble and pathetically ineffective figure, plead-
ing with the now utterly degenerate, base, and cowardly Sen-
ate for the high ideals of the Eepublic. He was a writer of
great care and distinction, and the orations and private letters
he has left us make him one of the most real and living figures
of this period to the modern reader. He was proscribed and
killed in 43 b.c, the year after the murder of Julius Cseaar,
and his head and hands were nailed up in the Roman forum.
Octavian, who became at last the monarch of Rome, seems to
have made an effort to save Cicero; that murder was certainly
not his crimes.
Here we cannot trace out the tangle of alliances and be-
trayals that ended in the ascendancy of this Octavian, the
adopted heir of Julius Csesar. The fate of the chief figures
is interwoven with that of Cleopatra.
444 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
After the death of Csesar, she set -herself to capture the emo-
tions and vanity of Antony, a much younger man than Caesar,
^."ith whom she was probably already acquainted. For a time
Octavian and Antony and a third figure, Lepidus, divided the
Roman world just as Caesar and Pompey had divided it before
their final conflict. Octavian took the hardier west, and con-
solidated his power; Antony had the more gorgeous east —
and Cleopatra. To Lepidus fell that picked bone, Carthaginian
Africa. He seems to have' been a good man of good traditions,
set upon the restoration of Carthage rather than upon wealth
or personal vanities. The mind of Antony succumbed to those
same ancient ideas of divine kingship that had already proved
too much for the mental equilibrium of Julius Csesar. In the
company of Cleopatra he gave himself up to love, amusements,
and a dream of sensuous glory, until Octavian felt that the time
was ripe to end these two Egyptian divinities.
In 32 B.C. Octavian induced ^he Senate to depose Antony
from the command of the east, and proceeded to attack him. A
great naval battle at Actium (31 b.c.) was decided by the un-
expected desertion of Cleopatra with sixty ships in the midst of
the fight. It is quite impossible for us to decide now whether
this was due to premeditated treachery or to the sudden whim
of a charming woman. The departure of these ships threw
the fleet of Antony into hopeless confusion, which was in-
creased by the headlong flight of this model lover in pursuit.
He went off in a swift galley after her without informing his
commanders. He left his followers to fight and die as they
thought fit, and for a time they were incredulous that he had
gone. The subsequent encounter of the two lovers and their
reconciliation is a matter for ironical speculation on the part
of Plutarch.
Octavian's net closed slowly round his rival. It is not im-
probable that there was some sort of understanding between
Octavian and Cleopatra, as perhaps in the time of Julius Caesar
there may have been betweien the queen and Antony. Antony
gave way to much mournful posturing, varied by love scenes,
during this last stage of his little drama. For a time he posed
as an iinitator of the cynic Timon, as one who had lost all
faith in mankind, though one may think that his deserted
sailors at Actium had better reason for such an attitude. Fi-
nally he found himself and Cleopatra besieged by Octavian in
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 445
Alexandria. There were 8ome sallies and minor successes, and
Antony was loud with challenges to Octavian to decide the mat-
ter by personal combat. Being led to believe that Cleopatra
had committed suicide, this star of romance stabbed himself,
but so ineffectually as to die lingeringly, and he was carried
off to expire in her presence (30 e.g.) .
Plutarch's account of Antony, which was derived very
largely from witnesses who had seen and known him, describes
him as of heroic mould. He is compared to the demigod Her-
cules, from whom indeed he claimed descent, and also to the
Indian Bacchus. There is a disgusting but illuminating de-
scription of a scene in the Senate when he attempted to speak
while drunk, and was overtaken by one of the least dignified
concomitants of intoxication. .. i.;
For a little while Cleopatra still clung to life, and perhapp
to the hope that .she might reduce Octavian to the same divine
role that had already been played by Julius Csesar and Antony.
She had an interview with Octavian, in which she presented
herself as beauty in distress and very lightly clad. But when
it became manifest that Octavian lacked the godlike spark,
and that his care for her comfort and welfare was dictated
chiefly by his desire to exhibit her in a triumphal procession
through the streets of Kome, she also committed suicide. An
asp was smuggled to her past the Eoman sentries, concealed in
a basket of figs, and by its fangs she died.
Octavian seems to have been almost entirely free from the
divine aspirations of Julius Csesar and Antony. He was neither
God nor romantic hero; he was a man. He was a man of far
greater breadth and' capacity than any other player in this last
act of the Eepublican drama in Eome. All things considered,
he was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to Rome
at that time. He "voluntarily resigned the extraordinary pow-
ers which he had held since 43,. and, to quote his own words,
'handed over the republic to the control of the senate and the
people of Eome.' The old constitutional machinery was once
more set in motion; the senate, assembly, and magistrates re-
sumed their functions, and Octavian himself was hailed as the
'restorer of the commonwealth and the champion of freedom.'
It was not so easy to determine what relation he himself, the
actual master of the Eoman world, should occupy towards
this revived republic. His abdication, in any real sense of
446 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the word, would have simply thrown everything back into
confusion. The interests of peace and order required that he
should retain at least the substantial part of his authority; and
this object was in fact accomplishedj and the rule of the em-
perors founded in a manner which has no parallel in history.
Any revival of the kingly title was out of the question, and
Octavian himself expressly refused the dictatorship. Nor was
any new office created or any new official title invented for his
benefit. But by senate and people he was invested according
to the old constitutional forms with certain powers, as many
citizens had been before him, and so took his place by the side
of the lawfully appointed magistrates of the republic; only,
to mark his pre-eminent dignity, as the first of them all, the
senate decreed that he should take as an additional cognomen
that of 'Augustus,' while in common parlance he was hence-
forth styled Princeps, a simple title of courtesy, familiar to
republican usage and conveying no other idea than that of a
recognized primacy and precedence over his fellow-citizens.
The ideal sketched by Oicero in his De Reyublicw, of a constitu-
tional president of a free republic, was apparently realized;
but it was only in appearance. !For in fact the special preroga-
tives conferred upon Octavian gave him back in substance the
autocratic authority he had resigned, and as between the re-
stored republic and its new princeps the balance of power was
overwhelmingly on the side of the latter." ^
§ 7
In this manner it was that Eoman republicanism ended in a
princeps or ruling prince, and the first great experiment in a
sejf-goveming community on a scale larger than that of tribe
or city, collapsed and failed.
The essence of its failure was that it could not sustain unity.
In its early stages its citizens, both patrician and plebeian, had
a certain tradition of justice and good faith, and of the loyalty
of all citizens to the law, and of the goodness of the law for all
citizens ; it clung to this idea of the importance of the law and
6f law-abidingness nearly into the first century b.c. But the
unforeseen invention and development of money, the tempta-
tions and disruptions of imperial expansion, the entanglement of
*H. S. Jones in The Enoyclopcedia Britannioa, article "Rome."
FROM TIBERIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR 447
electoral methods, weakened and swamped this tradition by pre-
senting old issues in new disguises under which the judgment
did not recognize them, and by enabling men to be loyal to the
professions of citizenship and disloyal to its spirit. The bond
of the Eoman people had always been a moral rather than a
religious bond ; their religion was sacrificial and superstitious ;
it embodied no such great ideas of a divine leader and of a
sacred mission as Judaism was developing. As the idea of
citizenship failed and faded before the new occasions, there
remained no inner, that is to say no real, unity in the system
at all. Every man tended more and more to do what was right
in his own eyes.
Under such conditions there was no choice between chaos and
a return to monarchy, to the acceptance of some chosen in-
dividual as the one unifying will in the state. Of course in
that return there is always hidden the expectation that the
monarch will become as it were magic, will cease to be merely
a petty human being, and will think and feel as something
greater and more noble, as indeed a state personage; and of
course monarchy invariably fails to satisfy that expectation.
We shall glance at the extent of this failure in the brief review
we shall presently make of the emperors of Rome. We shall
find at last one of the more constructive of these emperors,
Constantino the Great, conscious of his own inadequacy as a
unifying power, turning to the faith, the organization, and
teaching network of one of the new religious movements in
the empire, to supply just that permeating and correlating
factor in men's minds that was so manifestly wanting.
With Cffisar, the civilization of Europe and Western Asia
went back to monarchy, and, through monarchy, assisted pres-
ently by organized Christianity, it sought to achieve peace,
righteousness, happiness, and world order for close upon eighteen
centuries. Then almost suddenly it began reverting to repub-
licanism, first in one country and then in another, and, assisted
by the new powers of printing and the press and of organized
general education, and by the universalist religious ideas in
which the world had been soaked for generations, it seems now
to have resumed again the effort to create a republican world-
state and a world-wide scheme of economic righteousness which
the Romans had made so prematurely and in which they had
so utterly and disastrously failed.
448
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
FROM TIBEEIUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR ^49
Certain conditions, we are now beginning to perceive, are
absolutely necessary to such a creation; conditions which it is
inconceivable that any pre-Christian Eoman could have regarded
as possible. We may still think the attainment of these condi-
tions a vastly laborious and difficult and uncertain undertaking,
but we understand that the attempt must be made because no
other prospect before us gives even a promise of happiness or
self-respect or preservation of our kind. The first of these con-
ditions is that there should be a common political idea in the
minds of all men, an idea of the state thought of as the personal
possession of each individual and as the backbone fact of his
scheme of duties. In the early days of Kome, when it was a
little visible state, twenty miles square, such notions could be
and were developed in children in their homes, and by what
they saw and heard of the political lives of their fathers ; but in
a larger country such as Home had already become before the
war with Pyrrhus, there was a need of an organized teaching
of the history, of the main laws, and of the general intentions
of the state towards everyone if this moral unity was to be
maintained. But the need was never realized, and no attempt
at any such teaching was ever made. At the time it could
not have been made. It is inconceivable that it could have
been made. The knowledge was not there, and there existed
no class from which the needed teachers could be drawn and
no conception of an organization for any such systematic moral
and intellectual training as the teaching organization of Chris-
tianity, with its creeds and catechisms and sermons and con-
firmations, presently supplied.
Moreover, we know nowadays that even a universal education
of this sort supplies only the basis for a healthy republican
state. Next to education there must come abundant, prompt,
and truthful information of what is going on in the state, and
frank and free discussion of the issues of the time. Even nowa-
days these functions are performed only very imperfectly and
badly by the press we have and by our publicists and politicians ;
but badly though it is done, the thing is done, and the fact
that it is done at all argues that it may ultimately be done well.
In the Eoman state it was not even attempted. The Roman
citizen got his political facts from rumour and the occasional
orator. He stood wedged in the forum, imperfectly hearing a
450 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
distant speaker. He probably misconceived every issue upon
which he voted.
And of the monstrous ineffectiveness of the Roman voting
system we have already written.
Unable to surmount or remove these obstacles to a sane and
effective popular government, the political instincts of the Ro-
man mind turned towards monarchy. But it was not monarchy
of the later European type, not hereditary monarchy, which
was now installed in Rome. The princeps was really like an
American war-time president, but he was elected not for four
years but for life, he was able to appoint senators instead of
being restrained by an elected senate, and with a rabble pop-
ular meeting in the place of the house of representatives. He
was also pontifex maximus, chief of the sacrificial priests, a
function unknown at Washington; and in practice it became
usual for him to designate and train his successor and. to select
for that honour a son or an adopted son or a near relation whom
he could trust The power of the princeps was in itself enor-
mous to entrust to the hands of a single man without any ade-
quate checks, but it was further enhanced by the tradition of
monarch-worship which had now spread out from Egypt over
the entire Hellenized east, and which was coming to Rome in
the head of every Oriental slave and immigrant. By natural
and imperceptible degrees the idea of the god-emperor came
to dominate the whole Romanized world.
Only one thing presently remained to remind the god-emperor
that he was mortal, and that was the army. The god-emperor
was never safe upon the Olympus of the Palatine Hill at Rome.
He was only secure while he was the beloved captain of his
legions. And as a consequence only the hardworking emperors
who kept their legions active and in close touch with themselves
had long reigns. The sword overhung the emperor and spurred
him to incessant activity. If he left things to his generals, one
of those generals presently replaced him. This spur was per-
haps the redeeming feature of the Roman Imperial system. In
the greater, compacter, and securer empire of China there was
not the same need of legions, and so there was not the same
swift end for lazy or dissipated or juvenile monarchs that over-
took sugh types in Rome,
2XVIII
THE C^SAES BETWEEIST THE SEA AND THE GEEAT
PLAINS OF THE OLD WOELD
§ 1. ^ Short Catalogue of Emperors. § 2. Roman Civiliza-
tion at its Zenith. § 3. Limitations of the Roman Mimd.
§ 4. The Stir of the Great Plains. § 5. The Western (true
Roman) Empire Crumples Up. § 6. The Eastern {revived
Hellenic) Empire.
WESTEEN writers are apt, through their patriotic pre-
dispositions, to overestimate the organizatic^n,- civiliz-
ing work, and security of the absolute monarchy that
established itself in Eome after the accession of Augustus Caesar.
From it we derive the political traditions of Britain, France,
Spain, Germany, and Italy, and these countries loom big in the
perspectives of European writers. By the scale of a world his-
tory the Eoman Empire ceases to seem so overwhelmingly im-
portant. It lasted about four centuries in all before it was com-
pletely shattered. The Byzantine Empire was no genuine con-
tinuation of it ; it was a resumption of the Hellenic Empire of
Alexander; it spoke Greek; its monarch had a Eoman title no
doubt, but so for that matter had the late Tsar of Bulgaria.
During its four centuries of life the empire of Eome had phases
of division and complete chaos ; its prosperous years, if they are
gathered together and added up, do not amount in all to a
couple of centuries. Compared with the quiet steady expan-
sion, the security, and the civilizing task of the contemporary
Chinese Empire, or with Egypt between 4000 and 1000 b.c,
or with Sumeria before the Semitic conquest, this amounts to
a mere incident in history. The Persian Empire of Cyrus
again, which reached from the Hellespont to the Indus, had as
high a standard of civilization ; and its homelands remained un-
conquered and fairi^ prosperous for over two hundred years.
451
452 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Its predecessor, the Median Empire, had endured for half a
century. After a brief submergence by Alexander the Great,
it rose again as the' Seleucid Empire, which endured for some
centuries. The Seleucid dominion shrank at last to the west
of the Euphrates, and became a part of the Roman Empire;
but Persia, revived by the Parthians as a new Persian Empire,
first under the Arsaeids and then under the Sassanids, outlived
the empire of Rome. The Sassanids repeatedly carried war
into the Byzantine Empire, and held the line of the Euphrates
steadfastly. In 616 a.d. under Chosroes II, they were holding
Damascus, Jerusalem, and Egypt, and threatening the Helles-
pont. But there has been no tradition to keep alive the glories
of the Sassanids. The reputation of Rome has flourished
through the prosperity of her heirs. The tradition of Rome
is greater than its reality.
History distinguishes two chief groups of Roman emperors
who were great administrators. The first of these groups
began with: —
Augustus Caesar (27 b.c. to 14 a.d.), the Octavian of the
previous section, who worked hard at the reorganization of the
provincial governments and at financial reform. He estab-
lished a certain tradition of lawfulness and honesty in the
bureaucracy, and he restrained the more monstrous corruptions
and tyrannies by giving the provincial citizen the right to ap-
peal to Csesar. But he fixed the European boundaries of the
empire along the Rhine and Danube, so leaving Germany, which
is the necessary backbone of a safe and prosperous Europe, to
barbarism ; and he made a similar limitation in the east at the
Euphrates, leaving Armenia independent, to be a constant bone
of contention with the Arsaeids and Sassanids. It is doubtful
whether he considered that he was fixing the final boundaries
of the empire along these lines, or whether he thought it desir-
able to consolidate for some years before any further attempts
at expansion.
Tiberius (14 to 37 a.d.) is also described as a capable ruler,
but he became intensely unpopular in. Rome, and it would seem
that he was addicted to gross and abominable vices. But his
indulgence in these and his personal tyrannies and cruelties did
not interfere with the general prosperity of the empire. It is
difficult to judge him ; nearly all our sources of information are
manifestly hostile to him.
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 453
454 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Caligula (37 to 41 a.d.) was insane, but tlie empire carried
on during four years of eccentricity at its head. Finally lie
was murdered in his palace by his servants, and there seems to
have been an attempt to restore the senatorial government, an
attempt which was promptly suppressed by the household
legions.
Claudius (41 to 54 a.d.), the uncle of Caligula, upon whom
the choice of the soldiers fell, was personally uncouth, but he
seems to have been a hardworking and fairly capable admin-
istrator. He advanced the westward boundary of the empire by
annexing the southern half of Britain. He was poisoned by
Agrippina, the mother of his adopted son, Nero, and a woman
of great charm and force of character,
liTero (54 to 68 a.d.), like Tiberius, is credited with mon-
strous vices and cruelties, but the empire had acquired sufficient
momentum to carry on through his fourteen years of power.
He certainly murdered his devoted but troublesome mother and
his wife, the latter as a mark of devotion to a lady, Poppsea,
who then married him; but the domestic infelicities of the
Csesars are no part of our present story. The reader greedy
for criminal particulars must go to the classical source, Sue-
tonius. These various Csesars and their successors and their
womenkind were probably no worse essentially than most weak
and passionate human beings, but they had no real religion,
being themselves gods ; they had no wide knowledge on which
to build high ambitions, their women were fierce and often
illiterate, and they were under no restraints of law or custom.
They were surrounded by creatures ready to stimulate their
slightest wishes and to translate their vaguest impules into
action. What are mere passing black thoughts and
angry impulses with most of us became therefore deeds
with them. Before a man condemns 'Nero as a different
species of being from himself, he should examine his own secret
thoughts very carefully. Nero became intensely unpopular in
Eome, and it is interesting to note that he became unpopular
not because he murdered and poisoned his intimate relations,
but because there was an insurrection in Britain under a
certain Queen Boadicea, and the Eoman forces suffered a great
disaster (61 a.d.), and because there was a destanictive earth-
quake in Southern Italy. The Eoman population, true to its
Etruscan streak, never religiotis and always superstitious, did
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 455
not mind a wicked Csesar, but it did object strongly to an
unpropitious one. The Spanish legions rose in insurrection
under an elderly general of seventy-three, Galba, whom they
acclaimed emperor. He advanced upon Rome carried in
a litter. Nero, hopeless of support, committed suicide
(68 A.D.).
Galba, however, was only one of a group of would-be em-
perors. The generals in command of the Rhine legions, the
Palatine troops, and the eastern armies, each attempted to
seize power. Rome saw four emperors in a year, Galba, Otho,
Vitellus, and Vespasian; the fourth, Vespasian (69-79 a.d.),
from the eastern command, had the firmest grip, and held and
kept the prize. But with Nero the line of Caesars bom or
adopted ended. Casar ceased to be the family name of the
Roman emperors and became a title, Divus Csesar, the Caesar
god. The monarchy took a step forward towards orientalism by
an increased insistence upon the worship of the ruler.
Vespasian (69 to 79 a.d.) and his sons Titus (79 a.d.) and
Domitian (81 a.d.) constitute, as it were, a second dynasty,
the Flavian; then after the assassination of Domitian came
a group of emperors related to one another not by blood, but
by adoption, the adoptive emperors. Nerva (96 a.d.) was the
first of this line, and Trajan (98 a.d.) the second. They were
followed by the indefatigable Hadrian (117 a.d.), Antoninus
Pius (138. A.D.), and Marcus Aurelius (161 to 180 a.d.).
Under both the Flavians and the Antonines the boun-
daries of the empire crept forward again. North Britain
was annexed in 84 a.d., the angle of the Rhine and
Danube was filled in, and what is now Transylvania was made
into a new province, Dacia. Trajan also invaded Parthia
and annexed Armenia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia. Under his
rule the empire reached its maximum extent. Hadrian, his
successor, was of a cautious and retractile disposition. He aban-
doned these new eastern conquests of Trajan's, and he also
abandoned North Britain. He adopted the Chinese idea of
the limiting wall against barbarism, an excellent idea so long
as the pressure of population on the imperial side of the wall
is greater than the pressure from without, but worthless other-
wise. He built Hadrian's wall across Britain, and a palisade
between the Rhine and the Danube. The full tide of Roman
expansion was past, and in the reign of his successor the North
456 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
European frontier was already actively on the defensive against
the aggression of Teutonic and Slavic tribes.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus is one of those figures in history
about vehich men differ widely and intensely. To some critics
he seems to have been a priggish person; he dabbled in re-
ligions, and took a pleasure in conducting priestly ceremonies
in priestly garments" — a disposition offensive to common men
—and they resent his alleged failure to restrain the wickedness
of his wife Faustina. The stories of his domestic infelicity,
however, rest on no very good foundations, though certainly
his son Commodus was a startling person for a good home to
produce. On the other hand, he was unquestionably a devoted
and industrious emperor, holding social order together through
a series of disastrous years of vile weather, great floods, failing
harvests and famine, barbaric raids and revolts, and at last a
terrible universal pestilence. Says T. W. Farrar, quoted in the
Encyclopwdia Britannica, "He regarded himself as being, in
fact, the servant of all. The registry of the citizens, the sup-
pression of litigation, the elevation of public morals, the care
of minors, the retrenchment of public expenses, the limitation
of gladiatorial games and shows, the care of roads, the restora-
tion of senatorial privileges, the appointment of none but worthy
magistrates, even the regulation of street traffic, these and
numberless other duties so completely absorbed his attention
that, in spite of indifferent health, they often kept him at
severe labour from early morning till long after midnight. His
position, indeed, often necessitated his presence at games and
shows; but on these occasions he occupied himself either in
reading, or being read to, or in writing notes. He was one
of those who held that nothing should be done hastily, and
that few crimes were worse than waste of time."
But it is not by these industries that he is now remembered.
He was one of the greatest exponents of the Stoical philosophy,
and in his Meditations, jotted down in camp and court, he has
put so much of a human soul on record as to raise up for
himself in each generation a fresh series of friends and admirers.
With the death of Marcus Aurelius this phase of unity and
comparatively good government came to an end, and his son
Commodus inaugurated an age of disorder. Practically the
empire had been at peace within itself for two hundred years.
THE C^SAES BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 457
Now for a hundred years the student of Koman history must
master the various criminology of a number of inadequate em-
perors, while the frontier crumbled and receded under bar-
barian pressure. One or two names only seem to be the names
of able men : such were Septimius Severus, Aurelian, and Pro-
bus. Septimius Severus was a Carthaginian, and his sister
was never able to master Latin, She conducted her Eoman
household in the Punic language, which must have made Cato
the elder turn in his grave. The rest of the emperors of this
period were chiefly adventurers too unimportant to the general
scheme of things for us to note. At times there were separate
emperors ruling in different parts of the distracted empire.
From our present point of view the Emperor Decius, who was
defeated and killed during a great raid of the Goths into
Thrace in 251 A.r)., and the Emperor Valerian, who, togethel
with the great city of Antioch, was captured by the Sassanid
Shah of Persia in 260 a.d., are worthy of notice because they
mark the insecurity of the whole Eoman system, and the char-
acter of the outer pressure upon it. So, too, is Claudius, "the
Conqueror of the Goths," because he gained a great victory
over these people at Nish in Serbia (270 a.d.), and because he
died, like Pericles, of the plague.
Through all these centuries intermittent pestilences were
playing a part in weakening races and altering social condi-
tions, a part that has still to be properly worked out by histo-
rians. There was, for instance, a great plague throughout the
empire between the years 164 and 180 a.d. in the reign of the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It probably did much to disor-
ganize social life and prepare the way for the troubles that fol-
lowed the accession of Commodus. This same pestilence dev-
astated China, as we shall note in § 4 of this chapter. Con-
siderable fluctuations of climate had also been going on in the
first and second centuries, producing stresses and shiftings of
population, whose force historians have still to appraise. But
before we go on to tell of the irruptions of the barbarians and
the attempts of such later emperors as Diocletian (284 a.d.)
and Oonstantine the Great (312 a.d.) to hold together the heav-
ing and splitting vessel of the state, we must describe something
of the conditions of human life in the Eoman Empire during
its two centuries of prosperity.
458 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 2
The impatient reader of history may be disposed to count
the two centuries of order between 27 b.c. and 180 a.d. as
among the wasted opportunities of mankind. It was an age
of spending rather than of creation, an age of architecture and
trade in which the rich grew richer and the poor poorer and
the soul and spirit of man decayed. Looked at superficially,
as a man might have looked at it from an aeroplane a couple
of thousand feet in the air, there was a considerable flourish
of prosperity. Everywhere, from York to Cyrene and from
Lisbon to Antioch, he would have noted large and well-built
cities, with temples, theatres, amphitheatres, markets, and the
like ; thousands of such cities, supplied by great aqueducts and
served by splendid high roads, whose stately remains astonish
us to this day. He would have noted an abundant cultivation,
and have soared too high to discover that this cultivation was
the grudging work of slaves. Upon the Mediterranean and the
Eed Sea a considerable traflSc would be visible ; and the sight of
two ships alongside each other would not at that altitude reveal
the fact that one was a pirate and plundering the other.
And even if the observer came -down to a closer scrutiny,
there would still be much accumulated improvement to note.
There had been a softening of manners and a general refinement
since the days of Julius Caesar. With this there had been a
real increase of humane feeling. During the period of the
Antonines, laws for the protection of slaves from extreme cruelty
came into existence, and it was no longer permissible to sell them
to the gladiatorial schools. !N"ot only were the cities outwardly
more splendidly built, but within the homes of the wealthy
there had been great advances in the art of decoration. The
gross feasting, animal indulgence, and vulgar display of the
earlier days of Roman prosperity were now tempered by a
certain refinement. Dress had become richer, finer, and more
beautiful. There was a great trade in silk with remote China,
for the mulberry-tree and the silkworm had not yet begun to
move west. By the time silk had ended its long and varied
journey to Eome it was worth its weight in gold. Yet it was
used abundantly, and there was a steady flow of the precious
metals eastward in exchange. There had been "very considerable
advances in gastronomy and the arts of entertainment. Petro-
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 459
niua describes a feast given by a wealthy man under the early
Caesars, a remarkable succession of courses, some delicious, some
amazing, exceeding anything that even the splendours and
imagination of modern New York could produce; and the
festival was varied by music and by displays of tight-rope
dancing, juggling, Homeric recitations, and the like. There
was a considerable amount of what we may describe as "rich
men's culture" throughout the empire. Books were far more
plentiful than they had been before the time of the Csesars.
Men prided themselves upon their libraries, even when the cares
and responsibilities of property made them too busy to give
their literary treasures much more than a passing examination.
The knowledge of Greek spread eastward and of Latin west-
ward, and if the prominent men of this or that British or
Gallic city lacked any profound Greek culture themselves, they
could always turn to some slave or other, whose learning had
been guaranteed of the highest quality by the slave-dealer, to
supply the deficiency.
The generation of Cato had despised Greeks and the Greek
language, but now all that was changed. The prestige of Greek
learning of an approved and settled type was as high in the
Rome of Antoninus Pius as it was in the Oxford and Cam-
bridge of Victorian England. The Greek scholar received the
same mixture of unintelligent deference and practical contempt.
There was a very considerable amount of Greek scholarship,
and of written criticism and commentary. Indeed there was so
great an admiration for Greek letters as almost completely
to destroy the Greek spirit; and the recorded observations of
Aristotle were valued so highly as to preclude any attempt to
imitate his organization of further inquiry. It is noteworthy
that while Aristotle in the original Greek fell like seed upon
stony soil in the Roman world, he was, in Syrian and Arabic
translations, immensely stimulating to the Arabic civilization
of a thousand years later. Nor were the aesthetic claims of
Latin neglected in this heyday of Greek erudition. As Greece
had her epics and so forth, the Romans felt that they, too, must
have their epics. The age of Augustus was an age of imitative
literature. Virgil in the yEneid set himself modestly but reso-
lutely, and with an elegant sort of successfulness, to parallel
the Odyssey and Iliad.
All this wide-spread culture of the wealthy householder is to
460 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the credit of the early Eoman Empire, and Gibbon makes the
most of it in the sunny review of the age of the Antonines with
which he opens his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His
design for that great work demanded a prelude of splendour and
tranquillity. But he was far too shrewd and subtle not to
qualify his apparent approval of the conditions he describes.
"Under the Eoman Empire," he writes, "the labour of an in-
dustrious and ingenious people was variously but incessantly
employed in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table,
their houses, and their furniture, the favourites of fortune united
every refinement of convenience, of elegance, and of splendour,
whatever could soothe their pride, or gratify their sensuality.
Such refinements, under the odious name of luxury, have been
severely arraigned by the moralists of every age ; and it might
perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, as well as happiness,
of mankind; if all possessed the necessaries, and none the super-
fluities of life. But in the present imperfect condition of
society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems
to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution
of property. The diligent mechanic and the skilful artist,
who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive
a voluntary tax from the possessors of land ; and the latter are
prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with
whose produce they may purchase additional pleasure. This
operation, the particular effects of which are felt in every soci-
ety, acted with much more diffuse energy in the Roman world.
The provinces would soon have been exhausted of their wealth,
if the manufactures and commerce of luxury had not insen-
sibly restored to the industrious subjects the sums which were
exacted from them by the arms and authority of Home."
And so on, with a sting of satire in every fold of the florid
description.
If we look a little more widely than a hovering aeroplane can
do at the movement of races upon the earth, or a little more
closely than an inspection of streets, amphitheatres, and ban-
quets goes, into the souls and thoughts of men, we shall find
that this impressive display of material prosperity is merely
the shining garment of a polity blind to things without and
things within, and blind to the future. If, for instance, we
compare the two centuries of Eoman ascendancy and opportu-
nity, the first and second centuries a.d., with the two centuries
THE CJESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 461
of Greek and Hellenic life beginning about 466 b.c. with the
supremacy of Pericles in Athens, we are amazed by — we can-
not call it an inferiority, it is a complete absence of science. The
incuriousness of the Eoman rich and the Roman rulers was more
massive and monumental even than their architecture.
In one field of knowledge particularly we might have ex-
pected the Eomans to have been alert and enterprising, and
that was geography. Their political interests demanded a
steadfast inquiry into the state of affairs beyond their fron-
tiers, and yet that inquiry was never made. There is prac-
tically no literature of Eoman travel beyond the imperial limits,
no such keen and curious accounts as Herodotus gives of the
Scythians, the Africans, and the like. There is nothing in
Latin to compare with the early descriptions of India and
Siberia that are to be found in Chinese. The Eoman legions
went at one time into Scotland, yet there remains no really
intelligent account of Picts or Scots, much less any glance
at the seas beyond. Such explorations as those of Hanno or
Pharaoh KTecho seem to have been altogether beyond the scope
of the Eoman imagination. It is probable that after the de-
struction of Carthage the amount of shipping that went out
into the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar fell to incon-
siderable proportions. Still more impossible in this world of
vulgar wealth, enslaved intelligence, and bureaucratic rule was
any further development of the astronomy and physiography of
Alexandria. The Eomans do not seem even to have inquired
what manner of men wove the silk and prepared the spices or
collected; the amber and the pearls that came into their mar-
kets. Yet the channels of inquiry were open and easy; path-
ways led in every direction to the most convenient "jumping-off
places" for explorers it is possible to imagine.
"The most remote countries of the ancient world were ran-
sacked to supply the pomp and delicacy of Eome. The forests
of Scythia afforded some valuable furs. Amber was brought
overland from the shores of the Baltic to the Danube, and the
barbarians were astpnished at the price which they received in
exchange for so useless a commodity. There was a considerable
demand for Babylonian carpets and other manufactures of the
East ; but the most important branch of foreign trade was car-
ried on with Arabia and India. Every year, about the time of
the summer solstice, a fleet of a hundred and twenty vessels
*62 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
sailed from Myos-liomios, a port of Egypt on the Eed Sea. By
the periodical assistance of the monsoons, they traversed the
ocean in about forty days. The coast of Malabar, or the island
of Ceylon, was the usual term of their navigation, and it was
in those markets that the merchants from the more remote
countries of Asia expected their arrival. The return of the
fleet to Egypt was fixed to the months of Diecember or January,
and as soon as their rich cargo had been transported, on the
backs of camels, from the Red Sea to the Nile, and had de-
scended that river as far as Alexandria, it was poured, without
delay, into the capital of the empire." ^
Yet Eome was content to feast, exact, grow rich, and watch
its gladiatorial shows without the slightest attempt to learn
anything of India, China, Persia or Scythia, Buddha or Zoro-
aster, or about the Huns, the Negroes, the people of Scandi-
navia, or the secrets of the western sea.
When we realize the uninspiring quality of the social atmos-
phere which made this indifference possible, we are able to
account for the failure of Eome during its age of opportunity
to develop any physical or chemical science, and as a conse-
quence to gain any increased control over matter. Most of the
physicians in Eome were Greeks and many of them slaves — for
the Roman wealthy did not even understand that a bought mind
is a spoilt mind. Yet this was not due to any want of natural
genius among the Eoman people; it was due entirely to their
social and economic conditions. Erom the Middle Ages to the
present day Italy has produced a great number of brilliant
scientific men. And one of the most shrewd and inspired of
scientific writers was an Italian, Lucretius, who lived between
the time of Marius and Julius Csesar (about 100 b.c. to about
55 B.C.). This amazing man was of the quality of Leonardo da
Vinci (also an Italian) or Newton. He wrote a long Latin poem
about the processes of Nature, De Eerum Naturia,, in which he
guessed with astonishing insight about the constitution of matr
ter and about the early history of mankind. Osbom in his Old
Stone Age quotes with admiration long passages from Lucretius
about primitive man, so good and true are they to-day. But this
was an individual display, a seed that bore no fruit. Eoman
science was still-born into a suffocating atmosphere of vile
wealth and military oppression. The true figure to represent
'Gibbon.
THE CJESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 463
the classical Eoman attitude to science is not Lucretius, but
that Koman soldier who hacked Archimedes to death at the
storming of Syracuse.
And if physical and biological science wilted and died on
the stony soil of Roman prosperity, political and social science
never had a chance to germinate. Political discussion would
have been treason to the emperor, social or economic inquiry
would have threatened the rich. So Rome, until disaster fell
upon her, never examined into her own social health, never
questioned the ultimate value of her hard officialism. Conse-
quently, there was no one who realized the gravity of her failure
to develop any intellectual imagination to hold her empire
together, any general education in common ideas that would
make men fight and work for the empire as men will fight and
work for a dear possession. But the rulers of the Roman
Empire did not want their citizens to fight for anything in any
spirit at all. The rich had eaten the heart out of their general
population, and they were content with the meal they had
made. The legions were filled with Germans, Britons, ITumid-
ians, and the like; and until the very end the wealthy Romans
thought they could go on buying barbarians to defend them
against the enemy without and the rebel poor within. How
little was done in education by the Romans is shown by an
account of what was done. Says Mr. H. Stuart Jones, "Julius
Caesar bestowed Roman citizenship on 'teachers of the liberal
arts'; Vespasian endowed professorships of Greek and Latin
oratory at Rome; and later emperors, especially Antoninus
Pius, extended the same benefits to the provinces. Local enter-
prise and munificence were also devoted to the cause of educa-
tion; we learn from the correspondence of the younger Pliny
that public schools were founded in the towns of Northern Italy.
But though there was a wide diffusion of knowledge under the
empire, there was no true intellectual progress. Augustus, it is
true,, gathered about him the most brilliant writers of his
time, and the debut of the new monarchy coincided with the
Golden Age of Roman literature ; but this was of brief duration,
and the beginnings of the Christian era saw the triumph of
classicism and the first steps in the decline which awaits all
literary movements which lock to the past rather than the
future."
There is a diagnosis of the intellectual decadence of the age
464 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
in a treatise upon the sublime by a Greek writer who wrote
somewhen in the second, third, or fourth century a.d., and
who may possibly have been Longinus Philologus, which states
very distinctly one manifest factor in the mental sickness of the
Roman world. He is cited by Gibbon : "The sublime Longinus,
who, in somewhat a later period and in the court of a Syrian
queen, Zenobia, preserved the spirit of ancient Athens, ob-
serves and laments the degeneracy of his contemporaries, which
debased their sentiments, enervated their courage, and depressed
their talents. 'In the same manner,' says he, 'as some children
always remain pigmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely
confined, thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and
habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves or
to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we admire in
the ancients, who, living under a popular government, wrote
with all the same freedom as they acted.' "
But this critic grasped only one aspect of the restraints
upon mental activity. The leading-strings that kept the Koman
mind in a permanent state of infantilism constituted a double
servitude ; they were economic as well as political. The account
Gibbon gives of the life and activities of a certain Herodes
Atticus, who lived in the time of Hadrian, shows just how
little was the share of the ordinary citizen in the outward mag-
nificence of the time. This Atticus had an immense fortune,
and he amused himself by huge architectural benefactions to
various cities. Athens was given a racecourse, and a theatre of
cedar, curiously carved, was set up there to the memory of his
wife ; a theatre was built at Corinth, a racecourse was given to
Delphi, baths to Thermopylae, an aqueduct to Oanusium, and so
on and so on. One is struck by the spectacle of a world of
slaves and common people who were not consulted and over
whose heads, without any participation on their part, this rich
man indulged in his displays of "taste." Numerous inscrip-
tions in Greece and Asia still preserve the name of Herodes
Atticus, "patron and benefactor," who ranged about the empire
as though it was his private garden, conmiemorating himself
by these embellishments. He did not confine himself to splendid
buildings. He was also a philosopher, though none of his wis-
dom has survived. He had a large villa near Athens, and there
philosophers were welcome guests so long as they convinced their
patron of the soundness of their pretensions, received his dis-
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 465
courses witli respect, and did not offend him by insolent
controversy.
The world, it is evident, was not progressing during these two
centuries of Eoman prosperity. But was it happy in its stagna-
tion? There are signs of a very unmistakable sort that the
great mass of human beings in the empire, a mass numbering
something between a hundred and a hundred and fifty millions,
was not happy, was probably very acutely miserable, beneath
its outward magnificence. True there were no great wars and
conquests within the empire, little of famine or fire or sword
to afflict mankind ; but, on the other hand, there was a terrible
restraint by government, and still more by the property of
the rich, upon the free activities of nearly everyone. Life for
the great majority who were neither rich nor official, nor the
womankind and the parasites of the rich and oflBcial, must have
been laborious, tedious, and lacking in interest and freedom
to a degree that a modem mind can scarcely imagine.
Three things in particular may be cited to sustain the opinion
that this period was a period of widespread unhappiness. The
first of these is the extraordinary apathy of the population to
political events. They saw one upstart pretender to empire
succeed another with complete indifference. Such things did
not seem to matter to them ; hope had gone. When presently
the barbarians poured into the empire, there was nothing but the
legions to face them. There was no popular uprising against
them at all. Everywhere the barbarians must have been out-
numbered if only the people had resisted. But the people did
not resist. It is manifest that to the bulk of its inhabitants the
Koman Empire did not seem to be a thing worth fighting for.
To the slaves and common people the barbarian probably seemed
to promise more freedom and less indignity than the pompous
rule of the imperial official and grinding employment by the
rich. The looting and burning of palaces and an occasional
massacre did not shock the folk of the Roman underworld as it
shocked the wealthy and cultured people to whom we owe such
accounts as we have of the breaking down of the imperial sys-
tem. Great numbers of slaves and common people probably
joined the barbarians, who knew little of racial or patriotic
prejudices, and were openhanded to any promising recruit. No
doubt in many cases the population found that the barbarian
was a worse infliction even than the tax-gatherer and the slave-
466 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
driver. But tliat discovery came too late for resistance or the
restoration of the old order.
And as a second symptom that points to the same conclusion
that life was hardly worth living for the poor and the slaves and
the majority of people during the age of the Antonines, we
must reckon the steady depopulation of the empire. People
refused to have children. They did so, we suggest, hecause
their homes were not safe from oppression, because in the case
of slaves there was no security that the hushand and wife would
not he separated, because there was no pride nor reasonable
hope in children any more. In modem states the great breed-
ing-ground has always been the agricultural countryside where
there is a more or less secure peasantry; but under the Koman
Empire the peasant and the small cultivator was either a wor-
ried debtor, or he was held in a network of restraints that made
him a spiritless serf, or he had been ousted altogether by the
gang production of slaves.
A third indication that this outwardly flourishing period was
one of deep unhappiness and mental distress for vast multitudes,
is to be found in the spread of new religious movements through-
out the population. We have seen how in the case of the little
country of Judea a whole nation may be infected by the persua-
sion that life is unsatisfactory and wrong, and that something
is needed to set it right. The mind of the Jews, as we know,
had crystallized about the idea of the Promise of the One True
God and the coming of a Saviour or Messiah. Rather different
ideas from these were spreading through the Eoman Empire.
They were but varying answers to one universal question:
"What must we do for salvation?" A frequent and natural
consequence of disgust with life as it is, is to throw the imagina-
tion forward to an after-life, which is to redeem all the miseries
and injustices of this one. The belief in such compensation is
a great opiate for present miseries. Egyptian religion had long
been saturated with anticipations of immortality, and we have
seen how central was that idea to the cult of Serapis and Isis
at Alexandria. The ancient mysteries of Demeter and Orpheus,
the mysteries of the Mediterranean race, revived and made a
sort of theocrasia v?ith these new cults.
A second great religious movement was Mithraism, a de-
velopment of Zoroastrianism, a religion of very ancient Aryan
origin, traceable back to the Indo-Iranian people before they
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 467
split into Persians and Hindus. We cannot here examine its
mysteries in any detail.^ Mithras was a god of light, a Sun
of Kighteousness, and in the shrines of the cult he was always
represented as slaying a sacred bull whose blood was the seed of
life. Suffice it that, complicated with many added ingredients,
this worship of Mithras came into the Roman Empire about
the time of Pompey the Great, and began to spread very widely
under the Csesars and Antonines. Like the Isis religion, it
promised immortality. Its followers were mainly slaves, sol-
diers, and distressed people. In its methods of worship, in the
burning of candles before the altar and so forth, it had a certain
superficial resemblance to the later developments of the ritual
of the third great religious movement in the Eoman world,
Christianity.
Christianity also was a doctrine of immortality and salvation,
and it, too, spread at first chiefly among the lowly and unhappy.
Christianity has been denounced by modern writers as a "slave
religion." It was. It took the slaves and the downtrodden, and
it gave them hope and restored their self-respect, so that they
stood up for righteousness like men and faced persecution and
torment. But of the origins and quality of Christianity we will
tell more fully in a later chapter.
§ 3
We have already shown reason for our statement that the
Roman imperial system was a very unsound political growth
indeed. It is absurd to write of its statecraft ; it had none. At
its best it had a bureaucratic administration which kept the
peace of the world for a time and failed altogether to secure it.
Let us note here the main factors in its failure.
The clue to all its failure lies in the absence of any free
mental activity and any organization for the increase, develop-
ment, and application of knowledge. It respected wealth and
it despised science. It gave government to the rich, and im-
agined that wise men could be bought and bargained for in the
slave markets when they were needed. It was, therefore, a
colossally ignorant and unimaginative empire. It foresaw
nothing.
It had no strategic foresight, because it was blankly ignorant
'See Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity,
468 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of geography and ethnology. It knew nothing of the conditions
of Eussia, Central Asia, and the East. It was content to keep
the Ehine and Danube as its boundaries, and to make no effort
to Eomanize Germany. But we need only look at the map of
Europe and Asia showing the Roman Empire to see that a will-
ing and incorporated Germany was absolutely essential to the
life and security of Western Europe. Excluded, Germany be-
came a wedge that needed only the impact of the Hunnish ham-
mer to split up the whole system.
Moreover, this neglect to push the boundaries northward to
the Baltic left that sea and the North Sea as a region of ex-
periment and training and instruction in seamanship for the
J^orthmen of Scandinavia, Denmark, and the Frisian coast.
But Eome went on its way quite stupidly, oblivious to the growth
of a newer and more powerful piracy in the north.
The same unimaginative quality made the Eomans leave this
seaways of the Mediterranean undeveloped. When presently
the barbarians pressed down to the warm water, we read of no
swift transport of armies from Spain or Africa or Asia to the
rescue of Italy and the Adriatic coasts. Instead, we see the
Vandals becoming masters of the western Mediterranean with-
out so much as a naval battle.
The Eomans had been held at the Euphrates by an array of
mounted archers. It was clear that as the legion was organized
it was useless in wide open country, and it should have been
equally clear that sooner or later the mounted nomads of east
Germany, south Eussia or Parthia were bound to try conclu-
sions with the empire. But the Eomans, two hundred years
after Caesar's time, were still marching about, the same drilled
and clanking cohorts they had always been, easily ridden round
and shot to pieces. The empire had learnt nothing even from
Carrhse.
The incapacity of the Eoman imperialism for novelty in
methods of transport again is amazing. It was patent that their
power and unity depended upon the swift movement of troops
and supplies from one part of the empire to another. The re-
public made magnificent roads; the empire never improved
upon them. Four hundred years before the Antonines, Hero
of Alexandria had made the first steam-engine. Beautiful
records of such beginnings of science were among the neglected
treasures of the rich men's libraries throughout the imperial
THE C^SA&S BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 469
domains. They were seed lying on stony ground. The armies
and couriers of Marcus Aurelius drudged along the roads ex-
actly as the armies of Scipio Af ricanus had done thrfee centurie;3
before them.
The Eoman writers were always lamenting the effeminacy
of the age. It was their favourite cant. They recognized that
the free men of the forest and steppes and desert were harder
and more desperate fighters than their citizens, but the natural
corollary of developing the industrial power of their accumula-
tions of population to make a countervailing equipment never
entered their .heads. Instead they took the barbarians into
their legions, taught them the arts of war, marched them about
the empire, and returned them, with their lesson well learnt,
to their own people.
In view of these obvious negligences, it is no wonder that
the Romans disregarded that more subtle thing, the soul of the
empire, altogether, and made no effort to teach or traiu or win
its common people into any conscious participation with its
life. Such teaching or training would indeed have run counter
to all the ideas of the rich men and the imperial officials. They
had made a tool of religion; science, literature, and education
they had entrusted to the care of slaves, who were bred and
trained and sold like dogs or horses; ignorant, pompous, and
base, the Roman adventurers of finance and property who cre-
ated the empire, lorded it with a sense of the utmost security
while their destruction gathered without the empire and within.
By the second and third centuries a.d. the overtaxed and
overstrained imperial machine was already staggering towards
its downfall.
§ 4
And now it is necessary, if we are to understand clearly the
true situation of the Roman Empire, to turn our eyes to the
world beyond its northern and eastern borders, the world of
the plains, that stretches, with scarcely a break, from Holland
across Germany and Russia to the mountains of Central Asia
and Mongolia, and to give a little attention to the parallel em-
pire in China that was now consolidating and developing a
far tougher and more enduring moral and intellectual unity
than the Romans ever achieved.
470 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"It is the practice," says Mr. E. H. Parker, "even amongst
our most highly educated men in Europe, to deliver sonorous
sentences about being 'masters of the world,' 'bringing all na-
tions of the earth under her sway,' and so on, when in reality
only some corner of the Mediterranean is involved, or some
ephemeral sally into Persia and Gaul. Cyrus and Alexander,
Darius and Xerxes, Caesar and Pompey, all made very interest-
ing excursions, but they were certainly not on a larger scale
or charged with greater human interest than the campaigns
which were going on at the other end of Asia. Western civiliza-
tion possessed much in art and science for which China never
cared, but, on the other hand, the Chinese developed a historical
and critical literature, a courtesy of demeanour, a luxury of
clothing, and an administrative system of which Europe might
have been proud. In one word, the history of the Far East is
quite as interesting as that of the Ear West. It only requires
to be able to read it. When we brush away contemptuously
from our notice_ the tremendous events which took place on the
plains of Tartary, we must not blame the Chinese too much for
declining to interest themselves in the doings of what to them
appear insignificant states dotted round the Mediterranean and
Caspian, which, at this time, was practically all the world of
which we knew in Europe." ^
We have already mentioned (in Cha.p. XIV and elsewhere)
the name of Shi Hwang-ti, who consolidated an empire much
smaller, indeed, than the present limits of China, but still
very great and populous, spreading from the valleys of the
Hwang-ho and the Yang-tse. He became king of Ch'in in 246
B.C. and emperor in 220 B.C., and he reigned until 210 b.c,
and during this third of a century he effected much the same
work of consolidation that Augustus Casar carried out in Home
two centuries later. At his death there was dynastic trouble
for four years, and then (206 b.c.) a fresh dynasty, the Han,
established itself and ruled for two hundred and twenty-nine
years. The opening quarter century of the Christian era was
troubled by a usurper; then what is called the Later Han
Dynasty recovered power and ruled for another century and- a
half until China, in the time of the Antonines, was so dev-
astated by an eleven-year pestilence as to fall into disorder.
This same pestilence, we may note, also helped to produce a
' B. H. Parker, A Thousamd Years of the Tartars.
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 471
472 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
century of confusion in the Western world (see, § 1),.,, But
altogether until this happened, for more than four hundred
years Central China was generally at peace, and on the whole
wen governed, a cycle of strength and prosperity unparalleled
by anything in the experience of the Western world.
Only the first of the Han monarchs continued the policy of
Shi Hwang-ti against the literati. His successor restored the
classics, for the old separatist tradition was broken, and in the
aniformity of learning throughout the empire lay, he saw, the
cement of Chinese unity. While the Eoman world was still
blind to the need of any universal mental organization, the Han
emperors were setting up a uniform system of education and
of literary degrees throughout China that has maintained the
intellectual solidarity of that great and always expanding coun-
try into modem times. The bureaucrats of Kome were of the
most miscellaneous origins and traditions; the bureaucrats of
China were, and are still, made in the same mould, all mem-
bers of one tradition. Since the Han days China has experi-
enced great vicissitudes of political fortune, but they have never
changed her fundamental character; she has been divided, but
she has always recovered her unity; she has been conquered,
and she has always absorbed and assimilated her conquerors.
But from our present point of view, the most important conse-
quences of this consolidation of China under Shi Hwang-ti and
the Hans was in its reaction upon the unsettled tribes of the
northern and western border of China. Throughout the disor-
dered centuries before the time of Shi Hwang-ti, the Hiung-
nu or Huns had occupied Mongolia and large portions of North-
em China, and had raided freely into China and interfered
freely in Chinese politics. The new power and organization of
the Chinese civilization began to change this state of affairs
for good and all.
We have already, in our first account of Chinese beginnings,
noted the existence of these Huns, It is necessary now to ex-
plain briefly who and what they were. Even in using this word
Hun as a general equivalent for the Hiung-nu, we step' on to
controversial ground. In our accounts of the development of
the Western world we have had occasion to name the Scythians,
and to explain the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between
Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Modes, Persians, Parthians, Goths,
and other more or less nomadic, more or less Aryan peoples
THE CiESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 473
■who drifted to and fro in a great arc between the Danube and
Centml Asia. While sections of the Aryans were moving south
and acquiring and developing civilization, these other Aryan
peoples were developing mobility and nomadism; they were
learning the life of the tent, the wagon, and the herd. They
were learning also to use milk as a food basis, and were prob-
ably becoming less agricultural, less disposed to take even
snatch crops, than they had been. Their development was
being aided by a slow change in climate that was replacing the
swamps and forests and parklands of South Eussia and Central
Asia by steppes, by wide grazing lands that is, which
favoured a healthy, unsettled lif e^ and necessitated an an-
nual movement between summer and winter pasture. These
peoples had only the lowest political forms; they split up,
they mingled together; the various races had identical social
habits ; and so it is that the difficulty, the impossibility of sharp
distinctions between them arises. Now the case of the Mon-
golian races to the north and north-west of the Chinese civiliza-
tion is very parallel. There can be little doubt that the Hiung-
nu, the Huns, and the later people called the Mongols, were
all very much the same people, and that the Turks and Tartars
presently branched off from this same drifting Mongolian popu-
lation. Kalmucks and Buriats are later developments of thfe
same strain. Here we shall favour the use of the word "Hun"
as a sort of general term for these tribes, just as we have been
free and wide in our use of "Scythian" in the West.
The consolidation of China was a very serious matter for
these Hunnish peoples. Hitherto their overflow of population
had gone adventuring southward into the disorders of divided
China as water goes into a sponge. Now they found a wall
built against them, a firm government, and disciplined armies
cutting them off from the grass plains. And though the wall
held them back, it did not hold back the Chinese. They were
increasing and multiplying through these centuries of peace,
and as they increased and multiplied, they spread steadily with
house and plough wherever the soil permitted. They spread
westward into Tibet and northward and north-westwardly, per-
haps to the edge of the Gobi desert, They spread into the homes
and pasturing and hunting-grounds of the Hunnish nomads,
exactly as the white people of the United States spread west-
ward into the hunting-grounds of the Eed Indians. And in
474 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
spite of raid and massacre, they were just as invincible because
they had the pressure of numbers and a strong; avenging gov-
ernment behind them. Even without the latter support the
cultivating civilization of China has enormous powers of
permeation and extension. It has spread slowly and continu-
ously for three thousand years. It is spreading in Manchuria
and Siberia to-day. It roots deeply where it spreads.
Partly the Huns were civilized and assimilated by the Chi-
nese. The more northerly Huns were checked and their super-
abundant energies were turned westward. The southern Huns
were merged into the imperial population.
If the reader will examine the map of Central Asia, he will
see that very great mountain barriers separate the Southern,
Western, and Eastern peoples of Asia. (But he should be
wary of forming his ideas from a map upon Mercator's projec-
tion, which enormously exaggerates the areas and distances of
Northern Asia and Siberia.) He will find that from the cen-
tral mountain masses three great mountain systems radiate east-
ward ; the Himalayas going south-eastward, south of Tibet, the
Kuen Lun eastward, north of Tibet, and the Thien Shan north-
eastward to join the Altai mountains. Further to the north is
the great plain, still steadily thawing and drying. Between
the Thien Shan and the Kuen Lun is an area, the Tarim Basin
(= roughly Eastern Turkestan), of rivers that never reach
the sea, but end in swamps and intermittent lakes. This basin
was much more fertile in the past than it is now. The moun-
tain barrier to the west of this Tarim Basin is high, but not
forbidding; there are many practicable routes downward into
Western Turkestan, and it is possible to travel either along the
northern foothills of the Kuen Lun or by the Tarim valley
westward from China to Kashgar (where the roads converge),
and so over the mountains to Kokand, Samarkand, and Bok-
hara. Here then is the natural meeting-place in history of
Aryan and Mongolian. Here or round by the sea.
We have already noted how Alexander the Great came to
one side of the barrier in 329 b.o. High among the mountains
of Turkestan a lake preserves his name. Indeed, so living is
the tradition of his great raid, that almost any stone ruin in
Central Asia is still ascribed to "Iskander." After this brief
glimpse, the light of history upon this region fades again, and
when it becomes bright once more it is on the eastern and not
THE CJESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 475
upon the ■western side. Far away to the east Shi Hwang-ti had
routed the Huns and walled them out of China proper. A por-
tion of these people remained in the north of China, a remnant
which was destined to amalgamate with Chinese life under the
Hans, but a considerable section had turned westward and
(second and first centuries b.c.) driven before them a kindred
people called the Yueh-Chi, driving them from the eastern to
the western extremity of the Kuen Lun, and at last right over
the barrier into the once Aryan region of Western Turkestan.^
These Yueh-Chi conquered the slightly Hellenized kingdom of
Bactria, and mixed with Aryan people there. Later on these
Yueh-Chi became, or were merged with Aryan elements into, a
people called the Indo-Scythians, who went on down the Khyber
Pass and conquered northern portions of India as far as Benares
(100-150 A.D.), wiping out the last vestiges of Hellenic rule
in India. This big splash over of the Mongolian races west-
ward was probably not the first of such splashes, but it is the
first recorded splash. In the rear of the Yueh-Chi were the
Huns, and in the rear of the Huns and turning them now north-
ward was the vigorous Han Dynasty of China. In the reign
of the greatest of the Han monarchs, Wu-Ti (140-86 b.c), the
Huns had been driven northward out of the whole of Eastern
Turkestan or subjugated, the Tarim Basin swarmed with Chi-
nese settlers, and caravans were going over westward with
silk and lacquer and jade to trade for the gold and silver of
Armenia and Rome.
The splash over of the Yueh-Chi is recorded, but it is fairly
evident that much westward movement of sections of the Hun-
nish peoples is not recorded. From 200 b.c. to 200 a.d, the
Chinese Empire maintained a hard, resolute, advancing front
towards nomadism, and the surplus of the nomads drifted
steadily west. There was no such settling down behind a final
frontier on the part of the Chinese as we see in the case of the
Romans at the Ehine and Danube. The drift of the nomads
before this Chinese thrust, century by century, turned south-
ward at first towards Bactria. The Parthians of the first cen-
tury B.C. probably mingled Scythian and Mongolian elements.
The "singing arrows" that destroyed the army of Crassua came,
'Even in Eastern Turkestan there are still strong evidences of Nordic
blood in the physiognomy of the people. Ella and Percy Sykes, Through
Deserts and Oases of Central Asia.
m fHE OUTLINE Of MlgTdAY
it would seem, originally from the Altai and the TMen Shan.
After the first century b.c. the line of greater attraction and
least resistance lay for a time towards the north of the Caspian.
In a century or so all the country known as Western Turkestan
was "Mongolized," and so it^ remains to this day. A second
great thrust by China began about 75 a.d., and accelerated the
westward drift of the nomads. In 102, Pan Ohau, a Chinese
general, was sending explorers from his advanced camp upon
the Caspian (or, as some authorities say, the Persian Gulf)
to learn particulars of the Roman power. But their reports
decided him not to proceed.
By the first century ^.t>. nomadic Mongolian peoples were
in evidence upon the eastern boundaries of Europe, already
greatly mixed with i^ordic nomads and with uprooted IN'ordic
elements from the Caspian-Pamir region. There were Hunnish
peoples established between , the Caspian Sea and the Urals.
West of them were the Alans, probably also a Mongolian peo-
ple with Nordic elements; they had fought against Pompey
the Gr^at when he was in Armenia in 65 b.c. These were as
yet the furthest westward peoples of the new Mongolian ad-
vance, and they made no; further westward push until the fourth
century a.d. To the north-west the Finns, a Mongolian people,
had long been established as far west as the Baltic.
West of the Huns, beyond the Don, there were purely Nordic
tribes, the Goths. These Goths had spread south-eastward
from their region of origin in Scandinavia. They were a Teu-
tonic people, and we have already marked them crossing the
Baltic in the niap we have given of the earlier distribution of
the Aryan-speaking people. These, Gpths continued to move
south-eastward across Russia, using the rivers and never for-
getting their Baltic watercraft. No doubt they assimilated
much Scythian population as they spread down to the Black
Sea. In the first century a.d. they were in two main divisions,
the Ostrogoths, the east Goths, who were between the Don and
the Dnieper, and the Visigoths, or west Goths, west of the
Dnieper. During the first century there was quiescence over
the great plains, but population was accumulating and the tribes
were fermenting. The second and third centuries seem to have
been a phase of comparatively moist seasons and abundant
grass. Presently in the fourth and fifth centuries the weather
THE CiESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 477
478 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
grew drier and the grass became scanty and the nomads stirred
afresh.
But it is interesting to not© that in the opening century of
the Christian era, the Chinese Empire was strong enough to
expel and push off from- itself the surplus of this Mongolian
nomadism to the north of it which presently conquered North
India and gathered force and mingled with Aryan nomadism,
and fell at last like an avalanche upon the weak-backed Koman
Empire.
Before we go on to tell of the blows that now began to fall
upon the Eoman Empire and of the efforts of one or two great
men to arrest 'the collapce, we may say a few words about the
habits and quality of these westward-drifting barbaric Mon-
golian peoples who were now spreading from the limits of
China' towards the Black and Baltic Seas. It is still the Euro-
pean custom to follow the lead of the Roman writers and write
of these Huns and their associates as of something incredibly
destructive and cruel. But such accounts as we have from the
Romans were written in periods of panic, and the Roman could
lie about his enemies with a freedom and vigour that must
arouse the envy even of the modern propagandist. He could
talk of "Punic faith" as a byword for perfidy while committing
the most abominable treacheries against Carthage, and his rail-
ing accusations of systematic cruelty against this people or
that were usually the prelude and excuse for some frightful
massacre or enslavement or robbery on his own part. He had
quite a modem passion for self-justification. We must remem-
ber that these accounts of the savagery and frightfulness of
the Huns came from a people whose chief amusement was
gladiatorial shows, and whose chief method of dealing with in-
surrection and sedition was nailing the offender to a cross to
die. From first to last the Roman Empire must have killed
hundreds of thousands of men in that way, A large portion
of the population of this empire that could complain of the
barbarism of its assailants consisted of slaves subject prac-
tically to almost any lust or caprice at the hands of their owners.
It is well to bear these facts in mind before we mourn the
swamping of the Roman Empire by the barbarians as though
it was an extinction of all that is fine in life by all that is black
and ugly.
The facta seem to be that the Hunnish peoples were the east-
THE CiESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 479
em equivalent of the primitive Aryans, and that, in spite of
their profound racial and linguistic differences, they mixed
vpith the nomadic and semi-nomadic residuum of the Aryan-
speaking races north of the Danube and Persia very easily and
successfully. Instead of killing, they enlisted and intermarried
vfiih. the peoples they invaded. They had that necessary gift
for all peoples destined to political predominance, tolerant
assimilation. They came rather later in time, and their
nomadic life was more highly developed than that of the primi-
tive Aryans. The primitive Aryans were a forest and ox-wagon
people who took to the horse later. The Hunnish peoples had
grown up with the horse. Somewhen about 1200 or 1000
years b.c. they began to ride the horse. The bit, the saddle,
the stirrup, these are not primitive things, but they are neces-
sary if man and horse are to keep going for long stxetches. It
is well to bear in mind how modem a thing is riding. Alto-
gether man has not been in the saddle for much more than three
thousand years. ^ We have already noted the gradual appear-
ance of the war-chariot, the mounted man, and finally of dis-
ciplined cavalry in this history. It was from the Mongolian
regions of Asia that these things came. To this day men in
Central Asia go rather in the saddle than on their proper feet.
Says Eatzel,^ "Strong, long-necked horses are found in enor-
mous numbers on the steppes. For Mongols and Turcomans
riding is not a luxury; even the Mongol shepherds tend their
flocks on horseback. Children are taught to ride in early youth ;
and the boy of three years old often takes his first riding-lesson
on a safe child's saddle and makes quick progress."
It is impossible to suppose that the Huns and the Alans could
have differed very widely in character from the present nomads
of the steppe regions, and nearly all observers are agreed in
describing these latter as open and pleasant people. They
are thoroughly honest and free-spirited. "The character of
the herdsmen of Central Asia," says Eatzel,^ "when unadul-
terated, is ponderous eloquence, frankness, rough good-nature,
pridcj but also indolence, irritability, and a tendency to vin-
dictiveness. Their faces show a considerable share of frankness
*See Koger Pocock, Horses, a very interesting and picturesque littl*
book.
• The History of Mankind, book v., C.
"Ibid.
480 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
combined with amusing naivete,., . . Their courage is rather
a sudden blaze of pugnacity than cold boldness. Keli^oTjs
fanaticism they have none. Hospitality is universal." This is
not an entirely disagreeable picture. Their personal bearing,
he says further, is quieter and more dignified than that of the
townsmen of Turkestan and Persia. Add to this that the
nomadic life prevents any great class inequalities or any ex-
tensive development of slavery.
Of course these peoples out of Asia were totally illiterate and
artistically undeveloped. But we must not suppose, on that
account, that they were primitive barbarians, and that their
state of life was at the level from which the agricultural civili-
zation had long ago arisen. It was not. They, too, had de-
veloped, but they, had developed along a diiferent line, a line
with less intellectual complication, more personal dignity per-
haps, and certainly with a more intimate contact with /wind
and sky.
§ 5
The first, serious irruptions of the German tribes into the
Roman Empire began in the third century with the decay of
the central power. We will not entangle the reader here with
the vexed and intricate question of the names, identity, and
inter-relationships of the various Germanic tribes. Historians
find great difiiculties in keeping them distinct, and these
difficulties,! are enhanced by the fact that they them-
selves took little care to keep themselves distinct. We find in
236 A.D. a people called the Franks breaking bounds upon the
Lower Ehine, and another, the Alamanni, pouring into Alsace.
A much more serious push southward was. that of the Goths.
We have already noted the presence of these people in South
Russia, and their division by the Dnieper into Western and
Eastern Goths. They had become a maritime people again
upon the Black Sea — probably their traditional migration from
Sweden was along the waterways, for it is still possible to row
a boat, with only a few quite practicable, portages, from the
Baltic right across Russia to either the Black or Caspian Sea
— :and they had wrested the command of the, eastern seas from
the control of Rome. They were presently raiding the shores
of Greece. They also crossed the Danube in a great lanci raid
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 481
in 247, and defeated and killed the Emperor Decius in what is
now Serbia. The province of Dacia vanished from Roman
history. In 270 they were defeated at Nish in Serbia by
Claudius, and in 276 they were raiding Pontus. It is char-
acteristic of the invertebrate nature of the empire that the
legions of Gaul found that the most effective method of deal-
ing with the Franks and the Alamanni at this time was by
setting up a separate emperor in Gaul and doing the job by
themselves.
Then for a while the barbarians were held, and the Emperor
Probus in 276 forced the Franks and the Alamanni back over
the Ehine. But it is significant of the general atniosphere
of insecurity created by these raids that Aurelian (270-275)
fortified Rome, which had been an open and secure city for all
the earlier years of the empire.
In 321 A.D. the Goths were again over the Danube, plunder-
ing what is now Serbia and Bulgaria. They were driven back
by Coiistantine the Great, of whom we shall have more to tell
in the next chapter. About the end of his reign (337 a.d.)
the Vandals, a people closely kindred to the Goths, being pressed
by them, obtained permission to cross the Danube into Pan-
nonia, which is now that part of Hungary west of the river.
But by the middle of the fourth century the Hunnish people
to the east were becoming aggressive again. They had long
subjugated the Alani, and now they made the Ostrogoths, the
east Goths, tributary. The Visigoths (or west Goths) followed
the example of the Vandals, and made arrangements to cross
the Danube into Roman territory. There was some dispute
upon the terms of this settlement, and the Visigoths, growing
fierce, assumed the offensive, and at Adrianople defeated the
Emperor Valens, who was killed in this battle. " They were
then allowed to settle in what \a now Bulgaria, and their army
became nominally a Roman army, though they retained their
own chiefs, the foremost of whom was Alaric. It exhibits
the complete "barbarization" of the Roman empire that had
already occurred, that the chief opponent of Alaric the Goth,
Stilicho, was a Pannonian Vandal. The legions in Gaul were
under the command of a Frank, and the Emperor Theodosius I
(emp. 379-395) was a Spaniard chiefly supported by Gothic
auxiliaries.
The empire was now splitting finally into an eastern (Greek-
482 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
speaking) and a western (Latin-speaking) half. Theodosius
the Great was succeeded by his sons Arcadius at Constanti-
nople and Honorius at Kavenna. Alaric made a puppet of the
eastern monarch and Stilicho of the western. Huns now first
appear within the empire as auxiliary troops enlisted under
Stilicho. In this struggle of East and West, the frontier — -if
we can still speak of a frontier between the unauthorized bar-
barian without and the barbarian in employment within — gave
way. Fresh Vandals, more Goths, Alans, Suevi, marched freely
westward, living upon the country.. Amidst this confusion
occurred a crowning event. Alaric the Goth marched down
Italy, and after a short siege captured Rome (410).
By 425 or so, the Vandals (whom originally we noted in
East Germany) and a portion of the Alani (whom we first
mentioned in South-east Eussia) had traversed Gaul and the
Pyrenees, and had amalgamated and settled in the south of
Spain. There were Huns in possession of Pannonia and Goths
in Dalmatia. Into Bohemia and Moravia came and settled a
Slavic people, the Czechs (451). In Portugal and north of
the Vandals in Spain were Visigoths and Suevi. Gaul was
divided among Visigoths, Franks, and Burgundians. Britain
was being invaded by Low German tyibes, the Jutes, Angles
and Saxons, before whom the Keltic British of the south-west
were flying across the sea to what is now Brittany in France.
The usual date given for this invasion is 449, but it was prob-
ably earlier.^ And as the result of intrigues between two im-
perial politicians, the Vandals of the south of Spain, under
their king Genseric, embarked en masse for E'orth Africa (429),
became masters of Carthage (439), secured the mastery of the
sea, raided, captured, and pillaged Eome (455), crossed into
Sicily, and -set up a kingdom in West Sicily, which endured
there for a hundred years (up to 534). At the time of its
greatest extent (477) this Vandal kingdom included also
Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles, as well as much of
North Africa.
About this Vandal kingdom facts and figures are given that
show very clearly the true nature of these barbarian irruptions.
They were not really the conquest and replacement of one peo-
ple or race by another; what happened was something very
different it was a social revolution started and masked by a
»E. B.
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 48»
484 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Superficial foreign conquest. The whole Vandal nation, men,
Women, and children, that came from Spain to Africa, for
example, did not number more than eighty thousand souls.
We know this because we have particulars of the transport
problem. In their struggle for ]!^orth Africa, Dr. Schurtz tells
us,^ "there is no trace of any serious resistance offered by the
inhabitants; Boniface (the Koman governor of North Africa)
had defended Hippo with Gothic mercenaries, while the native
population lent no appreciable assistance, and the nomad tribes
of the country either adopted a dubious attitude or availed them-
selves of the difficulties of the Roman governor to make attacks
and engage in predatory expeditions. This demoralization re-
sulted from social conditions, which had perhaps developed more
unfavourably in Africa than in other parts of the Eoman Em-
pire. The free peasants had long ago become the serfs of the
great landed proprietors, and were little superior in position to
the masses of slaves who were everywhere to be found. And
the great landowners had become in their turn easy victims
>f the policy of extortion followed by unscrupulous governors
to an increasingly unprecedented extent in proportion as the
dignity of the imperial power sank lower. No man who had
anything to lose would how take a place in the senate of the
large towns, which had once been the goal of the ambitious,
for the senators were required to make up all deficiencies in the
revenue, and such deficiencies were now frequent and consider-
able. . . . Bloody insurrections repeatedly broke out, always
traceable ultimately to the pressure of taxation. . . ."
Manifestly the Yandals came in as a positive relief to such
a system. They exterminated the great landownerSj wiped out
all debts to Eoman money-lenders, and abolished the last ves-
tiges of military service. The cultivators found themselves
better off; the minor officials kept their places; it was not so
much a conquest as a liberation from an intolerable deadlock.
It was while the Vandals were still in Africa that a great
leader, Attila, arose among the Huns. The seat of his govern-
ment was in the plains east of the Danube. For a time he
swayed a considerable empire of Hunnish and Germanic tribes,
and his rule stretched from the Rhine into Central Asia. He
negotiated on equal terms with the Chinese emperor. He
bullied Ravenna and Constantinople for ten years, Honoria,
«In Hamolt'8 History of the World.
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 485
the grand-daughter of Theodosius II, Emperor of the Eastern
empire, one of those passionate yonng ladies who cause so much
trouble in the world, having been put under restraint because
of a love affair with a court chamberlain, sent her ring to
Attila and called upon him to be her husband and deliverer.
He was also urged to attack the Eastern empire by Genseric
the Vandal, who was faced by an alliance of the Western and
Eastern emperors. He raided southward to the very walls of
Constantinople, completely destroying, says Gibbon, seventy
cities in his progress, and forcing upon the emperor an onerous
peace, which apparently did not involve the liberation of
Honoria to her hero.
At this distance of time we are unable to guess at the motives
for this omission. Attila continued to speak of her as his
affianced bride, and to use the relationship as a pretext for
aggressions. In the subsequent negotiations a certain Priscus
accompanied an embassy to the camp of the Hunnish monarch,
and the fragments that still survive of the narrative he wrote
give us a glimpse of the camp and way of living of the great
conqueror.
The embassy was itself a curiously constituted body. Its
head was Maximin, an honest diplomatist who went in good
faith. Quite unknown to him and, at the time, to Priscus,
Vigilius, the interpreter of the expedition, had also a secret
mission from the court, of Theodosius which was to secure by
bribery the assassination of Attila. The little expedition went
by way of Nish ; it crossed the Danube in canoes, dug out of a
single tree, and it was fed by contributions from the villages
on the route. Differences in dietary soon attracted the atten-
tion of the envoys. Priscus mentions mead in the place of wine,
millet for corn, and a drink either distilled ^ or brewed from
badey. The journey through Hungary will remind the reader
in many of its incidents of the journeys of travellers in Central
Africa during the Victorian period. The travellers were
politely offered temporary wives.
Attila's capital was rather a vast camp and village than a
town. There was only one building of stone, a bath constructed
on the Roman model. The mass of the people were in huts and
tents; Attila and his leading men lived in timber palaces in
great stockaded enclosures with their numerous wives and min-
> Gibbon.
486 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
isters about them. There was a vast display of loot, but Attila
himself affected a nomadic simplicity ; he was served in wooden
cups and platters, and never touched bread. He worked hard,
kept open court before the gate of his palace, and was commonly
in the saddle. The primitive custom of both Aryans and Mon-
gols of holding great feasts in hall still held good, and there
was much hard drinking. Priscus describes how bards chanted
before Attila. They "recited the verses which they had com-
posed, to celebrate his valour and his victories. A profound
silence prevailed in the hall, and the attention of the guests
was captivated by the vocal harmony, which revived and per-
petuated the memory of their own exploits; a martial ardour
flashed from the eyes of the warriors, who were impatient for
battle ; and the tears of the old men expressed their generous
despair, that they could no longer partake the danger and glory
of the field. This entertainment, which might be considered
as a school of military virtue, wa^ succeeded by a farce that
debased the dignity of human nature. A Moorish and Scythian
buffoon successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators by
their deformed figures, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd
speeches, and the strange, unintelligible confusion of the Latin,
the Gothic, and the Hunnish languages, and the hall resounded
with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of
this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without change of counte-
nance, maintained his steadfast and inflexible gravity." ^
Although Attila was aware, through the confession of the
proposed assassin, of the secret work of Vigilius, he allowed
this embassy to return in safety, with presents of numerous
horses and the like, to Constantinople. Then he despatched an
ambassador to Theodosius II to give that monarch, as people
say, a piece of his mind. "Theodosius," said the envoy, "is
the son of an illustrious and respectable parent; Attila, like-
wise, is descended from a noble race; and he has supported, by
his actions the dignity which he inherited from his father
Munzuk. But Theodosius has forfeited his parental honours,
and, by consenting to pay tribute, has degraded himself to the
condition of a slave. It is therefore just that he should rever-
ence the man whom fortune and merit have placed above him ;
instead of attempting, like a wicked slave, clandestinely to
conspire against his master."
' Gibbons.
THE CiESARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 487
This straightforward hullyiug was met ,hy abject submission.
The emperor sued for pardon, and paid a great ransom.
In 451 Attila declared war on the western empire. He
invaded Gaul. So far as the imperial forces were concerned,
he had things all his own way, and he sacked most of the towns
of France as far south as Orleans. Then the Franks and
Visigoths and the imperial forces united against him, and a
great and obstinate battle at Troyes (451), in which over
150,000 men were killed on both sides, ended in his repulse
and saved Europe from a Mongolian overlord. This disaster
by no means exhausted Attila's resources. He turned his at-
tention southward, and overran North Italy. He burnt Aquileia
and Padua, and looted Milan, but he made peace at the entreaty
of Pope Leo I. He died in 453. . . .
Hereafter the Huns, so far as that name goes in Europe, the
Huns of Attila, disappeared out of history. They dissolve into
the, surrounding populations. They were probably already much
mixed, and rather Aryan than Mongolian. They did not be-
come, as one might suppose, the inhabitants of Hungary, though
they have probably left many descendants there. About a hun-
dred years after came another Hunnish or mixed people, the
Avars, out of the east into Hungary, but these were driven out
eastward again by Charlemagne in 791-5. The Magyars, the
modem Hungarians, came westward later. They were a
Turko-Finnish people. The Magyar is a language belonging to
the Finno-TJgrian division of the Ural-Altaic tongues. The
Magyars were on the Volga about 550. They settled in Hun-
gary about 900. . . . But we are getting too far on in our
story, and we must return to Eome.
In 493 Theodoric, a Goth, became King of Kome, but already
for seventeen years there had been no Eoman emperor. So
it was in utter social decay and collapse that the great slave-
holding "world-ascendancy" of the God-Gsesars and the rich
men of Eome came to an end.
§ 6
But though throughout the whole of Western Europe and
North Africa the Eoman imperial system had collapsed, though
credit had vanished, luxury production had ceased and money
was hidden, though creditors were going unpaid and slaves
4,88
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
masterless, the tradition of the Csesars was still being carried
on in Constantinople. We have already had occasion to men-
tion as two outstanding figures among the late Csesars, Diocle-
tian (284) and Constantine the Great (312), and it was to
the latter of these that the world owes the setting up of a fresh
imperial centre at Constantinople. Very early during the im-
perial period the unsuitability of the position of Home as a
world capital, due to the Eoman failure to use the sea, was felt.
<?^:ea5tekn: tudma-k -empire dv^joo^^
of Ifalif ft' 5i.cili{ , & nom-
tnallir jitbiect ■tb'tiw
I'he destruction of Carthage and Corinth had killed the ship-
ping of the main Mediterranean sea-routes. For a people who
did not use the sea properly, having the administrative centre
at Rome meant that every legion, every draft of officials, every
order, had to travel northward for half the length of Italy
before it could turn east or west. Consequently nearly all the
more capable emperors set up their headquarters at some sub-
ordinate centre in a more convenient position. Sirmium (on
the Eiver Save), Milan, Lyons, and Nicomedia (in Bithynia)
were among such supplementary capitals. For a time under
Diocletian, Durazzo was the imperial capital. Ravenna, near
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 489
the head of the Adriatic, was the capital of the last Koman
emperors in the time of Alaric and Stilicho.
It was Constantine the Great who determined upon the
permanent transfer of the centre of imperial power to the
Bosphorus. We have already noted the existence of the city
of Byzantium, which Constantine chose to develop into his new
capital. It played a part in the story of the intricate Histiseus
(Chap, xxi, § 4) ; it repulsed. Philip of Macedon (Chap, xxiii,
§ 3). If the reader will examine its position, he will see that
in the hands of a line of capable emperors, and as the" centre
of a people with some solidarity and spirit and seacraft (neither
of which things were vouchsafed to it), it was extraordinarily
well plated. Its galleys could have penetrated up the rivers
to the heart of Russia and outflanked every barbarian advance.
It commanded practicable trade routes to the east, and it was
within a reasonable striking distance of Mesopotamia, Egypt,
Greece, and all the more prosperous and' civilized regions of
the world at that period. And even under the rule of a series
of inept monarchs and under demoralized social conditions, the
remains of the Eotnan Empire centring at Constantinople held
out, for nearly a thousand years.
It was the mianifest intention of Constantine the Great that
Constantinople should be the centre of an undivided empire.
But having regard to the methods of travel and transport avail-
able at the time, the geographical conditions of Europe and
Western Asia do not point to any one necessary centre of govern-
ment. If Eome faced westward instead of eastward, and so
failed to reach out beyond the Euphrates, Constantinople on
the other hand was hopelessly remote from Gaul. The enfeebled
Mediterranean civilization, after a certain struggle for Italy,
did in fact let go of the west altogether and concentrated upon
what were practically the central vestiges, the stump, of the
empire of Alexander. The Greek language resumed its sway,
which had never been very seriously undermined by the official
use of Latin. This "Eastern" or Byzantine empire is generally
spoken of as if it were a continuation of the Roman tradition.
It is really far more like a resumption of Alexander's.
The Latin language had not the intellectual vigour behind it.
it had not the literature and the science, to make it a neces-
sity to intelligent men and so to maintain an ascendancy over
the Greek. For no language, whatever officialdom may do,
4>90
THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
THE C^SARS BETWEEN SEA AND PLAINS 491
can impose itself in competition with another that can offer
the advantages of a great literature or encyclopaedic informa-
tion. Aggressive languages must bring gifts, and the gifts of
Greek were incomparably greater than the gifts of Latin. The
Eastern empire was from the beginnings of its separation Greek-
speaking, and a continuation, though a degenerate continua-
tion, of the Hellenic tradition. Its intellectual centre was no
longer in Greece, but Alexandria. Its mentality was no longer
the mentality of free-minded plain-speaking citizens, of the
Stagirite Aristotle and the Greek Plato ; its mentality was the
mentality of the pedants and of men politically impotent; its
philosophy was a pompous evasion of real things, and its scien-
tific impulse was dead. Nevertheless, it was Hellenic and not
Latin. The Eoman had come, and he had gone again. Indeed
he had gone very extensively from the west also. By the sixth
century a.d. the populations of Europe and North Africa had
been stirred up like sediment. When presently in the seventh
and eighth centuries the sediment begins to settle down again
and populations begin to take on a definite localized character,
the Koman is only to be found by name in the region about
Home. Over large parts of his Western empire we find changed
and changing modifications of his Latin speech ; in Gaul, where
the Frank is learning a Gallic form of Latin and evolving
French in the process; in Italy, where, under the influence of
Teutonic invaders, the Lombards and Goths, Latin is being
modified into various Italian dialects ; in Spain and Portugal,
where it is becoming Spanish and Portuguese. The funda-
mental Latinity of the languages in these regions serves to re-
mind us of the numerical unimportance of the various Prankish,
Vandal, Avar, Gothic, and the like German-speaking invaders,
and serves to justify our statement that what happened to the
Western empire was not so much conquest and the replacement
of one population by another as a political and social revolu-
tion. The district of Valais in South Switzerland also retained
a fundamentally Latin speech and so did the Canton Grisons ;
and, what is more curious and interesting, is that in Dacia and
Moesia Inferior, large parts of which to the north of the Danube
became the modern Eoumania (=Eomania), although these
regions were added late to the empire and lost soon, the Latin
speech also remained.
In Britain Latin was practically wiped out by the conquering
492 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Anglo-Saxons, from among wliose various dialects the root stock
of English presently grew.
But while the siliashing. of the Koman social and political
structure was thus complete, while in the east it was thrown
off by the older and stronger Hellenic tradition, and while
in the west it was broken up into fragments that began to take
on a new and separate life of their own, there was one thing
that did not perish, but grew, and that was the tradition of
the world empire of Rome and of the supremacy of the Caesars.
When the reality was destroyed, the legend had freedom to
expand. Removed from the possibility of verification, the idea
of a serene and splendid Roman world-supremacy grew up in
the imagination of mankind, and still holds it to this day.
Ever since the time of Alexander, human thought has been
haunted by the possible political unity of the race. All the
sturdy chiefs and leaders and kings of the barbarians, who
raided through the prostrate but vast disorder of the decayed
empire, were capable of conceiving of some mighty king of
kings greater than themselves and giving a real law for all
men, and they were ready to believe that elsewhere in space
and time, and capable of returning presently to resume his
supremacy, Caesar had been such a king of kings. Far above
their own titles, therefore, they esteemed and envied the title
of Caesar. The international history of Europe from this time
henceforth is largely the story of kings and adventurers setting
up to be Caesar and Imperator (Emperor). We shall tell of
some of them in their places. So universal did this "Caesaring"
become, that the Great War of 1914-18 mowed down no fewer
than four Caesars, the German Kaiser (= Caesar), the Austrian
Kaiser, the Tsar (^ Caesar) of Russia, and that fantastic figure,
the Tsar of Bulgaria. The French "Imperator" (Napoleon
III) had already fallen in 1871. There is now (1920) no one
left in the world to carry on the Imperial title or the tradition
of Divus Caesar except the Turkish Sultan and the British mon-
arch. The former commemorates his lordship over Constanti-
nople as Kaisar-i-EoTjm ; the latter is called the Caesar of India
(a country no real Caesar ever looked upon), Kaisar-i-Hind.
XXIX
THE BEGINNINGS, THE KISE, AND THE DIVISIONS
OF CHKISTIANITY
§ 1. Jiuiea at the Christian Era. § 2. The Teachingis of Jesus
of Nazareth. § 3. The New Universal Religions. §■ 4.
• The Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. § 5. Doctrines
Added to the Teachings of Jesus. § 6. The Struggles and
Persecutions of Christianity. § Y. Constantine the Great.
§ 8. The Establishment of Official Christianity. § 9. The
Map of Europe, A. Z>.-500. § 10. The Salvation of Learn-
ing hy Christianity.
BEFORE we can understand the qualities of Christianity,
■which must now play a large part in our history, and
which opened men's eyes to fresh aspects of the possi-
bility of a unified world, we must go back some centuries and
tell of the condition of affairs in Palestine and Syria, in which
countries Christianity arose. We have already told the main
facts about the origin of the Jewish nation and tradition, about
the Diaspora, about the fundamentally scattered nature of
•Jewry even from the beginning, and the gradual development of
the idea of one just God ruling the earth and bound by a special
promise to preserve and bring to honour the Jewish people. The
Jewish idea was and is a curious combination of theological
breadth and an intense racial patriotism. The Jews looked
for a special saviour, a Messiah, who was to redeem mankind
by the agreeable process of restoring the fabulous glories of
David and Solomon, and bringing the whole world at last under
the benevolent but firm Jewish heel. As the political power
of the Semitic peoples declined, as Carthage followed Tyre
into the darkness and Spain became a Eoman province, this
dream grew and spread. There can be little doubt that the
scattered Phoenicians in Spain and Africa and throughout the
493
494, THE. OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Mediterranean, speaking as they did a language closely akin
to Hebrew and being deprived of their authentic political rights,
became proselytes to Judaism. For phases of vigorous prosely-
tism alternated with phases of exclusive jealousy in Jewish
history. On one occasion the Idumeans, being conquered, were
all forcibly made Jews.^ There were Arab tribes who were
Jews in the time of Muhammad, and a Turkish people who
were mainly Jews in South Russia in the ninth century. Juda-
ism is indeed the reconstructed political ideal of many shattered
peoples — ^mainly Semitic. It is to the Phoenician contingent
and to Aramean accessions in Babylon that the financial and
commercial tradition of the Jews is to be ascribed. But as a
result of these coalescences and assimilations, almost every-
where in the towns throughout the Eoman Empire, and far
beyond it in the east, Jewish communities traded and flourished,
and were kept in touch through the Bible, and through a re-
ligious and educational organization. The main part of Jewry
never was in Judea and had never come out of Judea. .
Manifestly this intercommunicating series of Judaized com-
munities had very great financial and political facilities. They
could assemble resources, they could stir up, they could allay.
They were neither so abundant nor so civilized as the still more
widely diffused Greeks, but they had a tradition of greater
solidarity. Greek was hostile to Greek; Jew stood by Jew.
Wherever a Jew went, he found men of like mind and like
tradition with himself. He could get shelter, food, loans, and
legal help. And by reason of this solidarity rulers had every-
where to take account of this people as a help, as a source of
loans, or as a source of trouble. So it is that the Jews have-
persisted as a people while Hellenism has become a universal
light for mankind.
We cannot tell here in any detail the history of that smaller
part of Jewry that lived in Judea. These Jews had returned
to their old position of danger ; again they were seeking peace
in, so to speak, the middle of a highway. In the old time they
had been between Syria and Assyria to the north and Egypt to
the south; now they had the Seleucids to the north and the
Ptolemys to the south, and when the Seleucids went, then down
came the Eoman power upon them. The independence of
Judea was always a qualified, and precarious thing. The reader
' Josephtts.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY
495
must go to the Antiquities and the Wars of the Jeius of Flavius
Josephus, a copious, tedious, and maddeningly patriotic writer,
to learn of the succession of their rulers, of their high-priest
monarchs, and of
the Maccahseans, the
Herods and the like.
These rulers were
for the most part of
the ordinary eastern
type, cunning,
treacherous, and
blood-stained. Thrice
Jerusalem was taken
and twice the temple
was destroyed. It
was the support of
the far more power-
ful Diaspora that
prevented the little
country from being
wiped out alto-
gether,'until 70 A,D.,
when ITitus, the
adopted son and suc-
cessor of the Em-
p e r o r Vespasian,
after a siege that
ranks in bitterness
and horror with that
of Tyre and Car-
thage, took Jerusa-
lem and destroyed
city and temple alto-
gether. He did this
in an attempt to destroy Jewry, but indeed he made Jewry
stronger by destroying its one sensitive and vulnerable point.
Throughout a history of five centuries of war and civil com-
motion between the return from captivity and the destruction
of Jerusalem, certain constant features of the Jew persisted.
He remained obstinately monotheistic; he would have none
other gods but the one true Grod.' lu Eome, as in Jerusalem,
496 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
lie stood out manfully against tlie worship of any god-Csssar.
And to the beat of his ability he held to his covenants with his
God. No graven images could enter Jerusalem; even the
Roman standards with their eagles had to stay outside.
, Two divergent lines of thought are traceable in Jewish affairs
during these five hundred years. On the right, so to speak, are
the high and narrow Jews, the Pharisees, very orthodox, very
punctilious upon even the minutest details of the law, intensely
patriotic and exclusive. Jerusalem on one occasion fell to the
Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV because the Jews would not
defend it on the Sabbath day, when it is forbidden to work;
■and it was because the Jews made no effort to destroy his sie^e
train on the Sabbath that Pompey the Great was able to take
Jerusalem. But against these narrow Jews were pitted the
broad Jews, the Jews of the left, who were Hellenizers, among
whom are to be ranked the Sadducees, who did not believe in
immortality. These latter Jews, the broad Jews, were all
more or less disposed to mingle with and assimilate themselves
to the Greeks and Hellenized peoples about them. They were
j ready to accept proselytes, and so to share God and his promise
with all mankind. But what they gained in generosity they
lost in rectitude. They were the worldlings of Judea. We
have already noted how the Hellenized Jews of Egypt lost their
!Hebrew, and had to have their Bible translated into Greek.
In the reign of Tiberius Csesar a great teacher arose out of
Judea who was to liberate the intense realization of the right-
eousness and unchallengeable oneness of God, and of man's
moral obligation to Gc>d, which was the strength of orthodox
Judaism, from that greedy and exclusive narrowness with which
it was so extraordinarily intermingled in the Jewish mind. This
was Jesus of Nazareth, the seed rather than the founder of
Christianity.
§ 2
The audience to which this book will first be presented will
be largely an audience of Christians, with perhaps a sprinkling
of Jewish readers, and the former at least will regard Jesus of
Nazareth as being much more than a human teacher, and his
appearance in the world not as a natural event in history, but
as something of, a supernatural sort interrupting and changing
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 497
tbat steady development of life towards a common consciousness
and a common will, which we have hitherto been tracing in this
book. But these persuasions, dominant as they are in Europe
and America, are nevertheless not the persuasions of all men
or of the great majority of mankind, and we are writing this
outline of the story of life with as complete an avoidance of
controversial matter as may be. We are trying to write as if
this book was to be read as much by Hindus or Moslems or
Buddhists as by Americans and Western Europeans. We shall
therefore hold closely to the apparent facts, and avoid, without
any disputation or denial, the theological interpretations that
have been imposed upon them. We shall tell what men have
believed about Jesus of Nazareth, but him we shall treat as
being what he appeared to be, a man, just as a painter must
needs paint him as a man. The documents that testify to his
acts and teachings we shall treat as ordinary human documents.
If the light of divinity shine through our recital, we will neither
help nor hinder it. This is what we have already done in the
case of Buddha, and what we shall do later with Muhammad.
About Jesus we have to write not theology but history, and
our concern is not with the spiritual and theological significance
ef his life, but with its effects upon the political and every-day
life of men.
Almost our only sources of information about the personality
of Jesus are derived from the four gospels, all of which were
certainly in existence a few decades after his death, and from
allusions to his life in the letters (epistles) of the early Chris-
tian propagandists. The first three gospels, the gospels of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, many suppose to be derived from
some earlier documents ; the gospel of St. John has more idiosyn-
crasy and is coloured by theology of a strongly Hellenic type.
Critics are disposed to regard the gospel of St. Mark as being
the most trustworthy account of the personality and actual
words of Jesus. But all four agree in giving us a picture
of a very definite personality; they carry the same conviction
of reality that the early accounts of Buddha do. In spite of
miraculous and incredible additions, one is obliged to say, "Here
was a man. This part of the tale could not have been invented."
' -But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been
'distorted and obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded
idol of later Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous
498 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
personality of Jesus is mucli wronged by the unreality and con-
ventionality that a mistaken reverence has imposed upon his
figure in modern Christian art. Jesus was a penniless teacher,
who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living
upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean,
combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with some-
thing motionless about him as though he was gliding through
the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to
many people who cannot distinguish the corfe of the story from
the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently
devout.
And it may be that the early parts of the gospels are accre-
tions of the same nature. The miraculous circumstances of
the birth of Jesus, the great star that brought wise men from
the east to worship at his manger cradle, the massacre of the
male infant children in the region of Bethlehem by Herod
as a consequence of these portents, and the flight into Egypt,
are all supposed to be such accretionary matter by many authori-
ties. At the best they are events unnecessary to the teaching,
and they rob it of much of the strength and power it possesses
when we strip it of such accompaniment. So, too, do the dis-
crepant genealogies given by Matthew and Luke, in which there
is an endeavour to trace the direct descent of Joseph, his father,
from King David, as though it was any honour to Jesus or to
anyone to have such a man as an ancestor. The insertion of
these genealogies is the more peculiar and unreasonable, be-
cause, according to the legend, Jesus was not the son of Joseph
at all, but miraculously conceived.
We are left, if we do strip this record of these difficult acces-
sories, with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest and
passionate, capable of swift anger, and teaching a new and
simple and profound doctrine — namely, the universal loving
Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
He was clearly a person — to use a common phrase — of intense
personal magnetism. He attracted followers and filled them
with love and courage. Weak and ailing people were heartened
and healed by his presence. Yet he was probably of a delicate
physique, because of the swiftness with which he died under
the pains of crucifixion. There is a tradition that he fainted
when, according to the custom, he was made to bear his cross
to the place of execution. When he first appeared as a teacher
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 499
he was a man of about thirty. He went about the country for
three years spreading his doctrine, and then he came to Jerusa-
lem and was accused of trying to set up a strange kingdom in
Judea; he was tried upon this charge, and crucified together
with two thieves. Long before these two were dead, his suffer-
ings were over.
Now it is a matter of fact that in the gospels all that body
of theological assertion which constitutes Christianity finds litr
tie support. There is, as the reader may see for himself, no
clear and emphatic assertion in these books of the doctrines
which Christian teachers of all denominations find generally
necessary to salvation. Except for one or two passages in St.
John's Gospel it is difiicult to get any words actually ascribed
to Jesus in which he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah
(rendered in Greek by "the Christ") and still more difiicult
is it to find any claim to be a part of the godhead, or any pas-
sage in which he explained the doctrine of the Atonement or
urged any sacrifices or sacraments (that is to say, priestly
ofiices) upon his followers. We shall see presently how later
on all Christendom was torn by disputes about the Trinity.
There is no evidence that the apostles of Jesus ever heard of
the Trinity — at any rate from him. The observance of the
Jewish Sabbath, again, transferred to the Mithraic Sun-day, is
an important feature of many Christian cults ; but Jesus de-
liberately broke the Sabbath, and said that it was made for man
and not man for the Sabbath. Nor did he say a word about
the worship of his mother Mary, in the guise of Isis, the Queen
of Heaven. All that is most characteristically Christian in
worship and usage, he ignored. Sceptical writers have had the
temerity to deny that Jesus can be called a Christian at all.
For light upon these extraordinary gaps in his teaching, each
reader must go to his own religious guides. Here we are bound
to mention these gaps on account of the difficulties and con-
troversies that arose out of them, and we are equally bound not
to enlarge upon them.
As remarkable is the enormous prominence given by Jesus
to the teaching of what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, and
its comparative insignificance in the procedure and teaching of
most of the Christian churches.
This doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main
teaching of Jesus, and which plays so small a part in the Chrisr
600 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tian creeds, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines
that ever stirred and changed human thought. It is small won-
der if the world of that time failed to grasp its full significance,
and recoiled in dismay from even a half apprehension of its
tremendous challenges to the established habits and institutions
of mankind. It is small wonder if the hesitating convert and
disciple presently went back to the old familiar ideas of temple
and altar, of fierce deity and propitiatory observance, of conse-
crated priest and magic blessing, and — these things being at-
tended to — reverted then to the dear old habitual life of hates
and profits and competition and pride. For the doctrine of
th« Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus seems to have preached it,
was no less than a bold and uncompromising demand for a
complete change and cleansing of the life of our struggling race,
an utter cleansing, without and within. To the gospels the
reader must go for all that is preserved of this tremendous
teaching; here we are only concerned with the jar of its impact
upon established ideas.
The Jews were persuaded that God, the one God of ^he whole
world, was a righteous god, but they also thought of him as a
trading god who had made a bargain with their Father Abra-
ham about them, a very good bargain indeed for them, to bring
them at last to predominance in the earth. With dismay and
anger they heard Jesus sweeping away their dear securities.
God, he taught, was no bargainer ; there were no chosen people
and no favourites in the Kingdom of Heaven. God was the
loving father of all life, as incapable of showing favour as the
universal sun. And all men were brothers — sinners alike and
beloved sons alike — of this divine father. In the parable of
the Good Samaritan Jesus cast scorn upon that natural tendency
we all obey, to glorify our own people and ■ to minimize the
righteousness of other creeds and other races. In the parable
of the labourers he thrust aside the obstinate claim of the
Jews to have a sort of first mortgage upon God. All whom
God takes into the kingdom, he taught, God serves alike ; there
is no distinction in his treatment, because there is no measure to
his bounty. From all, moreover, as the parable of the buried
talent witnesses, and as the incident of the widow's mite en-
forces, he demands the utmost. There are no privileges, no
rebates, and no excuses in the Kingdom of Heaven.
But it was not only the intense tribal patriotism of the Jews
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 501
that Jesus outraged. They were a people of intense family
loyalty, and lie would have swept away all the narrow and re-
strictive family affections in the great flood of the love of God.
The whole Kingdom of Heaven was to be the family of his
followers. We are told that, "While he yet talked to the peo-
ple, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring
to speak with him. Then one said unto him. Behold, thy mother
and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
But he answered and said unto him that told himj Who is my
mother ? and who are my brethren ? And he stretched forth his
hand towards his disciples, and said. Behold my mother and
my brethren! ■ For whosoever shall do the will of my Father
which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and
mother." ^
And not only did Jesus strike at patriotism and the bonds
of family loyalty in the name of God's universal fatherhood
and the brotherhood of all mankind, but it is clear that his
teaching condemned all the gradations of the economic system,
all private wealth, and personal advantages. All men belonged
to the kingdom ; all their possessions belonged to the kingdom ;
the righteous life for all men, he only righteous life, was the
service of God's will with all that we had, with all that we were.
Again and again he denounced private riches and the reserva-
tion of any private life.
"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came
one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him. Good Master,
what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus
said unto him, Why callest thou me good ? there is none good
but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do
not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal, Do not bear
false witness. Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.
And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these things
have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus beholding him
loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy
way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, take up the cross, and
follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away
grieved : for he had great possessions.
"And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples,
How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom
'Matt. xii. 46-50.
602 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of God! And the disciples were astonished at his words.
But Jesus answered again, and saith unto them, Children, how
hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom
of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." ^
Moreover, in his tremendous prophecy of this kingdom which
was to make all men one together in God, Jesus had small
patience for the bargaining righteousness of formal religion.
Another large part of his recorded utterances is aimed against
the meticulous observance of the rules of the pious career.
"Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of
the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw
some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with
unwashen, hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and
all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding
the tradition of the elders. ' And when they come from the
market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things
there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of
cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Phari-
sees and scribes asked him. Why walk not thy disciples accord-
ing to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen
hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Isaiah
prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written,
"This people honoureth me with their lips,
"But their heart is far from me.
"Howbeit in vain do they worship me,
"Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
"For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the
tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many
other such things ye do. And he said unto them. Full well
ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own
tradition." ^
So, too, we may note a score of places in which he flouted
that darling virtue of the formalist, the observance of the
Sabbath.
It was not merely a moral and a social revolution that Jesus
proclaimed; it is clear from a score of indications that his
teaching had a political bent of the plainest sort. It is true
that he said his kingdom was not of this world, that it was in
the hearts of men and not upon a throne ; but it is equally clear
•Mark, x, 17-25. 'Mark. vii. 1-9.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 503
that wherever and in what measure his kingdom, was set up
in the hearts of men, the outer world would be in that measure
revolutionized and made new.
Whatever else the deafness and blindness of his hearers may
have missed in his utterances, it is plain that they did not
miss his resolve to revolutionize the world. Some of the quesr
tions that were brought to Jesus and the answers he gave enable
us to guess at the drift of much of his unrecorded teaching.
The directness of his political attack is manifest by such an
incident as that of the coin —
"And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the
Herodians, to catch him in his words. And when they were
come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true,
and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of
men, but teachest the way of God in truth : Is it lawful to give
tribute to Caesar, or not ? Shall we give, or shall we not give ?
But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them. Why tempt ye
me? bring me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought
it. And he saith unto them. Whose is this image and super-
scription? And they said unto him, Caesar's. And Jesus an-
swering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" ^ — ^which in
view of all else that he had taught, left very little of a man
or his possessions for Caesar.
The whole tenor of the opposition to him and the circum-
staijces of his trial and execution show clearly that to his con-
temporaries he seemed to propose plainly and did propose
plainly to change and fuse and enlarge all human life. But
even his disciples did not grasp the profound and comprehensive
significance of that proposal. They were ridden by the old
Jewish dream of a king, a Messiah to overthrow the Hellenized
Herods and the Eoman overlord, and restore the fabled glories
of David. They disregarded the substance of his teaching,
plain and direct though it was ; evidently they thought it was
merely his mysterious and singular way of setting about the
adventure that would at last put him on the throne of Jerusa-
lem. They thought he was just another king among the endless
succession of kings, but of a quasi-magic kind, and making
quasi-magic profession of an impossible virtue,
. "And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto bini;
>Mark. xii. 13-17.
504 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
saying Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatso-
ever we shall desire. And he said unto them, What would
ye that I should do for you ? They said unto him. Grant unto
us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on
thy left hand, in thy glory. But Jesus said unto them. Ye know
not what ye ask : can ye drink of the cup that I drink of ? and
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And
they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them. Ye
shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the
baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized : but to
sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give;
but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. And
when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with
James and John. But Jesus called them to him, and saith
unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over
the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones
exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among
you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your
minister: and whosoever of you will be the chief est, shall be
servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be minis-
tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many." ^
This was cold comfort for those who looked for a due reward
for their services and hardships in his train. They could not
believe this hard doctrine of a kingdom of service which was
its own exceeding great reward. Even after his death upon
the cross, they could still, after their first dismay, revert to
the belief that he was nevertheless in the vein of the ancient
world of pomps and privileges, that presently by some amazing
miracle he would become undead again and return, and set
up his throne with much splendour and graciousness in Jerusa-
lem. They thought his life was a stratagem and his death a
trick.
He was too great for his disciples. And in view of what he
plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and pros-
perous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world
at his teaching? Perhaps the priests and the rulers and the
rich men understood him better than his followers. He was
dragging out all the little private resei-vations they had made
from social service into the light of a universal religious life.
•Mark x. 35-45.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 505
He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind
out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In
the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no prop-
erty, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed
and no reward but love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled
£tnd blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples
cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any
wonder that the priests realized that between this man and
themselves there was no choice but that he or priestcraft should
perish ? Is it any wonder that the Eoman soldiers, confronted
and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and
threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild
laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple
and make a mock Caesar of him ? For to take him seriously was
to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits,
to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible
happiness. . . .
Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much
for our small hearts?
§ 3
Yet be it noted that while there was much in the real teach-
ings of Jesus that a rich man or a priest or a trader or an
imperial official or any ordinary respectable citizen could not
accept without the most revolutionary changes in his way of
living, yet there was nothing that a follower of the actual teach-
ing of Gautama Sakya might not receive very readily, nothing
to prevent a primitive Buddhist from being also a Nazarene,
and nothing to prevent a personal disciple of Jesus from ac-
cepting all the recorded teachings of Buddha.
Again consider the tone of this extract from the writings of
a Chinaman, Mo Ti, who lived somewhen in the fourth century
B.C., when the doctrines of Confucius and Lao Tse prevailed
in China, before the advent of Buddhism to that country, and
note how "I^azarene" it is.
"The mutual attacks of state on state; the mutual usurpa-
tions of family on family; the mutual robberies of man on
man; the want of kindness on the part of the sovereign and of
loyalty on the part, of the minister ; the want of tenderness and
filial duty between father and son — these, and such as these, are
506 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the things injurious to the eqipire. All this has arisen from
want of mutual love. If but that one virtue could be made
universal, the princes loving one another would have no bat-
tle-fields ; the chiefs of families would attempt no usurpations ;
men would commit no robberies; rulers and ministers would
be gracious and loyal ; fathers and sons would be kind and filial ;
brothers would be harmonious and easily reconciled. Men in
general loving one another, the strong would not make prey
of the weak; the many would not plunder the few, the rich
would not insult the poor, the noble would not be insolent to
the mean; and the deceitful would not impose upon the
simple." ^
This is extraordinarily like the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth
cast into political terms. The thoughts of Mo Ti came close
to the Kingdom of Heaven.
This essential identity is the most important historical aspect
of these great world religions. They were in their beginnings
quite unlike the priest, altar, and temple cults, those cults for
the worship of definite finite gods that played so great and so
essential a part in the earlier stages of man's development be-
tween 15,000 B.C. and 600 e.g. These new world religions,
from 600 B.C. onward, were essentially religions of the heart
and of the universal sky. They swept away all those various
and limited gods that had served the turn of human needs since
the first communities were welded together by fear and hope.
And presently when we come to Islam we shall find that for a
third time the same fundamental new doctrine of the need of a
universal devotion of all men to one Will reappears. Warned
by the experiences of Christianity, Muhammad was very
emphatic in insisting that he himself was merely a man and so
saved his teaching from much corruption and misrepresenta-
tion.
We speak of these great religions of mankind which arose be-
tween the Persian conquest of Babylon and the break-up of
the Roman empire as rivals; but it is their defects, their ac-
cumulations and excrescences, their differences of language and
phrase, that cause the rivalry ; and it is not to one overcoming
the other or to any new variant replacing them that we must
look, but to the white truth in each being burnt free from its
dross, and becoming manifestly the same truth — ^namely, that
'Hirth, The Ancient ffistory of China, Chap, viii,
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 507
the hearts of men, and therewith all the lives and institutions
of men, must be subdued to one common Will, ruling them all.^
And though much has been written foolishly about the an-
tagonism of science and religion, there is indeed no such
antagonism. What all these world religions declare by inspira-
tion and insight, history as it grows clearer and science as its
range extends display, as a reasonable and demonstrable fact,
that men form one universal brotherhood, that they spring from
one common origin, that their individual lives, their nations
and races, interbreed and blend and go on to merge again at
last in one common human destiny upon this little planet amidst
the stars. And the psychologist can now stand beside the
preacher and assure us that there is no reasoned peace of heart,
no balance and no safety in the soul, until a man in losing his
life has found it, and has schooled and disciplined his interests
and will beyond greeds, rivalries, fears, instincts, and narrow
affections. The history of our race and personal religious ex-
perience run so closely parallel as to seem to a modern observer
almost the same thing ; both tell of a being at first scattered and
blind and utterly confused, feeling its way slowly to the serenity
and salvation of an ordered and coherent purpose. That, in the
simplest, is the outline of history ; whether one have a religious
purpose or disavow a religious purpose altogether, the lines of
the outline remain the same.
§ 4
In the year 30 a.d., while Tiberius, the second emperor, was
Emperor of Rome and Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea,
a little while before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus of Naza-
reth came into Jerusalem. Probably he came then for the first
time. Hitherto he had been preaching chiefly in Galilee, and
for the most part round and about the town of Capernaum. In
Capernaum he had preached in the synagogue.
His entry into Jerusalem was a pacific triumph. He had
gathered a great following in Galilee — he had sometimes to
preach from a boat upon the Lake of Galilee, because of the
pressure of the crowd upon the shore — and his fame had spread
' "Stt. Paul understood what most Christians never realize, namely, that
the Gospel of Christ is not a religion, but religion itself in its most
universal and deepest significance." — Dean Inge in Outspoken Essaysi,
508 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
before him to the capital. Great crowds' came out to greet him.
It is clear they did not understand the drift of his teaching, and
that they shared the general persuasion that by some magic of
righteousness he was going to overthrow the established order.
He rode into the city upon the foal of an ass that had been bor-
rowed by his disciples. The crowd accompanied him with cries
of triumph and shouts of "Hosanna," a word of rejoicing.
He went to the temple. Its outer courts were cumbered with
the tables of money-changers and with the stalls of those who
sold doves to be liberated by pious visitors to the temple. These
traders upon religion he and his followers cast out, overturning
the tables. It was almost his only act of positive rule.
Then for a week he taught in Jerusalem, surrounded by a
crowd of followers who made his arrest by the authorities diffi-
cult. Then officialdom gathered itself together against this
astonishing intruder. One of his disciples, Judas, dismayed and
disappointed at the apparent ineffectiveness of this capture of
Jerusalem, went to the Jewish priests to give them his advice
and help in the arrest of Jesus. For this service he was re-
warded with thirty pieces of silver. The high priest and the
Jews generally had many reasons for dismay at this gentle in-
surrection that was filling the streets with excited crowds; for
example, the.Komans might misunderstand it or use it as an
occasion to do some mischief to the whole Jewish people. Ac-
cordingly the high priest Caiaphas, in his anxiety to show his
loyalty to the Eoman overlord, was the leader in the pro-
ceedings against this unarmed Messiah, and the priests and
the orthodox mob of Jerusalem the chief accusers of Jesus.
How he was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, how he
was tried and sentenced by Pontius Pilate, the Eoman procura-
tor, how he was scourged and mocked by the Roman soldiers
and crucified upon the hill called Golgotha, is told with unsur-
passable simplicity and dignity in the gospels.
The revolution collapsed utterly. The disciples of Jesus with
one accord deserted him, and Peter, being taxed as one of them,
said, "I know not the man." This was not the end they had
anticipated in their great coming to Jerusalem. His last hours
of aching pain and thirst upon the cross were watched only by
a few women and near friends. Towards the end of the long
day of suffering this abandoned leader roused himself to one
supreme effort, cried out with a loud voice, "My God! my
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 509
God! why has thou forsaken me?" and, leaving these words
to echo down the ages, a perpetual riddle to the faithful,
died.
It was inevitable that simple believers should have tried to
enhance the stark terrors of this tragedy by foolish stories of
physical disturbances similar to those which had been invented
to emphasize the conversion of Gautama. We are told that a
great darkness fell upon the earth, and that the veil of the temple
was rent in twain; but if indeed these things occurred, they
produced not the slightest effect upon the minds of people in
Jerusalem at that time. It is difficult to believe nowadays that
the order of nature indulged in any such meaningless comments.
Far more tremendous is it to suppose a world apparently in-
different to those three crosses in the red evening twilight, and
to the little group of perplexed and desolated watchers. The
darkness closed upon the hill ; the distant city set about its prep-
arations for the Passover; scarcely anyone but that knot of
mourners on the way to their homes troubled whether Jesus of
Nazareth was still dying or already dead. . . .
The souls of the disciples were plunged for a time into utter
darkness. Then presently came a whisper among them and
stories, rather discrepant stories, that the body of Jesus was
not in the tomb in which it had been placed, and that first one
and then another had seen him alive. Soon they were consoling
themselves with the conviction that he had risen from the dead,
that he had shown himself to many, and had ascended visibly
into heaven. Witnesses were found to declare that they had
positively seen him go up, visibly in his body. He had gone
through the blue — to God. Soon they had convinced themselves
that he would presently come again, in power and glory, to
judge all mankind. In a little while, they said, he would come
back to them; and in these bright revivals of their old-time
dream of an assertive and temporal splendour they forgot the
greater measure, the giant measure, he had given them of the
Kingdom of God.
§ 5
The story of the early beginnings of Christianity is the story
of the struggle between the real teachings and spirit of Jesus of
Nazareth and the limitations, amplifications, and misunder-
610 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
standings of the very inferior men who had loved and followed
him from Galilee, and who were now the bearers and custodians
of his message to mankind. The gospels and the Acts of the
Apostles present a patched and uneven record, but there can be
little question that on the whole it is a quite honest record of
those early days.
The early Nazarenes, as the followers of Jesus were called,
present from the first a spectacle of a great confusion between
these two strands, his teaching on the one hand, and the glosses
and interpretations of the disciples on the other. They" con-
tinued for a time his disciplines of the complete subjugation of
self; they had their goods in common, they had no bond but
love. Nevertheless, they built their faith upon the stories that
were told of his resurrection and magical ascension, and the
promiised return. Few of them understood that the renunciation
of self is its own reward, that it is itself the Kingdom of
Heaven; they regarded it as a sacrifice that entitled them to
the compensation of power and dominion when presently the
second coming occurred. They had now all identified Jesus
with the promised Christ, the Messiah so long expected by the
Jewish people. They found out prophecies of the crucifixion
in the prophets — ^the Gospel of Matthew is particularly insistent
upon these prophecies. Revived by these hopes, enforced by the
sweet and pure lives of many of the believers, the Nazarene doc-
trine began to spread very rapidly in Judea and Syria.
And presently there arose a second great teacher, whom many
modem authorities regard as the real founder of Christianity,
Saul of Tarsus, or Paul. Saul apparently was his Jewish and
Paul his Eoman name ; he was a Roman citizen, and a man
of much wider education and a much narrower intellectuality
than Jesus seems to have been. By birth he was probably a
Jew, though some Jewish writers deny this; he had certainly
studied under Jewish teachers. But he was well versed in the
Hellenic theologies of Alexandria, and his language was Greek.
Some classical scholars profess to find his Greek unsatisfactory ;
he did not use the Greek of Athens, but the Greek of Alexandria ;
but he used it with power and freedom.^ He was a religious
theorist and teacher long before he heard of Jesus of Nazareth,
•Paul's Greek is very good. He is affected by the philosophical jargon
of the Hellenistic BchoolB and by that of Stoicism. But his mastery of
sublime language is amazing. — G. M.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 511
and he appears in the New Testament narrative at first as the
bitter critic and antagonist of the Nazarenes.
The present writer has been unable to find any discussion of
the religious ideas of Paul before he became a follower of Jesus.
They must have been a basis, if only a basis of departure, for
his new views, and their phraseology certainly supplied the
colour of his new doctrines. We are almost equally in the
dark as to the teachings of Gamaliel, who is named as the
Jewish teacher at whose feet he sat. Nor do we know what
Gentile teachings had reached him. It is highly probable that
he had been influenced by Mithraism. He uses phrases curi-
ously like Mithraistic phrases. What will be clear to anyone
who reads his various Epistles, side by side with the Gospels,
is that his mind was saturated by an idea which does not appear
at all prominently in the reported sayings and teachings of
Jesus, the idea of a sacrificial person, who is offered up to God
as an atonement for sin. What Jesus preached was a new birth
of the human soul; what Paul preached was the ancient re-
ligion of priest and altar and propitiatory bloodshed. Jesus
was to him the Easter lamb, that traditional human victim
without spot or blemish who haunts all the religions of the dark
white peoples. Paul came to the Nazarenes with overwhelming
force because he came to them with this completely satisfactory
explanation of the disaster of the crucifixion. It was a brilliant
elucidation of what had been utterly perplexing.
Paul had never seen Jesus. His knowledge of Jesus and hia
teaching must have been derived from the hearsay of the original
disciples. It is clear that he apprehended much of the spirit of
Jesus and his doctrine of a new birth, but he built this into a
theological system, a very subtle and ingenious system, whose
appeal to this day is chiefly intellectual. And it is clear that
the faith of the Nazarenes, which he found as a doctrine of
motive and a way of living, he made into a doctrine of belief.
He found the Nazarenes with a spirit and hope, and he left
them Christians with the beginning of a creed.
But we must refer the reader to the Acts of the Apostles and
the Pauline Epistles for an account of Paul's mission and teach-
ing. He was a man of enormous energy, and he taught, at Jeru-
salem, Antioch, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Eome.
Possibly he went into Spain. The manner of his death is
not certainly known, but it is said that he was killed in Borne
512 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
during the reign of Nero. A great fire had burnt a large part
of Eome, and the new sect was accused of causing this. The
rapid spread of Christian teaching certainly owes more to Paul
than to any other single man. Within two decades of the cruci-
fixion this new religion was already attracting the attention of
the Roman rulers in several provinces. If it had acquired a
theology in the hands of St. Paul, it still retained much of
the revolutionary and elementary quality of the teachings of
Jesus. It had become somewhat more tolerant of private prop-
erty ; it would accept wealthy adherents without insisting upon
the eommunization of their riches, and St. Paul has condoned
the institution of slavery ("Slaves, be obedient to your mas-
ters"), but it still set its face like fiint against certain funda-
mental institutions of the Eoman world. It would not tolerate
the godhead of Csesar; not even by a mute gesture at the altar
would the Christians consent to worship the Emperor, though
their lives were at stake in the matter. It denounced the gladia-
torial shows. Unarmed, but possessing enormous powers of
passive resistance, Christianity thus appeared at the outset
plainly as rebfeUion, striking at the political if not at
the economic essentials of the imperial system. The first
evidences of Christianity in non-Christian literature we find
when perplexed Eoman officials began to write to one another
and exchange views upon the strange problem presented by this
infectious rebellion of otherwise harmless people.
Much of the history of the Christians in the first two cen-
turies of the Christian era is very obscure. They spread far and
wide throughout the world, but we know very little of their ideas
or their ceremonies and methods during that time. As yet they
had no settled creeds, and there can be little doubt that there
were wide local variations in their beliefs and disciplines during
this formless period. But whatever their local differences,
everywhere they seem to have carried much of the spirit of
Jesus; and though everywhere they aroused bitter enmity and
active counter-propaganda, the very charges made against them
witness to the general goodness of their lives.
During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort
of theocrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult
and the almost equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic
cult, and the cult of Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it
would seem the Christians adopted Sun-day as their chief day
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 513
of "Worship instead of the Jewish Sabbath, the abundant use of
candles in religious ceremonies, the legend of the adoration
by the shepherds, and probably also those ideas and phrases, so
distinctive of certain sects to this day, about being "washed in
the blood" of Christ, and of Christ being a blood sacrifice. For
we have to remember that a death by crucifixion is hardly a more
bloody death than hanging; to speak of Jesus shedding his
blood for mankind is really a most inaccurate expression. Even
when we remember that he was scourged, that he wore a crown
of thorns, and that his side was pierced by a spear, we are still
far from a "fountain filled with blood." But Mithraism cen-
tred upon some now forgotten mysteries about Mithras sacri-
ficing a sacred and benevolent bull; all the Mithraic shrines
seem to have contained a figure of Mithras killing this bull,
which bleeds copiously from a wound in its side, and from this
blood a new life sprang. The Mithraist votary actually bathed
in the blood of the sacrificial bull, and was "born again"
thereby. At his initiation he went beneath a scaffolding on
which the bull was killed, and the blood ran down on him.
The contributions of the Alexandrine cult to Christian thought
and practices were even more considerable. In the personality
of Horus, who was at once the son of Serapis and identical with
Serapis, it was natural for the Christians to find an illuminating
analogue in their struggles with the Pauline mysteries. From
that to the identification of Mary with Isis, and her elevation to
a rank quasi-divine — in spite of the saying of Jesus about his
mother and his brothers that we have already quoted — was also
a very natural step. Natural, too, was it for Christianity to
adopt, almost insensibly, the practical methods of the popular
religions of the time. Its priests took on the head-shaving and
the characteristic garments of the Egyptian priests, because that
sort of thing seemed to be the right way of distinguishing a
priest. One accretion followed another. Almost insensibly
the originally revolutionary teaching was buried under these
customary acquisitions. We have already tried to imagine
Gautama Buddha returning to Tibet, and his amazement at
the worship of his own image in Lhassa. We will but suggest
the parallel amazement of some earnest Nazarene who had
known and followed his dusty and travel-worn Master through
the dry sunlight of Galilee, restored suddenly to this world and
visiting, let us say, a mass in St. Peter's at Rome, at learning
514 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
that the consecrated wafer upon the altar was none other than
his crucified teacher.
Religion in a world community is not many things but one
thing, and it was inevitable that all the living religious faiths
in the world at the time, and all the philosophy and religious
thought that came into contact with Christianity, should come
to an account with Christianity and exchange phrases and ideas.
The hopes of the early Nazarenes had identified Jesus with the
Christ; the brilliant mind of Paul had surrounded his career
with mystical significance. Jesus had called men and women
to a giant undertaking, to the renunciation of self, to the new
birth into the kingdom of love. The line of least resistance for
the flagging convert was to intellectualize himself away from
this plain doctrine, this stark proposition, into complicated
theories and ceremonies — that would leave his essential self
alone. How much easier is it to sprinkle oneself with blood
than to purge oneself from malice and competition; to eat
bread and drink wine and pretend one had absorbed divinity,
to give candles rather than the heart, to shave the head and
retain the scheming privacy of the brain inside it ! The world
was full of such evasive philosophy and theological stuff in the
opening centuries of the Christian era. It is not for us here to
enlarge upon the distinctive features of Neoplatonism, Gnosti-
cism, Philonism, and the like teachings which abounded in the
Alexandrian world. But it was all one world with that in
which the early Christians were living. The writings of such
men as Origan, Plotinus, and Augustine witness to the inevitable
give and take of the time.
Jesus called himself the Son of God and also the Son of
Man ; but he laid little stress on who he was or what he was,
and much upon the teachings of the Kingdom. In declaring
that he was more than a man and divine, Paul and his other
followers, whether they were right *or wrong, opened up a vast
field of argument. Was Jesus God ? Or had God created him ?
Was he identical with God or separate from God? It is not
the function of the historian to answer such questions, but he
is bound to note them, and to note how unavoidable they were,
because of the immense influence they have had upon the whole
subsequent life of western mankind. By the fourth century
of the Christian Era we find all the Christian communities so
agitated and exasperated by tortuous and elusive arguments
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 515
about the nature of God as to be largely negligent of the simpler
teachings of charity, service, and brotherhood that Jesus had
inculcated.
The chief views that the historian notices are those of the
Arians, the Sabellians, and the Trinitarians. The Arians fol-
lowed Arius, who taught that Christ was less than God; the
Sabellians taught that he was a mode or aspect of God; God
was Creator, Saviour, and Comforter just as one pian may
be father, trustee, and guest ; the Trinitarians, of whom Atha-
nasius was the great leader, taught that the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost were three distinct Persons, but one God.
The reader is referred to the Athanasian Creed ^ for the exact
expression of the latter mystery, and for the alarming conse-
quences to him of any failure to grasp and believe it. To
Gibbon he must go for a derisive statement of these controver-
sies. The present writer can deal with them neither with awe
nor derision; they seem to him, he must confess, a disastrous
ebullition of the human mind entirely inconsistent with the plain
account of Jesus preserved for us in the gospels. Orthodoxy
became a test not only for Christian ofl&ce, but for Christian
trade and help. A small point of doctrine might mean affluence
or beggary to a man. It is difficult to read the surviving litera-
ture of the time without a strong sense of the dogmatism, the
spites, rivalries, and pedantries of the men who tore Christianity
to pieces for the sake of these theological refinements. Most of
the Trinitarian disputants — for it is chiefly Trinitarian docu-
ments that survive — accuse their antagonists, probably with
truth, of mean and secondary motives, but they do so in a man-
ner that betrays their own base spirit very clearly. Arius, for
example, is accused of adopting heretical opinions because he
was not appointed Bishop of Alexandria, Eiots and excom-
munications and banishments punctuated these controversies,
and finally came official persecutions. These fine differences
about the constitution of the Deity interwove with politics and
international disputes. Men who quarrelled over business af-
fairs, wives who wished to annoy their husbands, developed
antagonistic views upon this exalted theme. Most of the bar-
barian invaders of the empire were Arians; probably because
*In any prayer book of the Episcopalian Church. The Athanasian
Creed embodies the view of Athanaslus, but probably was not composed
by him.
5ie THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
their simple minds found the Trinitarian position incompre-
hensible.
It is easy for the sceptic to mock at these disputes. But even
if we think that these attempts to say exactly how God was
related to himself were presumptuous and intellectually mon-
strous, nevertheless we are bound to recognize that beneath these
preposterous refinements of impossible dogmas there lay often
a real passion for truth — ^even if it was truth ill conceived.
Both sides produced genuine martyrs. And the zeal of these
controversies, though it is a base and often malicious zeal, did
at any rate make the Christian sects very energetically propa-
gandist and educational. Moreover, because the history of the
Christian body in the fourth and fifth centuries is largely a
record of these unhappy disputes, that must not blind us to
the fact that the spirit of Jesus did live and ennoble many lives
among the Christians. The text of the gospels, though it was
probably tampered with during this period, was not destroyed,
and Jesus of l^azareth, in his own manifest inimitable great-
ness, still taught through that text. Nor did these unhappy
quarrels prevent Christianity from maintaining a united front
against gladiatorial shows and against the degrading worship of
idols and of the god-Caesar.
§ 6
So far as it challenged the divinity of Caesar and the char-
acteristic institutions of the empire, Christianity is to be re-
garded as a rebellious and disintegrating movement, and so it
was regarded by most of the emperors before Constantine the
Great. It encountered considerable hostility, and at last sys-.
tematic attempts to suppress it. Deciu? was the first emperor
to organize an official persecution, and the great era of the
martyrs was in the time of Diocletian (303 and following years) .
The persecution of Diocletian was indeed the crowning strug-
gle of the old idea of the god-emperor against the already great
and powerful organization that denied his divinity. Diocle-
tian had reorganized the monarchy upon lines of extreme
absolutism; he had abolished the last vestiges of republican
institutions ; he was the first emperor to surround himself com-
pletely with the awe-inspiring etiquette of an eastern monarch.
He was forced by the logic of his assumptions to attempt the
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 517
complete eradication of a system that flatly denied them. The
test in the persecution was that the Christian was required to
offer sacrifice to the emperor.
"Though Diocletian, still averse to the effusion of blood, had
moderated the fury of Galerius, who proposed that everyone
refusing to offer sacrifice should immediately be burnt alive,
the penalties inflicted on the obstinacy of the Christians might
be deemed sufficiently rigorous and effectual. It was enacted
that their churches, in all the provinces of the empire, should
be demolished to their foundations ; and the punishment • of
death was denounced against all who should presume to hold
any secret assemblies for the purpose of religious worship. The
philosophers, who now assumed the unworthy office of directing
the blind zeal of persecution, had diligently studied the nature
and genius of the Christian religion; and as thOy were not
ignorant that the speculative doctrines of the faith were sup-
posed to be contained in the writings of the prophets, of the
evangelists, and of the apostles, they most probably suggested
the order that the bishops and presbyters should deliver all their
sacred books into the hands of the magistrates, who were com-
manded, under the severest penalties, to burn them in a public
and solemn manner. By the same edict, the property of the
church was at once confiscated ; and the several parts of which
it might consist were either sold to the highest bidder, united
to the imperial domain, bestowed on the cities or corporations,
or granted to the solicitations of rapacious courtiers. After
taking such effectual measures to abolish the worship, and to
dissolve the government of the Christians, it was thought neces-
sary to subject to the most intolerable hardships the condition
of those perverse individuals who should still reject the religion
of nature, of Kome, and of their ancestors. Persons of a
liberal birth were declared incapable of holding any honours or
employments; slaves were for ever deprived of the hopes of
freedom ; and the whole body of the Christians were put out of
the' protection of the law. The judges were authorized to hear
and to determine every action that was brought agaiuat a
Christian; but the Christians were not permitted to complain
of any injury which they themselves had suffered; and those
unfortunate sectaries were exposed to the severity, while they
were excluded from the benefits, of public justice. . . . This
edict was scarcely exhibited to the public view, in the most con-
518 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
spicuoua place in Nicomedia, before it was torn down by tbe
hands of a Christian, who expressed at the same time, by the
bitterest of invectives, his contempt as well as abhorrence for
such impious and tyrannical governors. His offence, according
to the mildest laws, amounted to treason, and deserved death,
and if it be true that he was a person of rank and education,
those circumstances could serve only to aggravate his guilt. He
was burnt, or rather roasted, by a slow fire; and his execu-
tioners, zealous to revenge the personal insult which had been
offered to the emperors, exhausted every refinement of cruelty
without being able to subdue his patience, or to alter the steady
and insulting smile which in his dying agonies he still pre-
served in his countenance." ^
So with the death of this unnamed martyr the great persecu-
tion opened. But, as Gibbon points out, our information as to
its severity is of very doubtful value. He estimates the total
of victims as about two thousand, and contrasts this with the
known multitudes of Christians martyred by their fellow-Chris^
tians during the period of the Eeformation. Gibbon was
strongly prejudiced against Christianity, and here he seems
disposed to minimize the fortitude and sufferings of the Chris-
tians. In many provinces, no doubt, there must have been a
great reluctance to enforce the edict. But there was a hunt
for the copies of Holy Writ, and in many places a systematic
destruction of Christian churches. There were tortures and
executions, as well as a great crowding of the gaols with Chris-
tian presbyters and bishops. We have to remember that the
Christian community was now a very considerable element of
the population, and that an influential proportion of the officials
charged with the execution of the edict were themselves of the
proscribed faith. Gelerius, who was in control of the eastern
provinces, was among the most vigorous of the persecutors, but
in the end, on his death bed (371), he realized the futility of
his attacks upon this huge community, and granted toleration
in an edict, the gist of which Gibbon translates as follows: —
"Among the important cares which have occupied our mind
for the utility and preservation of the empire, it was our inten-
tion to correct and re-establish all things according to the ancient
laws and public discipline of the Komans. We were particu-
larly desirous of reclaiming into the way of reason and nature
'Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Umpire, chap. xvi.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 519
the deluded Christians who had renounced the religion and
ceremonies instituted by their fathers ; and presumptuously de-
spising the practice of antiquity, had invented extravagant laws
and opinions according to the dictates of their fancy, and had
collected a various society from the different provinces of our
empire. The edicts which we have published to enforce the
worship of the gods having exposed many of the Christians to
danger and distress, many having suffered death, and many
more who still persist in their impious folly, being left destitute
of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend to
those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We
permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions
and to assemble in their conventicles without fear or molesta-
tion, provided always that they preserve a due respect to the
established laws and government. By another rescript we shall
signify our intentions to the judges and magistrates; and we
hope that our indulgence will engage the Christians to offer up
their prayers to the deity whom they adore, for our safety and
prosperity, for their ovra, and for that of the republic."
In a few years Constantino the Great was reigning, first as
associated emperor (312) and then as the sole ruler (324),
and the severer trials of Christianity were over. If Chris-
tianity was a rebellious and destructive force towards a pagan
Home, it was a unifying and organizing force within its own
communion. This fact the genius of Constantino grasped.
The spirit of Jesus, for all the doctrinal dissensions that pre-
vailed, made a great freemasonry throughout and even beyond
the limits of the empire. The faith was spreading among the
barbarians beyond the border ; it had extended into Persia and
Central Asia. It provided the only hope of moral solidarity he
could discern in the great welter of narrow views and self-
seeking over which he had to rule. It, and it alone, had the
facilities for organizing will, for the need of which the empire
was falling to pieces like a piece of rotten cloth. In 312 Con-
stantine had to fight for Rome and his position against Maxen-
tius. He put the Christian monogram upon the shields and
banners of his troops and claimed that the God of the Chris-
tians had fought for him in his complete victory at the battle
of the Milvian Bridge just outside Eome. By this act he
renounced all those pretensions to divinity that the vanity of
Alexander the Great had first brought into the western world,
590 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and with the applause and enthusiastic support of the Chris-
tians he established himself as a monarch more absolute even
than Diocletian.
In a few years' time Christianity had become the official
religion of the empire, and in a.d. 337 Constantine upon his
death-bed was baptized as a Christian.
§ 7
The figure of Constantine the Great is at least as cardinal in
history as that of Alexander the Great or Augustus Csesar.
We know very little of his personality or of his private life;
no Plutarch, no Suetonius, has preserved any intimate and
living details about him. Abuse we have of him from his
enemies, and much obviously fulsome panegyric to set against
it ; but none of these writers give us a living character of him ;
he is a party symbol for them, a partisan flag. It is stated
by the hostile Zosimus that, like Sargon I, he was of illegitimate
birth; his father was a distinguished general and his mother,
Helena, an inkeeper's daughter of Wish in Serbia. Gibbon,
however, is of opinion that there was a valid marriage. In
any case it was a lowly marriage, and the personal genius of
Constantine prevailed against serious disadvantages. He was
comparatively illiterate, he knew little or no Greek. It ap-
pears to be true that he banished his eldest son Crispus, and
caused him to be executed at the instigation of the young man's
stepmother, Fausta; and it is also recorded that he was after-
wards convinced of the innocence of Crispus, and caused Fausta
to be executed — according to one account by being boiled to
death in her bath, and according to another by being exposed
naked to wild beasts on a desolate mountain — ^while there is
also very satisfactory documentary evidence that she survived
him. If she was executed, the fact remains that her three
sons, together with two nephews, became the appointed heirs
of Constantine. Clearly there is nothing solid to be got from
this libellous tangle, and such souffle as is possible with these
scanty materials is to be found admirably done by Gibbon
(chap, xviii.). Gibbon, because of his anti-Christian animus,
is hostile to Constantine ; but he admits that he was temperate
and chaste. He accuses him of prodigality because of his
great public buildings, and of being vain and dissolute ( !)
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 521
because in his old age he wore a wig — Gibbon wore his own
hair tied with a becoming black bow — -and a diadem and mag-
nificent robes. But all the later emperors after Diocletian wore
diadems and magnificent robes.
Yet if the personality of Constantino the Great remains
phantom-like, if the particulars of his domestic life reveal noth-
ing but a vague tragedy, we can still guess at much that was
in his mind. It must, in the closing years of his life, have
been a very lonely mind. He was more of an autocrat than
any previous emperor had been — that is to say, he had less coun-
sel and help. No class of public-spirited and trustworthy men
remained; no senate nor council shared and developed his
schemes. How much be apprehended the geographical weak-
ness of the empire, how far he saw the complete disaster that
was now so near, we can only guess. He made his real capital
at Nicomedia in Bithynia; Constantinople across the Bo&-
phorus was still being built when he died. Like Diocletian, he
seems to have realized the broken-backed outline of his domin-
ions, and to have concentrated his attention on foreign affairs
and more particularly on the affairs of Hungary, South
Russia, and the Black Sea. He reorganized all the
official machinery of the empire; he gave it a new con-
stitution and sought to establish a dynasty. He was a rest-
less remaker of things; the social confusion he tried to fix by
assisting in the development of a caste system. This was fol-
lowing up the work of his great predecessor, Diocletian. He
tried to make a caste of the peasants and small cultivators, and
to restrict them from moving from their holdings. In fact
he sought to make them serfs. The supply of slave laboui;
had fallen off because the empire was no longer an invading
but an invaded power; he turned to serfdom as the remedy.
His creative efforts necessitated unprecedentedly heavy taxa-
tion. All these things point to a lonely and forcible mind. It
is in his manifest understanding of the need of some unifying
moral force if the empire was to hold together that his claim
to originality lies.
It was only after he had turned to Christianity that he seems
to have realized the fierce dissensions of the theologians. He
made a great effort to reconcile these differences in order to
have one uniform and harmonious teaching in the community,
and at his initiative a general council of the Church was held
522 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
at Nicsea, a town near Kicomedia and over against Constanti-
nople, in 325. Eusebius gives a curious account of tkis strange
gathering, over which the Emperor, although he was not yet
a baptized Christian, presided. It was not his first council
of the Church, for he had already (in 313) presided over a
council at Aries. He sat in the midst of the council of NicsBa
upon a golden throne, and as he had little Greek, we must sup-
pose he was reduced to watching the countenances and gestures
of the debaters, and listening to their intonations. The council
was a stormy one. When old Arius rose to speak, one Nicholas
of Myra struck him in the face, and afterwards many ran out,
thrusting their fingers into their ears in affected horror at the
old man's heresies. One is tempted to imagine the great Em-
peror, deeply anxious for the soul of his empire, firmly re-
solved to end these divisions, bending towards his interpreters
to ask tbem the meaning of the uproar.
The views that prevailed at Nicsea are embodied in the Nicene
Creed, a strictly Trinitarian statement, and the Emperor sus-
tained the Trinitarian position. But afterwards, when Athana-
sius bore too hardly upon the Arians, he had him banished from
Alexandria; and when the church at Alexandria would have
excommunicated Arius. he obliged it to readmit him to
communion.
§ 8
This date 325 a.d. is a very convenient date in our history.
It is the date of the first complete general ("oecumenical")
council of the entire Christian world. (That at Aries we have
mentioned had been a gathering of only the western half.) It
marks the definite entry upon the stage of human affairs of the
Christian church and of Christianity as it is generally under-
stood in the world to-day. It marks the exact definition of
Christian teaching by the Nicene Creed.
It is necessary that we should recall the reader's attention
to the profound differences between this fully developed Chris-
tianity of Nicsea and the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. All
Christians hold that the latter is completely contained in the
former, but that is a question outside our province. What is
clearly apparent is that the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth was a
prophetic teaching of the new type that began with the Hebrew
prophets. It was not priestly, it had no consecrated temple and
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 523
no altar. It had no rites and ceremonies. Its sacrifice was "a
broken and a contrite heart." Its only organization was an
organization of preachers, and its chief function was the ser-
mon. But the fully fledged Christianity of the fourth century,
though it preserved as its nucleus the teachings of Jesus in the
gospels, was mainly a priestly religion of a type already familiar
to the world for thousand of years. The centre of its elaborate
ritual was an altar, and the essential act of worship the sacri-
fice, by a consecrated priest, of the mass. And it had a rapidly
developing organization of deacons, priests, and bishops.
But if Christianity had taken on an extraordinary outward
rfesemblance to the cults of Serapis, Ammon, or Bel-Marduk,
we must remember that even its priestcraft had certain novel
features. Nowhere did it possess any quasi-divine image of
God. There was no head temple containing the god, because
God was everywhere. There was no holy of holies. Its wide-
spread altars were all addressed to the unseen universal Trinity.
Even in its most archaic aspects there was in Christianity some-
thing new.
A very important thing for us to note is the role played by
the Emperor in the fixation of Christianity. Not only was the
council of Nicsea assembled by Constantine the Great, but all
the great councils, the two at Constantinople (381 and 553),
Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451), were called together by
the imperial power. And it is very manifest that in much of
the history of Christianity at this time the spirit of Constantine
the Great is as evident as, or more evident, than the spirit of
Jesus. He was, we have said, a pure autocrat. The last ves-
tiges of Roman republicanism had vanished in the days of
Aurelian and Diocletian. To the best of his lights he was
trying to remake the crazy empire while, there was yet
time, and he worked without any councillors, any public
opinion, or any sense of the need of such aids and checks.
The idea of stamping out all controversy and division, stamp-
ing out all thought, by imposing one dogmatic creed upon all
believers, is an altogether autocratic idea, it is the idea of the
single-handed man who feels that to work at all he must be
free from opposition and criticism. The history of the Church
under his influence becomes now therefore a history 'of the vio-
lent struggles that were bound to follow upon his sudden and
rough summons to unanimity. From him the Church acquired
«24 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the disposition to be authoritative and unquestioned, to develop
a centralized organization and run parallel to the empire.
A second great autocrat who presently contributed to the
stamping upon Catholic Christianity of a distinctly authorita-
tive character was Theodosius I, Theodosius the Great (379-
395). He forbade the unorthodox to hold meetings, handed
over all churches to the Trinitarians, and overthrew the heathen
temples, throughout the empire, and in 390 he caused the great
statue of Serapis at Alexandria to be destroyed. There was
to be no rivalry, no qualification to the rigid unity of the
Church.
Here we cannot tell of the vast internal troubles of the
Church, its indigestions of heresy; of Arians and Paulicians,
of Gnostics and Manicheans. Had it been less authoritative
and more tolerant of intellectual variety, it might perhaps have
been a still more powerful body than it became. But, in spite
of all these disorders, it did for some time maintain a con-
ception of human unity more intimate and far wider than was
ever achieved before. By the fifth century Christendom was
already becoming greater, sturdier, and more enduring than
any empire had ever been, because it was something not merely
imposed upon men, but interwoven with the texture of their
minds. It reached out far beyond the utmost limits of the
empire, into Armenia, Persia, Abyssinia, Ireland, Germany,
India, and Turkestan. "Though made up of widely scattered
congregations, it was thought of as one body of Christ, one
people of God. This ideal unity found expression in many
ways. Intercommunication between the various Christian com-
munities was very active. Christians upon a journey were al-
ways sure of a warm welcome and hospitable entertainment
from their fellow-disciples. Messengers and letters were sent
freely from one church to another. Missionaries and evan-
gelists went continually from place to place. Documents of
various kinds, including gospels and apostolic epistles, circu-
lated widely. Thus in various ways the feeling of unity found
expression, and the development of widely separated parts of
Christendom conformed more or less closely to a common type." ^
Christendom retained at least the formal tradition of this
general unity of spirit imtil 1054, when the Latin-speaking
Western church and the main and original Greek-speaking
^ Encyolopwdia BritammAca, art. "Church History," p. 336.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 52S
cliTirch, the "Orthodox" church, severed themselves from one
another, ostensibly npon the question of adding tveo words to
the creed. The older creed had declared that the "Holy Ghost
proceeded from the Father." The Latins vpanted to add, and did
add "Filioque" (= and from the son), and placed the Greeks
out of their communion because they would not follow this lead.
But already as early as the fifth century the Christians in
Eastern Syria, Persia, Central Asia — there were churches at
Merv, Herat, and Samarkand — and India had detached them-
selves on a similar score. These extremely interesting Asiatic
Christians are known in history as the Nestorian Church, and
their influence extended into China. The Egyptian and Abys-
sinian churches also detached themselves very early upon simi-
larly inexplicable points. Long before this formal separation
of the Latin and Greek-speaking halves of the main church,
however, there was a practical separation following upon the
breaking up. of the empire. Their conditions diverged from
the first. While the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire held to-
gether and the emperor at Constantinople remained dominant in
the Church, the Latin half of the empire, as we have already
told, collapsed, and left the Church free of any such imperial
control. Moreover, while ecclesiastical authority in the empire
of Constantinople was divided between the high-bishops, or
patriarchs, of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusa-
lem, authority in the West was concentrated in the Patriarch,
or Pope, of Home. The Bishop of Eome had always been
recognized as first among the patriarchs, and all these things
conspired to justify exceptional pretensions upon his part to
a quasi-imperial authority. With the final fall of the Westiern
Empire, he took over the ancient title of pontifex maximus
which the emperors had held, and so became the supreme sacri-
ficial priest of the Koman tradition. Over the Christians of
the West his supremacy was fully recognized, but from the
beginning it had to be urged with discretion within the domin-
ions of the Eastern emperor and the jurisdictions of the other
four patriarchs.
Ideas of worldly rule by the Church were already prevalent
in the fourth century. St. Augustine, a citizen of Hippo
in North Africa, who wrote between 354 and 430, gave expres-
sion to the developing political ideas of the Church in his book
The City of Ood. The City of God leads the mind very di-
526 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
rectly towards the possibility of making the world into a theo-
logical and organized Kingdom of Heaven. The city, as
Augnstine puts it, is "a spiritual society of the predestined
faithful," but the step from that to a political application was
not a very wide one. The Church was to be the ruler of the
world over all nations, the divinely led ruling power over 'a
great league of terrestrial states. In later years these ideas
developed into a definite political theory and policy. As the
barbarian races settled and became Christian, the Pope began
to claim an overlordship of their kings. In a few centuries
the Pope had become in theory, and to a certain extent in
practice, the high priest, censor, judge, and divine monarch
of Christendom; his influence extended in the west far be-
yond the utmost range of the old empire, to Ireland, Norway
and Sweden, and over all Germany. For more than a thou-
sand years this idea of the unity of Christendom, of Christen-
dom as a sort of vast Amphictyony, whose members even in
war time were restrained from many extremities by the idea
of a common brotherhood and a common loyalty to the Church,
dominated Europe. The history of Europe from the fifth
century onward to the fifteenth is very largely the history of
the failure of this great idea of a divine world government to
realize itself in practice.
§9
We have already given an account in the previous chapter
of the chief irruptions of the barbarian races. We may now,
with the help of a map, make a brief review of the political
divisions of Europe at the close of the fifth century. No
vestige of the Western Empire, the original Roman Empire,
remained as a distinct and separate political division. Po-
litically it was completely broken up. Over many parts of
Europe a sort of legendary overlordship of the Hellenic East-
ern Empire as the Empire held its place in men's minds. The
emperor at Constantinople was, in theory at least, still emperor.
In Britain, the quite barbaric Teutonic Angles, Saxons and Jutes
had conquered the eastern half of England ; in the west of the
island the Britons still held out, but were gradually being
forced . back into Wales and Cornwall. The Anglo-Saxons
seem to have been among the most ruthless and effective of bar-
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 527
barian conquerors, for, wherever they prevailed, their lan-
guage completely replaced the Keltic or Latin speech — it is
not certain which — used by the British. These Anglo-Saxons
were as yet not Christianized. Most of Gaul, Holland, and
the Khineland was under the fairly vigorous. Christianized,
and much more civilized kingdom of the Franks. But the
Rhone valley was under the separate kingdom of the Bur-
gundians. Spain and some of the south of France were under
the rule of the Visigoths, but the Suevi were in possession of
the north-west corner of the peninsula. Of the Vandal king-
dom in Africa we have already written; and Italy, still in its
population and habits Roman, came under the rule of the Os-
trogoths. There was no emperor left in Rome; Theodoric I
ruled there as the first of a line of Gothic kings, and his rule
extended across the Alps into Pannonia and down the Adriatic
to Dalmatia and Serbia. To the east of the Gothic kingdom
the emperors of Constantinople ruled definitely. The Bulgars
were still at this time a Mongolian tribe of horse-riding nomads
in the region of the Volga ; the Aryan Serbs had recently come
southward to the shores of the Black Sea into the original home
of the Visigoths; the Turko-Finnish Magyars were not yet
in Europe. The Lombards were as yet north of the Danube.
The sixth century was marked by a phase of vigour on the
part of the Eastern Empire under the Emperor Justinian
(527-565). The Vandal kingdom was recovered in 534; the
Goths were expelled from Italy in 553. So soon as Justinian
was dead (565), the Lombards descended into Italy and set-
tled in Lombardy, but they left Ravenna, Rome, Southern
Italy, and North Africa under the rule of the Eastern
Empire.
Such was the political condition of the world in which the
idea of Christendom developed. The daily life of that time
was going on at a very low level indeed physically, intellectu-
ally, and morally. It is' frequently said that Europe in the
sixth and seventh centuries relapsed into barbarism, but that
does not express the reality of the case. It is far more cor-
rect to say that the civilization of the Roman empire had
passed into a phase of extreme demoralization. Barbarism is
a social order of an elementary type, orderly within its limits ;
but the state of Europe beneath its political fragmentation was
a social disorder. Its morah was not that of a kraal, but that
528 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of a slum. In a savage kraal a savage knows tliat he belongs
to a community, and lives and acts accordingly; in a slum,
the individual neither knows of nor acts in relation to any
greater being.
Only very slowly and weakly did Christianity restore that
lost sense of community and teach men to rally about the idea
of Christendom. The social and economic structure of the
Roman Empire was in ruins. That civilization had been a
civilization of wealth and political power sustained by the
limitation and slavery of- the great mass of mankind. It had
presented a spectacle of outward splendour and luxurious re-
fihement, but beneath that brave outward show were cruelty,
stupidity, and stagnation. It had to break down, it had to be
removed before anything better could replace it.
We have already called attention to its intellectual deadness.
For three centuries it had produced neither science nor litera-
ture of any importance. It is only where men are to be found
neither too rich and powerful to be tempted into extravagant
indulgences nor too poor and limited to care for anything be-
yond the daily need that those disinterested curiosities and
serene impulses can have play that give sane philosophy and
science and great art to the world, and the plutocracy of Rome
had made such a class impossible. When men and women are
unlimited and unrestrained, the evidence of history shows
clearly that they are all liable to become monsters of self-
indulgence; when, on the other hand, they are driven and
Unhappy, then their impulse is towards immoderate tragical
resorts, towards wild revolts or towards the austerities and
intensities of religion.
It is not perhaps true to say that the-world became miserable
in these "dark ages" to which we have now come ; much nearer
the truth is it to say that the violent and vulgar fraud of
Roman imperialism, that world of politicians, adventurers,
landowners and financiers, collapsed into a sea of misery that
was already there. Our histories of these times are very
imperfect: there were few places where men could write, and
little encouragement to write at all; no one was sure even
of the safety of his manuscript or the possibility of its being
read. But we know enough to tell that this age was an age
not merely of war and robbery, but of famine and pestilence.
No effective sanitary organization had yet come into the world.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY
529
and the migrations of the time must have destroyed whatever
hygenic balaiice had been established. Attila's ravages in
North Jtaly were checked by an outbreak of fever in 452. There
was a great epidemic of Wbonic plague towards the end of
the reign of Justinian (565) which did much to weaken the
defence of Italy against the Lombards. In 643 ten thousand
•A A « "Map of 'EUROPE akmi-SOOAJ>. iS « «
■-'^'''^^"■^^-^■^'™™^^
M E K
people had died in one day in Constantinople. (Gibbon says
"each day.") Plague was raging in Eome in 590. The
seventh century was also a plague-stricken century. The Eng-
lishman Bede, one of the few \?ritera of the time, records, pesti-
lences in England in 664, 672, 678, and 683, no fewer than
four in twenty years! Gibbon couples the Justinian epidemic
with the great comet of 531, and with the very frequent and
serious earthquakes of that reign. "Many cities of, the east
were left vacant, and in several districts of Italy the harvest
and the vintage withered on the ground." He . alleges "a
530 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
visible decrease of the human species which has never been
made good in some of the fairest countries of the globe." To
many in those dark days it seemed that all learning and all that
made life seemly and desirable was perishing.
How far the common lot was unhappier under these condi-
tions of squalor and insecurity than it had been under the grind-
ing order of the imperial system it is impossible to say. There
was possibly much local variation, the rule of violent bullies
here and a good-tempered freedom there, famine this year and
plenty the next. If robbers abounded, tax-gatherers and cred-
itors had disappeared. Such kings as those of the Frankish
and Gothic kingdoms were really phantom } ulers. to most of
their so-called subjects; the life of each district went on at a
low level, with little trade or travel. Greater or lesser areas
of countryside would be dominated by some able person, claim-
ing with more or less justice the title of lord or count or duke
from the tradition of the later empire or from the king. Such
local nobles would assemble bands of retainers and build them-
selves strongholds. Often they adapted pre-existing buildings.
The Colosseum at Eome, for example, the arena of many great
gladiatorial shows, was converted into a fortress, and so was
the amphitheatre at Aries. So also was the great tomb of
Hadrian at Rome. In the decaying and now insanitary towns
and cities shrunken bodies of artisans would hold togtether
and serve the needs of the cultivating villages about them by
their industry, placing themselves under the protection of
some adjacent noble.
§ 10
A very important share in the social recrystallization that
went on in the sixth and seventh centuries after the breakdown
and fusion of the fourth and fifth was taken by the Christian
monastic orders that were now arising in the Western world.
Monnteries had existed in the world before Christianity.
During the period of social unhappincs among the Jews be-
fore the time of Jesus of Nazareth, there was a sect of Esbones
who lived apart in communities vowed to austere lives of soli-
tude, purity, and self-denial. Buddhism, too, had developed
its communities of men who withdrew from the general effort
and commerce of the world to lead lives of austerity and conr
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 631
templation. Indeed, the story of Buddha as we have told it,
shows that such ideas must have prevailed in India long be-
fore his time, and that at last he repudiated them. Quite
early in the history of Christianity there arose a similar move-
ment away from the competition and heat and stress of the
daily life of men. In Egypt, particularly, great numbers of
men and women went out into the desert and there lived soli-
tary lives of prayer and contemplation, living in absolute pov-
erty in caves or under rocks, and subsisting on the chance alms
of those whom their holiness impressed. Such lives would
signify little to the historian, they are indeed of their very
nature lives' withdrawn from history, were it not for the turn
this monastic tendency presently took among the more ener-
getic and practical Europeans.
One of the central figures in the story of the development
of monasticism in Europe is St. Benedict, who lived between
480 and 544. He was born at Spoleto in Italy, and he was a
young man of good family and ability. The shadow of the
times fell upon him, and, like Buddha, he took to the religious
life and at first set no limit to his austerities. Eifty miles
from Kome is Subiaco, and there at the end of a gorge of the
Anio, beneath a jungle growth of weeds and bushes, rose a
deserted palace built by the Emperor Nero, overlooking an
artificial lake that had been made in those days of departed
prosperity by damming back the waters of the river. Here,
with a hair shirt as his chief possession, Benedict took up his
quarters in a cave in the high southward-looking cliff that over-
hangs the stream, in so inaccessible a position that his food
had to be lowered to him on a cord by a faithful admirer.
Three years he lived here, and his fame spread as Buddha's did
nearly a thousand years before under similar circumstances.
As in the case of Buddha, the story of Benedict has been
overlaid by foolish and credulous disciples with a mass of silly
stories of miracles and manifestations. But presently we find
him, no longer engaged in self-torment, but controlling a group
of twelve monasteries, and the resort of a great number of peo-
ple. Youths are brought to him to be educated, and the whole
character of his life has changed.
From Subiaco he moved further southward to Monte Cas-
sino, half-way between Kome and Naples, a lonely and beauti-
ful mountain, in the midst of a great circle of majestice heights.
5S2 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Here, it is interesting to note that in the sixth century a.d.
he found a temple of Apollo and a sacred grove and the coun-
tryside still worshipping at this shrine. His first labours
had to be missionary labours, and it was with difficulty that
he ipersuaded the simple pagans to demolish their temple and
cut down their grove. The establishment upon Monte Cas-
sino became a famous and powerful centre within the lifetime
of its founder. Mixed up with the imbecile inventions of
marvel-loving monks about demoiis exorcised, disciples walking
on the water, and dead children restored to life, we can still
detect something of the real spirit of Benedict. Particularly
si^ificant are the stories that represent him as 'discouraging
extreme mortification. He sent a damping message to a soli-
tary who had invented a new degree in saintliness by chain-
ing himself to a rock in a narrow cave. "Break thy chain,"
said Benedict, "for the true servant of God is chained not to
rooks by iron, but to righteousness by Christ."
And next to the discouragement of solitary self-torture it
is Benedict's distinction that he insisted upon hard work.
Through the legends shines the clear indication of the trouble
made by his patrician students and disciples who found them-
selves obliged to toil instead of leading lives of leisurely austerity
under the ministrations of the lower class brethren. A third
remarkable thing about Benedict was his political infiuence. He
set himself to reconcile Goths and Italians, and it is clear that
Totila, his Gothic king, came to him for counsel and was greatly
influenced by him. When Totila retook Naples from the Greeks,
the Goths protected the women from insult and treated even
the captured soldiers with humanity. When Belisarius, Jus-
tinian's general, had taken the same place ten years previously,
he had celebrated his triumph by a general massacre.
Now the monastic organization of Benedict was a very
great beginning in the western world. One of his prominent
followers was Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), the first
monk to become pope (590) ; he was one of the most capable
and energetic of the popes, sending successful missions to the
unconverted, and particularly to the Anglo-Saxons. He ruled
in Rome like an independent king, organizing armies, mak-
ing treaties. To his influence is due the imposition of the
Benedictine rule upon nearly the whole of Latin monasticism.
Closely associated with these two names in the development
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY 533
of a civilizing monasticism out of the merely egotistic mortifica-
tions of the early recluses is that of Cassiodorus (490-585).
He was evidently much senior to Pope Gregory, and younger
by ten years than Benedict, and, like these two, he belonged
to a patrician family, a Syrian family settled in Italy. He
had a considerable official career under the Gothic kings ; and
when, between 545 and 553, the overthrow of those kings
and the great pestilence paved the way for the new barbaric rule
pf the Lombards, he took refuge in a monastic career. lie
founded a monastery upon his private estates, and set the
monks he gathered to ^ork in quite the Benedictine fashion,
though whether his monks actually followed the Bejiedictine
rule that was being formulated about the same time from Monte
Qassino we do not know. But there can be no question of his
influence upon the development of this great working, teach-
ing, and studying order. It is evident that he was profoundly
impressed by the universal decay of education and the possible
loss of all learning and of the ancient literature by the world ;
and from the first he directed his brethren to the task of
preserving and restoring these things. He , collected ancient
MSS. and caused them to be copied. He made sundials, water
clocks, and similar apparatus, a little last gleam of experi-
mental science in the gathering darkness. He wrote a history
of the Gothic kings, and, what is more significant of his sense
of the needs of the time, he produced a series of school books
on the liberal arts and a grammar. Probably his influence was
even greater than that of St. Benedict in making monasticism
into a powerful instrument for the restoration of social order
in the Western world.
The spread of monasteries of the Benedictine order or type
in the seventh and eighth centuries was very considerable.
Everywhere we find them as centres of light, restoring, main-
taining, and raising the standard of cultivation, preserving
some sort of elementary education, spreading useful arts, mul-
tiplying and storing- books, and keeping before the eyes of the
world the spectacle and example of a social backbone. For
eight centuries thenceforth the European monastic system re-
mained a system of patches and fibres of enlightenment in
what might otherwise have been a wholly chaotic world. Closely
associated with the Benedictine monasteries were the schools
that grew presently into the mediseval universities. The schools
534 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of the Koman world had been altogether swept away in the
general social breakdown. There was a time when very few
priests in Britain or Gaul could read the gospel or their serv-
ice books. Only gradually was teaching restored to the world.
But when it was restored, it came back not as the duty work
of a learned slave, but as the religious service of a special class
of devoted men.
In the east also there was a breach of educational continuity,
but there the cause was not so much social disorder as religious
intolerance, and the break was by no means so complete. Jus-
tinian closed and dispersed the schools of Athens (529), but
he did this very largely in order to destroy a rival to the new
school he was setting up in Constantinople, which was more
directly under imperial control. Since the new Latin learning
of the developing western universities had no text-books and
literature of its own, it had, in spite of its strong theological
bias to the contrary, to depend very largely upon the Latin clas-
sics and the Latin translations of the Greek literature. It
was obliged to preserve far more of that splendid literature
than it had a mind to do.
XXX
SEVEN CENTUEIES IN ASIA (CIRCA 50 B.C.
TO A.D. 650)
§ 1. Justinian the Great. § 2. The Sassanid Empire in Per-
sia. § 3. The Decay of Syria under the Sassanids. § 4,
The First Message from Islam,. § 5. Zoroaster and Mani.
§ 6. Hunnish Peoples m Central Asia and India. § 7.
The Great Age of China. § 8. Intellectual Fetters of China.
§ 9. The Travels of Yuan Ghwang.
§ 1
IN the preceding two chapters we have concentrated our
attention chiefly on the collapse in the comparatively short
space of four centuries of the political and social order
of the western part of the great Eoman Empire of Caesar
and Trajan. We have dwelt upon the completeness of that
collapse. To any intelligent and public-spirited mind living
in the time and under the circumstances of St. Benedict or
Cassiodorus, it must have seemed, indeed, as if the light of
civilization was waning and near extinction. But with the
longer views a study of universal history gives us, we can
view those centuries of shadow as a phase, and probably a
necessary phase, in the onward march of social and political
ideas and understandings. And if, during that time, a dark
sense of calamity rested upon Western Europe, we must re-
member that over large portions of the world there was no
retrogression.
With their Western prepossessions European writers are
much too prone to underrate the tenacity of the Eastern em-
pire that centred upon Constantinople. This empire embodied
a tradition much more ancient than that of Rome. If the
reader will look at the map we have given of its extent in the
sixth century, and if he will reflect that its official language
had then become Greek, he will realize that what we are dealing
535
586 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
with here is only nominally a branch of the Koman Empire;
it ia really the Hellenic Empire of which Herodotus dreamt
and which Alexander the Great founded. True it called itself
Eoman and its people "Eomans," and to this day modem
Greek is called "Eomaic." True also that Oonstantine the
Great knew no Greek and that Justinian's accent was bad.
These superficialities of name and form cannot alter the fact
that the empire was in reality Hellenic, with a past of six
centuries at the time of Oonstantine the Great, and that while
the real Roman Empire crumpled up completely in four cfen-
turies, this Hellenic "Eoman Empire" held out for more. than
eleven — ^from 312, the beginning of the reign of Oonstantine
the Great, to 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman
Turks. .,
And while we have had to tell of something like a complete
social collapse in the west, there were no such equivalent break-
downs in the east. Towns and cities flourished, the country-
side was well cultivated, trade went on. For many centuries
Oonstantinople was the greatest and richest city in the world.
We will not trouble ourselves here with the names and follies,
the crimes and intrigues, of its tale of emperors. As with
most monarchs of great states, they did not guide their em-
pire ; they were carried by it. We have already dealt at some
length with Oonstantine the Great (312-337), we have men-
tioned Theodosius the Great (379-395), who for a little
while reunited the empire, and Justinian I (527-565). Pres-
ently we shall tell something of Heraclius (610-641).
Justinian, like Oonstantine, may have had Slav blood in his
veins. He was a man of great ambition and great organizing
power, and he had the good fortune to be married to a woman
of equal or greater ability, the Empress Theodora, who had
in her youth been an actress of doubtful reputation. But his
ambitious attempts to restore the ancient greatness of the em-
pire probably overtaxed its resources. As we have told, he
reconquered the African province from the Vandals and most
of Italy from the Goths. He also recovered the South of
Spain. He built the great and beautiful church of Sancta
Sophia in Oonstantinople, founded a university, and codified
the iaw.^ But against this we must set his closing of the schools
' Great importance is attached to tliis task by historianB, including one
of the editors of this history. We are told that the- essential contribution
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 587
of Athens. Mean-while a great plague swept the world, and
at his death this renewed and expanded empire of his col-
lapsed like a pricked bladder. The greater part of his Italian
conquests was lost to the Lombards. Italy was indeed at that
time almost a desert ; the Lombard historians assert they came
into an empty country. The Avars and Slavs struck down from
the Danube country towards the Adriatic, Slav populations es-
tablishing themselves in what is now Serbia, Croatia, and Dal-
matia, to become the Yugo-Slavs of to-day. Moreover, a great
and exhausting struggle began with the Sassanid Empire in
Persia.
But before we say anything of this struggle, in which the
Persians thrice came near to taking Constantinople, and which
was decided by a great Persian defeat at Nineveh (637)', it
is necessary to sketch very briefly the history of Persia from
the Parthian days.
§ 2
We have already drawn a comparison between the brief
four centuries of Roman imperialism and the obstinate vitality
of the imperialism of the Euphrates-Tigris country. We have
glanced very transitorily at the Hellenized Bactrian and Seleu-
cid monarchies that flourished in the eastern half of Alex-
ander's area of conquest for three centuries, and told how the
Parthians came down into Mesopotamia in the last century b.c.
We have described the battle of Carrhse and the end of Cras-
sus. Thereafter for two centuries and a half the Parthian
dynasty of the Arsacids ruled in the east and the Roman
in the west, with Armenia and Syria between them, and the
boundaries shifted east and west as either side grew stronger.
of Kome to the inheritance of mankind is the idea of society founded
on law, and that this exploit of Justinian was the crown of the gift.
The writer is ill-equipped to estimate the peculiar value of Boman legalism
to mankind. Existing law seems to him to be based upon a confused
foundation of conventions, arbitrary assumptions, and working fictions
about human relationship, and to be a very impracticable and antiquated
system indeed; he is persuaded that a time will come when the whole
theory and -practice of law will be recast in the light of a well-developed
science of social psychology in accordance with a scientific conception of
human society as one developing organization and in definite relationship
to a system of moral and intellectual education. He contemplates the
law and lawyers of to-day with a temperamental lack of appreciatipn.
This may have made him negligent of Justinian and unjust to Bome as a
whole.
538 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
We have marked the utmost eastward extension of the Koman
Empire under Trajan (see map to Chap. XXVIII, § 3), and
we have noted that about the same time the Indo-Scythians
(Chap. XXVIII, § 4) poured down into India.
In 227 occurred a revolution, and the Arsacid dynasty gave
way to a more vigorous line, the Sassanid, a national Persian
line under Ardashir I. In one respect the empire of Ardashir
I presented a curious parallelism with that of Constantino
the Great a hundred years later. Ardashir attempted to con-
solidate it by insisting upon religious unity, and adopted as
the state religion the old Persian faith of Zoroaster, of which
we shall have more to say later.
This new Sassanid Empire immediately became aggressive,
and under Sapor I, the son and successor of Ardashir, topk
Antioch. We have already noted how the Emperor Valerian
was defeated (260) and taken prisoner. But as Sapor was
retiring from a victorious march into Asia Minor, he was
fallen upon and defeated by Odenathus, the Arab king of a great
desert-trading centre, Palmyra.
For a brief time under Odenathus, and then under his widow
Zenobia, Palmyra was a considerable state, wedged between the
two empires. Then it fell to the Emperor Aurelian, who car-
ried off Zenobia in chains to grace his triumph at Rome (272).
We will not attempt to trace the fluctuating fortunes of the
Sassanids during the next three centuries. Throughout that
time war between Persia and the empire of Constantinople
wasted Asia Minor like a fever. Christianity spread widely
and was persecuted, for after the Christianization of Rome
the Persian monarch remained the only god-monarch on earth,
and he saw in Christianity merely the propaganda of his
Byzantine rival. Constantinople became the protector of the
Christians and Persia of the Zoroastrians ; in a treaty of 422,
the one empire agreed to tolerate Zoroastrianism and the other
Christianity. In 483, the Christians of the east split off from
the Orthodox church and became the Nestorian church ; which,
as we have already noted, spread its missionaries far and
wide throughout Central and Eastern Asia. This separa-
tion from Europe, since it freed the Christian bishops of
the east from the rule of the Byzantine patriarchs, and
so lifted from the Nestorian church the suspicion of po-
litical disloyalty, led to a complete toleration of Chris-
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 539
tianity in Persia. With Chosroes I (531-579) came a last
period of Sassanid vigour. He was tlie contemporary and
parallel of Justinian. He reformed taxation, restored the
orthodox Zoroastrianism, extended his power into Southern
Arabia (Yemen), which he rescued from the rule of Abys-
sinian Christians, pushed his northern frontier into Western
Turkestan, and carried on a series of wars with Justinian.
His reputation as an enlightened ruler stood so high, that when
Justinian closed the schools of Athens, the last Greek philoso-
phers betook themselves to his court. They sought in him the
philosopher king — ^that mirage which, as we have noted, Con-
fucius and Plato had sought in their day. The philosophers
found the atmosphere of orthodox Zoroastrianism even less to
their taste than orthodox Christianity, and in 549 Chosroes
had the kindness to insert a clause in an armistice with Jus-
tinian, permitting their return to Greece, and ensuring that
they should not be molested for their pagan philosophy or their
transitory pro-Persian behaviour.
It is in connection with Chosroes that we hear now of a new
Hunnish people in Central Asia, the Turks, who are, we learn,
first in alliance with him and then with Constantinople.
Chosroes II (590-628), the grandson of Chosroes I, eixperi-
enced extraordinary fluctuations of fortune. At the outset of
his career he achieved astonishing successes against the empire
of Constantinople. Three times (in 608, 615, and 62Y) his
armies reached Chalcedon, which is over against Constantino-
ple ; he took Antioch, Damascus, and Jerusalem (614), and from
Jerusalem he carried off a cross, said to be the true cross on
which Jesus was crucified, to his capital Ctesiphon. (But some
of this or some other true cross had already got to Borne. It
had been brought from Jerusalem, it was said, by the "Empress
Helena," the idealized and canonized mother of Constantine,
a story for which Gibbon displayed small respect.^) In 619,
Chosroes II conquered that facile country, Egypt. This career
of conquest was at last arrested by the Emperor Heraclius
(610), who set about restoring the ruined military power of
Constantinople. For some time Heraclius avoided a great bat-
tle while he gathered his forces. He took the field in good
earnest in 623. The Persians experienced a series of de-
feats culminating in the battle of Nineveh (627) ; but neither
' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap, xxiii.
540 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
side had the strength for the complete defeat of the other.
At the end of the struggle there was still an undefeated Persian
army upon the Bosphorus, although there were victorious By-
zantine forces in Mesopotamia. In 628 Chosroes II was de-
posed and murdered by his son. An indecisive peace was con-
cluded between the two exhausted empires a year or so later,
restoring their old boundaries ; and the true cross was sent back
to Heraclius, who replaced it in Jerusalem with much pomp
and ceremony,
§ 3
So we give briefly the leading events in the history of the
Persian as of the Byzantine Empire. What is more interesting
for us and less easy to give are the changes that went on in the
lives of the general population of those great empires during
that time. The present writer can find little of a definite char-
acter about the great pestilences that we know swept the world
in the second and sixth centuries of this era. Certainly they
depleted population, and probably they disorganized social
order in these regions just as much as we know they did in the
Eoman and Chinese empires.
The late Sir Mark Sykes, whose untimely death in Paris
during the influenza epidemic of 1919 was an irreparable loss
to Great Britain, vwote in The Caliph's Last Heritage a vivid
review of the general life of Nearer Asia during the period we
are considering. In the opening centuries of the present era,
he says : "The direction of military administration and imperial
finance became entirely divorced in men's minds from practical
government; and notwithstanding the vilest tyranny of sots,
drunkards, tyrants, lunatics, savages, and abandoned women,
who from time to time held the reins of government, Mesopo-
tamia, Babylonia, and Syria contained enormous populations,
huge canals and dykes were kept in repair, and commerce and
architecture flourished, in spite of a perpetual procession of hos-
tile armies and a continual changing of the nationality of the
governor. Each peasant's interest was centred in his ruling
town ; each citizen's interest was in the progress and prosperity
of his city ; and the advent of an enemy's army may have some-
times been looked on even with satisfaction, if his victory was
assured and the payment of his contracts a matter "of certainty.
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA
HI
"A raid from the north,^ on the other hand, must huVe been
a matter for dread. Then the villagers had need to take
refuge behind the walls of the cities, from whence they coul '
descry the smoke which told of the wreck and damage caused
by the nomads. So long, however, as the canals were not
destroyed (and, indeed, they were built with such solidity and
y/Zg E\5TERK EMPIRE euid ihc SPtSS2>tHTDS'
caution that their safety was assured), no irreparable daimage
could be effected. . . .
"In Armenia and . Pontus the condition of life was quite
otherwise. These were mountain districts, containing fierce
tribes headed by powerful native nobility under recognized
ruling kings, while in the valleys and plains the peaceful cul-
tivator provided the necessary .economic resources. . . . Cilicia
and Cappadocia were now thoroughly subject to Greek i^iflu-
ence, and contained numerous wealthy and highly civilized
towns, besides possessing a considerable merchant marine.
Passing from Cilicia to the Hellespont, the whole Mediter-
ranean coast was crowded with wealthy cities and Greek col-
^ Turanians from Turkestan or Avars from the Caucasus.
342 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Quies, entirely cosmopolitan in thought and speechj with those
municipal and local ambitions which seem natural to the Gre-
cian character. The Grecian Zone extended from Caria to
the Bosphorus, and followed the coast as far as Sinope on the
Black Sea, where it gradually faded away.
"Syria was broken up into a curious quilt-like pattern of
principalities and municipal kingdoms ; beginning with the al-
most barbarous states of Commagene and Edessa (Urfa) in
the north. South of these stood Bambyce, with its huge tem-
ples and priestly governors. Towards the coast a dense popu-
lation in villages and towns clustered around the independent
cities of Antioch, Apamea, and Emesa (Homs) ; while out in
the wilderness the great Semitic merchant city of Palmyra was
gaining wealth and greatness as the neutral trading-ground be-
tween Parthia and Home. Between the' Lebanon and Anti-
Lebanon we find, at the height of its glory, Heliopolis (Baal-
bek), the battered fragments of which even now command our
admiration. . . . Bending in towards Galilee we find the won-
drous cities of Gerasa and Philadelphia (Amman) connected
by solid roads of masonry and furnished with gigantic aque-
ducts. . . . Syria is still so rich in ruins and remains of the
period that it is not difficult to picture to oneself the nature
of its civilization. The arts of Greece, imported long before,
had been developed into magnificence that bordered on vulgar-
ity. The richness of ornamentation, the lavish expense, the
flaunting wealth, all tell that the tastes of the voluptuous and
artistic Semites were then as now. I have stood in the colon-
nades of Palmyra and I have dined in the Hotel Cecil, and,
save that the latter is built of iron, daubed with sham wood,
sham stucco, sham gold, sham velvet, and sham stone, the effect
is identical. In Syria there were slaves in sufficient quantity
to make real buildings, but the artistic spirit is as debased as
anything made .by machinery. Over against the cities the vil-
lage folk must have dwelt pretty much as they do now, in
houses of mud and dry stone wall ; while out in the distant pas-
tures the Bedouin tended their flocks in freedom under the
rule of the Nabatean kings of their own race, or performed
the office of guardians and agents of the great trading caravans.
"Beyond the herdsmen lay the parching deserts, which acted
as the impenetrable barrier and defence of the Parthian Em-
pire behind the Euphrates, where stood the great cities of
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA
543
Ctesiphon, Seleucia, Hatra, ISTisibin, Harran, and hundreds
more whose very names are forgotten. These great townships
subsisted on the enormous cereal wealth of Mesopotamia,
watered as it then was by canals, whose makers' names were
even then already lost in the mists of antiquity. Babylon and
!N^ineveh had passed away; the successors of Persia and Mace-
don had given place to Parthiaj but the people and the culti-
eujcs- oT A5IA2V1INOR. 5YRDV © ME^QPOTAMIA^
vertically.
vation were the same as when Cyrus the Conqueror had first
subdued the land. The language of many of the towns was
Greek, and the cultured citizens of Seleucia might criticize the
philosophies and tragedies of Athens ; but the millions of the
agricultural population knew possibly no more of these things
than does many an Essex peasant of to-day know of what
passes in the metropolis."
Compare with this the state of affairs at. the end of the
seventh century.
"Syria was now an impoverished and stricken land, and her
§44 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
great cities, though still populated, must have been encum-
bered with ruins which the public funds were not sufficient to
remove. Damascus and Jerusalem themselves had not recov-
ered from the eii'ects of long and terrible sieges; Amman and
Gerash had declined into wretched villages under the sway
and lordship of the Bedouin. The Hauran, perhaps, still
showed signs of the prosperity for which it had been noted in
the days of Trajan; but the wretched buildings and rude in-
scriptions of this date all point to a sad and depressing decline.
Out in the desert, Palmyra stood empty and desolate save for a
garrison in the castle. On the coasts and in the Lebanon a
shadow of the former business and wealth was still to be seen ;
but in the north, ruin, desolation, and abandonment must have
been the common state of the country, which had been raided
with unfailing regularity for one hundred years and had been
held by an enemy for fifteen. Agriculture must have declined;
and the population notably decreased through the plagues and
distresses from which it had suffered. . I
"Cappadocia had insensibly sunk into barbarism; and thd
great basilicas and cities, which the rude countrymen could
neither repair nor restore, had been leveled with the ground.
The Anatolian peninsula had been ploughed and harrowed by
the Persian armies; the great cities had been plundered and
sacked."
§4
It was while Heraelius was engaged in restoring order in
this already desolated Syria after the death of Chosroes II
and before the final peace with Persia, that a strange message
was brought to him. The bearer had ridden over to the im-
perial outpost at Bostra in the wilderness south of Damascus.
The letter was in Arabic, the obscure Semitic language of the
nomadic peoples of the southern desert; and probably only
an interpretation reached him — presumably with deprecatory
notes by the interpreter.
It was an odd, florid challenge from someone who called
himself "Muhammad, the Prophet of God." This Muhammad,
it appeared, called upon Heraelius to acknowledge the one true
God and to serve him. Nothing else was definite in the
document.
There is no record of the reception of this missive, and
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 545
presumably it went unanswered. The emperor probably
shrugged his shoulders, and was faintly amused at the incident.
But at Ctesiphon they knew more about this Muhammad.
He was said to be a tiresome false prophet, who had incited
Yemen, the rich province of Southern Arabia, to rebel against
the King of Kings. Kavadh was much occupied with affairs.
He had deposed and murdered his father Chosroes II, and he
was attempting to reorganize the Persian military forces. To
him also came a message identical with that sent to Heraclius.
The thing angered them. He tore up the letter, flung the
fragments at the envoy, and bade him begone.
When this was told to the sender far away in the squalid
little town of Medina, he was very angry. "Even so, O Lord !"
he cried; "rend Thou his kingdom from him." (a.d, 628.)
§ 5
But before we go on to tell of the rise of Islam in the world,
it will be well to complete our survey of the condition of Asia
in the dawn of the seventh century. And a word or so is due
to religious developments in the Persian community during
the Sassanid period.
From the days of Cyrus onward Zoroastrianism had pre-
vailed over the ancient gods of Nineveh and Babylon. Zoroas-
ter (the Greek spelling of the Iranian "Zarathustra"), like
Buddha, was an Aryan. We know nothing of the age in which
he lived; some authorities make him as early as 1000 b.c,
others make him contemporary with Buddha or Confucius;
and as little do we know of his place of birth or his exact
nationality. His teachings are preserved to us in the Zend
Avesta, but here, since they no longer play any great part in
the world's affairs, we cannot deal with them in any detail.
The opposition of a good god, Ormuzd, the god of light, truth,
frankness, and the sun, and a bad god, Ahriman, god of secrecy,
cunning, diplomacy, darkness, and night, formed a very cen-
tral part of his religion. As we find it in history, it is already
surrounded by a ceremonial and sacerdotal system; it has no
images, but it has priests, temples, and altars, on which bum a
sacred fire and at which sacrificial ceremonies are performed.
Among other distinctive features is its prohibition of either
the burning or the burial of the dead. The Parsees of India,
546 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the last surviving Zoroastrians, still lay their dead out within
certain open towers, the Towers of Silence, to which the vul-
tures come.
Under the Sassanid kings from Ardashir onward (227),
this religion was the official religion; its head was the second
person in the state next to the king, and the king in quite the
ancient fashion was supposed to be divine or semi-divine and
upon terms of peculiar intimacy with Ormuzd.
But the religious fermentation of the world did not leave
the supremacy of Zoroastrianism undisputed in the Persian
Empire. Not only was there a great eastward diffusion of
Christianity, to which we have already given notice, but new
sects arose in Persia, incorporating the novel ideas of the time.
One early variant or branch of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, we
have already named. It had spread into Europe by the first
century B.C., after the eastern campaigns of Pompey the Great.
It became enormously popular with the soldiers and common
people, and, until the time of Constantine the Great, continued
to be a serious rival to Christianity. Indeed, one of his suc-
cessors, the Emperor Julian (361-363), known in Christian
history as "Julian the Apostate," made a belated attempt to
substitute it for the accepted faith. Mithras was a god of
light, "proceeding" from Ormuzd and miraculously born, in
much the same way that the third person in the Christian
Trinity proceeds from the first. Of this branch of the Zoroas-
trian stem we need say no more. In the third century a.d.,
however, another religion, Manichseism, arose, which deserves
some notice now.
Mani, the founder of Manichseism, was bom the son of a
good family of Ecbatana, the old Median capital (a.d. 216).
He was educated at Ctesiphon. His father was some sort of
religious sectary, and he was brought up in an atmosphere of
religious discussion. There came to him that persuasion that
he at last had the complete light, which is the moving power
of all religious initiators. He was impelled to proclaim his
doctrine. In a.d. 242, at the accession of Sapor I, the second
Sassanid monarch, he began his teaching.
It is characteristic of the way in which men's minds were
moving in those days that his teaching included a sort of
theocrasia. He was not, he declared, proclaiming anything
new. The great religious founders before bim had all been
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 547
right: Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus Christ — all had been
true prophets, but to him it was appointed to clarify and
crown their imperfect and confused teaching. This he did in
Zoroastrian language. He explains the perplexities and con-
tradictions of life as a conflict of light and darkness, Ormuzd
was God and Ahriman Satan. But how man was created, how
he fell from light into darkness, how he is being disentangled
and redeemed from the darkness, and of the part played by
Jesus in this strange mixture of religions we cannot explain
here even if we would. Our interest with the system is his-
torical and not theological.
But of the utmost historical interest is the fact that Mani
not only went about Iran preaching these new and to him these
finally satisfying ideas of his, but into Turkestan, into India,
and over the passes into China. This freedom of travel is to
be noted. It is interesting also because it brings before us
the fact that Turkestan was no longer a country of dangerous
nomads, but a country in which cities were flourishing and men
had the education and leisure for theological argument. The
ideas of Mani spread eastward and westward with great
rapidity, and they were a most fruitful rootstoek of heresies
throughout the entire Christian world for nearly a thousand
years.
Somewhen about a.d. 270 Mani came back to Ctesiphon and
made many converts. This brought him into conflict with the
official religion and the priesthood. In 277 the reigning mon-
arch had him crucified and his body, for some unknown reason,
flayed, and there began a fierce persecution of his adherents.
Nevertheless, Maniehseism held its own in Persia with ISTes-
torian Christianity and orthodox Zoroastrianism (Mazdaism)
for some centuries.
§ 6
It becomes fairly evident that in the fifth and sixth centuries
A.D. not merely Persia, but the regions that are now Turkestan
and Afghanistan were far more advanced in civilization than
were the French and English of that time. The obscurity of
the history of these regions has been lifted in the last two
decades, and a very considerable literature written in lan-
guages of the Turkish group has been discovered. These ex-
548 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
taut manuscripts date from the seventh century onward. The
alphabet is an adaptation of the Syrian, introduced by
Maniohsean missionaries, and many of the MSS. discovered —
parchments have been found in v^indows in the place of glass
— are as beautifully written as any Benedictine production.
Mixed up with a very extensive Manichsean literature are
translations of the Christian scriptures and Buddhistic writ-
ings. Much of this early Turkish material still awaits
examination.
Everything points to the conclusion that those centuries,
which were centuries of disaster and retrogression in Europe,
were comparatively an a^e of progress in Middle Asia east-
ward into China.
A steady westward drift to the north of the Caspian of
Hunnish peoples, who were now called Tartars and Turks, was
still going on in the sixth century, but it must be thought of
as an overflow rather than as a migration of whole peoples.
The world from the Danube to the Chinese frontiers was still
largely a nomadic world, with tovsms and cities growing up
upon the chief trade routes. We need not tell in any detail
here of the constant clash of the Turkish peoples of Western
Turkestan with the Persians to the south of them, the age-
long bickering of Turanian and Iranian. We hear nothing
of any great northward marches of the Persians, but there
were great and memorable raids to the south both by the
Turanians to the east and the Alans to the west of the Caspian
before the big series of movements of the third and fourth cen-
tury westward that carried the Alans and Huns into the heart
of Europe. There was a nomadic drift to the east of Persia
and southward through Afghanistan towards India, as well as
this drift to the north-west. These streams of nomads flowed
by Persia on either side. We have already mentioned the
Yue-Chi (Chap, xxviii, § 4), who flnally descended into India
as the Indo-Scythians in the second century. A backward,
still nomadic section of these Yue-Chi remained in Central
Asia, and became numerous upon the steppes of Turkestan, as
the Ephthalites or White Huns. After being a nuisance and
a danger to the Persians for three centuries, they finally began
raiding into India in the footsteps of their kinsmen about the
year 470, about a quarter of a century after the death of Attila.
They did not migrate into India; they went to and fro, looting
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA
549
in India and returning witli their loot to their own country,
just as later the Huns established themselves in the great plain
of the Danube and raided all Europe.
The history of India during these seven centuries we are
now reviewing is punctuated by these two invasions of the Yue-
Chi, the Indo-Scythians who, as we have said, wiped out the
last traces of Hellenic rule, and the Ephthalites. Before the
former of these, the Indo-Scythians, a wave of uprooted popu-
lations, the Sakas, had been pushed; so that altogether India
experienced three waves of barbaric invasion, about a.d. 100,
about A.D. 120, and about a.d. 470. But only the second of
these invasions was a permanent conquest and settlement. The
Indo Scythians
made their head-
quarters on the
STorth-west Fron-
tier and set up a
dynasty, the
Kushan dynasty,
which ruled most
of North India as
far east as Benares.
The chief among
these Kushan mon-
archs was Kanishka (date unknown), who added to North India
Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. Like Asoka, he was a great
and vigorous promoter of Buddhism, and these conquests, this
great empire of the North-west Frontier, must have brought
India into close and frequent relations with China and Tibet.
We will not trouble to record here the divisions and coales-
cences of power in India, nor the dynasties that followed the
Kushans, because these things signify very little to us from
our present point of view. Sometimes all India was a patch-
work quilt of states; sometimes such empires as that of the
Guptas prevailed over great areas. These things made little
difference in the ideas, the religion, and the ordinary way of
life of the Indian peoples. Brahminism held its own against
Buddhism, and the two religions prospered side by side. The
mass of the population was living then very much as it lives
to-day; dressing, cultivating, and building its houses in much
the same fashion.
Tim 'BphtiuiUte Couu.
550 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The irruption of the Ephthalites is memorable not so much
because of its pennanent effects as because of the atrocities
perpetrated by the invaders. These Ephthalites very closely
resembled the Huns of Attila in their barbarism ; they merely
raided, they produced no such dynasty as the Kushan mon-
archy ; and their chiefs retained their headquarters in Western
Turkestan. Mihiragula, their most capable leader, has been
called the Attila of India. One of his favourite amusements,
we are told, was the expensive one of rolling elephants down
precipitous places in order to watch their sufferings. His
abominations roused his Indian tributary princes to revolt, and
he was overthrown (528). But the final ending of the
Ephthalite raids into India was effected not by Indians, but
by the destruction of their central establishment of the Ephtha-
lites on the Oxus (565) by the growing power of the Turks,
working in alliance with the Persians. After this break-up,
the Ephthalites dissolved very rapidly and completely into the
surrounding populations, much as the European Huns did after
the death of Attila a hundred years earlier. Nomads without
central grazing lands must disperse; nothing else is possible.
Some of the chief Rajput clans of to-day in Eajpntana in
North India are descended, it is said, from these White Huns.
§ 7
These seven centuries which saw the beginning and the end
of the emperors in Rome and the complete breakdown and
recasting of the social, economic, political, and religious life
of Western Europe, saw also very profound changes in the
Chinese world. It is too commonly assumed by both Chinese,
Japanese, and European historians, that the Han dynasty,
under which we find China at the beginning of this period, and
the Tang dynasty, with which it closed, were analogous as-
cendancies controlling a practically similar empire, and that
the four centuries of division that elapsed between the end of
the Han dynasty (220) and the beginning of the Tang period
(619) were centuries of disturbance rather than essential
change. The divisions of China are supposed to be merely
political and territorial; and, deceived by the fact that at the
close as at the commencement of these four centuries, China
occupied much the same wide extent of Asia, and was still
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 551
recognizably China, still with a common culture, a common
script, and a common body of ideas, they ignore the very funda-
mental breaking down and reconstruction that went on, and
the many parallelisms to the European experience that China
displayed.
It is true that the social collapse was never so complete in
the Chinese as in the European world. There remained
throughout the whole period considerable areas in which the
elaboration of the arts of life could go on. There was no such
complete deterioration in cleanliness, decoration, artistic and
literary production as we have to record in the West, and
no such abandonment of any search for grace and pleasure.
We note, for instance, that "tea" appeared in the world, and
its use spread throughout China. China began to drink tea
in the sixth century a.d. And there were Chinese poets to
write delightfully about the effects of the first cup and the
second cup and the third cup, and so on. China continued to
produce beautiful paintings long after the fall of the Han rule.
In the second, third, and fourth centuries some of the most
lovely landscapes were painted that have ever been done by
men. A considerable production of beautiful vases and carv-
ings also continued. Eine building and decoration went on.
Printing from wood blocks began about the same time as tea-
drinking, and with the seventh century came a remarkable
revival of poetry.
Certain differences between the great empires of the East
and West were all in favour of the stability of the former.
China had no general coinage. The cash and credit system
of the Western world, at once efficient and dangerous, had not
strained her economic life. Not that the monetary idea was
unknovyn. For small transactipns the various provinces were
using perforated zinc and brass "cash," but for larger there
was nothing but stamped ingots of silver. This great empire
was still carrying on most of its business on a basis of barter like
that which prevailed in Babylon in the days of. the Aramean
merchants. And so it continued to do to the dawn of the
twentieth century.
We. have seen how under the Koman republic economic and
social order was destroyed by the too great fluidity of property
that money brought about. Money became abstract, and lost
touch with the real values it was supposed to represent. In-
552
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
dividuals and communities got preposterously into debt, and
the world was saddled by a class of rich men who were creditors,
men who did not handle and administer any real wealth, but
who had the power to call up money. No such development of
"finance" occurred in China. Wealth in China remained real
and visible. And China had no need for any Licinian law,
nor for a Tiberius Gracchus. The idea of property in China
did not extend far beyond tangible things. There was no
TRi CHINESE EMPIRE tmSsp the T?iN.O Ihpmsti£(gc\a!t&stextzttir^)
"labour" slavery, no gang servitude.^ The occupier and user
of the land was in most instances practically the owner of it,
subject to a land tax. There was a certain amount of small
scale landlordism, but no great estates. Landless men worked
for wages paid mostly in kind — as they were in ancient
Babylon.
These things made for stability and the geographical form
of China for unity; nevertheless, the vigour of the Han
dyna-sty declined, and when at last at the close of the .second
century a.d. the world catastrophe of the great pestilence struck
'There were girl slaves who did domestic work and women who were
bought and sold. — J. J. L. D.
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 553
the system, the same pestilence that inaugurated a century of
confusion in the Eoman empire, the dynasty fell like a rotten
tree before a gale. And the same tendency to break up into a
number of warring states, and the same eruption of barbaric
rulers, was displayed in East and West alike. In China, as
in the Western empire, faith had decayed. Mr. Fu ascribes
much of the political nervelessness of China in this period to
Epicureanism, arising, he thinks, out of the sceptical indi-
vidualism of Lao Tse. This phase of division is known as the
"Three Kingdom Period." The fourth century saw a dynasty
of more or less civilized Huns established as rulers in the prov-
ince of Shen-si. This Hunnish kingdom included not merely
the north of China, but great areas of Siberia; its dynasty
absorbed the Chinese civilization, and its influence carried Chi-
nese trade and knowledge to the Arctic circle. Mr. Fu com-
pares this Siberian monarchy to the empire of Charlemagne
in Europe; it was the barbarian becoming "Chinized" as
Charlemagne was a barbarian becoming Komanized. Out of a
fusion of these Siberian with native north Chinese elements
arose the Suy dynasty, which conquered the south. This Suy
dynasty marks the beginning of a renascence of China. Under
a Suy monarch the Lu-chu isles were annexed to China, and
there was a phase of great literary activity. The number of
volumes at this time in the imperial library was increased,
we are told, to 54,000. The dawn of the seventh century saw
the beginning of the great Tang dynasty, which was to endure
for three centuries.
The renascence of China that began with Suy and culmi-
nated in Tang was, Mr. Fu insists, a real new birth. "The
spirit," he writes, "was a new one ; it marked the Tang civiliza-
tion with entirely distinctive features. Four main factors had
been brought together and fused: (1)' Chinese liberal culture;
(2) Chinese classicism; (3) Indian Buddhism; and (4)
Northern bravery. A new China had come into being. The
provincial system, the central administration, and the military
organization of the Tang dynasty were quite different from
those of their predecessors. The arts had been much influenced
and revivified by Indian and Central Asiatic influences. The
literature was no mere continuation of the old ; it was a new pro-
duction. The religious and philosophical schools of Buddhism
were fresh features. It was a period of substantial change.
554 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"It may be interesting to compare this making of China with
the fate of the Koman Empire in her later days. As the
Roman world was divided into the eastern and western halves,
so was the Chinese world into the southern and the northern.
The barbarians in the case of Eome and in the case of China
made similar invasions. They established dominions of a
similar sort. Charlemagne's empire corresponded to that of
the Siberian dynasty (Later Wei), the temporary recovery of
the Western empire by Justinian corresponded to the tem-
porary recovery of the north by Liu Yu. The Byzantine line
corresponded to the southern dynasties. But from this point
the two worlds diverged. China recovered her unity; Europe
has still to do so."
The dominions of the emperor, Tai-tsung (627), the second
Tang monarch, extended southward into Annam and westward
to the Caspian sea. His southern frontier in that direction
marched with that of Persia. His northern ran along the
Altai from the Kirghis steppe, north of the desert of Gobi.
But it did not include Corea, which was conquered and made
tributary by his son. This Tang dynasty civilized and in-
corporated into the Chinese race the whole of the southward
population, and just as the Chinese of the north call them-
selves the "men of Han," so the Chinese of the south call them-
selves the "men of Tang." The law was codified, the literary
examination system was revised, and a complete and accurate
edition of all the Chinese classics was produced. To the court
of Tai-tsung came an embassy from Byzantium, and, what is
more significant, from Persia came a company of Nestorian
missionaries (635). These latter Tai-tsung received with
great respect; he heard them state the chief articles of their
creed, and ordered the Christian scriptures to be translated
into Chinese for his fiirther examination. In 638 he an-
nounced that he found the new religion entirely satisfactory,
and that it might be preached within the empire. He also
allowed the building of a church and the foundation of a
monastery.
A still more remarkable embassy also came to the court of
Tai-tsung in the year 628, five years earlier than the Nes-
torians. This was a party of Arabs, who, came by sea to Can-
tsn in a trading vessel from Yanbu, the port of Medina in
Arabia. (Incidentally it is interesting to know that there
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 555
were such vessels engaged in an east and west trade at this
time.) These Arabs had been sent by that Muhammad we
have already mentioned, who styled himself "The Prophet of
God," and the message they brought to Tai-tsung was probably
identical with the summons which was sent in the same year
to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius and to Kavadh in Ctesi-
phon. But the Chinese monarch neither neglected the message
as Heraclius did, nor insulted the envoys after the fashion of
the parricide Kavadh. He received them well, expressed great
interest in their theological views, and assisted them, it is said,
to build a mosque for the Arab traders in Canton — a mosque
which survives to this day. It is one of the oldest mosques
in the world.
§ 8
The urbanity, the culture, and the power of China under
the early Tang rulers are in so vivid a contrast with the decay,
disorder, and divisions of the Western world, as at once to
raise some of the most interesting questions in the history of
civilization. Why did not China keep this great lead she had
won by her rapid return to unity and order? Why does she
not to this day dominate the world culturally and politically ?
Eor a long time she certainly did keep ahead. It is only a
thousand years later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
with the discovery of America, the spread of printed books and
education in the West, and the dawn of modern scientific dis-
covery, that we can say with confidence that the Western world
began to pull ahead of China. Under the Tang rule, her
greatest period, and then again under the artistic but rather
decadent Sung dynasty (960-1279), and again during the
period of the cultured Mings (1358-1644), China presented a
spectacle of prosperity, happiness, and artistic activity far in
front of any contemporary state. And seeing that she achieved
so much, why did she not achieve more ? Chinese shipping was
upon the seas, and there was a considerable overseas trade
during that time.^ Why did the Chinese never discover Amer-
' It is doubtful if the Chinese knew of the mariner's compass. Hirth,
Ancient History of Chvna, p. 126 sqq., comes to the conclusion, after a
careful examination of all data, that, although it is probable something
like the compass was known in high antiquity, the knowledge of it was
lost for a long time afterwards, until, in the Middle Ages, it reappears
as an instrument in the hands of geomancers (people who selected favour-
556 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ica or Australia? There was much isolated observation, in-
genuity, and invention. The Chinese knew of gunpowder in
the sixth century, they used coal and gas heating centuries
before these things were used in Europe ; their bridge-building,
their hydraulic engineering was admirable; the knowledge of
materials shown in their enamel and lacquer ware is very great.
Why did they never organize the system of record and co-opera-
tion in inquiry that has given the world modem science ? And
why, in spite of their general training in good manners and self-
restraint, did intellectual education never soak down into the
general mass of the population ? Why are the masses of China
to-day, and why have they always been, in spite of an excep-
tionally high level of natural intelligence, illiterate?
It is customary to meet such questions with rather platitudi-
nous answers. We are told that the Chinaman is the most
conservative of human beings, that, in contrast with the Euro-
pean races, his mind is twisted round towards the past, that he
is the willing slave of etiquette and precedent to a degree in-
conceivable to Western minds. He is represented as having a
mentality so distinct that one might almost expect to find a
difference in brain structure to explain it. The appeals of
Confucius to the wisdom of the ancients are always quoted to
clinch this suggestion.
If, however, we examine this generalization more closely, it
dissolves into thin air. The superior intellectual initiative, the
liberal enterprise, the experimental disposition that is supposed
to characterize the Western mind, is manifest in the history of
that mind only during certain phases and under exceptional
circumstances. For the rest, the Western world displays itself
as traditional and conservative as China. And, on the other
hand, the Chinese mind has, under conditions of stimulus,
shown itself quite as inventive and versatile as the European,
and the very kindred Japanese mind even more so. For, take the
case of the Greeks, the whole swing of their mental vigour falls
into the period between the sixth century b.c. and the decay
able sites for gravea, etc.). The earliest unmistakable mention of its
use as a guide to mariners occurs in a work of the 12th century and
refers to its use on foreign ships trading between China and Sumatra.
Hirth is rather inclined to assume that Arab travellers may have seen
it in the hands of Chinese geomancera and applied its use to navigation,
60 that it was afterwards brought back by them to China as the "mariner's
compass." — J. J. L. D.
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 5S7
of the Alexandrian Museum under the later Ptolemies in the
second century b.c. There were Greeks before that time and
Greeks since, but a history of a thousand years of the Byzantine
Empire showed the Hellenic world at least as intellectually
stagnant as China. Then we have already drawn attention to
the comparative sterility of the Italian mind during the Roman
period and its abundant fertility since the Eenaissance of learn-
ing. The English mind again had a phase of brightness in
the seventh and eighth centuries, and it did not shine again
until the fifteenth. Again, the mind of the Arabs, as we shall
presently tell, blazed out like a star for half a dozen generations
after the appearance of Islam, having never achieved anything
of importance before or since. On the other hand, there was
always a great deal of scattered inventiveness in China, and
the progress of Chinese art witnesses to new movements and
vigorous innovations. We exaggerate the reverence of the Chi-
nese for their fathers; parricide was a far commoner crime
among the Chinese emperors than it was even among the rulers
of Persia. Moreover, there have been several liberalizing move-
ments in China, several recorded struggles against the "ancient
ways."
It has already been suggested that phases of real intellectual
progress in any community seem to be connected with the exist-
ence of a detached class of men, sufficiently free not to be obliged
to toil or worry exhaustively about mundane needs, and not rich
and powerful enough to be tempted into extravagances of lust,
display, or cruelty. They must have a sense of security, but
not a conceit of superiority. This class, we have further in-
sinuated, must be able to talk freely and communicate easily.
It must not be watched for heresy or persecuted for any
ideas it may express. Such a happy state of affairs certainly
prevailed in Greece during its best days. A class of intelli-
gent, free gentlefolk is indeed evident in history whenever
there is a record of bold philosophy or effective scientific
advances.
In the days of T'ang and Sung and Ming there must have
been an abundance of pleasantly circumstanced people in China
of just the class that supplied most of the young men of the
Academy at Athens, or the bright intelligences of Eenaissance
Italy, or the members of the London Royal Society, that mother
society of modem science; and yet China did not produce in
558 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
these periods of opportunity any sucli large beginnings of re^
corded and analyzed fact.
If we reject the idea that there is some profound racial dif-
ference between China and the West which makes the Chinese
by nature conservative and the West by nature progressive, then
we are forced to look for the operating cause of this difference
in progressiveness in some other direction. Many people are
disposed to find that operating cause which has, in spite of
her original advantages, retarded China so greatly during the
last four or five centuries, in the imprisonment of the Chinese
mind in a script and in an idiom of thought so elaborate and
so difficult that the mental energy of the country has been largely
consumed in acquiring it. This view deserves examination.
We have already given an account in Chap, xvi of the
peculiarities of Chinese writing and of the Chinese language.
The Japanese writing is derived from the Chinese, and consists
of a more rapidly written system of forms. A great number
of these forms are ideograms taken over from the Chinese and
used exactly as the Chinese ideograms are used, but also a
number of signs are used to express syllables ; there is a Japa-
nese syllabary after the' fashion of the Sumerian syllabary
we have described in Chap. xvi. The Japanese writing re-
mains a clumsy system, as clumsy as cuneiform, though not so
clumsy as Chinese; and there has been a movement in Japan
to adopt a Western alphabet. Korea long ago went a step
farther and developed a true alphabet from the same Chinese
origins. With these exceptions all the great writing systems
now in use in the world are based on the Mediterranean alpha-
bets, and are beyond comparison more easily learnt and mastered
than the Chinese. This means that while other peoples learn
merely a comparatively simple and straightforward method of
setting down the language with which they are familiar, the
Chinaman has to master a great multitude of complex word
signs and word groups. He must not simply learn the signs,
but the established grouping of those signs to represent various
meanings. He must familiarize himself, therefore, with a
number of exemplary classical works. Consequently in China,
while you will find great numbers of people who know the
significance of certain frequent and familiar characters, you
discover only a few whose knowledge is sufficiently extensive
to grasp the meaning of a newspaper paragraph, and still fewer
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 559
who can read any subtlety of intention or fine shades of mean-
ing. In a lesser degree this is true also of Japan. 'No doubt
European readers, especially of such word-rich languages as
English or Kussian, vary greatly among themselves in regard
to the extent of books they can understand and how far they
understand them ; their power varies according to their vocabu-
laries; but the corresponding levels of understanding among
the Chinese represent a far greater expenditure of time and
labour upon their attainment. A mandarin's education in
China is, mainly, learning to read.
And it may be that the consequent preoccupation of the edu-
cated class during its most susceptible years upon the Chinese
classics gave it a bias in favour of this traditional learning upon
which it had spent so much time and energy. Eew men who
have toiled to build up any system of knowledge in their minds
will willingly scrap it in favour of something strange and new ;
this disposition is as characteristic of the West as of the East;
it is shown as markedly by the scholars of the British and
American universities as by any Chinese mandarins, and the
British at the present time, in spite of the great and manifest
advantages in popular education and national propaganda the
change would give them, refuse to make any move from their
present barbaric orthography towards a phonetic alphabet and
spelling. The peculiarities of the Chinese script, and the edu-
cational system arising out of that script, must have acted age
after age as an invincible filter that favoured the plastic and
scholarly mind as against the restive and orginating type, and
kept the latter out of positions of influence and authority. There
is much that is plausible in this explanation.
There have been several attempts to simplify the Chinese
^ writing and to adopt an alphabetical system. In the early days
of Buddhism in China, when there was a considerable amount
of translation from Sanscrit, Indian influences came near to
achieving this end; two Chinese alphabets were indeed in-
vented, and each had some little use. But what hindered the
general adoption of these, and what stands in the way of any
phonetic system of Chinese writing to-day, is this, that while
the literary script and phraseology is the same from one end
of China to the other, the spoken language of the common
people, both in pronunciation and in its familiar idioms, varies
SO widely that men from one province may be incomprehensible
560 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to men from another. There is, however, a "standard Chinese,"
a rather bookish spoken idiom, which is generally understood
hj. educated people; and it is upon the possibility of applying
an alphabetical system of writing to this standard Chinese that
the hopes of modem educational reformers in China are based
at the present time. For fresh attempts are now being made to
release the Chinese mind from this ancient entanglement.
A Chinese alphabet has been formed ; it is taught in the com-
mon schools, and newspapers and pamphlets are issued in it.
And the rigid examination system that killed all intellectual
initiatives has been destroyed. There has also been a consider-
able simplification in the direction of introducing spoken idioms
into written Chinese. This makes for ease and lucidity; even
in the old characters such Chinese is more easily read and writ-
ten, and it is far better adapted than classical Chinese to the
needs of modem literary expression.
The very success and early prosperity and general content-
ment of China in the past must have worked to justify in that
land all the natural self-complacency and conservatism of man-
kind. No animal will change when its conditions are "good
enough" for present survival. And in this matter man is still
an animal. Until the nineteenth century, for more than two
thousand years, there was little in the history of China that
could cause any serious doubts in the mind of a Chinaman of
the general superiority of his own civilization to that of the rest
of the world, and there was no reason apparent therefore for any
alteration. China produced a profusion of beautiful art, some
delightful poetry, astonishing cookery, and thousands of mil-
lions of glowingly pleasant lives generation after generation.
Her ships followed her marvellous inland waterways, and put
to sea but rarely, and then only to India or Borneo as their
utmost adventure.^ (Until the sixteenth century we must re-
member European seamen never sailed out into the Atlantic
Ocean. The Norse discovery of America, the Phoenician cir-
cumnavigation of Africa, were exceptional feats.) And these
things were attained without any such general boredom, servi-
tude, indignity, and misery as underlay the rule of the rich
in the Eoman Empire. There was much poverty, much dis-
content, but it was not massed poverty, it was not a necessary
'But Mr. Vogan tells me that rock carvings of a distinctively Chinieee
character have been found in New Zealand and New Caledonia.
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 561
popular discontent. For a thousand years the Chinese system,
though it creaked and swayed at times, seemed proof against
decay. Dynastic changes there were, rebellions, phases of dis-
order, famines, pestilences ; two great invasions that set foreign
dynasties upon the throne of the Son of Heaven, but no such
shock as to revolutionize the order of the daily round. The
emperors and dynasties might come and go ; the mandarins, the
examinations, the classics, and the traditions and habitual life
remained. China's civilization had already reached its culmina-
tion in the seventh century a.d., its crowning period was the
Tang period; and though it continued to spread slowly and
steadily into Annam, into Cambodia, into Siam, into Tibet,
into Nepal, Korea, Mongolia, and Manchuria, there is hence-
, forth little more than such geographical progress to record of
it in this history for a thousand years.
§ 9
In the year 629, the year after the arrival of Muhammad's
envoys at Canton and thirty odd years after the landing of
Pope Gregory's missionaries in England, a certain learned and
devout Buddhist named Yuan Chwang started out from Sian-fu,
Tai-tsung's capital, upon a great journey to India. He was
away sixteen years, he returned in 645, and he wrote an ac-
count of his travels which is treasured as a Chinese classic.
One or two points about his experiences are to be noted here
because they contribute to our general review of the state of
the world in the seventh century a.d.
Yuan Chwang was as eager for marvels and as credulous as
Herodotus, and without the latter writer's fine sense of history ;
he could never pass a monument or ruin without learning some
fabulous story about it ; Chinese ideas of the dignity of literature
perhaps prevented him from telling us much detail of how he
travelled, who were his attendants, how he was lodged, or what
be ate and how he paid his expenses — details precious to the
historian; nevertheless, he gives us a series of illuminating
flashes upon China, Central Asia, and India in the period now
under consideration.
. His journey was an enormous one. He went and came back
by way of the Pamirs. He went by the northern route, crossing
ihe desert of Gobi, passing along the southern slopes of the
562
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Thien Shan, skirting the great deep blue lake of Issik Kul, and
so to Tashkend and Samarkand, and then more or less in the
footsteps of Alexander the Great southward to the Khyber Pass
and Peshawar. He returned by the southern route, crossing
the Pamirs from Afghanistan to Kashgar, and so along the
line of retreat the Yu&-Chi had followed in the reverse direc-
tion seven centuries before, and by Yarkand, along the slopes of
the Kuen Lun to rejoin his former route near the desert end of
YUAK CHW?lMG-'5 roufe fPcmr ejtina. fc India. . 629-645A.X>.
the Great Wall. Each route involved some hard mountaineer^
ing. His joumeyings in India are untraceable; he was there
fourteen years, and he went all over the peninsula from Nepal
to Ceylon.
At that time there was an imperial edict forbidding foreign
travel, so that Yuan Chwang started from Sian-fu like an es-
caping criminal. There was a pursuit to prevent him carrying
out his project. How he bought a lean red-coloured horse that
knew the desert paths from a strange grey-beard, how he dodged
a frontier guard-house with the help of a "foreign person" who
made him a bridge of brushwood lower down the river, how he
crossed the desert guided by the bones of men and cattle, how
he saw a mirage, and how twice he narrowly escaped being shot
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 668
by arrows when he was getting water near the watch-towers on
the desert track, the reader will find in the Life. He lost his
way in the desert of Gobi, and for four nights and five days
he had no water; when he was in the mountains among the
glaciers, twelve of his party were frozen to death. All this
is in the Life; he tells little of it in his own account of his
travels.
He shows us the Turks, this new development of the Hun
tradition, in possession not only of what is now Turkestan, but
all along the northern route. He mentions many cities and
considerable cultivation. He is entertained by various rulers,
allies of or more or less nominally tributaries to China, and
among others by the Khan of the Turks, a magnificent person
in green satin, with his long hair tied with silk.
"The gold embroidery of this grand tent shone with a daz-
zling splendour ; the ministers of the presence in attendance sat
on mats in long rows on either side all dressed in magnificent
brocade robes, while the rest of .the retinue on duty stood be-
hind. You saw that although it was a case of a frontier ruler,
yet there was an air of distinction and elegance. The Khan
came out from his tent about thirty paces to meet Yuan Chwang,
who, after a courteous greeting, entered the tent. . . . After a
short interval envoys from China and Kao-chang were admitted
and presented their despatches and credentials, which the Khan
perused. He was much elated, and caused the envoys to be
seated ; then he ordered wine and music for himself and them
and grape-syrup for the pilgrim. Hereupon all pledged each
other, and the filling and draining of the winecups made a din
and bustle, while the mingled music of various instruments rose
loud : although the airs were the popular strains of foreigners,
yet they pleased the senses and exhilarated the mental faculties.
After a little, piles of roasted beef and mutton were served for
the others, and lawful food, such as cakes, milk, candy, honey,
and grapes, for the pilgrim. After the entertainment, grape-
syrup was again served and the Khan invited Yuan Chwang to
improve the occasion, whereupon the pilgrim expounded the
doctrines of the 'ten virtues,' compassion for animal life, and
the paramitas and emancipation. The Khan, raising- his hands,
bowed, and gladly believed and accepted the teaching."
Yuan Chwang's account of Samarkand is of a large and pros-
perous city, "a great commercial entrepot, the country about it
564 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
«
very fertile, abounding in trees and flowers and yielding many
fine horses. Its inhabitants were skilful craftsmen, smart and
energetic." At that time we must remember there was hardly
such a thing as a town in Anglo-Saxon England.
As his narrative approached his experiences in India, how-
ever, the pious and learned pilgrim in Yuan Chwang got the
better of the traveller, and the book becomes congested with
monstrous stories of incredible miracles. Nevertheless, we get
an impression of houses, clothing, and the like, closely re-
sembling those of the India of to-day. Then, as now, the
kaleidoscopic variety of an Indian crowd contrasted with the
blue uniformity of the multitude in China. In the time of
Buddha it is doubtful if there were reading and writing in
India; now reading and writing were quite common accom-
plishments. Yuan Chwang gives an interesting account of a
great Buddhist university at Nalanda, where ruins have quite
recently been discovered and excavated. Nalanda and Taxilla
seem to have been considerable educational centres as early as
the opening of the schools of Athens. The caste system Yuan
Chwang found fully established in spite of Buddha, and the
Brahmins were now altogether in the ascendant. He names
the four main castes we have mentioned in Chap, xviii., § 4
iq-V.), but his account of their functions is rather different. The
Sudras, he says, were the tillers of the soil. Indian writers say
that their function was to wait upon the three "twice bom"
castes above them.
But, as we have already intimated, Yuan Chwang's account
of Indian realities is swamped by his accumulation of legends
and pious inventions. For these he had come, and in these he
rejoiced. The rest, as we shall see, was a task that had been
set him. The faith of Buddha which in the days of Asoka,
and even so late as Kaniska, was still pure enough to be a
noble inspiration, we now discover absolutely lost in a wilder-
ness of preposterous rubbish, a philosophy of endless Buddhas,
tales of manifestations and marvels Hke a Christmas pantomime,
immaculate conceptions by six-tusked elephants, charitable
princes giving themselves up to be eaten by starving tigresses,
temples built over a sacred nail-paring, and the like. We can-
not give such stories here ; if the reader likes that sort of thing,
he must go to the publications of the Royal Asiatic Society or
the India Society, where he will find a delirium of such imagi-
SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA 566
nations. And in competition with this Buddhism, intellectually
undermined as it now was and smothered in gilded decoration,
Brahminism was everywhere gaining ground again, as Yuan
Chwang notes with regret.
Side by side with these evidences of a vast intellectual decay
in India we may note the repeated appearance in Yuan
Ghwang's narrative of ruined and deserted cities. Much of
the country was still suffering from the ravages of the Ephtha-
lites and the consequent disorders. Again and again we find
such passages as this: "He went north-east through a great
forest, the road being a narrow, dangerous path, with wild
buffalo and wild elephants, and robbers and hunters always in
wait to kill travellers, and emerging from the forest he reached
the country of Kou-shih-na-ka-lo (Kusinagara). The city walls
were in ruins, and the towns and villages were deserted. The
brick foundations of the 'old city' (that is, the city which had
been the capital) were above ten U in circuit; there were very
few inhabitants, the interior of the city being a wild waste."
This ruin was, however, by no means universal; there is at
least as much mention of crowded cities and villages and busy
cultivations.
The Life tells of many hardships upon the return journey:
he fell among robbers; the great elephant that was carrying
the bulk of his possessions was drowned ; he had much difficulty
in getting fresh transport. Here we cannot deal with these
adventures.
The return of Yuan Chwang to Sian-fu, the Chinese capital,
was, we gather, a triumph. Advance couriers must have told
of his coming. There was a public holiday; the streets were
decorated by gay banners and made glad with music. He was
escorted into the city with great pomp and ceremony. Twenty
horses were needed to carry the spoils of his travels; he had
brought with him hundreds of Buddhist books written in San-
scrit, and made of trimmed leaves of palm and birch bark strung
together in layers; he had many images great and small of
Buddha, in gold, silver, crystal, and sandal-wood; he had holy
pictures, and no fewer than one hundred and fifty well authen-
ticated true relics of Buddha. Yuan Chwang was presented to
the emperor, who treated him as a personal friend, took him
into the palace, and questioned him day by day about the won-
ders of these strange lands in which he had stayed so long.
566 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
But while the emperor asked about India, the pilgrim was
disposed only to talk about Buddhism.
The subsequent history of Yuan Chwang contains two inci-
dents that throw light upon the mental workings of this great
monarch, Tai-tsung, who was probably quite as much a Moslem
as he was a Christian or a Buddhist. The trouble about all
religious specialists is that they know too much about their
own religion and how it differs from others; the advantage, or
disadvantage, of such creative statesmen as Tai-tsung and Oon-
stantine the Great is that they know comparatively little of
such matters. Evidently the fundamental good of all these
religions seemed to Tai-tsung to be much the same fundamental
good. So it was natural to him to propose that Yuan Chwang
should now give up the religious life and come into his foreign
office, a proposal that Yuan Chwang would not entertain for a
moment. The emperor then insisted at least upon a written
account of the travels, and so got this classic we treasure. And
finally Tai-tsung proposed to this highly saturated Buddhist
that he should now use his, knowledge of Sanscrit in translating
the works of the great Chinese teacher, Lao Tse, so as to make
them available for Indian readers. It seemed, no doubt, to
the emperor a fair return and a useful service to the funda-
mental good that lies beneath all religions. On the whole, he
thought Lao Tse might very well rank with or evea a little
above Buddha, and therefore that if his work was put before
the Brahmins, they would receive it gladly. In much the same
spirit Constantine the Great had done his utmost to make Arius
and Athanasius settle down amicably together. But naturally
enough this suggestion was repulsed by Yuan Chwang. He
retired to a monastery and spent the rest of his years translating
as much as he could of the Buddhist literature he had brought
with him into elegant Chinese writing.
XXXI
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM
§ 1. Arabia Before Muhammad. § 2. Life of Muhammad to
the Hegira. § 3. Muhammad Becomes a Fighting Prophet.
§ 4. The Teachings of Islam. § 5. The Caliphs Abu Behr
and Omar. § 6. The Great Days of the Omayyads. § 7.
The Decay of Islam Under the Abbasids. § 8. The Intel'
lectual Life of Arab Islam.
§ 1
WE have already described how in a.d. 628 the courts of
Heraclius, of Kavadh, and' of Tai-tsung were visited
by Arab envoys sent from a certain Muhammad, "The
Prophet of God," at the small trading town of Medina in Arabia.
We must tell now who this prophet was who had arisen among
the nomads and traders of the Arabian desert.
From time immemorial Arabia, except for the fertile strip
of the Yemen to the south, had been a land of nomads, the
headquarters and land of origin of the Semitic peoples. From
Arabia at various times waves of these nomads had drifted
north, east, and west into the early civilizations of Egypt, the
Mediterranean coast, and Mesopotamia. We have noted in
this history how the Sumerians were swamped and overcome
by such Semitic waves, how the Semitic Phoenicians and
Canaanites established themselves along the eastern shores of
the Mediterranean, how the Babylonians and Assyrians were
settled Semitic peoples, how the Hyksos conquered Egypt, how
the Arameans established themselves in Syria with Damascus
as their capital, and how the Hebrews partially conquered their
"Promised Land." At some unknown date the Chaldeans
drifted in from Eastern Arabia and settled in the old southern
Sumerian lands. With each invasion first this and then that
section of the Semitic peoples comes into history. But each of
567
568 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
such swarmings still leaves a tribal nucleus behind to supply
fresh invasions in the future.
The history of the more highly organized empires of the
horse and iron period, the empires of roads and writing, shows
Arabia thrust like a wedge between Egypt, Palestine, and the
Euphrates-Tigris country, and still a reservoir of nomadic tribes
who raid and trade and exact tribute for the immunity and
protection of caravans. There are temporary and flimsy subju-
gations. Egypt, Persia, Macedonia, Kome, Syria, Constanti-
nople, and again Persia claim some unreal suzerainty in turn
over Arabia, profess some unsubstantial protection. Under
Trajan there was a Eoman province of "Arabia," which in-
cluded the then fertile region of the Hauran and extended as
far as Petra. Now and then some Arab chief and his trading
city rises to temporary splendour. Such was that Odehathus
of Palmyra, whose brief career we have noted and another
such transitory desert city whose ruins still astonish the traveller
was Baalbek.
After the destruction of Palmyra, the desert Arabs began
to be spoken of in the Eoman and Persian records as Saracens.
In the time of Chosroes II, Persia claimed a certain ascend-
ancy over Arabia, and maintained ofiicials and tax collectors in
the Yemen. Before that time the Yemen had been under the
rule of the Abyssinian Christians for some years, and before
that for seven centuries it had had native princes professing,
be it noted, the Jewish faith.
Until the opening of the seventh century a.d. there were no
signs of any unwonted or dangerous energy in the Arabian
deserts. The life of the country was going on as it had gone
on for long generations. Wherever there were fertile patches,
wherever, that is, there was a spring or a well, a scanty agri-
cultural population subsisted, living in walled towns because
of the Bedouin who wandered with their sheep, cattle, and
horses over the desert. Upon the main caravan routes the chief
towns rose to a certain second-rate prosperity, and foremost
among them were Medina and Mecca. In the beginning of the
seventh century Medina was a town of about 15,000 inhabitants
all told ; Mecca may have had twenty or twenty five thousand.
Medina was a comparatively well-watered town, and possessed
abundant date groves; its inhabitants were Yemenites, from
the fertile land to the south. Mecca was a town of a different
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM
569
character, built about a spring of water with a bitter taste, and
inhabited by recently settled Bedouin.
Mecca was not merely nor primarily a trading centre ; it was
a place of pilgrimage. Among the Arab tribes there had long
existed a sort of Amphictyony centering upon Mecca and cer-
tain other sanctuaries; there were months of truce to war and
blood feuds, and customs of protection and hoispitality for the
pilgrim. In addition there had grown up aii Olympic element
in these gatherings ; the Arabs were discovering possibilities of
beauty in their language, and there ■^efe recitations of war
poeitry and love songs. The sheiks of the tribes, under a "king
of the poets," sat in judgment and awarded prizes; the prize
songs were sung through all Arabia.
The Kaaba, the sanctuary at Mecca, was of very ancient date.
It was a small square temple of black stones, which had for its
comer-stone a meteorite. This meteorite was regarded as- a
570 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
god, and all the little tribal gods of Arabia were under bis pro-
tection. The permanent inhabitants of Mecca were a tribe of
Bedouin who had seized this temple and constituted themselves
its guardians. To them there came in the months of tnice a
great incourse of people, who marched about the Kaaba cere-
monially, bowed themselves, and kissed the stone, and also en-
gaged in trade and poetical recitations. The Meccans profited
much from these visitors.
All of this is. very reminiscent of the religious and political
state of affairs in Greece fourteen centuries earlier. But the
paganism of these more primitive Arabs was already being
assailed from several directions. There had been a great
proselytizing of Arabs during the period of the JVtaccabseans and
Herods in Judea; and, as we have already noted, the Yemen
had been in succession under the rule of Jews (Arab proselytes
to Judaism, i.e.), Christians, and Zoroastrians. It is evident
that there must have been plenty of religious discussion during
the pilgrimage fairs at Mecca and the like centres. Naturally
enough Mecca was a stronghold of the old pagan cult which
gave it its importance and prosperity; Medina, on the other
hand, had Jewish proclivities, and there were Jewish settle-
ments near by. It was inevitable that Mecca and Medina should
be in a state of rivalry and bickering feud.
§ 2
It was in Mecca about the year a.d. 5Y0 that Muhammad,
the founder of Islam, was born. He was born in considerable
poverty, and even by the standards of the desert he was unedu-
cated; it is doubtful if he ever learnt to write. He was for
some years a shepherd's boy; then he became the servant of a
certain Kadi j a, the widow of a rich merchant. Probably he
had to look after her camels or help in her trading operations ;
and he is said to have travelled with caravans to the Yemen and
to Syria. He does not seem to have been a very useful trader,
but he had the good fortune to find favour in the lady's eyes,
and she married him, to the great annoyance of her family. He
was then only twenty-five years old. It is uncertain if his wife
was much older, though tradition declares she was forty. After
the marriage he probably made no more long journeys. There
were several children, one of whom was named Abd Manif —
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 571
that is to say, the servant of the Meccan god Manif, which dem-
onstrates that at that time Muhammad had made no religious
discoveries.
Until he was forty he did indeed live a particularly undis-
tinguished life in Mecca, as the husband of a prosperous wife.
There may be some ground for the supposition that he became
partner in a business in agricultural produce. To anyone visit-
ing Mecca about a.d. 600 he would probably have seemed some-
thing of a loafer, a rather shy, good-looking individual, sitting
about and listening to talk, a poor poet, and an altogether
second-rate man.
About his internal life we can only speculate. Imaginative
writers have supposed that he had great spiritual struggles, that
he went out into the desert in agonies of doubt and divine desire.
"In the silence of the desert night, in the bright heat of noon-
tide desert day, he, as do all men, had known and felt him-
self alone yet not in solitude, for the desert is of God, and in
the desert no man may deny Him." ^ Maybe that was so, but
there is no evidence of any such desert trips. Yet he was cer-
tainly thinking deeply of the things about him. Possibly he
had seen Christian churches in Syria; almost certainly he
knew much of the Jews and their religion, and he heard their
scorn for this black stone of the Kaaba that ruled over the three
hundred odd tribal gods of Arabia. He saw the pilgrimage
crowds, and noted the threads of insincerity and superstition
in the paganism of the town. It oppressed his mind. The
Jews had perhaps converted him to a belief in the One True
God, without his knowing what had happened to him.
At last he could keep these feelings to himself no longer.
When he was forty he began to talk about the reality of God, at
first apparently only to his wife and a few intimates. He
produced cert,ain verses, which he declared had been revealed
to him by an angel. They involved an assertion of the unity
of God and some acceptable generalizations about righteousness.
He also insisted upon a future life, the fear of hell for the
negligent and evil, and the reservation of paradise for the be-
liever in the One God. Except for his claim to be a new
prophet, there does not seem to have been anything very new
about these doctrines at the time, but this was seditious teach-
ing for Mecca, which partly subsisted upon its polytheistic cult,
•Mark Sykes.
572 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and which.. was therefore holding on to idols when all the rest
of the world was giving them up. Like Mani, Muhammad
claimed that the prophets before him, and especially Jesus
and Abraham, had been divine teachers, but that he crowned
and .completed their teaching. Buddhism, however, he did not
name, probably because he had never heard of Buddha. Desert
Arabia was in a theological backwater.
For some years the new religion was the secret of a small
group of simple people, Kadi j a, the Prophet's wife, Ali, an
adopted son, Zeid, a slave, and Abu Bekr, a friend and admirer.
For some years it was an obscure sect in a few households of
Mecca, a mere scowl and muttering at idolatry, so obscure and
unimportant that the leading men of the town did not trouble
about it in the least. Then it gathered strength. Muhammad
began to preach more openly, to teach the doctrine of a future
life, . and to threaten idolaters and unbelievers with hell fire.
He seems to have preached with considerable effect. It ap-
peared to many that he was aiming at a sort of dictatorship in
Mecca, and drawing many susceptible and discontented people
to his side ; and an attempt was made to discourage and suppress
the new movement.
Mecca was a place of pilgrimage and a sanctuary; no blood
could be shed within its walls; nevertheless, things were made
extremely , disagreeable for the followers of the new teacher.
Boycott and confiscation were used against them. Some were
driven to take refuge in Christian Abyssinia. But the Prophet
himself went unscathed because he was well connected, and
his opponents did not want to begin a blood feud. We cannot
follow the fluctuations of the struggle here, but it is necessary
to note one perplexing incident in the new Prophet's career,
which, says Sir Mark'Sykes, "proves him to have been an Arab
of the Arabs." After all his insistence upon the oneness of
God, he wavered. He came into the courtyard of the Kaaba,
and declared that the gods and goddesses of Mecca might,
after all, be real, might be a species of saints with a power of
intercession.
His recantation was received with enthusiasm, but he had
no sooner made it than he repented, and his repentance shows
that he had indeed the fear of God in him. His lapse from
honesty proves him honest. He did all he could to repair the
evil he had done. He said that the devil had possessed his
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 673
tongue, and denounced idolatry again with renewed vigour.
The struggle against the antiquated deities, after a brief interval
of peace, was renewed again more grimly, and with no further
hope of reconciliation.
For a time the old interests had the upper hand. At the
end of ten years of prophesying, Muhammad found himself a
man of fifty, and altogether unsuccessful in Mecca. Kadi j a, his
first wife, was dead, and several of his chief supporters had also
recently died. He sought a refuge at the neighbouring town of
Tayf, but Tayf drove him out with stones and abuse. Then,
when the world looked darkest to him, opportunity opened be-
fore him. He found he had been weighed and approved in an
unexpected quarter. The city of Medina was inuch torn by
internal dissension, and many of its people, during the time of
pilgrimage to Mecca, had been attracted by Muhammad's teach-
ing. Probably the numerous Jews in Medina had shaken the
ancient idolatry of the people. An invitation was sent to him
to come and rule in the name of his God in Medina.
He did not go at once. He parleyed for two years, sending a
disciple to preach in Medina and destroy the idols there. Then
he began sending such followers as he had in Mecca to Medina
to await his coming there; he did not waiit to trust himself to
unknown adherents in a strange city. This exodus of the faith-
ful continued, until at last only he and Abu Bekr remained.
In spite of the character of Mecca as a sanctuary, he was
very nearly murdered there. The elders of the town evidently
knew of what was going on in Medina, and they realized the
danger to them if this seditious prophet presently found him-
self master of a town on their main caravan route to Syria.
Custom must bow to imperative necessity, they thought; and
they decided that, blood feud or no blood feud, Muhammad
must die. They arranged that he should be murdered in his
bed ; and in order to share the guilt of this breach of sanctuary
they appointed a committee to do this, representing every
family in the city except Muhammad's own. But Muhammad
had already prepared his flight; and when in the night they
rushed into his room, they found Ali, his adopted son, sleeping,
or feigning sleep, on his bed.
The flight (the Hegira) was an adventurous one, the pursuit
being pressed hard. Expert desert trackers sought for the
spoor to the north of the town, but Muhammad and Abu Bekr
574 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
had gone south to certain caves where camels and provisions
were hidden, and thence he made a great detour to Medina.
There he and his faithful companion arrived, and were received
with great enthusiasm on September 20, 622. It was the end
of his probation. and the beginning of his power.
§ 3
Until the Hegira, until he was fifty-one, the character of
the founder of Islam is a matter of speculation and dispute.
Thereafter he is in the light. We discover a man of great
imaginative power but tortuous in the Arab fashion, and with
most of the virtues and defects of the Bedouin.
The opening of his reign was "very Bedouin." The rule of
the One God of all the earth, as it was interpreted by Muham-
mad, began with a series of raids — ^which for more than a year
were invariably unsuccessful — upon the caravans of Mecca.
Then came a grave scandal, the breaking of the ancient cus-
tomary truce of the Arab Amphictyony in the sacred month of
Eahab. A party of Moslems, in this season of profound peace,
treacherously attacked a small caravan and killed a man. It
was their only success, and they did it by the order of the
Prophet.
Presently came a battle. A force of seven hundred men had
come out from Mecca to convoy home another caravan, and they
encountered a large raiding party of three hundred. There
was a fight, the battle of Badr, and the Meccans got the worst
of it. They lost about fifty or sixty killed and as many
wounded. Muhammad returned in triumph to Medina, and
was inspired by Allah and this success to order the assassina-
tion of a number of his opponents among the Jews in the town
who had treated his prophetic claims with a disagreeable levity.
But Mecca resolved to avenge Badr, and at the battle of
Uhud, near Medina, inflicted an indecisive defeat upon the
Prophet's followers. Muhammad was knocked down and nearly
killed^ and there was much running away among his followers.
The Meccans, however, did not push their advantage and enter
Medina.
For some time all the energies of the Prophet were concen-
trated upon rallying his followers, who were evidently much
dispirited. The Koran records the chastened feelings of those
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 575
days. "The suras of the Koran," says Sir Mark Sykes, "which
are attributed to this period, excel nearly all the others in their
majesty and sublime confidence." Here, for the judgment of
the reader, is an example, of these majestic utterances, from
the recent orthodox translation by the Maulvi Muhammad Ali.^
"Oh, you who believe! If you obey those who disbelieve,
they will turn you back upon your heels, so you will turn back
losers.
"E'ay! Allah is your Patron, and He is the best of the
helpers.
"We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve,
because they set up with Allah that for which He has sent down
no authority, and their abode is the fire ; and evil is the abode
of the unjust.
"And certainly Allah made good to you his promise, when
you slew them by His permission, until when you became weak-
hearted and disputed about the affair and disobeyed after He
had shown you that which you loved; of you were some who
desired this world, and of you were some who desired the here-
after; then He turned you away from them that He might try
you; and He has certainly pardoned you, and Allah is Gracious
to the believers.
"When you ran off precipitately, and did not wait for any-
one, and the Apostle was calling you from your rear, so He
gave you another sorrow instead of your sorrow, so that you
might not grieve at what had escaped you, nor at what befell
you ; and Allah is aware of what you do.
"Then after sorrow he sent down security upon you, a calm
coming upon a party of you, and there was another party whom
their own souls had rendered anxious; they entertained about
Allah thoughts of ignorance quite unjustly, saying: We have
no hand in this affair. Say, surely the affair is wholly in the
hands of Allah. They conceal within their souls what they
would not reveal to you. They say: Had we any hand in the
affair, we would not have been slain here. Say: had you re-
mained in your houses, those for whom slaughter was ordained
would certainly have gone forth to the places where they would
be slain, and that Allah might test what was in your breasts
and that He might purge what was in your hearts ; and Allah
knows what is in the breasts.
* Published by the Islamic Review.
576 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"As for those of you who turned hack on the day when the
two armies met, only the devil sought to cause them to make
a slip on account of some deeds they had done, and cer-
tainly Allah has pardoned them; surely Allah is Forgiving,
Forbearing."
■ Inconclusive hostilities continued for some years, and at last
Mecca made a crowning effort to stamp out for good and all the
growing power of Medina. A mixed force of no fewer than
10,000 men was scraped together, an enormous force for the
time and country. It was, of course, an entirely undisciplined
force of footmen, horsemen, and camel riders, and it was pre-
pared for nothing but the usual ' desert scrimmage. Bows,
spears, and swords were its only weapons. When at last it
arrived amid a vast cloud of dust in sight of the hovels and
houses of Medina, instead of a smaller force of the same kind
drawn up for battle, as it had expected, it found a new and
ttntirely disconcerting phenomenon, a trench and a wall. As-
sisted by a Persian convert, Muhammad had entrenched himself
ill Medina !
This trench struck the Bedouin miscellany as one of the
most unsportsmanlike things that had ever been known in the
history of the world. They rode about the place. They
shouted their opinion of the whole business to the besieged.
They discharged a few arrows, and at last encamped to argue
about this amazing outrage. They could arrive at no decision.
Muhammad would not come out; the rains began to fall, the
tents of the allies got wet and the cooking difficult, views be-
came divergent and tempers gave way, and at last this great
host dwindled again into its constituent parts without ever hav-
ing given battle (62Y). The bands dispersed north, east, and
south, became clouds of dust, and ceased to matter. N'ear
Medina was a castle of Jews, against whom Muhammad was
already incensed because of their disrespect for his theology.
They had shown a disposition to side with the probable victor
in this last struggle, and Muhammad now fell upon them, slew
all the men, nine hundred of them, and enslaved the women and
children. Possibly many of their late allies were among the
bidders for these slaves. Never again after this quaint failure
did Mecca make an effective rally against Muhammad, and one
by one its leading men came over to his side.
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 577
We need not follow the windings of the truce and the treaty
that finally extended the rule of the Prophet to Mecca. The
gist of the agreement was that the faithful should turn towards
Mecca when they prayed instead of turning towards Jerusalem,
as they had hitherto done, and that Mecca should be the pil-
grimage centre of the new faith. So long as the pilgrimage
continued, the men of Mecca, it would seem, did not care very
much whether the crowd assembled in the name of one god or
many. Muhammad was getting more and more hopeless of any
extensive conversion of the Jews and Christians, and he was
ceasing to press his idea that all these faiths really worshipped
the same One God. Allah was becoming more and more his own
special God, tethered now by this treaty to the meteoric stone of
the Kaaba, and less and less the father of all mankind. Already
the Prophet had betrayed a disposition to make a deal with
Mecca, and at last it was effected. The lordship of Mecca was
well worth the concession. Of comings and goings and a final
conflict we need not tell. In 629 Muhammad came to the town
as its master. The image of Manif, the god after whom he had
once named his son, was smashed under his feet as he entered
the Kaaba.
Thereafter his power extended, there were battles, treacheries,
massacres' ; but on the whole he prevailed, until he was master
of all Arabia ; and when he was master of all Arabia in 632, at
the age of sixty-two, he died.
Throughout the concluding eleven years of his life after the
Hegira, there is little to distinguish the general conduct of
Muhammad from that of any other welder of peoples into a
monarchy. The chief difference is his use of a religion of his
own creation as his cement. He was diplomatic, treacherous,
ruthless, or compromising as the occasion required and as any
other Arab king might have been in his place; and there was
singularly little spirituality in his kingship. Nor was his do-
mestic life during his time of power and freedom one of excep-
tional edification. Until the death of Kadija, when he was
fifty, he seems to have been the honest husband of one wife;
but then, as many men do in their declining years, he developed
a disagreeab)ly strong interest in women.
He married two wives after the death of Kadija, one being
the young Ayesha, who became and remained his favourite and
most influential partner; and subsequently a number of other
578 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
women, wives and concubines, were added to his establishment.
This led to much trouble and confusion, and in spite of many
special and very helpful revelations on the part of Allah, these
complications still require much explanation and argument
from the faithful. There was, for example, a scanda-l about
Ayesha ; she was left behind on one occasion when the howdah
and the camel went on, while she was looking for her necklace
among the bushes; and so Allah had to intervene with some
heat and denounce her slanderers. Allah also had to speak very
plainly about the general craving among this household of
women for "this world's life and its omature" and for "finery."
Then there was much discussion because the Prophet first mar-
ried his young cousin Zainib to his adopted son Zaid, and after-
wards, "when Zaid had accomplished his want of her," the
Prophet took her and married her — but, as the inspired book
makes clear, only in order to show the difference between an
adopted and a real son. "We gave her to you as a wife, so that
there should be no difficulty for the believers in respect of the
wives of their adopted sons, when they have accomplished their
want of them, and Allah's command shall be performed." Yet
surely a simple statement in the Koran should have sufficed with-
out this excessively practical demonstration. There was, more-
over, a mutiny in the harem on account of the undue favours
shown by the Prophet to an Egyptian concubine who had borne
him a boy, a boy for whom he had a great affection, since none
of Kadija's sons had survived. These domestic troubles mingle
inextricably with our impression of the Prophet's personality.
One of his wives was a Jewess, Safiyya, whom he had married
on the evening of the battle in which her husband had been
captured and executed. He viewed the captured women at the
end of the day, and she found favour in his eyes and was taken
to his tent
These are salient facts in these last eleven years of Muham-
mad's career. Because he, too, founded a great religion, there
are those who write of this evidently lustful and rather shifty
leader as though he were a man to put beside Jesus of Nazareth
or Gautama or Mani. But it is surely manifest that he was a
beiiig of a commoner clay ; he was vain, egotistical, tyrannous,
and a self-deceiver; and it would throw all our history out of
proportion if, out of an insincere deference to the possible
Moslem reader, we were to present him in any other light.
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 579
Yet, unless we balance it, this insistence upon his vanity,
egotism, self-deception, and hot desire does not complete the
justice of the case. We must not swing across from the repudia-
tion of the extravagant pretensions of the faithful to an equally
extravagant condemnation. Can a man who has no good quali-
ties hold a friend ? Because those who knew Muhammad best
believed in him most. Kadi j a for all her days believed in him
— ^but she may have been a fond woman. Abu Bekr is a better
witness, and he never wavered in his devotion. Abu Bekr be^
lieved in the Prophet, and it is very hard for anyone who reads
the history of these times not to believe in Abu Bekr. Ali
again risked his life for the Prophet in his darkest days.
Muhammad was no impostor, at any rate, though at times his
vanity made him behave as though Allah was at his beck and
call, and as if his thoughts were necessarily God's thoughts.
And if his bloodstained passion with Safiyya amazes and dis-
gusts our modem minds, his love for little Ibrahim, the son of
Mary the Egyptian, and his passionate grief when the child
died, reinstate him in the fellowship of all those who have
known love and loss.
He smoothed the earth over the little grave with his Own
hands. "This eases the afflicted heart," he said. "Though it
neither profits nor injures the dead, yet it is a comfort to the
living."
§4
But the personal quality of Muhammad is one thing and the
quality of Islam, the religion he founded, is quite another.
Muhammad was not pitted against Jesus or Mani, and his rela-
tive stature is only a very secondary question for us ; it is Islam
which was pitted against the corrupted Christianity of the
. seventh century and against the decaying tradition of the Zoro-
astrian Magi with which the historian has the greater concern.
And whether it was through its Prophet or whether it was in
spite of its Prophet, and through certain accidents in its ori-
gin and certain qualities of the desert from which it sprang,
there can be no denying that Islam possesses many fine a^nd
noble attributes. It is not always through sublime persons
that great things come into human life. It is the folly of the
simple disciple which demands miraculous frippery on the
majesty of truth and immaculate conceptions for righteousness.
580 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A year before his death, at the end of the tenth year of the
Hegira, Muhammad made his last pilgrimage from Medina to
Mecca. He made then a great sermon to his people of which
the tradition is as follows. There are, of course, disputes as
to the authenticity of the words, but there can be no dispute
that the world of Islam, a world still of three hundred mil-
lion people, receives them to this day as its rule of life, and to
a great extent observes it. The reader will note that the first
paragraph sweeps away all plunder and blood feuds among the
followers of Islam. The last makes the believing Negro the
equal of the Caliph. They may not be sublime words, as cer-
tain utterances of Jesus of Nazareth are sublime; but they es-
tablished in the world a great tradition of dignified fair dealing,
they breathe a spirit of generosity, and they are human and
workable. They created a society more free from widespread
cruelty and social oppression than any society had ever been
in the world before.
"Ye people : Hearken to my words ; for I kno^ not whether,
after this year, I shall ever be amongst you here again. Your
lives and property are sacred and inviolable amongst one
another until the end of time.
"The Lord hath ordained to every man the share of his in-
heritance; a testament is not lawful to the prejudice of heirs.
"The child belongeth to the parent ; and the violator of wed-
lock shall be stoned.
"Whoever claimeth falsely another for his father, or another
for his master, the curse of God and the angels and of all man-
kind shall rest upon him.
"Ye people ! Ye have rights demandable of your wives, and
they have rights demandable of you. Upon them it is incum-
bent not to violate their conjugal faith nor commit any act
of open impropriety 5 which things if they do, ye have authority
to shut them up in separate apartments and to beat them with
stripes, yet not severely. But if they refrain therefrom, clothe
them and feed them suitably. And treat your women well, for
they are with you as captives and prisoners; they have not
power over anything as regards themselves. And ye have verily
taken them on the security of God, and have made their persons
lawful unto you by the words of God.
"And your slaves, see that ye feed them with such food as
ye eat yourselves, and clothe them with the stuff ye wear. And
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 581
if they commit a fault wMch ye are not inclined to forgive,
then sell them, for they are the servants of the Lord, and are
not to be tormented.
"Ye people ! hearken to my speech and comprehend the same.
Know that every Moslem is the bro<-her of every other Moslem.
All of you are on the same equality."
This insistence upon kindliness and consideration in the daily
life is one of the main virtues of Islam, but it is not the only
one. Equally important is the uncompromising monotheism,
void of any Jewish exclusiveness, which is sustained by the
Koran. Islam from the outset was fairly proof against the
theological elaborations that have perplexed and divided Chris-
tianity and smothered the spirit of Jesus. And its third source
of strength has been in the meticulous prescription of methods
of prayer and worship, and its clear statement of the limited
and conventional significance of the importance ascribed to
Mecca. All sacrifice was barred to the faithful; no loophole
was left for the sacrificial priest of the old dispensation to come
back into the new faith. It was not simply a new faith, a purely
prophetic religion, as the religion of Jesus was in the time
of Jesus, or the religion of Gautama in the lifetime of Gautama,
but it was so stated as to remain so. Islam to this day has
learned doctors, teachers, and preachers; but it has no priests.
It was full of the spirit of kindliness, generosity, and broth-
erhood ; it was a simple and understandable religion ; it was in-
stinct with the chivalrous sentiment of the desert ; and it made
its appeal straight to the commonest instincts in the composi-
tion of ordinary men. Against it were pitted Judaism, which
had made a racial hoard of God; Christianity talking and
preaching endlessly now of trinities, doctrines, and heresies
no ordinary man could make head or tail of; and Mazdaism,
the cult of the Zoroastrian Magi, who had inspired the crucifix-
ion of Mani. The bulk of the people to whom the challenge of
Islam came did not trouble very much whether Muhammad
was lustful or not, or whether he had done some shifty and
questionable things ; what appealed to them was that this God,
Allah, he preached, was by the test of the conscience in their
hearts a God of righteousness, and that the honest acceptance
of his doctrine and method opened the door wide in a world of
uncertainty, treachery, and intolerable divisions to a great and
increasing brotherhood of trustworthy men on earth, and to a
582 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
paradise not of perpetual exercises in praise and worship, in
which saints, priests, and anointed kings were still to have
the upper places, but of equal fellowship and simple and under-
standable delights such as their souls craved for; Without any
ambiguous symbolism, without any darkening of altars or chant-
ing of priests, Muhammad had brought home those attractive
doctrines to the hearts of mankind.
§ 5
The true embodiment of the spirit of Islam was not Muham-
mad, but his close friend and supporter, Abu Bekr. There can
be little doubt that if Muhammad was the mind and imagina-
tion of primitive Islam, Abu Bekr was its conscience and its
will. Throughout their life together it was Muhammad who
said the thing, but it was Abu Bekr who believed the thing.
When Muhammad wavered, Abu Bekr sustained him. Abu
Bekr was a man without doubts, his beliefs cut down to acts
cleanly as a sharp knife cuts. We may feel sure that Abu
Bekr would never have temporized about the minor gods of
Mecca, or needed inspirations from Allah to explain his private
life. When in the eleventh year of the Hegira (632) the
Prophet sickened of a fever and died, it was Abu Bekr who
succeeded him as Caliph and leader of the people (Kalifa =
Successor), and it was the unflinching confidence of Abu Bekr
in the righteousness of Allah which prevented a split between
Medina and Mecca, which stamped down a widespread insur-
rection of the Bedouin against taxation for the common cause,
and carried out a great plundering raid into Syria that the
dead Prophet had projected. And then Abu Bekr, with that
faith which moves mountains, set himself simply and sanely
to organize the subjugation of the whole world to Allah — ^with-
little armies of 3,000 or 4,000 Arabs — according to those let-
ters the Prophet had written from Medina in 628 to all the
monarch s of the world.
And the attempt came near to succeeding. Had there been
in Islam a score of men, younger men to carry on his work,
of Abu Bekr's quality, it would certainly have succeeded. It
came near to succeeding because Arabia was now a centre of
faith and will, and because nowhere else in the world until
China was reached, unless it was upon the steppes of Enssia
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM
583
or Turkestan, was there another community of free-spirited
men with any power of belief in their rulers and leaders. The
head of the Byzantine Empire, Heraclius, the conqueror of
Chosroes II, was past his prime and suffering from dropsy,
and his empire was exhausted by the long Persian war. Nor
^Rz BEGINNINeS" oF iiuz M05I-1BM POWER,
had he at any time displayed such exceptional ability as the
new occasion demanded. The motley of people under his rule
knew little of him and cared less. Persia was at the lowest
depths of monarchist degradation, the parricide Kavadh II
had died after a reign of a few months, and a series of dynas-
tic intrigues and romantic murders enlivened the palace but
weakened the country. The war between Persia and the Byzan-
584 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tine Empire was only formally concluded about the time of
the beginning of Abu Bekr's rule. Both sides had made great
use of Arab auxiliaries ; over Syria a number of towns and
settlements of Christianized Arabs were scattered who professed
a baseless loyalty to Constantinople; the Persian marches be-
tween Mesopotamia and the desert were under the control of
an Arab tributary prince, whose capital was at Hira. Arab
influence was strong in such cities as Damascus, where Christian
Arab gentlemen would read and recite the latest poetry from the
desert competitors. There was thus a great amount of easily
assimilable material ready at hand for Islam.
And the military campaigns that now began were among the
most brilliant in the world's history. Arabia had suddenly
become a garden of fine men. The name of Khalid stands out
as the brightest star in a constellation of able and devoted
Moslem generals. Whenever he commanded he was victorious,
and when the jealousy of the second Caliph, Omar, degraded him
unjustly and inexcusably,^ he made no ado, but served Allah
cheerfully and well as a subordinate to those over whom he
had ruled. We cannot trace the story of this warfare here;
the Arab armies struck simultaneously at Byzantine Syria and
the Persian frontier city of Hira, and everywhere they offered
a choice of three alternatives; either pay tribute, or confess
the true God and join us, or die. They encountered armies,
large and disciplined but spiritless armies, and defeated themt.
And nowhere was there such a thing as a popular resistance.
The people of the populous irrigation lands of Mesopotamia
cared not a jot whether they paid taxes to Byzantium or Persep-
olis or to Medina ; and of the two, Arabs or Persian court, the
Arabs, the Arabs of the great years, were manifestly the cleaner
people, more just and more merciful. The Christian Arabs
joined the invaders very readily and so did many Jews. Just
as in the west, so now in the east, an invasion became a social
revolution. But here it was also a religious revolution with a
new and distinctive mental vitality.
It was Khalid who fought the decisive battle (634) with the
army of Heraclius upon the banks of the Yarmuk, a tributary
of tiie Jordan. The legions, as ever, were without proper
'But Schurtz, in Helmolt's History of the World, says that the private
life of the gallant Khalid was a scandal to the faithful. He committed
adultery, a serious offence in n. world of polygamy.
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 585
cavalry; for seven centuries the ghost of old Crassus had haunted
the east in vain; the imperial armies relied upon Christian
Arab auxiliaries, and these deserted to the Moslems as the
armies joined issue. A great parade of priests, sacred banners,
pictures, and holy relics was made by the Byzantine host, and
it was further sustained by the chanting of monks. But there
was no magic in the relics and little conviction about the chant-
ing. On the Arab side of the emirs and sheiks harangued the
troops, and after the ancient Arab fashion the shrill voices of
women in the rear encouraged their men. The Moslem ranks
were full of believers before whom shone victory or paradise.
The battle was never in doubt after the defection of the irregu-
lar cavalry. An attempt to retreat dissolved into a rout and
became a massacre. The Byzantine army had fought with its
back to the river, which was presently choked with its dead.
Thereafter Heraclius slowly relinquished all Syria, which
he had so lately won back from the Persians, to his new an-
tagonists. Damascus soon fell, and a year later the Moslems
entered Antioch. For a time they had to abandon it again to
a last eifort from Constantinople, but they re-entered it for
good under Khalid.
Meanwhile on the eastern front, after a swift initial success
which gave them Hira, the Persian resistance stiffened. , The
dynastic struggle had ended at last in the coming of a king of
kings, and a general of ability had been found in Kustam.
He gave battle at Kadessia (637). His army was just such
another composite host as Darius had led into Thrace or Alex-
ander defeated at Issus; it was a medley of levies. He had
thirty-three war elephants, and he sat on a golden throne upon
a raised platform behind the Persian ranks, surveying the
battle, which throne will remind the reader of Herodotus, the
Hellespont, and Salamis more than a thousand years before.
The battle lasted three days ; each day the Arabs attacked and
the Persian host held its ground until nightfall called a truce.
On the third day the Arabs received reinforcements, and to-
wards the evening the Persians attempted to bring the strug-
gle to an end by a charge of elephants. At first the huge
beasts carried all before them; then one was wounded pain-
fully and became uncontrollable, rushing up and down be-
tween the armies. Its panic affected the others, and for a
time both armies remained dumbfounded in the red light of
686 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
sunset, watching tlie frantic efforts of these grey, squealing
monsters to escape from the tormenting masses of armed men
that hemmed them in. It was by the merest chance that at
last they broke through the Persian and not through the Arab
array, and that it was the Arabs who were able to charge home
upon the resulting confusion. The twilight darkened to night,
but this time the armies did not separate. All through the
night the Arabs smote in the name of Allah, and pressed upon
the shattered and retreating Persians. Dawn broke upon the
vestiges of Eustam's army in flight far beyond the litter of the
battlefield. Its path was marked by scattered weapons and war
material, abandoned transport, and the dead and dying. The
platform and the golden throne were broken down, and Kus-
tam lay dead among a heap of dead men. . . .
Already in 634 Abu Bekr had died and given place to Omar,
the Prophet's brother-in-law, as Caliph ; and it was under Omar
(634-643) that the main conquests of the Moslems occurred.
The Byzantine Empire was pushed out of Syria altogether. But
at the Taurus Mountains the Moslem thrust was held. Ar-
menia was overrun, all Mesopotamia was conquered and Persia
beyond the rivers. Egypt passed almost passively from Greek
to Arab ; in a few years the Semitic race, in the name of God and
His Prophet, had recovered nearly all the dominions it had
lost to the Aryan Persians a thousand years before. Jerusalem
fell early, making a treaty without standing siege, and so the
True Cross which had been carried off by the Persians a dozen
years before, and elaborately restored by Heraclius, passed once
more out of the rule of Christians. But it was still in Christian
hands ; the Christians were to be tolerated, paying only a poll
tax; and all the churches and all the relics were left in their
possession.
Jerusalem made a peculiar condition for its surrender. IJhe
city would give itself only to the Caliph Omar in person.
Hitherto he had been in Medina organizing armies and control-
ling the general campaign. He came to Jerusalem (638),
and the manner of his coming shows how swiftly the vigour
and simplicity of the first Moslem onset was being sapped by
success. He came the six-hundred-mile journey with only one
attendant ; he was mounted on a camel, and a bag of barley, an-
other of dates, a water-skin, and a wooden platter were his pro-
vision for the journey. He was met outside the city by his chief
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM
687
588 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
captains, robed splendidly in siUca and with richly capar-
isoned horses. At this amazing sight the old man was overcome
with rage. He slipped down from his saddle, scrabbled up
dirt and stones with his hands, and pelted these fine gentlemen,
shouting abuse. What was this insult? What did this finery
mean? Where were his warriors? Where were the desert
men ? He would not let these popinjays escort him. He went
on with his attendant, and the smart Emirs rode afar off —
well out of range of his stones. He met the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, who had apparently taken over the city from its
Byzantine rulers, alone. With the Patriarch he got on very
well. They went round the Holy Places together, and Omar,
now a little appeased, made sly jokes at the expense of his
too magnificent followers.
Equg,lly indicative of the tendencies of the time is Omar's
letter 0rdering one of his governors who had built himself a
palace at Kufa, to demolish it again.
"They tell me," he wrote, "you would imitate the palace of
Chosroes,^ and that you would even use the gates that once were
his. Will you also have guards and porters at those gates, as
Chosroes had? Will you keep the faithful afar off and deny
audience to the poor ? Would you depart from the custom of
our Prophet, and be as ma^ificerit as those Persian emperors,
and descend to hell even as they have done ?" ^
§ 6
Abu Bekr and Omar I are the two master figures in the history
of Islam. It is not within our scope here to describe the wars
by which in a hundred and twenty-five years Islam spread it-
self from the Indus to the Atlantic and Spain, and from Kash-
gar on the borders of China to Upper Egypt. Two maps must
suffice to show the limits to which the vigorous impulse of the
new faith carried the Arab idea and the Arabic scriptures, before
worldliness, the old trading and plundering spirit, and the
glamour of the silk robe had completely recovered their paralyz-
ing sway over the Arab intelligence and will. The reader
will note how the great tide swept over the footsteps of Yuan
Ohwang, and how easily in Africa the easy conquests of the
'At Ctesiphon.
'Paraphrased from Schurtz in Helmolt's History of the World.
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 589
Vandals were repeated in the reverse direction. And if the
reader entertains any delusions about a fine civilization, either
Persian, Roman, Hellenic, or Egyptian, being submerged by
this flood, the sooner he dismisses such ideas the better. Islam
prevailed because it was the best social and political order the
times could offer. It prevailed because everywhere it found
politically apathetic peoples, robbed, oppressed, bullied, uned-
ucated, and unorganized, and it found selfish and unsound gov-
ernments out of touch with any people at all. It was the broad-
est, freshest, -and cleanest political idea that had yet come into
actual activity in the world, and it offered better terms than
any other to the mass of mankind. The capitalistic and slave-
holding system of the Eoman Empire and the literature and
culture and social tradition of Europe had altogether decayed
and broken down before Islam arose; it was only when man-
kind lost faith in the sincerity of its representatives that Islam,
too, began to decay.
The larger part of its energy spent itself in conquering
and assimilating Persia and Turkestan ; its most vigorous
thrusts were northwardly from Persia and westwardly through
Egypt. Had it concentrated its first vigour upon the Byzantine
Empire, there can be little doubt that by the eighth century
it would have taken Constantinople and come through into
Europe as easily as it reached the Pamirs. The Caliph Mua-
wiya, it is true, besieged the capital for seven years (672 to 678) ,
and Suleiman in 717 and 718 ; but the pressure was not sus-
tained, and for three or four centuries longer the Byzantine
Empire remained the crazy bulwark of Europe. In the' newly
Christianized or still pagan Avars, Bulgars, Serbs, Slavs, and
Saxons, Islam would certainly have found as ready converts as
it did in the Turks of Central Asia. And though, instead
of insisting upon Constantinople, it first came round into Eu-
rope by the circuitous route of Africa and Spain, it: was only
in France, at the end of a vast line of communications from
Arabia, that it encotmtered a power, sufficiently vigorous to
arrest its advance.
From the outset the Bedouin aristocrats of Mecca dominated
the new empire. Abu Bekr, the first Caliph, was in an informal
shouting way elected at Medina, and so were Omar I and 0th-
man, the third Caliph, but all three were Meccans of good
family. They were not men of Medina. And though Abu
sm
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 591
Bekr and Omar were men of stark simplicity and righteousness
Othman was of a baser quality, a man quite in the vein of
those silk robes, to whom conquest was not conquest for Allah
but for Arabia, and especially for Mecca in Arabia, and more
particularly for himself and for the Meccans and for his fam-
ily, the Omayyads. He was a worthy man, who stood out
for his country and his town and his "people." He was no
early convert as his two predecessors had been; he had joined
the Prophet for reasons of policy in fair give and take. With
his accession the Caliph ceases to be a strange man of fire and
wonder, and becomes an Oriental monarch like many Oriental
monarchs before and since, a fairly good monarch by Eastern
standards as yet, but nothing more.
The rule and death of Othman brought out the consequences
of Muhammad's weaknesses as clearly as the lives of Abu Bekr
and Omar had witnessed to the divine fire in his teaching. Mu-
hammad had been politic at times when Abu Bekr would have
been firm, and the new element of aristocratic greediness that
came in with Othman was one fruit of those politic moments.
And the legacy of that (fatelessly compiled harem of the Prophet,
the family complications and jealousies which had lurked in
the background of Moslem affairs during the rule of the first
two Caliphs, was now coming out into the light of day. Ali,
who was the nephew, the adopted son, and the son-in-law of
the Prophet — ^he was the husband of the Prophet's daughter
Fatima — ^he had considered himself the rightful Caliph. His
claims formed an undertow to the resentment of Medina and of
the rival families of Mecca against the advancement of the
Omayyads. But Ayesha, the favourite wife of the Prophet, had
always been jealous of Fatima and hostile to Ali. She sup-
ported Othman. . . . The splendid opening of the story of
Islam collapses suddenly into this squalid dispute and bickering
of heirs and widows.
In 656 Othman, an old man of eighty, was stoned in the
streets of Medina by a mob, chased to his house, and murdered ;
and Ali became at last Caliph, only to be murdered in his turn
(661), In one of the battles in this civil war, Ayesha, now a
gallant, mischievous old lady, distinguished herself by leading
a charge, mounted on a camel. She was taken prisoner and
treated well.
While the armies of Islam were advancing triumphantly to
592 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the conquest of the world, this sickness of civil war smote at its
head. What was the rule of Allah in the world to Ayesha
when she could score off the detested Fatima, and what heed
were the Omayyads and the partisans of Ali likely to take of
the unity of mankind when they had a good hot feud of this
sort to entertain them, with the caliphate as a prize ? The world
of Islam was rent in twain by the spites, greeds, and partisan
silliness of a handful of men and women in Medina. That
quarrel still lives. To this day one main division of the Mos-
lems, the Shiites, maintain the hereditary right of Ali to be
Caliph as an article of faith! They prevail in Persia and
India. But an equally important section, the Sunnites, with
whom it is difficult for a disinterested observer not to agree,
deny this peculiar addendum to Muhammad's simple creed.
So far as we can gather at this length of time, Ali was an
entirely commonplace individual.
To watch this schism creeping across the brave beginnings of
Islam is like watching a case of softening of the brain. To
the copious literature of the subject we must refer the reader
who wishes to learn how Hasan, the son of Ali, was poisoned
by his wife, and how Husein, his brother, was killed. We do
but name them here because they still afford a large section of
mankind scope for sentimental partisanship and mutual an-
noyance. They are the two chief Shiite martyrs. Amidst the
coming and going of their conflicts the old Kaaba at Mecca
was burnt down, and naturally there began endless disputa-
tion whether it should be rebuilt in exactly its ancient form or
on a much larger scale.
In this and the preceding sections we have seen once more
the inevitable struggle of this newest and latest unifying im-
pulse in the world's affairs against the everyday worldliness
of mankind, and we have seen also how from the first the com-
plicated household of Muhammad was like an evil legacy to
the new faith. But as this history now degenerates into the
normal crimes and intrigues of an Oriental dynasty, the stu-
dent of history will realize a third fundamental weakness in
the world reforms of Muhammad. He was an illiterate Arab,
ignorant of history, totally ignorant of all the political experi-
ences of Rome and Greece, and almost as ignorant of the real
history c^ Judea ; and he left his followers with no scheme for
a stable government embodying and concentrating the general
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 693
will of the faithful, and no effective form to express the very
real spirit of democracy (using the world in its modern sense)
that pervades the essential teaching of Islam. His own rule
was unlimited autocracy, and autocratic Islam has remained.
Politically Islam was not an advance, but a retrogression from
the traditional freedoms and customary laws of the desert.
The breach of the pilgrims' truce that led to the battle of Badr
is the blackest mark against early Islam. Nominally Allah
is its chief ruler — ^but practically its master has always been
whatever man was vigorous and unscrupulous enough to snatch
and hold the Caliphate — ^and, subject to revolts and assassina-
tions, its final law has been that man's will.
For a time, after the death of Ali, the Omayyad family was
in the ascendant, and for nearly a century they gave rulers
to Islam.
The Arab historians are so occupied with the dynastic squab-
bles and crimes of the titne, that it is difficult to trace the ex-
ternal history of the petiod. We find Moslem shipping upon
the seas defeating the Byzantine fleet in a great sea fight off
the coast of Lycia (a.d. 655), but how the Moslems acquired
this victorious fleet thus early we do not clearly know. It
was probably chiefly Egyptian. For some years Islam cer-
tainly controlled the eastern Mediterranean, and in 662 and
again in 672, during the reign of Muawiya (662-680), the
first great Omayyad Caliph, made two sea attacks upon Con-
stantinople. They had to be sea attacks because Islam, so long
as it was under Arab rule, never surmounted the barrier of the
Taurus Mountains. During the same period the Moslems were
also pressing their conquests further and further into Cen-
tral Asia. While Islam was already decaying at its centre,
it was yet making great hosts of new adherents and awaken-
ing a new spirit among the hitherto divided and aimless
Turkish peoples. Medina was no longer a possible centre for
its vast enterprises in Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean,
and so Damascus became the usual capital of the Omayyad
Caliphs.
Chief among these, as for a time the clouds of dynastic in-
trigue clear, are Abdal Malik (685-705) and Walid I (705-
715), under whom the Omayyad line rose to the climax of its
successes. The western boundary Was carried to the Pyrenees,
while to the east the domains of the Caliph marched vdth China.
59* THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The son of Walid, Suleiman (715), carried out a second series
of Moslem attacks upon Constantinople which his father had
planned and proposed. As with the Caliph Muawiya half a
century before, the approach was by sea — for Asia Minor, as
we have just noted, was still unconquered — and the shipping
was drawn chiefly from Egypt. The emperor, a usurper, Leo
the Isaurian, displayed extraordinary skill and obstinacy in
the defence; he burnt most of the Moslem shipping in a bril-
liant sortie, cut up the troops they had landed upon the Asiatic
side of the Bosphorus, and after a campaign in Europe of
two years (717-718), a winter of unexampled severity com-
pleted their defeat.
From this point onward the glory of the Omayyad line de-
cays. The first tremendous impulse of Islam was now spent.
There was no further expansion and a manifest decline in
religious zeal. Islam had made millions of converts, and had
digested those millions very imperfectly. Cities, nations, whole
sects and races, Arab pagans, Jews, Christians, Manichseans,
Zoroastrians, Turanian pagans had been swallowed up into this
new vast empire of Muhammad's successors. It has hitherto
been the common characteiristic of all the great unifying re-
ligious initiators of the world, the common oversight, that
they have accepted the moral and theological ideals
to which the first appeal was made, as though they were
universal ideals. Muhammad's appeal, for example, was to
the traditional chivalry and underlying monotheistic feelings
of the intelligent Arabs of his time. These things were latent
in the mind and conscience of Mecca and Medina ; he did but
call them forth. Then, as the new teaching spread and stereo-
typed itself, it had to work on a continually more uncongenial
basis, it had to grow in soil that distorted and perverted it.
Its sole text-book was the Koran. To minds untuned to the
melodies of Arabic, this book seemed to be, as it seems to many
European minds to-day, a mixture of fine-spirited rhetoric
with — to put it plainly — formless and unintelligent gabble.
Countless converts missed the real thing in it altogether. To
that we must ascribe the readiness of the Persian and Indian
sections of the faith to join the Shiite schism upon a quarrel that
they could at least understand and feel. And to the same at-
tempt to square the new stuff with old prepossessions was due
such extravagant theology as presently disputed whether the
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 595
Koran was and always had been co-existent with God.^ We
should be stupefied by the preposterousness of this idea if we
did not recognize in it at once the well-meaning attempt of
some learned Christian convert to Islamize his belief that "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God." ^
None of the great unifying religious initiators of the world
hitherto seems to have be^ accompanied by any understanding
of the vast educational task, the vast work of lucid and varied
exposition and intellectual, organization involved in its propo-
sitions. They all present the same history of a rapid spread-
ing, like a little water poured over a great area, and then of a
superficiality and corruption.
In a little while we hear stories of an Omayyad Caliph,
Walid II (743-744), who mocked at the Koran, ate pork, drank
wine, and did not pray. Those stories may have been true or
they may have been circulated for political reasons. There
began a puritan reaction in Mecca and Medina against the
levity and luxury of Damascus. Another great Arab family,
the Abbas family, the Abbasids, a thoroughly wicked line, had
long been scheming for power, and was making capital out of
the general discontent. The feud of the Omayyads and the
Abbasids was older than Islam; it had been going on before
Muhammad was bom. These Abbasids took up the tradition
of the Shiite "martyrs," Ali and his sons Hasan and Husein,
and identified themselves with it. The banner of the Omay-
yads was white; the Abbasid adopted a black banner, black in
mourning for Hasan and Husein, black because black is more
impressive than any colour; moreover, the Abbasids declared
that all the Caliphs after Ali were usurpers. In 749 they
accomplished a carefully prepared revolution, and the last of
the Omayyad Caliphs was hunted down and slain in Egypt.
Abul Abbas was the first of the Abbasid Caliphs, and he began
his reign by collecting into one prison every living male of
the Omayyad line upon whom he could lay bands and causing
them all to be massacred. Their bodies, it is said, were heaped
together, a leathern carpet was spread over them, and on this
gruesome table Abul Abbas and his councillors feasted. More-
over, the tombs of the Omayyad Caliphs were rifled, and their
bones burnt and scattered to the four winds of heaven. So the
'Mark Sykes. 'St. John's Gospel, chap. i. 1,
696 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
grievances of Ali were avenged at last, and the Omayyad line
passed out of history.
There was, it is interesting to note, a rising on behalf of the
Omayyads in Khorasan which; was assisted by the Chinese
Emperor.
§ 7
But the descendants of Ali were not destined to share in
this triumph for long. The Abassids were adventurers and
rulers of an older school than Islam. Wow that the tradition
of Ali had served its purpose, the next proceeding of the new
Caliph was to hunt down and slaughter the surviving members
of his family, the descendants of Ali and Fatima.
Clearly the old traditions of Sassanid Persia and of Persia
before the Greeks were returning to the world. With the
accession of the Abbasids the control of the sea departed from
the Caliph, and with it went Spain and !N"orth Africa, in
which, under 'an Qmayyad survivor in the former case, inde-
pendent Moslem states now arose. The centre of gravity of
Islam shifted across the desert from Damascus to Mesopotamia.
Mansur, the successor of Abul Abbas, built himself a new cap-
ital at Bagdad near the ruins of Ctesiphon, the former Sassanid
capital. Turks and Persians as well as Arabs became Emirs,
and the army was reorganized upon Sassanid lines. Medina
and Mecca were now only of importance as pilgrimage cen-
tres, to which the faithful turned to pray. But because it was
a fine language, and because it was the language of the Koran,
Arabic continued to spread until presently it had replaced
Greek and become the language of educated men throughout
the whole Moslem world.
Of the Abbasid monarchs after Abul Abbas we need tell
little here. A bickering war went on year by year in Asia
Minor in which neither Byzantium nor Bagdad made any per-
manent gains, though once or twice the Moslems raided as far
as the Bosphorus. A false prophet Mokanna, who said he was
God, had a brief but troublesome career. There were plots,
there were insurrections ; they lie flat and colourless now in the
histories like dead flowers in an old book. One other Abbasid
Caliph only need be named, and that quite as much for his
legendary as for his real importance, Haroun-al-Kaschid (786-
809). He was not only the Caliph of an outwardly prosper-
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 597
ous empire in the world of reality, but he was also the Caliph
of an undying empire in the deathless world of fiction, he was
the Haroun-al-Easchid of the Arabian Nights.
Sir Mark Sykes ^ gives an account of the reality of his em-
pire from which we will quote certain passages. He says : "The
Imperial Court was polished, luxurious, and unlimitedly
wealthy; the capital, Bagdad, a gigantic mercantile city sur-
rounding a huge administrative fortress, wherein every de-
partment of state had a properly regulated and well-ordered
public office ; where schools and colleges abounded ; whither phi-
losophers, students, doctors, poets, and theologians flocked from
all parts of the civilized globe. . . . The provincial capitals
were embellished with vast public buildings, and linked to-
gether by an effective and rapid service of posts and caravans;
the frontiers were secure and well garrisoned, the army loyal,
efficient, and brave; the governors and ministers honest and
fdrbearing. The empire stretched with equal strength and
unimpaired control from the Cilician gates to Aden, and from
Egypt to Central Asia. Christians, Pagans, Jews, as well as
Moslems, were employed in the government service. Usurpers,
rebellious generals, and false prophets seemed to have vanished
from the Moslem dominions. Traffic and wealth had taken
the place of revolution and famine. . . . Pestilence and dis-
ease were met by Imperial hospitals and government physi-
cians. ... In government business the rough-and-ready meth-
ods of Arabian administration had given place to a complicated
system of Divans, initiated partly from the Roman, but chiefly
taken from the Persian system of government. Posts, Finance,
Privy Seal, Crown Lands, Justice, and Military affairs were
each administered by separate bureaux in the hands of min-
isters and officials; an army of clerks, scribes, writers, and ac-
countants swarmed into these offices and gradually swept the
whole power of the government into their own hands by sepa-
rating the Commander of the Faithful from any direct inter-
course with his subjects. The Imperial Palace and the entour-
age were equally based on Eoman and Persian precedents.
Eunuchs, closely veiled 'harems' of women, guards, spies, go-
betweens, jesters, poets, and dwarfs clustered around the person
of the Commander of the Faithful, each, in his degree, endeav-
ouring to gain the royal favour and indirectly distracting the
' The Caliph's Last Heritage.
598 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
royal mind from affairs of business and state. Meanwhile the
mercantile trade of the East poured gold into Bagdad, and sup-
plemented the other enormous stream of money derived from
the contributions of plunder and loot despatched to the capital
by the commanders of the victorious raiding forces which har-
ried Asia Minor, India, and Turkestan. The seemingly unend-
ing supply of Turkish slaves and Byzantine specie added to the
richness of the revenues of Irak, and, combined with the vast
commercial traffic of which Bagdad was the centre, produced
a large and powerful moneyed class, composed of the sons of
generals, officials, landed proprietors, royal favourites, mer-
chants, and the like, who encouraged the arts, literature, phi-
losophy, and poetry as the mood took them, building palaces
for themselves, vying with each other in the luxury of their
entertainments, suborning poets to sound their praises, dabbling
in philosophy, supporting various schools of thought, endowing
charities, and, in fact, behaving as the wealthy have always
behaved in all ages.
"I have said that the Aboasid Empire in the days of Haroun"-
al-Kaschid was weak and feeble to a degree, and perhaps the
reader will consider this a foolish proposition when he takes
into consideration that I have described the Empire as orderly,
the administration definite and settled, the army efficient, and
wealth abundant. The reason I make the suggestion is that the
Abbasid Empire had lost touch with everything original and
vital in Islam, and was constructed entirely by the reunion of
the fragments of the empires Islam had destroyed. There was
nothing in the empire which appealed to the higher instincts
of the leaders of the people ; the holy war had degenerated into
a systematic acquisition of plunder. The Caliph had become
a luxurious Emperor or King of Kings; the administration
had changed from a patriarchal system to a bureaucracy. The
wealthier classes were rapidly losing all faith in the religion
of the state; speculative philosophy and high living were tak-
ing the place of Koranic orthodoxy and Arabian simplicity.
The solitary bond which could have held the empire together,
the sternness and plainness of the Moslem faith,, was cpm-
pletely neglected by both the Caliph and his advisers. • . .
Haroun-al-Easchid himself was a winebibber, and his palace was
decorated with graven images of birds and beasts and men. . . .
"For a moment we stand amazed at the greatness of the Ab-
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 599
basid aominion; then suddenly we realize that it is but as a
fair husk enclosing the dust and ashes of dead civilizations."
Haroun-al-Easchid died in 809. At his deatK his great em-
pire fell immediately into civil war and confusion, and the next
great event of unusual importance in this region of the world
comes two hundred years later when the Turks, under the chiefs
of the great family of the Seljuks, poured southward out of
Turkestan, and not only conquered the empire of Bagdad, but
Asia Minor also. Coming from the north-east as they did,
they were able to outflank the great barrier of the Taurus
Mountains, which had hitherto held back the Moslems. They
were still much the same people as those of whom Yuan Chwang
gave us a glimpse four hundred years earlier, but now they were
Moslems, and Moslems of the primitive type, men whom Abu
Bekr would have welcomed to Islam. They caused a great
revival of vigour in Islam, and they turned the minds of the
Moslem world once more in the direction of a religious war
against Christendom. For there had been a sort of truce be-
tween these two great religions after the cessation of the Mos-
lem advance and the decline of the Omayyads. Such war-
fare as had gone on between Christianity and Islam had been
rather border-bickering than sustained war. It became only
a bitter fanatical struggle again in the eleventh century.
§ 8
But before we go on to tell of the Turks and the Crusaders,
the great wars that began between Christendom and Islam,
and which have left a quite insane intolerance between these
great systems right down to the present time, it is necessary
to give a little more attention to the intellectual life of the
Arabic-speaking world which was now spreading more and
more widely over the regions which Hellenism had once dom-
inated. For some generations before Muhammad, the Arab
mind had been, as it were, smouldering, it had been producing
poetry and much religious discussion; under the stimulus of
the national and racial successes it presently blazed out with a
brilliance second only to that of the Greeks during their best
period. From a new angle and with a fresh vigour it took up
that systematic development of positive knowledge which the
Greeks had begun and relinquished. It revived the human
600 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pursuit of science. If the Greek was the father, then the Arab
was the foster-father of the scientific method of dealing with
reality, that is to say, by absolute frankness, the utmost sim-
plicity of statement and explanation, exact record, and ex-
haustive criticism. Through the Arabs it was and not by the
Latin route that the modem world received that gift of light
and power.
Their conquests brought the Arabs into contact with the
Greek literary tradition, not at first directly, but through the
Syrian translations of the Greek writers. The Nestorian Chris-
tians, the Christians to the east of orthodoxy, seem to have
been much more intelligent and active-minded than the court
theologians of Byzantium, and at a much higher level of gen-
eral education than the Latin-speaking Christians of the west.
They had been tolerated during the latter days of the Sassanids,
and they were tolerated by Islam until the ascendancy of the
Turks in the eleventh century. They had preserved much of
the Hellenic medical science, and had even added to it. In
the Omayyad times most of the physicians in the Caliph's
dominions were ISTestorians, and no doubt many learned Nesto-
rians professed Islam without aUy serious compunction or any
great change in their work and thoughts. They had preserved
much of Aristotle both in Greek and in Syrian translations.
They had a considerable mathematical literature. Their equip-
ment makes the contemporary resources of St. Benedict or
Caasiodorus seem very pitiful. To these Nestorian teachers
came the fresh Arab mind out of the desert, keen and curious,
and learnt much and improved upon its teaching.
But the Nestorians were not the only teachers available for
the Arabs. Throughout all the rich cities of the east the kindred
Jews were scattered with their own distinctive literature and
tradition, and the Arab and the Jewish mind reacted upon one
another to a common benefit. The Arab was informed and
the Jew sharpened to a keener edge. The Jews have never been
pedants in the matter of their language; we have already
noted that a thousand years before Islam they spoke Greek
in Hellenized Alexandria, and now all over this new Moslem
world they were speaking and writing Arabic. Some of the
greatest of Jewish literature was written in Arabic, the re-
ligious writings of Maimonides, for example. Indeed, it is
diflBcult to say in the case of this Arabic culture where the Jew
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 601
ends and the Arab begins, so important and essential were
its Jewish factors.
Moreover, there was a third source of inspiration, more
particularly in mathematical science, to which at present it is
difficult to do justice — India. There can be little doubt that
the Arab mind during its best period was in effective contact
with Sanscrit literature and with Indian ideas, and that it
derived much from this source.
The distinctive activities of the Arab mind were already
manifest under the Omayyads, though it was during the Ab-
basid time that it made its best display. History is the be-
ginning and core of all sound philosophy and all great literature,
and the first Arab writers of distinction were historians, biogra-
phers, and quasi-historical poets. Komantic fiction and the
short story followed as a reading public developed, willing to
be amused. And as reading ceased to be a special accomplish-
ment, and became necessary to every man of affairs and to every
youth of breeding, came the systematic growth of an educa-
tional system and an educational literature. By the ninth and
tenth centuries there are not only grammars, but great lexi-
cons, and a mass of philological learning in Islam.
And a century, or so in advance of the west, there grew up
in the Moslem world at a number of centres, at Basra, at Kufa,
at Bagdad and Cairo, and at Cordoba, out of what were at first
religious schools dependent upon mosques, a series of great
universities. The light of these universities shone far beyond
the Moslem world, and drew students to them from east and
west. At Cordoba in particular there were great numbers of
Christian students, and the influence of Arab philosophy com-
ing by way of Spain upon the universities of Paris, Oxford, and
North Italy and upon Western European thought generally, was
very considerable indeed. The name of Averroes (Ibn-rushd)
of Cordoba (1126-1198) stands out as that of the culminating
influence of Arab philosophy upon European thought. He
developed the teachings of Aristotle upon lines that made a
sharp division between religious and scientific truth, and so
prepared the way for the liberation of scientific research from
the theological dogmatism that restrained it both under Chris-
tianity and under Islam. Another great name is that of Avi-
cenna (Ibnsina), the Prince of Physicians (980-1037), who
was bom at the other end of the Arabic world at Bokhara,
602 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and who travelled in Khorasan. . , . The book-copying indus-
try flourished at Alexandria, Damascus, Cairo, and Bagdad,
and about the year 970 there were twenty-seven free schools
open in Cordoba for the education of the poor.
"In mathematics," say Thatcher and Schwill,^ "the Arabs
built on the foundations of the Greek mathematicians. The
origin of the so-called Arabic numerals is obscure. Under
Theodoric the Great, Boethius made use of certain signs which
were in part very like the nine digits which we now use. One
of the pupils of Gerbert also used signs which were still more
like ours, but the zero was unknown till the twelfth century,
when it was invented by an Arab mathematician named Mu-
hammad-Ibn-Musa, who also was the first to use the decimal
notation, and who gave the digits the value of position. In
geometry the Arabs did not add much to Euclid, but algebra is
practically their creation ; also they developed spherical trigon-
ometry, inventing the sine, tangent, and cotangent. In physics
they invented the pendulum, and produced work on optics.
They made progress in the science of astronomy. They built
several observatories, and constructed many astronomical in-
struments which are still in use. They calculated the angle
of the ecliptic and the precession of the equinoxes. Their
knowledge of astronomy was undoubtedly considerable.
"In medicine they made great advances over the work of
the Greeks. They studied physiology and hygiene, and their
materia medica was practically the same as ours to-day. Many
of their methods of treatment are still in use among us. Their
surgeons understood the use of anaesthetics, and performed
some of the most difScult operations known. At the time when
in Europe the practice of medicine was forbidden by the Church,
which expected cures to be effected by religious rites per-
formed by the clergy, the Arabs had a real science of medicine.
In chemistry they made a good beginning. They discovered
many new substances, such as alcohol,* potash, nitrate of silver,
corrosive sublimate, and nitric and sulphuric acid. ... In
manufactures they outdid the world in variety and beauty of
design and perfection of workmanship. They worked in all the
• A Oeneral History of Europe.
'Alcohol as "spirits of wine" was known to Pliny (100 A.D.). The
student of the history of science should consult Campbell Brown's History
of Chemistry and check these statements in the text.
MUHAMMAD AND ISLAM 603
metals-T^gold, silver, copper, bronze, iron, and steel. In textile
fabrics they have never been surpassed. They made glass and
pottery of the finest quality. They knew the secrets of dyeing,
and they manufactured paper. They had many processes of
dressing leather, and their work was famous throughout Eu-
rope. They made tinctures, essences, and syrups. They made
sugar from the cane, and grew many fine kinds of wine. They
practised farming in a scientific way,' and had good systems of ir-
rigation. They knew the value of fertilizers, and adapted their
crops to the quality of the ground. They excelled in horti-
culture, knowing how to graft and how to produce new varieties
of fruit and flowers. They introduced into the west many
trees and plants from the east, and wrote scientific treatises on
farming."
One item in this account must be underlined here because of
its importance in the intellectual life of mankind, the manufac-
ture of paper. This the Arabs seem to have learnt from the
Chinese by way of Central Asia. The Europeans acquired it
from the Arabs. Until that time books had to be written upon
parchment or papyrus, and after the Arab conquest of Egypt
Europe was cut off from the papyrus supply. Until paper
became abundant, the art of printing was of little use, and
newspapers and popular education by means of books was im-
possible. This was probably a much more important factor in
the relative backwardness of Europe during the dark ages
than historians seem disposed to admit. . . .
And all this mental life went on in the Moslem world in
spite of a very considerable amount of political disorder. From
first to last the Arabs never grappled with the problem, the still
unsolved problem, of the stable progressive state; everywhere
their form of government was absolutist and subject to the con-
vulsions, changes, intrigues, and murders that have always
characterized the extremer forms of monarchy. But for some
centuries, beneath the crimes and rivalries of courts and camps,
the spirit of Islam did preserve a certain general decency and
restraint in life; the Byzantine Empire was impotent to shat-
ter this civilization, and the Turkish danger in the north-east
gathered strength only very slowly. Until the Turk fell upon
it, the intellectual life of Islam continued. Perhaps it secretly
flattered itself that it would always be able to go on in spite
of the thread of violence and unreason in its political direction.
604 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Hitherto in all countries that has been the characteristic atti-
tude of science and' literature. The intellectual man has been
loth to come to grips with the forcible man. He has generally
been something of a courtier and time-server. Possibly he has
never yet been quite sure of himself. Hitherto men of reason
and knowledge have never had the assurance and courage of the
religious fanatic. But there can be little doubt that they have
accumulated settled convictions and gathered confidence dur-
ing the last few centuries; they have slowly found a means to
power through the development of popular education and pop-
ular literature, and to-day they are far more disposed to say
things plainly and to claim a dominating voice in the organiza-
tion of human afFairs than they have ever been before in the
world's history.
XXXII
CHEISTENDOM A^B THE CRUSADES
§ 1. The Western World at its Lowest Ebb. § 2. The Fevdd
System. § 3. The Prankish Kingdom of the Merovingians.
§ 4. The Christianization of the Western Barbariam, § 5.
Charlemagne becomes Emperor of the West. § 6. The Per-
sonality of Charlemagne. § 7. The Prench and the Germans
become Distinct. § 8. The Normans, the Saracens, the
-Hungarians and the SeljvJc Turks. § 9. How Constanti-
nople Appealed to Borne. § 10, The Crusades. § 11. The
Crusades a Test of Christianity. § 12. The Emperor Pred-
erich II. § 13. Defects and Limitations of the Papacy.
§ li. A List of Leading Popes.
§ 1
LET us turn again now from this intellectual renascence
in the cradle of the ancient civilizations to the affairs
of the Western world. We have described the complete
economic, social, and political break-up of the Roman imperial
system in the west, the confusion and darkness that followed in
the sixth and seventh centuries, and the struggles of such men
as Cassiodorus to keep alight the flame of human learning amidst
these windy confusions. For a time it would be idle to write
of states and rulers. Smaller or greater adventurers seized
a castle or a countryside and ruled an uncertain area. The
British Islands, for instance, were split up amidst a multitude
of rulers; numerous Keltic chiefs in Ireland and Scotland
and Wales and Cornwall fought and prevailed over and suc-
cumbed to each other; the English invaders were also divided
into a number of fluctuating "kingdoms," Kent, Wessex, I)ssex,
Sussex, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia, which were
constantly at war with one another. So it was over most of
the Western world. Here a bishop would be the monarch, as
Gregory the Great was in Rome; here a town or a group of
605
606 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
towns would be under the rule of the duke or prince of this or
that. Amidst the vast ruins of the city of Kome half-inde-
pendent families of quasi-noble adventurers and their retainers
maintained themselves. The Pope kept a sort of general pre-
dominance there, but he was sometimes more than balanced by a
"Duke of Eome." The great arena of the Colosseum had been
made into a ptrivately-owned castle, and so, too, had the vast cir-
cular tomb of the Emperor Hadrian ; and the adventurers who
had possession of these strongholds and their partisans waylaid
each other and fought and bickered in the ruinous streets of
the once imperial city. The tomb of Hadrian was known after
the days of Gregory the Great as the Castle of St. Angelo,
the Castle of the Holy Angel, because when he was crossing
the bridge over the Tiber on his way to St. Peter's to pray
against the great pestilence which was devastating the city, he
had had a vision of a great angel standing over the dark mass of
the mausoleum and sheathing a sword, and he had known then
that his prayers would be answered. This Castle of St. Angelo
played a very important part in Eoman affairs during this
age of disorder.
Spain was in much the same state of political fragmentation
as Italy or, France or Britain; and in Spain the old feud pf
Carthaginian and Roman was still continued in the bitter
hostility of their descendants and heirs, the Jew and the Chris-
tian. So that when the power of the Caliph had swept along
the IN'orth African coast to the Straits of Gibraltar, it found
in the Spanish Jews ready helpers in its invasion of Europe.
A Moslem army of Arabs and of Berbers, the nomadic Hamitic
people of the African desert and mountain hinterland who had
been converted to Islam, crossed and defeated the West Goths
in a great battle in 711. In a few years the whole country
was in their possession.
In 720 Islam had reached the Pyrenees, and had pushed
round their eastern end into France; and for a time it seemed
that the faith was likely to subjugate Gaul as easily as it had
subjugated the Spanish peninsula. But presently it struck
against something hard, a new kingdoni of the Franks, which
had been consolidating itself for some two centuries in the
Rhineland and Iforth France.
Of this Prankish kingdom, the precursor of France and Ger-
many, which formed the western bulwark of Europe against
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 607
the faith of Muhammad, as the Byzantine empire behind the
Taurus Mountains formed the eastern, we shall now have
much to tell; but first we must give some account of the new
system of social groupings out of which it arose.
§2
It is necessary that the reader should have a definite idea
of the social condition of western Europe in the eighth cen-
tury. It was not a barbarism. Eastern Europe was still bar-
baric and savage; things had progressed but little beyond the
state of affairs described by Gibbon in his account of the mission
of Priscus to Attila (see p. 485). But western Europe was
a shattered civilization, without law, without administration,
with roads destroyed and education disorganized, but still with
great numbers of people with civilized ideas and habits and
traditions. It was a time of confusion, of brigandage, of
crimes unpunished and universal insecurity. It is very inter-
esting to trace how, out of the universal melee, the beginnings
of a new order appeared. In a modern breakdown there would
probably be the formation of local vigilance societies, which
would combine and restore a police administration and a roughly
democratic rule. But in the broken-down western empire of
the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, men's ideas turned
rather to leaders than to committees, and the centres about
which affairs crystallized were here barbaric chiefs, here a
vigorous bishop or some surviving claimant to a Koman official
position, here a long-recognized landowner or man of ancient
family, and here again some vigorous usurper of power. No
solitary man was safe. So men were forced to link themselves
with others, preferably people stronger than themselves. The
lonely man chose the most powerful and active person in his
district and became his man. The freeman or the weak lordling
of a petty territory linked himself to some more powerful lord.
The protection of that lord (or the danger of his hostility) be-
came more considerable with every such accession. So very
rapidly there went on a process of political crystallization in
the confused and lawless sea into which the Western Empire
bad liquefied. These natural associations and alliances of
protector and subordinates grew very rapidly into a system,
the fevdal system,, traces of which are still to be found in
608 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
the social structure of every European community west of
Kussia,
This process speedily took on technical forms and laws of its
own. In such a country as Gaul it was already well in progress
in the days of insecurity before the barbarian tribes broke into
the empire as conquerors. The Franks when they came into
Gaul brought with them an institution, which we have already
noted in the case of thei Macedonians, and which was probably
of very wide distribution among the Nordic people, the gather-
ing about the chief or war king of a body of young men of
good family, the companions or cornMcdus, his counts or cap-
tains. It was natural in the case of invading peoples that the
relations of a weak lord to a strong lord should take on the
relations of a count to his king, and that a conquering chief
should divide seized and confiscated estates among his com-
panions. From the side of the decaying empire there came to
feudalism the idea of the grouping for mutual protection of men
and estates ; from the Teutonic side came the notions of knightly
association, devotion, and personal service. The former was
the economic side of the institution, the latter the chivalrous.
The analogy of the aggregation of feudal groupings with crys-
tallization is a very close one. As the historian watches the
whirling and eddying confusion of the fourth and fifth cen-
turies in Western Europe, he begins to perceive the appearance
of these pyramidal growths of heads and subordinates and
sub-subordinates, which jostle against one another, branch,
dissolve again, or coalesce. "We use the term 'feudal system'
for convenience sake, but with a degree of impropriety if it
conveys the meaning 'systematic' Feudalism in its most flour-
ishing age was anything but systematic. It was confusion
roughly organized. Great diversity prevailed everywhere, and
we should not be surprised to find some different fact or custom
in every lordship. Anglo-Norman feudalism attained in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries a logical completeness and a
uniformity of practice which, in the feudal age proper, can
hardly be found elsewhere through so large a territory. . . .
"The foundation of the feudal relationship proper was the fief,
which was usually land, but might be any desirable thing, as
an office, a revenue in money or kind, the right to collect a
toll, or operate a mill. In return for the fief, the man became
the vassal of his lord ; he knelt before him, and, with his hands
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
609
between his lord's hands, promised him fealty and service. . . .
The faithful performance of all the duties he had assumed in
homage constituted the vassal's right and title to his fief. So
long as they were fulfilled, he, and his heir after him, held the
fief as his property, practically and in relation to all under-
tenants as if he were the owner. In the ceremony of homage
•A -A « '1^apof'ElIROPEaicnU-^00A:D. ^ « rt
--^ ^''--''■^"^•liii^^
N E A
and investiture, which is the creative contract of feudalism,
the obligations assumed by the two parties were, as a rule, not
specified in exact terms. They were determined by local cus-
tom. ... In many points of detail the vassal's services dif-
fered widely in different parts of the feudal world. We may
say, however, that they fall into two classes, general and specific.
The general included all that might come under the idea of
loyalty, seeking the lord's interests, keeping his secrets, be-
traying the plans of his enemies, protecting his family, etc.
The specific services are capable of more definite statement,
610 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and they usually received exact definition in custom and some-
times in written documents. The most characteristic of these
was the military service, which included appearance in the
field on summons with a certain force, often armed in a speci-
fied way, and remaining a specified length of time. It often
included also the duty of guarding the lord's castle, and of
holding one's own castle subject to the plans of the lord for the
defence of his fief. . . .
"Theoretically regarded, feudalism covered Europe with a,
network of these fiefs, rising in graded ranks one above the
other from the smallest, the knight's fee, at the bottom, to the
king at the top, who was the supreme landowner, or who held
the kingdom from God. . . ." ^
But this was the theory that was superimposed upon . the
established facts. The reality of feudalism was its voluntary
co-operation.
"The feudal state was one in which, it has been said, private
law had usurped the place of public law." But rather is it
truer that public law had failed and vanished and private law
had come in to fill the vacuum. ' Public duty had ~ become
private obligation.
§ 3
We have already mentioned various kingdoms of the bar-
barian tribes who set up a more or less flimsy dominion over
this or that area amidst the debris of the empire, the kingdoms
of the Suevi and West Goths in Spain, the East-Gothic kingdom:
in Italy, and the Italian Lombard kingdom which succeeded the
Goths after Justinian had expelled the latter and after thei
great pestilence had devastated Italy. The Frankish kingdomi
was another such barbarian power which arose first in what
is now Belgium, and which spread southward to the Loire,
but it developed far more strength and solidarity than any of
the others. It was the first real state to emerge from the uni-
versal wreckage. It became at last a wide and vigorous po-
litical reality, and from it are derived two great powers of
modern Europe, France and the German Empire. Its founder
was Clovis (481-511) who began as a small king in Belgium
and ended with his southern frontiers nearly at the Pyrenees.
He divided his kingdom among his four sons, but the Franks
* Encyclopcedia BrU<tnmca, article "Feudalism," by Professor G. B, Adams.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
611
retained a tradition of unity in spite of this division, and for
a time fraternal wars for a single control united rather than
divided them. A more serious split arose, hov?ever, through
the Latinization of the Western Franks, who .occupied Roman-
ized Gaul and who learnt to speak the corrupt Latin of the suh-
ject population, while the Franks of the Ehineland retained
Area- move or less- vixidev TR3^^KI5H cLotnixiiorv in
tJic tmt<r oP CimSiJLES OViARTEL
their Low German speech. At a low level of civilization, dif-
ferences in language cause very powerful political strains. For
a hundred and fifty years the Frankish world was split in two,
Neustria, the nucleus of France, speaking a Latinish speech,
which became at last the French language we know, and Aua-
traaia, the Ehineland, which remained German. '^
*The Franks differed from the Swabians and South Germans, and came
much nearer the Anglo-Saxons in that they spoke a "Low German" and
not a "High German" dialect. Their language resembled plattdeutsch
and Anglo-Saxon, and was the direct parent of Dutch and FJemish. In
fact, the Franks where they were not Latinized became Flemings and
ei2 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
We will not tell here of the decay of the dynasty, the Mero-
vingian dynasty, founded by Clovis ; nor how in Austrasia a
certain court official, the Mayor of the Palace, gradually be-
came the king de, facto and used the real king as a puppet.
The position of Mayor of the Palace also became hereditary
in the seventh century, and in 687 a certain Pepin of Heris-
thal, the Austrasian Mayor of the Palace, had conquered Neus-
tria and reunited all the Franks. He was followed in Y14 by
his son, Charles Martel, who also bore no higher title than
Mayor of the Palace. (His poor little Merovingian kings do
not matter in the slightest degree to us here.) It was this
Charles Martel who stopped the Moslems. They had pushed
as far as Tours when he met them, and in a great battle be-
tween that place and Poitiers (732) utterly defeated them and
broke their spirit. Thereafter the Pyrenees remained their ut-
most boundary ; they came no further into Western Europe.
Charles Martel divided his power between two sons, but one
resigned and went into a monastery, leaving his brother Pepin
sole ruler. This Pepin it was who finally extinguished the
descendants of Clovis. He sent to the Pope to ask who was
the true king of the Franks, the man who held the power or
the man who wore the crown; and the Pope, who was in need
of a supporter, decided in favour of the Mayor of the Palace.
So Pepin was chosen king at a gathering of the Prankish
nobles in the Merovingian capital Soissons, and anointed and
crowned. That was in 751. The Franco-Germany he united
was consolidated by his son Charlemagne. It held together
until the death of his grandson Louis (840), and then France
and Germany broke away again — to the great injury of man-
kind. It was not a difference of race or temperament, it was
a difference of language and tradition that split these Prankish
peoples asunder.
That old separation of Neustria and Austrasia still works
out in bitter consequences. In 1916 the ancient conflict of
Neustria and Austrasia had broken out into war once more.
In the August of that year the present writer visited Soissons,
and crossed the temporary wooden bridge that had been built by
"Dutchmen" of South Holland (North Holland is still Friesiseh — i.e.
Anglo-Saxon ) . The "French" which the Latinized Franks and Burgundians
spoke in the seventh to the tenth centuries was remarkably like the
Bumansch language of Switzerland, judging from the vestiges that re-
main in old documents. — H. H. J.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 613
the English after the Battle of the Aisne from the main part
of the town to the suburb of St'. Medard.- Canvaa screens
protected passengers upon the bridge from the observation of the
German sharpshooters who were sniping from their trenches
down the curve of the river. He went with his guides across
a field and along by the wall of an orchard in which a German
shell exploded as he passed. So he reached the battered build-
ings that stand upon the site of the ancient abbey of St. Medard,
in which the last Merovingian was deposed and Pepin the Short
was crowned in his stead. Beneath these ancient buildings
there were great crypts, very useful as dug-outs — for the Ger-
man advanced lines were not more than a couple of hundred
yards away. The sturdy French soldier lads were cooking
and resting in these shelters, and lying down to sleep among
the stone coffins that had held the bones of their Merovingian
kings.
§ 4
The populations over which Charles Martel and King Pepin
ruled were at very different levels of civilization in different
districts. To the west and south the bulk of the people con-
sisted of Latinized and Christian Kelts ; in the central regions
these rulers had to deal with such more or less Christianized
Germans as the Franks and Burgundians and Alemanni; to
the north-east were still pagan Frisians and Saxons; to the
east were the Bavarians, recently Christianized through the
activities of St. Boniface ; and to the east of them again pagan
Slavs and Avars. The "Paganism" of the Germans and Slavs
was very similar to the primitive religion of the Greeks;
it was a manly religion in which temple, priest, and sacrifices
played a small part, and its gods were like men, a kind of
"school prefects" of more powerful beings who interfered im-
pulsively and irregularly in human affairs. The Germans had
a Jupiter in Odin, a Mars in Thor, a Venus in Freya, and
so on. Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries a steady
process of conversion to Christianity went on amidst these Ger-
man and Slavonic tribes.
It will be interesting to English-speaking readers to note
that the most zealous and successful missionaries among the
Saxons and Frisians came from England. Christianity was
twice planted in the British Isles. It was already there while
614 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Britain was a part of the Eoman Empire; a martyr, St. Alban,
gave bis name to the town of St. Albans, and nearly every visitor
to Canterbury has also visited little old St. Martin's church,
"which was used during the Koman times. From Britain, as
we have already said, Christianity spread beyond the imperial
boundaries into Ireland — the chief missionary was St.. Patrick —
and there was a vigorous monastic movement with which are
connected the names of St. Columba and the religious settle-
ments of lona. Then in the fifth and sixth centuries came the
.fierce and pagan English, and they cut off the early Church
of Ireland from the main body of Christianity. In the sev-
enth century Christian missionaries were converting the Eng-
lish, both in the north from Ireland and in the south from
Rome. The Home mission was sent by Pope Gregory the Great
just at the close of the sixth century. The story goes that he
saw English boys for sale in the Eoman slave market, though
it is a little difficult to understand how they got there. They
were very fair and good-looking. In answer to his inquiries,
he was told that they were Angles. "Not Angles, but Angels,"
said he, "had they but the gospel."
The mission worked through the seventh century. Before
that century was over, most of the English were Christians;
though Mercia, the central English kingdom, held out stoutly
against the priests and for the ancient faith and ways. And
there was a swift progress in learning upon the part of these
new converts. The monasteries of the kingdom of Northum-
bria in the north of England became a centre of light and
learning. Theodore of Tarsus was one of the earliest arch-
bishops of Canterbury (669-690). "While Greek was utterly
unknown in the west of Europe, it was mastered by some of
the pupils of Theodore. The monasteries contained many monks
who were excellent scholars. Most famous of all was Bede,
known as the Venerable Bede (673-735), a monli of Jarrow
(on Tyne). He had for his pupils the six hundred monks of
that monastery, besides the many strangers who came to hear
him. He gradually mastered all the learning of his day, and
left at his death forty-five volumes of his writings, the most
important of which are The Ecclesiastical History of the Eng-
lish' and his translation of the Gospel of John into English.
His writings were widely known and used throughout Europe.
He reckoned all dates from the birth of Christ, and through
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
615
his works the use of Christian chronology became common in
Europe. Owing to the large number of monasteries and monks
640 AV.
in !N"orthumbria, that part of England was for a time far
in advance of the south in civilization." *
In the seventh and eighth centuries we find the English
missionaries active upon the eastern frontiers of the Frankish
*A General History of Ev/rope, Thatcher and Schwill.
616 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
kingdom. Chief among these -was St. Boniface (680-755),
who waa born at Crediton, in Devonshire, who converted the
Frisians, Thuringians, and Hessians, and who was martyred in
Holland.
Both in England and on the Continent the ascendant rulers
seized upon Christianity as a unifying force to cement their
conquests. Christianity became a banner for aggressive chiefs
— as it did in Uganda in Africa in the bloody days before that
country was annexed to the British Empire. After Pepin,
who died in 768, came two sons, Charles and another, who
divided his kingdom ; but the brother of Charles died in 771,
and Charles then became sole king (771-814) of the growing
realm of the Franks. This Charles is known in history as
Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. As in the case of Alexan-
der the Great and Julius Caesar, posterity has enormously ex-
aggerated his memory. He made his wars of aggression defi-
nitely religious wars. All the world of north-western Europe,
which is now Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark,
and ^Norway and Sweden, was in the ninth century an arena
of bitter conflict between the old faith and the new. Whole
nations were converted to Christianity by the sword just as
Islam in Arabia, Central Asia, and Africa had converted
whole nations a century or so before.
With fire and sword Charlemagne preached the Gospel of
the Cross to the Saxons, Bohemians, and as far as the Danube
into what is now Hungary ; he carried the same teaching down
the Adriatic Coast through what is now Dalmatia, and drove
the Moslems back from the Pyrenees as far as Barcelona.
Moreover, he it was who sheltered Egbert, an exile from
Wessex, in England, and assisted him presently to establish
himself as King in Wessex (802). Egbert subdued the Brit-
ons in Cornwall, as Charlemagne conquered the Britons of
Brittany, and, by a series of wars, which he continued after
the death of his Prankish patron, made himself at last the first
K^ng of all England (828).
But the attacks of Charlemagne upon the last strongholds of
paganism provoked a vigorous reaction on the part of the un-
converted. The Christianized English had retained very little
of the seamanship that had brought them from the mainland,
and the Franks had not yet become seamen. As the Christian
propaganda of Charlemagne swept towards the shores of the
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
617
North and Baltic Seas, the pagans were driven to the sea. They
retaliated for the Christian persecutions with plundering raids
and expeditions against the northern coasts of France and
against Christian England, These pagan Saxons and English
of the mainland and their kindred from Denmark and Nor-
way are the Danes and Northmen of our national histories.
They were also called Vikings/ which means "inlet-men," be-
'N.Bw — ^Vik-ings, not Vi-kings, Vik = a fiord or inlet.
618 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOKY
cause they came from the deep inlets of the Scandinavian coast.
They came in long black galleys, making little use of sails.
Most of our information about these wars and invasions of the
Pagan Vikings is derived from Christian sources, and so
we have abundant information of the massacres and atrocities
of their raids and very little about the cruelties inflicted upon
their pagan brethren, the Saxons, at the hands of Charlemagne.
Their animus against the cross and against monks and nuns
was extreme. They delighted in the burning of monasteries
and nunneries and the slaughter of their inmates.
Throughout the period between the fifth and the ninth cen-
turies these Vikings or iN^orthmen were learning seamanship,
becoming bolder, and ranging further. They braved the north-
ern seas until the icy shores of Grepnland were a familiar
haunt, and by the ninth century they had settlements (of which
Europe in general knew nothing) in America. In the tenth
and eleventh centuries many of their sagas began to be written
down in Iceland. They saw the world in terms of valiant ad-
venture. They assailed the walrus, the bear, and the whale. In
their imaginations, a great and rich city to the south, a sort of
confusion of Kome and Byzantium, loomed large. They called
it "Miklagard" (Michael's court) or Micklegarth. The mag-
netism of Micklegarth was to draw the descendants of these
Northmen down into the Mediterranean by two routes, by the
west and also across Russia from the Baltic, as we shall tell
later. By the Eussian route went also the kindred Swedes.
So long as Charlemagne and Egbert lived, the Vikings were
no more than raiders; but as the ninth century wore on, these
raids developed into organized invasions. In several districts
of England the hold of Christianity was by no means firm as
yet. In Mercia in particular the pagan Northmen found sym-
pathy and help. By 886 the Danes had conquered a fair part
of England, and the English king, Alfred the Great, had rec-
ognized their rule over their conquests, the Dane-law, in the
pact he made with Guthrum their leader. A little later, in 912,
another expedition under Eolf the Ganger established itself
upon the coast of France in the region that was known hence-
forth as Normandy ( = Northman-dy) . But of how there was
presently a fresh conquest of England by the Danea, and how
finally the Duke of Normandy became King of England, we
cannot tell at any length. There were very small racial and
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 619
social differences between Angle, Saxon, Jute, Dane, or Nor-
man ; and though these changes loom large in the imaginations
of the English, they are seen to be very slight rufflings indeed
of the stream of history when we measure them by the stand-
ards of a greater world. The issue between Christianity and
paganism vanished presently from the struggle. By the Treaty
of Wedmore the Danes agreed to be baptized if they were as-
sured of their conquests ; and the descendants of Eolf in Nor-
mandy were not merely Christianized, but they learnt to speak
French from the more civilized people about them, forgetting
their own Norse tongue. Of much greater significance in the
history of mankind are the relations of Charlemagne with his
neighbours to the south and east, and to the imperial tradition.
§ 5
Through Charlemagne the tradition of the Eoman Caesar was
revived in Europe. The Koman Empire was dead and de-
caying; the Byzantine Empire was far gone in decline; but
the education and mentality of Europe had sunken to a level at
which new creative political ideas were probably impossible. In
all Europe there survived not a tithe of the speculative vigour
that we find in the Athenian literature of the fifth century B.C.
There was no power to postulate a new occasion or to conceive
and organize a novel political method. Official Christianity
had long overlaid and accustomed itself to ignore those strange
teachings of Jesus of Nazareth from which it had arisen. The
Koman Church, clinging tenaciously to its possession of the
title of pontifex maximus, had long since abandoned its ap-
pointed task of achieving the Kingdom of Heaven. It was
preoccupied with the revival of Roman ascendancy on earth,
which it conceived of as its inheritance. It had become a
political body, using the faith and needs of simple men to
forward its schemes. Europe drifted towards a dreary imita-
tion and revival of the misconceived failures of the past. Eor
eleven centuries from Charlemagne onwards, "Emperors" and
"Caesars" of this line and that come and go in the history of
Europe like fancies in a disordered mind. We shall have to
tell of a great process of mental growth in Europe, of enlarged
horizons and accumulating power, but it was a process that
went on independently of, and in spite of, the political fonns
620
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 621
of the time, until at last it shattered those forms altogether.
Europe during those eleven centuries of the imitation Caesars
which began with Charlemagne, and which closed only in the
monstrous bloodshed of 1914^1918, has been like a busy factory
owned by a somnambulist, who is sometimes quite imimpor-
tant and sometimes disastrously in the way. Or rather than
a somnambulist, let us say by a corpse that magically simulates
a kind of life. The Roman Empire staggers,' sprawls, is thrust
off the stage, and reappears, and — if we may carry the image
one step further — it is the Church of Eome which plays the
part of the magician and keeps this corpse alive.
And throughout the whole period there is always a struggle
going on for the control of the corpse between the spiritual and
various temporal powers. We have already noted the spirit of
St. Augustine's City of Ood. It was a book which we know
Charlemagne read, or had read to him — ^for his literary accom-
plishments are rather questionable. He conceived of this Chris-
tian Empire as being ruled and maintained in its orthodoxy by
some such great Caesar as himself. He was to rule even the
Pope. But at Rome the view taken of the revived empire dif-
fered a little from that. There the view taken was that the
Christian Caesar must be anointed and guided by the Pope — ■
who would even have the power to excommunicate and depose
him. Even in the time of Charlemagne this divergence of view
was apparent. In the following centuries it became acute.
The idea of the revived Empire dawned only very gradually
upon the mind of Charlemagne. At first he was simply the
ruler of his father's kingdom of the Franks, and his powers
were fully occupied in struggles with the Saxons and Bavarians,
and with the Slavs to the east of them, with the Moslem in
Spain, and with various insurrections in his own dominions.
And as the result of a quarrel with the King of Lombardy,
his father-in-law, he conquered Lombardy and North Italy.
"We have noted the establishment of the Lombards in North
Italy about 5Y0 after the great pestilence, and after the over-
throw of the East Gothic kings by Justinian. These Lombards
had always been a danger and a fear to the Popes, and there
had been an alliance between Pope and Prankish King against
them in the time of Pepin. Now Charlemagne completely sub-
jugated Lombardy (774), sent his father-in-law to a monastery,
and carried his conquests beyond the present north-eastern
622 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
bQ:undaries of Italy into Dalmatia in 776. In 781 he caused
one of his sons, Pepin, who did not outlive him, to he crowned
King of Italy in Rome.
There was a new Pope, Leo III, in 795, who seems from the
first to have resolved to make Charlemagne emperor. Hith-
erto the court at Byzantium had possessed a certain indefinite
authority over the Pope. Strong emperors like Justinian had
bullied the Popes and obliged them to come to Constantinople;
weak emperors had annoyed them ineffectively. The idea of a
breach, both secular and religious, with Constantinople had
long been entertained at the Lateran,^ and in the Prankish
power there seemed to be just the support that was necessary if
Constantinople was to be defied. So at his accession Leo III
sent the keys of the tomb of St. Peter and a banner to Charle-
magne as the symbols of his sovereignty in Rome as King
of Italy. Very soon the Pope had to appeal to the protection he
had chosen. He was unpopular in Rome ; he was attacked and
ill-treated in the streets during a procession, and obliged to
fly to Germany (799). Eginhard says his eyes were gouged
out and his tongue cut off ; he seems, however, to have had both
eyes and tongue again a year later. Charlemagne brought him
back and reinstated him (800).
Then pccurred a very important scene. On Christmas Day,
in the year 800, as Charles was rising from prayer in the
Church of St. Peter, the Pope, who had everything in readi-
ness, clapped a crown upon his head and hailed him Caesar
and Augustus. There was great popular applause. But Egin-
hard, the friend and biographer of Charlemagne, says that the
new emperor was by no means pleased by this coup of Pope
Leo's. If he had known this was to happen, he said, "he
would not have entered the church, great festival though it
was." i^o doubt he had been thinking and talking of making
himself emperor, but he had evidently not intended that the
Pope should make him emperor. He had some idea of marry-
ing the Empress Irene, who at that time reigned in Constanti-
nople, and so becoming monarch of both Eastern and Western
Empires. He was now obliged to accept the title in the manner
that Leo III had adopted as a gift from the Pope, and in a
way that estranged Constantinople and secured the separation
of Rome from the Byzantine Church.
' The Lateran was the earlier palace of the Popes in Home. Later they
occupied the Vatican.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 623
At first Byzantium was unwilling to recognize the imperial
title of Charlemagne. But in 810 a great disaster fell upon
the Byzantine Empire. The pagan Bulgarians, under their
Prince Krum (802-814), defeated and destroyed the armies
of the Emperor Nicephorus, whose skull became a drinking-
cup for Krum. The greater part of the Balkan peninsula was
conquered by these people. (The Bulgarian and the English
nations thus became established as political unities almost
simultaneously.) After this misfortune Byzantium was in no
position to dispute this revival of the empire in the West, and
in 812 Charlemagne was formally recognized by Byzantine
envoys as Emperor and Augustus.
So the Empire of Rome, which had died at the hands of
Odoacer in 476, rose again in 800 as the "Holy Eoman Em-
pire." While its physical strength lay north of the Alps, the
centre of its idea was Eome. It was therefore from the begin-
ning a divided thing of uncertain power, a claim and an argu-
ment rather than a necessary reality. The German sword was
always clattering over the Alps into Italy, and missions and
legates toiling over in the reverse direction. But the Germans
could never hold Italy permanently, because they could not
stand the malaria that the ruined, neglected, undrained country
fostered. And in Rome, as well as in several other of the cities
of Italy, there smouldered a more ancient tradition, the tradi-
tion of the aristocratic republic, hostile to both Emperor and
Pope.
§ 6
In spite of the fact that we have a life of him written by his
contemporary, Eginhard,^ the character and personality of
Charlemagne are difficult to visualize. Eginhard lacks vivid-
ness; he tells many particulars, but not the particulars that
make a man live again in the record. Charlemagne, he says,
was a tall man, with a rather feeble voice; and he had bright
eyes and a long nose. "The top of his head was round," what-
ever that may mean, and his hair was "white." He had a thick,
rather short neck, and "his belly too prominent." He wore a
tunic with a silver border, and gartered hose. He had a blue
cloak, and was always girt with, his sword, hilt and belt being
'Eginhard's Life of Karl the Great. (Glaister.)
624 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of gold and silver. He was evidently a man of great activity,
one imagines him moving quickly, and his numerous love affairs
did not interfere at all with his incessant military and political
labours. He had numerous wives and mistresses. He took much
exercise, was fond of pomp and religious ceremonies, and gave
generously. He was a man of very miscellaneous activity and
great intellectual enterprise, and with a self-confidence that is
rather suggestive of William II, the ex-German Emperor, the
last, perhaps for ever, of this series of imitation Caesars in,
Europe which Charlemagne began.
The mental life that Eginhard records of him is interesting,
because it not only gives glimpses of a curious character, but
serves as a sample of i the intellectuality of the time. He could
read probably ; at meals he "listened to music or reading," but
we are told that he had not acquired the art of writing ; "he used
to keep his writing-book and tablets under his pillow, that when
he had leisure he might practise his hand in forming letters,
but he made little progress in an art begun too late in lifei"
He had, however, a real respect for learning and a real desire
for knowledge, and he did his utmost to attract men of learning
to his court. Among others who came was Alcuin, a learned
Englishman. All those learned men were, of course, cler^onen,
there being no other learned men^ and naturally they gave a
strongly clerical tinge to the information they imparted to their
master. At his court, which was usually at Aix-la-ChapeUe or
Mayence, he maintained in the winter months a curious institu-
tion called his "school," in which he and his erudite associates
affected to lay aside all thoughts of worldly position, assumed
names taken from the classical writers or from Holy Writ, and
discoursed upon theology and literature. Charlemagne himself
was "David." He developed a considerable knowledge of the-
ology, and it is to him that we must ascribe; the addition of the
words -filio que to the Nicene Creed, an addition that finally
split the Latin and Greek churches asunder. But it is more
than doubtful if he had any such separation in mind. He
wanted to add a word or so to the creed, just as the Emperor
William II wanted to write operas and paint pictures,^ and he
took up what was originally a Spanish innovation.
'The addition was discreetly opposed by Leo III "In the correspondence
between them the Pope assumes the liberality of a statesman and the
prince descends to the prejudice and passions of a priest." — Gibbon,
chap. Ix.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 625
Of bis organization of his empire there is little to be said
here. He was far too restless and busy to consider the quality
of his successor or the condition of political stability, and the
most noteworthy thing in this relationship is that he part;icu-
larly schooled his son and successor, Louis the Pious (814-840),
to take the crown from the altar and crown himself. But Louis
the Pious was too pious to adhere to those instructions when
the Pope made an objection.
The legislation of Charlemagne was greatly coloured by Bifcle
reading ', he knew his Bible well, as the times went ; and it is
characteristic of him that after he had been crowned emperor
he required every male subject above the age of twelve to renew
his oath of allegiance, and to undertake to be not simply a good
subject, but a good Christian. To refuse baptism and to re-
tract after baptism were crimes punishable by death. He did
much to encourage architecture, and imported many Italian
architects, chiefly from Ravenna, to whom we owe many of
tiiS' pleasant ByZalitine buildings that still at Worms and
Col6ghe and elsewhere delight the tourist in the Ehineland.
He founded a nilmbei' of cathedrals and monastic schools, did
much to encourage the stu^y of classical Latin, and was a dis-
tinguished amateur of church music. The possibility of his
talking Latin aiid understanding Greek is open to discussion;
probably he talked Prench-Latin. Friankish, however, was his
habitual tongue. He made a collection of old German songs
and tales, but these were destroyed by his successor Louis the
Pious on account of their paganism.
He corresponded with Haroun-al-Kaschid, the Abbasid Caliph
at Bagdad,! who was not perhaps the less friendly to him on
account of his vigorous handling of the Omayyad Arabs in
Spain, Gibbon supposes that this "public correspondence was
fpunded on vanity," and that "their remote situation left no
room for a competition of interest." But with the Byzantine
Empire between them in the East, and the independent cal-
iphate of Spain in. the West, and a common danger in the Turks
ftf the great plains, they had three very excellent reasons for
cordiality- ]Haroun-al-Easchid, says Gibbon, sent Charlemagne
ty his ambassadors a splendid teiit, a water clock, an elephant,
andih? keys of the Holy Sepulchre. The last item suggests
tiiait .Charl^agne was to some extent regarded by the Saracen
monarcfias tjie protector of the Christians tod Christian prop-
636 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
erties in his dominions. Some historians declare explicitly
that there was a treaty to that effect.
§ 7
The Empire of Charlemagne did not outlive his son and suc-
cessor, Louis the Pious. It fell apart into its main constituents.
The Latinized Keltic and Frankish population of Gaul begins
now to be recognizable as France, though this France was broken
up into a number of dukedoms and principalities, often with
no more than a nominal unity; the German-speaking peoples
between the Ehine and the Slavs to the east similarly begin to
develop an even more fragmentary intimation of Germany.
When at length a real emperor reappears in Western Europe
(962), he is not a Frank, but a Saxon; the conquered in Ger-
many have become the masters.
It is impossible here to trace the events of the ninth and tenth
centuries in any detail, the alliances, the treacheries, the claims
and acquisitions. Everywhere there was lawlessness, war, and
a struggle for power. In 987 the nominal kingdom of France
passed from the hands of the Oarlpvingians, the last descendants
of Charlemagne, into the hands of Hugh Capet, who founded
a new dynasty. Most of his alleged subordinates were in fact
independent, and willing to make war on the king at the slightest
provocation. The dominions of the Duke of Normandy, for
example, were more extensive and more powerful than the
patrimony of Hugh Capet. Almost the only unity of this
France over which the king exercised a nominal authority lay
in the common resolution of its great provinces to resist in-
corporation in any empire dominated either by a German ruler
or by the Pope. Apart from the simple organization dictated
by that common will, France was a mosaic of practically in-
dependent nobles. It was an era of castle-building and fortifi-
cation, and what was called "private war" throughout all
Europe.
The state of Eome in the tenth century is. almost indescri-
bable. The decay of the Empire of Charlemagne left the Pope
without a protector, threatened by Byzantium and the Saracens
(who had taken Sicily), and face to face with the unruly nobles
of Home; Among the most powerful of these were two women,
Theodora and Marozia, mother and daughter^ who in succes-
• Gibbon mentions a second Theodora, the sister of Marozit-
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 627
sion held tlie Castle of St. Angelo (§1), which Theophylaot,
the patrician husband of Theodora, had seized with most of the
temporal power of the Pope; these two women were as bold,
unscrupulous, and dissolute as any mqle prince of the time
could have been, and they are abused by historians as though
they were ten times worse. Marozia seized and imprisoned
Pope John X (928), who speedily died under her care. She
subsequently made her illegitimate son pope, under the title of
John XI. After him her grandson, John XII, filled the chair
of St. Peter. Gibbon's account of the manners and morals of
John XII takes refuge at last beneath a veil of Latin footnotes.
This Pope, John XII, was finally degraded by the new German
Emperor Otto, who came over the Alps and down into Italy to
be crowned in 962.^
This new line of Saxon emperors, which thus comes into
prominence, sprang from a certain Henry the Fowler, who was
elected King of Germany by an assembly of German nobles,
princes, and prelates in 919. In 936 he was succeeded as King
by his son, Otto I, surnamed the Great, who was also elected
to be his successor at Aix-la-Chapelle, and who finally descended
upon Kome at the invitation of John XII, to be crowned
emperor in 962. His subsequent degradation of John was
forced upon him by that pope's treachery. With his assumption
of the imperial dignity. Otto I did not so much overcome Rome
as restore the ancient tussle of Pope and Emperor for ascend-
ancy to something like decency and dignity again. Otto I was
followed by Otto II (973-983), and he again by a third Otto
(983-1002). 2
The struggle between the Emperor and the Pope for ascend-
ancy over the Holy Roman Empire plays a large part in the
' This period Is a tangled one. The authority is Gregorovius, History
of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. John X owed • the tiara to his
mistress, the elder Theodora, but he was "the foremost statesman of his
age." He fell in 928 owing to Marozia. John XI became Pope in 931
(after two Popes had intervened in the period 928-931) ; he was Marozia's
son, possibly by Pope Sergius III. John XII did not come at once after
John XI, who died in 936; there were several Popes in between; and
he became Pope in 955. — E. B.
^ There were three dynasties of emperors in the early middle ages:
Saxon: Otto I (962) to Henry II, ending 1024.
Salian: Conrad II to Henry V, ending about 1125.
Uohenstauf en : Conrad III to Frederic II, ending in 1250.
The Hohenstaufens were Swabian in origin. Then came the Habsburgs
with Rudolph I in 1273, who lasted until 1918.
628 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
history of the early Middle Ages, and we shall have presently
to sketch its chief phases. Though the church never sank quite
to the level of John XII again, nevertheless the story fluctuates
through phases of great violence, confusion, and intrigue. Yet
the outer history of Christendom is not the whole history of
Christendom. That the Lateran was as cunning, foolish, and
criminal as most other contemporary courts has to be recorded ;
but, if we are to keep due proportions in this history, it must
not be unduly emphasized. We must remember that through
all those ages, leaving profound consequences, but leaving no
conspicuous records upon the historian's page, countless men
and women were touched by that Spirit of Jesus which still
lived and lives still at the core of Christianity, that they led
lives that were on the whole gracious and helpful, and that they
did unselfish and devoted deeds. Through those ages such lives
cleared the air and made a better world possible. Just as in
the Moslem world the Spirit of Islam generation by generation
produced its crop of courage, integrity, and kindliness.
§ 8
While the Holy Roman Empire and the kingdoms of France
and England were thus appearing amidst the extreme political
fragmentation of the civilization of Western Europe, both that
civilization and the Byzantine Empire were being subjected to
a threefold attack: from the Saracen powers, from the North-
men, and, more slowly developed and most formidable of all,
from a new westward thrust of the Turkish peoples through
South Russia, and also by way of Armenia and the Empire
of Bagdad from Central Asia.
After the overthrow of the Omayyads by the Abbasid dynasty,
the strength of the Saracenic impulse against Europe dimin-
ished. Islam was no longer united. Spain was under, a sepa-
rate Omayyad Caliph, Nerth Africa, though nominally sub-
ject to the Abbasids, was really independent, and presently
(969) Egypt became a separate power with a Shiite Caliph of
its own, a pretender claiming descent from Ali and Fatima
(the Fatimite Caliphate). These Egyptian Fatimites, the
green flag Moslems, were fanatics in comparison with the
Abbasids, and did much to embitter the genial relations of
Islam and Christianity. They took Jerusalem, and interfered
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
629
FR AKCE afr ^ dose aTt&e ^0^ Cctvtixrrf
Hcaal'Dotnaia
Tiefs ofthz
Croam-
630 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
with the Christian access to the Holy Sepulchre. On the other
side of the shrunken Abbasid domain there was also a Shiite
kingdom in Persia. The chief Saracen conquest in the ninth
century was Sicily; but this was not overrun in the grand old
style in a year or so, but subjugated tediously through a long
century, and with many set-backs. The Spanish Saracens dis-
puted in Sicily with the Saracens from Africa. In Spain the
Saracens were giving ground before a renascent Christian effort.
Nevertheless, the Byzantine Empire and Western Christendom
were still so weak upon the Mediterranean Sea that the Saracen
raiders and pirates from North Africa were able to raid almost
unchallenged in South Italy and the Greek Islands.
But now a new force was appearing in the Mediterranean.
We have already remarked that the Roman Empire never ex-
tended itself to the shores of the Baltic Sea, nor had ever the
vigour to push itself into Denmark. The Nordic Aryan peoples
of these neglected regions learnt much from the empire that
was unable to subdue them; as we have already noted, they
developed the art of shipbuilding and became bold seamen;
they spread across the North Sea to the west, and across the
Baltic and up the Russian rivers into the very heart of what
is now Russia. One of their earliest settlements in Russia was
Novgorod the Great There is the same trouble and con-
fusion for the student of history with these northern
tribes as there is with the Scythians of classical times,
and with the Hunnish Turkish peoples of Eastern and Central
Asia. They appear under a great variety of names, they
change and intermingle. In the case of Britain, for example,
the Angles, the Saxons, and Jutes conquered most of what is
now England in tbe fifth and sixth centuries ; the Danes, a
second wave of practically the same people, followed in the
eighth and ninth; and in 1016 a Danish King, Canute the
Great, reigned in England, and not only over England, but over
Denmark and Norway. His subjects sailed to Iceland, Green-
land, and perhaps to the American continent. For a time,
under Canute and his sons, it seemed possible that a great con-
federation of the Northmen might have established itself. Then
in 1066 a third wave of the same people flowed over England
from the "Norman" state in France, where the Northmen had
been settled since the days of Rolf the Ganger (912), and
where they had learnt to speak French. William, Duke of
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 631
Normandy, became the William the Conqueror (1066) of Eng-
lish history. Practically, from the standpoint of universal his-
tory, all these peoples were the same people, waves
of one Nordic stock. These waves were not only flowing
westward, but eastward. Already we have mentioned a
very interesting earlier movement of the same peoples under
the name of Goths from the Baltic to the Black Sea. We have
traced the splitting of these Goths into the Ostrogoths and the
Visigoths, and the adventurous wanderings that ended at last
in the Ostrogoth kingdom in Italy and the Visigoth states in
Spain. In the ninth century a second movement of the North-
men across Russia was going on at the same time that their
establishments in England and their dukedom of Normandy
were coming into existence. The population of South Scotland,
England, East Ireland, Flanders, Normandy, and the Eussias
have more elements in common than we are accustomed to recog-
nize. All are fundamentally Gothic and Nordic peoples. Even
in their weights and measures the kinship of Russian and
English is to be noted ; both have the Norse inch and foot, and
many early Norman churches in England are built on a scale
that shows the use of the sajene (7 ft.) and quarter sajene, a
Norse measure still used in Russia. These "Russian" Norse-
men travelled in the summer-time, using the river routes that
abounded in Russia ; they carried their ships by portages from
the northward-running rivers to those flowing southward. They
appeared as pirates, raiders, and traders both upon the Caspian
and the Black Sea. The Arabic chroniclers note their appari-
tion upon the Caspian, and learnt to call them Russians. They
raided Persia, and threatened Constantinople with a great fleet
of small cr.aft (in 865, 904, 941, and 1043).^ One of these
Northmen, Rurik (circa 850), established himself as the ruler
of Novgorod and his successor, the duke Oleg, took Kief, and
laid the foundations of modem Russia. The fighting qualiti^
of the Russian Vikings were speedily appreciated at Constan-
tinople; the Greeks called them Varangians, and an Imperial
Varangian bodyguard was formed. After the conquest of
England by the Normans (1066), a number of Danes and
English were driven into exile and joined these Russian Varan-
gians, apparently finding few obstacles to intercourse in their
speech and habits.
'These dates are from Gibbon. Beazley gives 865, 904-7, 935, 944, 971-2.
(History of Russiag Clarendon Press.)
632 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Meanwhile the Normaiis from Normandy were also finding
their way into the Mediterranean from the West. They came
first as mercenaries, and later as independent invaders; and
they came mainly, not, it is to be noted, by sea, but in scattered
bands by land. They came through the Khineland and Italy
partly in the search for warlike employment and loot, partly as
pilgrims. For the ninth and tenth centuries saw a great de-
velopment of pilgrimage. These Normans, as they grew powers
ful, discovered themselves such rapacious and vigorous robbers
that they forced the Eastern Emperor and the Pope into a feeble
and ineffective alliance against them (1053). They defeated
and captured and were pardoned by the Pope ; they established
themselves in Calabria and South Italy, conquered Sicily from
the Saracens (1060-1090), and under Eobert Guiscard, who
had entered Italy as a pilgrim adventurer and b^an his career
as a brigand in Calabria, threatened the Byzantine Empire
itself (1081). His army, which contained a contingent of
Sicilian Moslems, crossed from Brindisi to Epirus in the re-
verse direction to that in which Pyrrhus had crossed to attack
the Eoman Kepublic, thirteen centuries before (275 b.c.). He
laid siege to the Byzantine stronghold of Durazzo.
Eobert captured Durazzo (1082), but the pressure of affairs
in Italy recalled him, and ultimately put an end to this first
Norman attack upon the Empire of Byzantium, leaving the way
open for the rule of a comparatively vigorous Comnenian
dynasty (1081-1204). In Italy, amidst conflicts too complex
for us to tell here, it fell to Eobert Guiscard to besiege and
sack Eome (1084) ; and Gibbon notes with quiet satisfaction
the presence of that contingent of Sicilian Moslems amongst
the looters. There were in the twelfth century three other
Norman attacks upon the Eastern power, one by the son of
Eobert Guiscard, and the two others directly from Sicily by
sea. . . .
But neither the Saracens nor the Normans pounded quite so
heavily against the old empire at Byzantium or against the
Holy Eoman Empire, the vamped-up Eoman Empire of the
West, as did the double thrust from the Turanian centres in
Central Asia, of which we must now tell. We have already
noted the westward movement of the Avars, and the Turkish
Magyars who followed in their track. From the days of Pepin
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
633
OTTO
tiic GREAT
=C A-'M.
5-' ^•rf'. rvc-1
j.yiH,
634
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
I onward, the Frankish power and its successors in Germany
were in conflict with these Eastern raiders along all the Eastern
borderlands. Charlemagne held and punished them, and estab-
lished some sort of overlordship as far east as the Carpathians;
but amidst the enfeeblement that followed his death, these peo^
pies, more or less blended now in the accounts under the name
of Hungarians, led by the Magyars, re-established their com-
plete freedom again, and raided yearly, often as far as the
Khine. They destroyed, Gibbon notes, the monastery of St.
Gall in Switzerland, and the town of Bremen. Their great
raiding period was between 900 and 950. Their biggest effort,
through Germany right into France, thence over the Alps and
home again by N'orth Italy, was in 938-9.
Thrust southward by these disturbances, and by others to
be presently noted, the Bulgarians established themselves under
Krum, between the Danube and Constantinople. Originally a
Turkish people, the Bulgarians, siiice their first appearance in
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 635
the east of Russia, had become by repeated admixture ahnost
entirely Slavonic in race and language. For some time after
their establishment in Bulgaria they remained pagan. Their
king, Boris (852-884), entertained Moslem envoys, and seems
to have contemplated an adhesion to Islam, but finally he mar-
ried a Byzantine princess, and handed himself and his people
over to the Christian faith.
The Hungarians v^ere drubbed into a certain respect for
civilization by Henry the Fowler, the elected King of Ger-
many, and Otto the First, the first Saxon emperor, in the tenth
century. But they did not decide to adopt Christianity until
about A.D. 1000. Though they were Christianized, they re-
tained their own Turko-Finnic language (Magyar), and they
retain it to this day.
Bulgarians and Hungarians do not, however, exhaust the
catalogue of the peoples whose westward movements embodied
the Turkish thrust across South Eussia. Behind the Hungarians
and Bulgarians thrust the Khazars, a Turkish people, with
whom were mingled a very considerable proportion of Jews
who had been expelled from Constantinople, and who had mixed
with them and made many proselytes. To these Jewish Khazars
are to be ascribed the great settlements of Jews in Poland and
Russia.* Behind the Khazars again, and overrunning them,
were the Petschenegs (or Patzinaks) , a savage Turkish people
who are first heard of in the ninth century, and who were des-
tined to dissolve and vanish as the kindred Huns did five cen-
turies before. And while the trend of all these peoples was west-
ward, we have, when we are thinking of the present population of
these South Russian regions, to remember also the coming and
going of the Northmen between the Baltic and the Black Sea,
who interwove with the Turkish migrants like warp and woof,
and bear in mind also that there was a considerable Slavonic
population, the heirs and descendants of Scythians, Sarmatians,
and the like, already established in these restless, lawless, but
fertile areas. All these races mixed with and reacted upon one
another. The universal prevalence of Slavonic languages, except
in Hungary, shows that the population remained predomi-
nantly Slav. And in what is now Roumania, for all the passage
*"A Turkish people whose leaders had adopted Judaism," says Harold
Williams.
636 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of peoples, and in spite of conquest after conquest, the tradition
and inheritance of the Koman provinces of Dacia and Mcesia
Inferior still kept a Lt^tin speech and memory alive.
But this direct thrust of the Turkish peoples against Chris-
tendom to the north of the Black Sea was, in the end, not nearly
so important as their indirect thrust south of it through the
empire of the Caliph. We cannot deal here with the tribes and
dissensions of the Turkish peoples of Turkestan, nor with the
particular causes that brought to the fore the tribes under the
rule of the Seljuk clan. In the eleventh century these Seljuk
Turks broke with irresistible force not in one army, but in a
group of armies, and under two brothers, into the decaying frag-
ments of the Moslem Empire. For Islam had long ceased to
be one empire. The orthodox Sunnite Abbasid rule had
shrunken to what was once Babylonia ; and even in Bagdad the
Caliph was the mere creature of his Turkish palace guards. A
sort of mayor of the palace, a Turk, was the real ruler. East
of the Caliph, in Persia, and west of him in Palestine, Syria,
and Egypt, were Shiite heretics. The Seljuk Turks were
orthodox Sunnites ; they now swept down upon and conquered
the Shiite rulers and upstarts, and established themselves as
the protectors of the Bagdad Caliph, taking over the temporal
powers of the mayor of the palace. Very early they conquered
Armenia from the Greeks, and then, breaking the bounds that
had restrained the power of Islam for four centuries, they swept
on to the conquest of Asia Minor, almost to the gates of Con-
stantinople. The mountain barrier of Cilicia that had held the
Moslem so long had been turned by the conquest of Armenia
from the north-east. Under Alp Arslan, who had united all the
Seljuk power in his own hands, the Turks utterly smashed the
Byzantine army at the battle of Manzikert., or Melasgird
(1071). The effect of this battle upon people's imaginations
was very great. Islam, which had appeared far gone in decay,
which had been divided religiously and politically, was sud-
denly discovered to have risen again, and it was the secure old
Byzantine Empire that seemed on the brink of dissolution. The
loss of Asia Minor was very swift. The Seljuks established
themselves at Iconium (Konia), in what is now Anatolia. In
a little while they were in possession of the fortress of Nicsea
over against the capital.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 637
§ 9
We have already told of the attack of the Normans upon the
Byzantine Empire from the west, and of the battle of Durazzo
(1081) ; and we have noted that Constantinople had still vivid
memories of the Eussia sea raids (1043). Bulgaria, it is true,
had been tamed, but there was heavy and uncertain warfare
going -on with the Petschenegs. North and west, the emperor's
hands were fuU. This swift advance of the Turks into country
that had been so long securely Byzantine must have seemed like
the approach of final disaster. The Eastern Emperor, Michael
VII, under the pressure of these convergent dangers, took a
step that probably seemed both to himself and to Eome of the
utmost political significance. He appealed to the Pope, Gregory
VII, for assistance. His appeal was repeated still more urgently
by his successor, Alexius Comnenus, to Pope Urban II.
To the counsellors of Eome this must have presented itself
as a supreme opportunity for the assertion of the headship of
the Pope over the entire Christian world.
In this history we have traced the growth of this idea of a
religious government of Christendom — and through Christen-
dom of mankind — and we have shown how naturally and how
necessarily, because of the tradition of world empire, it found
a centre at Eome. The Pope of Eome was the only Western
patriarch; he was the religious head of a vast region in which
the ruling tongue was Latin ; the other patriarchs of the Ortho-
dox Church spoke Greek, and so were inaudible throughout his
domains; and the two words filio que, which had been added
to the Latin creed, had split off the Byzantine Christians by
one of those impalpable and elusive doctrinal points upon which
there is no reconciliation. (The final rupture was in 1054.)
The life of the Lateran changed in its quality with every occu-
pant of the chair of St. Peter: sometimes papal Eome was a
den of corruption and uncleanness, as it bad been in the days
of John XII; sometimes it was pervaded by the influence of
widely thinking and nobly thinking men. But behind the Pope
was the assembly of the cardinals, priests, and a great number
of highly educated officials, who never, even in the darkest and
wildest days, lost sight altogether of the very grand idea of a
divine world dominion, of a peace of Christ throughout the
earth that St. Augustine had expressed. Through all the
638 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Middle Ages that idea was the guiding influence in Kome. For
a time, perhaps, mean minds would prevail there, and in the
affairs of the world Rome would play the part of a greedy,
treacherous, and insanely cunning old woman ; followed a pha^e
of masculine and quite worldly astuteness perhaps, or a phase
of exaltation. Came an interlude of fanaticism or pedantry,
when all the pressure was upon exact doctrine. Or there was a
moral collapse, and the Lateran became the throne of some
sensuous or aesthetic autocrat, ready to sell eivery hope or honour
the church could give for money to spend upon pleasure or
display. Yet, on the whole, the papal ship kept its course, and-
came presently into the wind again.
In this period to which we have now come, the period of the
eleventh century, we discover a Kome dominated by the per-
sonality of an exceptionally great statesman, Hildebrand, who
occupied various official positions under a succession of Popes,
and finally became Pope himself under the name of Gregory
VII (1073-1085). We find that under his influence, vice,
sloth, and corruption have been swept out of the church, that
the method of electing the Popes has been reformed, and that a
great struggle has been waged with the Emperor upon the mani-
festly vital question of "investitures," the question whether
Pope or temporal monarch should have the decisive voice in
the appointment of the bishops in their domains. Vital that
question was not only to the church, but to the monarchs, for
in many countries more than a quarter of the land was clerical
property. Hitherto the Eoman clergy had been able to marry ;
but now, to detach them effectually from the world and to make
them more completely the instruments of the church, celibacy
was imposed upon all priests. . . .
Gregory VII had been prevented by his struggle over the in-
vestitures from any effectual answer to the first appeal from
Byzantium; but he had left a worthy successor in Urban II
(108Y-1099) ; and when the letter of Alexius came to hand^
Urban seized at once upon the opportunity it afforded for
drawing together all the thoughts and forces of Western Europe
into one passion and purpose. Thereby he might hope to end
the private warfare that prevailed, and find a proper outlet for
the immense energy of the Normans. He saw, too, an oppor-
tunity of thrusting the Byzantine power and Church aside, and
extending the influence of the Latin Church over Syria, Pales-
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 639
tine, and Egypt. The envoys of Alexius were heard at a church
council, hastily summoned at Piazenza (^ Placentia), and next
year (1095) at Clermont, Urban held a second great council,
in which all the plowly gathered strength of the Church was
organized for a universal war propaganda against the Moslems.
Private war, all war among Christians, was to cease until the
infidel had been swept back and the site of the Holy Sepulchre
was again in Christian hands.
The fervour of the response enables us to understand the
great work of creative organization that had been done in West-
ern Europe in the previous five centuries. In the beginning
of the seventh century we saw Western Europe as a chaos of
social and political fragments, with no common idea nor hopoj
a system shattered almost to a dust of self-seeking individuals,
l^ow in the dawn of the eleventh century there is everywhere
a common belief, a linking idea, to which men may devote them-
selves, and by which they can co-operate together in a universal
enterprise. We realize that, in spite of much weakness and
intellectual and moral unsoundness, to this extent the Christian
Church has worked. We are able to measure the evil phases of
tenth-century Eome, the scandals, the filthiness,- the murders
and violence, at their proper value by the scale of this fact. No
doubt also all over Christendom there had been many lazy,
evil, and foolish priests ; but it is manifest that this task of
teaching and co-ordination that had been accomplished could
have been accomplished only through a great multitude of right-
living priests and monks and nuns. A new and greater
amphictyony, the amphictyony of Christendom, had come into
the world, and it had been built by thousands of anonymous,
faithful lives.
And this response to the appeal of Urban the Second was
not confined only to what we should call educated people. It
was not simply knights and princes who were willing to go
upon this crusade. Side by side with the figure of Urban we
must put the figure of Peter the Hermit, a type, novel to Europe,
albeit a little reminiscent of the Hebrew prophets. This man
appeared preaching the crusade to the common people. He
told a story — ^whether truthful or untruthful hardly matters in
this connection — of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, of the wanton
destruction at the Holy Sepulchre by the Seljuk Turks, who
took it in 1073, and of the exactions, brutalities, and deliberate
640 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
cruelties practised upon the Christian pilgrims to the Holy
Places. Barefooted, clad in a coarse garment, riding on an ass,
and bearing a huge cross, this man travelled about France and
Germany, and everywhere harangued vast crowds in church or
street or market-place.
Here for the first timfe we discover Europe with an idea and
a soul ! Here is a universal response of indignation at the story
of a remote wrong, a swift understanding of a common cause
fol' rich and poor alike. You cannot imagine this thing hap-
pening in the Empire of Augustus Caesar, or indeed in any
pi*evious state in the world's history. Something of the kind
might perhaps have been possible in the far smaller world of
Hellas, or in Arabia before Islam. But this movement affected
natiohsj kingdoms, tongues, and peoples. It is clear that we
are dealing with something new that has come into the world,
a new clear connection of the common interest with the con-
sciousness of the common man.
§ 10
From the very first this flaming enthusiasm was mixed with
baser elements. There was the cold and calculated scheme of
the free and ambitious Latin Church to subdue and replace the
emperor-ruled Byzantine Church ; there was the freebooting in-
stinct of the Normans, who were tearing Italy to pieces, which
tumied readily icnough to a new and richer world of plunder ;
and there was something in the multitude who now turned their
faces east, something deeper than love in the human composi-
tion, namely, fear-born hates, that the impassioned appeals of
the propagandists and the exaggeration of the horrors and cruel-
ties df the infidel had fanned into flame^ And there was still
other forces ; the intolerant Seljuks and the intolerant Fatimites
lay now an impassable barrier across the eastward trade of
Genoa and Venice that had hitherto flowed through Bagdad
and Aleppo, or through Egypt. They must force Open these
closed channels, unless Constantinople and the Black Sea route
were to monopolize Eastern trade altogether. Moreoverj in
1094 and 1095 there had been a pestilence and famine from
the Scheldt to Bohemia, and there was great social disorganiza-
tion. "No wonder," says Mr. Earnest Barker, "that a stream of
emigration set towards the East, such as would in modern times
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES
641
flow towards a newly discovered goldfield — a stream carrying
in its turbid waters much refuse, tramps and bankrupts, camp-
followers and hucksters, fugitive monks and escaped villeins,
and marked by the same motley grouping, the same fever of
^7W^ fo illustrate ike TIRST CRUSADE
s^-^^ WZA
Route of CmsaJers ^m^m^m^
life, the same alternations of affluence and beggary, which mark
the rush for a goldfield to-day."
But these were secondary contributory causes. The fact of
predominant interest to the historian of mankind is this will
to crusade suddenly revealed as a new mass possibility in human
affairs.
The story of the crusades abounds in such romantic and
picturesque detail that the writer of an Outline of History must
ride his pen upon the curb through this alluring field. The
first forces to move eastward were great crowds of undisciplined
peopile rather than armies, and they sought to make their way
by the valley of the Danube, and thence southward to Con-
642 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
stantinople. This was the "people's crusade." I^Tever before in
the whole history of the world had there been such a spectacle
as these masses of practically leaderless people moved by an
idea. It was a very crude idea. When they got among for-
eigners, they do not seem to have realized that they were not
already among the infidel. Two great mobs, the advance guard
of the expedition, committed such excesses in Hungary, where
the language must have been incomprehensible to them, as to
provoke the Hungarians to destroy them. They were massa-
cred. A third host began with a great pogrom of the Jews in
the Ehineland — for the Christian blood was up — and this multi-
tude was also dispersed in Hungary. Two other hosts under
Peter got through and reached Constantinople, to the astonish-
ment and dismay of the Emperor Alexius. They looted and
committed outrages as they came, and at last he shipped them
across the Bosphorus, to be massacred rather than defeated by
the Seljuks (1096).
This first unhappy appearance of the "people" as people in
modern European history was followed in 1097 by the organ-
ized forces of the First Crusade. They came by diverse routes
from France, Normandy, Flanders, England, Southern Italy
and Sicily, and the will and power of them were the l^ormans.
They crossed the Bosphorus and captured Nicasa, which
Alexius snatched away from them before they could loot it.
They then went by much the same route as Alexander the Great,
through the Cilician Gates, leaving the Turks in Konia uncon-
quered, past the battlefield of the Issus, and so to Antioch,
which they took after nearly a year's siege. Then they defeated
a great relieving army from Mosul. A large part of the Cru-
saders remained in Antioch, a smaller force under Godfrey
of Bouillon (in Belgium) went on to Jerusalem. "After a lit-
tle more than a month's siege, the city was finally captured
(JiJy 15). The slaughter was terrible; the blood of the con-
quered ran down the streets, until men splashed in blood as
they rode. At nightfall, 'sobbing for excess of joy,' the cru-
saders came to the Sepulchre from their treading of the wine-
press, and put their blood-stained hands together in prayer.
So, on that day of July, the First Crusade came to an end." ^
The authority of the Patriarch of Jerusalem was at once
seized upon by the Latin clergy with the expedition, and the
'E. Barker, art. "Cruaades," JEncyclopcedia Britannioa,
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 643
Orthodox Christians found themselves in rather a worse case
under Latin rule than under the Turk. There were already
Latin principalities established at Antioch and Edessa, and
there began a struggle for ascendancy between these various
courts and kings, and an unsuccessful attempt to make Jerusa-
lem a property of the Pope. These are complications beyond
our present scope.
Let us quote, however, a characteristic passage from
Gibbon : —
"In a style less grave than that of history, I should perhaps
compare the Emperor Alexius to the jackal, who is said to fol-
low the steps and to devour the leavings of the lion. Whatever
had been his fears and toils in the passage of the First Cru-
sade, they were amply recompensed by the subsequent benefits
which he derived from the exploits of the Franks. His dex-
terity and vigilance secured their first conquest of Nicsea, and
from this threatening station the Turks were compelled to
evacuate the neighbourhood of Constantinople. While the Cru-
saders, with blind valour, advanced into the midland countries
of Asia, the crafty Greek improved the favourable occasion
when the emirs of the sea coast were recalled to the standard
of the Sultan. The Turks were driven from the isles of
Rhodes and Chios; the cities of Ephesus and Smyrna, of
Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea were restored to the em-
pire, which Alexius enlarged from the Hellespont to the banks
of the Majander and the rocky shores of Pamphylia. The
churches resumed their splendour; the towns were rebuilt and
fortified; and the desert country was peopled with colonies of
Christians, who were gently removed from the more distant
and dangerous frontier. In these paternal cares we may for-
give Alexius, if we forget the deliverance of the holy sepulchre ;
but, by the Latins, he was stigmatized with the foul reproach
of treason and desertion. They' had sworn fidelity and obedi-
ence to his throne; but he had promised to assist their enter-
prise in person, or at least, with his troops and treasures ; his
base retreat dissolved their obligations; and the sword, which
had been the instrument of their victory, was the pledge and
title of their just independence. It does not appear that the
emperor attempted to revive his obsolete claims over the king-
dom of Jerusalem, but the borders of Cilicia and Syria were
more recent in his possession and more accessible to his arms.
644 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The great army of the Crusaders was annihilated or dispersed ;
the principality of Antioch was left without a head, by the sur-
prise and captivity of Bohemond; his ransom had oppressed
him with a heavy debt ; and his Norman followers were insuffi-
cient to repel the hostilities of the Greeks and Turks. In this
distress, Bohemond embraced a magnanimous resolution, of
leaving the defence of Antioch to his kinsman, the faithful
Tancred; of arming the West against the Byzantine Empire,
and of executing the design which he inherited from the lessons
and example of his father Guiscard. His embarkation was
clandestine ; and if we may credit a tale of the Princess Anna,
he passed the hostile sea closely secreted in a coffin. (Anna
Gomnena adds, that to complete the imitation, he was shut up
with a dead cock; and condescends to wonder how the bar-
barian could endure the confinement and putrefaction. This
absurd tale is unknown to the Latins.) But his reception in
France was dignified by the public applause and his marriage
with the king's daughter; his return was glorious, since the
bravest spirits of the age enlisted under his veteran command ;
and he repassed the Adriatic at the head of five thousand horse
and forty thousand foot, assembled from the most remote cli-
mates of Europe. The strength of Durazzo and prudence of
Alexius, the progress of famine and approach of winter, eluded
his ambitious hopes; and the venal confederates were seduced
from his standard. A treaty of peace suspended the fears of
the Greeks."
We have dealt thus lengthily with the First Crusade, because
it displays completely the quality of all these expeditions.
The reality of the struggle between the Latin and the Byzantine
system became more and more nakedly apparent. In 1101^
came reinforcements, in which the fleet of the mercantile re-
publics of Venice and Genoa played a prominent part, and the
power of the kingdom pf Jerusalem was extended. The year
1147 saw a Second Crusade, in which both the Emperor Conrad
in and King Louis of France participated. It was a much
more stately and far less successful and enthusiastic expedition
than its predecessor. It had been provoked by the fall of
Edessa to the Moslems in 1144. One large division of Ger-
mans, instead of going to the Holy Land, attacked and subju-
gated the still pagan Wends east of the Elbe; This, the Pope
agreed, counted as crusading, and so did the capture of Lisbon,
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 645
and the foundation of the Christian kingdom of Portugal by
the Flemish and English contingents.
In 1169 a Kurdish adventurer, named Saladin, became ruler
of Egypt, in which country the Shiite heresy had now fallen
before a Sunnite revival. This Saladin reunited the efforts of
Egypt and Bagdad, and preached a Jehad, a Holy War, a
counter-crusade, of all the Moslems against the Christians.
This Jehad excited almost as much feeling in Islam as the
First Crusade had done in Christendom. It was now a case
of crusader against crusader; and in 1187 Jerusalem was re-
takem. This provoked the Third Crusade (1189). This also
was a grand affair, planned jointly by the Emperor Frederick I
(known better as Frederick Barbarossa), the King of France,
and the King of England (who at that time owned many of
the fairest French provinces). The papacy played a secondary
part in this expedition ; it was in one of its phases of enfeeble-
ment; and the crusade was the most courtly, chivalrous, and
romantic of all. Religious bitterness was mitigated by the idea
of knightly gallantry, which obsessed both Saladin and Eichard
I (1189-1199) of England (Coeur-de-Lion), and the lover of
romance may very well turn to the romances about this period
for its flavour. The crusade saved the principality of Antioch
for a time, but failed to retake Jerusalem. The Christians,
however, remained in possession of the sea-coast of Palestine.
By the time of the Third Crusade, the magic and wonder
had gone out of these movements altogether. The common peo-
ple had found them out. Men went, but only kings and nobles
straggled back; and that often only after heavy taxation for
a ransom. The idea of the crusades was cheapened by their
too frequent and trivial use. Whenever the Pope quarrelled
with anyone now, he called for a crusade, until the word ceased
to mean anything but an attempt to give flavour to an im-
palatable civil war. There was a crusade against the heretics
in the south of France, one against John (King of England),
one against the Emperor Frederick II. The Popes did not
understand the necessity of dignity to the papacy. They had
achieved a moral ascendancy in Christendom. Forthwith they
began to fritter it away. They not only cheapened the idea of
the crusades, but they made their tremendous power of ex-
communication, of putting people outside all the sacraments,
hopes, and comforts of religion, ridiculous by using it in mere
646 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
disputes of policy. Frederick II was not only crusaded against,
but excommunicated — without visible injury. He was excom-
municated again in 1239, and this sentence was renewed by
Innocent IV in 1245.
The bulk of the Fourth Crusade never reached the Holy
Land at all. It started from Venice (1202), captured Zara,
encamped at Constantinople (1203), and finally, in 1204,
stormed the city. It was frankly a combined attack on the
Byzantine Empire. Venice took much of the coasts and islands
of the empire, and a Latin, Baldwin of Flanders, was set up
as emperor in Constantinople. The Latin and Greek Churches
were declared to be reunited, and Latin emperors ruled as con-
querors in Constantinople from 1204 to 1261.
In 1212 occurred a dreadful thing, a children's crusade. An
excitement that could no longer affect sane adults was spread
among the children in the south of France and in the Rhone
valley. A crowd of many thousands of French boys marched
to Marseilles; they were then lured on board ship by slave
traders, who sold them into slavery in Egypt. The Rhineland
children tramped into Italy, many perishing by the way, and
there dispersed. Pope Innocent III made great capital out
of this strange business. "The very children put us to shame,"
he said; and sought to whip up enthusiasm for a Fifth Cru-
sade. This crusade aimed at the conquest of Egj'pt, because
Jerualem was now held by the Egyptian Sultan ; its remnants
returned in 1221, after an inglorious evacuation of its one
capture, Damietta, with the Jerusalem vestiges of the True
Cross as a sort of consolation concession on the part of the
victor. We have already noted the earlier adventures of this
venerable relic before the days of Muhammad when it was
carried off by Chosroes II to Ctesiphon, and recovered by the
Emperor Heraclius. Fragments of the True Cross, however,
had always been in Eome at the church of S. Croce-in-Gerusa-
lemme, since the days of the Empress Helena (the mother of
Constantino the Great) to whom, says the legend, its hiding-
place had been revealed in a vision during her pilgrimage to
the Holy Land.^
' "The custody of the True Gross, which on Easter Sunday was solemnly
exposed to the people, was entrusted to the Bishop of Jerusalem; and he
alone might gratify the curious devotion of the pilgrims, by the gift of
small pieces, which 1!hey encased in gold or gems, and carried away in
triumph to their respective countries. But, as this gainful branch of com-
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 647
The Sixth Crusade (1229) was a crusade bordering upon
absurdity. The Emperor Frederick II had promised to go
upon a crusade, and evaded his vow. He had made a false
start and returned. He was probably bored by the mere idea
of a crusade. But the vow had been part of the bargain by
which he secured the support of Pope Innocent III in his elec-
tion as emperor. He busied himself in reorganizing the gov-
ernment of his Sicilian kingdom, though he had given the Pope
to understand that he would relinquish those possessions if he
became emperor ; and the Pope was anxious to stop this process
of consolidation by sending him to the Holy Land. The Pope
did not want Frederick II, or any German emperor at all in
Italy, because he himself wished to rule Italy. As Frederick
II remained evasive, Gregory IX excommunicated him, pro-
claimed a crusade against him, and invaded his dominions in
Italy (1228). Whereupon the Emperor sailed with an army
to the Holy Land. There he had a meeting with the Sultan
of Egypt (the Emperor spoke six languages freely, including
Arabic) ; and it would seem these two gentlemen, both of
sceptical opinions, exchanged views of a congenial sort, dis-
cussed the Pope in a worldly spirit, debated the Mongolian rush
westward, which threatened them both alike, and agreed finally
to a conmiercial convention, and the surrender of a part of
the kingdom of Jerusalem to Frederick. This indeed was a
new sort of crusade, a crusade by private treaty. As this
astonishing crusader had been excommunicated, he had to in-
dulge in a purely secular coronation in Jerusalem, taking the
crown from the altar with his own hand, in a church from
which all the clergy had gone. Probably there was no one to
show him the Holy Places; indeed these were presently all
put Tinder an interdict by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and
locked up; manifestly the affair differed altogether in spirit
from the red onslaught of the First Crusade. It had not even
the kindly sociability of the Caliph Omar's visit six hundred
years before. Frederick II rode out of Jerusalem almost alone,
returned from this unromantic success to Italy, put his affairs
there in order very rapidly, chased the papal armies out of his
possessions, and obliged the Pope to give him absolution from
meroe must soon have been annihilated, it was found convenient to sup-
pose that the marvellous wood possessed a secret power of vegetation, and
that its substance, though continually diminished, still remained entire
and unimpaired." — Gibbon.
648 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
his excommumcation (1230). This Sixth Crusade was indeed
not only the rediictio ad ahsurdum of crusades, but of papal
excommunications. Of this Erederick II we shall, tell more in
a later section, because he was very typical of certain new
forces that were coming into European affairs.
The Christians lost Jerusalem again in 1244; it was taken
from them very easily by the Sultan of Egypt when they at-
tempted an intrigue against him. This provoked the Seventh
Crusade, the Crusade of St. Louis, King of France (Louis
IX), who was taken prisoner in Egypt and ransomed in 1250.
Not until 1918, when it fell to a mixed force of Erench, British,
and Indian troops, did Jerusalem slip once more from the
Moslem grasp. . . .
One more crusade remains to be noted, an expedition to
Tunis by this same Louis IX, who died of fever there.
§ 11
The essential interest of the crusades for the historian of
mankind lies in the wave of emotion, of unifying feeling, that
animated the first. Thereafter these expeditions became more
and more an established process, and less and less vital events.
The Eirst Crusade was an occurrence like the discovery of
America ; the later ones were more and more like a trip across
the Atlantic. In the eleventh century, the idea of the crusade
must have been like a strange and wonderful light in the sky ;
in the thirteenth one can imagine honest burghers saying in
tones of protest, "What! another crusade!" The experience of
St. Louis in Egypt is not like a fresh experience for mankind ;
it is much more like a round of golf over some well-known
links, a round that was dogged by misfortune. It is an in-
significant series of events. The interest of life had shifted
to other directions.
The beginning of the crusades displays all Europe saturated
by a naive Christianity, and ready to follow the leading of the
Pope trustfully and simply. The scandals of the Lateran
during its evil days, with which we are all so familiar now,
were practically unknown outside Eome. And Gregory VII
and Urban II had redeemed all that. But intellectually and
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 649
morally their successors at the Lateran and the Vatican ^ were
not equal to their opportuijities. The strength of the papacy
lay in the faith men had in it, and it used that faith so care-
lessly as to enfeeble it. Rome has always had too much of the
shrewdness of the priest and too little of the power of the
prophet. So that while the eleventh century was a century of
ignorant, and confiding men, the thirteenth was an age of know-
ing and disillusioned men. It was a far more civilized and
profoundly sceptical world.
The bishops, priests, and the monastic institutions of Latin
Christendom before the days of Gregory VII had been perhaps ,
rather loosely linked together and very variable in quality ; but
it is clear that they were, as a rule, intensely intimate with the
people among whom they found themselves, and with much of
the spirit of Jesus still alive in them; they were trusted, and
they had enormous power within the conscience of their fol-
lowers. The church, in comparison with its later state, was
more in the hands of local laymen and the local ruler ; it lacked
its later universality. The energetic bracing up of the church
organization by Gregory VII, which was designed to increase
the central power of Rome, broke many subtle filaments be-
tween priest and monastery on the one hand, and the country-
side about them on the other. Men of faith and wisdom be-
lieve in growth and their fellow men; but priests, even such
priests as Gregory VII, believe in the false "efficiency" of an
imposed discipline. The squabble over investitures made every
prince in Christendom suspicious of the bishops as agents of a
foreign power; this suspicion filtered down to the parishes.
The political enterprises of the papacy necessitated an increas-
ing demand for money. Already in the thirteenth century it
was being said everywhere that the priests were not good men,
that they were always hunting for moMey.
In the days of ignorance there had been an extraordinary
willingness to believe the Catholic priesthood good and wise.
Eelatively it was better and wiser in those days. Great powers
beyond her spiritual functions had been entrusted to the church,
'The Popes inhabited the palace of the Lateran until 1305, when a
French Pope set up the papal court at Avignon. When the Pope returned
to Rome in 1377 the Lateran was almost in ruins, and the palace of the
Vatican became the seat of the papal court. It was, among other ad-
vantages, much nearer to the papal stronghold, the Castle of St. Angelo
650 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and very extraordinary freedoms. Of this confidence the fullest
advantage had been taken. In the Middle Ages the church
had become a state witliin the state. It had its own lave courts.
Cases involving not merely priests', but monks, students, cru-
saders, widows, orphans, and the helpless, were reserved for
the clerical courts; and whenever the rites or rules of the
church were involved, there the church claimed jurisdiction
over such matters as wills, marriage, oaths, and of course over
heresy, sorcery, and blasphemy. There were numerous clerical
prisons in which offenders might pine all their lives. The
Pope was the supreme law-giver of Christendom, and his court
at Rome the final and decisive court of appeal. And the church
levied taxes ; it had not only vast properties and a great income
from fees, but it imposed a tax of a tenth, the tithe, upon its
subjects. It did not call for this as a pious benefaction; it
demanded it as a right. The clergy, on the other hand, were
now claiming exemption from lay taxation.
This attempt to trade upon their peculiar prestige and evade
their share in fiscal burdens was certainly one very considerable
factor in the growing dissatisfaction with the clergy. Apart
from any question of justice, it was impolitic. It made taxes
seem ten times more* burthensome to those who had to pay. It
made everyone feel the immunities of the church. And a still
more extravagant and unwise claim made by the church was
the claim to the power of dispensation. The Pope might in
many instances set aside the laws of the church in individual
cases ; he might allow cousins to marry, permit a man to have
two wives, or release anyone from a vow. But to do such things
is to admit that the laws affected are not based upon necessity
and an inherent righteousness ; that they are in fact restrictive
and vexatious. The law-giver, of all beings, most owes the law
allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law
compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind
that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we
own.
§ 12
The Emperor Frederick II is a very convenient example of
the sort of doubter and rebel the thirteenth century could pro-
duce. It may be interesting to tell a little of this intelligent
and cynical man. He was the son of tlie German Emperor,
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 661
Henry VI, and grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, and his
mother was the daughter of Roger I, the Norman King of
Sicily. He inherited this kingdom in 1198, when he was four
years old; his mother was his guardian for six months, and
when she died. Pope Innocent III (1198 to 1216) became
regent and guardian. He seems to have had an exceptionally
good and remarkably mixed education, and his accomplishments
earned him the flattering title of Stupor mvmdi, the amazement
of the world. The result of getting an Arabic view of Chris-
tianity, and a Christian view of Islam, was to make him believe
that all religions were impostures, a view held perhaps by many
a stifled observer in the Age of Faith. But he talked about
his views ; his blasphemies and heresies are on record. Growing
up under the arrogant rule of Innocent III, who never seems to
have realized that his ward had come of age, he developed a
slightly humorous evasiveness. It was the papal policy to pre-
vent any fresh coalescence of the power of Germany and Italy,
and it was equally Frederick's determination to get whatever
he could. When presently opportunity offered him the im-
perial crown of Germany, he secured the Pope's support by
agreeing, if he were elected, to relinquish his possessions in
Sicily and South Italy, and to put down heresy in Germany.
For Innocent III was one of the great persecuting Popes, an
able, grasping, and aggressive man. (For a Pope, he was ex-
ceptionally young. He became Pope at thirty-seven.) It was
Innocent who had preached a cruel crusade against the heretics
in the south of France, a crusade that presently became a loot-
ing expedition beyond his control. So soon as Frederick was
elected emperor (1211),' Innocent pressed for the performance
of the vows and promises he had wrung from his dutiful ward.
The clergy were to be free from lay jurisdiction and from taxa-
tion, and exemplary cruelties were to be practised upon the
heretics. ISTone of which things Frederick did. As we have
already told, he would not even relinquish Sicily. He liked
Sicily as a place of residence better than he liked Germany.
Innocent III died baffled in 1216, and his successor, Honorius
III, effected nothing. Honorius was succeeded by Gregory IX
(1227), who evidently came to the papal throne with a nervous
resolution to master this perplexing young man. He excom-
•He was crowned emperor in 1220 by Honorius III, the successor of
Innocent.
652 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
municated him at once for failing to start upon his crusade,
which was now twelve years overdue; and he denounced his
vices, heresies, and general offences in a public letter (1227).
To this Frederick replied in a far abler document addressed
to all the princes of Europe, a document of extreme importance
in history, because it is the first clear statement of the issue
between the pretensions of the Pope to be absolute ruler of all
Christendom, and the claims of the secular rulers.^ This con-
flict had always been smouldering; it had broken out here in
one form, and there in another; but now Frederick put it in
clear general terms upon which men could combine together.
Having delivered this blow, he departed upon the pacific
crusade of which we have already told. In 1239, Gregory IX
was excommunicating him for a second time, and renewing that
warfare of public abuse in which the papacy had already
suffered severely. The controversy was revived after Gregory
IX was dead, when Innocent IV was Pope ; and again a devas-
tating letter, which men were bound to remember, was written
by Frederick against the church. He denounced the pride and
irreligion of the clergy, and ascribed all the corruptions of the
time to their pride and wealth. He proposed to his fellow
princes a general confiscation of church property — for the good
of the church. It was a suggestion that never afterwards left
the imagination of the European princes.
We will not go on to tell of his last years or of the disaster
at Parma, due to his carelessness, which cast a shadow of failure
over his end. The particular events of his life are far leSs
significant than its general atmosphere. It is possible to piece
together something of his court life in Sicily. He is described
towards the end of his life as "red, bald, and short-sighted";
but his features were good and pleasing. He was luxurious in
his way of living, and fond of beautiful thing. He is described
as licentious. But it is clear that his mind was not satisfied
by religious scepticism, and that he was a man of very effectual
curiosity and inquiry. He gathered Jewish and Moslem as
well as Christian philosophers at his court, and he did much to
irrigate the Italian mind with Saracenic influences. Through
him Arabic numerals and algebra were introduced to Christian
students, and among other philosophers at his court was Michael
' Some authorities deny his authorship of this letter.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 653
Scott, who translated portions of Aristotle and the commen-
taries thereon of the great Arab philosopher Averroes (of Cor-
doba). In 1224 Frederick founded the University of Naples,
and he enlarged and enriched the great medical school at Salerno
University, the most ancient of universities. He also founded
a zoological garden. He left a book on hawking, which shows
him to have been an acute observer of the habits of birds, and
he was one of the first Italians to write Italian verse. Italian
poetry was indeed bom at his court. He has been called by an
able writer, "the first of the moderns," and the phrase expresses
aptly the unprejudiced detachment of his intellectual side. His
was an all-round originality. During a gold shortage he intro-
duced and made a success of a coinage of stamped leather,
bearing his promise to pay in gold, a sort of leather bank-note
issue. ^
In spite of the torrent of abuse and calumny in which Fred-
erick was drenched, he left a profound impression upon the
popular imagination. He is still remembered in South Italy
almost as vividly as is Napoleon I by the peasants of France;
he is the "Gran Federigo." And German scholars declare that,
in spite of Frederick's manifest dislike for Germany, it is he,
and not Frederick I, Frederick Barbarossa, to whom that Ger-
man legend originally attached — that legend which represents
a great monarch slumbering in a deep cavern, his beard grown
round a stone table, against a day of awakening when the world
will be restored by him from an extremity of disorder to peace.
Afterwards, it seems, the story was transferred to the Crusader
Barbarossa, the grandfather of Frederick II.
A difficult child was Frederick II for Mother Church, and
he was only the precursor of many such difficult children. The
princes and educated gentlemen throughout Europe read his
letters and discussed them. The more enterprising university
students found, marked, and digested the Arabic Aristotle he
had made accessible to them in Latin. Salerno cast a baleful
light upon Eom.e. All sorts of men must have been impressed
by the futility of the excommunications and interdicts that were
levelled at Frederick.
"Perhaps parchment rather than leather. Such promises on parchment
were also used by the Carthaginians. Was Frederick's money an in-
heritance from an old tradition living on in Sicily since Carthaginian
times?— E. B.
654 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 13
We have said that Innocent III never seemed to realize that
his ward, Frederick II, was growing up. It is equally true that
the papacy never seemed to realize that Europe was growing up.
It is impossible for an intelligent modern student of history
not to sympathize with the underlying idea of the papal court,
with the idea of one universal rule of righteousness keeping
the peace of the earth, and not to recognize the many elements
of nobility ithat entered into the Lateran policy. Sooner or
later mankind must come to one universal peace, unless our
race is to be destroyed by the increasing power of its own de-
structive inventions ; and that universal peace must needs take
the form of a government, that is to say a law-sustaining organi-
zation, in the best sense of the word religious ; a government
ruling men through the educated co-ordination of their minds
in a common conception of human history and human destiny.
The papacy we must now recognize as the first clearly con-
scious attempt to provide such a government in the world. We
cannot too earnestly examine its deficiencies and inadequacies,
for every lesson we can draw from them is necessarily of the
greatest value to us in forming our ideas of our own interna-
tional relationships. We have tried to suggest the main factors
in the breakdown of the Roman Republic, and it now behoves
us to attempt a diagnosis of the failure of the Roman Church
to secure and organize the good will of mankind.
The first thing that will strike the student is the intermittence
of the efforts of the church to establish the world City of God.
The policy of the church was not whole-heartedly and continu-
ously set upon that end. It was only now and then that some
fine personality or some group of fine personalities dominated it
in that direction. The kingdom of God that Jesus of Nazareth
had preached was overlaid, as we have explained, almost from
the beginning by the doctrines and ceremonial traditions of an
earlier age, and of an intellectually inferior type. Christianity
almost from its commencement ceased to be purely prophetic
and creative. It entangled itself with archaic traditions of
human sacrifice, with Mithraic blood-cleansing, with priestcraft
as ancient as human society, and with elaborate doctrines about
the structure of the divinity. The gory forefinger of the
Etruscan pontifex maximus emphasized the teachings of Jesus
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 655
of Nazareth ; the mental complexity of the Alexandrian Greek
entangled them. In the inevitable jangle of these incompatibles
the church had become dogmatic. In despair of other solutions
to its intellectual discords it had resorted to arbitrary authority.
Its priests and bishops were more and more men moulded to
creeds and dogmas and set procedures ; by the time they became
cardinals or popes they were usually oldish men, habituated
to a politic struggle for immediate ends and no longer capable
of world-wide views. They no longer wanted to see the King-
dom of God established in the hearts of men — ^they had for-
gotten about that ; they wanted to see the power of the church,
which was their own power, dominating men. They were pre-
pared to bargain even with the hates and fears and lusts in
men's hearts to ensure that power. And it was just because
many of them probably doubted secretly of the entire sound-
ness of their vast and elaborate doctrinal fabric, that they
would brook no discussion of it. They were intolerant of ques-
tions or dissent, not because they were sure of their faith, but
because they were not. They wanted conformity for reasons
of policy. By the thirteenth century the church was evidently
already morbidly anxious about the gnawing doubts that might
presently lay the whole structure of its pretensions in ruins.
It had no serenity of soul. It was hunting everywhere for
heretics as timid old ladies are said to look under beds and in
cupboards for burglars before retiring for the night.
We have already mentioned the Persian Mani, who was
crucified and flayed in the year 277. His way of representing
the struggle between good and evil was as a struggle between a
power of light which was, as it were, in rebellion against a
power of darkness inherent in the universe. All these profound
mysteries are necessarily represented by symbols and poetic
expressions, and the ideas of Mani still find a response in many
intellectual temperaments to-day. One may hear Manichaean
doctrines from many Christian pulpits. But the orthodox
Catholic symbol was a different one. These Manichaean ideas
had spread very widely in Europe, and particularly in Bul-
garia and the south of France In the south of France the
people who held them were called the Cathars or Albigenses.
Their ideas jarred so little with the essentials of Christianity,
that they believed themselves to be devout Christians. As a
body they lived lives of conspicuous virtue and purity in a
656 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
violent, undisciplined, and vicious age. But they^ questioned
the doctrinal soundness of Eome and tlie orthodox interpreta-
tion of the Bible. They thought Jesus was a rebel against the
cruelty of the God of the Old Testament, and not his harmoni-
ous son. Closely associated with the Albigenses were the
Waldenses, the followers of a man called Waldo, who seems to
have been quite soundly Catholic in his theologyj but equally
offensive to the church because he denounced the riches and
luxury of the clergy. This was enough for the Lateran, and
so we have the spectacle of Innocent III preaching a crusade
against these unfortunate sectaries, and permitting the enlist-
ment of every wandering scoundrel at loose ends to carry fire
and sword and rape and every conceivable outrage among the
most peaceful subjects of the King of France. The accounts
of the cruelties and abominations of this crusade are far more
terrible to read than any account of Christian martyrdoms by
the pagans, and they have the added horror of being indis-
putably true.
This black and pitiless intolerance was an evil spirit to be
mixed into the project of a rule of God on earth. This was
a spirit entirely counter to that of Jesus of Nazareth. We
do not hear of his smacking the faces or wringing the wrists
of recalcitrant or unresponsive disciples. But the Popes, during
their centuries of power were always raging against the slightest
reflection upon the intellectual sufficiency of the church.
And the intolerance of the church was not confined to re-
ligious matters. The shrewd, pompous, irascible, and rather
malignant old men who manifestly constituted a dominant ma-
jority in the councils of the church resented any knowledge
but their own knowledge, and distrusted any thought at all that
they did not correct and control. They set themselves to re-
strain science, of which they were evidently jealous. Any
mental activity but their' own struck them as being insolent.
Later on they were to have a great struggle upon the question
of the earth's position in space, and whether it moved round
the sun or not. This was really not the business of the church
at all. She might very well have left to. reason the things that
are reason's, but she seems to have been impelled by an inner
necessity to estrange the intellectual conscience in men.
Had this intolerance sprung from a real intensity of convic-
tion it would have been bad enough, but it was accompanied
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 657
by a scarcely disguised contempt for the intelligence and mental
dignity of the common man that makes it far less acceptable
to our modern judgments, and which no doubt made it far
less acceptable to the free spirits of the time. We have told
quite dispassionately the policy of the Roman church towards
her troubled sister in the East. Many of the tools and ex-
pedients she used were abominable. In her treatment of her
own people a streak of real cynicism is visible. She destroyed
her prestige by disregarding her own teaching of righteousness.
Of dispensations we have already spoken (§ 11). Her crown-
ing folly in the sixteenth century was the sale of indtdgences,
whereby the sufferings of the soul in purgatory could be com-
muted for a money payment. But the spirit that led at last
to this shameless and, as it proved, disastrous proceeding, was
already very evident in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Long before the seed of criticism that Frederick II had sown
had genninated in men's minds and produced its inevitable
crop of rebellion, there was apparent a strong feeling in Chris-
tendom that all was not well with the spiritual atmosphere.
There began movements, movements that nowadays we should
call "revivalist," within the church, that implied rather than
uttered a criticism of the sufficiency of her existing methods
and organization. Men sought fresh forms of righteous living
outside the monasteries and priesthood. One notable figure is
that of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). We cannot tell here
in any detail of how this pleasant young gentleman gave up all
the amenities and ease of his life and went forth to seek God ;
the opening of the story is not unlike the early experiences
of Gautama Buddha. He had a sudden conversion in the midst
of a life of pleasure, and, taking a vow of extreme poverty, he
gave himself up to an imitation of the life of Christ, and to
the service of the sick and wretched, and more particularly to
the service of the lepers, who then abounded in Italy. He was
joined by great multitudes of disciples, and so the first Friars
of the Franciscan Order came into existence. An order of
women deyotees was set up beside the original confraternity,
and in addition great numbers of men and women were brought
into less formal association. He preached, unmolested by ihe
Moslems, be it noted, in Egypt and Palestine, though the Fifth
Crusade was then in progress. His relations with the church
are still a matter for discussion. His work had been sanctioned
658 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
by Pope Innocent III, but while he was in the East there was
a reconstitution of his order, intensifying its discipline and
substituting authority for responsive impulse, and as a conse-
quence of these changes he resigned its headship. To the end
he clung passionately to the ideal of poverty, but he was hardly
dead before the order was holding property through trustees
and building a great church and monastery to his memory at
Assisi. The disciplines of the order that were applied after
his death to his immediate associates are scarcely to be distin-
guished from a persecution; several of the more conspicuous
zealots for simplicity were scourged, others were imprisoned,
one was killed while attempting to escape, and Brother Bernard,
the "first disciple," passed a year in the woods and hills, hunted
like a wild beast.
This struggle within the Franciscan Order is a very interest-
ing one, because it foreshadows the great troubles that were
coming to Christendom. All through the thirteenth century a
section of the Franciscans were straining at the rule of the^
church, and in 1318 four of them were burnt alive at Marseilles
as incorrigible heretics. There seems to have been little differ-
ence between the teaching and spirit of St. Francis and that of
Waldo in the twelfth century, the founder of the murdered
sect of Waldenses. Both were passionately enthusiastic for the
spirit of Jesus of N'azareth. But while Waldo<»rebelled against
the church, St. Francis did his best to be a good child of the
church, and his comment on the spirit of official Christianity
was only implicit. But both were instances of an outbreak of
conscience against authority and the ordinary procedure of the
church. And it is plain that in the second instance, as in the
first, the church scented rebellion.
A very different character to St. Francis was the Spaniard
St. Dominic (1170-1221), who was, of all things, orthodox.
He had a passion for the argumentative conversion of heretics,
and he was commissioned by Pope Innocent III to go and
preach to the Albigenses. His work went on side by side with
the fighting and massacres of the crusade ; whom Dominic could
not convert. Innocent's crusaders slew; yet his very activities
and the recognition and encouragement of his order by the Pope
witness to the rising tide of discussion, and to the persuasion
even of the papacy that force was no remedy. In several re-
spects the development of the Black Friars or Dominicans^^
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 659
the Franciscans -were the Grey Friars — shows the Eoman
church at the parting of the ways, committing itself more and
more deeply to organized dogma, and so to a hopeless conflict
with the quickening intelligence and courage of mankind. She
whose one duty was to lead, chose to compel. The last discourse
of St. Dominic to the heretics he had sought to convert is pre-
served to us. It is a signpost in history. It betrays the fatal
exasperation of a man who has lost his faith in the power of
truth because his truth has not prevailed. "For many years/'
he sa-id, "I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preach-
ing, praying, and weeping. But according to the proverb of
my country, 'where blessing can accomplish nothing, blows
may avail.' We shall rouse against you princess and prelates,
who, alas ! will arm nations and kingdoms against this land . . .
and thus blows will avail where blessings and gentleness have
been powerless." ^
The thirteenth century saw the development of a new institu-
tion in the church, the papal Inquisition. Before this time it
had been customary for the Pope to make occasional inquests
or inquiries into heresy in this region or that, but now Innocent
III saw in the new order of the Dominicans a powerful instru-
ment of suppression. The Inquisition was organized as a
standing inquiry under their direction, and with fire and tor-
ment the church set itself, through this instrument, to assail
and weaken the human conscience in which its sole hope of
world dominion resided. Before the thirteenth century the
penal^iy of death had been inflicted but rarely upon heretics and
unbelievers. Now in a hundred market-places in Europe the
dignitaries of the church watched the blackened bodies of its
antagonists, for the most part, poor and insignificant people,
bum and sink pitifully, and their owa great mission to man-
kind burn and sink with them into dust and ashes.
The beginnings of the Franciscans and the Dominicans were
but two among many of the new forces that were arising in
Christendom, either to help or shatter the church, as its own
wisdom might decide. Those two orders the church did assimi-
late and use, though with a little violence In the case of the
former. But other forces were more frankly disobedient and
critical. A century and a half later came Wycliffe (1320-
1384). He was a learned doctor at Oxford ; for a time he was
^ Mnoyclofcedia Britannica, art. "Dominie."
660 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Master of Balliol; aiid he held various livings in the church.
Quite late in his life he began a series of outspoken criticisms
of the corruption of the clergy and the unwisdom of the church.
He organized a number of poor priests, the WycliiStes, to
spread his ideas throughout England ; and in order that people
should judge between thfe church and himself, he translated
the Bible into English. He was a more learned and far abler
man than either St. Francis or St. Dominic. He had sup-
porters in high places and a great following among the people ;
and though Rome raged against him, and ordered his imprison-
ment, he died a free man, still administering the Sacraments
as parish priest of Lutterworth. But the black and ancient
spirit that was leading the Catholic church to its destruction
would not let his bones rest in his grave. By a decree of the
Council of Constance in 1415, his remains were ordered to be
dug up and burnt, an order which was carried out at the com-
mand of Pope Martin V by Bishop Fleming in 1428. This
desecration was not the act of some isolated fanatic; it was
the official act of the church.
§ 14
The history of the papacy is confusing to the general reader
because of the multitude and abundance of the Popes. They
mostly began to reign as old men, and their reigns were short,
averaging less than two years ieach. But certain of the Popes
stand out and supply convenient handles for the student to
grasp. Such were Gregory I (590-604) the Great, the first
monkish Pope, the friend of Benedict, the sender of the English
mission. Other noteworthy Popes are Leo III (795-816), who
crowned Charlemagne, the scandalous Popes John XI (931-
93.6) and John XII (955-963), which latter was deposed by
the Emperor Otto I, and the great Hildebrand, who ended his
days as Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), and who did so much
by establishing the celibacy of the clergy, and insisting upon
the supremacy of the church over kings and princes, to cen-
tralize the power of the church in Rome. There was a great
struggle between Hildebrand and the Emperor elect Henry IV
upon the question of investitures. The emperor attempted to
depose the pope; the pope excommunicated the emperor and
released his subjects from their allegiance. The emperor was
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 661
obliged to go in penitence to the pope at Oanossa and to await
forgiveness for three days and nights in the courtyard of the
castle, clad in sackcloth and barefooted to the snow. The next
Pope but one after Gregory VII was Urban II (1087-1099),
the Pope of the First Crusade. The period from the time of
Gregory VII onward for a century and a half, was the great
period of ambition and effort for the church. There was a real
sustained attempt to unite all Christendom under a purified and
reorganized church.
The setting up of Latin kingdoms in Syria and the Holy
Land, in religious communion with Kome, after the First Cru-
sade, marked the opening stage of a conquest of Eastern Chris-
tianity by Home that reached its climax during the Latin rule
in Constantinople (1204-1261).
\ In 1176, at Venice, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa
VFrederick I) knelt to the Pope Alexander III, recognized his
spiritual supremacy, and swore fealty to him. But after the
death of Alexander III, in 1181, the peculiar weakness of the
/papacy, its liability to fall to old and enfeebled men, became
manifest. Five Popes tottered to the Lateran to die within the
space of ten years. Only with Innocent III (1198-1216) did
another vigorous Pope take up the great policy of the City of
God.
Under Innocent III, the guardian of that Emperor Frederick
II, whose career we have already studied in §§ 10 and 12, and
the five Popes who followed him, the Pope of Rome came nearer
to being the monarch of a united Christendom than he had ever
been before, and was ever to be again. The empire was weak-
ened by internal dissensions, Constantinople was in Latin
hands, from Bulgaria to Ireland and from Norway to Sicily
and Jerusalem the Pope was supreme. Yet this supremacy was
more apparent than real. For, as we have seen, while in the
time of Urban the power of faith was strong in all Christian
Europe, in the time of Innocent III the papacy bad lost its
hold upon the hearts of princes, and the faith and conscience
of the common people was turning against a merely political
and aggressive church.
The church in the thirteenth century was extending its legal
power in the world, and losing its grip upon men's consciences.
It was becoming less persuasive and more violent. No intelli-
gent man can tell of this process, or read of this process of failure
662 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
without very mingled feelings. The church had sheltered and
formed a new Europe throughout the long ages of European
darkness and chaos ; it had been the matrix in which the new
civilization had been cast. But this new-formed civilization
was impelled to grow by its own inherent vitality, and the
church lacked sufficient power of growth and accommodation.
The time was fast approaching when this matrix was to be
broken.
The first striking intimation of the decay of the living and
sustaining forces of the papacy appeared when presently the
Popes came into conflict with the growing power of the French
king. During the lifetime of the Emperor Frederick II, Ger-
many fell into disunion, and the French king began to play the
role of guard, supporter, and rival to the Pope that had hitherto
fallen to the Hohenstaufen emperors. A series of Popes pur-
sued the policy of supporting the French monarchs. French
princes were established in the kingdom of Sicily and Naples,
with the support and approval of Eome, and the French kings
saw before them , the possibility of restoring and ruling the
Empire of Charlemagne. When, however, the German inter-
regnum after the death of Frederick II, the last of the Hohen-
staufens, came to an end and Kudolf of Habsburg was elected
first Habsburg Emperor (1273), the policy of the Lateran
began to fluctuate between France and Germany, veering about
with the sympathies of each successive Pope. In the East in
1261 the Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latin
emperors, and the founder of the new Greek dynasty, Michael
Palseologus, Michael VIII, after some unreal tentatives of
reconciliation with the Pope, broke away from the Eoman com-
munion altogether, and with that, and the fall of the Latin king-
doms in Asia, the eastward ascendancy of the Popes came to
an end.
In 1294 Boniface VIII became Pope. He was an Italian,
hostile to the French, and full of a sense of the great traditions
and mission of Eome. For a time he carried things with a
high hand. In 1300 he held a jubilee, and a vast multitude of
pilgrims assembled in Eome. "So great was the influx of
money into the papal treasury, that two assistants were kept
busy with rakes collecting the offerings that were deposited at
the tomb of St. Peter." ^ But this festival was a delusive tri-
' J. H. Robinson.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 663
umph. It is easier to raise a host of excursionists than a band
of crusaders. Boniface came into conflict with the French king
in 1302, and in 1303, as he was about to pronounce sentence of
excommunication against that monarch, he was surprised and
arrested in his own ancestral palace, at Anagni, by Guillaume
de Nogaret. This agent from the French king forced an en-
trance into the palace, made his way into the bedroom of the
frightened Pope — ^he was lying in bed with a cross in his hands
— and heaped threats and insults upon him. The Pope was
liberated a day or so later by the townspeople, and returned to
Rome; but there he was seized upon and again made prisoner
by the Orsini family, and in a few weeks' time the shocked and
disillusioned old man died a prisoner in their hands.
The people of Anagni did resent the first outrage, and rose
against Nogaret to liberate Boniface, but then Anagni was the
Pope's native town. The important point to note is that the
French king, in this rough treatment of the head of Christen-
dom, was acting with the full approval of his people; he had
summoned a council of the Three Estates of France (lords,
church, and commons) and gained their consent before pro-
ceeding to extremities. Neither in Italy, Germany, nor Eng^
land was there the slightest general manifestation of disap-
proval at this free handling of the sovereign pontiff. The idea
of Christendom had decayed until its power over the minds of
men had gone.
Throughout the fourteenth century the papacy did nothing
to recover its moral sway. The next Pope elected, Clement V,
was a Frenchman, the choice of King Philip of France. He
never came to Rome. H© set up his court in the town of
Avignon, which then belonged not to France, but to the Papal
See, though embedded in French territory, and there his succes-
sors remained until 1377, when Pope Gregory XI returned to
the Vatican palace in Rome. But Gregory XI did not take the
sympathies of the whole church with him. Many of the cardi-
nals were of French origin, and their habits and associations
were rooted deep at Avignon. When in 1378 Gregory XI died,
and an Italian, Urban VI, was elected, these dissentient cardi-
nals declared the election invalid, and elected another Pope,
the anti-Pope, Clement VII. This split is called the Great
Schism. The Popes remained in Rome, and all the anti-
French powers, the Emperor, the King of England, Hungary,
664 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Poland, and the North of Europe were loyal to them. The
anti-Popes, on the other hand, continued in Avignon, and were
supported by the King of France, his ally the King of Scotland,
Spain, Portugal, and various German princes. Each Pope
excommunicated and cursed the adherents of his rival, so that
by one standard or another all Christendom was damned during
this time (1378-1417). The lamentable effect of this split
upon the solidarity of Christendom it is impossible to ex-
aggerate. Is it any marvel that such men as Wyeliffe began to
teach men to think on their own account when the fotintain
of truth thus squirted against itself ? In 1417 the Great Schism
was healed at the Council of Constance, the same council that
dug up and burnt Wycliffe's bones, and which, as we shall tell
later, caused the burning of John Huss ; at this council, Pope
and anti-Pope resigned or were swept aside, and Martin V
became the sole Pope of a formally reunited but spiritually
very badly strained Christendom.
How later on the Council of Basle (1437) led to a fresh
schism, and to further anti-Popes, we cannot relate here.
Such, briefly, is the story of the great centuries of papal
ascendancy and papal decline. It is the story of the failure to
achieve the very noble and splendid idea of a unified and re-
ligious world. We have pointed out in the previous section how
greatly the inheritance of a complex dogmatic theology en-
cumbered the church in this its ambitious adventure. It had
too much theology, and not enough religion. But it may not
be idle to point out here how much the individual insufficiency
of the Popes also contributed to the collapse of its scheme and
dignity. There was no such level of education in the world
as to provide a succession of cardinals and popes with the
breadth of knowledge and outlook needed for the task they had
undertaken ; they were not sufficiently educated for their task,
and only a few, by sheer force of genius, transcended that defect.
And, as we have already pointed out, they were, when at last
they got to power, too old to use it. Before they could grasp the
situation they had to control, most of them were dead. It
would be interesting to speculate how far it would have tilted the
balance in favour of the church if the cardinals had retired at
fifty, and if no one could have been elected Pope after fifty-five.
This would have lengthened the average reign of each Pope, and
enormously increased the continuity of the policy of the church.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE CRUSADES 665
And it is perhaps possible that a more perfect system of select-
ing the cardinals, who were the electors and counsellors of the
Pope, might have been devised. The rules and vyays by which
men reach power are of very great importance in human affairs.
The psychology of the ruler is a science that has still to be
properly studied. We have seen the Roman Republic wrecked,
and here we see the church failing in its world mission very
largely through ineffective electoral methods.
XXXIII
THE GREAT EMPIRE OF JENGIS KHAN AND
HIS SUCCESSORS
(The Age of the Land Ways)
§ 1. Asia at the End of the Twelfth Centwry. § 2. The Rise
and Victories of the Mongols. § 3. The Travels of Marco
Polo. § 4. The Ottoman Turks and Oonstcmtinople. § 5.
Why the Mongols Were Not Christianized. § 5a. KvJblai
Khan Founds the Yuan Dynasty. § 5b. The Mongols Re-
vert to Tribalism,. § 5c. The Kipchak Empire and the Tsar
of Muscovy. § 5d. Timiurlane. § 5e. The Mongol Empire
of India. § 5f. The Mongols and the Gipsies.
§ 1
WE have to tell now of the last and greatest of all the
raids of nomadism upon the civilizations of the East
and West. We have traced in this history the de-
velopment side by side of these two ways of living, and we
have pointed out that as the civilizations grew more extensive
and better organized, the arms, the mobility, and the intelli-
gence of the nomads also improved. The nomad was not simply
an uncivilized man, he was a man specialized and specializing
along his own line. From the very beginning of history the
nomad and the settled people have been in reaction. We have
told of the Semitic and Elamite raids upon Sumeria; we have
seen the Western empire smashed by the nomads of the great
plains and Persia conquered and Byzantium shaken by the
nomads of Arabia. Whenever civilization seems to be choking
amidst its weeds of wealth and debt and servitude, when its
faiths seem rotting into cynicism and its powers of further
growth are hopelessly entangled in effete formulae, the nomad
drives in like a plough to break up the festering stagnation and
release the world to new beginnings. The Mongol aggression,
which began with the thirteenth century, was the greatest, and
666
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 667
so far it has been the last, of all these destructive reploughings
of human association.
From entire obscurity the Mongols came very suddenly into
history towards the close of the twelfth century. They ap-
peared in the country to the north of China, in the land of
origin of the Huns and Turks, and they were manifestly of
the same strain as these peoples. They were gathered together
under a chief, with whose name we will not tax the memory
of the reader; under his son Jengis Khan their power grew
with extraordinary swiftness.
The reader will already have an idea of the gradual breaking
up of the original unity of Islam. In the beginning of the
thirteenth century there were a number of separate and dis-
cordant Moslem states in Western Asia. There was Egypt
(with Palestine and, much of Syria) under the successors of
Saladin, there was the Seljuk power in Asia Minor, there was
still an Abbasid caliphate in Bagdad, and to the east of this
again there had grown up a very considerable empire, the
Kharismian empire, that of the Turkish princes from Khiva
who had conquered a number of fragmentary Seljuk principali-
ties and reigned from the Ganges valley to the Tigris. They
had but an insecure hold on the Persian and Indian populations.
The state of the Chinese civilization was equally inviting to
an enterprising invader. One last glimpse of China in this his-
tory was in the seventh century during the opening years of the
Tang dynasty, when that shrewd and able emperor Tai-tsung
was weighing the respective merits of Nestorian Christianity,
Islam, Buddhism, and the teachings of Lao Tse, and on the
whole inclining to the opinion that Lao Tse was as good a
teacher as any. We have described his reception of the traveller
Yuan Chwang. Tai-tsung tolerated all religions, but several
of his successors conducted a pitiless persecution of the Buddhist
faith ; it flourished in spite of these persecutions, and its monas-
teries played a somewhat analogous part in at first sustaining
learning and afterwards retarding it, that the Christian
monastic organization did in the West. By the tenth century
the great Tang dynasty was in an extreme state of decay; the
usual degenerative process through a series of voluptuaries and
incapables had gone on, and China broke up again politically
into a variable number of contending states, "The age of the
Ten States," an age of confusion that lasted through the first
668
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 669
half of the tenth century. Then arose a dynasty, the Northern
Sung (960-1127), which established a sort of unity, but which
was in constant struggle with a number of Hunnish peoples
from the north who were pressing down the eastern coast. For
a time one of these peoples, the Khitan, prevailed. In the
twelfth century these people had been subjugated and had given
place to another Hunnish empire, the empire of the Kin, with
its capital at Pekin and its southern boundary south of Hwang-
ho. The Sung empire shrank before this Kin empire. In 1138
the capital was shifted from itTankin, which was now too close
to the northern frontier, to the city of Han Chau on the coast.
From 1127 onward to 1295, the Sung dynasty is known as the
Southern Sung. To the north-west of its territories there was
now the Tartar empire of the Hsia ; to the north, the Kin em-
pire, both states in which the Chinese population was under
rulers in whom nomadic traditions were still strong. So that
here on the east also the main masses of Asiatic mankind were
under uncongenial rulers and ready to accept, if not to welcome,
the arrival of a conqueror.
Northern India we have already noted was also a conquered
country at the opening of the thirteenth century. It was at
first a part of the Khivan empire, but in 1206 an adventurous
ruler, Kutub, who had been a slave and who had risen as a slave
to be governor of the Indian province, set up a separate Mos-
lem state of Hindustan in Delhi. Brahminism had long since
ousted Buddhism from India, but the converts to Islam were
still but a small ruling minority in the land.
Such was the political state of Asia when Jengis Khan began
to consolidate his power among the nomads in the country
between Lakes Balkash and Baikal in the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
§ 2
The career of conquest of Jengis Khan and his immediate
successors astounded the world, and probably astounded no one
more than these Mongol Khans themselves.
The Mongols were in the twelfth century a tribe subject to
those Kin who had conquered North-east China. They were a
horde of nomadic horsemen living in tents, and subsisting mainly
upon mare's milk products and meat. Their' occupations were
670 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pasturage and hunting, , varied by war. They drifted north-
ward as the snows melted for summer pasture, and southward
to winter pasture after the custom of the steppes. Their mili-
tary education began with a successful insurrection against
the Kin. The empire of Kin had the resources of half China
behind it, and in the struggle the Mongols learnt very much
of the military science of the Chinese. By the end of the
twelfth century they were already a fighting tribe of excep-
tional quality.
The opening years of the career of Jengis were spent in de-
veloping his military machine, in assimilating the Mongols and
the associated tribes about them into one organized army. His
first considerable extension of power was westward, when the
Tartar Kirghis and the Uigurs (who were the Tartar people of
the Tarim basin) were not so much conquered as induced to
join his organization. He then attacked the Kin empire
and took Pekin (1214). The Khitan people, who had been so
recently subdued by the Kin, threw in their fortunes with his,
and were of very great help to him. The settled Chinese
population went on sowing and reaping and trading during this
change of masters without lending its weight to either side.
We have already mentioned the very recent Kharismian em-
pire of Turkestan, Persia, and North India. This empire ex-
tended eastward to Kashgar, and it must have seemed one of the
most progressive and hopeful empires of the time. Jengis
Khan, while still engaged in this war with the Kin empire,
sent envoys to Kharismia. They were put to death, an almost
incredible stupidity. The Kharismian government, to use the
political jargon of to-day, had decided not to "recognize" Jengis
Khan, and took this spirited course with him. Thereupon
(1218) the great host of horsemen that Jengis Khan had con-
solidated and disciplined swept over the Pamirs and down
into Turkestan, It was well armed, and probably it had some
guns and gunpowder for siege work — for the Chinese were cer-
tainly using gunpowder at this time, and the Mongols learnt
its use from them. Kashgar, Khokand, Bokhara fell and then
Samarkand, the capital of the Kharismian empire. There-
after nothing held the Mongols in the Kharismian territories.
They swept westward to the Caspian, and southward as far as
Lahore. To the north of the Caspian a Mongol army en-
countered a Russian force from Kieff. There was a series of
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS
671
672 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
battles, in which the Russian armies were finally defeated and
the Grand Duke of Kieff taken prisoner. So it was the Mon-
gols appeared on the northern shores of the Black Sea. A
panic swept Constantinople, which set itself to reconstruct its
fortifications. Meanwhile other armies were engaged in the
conquest of the empire of the Hsia in China. This was
annexed, and only the southern part of the Kia empire re-
mained unsubdued. In 1227 Jengis Khan died in the midst
of a career of triumph. His empire reached already from the
Pacific to the Dnieper. And it was an empire still vigorously
expanding.
Like all the empires founded by nomads, it was, to begin with,
purely a military and administrative empire, a framework
rather than a rule. It centred on the personality of the mon-
arch, and its relations with the mass of the populations over
which it ruled was simply one of taxation for the maintenance
of the horde. But Jengis Khan had called to his aid a very
able and experienced administrator of the Kin empire, who
was learned in all the traditions and science of the Chinese.
This statesman, Yeliu Chutsai, was able to carry on the affairs
of the Mongols long after the death of Jengis Khan, and there
can be little doubt that he is one of the great political heroes of
history. He tempered the barbaric ferocity of his masters,
and saved innumerable cities and works of art from destruction.
He collected archives and inscriptions, and when he was accused
of corruption, his sole wealth was found to consist of documents
and a few musical instruments. To him perhaps quite as much
as to Jengis is the efficiency of the Mongol military machine to
be ascribed. Under Jengis, we may note further, we find the
completest religious toleration established across the entire
breadth of Asia.
At the death of Jengis the capital of the new empire was still
in the great barbaric town of Karakorum in Mongolia. There
an assembly of Mongol leaders elected Ogdai Khan, the son of
Jengis, as his successor. The war against the vestiges of the
Kin empire was- prosecuted until Kin was altogether subdued
(1234). The Chinese empire to the south under the Sung
dynasty helped the Mongols in this task, so destroying their
own bulwark against the universal conquerors. The Mongol
hosts then swept right across Asia to Russia (1235), an amaz-
ing march. Kieff was destroyed in 1240, and nearly all Russia
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 673
became tributary to the Mongols. Poland was ravaged, and a
mixed army of Poles and Germans was annihilated at the battle
of Liegnitz in Lower Silesia in 1241. The Emperor Frederick
II does not seem to have made any great efforts to stay the
advancing tide.
"It is only recently," says Bury in his notes to Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire^ "that European history
has begun to understand that the successes of the Mongol army
which overran Poland and occupied Hungary in the spring of
A.D. 1241 were won by consummate strategy and were not due
to a niere overwhelming superiority of numbers. But this fact
has not yet become a matter of common knowledge ; the vulgar
opinion which represents the Tartars as a wild horde carrying
all before them solely by their multitude, and galloping through
Eastern Europe without a strategic plan, rushing at all obstacles
and overcoming them by mere weight, still prevails. . . .
"It was wonderful how punctually and effectually the arrange-
ments of the commander were carried out in operations extend-
ing from the Lower Vistula to Transylvania; Such a cam-
paign was quite beyond the power of any European army of the
time, and it was beyond the vision of any European commander.
There was no general in Europe, from Frederick II downward,
who was not a tyro in strategy compared to Subutai. It should
also be noticed that the Mongols embarked upon the enterprise
with full knowledge of the political situation of Hungary and
the condition of Poland — they had taken care to inform them-
selves by a well-organized system of spies; on the other hand,
the Hungarians and Christian powers, like childish barbarians,
knew hardly anything about their enemies."
But though the Mongols were victorious at Liegnitz, they did
not continue their drive westward. They were getting into
woodlands and hilly country, which did not suit their tacticsj
and so they turned southward and prepared to settle in Hun-
gary, massacring or assimilating the kindred Magyar, even as
these had previously massacred and assimilated the mixed Scy-
thians and Avars and Huns before them. From the Hungarian
plain they would probably have made raids west and south as the
Hungarians had done in the ninth century, the Avars in the
seventh and eighth, and the Huns in the fifth. But in Asia the
Mongols were fighting a stiff war of conquest against the Sung,
and they were also raiding Persia and Asia Minor ; Ogdai died
674 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
suddenly, and in 1242 there was trouble about tlie succession,
and recalled by this, the undefeated hosts of Mongols began to
pour back across Hungary and Rumania towards the east.
To the great relief of Europe the dynastic troubles at Kara-
korum lasted' for some years, and this vast new empire showed
signs of splitting up. Mangu Khan became the Great Khan in
1251, and he nominated his brother Kublai Khan as Governor-
General of China. Slowly but surely the entire Sung empire
was subjugated, and as it was subjugated the eastern Mongols
became more and more Chinese in their culture and methods.
Tibet was invaded and devastated by Mangu, and Persia and
Syria invaded in good earnest. Another brother of Mangu,
Hulagu, was in command of this latter war. He turned his
arms against the caliphate and captured Bagdad, in which city
he perpetrated a massacre of the entire population. Bagdad was
still the religious capital of Islam, and the Mongols had become
bitterly hostile to the Moslems. This hostility exacerbated the
natural discord of nomad and townsman. In 1259 Mangu died,
and in 1260 — for it took the best part of a year for the Mongol
leaders to gather from the extremities of this vast empire, from
Hungary and Syria and Scind and China — Kublai was elected
Great Khan. He was already deeply interested in Chinese af-
fairs ; he made his capital Pekin instead of Karakorum, and Per-
sia, Syria, and Asia Minor became virtually independent under
his brother Hulagu, while the hordes of Mongols in Russia and
Asia next to Russia, and various smaller Mongol groups iii
Turkestan became also practically separate. Kublai died in
1294, and with his death even the titular supremacy of the
Great Khan disappeared.
At the death of Kublai there was a main Mongol .empire,
with Pekin as its capital, including all China and Mongolia;
there was a second great Mongol empire, that of Kipchak in
Russia ; there was a third in Persia, that founded by Hulagu,
the Ilkhan empire, to which the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor
were tributary ; there was a Siberian state between Kipchak and
Mongolia ; and another separate state "Great Turkey" in Turk-
estan. It is particularly remarkable that India beyond the
Punjab was never invaded by the Mongols during this period,
and that an army under the Sultan of Egypt completely de-
feated Ketboga, Hulagu's general, in Palestine (1260), and
stopped them from entering Africa. By 1260 the impulse of
JENGIS l&MAN AND tttS SUCCESSORS 6t5
Mongol conquest had already passed its zenith. Thereafter the
Mongol story is one of division and decay.
The Mongol dynasty that Kublai Khan had founded in China,
the Yuan dynasty, lasted from 1280 until 1368. Later on a
recrudescence of Mongolian energy in Western Asia was des-
tined to create a still more enduring monarchy in India.
§ 3
Now this story of Mongolian conquests is surely the most
remarkable in all history. The conquests of Alexander the
Great cannot compare with them in extent. And their effect
in diffusing and broadening men's ideas, though such things are
more difficult to estimate, is at least comparable to the spread of
the Hellenic civilization which is associated with Alexander's
adventure. For a time all Asia and Western Europe enjoyed
an open intercourse; all the roads were temporarily open, and
representatives of every nation appeared at the court of Kara-
korum. The barriers between Europe and Asia set up by the
religious feud of Christianity and Islam were lowered. Great
hopes were entertained by the papacy for the conversion of the
Mongols to Christianity. Their only religion so far had been
Shamanism, a primitive paganism. Envoys of the Pope, Bud-
dhist priests from India, Parisian and Italian and Chinese
artificers, Byzantine and Armenian merchants, mingled with
Arab officials and Persian and Indian astronomers and mathe-
maticians at the Mongol court. We hear too much in history
of the campaigns and massacres of the Mongols, and not enough,
of their indubitable curiosity and zest for learning. Not per-
haps as an originative people, but as transmitters of knowledge
and method their influence upon the world's history has been
enormous. And everything one can learn of the vague and
romantic personalities of Jengis or Kublai tends to confirm the
impression that these men were built upon a larger scale, and
were at least as understanding and creative monarchs as either
that flamboyant but egotistical figure Alexander the Great, or
that raiser of political ghosts, that energetic but illiterate
theologian, Charlemagne.
The missionary enterprises of the papacy in Mongolia ended
in failure. Christianity was losing its persuasive power. The
Mongols had no prejudice against Christianity ; they evidently
676
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 677
preferred it at first to Islam ; but the missions that came to them
were manifestly using the power in the great teachings of Jesus
to advance the vast claims of the Pope to veorld dominion.
Christianity so vitiated was not good enough for the Mongol
mind. To make the empire of the Mongols part of the kingdom
of God might have appealed to them ; but not to make it a fief
of a group of French and Italian priests, whose claims were
as gigantic as their powers and outlook were feeble, who were
now the creatures of the Emperor of Germany, now the nominees
of the Eing of France, and now the victims of their own petty
spites and vanities. In 1269 Kublai Khan sent a mission to the
Pope with the evident intention of finding some common mode
of action with Western Christendom, He asked that a hundred
men of learning and ability should be sent to his court to estab-
lish an understanding. His mission found the Western world
popeless, and engaged in one of those disputes about the suc-
cession that are so frequent in the history of the papacy. For
two years there was no pope at all. When at last a pope was
appointed', he dispatched two Dominican friars to convert the
greatest power in Asia to his rule! Those worthy men were
appalled by the length and hardship of the journey before them,
and found an early excuse for abandoning the expedition.
But this abortive mission was only one of a number of at-
tempts to communicate, and always they were feeble and feeble-
spirited attempts, with nothing of the conquering fire of the
earlier Christian missions. Innocent IV had already sent some
Dominicans to Karakorum, and St. Louis of France had also
dispatched missionaries and relics by way of Persia; Mangu
Khan had numerous Nestorian Christians at his court, and sub-
sequent papal envoys actually reached Pekin. We hear of
the appointment of various legates and bishops to the East, but
many of these seem to have lost themselves and perhaps their
lives before they reached China. There was a papal legate in
Pekin in 1346, but he seems to have been a mere papal diplo-
matist. With the downfall of the Mongolian (Yuan) dynasty
(1368), the dwindling opportunity of the Christian missions
passed altogether. The house of Yuan was followed by that of
Ming, a strongly nationalist Chinese dynasty, at first very hos-
tile to all foreigners. There may have been a massacre of the
Christian missions. Until the later days of the Mings (1644)
little more is heard of Christianity, whether Nestorian or Oath-
678 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
olic, in China. Then a fresh and rather more successful at-
tempt to propagate Catholic Christianity in China was made
by the Jesuits, but this. second missionary wave reached China
by the sea.
In the year 1298 a naval battle occurred between the Genoese
and the Venetians, in which the latter were defeated. Among
the 7,000 prisoners taken by the Genoese was a Venetian gentle-
man named Marco Polo, who had been a great traveller, and
who was very generally believed by his neighbours to be given
to exaggeration. He had taken part in that first mission to
Kublai Khan, and had gone on when the two Dominicans turned
back. While this Marco Polo was a prisoner in Genoa, he be-
guiled his tedium by talking of his travels to a certain writer
named Eusticiano, who wrote them down. We will not enter
here into the vexed question of the exact authenticity of Eusti-
ciano's story — ^we do not certainly know in what language it was
written— —but there can be no doubt of the general truth of this
remarkable narrative, which became enormously popular in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with all men of active intelli-
gence. The Travels of Marco Polo is one of the great books of
history. It opens this world of the thirteenth century, this cen-
tury which saw the reign of Erederick II and the beginnings of
the Inquisition, to our imaginations as no mere historian's chron-
icle can do. It led directly to the discovery of America.
It begins by telling of the journey of Marco's father, Nicolo
Polo, and uncle, Maffeo Polo, to China. These two were Vene-
tian merchants of standing, living in Constantinople, and some-
when about 1260 they went to the Crimea and thence to Kazan;
from that place they journeyed to Bokhara, and at Bokhara
they fell in with a party of envoys from Kublai Khan in China
to his brother Hulagu in Persia. These envoys pressed them
to come on to the Great Khan, who at that time had never seen
men of the "Latin" peoples. They went on; and it is clear they
made a very favourable impression upon Kublai, and interested
him greatly in the civilization of Christendom. They were
made the bearers of that request for a hundred teachers and
learned men, "intelligent men acquainted with the Seven Arts,
able to enter into controversy and able clearly to prove to idol-
ators and other kinds of folk that the Law of Christ was best,"
to which we have just alluded. But when they returned Chris-
tendom was in a phase of confusion, and it was only after a
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 679
delay of two years tliat they got their authorization to start for
China again in the company of those two faint-hearted Domini-
cans. They took with them young Marco, and it is due to his
presence and the boredom of his subsequent captivity at Genoa
that this most interesting experience has been preserved to us.
The three Polos started by way of Palestine and not by the
Crimea, as in the previous expedition. They had with them
a gold tablet and other indications from the Great Khan that
must have greatly facilitated their journey. The Great Kahn
had asked for some oil from the lamp that bums in the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and so thither they first went, and
then by way of Cilicia into Armenia. They went thus far north
because the Sultan of Egypt was raiding the Ilkhan domains at
this time. Thence they came by way of Mesopotamia to Ormuz
on the Persian Gulf, as if they contemplated a sea voyage. At
Ormuz they met merchants from India. Por some reason they
did not take ship, but instead turned northward through the
Persian deserts, and so by way of Balkh over the Pamir to Kash-
gar, and by way of Kotan and the Lob Nor (so following in the
footsteps of Yuan Chwang) into the Hwangho valley and on to
Pe;kin. Pekin, Polo calls "Cambaluc" ; Northern China,
"Cathay" (^ Khitan) ; and Southern China of the former
Sung dynasty, "Manzi." At Pekin was the Great Khan, and
they were hospitably entertained. Marco particularly pleased
Kublai ; he was young and clever, and it. is clear he had mastere(?
the Tartar language very thoroughly. He was given an official
position and sent on several missions, chiefly in South-west
China. The tale he had to tell of vast stretches of smiling and
prosperous country, "all the way excellent hostelries for travel-
lers," and "fine vineyards, fields and gardens," of "many
abbeys" of Buddhist monks, of manufactures of "cloth of silk
and gold and many fine taffetas," a "constant succession of
cities and boroughs," and so on, first roused the incredulity and
then fired the imagination of all Europe. He told of Burmah,
and of its great armies with hundreds of elephants, and how
these animals were defeated by the Mongol bowmen, and also of
the Mongol conquest of Pegu. He told of Japan, and grea ily ex-
aggerated the amount of gold in that country. And, still more
wonderful, he told of Christians and Christian rulers in China,
and of a certain "Prester John," John the Priest, who was the
"king" of a Christian people. Those people he had not seen. Ap-
680 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
parently they were a tribe of Nestorian Tartars in Mongolia. An
understandable excitement probably made Rusticiano over-em-
phasize what must have seemed to him the greatest marvel of
the whole story, and Prester John became one of the most stimu-
lating legends of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It
encouraged European enterprise enormously to think that far
away in China was a community of their co-religionists, pre-
sumably ready to welcome and assist them. For three years
Marco ruled the city of Tang-chow as governor, and he prob-
ably impressed the Chinese inhabitants as being very little more
of a foreigner than any Tartar would have been. He may also
have been sent on a mission to India. Chinese records mention
a certain Polo attached to the imperial council in 1277, a very
valuable confirmation of the general truth of the Polo story.
The Polos had taken about three and a half years to get to
China. They stayed there upwards of sixteen. Then they began
to feel homesick. They were the proteges of Kublai, and pos-
sibly they felt that his favours roused a certain envy that might
have disagreeable results after his death. They sought his per-
mission to return. For a time he refused it, and then an oppor-
tunity occurred. Argon, the Ilkhan monarch of Persia, the
grandson of Hulagu, Kublai's brother, had lost his Mongol wife,
and on her deathbed had promised not to wed any other woman
but a Mongol of her own tribe. He sent ambassadors to Pekin,
and a suitable princess was selected, a girl of seventeen. To
spare her the fatigues of the caravan route, it was decided to
send her by sea with a suitable escort. The "Barons" in charge
of her asked for the company of the Polos because these latter
were experienced travellers and sage men, and the Polos
snatched at this opportunity of getting homeward. The expedi-
tion sailed from some port on the east of South China; they
stayed long in Sumatra and South India, and they reached Per-
sia after a voyage of two years. They delivered the young lady
safely to Argon's successor — for Argon was dead — and she mar-
ried Argon's son. The Poles then went by Tabriz to Trebizond,
sailed to Constantinople, and got back to Venice about 1295. It
is related that the returned travellers, dressed in Tartar garb,
were refused admission to their own house. It was some time
before they could establish their identity. Many people v?ho
admitted that, were still inclined to look askance at them as
shabby wanderers; and, in order to dispel such doubts, they
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS .681
gave a great feast, and when it was at its height they had their
old padded suits brought to them, dismissed the servants, and
then ripped open these garments, whereupon an incredible dis-
play of "rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, emeralds, and diamonds"
poured out before the dazzled company. Even after this,
Marco's accounts of the size and population of China were re-
ceived with much furtive mockery. The wits nicknamed him
II Milione, because he was always talking of millions of people
and millions of ducats.
Such was the story that raised eyebrows first in Venice and
then throughout the Western world. The European literature,
and especially the European romance of the fifteenth century,
echoes with the names in Marco Polo's story, with Cathay and
Oambaluc and the like.
§ 4
These travels of Marco Polo were only the beginning of a very
considerable intercourse. That intercourse was to bring many
revolutionary ideas and many revolutionary things to Europe,
including a greatly extended use of paper and printing from
blocks, the almost equally revolutionary use of gunpowder in
warfare, and the mariner's compass which was to release the
European shipping from navigation by coasting. The popular
imagination has always been disposed to ascribe every such
striking result to Marco Polo. He has become the type and
symbol for all such interchanges. As a matter of fact, there is
no evidence that he had any share in these three importations.
There were many mute Marco Polos who never met their Rusti-
cianos, and history has not preserved their names. Before we go
on, however, to describe the great widening of the mental hori-
zons of Europe that was now beginning, and to which this book
of travels was to contribute very materially, it will be convenient
first to note a curious side consequence of the great Mongol con-
quests, the appearance of the Ottoman Turks upon the Darda-
nelles, and next to state in general terms the breaking up and
development of the several parts of the empire of Jengis Khan.
The Ottoman Turks were a little band of fugitives who fied
south-westerly before the first invasion of Western Turkestan
by Jengis. They made their long way from Central Asia, over
deserts and mountains and through alien populations, seeking
682 . THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
some new lands in whicli they might settle. "A small band of
alien herdsmen," says Sir Mark Sykes, "wandering unchecked
through crusades and counter-crusades, principalities, empires,
and states. Where they camped, how they moved and preserved
their flocks and herds, where they found pasture, how they made
their peace with the various chiefs through whose territories
they passed, are questions which one may well ask in wonder."
They found a resting-place at last and kindred and congenial
neighbours on the table-lands of Asia Minor among the Seljuk
Turks. Most of this country, the modem Anatolia, was now
largely Turkish in speech and Moslem in religion, except that
there was a considerable proportion of Greeks, Jews, and Arme-
nians in the town populations. No doubt the various strains of
I-Iittite, Phrygian, Trojan, Lydian, Ionian Greek, Cimmerian,
Galatian, and Italian (from the Pergamus times) still flowed
in the blood of the people, but they had long since forgotten
these ancestral elements. They were indeed much the same
blend of ancient Mediterranean dark whites, Nordic Aryans,
Semites and Mongolians as were the inhabitants of the Balkan
peninsula, but they believed themselves to be a pure Turanian
race, and altogether superior to the Christians on the other side
of the Bosphorus.
Gradually the Ottoman Turks became important, and at last
dominant among the small principalities into which the Seljuk
empire, the empire of "Eoum," had fallen. Their relations with
the dwindling empire of Constantinople remained for some cen-
turies tolerantly hostile. They made no attack upon the Bos-
phorus, but they got a footing in Europe at the Dardanelles,
and, using this route, the route of Xerxes and not the route
of Darius, they pushed their way steadily into Macedonia, Epi-
rus, Illyria, Yugo-Slavia, and Bulgaria. In the Serbs (Yugo-
slavs) and Bulgarians the Turks found people very like them-
selves in culture and, though neither side recognized it, prob-
ably very similar in racial admixture, with a little less of the
dark Mediterranean and Mongolian strains than the Turks and
a trifle more of the Nordic element. But these Balkan peoples
were Christians, and bitterly divided among themselves. The
Turks on the other hand spoke one language ; they had a greater
sense of unity, they had the Moslem habits of temperance and
frugality, and they were on the whole better soldiers. They
converted what they could of the conquered people to Islam ; the
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 683
Christians they disarmed, and conferred upon them the monop-
oly of tax-paying. Gradually the Ottoman princes consolidated
an empire that reached from the Taurus mountains in the east
to Hungary and Koumania in the west. Adrianople became
their chief city. They surrounded the shrunken empire of Con-
stantinople on every side.
The Ottomans organized a standing military force, the Janis-
saries, rather on the lines of the Mamelukes who dominated
Egypt. "These troops were formed of levies of Christian youths
to the extent of one thousand per annum, who were affiliated to
the Bektashi order of dervishes, and though at first not obliged
to embrace Islam, were one and all strongly imbued with the
mystic and fraternal ideas of the confraternity to which they
were attached. Highly paid, well disciplined, a close and jeal-
ous secret society, the Janissaries provided the newly formed
Ottoman state with a patriotic force of trained infantry soldiers,
which, in an age of light cavalry and hired companies of mer-
cenaries, was an invaluable asset. . . .
"The relations between the Ottoman Sultans and the Em-
perors has been singular in the annals of Moslem and Christian
states. The Turks had been involved in the family and dynastic
quarrels of the Imperial City, were bound by ties of blood to the
ruling families, frequently supplied troops for the defence of
Constantinople, and on occasion hired parts of its garrison to
assist them in their various campaigns ; the sons of the Emperors
and Byzantine statesmen even accompanied the Turkish forces
in the field, yet the Ottomans never ceased to annex Imperial
territories and cities both in Asia and Thrace. This curious
intercourse between the House of Osman and the Imperial gov-
ernment had a profound effect on both institutions ; the Greeks
grew more and more debased and demoralized by the shifts and
tricks that their military weakness obliged them to adopt to-
wards their neighbours, the Turks were corrupted by the alien
atmosphere of intrigue and treachery which crept intb their
domestic life. Fratricide and parricide, the two crimes which
most frequently stained the annals of the Imperial Palace, even-
tually formed a part of the policy of the Ottoman dynasty. One
of the sons of Murad I embarked on an intrigue with Androni-
cus, the son of the Greek Emperor, to murder their respective
fathers. . . .
"The Byzantine found it more easy to negotiate with the Otto-
684
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
man Pasha than with the Pope. For years the Turks and By-
zantines had intermarried, and hunted in couples in strange by-
paths of diplomacy. The Ottoman had played the Bulgar and
the Serb of Europe against the Emperor, just as the Emperor
had played the Asiatic Amir against the Sultan ; the Greek and
Turkish Eoyal Princes had mutually agreed to hold each other's
rivals as prisoners and hostages; in fact, Turk and Byzantine
policy had so intertwined that it is difficult to say whether the
Turks regarded the Greeks as their allies, enemies, or subjects,
^^ OTTOMAK EMPIRE Icfovc US3.
or whether the Greeks looked upon the Turks as their tyrants,
destroyers, or protectors. . . ." ^
It was in 1453, under the Ottoman Sultan, Muhammad II,
that Constantinople at last fell to the Moslems. He attacked
it from the European side, and with a great power of artillery.
The Greek Emperor was killed, and there was much looting
and massacre. The great church of St. Sophia which Justin-
ian the Great had built (532) was plundered of its treasures
and turned at once into a mosque. This event sent a wave of
"Sir Mark Sykes, The Oaliphs' Last Beritape.
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 685
excitement throughout Europe, and an attempt was made to
organize a crusade, but the days of the crusades were past.
Says Sir Mark Sykes: "To the Turks the capture of Con-
stantinople was a crowning mercy and yet a fatal blow. Con-
stantinople had been the tutor and polisher of the Turks. So
long as the Ottomans could draw science, learning, philosophy,
art, and tolerance from a living fountain of civilization in the
heart of tljeir dominions, so long had the Ottomans not only
brute force, but intellectual power. So long as the Ottoman
Empire had in Constantinople a free port, a market, a centre of
world finance, a pool of gold, an exchange, so long did the Otto-
mans never lack for money and financial support. Muhammad
was a great statesman, the moment he entered Constantinople he
endeavoured to stay the damage his ambition had done ; he sup-
ported the patriarch, he conciliated the Greeks, he did all he
could to continue Constantinople the city of the Emperors . . .
but the fatal step had been taken, Constantinople as the city of
the Sultans was Constantinople no more; the markets died
away, the culture and civilization fled, the complex finance
faded from sight; and the Turks had lost their governors and
their support. On the other hand, the corruptions of Byzantium
remained, the bureaucracy, the eunuchs, the palace guards, the
spies, the bribers, go-betweens — all these the Ottomans took
over, and all these survived in luxuriant life. The Turks, in
taking Stambul, let slip a treasure and gained a pestilence. . . ."
Muhammad's ambition was not sated by the capture of Con-
stantinople. He set 'his eyes also upon Eome. He captured
and looted the Italian town of Otranto, and it is probable that
a very vigorous and perhaps successful attempt to conquer Italy
— ^for the peninsula was divided against itself — ^was averted only
by his death (1481). His sons engaged in fratricidal strife.
Under Bayezid II (1481-1512), his successor, war was carried
into Poland, and most of Greece was conquered. Selim (1512-
1520), the son of Bayezid, extended the Ottoman power over
Armenia and conquered Egypt. In Egypt, the last Abbasid
Caliph was living under the protection of the Mameluke Sultan
— ^for the Fatimite caliphate was a thing of the past. Selim
bought the title of Caliph from this last degenerate Abbasid,
and acquired the sacred banner and other relics of the Prophet.
So the Ottoman Sultan became also Caliph of all Islam. Selim
was followed by Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566), who
686
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 687
conquered Bagdad in the east and the greater part of Hungary
in the west, and very nearly captured Vienna. His fleets also
took Algiers, and inflicted a number of reverses upon the Vene-
tians. In most of his warfare with the empire he was in alliance
with the French, Under him the Ottoman power reached its
zenith.
§ 5
Let us now very briefly run over the subsequent development
of the main masses of the empire of the Great Khan. In no
case did Christianity succeed in capturing the imagination of
these Mongol states. Christianity was in a phase of moral and
intellectual insolvency, without any collective faith, energy, or
honour ; we have told of the wretched brace of timid Domini-
cans which was the Pope's reply to the appeal of Kublai Khan,
and we have noted the general failure of the overland missions
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. That apostolic pas-
sion that could win whole nations to the Kingdom of Heaven
was dead in the church.
In 1305, as we have told, the Pope became the kept pontiff
of the French king. All the craft and policy of the Popes
of the thirteenth century to oust the Emperor from Italy had
only served to let in the French to replace him. From 1305
to 1377 the Popes remained at Avignon; and such slight mis-
sionary effort as they made was merely a part of the strategy
of Western European politics. In 1377 the Pope Gregory XJ
did indeed re-enter Eome and die there, but the French car-
dinals split off from the others at the election of his successor,
and two Popes were elected, one at Avignon and one at Home.
This split, the Great Schism, lasted from 1378 to 1418. Each
Pope cursed the other, and put all his supporters under an inter-
dict. Such was the state of Christianity, and such were now
the custodians of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. AH Asia
was white unto harvest, but there was no effort to reap it.
When at last the church was reunited and missionary energy
returned with the foundation of the order of the Jesuits, the
days of opportunity were over. The possibility of a world-wide
moral unification of East and West through Christianity had
passed away. The Mongols in China and Central Asia turned
to Buddhism; in South Russia, Western Turkestan, and the
Ilkhan Empire they embraced Islam.
688 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 5a
In China the Mongols were already saturated with Chinese
civilization by the time of Kublai. After 1280 the Chinese an-
nals treat Kuhlai as a Chinese monarch, the founder of the
Yuan dynasty (1280-1368). This Mongol dynasty was finally
overthrown by a Chinese nationalist movement which set up
the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a cultivated and artistic line
of emperors, ruling until a northern people, the Manchus, who
were the same as the Kin whom Jengis had overthrown, con-
quered China and established a dynasty which gave way only
to a native republican form of government in 1912.
It was the Manchus who obliged the Chinese to wear pigtails
as a mark of submission. The pigtailed Chinaman is quite a
recent figure in history. With the coming of the republic
the wearing of the pigtail has ceased to be compulsory, and
many Chinamen no longer wear it.
§ 5b
In the Pamirs, in much of Eastern and Western Turkestan,
and to the north, the Mongols dropped, back towards the tribal
conditions from which they had been lifted by Jengis. It is
possible to trace the dwindling succession of many of the small
Khans who became independent during this period, almost down
to the present time. The Kalmuks in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries founded a considerable empire, but dynastic
troubles broke it up before it had extended its power beyond
Central Asia. The Chinese recovered Eastern Turkestan from
them about 1757.
Tibet was more and more closely linked with China, and be-
came the great home of Buddhism and Buddhist monasticism.
Over most of the area of Western Central Asia and Persia
and Mesopotamia, the ancient distinction of nomad and settled
population remains to this day. The townsmen despise and
cheat the nomads, the nomads ill-treat and. despise the townsfolk.
§ 5c
The Mongols of the great realm of Kipchak remained no-
madic, and grazed their stock across the wide plains of South
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 689
Russia and Western Asia adjacent to Russia. They became
not very devout Moslems, retaining many traces of their earlier
barbaric Shamanism. Their chief Khan viras the Khan of the
Golden Horde. To the west, over large tracts of open country,
and more particularly in what is now known as Ukrainia, the
old Scythian population, Slavs with a Mongol admixture, re-
verted to a similar nomadic life. These Christian nomads, the
Cossacks, formed a sort of frontier screen against the Tartars,
and their free and adventurous life was so attractive to the peas-
ants of Poland and Lithuania that severe laws had to be passed
to prevent a vast migration from the plough-lands to the steppes.
The serf -owning landlords of Poland regarded the Cossacks with
considerable hostility on this account, and war was as frequent
between the Polish chivalry and the Cossacks as it was between
the latter and the Tartars.
In the empire of Kipchak, as in Turkestan almost up to the
present time, while the nomads roamed over wide areas, a num-
ber of towns and cultivated regions sustained a settled popula-
tion which usually paid tribute to the nomad Khan. In such
towns as Kieff, Moscow, and the like, the pre-Mongol, Christian
town life went on under Russian dukes or Tartar governors, who
collected the tribute for the Khan of the Golden Horde. The
Grand Duke of Moscow gained the confidence of the Khan, and
gradually, under his authority, obtained an ascendancy over
many of his fellow tributaries. In the fifteenth century, under
its grand duke, Ivan III, Ivan the Great (1462-1505), Mos-
cow threw oif its Mongol allegiance and refused to pay tribute
any longer (1480). The successors of Constantine no longer
reigned in Constantinople, and Ivan took possession of the By-
zantine double-headed eagle for his arms. He claimed to be the
heir to Byzantium because of his marriage (1472) with Zoe
Palseologus of the imperial line. This ambitious grand dukedom
of Moscow assailed and subjugated the ancient Northman trad-
ing republic of Novgorod to the north, and s6 the foundations
of the modem Russian Empire were laid and a link with the
mercantile life of the Baltic established. Ivan III did not, how-
ever, carry his claim to be the heir of the Christian rulers of
Constantinople to the extent of assuming the imperial title.
This step was taken by his grandson, Ivan IV (Ivan the Terri-
ble, because of his insane cruelties; 1533-1584). Although the
ruler of Moscow thus came to be called Tsar (Csesar), his tradi-
600 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tian was in many respects Tartar rather than European ; he was
autocratic after the unlimited Asiatic pattern, and the form of
Christianity he affected was the Eastern, court-ruled, "orthodox"
form, which had reached Kussia long before the Mongol con-
quest, by means of Bulgarian missionaries from Constantinople.
To the west of the domaiins of Kipchak, outside the range
of. Mongol rule, a second centre of Slav consolidation had been
set up during the tenth and eleventh centuries in Poland. The
Mongol wave had washed over Poland, but had never subjugated
it. Poland was not "orthodox," but Eoman Catholic in re-
ligion ; it used the Latin alphabet instead of the strange Eussian
letters, and its monarch never assumed an absolute independence
of the Emperor. Poland was in fact in its origins an outlying
part of Christendom and of the Holy Empire; Kussia never was
anything of the sort..
§ 5d
The nature and development of the empire of the Ilkhans in
Persia, Mesopotamia, and Syria is perhaps the most interesting
of all the stories of these Mongol powers, because in this region
nomadism really did attempt, and really did to a very consider-
able, degree succeed in its attempt to stamp a settled civilized
system out of existence. When Jengis Kahn first invaded
China, we are told that there was a serious discussion among
the Mongol chiefs whether all the towns and settled populations
should not be destroyed. To these simple practitioners of the
open-air life the settled populations seemed corrupt, crowded,
vicious, effeminate, dangerous, and incomprehensible; a detesta-
ble human eiflorescence upon what would otherwise have been
good pasture. They had no use whatever for the towns. The
early Franks and the Anglo-Saxon conquerors of South Britain
seem to have had much the same feeling towards townsmen.
But it was only under Hulagu in Mesopotamia that these ideas
seem to have been embodied in a deliberate policy. The Mon-
gols here did not only bum and massacre; they destroyed the
irrigation system that had endured for at least eight thousaud
years, and with that the mother civilization of all the Western
world came to an end. Since the days of the priest-kings -of
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 691
Sumeria there had been a continuous cultivation in these fertile
regions, an accumulation of tradition, a great population, a suc-
cession of busy cities, Eridu, Nippur, Babylon, Nineveh, Ctesi-
phon, Bagdad. Now the fertility ceased., Mesopotamia became
a land of ruins and desolation, through which great waters ran
to waste, or overflowed their banks to make malarious swamps.
Later on Mosul and Bagdad revived feebly as second-rate
towns. ... ! :
But for the defeat and death of Hulagu's general 'Kitboga
in Palestine (1260), the same fate might have overtaken Egypt.
But Egypt was now a Turkish sultanate ; it was dominated by a
body of soldiers, the Mamelukes, whose ranks, like those of their
imitators, the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, were re-
cruited and kept vigorous by the purchase and training of boy
slaves. A capable Sultan such men would obey; a weak or evil
one they would replace. Under this ascendancy Egypt remained
an independent power until 1517, when it fell to the Ottoman
Turks.
The first destructive vigor of Hulagu's Mongols soon subsided,
but in the fifteenth century a last tornado of nomadism arose
in Western Turkestan under the leadership of a certain Timur
the Lame, or Timurlane. He was descended in the female line
from Jengis Khan. He established himself in Samarkand, and
spread his authority over Kipchak (Turkestan to South Rus-
sia), Siberia, and southward as far as the Indus. He assumed
the title of Great Khan in 1369. He was a nomad of the savage
school, and he created an empire of desolation from North India
to Syria. Pyramids of skulls were his particular architectural
fancy ; after the storming^ of Ispahan he made one of T0,000.
His ambition was to restore the empire of Jengis Kahn as he
conceived it, a project in which he completely failed. He spread
destruction far and wide; the Ottoman Turks — it was before
the taking of Constantinople and their days of greatness — and
Egypt paid him tribute ; the Punjab he devastated ; and Delhi
surrendered to him. After Delhi had surrendered, however, he
made, a frightful massacre of its inhabitants. At the time of
his death (1405) very little remained to witness to his power
but a name of horror, ruins and desolated countries, and a
shrunken and impoverished domain in Persia.
The dynasty founded by Timur in Persia was extinguished
by another Turkoman horde fifty years later.
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 693
§ 5e
In 1505 a small Turkoman chieftain, Baber, a descendant of
Timur an'd therefore of Jengis, was forced after some years of
warfare and some temporary successes — for a time he held Sam-
arkand— ^to fly with a few followers over the Hindu Kush to
Afghanistan. There his band increased, and he made himself
master of Cahul. He assembled an army, accumulated guns,
and then laid claim to the Punjab, because Timur had conquered
it a hundred and seven years before. He pushed his successes
beyond the Punjab. India was in a state of division, and quite
ready to welcome any capable invader who promised peace and
order. After various fluctuations of fortune Baber met the
Sultan of Delhi at Panipat (1525), ten miles north of that
town, and though he had but 25,000 men, provided, however,
with guns, against a thousand elephants and four times as many
men — the numbers, by the by, are his own estimate — ^he gained
a complete victory. He ceased to call himself King of Cabul,
and assumed the title of Emperor of Hindustan. "This," he
wrote, "is quite a different world from our countries." It was
finer, more fertile, altogether richer. He conquered as far as
Bengal, but his untimely death in 1530 checked the tide of
Mongol conquest for a quarter of a century, and it was only
after the accession of his grandson Akbar that it flowed again.
Akbar subjugated all India as far as Berar, and his great-grand-
son Aurungzeb (1658-1707) was practically master of the entire
peninsula. This great dynasty of Baber (1526-1530), Huma-
yun (1530-1556), Akbar (1556-1605), Jehangir (1605-1628),
Shah Jehan (1628-1658), and Aurungzeb (1658-1707), in
which son succeeded father for six generations, this "Mogul
(^ Mongol) dynasty," ^ marks the most splendid age that had
hitherto dawned upon India. Akbar, next perhaps to Asoka,
was one of the greatest of Indian monarchs, and one of the few
royal figures that approach the stature of great men.
To Akbar it is necessary to give the same distinctive atten-
tion that we have shown to Charlemagne or Constantine the
Great. He is one of the hinges of history. Much of his work
of consolidation and organization in India survives to this day.
' "Mogul" is our rendering of the Arabic spelling Mughal, which itself
was a corruption of Mongol, the Arabic alphabet having lo symbol for
K?— H. H. J.
694 THE OUTtlNE OF HISTORY
It was taken over and continued by the British when they be-
came the successors of the Mogul emperors. The British mon-
arch, indeed, now uses as his Indian title the title of the Mogul
emperors, Kaisar-irHind. AH, the other great administrations
of the descendants of Jengis Khan, in Eussia, throughout West-
em and Central Asia and in China, have long since dissolved
away arid given place to other forms of government. Their
governments were indeed little more than taxing governments ;
a system of revenue-collecting to feed the central establishment
of the ruler, like the Golden Horde in South Eussia or the
imperial city at Karakorum or Pekin. The life and ideas of
the people they left alone, careless how they lived — so long as
they paid. So it was that after centuries of subjugation, a
Christian Moscow and Kieff, a Shiite Persia, and a thoroughly
Chinese China rose again from their Mongol submergence. But
Akbar made a new India. He gave the princes and ruling
classes of India some inklings at least of a common interest. If
India is now anything more than a sort of rag-bag of inco-
herent states and races, a prey to every casual raider from the
north, it is very largely due to him.
His distinctive quality was his openness of mind.. He set
himself to make every sort of able man in India, whatever his
race or religion, available for the public work of Indian life.
His instinct was the true statesman's instinct fw synthesis.
His empire was to be neither a Moslem nor a Mongol one, nor
was it to be Eajput or Aryan, or Dravidian, or Hindu, or
high or low caste; it was to be Indian. "During the years of
his training he enjoyed many opportunities of noting the good
qualities, the fidelity, the devotion, often the nobility of soul,
of those Hindu princes, whom, because they were followers of
Brahma, his Moslem courtiers devoted mentally to eternal tor-
ments. He noted that these men^ and men who thought like
them, constituted the vast majority of his subjects. He noted,
further, of many of them, and those the most trustworthy, that
though they had apparently much to gain from a worldly point
of view by embracing the religion of the court, they held fast to
their own. His reflective mind, therefore, was unwilling from
the outset to accept the theory that because he, the conqueror,
the ruler, happened to be bom a Muhammadan, therefore Mu-
hammadanism was true for all mankind. Gradually his
thoughts found words in the utterance : 'Why should I claim to
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 695
guide men before I myself am guided ?' and, as he listened to
other doctrines and other creeds, his honest doubts became con-
firmed, and, noting daily the bitter narrowness of sectarianism,
no matter of what form of religion, he became more and more
wedded to the principle of toleration for all."
"The son of a fugitive emperor," says Dr. Emil Schmit, "bom
in the desert, brought up in nominal confinement, he had known
the bitter side of life from his youth up. Fortune had given
him a powerful frame, which he trained to support the ex-
tremities of exertion. Physical exercise was with him a pas-
sion; he was devoted to the chase and especially to the fierce
excitement of catching the wild horse or elephant or slaying the
dangerous tiger. On one occasion, when it was necessary to
dissuade the Kaja of Jodhpore to abandon his intention of forc-
ing the widow of his deceased son to mount the funeral pyre,
Akbar rode two hundred and twenty miles in two days. In bat-
tle he displayed the utmost bravery. He led his troops in person
during the dangerous part of a campaign, leaving to his gen-
erals the lighter task of finishing the war. In every victory he
displayed humanity to the conquered, and decisively opposed
any exhibition of cruelty. Free from all those prejudices
which separate society and create dissension, tolerant to men of
other beliefs, impartial to men of other races, whether Hindu
or Dravidian, he was a man obviously marked out to weld the
confiicting elements of his kingdom into a strong and prosperous
whole.
"In all seriousness he devoted himself to the work of peace.
Moderate in all pleasures, needing but little sleep and accus-
tomed to divide his time with the utmost accuracy, he found
leisure to devote himself to science and art after the completion
of his State duties. The famous personages and scholars wh©
adorned the capital he had built for himself at Fatepur-Sikri
were at the same time his friends; every Thursday evening a
circle of these was collected for intellectual conversation and
philosophical discussion. His closest friends were two highly
talented brothers, Faizi and Abul Fazl, the sons of a learned
free-thinker. The elder of these was a famous scholar in Hindu
literature; with his help, and under his direction, Akbar had
the most important of the Sanskrit works translated into Per-
sian. Fazl, on the other hand, who was an especially close
friend of Akbar, was a general, a statesman, and an organizer,
696 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and to his activity Akbar's kingdom chiefly owed the solidarity
of its internal organization." ^
(Such was the quality of the circle that used to meet in the
palaces of Fatehpur-Sikri, buildings which still stand in the
Indian sunlight — ^but empty now and desolate. Fatehpur-
Sikri, like the city of Ambar, is now a dead city. A few years
ago the child of a British ofiicial was killed by a panther in
one of its silent streets.)
All this that we have quoted reveals a pre-eminent monarch.
But Akbar, like all men, great or petty, lived within the limita-
tions of his period and its circle of ideas. And a Turkoman,
ruling in India, was necessarily ignorant of much that Europe
had been painfully learning for a thousand years. He knew
nothing of the growth of a popular consciousness in Europe,
and little or nothing of the wide educational possibilities that
the church had been working out in the West. His upbringing
in Islam and his native genius made it plain to him that a
great nation in India could only be cemented by common ideas
upon a religious basis, but the knowledge of how such a soli-
darity could be created and sustained by universal schools,
cheap books, and a university system at once organized and
free to think, to which the modern state is still feeling its way,
was as impossible to him as a knowledge of steamboats or aero-
planes. The form of Islam he knew best was the narrow and
fiercely intolerant form of the Turkish Sunnites. The Mos-
lems were only a minority of the population. The problem he
faced was indeed very parallel to the problem of Constantine
the Great. But it had peculiar difficulties of its own. He
never got beyond an attempt to adapt Islam to a wider appeal
by substituting for "There is one God, and Muhammad is his
prophet," the declaration, "There is one God, and the Emperor
is his vice-regent." This he thought might form a common
platform for every variety of faith in India, that kaleidoscope
of religions. With this faith he associated a simple ritual bor-
rowed from the Persian Zorastrians (the Parsees) who still
survived, and survive to-day, in India. This new state re-
ligion, however, died with him, because it had no roots in the
minds of the people about him.
The essential factor in the organization of a living state,
the world is coming to realize, is the organization of an educa-
'Dr. Schmit in Helmolt's History of the World.
JENGIS KHAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS 697
tion. This Atbar never understood. And he had no class of
men available who would suggest such an idea to him or help
him to carry it out. The Moslem teachers in India were not
so much teachers as conservators of an intense bigotry; they
did not want a common mind in India, but only a common in-
tolerance in Islam. The Brahmins, who had the monopoly of
teaching among the Hindus, had all the conceit and slackness
of hereditary privilege. Yet though Akbar made no general
educational scheme for India, he set up a number of Moslem
and Hindu schools. He knew less and he did more for India
in these matters than the British who succeeded him. Some
of the British viceroys have aped his magnificence, his costly
tents and awnings, his palatial buildings and his elephants of
state, but none have gone far enough beyond the political out-
look of this mediaeval Turkoman to attempt that popular edu-
cation which is an absolute necessity to India before she can
play her fitting part in the commonweal of mankind.
§ 5f
A curious side result of these later Mongol perturbations,
those of the fourteenth century of which Timurlane was the
head and centre, was the appearance of drifting batches of a
strange refugee Eastern people in Europe, the Gipsies. They
appeared somewhen about the end of the fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries in Greece, where they were believed to be
Egyptians (hence Gipsy), a very general persuasion which
they themselves accepted and disseminated. Their leaders,
however, styled themselves "Counts of Asia Minor." They
had probably been drifting about Western Asia for some cen-
turies before the massacres of Timurlane drove them over the
Hellespont. They may have been dislodged from their original
homeland — as the Ottoman Turks were — by the great cataclysm
of Jengis or even earlier. They had drifted about as the Otto-
man Turks had drifted about, but with less good fortune. They
spread slowly westward across Europe, strange fragments of
nomadism in a world of plough and city, driven off their an-
cient habitat of the Bactrian steppes to harbour upon European
commons and by hedgerows and in wild woodlands and
neglected patches. The Germans called them "Hungarians"
and "Tartars," the French, "Bohemians." They do not seem
698 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to have kept the true tradition of their origin, but they have
a distinctive language which indicates their lost history; it
contains many North Indian words, and is probably in its
origin North Indian. There are also considerable Armenian
and Persian elements in their speech. They are found in all
European countries to-day ; they are tinkers, pedlars, horse-
dealers, showmen, fortune-tellers, and beggars. To many
imaginative minds their wayside encampments, with their
smoking fires, their rounded tents, their hobbled horses, and
their brawl of sunburnt children, have a very strong appeal.
Civilization is so new a thing in history, and has been for most
of the time so very local a thing, that it has still to conquer and
assimilate most of our instincts to its needs. In most of us,
irked by its conventions and complexities, there stirs the nomad
strain. We are but half-hearted home-keepers. The blood in
our veins was brewed on the steppes as well as on the plough
lands.
XX2IV
THE EENASOENOE OF WESTEEN" CIVILIZATION ^
(Land Ways Give Place to Sea Ways)
§ 1. Christianity and Popular Education. § 2. Europe Be-
gins to Think for Itself. § 3. The Great Plague and the
Dawn of Comm.unism. § 4. How Paper Liberated the
Human Mind. § 5. Protestantism of the Princes and
Protestantism, of the Peoples. § 6. The Reawakening of
Science. § 7. The New Growth of European Towns. § 8.
America Comes into History. § 9. What Machia/velU
Thought of the World. §10. The Republic of Switzerland.
§ 11a. The Life of the Emperor Charles V. § 11b. Prot-
estants if the Prince Wills It. % llo. The Intellectual
Undertow.
§ 1
JUDGED by the map, the three centuries from the begin-
ning of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century
were an age of recession for Christendom. These cen-
turies were the Age of the Mongolian peoples. Nomadism from
Central Asia dominated the known world. At the crest of this
period there were rulers of Mongol or the kindred Turkish race
and nomadic tradition in China, India, Persia, Egypt, North
Africa, the Balkan peninsula, Hungary, and Eussia. The Otto^
man Turk had even taken to the sea, and fought the Venetian
upon his own Mediterranean waters. In 1529 the Turks
'Renascence here means rebirth, and it is applied to the recovery of
the entire Western world. It is not to be confused with the "Renaissance,"
an educational, literary, and artistic revival that went on in Italy and the
Western world affected by Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies. The Renaissance was only a part of the Renascence of Europe.
The Renaissance was a revival due to the exhumation of classical art
and learning; it was but one factor in the very much larger and more
complicated resurrection of European capacity and vigour, with which we
are dealing in this chapter.
700 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
besieged Vienna, and were defeated rather by the weather than
by the defenders. The Habsburg empire of Charles V paid
the Sultan tribute. It was not until the battle of Lepanto in
1571, the battle in which Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote,
lost his left arm, that Christendom, to use his words, "broke
the pride of the Osmans and undeceived the world which had
regarded the Turkish fleet as invincible." The sole region of
Christian advance was Spain. A man of foresight surveying
the world in the early sixteenth century might well have con-
cluded that it was only a matter of a few generations before
the whole world became Mongolian — and probably Moslem.
Just as to-day most people seem to take it for granted that
European rule and a sort of liberal Christianity are destined
to spread over the whole world. Few people seem to realize
how recent a thing is this European ascendancy. It was only
as the fifteenth century drew to its close that any indications
of the real vitality of Western Europe became clearly apparent.
Our history is now approaching our own times, and our study
becomes more and more a study of the existing state of affairs.
The European or Europeanized system in which the reader is
living, is the same system that we see developing in the
crumpled-up, Mongol-threatened Europe of the early fifteenth
century. Its problems then were the embryonic form of the
problems of to-day. It is impossible to discuss that time with-
out discussing our own time. We become political in spite of
ourselves. "Politics without history has no root," said Sir
J. E. Seeley; "history without politics has no fruit."
Let us try, with as much detachment as we can achieve, to
discover what the forces were that were dividing and holding
back the energies of Europe during this tremendous outbreak
of the Mongol peoples, and how we are to explain the accumu-
lation of mental and physical energy that undoubtedly went
on during this phase of apparent retrocession, and which broke
out so impressively at its close.
Now, just as in the Mesozoic Age, while the great reptiles
lorded it over the earth, there were developing in odd out-of-
the-way comers those hairy mammals and feathered birds who
were finally to supersede that tremendous fauna altogether by
another far more versatile and capable, so in the limited terri-
tories of Western Europe of the Middle Ages, while the Mon-
golian monarchies dominated the world from the Danube to
KENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 701
702 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the Pacific and from the Arctic seas to Madras and Morocco
and the Nile, the fundamental lines of a new and harder and
more efiicient type of hiunan community were being laid down.
This type of community, which is still only in the phase of
formation, which is still growing and experimental, we may
perhaps speak of as the "modem state." This is, we must
recognize, a vague expression, hut we shall endeavour to get
meaning into it as we proceed. We have noted the appearance
of its main root ideas in the Greek republics and especially in
Athens, in the great Koman republic, in Judaism, in Islam, and
: in the story of Western Catholicism. Essentially this modem
state, as we siee it growing under our eyes to-day, is a tentative
combination of two apparently contradictory ideas, the idea of
a community of faith and obedience, such as the earliest civili-
zations undoubtedly were, and the idea of a community of will,
such as were the primitive political groupings of the S'ordic
and Hunnish peoples. For thousands of years the settled
civilized peoples, who were originally in most cases dark-white
Caucasians, or Dravidian or Southern Mongolian peoples, seem
to have developed their ideas and habits along the line of wor-
ship and personal subjection, and the nomadic peoples theirs
along the line of personal self-reliance and self-assertion.
.Naturally enough under the circumstances the nomadic peoples
were always supplying the civilizations with fresh rulers and
new aristocracies. That is tlie rhythm of all early history. It
was only after thousands of years of cyclic changes between
refreshment by nomadic conquest, civilization, decadence, iand
fresh conquest that the present process of a mutual blending of
"civilized" and "free" tendencies into a new type of commu-
nity, that now demands our attention and which is the substance
of contemporary history, began.
We have traced in this history the slow development of larger
and larger "civilized" human communities from the days of
the primitive Palaeolithic family tribe. We have seen how the
advantages and necessities of cultivation, the fear of tribal
gods, the ideas of the priest-king and the god-king, played their
part in consolidating continually larger and more powerful
societies in regions of maximum fertility. We have watched
the interplay of priest, who was usually native, and monarch,
■TOO was usually a conqueror, in these early civilizations, the
development of a written tradition and its escape from priestly
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 703
control, and the appearance of novel forces, at first apparently
incidental and secondary, -whicli we have called the free intelli-
gence and the free conscience of mankind. We have seen the
rulers of the primitive civilizations of the river valleys widen-
ing their area and extending their sway, and simultaneously
over the less fertile areas of the earth we have seen mere trihal
savagery develop into a more and more united and politically
competent nomadism. Steadily and divergently mankind pur-
sued one or other of these two lines. For long ages all the
civilizations grew and developed along monarchist lines, upon
lines of absolute monarchy, and in every monarchy and dynasty
we have watched, as if it were a necessary process, efficiency
and energy give way to pomp, indolence, and decay, and finally
succumb to some fresher lineage from the desert or the steppe.
The story of the early cultivating civilizations and their temples
and courts and cirtes bulks large in human history, but it is
well to remember that the scene of that story was never more
than a very small part of the land surface of the globe. Over
the greater part of the earth until quite recently, until the last
two thousand years, the hardier, less numerous tribal peoples
of forest and parkland and the nomadic peoples of the seasonal
grasslands maintained and developed their own ways of life.
The primitive civilizations were, we may say, "communities
of obedience" ; obedience to god-kings or kings under gods was
their cement; the nomadic tendency on the other hand has
always been towards a different type of association which we
shall here call a "community of will." In a wandering, fight-
ing community the individual must be at once self-reliant and
disciplined. The chiefs of such communities must be chiefs
who are followed, not masters who compel. This community
of will is traceable throughout the entire history of mankind;
everywhere we find the original disposition of all the nomads
alike, Nordic, Semitic, or Mongolian, was individually more
tvUling and more erect than that of the settled folk. The
Nordic peoples came into Italy and Greece under leader kings ;
they -did not bring any systematic temple cults with them, they
found such things in the conquered lands and adapted as they
adopted them. The Greeks and Latins lapsed very easily again
into republics, and so did the Aryans in India. There was a
tradition of election also in the early Frankish and German
kingdoms, though the decision was usually taken between one
704 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
or other members of a royal caste or family. The early Caliphs
were elected, the Judges of Israel and the "kings" of Carthage
and Tyre, were elected, and so was the Great Khan of the
Mongols until Kuhlai became a Chinese monarch. . . .
Equally constant in the settled lands do we find the opposite
idea, the idea of a non-elective divinity in kings and of their
natural and inherent right to rule. ... As our history has
developed we have noted the appearance of new and complicat-
ing elements in the story of human societies ; we have seen that
nomad turned go-between, the trader, appear, and we have
noted the growing importance of shipping in the world. It
seems as inevitable that voyaging should make men free in
their minds as that settlement within a narrow horizon should
make men timid and servile. . . . But in spite of all such
complications, the broad antagonism between the method of
obedience and the method of will runs thrdagh history down
into our ovm times. To this day their reconciliation is
incomplete.
Civilization even in its most servile forms has always offered
much that is enormously attractive, convenient, and congenial
to mankind; but something restless and untamed in our race
has striven continually to convert civilization from its original
reliance upon unparticipating obedience into a community of
participating wills. And to the lurkingnomadism in our blood,
and particularly in the blood of monarchs and aristocracies, we
must ascribe also that incessant urgency towards a wider range
that forces every state to extend its boundaries if it can, and
to spread its interests to the ends of the earth. The power
of nomadic restlessness that tends to bring all the earth under
one rule, seems to be identical with the spirit that makes most
of us chafe under direction and restraint, and seek to partici-
pate in whatever government we tolerate. And this natural,
this temperamental struggle of mankind to reconcile civilization
with freedom has been kept alive age after age by the military
and political impotence of every "community of obedience"
that has ever existed. Obedience, once men are broken to it,
can -be easily captured and transferred ; witness the passive role
of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, the original and typical
lands of submission, the "cradles of civilization," as they have
passed from one lordship to another. A servile civilization is a
standing invitation to predatory free men. But on the other
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 705
hand a "community of will" necessitates a fusion of intractable
materials ; it is a far harder community to bring about, and still
more difficult to maintain. The story of Alexander the Great
displays the community of will of the Macedonian captains
gradually dissolving before his demand that they should wor-
ship him. The incident of the murder of Clitus is quite typical
of the struggle between the free and the servile tradition that
went on whenever a new conqueror from the open lands and
the open air found himself installed iti the palace of an ancient
monarchy.
In the case of the Eoman Eepublic, history tells of the first
big community of will in the world's history, the first free com-
munity much larger than a city, and how it weakened with
growth and spent itself upon success until at last it gave way
to a monarchy of the ancient type, and decayed swiftly into
one of the feeblest communities of servitude that ever collapsed
before a handful of invaders. We have given some attention
in this book to the factors in that decay, because they are of
primary importance in human history. One of the most evi-
dent was the want of any wide organization of education to
base the ordinary citizens' minds upon the idea of service and
obligation to the republic, to keep them willing, that is; an-
other was the absence of any medium of general information
to keep their activities in harmony, to enable them to will as
one body. The community of will is limited in size by the
limitations set upon the possibilities of a community of knowl-
edge. The concentration of property in a few hands and the
replacement of free workers by slaves were rendered possible
by the decay of public spirit and the confusion of the public
intelligence that resulted from these limitations. There was,
moreover, no efficient religious idea behind the Roman state;
the dark Etruscan liver-peering cult of Rome was as little
adapted to the political needs of a great community as the very
similar Shamanism of the Mongols. It is in the fact that both
Christianity and Islam, in their distinctive ways, did at least
promise to supply, for the first time in human experience, this
patent gap in the Eoman republican system as well as in the
nomadic system, to give a common moral education for a mass
of people, and to supply them with a common history of the
past and a common idea of a human purpose and destiny, that
their enormous historical importance lies. Aristotle, as we have
706 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
noted, had set a limit to the ideal community of a i«w thousand
citizens, because he could not conceive how a larger multitude
could be held together by a common idea. He had had no
experience of any sort of education beyond the tutorial methods
of his time. Greek education was almost purely vivorvoce edu-
cation; it could reach therefore only to a limited aristocracy.
Both the Christian church and Islam demonstrated the un-
soundness of Aristotle's limitation. We may think they did
their task of education in their vast fields of opportunity
crudely or badly, but the point of interest to us is that they
did it at all. Both sustained almost world-wide propagandas
of idea and inspiration. Both relied successfully upon the
power of the written word to link great multitudes of diverse
men together in common enterprises. By the eleventh century,
as we have seen, the idea of Christendom had been imposed upon
all the vast warring miscellany of the smashed and pulverized
Western empire, and upon Europe far beyond its limits, as a
uniting and inspiring idea. It had made a shallow but effective
community of will over an unprecedented area and out of an
unprecedented multitude of human beings. Only one other
thing at all like this had ever happened to any great section of
mankind before, and that was the idea of a community of good
behaviour that the literati had spread throughout China.-'
The Catholic Church provided what the Roman Republic
had lacked, a system of popular teaching, a number of uni-
versities and methods of intellectual inter-communication. By
this achievement it opened the way to the new possibilities of
human government that now become apparent in this Outline,
possibilities that are still being apprehended and worked out
in the world in which we are living. Hitherto the government
of states had been either authoritative, under some uncriticized
and unchallenged combination of priest and monarch, or it
had been a democracy, uneducated and uninformed, degenerat-
ing with any considerable increase of size, as Rome and Athens
did, into a mere rule by mob and politician. But by the thir-
teenth century the first intimations had already dawned of an
ideal of government which is still making its way to realiza-
tion, the modem ideal, the ideal of a world-wide educational
government, in which the ordinary man is neither the slave
•But the Jews were already holding their community together by sys-
tematic education at least as early as the beginning of the Christian e.'-a.
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 707
of an absolute monarch nor of a demagogue-ruled state, but an
informed, inspired, and consulted part of bis community. It is
upon the word educational that stress must be laid, and upon
the idea that information must precede consultation. It is in
the practical realization of this idea that education is a collec-
tive function and not a private affair that one essential distinc-
tion of the "modern state" from any of its precursors lies. The
modern citizen, men are coming to realize, must be informed
first and- then consulted. Before he can vote he must hear the
evidence; before he can decide be must know. It is not by
setting up polling booths, but by setting up schools and making
literature and knowledge and news universally accessible that
the way is opened from servitude and confusion to that will-
ingly co-operative state which is the modem ideal. Votes in
themselves are worthless things. Men had votes in Italy in
the time of the Gracchi. Their votes did not help them. Until
a man has education, a vote is a useless and dangerous thing
for him to possess. The ideal community towards which we
move is not a community of will simply ; it is a community of
knowledge and will, replacing a community of faith and obedi-
ence. Education is the adapter* which will make the nomadic
spirit of freedom and self-reliance compatible with the co-opera-
tions and wealth and security of civilization.
§ 2
But though it is certain that the Catholic Church, through
its propagandas, its popular appeals, its schools and universities,
opened up the prospect of the modern educational state in
Europe, it is equally certain that the Catholic Church never
intended to do anything of the sort. It did not send out knowl-
edge with its blessing ; it let it loose inadvertently. It was not
the Eoman Eepublic whose heir the Church esteemed itself, but
the Roman Emperor. Its conception of education was not re-
lease, not an invitation to participate, but the subjugation of
minds. Two of the greatest educators of the Middle Ages
were indeed not churchmen at all, but monarchs and statesmen,
Charlemagne and Alfred the Great of England, who made use
of the church organization. But it was the church that had
provided the organization. Church and monarchs in their
mutual grapple for power were both calling to their aid the
708 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
thoughts of the common man. In response to these conflicting
appeals appeared the common man, the unofficial outside inde-
pendent mail, thinking for himself.
Already in the thirteenth century we have seen Pope Gregory
IX and the Emperor Frederick II engaging in a violent public
controversy. Already then there was a sense that a new arbi-
trator greater than pope or monarchy had come into the world,
that there were readers and a public opinion. The exodus of
the popes to Avignon, and the divisions and disorders of the
Papacy during the fourteenth century, stimulated this free
judgment upon authority throughout Europe enormously.
At first the current criticism upon the church concerned only
moral and material things. The wealth and luxury of the higher
clergy and the heavy papal taxation were the chief grounds of
complaint. And the earlier attempts to restore Christian sim-
plicity, the foundation of the Franciscans, for example, were
not movements of separation, but movements of revival. Only
later did a deeper and more distinctive criticism develop which
attacked the central fact of the church's teaching and the justifi-
cation of priestly importance; namely, the sacrifice of the mass.
We have sketched in broad (Outlines the early beginnings of
Christianity, and we have shown how rapidly that difficult and
austere conception of the Kingdom of God, which was the cen-
tral idea of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, was overlaid
by a revival of the ancient sacrificial idea, a doctrine more diffi-
cult indeed to grasp, but easier to reconcile with the habits and
dispositions and acquiescences of everyday life in the Near East.
We have noted how a sort of theocrasia went on between Chris-
tianity and Judaism and the cult of the Serapeum and Mithra-
ism and other competing cults^ by which the Mithraist Sunday,
the Jewish idea of blood as a religious essential, the Alexan-
drian importance of the Mother of God, the shaven and
fasting priest, self-tormenting asceticism, and many other mat-
ters of belief and ritual and practice, became grafted upon the
developing religion. These adaptations, no doubt, made the
new teaching much more understandable and acceptable in
Egypt and Syria and the like. They were things in the way
of thought of the dark-white Mediterranean race; they were
congenial to that type. But as we have shown in our story of
Muhammad, these acquisitions did not make Christianity more
acceptable to the Arab nomads ; to them these features made it
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 709
disgusting. And so, too, the robed and shaven monli: and nun
and priest seem to have roused something like an instinctive
hostility in the Nordic barbarians of the North and West. We
have noted the peculiar bias of the early Anglo-Saxons and
Northmen against the monks and nuns. They seem to have
felt that the lives and habits of these devotees were queer and
unnatural.
The clash between what we may call the "dark-white" factors
and the newer elements in Christianity was no doubt intensi-
fied by Pope Gregory Vll's" imposition of celibacy upon the
Catholic priests in the eleventh century. The East had known
religious celibates for thousands of years ; in the West they were
regarded with scepticism and suspicion.
And now in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as the
lay mind of the Nordic peoples began to acquire learning, to
read and write and express itself, and as it came into touch
with the stimulating activities of the Arab mind, we find a
much more formidable criticism of Catholicism beginning, an
intellectual attack upon the priest as priest, and upon the cere-
mony of the mass as the central fact of the religious life,
coupled with a demand for a return to the personal teachings
o-f Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.
We have already mentioned the career of the Englishman
Wycliffe (c. 1320-1384), and how he translated the Bible into
English in order to set up a counter authority to that of the
Pope. He denounced the doctrines of the church about the
mass as disastrous error, and particularly the teaching that the
consecrated bread eaten in that ceremony becomes in some
magical way the actual body of Christ. We will not pursue
the question of transubstantiation, as this process of the mystical
change of the elements in the sacrament is called, into its
intricacies. These are matters for the theological specialist.
But it will be obvious that any doctrine, such as the Catholic
doctrine, which makes the consecration of the elements in the
sacrament a miraculous process performed by the priest, and
only to be performed by the priest, and which makes the sacra-
ment the central necessity of the religious system, enhances the
importance of the priestly order enormously. On the other
hand, the view, which was the typical "Protestant" view, that
this sacrament is a mere eating of bread and drinking of wine
as a personal remembrance of Jesus of Nazareth, does away
710 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
at last with any particular need for a consecrated priest afr all.
Wycliffe himself did not go to this extremity ; he was a priest,
and he remained a priest to the end of his life, he held that
God was spiritually if not substantially present in the conse-
crated bread, but his doctrine raised a question that carried
men far beyond his positions. From the point of view of the
historian, the struggle against Rome that Wycliffe opened be-
came very speedily a struggle of what one may call rational or
layman's religion making its appeal to the free intelligence and
the free conscience in mankind, against authoritative, tradi-
tional, ceremonial, and priestly religion. The ultimate tendency
of this complicated struggle was to strip Christianity as bare
as Islam of every vestige of ancient priestcraft, to revert to
the Bible documents as authority, and to recover, if possible,
the primordial teachings of Jesus. Most of its issues are still
undecided among Christians to this day.
Wycliffe's writings had nowhere more influence than in Bo-
hemia. About 1396 a learned Czech, John Huss, delivered a
series of lectures in the university of Prague based upon the
doctrines of the great Oxford teacher. Huss became rector of
the university, and his teachings roused the church to excom-
municate him (1412). This was at the time of the Great
Schism, just before the Council of Constance (1414-1418)
gathered to discuss the scandalous disorder of the church. We
have already told how the schism was ended by the election of
Martin V. The council aspired to reunite Christendom com-
pletely. But the methods by which it sought this reunion jar
with our modem consciences. Wycliffe's bones were condemned
to be burnt. Huss was decoyed to Constance under promise of
a safe conduct, and he was then put upon his trial for heresy.
He was ordered to recant certain of his opinions. He replied
that he could not recant until he was convinced of his error.
He was told that it was his duty to recant if his superiors
required it of him, whether he was convinced or not. He re-
fused to accept this view. In spite of the Emperor's safe con-
duct, he was burnt alive (1415), a martyr not for any specific
doctrine, but for the free intelligence and free conscience of
mankind.
It would be impossible to put the issue between priest and
anti-priest more clearly than it was put at this trial of John
Huss, nor to demonstrate more completely the evil spirit in
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 711
priestcraft. A colleague of Huss, Jerome of Prague, was burnt
in the following year.
These outrages were followed by an insurrection of the
Hussites in Bohemia (1419), the first of a series of religious
wars that marked the breaking-up of Christendom. In 1420
the Pope, Martin V, issued a bull proclaiming a crusade "for
the destruction of the Wycliffites, Hussites, and all other heretics
in Bohemia," and attracted by this invitation the unemployed
soldiers of fortune and all the drifting blackguardism of Europe
converged upon that valiant country. They found in Bohemia,
under its great leader Ziska, more hardship and less loot than
crusaders were disposed to face. The Hussites were conducting
their affairs upon extreme democratic lines, and the whole coun-
try was aflame with enthusiasm. The crusaders beleaguered
Prague, but failed to take it, and they experienced a series of
reverses that ended in their retreat from Bohemia. A second
crusade (1421) was no more successful. Two other crusades
failed. Then unhappily the Hussites fell into internal dissen-
sions. Encouraged by this, a fifth crusade (1431) crossed the
frontier under Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg.
The army of these crusaders, according to the lowest esti-
mates, consisted of 90,000 infantry and 40,000 horsemen. At-
tacking Bohemia from the west, they first laid siege to the town
of Tachov, but failing to capture the strongly fortified city, they
stormed the little town of Most, and here, as well as in the sur-
rounding country, committed the most horrible atrocities on a
population a large part of which was entirely innocent of any
form of theology whatever. The crusaders, advancing by slow
marches, penetrated further into Bohemia, till they reached the
neighbourhood of the town of Domazlice (Tauss). "It was at
three o'clock on August 14th, 1431, that the crusaders, who
were encamped in the plain between Domazlice and Horsuv
Tyn, received the news that the Hussites, under the leadership
of Prokop the Great, were approaching. Though the Bohemians
were still four miles off, the rattle of their war-wagons and the.
song, 'All ye warriors of God,' which their whole host was chant-
ing, could already be heard." The enthusiasm of the crusaders
evaporated with astounding rapidity. Liitzow ^ describes how
the papal representative and the Duke of Saxony ascended a
convenient hill to inspect the battlefield. It was, they discov-
^Liitzow's Bohemia.
712 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ered, not going to be a battlefield. The German camp was ir
utter confusion. Horsemen were streaming off in every direc-
tion*, and the clatter of empty wagons being driven off almost
drowned the sound of that terrible singing. The crusaders were
abandoning even their loot. Came a message from the Mar-
grave of Brandenburg advising flight ; there was no holding any
of their troops. They were dangerous now only to their own
side, and the papal representative spent an unpleasant night
hiding from them in the forest. ... So ended the Bohemian
crusade.
In 1434 civil war again broke out among the Hussites, in
which the extreme and most valiant section was defeated, and
in 1436 an agreement was patched up between the Council of
Basle and the moderate Hussites, in which the Bohemian church
was allowed to retain certain distinctions from the general
Catholic practice, which held good until the German Reforma-
tion in the sixteenth century.
§ 3
The split among the Hussites was largely due to the drift of
the extremer section towards a primitive communism, which
alarmed the wealthier and more influential Czech noblemen.
Similar tendencies had already appeared among the English
Wyclifiites. They seem to follow naturally enough upon the
doctrines of equal human brotherhood that emerge whenever
there is an attempt to reach back to the fundamentala of
Christianity.
The development of such ideas had been greatly stimulated
by a stupendous misfortune that had swept the world and laid
bare the foundations of society, a pestilence of unheard-of viru-
lence. It was called the Black Death, and it came nearer to
the extirpation of mankind than any other evil has ever done.
It was far more deadly than the plague of Pericles, or the
plague of Marcus Aurelius, or the plague waves of the time of
Justinian and Gregory the Great that paved the way for the
Lombards in Italy. It arose in South Eussia or Central Asia,
and came by way of the Crimea and a Genoese ship to Genoa
and Western Europe. It passed by Armenia to Asia Minor,
Egypt, and North Africa. It reached England in 1348. Two-
thirds of the students at Oxford died, we are told; it is esti-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 718
mated that between a quarter and a half of the whole popular
tion of England perished at this time. Throughout all Europe
there was as great a mortality. Hecker estimates the total as
twenty-five million dead. It spread eastward to China, where,
the Chinese records say, thirteen million people perished. In
China the social disorganization led to a neglect of the river
embankments, and as a consequence great floods devastated the
crowded agricultural lands. ^
Never was there so clear a warning to mankind to seek knowl-
edge and cease from bickering, to unite against the dark powers
of nature. All the massacres of Hulagu and Timurlaue were
as nothing to this. "Its ravages," says J. E. Green, "were
fiercest in the greater towns, where filthy and undrained streets
aiforded a constant haunt to leprosy and fever. In the burial-
ground which the piety of Sir Walter Manny purchased for
the citizens of London, a spot whose site was afterwards marked
by the Charter House, more than fifty thousand corpses are
said to have been interred. Thousands of people perished at
Norwich, while in Bristol the living were hardly able to bury
the dead. But the Black Death fell on the villages almost as
fiercely as on the towns. More than one-half of the priests of
Yorkshire are known to have perished; in the diocese of Nor-
wich two-thirds of the parishes changed their incumbents. The
whole organization of labour was thrown out of gear. The
scarcity of hands made it difficult for the minor tenants to per-
form the services due for their lands, and only a temporary
abandonment of half the rent by the landowners induced the
farmers to refrain from the abandonment of their farms. Eor
a time cultivation became impossible. 'The sheep and cattle
strayed through the fields and corn,' says a contemporary, 'and
there were none left who could drive them.' "
It was from these distresses that the peasant wars of the
fourteenth century sprang. There was a great shortage of
labour and a great shortage of goods, and the rich abbots and
monastic cultivators who owned so much of the land, and the
nobles and rich merchants, were too ignorant of economic laws
^Dr. C. O. Stallybrass says that this plague reached China thirty or
forty years after its first appearance in Europe. Ibn Batuta, the A^£^b
traveller who was in China from 1342 to 1346, first met with it on his
return to Damascus. The Black Death is the human form of a disease
endemic among the jerboas and other small rodents in the districts round
the head of the Caspian Sea.
7U
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to understand that they must not press upon the toilers in this
time of general distress. They saw their property deteriorating,
their lands going out of cultivation, and
they made violent statutes to compel men to
work without any rise in wages, and to pre-
vent their straying in search of better
employment, Naturally enough this pro-
voked "a new revolt against the whole sys-
tem of social inequality which had till then
passed unquestioned as the divine order of
the world. The cry of the poor found a
terrible utterance in the words of 'a, mad
priest of Kent,' as the courtly Froissart
calls him, who for twenty years (1360-
1381) found audience for his sermons, 'in
defiance of interdict and imprisonment, in
the stout yeomen who gathered in the Kent-
ish churchyards. 'Mad,' as the landovraers
called him, it was in the preaching of John
Ball that England first listened to a declara-
tion of natural, equality and the rights of
man. 'Good people,' cried the preacher,
'things will never go well in England so
long as goods be not in common, and so
long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By
what right are they whom we call lords
greater folk than we? On what grounds
have they deserved it ? Why do they hold
us in serfage ? If we all came of the same
father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how
can they say or prove that they are better
than we, if it be not that they make us gain
for them by our toil what they spend in
their pride ? They are clothed in velvet and
warm in their furs and their ermines, while
we are covered with rags. They have wine
and spices and fair bread ; and we oat-cake
and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine
houses ; we have pain and labour, the rain and the wind in the
fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men hold
their state.' A spirit fatal to the whole system of the Middle
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 715
Ages breathed in the popular rhyme ■which condensed the
levelling doctrine of John Ball : 'When Adam delved and Eve
span, who was then the gentleman V " ^
Wat Tyler, the leader of the English insurgents, was assassi-
nated by the Mayor of London in the presence of the young King
Eichard II (1381), and his movement collapsed. The commu-
nist side of the Hussite movement was a part of the same sys-
tem of disturbance. A little earlier than the English outbreak
had occurred the French "Jacquerie" (1358), in which the
French peasants had risen, burnt chateaux, and devastated the
countryside. A century later the same urgency was to sweep
Germany into a series of bloody Peasant Wars. These began
late in the fifteenth century. Economic and religious disturb-
ance mingled in the case of Germany even more plainly than
in England. One conspicuous phase of these German troubles
was the Anabaptist outbreak. The sect of the Anabaptists ap-
peared in Wittenberg in 1521 under three "prophets," and
broke out into insurrection in 1525. Between 1532 and 1535
the insurgents held the town &f Miinster in Westphalia, and
did their utmost to realize their ideas of a religious communism.
They were besieged by the Bishop of Miinster, and under the
distresses of the siege a sort of insanity ran rife in the town ;
cannibalism is said to have occurred, and a certain John of
Leyden seized power, proclaimed himself the successor of King
David, and followed that monarch's evil example by practising
polygamy. After the surrender of the city the victorious bishop
had the Anabaptist leaders tortured very horribly and executed
'The seeds of conflict which grew up into the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
were sown upon ground which is strangely familiar to any writer in 1920.
A European catastrophe had reduced production and consequently in-
creased the earnings of workers and traders. Rural wages had risen by
48 per cent, in England, when an unwise executive endeavoured to en-
force in the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers (1350-51) a return to
the pre-plague wages and prices of 1346, and aimed a blow in the Statute
of 1378 against labour combinations. The villeins were driven to des-
peration by the loss of their recent increase of comfort, and the outbreak
came, as Froissart saw it from the angle of the Court, "all through the
too great comfort pf the commonalty." Other ingredients which entered
into the outbreak were the resentment felt by the new working class at
the restrictions imposed on its right to combine, the objection of the lower
clergy to papal taxes, and a frank dislike of foreigners and landlords.
There was no touch of WycliflFe's influence in the rising. It was at its
feeblest in Leicestershire, and it murdered one of the only other Liberal
churchmen in England. — ^P. ^.
716 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
in the market-place, their mutilated bodies being hung in cages
from a church tower to witness to all the world that decency
and order were now restored in Miinster. . . .
These upheavals of the common labouring men of the West-
ern European countries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
were more serious and sustained than anything that had ever
happened in history before. The nearest previous approach to
them were certain communistic Muhammadan movements in
Persia. There was a peasant revolt in Normandy about a.d.
1000, and there were revolts of peasants (Bagaudse) in the
later Roman Empire, but these were not nearly so formidable.
They show a new spirit growing in human affairs, a spirit alto-
gether different from the unquestioning apathy of the serfs and
peasants in the original regions of civilization or from the
anarchist hopelessness of the serf and slave labour of the Roman
capitalists. All these early insurrections of the workers that
we. have mentioned were suppressed with much cruelty, but the
movement itself was never completely stamped out. From that
time to this there has been a spirit of revolt in the lower levels
of the pyramid of civilization. There have been phases of in-
surrection, phases of repression, phases of compromise and com-
parative pacification ; but from that time until this, the struggle
has never wholly ceased. We shall see it flaring out during the
Erench Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, insur-
gent again in the middle and at the opening of the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, and achieving vast proportions in
the world of to-day. The socialist movement of the nineteenth
century was only one version of that continuing revolt.
In many countries, in France and Germany and Russia, for
example, this labour movement has assumed at times an attitude
hostile to Christianity, but there can be little doubt that this
steady and, on the whole, growing pressure of the common man
in the West against a life of toil and subservience is closely
associated with Christian teaching. The church and the Chris-
tian missionary may not have intended to spread equalitarian
doctrines, but behind the church was the unquenchable per-
sonality of Jesus of Nazareth, and even in spite of himself the
Christian preacher brought the seeds of freedom and responsi-
bility with him, and sooner or later they shot up where he had
been. ,
This steady and growing upheaval of "Labour," its develop-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 717
ment of a consciousness of itself as a class and of a definite
claim upon the world at large, quite as mucli as the presence
of schools and universities, quite as much as abundant printed
books and a developing and expanding process of scientific re-
search, mark off our present type of civilization, the "modern
civilization," from any pre-existing state of human society, and
mark it, for all its incidental successes, as a thing unfinished
and transitory. It is an embryo or it is something doomed to
die. It may be able to solve this complex problem of co-ordi-.
nated toil and happiness, and so adjust itself to the needs of
the human soul, or it may fail and end in a catastrophe as the
Eoman system did. It may be the opening phase of some more
balanced and satisfying order of society, or it may be a system
destined to disruption and replacement by some differently con-
ceived method of human association. Like its predecessor, our
present civilization may be no more than one of those crops
farmers sow to improve their land by the fixation of nitrogen
from the air; it may have grown only that, accumulating cer-
tain traditions, it may be ploughed into the soil again for better
things to follow. Such questions as these are the practical
realities of history, and in all that follows we shall find them
becoming clearer and more important, until in our last chapter
we shall end, as all our days and years end, with a recapitula-
tion of our hopes and fears — and a note of interrogation.
§ 4
The development of free discussion in Europe during this age
of fermentation was enormously stimulated by the appearance
of printed books. It was the introduction of paper from the
East that made practicable the long latent method of printing.
It is still difficult to assign the honour of priority in the use
of the simple expedient of printing for multiplying books. It
is a trivial question that has been preposterously debated. Ap-
parently the glory, such as it is, belongs to Holland. In Haar-
lem, one Coster was printing from movable type somewhen
before 1446. Gutenberg was printing at Mainz about the same
time. There were printers in Italy by 1465, and Caxton set
up his press in Westminster in 1477. But long before this
time there had been a partial use of printing. Manuscripts as
718 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
early as the twelfth century display initial letters that may
have been printed from wooden stamps.
Far more important is the question of the manufacture of
paper. It is scarcely too much to say that paper made the re-
vival of Europe possible. Paper originated in China, where its
us© probably goes back to the second century B.C. In 751 the
Chinese made an attack upon the Arab Moslems in Samarkand ;
they were repulsed, and among the prisoners taken from them
were some skilled paper-makers, from whom the art was learnt-
Arabic paper manuscripts from the ninth century onward still
exist. The manufacture entered Christendom either through
Greece or by the capture of Moorish paper-mills during the
Christian reconquest of Spain. But under the Christian Span-
ish the product deteriorated sadly. Good paper was not made
in Christian Europe until near the end of the thirteenth century,
and then it was Italy which led the world. Only by the four-
teenth century did the manufacture reach Germany, and not
until the end of that century was it abundant and cheap enough
for the printing of books to be a practicable business proposi-
tion. Thereupon printing followed naturally and necessarily,
and the intellectual life of the world entered upon a new and far
more vigorous phase. It ceased to be a little trickle from mind
to mind ; it became a broad flood, in which thousands and pres-
ently scores and hundreds of thousands of minds participated.
One immediate result of this achievement of printing was
the appearance of an abundance of Bibles in the world. An-
other was a cheapening of school-books. The knowledge of
reading spread swiftly. There was not only a great increase of
books in the world, but the books that were now made were
plainer to read and so easier to understand. Instead of toiling
at a crabbed text and then thinking over its significance, readers
now could think unimpeded as they read. With this increase
in the facility of reading, the reading public grew. The book
ceased to be a highly decorated toy or a scholar's mystery. Peo-
ple began to write books to be read as well as looked at by
ordinary people. With the fourteenth century the real history
of the European literatures begins. We find a rapid replace-
ment of local dialects by standard Italian, standard English,
standard French, standard Spanish, and, later, standard Ger-
man. These languages became literary languages in their sev-
eral countries ; they were tried over, polished by use, and made
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 719
exact and vigorous. They became at last as capable of the
burden of philosophical discussion as Greek or Latin.
§ 5
Here we devote a section to certain elementary statements
about the movement in men's religious ideas during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. They are a necessary introduction
to the political history of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies that follows.
We have to distinguish clearly between two entirely different
systems of opposition to the Catholic church. They intermingled
very confusingly. The church was losing its hold upon the
consciences of princes and rich and able people; it was also
losing the faith and confidence of common people. The effect
of its decline of spiritual power upon the former class was to
make them resent its interference, its moral restrictions, its
claims to overlordship, its claim to tax, and to dissolve allegi-
ances. They ceased to respect its power and its property. This
insubordination of princes and rulers was going on throughout
the Middle Ages, but it was only when in the sixteenth century
the church began to side openly with its old antagonist the
Emperor, when it offered him its support and accepted his help
in its campaign against heresy, that princes began to think
seriously of breaking away from the Roman communion and
setting up fragments of a church. And they would never have
done so if they had not perceived that the hold of the church
upon the masses of mankind had relaxed.
The revolt of the princes was essentially an irreligious revolt
against the world-rule of the church. The Emperor Frederick
II, with his epistles to his fellow princes, was its forerunner.
The revolt of the people against the church, on the other hand,
was as essentially religious. They objected not to the church's
power, but to its weaknesses. They wanted a deeply righteous
and fearless church to help them and organize them against the
wickedness of powerful men. Their movements against the
church, within it and without, were movements not for release
from a religious control, but for a fuller and more abundant
religious control. They did not want less religious control, but
more — but they wanted to be assured that it was religious. They
objected to the Pope not because he wa? the religious head of
720 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the world, but because he was not; because he was a wealthy
earthly prince when he ought to have been their spiritual leader.
The contest in Europe from the fourteenth century onward
therefore was a three-cornered contest. The princes wanted to
use the popular forces against the Pope, but not to let those
forces grow too powerful for their own power and glory. For
a long time the church went from prince to prince for an ally
without realizing that the lost ally it needed to recover was popu;
lar veneration.
Because of this triple aspect of the mental and moral conflicts
that were going on in the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, the series of ensuing changes, those changes that are
known collectively in history as the Reformation, took on a
threefold aspect. There was the Reformation according to the
princes, who wanted to stop the flow of money to Rome and to
seize the moral authority, the educational power, and the mate-
rial possessions of the church within their dominions. There
was -the Reformation according to the people, who sought to
make Christianity a power against unrighteousness, and particu-
larly against the unrighteousness of the rich and powerful. And
finally there was the Reformation within the church, of which
St. Francis of Assisi was the precursor, which sought to restore
the goodness of the church and, through its goodness, to restore
its power.
The Reformation according to the princes took the form of a
replacement of the Pope by the prince as the head of the re-
ligion and the controller of the consciences of his people. The
princes had no idea and no intention of letting free the judg-
ments of their subjects more particularly with the object-lessons
of the Hussites and the Anabaptists before their eyes; they
sought to establish national churches dependent upon the throne.
As England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, North Ger-
many, and Bohemia broke away from the Roman communion,
the princes and other ministers showed the utmost solicitude
to keep the movement well under control. Just as much refor-
mation as would sever the link with Rome they permitted ; any-
thing beyond that, any dangerous break towards the primitive
teachings of Jesus or the crude direct interpretation of the
Bible, they resisted. The Established Church of England is
one of the most typical and successful of the resulting com-
promises. It is still sacramental and sacerdotal ; but its organi-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 721
zation centres in the Court and the Lord Chancellor, and though
subversive views may, and do, break out in the lower and less
prosperous ranks of its priesthood, it is impossible for them to
struggle up to any position of influence and authority.
The Reformation according to the common man was very
different in spirit from the Princely Reformation. We have
already told something of the popular attempts at Reformation
in Bohemia and Germany. The wide spiritual upheavals of
the time were at once more honest, more confused, more endur-
ing, and less immediately successful than the reforms of the
princes. Very few religious-spirited men had the daring to
break away or the effrontery to confess that they had broken
away from all authoritative teaching, and that they were now
relying entirely upon their own minds and consciences. That
required a very high intellectual courage.. The general drift
of the common man in this period in Europe was to set up
his new acquisition, the Bible, as a .counter authority to the
church. This was particularly the case with the great leader
of German Protestanism, Mai^in Luther (1483-1546). All
over Germany, and indeed all over Western Europe, there were
now men spelling .over the black-letter pages of the newly
translated and printed Bible, over the Book of Leviticus and
the Song of Solomon and the Revelation of St. John the 'Divine
— strange and perplexing books — quite ,as mtich as over the
simple and inspiring record of Jesus in the Gospels. ^Naturally
they produced strange views and grotesque interpretations. It
is surprising that they were not ;stranger and grotesqiier. But
the human reason is an obstinate thing, and will criticize and
select in spite of its own resolutions. The bulk of these new
Bible students took what their consciences approved from the
Bible and ignored its riddles and contradictions. All over
Europe, wherever the new Protestant churches of the princes
were set up, a living and very active residuum of Protestants
remained who declined to have their religion made over for
them in this fashion. These were the Nonconformists, a medley
of sects, having nothing in common but their resistance to au-
thoritative religion, whether of the Pope or the State. ^ Most, but
not all of these Nonconformists held to the Bible as a divinely
inspired and authoritative guide. This was a strategic rather
' But Nbncomformity was stamped out in Germany. See § 11b of this
chapter.
722
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
than an abiding position, and the modem drift of Nonconform-
ity has been onward away from this original Bibliolatry towards
a mitigated and sentimentalized recognition of the bare teach-
ings of Jesus of Nazareth. Beyond the range of Noncon-
formity, beyond the range of professed Christianity at all, there
is also now a great and growing mass of equalitarian belief and
altruistic impulse in the modern civilizations, which certainly
owes, as we have already asserted, its spirit to Christianity,
which began to appear in Europe as the church lost its grip upon
the general mind.
Let us say a word now of the third phase of the Eeformation
process, the Eeformation within the church. This was already
beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with the ap-
pearance of the Black and
Grey Eriara (Chap, xxxii,
§ 13). In the sixteenth cen-
tury, and when it was most
needed, came a fresh im-
petus of the same kind. This
was the foundation of the So-
ciety of the Jesuits by Inigo
Lopez de Eecalde, better
known to the world of to-day
as St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Ignatius began hia career
as a very tough and gallant
young Spaniard. He was
clever and dexterous and in-
spired by a passion for
pluck, hardihood, and rather showy glory. His love affairs
were free and picturesque. In 1521 the French took the
town of Pampeluna in Spain from the Emperor Charles V,
and Ignatius was one of the defenders. His legs were smashed
by a cannon-ball, and he was taken prisoner. One leg was badly
set and had to be broken again, and these painful and complex
operations nearly cost him his life. He received the last sacra-
ments. In the night, thereafter, he began to mend, and pres-
ently he was convalescent and facing the prospect of a life in
which he would perhaps always be a cripple. His thoughts
turned to the adventure of religion. Sometimes he would think
of a certain great lady, and how, in spite of his broken state,
Xot^ola.
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 723
he might yet win her admiration by some amazing deed; and
sometimes he would think of being in some especial and per-
sonal way the Knight of Christ. In the midst of these eon-
fusions, one night as he My awake, he tells us, a new great
lady claimed his attention ; he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin
Mary carrying the Infant Christ in her arms. "Immediately
a loathing seized him for the former deeds of his life." He
resolved to give up all further thoughts of earthly women, and
to lead a life of absolute chastity and devotion to the Mother
of God. He projected great pilgrimages and a monastic life.
His final method of taking his vows marks him the country-
man of Don Quixote. He had regained his strength, and he
was riding out into the world rather aimlessly, a penniless sol-
dier of fortune with little but his arms and the mule on which
he rode, when he fell into company with a Moor. They went
on together and talked, and presently disputed about religion.
The Moor was the better educated man; he had the best of
the argument, he said offensive things about the Virgin Mary
that were difficult to answer, and he parted triumphantly from
Ignatius. The young Knight of our Lady was boiling with
shame and indignation. He hesitated whether he should go
after the Moor and kill him or pursue the pilgrimage he had'
in mind. At a fork in the road he left things to his mule,
which spared the Moor. He came to the Benedictine Abbey
of Manresa near Montserrat, and here he imitated that peerless
hero of the mediaeval romance, Amadis de Gaul, and kept an
all-night vigil before the Altar of the Blessed Virgin. He pre-
sented his mule to the abbey, he gave his worldly clothes to a
beggar, he laid his sword and dagger upon the altar, and clothed
himself in a rough sackcloth garment and hempen shoes. He
then took himself to a neighbouring hospice and gave himself
up to scourgings and austerities. For a whole week he fasted
absolutely. Thence he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
For some years he wandered, consumed with the idea of
founding a new order of religious knighthood, but not knowing
clearly how to set about this enterprise. He became more and
more aware of his own illiteracy, and the Inquisition, which
was beginning to take an interest in his proceedings, forbade
him to attempt to teach others until he had spent at least four
years in study. So much cruelty and intolerance is laid at the
door of the inquisition that it is pleasant to record that in its
724 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
handling of this heady, imaginative young enthusiast it showed
itself both sympathetic and sane. It recognized his vigour
and possible uses; it saw the dangers of his ignorance. He
studied at Salamanca and Paris, among other places. He was
ordained a priest in 1538, and a year later his long-dreamt-of
order was founded under the military title of the "Company
of Jesus." Like the Salvation Army of modern England, it
made the most direct attempt to bring the generous tradition
of military organization and discipline to the service of religion.
This Ignatius of Loyola who founded the order of Jesuits was
a man of forty-seven ; he was a very difFerent man, much wiser
and steadier, than the rather absurd young man who had aped
Amadis de Gaul and kept vigil in the abbey of Manresa ; and
the missionary and educational organization he now created
and placed at the disposal of the Pope was one of the most
powerful instruments the church had ever handled. These
men gave themselves freely and wholly to be used by the church.
It was the Order of the Jesuits which carried Christianity to
China again after the downfall of the Ming Dynasty, and
Jesuits were the chief Christian missionaries in India and
North America. To their civilizing work among the Indians in
South America we shall presently allude. But their main
achievement lay in raising the standard of Catholic education.
Their schools became and remained for a long time the best
schools in Christendom. Says Lord Verulam {=^ Sir Francis
Bacon) : "As for the pedagogic part . . . consult the schools
of the Jesuits, for nothing better has been put in practice."
They raised the level of intelligence, they quickened the con-
science of all Catholic Europe, they stimulated Protestant
Europe to competitive educational efforts. . . . Some day it
may be we shall see a new order of Jesuits, vowed not to the
service of the Pope, but to the service of mankind.
And concurrently with this great wave of educational effort,
the tone and quality of the church was also greatly improved
by the clarification of doctrine and the reforms in organization
and discipline that were made by the Council of Trent. This
council met intermittently either at Trent or Bologna between
the years 1545 and 1563, and its work was at least as impor-
tant as the energy of the Jesuits in arresting the crimes and
blunders that were causing state after state to fall away from
the Eoman communion. The change wrought by the Reformtl-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 72S
tion within the Church of Eome was as great as the change
wrought in the Protestant churches that detached themseives
from the mother hody. There are henceforth no more open
scandals or schisms to record. But if anything, there has been
an intensification of doctrinal narrowness, and such phases of
imaginative vigour as are represented by Gregory the Great,
or by the group of Popes associated with Gregory VII and
Urban II, or by the group that began with Innocent III, no
longer enliven the sober and pedestrian narrative. The world
war of 1914-1918 was a unique opportunity for the Papacy;
the occasion was manifest for some clear strong voice proclaim-
ing the universal obligation to righteousness, the brotherhood
of men, the claims of human welfare over patriotic passion.
No such moral lead was given. The Papacy seemed to be
balancing its traditional reliance upon the faithful Habsburgs
against its quarrel with republican Prance.
§ 6
The reader must not suppose that the destructive criticism
of the Catholic Church and of Catholic Christianity, and the
printing and study of the Bible, were the only or even the most
important of the intellectual activities of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. That was merely the popular and most con-
spicuous aspect of the intellectual revival of the time. Behind
this: conspicuous and popular awakening to thought and dis-
cussion, other less immediately striking but ultimately more im-
portant mental developments were in progress. Of the trend
of these developments we must now give some brief indications.
They had l)egun long before books were printed, but it was
printing that released them, from obscurity.
We have already told something of the first appearance of
the free intelligence, the spirit of inquiry and plain statement,
in human affairs. One name is central in the record of that
first attempt at systematic knowledge, the name of Aristotle.
We have noted also the brief phase of scientific work at Alex-
andria. From that time onward the complicated economic and
political and religious conflicts of Europe and Western Asia
impeded further intellectual progress. These regions, as we
have seen, fell for tong ages under the sway of the Oriental
type of monarchy and of Oriental religious traditions. Borne
726 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tried and abandoned a slave system of industry. The first
great capitalistic system developed and fell into chaos through
its own inherent rottenness. Europe relapsed into universal
insecurity. The Semite rose against the Aryan, and replaced
Hellenic civilization throughout Western Asia and Egypt by an
Arabic culture. All Western Asia and half of Europe fell
under Mongolian rule. It is only in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries that we find the Nordic intelligence struggling through
again to expression.
We then find in the growing universities of Paris, Oxford,
and Bologna an increasing amount of philosophical discussion
going on. In form it is chiefly a discussion of logical ques-
tions. As the basis of this discussion we find part of the teach-
ings of Aristotle, not the whole mass of writings he left be-
hind him, but his logic only. Later on his work became better
known through the Latin translations of the Arabic edition
annotated by Averroes. Except for these translations of Aris-
totle, and they were abominably bad translations, very little
of the Greek philosophical literature was read in Western
Europe until the fifteenth century. The creative Plato — as dis-
tinguished from the scientific Aristotle — ^was almost unknown.
Europe had the Greek criticism without the Greek impulse.
Some neo-Platonic writers were known, but neo-Platonism had
much the same relation to Plato that Christian Science has to
Christ.
It has been the piractice of recent writers to decry the phil-
osophical discussion of the mediaeval "schoolmen" as tedious
and futile. It was nothing of the sort. It had to retain a
severely technical form because the dignitaries of the church,
ignorant and intolerant, were on the watch for heresy. It
lacked the sweet clearness, therefore, of fearless thought. It
often hinted what it dared not say. But it dealt with funda-
mentally important things, it was a long and necessary struggle
to clear up and correct certain inherent defects of the human
mind, and many people to-day blunder dangerously through
their neglect of the issues the schoolmen discussed.
There is a natural tendency in the human mind to exaggerate
the differences and resemblances upon which classification is
based, to suppose that things called by different names are alto-
gether different, and that things called by the same name are
practically identical. This tendency to exaggerate classification
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 727
produces a thousand evils and injustices. In the sphere of
race or nationality, for example, a "European" will often treat
an "Asiatic" almost as if he were a different animal, while
he will be disposed to regard another "European" as necessarily
as virtuous and charming as himself. He will, as a matter of
course, take sides with Europeans against Asiatics. But, as the
reader of this history must realize, there is no such difiference
as the opposition of these names implies. It is a phantom dif-
ference created by two names. . . .
The main mediaeval controversy was between the "Eealists"
and the "Nominalists," and it is necessary to warm the reader
that the word "Realist" in mediaeval discussion has a meaning
almost diametrically opposed to "Realist" as it is used in the
jargon of modern criticism. The modern "Realist" is one who
insists on materialist details; the mediaeval "Realist" was far
nearer what nowadays we should call an Idealist, and his con-
tempt for incidental detail was profound. The Realists outdid
the vulgar tendency to exaggerate the significance of class.
They held that there was something in a name, in a common
noun that is, that was essentially real. For example, they
held there was a typical "European," an ideal European, who
was far more real than any individual European, Every
European was, as it were, a failure, a departure, a flawed speci-
men of this profounder reality. On the other hand the Nom-
inalist held that the only realities in the case were the individual
Europeans, that the name "European" was merely a name and
nothing more than a name applied to all these instances.
Nothing is quite so difficult as the compression of philo-
sophical controversies, which are by their nature voluminous and
various and tinted by the mental colours of a variety of minds.
With the difference of Realist and Nominalist stated baldly,
as we have stated it here, the modern reader unaccustomed to
philosophical discussion may be disposed to leap at once to the
side of the Nominalist. But the matter is not so simple that
it can be covered by one instance, and here we have purposely
chosen an extreme instance. Names and classifications differ
in their value and reality. While it is absurd to suppose that
there can be much depth of class difference between men called
Thomas and men called William, or that there is an ideal and
quintessential Thomas or William, yet on the other hand there
may be much profounder differences between a white man and
728 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
a Hottentot, and still more between Homo sapiens and Honuf
neanderthalensis. While again the distinction hetween- the class
of pets and the class of useful animals is dependent upon very
slight differences of habit and application, the' difference of a
cat and dog is so profound that the microscope can trace it in
a drop of blood or a single hair.. When this aspect of the
question is considered, it becomes understandable how Nomi-
nalism had ultimately to abandon the idea that names were as
insignificant as labels, and how, out of a revised and amended
Nominalism, there grew up that systematic attempt to find the
true — the most significant and fruitful — classification of things:
and substances which is called Scientific Eesearieh.
And it will be almost as evident that while the tendency of'
Eealism, which is the natural tendency of every untutored mind,,
was towards dogma, harsh divisions, harsh judgments, and un^
compromising attitudes, the tendency of earlier and later Nom-
inalism was towards qualified statements, towards an examina-
tion of individual instances, and towards inquiry and experi-
ment and scepticism.
So while in the market-place and the ways of the common
life men were questioning the morals and righteousness of the
clergy, the good faith and propriety of their celibacy, and th*!
justice of papal taxation; while in theological circles their
minds were set iipon the ques.tion of transubstantiation, the
question of the divinity or not of the bread and wine in the mass, -
in studies and lecture^rooms a wider-reaching criticism of the
methods of ordinary Catholic teaching- was in progress.- We
cannot attempt here to gauge the significance in this process of
such names as Peter Abelard (1079-1142)-, Albertus' Magnus
(1193-1280), and Thomas Aquinas (1225-12Y4). These men
sought to reconstruct Catholicism on a sounder syStenf of reason-
ing. They turned towards Nominalism. Chief among th«ir
critics and successors were Duns Scotus (M308), an Oxford.
Franciscan and, to judge by his sedulous thought and deliber--
ate subtleties, a Scotchman, and Occam, an Englishman ( ?-
134Y). Both these latter, like Averroes (see Chap. xxx:i., § 8);
made a definite distinction between theological and philosophical
truth; they placed theology on a pinnacle, but they placed it
where it could no longer obstruct research; Duns Scotus de-
clared that it was impossible to prove by reasoning the exist-
ence of God or of the Trinity or the credibility of the
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 729
Act of Creation; Occam was still more insistent upon this
separation — ^which manifestly released scientific inquiry from
dogmatic control. A later generation, benefiting by the free-
doms towards which these pioneers worked, and knowing not
the sources of its freedom, had the ingratitude to use the name
of Scotus as a term for stupidity, and so we have our English
word "Dunce." Says Professor Pringle Pattison,^ "Occam,
who is still a Scholastic, gives us the Scholastic justification
of the spirit which had already taken hold upon Eog6r Bacon,
and which was to enter upon its rights in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries."
Standing apart by himself because of his distinctive genius
is this Koger Bacon (about 1210 to about 1293), who was also
English. He was a Franciscan of Oxford, and a very typical
Englishman indeed, irritable, hasty, honest, and shrewd. He
was two centuries ahead of his world. Says H. O. Taylor of
him ^ :
"The career of Bacon was an intellectual tragedy, conform-
ing to the old principles of tragic art : that the hero's character
shall be large and noble, but not flawless, inasmuch as the fatal
consummation must issue from character, and not happen
through chance. He died an old man, as in his youth, so in
his age, a devotee of tangible knowledge. His pursuit of a
knowledge which was not altogether learning had been ob-
structed by the Order of which he was an unhappy and rebel-
lious member ; quite as fatally his achievement was deformed
from within by the principles which he accepted from his time.
But he was responsible for his acceptance of current opinions ;
and as his views roused the distrust of his brother Friars, his
intractable temper drew their hostility on his head. Persuasive-
ness aind tact were needed by one who would impress such novel
views as his upon his fellows, or, in the thirteenth century, es-
cape persecution for their divulgence. Bacon attacked dead and
living worthies, tactlessly, fatuously, and unfairly. Of his life
scarcely anything is knovsm, save from his allusions to him-
self and others ; and these are insufficient for the construction
of even a slight consecutive narrative. Born; studied at Ox-
ford ; went to Paris, studied, experimented ; is at Oxford again,
and a Franciscan; studies, teaches, becomes suspect to his
^ Encyolopwdia Britanmca, article "Scholasticism."
'^The Medieval Umd, by Henry Osborn Taylor.
780 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Order, is sent back to Paris, kept under surveillance, receives
a letter from the Pope, writes, writes, writes — his three best-
known works; is again in trouble, confined for many years,
released, and dead, so very dead, body and fame alike, until
partly unearthed after five centuries."
The bulk of these "three best-known works" is a hotly phrased
and sometimes quite abusive, but entirely just attack on the
ignorance of the times, combined with a wealth of suggestions
for the increase of knowledge. In his passionate insistence upon
the need of experiment and of collecting knowledge, the spirit
of Aristotle lives again in him. "Experiment, experiment,"
that is the burthen of Roger Bacon. Yet of Aristotle himself
Roger Bacon fell foul. He fell foul of him because men, in-
stead of facing facts boldly, sat in rooms and pored over the
bad Latin translations which were then all that was available
of the master. "If I had my way," he wrote, in his intem-
perate fashion, "I should burn all the books of Aristotle, for the
study of them can only lead to a loss of time, produce error, and
increase ignorance," a sentiment that Aristotle would probably
have echoed could he have returned to a world in which his
works were not so much read as worshipped — and that, as
Roger Bacon showed, in these most abominable translations.
Throughout his books, a little disguised by the necessity of
seeming to square it all witb orthodoxy for fear of the prison
and worse, Roger Bacon shouted to mankind, "Cease to be
Tuled by dogmas and authorities; look at the world!" Four
chief sources of ignorance he denounced ; respect for authority,
custom, the sense of the ignorant crowd, and the vain proud
unteachableness of our dispositions. Overcome but these, and
a world of power would open to men: —
"Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, so that
great ships suited to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be
borne with greater speed than if they were full of men. Like-
wise cars may be made so that without a draught animal they
may be moved cum impetu incestimahili, as we deem the scythed
chariots to have been from which antiquity fought. And flying
machines are possible, so that a man may sit in the middle
turning some device by. which artificial wings may beat the air
in the manner of a flying bird."
Occam, Roger Bacon, these are the early precursors of a great
movement in Europe away from "Realism" towards reality.
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 731
For a time the older influences fought against the naturalism of
the new Nominalists. In 1339 Occam's books were put under a
ban and Nominalism solemnly condemned. As late as 1473 an
attempt, belated and unsuccessful, was made to bind teachers
of Paris by an oath to teach Realism. It was only in the six-
teenth century with the printing of books and the increase of
intelligence that the movement from absolutism towards experi-
ment became massive, and that one investigator began to co-
operate with another.
Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries experi-
menting with material things was on the increase, items of
knowledge were being won by mai, but there was no inter-
related advance. The work was done in a detached, furtive,
and inglorious manner. A tradition of isolated investigation
came into Europe from the Arabs, and a considerable amount
of private and secretive research was carried on by the alche-
mists, for whom modern writers are a little too apt with their
contempt. These alchemists were in close touch with the glass
and metal workers and with the herbalists and medicine-makers
of the times ; they pried into many secrets of nature, but they
were obsessed by "practical" ideas ; they sought not knowledge,
but power; they wanted to find out how to manufacture gold
from cheaper materials, how to make men immortal by the
elixir of life, and such-like vulgar dreams. Incidentally in
their researches they learnt much about poisons, dyes, metal-
lurgy, and the like; they discovered various refractory sub-
stances, and worked their way towards clear glass and so to
lenses and optical instruments; but as scientific men tell us
continually, and as "practical" men still refuse to learn, it is
only when knowledge is sought for her own sake that she gives
rich and unexpected gifts in any abundance to her servants.
The world of to-day is still much more disposed to spend money
on technical research than on pure science. . Half the men in
our scientific laboratories still dream of patents and secret
processes. We live to-day largely in the age of alchemists, for
all our sneers at their memory. The "business man" of to-day
still thinks of research as a sort of alchemy.
Closely associated with the alchemists were the astrologers,
who were also a "practical" race. They studied the stars —
to tell fortunes. They lacked that broader faith and under-
standing which induces men simply to study the stars.
732 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Not until the fifteenth century did the ideas which Eoger
Bacon first expressed begin to produce their first-fruits in new
knowledge and a widening outlook. Then suddenly, as the
sixteenth century dawned, and as the world recovered from the
stoma of social trouble that had followed the pestilences of the
fourteenth century, Western Europe broke out into a galaxy
of names that outshine the utmost scientific reputations of the
best age of Greece. Nearly every nation contributed, the
reader will note, for science knows no nationality.
One of the earliest and most splendid in this constellation
is the Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a man
with an almost miraculous vision for reality. He was a nat-
uralist, an anatomist,, an engineer, as well as a very great artist. ■
He was the first modem to realize the true nature of fossils,^
he made note-books of observations that still amaze us, he was
convinced of the practicability of mechanical flight. Another
great name is that of Copernicus, a Pole (1473-1543), who
made the first clear analysis of the movements of the heavenly
bodies and showed that the earth moves round the sun. Tycho
Brahe (1546-1601), a Dane working at the university of
Prague, rejected this latter belief, but his observations of celes-
tial movements were of the utmost value to his successors,
and especially to the German, Kepler (1571-1630). Galileo
Galilei (1564-1642) was the founder of the science of dy-
namics. Before his time it was believed that a weight a hun-
dred times greater than another would fall a hundred times
as fast. Galileo denied this. Instead of arguing about it like
a scholar and a gentleman, he put it to the coarse test of experi-
ment by dropping two unequal weights from an upper gallery
of the leaning tower of Pisa — ^to the horror of all erudite men.
He made what was almost the first telescope, and he developed
the astronomical views of Copernicus; but the church, still
struggling gallantly against the light, decided that to believe that
the earth was smaller and inferior to the sun made man and
Christianity of no account, and diminished the importance of
the Pope; so Galileo, under threats of dire punishment, when
he was an old man of sixty-nine, was made to recant this view
and put the earth back in its place as the immovable centre of
the universe. He knelt before ten cardinals in scarlet, an
assembly august enough to overawe truth itself, while he
^Op. Chap. II, § 1, towards the end.
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 733
ainended the creation he had disarranged. The story has it
that as he rose from his knees, after repeating his recantation,
he muttered, "Epptcr si Muove" — "it moves nevertheless."
Newton (1642-1727) was bom in the year of Galileo's
death. By his discovery of the law of gravitation he completed
the clear vision of the starry universe that we have to-day.
But Newton carries us into the eighteenth century. He carries
us too far for the present chapter. Among the earlier names,
that of Dr. Gilbert (1540-1603), of Colchester, is pre-eminent.
Rogfer Bacon had preached experiment, Gilbert was one of the
first to practise it. There can be little doubt that his work,
-which was chiefly upon magnetism, helped to form the ideas of
Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (1561-1626), Lord Chancellor
to James I of England. This Francis Bacon has been called
the "Father of Experimental Philosophy," but of his share in
the development of scientific work far too much has been made.^
He was, says Sir R. A. Gregory, "not the founder but the
apostle" of the scientific method. His greatest service to sci-
ence was a fantastic book. The New Atlantis. "In his New
Atlantis, Francis Bacon planned in somewhat fanciful lan-
guage a palace of invention, a great temple of science, where the
pursuit of knowledge in all its branches was to be organized
on principles of the highest eflSciency."
From this Utopian dream arose the Eoyal Society of Lon-
'don, which received a Royal Charter from Charles II of Eng-
land in 1662. The essential use and virtue of this society was
and is publication. Its formation marks a definite step from
isolated inquiry towards co-operative work, from the secret and
solitary investigations of the alchemist to the frank report and
"open discussion which is the life of the modern scientific process.
For the true scientific method is this: to trust no statements
■without verification, to test all things as rigorously as possible,
to keep no secrets, to attempt no monopolies, to give out one's
best modestly and plainly, serving no other end but knowledge.
The long-slumbering science of anatomy was revived by Har-
vey (1578-1657), who demonstrated the circulation of the
blood. . '.'■'.■ Presently the Dutchman, Leeuwenhoek (1632-
1723) brought the first crude microscope to bear upon the hid-
den minutisB of life.
These are but some of the brightest stars amidst that in-
*See Gregory's Discovery, chap. vi. ,
734 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
creasing multitude of men who have from the fifteenth century
to our own time, with more and more collective energy and
vigour, lit up our vision of the universe, and increased our
power over the conditions of our lives.
§ 1
We have dealt thus fully with the recrudescence of scientific
studies in the Middle Ages because of its ultimate importance
in human affairs. In the long run, Koger Bacon is of more
significance to mankind than any monarch of his time. But the
contemporary world, for the most part, knew nothing of this
smouldering activity in studies and lecture-rooms and alchemist's
laboratories that was presently to alter all the conditions of
life. The church did indeed take notice of what was afoot, but
only because of the disregard of her conclusive decisions. She
had decided that the earth was the very centre of God's creation,
and that the Pope was the divinely appointed ruler of the earth.
Men's ideas on these essential points, she insisted, must not be
disturbed by any contrary teaching. So soon, however, as she
had compelled Galileo to say that the world did not move she
was satisfied ; she does not seem to have realized how ominous it
was for her that, after all, the earth did move.
Very great social as well as intellectual developments were
in progress in Western Europe throughout this period of the
later Middle Ages. But the human mind apprehends events far
more vividly than changes ; and men for the most part, then as
now, kept on in their own traditions in spite of the shifting
scene about them.
In an outline such as this it is impossible to crowd in the
clustering events of history that do not clearly show the main
process of human development, however bright and picturesque
they may be. We have to record the steady growth of towns
and cities, the reviving power of trade and money, the gradual
re-establishment of law and custom, the extension of security,
the supersession of private warfare that went on in Western
Europe in the period between the first crusade and the six-
teenth century. Of much that looms large in our national
histories we cannot tell anything. We have no space for the
story of the repeated attempts of the English kings to conquer
Scotland and set themselves up as kings of France, nor of how
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 735
the Norman English established themselves insecurely in Ire-
land (twelfth century), and how Wales was linked to the Eng-
lish crown (1282). All through the Middle Ages the struggle of
England with Scotland and France was in progress ; there were
times when it seemed that Scotland was finally subjugated and
when the English king held far more land in France than its
titular sovereign. In the English histories this struggle with
France is too often represented as a single-handed and almost
successful attempt to conquer France. In reality it was a joint
enterprise undertaken in concert first with the Flemings and
Bavarians and afterwards with the powerful French vassal state
of Burgundy to conquer and divide the patriinony of Hugh
Capet. Of the English rout by the Scotch at Bannockbum
(1314), and of William Wallace, and Eobert the Bruce, the
Scottish national heroes, of the battles of Crecy (1346) and
Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) in France, which shine
like stars in the English imagination, little battles in which
sturdy bowmen through some sunny hours made a great havoc
among French knights in armour, of the Black Prince
and Henry V of England, and of how a peasant girl, Joan
of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, drove the English out of her
country again (1429-1430), this history relates nothing.
For every country has such cherished national events. They
are the ornamental tapestry of history, and no part of the
building. Rajputana or Poland, Russia, Spain, Persia, and
China can all match or outdo the utmost romance of western
Europe, with equally adventurous knights and equally valiant
princesses and equally stout fights against the odds. Nor can we
tell how Louis XI of France (1461-1483), the son of Joan of
Arc's Charles VII, brought Burgundy to heel and laid the
foundations of a centralized Frencfh monarchy. It signifies
more that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, gunpowder,
that Mongol gift, came to Europe so that the kings (Louis XI
included) and the law, relying upon the support of the growing
towns, were able to batter dovni the castles of the half-inde-
pendent robber knights and barons of the earlier Middle Ages
and consolidate a more centralized power. The fighting nobles
and knights of the barbaric period disappear slowly from his-
tory during these centuries ; the Crusades consumed them, such
dynastic wars as the English Wars of the Roses killed them off,
the arrows from the English long-bow pierced them and stuck
736 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
out a yard behind, infantry ao armed swept them from the
stricken field ; they became reconciled to trade and changed their
nature. They disappeared in everything but a titular sense
from the west and south of Europe before they disappeared from
Germany. The knight in Germany remained a professional
fighting man into the sixteenth century.
Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries in western
Europe, and particularly in France and England, there sprang
up like flowers a multitude of very distinctive and beautiful
buildings, cathedrals, abbeys, and the like, the Gothic architec-
tura This lovely efflorescence marks the appearance of a body
of craftsmen closely linked in itsbeginnings to the church. In
Italy and Spain, too, the world was beginning to build freely
and beautifully again. At first it was the wealth of the church
that provided most of these buildings; then kings and merchants
also began to build.
From the twelfth century onward, with th© increase of trade,
there was a great revival of town life throughout Europe.
Prominent among these towns were Venice, with its dependents
Kagusa and Corfu, Genoa, Verona, Bologna, Pisa, Florence,
Naples, Milan, Marseilles, Lisbon, Barcelona, Karbonne, Tours,
Orleans, Bordeaux, Paris, Ghent, Bruges, Boulogne, London,
Oxford, Cambridge, Southampton, Dover, Antwerp, Hamburg,
Bremen, Cologne, Mayence, Nuremberg, Munich, Leipzig, Mag-
deburg, Breslau, Stettin, Dantzig, Konigsberg, Riga, Pskof,
Novgorod, Wisby, and Bergen.
"A West Gentian town, between 1400 and 1500,^ embodied
all the achievements of progress at that tim^e, although from a
modern standpoint much seems wanting. . . . The streets were
mostly narrow and irregularly built, the houses chiefly, of
wood, while almost every burgher kept his .cattle in the house,
and the herd of swine which was driven every morning by the
town herdsman to the pasture-ground formed an inevitable part
of city life.^ In Frankfort-on-Main it was unlawful after 1481
to keep swine in the Altstadt, but in, the Neustadt and in Sajchr
senhausen this custom remained as a matter of course. It was
only in 1645, after a corresponding attempt in 155,6 had failed,
that the swine^pens in the inner town were pulled' dP^^^' ^*
' From Dr. Tille in Helmolt's History of the WorM. " ' ' ■
"Charles Dickens in his Amerioan T^otes mentions swine; in Broadway,
New York, in the middle nineteenth century. „' ,, ; , -,,, .. :
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 737
Leipzig. The rich burghers, who occasionally took part in the
great trading companies, were conspicuously wealthy landown-
ers, and had extensive courtyards with large bams inside the
town walls. The most opulent of them owned those splendid
patrician houses which we still admire even to-day. But even
in the older towns most houses of the fifteenth century have
disappeared ; only here and there a building with open timber-
work and overhanging storeys, as in Bacharach or Miltenburg,
reminds us of the style of architecture then customary in the
houses of burghers. The great bulk of the inferior population,
who lived on mendicancy, or got a livelihood by the exercise of
the inferior industries, inhabited squalid hovels outside the
town; the town wall was often the only support for these
wretched buildings.. The internal fittings of the houses, even
amongst the wealthy population, were very defective according
to modem ideas ; the Gothic style was as little suitable for the
petty details of objects of luxury as it was splendidly adapted
for the building of churches and town halls. The influence
of the Renaissance added much to the comfort of the house.
"The fourteenth and fifteenth century saw the building of
numerous Gothic town churches and town halls throughout Eu-
rope which still in many cases' serve their original purpose.
The power and prosperity of the towns find their best expres-
sion in these and in the fortifications, with their strong towers
and gateways. Every picture of a town of the sixteenth or
later centuries shows conspicuously these latter erections for
the protection and honour of the town. The town did many
things which in our time are done by the State. Social prob-
lems were taken up by town administration or the corresponding
municipal organization. The regulation of trade was the con-
cern of the guilds in agreement with the council, the care of
the poor belonged to the church, while the council looked after
the protection of the town walls and the very necessary fire
brigades. The council, mindful of its social duties, superin-
tended the filling of the municipal granaries, in order to have
supplies in years of scarcity. Such store-houses were erected
in almost every town during the fifteenth century. Tariffs
of prices for the sale of all wares, high enough to enable every
artisan to make a good livelihood, and to give the purchaser a
guarantee for the quality of the wares, were maintained. The
town was also the chief capitalist; as a seller of annuities on
738
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 739
lives and inheritances it was a banker and enjoyed unlimited
credit. In return it obtained means for the construction of
fortifications or for such occasions as the acquisition of sover-
eign rights from the hand of an impecunious prince."
For the most part these European towns were independent
or quasi-independent aristocratic republics. Most admitted a
vague overlordship on the part of the church, or of the emperor
or of a king. Others were parts of kingdoms, or even the
capitals of dukes or kings. In such cases their internal free-
dom was maintained by a royal or imperial charter. In Eng-
land the Royal City of Westminster on the Thames stood cheek
by jowl with the walled city of London, into which the King
came only with ceremony and permission. The entirely free
Venetian republic ruled an empire of dependent islands and
trading ports, rather after the fashion of the Athenian republic.
Genoa also stood alone. The Germanic towns of the Baltic
and North Sea from Kiga to Middelburg in Holland, Dort-
mund, and Cologne were loosely allied in a confederation, the
confederation of the Hansa towns, under the leadership of
Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, a confederation which was still
more loosely attached to the empire. This confederation, which
included over seventy towns in all, and which had depots in
Novgorod, Bergen, London, and Bruges, did much to keep the
northern seas clean of piracy, that curse of the Mediterranean
and of the Eastern seas. The Eastern Empire throughout its
last phase, from the Ottoman conquest of its European hinter-
land in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century until its fall
in 1453, was practically only the trading town of Constanti-
nople, a town state like Genoa or Venice, except that it was en-
cumbered by a corrupt imperial court.
The fullest and most splendid developments of this city life
of the later Middle Ages occurred in Italy. After the end of
the Hohenstaufen line in the thirteenth century, the hold of
the Holy Roman Empire upon North and Central Italy weak-
ened, although, as we shall tell, German Emperors were still
crowned as kings and emperors in Italy up to the time of
Charles V (circ. 1530). There arose a number of quasi-inde-
pendent city states to the north of Rome, the papal capital.
South Italy and Sicily, however, remained under foreign domin-
ion. Genoa and her rival, Venice, were the great trading sea-
ports of this time; their noble palaces, their lordly paintings,
740 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
still win our admiration. Milan, at the foot of the St. Gothard
pass, revived to wealth and power. Inland was Florence, a
trading and financial centre which, under the almost monarchi-
cal rule of the Medici family in the fifteenth century, enjoyed a
second "Periclean age." But already before the time of these
cultivated Medici "bosses," Florence had produced much beau-
tiful art, Giotto's tower (Giotto, born 1266, died 1337) and
the Duomo (by Brunellesco, bom 1377, died 1446) already ex-
isted. Towards the end of the fourteenth century Florence be-
came the centre of the rediscovery, restoration, and imitation
of antique art (the ''Renaissance" in its narrower sense).
Artistic productions, unlike philosophical thought and scientific
discovery, are the ornaments and expression rather than the cre-
ative substance of history, and here we cannot attempt to trace
the development of the art of Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Dona-
tello (died 1466), Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519), Michel-
angelo (1475-1564), and Eaphael (died 1520). Of the sci-
entific speculation of Leonardo we have already had occasion
to speak. ,
§ 8
In 1453, as we have related, Constantinople fell. Through-
out the next century the Turkish pressure upon Europe was
heavy and continuous. The boundary line between Mongol
and Aryan, which had lain somewhere east of the Pamirs in
the days of Pericles, had receded now to Hungary. Constanti-
nople had long been a mere island of Christians in a Turk-
ruled Balkan peninsula. Its fall did much to interrupt the
trade with the East.
Of the two rival cities of the Mediterranean, Venice was
fenerally on much better terms with the Turks than Genoa.
Ivery intelligent Genoese sailor fretted at the trading monopoly
of Venice, and tried to invent some way of getting through it
or round it. And there were now new peoples taking to the sea
trade, and disposed to look for new ways to the old markets be-
cause the ancient routes were closed to them. The Portuguese,
for example, were developing an Atlantic coasting trade. The
Atlantic was waking up again after a vast period of neglect
that dated from the Roman murder of Carthage. It is rather
a delicate matter to decide whether the western European was
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 741
pushing out into the Atlantic or whether he was being pushed
out into it by the Turk, who lorded it in the Mediterranean until
the Battle of Lepanto (1571). The Venetian and Genoese
ships were creeping round to Antwerp, and the Hansa town
seamen were coming south and extending their range. And
there were considerable developments of seamanship and ship-
building in progress. The Mediterranean is a sea for galleys
and coasting. But upon the Atlantic Ocean and the North
Sea winds are more prevalent, seas run higher, the shore is
often a danger rather than a refuge. The high seas called
for the sailing ship, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
it appears keeping its course by the compass and the stars.
By the thirteenth century the Hansa merchants were already
sailing regularly from Bergen across the grey cold seas to the
Northmen in Iceland. In Iceland men knew of Greenland, and
adventurous voyagers had long ago found a further land be-
yond, Vinland, where the climate was pleasant and where men
could settle if they chose to cut themselves off from the rest of
human kind. This Vinland was either Nova Scotia or, what
is more probable, New England.
All over Europe in the fifteenth century merchants and
sailors were speculating about new ways to the East. The Por-
tuguese, unaware that Pharaoh Necho had solved the problem
ages ago, were asking whether it was not possible to go round
to India by the coast of Africa. Their ships followed in the
course that Hanno took to Cape Verde (1445). They put
out to sea to the west and found the Canary Isles, Madeira, and
the Azores.^ That was a fairly long stride across the Atlantic.
In 1486 a Portuguese, Diaz, reported that he had rounded
the south of Africa. ...
A certain Genoese, Christopher Columbus, began to think
more and more of what is to us a very obvious and natural en-
terprise, but which strained the imagination of the fifteenth
century to the utmost, a voyage due west across the Atlantic.
At that time nobody knew of the existence of America as a
separate continent, Columbus knew that the world was a
sphere, but he underestimated its size; the travels of Marco
Polo had given him an exaggerated idea of the extent of Asia,
'In these maritime adventures in the eastern Atlantic and the west
African coast the Portuguese were preceded in the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and early fifteenth centuries by Normans, Catalonians, and Gienoese.
742 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and he supposed therefore that Japan, with its reputation for
a great wealth of gold, lay across the Atlantic in about the
position of Mexico, He had made various voyages in the At-
lantic; he had been to Iceland and perhaps heard of Vinland,
which must have greatly encouraged these ideas of his, and this
project of sailing into the sunset became the ruling purpose
of his life. He was a penniless man, some accounts say he was
a bankrupt, and his only way of securing a ship was to get
someone to entrust him with a command. He went first to
King John II of Portugal, who listened to him, made difficul-
ties, and then arranged for an expedition to start without his
knowledge, a purely Portuguese expedition. This highly dip-
lomatic attempt to steal a march on an original man failed, as it
deserved to fail; the crew became mutinous, the captain lost
heart and returned (1483), Columbus then went to the Court
of Spain.
At first he could get no ship and no ' powers. Spain was
assailing Granada, the last foothold of the Moslems in western
Europe. Most of Spain had been recovered by the Christians
between the eleventh and the thirteenth century ; then had come
a pause ; and now all Spain, united by the marriage of Ferdi-
nand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, was setting itself to
the completion of the Christian conquest. Despairing of Span-
ish help, Columbus sent his brother Bartholomew to Henry
VII of England, but the adventure did not attract that canny
monarch. Finally in 1492 Granada fell, and then, helped by
some merchants of the town of Palos, Columbus got his ships,
three ships, of which only one, the Santa Maria, of 100 tons
burthen, was decked. The two other were open boats of half
that tonnage.
The little expedition — it numbered altogether eighty-eight
men! — ^went south to the Canaries, and then stood out across
the unknown seas, in beautiful weather and with a helpful wind.
The story of that momentous voyage of two months and nine
days must be read in detail to be appreciated. The crew was
full of doubts and fears; they might, they feared, sail on for
ever. They were comforted by seeing some birds, and later on
by finding a pole worked with tools, and a branch with strange
berries. At ten o'clock, on the night of October 11th, 1492,
Columbus saw a light ahead ; the next morning land was sighted,
and, while the day was still young, Columbus landed on the
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 743
shores of the new world, richly apparelled and bearing the royal
banner of Spain. . . .
Early in 1493 Columbus returned to Europe. He brought
gold, cotton, strange beasts and birds, and two wild-eyed painted
Indians to be baptized. He had not found Japan, it was
thought, but India. The islands he had found were called there-
fore the West Indies. The same year he sailed again with a
great expedition of seventeen ships and fifteen thousand men,
with the express permission of the Pope to take possession of
these new lands for the Spanish crown. . . .
We cannot tell of his experiences as Governor of this Spanish
colony, nor how he was superseded and put in chains. In a
little while a swarm of Spanish adventurers were exploring the
new lands. But it is interesting to note that Columbus died
ignorant of the fact that he had discovered a new continent.
He believed to the day of his death that he had sailed round
the world to Asia.
The news of his discoveries caused a great excitement through-
out western Europe. It spurred the Portuguese to fresh at-
tempts to reach India by the South African route. In 1497,
Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Zanzibar, and thence,
with an Arab pilot, he struck across the Indian Ocean to Cali-
cut in India. In 1515 there were Portuguese ships in Java
and the Moluccas. In 1519 a Portuguese sailor, Magellan, in
the employment of the Spanish King, coasted to the south of
South America, passed through the dark and forbidding "Strait
of Magellan," and so came into the Pacific Ocean, which had
already been sighted by Spanish explorers who had crossed the
Isthmus of Panama.
Magellan's expedition continued across the Pacific Ocean
westward. This was a far more heroic voyage than that of
Columbus ; for eight and ninety days Magellan sailed unflinch-
ingly over that vast, empty ocean, sighting nothing but two
little desert islands. The crews were rotten with scurvy ; there
was little water and that bad, and putrid biscuit to eat. Eats
were hunted eagerly; cowhide was gnawed and sawdust de-
voured to stay the pangs of hunger. In this state the expedi-
tion reached the Ladrones. They discovered the Philippines,
and here Magellan was killed in a fight with the natives. Sev-
eral other captains were murdered. Five ships had started with
Magellan in August 1519 and two hundred and eighty men;
744 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
in July 1522 tlie Vitioria, ■with a remnant of one and thirty
men aboard, returned up the Atlantic to her anchorage near the
Mole of Seville, in the river Guadalquivir — the first ship that
ever circumnavigated this planet.
The English and French and Dutch and the sailors of the
Hansa towns came rather later into this new adventure of ex-
ploration. They had not the same keen interest in the eastern
trade. And vrhen they did come in, their first efforts were
directed to sailing round the north of America as Magellan
had sailed round the south, and to sailing round the north
of Asia as Vasco da Gama had sailed round the south of Africa.
Both these enterprises v?ere doomed to failure by the nature of
things. Both in America and the East, Spain and Portugal
had half a century's start of England and Erance and Holland.
And Germany never started. The King of Spain was Emperor
of Germany in those crucial years, and the Pope had given the
monopoly of America to Spain, and not simply to Spain, but
to the kingdom of Castile. This must have restrained both
Germany and Holland at first from American adventures. The
Hansa towns were quasi-independent ; they had no monarch be-
hind them to support them, and no unity among themselves for
so big an enterprise as oceanic exploration. It was the mis-
fortune of Germany, and perhaps of the world, that, as we will
presently tell, a storm of warfare exhausted her when all the
Western powers were going to this newly opened school of trade
and administration upon the high seas.
Slowly throughout the sixteenth century the immense good
fortune of Castile unfolded itself before the dazzled eyes of
Europe. She had found a new world, abounding in gold and
silver and wonderful possibilities of settlement. It was all
hers, because the Pope had said so. The Court of Eome, in
an access of magnificence, had divided this new world of
strange lands which was now opening out to the European im-
agination, between the Spanish, who were to have everything
west of a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, and
the Portuguese, to whom everything east of this line was given.
At first the only people encountered by the Spaniards in
America were savages of a Mongoloid type. Many of these
savages were cannibals. It is a misfortune for science that
the first Europeans to reach America were these rather incurious
Spaniards, without any scientific passion, thirsty for gold, and
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
745
746 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
full of the blind bigotry of a recent religious war. They made
few intelligent observations of the native methods and ideas of
these primordial people. They slaughtered them, they robbed
them, they enslaved them, and baptized them; but they made
small note of 1;he customs and motives that changed and van-
ished undei" their assault. They were as destructive and reck-
less as the British in Tasmania, who shot the last Palseolithic
men at sight, and put out poisoned meat for them to find.
Great' areas of the American interior were prairie land,
whose nomadic tribes subsisted upon vast herds of the now prac-
tically extinct bison. In their manner of life, in their painted
garments and their free use of paint, in their general physical
characters, these prairie Indiana sbowed remarkable resem-
blances to the Later Palaeolithic men of the Solutrian age in
Europe. But they had no horses. They seem to have made no
very great advance from that primordial state, which was prob-
ably the' state in which their ancestors had reached America.
They had, however, a knowledge of metals, and most notably
a free use of native copper, but no knowledge of iron. As the
Spaniards penetrated into the continent, they found and they
attacked, plundered, and destroyed two separate civilized sys-
tems that had developed in America, perhaps quite independ-
ently of. the civilized systems of the old world. One of them
was the Aztec civilization- of Mexico; the other, that of Peru.
They had probably arisen out of the heliolithic sub-civilization
that had; drifted in canoes across the Pacific, island by island,
step by step, age after age, from its region of origin round and
about the Mediterranean. We have already noted one or
two points of interest in these tinique developments.. Along
their own lines these civilized peoples of America had reached
to a statp of affairs roughly parallel with the culture of pre-
dynastic Egypt or the early Sumerian cities. Before the Az-
tecs and the Peruvians there had been still earlier civilized
beginnings which had either been destroyed by their successors,
or which had failed and relapsed of their own accord.
The Aztecs seem to have been a conquering, less civilized
people, dominating a more civilized community, as the Aryans
dominated Greece and ifTorth India. Their religion was a
primitive, complex, and cruel system, in which human sacrifices
and ceremonial cannibalism played a large part. Their minds
were haunted by the idea of sin and the need fol- bloody
propitiations.
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 747
The Aztec civilization was destroyed by an expedition tinder
Cortez. He had eleven ships, four hundred Europeans, two
hundred Indians, sixteen horses, and fourteen guns. But in
Yucatan he picked up a stray Spaniard who had been a captive
with the Indians for some years, and who had more or less
learnt various Indian languages, and knew that the Aztec rule
was. deeply resented by many of its subjects. It was in alliance
with these that Cortez advanced over the mountains into the
valley of Mexico (1519). How he entered Mexico, how its
monarch, Montezuma, was killed by his own people for favour-
ing , the Spaniards, how Cortez was besieged in Mexico, and
escEtped with the loss of his guns and horses, and how after a
terrible retreat to the coast he was able to return and subju-
gate the whole land, is a romantic and picturesque story wnich
we cannot even attempt to tell here. The population of Mexico
to this day is largely of native blood, but Spanish has replaced
the native languages, and such culture as exists is Catholic and
Spanish^ '. ;
The still more curious Peruvian state fell a victim to antjther
advpnturer, Pizarro. He sailed from the Isthmus of 'Panama
in 1530, with an expedition of a hundred and sixty-eight
Spaniards. Like Cortez in Mexico, he availed himself oi the
native dissensions to secure possession of the doomed state.
Like Coitez, too, who, had made a captive and tool of Monte-
zuma, he; seized the Inca of Peru by treachery, and attem|pted
to rule in his name. Here again we cannot do justice t<> the
tangle of, subsequent events, the ill-planned insurrection^ of
theinatives, the arrival of Spanish reinforcements from Mexico,
and the reduction of the state to a Spanish province. Nor can
we tell much more of the swift spread of Spanish adventurers
over the rest of America, outside the Portuguese reservation
of Brazil. To begin with, each story is nearly always a story
of adventurers and of cruelty and loot. The Spaniards ill-
treated the natives, they quarrelled among themselves, the law
and order of Spain were months and years away from them;
it was only very slowly that the phase of violence and conquest
passed into a phase of government and settlement. But long
before there was much order in America, a steady stream of
gold and silver began to flow across the Atlantic to the Spanish
government and people.
After the first violent treasure hunt came plantation and; the
748
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
working of mines. With that arose the earliest labour difficulty
in the new world. At first the Indians were enslaved with
much brutality and injustice; but to- the honour of the Spaniards
this did not go uncriticized. The natives found champions, and
v#ry valiant champions, in the Dominican Order and in a
secular priest, Las Gasas, who was for a time a planter and
slave-owner in Cuba until his conscience smote him. An im-
portatioii of negro slaves from West Africa also began quite
early in the sixteenth century. After some retrogression,
Mexico, Brazil, and Spanish South America began to develop
into great slave-holding, wealth-producing lands. ...
^e cannot tell here, as we would like to do, of the fine civi-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 749
lizing work done in South America, and more especially among
the natives, by the Franciscans, and presently by the Jesuits,
■who came into America in the latter half of the sixteenth cen-
tury (after 1549). . , .
So it was that Spain rose to a temporary power and promi-
nence in the world's affairs. It was a very sudden and very
memorable rise. From the eleventh century this infertile and
corrugated peninsula had been divided against itself, its Chris-
tian population had sustained a perpetual conflict with the
Moors; then by what seems like an accident it achieved unity
just in time to reap the first harvest of benefit from the discov-
ery of America. Before that time Spain had always been a
poor country ; it is a poor country to-day, almost its only wealth
lies in its mines. For a century, however, through its monop-
oly of the gold and silver of America, it dominated the world.
The east and centre of Europe were still overshadowed by the
Turk and Mongol ; the discovery of America was itself a conse-
quence of the Turkish conquests ; very largely through the Mon-
golian inventions of compass and paper, and under the stimulus
of travel in Asia and of the growing knowledge of eastern
Asiatic wealth and civilization, came this astonishing blazing up
of the mental, physical, and social energies of the "Atlantic
fringe." For cloSe in the wake of Portugal and Spain came
France and England, and presently Holland, each in its turn
taking up the role of expansion and empire overseas. The cen-
tre of interest for European history which once lay in the Levant
shifts now from the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea to the
Atlantic. For some centuries the Turkish Empire and Central
Asia and China are relatively neglected by the limelight of the
European historian. Nevertheless, these central regions of the
world remain central, and their welfare and participation is
necessary to the permanent peace of mankind.
§ 9
And now let us consider the political conseqiiences of this
vast release and expansion of European ideas in tlie fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries with the new development of science,
the exploration of the world, the great dissemination of knowl-
edge through paper and printing, and the spread of a new crav-
ing for freedom and equality. How was it affecting the men-
750 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tality of the courts and kings that directed the formal affairs
of mankind? We have already shown how the hold of the
CathQlic church upon the consciences of men was weakening at
this time. Only the Spaniards, fresh from a long and finally
successful religious war against Islam, had any greiat enthusiasm
left, for the church. The Turkish conquests and the expansion
of the known world robbed the Roman Empire of its former
prestige of universality. The old mental and moral framework-
of _Europe was breaking up. What was happening to the dukes,
princes, and kings of the old dispensation during this age of
change?
In England, as we shall tell later, very subtle and interesting
tendencies were leading towards a new method in government,
the method of parliament, that was to spread later on over
nearly all the world. But of these tendencies the world at large
was as yet practically unconscious in the sixteenth century.
Few monarchs have left us intimate diaries ; to be a monarch
and to be frank are incompatible feats; monarchy is itself
necessarily a pose. The historian is obliged to speculate about
the contents of the head that wears a crown as best he can. No
doubt regal : psychology has varied with the ages. We have,
however, the writings of a very able man of this pieriod who set
himself to study and expound the arts of kingcraft as they
were understood in the later fifteenth century. This was the
celebrated Florentine, Wiccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). He
was of good birth and reasonable fortune, and he had entered the
public employment of the republic by the time he was twenty-
five. For eighteen years he was in the Florentine diplomatic
service; he was engaged upon a number of embassies, and in
1500 he was sent to France to deal with the French king.
From 1502 to 1512 he was the right-hand man of the gonfalonier
(the life president) of Florence, Soderini. Machiavelli re-
organized the Florentine army, wrote speeches for the gon-
falonier, was indeed the ruling intelligence in Florentine
affairs. When Soderini, who had leant upon the French,
was overthrown by the Medici family whom the Spanish sup-
portedj, Machiavelli, though he tried to transfer his services to
the victors, was tortured on the rack and expelled. He took
up his quarters in a villa near San Casciano, twelve miles or
so from Floreijce, and there entertained himself partly by
collecting and writing salacious stories to a friend in Rome,
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 751
and partly by writing books about Italian jralitics in which be
could no longer play a part. Just as we owe Marco Polo's
book of travels to his imprisonment, so we owe Machiavelli's
Prince, his Florentine History, and The Art of War to his
downfall and the boredom of San Casciano.
The enduring value of these books lies in the clear idea they
give us of the quality and limitations of the ruling minds of this
age. Their atmosphere was his atmosphere. If he brought an
exceptionally keen intelligence to their business, that merely
throws it into a brighter light.
His susceptible mind had been greatly impressed by the cun-
ning, cruelty, audacity, and ambition of Caesar Borgia, the
Duke of Valentino, in whose camp he had spent some months
as an envoy. In his Prince he idealized this dazzling person.
Caesar Borgia (1476-1507), the reader must understand, was
the son of Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia (1492-1503).
The reader will perhaps be startled at the idea of a Pope having
a son, but this, we must remember, was a pre-reformation Pope.
The Papacy at this time was in a mood of moral relaxation, and
though Alexander was, as a priest, pledged to live unmarried,
this did not hinder him from living openly with a sort of
unmarried wife, and devoting the resources of Christendom to
the advancement of his family. Caesar was a youth of spirit
even for the times in which he lived; he had early caused. his
elder brother to be murdered, and also the husband of his sister,
Lucrezia. He had indeed betrayed and murdered a number of
people. With his father's a'ssistance he had become duke of a
wide area of Central Italy when Machiavelli visited him. He
had shown little or no military ability, but considerable dex-
terity and administrative power. His magnificence was of the
most temporary sort. When presently his father died, it col-
lapsed like a pricked bladder. Its unsoundness was not evident
to Machiavelli. Our chief interest in Caesar Borgia is that he
realized Machiavelli's highest ideals of a superb and successful
prince.
Much has been written to show that Machiavelli had .wide
and noble intentions behind his political writings, but all such
attempts to ennoble him will leave the sceptical reader, who in-
sists on reading the lines instead of reading imaginary things
between the lines of Machiavelli's work, cold towards him. This
man m^mfestly had no belief in any righteousness at all, no
752 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
belief in a God ruling over the world or in a God in men's
hearts, no understanding of the power of conscience in men.
Not for him were Utopian visions of world-wide human order,
or attempts to realize the City of God. Such things he did not
want. It seemed to him that to get power, to gratify one's
desires and sensibilities and hates, to swagger triumphantly in
the world, must be the crown of human desire. Only a prince
could fully realize such a life. Some streak of timidity or
his sense of the poorness of his personal claims had evidently
made him abandon such dreams for himself; but at least he
might hope to serve a prince, to live close to the glory, to share
the plunder and the lust and the gratified malice. He might
even make himself indispensable ! He set himself, therefore, to
become an "expert" in prince-craft. He assisted Soderini to
fail. When he was racked and rejected by the Medicis, and
had no further hopes of being even a successful court parasite,
he wrote these handbooks of cunning to show what a clever
servant some prince had lost. His ruling thought, his great
contribution to political literature, was that the moral obliga-
tions upon ordinary men cannot bind princes.
There is a disposition to ascribe the virtue of patriotism to
Machiavelli because he suggested that Italy, which was weak
and divided — she had been invaded by the Turks and saved
from conquest only by the death of the Sultan Muhammad, and
she was being fought over by the French and Spanish as though
she was something inanimate — ^might be united and strong; but
he saw in that possibility only a great opportunity for a prince.
And he advocated a national army only because he saw the
Italian method of carrying on war by hiring bands of foreign
mercenaries was a hopeless one. At any time such troops might
go over to a better paymaster or decide to plunder the state
they protected. He had been deeply impressed by the victories
of the Swiss over the Milanese, but he never fathomed the
secret of the free spirit that made those victories possible. The
Florentine militia he created was a complete failure. He was
a man bom blind to the qualities that make peoples free and
nations great.
Yet this morally blind man was living in a little world of
morally blind men. It is clear that his style of thought was
the style of thought of the court of his time. Behind the princes
of the new states that had grown up out of the wreckage of
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 753
the empire and the failure of the Church, there were every-
where chancellors and secretaries and trusted ministers of the
Machiavellian type. Cromwell, for instance, the minister of
Henry VIII of England after his breach with Eome, regarded
Machiavelli's Prince as the quintessence of political wisdom.
When the princes were themselves sufficiently clever they, too,
were Machiavellian. They were scheming to outdo one an-
other, to rob weaker contemporaries, to destroy rivals, so that
they might for a brief interval swagger. They had little or
no vision of any scheme of human destinies greater than this
game they played against one another.
§ 10
It is interesting to note that this Swiss infantry which had
so impressed Machiavelli was no part of the princely system
of Europe. At the very centre of the European system there
had arisen a little confederation of free states, the Swiss Con-
754 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
federation, which after some centuries of nominal adhesion to
the Holy Roman Empire, became frankly republican in 1499.
As early as the thirteenth century, the peasant farmers of three
valleys round about the Lake of Lucerne took it into their
heads that they would dispense with an overlord and manage
their own affairs in their own fashion. Their chief trouble
came from the claims of a noble family of the Aar valley, the
Habsburg family. In 1245 the men of Schwyz burnt the castle
of New Habsburg which had been set up hear Lucerne to over-
awe them ; its ruins are still to be seen there.
This Habsburg family was a growing and acquisitive one;*
it had lands and possessions throughout Germany ; and in 1273,;
after the extinction of the Hohenstauf en house, Eudolf of;
Habsburg' was elected Emperor of Germany, a distinction that
became at last practically hereditary in his family. None the
less, the men of Uti, Schwyz, and Unterwalden did not mean
to be ruled by any Habsburg ; they formed an Everlasting;
League in 1291, and they held their own among the mountains
from that time onward to this day, first as free members of
the empire and then as an absolutely independent confedera-'
tion. Of the heroic legend of William Tell ^we have no space
to tell here, nor have we room in which to trace the gradual
extension of the confederation to its present boundaries.
Eomansh, Italian, and French-speaking valleys were presently
added to this valiant little republican group. The red cross
flag of Geneva has become the symbol of international humanity
in the midst of warfare. The bright and thriving cities of
Switzerland have been a refuge for free men from a score of
tyrannies.
Most of the figures that stand out in history, do so through
some exceptional personal quality, good or bad, that makes,
them more significant than their fellows. But there was born
at Ghent in Belgium in 1500 a man of commonplace abilities
and melancholy temperament, the son of a mentally defective
mother who had been married for reasons of state, who' was,
through no fault of his own, to become the focus of the accumu-
lating stresses of Europe. The historian must give him a quite
unmerited and accidental prominence side by -side with such'
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 735
marked individualities as Alexander and Charlemagne and
Frederick II. This was the Emperor Charles V. For a time
he had an air of being the greatest monarch in Europe since
Charlemagne. Both he and his illusory greatness were the
results of the matrimonial statecraft of his grandfather, the
;Emperor Maximilian I (born 1459, died 1519).
Some, families have fought, others have intrigued their way
to world power; the Habsburg married their way. Maximilian
began his career with the inheritance of the Habsburgs, Aus-
tria, Styria, part of Alsace and other districts ; he married-^
the lady's name scarcely matters to us — rthe Netherlands atid
Burgundy. Most of Burgundy slipped from him after his first
wife's death, but the Netherlands he held. Then he tried un-
successfully to marry Brittany. He became Emperor in suc-
cession to his father, Frederick III, in 1493, and married the
duchy of Milan. Finally he married his son to the weak-
minded daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Ferdinaiid
and Isabella of Columbus, who not only reigned over a freshly
united Spain, and over Sardinia and the kingdom of the two
Sicilies, but by virtuue of the papal gifts to Castile, over
all America west of Brazil. So it was that Charles, his. grand-
son, inherited most of the American continent and between a
third and a half of what the Turks had left of Europe. The
father of Charles died in 1506, and Maximilian did his' best
to secure his grandson's election to the imperial throne.
Charles succeeded to the Netherlands in 1506; he became
practically king of the Spanish dominions, his mother being
imbecile, when his grandfather Ferdinand died in 1516; and
his grandfather Maximilian dying in 1519, he was in 1520
elected Emperor at the still comparatively tender age of
. twenty.
His election as Emperor was opposed by the young and bril-
liant French King, Francis I, who had succeeded to the French
throne in 1515 at the age of twenty-one. The candidature of
Francis was supported by Leo X (1513), who also requires
from us the epithet brilliant. It was indeed an age of brillia:^it
monarchs. It was the age of Baber in India (1526-1530)
and Suleiman in Turkey (1520). Both Leo and Francis
dreaded the concentration of so much power in the hands of
one man as the election of Charles threatened. The only other
monarch who seemed to matter in Europe was Henry VIII,
756
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 757
who had become King of England in 1509 at the age of
eighteen. He also offered himself as a candidate for the empire,
and the imaginative English reader may amuse himself by
working out the possible consequences of such an election.
There was much scope for diplomacy in this triangle of kings.
Charles on his way from Spain to Germany visited England
and secured the support of Henry against Francis by bribing
his minister, Cardinal Wolsey. Henry also made a great parade
of friendship with Francis, there was feasting, tournaments,
and such-like antiquated gallantries in France, in a courtly
picnic known to historians as the Field of the Cloth of Gold
(1520). Knighthood was
becoming a picturesque af-
fectation in the sixteenth
century. The Emperor
Maximilian I is still called
"the last of the knights" by
German historians.
The election of Charles
was secured, it is to be noted,
by a vast amount of bribery.
He had as his chief sup-
porters and creditors the
great German business
house of the Fuggers. That
large treatment of money
and credit which we call
finance, which had gone out
of European political life with the collapse of the Roman
Empire, was now coming back to power. This appearance
of the Fuggers, whose houses and palaces outshone those of
the emperors, marks the upward movement of forces that had
begun two or three centuries earlier in Cahors in France and
in Florence and other Italian towns. Money, public debts,
and social unrest and discontent re-enter upon the miniature
stage of this Ovilvne. Charles V was not so much a Habsburg
as a Fugger emperor.
For a time this fair, not very intelligent-looking young man
with the thick upper lip and long, clumsy chin — features which
still afflict his descendants — ^was largely a puppet in the hands
of his ministers. Able servants after the order of Machiavelli
(after SvaxutcL)
rS8 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
guided him at first in tlie arts of kingship. Then in a slow but
effectual way he began to assert himself. He was confronted
at the very outset of his reign in Germany with the perplexing
dissensions of Christendom; The revolt against the papal rule
which had been going on since the days of Kuss and Wycliffe
had been recently exasperated by a new and unusually cynical
selling of indulgences to raise money for the completion of
St. Peter's at Eome. A monk named Luther, who had been
consecrated as a piriest, who had taken to reading the Bible, and
who, while visiting Eome on the business of his order, had been
much shocked by the levity and worldly splendour of the
Papacy, had eome forwar.d against these papal expedients at
IfVittenberg (1517), offering disputation and propounding cer-
tain theses. An important controversy ensued. At first Luther
carried on this controversy in Latin, but presently took to Ger-
man, and speedily had the peoplp in a ferment. Charles found
this dispute raging when he came from Spain to Germany. He
summoned an assembly or "diet" of the empire at Worms on
the Ehine. To this, Luther, who had been asked to recant his
views by Pope Leo X, and who had refused to do so, was sum-
moned. He came, and, entirely in the spirit of Huss, refused
to recant unless he was convinced of his error by logical argu-
ment or the authority of Scripture. But his protectors among
the princes were too powerful for him to suffer the fate of John
Huss.
Here was a perplexing situation for the young Emperor.
There is reason to suppose that he was inclined at first to sup-
port Luther against the Pope. Leo X had opposed the election
of Charles, and was friendly with his rival, Francis I. But
Charles V was not a good Machiavellian, and he had acquired
in Spain a considerable religious sincerity. He decided against
Luther. Many of the German princes, and especially the Elec-
tor of Saxony, sided with the reformer. Luther went into
hiding under the protection of the Saxon Elector, and Charles
found himself in the presence of the opening rift that was to
split Christendom into two contending camps.
Close upon these disturbances, and probably connected with
them, came a widespread peasants' revolt throughout Germany.
This outbreak frightened Luther very effectually. He was
shocked by 'its excesses, and from that time forth the Eeforma-
.tion he advocated ceased to be a Reformation according to the
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
759
Francis- l.f-.'^^^t
m^
W^-m
^P
Sk^^Fwji-
""^s
^^SHPi' 'HI^h
#
l-:,t^"^^^ik^ ;'',;,
people and became a Eeformation according to the princes. He
lost his confidence in that free judgment for which he had stood
up so manfully. ,
Meanwhile Charles realized that his great empire was in very
serious danger both from the west and from the east. On the
west of him was his spirited rival, Francis I ; to the east was
the Turk in Hungary, in alliance with Francis and clamouring
for certain arrears , of tribute
from the Austrian dominions.
Charles had the money and army
of Spain at his disposal, but it
was extremely difficult to get any
effective support in money from
Germany. His grandfather had
developed a German infantry on
the Swiss model, very much
upon the lines expounded in
Machiavelli's Art of War, but
these troops had to be paid and
his imperial subsidies had to be
supplemented by unsecured borrowings, which were finally to
bring his supporters, the Fuggers, to ruin.
On the whole, Charles, in alliance with Henry VIII, was
successful against Francis I and the Turk. Their chief battle-
field was north Italy ; the generaMhip was dull on both sides ;
their advances and retreats depended chiefiy. on the arrival of
reinforcements. The German army invaded France, failed to
take Marseilles, fell back into Itaily, lost Milan, and was be-
sieged in Pavia. Francis I made a long and unsuccessful siege
of Pavia, was caught by fresh German . forces, defeated^
wounded, and taken prisoner. He sent back a message to his
queen that all was "lost but honour," made a humiliating peace,
and broke it as soon as he was liberated| so. that, even the salvage
of honour was but temporary. Henry VIII and the Pope, in
obedience to the rules of Machiavellian strategy, now went over
to the side of France in order to prevent Charles becoming too
powerful. The German troops in Milan, under the Constable
of Bourbon, being unpaid, forced rather than followed their
commander into a raid upon Kome. They stormed the city and
pillaged it (1527). The Pope took refuge in the Castle of St.
Angelo while the looting and slaughter went on, He bought
760
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
off the German troops at last by the payment of four hundred
thousand ducats. Ten years of such stupid and confused fight-
ing impoverished all Europe and left the Emperor in possession
of Milan. In 1530 he was crowned by the Pope — ^he was the
last German Emperor to be crowned by the Pope — at Bologna-
One thinks of the rather dull-looking blonde face, with its long
lip and chin, bearing the solemn expression of one who endures
a doubtful though probably honourable ceremony.
Meanwhile the Turks were making great headway in Hun-
gary, They had defeated and killed the King of Hungary in
1526, they held Buda-Pesth, and in 1529, as we have already
noted, Suleiman the Magnificent very nearly took Vienna. The
Emperor was greatly concerned by these advances, and did his
utmost to drive back the Turks, but he found the greatest diffi-
culty in getting the German princes to unite even with this
formidable enemy upon their very borders. Francis I remained
implacable for a time, and there was a new French war ; but in
1538 Charles won his rival over to a more friendly attitude by
ravaging the south of France. Francis and Charles then formed
an alliance against the Turk, but the Protestant princes, the
German princes who were resolved to break away from Kome,
had formed a league, the Schmal-
kaldic League (named after the
little town of Schmalkalden in
Hesse, at which its constitution
was arranged), against the Em-
peror, and in the place of a great
campaign to recover Hungary for
Christendom Charles had to turn
his mind to the gathering internal
struggle in Germany. Of that
struggle he saw only the opening
war. It was a struggle, a san-
guinary irrational bickering of
HenruVHI
■'--Va;,; :,' ';ij;&<ii?VS'
princes for ascendancy, now flaming into war and destruction,
now sinking back to intrigues and diplomacies ; it was a snake's
sack of Machiavellian policies, that was io go on writhing
incurably right into the nineteenth century, and to waste and
desolate Central Europe again and again.
The Emperor never seems to have grasped the true forces at
work in these gathering troubles. He was for his time and sta-
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 761
tion an exceptionally -worthy man, and he seems to have taken
the religious dissensions that were tearing Europe into warring
fragments as genuine theological differences. He gathered diets
and councils in futile attempts at reconciliation. Formulse and
confessions were tried over. The student of German history
must struggle with the details of the Eeligious Peace of Nurem-
berg, the settlement at the diet of Ratisbon, the Interim of Augs-
burg, and the like. Here we do
but mention them as details in the
worried life of this culminating
emperor. As a matter of fact,
hardly one of the multifarious
princes and rulers in Europe
seems to have been acting in good
faith. The wide-spread religious
trouble of the world, the desire
of the common people for truth
and social righteousness, the
spreading knowledge of the time,
all those things were merely coun-
ters in the imaginations of princely diplomacy. Henry VIII
of England, who had begun his career with a book written
against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with
the title of "Defender of the Faith," being anxious to divorce
his first wife in favour of an animated young lady named Anne
Boleyn,^ and wishing also to turn against the Emperor in
favour of Francis I and to loot the vast wealth of the church
in England, joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530.
Sweden, Denmark, and ITorway had already gone over to the
Protestant side.
The German religious war began in 1546, a few months after
the death of Martin Luther. We need not trouble about the
incidents of the campaign. The Protestant Saxon army was
badly beaten at Lochau. By something very like a breach of
faith Philip of Hesse, the Emperor's chief remaining antag-
onist, was caught and imprisoned, and the Turks were bought
off by the payment of an annual tribute. In 1547, to the great
relief of the Emperor, Francis I died. So by 1647 Charles
'But he had a better reason for doing this in the fact that there was
no heir to the throne. The Wars of the Roses, a bitter dynastic war,
were still very vivid in the minds of English people. — F. H. H.
762 THE OUTLINE Of. HISTORY
got to a kind of settlement, and, made his last efforts to effect
peace where there was no peace, In 1552 all Germany was at
war again, only a precipitate flight from Innsbruck saved
iQharles froni capture, and in .1552, with the treaty of Passau,
c^pie; another unstable, equilibrium., .Charles was now utterly
weary of the cares and splendours of empire; he had never had
a very sound constitution, he was naturally indolent, and he
was suffering greatly .from gout. He abdicated. He made
over i.all his. soverei^ rights in .Germany to his brother Ferdi-
kand, and .iSpain $nd the Ifetherlands he resigned to his son
Philip. He then retired to a monastery at Yuste, among the
oak and ;ph€5atiiut forests in the -hills to the north of the Tagus
yalleyj aiid tliere he died in 1558.
f Much has been written in a sentimental vein of this retire-
ment, this renunjeiation of | the world by this tired majestic
Titan, world-weary, seeking in an austere solitude his peace
with God. But his retreat was neither solitary nor austere;
he had with him nearly a'iundred and fifty attendants; his
est^^tjjishment had all the indulgences without the fatigues of a
court, and Philip II was a dutiful son to whom his father's
advice was' a command. As . for his austerities, let Prescott
witness : "In the almost daily correspondence between Quixada,
or Gaztelu, and the Secretary. of State, at Valladolid, there is
scarcely a letter that does not turn more or less on the Emperor's
eating! or his illness. The one seems naturally to follow, like
a running commentary, on the, other. It is rare that such
topics have foj^rmed the burden of communications with the
department of . state. It must have been no easy matter for
the secretary to preserve his gravity in the perusal of despatches
in which politics and gastronomy were so strangely mixed
together. The courier from Valladolid to Lisbon was ordered
to, make .a detour, so as to take Jarandilla in his route^. and
bring, supplies for the royal table. On Thursdays he was to
bring fish to serve for the jour waigre that was to follow. The
trout in. the neighbourhood, Charles, thought too small; so
fttherS) of a larger size, were to be sent from Valladolid. Fish
of every kind was to his taste, as, indeed, was anything that
in its nature or habits at all approached to fish. Eels, frogs,
oysters, occupied an important place in the royal bill of fare.
Potfed.fish, especially 'anchovies, found great favour with him;
and He regretted that he had not brought a better supply of
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 763
these from the Low Countries. On an eel^pasty he particularly
doted." '. . .^ - ; ' i ; .
In 1554 Charles had ohtained a bull from Pope Julius III
granting him a dispensation from fasting, and allowing him to
break his fast early in the morning even when he was to take
the sacrament. : ; . .
"That Charles was not altogether unmindful of his wearing
apparel in Yuste, may be inferred from the fact that his ward-:
robe contained no less than sixteen robes of silk and velvet,
lined with ermine, or eider down, or the soft hair, of the Bar-
ba.ry goat. As to the furniture and upholstery of his apart-
ments, how little reliance is to be placed on the reports, so care-
lessly circulated about these may be gathered from a single
glance at the inventory of his effects, prepared by; Quixada
and Gaztelu soon after their master's death. Among the items
we find carpets from Turkey atid Alcarez, canopies , of velvet
and other stuffs, hangings of fine black cloth, which since his
mother's death he had always chosen for his own bedroom;
while the remaining apartments were provided with, no less
than twenty-five suits of tapestiy, from the looms of Flanders,
richly embroidered with figures ■ of ' animals and with land*
scapes." . . . "Among the different pieces of plate; we find
some of pure gold, and others especially noted for their curious
workmanship ; and as this was an age in which the art of work-
ing the precious metals was carried to the highest perfection,,
we cannot doubt that some of the finest specimens had come
into the Emperor's possession. The whole amount of plate was
estimated at between twelve and thirteen thousand ounces in-
weight." . . .^ i
Charles had never acquired the habit of reading, but he
would be read aloud to at meals after the fashion of Charle-
magne, and would make what one narrator describes .aS; a'
"sweet and heavenly commentary." He also amused himself
with technical toys, by listening to music or sermons, and : by
attending to the imperial business that still came drifting in
to him. The death of the Empress, to whom he was greatly
attached, had turned his uaind towards religion, which in his
case took a punctilious and ceremonial form; every Friday in
Lent he scourged himself with the rest of the monks, with, stlch
•Prescott'B Appendix to Robertson's History of Ghwrles V, ' • •
'■Prescott. ■' ' ' ' ' J ' ';■'
764 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
good ■will as to draw blood. These exercises and the gout
released a bigotry in Charles that had been hitherto restrained
by considerations of policy. The appearance of Protestant
teaching close at hand in VaUadolid roused him to fury. "Tell
the grand inquisitor and his council from me to be at their
posts, and to lay the axe at the root of the evil before it spreads
further." . . . He expressed a doubt whether it would not
be well, in so black an affair, to dispense with the ordinary
course of justice, and to show no mercy; "lest the criminal,
if pardoned, shotdd have the opportunity of repeating his
crime." He recommended, as an example, his own mode of
proceeding in the Netherlands, "where all who remained
obstinate in their errors were burned alive, and those who were
admitted to penitence were beheaded."
Among the chief pleasures of the Catholic monarch between
meals during this time of retirement were funeral services.
He not only attended every actual funeral tiiat was celebrated
at Yuste, but he had services conducted for the absent dead,
he held a funeral service in memory of his wife on tha anjii-
versary of her death, and finally he celebrated his own obsequies.
"The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of
wax-lights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The
brethren in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor's
household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge
catafalque, shrouded also in black, which had been raised in
the centre of the chapel. The service for the burial of the
dead was then performed; and, amidst the dismal wail of the
monks, the prayers ascended for the departed spirit, that it
might be received into the mansions of the blessed. The sor-
rowful attendants were melted to tears, as the image of their
master's death was presented to their ininds — or they were
touched, it may be, with compassion by this pitiable display
of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing
a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the
spectator of his own obsequies ; and the doleful ceremony was
concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest,
in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the Almighty."
Other accounts make Charles wear a shroud and lie in the
coffin, remaining there alone until the last mourner had left
the chapel.
Within two months of this masquerade he was dead. And
RENASCENCE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION 765
the greatness of the Holy Eoman Empire died with him. The
Holy Eoman Empire struggled on indeed to the days of Napo-
leon, but as an invalid and dying thing.
§ llB
Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V, took over his aban-
doned work and met the German princes at the diet of Augs-
burg in 1555. Again there was an attempt to establish a
religious peace. Nothing could better show the quality of that
attempted settlement and the blindness of the princes and
statesmen concerned in it, to the deeper and broader processes
of the time, than the form that settlement took. The recogni-
tion of religious freedom was to apply to the states and not
to individual citizens; cujus regio ejus religio, "the confession
of the subject was to be dependent on that of the territorial
lord."
§ llo
We have given as much attention as we have done to the
writings of Machiavelli and to the personality of Charles V
because they throw a flood of light upon the antagonisms of the
next period in our history. This present chapter has told the
story of a vast expansion of human horizons and of a great
increase and distribution of knowledge, we have seen the con-
science of common men awakening and intimations of a new
and profounder social justice spreading throughout the general
body of the Western civilization. But this process of light and
thought was leaving courts and the political life of the world
untouched. There is little in Machiavelli that might not have
been written by some clever secretary in the court of Chosroes
I or Shi Hwang-ti — or even of Sargon lor Pepi. While the
world in everything else was moving forward, in political ideas,
in ideas about the relationship of state to state and of sovereign
to citizen, it was standing still. Nay, it was falling back. For
the great idea of the Catholic Church as the world city of God
had been destroyed in men's minds by the church itself, and
the dream of a world imperialism had, in the person of Charles
[7, been carried in effigy through Europe to limbo. Politically
766 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
thq world seemed falling tack towards personal monarchy j of
theAssyrian, or Macedonian pattern.
It is not that the newly awakened intellectual energies of
western European men were too absorbed in theological re-
statement, in scientific investigations, in exploration and mer-
cantile development, to give a thought to the claims and
responsibilities of rulers. Not only were common men drawing
ideas of a theocratic, or republican or communistic character
from the now accessible Bible, but the renewed study of the
Greek classics was bringing the creative and fertilizing spirit
of Plato , to bear upon the Western mind. In England Sir
Thomas Mqre produced a quaint imitation of Plato's' Republic
in his Utopia,, setting out a sort of autocratic communism. In
Naples, a century later, a certain friar Oampanella was equally
bold in his City of the Sun. But such discussions were having
no immediate effect upon political arrangements. Compared
with the massiveness of the task, these books do indeed seem
poetical and scholarly and flimsy. (Yet later on the Utopia
was to bear fruit in the English Poor Laws.) The intellectual
and moral development of the Western mind and this drift
towards Machiavellian monarchy in Europe were for a time
going on concurrently in the same world, but they were going
on almost; independently. The statesmen still schemed and
mancEuvred. as if nothing grew but the power of wary and
fortunate kings. It was only in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries that these two streams of tendency, the stream of
general ideas and the drift of traditional and egoistic mon-
archical diplomacy, interfered and came into conflict.
XXXV
PEINCES, PAELIAMENTS, AND POWERS
i 1. Princes and Foreign Policy. § 2. The Dutch BepubUc._
§ 3. The English Republic. § 4, The Break-up and Disor-:
der of Oermany. § 5. The Splendours of Grand Monarchy
in Europe. § 6. The Growth of the Idea of Great Powers.
§ Y. The Crowned Republic of Poland and. Its Fate. § 8.
The First Scramble for Empire Overseas. § 9. Britnin
.Dominates India. § 10. Russia's Ride to the' Pacific.
§ 11. What Gibbon Thought of the World m 1780. § 12.
The Social Truce Draws to an End.
IN^ the preceding chapter we have traced the heginnings of
a new civilization, the civilization of thie "modem" type
which becomes at the present time world-wide. It is still
a vast unformed thing, still only in the opening phases of
growth and development to-day. We have seen the mediaeval
ideas of the Holy Koman Empire and of the Roman Church,
as forms of iiniversal law and order, fade in its dawn. They
fade out, as if it were necessary in order that these
ideas .of one law and one order for all men should be
redravsm on world-wide lines. And while in nearly every
other field of human interest there was advance^ the effacement
of these general political ideas of the Church and Empire led
back for a time in things political towards merely personal
monarchy and monarchist nationalism of the Macedonian typie.
There came an interregnum, as it were, in the consolidatiojn
of humau affairs, a phkse of the type the Chines^ annalists
would call an "Age of Confusion." This interregnum has
lasted as long as that between the fall of the Western Empire
and the crowning of Charlemagne in Rome. We are living
iii it to-day. It may be drawing to its close; we cannot tell
yet. . The old leading ideas had broken dowii, a medley of
■"■''■' '' ■■'■ 767 ■ ■' '
768 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
new and untried projects and suggestions perplexed men's
minds and actions, and meanwhile the world at large had to
fall back for leadership upon the ancient tradition of an indi-
vidual prince. There was no new way clearly apparent for men
to follow, and the prince was there.
All over the world the close of the sixteenth century saw
monarchy prevailing and tending towards absolutism. Ger-
many and Italy were patchworks of autocratic princely do-
minions, Spain was practically autocratic, the throne had never
been so powerful in England, and as the seventeenth century
drew on, the French monarchy gradually became the greatest
and most consolidated power in Europe. The phases and
fluctuations of its ascent we cannot record here.
At every court there were groups of ministers and secretaries
who played a Machiavellian game against their foreign rivals.
Foreign policy is the natural employment of courts and mon-
archies. Foreign oflSces are, so to speak, the leading characters
in all the histories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
They kept Europe in a fever of wars. And wars were becoming
expensive. Armies were no longer untrained levies, no longer
assemblies of feudal knights who brought their own horses and
weapons and retainers witb them; they needed more and more
artillery; they consisted of paid troops who insisted on their
pay ; they were professional and slow and elaborate, conducting
long sieges, necessitating elaborate fortifications. War expendi-
ture increased everywhere and called for more and more taxa-
tion. And here it was that these monarchies of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries came into conflict with new and
shapeless forces of freedom in the community. In practice the
princes found they were not masters of their subjects' lives
or property. They found an inconvenient resistance to the
taxation that was necessary if their diplomatic aggressions and
alliances were to continue. Finance became an unpleasant
spectre in every council chamber. In theory the monarch owned
his country. James I of England (1603) declared that "As it
is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do; so it
is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what
a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that." In
practice, however, he found, and his son Charles I (1625) was
to find still more effectually, that there were in his dominions
a great number of landlords and merchants, substantial and
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 769
intelligent persons, who set a very definite limit to the calls
and occasions of the monarch and his ministers. They were
prepared to tolerate his rule if they themselves might also be
mOnarchs of their lands and businesses and trades and what
not. But not otherwise.
Everywhere in Europe there was a parallel development.
Beneath the kings and princes there were these lesser monarchs,
the private owners, noblemen, wealthy citizens and the like, who
were now offering the' sovereign prince much the same resist-
ance that the kings and princes of Germany had offered the
Emperor. They wanted to limit taxation so far as it pressed
upon themselves, and to be free in their own houses and estates.
And the spread of books and reading and intercommunication
was enabling these smaller monarchs, these monarchs of owner-
ship, to develop such a community of ideas and such a solidarity
of resistance as had been possible at no previous stage in the
world's history. Everywhere they were disposed to resist the
prince, but it was not everywhere that they found the same
faculties for an organized resistance. The economic circum-
stances and the political traditions of the Netherlands and
England made those countries the first to bring this antagonism
of monarchy and private, ownership to an issue.
At first this seventeenth-century "public," this public of
property owners, cared very little for foreign policy. They
did not perceive at first how it aifected them. They did not
want to be bothered with it ; it was, they conceded, the affairs
of kings and princes. They made no attempt therefore to con-
trol foreign entanglements. But it was with the direct conse-
quences of these entanglements that they quarrelled; they ob-
jected to heavy taxation, to interference with trade, to arbi-
trary imprisonment, and to the control of consciences by the
monarch. It was upon these questions that they joined issue
with the Crown.
§3
The breaking away of the Netherlands from absolutist mon-
archy was the beginning of a series of such conflicts through-
out the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They varied very
greatly in detail according to local and racial peculiarities, but
essentially they were all rebellious against the idea of a pre-
770 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
dominating personal "prince" and his religious and politicjal
direction.
In the twelfth century all the lower Rhine country was
divided up among a number of small rulers, and the popu-
lation was a Low German one on a Celtic basis, mixed with
subsequent Danish ingredients very similar to the English ad-
mixture. The south-eastern fringe of it spoke French dialects:
the bulk, Frisian, Dutch, and other Low German languages.
The Netherlands figured largely in the crusades. Godfrey of
Bouillon, who took Jerusalem (First Crusade), was a Belgian;
and the founder of the so-called Latin Dynasty of emperors in
Constantinople (Fourth Crusade) was Baldwin of Flanders.
(They were called Latin emperors because they were on the
side of the Latin church.) In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries considerable towns grew up in the Netherlands:
Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Utrecht, Leyden, Haarlem, and so forth ;
and these towns developed quasi-independent municipal gov-
ernments and a class of educated townsmen. We will not
trouble the reader with the dynastic accidents that linked the
affairs of the Netherlands with Burgundy (Eastern France),
and which finally made their overlordship the inheritance of
the Emperor Charles V.
It was under Charles that the Protestant doctrines that; now
prevailed in Germany spread into the Netherlands. Charles
persecuted with some vigour, but in 1556, as we have told, he
handed over the task to his son Philip (Philip II). Philip's
spirited foreign policy — ^he was carrying on a w^r with France
— presently became a second source of trouble between him-
self and the Netherlandish noblemen and townsmen, because
he had to come to them for supplies. The great nobles, led by
William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Counts of
Egmont and Horn, made themselves the heads of a popular
resistance, in which it is now impossible to disentangle the
objection to taxation from the objection to religious persecu-
tion. The great nobles were not at first Protestants. They
became Protestants as the struggle grew in bitterness. The
people were often bitterly Protestant.
Philip was resolved to rule both the property and consciences
of his Netherlanders. He sent picked Spanish troops into the
country, and he made governor-general a nobleman named Alva,
one of those ruthless "strong" men wbo wreck governments and
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 771
monarchies. For a time he ruled the land with a hand of iron,
but the hand of iron begets a soul of iron in the body it grips,
and in 1567 the Netherlands were in open revolt. Alva mur-
dered, sacked, and massacred — in vain. Counts Egmont and
Horn were executed. William the Silent became the great
leader of the Dutch, a king de facto. For a long time, and with
many complications, the struggle for liberty continued, and
through it all it is noteworthy that the rebels continued to
cling to the plea that Philip II was their king — if only' he
would be a reasoilable and limited king. But the idea of
limited monarchy was distasteful to the crowned heads
of Europe at that time, and at last Philip drove the
United Provinces, for which we now use the name of Holland,
to the republican form of government. Holland, be it noted—
not all the Netherlands; the southern. Netherlands, Belgium as
we now call that country, remained at the end of the struggle
a. Spanish possession and Catholic.
The siege of Alkmaar (1573), as Motley ^ describes it, may
be taken as a sample of that loiig and hideous conflict between
the little Dutch people and the still vast resources of Catholic
Imperialism.
" 'If I take Alkmaar,' Alva wrote to Philip, 'I am resdlved
not to leave a single creature alive ; the knife shall be put to
every throat.' - . .
"And now, with the dismantled and desolate Haarlem before
their eyes, a prophetic phantom, perhaps, of their own immi-
nent fate, did the handful of people shut up within Alkmaar
prepare for the worst. Their main hope lay in the friendly
'sea. The vast sluices called the' Zyp, through which the inUnda^
tion of the whole northern province could be very soon effected,
were but a few miles distant. By opening these gates, and by
piercing a few dykes, the ocean might be made to fight for
them. To obtain this result, however, the consent of the in-
habitants was requisite, as the destruction of all the standing
crops wouM be inevitable. The city was so closely invested,
that it was a matter of life and death to venture forth, and it
was difficult, therefore, to find an envoy for this hazardous
mission. At last, a carpenter in the city, Peter Van der Mey
by name, undertook the adventure. ...
"Affairs soon approached a crisis within the beleaguered city.
' Rise of the Dutch Republic.
772 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Daily skirmishes, without decisive results, had taken place out-
side the walla. At last, on the 18th oi September, after a
steady cannonade of nearly twelve hours, Don Frederick, at
three in the afternoon, ordered an assault. Notwithstanding
his seven months' experience at Haarlem, he still believed it
certain that he should carry Alkmaar by storm. The attack
took place at once upon the Frisian gate and upon the red tower
on the opposite side. Two choice regiments, recently arrived
from Lombardy, led the onset, rending the air with their shouts
and confident of an easy victory. They were sustained by what
seemed an overwhelming force of disciplined troops. Yet never,
even in the recent history of Haarlem, had an attack been re-
ceived by more dauntless breasts. Every living man was on
the walls. The storming parties were assailed with cannon,
with musketry, with pistols. Boiling water, pitch and oil,
molten lead, and unslaked lime were poured upon them every
moment. Hundreds of tarred and burning hoops were skilfully
quoited around the necks of the soldiers, who struggled in vain
to extricate themselves from these fiery ruffs, while as fast as
any of the invaders planted foot upon the breach, they were
confronted face to face with sword and dagger by the burghers,
who hurled them headlong into the moat below.
"Thrice was the attack renewed with ever-increasing rage —
thrice repulsed with unflinching fortitude. The storm con-
tinued four hours long. During all that period not one of the
defenders left his post, till he dropped from it dead or wounded.
. . . The trumpet of recall was sounded, and the Spaniards,
utterly discomfited, retired from the walls, leaving at least one
thousand dead in the trenches, while only thirteen burghers and
twenty-four of the garrison lost their lives. , . . Ensign Solis,
who had mounted the breach for an instant, and miraculously
escaped with life, after having been hurled from the battle-
ments, reported that he had seen 'neither helmet nor harness'
as he looked down into the city: only some plain-looking peo-,
pie, generally dressed like fishermen. Yet these plain-looking
fishermen had defeated the veterans of Alva. . . .
"Meantime, as Governor Sonoy had opened many of the
dykes, the land in the neighbourhood of the camp was becoming
plashy, although as yet the threatened inundation had not taken
place. The soldiers were already very uncomfortable and very
refractory. The carpenter-envoy had not been idle. . . ."
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 773
He returned with despatches for the city. By accident or
contrivance he lost these despatches as he made his way into
the town, so that they fell into Alva's hands. They contained
a definite promise from the Duke of Orange to flood the country
so as to drown the whole Spanish army. Incidentally this
would also have drowned most of the Dutch harvest and cattle.
But Alva, when he had read these documents, did not wait for
the opening of any more sluices. Presently the stout men of
Alkmaar, cheering and jeering, watched the Spaniards hreak-
ing camp. . . ,
The form assumed by the government of liberated Holland
was a patrician republic under the headship of the house of
Orange. The States-General was far less representative of
the whole body of citizens than was the English Parliament we
shall next relate.
Though the worst of the struggle was over after Alkmaar,
Holland was not effectively independent until 1609, and its
independence was only fully and completely recognized by the
treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
§ 3
The open struggle of the private property owner against the
aggressions of the "Prince" begins in England far back in the
twelfth century. The phase in this struggle that we have to
study now is the phase that opened with the attempts of Henry
VII and VIII and their successors, Edward VI, Mary and
Elizabeth, to make the government of England a "personal
monarchy" of the continental type. It became more acute
when, by dynastic accidents, James, King of Scotland, became
James I, King of both Scotland and England (1603), and
began to talk in the manner we have already quoted of his
"divine right" to do as he pleased. But never had the path of
English monarchy been a smooth one. In all the monarchies
of the Northmen and Germanic invaders of the empire there
had been a tradition of a popular assembly of influential and
representative men to preserve their general liberties, and in
none was it more living than in England. France had her
tradition of the assembly of the Three Estates, Spain her Cortes,
but the English assembly was peculiar in two respects ; that it
had behind it a documentary declaration of certain elementary
774 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and universal rights, and that it contained elected "Knights of
the Shire," as well as elected burghers from 'the towns. The
French and Spanish assemblies had the latter, but not the
former element. . ; ;
These two features gave the English Parliament a peculiar
strength in its struggle with the Throne. The document in
question was Magna Carta, the Great Charterj a dedaratibn
which was forced from King John (1199-1216), the brother
and successor of Richard Coeur de Lion (1189-99), after a
revolt of the Barons in 1215. It rehearsed a number of funda-
mental rights that made England a legaland not a regal state.
It rejected the power of the king to control the personal prop-
erty and liberty of every sort of citizen — save with the consent
of that man's equals.
The presence of the elected shire representatives in the Eng-
lish Parliament, the second peculiarity of the British situation,
came about from very simple and apparently innocuous begin-
nings. Erom the shires, or county divisions, knights seem to
have been summoned to the national council to testify to the
taxable capacity of their districts. They were sent up by the
minor gentry, freeholders and village elders of their districts
as early as 1254, two knights from each shire. This idea in-
spired Simon de Montfort,^ who was in rebellion against Henry
III, the successor of John, to summon to the national council
two knights from each shire and two citizens from each city or
borough. Edward I, the successor to Henry III, continued
this practice because it seemed a convenient way of getting
into financial touch with the growing towns. At first there was
considerable reluctance on the parts of the knights and towns-
men to attend Parliament, but gradually the power they pos-
sessed of linking the redress of grievances with the granting
of subsidies was realized. Quite early, if not from the first,
these representatives of the general property owners in town
and country, the Commons, sat and debated apart from the
great Lords and Bishops. So there grew up in England a
representative assembly, the Commons, beside an episcopaland
patrician one, the Lords. There was no profound and funda-
mental difference between the personnel of the two assemblies ;
many ' of the knights of the shire were substantial men who
'This is not the same Simon de Montfort as the leader of the crusades
against the Albigenses, but his son.
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 775
might be as wealthy and influential as peers and also the sons
and brothers of peers, but on the whole the Commons was the
more plebeian assembly. From the first these two assemblies,
and especially the Commons, displayed a disposition to claim
the entire power of taxation in the land. Graliually they ex^
tended their purview of grievances to a criticism of all the
Mfairs of the realm. We will not follow the fluctuations of
the power and prestige of the English Parliament through the
time of the Tudor monarchs (i.e., Henry VII and VIII,
Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth), but it will be manifest
from what has been said that when at last James Stuart made
his open claim to autocracy, the English merchants, peers, and
private gentlemen found themselves with a tried and honoured
traditional means of resisting him such as no other people in
Europe possessed.
Another peculiarity of the English political conflict was its
comparative detachment from the great struggle between Catho-
lic and Protestant that was now being waged all over Europe.
There were, it is true, very distinct religious issues mixed up
in the English struggle, but upon its main lines it was a po-
litical struggle of King against the Parliament embodying the
class of private-property-owning citizens. Both Crown and
people were formally reformed and Protestant. It is true that
many people on the latter side were Protestants of a Bible-
respecting, non-sacerdotal type, representing the reformation
according to the peoples, and that the king was the nominal
head of a special sacerdotal and sacramental church, the estab-
lished Church of England, representing the reformation ac-
cording to the princes, but this antagonism never completely
obscured the essentials of the conflict.
The struggle of King and Parliament had already reached
an acute phase before the death of James I (1625), but only
in the reign of his son Charles I did it culminate in civil war.
Charles did exactly what one might have expected a king to do
in such a position, in view of the lack of Parliamentary control
over foreign policy; he embroiled the country in a conflict with
both Spain and France, and then came to the country for sup-'
plies in the hope that patriotic feeling would override the nor-
mal dislike to giving him money. When Parliament refused
supplies, he demanded loans from various subjects, and at-
tempted similar illegal exactions. This produced from Parlia-
776 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ment in 1628 a very memorable document, the' Petition of
Bight, citing the Great Charter and rehearsing the legal limita-
tions upon the power. of the English king, denying his right
to levy charges upon, or to imprison, or punish anyone, or to
quarter soldiers' on the people, ■without due process of law. The
Petition of Right stated the case of the English Parliament.
The disposition to "state a case" has always been a very markefl
English characteristic. When President Wilson, during the
Great War of 1914-18, prefaced each step in his policy by a
"Note," he was walking in the most respectable traditions of
the English. Charles dealt with this Parliament with a high
hand, he dismissed it in 1629, and for eleven years he sum-
moned no Parliament, He levied money illegally, but not
enough for his purpose ; and realizing that the church could be
used as an instrument of obedience, he made Laud, an aggres-
sive high churchman, very much of a priest and a very strong
believer in "divine right," Archbishop of Canterbury, and so
head of the Church of England.
In 1638 Charles tried to extend the half-Protestant, half-
Catholic characteristics of the Church of England to his other
kingdom of Scotland, where the secession from Catholicism had
been more complete, and where a non-sacerdotal, non-sacra-
mental form of Christianity, Presbyterianism, had been estab-
lished as the national church. The Scotch revolted, and the
English levies Charles raised to fight them mutinied. In-
solvency, at all times the natural result of a "spirited" foreign
policy, was close at hand. Charles, without money or trust-
worthy troops, had to summon a Parliament at last in 1640.
This Parliament, the Short Parliament, he dismissed in
the same year; he tried a Council of Peers at York (1640),
and then in the November of that year summoned his last
Parliament.
This body, the Long Parliament, assembled in the mood for
conflict. It seized Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
charged him with treason. It published a "Grand Eemon-
strance," which was a long and full statement of its case against
Charles. It provided by a bill for a meeting of Parliament at
least once in three years, whether the King summoned it or no.
It prosecuted the King's chief ministers who had helped him
to reign for so long without Parliament, and in particiilar the
Earl of Strafford. To save Strafford the King plotted for a
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 777
sudden seizure of London by the army. This was discovered,
and the Bill for Strafford's condemnation was hurried on in
the midst of a vast popular excitement. Charles I, who was
probably one of the meanest and most treacherous occupants
the English throne has ever known, was frightened by the Lon-
don crowds. Before Strafford could die by due legal process^
it was necessary for the King to give his: assent. Charles gave
it — and Strafford was beheaded. Meanwhile the King was plot-
ting and looking for help in strange quarters — from the Catho-
lic Irish, from treasonable Scotchmen. Einally he resorted to
a forcible-feeble display of violence. He went down to , the
Houses of Parliament to arrest five of his most active oppo-
nents. He entered the House of Commons and took the
Speaker's chair. He was prepared with some bold speech about
treason, but when he saw the places of his five antagonists
vacant, he was baffled, confused, and spoke in broken sentences.
He learnt that they had departed from his royal city of West-
minster and taken refuge in the city of London (see Chap. X^IV,
§ Y). London defied him. A week later the Five Members
were escorted back in triumph to the Parliament House in
Westminster by the Trained Bands of London, and the King,
to avoid the noise and hostility of the occasion, left Whitehall
for Windsor.
Both parties then prepared openly for war.
The King was the traditional head of the army, and the
habit of obedience in soldiers is to the King. The Parliament
had the greater resources. The King set up his standard at
ISTottingham on the eve of a dark and stormy August day in
1642. There followed a long and obstinate civil war, the King
holding Oxford, the Parliament, London. Success swayed
from side to side, but the King could never close on London
nor Parliament take Oxford. Each antagonist was weakened
by moderate adherents who "did not want to go too far." There
emerged among the Parliamentary commanders a certain Oliver
Cromwell, who had raised a small troop of horse and who rose
to the position of general. Lord Warwick, his contemporary,
describes him as a plain man, in a cloth suit "made by an ill
country tailor." He was no mere fighting soldier, but a mili-
tary organizer; he realized the inferior quality of many of the
Parliamentary forces, and set himself to remedy it. The
Cavaliers of the King had the picturesque tradition of chivalry
778 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and loyalty on their side; Parliament was something new and
difficult — without any comparable traditions. "Your troops are
most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters," said Crom-
well. "Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean
fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have
honour and courage and resolution in them?" But there is
something better and stronger than picturesque chivalry in
the world, religious enthusiasm. He set himself to get to^
gether a "godly" regiment. They were to be earnest, sober-
living men. Above all, they were to be men of strong convic-
tions. He disregarded all social traditions, and drew his officers
from every class. "I had rather have a plain, russet-coated
captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows,
than what you call a gentleman and is nothing else." England
discovered a new force, the Ironsides, in its midst, in which
footmen, draymen, and ships' captains held high command,
side by side with men of family. They became the type on
which the Parliament sought to reconstruct its entire army.
The Ironsides were the backbone of this "New Model." From
Marston Moor to Naseby these men swept the Cavaliers
before them. The King was at last a captive in the hands of
Parliament.
There were still attempts at settlement that would have left
the King a sort of king, but Charles was a man doomed to tragic
issues, incessantly scheming, "so false a man that he is not to
be trusted." The English were drifting towards a situation
new in the world's history, in which a monarch should be
formally tried for treason to his people and condemned.
Most revolutions are precipitated, as this English one was,
by the excesses of the ruler, and by attempts at strength and
firmness beyond the compass of the law; and most revolutions
swing by a kind of necessity towards an extremer conclusion
than is warranted by the original quarrel.. The English revolu-
tion was no exception. The English are by nature a compro-
mising and even a vacillating people, and probably the great
majority of them still wanted the King to be King and the
people to be free, and all the lions and lambs to lie down to-
gether in peace and liberty. But the army of the New Model
could not go back. There would have been scant mercy for
these draymen and footmen who had ridden down the King's
gentlemen if the King came back. When Parliament began
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 779
to treat again with, this regal trickster, the New Model intea--
vened; Colonel Pride turned out eighty members from the
House of Commons who favoured the King, and the illegal
residue, the Hump Parliament, then put the King on trial.
But indeed the King was already doomed. The House of
Lords rejected the ordinance for the trial, and the Kump then
proclaimed "that the People are, under God, the original of
all just power," and that "the Commons of England . . . have
the supreme power in this nation," and — assuming that it was
itself the Commons — proceeded with the trial. The King was
condemned as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and enemy of his
country." He was taken one January morning in 1649 to a
scaffold erected outside the windows of his own banqueting-
room at Whitehall. There he was beheaded. He died with
piety and a certain noble self-pity — eight years after the execu-
tion of Strafford, and after six and a half years of a destructive
civil war which had been caused almost entirely by his own
lawlessness.
This was indeed a great and terrifying thing that Parliament
had done. The like of it had never been heard of in the world
before. Kings had killed each other times enough; parricide,
fratricide, assassination, those are the privileged expedients
of princes ; but that a section of the people should rise up, try
its king solemnly and deliberately for disloyalty, mischief, and
treachery, and condemn and kill him, sent horror through every
court in Europe. The Rump Parliament had gone beyond
the ideas and conscience of its time. It was as if a committee
of jungle deer had taken and killed a tiger — a crime against
nature. The Tsar of Eussia' chased the English envoy from
his court. Eranee and Holland committed acts of open hos-
tility. England, confused and conscience-stricken at her own
sacrilege, stood isolated before the world.
But for a time the personal quality of Oliver Cromwell and
the discipline and strength of the army he had created main-
tained England in the republican course she had taken. The
Irish Catholics had made a massacre of the Protestant English
in Ireland, and now Cromwell suppressed the Irish insurrec-
tion with great vigour. Except for certain friars at the storm
of Drogheda, none but men with arms in their hands were killed
by his troops ; but the atrocities of the massacre were fresh in
his mind, no quarter was given in battle, and so his memory
780 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
still rankles in the minds of the Irish, who have a long 6iemory
for their own wrongs. After Ireland came Scotland, where
Cromwell shattered a Eoyalist army at the Battle of Dunbar
(1650). Then he turned his attention to Holland, which coun-
try had rashly seized upon the divisions among the English as
an excuse for the injury of a trade rival. The Dutch were then
the rulers of the sea, and the English fleet fought against odds ;
but after a series of obstinate sea fights the Dutch were driven
from the British seas and the English took thefir place as the
ascendant naval power. Dutch and French ships must dip
their flags to them. An English fleet went into the Mediter-
ranean— the first English naval force to enter those waters ; it
put right various grievances of the English shippers with Tus-
cany and Malta, and bombarded the pirate nest of Algiers and
destroyed the pirate fleet — ^which in the lax days of Charles had
been wont to come right up to the coasts of Cornwall and Devon
to intercept ships and carry off slaves to Africa. The strong
arm of England also intervened to protect the Protestants in the
south of France, who were being hunted to death by the Duke
of Savoy. France, Sweden, Denmark, all found it wiser to
overcome their flrst distaste for regicide and allied themselves
with England. Came a war with Spain, and the great English
Admiral Blake destroyed the Spanish Plate Fleet at Teneriffe
in an action of almost incredible daring. He engaged land
batteries. He was the first man "that brought ships to contemn
castles on the shore." (He died in 1657, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey, but after the restoration of the monarchy
his bones were dug out by the order of Charles II, and removed
to St. Margaret's, Westminster.) Such was the figure that
England cut in the eyes of the world during her brief republican
days.
On September 3rd, 1658, Cromwell died in the midst of a
great storm that did not fail to impress the superstitious. Once
his Strong hand lay still, England fell away from this premature
attempt to realize a righteous commonweal of free men. In
1660 Charles II, the son of Charles the "Martyr," was wel-
comed back to England with all those manifestations of personal
loyalty dear to the English heart, and the country relaxed from
its military and naval efBciency as a sleeper might wake and
stretch and yawn after too intense a dream. The Puritans
were done with. "Merrie England" was herself again, and in
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 781
1667 the Dutch, once more masters of the sea, sailed up the
Thames to Gravesend and burnt an English fleet in the Med-
way. "On the night when our ships were burnt by the Dutch,'
says Pepys, in his diary, "the King did sup with my Lad}
Oastelmaine, and there they were all mad, hunting a poor
moth." Charles, from the date of his return, 1660, took con
trol of the foreign affairs of the state, and in 1670 concluded a
secret treaty with Louis XIV of France by which he undertook
to subordinate' entirely English foreign policy to that of France
for an annual pension of £100,000. Dunkirk, which Cromwell
had taken, had already been sold back to France. The King
was a great sportsman ; he had the true English love for watch-
ing horse races, and the racing centre at Newmarket is perhaps
his most characteristic monument.
While Charles lived, his easy humour enabled him to retain
the BritiA crown, but he did so by wariness and compromise,
and when in 1685 he was succeeded by his brother James II,
, who was a devout Catholic, and too dull to recognize the hidden
limitation of the monarchy in Britain, the old issue between
Parliament and Crovsoi became acute. James set himself to
force his country into a religious reunion with Rome. In 1688
he was in flight to France. But this time the great lords and
merchants and gentlemen were too circumspect to let this revolt
against the King fling them into the hands of a second Pride
or a second Cromwell. They had already called in, another king,
William, Prince of Orange, to replace James. The change was
made rapidly. There was no civil war — except in Ireland-—,
and no release of the deeper revolutionary forces of the country.
Of William's claim to the throne, or rather of his wife Mary's
claim, we cannot tell here, its interest is purely technical, nor
how William III and Mary ruled, nor how, after the widower
William had reigned alone for a time, the throne passed on to
Mary's sister Anne (1702-14). Anne seems to have thought
favourably of a restoration of the Stuart line, but the Lords and
the Commons, who now dominated English affairs, preferred a
less competent king. Some sort of claim could be made out
for the Elector of Hanover, who became King of England as
George I (1714-27). He was entirely German, he could
speak no English, and he brought a swarm of German women
and German attendants to the English court ; a dullness, a tar-
nish, came over the intellectual life of the land with his coming,
782 , THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
but this isolation of the court from English life was his con-
clusive recommendation to the great landowners and the com-
mercial interests who chiefly brought him over. England en-
tered upon a phase which Lord Beaconsfield has called the
"Venetian oligarchy" stage; the supreme power resided in Par-
liame'nt, dominated now by the Lords, for the art of bribery
and a study of the methods of working elections carried to a
high pitch by Sir Eobert Walpole had robbed the House of Com-
mons of its original freedom and vigour. By ingenious de-
vices the parliamentary vote was restricted to a shrinking
number of electors, old towns with little or no population would
return one or two members (old Sarum had one non-resident
voter, no population, and two members) , while newer populous
centres had no representation at all. And by insisting upon a
high property qualification for members, the chance of the
Commons speaking in common accents of vulgar needs was still
more restricted. George I was followed by the very similar
George II (1727-60), and it was only at his death that Eng-
land had again a king who had been born in England, and one
who could speak English fairly well, his grandson George III.
On this monarch's attempt to recover some of the larger powers
of monarchy we shall have something to say in a later section.
Such briefly is the story of the struggle in England during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between the three main
factors in the problem of the "modern state" ; between the crown,
the private property owners, and that vague power, still blind
and ignorant, the power of the quite common people. This
latter factor appears as yet only at moments when the country
is most deeply stirred ; then it sinks back into the depths. But
the end of the story, thus far, is a very complete triumph of the
British private property owner over the dreams and schemes of
Machiavellian absolutism. With the Hanoverian Dynasty, Eng-
land became — as the Times recently styled her — a "crowned
republic." She had worked out a new method of government.
Parliamentary government, recalling in many ways the Senate
and Popular Assembly of Rome, but more steadfast and efficient
because of its use, however restricted, of the representative
method. Her assembly at Westminster was to become the
"Mother of Parliaments" throughout the world. Towards the
crown the English Parliament has held and still holds much
the relation of the mayor of the palace to the Merovingian
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 783
kings. The king is conceived of as ceremonial and irresponsible,
a living symbol of the royal and imperial system. But much
power remains latent in the tradition and prestige of the crown,
and the succession of the four Hanoverian Georges, William
IV (1830), Victoria (1837), Edward VII (1901), and the
present king, George V (1910), is of a quite different strain
from the feeble and short-lived Merovingian monarchs. In the
affairs of the church, the military and naval organizations, and
the foreign office, these sovereigns have all in various degrees
exercised an influence which is none the less important because
it is indefinable.
Upon no part &f Europe did the collapse of the idea of a
unified Christendom bring more disastrous consequences than
to Germany. Naturally one would have supposed that the
Emperor, being by origin a German, both in the case of the
earlier lines and in the case of the Habsburgs, would have
developed into the national monarch of a united German-speak-
ing state. It was the accidental misfortune of Germany that
her Emperors never remained German. Frederick II, the last
Hohenstaufen, was, as we have seen, a half-Orientalized
Sicilian; the Habsburgs, by marriage and inclination, became
in the person of Charles V, first Burgundian and then Spanish
in spirit. After the death of Charles V, his brother Ferdinand
took Austria and the empire, and his son Philip II took Spain,
the Netherlands, and South Italy; but the Austrian line, ob-
stinately Catholic, holding its patrimony mostly on the eastern
frontiers, deeply entangled therefore with Hungarian affairs
and paying tribute, as Ferdinand and his two successors did,
to the Turk, retained no grip upon the north Germans with
their disposition towards Protestantism, their Baltic and west-
ward affinities, and their ignorance of or indifference to the
Turkish danger.
The sovereign princes, dukes, electors, prince bishops and the
like, whose domains cut up the map of the Germany of the
Middle Ages into a crazy patchwork, were really not the equiva-
lents of the kings of England and France. They were rather
on the level of the great land-owning dukes and peers of France
and England. Until 1701 none of them had the title of "King."
784
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Many of their dominions were less both in size and value than
the larger estates of the British nobility. The German Diet was
like the States-General or like a parliament without the pres-
ence of elected representatives. So that the great civil war in
Germany that presently broke out, the Thirty Years' War
gzniral 'BUROPt aRev £kc Teace. of Westphalia,, 164^8
KORtH
(1618-48) was in its essential nature much more closely
akin to the civil war in England (1643-49) and to the war of
the Fronde (1648-53), the league of feudal nobles against the
Crown in France, than appears upon the surface. In all these
cases the Crown was either Catholic or disposed to be-
come Catholic, and the recalcitrant nobles found their in-
dividualistic disposition tending to a Protestant formula.
But while in England and Holland the Protestant nobles and
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 783
rich merchants ultimately triumphed and in France the suc-
cess of the Crown was even more complete, in Germany
neither was the Emperor strong enough, nor "had the Protestant
princes a sufficient unity and organization among themselves
to secure a conclusive triumph. It ended there in a tom-up
Germany. Moreover, the German issue was complicated by
the fact that various non-German peoples, the Bohemians and
the Swedes (who had a new Protestant monarchy which had
arisen under Gustava Vasa as a direct result of the Eeforma-
tion), were entangled in the struggle, Pinally, the French
monarchy, triumphant now over its own nobles, although it was
Catholic, came in on the Protestant side with the evident inten-
tion of taking the place of the Habsburgs as the imperial line.
: The prolongation of the war, and the fact that it was not
fought along a determinate frontier, but all over an empire of
patches, Protestant here, Catholic there, made it one of the most
cruel and destructive that Europe had known since the days
of the barbarian raids. Its peculiar mischief lay not in the
fighting, but in the concomitants of the fighting. It came at a
time when military tactics had developed to a point that ren-
dered ordinary levies useless against trained professional in-
fantry. Volley firing with muskets at a range of a few score
yards had abolished the individualistic knight in armour, but
the charge of disciplined masses of cavalry could still disperse
any infantry that had not been drilled into a mechanical rigidity.
The infantry with their muzzle-loading muskets could not keep
up a steady enough fire to wither determined cavalry before it
charged home. They had, therefore, to meet the shock standing
or kneeling behind a bristling wall of pikes or bayonets. For
this they needed great discipline and experience. Iron cannon
were still of small size and not very abundant, and they did
not play a decisive part as yet in warfare. They could "plough
lanes" in infantry, but they could not easily smash and scatter
it if it was sturdy and well drilled. War under these conditions
was entirely in the hands of seasoned professional soldiers, and
the question of their pay was as important a one to the generals
oi that time as the question of food or munitions. As the long
struggle dragged on from phase to phase, and the financial dis-
tress of the, land increased, the commanders of both sides were
forced to fall back upon the looting of towns and villages, both
for supply and to make up the arrears of their soldiers' pay.
786 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The soldiers became, therefore, more and more mere brigands
living on the country, and the Thirty Years' War set up a
tradition of looting as a legitimate operation in warfare and of
outrage as a soldier's privilege that has tainted the good name
of Germany right down to the Great War of 1914. The earlier
chapters of Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier, with its vivid de-
scription of the massacre and burning of Magdeburg, will give
the reader a far better idea of the warfare of this time than any
formal history. So harried was the land that the farmers
ceased from cultivation, what snatch crops could be harvested
were hidden away, and great crowds of starving women and
children became camp followers of the armies, and supplied a
thievish tail to the rougher plundering. At the close of the
struggle all Germany was ruined and desolate. Central Europe
did not fully recover from these robberies and devastations for
a century.
Here we can but name Tilly and Wallenstein, the great plun-
der captains on the Habsburg side, and Gustavus Adolphus, the
King of Sweden, the Lion of the North, the champion of the
Protestants, whose dream was to make the Baltic Sea a "Swed-
ish Lake." Gustavus Adolphus was killed in his decisive victory-
over Wallenstein at Liitzen (1632), and Wallenstein was mu]>
dered in 1634. In 1648 the princes and diplomatists gathered
amidst the havoc they had made to patch up the affairs of
Central Europe at the Peace of Westphalia. By that peace the
power of the Emperor was reduced to a shadow, and the ac-
quisition of Alsace brought France up to the Bhine. And one
German prince, the HohenzoUem Elector of Brandenburg, ac-
quired so much territory as to become the greatest German
power next to the Emperor, a power that presently (1701) be-
came the kingdom of Prussia. The Treaty also recognized two
long accomplished facts, the separation from the empire and the
complete independence of both Holland and Switzerland.
§5
We have opened this chapter with the stories of two countries,
the ^Netherlands and Britain, in which the resistance of the
private citizen to this new type of monarchy, the Machiavellian
monarchy, that was arising out of the moral collapse of Chris-
tendom, succeeded. But in France, Russia, in many parts of
PBINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 787
Gennany and of Italy — Saxony and Tuscany e.g. — personal
monarchy was not so restrained and overthrown ; it established
itself indeed as the ruling European system during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. And even in Holland and
Britain the monarchy was recovering power during the eight-
eenth century.
(In Poland condi-
tions were peculiar, and
they will be dealt with
in a later section.)
In France there had
been no Magna Carta,
and there was not quite
so definite and effective
a tradition of parlia-
mentary rule. There
was the same opposition
of interests between the
crown on the one hand
and the landlords and
merchants on the other,,
but the latter had no
recognized gathering-
place, and no dignified
method of unity. They
formed oppositions to
the crown, they made
leagues of resistance —
such was the "Fronde,"
which was struggling
against the young King
Louis XIV and his
great minister Mazarin,
while Charles I was
fighting for his life in England — ^but ultimately (1652), after
a civil war, they were conclusively defeated; and while in
England after the establishment of the Hanoverians the House
of Lords and their subservient Commons ruled the country,
in France, on the contrary, after 1652, the court entirely domi-
nated the aristocracy. Cardinal Mazarin was himself building
upon a foundation that Cardinal Kichelieu, the contemporary
788 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of King James I of England, had prepared for him. After the
time of Mazarin we hear of no great French nobles unless they
are at court as court servants and ofScials. They have been
tamed — ^but at a price, the price of throwing the burthen of
taxation upon the voiceless mass of the common people. From
many taxes both the clergy and the nobility-^everyone indeed
who bore a title — were exempt. In the end this injustice be-
came intolerable, but for a while the French monarchy flour-
ished like the Psalmist's green bay tree. By the opening of
the eighteenth century English writers are already calling at-
tention to the misery of the French lower classes and the com-
parative prosperity, at that time, of the English poor.
On stich terms of unrighteousness what we may call "Grand
Monarchy" established itself in France. Louis XIV, styled the
Grand Monarque, reigned for the unparalleled length of seventy-
two years (1643-1715), and set a pattern for all the kings of
Europe. At first he was guided by his Machiavellian minister,
Cardinal Mazarin; after the death of the Cardinal he himself
in his own proper person became the ideal "Prince." He was,
within his limitations, an exceptionally capable king ; his ambi-
tion was stronger than his baser passions, and he guided his
country towards bankruptcy, through the complication of a
spirited foreign policy, with an elaborate dignity that still ex-
torts our admiration. His immediate desire was to consolidate
and extend France to the Khine and Pyrenees, and to absorb
the Spanish Netherlands; his remoter view saw the French
kings as the possible successors of Charlemagne in a recast
Holy Eoman Empire. He made bribery a state method almost
more important than warfare. Charles II of England was in
his pay, and so were most of the Polish nobility, presently to
be described. His money, or rather the money of the tax-pay-
ing classes in France, went everywhere. But his prevailing oc-
cupation was splendour. His great palace at Versailles, with
its salons, its corridors, its mirrors, its terraces and fountains
and parks and prospects, was the envy and admiration of the
world. He provoked a universal imitation. Every king and
princelet in Europe was building his own Versailles as much
beyond his means as his subjects and credits would permit.
Everywhere the nobility rebuilt or extended their chateaux to
the new pattern. A great industry of beautiful and elaborate
fabrics and furnishings developed. The luxurious arts fliour-
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 789
ished everywhere ; sculpture in alabaster, faience, gilt woodwork,
metal work, stamped leather, much music, magnificent paintr
ing, beautiful printing and bindings, fine cookery, fine vin-
tages. Amidst the mirrors and fine furniture went a strange
race of "gentlemen" in vast powdered wigs, silks and laces,
poised upon high red heels, supported by amazing canes; and
still more wonderful "ladies," under towers of powdered hair
and wearing vast expansions of silk and satin sustained on wire.
Through it all postured the great Louis, the sun of his world,
unaware of the meagre and sulky and bitter faces that watched
him from those lower darknesses to which his sunshine did not
penetrate.
We cannot give here at any length the story of the wars and
doings of this monarch. In many ways Voltaire's Siecle de
Louis XIV is still the best and most wholesome account. He
created a French navy fit to face the English and Dutch; a
very considerable achievement. But because his intelligence
did not rise above the lure of that Eata Morgana, that crack
in the political wits of Europe, the dream of a world-wide
Holy Eoman Empire, he drifted in his later years to the pro-
pitiation of the Papacy, which had hitherto been hostile to him.
He set himself against those spirits of independence and dis-
union, the Protestant princes, and he made war against Protes-
tantism in France. Great numbers of his most sober and val-
uable subjects were driven abroad by his religious persecutions,
taking arts and industries with them. The English silk manu-
facture, for instance, was founded by French Protestants.
Under his rule were carried out the "dragonnades," a pecu-
liarly malignaut and effectual form of persecution. Eough sol-
diers were quartered in the houses of the Protestants, and were
free to disorder the life of their hosts and insult their woman-
kind as they thought fit. Men yielded to that sort of pressure
who would not have yielded to rack and fire. The education
of the next generation of Protestants was broken up, and the
parents had to give Catholic instruction or none. They gave it,
no doubt, with a sneer and an intonation that destroyed all faith
in it. While more tolerant countries became mainly sincerely
Catholic or sincerely Protestant, the persecuting countries, like
France and Spain and Italy, so destroyed honest Protestant
teaching that these peoples became mainly Catholic believers or
Catholic atheists, ready to break out into blank atheism when-
780
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 791
ever the opportunity offered. The next reign, that of Louis
XV, was the age of that supreme mocker, Voltaire (1694-
1778), an age in which everybody in French society conformed
to the Roman church and hardly anyone believed in it.
It was part — and an excellent part — of the pose of Grand
Monarchy to patronize literature and the sciences. Louis XIV
set up an academy of sciences in rivalry with the English Royal
Society of Charles II and the similar association at Florence.
He decorated his court with poets, playwrights, philosophers, and
scientific men. If the scientific process got little inspiration
from this patronage, it did at any rate acquire resources for
experiment and publication, and a certain prestige in the eyes
of the vulgar.
Louis XV was the great-grandson of Louis XIV, and an in-
competent imitator of his predecessor's magnificence. He posed
as a king, but his ruling passion was that common obsession of
our kind, the pursuit of women, tempered by a superstitious
fear of hell. How such women as the Duchess of Chateau-
roux, Madame de Pompadour, and Madame du Barry domi-
nated the pleasures of the king, and how wars and alliances
were made, provinces devastated, thousands of people killed,
because of the vanities and spites of these creatures, and how
all the public life of France and Europe was tainted with in-
trigue and prostitution and imposture because of them, the
reader must learn from the memoirs of the time. The spirited
foreign policy went on steadily under Louis XV towards its
final smash.
In 1774 this Louis, Louis the Well-Beloved, as his flatterers
called him, died of smallpox, and was succeeded by his grand-
son, Louis XVI (1774-93), a dull, well-meaning man, an excel-
lent shot, and an amateur locksmith of some ingenuity. Of
how he came to follow Charles I to the scaffold we shall tell in
a later section. Our present concern is with Grand Monarchy
in the days of its glory.
Among the chief practitioners of Grand Monarchy outside
France we may note first the Prussian kings, Frederick William
I (1713-40), and his son and successor, Frederick II, Fred-
erick the Great (1740-86). The story of the slow rise of the
HohenzoUem family, which ruled the kingdom of Prussia, from
inconspicuous beginnings is too tedious and unimportant for us
to follow here. It is a story of luck and violence, of bold claims
792 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and sudden betrayals. It is told with great appreciation in
Carlyle's Frederick the Great,' By tlie eighteenth century the
Prussian kingdom was important enough to threaten the em-
pire; it had a strong, well-drilled army, and its king was an
attentive and worthy student of Machiavelli. Frederick the
Great perfected his Versailles at Potsdam. There the park of
Sans Souci, with its fountains, avenues, statuary, aped its
model; there also'was the New Palace, a vast brick building
erected at enormous expense, the Orangery in the Italian style,
with a collection of pictures,, a Marble Palace, and so on.
Frederick carried culture to the pitch of authorship, and
corresponded with and entertained Voltaire, to their mutual
exasperation.
The Austrian dominions were kept too busy between the
hammer of the French and the anvil qf the Turks to develop the
real Grand Monarch style until the reign of Maria Theresa
(who, being a woman, did not bear the title of Empress) (1740-
80). Joseph II, who was Emperor from 1765-92, succeeded
to her palaces in 1780.
With Peter the Great (1682-1725) the empire of Muscovy
broke away from her Tartar traditions and entered the sphere
of French attraction. Peter shaved the Oriental beards of his
nobles and introduced "Western costume. These were but the
outward and visible symbols of his westering tendencies. To
release himself from the Asiatic feeling and traditions of
Moscow, which, like Pekin, has a sacred inner city, the Krem-
lin, he built himself a new capital, Petrograd, upon the swamp
of the KTeva. And of course he built his Versaillra, the Peter-
hof, about eighteen miles from this new Paris, employing a
French architect and having a terrace, fountains, cascades,
picture gallery, park, and all the recognized features. HiS
more distinguished successors were Elizabeth (1741-62) and
Catherine the Great, a German princess, who, after obtaining
the crown in sound Oriental fashion through the murder of
her husband, the legitimate Tsar, reverted to advanced Western
ideals and ruled with great vigour from 1762 to 1796. She
set up an academy, and corresponded with Voltaire. And: she
lived to witness the end of the system of Grand Monarchy in
Europe and the execution of Louis XVI.
We cannot even catalogue here the minor Grand Monarehs
of the time in Florence (Tuscany) and Savoy and Saxony and
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 793
Denmark and Sweden. Versailles, under a score of names, is
starred in every volume of Bsedeker, and the tourist gapes in
their palaces, ^ot can we deal with the war of the Spanish
Succession. Spain, overstrained by the imperial enterprises of
Charles V and Philip II, and enfeebled by a bigoted persecution
of Protestants, Moslems, and Jews, was throughout the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries sinking down from her tempo-
rary importance in European affairs to the level of a secondary
power again. • ^
These European monarchs ruled their kingdoms as theii-
noblemen ruled their estates: they plotted against one another,
they were politic and far-seeing in an unreal fashion, they
made wars, they spent the substance of Europe upon absurd
"policies" of aggression and resistance. At last there burst
upon them a great storm out of the depths. That storm, the
First French Revolution, the indignation of the common man
in Europe, took their system unawares. It was but this open-
ing outbreak of a great cycle of political and social storms that
still continue, that will perhaps continue until every vestige
of nationalist monarchy has been swept out of the world and
the skies clear again for the great peace of the federation of
mankind.
§ 6
We have seen how the idea of a world-rule and a community
of mankind first came into human affairs, an<i we have traced
how the failure of the Christian churches to sustain and estab-
lish those conceptions of its founder, led to a moral collapse in
political affairs and a reversion to egotism and want of faith.
We have seen how Machiavellian monarchy set itself up against
the spirit of brotherhood in Christendom, and how Machiavellian
monarchy developed throughout a large part of Europe into
the Grand Monarchies and Parliamentary Monarchies of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the mind and imag-
ination of man is incessantly active, and beneath the sway of
the grand monarchs, a complex of notions and traditions was
being woven as a net is woven, to catch and entangle men's
minds, the conception of international politics not as a matter
of dealings between princes, but as a matter of dealings be-
tween a kind of immortal Beings, the Powers. The Princes
794, THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
came and went ; a Louis XIV would be followed by a petticoat-
hunting Louis XV, and be again by that dull-witted amateur
locksmith, Louis XVI- Peter the Great gave place to a suc-
cession of empresses; the chief continuity of the Habsburgs
after Charles V, either in Austria or Spain, was a continuity
of thick lips, clumsy chins, and superstition ; the amiable scoun-
drelism of a Charles II would make a mock of his own preten-
sions. But what remained much more steadfast were the secre-
tariats of the foreign ministries and the ide^s of people who
wrote of state concerns. The ministers maintained a con-
tinuity of policy during the "off days" of their monarchs, and
between one monarch and another.
So we find that the prince gradually became less important
in men's minds than the "Power" of which he was the head.
We begin to read less and less of the schemes and ambitions of
King This or That, and more of the "Designs of France" or
the "Ambitions of Prussia." In an age when religious faith
was declining, we find men displaying a new and vivid belief in
the reality of these personifications. These vast vague phan-
toms, the "Powers," crept insensibly into European political
thought, until in the later eighteenth and in the nineteenth
centuries they dominated it entirely. To this day they domi-
nate it. European life remained nominally Christian, but to
worship one God in spirit and in truth is to belong to one
community with all one's fellow worshippers. In practical
reality Europe does not do this, she has given herself up alto-
gether to the wor^ip of this strange state mythology. To these
sovereign deities, to the unity of "Italy," to the hegemony of
"Prussia," to the glory of "France," and the destinies of "Rus-
sia," she has sacrificed many generations of possible unity,
peace, and prosperity and the lives of millions of men.
To regard a tribe or a state as a sort of personality is a
very old disposition of the human mind. The Bible abounds
in such personifications. Judah, Edom, Moab, Assyria, figure
in the Hebrew Scriptures as if they were individuals; it is
sometimes impossible to say whether the Hebrew writer is deal-
ing with a person or with a nation. It is manifestly a primitive
and natural tendency. But in the case of modem Europe it
is a retrocession. Europe, under the idea of Christendom,
had gone far towards unification. And while such tribal per-
sons as "Israel" or "Tyre" did represent a certain community
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 795
of blood, a certain uniformity of type, and a homogeneity of
interest, the European powers which arose in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries were entirely fictitious unities. Rus^
sia was in truth an assembly of the most incongruous elements,
Cossacks, Tartars, Ukrainians, Muscovites, and, after the time
of Peter, Esthonians and Lithuanians ; the France of Louis XV
comprehended German Alsace and freshly assimilated regions
of Burgundy; it was a prison of suppressed Huguenots and a
sweating-house for peasants. In "Britain," England carried
on her back the Hanoverian dominions in Germany, Scotland,
the profoundly alien Welsh and the hostile and Catholic Irish.
Such powers as Sweden, Prussia, and still more so Poland and
Austria, if we watch them in a series of historical maps, con-
tract, expand, thrust out extensions, and wander over the map
of Europe as amoebae do under the microscope. . . .
If we consider the psychology of international relationship as
we see it manifested in the world about us, and as it is shown
by the development of the "Power" idea in modem Europe,
we shall realize certain historically very important facts about
the nature of man. Aristotle said that man is a political ani-
mal, but in our modern sense of the word politics, which now
covers world-politics, he is nothing of the sort. He has still the
instincts of the family tribe, and beyond that he has a disposi-
tion to attach himself and his family to something larger, to
a tribe, a city, a nation, or a state. But that disposition, left
to itself, is a vague and very uncritical disposition. If any-
thing, he is inclined to fear and dislike criticism of this some-
thing larger that encloses his life and to which he has given
himself, and to avoid such criticism. Perhaps he has a sub-
conscious fear of the isolation that may ensue if the system is
broken or discredited. He takes the milieu in which he finds
himself for granted ; he accepts his city or his government, just
as he accepts the nose or the digestion which fortune has be-
stowed upon him. But men's loyalties, the sides they take in
political things, are not innate, they are educational results.
For most men their education in these matters is the silent,
continuous education of things about them. Men find them-
selves a part of Merry England or Holy Russia ; they grow up
into these devotions ; they accept them as a part of their nature.
It is only slowly that the world is beginning to realize how
profoundly the tacit education of circumstances can be supple-
796 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
mented, modified, or corrected by positive teaching, by litera-
ture, discussion, and properly criticized experience. The real
life of the ordinary man is his eveiyday life, his little circle of
affections, fears, hungers, lusts, and imaginative impulses. It
is only vphen his attention is directed to political affairs as
something vitally affecting this personal circle, that he brings
his reluctant mind to bear upon them. It is scarcely too much to
say that the ordinary man thinks as little about political matters
as he can, and stops thinking about them as soon as possible.
It is still only very curious and exceptional minds, or minds
that have by example or good education acquired the scientific
habit of wanting to know why, or minds shocked and distressed
by some public catastrophe and roused to wide apprehensions of
danger, that will not accept governments and institutions, how-
ever preposterous, that do not directly annoy them, as satis-
factory. The ordinary human being, until he is so aroused, will
acquiesce in any collective activities that are going on in this
world in which he finds himself, and any phrasing or symboliza-
tion that meets his vague need for something greater to which
his personal affairs, his individual circle, can be anchored.
If we keep these manifest limitations of our nature in mind,
it no longer becomes a mystery how, as the idea of Christianity
as a world brotherhood of men sank into discredit because of
its fatal entanglement with priestcraft and the Papacy on the
one hand and with the authority of princes on the other, and
the age of faith passed into our present age of doubt and dis-
belief, men shifted the reference of their lives from the kingdom
of God and the brotherhood of mankind to these apparently
more living realities, France and England, Holy Russia, Spain,
Prussia, which were at least embodied in active courts, which
maintained laws, exerted power through armies and navies,
waved flags with a compelling solemnity, and were self-asser-'
tive and insatiably greedy in an entirely human and understand-
able fashion. Certainly such men as Cardinal Eichelieu and
Cardinal Mazarin thought of thelnselves as serving greater ends
than their own or their monarch's ; they served the quasi-divine
Prance of their imaginations. And as certainly these habits
of mind percolated down from them to their subordinates and
to the general body of the population. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the general population of Europe was re-
ligious and only vaguely patriotic; by the nineteenth it had
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 797
tecome wholly patriotic. In a crowded English or French or
German railway carriage of the later nineteenth century it would
have aroused far less hostility to have jeered at God than to
have jeered at one of those strange beings, England or France
or Germany. To these things men's minds clung, and they
clung to them because in all the world there appeared nothing
else so satisfying to cling to. They were the real and living
gods of Europe.
This idealization of governments and foreign offices, this
mythology of "Powers" and their loves and hates and conflicts,
has so obsessed the imaginations of Europe and Western Asia as
to provide it with its "forms of thought." Nearly all the his-
tories, nearly all the political literature of the last two centuries
in Europe, have been written in its phraseology. Yet a time
is coming when a clear-sighted generation will read with per-
plexity how in the community of western Europe, consisting
everywhere of very slight variations of a common racial mixture
of Nordic and Iberian peoples and immigrant Semitic and Mon-
golian elements, speaking nearly everywhere modifications of
the same Aryan speech, having a common past in the Roman
Empire, common religious forms, common social usages, and a
eomm.on art and science, and intermarrying so freely that no one
could tell with certainty the "nationality" of any of his great-
grandchildren, men could be moved to the wildest excitement
upon the question of the ascendancy of "France," the rise and
unification of "Germany," the rival claims of "Eussia" and
"Greece" to possess Constantinople. These conflicts will seem
then as reasonless and insane as those dead, now incomprehensi-
ble feuds of the "greens" and "blues" that once filled the streets
of Byzantium with shouting and bloodshed.
Tremendously as these phantoms, the Powers, rule our minds
and lives to-day, they are, as this history shows clearly, things
only of the last few centuries, a mere hour, an incidental phase,
in the vast deliberate history of our kind. They mark a phase
of relapse, a backwater, as the rise of Machiavellian monarchy
marks a backwater ; they are part of the same eddy of faltering
faith, in a process altogether greater and altogether different
in its general tendency, the process of the moral and intellectual
reunion of mankind. For a time men have relapsed upon these
national or imperial gods of theirs; it is but for a time. The
idea of the world state, the universal kingdom of righteousness
798 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of wliich every living soul shall be a citizen, was already in the
world two thousand years ago never more to leave it. Men
know that it is present even when they refuse to recognize it.
In the writings and talk of men about international ailairs to-
day, in the current discussions of historians and political jour-
nalists, there is an effect of drunken men growing sober, and
terribly afraid of growing sober. They still talk loudly of their
"love" for France, of their "hatred" of Germany, of the "tra-
ditional ascendancy of Britain at sea," and so on and so on,
like those who sing of their cups in spite of the steadfast onset
of sobriety and a headache. These are dead gods they serve.
By sea or land men want no Powers ascendant, but only law
and service. That silent unavoidable challenge is in all our
minds like dawn breaking slowly, shining between the shutters
of a disordered room.
The seventeenth century in Europe was the century of Louis
XIV ; he and French ascendancy and Versailles are the central
motif of the story. The eighteenth century was equally the
century of the "rise of Prussia as a great power," and the chief
figure in the story is Frederick II, Frederick the Great. Inter-
woven with his history is the story of Poland.
The condition of affairs in Poland was peculiar. Unlike its
three neighbours, Prussia, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy of the Habsburgs, Poland had not developed a Grand
Monarchy. Its system of government may be best described as
republican with a king, an elected life-president. Each king
was separately elected. It was in fact rather more republican
than Britain, bijt its republicanism was more aristocratic in
form. Poland had little trade and few manufactures ; she was
agricultural and still with great areas of grazing, forest, and
waste; she was a poor country, and her landowners were poor
aristocrats. The mass of her population was a downtrodden
and savagely ignorant peasantry, and she also harboured great
masses of very poor Jews. She had remained Catholic. She
was, so to speak, a poor Catholic inland Britain, entirely sur-
rounded by enemies instead of by the sea. She had no definite
boundaries at all, neither sea nor mountain. And it added to
her misfortunes that some of her elected kings had been bril-
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 799
liant and aggressive rulers. Eastward her power extended
weakly into regions inhabited almost entirely by Russians ; west-
ward she overlapped a German subject population.
Because she had no great trade, she had no great towns to
compare with those of western Europe, and no vigorous uni-
versities to hold her mind together. Her noble class lived on
their estates, without much intellectual intercourse. They were
patriotic, they had an aristocratic sense of freedom — which was
entirely compatible with the systematic impoverishment of their
serfs — but their patriotism and freedom were incapable of ef-
fective co-operation. While warfare was a matter of levies of
men and horses, Poland was a comparatively strong power;
but it was quite unable to keep pace with the development of
military art that was making standing forces of professional
soldiers the necessary weapon in warfare. Yet divided and
disabled as she was, she could yet count some notable victories
to her credit. The last Turkish attack upon Vienna (1683)
was defeated by the Polish cavalry under King John Sobiesky,
King John III. (This same Sobiesky, before he was elected
king, had been in the pay of Louis XIV, and had also fought
for tbe Swedes against his native country.) J^eedless to say,
this weak aristocratic republic, with its recurrent royal elec-
tions, invited aggression from all three of its neighbours. "For-
eign money," and every sort of exterior interference, came into
the country at each election. And like the Greeks of old, every
disgruntled Polisb patriot flew off to some foreign enemy to
wreak his indignation upon his ungrateful country.
Even when the King of Poland was elected, he had very
little power because of the mutual jealousy of the nobles. Like
the English jieers, they preferred a foreigner, and for much
the same reason, because he had no roots of power in the land ;
but, unlike the British, their own government had not the
solidarity whicb the periodic assembling of Parliament in Lon-
don, the "coming up to town," gave the British peers. In Lon-
don there was "Society," a continuous intermingling of influ-
ential persons and ideas. Poland had no London and no "So-
ciety." So practically Poland had no central government at
all. The King of Poland could not make war nor peace, levy
a tax nor alter the law, without the consent of the Diet, and
any smgle member of the Diet Tied the power of putting a veto
upon any proposal before it. He had merely to rise and say,
800
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"I disapprove," and the matter dropped. He could even carry
his free veto, bis liberum veto, iuTther. He could object to the
assembly of tbe Diet, and the Diet was tbereby dissolved. ; Po-
land was not simply a crowned aristocratic republic like tJie
British, it was a paralyzed crowned aristocratic republic.
r£e PAI^TITIONS oP POLATsLD
To Frederick the Great the existence of Poland was partic-
ularly provocative because of the way in which an arm pf Po-
land reached out to the Baltic at Dantzig and separated his an-
cestral dominions in East Prussia from his territories within
the empire. It was he who incited Catherine the Second of
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 801
Russia and Maria Theresa of Austria, whose respect he had
earned by depriving her of Silesia, to a joint attack upon
Poland.
Let four maps of Poland tell the tale.
After this first outrage of 1772 Poland underwent a great
change of heart. Poland was indeed born as a nation on the
eve of her dissolution. There was a hasty but very consider-
able development of education, literature, and art; historians
and poets sprang up, and the impossible constitution that had
made Poland impotent was swept aside. The free veto was
abolished, the crown was made hereditary to save Poland from
the foreign intrigues that attended every election, and a Parlia-
ment in imitation of the British was set up. There were, how-
ever, lovers of the old order in Poland who resented these
necessary changes, and these obstructives were naturally sup-
ported by Prussia and Russia, who wanted no Polish revival.
Came the second partition, and, after a fierce patriotic struggle
that began in the region annexed by Prussia and found a leader
and national hero in Kosciusko, the final obliteration of Poland
from the map. So for a time ended this Parliamentary threat
to Grand Monarchy in Eastern Europe. But the patriotism
of the Poles grew stronger and clearer with suppression. For
a hundred and twenty years Poland struggled like a submerged
creature beneath the political and military net that held her
down. She rose again in 1918, at the end of the Great War.
§ 8
We have given some account of the ascendancy of France in
Europe, the swift decay of the sappy growth of Spanish power
and its separation from Austria, and the rise of Prussia. So
far as Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, and Holland were con-
cerned, their competition for ascendancy in Europe was ex-
tended and complicated by a struggle for dominion overseas.
The discovery of the huge continent of America, thinly in-
habited, undeveloped, and admirably adapted for European
settlement and exploitation, the simultaneous discovery of great
areas of unworked country south of the torrid equatorial re-
gions of Africa that had hitherto limited European knowledge,
and the gradual realization of vast island regions in the Eastern
802 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
seas, as yet lantouclied by Western civilization, was a presenta-
tion of opportunity to mankind unprecedented in all history. It
was as if the peoples of Europe had come into some splendid
legacy. Their world had suddenly quadrupled. There was more
than enough for all; they had only to take these lands and con-
tinue to do well by them, and their crowded poverty would
vanish like a dream. And they received this glorious legacy
like ill-bred heirs ; it meant no more to them than a fresh occa-
sion for atrocious disputes. But what community of human
beings has ever yet preferred- creation to conspiracy? What
nation in all our story has ever worked with another when, at
any cost to itself, it could contrive to do that other an injury ?
The Powers of Europe began by a frantic "claiming" of the
new realms. They went on to exhausting conflicts. Spain, who
claimed first and most, and who was for a time "mistress" of
two-thirds of America, made no better use of her possession than
to bleed herself nearly to death therein.
We have told how the Papacy in its last assertion of world
dominion, instead of maintaining the common duty of all Chris-
tendom to make a great common civilization in the new lands,
divided the American continent between Spain and Portugal.
This naturally roused the hostility of the excluded nations.
The seamen of England showed no respect for either claim, and
set themselves particularly against the Spanish; the Swedes
turned their Protestantism to a similar account. The Hollan-
ders, so soon as they had shaken off their Spanish masters,
also set their sails westward to flout the Pope and share in the
good things of the new world. His Most Catholic Majesty of
France hesitated as little as any Protestant. All these powers
were soon busy staking out claims in North America and the
West Indies.
Neither the Danish kingdom (which at that time included
Norway and Iceland) nor the Swedes secured very much in the
scramble. The Danes annexed some o'f the West Indian islands.
Sweden got nothing. Both Denmark and Sweden at this time
were deep in the affairs of Germany. We have already named
Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant "Lion of the North," and
mentioned his campaigns in Germany, Poland, and Eussia.
These Eastern European regions are great absorbents of energy,
and the strength that might have given Sweden a large share
ill the new world reaped a barren harvest of glory in Europe.
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 803
Such small settlements as the Swedes made in America pres-
ently fell to the Dutch.
The Hollanders, too, with the French monarchy under Car-
dinal Eiehelieu and under Louis XIV eating its way across the
Spanish Netherlands towards their frontier, had not the un-
distracted resources that Britain, behind her "silver streak" of
sea, could put into overseas adventures.
Moreover, th© absolutist efforts of James I and Charles I,
and the restoration of Charles II, had the effect of driving out
from England a great number of sturdy-minded, republican-
spirited Protestants, men of substance and character, who set
up in America, and particularly in New England, out of reach,
as they supposed, of the king and his taxes. The Mayflower
was only one of the pioneer vessels of a stream of emigrants.
It was the luck of Britain that they remained, though dis-
sentient in spirit, under the British flag. The Dutch never
sent out settlers of the same quantity and quality, first because
their Spanish rulers would not let them, and then because they
had got possession of their own country. And though there was
a gTeat emigration of Protestant Huguenots from the dragon-
nades and persecution of Louis XIV, they had Holland and
England close at hand as refuges, and their industry, skill, and
sobriety went mainly to strengthen those countries, and partic-
ularly England. A few of them founded settlements in Caro-
lina, but these did not remain French; they fell first to the
Spanish and finally to the English.
The Dutch settlements, with the Swedish, also succumbed to
Britain; Nieuw Amsterdam became British in 1674, and
its name was changed to New York, as the reader may learn
very cheerfully in Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's His-
tory of New York. The state of affairs in North America
in 1750 is indicated very clearly by a map we have
adapted from one in Eobinson's Medieval and Modern
Times. The British power was established along the east coast
from Savannah to the St. Lawrence River, and Newfoundland
and considerable northern areas, the Hudson Bay Company ter-
ritories, had been acquired by treaty from the French. The
British occupied Barbados (almost our oldest possession) in
1605, and acquired Jamaica, the Bahamas, and British Hon-
duras from the Spaniards. But France was pursuing a very
dangerous and alarming game, a game even more dangerous
804
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
■ ^S'V,'^^ V"^ TSI-B.- Shading doas not uidica*"
C,P^ ^ ^ areas actually settled, (cf. later
LextenL of
5 chiivruzd.
BriiLsh
FrencK
AFOHi
and alarming on the map than in reality. She had made real
settlements in Quebec and Montreal to the north and at New
Orleans in the south, and her explorers and agents had pushed
south and north, making treaties with the American Indians
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 805
of the great plains and setting up claims — ^without setting up
towns — right across the continent behind the British. But the
realities of the case are not adequately represented in this way.
The British colonies were heing very solidly settled by a good
class of people; they already numbered a population of over a
million ; the French at that time hardly counted a tenth of that.
They had a number of brilliant travellers and missionaries at
work, but no substance of population behind them.
Many old maps of America in this period are still to be found,
maps designed to scare and "rouse" the British to a sense of
the "designs of France" in America. War broke out in 1754,
and in 1759 the British and Colonial forces under General
Wolfe took Quebec and completed the conquest of Canada in
the next year. In 1763 Canada was finally ceded to Britain.
(But the western part of the rather indefinite region of Louisi-
ana in the south, named after Louis XIV, remained outside the
British sphere. It was taken over by Spain; and in 1800 it
was recovered by France. Finally, in 1803, it was bought from
France by the United States government.) In this Canadian
war the American colonists gained a considerable experience
of the military art, and a knowledge of British military or-
ganization that was to be of great use to them a little later.
§ 9
It was not only in America that the French and British
powers clashed. The condition of India at this time was one
very interesting and attractive to European adventurers. The
great Mongol Empire of Baber, Akbar, and Aurangzeb was now
far gone in decay. What had happened to India was very
parallel to what had happened to Germany. The Great Mo-
gul at Delhi in India, like the Holy Eoman Emperor in Ger-
many, was still legally overlord, but after the death of Aurang-
zeb he exerted only a nominal authority except in the immediate
neighbourhood of his capital. In the south-west a Hindu peo-
ple, the Mahrattas, had risen against Islam, restored Brahmin-
ism as the ruling religion, and for a time extended their power
over the whole southern triangle of India. In Eajputana also
the rule of Islam was replaced by Brahminism, and at Bhurt-
pur and Jaipur there ruled powerful Eajput princes. In Oudh
there was a Shiite kingdom, with its capital at Lucknow, and
806 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Bengal was also a separate (Moslem) kingdom. Away in the
Punjab to the north had arisen a very interesting religious body,
the Sikhs, proclaiming the universal rule of one God and assail-
ing both the Hindu Vedas and the Moslem Koran. Originally
a pacific sect, the Sikhs presently followed the example of Islam,
and sought — at first very disastrously to themselves — to establish
the kingdom of God by the sword. And into this confused and
disordered India there presently (1738) came an invader from
the north, Nadir Shah (1736-47), the Turcoman ruler of
Persia, who swept down through the Kyber pass, broke every
army that stood in his way, and captured and sacked Delhi,
carrying off an enormous booty. He left the north of India
so utterly broken, that in the next twenty years there were no
less than six other successful plundering raids into North India
from Afghanistan, which had become an independent state at the
death of Nadir Shah. For a time Mahrattas fought with
Afghans for the rule of North India ; then the Mahratta power
broke up into a series of principalities, Indore, Gwalior, Baroda,
and others. . . .
This was the India into which the French and English were
thrusting during the eighteenth century. A succession of other
European powers had been struggling for a commercial and
political footing in India and the east ever since Vasco da
Gama had made his memorable voyage round the Cape to
Calicut. The sea trade of India had previously been in the
hands of the Ked Sea Arabs, and the Portuguese won it from
them in a series of sea fights. The Portuguese ships were the
bigger, and carried a heavier armament. For a time the Por-
tuguese held the Indian trade as their own, and Lisbon outshone
Venice as a mart for oriental spices ; the seventeenth century,
however, saw the Dutch grasping at this monopoly. At the
crest of their power the Dutch had settlements at the Cape of
Good Hope, they held Mauritius, they had two establishments in
Persia, twelve in India, six in Ceylon, and all over the East
Indies they had dotted their fortified stations. But their lalf-
ish resolution to exclude traders of any other European na-
tionality forced the Swedes, Danes, French, and English into
hostile competition. The first effectual blows at their overseas
monopoly were struck in European waters by the victories of
Blake, the English republican admiral ; and by the opening of
the eighteenth century both the English and French were in
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS
807
vigorous competition with the Dutch for trade and privileges
throughout India. At Madras, Bomhay, and Calcutta the Eng-
lish established their headquarters; Pondicherry and Chander-
nagore were the chief French settlements.
At first all these European powers came merely as traders,
and the only establishments they attempted were warehouses;
The chiePForei^ ScttUmcntsr in IT^DIAr
but the unsettled state of the country, and the unscrupulous
methods of their rivals, made it natural for them to fortify
and arm their settlements, and this armament made them attrac-
tive allies of the various warring princes who now divided India.
And it was entirely in the spirit of the new European nationalist
politics that when the French took one side, the British should
take another. The great leader upon the English side was
Eobert Clive, who was bom in 1725, and went to India in 1743.
His chief antagonist was Dupleix. The story of this struggle
808 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
throughout the first half of the eighteenth century is too long
and intricate to be told here. By 1761 the British found them-
selves completely dominant in the Indian peninsula. At Plas^
sey (17.57) and at Buxar (1764) their armies gained striking
and conclusive victories over the army of Bengal and the army
of Oudh. The Great Mogul, nominally their overlord, became
in effect their puppet. They levied taxes over great areas;
they exacted indemnities for real or fancied opposition.
These successes were not gained directly by the forces of
the King of England ; they were gained by the East India Trad-
ing Company, which had been originally at the time, of its
incorporation under Queen Elizabeth no more than a company
of sea adventurers. Step by step they had been forced to raise
troops and arm their ships. And now this trading company,
with its tradition of gain, found itself dealing not merely in
spices and dyes and tea and jewels, but in the revenues and
territories of princes and the destinies of India. It had come
to buy and sell, and it found itself achieving a tremendous
piracy. There was no one to challenge its proceedings. • Is it
any wonder that its captains and commanders and officials,
nay, even its clerks and common soldiers, came back to England
loaded with spoils? Men under such circumstances, with a
great and wealthy land at their mercy, could not determine
what they might or might not do. It was a strange land to
them, with a strange sunlight; its brown people were a different
race, outside their range of sympathy ; its temples and buildings
seemed to sustain fantastic standards of behaviour. English-
men at home were perplexed when presently these generals and
officials came back to make dark accusations against each other
of extortions and cruelties. Upon Clive Parliament passed a
vote of censure. He committed suicide in 1774. In 1788
Warren Hastings, a second great Indian administrator, was
impeached and acquitted (1793). It was a strange and un-
precedented situation in the world's history. The English Par-
liament found itself ruling over a London trading company,
which in its turn was dominating an empire far greater and
more populous than all the domains of the British crown. To
the bulk of the English people India was a remote, fantastic,
almost inaccessible land, to which adventurous poor young men
went out, to return after many years very rich and very choleric
old gentlemen. It was difficult for the English to conceive what
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 809
the life of these countless brown millions in the eastern sunshine
could be. Their imaginations declined the task. India re-
mained romantically unreal. It was impossible for the English,
therefore, to exert any effective supervision and control over
the company's proceedings.
§ 10
And while the great peninsula of the south of Asia was thus
falling under the dominion of the English sea traders, an equally
remarkable reaction of Europe upon Asia was going on in the
north. We have told in Chap. XZXIII, § 5c, how the Christian
states of Russia recovered their independence from the Golden
Horde, and how the Tsar of Moscow became master of the re-
public of Novgorod ; and in § 5 of this chapter we have told of
Peter the Great joining the circle of Grand Monarchs and, as
it were, dragging Russia into Europe. The rise of this great
central power of the old world, which is neither altogether of the
East nor altogether of the West, is one of the utmost importance
to our' human destiny. We have also told in the same chapter
of the appearance of a Christian steppe people, the Cossacks,
who formed a barrier between the feudal agriculture of Poland
and Hungary to the west and the Tartar to the east. The Cos-
sacks were the wild east of Europe, and in many ways not un-
like the wild west of the United States in the middle nineteenth
century. AH who had made Russia too hot to hold them, crim-
inals as well as the persecuted innocent, rebellious serfs, re-
ligious sectaries, thieves, vagabonds, murderers, sought asylum
in the southern steppes, and there made a fresh start and fought
for life and freedom against Pole, Russian, and Tartar alike.
Doubtless fugitives from the Tartars to the east also contributed
to the Cossack mixture. Chief among these new nomad tribes
were the Ukraine Cossacks on the Dnieper and the Don Cossacks
on the Don. Slowly these border folk were incorporated in
the Russian imperial service, much as the Highland clans of
Scotland were converted into regiments by the British govern-
ment. New lands were offered them in Asia. They became a
weapon against the dwindling power of the Mongolian nomads,
first in Turkestan and then across Siberia as far as the Amur.
The decay of Mongol energy in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries is very difficult to explain. Within two or
three centuries from the days of Jengis and Timurlane, central
810
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Asia had relapsed from a period of world ascendancy to ex-
treme political impotence. Changes of climate, unrecorded
pestilences, infections of a malarial type, may have played their
part in this recession — ^which may be only a temporary recession
measured by the scale of universal history — of the Central Asian
Kabul
Saidh 0/ iiiiiNHiiin sub/ect to
MaJiratia Tribute.
iH.v.TTT-.hTn't Sphere ofFrzruih.
izi-Elnence.
peoples. Some authorities think that the spread of Buddhist
teaching from China also had a pacifying influence upon them.
At any rate, by the sixteenth century the Mongol Tartar and
Turkish peoples were no longer pressing outward, but were
being invaded, subjugated, and pushed back both by Christian ■
Eussia in the west and by China in the east.
All through the seventeenth century the Cossacks were spread-
ing eastward from European Eussia, and settling wherever
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS/ AND POWERS 811
they found agricultural conditions. Cordons of forts and sta-
tions formed a moving frontier to these settlements to the south,
where the Turkomans were still strong and active ; to the north-
east, however, Eussia had no frontier until she reached right
to the Pacific. . , .
At the same time China was in a phase of expansion. In
1644 the Ming Dynasty, in a state of artistic decay and greatly
weakened by a Japanese invasion, fell to Manchu conquerors,
a people apparently identical with the former Kin Dynasty,
which had ruled at Pekin over iNTorth China until the days of
Jengis. It was the Manchus who imposed the pigtail as a mark
of political loyalty upon the Chinese population. They brought
a new energy into Chinese affairs, and their northern interests
led to a considerable northward expansion of the Chinese civ-
ilization and influence into Manchuria and Mongolia. So it
was that by the middle of the eighteenth century the Russians
and Chinese were in contact in Mongolia. At this period
China ruled eastern Turkestan, Tibet, Nepal, Burmah, and
Annam. . , =
We have mentioned a Japanese invasion of China (or rather
of Korea). Except for this aggression upon China, Japan plays
no part in our history before the nineteenth century. Like
China under the Mings, Japan had set her face resolutely against
the interference of foreigners in her affairs. She was a country
leading her own civilized life, magically sealed against intruders.
We have told little of her hitherto because there was little to
tell. Her picturesque and romantic history stands apart from
the general drama of human affairs. Her population was
chiefly a Mongolian population, with some very interesting
white people of a Nordic type, the Hairy Ainu, in the northern
islands. Her civilization seems to have been derived almost
entirely from Korea and China ; her art is a special development
of Chinese art, her writing an adaptation of the Chinese script.
§ 11
In these preceding ten sections we have been dealing with an
age of division, of separated nationalities. We have already
described this period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
as an interregnum in the progress of mankind towards a world-
wide unity. Throughout this period there was no ruling unify-
812 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ing idea in men's minds. The impulse of the empire had failed
until" the Emperor was no more than one of a number of com-
peting princes, and the dream of Christendom also was a fading
dream. The developing "powers" jostled one another through-
out the world ; but for a time it seemed that they might jostle
one another indefinitely without any great catastrophe to man-
kind. The great geographical discoveries of the sixteenth cen-
tury had so enlarged human resources that, for all their divi-
sions, for all the waste of their wars and policies, the people
of Europe enjoyed a considerable and increasing prosperity.
Central Europe recovered steadily from the devastation of the
Thirty Years' War.
Looking back upon this period, which came to its climax
in the eighteenth century, looking back, as we can begin to do
nowadays, and seeing its events in relation to the centuries that
came before it and to the great movements of the present time,
we are able to realize how transitory and provisional were its
political forms and how unstable its securities. Provisional
it was as no other age has been provisional, an age of assimi-
lation and recuperation, a political pause, a gathering up of
the ideas of men and the resources of science for a wider
human effort. But the contemporary mind did not see
it in that light. The failure of the great creative ideas as
they had been formulated in the Middle Ages had left human
thought for a time destitute of the guidance of creative ideas;
even educated and imaginative men saw the world undramati-
cally ; no longer as an interplay of effort and destiny, but as the
scene in which a trite happiness was sought and the milder vir-
tues were rewarded. It was not simply the contented and con-
servative-minded who, in a world of rapid changes, were under
the sway of this assurance of an achieved fixity of human condi-
tions. Even highly critical and insurgent intelligences, in de-
fault of any sustaining movements in the soul of the community,
betrayed the same disposition. Political life, they felt, had
ceased to be the urgent and tragic thin^ it had once been ; it had
become a polite comedy. The eighteenth was a century of
comedy — ^which at the end grew grim. It is inconceivable that
that world of the middle eighteenth century could have produced
a Jesus of Nazareth, a Gautama, a Francis of Assisi, an Igna-
tius of Loyola. If one may imagine an eighteenth-century John
Hubs, it is impossible to imagine anyone with sufficient pas-
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 813
sion to bum him. Until the stirrings of conscience in Britain
that developed into the Methodist revival began, we can detect
scarcely a suspicion that there still remained great tasks in
hand for our race to do, that enormous disturbances were close
at hand, or that the path of man through space and time was
dark with countless dangers, and must to the end remain a
high and terrible enterprise.
We have quoted again and again in this history from Gib-
bon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, l^ow we shall
quote from it for the last time and bid it farewell, for we have
come to the age in which it was written. Gibbon was born in
1737, and the last volume of his history was published in
1787, but the passage we shall quote was probably written in
the year 1780. Gibbon was a young man of delicate health
and fairly good fortune; he had a partial and interrupted
education at Oxford, and then he completed his studies in Gen-
eva; on the whole his outlook was French and cosmopolitan
rather than British, and he was much under the intellectual
influence of that great Frenchman who is best known under the
name of Voltaire (Frangois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 1694-
1778). Voltaire was an author of enormous industry; seventy
volumes of him adorn the present writer's shelves, and another
edition of Voltaire's works runs to ninety-four ; he dealt largely
with history and public affairs, and he corresponded with
Catherine the Great of Eussia, Frederick the Great of Prus-
sia, Louis XV, and most of the prominent people of the time.
Both Voltaire and Gibbon had the sense of history strong in
them ; both have set out very plainly and fully their visions of
human life; and it is clear that to both of them the system in
which they lived, the system of monarchy, of leisurely and
privileged gentlefolks, of rather despised industrial and trading
people and of dovimtrodden and negligible labourers and poor
and common people, seemed the most stably established way of
living that the world has ever seen. They postured a little as
republicans, and sneered at the divine pretensions of monarchy ;
but the republicanism that appealed to Voltaire was the crowned
republicanism of the Britain of those days, in which the king
was simply the oiBcial head, the first and greatest of the
gentlemen.
The ideal they sustained was the ideal of a polite and polished
world in which men — ^men of quality, that is, for no others
814 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
counted — ^would be ashamed to be cruel or gross or enthusiastic,
in which the appointments of life would be spacious and ele-
gant, and the fear of ridicule the potent auxiliary of the law
in maintaining the decorum and harmonies of life. Voltaire
had in him the possibility of a passionate hatred of injustice,
and his interventions on behalf of persecuted or ill-used men
are the high lights of his long and complicated life-story. And
this being the mental disposition of Gibbon and Voltaire, and
of the age in which they lived, it is natural that they should
find the existence of religion in the world, and in particular
the existence of Christianity, a perplexing and rather unac-
countable phenomenon. The whole of that side of life seemed
to them a kind of craziness in the human make-up. Gibbon's
great history is essentially an attack upon Christianity as the
operating cause of the decline and fall. He idealized the crude
and gross plutocracy of Rome into a world of fine gentlemen
upon the eighteenth-century model, and told how it fell before
the Barbarian from without because of the decay through Chris-
tianity within. In our history here we have tried to set that
story in a better light. To Voltaire official Christianity was
"I'infame" ; something that limited people's lives, interfered
with their thoughts, persecuted harmless dissentients- And in-
deed in that period of the interregnum there was very little
life or light in either the orthodox Christianity of Rome or in
the orthodox tame churches of Russia and of the Protestant
princes. In an interregnum incommoded with an abundance of
sleek parsons and sly priests it was hard to realize what fires had
once blazed in the heart of Christianity, and what fires of po-
litical and religious passion might still blaze in the hearts of
men.
At the end of his third volume Gibbon completed his account
of the breaking up of the Western Empire. He then raised the
question whether civilization might ever undergo again a
similar collapse. This led him to review the existing state of
affairs (1780) and to compare it with the state of affairs dur-
ing the decline of imperial Rome. It will be very convenient
to our general design to quote some passages from that com-
parison here, for nothing could better illustrate the state of
mind of the liberal thinkers of Europe at the crest of the po-
litical interregnum of the age of the Great Powers, before the
first intimations of those profound political and social forces
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 815
of disintegration that have produced at length the dramatic
interrogations of our own times.
"This awful revolution," wrote Gibbon of the Western col-
lapse, "may be usefully applied to the useful instruction of the
present age. It is the duty of a patriot to prefer and
promote the exclusive interest and glory of his native coun-
try; but a philosopher may be permitted to enlarge his
views, and to consider Europe as one great republic, whose
various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of po-
liteness and cultivation. The balance of power will continue
to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own or the neighbouring
kingdoms may be alternately exalted or depressed; but these
partial events cannot essentially injure our general state of
happiness, the system of arts, and laws, and manners, 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 civilized society; and we may en-
quire 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 reflec-_
tions will illustrate the fall of that mighty empire and ex-
plain the probable causes of our actual security.
"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, vora-
cious, and turbulent; bold in arms, and impatient to ravish the
fruits of industry. The Barbarian VForld 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 can no longer issue from the ISTorth ; and the long
repose, which has been imputed to the decrease of population,
is the happy consequence of the progress of arts and agricul-
ture. Instead of some rude villages, thinly scattered among
816 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
its woods and morasses, Germany now produces a list of two
thousand three hundred walled towns ; the Christian kingdoms
of Denmark, Sweden, and Poland have been successively estab-
lished; and the Hanse merchants, with the Teutonic knights,
have extended their colonies along the coast of the Baltic, as
far as the Gulf of Finland. From the Gulf of Finland to the
Eastern Ocean, Russia now assumes the form of a powerful
and civilized empire. The plough, the loom, and the forge are
introduced on the banks of the Volga, the Oby, and the Lena ;
and the fiercest of the Tartar hordes have been taught to trem-
ble and obey. . . .
"The Empire of Eome was firmly established by the singular
and perfect coalition of its members. . . . But this union was
purchased by the loss of national freedom and military spirit ;
and the servile provinces, destitute of life and motion, expected
their safety from the mercenary troops and governors, who were
directed by the orders of a distant court. The happiness of a
hundred millions depended on the personal merit of one or two
men, perhaps children, whose minds were corrupted by educa-
tion, luxury, and despotic power. Europe is now divided into
twelve powerful, though unequal kingdoms, three respectable
commonwealths, and a variety of smaller, though independent,
states; the chances of royal and ministerial talents are multi-
plied, at least with the number of its rulers ; and a Julian ^
or Semiramis ^ may reign in the north, while Arcadius and
Honorius ^ again slumber on the thrones of the House of Bour-
bon. The abuses of tyranny are restrained by the mutual in-
fluence of fear and shame; republics have acquired order and
stability ; monarchies have imbibed the principles of freedom,
or, at least, of moderation ; and some sense of honour and jus-
tice is introduced into the most defective constitutions by the
general manners of the times. In peace, the progress of knowl-
edge and industry is accelerated by the emulation of so many
active rivals : in war, the European forces are exercised by tem-
perate and undecisive contests. If a savage conqueror should
issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly vanquish
the robust peasants of Russia, the numerous armies of Ger-
many, the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid freemen
•Frederick the Great of Prussia.
J 'Catherine the Great of Kussia.
' Louis XVI of France and Charles III of Spain.
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 817
of Britain ; who, perhaps, might confederate for their common
defence. Should the victorious Barbarians carry slavery and
desolation as far as the Atlantic Ocean, ten thousand vessels
would transport beyond their pursuit the remains of civilized
society ; and Europe would revive and flourish in the American
world which is already filled with her colonies and institutions.
"Cold, poverty, and a life of danger and fatigue fortify the
strength and courage of Barbarians. In every age they have op-
pressed the polite and peaceful nations of China, India, and
Persia, who neglected, and still neglect, to counterbalance these
natural powers by the resources of military art. The warlike
states of antiquity, Greece, Macedonia, and Eome, educated
a race of soldiers ; exercised their bodies, disciplined their cour-
age, multiplied their forces by regular evolutions, and con-
verted the iron which they possessed into strong and serviceable
weapons. But this superiority insensibly declined with their
laws and manners; and the feeble policy of Constantine and
his successors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the em-
pire, the rude valour of the Barbarian mercenaries. The mili-
tary art has been changed by the invention of gunpowder ; which
enables man to command the two most powerful agents of
nature, air and fire. Mathematics, chemistry, mechanics, archi-
tecture, have been applied to the service of war ; and the ad-
verse parties oppose to each other the most elaborate modes of
attack and of defence. Historians may indignantly observe that
the preparations of a siege would found and maintain a flourish-
ing colony; yet we cannot be displeased that the subversion of
a city should be a work of cost and difficulty, or that an indus-
trious people should be protected by those arts, which survive
and supply the' decay of military virtue. Cannon and fortifica-
tions now form an impregnable barrier against the Tartar
horse ^ ; and Europe is secure from any future, irruption of
Batbarians ; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to
be barbarous. , . .
"Should these speculations be found doubtful or fallacious,
there still remains a more humble source of comfort and hope.
The discoveries of ancient and modem navigators, and the do-
mestic history, or tradition, of the most enlightened nations,
represent the human savage, naked both in mind and body, and
' Gibbon forgets here that ' cannon and the fundamentals of modern
military method came to Europe with the Mongols.
818 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language.
From this abject condition, perhaps the primitive and universal
state of man, he has gradually arisen to command the animals,
to fertilize the earth, to traverse the ocean, and to measure the
heavens. His progress in the improvement and exercise of his
mental and corporeal faculties has been irregular and various,
infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing by degrees with
redoubled velocity ; ages of' laborious ascent have been followed
by a moment of rapid downfall ; and the several climates of the
globe have felt the vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the
experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and
diminish our apprehensions; we cannot determine to what
height the human species may aspire in their advances towards
perfection; but it may safely be presumed that no people, un-
less the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original
barbarism.
"Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and
religious zeal have diffused, among the savages of the Old and
New World, those inestimable gifts, they have been successively
propagated ; they can never be lost. We may therefore acquiesce
in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has in-
creased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the
knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race."
§ 12
One of the most interesting aspects of this story of Europe in
the seventeenth and earlier eighteenth century during the phase
of the Grand and Parliamentary Monarchies, is the compara-
tive quiescence of the peasants and workers. The insurrection-
ary fires of the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
seem to have died down. The acute economic clashes of the
earlier period had been mitigated by rough adjustments. The
discovery of America had revolutionized and ohanged the scale
of business and industry, had brought a vast volume of pre-
cious metal for money into Europe, had increased and varied
employment. For a time life and work ceased to be intolerable
to the masses of the poor. This did not, of course, prevent
much individual misery and discontent; the poor we have al-
ways had with us, but this misery and discontent was divided
and scattered. It became inaudible.
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 819
In the earlier period the common people had had an idea to
crystallize upon, the idea of Christian communism. They had
found an educated leadership in the dissentient priests and
doctors of the Wycliffe type. As the movement for a revival
in Christianity spent its force, as Lutheranism fell back for
leadership from Jesus upon the Protestant Princes, this con-
tact and reaction of the fresher minds of the educated class
upon the illiterate mass was interrupted. However nuraerous
a downtrodden class may be, and however extreme its miseries,
it will never be able to make an effective protest until it achieves
solidarity by the development of some common general idea.
Educated men and men of ideas are more necessary to a popular
political movement than to any other political process. A mon-
archy learns by ruling, and an oligarchy of any type has the
education of affairs ; but the common man, the peasant or toiler,
has no experience in large matters, and can exist politically
only through the services, devotion, and guidance of educated
men. The Reformation, the Reformation that succeeded, the
Reformation that is of the Princes, by breaking up educational
facilities, largely destroyed the poor scholar and priest class
whose persuasion of the crowd had rendered the Reformation
possible.
The Princes of the Protestant countries when they seized
upon the national churches early apprehended the necessity of
gripping the universities also. Their idea of education was
the idea of capturing young clever people for the service of their
betters. Beyond that they were disposed to regard education
as a mischievous thing. The only way to an education, therefore,
for a poor man was through patronage. Of course there was a
parade of encouragement towards learning in all the Grand
Monarchies, a setting up of Academies and Royal Societies, but
these benefited only a small class of subservient scholars. The
church also had learnt to distrust the educated poor man. In
the great aristocratic "crowned republic" of Britain there was
the same shrinkage of educational opportunity. "Both the an-
cient universities," says Hammond, in his account of the eight-
eenth century, "were the universities of the rich. There is a
passage in Macaulay describing the state and pomp of Oxford
at the end of the seventeenth century, 'when her Chancellor, the
Venerable Duke of Ormonde, sat in his embroidered mantle on
his throne under the painted celling of the Sheldonian theatre,
820 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to their
rank, while the noblest youths of England were solemnly pre-
sented to him as candidates for academical honours.' The uni-
versity was a power, not in the sense in which that could be
said of a university like the old university of Paris, whose learn-
ing could make Popes tremble, but in the sense that the univer-
sity was part of the recognized machinery of aristocracy. What
was true of the universities was true of the public schools.
Education in England was the nursery not of a society, but of
an order ; not of a state, but of a race of owner-rulers." The mis-
sionary spirit had departed from education throughout Europe.
To that quite as much as to the amelioration of things by a dif-
fused prosperity, this phase of quiescence among the lower
classes is to be ascribed. They had lost brains and speech, and
they were fed. The community was like a pithed animal in the
hands of the governing dass.^
Moreover, there had been considerable changes in the propor-
tions of class to class. One of the most difficult things for the
historian to trace is the relative amount of the total property
of the community held at any time by any particular class in
that community. These things fluctuate very rapidly. The
peasant wars of Europe indicate a phase of comparatively con-
centrated property when large masses of people could feel them-
selves expropriated and at a common disadvantage, and so take
mass action. This was the time of the rise and prosperity of
the Fuggers and their like, a time of international finance.
Then with the vast importation of silver and gold and com-
modities into Europe from America, there seems to have been
a restoration of a more diffused state of wealth. The poor
were just as miserable as ever, but there were perhaps not so
many poor relatively, and they were broken up into a variety
of types without any ideas in common. In Great Britain the
agricultural life which had been dislocated by the confiscations
of the Eeformation had settled down again into a system of
tenant farming under great landowners. Side by side with
the large estates there was still/ however, much common land
' "Our present public school system is candidly based on training a
dominant master CI9.SS. But the uprising of the workers and modern
conditions are rapidly making the dominant method unworkable. . . .
The change In the aim of schools will transform all the organizations and
methods of schools, and my belief is that this change will make the new era."
— F. W. Sanderson, Head Master of Oundle, in an address at Leeds, Feb-
ruary 16th, 1920.
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 821
for pasturing the beasts of the poorer villagers, and much land
cultivated in strips upon communal lines. The middling sort
of man, and even the poorer sort of man upon the land, were
leading an endurable existence in 1700. The standard of life,
the idea, that is, of what is an endurable existence, was, how-
ever, rising during the opening phase of Grand Monarchy;
aft^ a time the process of the upward concentration of wealth
seems to have been resumed, the larger landowners began to
acquire and crowd out the poorer free cultivators, and the pro-
portion of poor people and of people who felt they were lead-
ing impoverished lives increased again. The bigger men were
unchallenged rulers of Great Britain, and they set themselves
to enact laws, the Enclosure Acts, that practically confiscated the
unenclosed and common lands, mainly for the benefit of the
larger landowners. The smaller men sank to the level of wage
workers upon the land over which they had once possessed rights
of cultivation and pasture.
The peasant in France and upon the Continent generally was
not so expropriated; his enemy was not the landlord, but the
taxgatherer; he was squeezed on his land instead of being
squeezed off it.
As the eighteenth century progressed, it is apparent in the
literature of the time that what to do with "the poor" was again
exercising men's thoughts. We find such active-minded Eng-
lish writers as Defoe (1659-1731) and Fielding (1707-54)
deeply exercised by this problem. But as yet there is no such
revival of the communistic and equalitarian ideas of primitive
Christianity as distinguished the time of Wycliffe and John
Huss. Protestantism in breaking up the universal church had
for a time broken up the idea of a universal human solidarity.
Even if the universal church of the Middle Ages had failed al-
together to realize that idea, it had at any rate been the symbol
of that idea,
Defoe and Fielding were men of a livelier practical imagina-
tion than Gibbon, and they realized something of the economic
processes that were afoot in their time. So did Oliver Gold-
smith (1728-74) ; his Deserted Village (17.70) is a pamphlet
on enclosures disguised as a poem. But Gibbon's circumstances
had never brought economic facts very vividly before his eyes ,
h^ saw the world as a struggle between barbarism and civiliza-
tion, but he perceived nothing of that other struggle over which
822 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
he floated, the mute, unconscious struggle of the commonalty
against able, powerful, rich, and selfish men. He did not per-
ceive the accumulation of stresses that were presently to strain
and break up all the balance of his "twelve powerful, though
unequal, kingdoms," his "three respectable commonwealths,"
and their rag, tag, and bobtail of independent minor princes,
reigning dukes, and so forth. Even the civil war that had begun
in the British colonies in America did not rouse him to the
nearness of what we now call "Democracy."
From what we have been saying hitherto, the reader may
suppose that the squeezing of the small farmer and the peasant
off the land by the great landowners, the mere grabbing of com-
mons and the concentration of property in the hands of a power-
ful privileged and greedy class, was all that was happening to
the English land in the eighteenth century. So we do but state
the worse side of the change. Concurrently with this change
of ownership there was going on a great improvement in agri-
culture. There can be little doubt that the methods of cultiva-
tion pursued by the peasants, squatters, and small farmers were
antiquated, wasteful, and comparatively unproductive, and that
the larger private holdings and estates created by the Enclo-
sure Acts were much more productive (one authority says
twenty times more productive) than the old ways. The change
was perhaps a necessary one and the evil of it was not that it
was brought about, but that it was brought about so as to in-
crease both wealth and the numbers of the poor. Its benefits
were intercepted by the bigger private owners. The community
was injured to the great profit of this class.
And here we come upon one of the chief problems of our
lives at the present time, the problem of the deflection of the
profits of progress. For two hundred years there has been,
mainly under the influence of the spirit of science and enquiry,
a steady improvement in the methods of production of almost
everything that humanity requires. If our sense of community
and our social science were equal to the tasks required of them,
there can be little question that this great increment in pro-
duction would have, benefited the whole community, would have
given everyone an amount of education, leisure, and freedom
such as mankind had never dreamt of before. But though the
common standard of living has risen, the rise has been on a
scale disproportionately small. The rich have developed a
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 823
freedom and luxury unknown in the world hitherto, and there
has been an increase in the proportion of rich people and stag-
nantly prosperous and unproductive people in the community ;
but that also fails to account for the full benefit. There has been
much sheer waste. Vast accumulations of material and energy
have gone into warlike preparations and warfare. Much has
been devoted to the futile efforts of unsuccessful business com-
petition. Huge possibilities have remained undeveloped be-
cause of the opposition of owners, forestallers, and speculators
to their economical exploitation. The good things that science
and organization have been bringing within the reach of man-
kind have not been taken methodically and used to their utmost,
but they have been scrambled for, snatched at, seized upon by
gambling adventurers and employed upon selfish and vain ends.
The eighteenth century in Europe, and more particularly in
Great Britain and Poland, was the age of private ownership.
"Private enterprise," which meant in practice that everyone
was entitled to get everything he could out of the business of
the community, reigned supreme, ^o sense of obligation to
the state in business matters is to be found in the ordinary
novels, plays, and such-like representative literature of the
time. Everyone is out "to make his fortune," there is no
recognition that it is wrong to be an unproductive parasite on
the community, and still less that a financier or merchant or
manufacturer can ever be overpaid for his services to mankind.
This was the moral atmosphere of the time, and those lords
and gentlemen who grabbed the people's commons, assumed
possession of the mines under their lands, and crushed down
the yeoman farmers and peasants to the status of pauper
labourers, had no idea that they were living anything but highly
meritorious lives.
Concurrently with this change in Great Britain from tradi-
tional patch agriculture and common pasture to large and more
scientific agriculture, very great changes were going on in the
manufacture of commodities. In these changes Great Britain
was, in the eighteenth century, leading the world. Hitherto,
throughout the whole course of history from the beginnings of
civilization, manufactures, building, and industries generally
had been in the hands of craftsmen and small masters who
worked in their own houses. They had been organized in
^ilds, find were mostly their own employers. They formed
824 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
an essential and pennanent middle class. There were capi-
talists among them, who let out looms and the like, supplied
material, and took the finished product, but they were not big
capitalists. There had been no rich manufacturers. The rich
men of the world before this time had been great landowners
or inoney'lenders and money manipulators or merchants. But
in the eighteenth century, workers in certain industries began
to be collected together into factories in order to produce things
in larger quantities through a systematic division of labour, and
the employer, as distinguished from the master worker, began
to be a person of importance. Moreover, mechanical inven-
tion was producing machines that simplified the manual work
of production, and were capable of being driven by water
power and presently by steam. In 1765 Watt'si steam en~
gine was constructed, a very important date in the history of
industrialism.
The cotton industry was one of the first to pass into factory'
production (originally with water-driven machinery). The
woollen industry followed. At the same time iron smelting,
which had been restrained hitherto to small methods by the
use of charcoal, resorted to coke made from coal, and the coal
and iron industries also began to expand. The iron industry
shifted from the wooded country of Sussex and Surrey to the
coal districts. By 1800 this change-over of industry from a
small scale business with small employers to a large scale pro-
duction under big employers was well in progress. Every-
where there sprang up factories using first water, then steam
power. It was a change of fundamental importance in human
economy. From the dawn of history the manufacturer and
craftsman had been, as we have said, a sort of middle-class
townsman. The machins and the employer now superseded his
skill, and he either became an employer of his fellows, and
grew towards wealth and equality with the other rich classes,
or he remained a worker and sank very rapidly to the level of
a mere labourer. This great change in human affairs is known
as the Industrial Eevolution. Beginning in Great Britain, it
spread during the nineteenth century throughout the world.
As the Industrial Eevolution went on, a great gulf opened
between employer and employed. In the past every manufac-
turing worker had the hope of becoming an independent mas-
ter. Even the slave craftsmen of Babylon and Rome were
PRINCES, PARLIAMENTS, AND POWERS 825
protected by laws that enabled them to save and buy their
freedom and to set up for themselves. But now a factory and
its engines and machines became a vast and costly thing meas-
ured by the scale of the worker's pocket. Wealthy men had
to come together to create an enterprise ; credit and plant, that
is to say, "Capital," werQ required. "Setting up for oneself"
ceased to be a normal hope for an artisan. The worker was
henceforth a worker from the cradle to the grave. Besides the
landlords and merchants and the money-dealers who financed
trading companies and lent their money to the merchants and
the state, there arose now this new wealth of industrial capital
— a new sort of power in the state.
Of the working out of these beginnings we shall tell later.
The immediate effect of the industrial revolution upon the
countries to which it came, was to cause a vast, distressful shift-
ing and stirring of th» mute, uneducated, leaderless, and now
more and more propertyless common population. The small
cultivators and peasants, ruined and dislodged by the Enclosure
Acts, drifted towards the new manufacturing regions, and there
they joined the families of the impoverished and degraded
craftsmen in the factories. Great towns of squalid houses came
into existence. Nobody seems to have noted clearly what was
going on at the time. It is the keynote of "private enterprise"
to mind one's OM^n business, secure the utmost profit, and disr
regard any other consequences. Ugly great factories grew up,
built as cheaply as possible, to hold as many machines and
workers as possible. Around them gathered the streets of
workers' homes, built at the cheapest rate, without space, with-
out privacy, barely .decent, and let at the utmost rent that could
be exacted. These new industrial centres were at first without
schools, without churches. ...
The English gentleman of the closing decades of the eight-
eenth century read Gibbon's third volume and congratulated
himself that there was henceforth no serious fear of the Bar-
barians, with this new barbarism growing up, with this meta-
morphosis of his countrymen into something dark and desperate,
in full progress, within an easy walk perhaps of his door.
XXXVI
THE NEW DEMOCKATIO EEPUBLICS OF AMEKICA
AND FKAN^B
§ 1. Inconveniences of the Oreat Power System. § 2. The
Thirteen Colonies Before Their Revolt. § 3. Civil War Is
Forced Upon the Colonies. § 4. The War of Independency.
§ 5. The Constitution of the United States. § 6. Primitive
Features of the United States Constitution. § 7. Revolu-
tionary Ideas in France. § 8. The Revolution of the Year
1789.: § 9. The French "Crovmed Republic" of '89-91.
§, 10. The Revolution of the Jacobins. § 11. The Jaxohin
Republic, 1792-9 Jf. § 12. The Directory. % 13. The Pause
in Reconstruction and the Dawn of Modem Socialism.
§ 1
WHEN Gibbon, , nearly a century and a half ago, was
congratulating the "world of refined and educated peo-
ple that the age of great political and social catas-
trophes was past, he was neglecting many signs which we^
in the wisdom of accomplished facts — could have told him
portended far heavier jolts and dislocations than any he fore-
saw. We have told how the struggle of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth-century princes for ascendancies and advantages de-
veloped into a more cunning and complicated struggle of foreign
offices, rifasquerading as idealized "Great Powers," as the eight-
eenth century wore on. The intricate and pretentious art of
diplomacy developed. The "Prince" ceased to be a single and
secretive Machiavellian schemer, and became merely the
crowned symbol of a Machiavellian scheme. Prussia, Eussia,
and Austria fell upon and divided Poland. France was baffled
in profound schemes against Spain. Britain circumvented the
"designs of France" in America and acquired Canada, and
got the better of France in India. And then a remarkable thing
occurred, a thing very shocking to European diplomacy. The
JBritish colonies in America flatly refused to have further part
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 827
or lot in this game of "Great Powers." They objected that they
had no voice and no great interest in these European schemes
and conflicts, and they refused to bear any portion of the
burthen of taxation these foreign policies entailed. "Taxation
without representation is tyranny"; this was their dominant
idea.
Of course this decision to separate did not flash out complete
and finished from the American mind at the beginning of these
troubles. In America in the eighteenth century, just as in
England in the seventeenth, there was an entire willingness,
indeed a desire on the part of ordinary men, to leave foreign
affairs in the hands of the king and his ministers. But there
was an equally strong desire on the part of ordinary men to
be neither taxed nor interfered with in their ordinary pursuits.
These are incompatible wishes. Common men cannot shirk
world politics and at the same time enjoy private freedom; but
it has taken them countless generations to learn this. The
first impulse in the American revolt against the government in
Great Britain was therefore simply a resentment against the
taxation and interference that followed necessarily from "for-
eign policy" without any clear recognition of what was in-
volved in that objection. It was only when the revolt was con-
summated that the people of the American colonies recognized
at all clearly that they had repudiated the Great Power view of
life. The sentence in which that repudiation was expressed
was Washington's injunction to "avoid entangling alliances."
For a full century the united colonies of. Great Britain in North
America, liberated and independent as the United States of
America, stood apart altogether from the blood-stained iiitrigues
and conflicts of the European foreign offices. Soon after (1810
to 1823) they were able to extend their principle of detach-
ment to the rest of the continent, and to make all the E^ew
World "out of bounds" for the scheming expansionists of the
old. When at length, in 1917, they were obliged to re-enter the
arena of world politics, it was to bring the new spirit and new
aims their aloofness had enabled them to develop into the tangle
of international relationships. They were not, however, the
first to stand aloof. Since the treaty of Westphalia (1648),
the confederated states of Switzerland, iu their mountain fast-
nesses, had sustained their right to exclusion from the schemes
of kings and empires.
828 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
But since the North American peoples are now to play an
increasingly important part in our history, it will be well to
devote a little more attention than we have hitherto given to
their development. We have already glanced at this story in
§ 8 of the preceding chapter. We will now tell a little more
fully— rthough still in the barest outline — ^what these colonies
were, whose recalcitrance was so disconcerting to the king and
ministers of Great Britain in their diplomatic game against
the rest of mankind.
§ 2
The extent of the British colonies in America in the early
half of the eighteenth century is shown in the accompanying
map. The darker shading represents the districts settled in
1700, the lighter the growth of the settlements up to 1760. It
will he seen that the colonies were a mere fringe of population
along the coast, spreading gradually inland and finding in the
Alleghany and Blue Mountains a very serious barrier. Among
the oldest of these settlements was the colony of Virginia, the
name of which commemorates Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin
Queen of England. The first expedition to found a colony in
Virginia was made by Sir Walter Kaleigh in 1584, but there
was no permanent settlement at that time ; and the real begin-
nings of Virginia date from the foundation of the Virginia
Company in 1606 in the reign of James I (1603-25). The
story of John Smith and the early founders of Virginia and
of how the Indian "princess" Pocahontas married one of his
gentlemen, is an English classic.^ In growing tobacco the Vir-
ginians found the beginning of prosperity. At the same time
that the Virginian Company was founded, the Plymouth Com-
pany obtained a charter for the settlement of the country to
the north of Long Island Sound, to which the English laid
claim. But it was only in 1620 that the northern region began
to be settled, and that under fresh charters. The settlers of
the northern region (New England), which became Connecti-
cut, New Hampshire, Ehode Island, and Massachusetts, were
men of a different stamp to the Virginia people. They were
Protestants discontented with the Anglican Church compromise,
and republican-spirited men hopeless of resistance to the Grand
^John Smith's Trwvels.
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 829
Monarchy of James I and Charles I. Their pioneer ship was
the Mayflower, which founded New Plymouth in 1620. The
dominant northern colony was Massachusetts. Differences in
religious method and in ideas of toleration led to the separation
of the three other Puritan colonies from Massachusetts. It
illustrates the scale upon which things were done in those days
that the whole state of New Hampshire was claimed as belong-
ing to a certain Captain John Mason, and that he offered to
sell it to the king (King Charles II in 1671) in exchange for
the right to import 300 tons of French wine free of duty — an
offer which was refused. The present state of Maine was bought
by Massachusetts from its alleged owner for twelve hundred
and fifty 'pounds.
In the Civil War that ended with the decapitation of Charles
I the sympathies of New England were for the Parliament,
and Virginia was Cavalier; but two hundred and fifty miles
separated these settlements, and there were no serious hostili-
ties. With the return of the monarchy in 1660, there vt^as a
vigorous development of British colonization in America.
Charles II and his associates were greedy for gain, and the
British crown had no wish to make any further experiments
in illegal taxation at home. But the undefined rektions of
the colonies to the crown and the British government seemed to
afford promise of financial adventure across the Atlantic. There
was a rapid development of plantations and proprietary colonies.
Lord Baltimore had already in 1632 set up a colony that was
to be a home of religious freedom for Catholics under the at-
tractive name of Maryland, to the north and east of Virginia ;
and now the Quaker Penn (whose father had rendered valuable
services to Charles II) established himself to the north at
Philadelphia and founded the colony of Pennsylvania. Its
main boundary with Maryland and Virginia was delimited
by two men. Mason and Dixon, whose "Mason and Dixon's
Line" was destined to become a very important line indeed in
the later affairs of the United States. Carolina, which was
originally an unsuccessful French Protestant establishment, and
which owed its name not to Charles (Carolus) II of England,
but to Charles IX of France, had fallen into English hands and
was settled at several points. Between Maryland and New
England stretched a number of small Dutch and Swedish set-
tlements, of which the chief town was New Amsterdani, These
830
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
settlements were captured from the Dutch by the British in
1664, lost again in 1673, and restored hy treaty when Hol-
land and England made peace in 1674. Thereby the whole
^(ie AlvtERlCAIVl eb2omgf.5?Knym^ferPttor^
sdddaA uptol760 r~ .
• •» forta
"K-Hf Nzw Hairpshire
TvT. * Massachusetts
C. = Cdnnecxicut
R.I.= "Ryiouz Is.
NJ. = New Jerstt
M5= Maryland
D. = Delaware
coast from Maine to Carolina became in some form or other a
British possession. To the south the Spanish were established ;
their headquarters were at Fort St. Augustine in Florida, and
in 1732 the town of Savannah was settled by a philanthropist
Oglethorpe from England, who had taken pity on the miserable
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 831
people imprisoned for debt in England, and rescued a number
of them from prison to become the founders of a new colony,
Georgia, which was to be a bulwark against the Spanish. So
by the middle of the eighteenth century we have these settle-
ments along the American coast'line: the New England group
of Puritans and free Protestants, Maine (belonging to Massa-
chusetts), New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Massachusetts; the captured Dutch group, which was now di-
vided up into New York (New Amsterdam rechristened) , New
Jersey, and Delaware (Swedish before it was Dutch, and in its
earliest British phase attached to Pennsylvania) ; then came
Catholic Maryland; Cavalier Virginia; Carolina (which was
presently divided into North and South) and Oglethorpe's
Georgia. Later on a number of Tyrolese Protestants took
refuge in Georgia, and there was a considerable immigration of
a good class of German cultivators into Pennsylvania.
Such were the miscellaneous origins of the citizens of the
Thirteen Colonies. The possibility of their ever becoming
closely united would have struck an impartial observer in 1760
as being very slight. Superadded to the initial differences of
origin, fresh differences were created by climate. North of the
Mason and Dixon line farming was practised mainly upon
British or Central European lines by free white cultivators.
The settled country of New England took on a likeness to the
English countryside; considerable areas of Pennsylvania de-
veloped fields and farmhouses, like those of South Germany.
The distinctive conditions in the north had, socially, important
effects. Masters and men had to labour together as backwoods-
men, and were equalized in the process. They did not start
equally; many "servants" are mentioned in the roster of the
Mayflower. But they rapidly became equal under colonial con-
ditions ; there was, for instance, a vast tract of land to be had
for the taking, and the "servant" went off and took land like
his master. The English class system ' disappeared. Under
colonial conditions there arose equality "in the faculties both
of body and mind," and an individual independence of judg-
ment impatient of interference from England. But south of
the Mason and Dixon line tobacco growing began, and the _
warmer climate encouraged the establishment of plantations *
with gang labour. Eed Indian captives were tried, but found
to be too homicidal; Cromwell sent Irish prisoners of war to
8S2 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
Virginia, which did much to reconcile the Royalist planters to
republicanism ; convicts were sent out, and there was a consid-
erable trade in kidnapped children, who were "spirited away"
to America to become apprentices or bond slaves. But the most
convenient form of gang labour proved to be that of negro
slaves. The first negro slaves were brought to Jamestown in
Virginia by a Dutch ship as early as 1620. By 1700 negro
slaves were scattered all over the states, but Virginia, Mary-
land, and the Carolinas were their chief regions of employ-
ment, and while the communities to the north, were communities
of not very rich and not very poor farming men, the south
developed a type of lai:ge proprietor and a white community of
overseers and professional men subsisting on slave labour.
Slave labour was a necessity to the social and economic system
that had grown up in the south; in the north the presence of
slaves was unnecessary and in some respects inconvenient. Con-
scientious scruples about slavery were more free, therefore, to
develop and flourish in the northern atmosphere. To this
question of the revival of slavery in the world we must return
when we come to >consider the perplexities of American Democ-
racy. Here we note it simply as an added factor in the hetero-
geneous mixture of the British Colonies.
But if the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies were miscel-
laneous in their origins and various in their habits and sym-
pathies, they had three very strong antagonisms in common.
They had a common interest against the Red Indians. For a
time they shared a common dread of French conquest and
4ominion. And thirdly, they were all in conflict with the claims
of the British crown and the commercial selfishness of the nar-
row oligarchy who dominated the British Parliament and
British affairs.
So far as the first danger went, the Indians were a constant
evil, but never more than a threat of disaster. They remained
divided against themtelves. Yet they had shown possibilities
of combination upon a larprer scale. The Five Nations of the
Iroquois (see map, p. 830) was a very important league of
tribes. But it never succeeded in playing off the French against
the English to secure itself, and no Red Indian Jengis Khan
ever arose among these nomads of the new world. The French
aggression was a more serious threat. The French never made
settlements in America on a scale to compete with the English,
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 833
but their government set about the encirclement of the colonies
and their subjugation in a terrifyingly systematic manner. The
English in America were colonists ; the French were explorers,
adventurers, agents, missionaries, merchants, and soldiers.
Only in Canada did they strike root. French statesmen sat
over maps and dreamt dreams, and their dreams are to be seen
in our map in the chain of forts creeping southward from ihe
great lakes and northward up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
The struggle of France and Britain was a world-wide struggle.
It was decided in India, in Germany, and on the high seas. In
the Peace of Paris (1763) the French gave England Canada,
and relinquished Louisiana to the inert hands of declining
Spain. It was the complete abandonment of America by France.
The lifting of the French danger left the colonists unencum-
bered to face their third common antagonist — the crown and _
government of their mother land.
§ 3
We have noted in the previous chapter how the governing
class of Great Britain steadily acquired the land and destroyed
the liberty of the common people throughout the eighteenth
century, and how greedily and blindly the new industrial revolu-
tion was brought about. We have noted also how the British
Parliament, through the decay of the representative methods
of the House of Commons, had become both in its upper and
lower houses merely the instrument of government through the
big landowners. Both these big property-holders and the crown
were deeply interested in America; the former as private ad-
venturers, the latter partly as representing the speculative ex-
ploitations of the Stuart kings, and partly as representing the
state in search of funds for the expenses of foreign policy, and
neither lords nor crown were disposed to regard the traders,
planters, and common people of the colonies with any more con-
sideration than they did the yeomen and small cultivators at
home. At bottom the interests of the common man in Great
Britain, Ireland, and America were the same. Each was being
squeezed by the same system. But while in Britain oppressor
and oppressed were closely tangled up in one intimate social
system, in America the crown ,and the exploiter were far away,
834 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and men could get together and develop a sense of community
against their common enemy.
Moreover, the American colonist had the important advan-
tage of possessing a separate and legal organ of resistance to
the British government in the assembly or legislature of his
colony that was necessary for the management of local affairs.
The common man in Britain, cheated out of his proper repre-
sentation in the Commons, had no organ, no centre of expression
and action for his discontents.
It will be evident to the reader, bearing in mind the variety
of the colonies, that here was the possibility of an endless series
of disputes, aggressions, and counter-aggressions. The story
of the development of irritations between the colonies and
Britain is a story far too intricate, subtle, and lengthy for the
. scheme of this Outlina SufBce it that the grievances fell under
three main heads : attempts to secure for British adventurers or
the British government the profits of the exploitation of new
lands; systematic restrictions upon trade designed to keep the
foreign trade of the colonies entirely in British hands, so that
the colonial exports all went through Britain and only British-
made goods were used in America ; and finally attempts at taxa-
tion through the British Parliament as the supreme taxing
authority of the empire. Under the pressure of this triple
system of annoyances, the American colonists were forced to
do a very considerable amount of hard political thinking. Such
men as Patrick Henry and James Otis began to discuss the
fundamental ideas of government and political association very
much as they had been discussed in England in the great days
of Cromwell's Commonweal. They began to deny both the
divine origin of kingship and the supremacy of the British
Parliament, and (James Otis, 1Y62) to say such things as: —
"God made all men naturally equal.
"Ideas of earthly superiority are educational, not innate.
"Kings were made for the good of the people, and not the
people for them.
"Wo government has a right to make slaves of its subjects.
"Though most governments are de facto arbitrary, and conse-
quently the curse and scandal of human nature, yet none are
de jure arbitrary."
Some of which propositions reach far.
This ferment in the political ideas of the Americans was
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 835
started by English leaven. One very influential English writer
■was John Locke (1632-1704), whose Two Treatises on Civil
Governmerd may be taken, as much as any one single book can
be taken in such cases, as the point of departure for modern
democratic ideas. He was the son of a Cromwellian soldier,
he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, during the repub-
' lican ascendancy, he spent some years in Holland in exile, and
' his writings form a bridge between the bold political thinking
of those earlier republican days and the revolutionary move-
ment both in America and France.
But men do not begin to act upon theories. It is always
some real danger, some practical necessity, that produces action ;
and it is only after action has destroyed old relationships and
produced a new and perplexing state of affairs that theory comes
to its own. Then it is that theory is put to the test. The dis-
cord in interests and ideas between the colonists was brought
to a fighting issue by the obstinate resolve of the British Parlia-
ment after the peace of 1763 to impose taxation upon the Ameri-
can colonies. Britain was at peace and flushed with successes ;
it seemed an admirable opportunity for settling accounts with
these recalcitrant settlers. But the great British property-
owners found a power beside their own, of much the same mind
with them, but a little divergent in its ends — the reviving
crown. King George III, who had begun his reign in 1760,
was resolved to be much more of a king than his two German
predecessors. He could speak English; he claimed to "glory
in the name of Briton" — and indeed it is not a bad name for a
man without a perceptible drop of English, Welsh, or Scotch
blood in his veins. In the American colonies and the overseas
possessions generally, with their indefinite charters or no char-
ters at all, it seemed to him that the crown might claim authority
and obtain resources and powers absolutely denied to it by the
strong and jealous aristocracy in Britain. This inclined many
of the Whig noblemen to a sympathy with the colonists that
they might not otherwise have shown. They had no objection
to ithe exploitation of the colonies in the interests of British
"private enterprise," but they had very strong objections to
the strengthening of the crown by that exploitation so as to
make it presently independent of themselves.
The war that broke out was therefore in reality not a war
between Britain and the colonists, it was a war between
8S6 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the British government and the colonists, with a body of
Whig noblemen and a considerable amount of public feeling
in England on the side of the latter. An early move after 1763
was an attempt to raise revenue for Britain in the colonies by
requiring that newspapers and documents of various sorts
should be stamped. This was stiffly resisted, the British crown
was intimidated, and the Stamp Acts were repealed (1766).
Their repeal was greeted by riotous rejoicings in London, more
hearty even than those in the colonies.
But the Stamp Act affair was only one eddy in a turbulent
stream flowing towards civil war. Upon a score of pretexts,
and up and down the coast, the representatives of the British
government were busy asserting their authority and making
British government intolerable. The quartering of soldiers
upon the colonists was a great nuisance. Khode Island was
particularly active in defying the trade restrictions ; the Rhode
Islanders were "free traders," — that is to say, smugglers; a
government schooner, the Gaspee, ran aground off Providence;
she was surprised, boarded, and captured by armed men in
boats, and burnt. In 1773, with a total disregard of the exist-
ing colonial tea trade, special advantages for the importation
of tea into America were given by the British Parliament to
the East India Company. It was resolved by the colonists to
refuse and boycott this tea. When the tea importers at Boston
showed themselves resolute to land their cargoes, a band of
men disguised as Indians, in the presence of a great crowd of
people, boarded the three tea ships and threw the tea overboard
(December 16th, 1773).
All 1774 was occupied in the gathering up of resources on
either side for the coming conflict. It was decided by the Brit-
ish Parliament in the spring of 1774 to punish Boston by clos-
ing her port. Her trade was to be destroyed unless she accepted
that tea. It was a quite typical instance of that silly "firmness"
which shatters empires. In order to enforce this measure, Brit-
ish troops were concentrated at Boston under General Gage.
The colonists took counter-measures. The first colonial Con-
gress met at Philadelphia in September, at which twelve colonies
were represented : Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hamp-
shire, Rhode Island, l^ew York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and North and South Carolina.
Georgia was not present. True to the best English traditions,
BEPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE
837
the Congress documented its attitude by a "Declaration of
Rights." Practically this Congress was an insurrectionary
government, but no blow was struck until the spring of 1775.
Then came the first shedding of blood.
Two of the American leaders, Hancock and Samuel Adams,
had been marked down by the British Government for arrest
and trial for treason ; they were known to be at Lexington, about
Sketch mapia^umr
•B05TCN e
1775
■f MCks
eleven miles from Boston ; and in the night of April 18th, 1775,
Gage set his forces in motion for their arrest.
That night was a momentous one in history. The movement
of Gage's troops had been observed, signal lanterns were shown
from a church tower in Boston, and two men, Dawes and Paul
Revere, stole away in boats across the Back Bay to take horse
and warn the countryside. The British were also ferried over
thp water, and as they marched through the night towards
Lexington, the firing of signal cannon and the ringing of church
bells went before them. As they entered Lexington at dawn,
they saw a little company of men drawn up in military fashion.
It seems that the British fired first. There was a single shot and
then a volley, and the little handful decamped, apparently with-
out any answering shots, leaving eight dead and nine wounded
upon the village green.
The British then marched on to Concord, ten miles further,
occupied the village, and stationed a party on the bridge at that
place. The expedition had failed in its purpose of arresting
Hancock and Adams, and the British commander seems to have
838 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
been at a loss what to do next. Meanwliile tlie colonial levies
were coming up from all directions, and presently the picket
upon the bridge found itself subjected to an increasing fire
from a gathering number of assailants firing from behind trees
and fences. A retreat to Boston was decided upon. It was a
disastrous retreat. The country had risen behind the British;
all the morning the colonials had been gathering. Both sides
of the road were now swarming with sharpshooters firing from
behind rock and fence and building; the soldiers were in con-
spicuous scarlet uniforms, with yellow facings and white gaiters
and cravats; this must have stood out very vividly against the
cold sharp colours of the late iN'ew England spring; the day
was bright, hot, and dusty, and they were already exhausted by
a night march. Every few yards a man fell, wounded or killed.
The rest tramped on, or halted to fire an ineffectual volley. 'No
counter-attack was possible. Their assailants lurked every-
where. At Lexington there were British reinforcements and
two guns, and after a brief rest the retreat was resumed in
better order. But the sharpshooting and pursuit was pressed
to the river, and after the British had crossed back into Boston,
the colonial levies took up their quarters in Cambridge and
prepared to blockade the city.
§ 4
So the war began. It was not a war that promised a con-
clusive end. The colonists had no one vulnerable capital ; they
were dispersed over a great country, with a limitless wilderness
behind it, and so they had great powers of resistance. They
had learnt their tactics largely from the Indians; they could
fight well in open order, and harry and destroy troops in move-
ment. But they had no disciplined army that could meet the
British in a pitched battle, and little military equipment; and
their levies grew impatient at a long campaign, and tended to
go home to their farms. The British, on the other hand, had
a well-drilled army, and their command of the sea gave them
the power of shifting their attack up an,d down the long Atlantic
seaboard. They were at peace with all the world. But the
king was stupid and greedy to interfere in the conduct of
affairs ; the generals he favoured were stupid "strong men" or
flighty men of birth and fashion; and the heart of England
EEPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 839
was not in the business. He trusted rather to being able to
blockade, raid, and annoy the colonists into submission than
to a conclusive conquest and occupation of the land. But the
methods emplojed, and particularly the use of hired German
troops, who still retained the cruel traditions of the Thirty
Years' War, and of Indian auxiliaries, who harried the out-
lying settlers, did not so much weary the Americans of the war
as of the British. The Congress, meeting for the second time
in 17Y5, endorsed the actions of the New England colonists,
and appointed George Washington the American commander-
in-chief. In 17Y7, General Burgoyne, in an attempt to get
down to "New York from Canada, was defeated at Freeman's
Farm on the Upper Hudson, and surrounded and obliged to
capitulate at Saratoga with his whole army. This disaster en-
couraged the French and Spanish to come into the struggle
on the side of the colonists. The French sent General Lafayette
to the States to assist them with his advice, and their fleet did
much to minimize the advantage of the British at sea. General
Comwallis was caught in the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia
in 1781, and capitulated with his army. The British Govern-
ment, now heavily engaged with France and Spain in Europe,
was at the end of its resources.
At the outset of the war the colonists in general seem to have
been as little disposed to repudiate monarchy and claim com-
plete independence as were the Hollanders in the opening phase
of Philip II's persecutions and follies. The separatists were
called radicals ; they were mostly extremely democratic, as we
should say in England to-day, and their advanced views fright-
ened many of the steadier and wealthier colonists, for whom
class privileges and distinctions had considerable charm. But
early in 1776 an able and persuasive Englishman, Thomas
Paine, published a pamphlet at Philadelphia with the title of
Common Sense, which had an enormous effect on public opinion.
Its style was rhetorical by modem standards. "The blood of
the slain, the weeping voice of Nature cries, ' 'TIs time to part,' "
and so forth. But its effects were very great. It converted
thousands to the necessity of separation. The turn-over of
opinion, once it had begun, was rapid.
Only in the summer of 1776 did Congress take the irrevocable
step of declaring for separation. "The Declaration of Indepen-
dence," another of those exemplary documents which it has been
840 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tlie peculiar service of the English to produce for mankind, was
drawn up by Thomas Jefferson ; and after various amendments
and modifications it was made the fundamental document of
the United States of America. There were two noteworthy
amendments to Jefferson's draft. He had denounced the
slave trade fiercely, and blamed the home government for in-
terfering with colonial attempts to end it. This was thrown
out, and so, too, was a sentence about the British: "we must
endeavour to forget our former love for them . . • we might
have been a free and a great people together."
Towards the end of 1782, the preliminary articles of the
treaty in which Britain recognized the complete independence
of the United States were signed at Paris. The end of the war
was proclaimed on April 19th, 1783, exactly eight years after
Paul Eevere's ride, and the retreat of Gage's men from Con-
cord to Boston. The Treaty of Peace was finally signed at
Paris in September.
§5
From the point of view of human history, the way in which
the Thirteen States became independent is of far less impor-
tance than the fact that they did become independent. And
with the establishment of their Independence came a new sort
of community into the world. It was like something coming
out of an egg. It was a western European civilization that
had broken free from the last traces of Empire and Christen-
dom ; it had not a vestige of monarchy left and no state religion.
It had no dukes, princes, counts, nor any sort of title-bearers
claiming to ascendancy or respect as a right. Even its unity
was as yet a mere unity for defence and freedom. It was in
these respects such a clean start in political organization as the
world had not seen before. The absence of any binding re-
ligious tie is especially noteworthy. It had a number of forms
of Christianity, its spirit was indubitably Christian; but as a
state document of 1796 explicitly declared, "The government
of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Chris-
tian religion." ^ The new community had in fact gone ■ right
down to the bare and stripped fundamentals of human asaocia-
• The Tripoli Treaty, see Channing, vol. iii, chap, xviii.
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE
841
tion, and it was building up a new sort of society and a new
sort of state upon those foundations.
Here were about four million people scattered over vast areas
with very slow and difficult means of intercommunication, poor
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as yet, but with the potentiality of limitless wealth, setting out
to do in reality on a huge scale such a feat of construction as
the Athenian philosophers twenty-two centuries before had done
in imagination and theory.
842 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
This situation marks a definite stage in the release of man
from precedent and usage, and a definite step forward towards
the conscious and deliherate reconstruction of his circumstances
to suit his needs and aims. It was a new method becoming
practical in human affairs. The modern states of Europe have
been evolved institution by institution slowly and planlessly
out of preceding things. The United States were planned and
made.
In one respect, however, the creative freedom of the new
nation was very seriously restricted. This new sort of com-
munity and state was not built upon a cleared site. It was not
even so frankly an artificiality as some of the later Athenian
colonies, which went out from the mother city to plan and build
brand new city states with brand new constitutions. The thir-
teen colonies by the end of the war had all of them constitutions
either like that of Connecticut and Ehode Island dating from
their original charters (1662) or, as in the case of the rest of
the states, where a British governor had played a large part
in the administration, re-made during the conflict. But we may
well consider these reconstructions as contributory essays and
experiments in the general constructive effort.
Upon the effort certain ideas stood out very prominently.
One is the idea of political and social equality. This idea,
which we saw coming into the world as an extreme and almost
incredible idea in the age between Buddha and Jesus of Naza-
reth, is now asserted in the later eighteenth century as a prac-
tical standard of human relationship. Says the fundamental
statement of Virginia: "All men are by nature equally free
and independent," and it proceeds to rehearse their "rights,"
and to assert that all magistrates and governors are but "trustees
and servants" of the commonweal. All men are equally entitled
to the free exercise of religion. The king by right, the aris-
tocrat, the "natural slave," the god, king, and the god have all
vanished from this political scheme — so far as these declarations
go. Most of the states produced similar preludes to government.
The Declaration of Independence said that "all men are born
equal." It is everywhere asserted in eighteenth-century terms
that the new community is to be — to use the phraseology we
have introduced in an earlier chapter — a community of will
and not a community of obedience. But the thinkers of that
time had a rather clumsier way of putting the thing, they
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE * 843
imagined a sort of individual choice of and assent to citizenship
that never in fact occurred — the so-called Social Contract. The
Massachusetts preamhle, for instance, asserts that the state is a
voluntary association, "by which the whole people covenants
with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people that
all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good."
Now it will be evident that most of these fundamental state-
ments are very questionable statements. Men are not born
equal, they are not born free; they are born a most various
multitude enmeshed in an ancient and complex social net. Nor
is any man invited to sign the social contract or, failing that,
to depart into solitude. These statements, literally interpreted,
are so manifestly false that it is impossible to believe that the
men who made them intended them to be literally interpreted.
They made them in order to express certain elusive but pro-
foundly important ideas — ideas that after another century and
a half of thinking the world is in a better position to express.
Civilization, as this outline has shown, arose as a community
of obedience, and was essentially a community of obedience.
But generation after generation the spirit was abused by priests
and rulers. There was a continual influx of masterful will
from the forests, parklands, and steppes. The human spirit
had at last rebelled altogether against the blind obediences of
the common life; it was seeking — and at first it was seeking
very clumsily — to achieve a new and better sort of civilization
that should also be a community of will. To that end it was
necessary that every man should be treated as the sovereign of
himself; his standing was to be one of fellowship and not of
servility. His real use, his real importance depended upon
his individual quality.
The method by which these creators of political America
sought to secure this community of will was an extremely simple
and crude one. They gave what was for the time, and in view
of American conditions, a very wide franchise. Conditions
varied in the different states; the widest franchise was in
Pennsylvania, where every adult male taxpayer voted, but, com-
pared with Britain, all the United States were well within sight
of manhood suffrage by the end of the eighteenth century.
These makers of America also made efforts, considerable for
their times, but puny by more modern standards, to secure a
widely diffused common education. The information of the
844 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
citizens as to what was going on at home and ahroad, they left,
apparently without any qualms of misgiving, to public meetings
and the privately owned printing press.
The story of the various state constitutions, and of the con-
stitution of the United States as a whole, is a very intricate
one, and we can only deal with it here in the broadest way.
The most noteworthy point in a modern view is the disregard
of women as citizens. The American community was a simple,
largely agricultural community, and most women were married ;
it seemed natural that they should be represented by their men
folk. But l^Tew Jersey admitted a few women to vote on a
property qualification. Another point of great interest is the
almost universal decision to have two governing assemblies,
confirming or checking each other, on the model of the Lords
and Commons of Britain. Only Pennsylvania had a single
representative chamber, and that was felt to be a very danger-
ous and ultra-democratic state of affairs. Apart from the argu-
ment that legislation should be slow as well as sure, it is diffi-
cult to establish any necessity for this "bi-cameral" arrange-
ment. It seems to have been a fashion with constitution plan-
ners in the eighteenth century rather than a reasonable impera-
tive. The British division was an old one; the Lords, the
original parliament, was an assembly of "notables," the leading
men of the kingdom ; the House of Commons came in as a new
factor, as the elected spokesmen of the burghers and the small
landed men. It was a little too hastily assumed in the eight-
eenth century that the commonalty would be given to wild
impulses and would need checking ; opinion was for democracy,
but for democracy with powerful brakes always on, whether
it was going up hill or down. About all the upper houses there
was therefore a flavour of selectness; they were elected on a
more limited franchise. This idea of making an upper cham-
ber which shall be a stronghold for the substantial man does
not appeal to modern thinkers so strongly as it did to the men
of the eighteenth century, but the bi-cameral idea in another
form still has its advocates. They suggest that a community
may with advantage consider its affairs from two points of
view — through the eyes of a body elected to represent trades,
industries, professions, public services, and the like, a body
representing function, and through the eyes of a second body
elected by localities to represent communities. For the mem-
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND ERANCE
&tS
846 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
bers of the former a man would vote by bis calling, for tbe
latter by bis district of residence. They point out that the
British House of Lords is in effect a body representing func-
tion, in which the land, the law, and the church are no doubt
disproportionately represented, but in which industrialism,
finance, the great public services, art, science, and medicine,
also find places; and that the British House of Commons is
purely geographical in its reference. It has even been sug-
gested in Britain that there should be "labour peers," selected
from among the leaders of th6 great industrial trade unions.
But these are speculations beyond our present scope.
The Central Government of the United States was at first a
very feeble body, a Congress of representatives of the thirteen
governments, held together by certain Articles of Confederation.
This Congress was little more than a conference of sovereign
representatives ; it had no control, for instance, over the foreign
trade of each state, it could not coin money nor levy taxes by
its own authority. When John Adams, the first minister from
the TJnited States to England, went to discuss a commercial
treaty with the British foreign secretary, he was met by a
request for thirteen representatives, one from each of the states
concerned. He had to confess his inadequacy to make binding
arrangements. Tbe British presently began dealing with each
state separately over the head of Congress, and they retained
possession of a number of posts in the American territory about
the great lakes because of the inability of Congress to hold these
regions effectually. In another urgent matter Congress proved
equally feeble. To the west of the thirteen states stretched
limitless lands into which settlers were now pushing in ever-
increasing numbers. Each of the states had indefinable claims
to expansion westward. It was evident to every clear-sighted
man that the jostling of these claims must lead in the long run
to war, unless the Central Government could take on their ap-
portionment. The feebleness of the Central Government, its
lack of concentration, became so much of an inconvenience and
so manifest a danger that there was some secret discussion of
a monarchy, and l^Tathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, the presi-
dent of Congress, caused Prince Henry of Prussia, tbe brother
of Frederick the Great, to be approached on the subject. Einally
a constitutional convention was called in 1787 at Philadelphia,
and there it was that the present . constitution of the TJnited
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 847
States was in its broad lines hammered out. A great change
of spirit had gone on during the intervening years, a wide-
spread realization of the need of unity.
When the Articles of Confederation were drawn up, men
had thought of the people of Virginia, the people of Massa-
chusetts, the people of Ehode Island, and the like; but now
there appears a new conception, "the people of the United
States." The new government, with the executive President,
the senators, congressmen, and the Supreme Court, that was
now created, was declared to be the government of "the people
of the United States"; it was a synthesis and not a mere
assembly. It said "we the people," and not "we the states," as
Lee of Virginia bitterly complained. It was to be a "federal"
and not a confederate government.
State by state the new constitution was ratified, and in the
spring of 1788 the first congress upon the new lines assembled
at New York, under the presidency of George Washington, who
had been the national commander-in-chief throughout the War
of Independence. The constitution then underwent considerable
revision, and Washington upon the Potomac was selected as
the Federal capital.
§ 6
In an earlier chapter we have described the Roman republic,
and its mixture of modern features with dark superstition and
primordial savagery, as the JSTeanderthal anticipation of the
modern democratic state. A time may come when people will
regard the contrivances and machinery of the American con-
stitution as the political equivalents of the implements and
contrivances of Neolithic man. They have served their purpose
well, and under their protection the people of the States have
grown into one of the greatest, most powerful, and most civilized
communities that the world has yet seen ; but there is no rea-
son in that for regarding the American constitution as a thing
more final and inalterable than the pattern of street railway
that overshadows many New York thoroughfares, or the excel-
lent and homely type of house architecture that still prevails in
Philadelphia. These things also have served a purpose well,
they have their faults, and they can be improved. Our po-
litical contrivances, just as much as our domestic and mechan-
848 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ical contrivances, need to undergo constant revision as knowl-
edge and understanding grow.
Since the American constitution was planned, our conception
of history and our knowledge of collective psychology has un-
dergone very considerable development. We are beginning to
see many things in the problem of government to which the
men of the eighteenth century were blind ; and, courageous as
their constructive disposition was in relation to whatever po-
litical creation had gone before, it fell far short of the boldness
which we in these days realize to be needful if this great human
problem of establishing a civilized community of will in the
earth is to be solved. They took many things for granted that
now we know need to be made the subject of the most exacting
scientific study and the most careful adjustment. They thought
it was only necessary to set up schools and colleges, with a grant
of land for maintenance, and that they might then be left to
themselves. But education is not a weed that will grow lustily
in any soil, it is a necessary and delicate crop that may easily
wilt and degenerate. We learn nowadays that the under-d&-
velopment of universities and educational machinery is like
some under-development of the brain and nerves, which hampers
the whole growth of the social body. By European standards,
by the standard of any state that has existed hitherto, the level
of the common education of America is high ; but by the stand-
ard of what it might be, America is an uneducated country.
And those fathers of America thought also that they had but
to leave the press free, and everyone would live in the light. They
did not realize that a free press could develop a sort of consti-
tutional venality due to its relations with advertisers, and that
large newspaper proprietors could become buccaneers of opinion
and insensate wreckers of good beginnings. And, finally, the
makers, of America had no knowledge of the complexities of
vote manipulation. The whole science of elections was beyond
their ken, they knew nothing of the need of the transferable
vote to prevent the "working" of elections by specialized organi-
zations, and the crude and rigid methods they adopted left
their political system the certain prey of the great party ma-
chines that have robbed American democracy of half its free-
dom and most of its political soul. Politics became a trade,
and a very base trade; decent and able men, after the first
great period, drifted out of politics and attended to "business,"
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE
849
and what I have called elsewhere the "sense of the state" ^ de-
clined. Private enterprise ruled in many matters of common
concern, because political corruption made collective enterprise
impossible.
Yet the defects of the great political system created by the
Americans of the revolutionary period did not appear at once.
For several generations the history of the United States was
one of rapid expansion and of an amount of freedom, homely
happiness, and energetic work unparalleled in the world's his-
tory. And the record of America for the whole last century
and a half, in spite of many reversions towards inequality, in
spite of much ravsTiess and
much blundering, is never-
theless as bright and honour-
able a story as that of any
other contemporary people.
In this brief account of
the creation of the United
States of America we have
been able to do little more
than mention the names of
some of the group of great
men who made this new de-
parture in human history.
We have named casually or
we have not even named such
men as Tom Paine, Ben-
jamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, the Adam
cousins, Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George' Washing-
ton. It is hard to measure the men of one period of history
with those in another. Some writers, even American writers,
impressed by the artificial splendours of the European courts
and by the tawdry and destructive exploits of a Frederick the
Great or a Great Catherine, display a snobbish shame of some-
thing homespun about these makers of America. They feel that
Benjamin Franklin at the court of Louis XVI, with his long
hair, his plain clothes, and his pawky manner, was sadly lacking
in aristocratic distinction. But stripped to their personalities,
Louis XVI was hardly gifted enough or noblfr-minded enough
to be Franklin's valet. If human greatness is a matter of scale
' Wells, The Future in Amerioa.
'Benjamui TrankUii^
850
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and glitter, then no doubt Alexander the Great is at the apex of
human greatness. But is greatness that ? Is not a great man
rather one who, in a great position or amidst great opportunities
— and great gifts are no more than great opportunities — serves
God and his fellows with a humble heart ? And quite a num-
ber of these Americans of the revolutionary time do seem to
have displayed much disinterestedness and devotion. They were
limited men, fallible men; Washington was, for example, a
conspicuously indolent man; but on the whole they seemed
to have cared more for the commonweal they were creating
than for any personal end or personal vanity.
They were all limited
men. They were limited in
knowledge and outlook; they
were limited by the limita-
tions of the time. And there
was no perfect man among
them. They were, like all of
us, men of mixed motives;
good impulses arose in their
minds, great ideas swept
through them, and also they
could be jealous, lazy, ob-
stinate, greedy, vicious. If
one were to write a true,
full, and particular history
of the making of the United
States, it would have to be written with charity and high spirits
as a splendid comedy. And in no other regard do we find the
rich tortuous humanity of the American story so finely dis-
played as in regard to slavery. Slavery, having regard to the
general question of labour, is the test of this new soul in the
world's history, the American soul.
Slavery began very early in the European history of America,
and no European people who went to America can be held
altogether innocent in the matter. At a time when the German
is still the moral whipping-boy of Europe, it is well to note
that the German record is in this respect the best of all. Al-
Topst the first outspoken utterances against negro slavery came
from German settlers in Pennsylvania. But the German set-
tler was working with free labour upon a temperate country-
"WasTiitigianv
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 851
side, well north of the plantation zone ; he was not under serious
temptation in this matter. American slavery began with the
enslavement of Indians for gang work in mines and upon planta-
tions, and it is curious to note that it was a very good and
humane man indeed, Las Casas, who urged that negroes should
be brought to America to relieve his tormented Indian proteges.
The need for labour upon the plantations of the West Indies
and the south was imperative. When the supply of Indian
captives proved inadequate, the planters turned not only to the
negro, but to the jails and poorhouses of Europe for a supply
of toilers. The reader of Defoe's Moll Flanders will learn how
the business of Virginian white slavery looked to an intelligent
Englishman in the early eighteenth century. But the negro
came very early. The year (1620) that saw the Pilgrim
Fathers landing at Plymouth in New England, saw a Dutch
sloop disembarking the first cargo of negroes at Jamestown in
Virginia. Negro slavery was as old as New England; it had
been an American institution for over a century and a half
before the War of Independence. It was to struggle on for
the better part of a century more.
But the conscience of thoughtful men in the colonies was
never quite easy upon this score, and it was one of the accusa-
tions of Thomas Jefferson against the crown and lords of Great
Britain that every attempt to ameliorate or restrain the slave
trade on the part of the colonists had been checked by the great
proprietary interests in the mother country.^ With the moral
and intellectual ferment of the revolution, the question of negro
slavery came right into the foreground of the public conscience.
The contrast and the challenge glared upon the mind. "All
men are by nature free and equal," said the Virginia Bill of
Eights, and outside in the sunshine, under the whip of the over-
seer, toiled the negro slave.
It witnesses to the great change in human ideas since the
Roman Imperial system dissolved under the barbarian inrush,
that there could be this heart-searching. Conditions of indus-
try, production, and land tenure had long prevented any re-
crudescence of gang slavery ; but now the cycle had come round
again, and there were enormous immediate advantages to be
reaped by the owning and ruling classes In the revival of that
» In 1776 Lord Dartmouth wrote that the colonists could not be allowed
"to check or discourage a traffic so beneficent to the nation."
85£ THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ancient institution in mines, upon plantations, and upon great
public works. It was revived — ^but against great opposition.
From the beginning of the revival there were protests, and they
grew. The revival was counter to the new conscience of man-
kind. In some respects the new gang slavery was worse than
anything in the ancient world. Peculiarly horrible was
the provocation by the trade of slave wars and man hunts in
Western Africa, and the cruelties of the long transatlantic voy-
age. The poor creatures were packed on the ships often with
insufficient provision of food and water, without proper sanita-
tion, without medicines. Many who could tolerate slavery upon
the plantations found the slave trade too much for their moral
digestions. Three European nations were chiefly concerned in
this dark business, Britain, Spain, and Portugal, because they
were the chief owners of the new lands in America. The com-
parative innocence of the other European powers is to be as-
cribed largely to their lesser temptations. They were similar
communities; in parallel circumstances they would have be-
haved similarly.
Throughout the middle part of the eighteenth century there
was an active agitation against negro slavery in Great Britain
as well as in the States. It was estimated that in 1Y70 there
were fifteen thousand slaves in Britain, mostly brought over
by their ovniers from the West Indies and Virginia. In 1Y71
the issue came to a conclusive test in Britain before Lord Mans-
field. A negro named James Somersett had been brought to
England from Virginia by his owner. He ran away, was cap-
tured, and violently taken on a ship to be returned to Virginia.
From the ship he was extracted by a writ of habeas corpus.
Lord Mansfield declared that slavery was a condition unknown
to English law, an "odious" condition, and Somersett walked
out of the court a free man.
The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 had declared that
"all men are bom free and equal." A certain negro, Quaco, put
this to the test in 1783, and in that year the soil of Massachu-
setts became like the soil of Britain, intolerant of slavery; to
tread upon it was to become free. At that time no other state
in the Union followed this example. At the census of 1790,
Massachusetts, alone of all the states, returned "no slaves."
The state of opinion in Virginia is remarkable, because it
brings to light the peculiar difficulties of the southern states.
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 853
The great Virginian statesmen, sucli as Washington and Jef-
ferson, condemned the institution, yet because there was no
other form of domestic service, Washington owned slaves. There
was in Virginia a strong party in favour of emancipating
slaves. But they demanded that the emancipated slaves should
leave the state within a year or he outlawed! They were
naturally alarmed at the possibility that a free barbaric black
community, many of its members African-bom and reeking with
traditions of cannibalism and secret and dreadful religious rites,
should arise beside them upon Virginian soil. When we con-
sider that point of view, we can understand why it was that a
large number of Virginians should be disposed to retain the
mass of blacks in the country under control as slaves, while at
the same time they were bitterly opposed to the slave trade and
the importation of any fresh blood from Africa. The free
blacks, one sees, might easily become a nuisance; indeed the
free state of Massachusetts presently closed its borders to their
entry. . . . The question of slavery, which in the ancient world
was usually no more than a question of status between indi-
viduals racially akin, merged in America with the different and
profounder question of relationship between two races at oppo-
site extremes of the human species and of the most contrasted
types of tradition and culture. If the black man had been
white, there can be little doubt that negro slavery, like white
servitude, would have vanished from the United States within
a generation of the Declaration of Independence as a natural
consequence of the statements in that declaration.
§ 7
We have told of the War of Independence in America as the
first great break away from the system of European monarchies
and foreign offices, as the repudiation by a new community of
Machiavellian statescraft as the directive form of human affairs.
Within a decade there came a second and much more portentous
revolt against this strange game of Great Powers, this tangled
interaction of courts and policies which obsessed Europe. But
this time it was no breaking away at the outskirts. In France,
the nest and home of Grand Monarchy, the heart and centre of
Europe, came this second upheaval. And, unlike the American
854 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
colonists, who simply repudiated a king, the French, following
in the footsteps of the English revolution, beheaded one.
Like the British revolution and like the revolution in the
United States, the French revolution can be traced back to
the ambitious absurdities of the French monarchy. The schemes
of aggrandisement, the aims and designs of the Grand Monarch,
necessitated an expenditure upon war equipment throughout
Europe out of all proportion to the taxable capacity of the age.
And even the splendours of monarchy were enormously costly,
measured by the productivity of the time. In France, just as
in Britain and in America, the first resistance was made not to
the monarch as such and to his foreign policy as such, nor with
any clear recognition of these things as the roots of the trouble,
but merely to the inconveniences and charges upon the indi-
vidual life caused by them. The practical taxable capacity of
France must have been relatively much less than that of Eng-
land because of the various exemptions of the nobility and
clergy. The burthen resting directly upon the common people
was heavier. That made the upper classes the confederates of
the court instead of the antagonists of the court as they were
in England, and so prolonged the period of waste further ; but
when at last the bursting-point did come, the explosion was more
violent and shattering.
During the years of the American War of Independence there
were few signs of any impending explosion in France. There
was much misery among the lower classes, much criticism and
satire, much outspoken liberal thinking, but there was little to
indicate that the thing as a whole, with all its customs, usages,
and familiar discords, might not go on for an indefinite time.
It was consuming beyond its powers of production, but as yet
only the inarticulate classes were feeling the pinch. Gibbon,
the historian, knew France well ; Paris was as familiar to him
as London ; but there is no suspicion to be detected in the pas-
sage we have quoted that days of political and social dissolution
were at hand. "No doubt the world abounded in absurdities and
injustices, yet nevertheless, from the point of view of a scholar
and a gentleman, it was fairly comfortable, and it seemed fairly
secure.
There was much liberal thought, speech, and sentiment in
France at this time. Parallel with and a little later than John
Locke in England, Montesquieu (1689-1755) in France, in the
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 855
earlier half of the eighteenth century, had subjected social, po-
litical, and religious institutions to the same searching and
fundamental analysis, especially in his Esprit des Lois. He
had stripped the magical prestige from the absolutist monarchy
in France. He shares with Locke the credit for clearing away
many of the false ideas that had hitherto prevented deliberate
and conscious attempts to reconstruct human society. It was
not his fault if at first some extremely unsound and imperma-
nent shanties were run up on the vacant site. The generation
that, followed him in the middle and later decades of the eight-
eenth century was boldly speculative upon the moral and intel-
lectual clearings he had made. A group of brilliant writers,
the "Encyclopaedists," mostly rebel spirits from the excellent
schools of the Jesuits, set themselves under the leadership of
Diderot to scheme out, in a group of works, a new world (1766).
The glory of the Encylopsedists, says Mallet, lay "in their hatred
of things unjust, in their denunciation of the trade in slaves,
of the inequalities of taxation, of the corruption of justice, of
the wastefulness of wars, in their dreams of social progress, in
their sympathy with the rising empire of industry which was
beginning to transform the world." Their chief error seems
to have been an indiscriminate hostility to religion. They be-
lieved that man was naturally just and politically competent,
whereas his impulse to social service and self-forgetfulness is
usually developed only through an education essentially re-
ligious, and sustained only in an atmosphere of honest co-opera-
tion. Unco-ordinated human initiatives lead to nothing but
social chaos.
Side by side with the Encyclopaedists were the Economists or
Physiocrats, who were making bold and crude inquiries into
the production and distribution of food and goods. Morally,
the author of the Code de la Nature, denounced the institution
of private property and proposed a communistic organization
of society. He was the precursor of that large and various
school of colleetivist thinkers in the nineteenth century who
are lumped together as Socialists.
Both the Encyclopaedists and the various Economists and
Physiocrats demanded a considerable amount of hard thinking
in their disciples. An easier and more popular leader to follow
was Rousseau (1712-78). He displayed a curious mingling
<tf logical rigidity and sentimental enthusiasm. He preached
856 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the alluring doctrine that the primitive state of man was one
of virtue and happiness, from which he had declined through
the rather inexplicable activities of priests, kings, lawyers, and
the like. Rousseau's intellectual influence was on the whole
demoralizing. It struck not only at the existing social fabric,
but at any social organization. When he wrote of the Social
Contract, he seemed rather to excuse breaches of the covenant
than to emphasize its necessity. Man is so far from perfect,
that a writer who apparently sustained the thesis that the al-
most universal disposition, against which we all have to fortify
ourselves, to repudiate debts, misbehave sexually, and evade
the toil and expenses of education for ourselves and others, is
not after all a delinquency, but a fine display of Natural Virtue,
was bound to have a large following in every class that could
read him. Rousseau's tremendous vogue did much to popularize
a sentimental and declamatory method of dealing with social
and political problems.
We have already remarked that hitherto no human commu-
nity has begun to act upon theory. There must first be some
breakdown and necessity for direction that lets theory into her
own. Up to 1788 the republican and anarchist talk and writing
of French thinkers must have seemed as ineffective and po-
litically unimportant as the sesthetic socialism of William
Morris at the end of the nineteenth century. There was the
social and political system going on with an effect of invincible
persistence, the king hunting and mending his clocks, the court
and the world of fashion pursuing their pleasures, the financiers
conceiving continually more enterprising extensions of credit,
business blundering clumsily along its ancient routes, much in-
commoded by taxes and imposts, the peasants worrying, toiling,
and suffering, full of a hopeless hatred of the nobleman's
chateau. Men talked — and felt they were merely talking. Any-
thing might be said, because nothing would ever happen.
§ 8
The first jar to this sense of the secure continuity of life in
France came in 1787, Louis XVI (1774-92) was a dull, ill-
educated monarch, and he had the misfortune to be married to
a silly and extravagant woman, Marie Antoinette, the sister of
the Austrian emperor. The question of her virtue is one of
REPUBLICS t)F AMERICA AND FRANCE 857
profound interest to a certain type of historical writer, but we
need not discuss it here. She lived, as Paul Wiriath ^ puts it,
"side by side, but not at the side" of her husband. She was
rather heavy-featured, but not so plain as to prevent her posing
as a beautiful, romantic, and haughty queen. When the ex-
chequer was exhausted by the war in America (an enterprise
to weaken England of the highest Machiavellian quality) , when
the whole country was uneasy with discontents, she set her in-
fluence to thwart the attempts at economy of the king's minis-
ters, to encourage every sort of aristocratic extravagance, and
to restore the church and the nobility to the position they had
held in the great days of Louis XIV. Non-aristocratic officers
were to be weeded from the army ; the power of the church over
private life was to be extended. She found in an upper-class
official, Calonne, her ideal minister of finance. From 1783-87
this wonderful man produced money as if by magic — and as if
by magic it disappeared again. Then in 1787 he collapsed. He
had piled loan on loan, and now he declared that the monarchy,
the Grand Monarchy that had ruled France since the days of
Louis XIV, was bankrupt. No more money could be raised.
There must be a gathering of the notables of the kingdom to
consider the situation.
To the gathering of notables, a summoned assembly of lead-
ing men, Calonne propounded a scheme for a subsidy to be
levied upon all landed property. This roused the aristocrats to
a pitch of great indignation. They demanded the summoning
of a body roughly equivalent to the British parliament, the
States General, which had not met since 1610. Regardless of
the organ of opinion they were creating for the discontents
below them, exejted only by the proposal that they should bear
part of the weight of the financial burthens of the country, the
French notables insisted. And in May, 1789, the States
General met.
It was an assembly of the representatives of three orders, the
nobles, the clergy, and the Third Estate, the commons. For
the Third Estate the franchise was very wide, nearly every tax-
payer of twenty-five having a vote. (The parish priests voted
as clergy, the small noblesse as nobles.) The States General
was a body without any tradition of procedure. Enquiries were
sent to the antiquarians of the Academy of Inscriptions in that
•Article "France,'' Encyclopwdia Britannica,
858 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
matter. Its opening deliberations turned on the question
whether it was to meet as one body or as three, each estate hav-
ing an equal vote. Since the Clergy numbered 308, the Nobles
285, and the Deputies 621, the former arrangement would put
the Commons in an 'absolute majority, the latter gave them
one vote in three. Nor had the States General any meeting-
place. Should it meet in Paris or in some provincial city?
Versailles was chosen, "because of the hunting."
It is clear that the king and queen meant to treat this fuss
about the national finance as a terrible bore, and to allow it to
interfere with their social routine as little as possible. We
find the meetings going on in salons that were not wanted, in
orangeries and tennis-courts, and so forth.
The question whether the voting was to be by the estates or
by head was clearly a vital one. It was wrangled over for six
weeks. The Third Estate, taking a leaf from the book of the
English House of Commons, then declared that it alone repre-
sented the nation, and that no taxation must be levied hence-
forth without its consent. Whereupon the king closed the hall
in which it was sitting, and intimated that the deputies had
better go home. Instead, the deputies met in a convenient ten-
nis-court, and there took oath, the Oath of the Tennis Court,
not to separate until they had established a constitution in
France.
The king took a high line, and attempted to disperse the
Third Estate by force. The soldiers refused to act. On that
the king gave in with a dangerous suddenness, and accepted
the principle that the Three Estates should all deliberate and
vote together as one National Assembly. Meanwhile, appar-
ently at the queen's instigation, foreign regiments in the French
service, who could be trusted to act against the people, were
brought up from the provinces under the Marshal de Broglie,
and the king prepared to go back upon his concessions. Where-
upon Paris and France revolted. Broglie hesitated to fire on
the crowds. A provisional city government was set up in Paris
and in most of the other large cities, and a new armed force,
the National Guard, a force designed primarily and plainly
to resist the forces of the crown, was brought into existence by
these municipal bodies.
The revolt of July 1789 was really the effective French revo-
lution. The grim-looking prison of the Bastille, very feebly
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 859
defended, was stormed by the people of Paris, and the insur-
rection spread rapidly throughout France. In the east and
north-west provinces many chateaux belonging to the nobility
were burnt by the peasants, their title-deeds carefully destroyed,
and the owners murdered or driven away. The insurrection
spread throughout France. In a month the ancient and decayed
system of the aristocratic order had collapsed. Many of the
leading princes and courtiers of the queen's party fled abroad.
The National Assembly found itself called upon to create a new
political and social system for a new age.
§ 9
The French National Assembly was far less fortunate in the
circumstances of its task than the American Congress. The
latter had half a continent to itself, with no possible antagonist
but the British Government. Its religious and educational
organizations were various, collectively not very powerful, and
on the whole friendly. King George was far away in England,
and sinking slowly towards an imbecile condition. Neverthe-
less, it took the United States several years to hammer out a
working constitution. The French, on the other hand, were
surrounded by aggressive neighbours with Machiavellian ideas,
they were encumbered by a king and court resolved to make
mischief, and the church was one single great organization in-
extricably bound up with the ancient order. The queen was in
close correspondence with the Count of Artois, the Duke of
Bourbon, and the other exiled princes who were trying to induce
Austria and Prussia to attack the new French nation. More-
over, France was already a bankrupt country, while the United
States had limitless undeveloped resources ; and the revolution,
by altering the conditions of land tenure and marketing, had
produced an economic disorganization that has no parallel in
the case of America.
These were the unavoidable difficulties of the situation. But
in addition the Assembly made difficulties for itself. There
was no orderly procedure. The English House of Commons had
had more than five centuries of experience in its work, and
Mirabeau, one of the great leaders of the early Kevolution, tried
in vain to have the English rules adopted. But the feeling of
the times was all in favour of outcries, dramatic interruption-.
8ed THE OUTLINE Of hIstoHY
and such-like manifestations of Natural Virtue. And the dis-
order did not come merely from the assembly. There was a
great gallery, much too great a gallery, for strangers ; but who
would restrain the free citizens from having a voice in the na-
tional control ? This gallery swarmed with people eager for a
"scene," ready to applaud or shout down the speakers below.
The abler speakers were obliged to play to the gallery, and take
a sentimental and sensational line. It was easy at a crisis to
bring in a mob to kill debate.
So encumbered, the Assembly set about its constructive task.
On the Fourth of August it achieved a great dramatic success.
Led by several of the liberal nobles, it made a series of resolu-
tions, abolishing serfdom, privileges, tax exemptions, tithes, and
feudal courts. (In many parts of the country, however, these
resolutions were not carried into effect until three or four years
later.) Titles went with these other renunciations. Long be-
fore France was a republic it was an offence for a nobleman to
sign his name with his title. For six weeks the Assembly de-
voted itself, with endless opportunities for rhetoric, to the
formulation of a Declaration of the Eights of Man — on the
lines of the Bills of Eights that were the English preliminaries
to organized change. Meanwhile the court plotted for reaction,
and the people felt that the court was plotting. The story is
complicated here by the scoundrelly schemes of the king's
CQUsin, Philip of Orleans, who hoped to use the discords of
the time to replace Louis on the French throne. His gardens
at the Palais Eoyal were thrown open to the public, and became
a great centre of advanced discussion. His agents did much
to intensify the popular suspicion of the king. And things were
exacerbated by a shortage of provisions — ^for which the king's
government was held guilty.
Presently the loyal Flanders regiment appeared at Versailles.
The royal family was scheming to get farther away from Paris
— in order to undo all that had been done, to restore tyranny
and extravagance. Such constitutional monarchists as General
Lafayette were seriously alarmed. And just at this time oc-
curred an outbreak of popular indignation at the scarcity of
food, that passed by an easy transition into indignation against
the threat of royalist reaction. It was believed that there was
an abundance of provisions at Versailles; that food was being
kept there away from the people. The public mind had been
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 861
mudi disturbed by reports, possibly by exaggerated reports, of a
recent banquet at Versailles, hostile to the nation. Here are some
extracts from Carlyle descriptive of that unfortunate feast.
"The Hall of the Opera is granted ; the Salon d'Hercule shall
be drawing-room. Not only the Officers of Flandre, but of the
Swiss, of the Hundred Swiss; nay of the Versailles National
Guard, such of them as have any loyalty, shall feast ; it will be
a Kepast like few.
"And now suppose this Eepast, the solid part of it, trans-
acted; and the first bottle over. Suppose the customary loyal
toasts drunk; the King's health, the Queen's with deafening
vivats ; that of the nation 'omitted,' or even 'rejected.' Suppose
champagne flowing ; with pot-valorous speech, with instrumental
music; empty featherheads growing ever the noisier, in their
own emptiness, in each other's noise. Her Majesty, who looks
unusually sad to-night (His Majesty sitting dulled with the
day's hunting), is told that the sight of it would cheer her.
Behold! She enters there, issuing from her State-rooms, like
the Moon from clouds, this fairest unhappy Queen of Hearts ;
royal Husband by her side, young Dauphin in her arms ! She
descends from the Boxes, amid splendour and acclaim; walks
queen-like round the Tables; gracefully nodding; her looks
full of sorrow, yet of gratitude and daring, with the hope of
France on her mother-bosom ! And now, the band striking up,
0 Richard, 0 mon Roi, I'univers t'ahandonne (Oh Eichard, O
my king, the world is all forsaking thee), could man do other
than rise to height of pity, of loyal valour? Could feather-
headed young "ensigns do other than, by white Bourbon Cock-
ades, handed them from fair fingers; by waving of swords,
drawn to pledge the Queen's health; by trampling of National
Cockades; by scaling the Boxes, whence intrusive murmurs
may come ; by vociferation, sound, fury and distraction, within
doors and without — testify what tempest-tost state of vacuity
they are in? . . .
"A natural Repast ; in ordinary times, a harmless one : now
fatal. . . . Poor ill-advised Marie Antoinette ; with a woman's
vehemence, not with a sovereign's foresight ! It was so natural,
yet so unwise. Next day, in public speech of ceremony, her
Majesty declares herself 'delighted with Thursday.' "
And here to set against this is Carlyle's picture of the mood
of the people.
862 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"In squalid garret, on Monday morning Maternity awakes, to
hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must forth to the
streets, to the herb-makers and bakers'-queues ; meets there with
hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. O ' we
unhappy women! But, instead of bakers'-queues, why not to
Aristocrats' palaces, the root of the matter? Allans! Let us
assemble. To the H6tel-de-Ville ; to Versailles. ..."
There was much shouting and coming and going in Paris be-
fore this latter idea realized itself. One Maillard appeared
with organizing power, and assumed a certain leadership. There
can be little doubt that the revolutionary leaders, and partic-
ularly General Lafayette, used and organized this outbreak
to secure the king, before he could slip away — as Charles I
did to Oxford — to begin a civil war. As the afternoon wore on,
the procession started on its eleven mile tramp. . . .
Again we quote Carlyle:
"Maillard has halted Ms draggled Menads on the last hill-
top; and now Versailles, and the Chateau of Versailles, and
far and wide the inheritance of Eoyalty opens to the wondering
eye. From far on the right, over Marly and Saint-Germain-
en-Laye; round towards Eambouillet, on the left, beautiful
all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist
weather! And near before us is Versailles, New and Old;
with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles between — stately
frondent, broad, three hundred feet as men reckon, with its
four rows of elms ; and then the Chateau de Versailles, ending
in royal parks and pleasances, gleaming lakelets, arbours, laby-
rinths, the Menagerie, and Great and Little Tlrianon. High-
towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places; where the gods of
this lower world abide: whence, nevertheless, black care cannot
be excluded ; whither Monadic hunger is even now advancing,
armed with pike-thyrsi !"
Eain fell as the evening closed.
"Behold the Esplanade, over all its spacious expanse, is cov-
ered with groups of squalid dripping women; of lank-haired
male rascality, armed with axes, rusty pikes, old muskets, iron-
shod clubs (batons femes, which end in knives or swordblades,
a kind of extempore billhook) ; looking nothing but hungry re-
volt. The rain pours; Gardes-du-Corps so caracoling through
the groups 'amid hisses'; irritating and agitating what is but
dispersed here to reunite there. . . .
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 863
"Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the President and
Deputation; insist on going with him: has not his Majesty him-
self, looking from the window, sent out to ask, What we wanted ?
'Bread, and speech with the King,' that was the answer. Twelve
women are clamourously added to the deputation; and march
with it, across the Esplanade ; through dissipated groups, cara-
coling bodyguards and the pouring rain."
"Bread and not too much talking !" Natural demands,
"One learns also that thp royal Carriages are getting yoked,
as if for Metz, Carriages, royal or not, have verily showed
themselves at the back gates. They even produced, or quoted, a
written order from our Versailles Municipality — ^which is a
monarchic not a democratic one. However, Versailles patrols
drove them in again; as the vigilant Lecointre had strictly
charged them to do. . . .
"So sink the shadows of night, blustering, rainy; and all
paths grow dark. Strangest night ever seen in these regions;
perhaps since the Bartholomew Night, when Versailles, as
Bassompierre writes of it, was a chetif chateau.
"O for the lyre of some Orpheus, to constrain, with touch of
melodious strings, these mad masses into Order ! For here all
seems fallen asunder, in wide-yawning dislocation. The high-
est, as in down-rushing of a world, is come in contact with the
lowest: the rascality of France beleaguering the royalty of
France; 'iron-shod batons' lifted round the diadem, not to
guard it ! With denunciations of bloodthirsty anti-national
body-guards, are heard dark growlings against a queenly
name.
"The Court sits tremulous, powerless : varies with the vary-
ing temper of the Esplanade, with the varying colour of the
rumours from Paris. Thick-coming rumours; now of peace,
now of war. ISTeeker and all the Ministers consult; with a
blank issue. The (Eil-de-Boeuf is one tempest of whispers : We
will fly to Metz; we will not fly. The royal carriages again
attempt egress — ^though for trial merely ; they are again driven
in by Lecointre's patrols."
But we must send the reader to Carlyle to learn of the com-
ing of the National Guard in the night under General Lafayette
himself, the bargaining between the Assembly and the King,
the outbreak of fighting in the morning between the bodyguard
and the hungry besiegers, and how the latter stormed into the
864 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY,
palace and came near to a massacre of the royal family. Lafay-
ette and his troops turned out in time to prevent that, and timely
cartloads of loaves arrive from Paris for the crowd.
At last it was decided that the king should come to Paris.
"Processional marches not a few our world has seen ; Roman
triumphs and ovations, Cabiric cymbal-beatings, Koyal prog-
resses, Irish funerals ; but this of the French Monarchy march-
ing to its bed remained to be seen. Miles long, and of breadth
losing itself in vagueness, for all the neighbouring country
crowds to see. Slow: stagnating along, like shoreless Lake,
yet with a noise like l^iagara, like Babel and Bedlam. A
splashing and a tramping; a hurrahing, uproaring, musket-
volleying ; the truest segment of Chaos seen in these latter Ages !
Till slowly it disembogue itself, in the thickening dusk, into
expectant Paris, through a double row of faces all the way from
Passy to the H6tel-de-Ville.
"Consider this: Vanguard of !N"ational troops; with trains
of artillery; of pikemen and pikewomen, mounted on cannons,
on carts, hackney-coaches, or on foot. . . . Loaves stuck on
the points of bayonets, green boughs stuck in gun-barrels. Next,
as main-march, 'fifty cart-loads of corn,' which have been
lent, for peace, from the stores of Versailles. Behind which
follow stragglers of the Garde-du-Corps ; all humiliated, in
Grenadier bonnets. Close on these comes the royal carriage;
come royal carriages ; for there are a hundred national deputies
too, among whom sits Mirabeau — ^his remarks not given. Then
finally, pell-mell, as rear-guard, Flandre, Swiss, Hundred Swiss,
other bodyguards, brigands, whosoever cannot get before. Be-
tween and among all which masses flows without limit Saint-
Antoine and the Monadic cohort. Menadic especially about
the royal carriage. . . . Covered with tricolor; singing 'al-
lusive songs' ; pointing with one hand to the royal carriage,
which the allusions hit, and pointing to the provision-wagons
with the other hand, and these words: 'Courage, Friends!
We shall not want bread now ; we are bringing you the Baker,
the Bakeress and Baker's boy.' . . .
"The wet day draggles the tricolor, but the joy is unextin-
guishable. Is not all well now? 'ATi Madame, notre bonne
Beine,' said some of these Strong-women some days hence,
'Ah, Madame, our good Queen, don't be a traitor any more
and we will all love you!' . . ."
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 865
This was October the sixth, 1789. For nearly two years the
royal family dwelt unmolested in the Tuileries. Had the court
kept common faith with the people, the king might have died
there, a king.
From 1789 to 1791 the early Kevolution held its own; France
was a limited monarchy, the king kept a diminished state in
the Tuileries, and the National Assembly ruled a country at
peace. The reader who will glance back to the maps of Poland
we have given in the previous chapter will, realize what occu-
pied Eussia, Prussia, and Austria at this time. While France
experimented with a crowned republic in the west, the last
division of the crowned republic of the east was in progress.
France could wait.
When we consider its inexperience, the conditions under
which it worked, and the complexities of its problems, one must
concede that the Assembly did a very remarkable amount of
constructive work. Much of that work was sound and still en-
dures, much was experimental and has been undone. Some
was disastrous. There was a clearing up of the penal code;
torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and persecutions for heresy
were abolished. The ancient provinces of France, Normandy,
Burgundy, and the like gave place to eighty departments. Pro-
motion to the highest ranks in the army was laid open to men
of every class. An excellent and simple system of law courts
was set up, but its value was much vitiated by having the judges
appointed by popular election for short periods of time. This
made the crowd a sort of final court of appeal, and the judges,
like the members of the Assembly, were forced to play to the
gallery. And the whole vast property of the church was seized
and administered by the state ; religious establishments not en-
gaged in education or works of charity were broken up, and the
salaries of the clergy made a charge upon the nation. This
in itself was not a bad thing for the lower clergy in France,
who were often scandalously underpaid in comparison with the
richer dignitaries. But in addition the choice of priests and
bishops was made elective, which struck at the very root idea
of the Roman church, which centred everything upon the
Pope, and in which all authority is from above downward.
Practically the National Assembly wanted at one blow to make
the church in France Protestant, in organization if not in
doctrine. Everywhere there were disputes and conflicts between
866 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the state priesta created by the National Assembly and the
recalcitrant (non-juring) priests who were loyal to Kome. . . .
One curious thing the National Assembly did which greatly
weakened its grip on affairs. It decreed that no member of
the Assembly should be an executive minister. This was in
imitation of the American constitution, where also ministers
are separated from the legislature. The British method has been
to have all ministers in the legislative body, ready to answer
questions and account for their interpretation of the laws and
their conduct of the nation's business. If the legislature repre-
sents the sovereign people, then it is surely necessary for the
ministers to be in the closest touch with their sovereign. This
severance of the legislature and executive in Trance caused mis-
understandings and mistrust ; the legislature lacked control and
the executive lacked moral force. This led to such an ineffective-
ness in the central government that in many districts at this
time, communes and towns were to be found that were prac-
tically self-governing communities; they accepted or rejected
the commands of Paris as they thought fit, declined the pay-
ment of taxes, and divided up the church lands according to
their local appetites.
§ 10
It is quite possible that with the loyal support of the crown
and a reasonable patriotism on the part of the nobility, the
National Assembly, in spite of its noisy galleries, its Eousseau-
ism, and its inexperience, might have blundered through to a
stable form of parliamentary government for France. In Mira-
beau it had a statesman with clear ideas of the needs of the
time ; he knew the strength and the defects of the British sys-
tem, and apparently he had set himself to establish in France
a parallel political organization upon a wider, more honest
franchise. He had, it is true, indulged in a sort of Ruritanian
flirtation with the queen, seen her secretly, pronounced her very
solemnly the "only mem" about the king, and' made rather a
fool of himself in that matter, but his schemes were drawn
upon a much larger scale than the scale of the back stairs of the
Tuileries. By his death in 1791 France certainly lost one of
her most constructive statesmen, and the National Assembly
its last chance of any co-operation with the king. When there
is a court there is usually a conspiracy, and royalist schemes
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE
867
and royalist mischief -making were tihe last straw in the balance
against the Ifational Assembly. The royalists did not care for
Mirabeau, they did not care
for France; they wanted to be
back in their lost paradise of
privilege, haughtiness, and
limitless expenditure, and it
seemed to them that if only
they could make the govern-
ment of the National Assem-
bly impossible, then by a sort
of miracle the dry bones of
the ancient regime would live
again. They had no sense of
the other possibility, the gulf
of the republican extremists,
that yawned at their feet.
One June night in 1791,
between eleven o'clock and
midnight, the king and queen
and their two children slipped
out of the Tuileries disguised,
threaded their palpitating
way through Paris, circled
round from the north of the
city to the east, and got at last
into a travelling-carriage that
was waiting upon the road to
Chalons. They were flying to
the army of the east. The
army of the east wag "loyal,"
that is to say, its general and
officers at least were prepared-
to betray France to the king
and court. Here was adven-
ture at last after the queen's
heart, and one can understand
the pleasurable excitement of
the little party as the miles
lengthened between themselves and Paris. Away over the hills
were reverence, deep bows, and the kissing of hands. Then back
868 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to Versailles. A little shooting of the mob in Paris' — artillery,
if need be. A few executions — but not of the sort of people who
matter. A White Terror for a few months. Then all would be
well again. Perhaps Calonne might return, too, with fresh
financial expedients. He was busy just then gathering support
among the German princes. There were a lot of chateaux to re-
build, but the people who burnt them down could hardly com-
plain if the task of rebuilding them pressed rather heavily upon
their grimy necks. ...
All such bright anticipations were cruelly dashed that night
at Varennes. The king had been recognized at Sainte Mene-
hould by the landlord of the post house, and as the night fell,
the eastward roads clattered with galloping messengers rousing
the country, and trying to intercept the fugitives. There were
fresh horses waiting in the upper village of Varennes — the
young officer in charge had given the king up for the night and
gone to bed — ^while for half an hour in the lower village the
poor king, disguised as a valet, disputed with his postillions, who
had expected reliefs in the lower village and refused to go
further. Finally they consented to go on. They consented too
late. The little partj found the postmaster from Sainte Mene-
hould, who had ridden past while the postillions wrangled, and
a number of worthy republicans of Varennes whom he had
gathered together, awaiting them at the bridge between the two
parts of the town. The bridge was barricaded. Muskets were
thrust into the carriage : "Your passports ?"
The king surrendered without a struggle. The little party
was taken into the house of some village functionary. "Well,"
said the king, "here you have me!"- Also he remarked that
he was hungry. At dinner he commended the wine, "quite
excellent wine." What the queen said is not recorded. There
were royalist troops at hand, but they attempted no rescue.
The tocsin began to ring, and the village "illuminated itself,"
to guard against surprise. . . .
A very crestfallen coachload of royalty returned to Paris,
and was received by vast crowds — in silence. The word had
gone forth that whoever insulted the king should be thrashed,
and whoever applauded him should be killed. . . .
It was only after this foolish exploit that the idea of a re-
public took hold of the French mind. Before this flight to
Varennes there was no doubt much abstract republican senti-
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 86S
ment, but there was scarcely anj expressed disposition to abol-
ish monarchy in France. Even in Jnly, a month after the
flight, a great meeting in the Champ de Mars, supporting a
petition for the dethronement of the king, was dispersed by the
authorities, and many people were killed. But such displays
of firmness could not prevent the lesson of that flight soaking
into men's minds. Just as in England in the days of
Charles I, so now in France men realized that the king could
not be trusted — ^he was dangerous. The Jacobins grew rapidly
in strength. Their leaders, Eobespierre, Danton, Marat, who
had hitherto been figured as impossible extremists, began to
dominate French affairs.
These Jacobins were the equivalents of the American
radicals, men with untrammelled advanced ideas. Their
strength lay in the fact that they were unencumbered and
downright. They were poor men with nothing to lose. The
party of moderation, of compromise with the relics of the old
order, was led by such men of established position as General
Lafayette, the general who had represented France in America,
and Mirabeau, an aristocrat who wasi ready to model himself
on the rich and influential aristocrats of England. But Eobes-
pierre was a needy but clever young lawyer from Arras, whose
most precious possession was his faith in Eousseau; Danton
was a scarcely more wealthy barrister in Paris, a big, gesticulat-
ing, rhetorical figure; Marat was an older man, a Swissi of
very great scientific distinction, but equally unembarrassed by
possessions. On Marat's scientific standing it is necessary to
lay stress because there is a sort of fashion among English
writers to misrepresent the leaders of great revolutionary move-
ments as ignorant men. This gives a false view of the mental
processes of revolution; and it is the task of the historian to
correct it. Marat, we find, was conversant with English, Span-
ish, German, and Italian ; he had spent several years in England,
he was made an honorary M.D. of St. Andrew's, and had pub-
lished some valuable contributions to medical science in English.
Both Benjamin Franklin and Goethe were greatly interested
in his work in physics. This is the man who is called by Car-
lyle "rabid dog," "atrocious," "squalid," and "Dog-leech"—
this last by way of tribute to his science.
The revolution called Marat to politics, and his earliest con-
tributions to the great discussion were fine and sane. There
870 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
was a prevalent delusion in France that England was a land of
liberty. His Tableau des vices de la constitution d'Angleterre
showed the realities of the English position. His last years
were maddened by an . almost intolerable skin disease which
he caught while hiding in the sewers of Paris to escape the
consequences of his denunciation of the king as a traitor after
the flight to Varennes. Only by sitting in a hot bath could
he collect his mind to write. He had been treated hardly and
suffered, and he became hard; nevertheless he stands out in
history as a man of rare, imblemished honesty. His poverty
seems particularly to have provoked the scorn of Oarlyle.
"What a road he has travelled; and sits now, about half-
past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath ; sore aflicted ;
ill of Revolution Eever, . . . Excessively sick and worn, poor
man: with precisely elevenpence halfpenny of ready-money, in
paper; with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool for writing
on, the while : and a squalid Washerwoman for his sole house-
hold . . . that is his civic establishment in Medical-School
Street; thither and not elsewhere has his road led him. . . .
Hark, a rap again ! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be
rejected : it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service.
Marat, recognizing from within, cries, Admit her. Charlotte
Corday is admitted."
The young heroine — ^for republican leaders are fair game,
and their assassins are necessarily heroines and their voices
"musical" — offered to give him some necessary information
about the counter-revolution at Caen, and as he was occupied
in making a note of her facts, she stabbed him with a large
sheath knife (1792). . . .
Such was the quality of most of the leaders of the Jacobin
party. They were men of no property — ^untethered men.
They were more dissociated and more elemental, there-
fore, than any other party; and they were ready to push the
ideas of freedom and equality to a logical extremity. Their
standards of patriotic virtue were high and harsh. There was
something inhuman even in their humanitarian zeal. They
saw without humour the disposition of the moderates to ease
things down, to keep the common folk just a little needy and
respectful, and royalty (and men of substance) just a little
respected. They were blinded by the formulse of Rousseauism
to the historical truth that man is by nature oppressor and
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 871
oppressed, and that it is only slowly by law, education, and the
spirit of love in the world that men can be made happy and
free.
And while in America the formulae of eighteenth-century
democracy were on the whole stimulating and helpful because
it was already a land of open-air practical equality so far as
white men were concerned, in France these formulse made a
very heady and dangerous mixture for the town populations,
because considerable parts of the towns of France were slums
full of dispossessed, demoralized, degraded, and bitter-spirited
people. The Parisian crowd was in a particularly desperate
and dangerous state, because the industries of Paris had been
largely luxury industries, and much of her employment parasitic
on the weaknesses and vices of fashionable life. Now the fash-
ionable world had gone over the frontier, travellers were re-
stricted, business disordered, and the city full of unemployed
and angry people.
But the royalists, instead of realizing the significance of these
Jacobins with their dangerous integrity and their dangerous
grip upon the imagination of the mob, had the conceit to think
they could make tools of them. The time for the replacement
of the National Assembly under the new-made constitution by
the "Legislative Assembly" was drawing near; and when the
Jacobins, with the idea of breaking up the moderates, proposed
to make the members of the National Assembly ineligible for
the Legislative Assembly, the royalists supported them with
great glee, and carried the proposal. They perceived that the
Legislative Assembly, so clipped of all experience, must certainly
be a politically incompetent body. They would "extract good
from the excess of evil," and presently France would fall back
helpless into the hands of her legitimate masters. So they
thought. And the royalists did more than this. They backed
the election of a Jacobin as Mayor of Paris. It was about as
clever as if a man brought home a hungry tiger to convince
his wife of her need of him. There stood another body ready
at hand with which these royalists did not reckon, far better
equipped than the court to step in and take the place of an
ineffective Legislative Assembly, and that was the strongly
Jacobin Commune of Paris installed at the Hotel de Ville.
So far France had been at peace. None of her neighbours
872 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
had attacked her, because she appeared to be weakening herself
by her internal dissensions. It was Poland that suffered by the
distraction of France. But there seemed no reason why they
should not insult and threaten her, and prepare the way for
a later partition at their convenience. At Pillnitz, in 1791,
the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria met, and
issued a declaration that the restoration of order and monarchy
in France was a matter of interest to all sovereigns. And
an army of emigres, French nobles and gentlemen, an army
largely of officers, was allowed to accumulate cloae to the
frontier.
It was France that declared war against Austria. The mo-
tives of those who supported this step were conflicting. Many
republicans wanted it because they wished to see the kindred
people of Belgium liberated from the Austrian yoke. Many
royalists wanted it because they saw in war a possibility of
restoring the prestige of the crown. Marat opposed it bitterly
in his paper L'Ami du Peuple, because he did not want to see
republican enthusiasm turned into war fever. His instinct
warned him of Napoleon. On April 20th, 1792, the king came
down to the Assembly and proposed war amidst great applause.
The war began disastrously. Three French armies entered
Belgium, two were badly beaten, and the third, under Lafayette,
retreated. Then Prussia declared war in support of Austria,
and the allied forces, under the Duke of Brunswick, prepared
to invade France. The duke issued one of the most foolish
proclamations in history ; he was, he said, invading France to
restore the royal authority. Any further indignity shown the
king he threatened to visit upon the Assembly and Paris
with "military execution." This was surely enough to make
the most royalist Frenchman a republican — at least for the
duration of the war.
The new phase of revolution, the Jacobin revolution, was
the direct outcome of this proclamation. It made the Legisla-
tive Assembly, in which orderly republicans (Girondins) and
royalists prevailed, it made the government which had put
down that republican meeting in the Champ de Mars and hunted
Marat into the sewers, impossible. The insurgents gathered
at the Hotel de Ville, and on the tenth of August the Commune
launched an attack on the palace of the Tuileries.
The king behaved with a clumsy stupidity, and with that
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 873
disregard for others which is the prerogative of kings. Pie
had with him a Swiss guard of nearly a thousand men as well
as National Guards of uncertain loyalty. He held out vaguely
until firing began, and then he went oS to the adjacent Assem-
bly to place himself and his family under its protection, leaving
his Swiss fighting. No doubt he hoped to antagonize Assem-
bly and Commune, but the Assembly had none of the fighting
spirit of the Hotel de Ville. The royal refugees were placed
in a box reserved for journalists (out of which a small room
opened), and there they remained for sixteen hours while the
A.ssembly debated their fate. Outside there were the sounds
of a considerable battle; every now and then a window would
break. The unfortunate Swiss were fighting with their backs
to the wall because there was now nothing else for them to
do. . . .
The Assembly had no stomach to back the government's ac-
tion of July in the Champ de Mars. The fierce vigour of the
Commune dominated it. The king found no comfort what-
ever in the Assembly. It scolded him and discussed his "sus-
pension." The Swiss fought until they received a message from
the king to desist, and then — the crowd being savagely angry
at the needless bloodshed and out of control — they were for
the most part massacred.
The long and tedious attempt to "Merovingianize" Louis,
to make an honest crowned republican out of a dull and in-
adaptable absolute monarch, was now drawing to its tragic
close. The Commune of Paris was practically in control of
France. The Legislative Assembly — which had apparently un-
dergone a change of hearti — decreed that the king was suspended
from his ofiice, confined him in the Temple, replaced him by
an executive commission, and summoned a National Conven-
tion to frame a new constitution.
The tension of patriotic and republican Trance was now
becoming intolerable. Such armies as she had were rolling
back helplessly towards Paris. Longwy had fallen, the great
fortress of Verdun followed, and nothing seemed likely to stop
the march of the allies upon the capital. The sense of royalist
treachery rose to panic cruelty. At any rate the royalists had
to be silenced and stilled and scared out of sight. The Com-
mune set itself to hunt out every royalist that could be found,,
until the prisons of Paris were full. Marat saw the danger of
m
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others, the Princesse de Lamt^],l& whom the king and queen
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graErtsftcoMdi/iiMfiksejp'hini. )haiiaieesbM Jiqiep'o JbfcJP ';fi??ifte«Q
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cha:r^driwit(jh)anyflorffeiieejd©imBiaftte(J)tef0?e'hi©figpi^ii^
tution, because before/tte&Ih«^.'wasf |a itml wSrt^mhi?, s^P^trklS^
and sw Jaicapable!: (ftfobejifgdlle^l,! ^J^ton^wK m0a^dV^V^^^
attacks>i[j(on.th^fMing'iaicoiiri&el. u. . i„ .T)bro»gJ>()fe%^^^rg](^"5fe|
a bitter lihdjfjmlriofilieai arjusf pfert; h^.wfig;^'^ •gflea;i|frl(J«,%;5*L fij?f9
intelligencesi ibza' tsMii : oii firef;, , wn-iingf , -viii^/Cji^iff^gaj^ifirifeaJ^^
in the biyodetibfgi isi asoiija; pnodltii* c^£iifeh9oifiiP<Jr;te"tl;:#fBtl^
body. fi ,qr; jirir/i[ sn-// jIriI sbirnroi iemii) rlon^il gilt omit
Louis Wa»t^e8ded>iii>r^rakLUdryyl-l93'; j H-e 5Ka'8 g)u6i1b1fttefcn
for since tke j^fevidrnfe lAiu^sitirliheiguillotiine-h^ribrielKJai jiii:?@<^a9
the official itesliu^enti"ittiiFi'em& exeeiolioiisU/i)) Bf/ntr;!/' ul inam
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"The kings ;of''Eu^bp©J■vk)ul(iidhall*§e■)lls/^)he>rr»aafeld(. jt"W#
throw them ',th4 ijiqad'iof-a'feiHg !" i;;fi^. «f: ,:irutrfi>ft 'irft ro't fffiirrol:
876 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 11
And now followed a strange phase in the history of the French
people. There arose a great flame of enthusiasm for France
and the Eepublic. There was to be an end to compromise at
home and abroad; at home royalists and every form of dis-
loyalty were to be stamped out; abroad France was to be the
protector and helper of all revolutionaries. All Europe, all
the world, was to become republican. The youth of France
poured into the Republican armies ; a new and wonderful song
spread through the land, a song that still warms the blood like
wine, the Marseillaise. Before that chant and the leaping col-
umns of French bayonets and their enthusiastically served guns
the foreign armies rolled back; before the end of 1792 the
French armies had gone far beyond the utmost achievements
of Louis XIV; everywhere they stood on foreign soil. They
were in Brussels, they had overrun Savoy, they had raided to
Mayence; they had seized the Scheldt from Holland. Then
the French Government did an unwise thing. It had been ex-
asperated by the expulsion of its representative from England
upon the execution of Louis, and it declared war against Eng-
land. It was an unwise thing to do, because the revolution
which had given France a new enthusiastic infantry and a bril-
liant artillery, released from its aristocratic officers and many
cramping traditions, had destroyed the discipline of its navy,
and the English were supreme upon the sea. And this provo-
cation united all England against France, whereas there had
been at first a very considerable liberal movement in Great
Britain in sympathy with the revolution.
Of the fight that France made in the next few years against
a European coalition we cannot tell in any detail. She drove
the Austrians for ever out of Belgium, and made Holland a
republic. The Dutch fleet, frozen in the Texel, surrendered
to a handful of cavalry without firing its guns. For some
time the French thrust towards Italy was hung up, and it was
only in 1796 that a new general, !N"apoleon Bonaparte, led the
ragged and hungry republican armies in triumph across Pied-
mont to Mantua and Verona. An Outline of History cannot
map out campaigns ; but of the new quality that had come into
war, it is bound to take note. The old professional armies had
fought for the fighting, as slack as workers paid by the hour ;
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 877
these wonderful new armies fought, hungry and thirsty, for vic-
tory. Their enemies called them the "New French." Says
C. F. Atkinson,^ "What astonished the Allies most of all was
the number and the velocity of the Eepublicans. These im-
provised armies had in fact nothing to delay them. Tents were
unprocurable for want of money, untransportable for want of
the enormous number of wagons that would have been required,
and also unnecessary, for the discomfort that would have caused
wholesale desertion in professional armies was cheerfully borne
by the men of 1793-94. Supplies for armies of then unheard-of
size could not be carried in convoys, and the French soon be-
came familiar with 'living on the country.' Thus 1793 saw
the birth of the modem system of war — rapidity of movement,
full development of national strength, bivouacs, requisitions
and force as against cautious manoeuvring, small professional
armies, tents and full rations, and chicane. The first rep-
resented the decision-compelling spirit, the second the spirit of
risking little to gain a little. . . ."
And while these ragged hosts of enthusiasts were chanting
the Marseillaise and fighting for La, France, manifestly never
quite clear in their minds whether they were looting or liberat-
ing the countries into which they poured, the republican en-
thusiasm in Paris was spending itself in a far less glorious
fashion. Marat, the one man of commanding intelligence among
the Jacobins, was now frantic with an incurable disease, and
presently he was murdered; Danton was a series of patriotic
thunderstorms; the steadfast fanaticism of Eobespierre domi-
nated the situation. This man is difficult to judge; he was
a man of poor physique, naturally timid, and a prig. But
he had that most necessary gift for power, faith. He believed
not in a god familiar to men, but in a certain Supreme Being,
and that Kousseau was his prophet. He set himself to save
the republic as he conceived it, and he imagined it could be
saved by no other man than he. So that to keep in power was
to save the republic. The living spirit of the republic, it
seemed, had sprung from a slaughter of royalists and the; execu-
tion of the king. There were insurrections: one in the west,
in the district of La Vendee, where the people rose against
the conscription and against the dispossession of the orthodox
'In nis article, "Trench Revolutionary Wars," in the Encyolopoediai
Britannioa.
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temb©lfehi ^j^^9di«i^^tk^,"^e.^dW!;i^oenitive;of most'tonmEB
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in the following seven weeks there were 1,376. — ^P. G. .»«>««»*«&
new n.aipQs 'i^ iiia, joaiftiiSjoaslst^k) Of Mn^ i4a^^) m^ftbm Mk^-hj
^tikA^ lejigisi»s&(J)^lpw«t'tia"m9:jti WlifH^scoth^Kslitjigis^ifi/iin-
age and the tangled weights and measures of old Frqgseyggy©
gl^Afti^^Outfefe pi^S^aflidJ-Mi^ iM^i4ftk9?F^te5*iii3^ftfeC»tj)l|Ten-
afe(fti?bx^f)»d)#P5ip|^cf3i6|[er. jiggijtB^§^^84^gstfeg^ -miicp mI^
tt>i^ei>Jfe^..9TVO&gfei^'fiifi3^^eifexd f^<^^d^m J-P^sii-tifeaFp^jfej^
Reason in the cathedral of l!Totre-Danie, with a \pn^^ty §gt|!g)gg5a§
fMfti/Ji%(»ft?9*'flo8t%iftgara4^}lf ifflSa S)& Mi, .ym-9$^i%<^\^i
tJ^iBef'iteiasBagA lo Jngbie-j-i*!" .mid in Ifod orit balgirij; iaob
ail?o MigTifeSi'ife^^^^rt/^^Jf^b^fieiiefel&tf* t\i9T$qm^(M
i^^W%dffli^ altJ^JBSfl^.f)ag b9ii:2i;OD eri ; raid b'-jtiosob 9oioT
A certain mental dis(yid!^i,teatefe3>^l',QfiS»li^*tefirii)R«>fcfisp45ri8
l§i&%iSP#JIWrx]§ttl&Sl e^?(?fy ^Ai',yM.ebW»sh^mh «0»c@|fied
with his religion. (The arrests and executions of sugp^jsiiSgf JBt
ge^ig^/^MeWM a^lM^ljLi** ^-ySt-Y 1|irfesfl[thfli,ptj5SB|6jftij;mri3
Begij)Je.^73iJ^e .i^i^Spl •ifee[iQ@n^ffl.jfeipi3idMcdQ«??P4*^.ii'r#^;«>
bl^py^ fe# ^g§%%^R^ag60&ndiinidi&«bc,OTBf.j8f»Bf €gct¥te
ft^jjjngj^jJftl^ft^'^fotfoeiaos^STtJnJiiM^iheie^M
tJS^H^^ f§lM^]3{9fotl3IT^ffi^l^®&«f3^«SBg«r£3^I?fifjs^5ft?8^oP'!l>eftit
§ig^fiil;eT;-^h^xi6%BPfPA'd^/ii[^y%f-SKhkltrhei'l{^iii#i^ !ft?t
?«5^Mj3l'eft&njtc^8^:^ibWR^ «lt'&WyiS:t afidfiwh§8-t;«p.K^h^^
Wrgfl-j<?f9i9i3?nnjflte«ynPi*t^iaiiTOprf§9it|af7A^iffi!rr8!SKi9Tric^
TO€ftt §QieTi^U^hw^'mikeni'> ibyiiarnailipsBigteiWgq^teifaPtjtiftfflfi
t7it^k;isoro.6nSliiM) §ie&lsiHggsj ,a»oJ||^8e>jt);tf|tibl|$[i§;E^Se{'#ll^^
dom rose in their place. Thef^fjs^fsfl? itep(JPJF^est5rRfi^4s©J#5®
^lii?fif^fit%g j33pd^^giiiDtet7^p^i)fSi*l3&fJie[tA^§MS^ <o-owT
-d]^eiyjei(^^ifeBfltopi^fye^rdiss^l»JftJs*''i'^W*^i9^
if&njiifii?^ j^lbi^ir*p%Lh«A^fe.Wy.ls9totfeerff'iiBt^fttifi!te
8 G-0n)^-flay.*ft-Jii%3|e#eftfp0Bf e^awJ M^'^&^iksk.mngsm^^^
lba;t jetef rJ5V/(ioBi8fe(iwi^ 9l?3J?s]j rityf^ۤBtieW.g9y;9QMi^rjQa
the multitude of vices which the torrent of RevolutioifocfeW
mBefi Mwn^" ■ he dcHie4prfi» i him h-^%-i^^^\v^<i§pk?X%-iiM](^'a.-
ykik^km. ({{likm^ ^ibetiwie^ .trfembl6d:)!l^::3i(«b6iii:.he8sai.led
880 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
by the impure neighbourhood of wicked men. ... I know
that it is easy for the leagued tyrants of the world to over-
whelm a single individual; but I know also what is the duty
of a man who can die in the defence of humanity." • . .
And so on to vague utterances that seemed to threaten
everyona
The Convention heard this speech in silence; then when a
proposal was made to print and circulate it, broke into a re-
sentful uproar and refused permission. Eobespierre went off in
bitter resentment to the club of his supporters, and re-read his
speech to them!
That night was full of talk and meetings and preparations
for the morrow, and the next morning the Convention turned
upon Eobespierre. One Tallien threatened him with a dagger.
When he tried to speak, he was shouted down, and the Presi-
dent jingled the bell at him. "President of Assassins," cried
Eobespierre, "I demand speech!" It was refused him. His
voice deserted him; he coughed and spluttered. "The blood
of Danton chokes him," cried someone.
He was accused and arrested there and then with his chief
supporters.
Whereupon the Hotel de Ville, still stoutly Jacobin, rose
against the Convention, and Eobespierre and his companions
were snatched out of the hands of their captors. There was a
night of gathering, marching, counter-marching; and at last,
about three in the morning, the forces of the Convention faced
the forces of the Commune outside the Hotel de Ville. Henriot,
the Jacobin commander, after a busy day was drunk upstairs ;
a parley ensued, and then, after some indecision, the soldiers
of the Commune went over to the Government. There was i.
shouting of patriotic sentiments, and someone looked out from
the Hotel de Ville. Eobespierre and his last companions found
themselves betrayed and trapped.
Two or three of these men threw themselves out of a window,
and injured themselves frightfully on the railings below with-
out killing themselves. Others attempted suicide. Eobespierre,
it seems, was shot in the lower jaw by a gendarme. He was
found, his eyes staring from a pale face whose lower part was
blood.
Followed seventeen hours of agony before his end. He spoke
never a word during that time, his jaw being bound up roughly
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 881
in dirty linen. He and his companions, and the broken, dying
bodies of those who had jumped from the windows, twenty-two
men altogether, were taken to the guillotine instead of the con-
demned appointed for that day. Mostly his eyes were closed,
but, says Oarlyle, he opened them to see the great knife rising
above him, and struggled. Also it would seem he screamed when
the executioner removed his bandages. Then the knife came
down, swift and merciful.
The Terror was at an end. From first to last there had been
condemned and executed about four thousand people.
§ 12
It witnesses to the immense vitality and the profound right-
ness of the flood of new ideals and intentions that the French
Revolution had released into the world of practical endeavour,
that it could still flow in a creative torrent after it had been
caricatured and mocked in the grotesque personality and career
of Eobespierre. He had shown its deepest thoughts, he had
displayed anticipations of its methods and conclusions ; through
the green and distorting lenses of his preposterous vanity and
egotism, he had smeared and blackened all its hope and promise
with blood and horror, and the power of these ideas was not
destroyed. They stood the extreme tests of ridiculous and hor-
rible presentation. After his downfall, the Republic still ruled
unassailable. Leaderless, for his successors were a group of
crafty or commonplace men, the European republic struggled
on, and presently fell and rose again, and fell and rose and
still struggles, entangled but invincible. -
And it is well to remind the reader here of the real dimensions
of this phase of the Terror, which strikes so vividly upon the
imagination and which has therefore been enormously exag-
gerated relatively to the rest of the revolution. From 1789 to
late in 1791 the French Eevolution was an orderly process, and
from the summer of 1794 the Republic was an orderly and
victorious state. The Terror was not the work of the whole
country, but of the town mob which owed its existence and
its savagery to the misrule and social injustice of the ancient
regime; and the explosion of the Terror could have happened
only through the persistent treacherous disloyalty of the royalists
which, while it raised the extremists to frenzy, disinclined the
882 3 : ) /> A THE .OUTLH* B 10^ HlSf dit? ' '^ -^ ii
Jti^texbimitea^reWaTgitetAfed.tiJi^ Jfaf^ thli:fealfilS',qgfldbaai8a.|
;^8ei1toBsfeild3T^aid! aroretcHiA^iiityna-^esdt -fltiQijb^ ^fiaa^ro
aa&f foisitjsgvdioaQi thesS^Wc^ilpfJa/ll tHB56|prdfelsi§f f^^'SSfi^,
wasoeaiitUdalfa kJMT Ite^ii80ji!ii(i^8B4ch9t®aitor9rf«as^^fiMseh.tefr
makers as Philip, Duke of Orleans offijTtfaeaifekiS fcmV^ib
haifvbtefle&aflrfthefldeatthBrofi Iwxnai" XFtEs xMdiseBKveSowm M^led
by the Britilljogf ifBraJsfcaibmoo^iili/tkb iiipgajag9 4^ y«t^ki<i8
known as the Somme offensive of July, 1916, than in the whole
French revolution from start t(g|&msh. We hear so much about
the martyrs of the French Terror because they were notable,
Wd^i80bBe©te)i(p®i^l6^fan4,lftfeEferaseBthBimKa®rbe6tis©SEaitl©#pl!3bp-
sigmM (dliMiiiswS^tiBi^ ffiotalebhis'fealaikoeLajgfiiresitthieiBSOT
9nn)«Kybite''^fcatoTS^ ^©ifa^com ailJthifip£aeia3[iBtf WW wrri^ldogefit
«sm)HyWdthii1?iiiftiBJalTii(BritaiB9a3ad3 Jriaeni&i/lwfeilBtilthe UetEcfe
feifceStf-jB8rfgiKtetafq«i!teBri»^ialiwff£facfa^a:^nsfopraBe»^
■!*§B©idd)i^<ieoiiae&£fa);p She MeTk&atieiis^ eSbAa^mbajbhe^^i^ab
SgBJn^itb« SJi*tst80(P£cp(MBis§!p liis^gfr^et JMe*yrfiedfflBicfH>3pgop3fe
BBflesd^btttiite^Jai^BlJoflghb'raa^Itiafe^ feirifdredGor^ ^iiil vpSLs^teilg^
innMasgagferfset'lssBliJi WSS^/fa^* afiflrcfibily .taking fcb© hat^dshWsf
a'mHbnckteso6ioa.iibi:lier^arl afehtodtHK^t fiinother8tt'?et.?bct'^4a9ii^
Hdwarf(flrJthsrr^h^biathi[()ipIfetiifdaxhitrlMS})AfoiiWjffltiTOHmJ^e9rIdi^
|ier:^fclga ianaBceat ^6efteij[fetaMedoln,dM'iHn@Ush piis6bs>.mha
fees. oaAmdriiiefelpfaisanpfik^iEe ^lilii;^rpdaflsS; u^dreraaMii dfoetiire
control. Torture was stiMcibnisetirtriAdsJ^mnlveriaalj^^nninifeiiis.
of [(MktiBiiafafiHacgiifaJesiygKTBl^sSEoi^ebJEHis-i IM Lladrlaedi Bn /use
bdiFwanfoe^^iipL'da tbeeftiimids afDibfeff ^^aiioSkbiiisfeemfeijiq J^Uftele
t^ii^ ^teTkfrfhejlevffil'Jolf thelagedi tkis shjiimi brHOOBdJtfeati'^BJy-i
(5ile68^2rs ailiB-KBerarte'fycrIbrtTirH§ by rtke aEterichJ'Jrcrs^elfftifeniffies!
(faimiii^sdiEKp^fiimi&no Hliaa&;'feMtlrhii/^fi6dfoofT!ffi5EiiDfclI(^bhl!iefe9M
Miii^oys&apilniiafe'afnoBficbijiHBmilhaflebUeiiiwel'li-coiiiteisdfehow^
aiistwfairfJoflieriiovItoBfea^otiraE^, IxraitiaiBtprb'^ thssfffibafero&aiaiv
^bsrBafediistexi^ atigfeajtrdrdgienfty. doThencommdn iQaAi'Sn^^aiBre©
vteasi 'aaiwsreif jfrbe, otetelrepib%iraia:dfjhapj{ieE!idurif% oth?|i=511BetsEo«35
ffliHro«:JipjJia9i'i}feefiiitrii]!ii 1558^^T grft 'lo fioiaolqxo edl has ;9nii'39i
8,taina9ostoify iof(. Hb^cxEeipiablici ifeftert theJ -Humqierit oi^ rl09f4r ^^beo
oifl b'utironigib ,y?.0hailm&dg5!ivilii'iiilyjdia|tftxfoiiiiK'r ii elisiw jdoidw
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 883
comes a tangled, story of political groups aiming at everything
from a radical republic to a royalist reaction, but pervaded by
a general desire for some definite vporking arrangement even
at the price of considerable concessions. There was a series
of insurrections of the Jacobins and of the royalists, there seems
to have been what we should call nowadays a hooligan class
in Paris which was quite ready to turn out to fight and loot on
either side ; nevertheless the Convention produced a; government,
the Directory of five members, which held France together for
five years. The last, most threatening revolt of all, in October,
1795, wa? suppressed with great skill and decision by a rising
young general, Napoleon Bonaparte,
The Directory was victorious abroad, but uncreative at home ;
its members were far too anxious to stick to the sweets ,and
glories of office to prepare a constitution that would supersede
them, and far too dishonest to handle the task of financial and
economic reconstruction demanded by the condition of France.
We need only note two of their names, Carnot, who was an
honest republican, and Barras, who was conspicuously a rogue.
Their reign of five years formed a curious interlude in this
history of great changes. They took things as they found
them. The propagandist zeal of the revolution carried the
French armies into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, south GerT
many, and north Italy. Everywhere kings were expe;lled and
republics set up. But such propagandist zeal as animated
the Directorate did not prevent the looting of the treasures of
the liberated peoples to relieve the financial embarrassment of
the French Government. Their wars became less and less
the holy war of freedom, and more and more like the aggres-
sive wars of the ancient regime.. The last feature of Grand
Monarchy that France was disposed to discard was her tradi-
tion of foreign policy, grasping, aggressive, restless, French-
centred. One discovers it still as vigorous under the Directorate
as if there had been no revolution.
§ 13
The ebb of this tide of Eevolution in the world, this tide which
had created the great Eepublic of America and threatened to
subraerge all European monarchies, was now at hand. It is as if
something had thrust up from beneath the surface of human
884 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
affairs, made a gigantic effort, and for a time spent itself. It
swept many obsolescent and evil things away, but many evil
and unjust things remained. It solved many jH'oblems, and
it left the desire for fellowship and order face to face with
much vaster problems that it seemed only to have revealed.
Privilege of certain types had gone, many tyrannies, mvieh re-
ligious persecution. When these things of the ancient regime
had vanished, it seemed as if they had never mattered. What
did matter was that for all their votes and enfranchisement,
and in spite of all their passion and effort, common men were
still not free and not enjoying an equal happiness; that the
immense promise and air of a new world with which the Eevo-
kition had come, remained unfulfilled.
Yet, after all, this wave of revolution had realized nearly
everything that had been clearly thought out before it came.
It was not failing now for want of impetus, but for want of
finished ideas. Miany things that had oppressed mankind were
swept away for ever, l^ow that they were swept away it be-
came apparent how unprepared men were for the creative op-
portunities this clearance gave them. And periods of revolu-
tion are periods of action; in them men reap the harvests of
ideas that have grown during phases of interlude, and they
leave the fields cleared for a new season of growth, but they
cannot suddenly produce ripened new ideas to meet an un-
anticipated riddle.
The sweeping away of king and lord, of priest and inquisitor,
of landlord and taxgatherer and task-master, left the mass of
men face to face for the first time with certain very fundamental
aspects of the social structure, relationships they had taken
for granted, and had never realized the need of thinking hard
and continuously about before. Institutions that had seemed
to be in the nature of things, and matters that had seemed to
happen by the same sort of necessity that brought round the
dawn and springtime, were discovered to be artificial, control-
lable, were they not so perplexingly intricate, and — ^now that
the old routines were abolished and done away with — in urgent
need of control. The New Order found itself confronted with
three riddles which it was quite unprepared to solve: Propi-
erty. Currency, and International Relationship.
Let us take these three problems in order, and ask what
they are and how they arose in human affairs. Every human
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 885
life is deeply entangled in them, and concerned in their solu-
tion. The rest of this history becomes more and more clearly
the development of the effort to solve these problems; that is
to say, so to interpret property, so to establish currency, and
so to control international reactions as to render possible a
■world-wide, progressive, and happy community of will. They
are the three riddles of the sphinx of fate, to which the human
commonweal must find an answer or perish.
The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of
the species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was
a proprietor. Primitive property is what a beast will fight
for. The dog and his bone, the tigress and her lair, the roar-
ing stag and his herd, these are proprietorship blazing. No
more nonsensical expression is conceivable in sociology than
the term "primitive communism." The Old Man of the family
tribe of early palseolithic times insisted upon his proprietorship
in his wives and daughters, in his tools, in his visible universe.
If any other man wandered into his visible universe he fought
him, and if he could he slew him. The tribe grew in the course
of ages, as Atkinson showed convincingly in his Primal Law,
by the gradual toleration by the Old Man of the existence of
the younger men, and of their proprietorship in the wives they
captured from outside the tribe, and in the tools and orna-
ments they 'made and the game they slew. Human society
grew by a compromise between this one's property and that.
It was largely a compromise and an alliance forced upon men
by the necessity of driving some other tribe out of its visible
universe. If the hills and forests and streams were not you^
land or my land, it was because they had to be our land. Each
of us would have preferred to have it my land, but that would
not work. In that case the other fellows would have destroyed
us. Society, therefore, is from its beginnings the mitigation
of ownership. Ownership in the beast and in the primitive
savage was far more intense a thing than it is in the civilized
world -to-day. It is rooted more strongly in our instincts than
in our reason.
In the natural savage and in the untutored man to-day —
for it is well to keep in mind that no man to-day is more than
four hundred generations from the primordial savage — there
is no limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you
can fight for, you can own; women-folk, spared captive, cap-
886 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tured beast, forest glade, stone pit or what not. As the com-
munity grew and a sort of law came to restrain internecine
fighting, men developed rough and ready methods of settling
proprietorship. Men could own what they were the first to
make or capture or claim. It seraned natural that a debtor
who could not pay up should become the property of his cred-
itor. Equally natural was it that, after claiming a patch of
land ("Bags I," as the schoolboy says), a man should exact
payments and tribute from anyone else who wanted to use it.
It was only slowly, as the possibilities of organized life dawned
on men, that this unlimited property in anything whatever began
to be recognized as a nuisance. Men found themselves born
into a universe all owned and claimed, nay ! they found them-
selves born owned and claimed. The social struggles of the
earlier civilization are difBcult to trace now, but the history we
have told of the Roman republic shows a community waking
up to the idea that they may become a public inconvenience
and should then be repudiated, and that the unlimited owner-
ship of land is also an inconvenience. We find that later Baby-
lonia severely limited the rights of property in slaves. Finally,
we find in the teaching of that great revolutionist, Jesus of
Nazareth, such an attack upon property as had never been
before. Easier it was, he said, for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for the owner of great possessions to
enter the kingdom of heaven. A steady, continuous criticism
of the permissible scope of property seems to have been going
on in the world for the last twenty-five or thirty centuries.
Nineteen hundred years after Jesus of ISTazareth we find all
the world that has come under the Christian teaching per-
Waded that there could be no property in persons. There has
teen a turn-over in the common conscience in that matter.
^MiJ also the idea that "a man may do what he likes with his
^^W': was clearly very much shaken in relation to other sorts
fe?''^pf6perty. But this world of the closing eighteenth century
'Wis iW. only in the interrogative stage in this' matter. It
had got nothing clear enough, much less settled enough, to act
up5?S'°^^0fie of its primary impulses was to protect property
%|atiStP'ffi#^greed and waste of kings and the exploita;tion of
^c?Mfe~a®^M^rers. It was to protect private property that the
WS^dlWtJ^H' TOgan. But its equalitarian formulae carried it
■ffitb 'aI'''6i€fi^isW'of the very property it had risen to protect.
siiHy-rftliiffirrjpQQCoOSiliipIaiBifcd. v cbv/rovj erij o1 eoirfitioqmi Iidiv
'.'■{Tb -wii-JoBt ridjdle ifebeuJacofeiuiTBej)|lJ5yTwsritfei6eifftbcl:i}t-MM#7
iilg.)wpe'li Tiiefa]ffiani?diito/iBtfln6^;^jaiiiijd taisfe»si,liisaip]EQps[5tyfl'
Aitnmg9aii'jiifefrsiaiiie> eaitti/^'bjg agitffher.arriiaJfeejntlifea'&cweiBdj^ataies^
kkiAhftI eiglite€iO<tbi ceiituiijjiaertaiiiopriiKiitfceb safesa^ifits-grrOlVe^q
be M^miss^mi, ^iimmums^»ar-yihefigr79n^i Ite-i^beJisVfli^tiwte
ps©^erty)'K8[ltog9t]jer. ^a-jfibe 7Sfcate-r<\a ^^ei^jiiatfeii^ate^jliva&Y&I
#BJEge ^^fed/^rslM^fldjH vTasAto owtEall p^fl^wtyni Ijtisv^a[5ii:^y<s ag
thefiai&ejtfefefttli) ceiitiiij;^';dewl6p^ jtial saen^sga^if dte M^zh^§H
pfflfipe|it|6BTEfei& «fcl))0?Meii-M«p!^'t(Si»gjoibT*thaYii!e^^ije^fefpJqxi)fl|
^si| -(^idb 'jas-ibijmstB i)eS©p^dt«f 9^pJe»@&ta,8@fioan>}Mi€sfcr
gftjls.pai5njJfi^JU3»-b«Wit?rfof«rgieS«iWgl«>l-?5^^nnee^fiea(3kIjtoj-^
($5ft^dgg^ ■^rgrigga^jpeiflftnljg .tphjdetff iWJiaft IjfiiSrff agoinidi»»dCT
1,yjb^lJjBStaJ^§JlHI[(if Wfl-j^fftOiee Tjastpro^riy^ilfe-fSv^eHgh^^BAfoJ
];iM>|a#ii,V^^8i}S'tp! tteiTptHH'fejdcpiaiftraaift i^yifei^iJtdffiiiftifit^S
ifl4tilfS}$T^tote-rf|e3a|a|:8iin,^|3ietgoB'9fitit5 Jfl*re3tJo}ft?ii'jlb8tJ)f^
tklii)^ ft^8r.9Se3t4oH|%Kl|assxiiiilJOaf^M8S,.ii%aid IfeffupffioHwa
qftj^ieg)iP^(^j[jip^J40ftftlogci^c§«oillYrff.W-FQiteSay.9ft^^
qffar:feu©^ij^i^ii<drftMrtiy[5^«8r?)fi£ d^1i»^§i((iro*>terB%ifiiei(}».eT^f
ilrfStiW §n7'^t ^^5i4nP&l#'k^atl't(.;&nnQMxiri^b§|'c[j6b8ii igi99ci6^ei
TJri^|i§fff |^^f;^i^ju§%%^ii9i^ (jit f)Vna[9)a4?ilM8if!3bte i^ii#tifei|Ji1)gg^%
centHtj^[j5jiFsa,^6fe^bfi%l^ i)f e^gijnA/^Sty <fltSeg(^pc^%(^eotbp[ilMfef^
vague .ajjd;isp|ifsj^gdr pO^Wffe tewMeiat^ -^il^Bg te ^k^«§pg§(s
owners, a;5i4#}ag?g»/3|f s^^H^id l^J^ <3Wii««?cfe9lidBrff @BagwiS»b3
demandmg^iJ|e|ftl't,oftvjeiryjy^i|go^se,vJS:jyip-)arde_flj ^t9dxr&qmB%
and seeking -totjiQi^ri^^sfbtW^iii^itjWwVle ste# c^ai^MH^MhalT
ever that coiilidff|e?l^g&% ppbssgedii-iBT' dlrn eovfeenrodt hiwo'i
Closely connea|gdirT?Mfetfeftj;V8gsime9&;C)iE>tlen'arMlfe^) ?ib«ft[:
property was the m^^Ti'l^S'j}ir^}imrMfim)9^hl}^iimir^^3'>r(M>io.
the American and oth^ltFj^^n^-ifjipppblie^ Jf^lfcieti^fieififliiss ttwlftj
ble upon this seore^noMeije,! again, ivsf^cfd^liitvi^Tjftj^^^lg
888 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
that is not simple, a tangle of usages, conventions, laws, and
prevalent mental habits, out of ■which arise problems v?hich
admit of no solution in simple terms, and vphich yet are of
vital importance to the everyday life of the community. The
validity of the acknowledgment a man is given for a day's
: work is manifestly of quite primary importance to the work-
ing of the social machine. The grovTth of confidence in the
precious metals and of coins, until the assurance became
practically universal that good money could be trusted to
have its purchasing power anywhere, must have been
a gradual one in human history. And being fairly estab-
lished, this assurance was subjected to very considerable strains
and perplexities by the action of governments in debasing cur-
rency and in substituting paper promises to pay for the actual
metallic coins. Every age produced a number of clever people
intelligent enough to realize the opportunities for smart opera-
tions afforded by the complex of faiths and fictions upon which
the money system rested, and sufficiently unsound morally to
give their best energies to growing rich and so getting people
to work for them, through tricks and tampering with gold,
ceinage, and credit So soon as serious political and social
dislocation occurred, the money mechanism began to work stiffly
and inaccurately. The United States and the French Republic
both started their careers in a phase of financial difficulty.
Everywhere governments had been borrowing and issuing paper
promises to pay interest, more interest than they could con-
veniently raise. Both revolutions led to much desperate pub-
lic spending and borrowing, and at the same time to an in-
terruption of cultivation and production that further dimin-
ished real taxable wealth. Both governments, being unable
to pay their way in gold, resorted to the issue of paper money,
promising to pay upon the security of undeveloped land (in
America) or recently confiscated church lands (France). In
both cases the amount of issue went far beyond the confidence
of men in the new security. Gold was called in, hidden by the
cunning ones, or went abroad to pay for imports; and people
found themselves with various sorts of bills and notes in the
place of coins, all of uncertain and diminishing value.
However complicated the origins of currency, its practical
effect and the end it has to serve in the community may be
stated roughly in simple terms. The money a man receives for
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 889
his work (mental or bodily) or for relinquishing his property
in some consumable good, must ultimately be able to purchase
for him for his use a fairly equivalent amount of consumable
goods. ("Consumable goods" is a phrase we would have under-
stood in the widest sense to represent even such things as a
journey, a lecture or theatrical entertainment, housing, medical
advice, and so forth.) When everyone in a community is as-
sured of this, and assured that the money will not deteriorate
in purchasing power, then currency — and the distribution of
goods by trade — is in a healthy and satisfactory state. Then
men will work cheerfully, and only then. The imperative
need for that steadfastness and security of currency is the fixed
datum from which the scientific study and control of currency
must begin. But under the most stable conditions there will
always be fluctuations in currency value. The sum total of
saleable consumable goods in the world and in various coun-
tries varies from year to year and from season to season ; autumn
is probably a time of plenty in comparison with spring; with
an increase in the available goods in the world, the purchasing
power of currency will increase, unless there is also an increase
in the amount of currency. On the other hand, if there is a
diminution in the production of consumable goods or a great and
unprofitable destruction of consumable goods, such as occurs
in a war, the share of the total of consumable goods repre-
sented by a sum of money will diminish and prices and wages
will rise. In modern war the explosion of a single big shell,
. even if it hits nothing, destroys labour and material roughly
equivalent to a comfortable cottage or a year's holiday for a
man. If the shell hits anything, then that further destruction
has to be added to the diminution of consumable goods. Every
shell that burst in the recent war diminished by a little fraction
the purchasing value of every coin in the whole world. If
there is also an increase of currency during a period when con-
sumable goods are being used up and not fully replaced — and
the necessities of revolutidhary and war-making governments
almost always require this — tlien the enhancement of prices
and the fall in the value of the currency paid in wages is still
greater. Usually also governments under these stresses borrow
money; that is to say, they issue interest-bearing paper, se-
cured on the willingness and ability of the general community
to endure taxation. Such operations would be difficult enough
890 'dOYiA'M^nimTMf^m. m^m^^VJIESl
the full,%^^[g| g^b&gjIjjfiM^ §gJMtiiGo|ii9MlMg^<io-^Sif1(iiatfar
erto this ^^(>^Mmiihpm4Wif?^^l■fi^l}eie^Jy^^i^tio^mitle^St
egotist, thq ^(}y§j3]^/)fcBi,sI}jli%|i,"|'&c%ijJg,;tftf)dei©B*)thig^o|
little to his (j^ ^rf%^^g^.ic^l^v^^ffwJ^§^,)Mi,/iOMl^nihdh»
stupid egotist E^(iyi<^fti1;?M9l??«lt'J¥i)4'^*k 4'lrttoffe»ip(;9rjfi'j9»{;
sequently we pres^i^|iy9<^i^ciQtV^nfep/ystatef{pR<Si«feb^i ,i)5ivl«
excess of currency, v^^J^'ailj »r{P%Pft;^ri*»i^Mt^*iI»&;p«i®
debt, and also -with aij.gr.^ljisfeTiB^^J^f ^•i§3;0«p|atp}ft»'i)«piwi
Both credit and euTrenqj^^h^%i.jpi-^ucy^t%i)mi^^s.M}(i^
the evaporation of piubli?[oC^flfi4e^ffirti'33Jti^yvI'i&*Pj 11^* My*
demoralized. r,^9g boB 8«orit8B'ilj/JO)8 huh -lo't bo-sri
The ultimate consequence of qfti^n^Btljiflejfoirfe^iaedi tfcMfeSie^
would be to end all work and all tr§df> 'thMsopW notili^dajfiffii
on by payment in kind and barter ,,,; ^^BjiMSsW grfefcisewtfi
work except for food, clothing, housing, aui^tlsaiyiaaeiiiait) iutMad.
The immediate consequence of a partially demOTalfeedr aSttTt
rency is to drive up prices and make trading fevej^isitlfe&diijbjesr
turous and workers suspicious and irritable. A sha9r'p)riiiQii£tt
wants under such conditions to hold money for as brief oq
period as possible ; he demands the utmost for his reality, and
buys a reality again as soon as possible in order to get this per-
ishable stuff, the currency paper, off his hands. All who have
fixed incomes and saved accumulations suffer by the rise in
prices, and the wage-earners find, with a gathering fury, that
the real value of their wages is continually less. Here is a
state of affairs where the duty of every clever person is evi- ,
dently to help adjust and reassure. But all the traditions
of private enterprise, all the ideas of the later eighteenth cen-
tury, went to justify the action of acute-minded and dex-
terous people who set themselves to accumulate claims, titles,
and tangible property in the storms and dislocations of this
currency breakdown. The number of understanding people
in the world who were setting themselves sincerely and simply
to restore honest and workable currency and credit conditions
were few and ineffectual. Most of the financial and specu-
lative people of the time were playing the part of Cornish
wreckers — not apparently with any conscious dishonesty, but
with the completest self-approval and the applause of their
fellow-men. The aim of every clever person was to accumulate
as much as he could of really negotiable wealth, and then,
REPUBLICS OF AMERICA AND FRANCE 891
and only then, to bring about some sort of stabilizing political
process that would leave him in advantageous possession of
his accumulation. Here were, the factors of a bad economic
atmosphere, suspicious, feverish, greedy, and speculative. . . .
In the third direction in which the Revolution had been
unprepared with clear ideas, the problem of international re-
lationships, developments were to occur that interacted dis-
astrously with this state of financial and economic adventure,
this scramble and confusion, this preoccupation of men's minds
with the perplexing slipperiness of their private property and
their monetary position at home. The Republic at its birth
found itself at war. For a time that war was waged by the
new levies with a patriotism and a zeal unparalleled in the
world's history. But that could not go on. The Directory found
itself at the head of a conquering country, intolerably needy
and embarrassed at home, and in occupation of rich foreign
lands, full of seizable wealth and material and financial op-
portunity. We have all double natures, and the French in
particular seem to be developed logically and symmetrically
on both sides. Into these conquered regions France came as a
liberator, the teacher of Republicanism to mankind. Holland
and Belgium became the Batavian Republic, Genoa and its
Riviera the Ligurian Republic, north Italy the Cisalpine Re-
public, Switzerland was rechristened the Helvetian Republic,
Miilhausen, Rome, and Naples vrere designated republics.
Grouped about France, these republics were to be a constellation
of freedom leading the world. That was the ideal side. At
the same time the French government, and French private
individuals in concert with the government, proceeded to a
complete and exhaustive exploitation of the resources of these
liberated lands.
So within ten years of the meeting of the States General,
New France begins to take on a singular likeness to the old.
It is more fiushed, more vigorous ; it wears a cap of liberty in-
stead of a crown ; it has a new army — but a damaged fleet ; it
has new rich people instead of the old rich people, a new peas-
antry working even harder than the old and yielding more taxes,
a new foreign policy curiously like the old foreign policy
disrobed, and — ^there is no Millennium.
XXXVII
THE CAEEER OF NAPOLEON BONAPAETE
§ 1. The Bonaparte Family in Corsica. § 2. Bonaparte as
a, Republican General. § 3. Napoleon First Consid, 1799-
1804. § 4. Napoleon I. Emperor, 1804-U. § 5. The Hun-
dred Days. § 6. The Map of Europe in 1815.
§ 1
AND now we come to one of the most illuminating figures
in modern history, the figure of an adventurer and a
wrecker, whose story seems to display with an extraor-
dinary vividness the universal subtle conflict of egotism, van-
ity, and personality with the weaker, wider claims of the com-
mon good. Against this background of confusion and stress
and hope, this strained and heaving France and Europe, this
stormy and tremendous dawn, appears this dark little archaic
personage, hard, compact, capable, unscrupulous, imitative, and
neatly vulgar. He was born (1769) in the still half-barbaric
island of Corsica, the son of a rather prosaic father, a lawyer
who had been first a patriotic Corsican against the French
monarchy which was trying to subjugate Corsica, and who had
then gone over to the side of the invader. His mother was
of sturdier stuff, passionately patriotic and a strong and man-
aging woman. (She birched her sons; on one occasion she
birched Napoleon when he was sixteen.) There were numerous
brothers and sisters, and the family pursued the French author-
ities with importunities for rewards and jobs. Except for
Napoleon it seems to have been a thoroughly commonplace,
"hungry" family. He was clever, bad-tempered, and overbear-
ing. From his mother he had acquired a romantic Corsican
patriotism.
Through the patronage of the French governor of Corsica
he got an education first at the military school of Brienne and
then at the military school of Paris, from which he passed
892
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 89S
into the artillery in 1785. He was an industrious student
both of mathematics and history, his memory was prodigiously
good, and he made copious note-books which still exist. These
note-books show no very exceptional intelligence, and they con-
tain short pieces of original composition — ^upon suicide and
similar adolescent topics. He fell early under the spell of
Rousseau ; he developed sensibility and a scorn for the corrup-
tions of civilization. In 1786 he wrote a pamphlet against a
Swiss pastor who had attacked Eousseau. It was a very ordi-
nary adolescent production, rhetorical and imitative. He
dreamt of an independent Corsica, freed from the French.
With the revolution, he became an ardent republican and a
supporter of the new French regime in Corsica. For some
years, until the fall of Robespierre, he remained a Jacobin.
§2
He soon gained the reputation of a useful and capable oflBcer,
and it was through Robespierre's younger brother that he got
his first chance of distinction at Toulon. Toulon had been
handed over to the British and Spanish by the Royalists, and
an allied fleet occupied its harbour. Bonaparte was given the
command of the artillery, and under his direction the French
forced the allies to abandon the port and town.
He was next appointed commander of the artillery in Italy,
but he had not taken up his duties when the death of Robespierre
seemed likely to involve his own; he was put under arrest as
a Jacobin, and for a time he was in danger of the guillotine.
That danger passed. He was employed as artillery commander
in an abortive raid upon Corsica, and then went to Paris (1795)
rather down at heel. Madame Junot in her Memoirs describes
his lean face and slovenly appearance at this time, "his ill-
combed, ill-powdered hair hanging down over his grey over-
coat," his gloveless hands and badly blacked boots. It was a
time of exhaustion and reaction after the severities of the
Jacobite republic. "In Paris," says Holland Rose, "the star
of Liberty was paling before Mercury, Mars, and Venus"
— finance, uniforms, and social charm. The best of the common
men .were in the armies, away beyond the frontiers. We have
already noted the last rising of the royalists in this year (1795).
Napoleon had the luck to be in Paris, and found his second
894 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
opportunity in this affair. He saved the Kepublic — of the
Directory.
His abilities greatly impressed Camot, the most upright of
the Directors. Moreover, he married a charming young widov?,
Madame Josephine de Beauharnais, who had great influence
with Barras. Both these things probably helped him to secure
the command in Italy.
We have no space here for the story of his brilliant campaigns
in Italy (1796-97), but of the spirit in which that invasion of
Italy was conducted we must say a word or two, because, it
illustrates so vividly the double soul of France and of Napoleon,
and how revolutionary idealism was paling before practical
urgencies. He proclaimed to the Italians that the French were
coming to break their chains — -and they were! He wrote to
the Directory: "We will levy 20,000,000 francs in exactions
in this country ; it is one of the richest in the world." To his
soldiers he said, "You are famished and nearly naked. . . .
I lead you into the most fertile plain in the world. There you
will find great towns, rich provinces, honour, glory, riches. . . ."
We are all such mixed stuff as this ; in all of us the intimations
of a new world and a finer duty struggle to veil and control the
ancient greeds and lusts of our inherited past; but these pas-
sages, written by a young man of twenty-seven, seem to show
the gilt of honourable idealism rubbed off at an unusually early
age. These are the bribes of an adventurer who has brought
whatever impulse of devotion to a great cause once stirred
within him well under the control of his self-love.
His successes in Italy were brilliant and complete; they
enormously stimulated his self-confidence and his contempt for
the energy and ability of his fellow-creatures. He had wanted
to go into Italy because there lay the most attractive task —
he had risked his position in the army by refusing to take up
the irksome duties of a command against the rebels in La
Vendee — and there are clear signs of a vast iexpansion of his
vanity with his victories. He had been a great reader of
Plutarch's Lives and of Roman history, and his extremely ac-
tive but totally uncreative imagination was now busy with
dreams of a revival of the eastern conquests of the Eoman
Empire. He got the republic of Venice out of his way by cut-
ting it up between the French and Austria, securing the l6nian
islands and the Venetian fleet for France. This peace, the peace
CAREEB l(M HSr ABOGLEOK! ^BONlftPARTE 896
^«MlyldndtiiltiMikliiyt&8disfa>st!B©ub9fcBa!g^H 'BWnexi^ repuMim;
t)cf§Manc^-H]fesiB*ddf!iM'/thBlafaiJdG'Aoe6Jkisxaidfeireptfa?epb^
^efeiwoeiHrie(ft'iiii>p«Hirt; .tej^inatfk ebaaider^bile &Utci<y -iii 'Ex-aHuh
ie-aa£driiiSu3tafiaY^ot{.rSfeaietiip, lihawMoii laiob mvlQlfSbsbeftvras
desditiidglEii Bteeditfi dsMhiji 'EMtebweresalsb sfouebClausesiJ)^
mkidd^&ilir^tsm^^nd. Au?6fi®iWB»^naie»>t6) aGS^iifidaqjpjtfii
(&e«eB;^fi9fcePskoi'35'^ ^«fli>litIw^&lMyt mip tkwBldv&&&ipiek'eAst'-
ward that, was now excitmgo2fep)loMi?i BiaMo i^Tkisi'wfraitfife
IfeS^ef ii@«i^5SSafiHiiCl|e8liJ3Tw^na'olf|xi-:e»fia;^]ier>Ifofitbie^^
mmfiSi<i'3^^Ykl of8fei!a'8fiv€'f^:tfsttBliFJ!#alifed88'.T -.fit" aev^ uob
aictJfesarffeM te(5SJI^4D£§i;i'<»/Mlrae['if!i$iiPiS-a«i4rJa h:ero4ndi (jan}-
^<lSgrfeiqrjSlsdAw,i9afetdto»v^uldiieS«i^ WtMtfootolE^ptctajnd
I^i^se-E-gJ^p«Sidfindik/Awwetoi te^liiscOaaily elbenessteaTrnj-Uy
]S6ffi;4?''bf'iK$^cg^iii!fe ibdmif TifeMch»BfeloxikrisrfvhritefSci'Sglii^'/iii
tMgf^'deeigibifijfKllpl-vto'iti'itkwiJfj^' ' aaa'ifesiiliKicapeeSvfe^l &mija?fciom
3ffby'^lSii®rits -;of tfaiMBe fstarrte^rhitarr iLii,tkelIftoe. o-^^^hetiw&jaM
^^f% sridf^^j^ft wJaii^Bsfea^taindrJtKS BrJiliifti^giiiiiBgpiffiDaof tsro
i<^itfMa.vaiirfitcl!liSie1S5 -w^OBfe jfei^omtEneeilf^aipoieitarBxagg^isartfedj
Tt^eBe'fetoQigiif tllitorth© IfaiiidB.--aliq^'iI McfljenraeryrfEgjrpfeowiifs
SPpssS^ofitl&MisJjkfeaeHijiir^iJby-no'iriAiiaiaitEQhtenJpbHjM^
i'alte^#'daysiu'2>rci?etatifiles«.dhsn:jp*5sua!iHd^
■#ag dpsWflbbpiifis JtaHgnoespkntfeiBfto fletelriifiigmi a^^sr A-jgilda
'gmd'^smih'J^TSfstd^ AW Baji^Sali flfieti gpdilamvetatiiA(lexandm'ai
J&i45a«dedTtey: tTOi(i^Br.liiHTjiBilg;fja3d -tfifc Ifcat^ejof 'tka'Bjwaiiiiiids
'^desMnriaiiaBtBrtGf'i^^p*!' '!! h[;/09 9II .glqojq rfDfiei"! yrfj
.9ig]te^a8ir)BiitffiteiBBfeat)itiialfri4iiri3B)\toBiBith®fl^^
&4dfe o6WJz, Txcrtfftltei4d33fflmKliiiti7<dfefihgdiias^fojJce)o£/l^rib®lt
te^s/J*bH^^ffijBeHid^llftralkJM6!is®IBg-aa peaJtlias'igeQdajaFi* Hftval
aSFafw'^ i^wrarrilSfepclednBiiiit 1flaihigpfln,iEta'B^t^t0''iw&sf?£8itdi*Ji*-
g^ tte>*!Beiuih floitiilk/tiiF(birrla t»n«i;Bri©ta©iijSftM#Sit ifo ^tieit
fl^iimivgni^ifiiially, wiitdtesngfifaiffi^jaCjtto^ratljs^rf^Tftp^ltJafe
fe^nflnk ,kbaBokdKiii>niiA5bdliki?B'fe8[g.TOE'feobftft (EftiJ^* ikilsnS-
teaiDes ;im8Bilig^aofii!tto omejEwei^daft^ca^a^iIdii^.M&TTOeilbF^SiTbtigii
h0HriHrtke,ft%-H)I|Ko Heibad iB^uisbfefits^ and, JtR-s^^aifeAm^l?
things ta>ltsaHirityta.vlii©&sKalJowl7KaAf8fr ijiila; >fea4rfliglitfni ^J!*?
ffif^nltdiftidErfMlrfedAcljgiWr^-t^rpiw^ ^S,t ys,<f d-y^f^ Wfe^M
ll9*craMiGfeiWfem(p!»'Qiti^ todi{sQifjaMfe/iV?);b&^e;MV W?mi^g
■Mrftmein afoardpt»mtiilfiii(r ■^-asiiMoHflte^tO' dpi 95([^j ^^sct^j/h^g^^
struck at once — against the advice of some of hj^yicapfeiiiW.
896 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
One ship only went aground. She marked the shoal for the
rest of the fleet. He sailed to the attack in a double line
about sundown, putting the French between two fires. Night
fell as the battle was joined; the fight thundered and crashed
in the darkness, until it was lit presently by the flames of
burning French ships, and then by the flare of the French
flag-ship, the Orient, blowing up. . . . Before midnight the
battle of the Nile was over, and Napoleon's fleet was destroyed.
Napoleon was cut off from France.
Says Holland Kose, quoting Thiers, this Egyptian expedi-
tion was "the rashest attempt history records." Napoleon was
left in Egypt with the Turks gathering against him and his
army infected with the plague. Nevertheless, with a stupid sort
of persistence, he went on for a time with this Eastern scheme.
He gained a victory at Jaffa, and, being short of provisions,
massacred all his prisoners. Then he tried to take Acre, where
his own siege artillery, just captured at sea by the English,
was used against him. Returning baffled to Egypt, he gained
a brilliant victory over a Turkish force at Aboukir, and then,
deserting the army of Egypt — it held on until 1801, when it
capitulated to a British force — made his escape back to France
(1799), narrowly missing capture by a British cruiser off Sicily.
Here was muddle and failure enough to discredit any gen-
eral— ^had it been known. But the very British cruisers which
came so near to catching him, helped him by preventing any
real understanding of the Egyptian situation from reaching
the French people. He could make a great flourish over the
battle of Aboukir and conceal the shame and loss of Acre.
Things were not going well with France just then. There had
been military failures at several points; much of Italy had
been lost, Bonaparte's Italy, and this turned men's minds to
him as the natural saviour of that situation; moreover, there
had been much peculation, and some of it was coming to light ;
France was in one of her phases of financial scandal, and Na-
poleon had not filched; the public was in that state of moral
fatigue when a strong and honest man is called for, a wonder-
ful, impossible healing man who will do everything for every-
body. People, poor lazy souls, persuaded themselves that this
specious young man with the hard face, so providentially back
from Egypt, was the strong and honest man required — another
Washington.
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
897
With Julius Caesar rather than Washington at the back of
his mind, Napoleon responded to the demand of his time. A
conspiracy was carefully engineered to replace the Birectory
by three "Consuls" — everybody seems to have been reading far
too much Roman history just then — of whom Napoleon was
to be the chief. The working of that conspiracy is too intricate
a story for our space; it involved a Cromwell-like dispersal of
the Lower House (the Council of Five Hundred), and in this
Map -to iHustraie.
catvCpaig-tsl
xoySlu
affair Napoleon lost his nerve. The deputies shouted at him
and hustled him, and he seems to have been very much fright-
ened. He nearly fainted, stuttered, and could say nothing, but
the situation was saved by his brother Lucien, who brought in
the soldiers and dispersed the council. This little hitch did not
affect the final success of the scheme. The three Consuls were
installed at the Luxembourg palace, with two commissioners,
to reconstruct the constitution.
With all his confidence restored and sure of the support of
the people, who supposed him to be honest, patriotic, repub-
lican, and able to bring about a good peace, Napoleon took a
high hand with his colleagues and the commissioners. A con-
stitution was produced in which the chief executive officer
was to be called the First Consul, with enormous, powers.
He was to be Napoleon ; this was part of the constitution. He
was to be re-elected or replaced at the end of ten years. Be waa
998
KTnimE'^QJi'mmMcimmiBTcmRsiAD
badiesjcitBeoilegial^ke (^d^oimhidh <toWii5»ptg^7i)u±-)iif}ti6^.^
¥fndteihiii[feiife rfifkfc(4epaiBQkie!nt^^fiS?iKi TS¥i;e5Skpted;;byiifeeij'T©S^as
feilfitias bifiBth(ef)3EdHnnHn9^1'Mbx) [iwer©i''^lirt^'3ikg^jiiia9«flJffii¥Jft
voters. The suffrage for the election of the notabilities of the
commiSnl
racy i: i
the joint
one oi
Franc >
in the
when,
was St
himself in fear of himself, and search his heart and serve God
afidf :to]J?sttjj«tH& «ttte)^tib gJiife old70»dei!rjifJ*Mngs9iwqs;deadilE
(fffltif^ sfeiajfflig&^tiewiifwfces/diiov^ thraa^hdlfsnpqrUxfeeefliiHgttfdraia
iM ^^Mmi^i&bh^msaiiBm oBQaf:xWjrid,te^uldic-«[md:.amHidiafiriiig
■«W)^r&«fei(i€P<i^i8pe4WdKn=iaftQMtiMd<^
fhfefeiul'aMsf 5gi^*ni!MiHy ofivMoaj-iskjbjHJWfrifafbaEeataafeiaaa^i*
flml6]S/rjhM^A©oytoiBccessifeW'-to'^»riiijto(Msia.'teEestedi aiftbitidia^
heaffi^gfet-nfean^© dmite i^cwk ioBfsqai^iB»iJnt4iatr.57(juJLd AaferioaJadiQ
him the very sun of history. AlliEurbj«Efmmd)i&nteiri((iafriSibiinred
%• 'th«i<|#gt9ffeoMsei©f fe(naeir5-af^pwa9timiaaHiin|^ £ak MTaL\'Wot
IffSlJiffe ,altofS.tBqFrbjQo©>iWa)sf inf hisrAabaaJpc^sidnsifonipd^qt)9i!|o gifo
^fi^' ^s 4iei|pl*^Sid,9wiiiin!gji£^r ipdaieef fibi!itriealQptoeiififoi5i-H5aKillii^
an'W^uiisiteirsusaMdinrnTbeife ftaokediiiisibffinDgatd tfcis; ^eatl ofeg&i
^fteffiobtPfFf Jtfxmbleliihlaginfelticfairfv^Ana ffiaibii^f^hat,?/ I^fajpol^iiS
(KTsMp^o f«9'iin©Ke>thiitmvatE{rteui»8lti ths'>feresiStoi*iifiiSDgB€fe.tci)iiQ)Wr
tMn oimppi'Pimm^llihe totoipcfeeiffelidn ;ai(d»Mi^lill.iri Thepfigufl
hewaSles. 'mi'Msilrotyi drfione • M almostf-locredtbie^i^elfreoKfceity, ■ of
CARE?^^ bT* NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
899
VWltj, ^.eM, aiid'ctt'tiiiifi^,' of callous contempt and disregard
Uf^ll Mtf ftliisM'-'My,'' aiid^'of a grandiose aping of Caesar,
-m%xmm, '&m^'Gkm%&a^emimh. would be purely comic if
fe4fh'ieim?6^m^&¥4^tmmm.nhlood. Until, as Victor
B9g[?'^s^(p4ii m^mm^^uf^^m'^dd was bored by him,"
Mflie WF'eaike'd' a^ir#Mt^^%ffiie!^lo'^6hd his days, explain-
' ' "" e^PaMffi^TO 4'^ c^^'^^mM^unders had been,
i^l^Btefil ffS^^it^Mt^ilfffl^ M^dn^iMs and squab-
M'^ffi?4^1y-^raFfeutefMfei ^6Kr ^a^«ilefe% show him
' i^^L''feA9C!tfE8ulf ^aS^^ffil'^jiBe"feas<™^oiiour-
jiBftWagg m'^ii^^i!r<i&?'^'S^'M^WWuEMmgmimf4 iffairs
2^fWKal^^rm|BtMWtt^Sfe^£'!^ittfteH'feca^aM?Sfa^^|
lirar lT^afitiMt^§G0).-8->j^i^s9^l^g^|^TthW at^aSSfe'tn^
/4i^&eMl^!8B?^lt,%tfttfe^?as^Wsfi®v^^M(^^aaa!t^lfef
Wji%tJiiiinffl6S'iaf ^mm'^mmii^^&^sh&
f'P^iSj'^as'ctei^d'^a^ffi 4^ffe( rfMT^(^§otf^Pft¥e^tB>#W
isSff tr-flie •cjihM%§'Mk\^Ml¥Mi^mm F¥kiS§^^/nd-©SSt^;pg
•Moi?g5m^iiW,Wo8a ife^iW/r2[nfs ^i^a(f li's'^a^'ffig h4k^
Mp58n^'tb^^FlifiUM^b^J(feaifg^'£h^flm^#der'oKtte^
mmiS°^'mdm 'Mm'%i&v=>M>Vitei te?kag"a<l/^ift^ a^d^iat
iSSl-
Jitl
^3M&_e^eMi
scheming Jo
'^W£t W'bVS^^^lilP! a*fe4b
q-^I^%BW8r,«^tlh f^fSr(9#%f ^Bfew
,fe^*^§ffi60i-f6H^^S£do#i5efea^ at
^Sa^'''keMsef%Ti'fe' "it= Vilfl(^^'^di%rf ^I^diais-ft ,i»mM
900 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
astonish his mother. What response was there in a head of
that sort for the splendid creative challenge of the time ? But
first France must he prosperous. Trance hungry would cer-
tainly not endure an emperor. He set himself to carry out an
old scheme of roads that Louis XV had approved ; he developed
canals in imitation of the English canals; he reorganized the
police and made the country safe ; and, preparing the scene for
his personal drama, he set himself to make Paris look like Home,
with classical arches, with classical columns. Admirable
schemes for banking development were available, and he made
use of them. In all these things he moved with the times, they
would have happened — ^with less autocracy, with less centraliza-
tion, if he had never been born. And he set himself to weaken
the republicans whose fundamental convictions he was planning
to outrage. He recalled the emigres, provided they gave satis-
factory assurances to respect the new regime. Many were very
willing to come back on such terms, and let Bourbons be by-
gones. And he worked out a great reconciliation, a Concordat,
with Eome. Rome was to support him, and he was to restore
the authority of Home in the parishes. France would never
be obedient and manageable, he thought ; she would never stand
a new monarchy, without religion. "How can you have order
in a state," he said, "without religion? Society cannot exist
without inequality of fortunes, which cannot endure apart from
religion. When one man is dying of hunger near another who
is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference, un-
less there is an authority which declares — 'God wills it thus:
there must be poor and rich in the world: but hereafter and
during all eternity the division of things will take place dif-
ferently.' " Religion — especially of the later Roman brand —
was, he thought, excellent stuff for keeping the common people
quiet. In his early Jacobin days he had denounced it for that
very reason.
Another great achievement which marks his imaginative
scope and his estimate of human nature was the institution of
the Legion of Honour, a scheme for decorating Frenchmen
with bits of ribbon which was admirably calculated to divert
ambitious men from subversive proceedings.
And also Napoleon interested himself in Christian propa- ■
ganda. Here is the Napoleonic view of the political uses of
Christ, a view that has tainted all French missions from that
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 901
time forth. "It is my wish to re-estahlish the institution for
foreign missions; for the religious missionaries may be very
useful to me in Asia, Africa, and America, as I shall make
them reconnoitre all the lands they visit. The sanctity of their
dress will not only protect them, but serve to conceal their po-
litical and commercial investigations. The head of the mis-
sionary establishment shall reside no longer at Rome, but in
Paris."
These are the ideas of a roguish merchant rather than a
statesman. His treatment of education shows the same nar-
row vision, the same blindness to the realities of the dawn about
him. Elementary education he neglected almost completely;
he left it to the conscience of the local authorities, and he pro-
vided that the teachers should be paid out of the fees of the
scholars; it is clear he did not want the common people to be
educated ; he had no glimmering of any understanding why they
should be; but he interested himself in the provision of tech-
nical and higher schools because his state needed the services
of clever, self-seeking, well-informed men. This was an astound-
ing retrogression from the great scheme, drafted by Condorcet
for the Eepublic in 1Y92, for a complete system of free educa-
tion for the entire nation. Slowly but steadfastly the project
of Condorcet comes true; the great nations of the world are
being compelled to bring it nearer and nearer to realization,
and the cheap devices of Napoleon pass out of our interest. As
for the education of the mothers and wives of our race, this
was the quality of !N"apoleon's wisdom: "I do not think that
we need trouble ourselves with any plan of instruction for
young females, they cannot be better brought up than by their
mothers. Public education is not suitable for them, because
they are never called upon to act in public. Manners are all
in all to them, and marriage is all they look to."
The First Consul was no kinder to women in the Code Napo-
leon. A wife, for example, had no control over her own prop-
erty ; she was in her husband's hands. This code was the work
very largely of the Council of State. Napoleon seems rather
to have hindered than helped its deliberations. He would in-
vade the session without notice, and favour its members with
lengthy and egotistical monologues, frequently quite irrelevant
to the matter in hand. The Council listened with profound
respect; it was all the Council could do. He would keep his
902 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
councillors up to unearthly hours, and betray a simple pride
in his superior, wakefulness. He recalled these discussions with
peculiar satisfaction in his later years, and remarked on one
occasion that his glory consisted not in having won forty battles,
but in having created the Code Napoleon. ... So- far as it
substituted plain statements for inaccessible legal mysteries his
Code was a good thing; it gathered together, revised, and made
clear a vast disorderly accumulation of laws, old and new. Like
all his constructive work, it made for immediate efficiency, it
defined things and relations so that men could get to work upon
them without further discussion. It was of less immediate
practical importance that it frequently defined them wrongly.
There was no intellectual power, as distinguished from intel-
lectual energy, behind this codification. It took everything
that existed for granted. ("Sa Majeste ne croit que ce qui
est." ^) The fundamental ideas of the civilized community
and of the terms of human co-operation were in process of re-
construction all about Napoleon — and he never perceived it,
He accepted a phase of change, and tried to fix it for ever. To
this day France is cramped by this early nineteenth-century
strait-waistcoat into which he clapped her. He fixed the status
of women, the status of labourers, the status of the peasant;
they all struggle to this day in the net of his hard definitions.
So briskly and forcibly Napoleon set his mind, hard, clear,
and narrow, to brace up France. That bracing up was only a
part of the large egotistical schemes that dominated him. His
imagination was set upon a new Csesarism. In 1802 he got
himself made First Consul for life with the power of appoint-
ing a successor, and his clear intention of annexing Holland
and Italy, in spite of his treaty obligations to keep them sepa-
rate, made the Peace of Amiens totter crazily from the very
beginning. Since his schemes were bound to provoke a war
with England, he should, at any cost, have kept quiet until he
had brought his navy to a superiority over the British navy.
He had the control of great resources for ship-building, the,
British government was a weak one, and three or four years
would have sufiiced to shift that balance. But in spite of his
rough experiences in Egypt, he had never mastered the im-
portance of sea power, and he had not the mental steadfastness
for, a waiting game and long preparation. In 1803 his occupa-
'trourgaud quoted by Holland Rose.
CAREBR OFiNAPOlEON' BONi^PARTE
dOS
agfilffl %itWiEi(glanii; 'i The 1 m^& a^Min^tei4fl(l B^lwfit> gbir©
jpkbe • todtlW ittfeatetl Pitt; ■ ailTk'eeri^slJi of 8Di]ia^oteol»'^:f stTOyiltiitbs
wp&ndt3afa*Iwat£ri b i8u[ sbw ;ti i-OSI nx ; woiisoiiixrgie oldBistiBiioo
3Jhisl-^&:>qtatfe'ttB9amiVeiy iqlaiiKcfisk^iiiia> Gmm&w,oa.Tii>il!i }Mip6
<6(ittcu«p£el^Sii$d IjAgfeaowfli* -vafedd'Hisif »si1:jia!inamidfrth» 6p-^^
iKekitiesi}i^iJr^thimilBS^nc£ us can live without an audience.
■a:a#iti!ie iflrsbianiiJisrige ofu^to' c ilSEiDod n
JHsiito'cfchfefiebqlPof (Mr^daysiaife swayed
ontt<if^ini3ikpd^bMJtHisra'iai}d , isters.
successful men or wojlieprdisp ay thi
•sfelr^fiDrgstiffglndss.-xix'OnijJ'iouls iplift^
iM'a2ajfeth'i'VwasouipMfJedl,ocamisa; of alli
ai'otheD'andiiBiJs'ailweithjeii'!?'"! A large
Napblgot 'wilo-ttte jdesitfe id ai laze, ai
ikindf of 'fth©'fBmfajJari(;MoKmi y, and
|>"rop©t(ed>ih"i9 (l9othe»& lalSicniloi] ^ly — ^r they we
kllqSdtsieaoTWiS (jpenf-'nlfiu-thedl^^Uj, „„„._k™
M^tfW^'ltwasiBertbCTf'aiiagedmoM^^Ti^dcMijC^
Mh g^ihe'? lasffley-ifca'speiM and asls^sa^^bsp aw^"^?*? s ; he
la:hoSte&>-h^ri*fl mtfter^gidiBplay, to live as became the mother
i3iflfeo''ffit'ait«ei'i©a3ji'm imsld^Bh^kmg/JStfa&n. .jMat-ilildd ^ad Md|^
who had birched the Man of Destiny at the age of sixtosiiiiAir
gsSnaGittgaato hB'Sigraii^isiiifflibei^'^i^a'iyaieiiifer idaswW ntOB(^eErfi&ed
b^t ;yiBr<ia*i ttega^eJ^fef ' (thtrtjf tw^rioIMioFiaiiKfeoaQi^Md-stofltsbit)
hitey fbutf she toad'^Oi ifadiomisjniShaEbpiiit iif Sii%imdak^fh^js^
hei*;i siheieSMM'iiiifeilriheituetfstQmiapy^ e(MM!K)itoiES39ob'^if39eH?it.i8i^I
over;"-stie:8aidpff5iqHi wiM'tePaldfiofiaiajr.'BatvingsjJT .egnib^aooTq
>'■"!. ^ oi hoHfi'so eH .iroiaiqo imgrJil [[fi hos.uBiJsg LbiI noij'Bn
'>iW ;b9v.(rrt9d bfid od -^fert en b a:^-^'^'^ ^'^^ "^^ i>fo *"^^ loi ledtio
tod gnifitotr tol :^sbI .tr; bo-if f.H .niv/.ot baffisl: bjsrf ed bio
We will not detail the steps by which Napoleon -IB^gaifiJ.^
of 'gfall h-MS'fy 'kh&btP i^a-ptfssible > Ifo ■ imagSi^9'8€yi§& J'^'Wasf ' mfe
Mfgietlffe ^tfet^ ]fftp6fec)n<W^srip'Myag1«BSiv)at|^tei^f©feia»iig»
ilap^ tfeg%fe¥c^0'¥MM'te«Sp8^r;r'il:o«ite'^g#at«E0SaW^ Bwtvia
M'J"^MM%#^f<mtt^6^I)aifleln-'Parigr5^Jffi&tSfjMr.(iM4tsi¥Ii^^
ski! feri^lfttt^t f:^6m: ''Mome>ia'^^>i:Mm^4'&miiA^n^i^miii^ aft
904
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the climax Napoleon I seized the crown, waved the Pope aside,
and crowned himself. The attentive reader of this OvMine
will know that a thousand years before this would have had
considerable significance; in 1804 it was just a ridiculous scene.
In 1806 Napoleon revived another venerable antiquity, and,
following still the footsteps of Charlemagne, crowned himself
with the iron crown of Lombardy in the cathedral of Milan.
All this mummery was to have a wonderful effect upon the
imagination of western Ger-
many, which was to remem-
ber that it, too, had been a
part, of the empire of Charle-
magne.
The four daughter repub-
lics of France were now to
become kingdoms; in 1806
he set up brother Louis in
Holland and brother Joseph
in Naples. But the story of
the subordinate kingdoms he
created in Europe, helpful
though this free handling of
frontiers was towards the
subsequent unification of
Italy and Germany, is too complex and evanescent for this
Outline.
The pact between the new Charlemagne and the new Leo
did not hold good for very long. In 1807 he began to bully the
Pope, and in 1811 he made him a close prisoner at Fontaine-
bleau. There does not seem to have been much reason in these
proceedings. They estranged all Catholic opinion, as his coro-
nation had estranged all liberal opinion. He ceased to stand
either for the old or the new., The new he had betrayed ; the
old he had failed to win. He stood at last for nothing but
himself.
There seems to have been as little reason in the foreign policy
that now plunged Europe into a fresh cycle of wars. Having
quarrelled with Great Britain too soon, he (1804) assembled
a vast army at Boulogne for the conquest of England, regard-
less of the naval situation. He even struck a medal and erected
a column at Boulogne to commemorate the triumph of this
"Hdcooieoxx. AS "BvKgeeoe
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 90S
projected invasion. In some "Napoleonic" fashion the British
fleet was to be decoyed away, this army of Boulogne was to be
smuggled across the Channel on a flotilla of rafts and boats,
and London was to be ciaptured before the fleet returned. At
the same time his aggressions in south Germany forced Austria
and Russia steadily into a coalition with Britain against him.
In 1805 two fatal blows were struck at any hope he may have
entertained of ultimate victory, by the British Admirals Calder
and ISTelson, In July the former inflicted a serious reverse upon
the French fleet in the Bay of Biscay; in October the latter
destroyed the joint fleets of France and Spain at the battle oft
Trafalgar. Ifelson died splendidly upon the Victory, victori-
ous. Thereafter Napoleon was left with Britain in pitiless;
opposition, unattainable and unbonquerable, able to strike here'
or there against him along all the coasts of Europe.
But for awhile the mortal wound of Trafalgar was hidden
from the French mind altogether. They heard merely that
"storms have caused us to lose some ships of the line after an'
imprudent fight." After Calder's victory he had snatched his
army from Boulogne, rushed it across half Europe, and de-
feated the Austrian and Russian armies at Ulm and Austerlitz.;
Under these inauspicious circumstances Prussia came into, the
war against him, and was utterly defeated and broken at the
battle of Jena (1806). Although Austria and Prussia were
broken, Russia was still a fighting power^ and the next year was
devoted to this unnecessary antagonist of the French, against
whom an abler and saner ruler would never have fought at all.
We cannot trace in any detail the difficulties of the Polish cam-
paign against Russia ; Napoleon was roughly handled at Pultusk
— ^which he announced in Paris as a brilliant victory — and
again at Eylau. Then the Russians were defeated at Fried-
land (1807). As yet he had never touched Russian soil, the
Russians were still as unbeaten as the British ; but now came
an extraordinary piece of good fortune for Napoleon. By a
mixture of boasting, subtlety, and flattery he won over the youn,^
and ambitious Tsar, Alexander I — ^he was just thirty years old
— to an alliance. The two emperors met on a raft in the middle
of the Niemen at Tilsit, and there came to an understanding.'
This meeting was an occasion for sublime foolishness on the
part of both the principal actors. Alexander had imbibed much
liberalism during his education at the court of Catherine II,
906
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and was all for freedom, education, and the new order of the
world — subject to his own pre-eminence. "He would gladly
have everyone freie," said onie of his early associates, "provided
that everyone was prepared to do freely exactly what he,
wished." And he declared that he would have abolished serf-
dom if it had cost him his head — if only civilization had been
more advanced. He made war against France, he said, be-
cause Napoleon was a tyrant, to free the French people. After
Friedland he saw ]!!Tapoleon
in a different light. These
two men met eleven days
after that rout; Alexander
no doubt in the state of ex-
planatory exaltation natural
to his type during a mood of
change.
To IN'apoleon the meeting
must have been extremely
gratifying. This was his
first meeting with an em-
peror upon terms of equality.
Like all men of limited
vision, this man was a snob
to the bone, his continual
solicitude for his titles shows as much, and here was a real
emperor, a born emperor, taking his three-year-old dignities as
equivalent to the authentic imperialism of Moscow. Two
imaginations soared together upon the raft at Tilsit. "What
is Europe?" said Alexander, "We are Europe." They dis-
cussed the affairs of Prussia and Austria in that spirit, they
divided Turkey in anticipation, they arranged for the conquest
of India, and indeed of most of Asia, and that Eussia should
take Finland from the Swedes; and they disregarded the dis-
agreeable fact that the greater part of the world's surface is sea,
and that on the seas the British fleets sailed now unchallenged.
Close at hand was Poland, ready to rise up and become the pas:-
sionate ally of France had Napoleon but willed it so. But he was
blind to Poland. It was a day of visions vidthout vision.
Napoleon even then, it seems, concealed the daring thought that
he might one day marry a Russian princess, a real princess. But
that, he was to learn in 1810, was going a little too far.
Tsav Alcacan3gr I.
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 907
After Tilsit there was a perceptible deterioration in !N"apo-
leon's quality ; he became rasher, less patient of obstacles, more
and more the fated master of the world, more and more intoler-
able to everyone he encountered.
In 1808 he committed a very serious blunder. Spain was
his abject ally, completely under his control, but he saw fit
to depose its Bourbon king in order to promote his brother
Joseph from the crown of the two Sicilies. Portugal he had
already conquered, and the two kingdoms of Spain and Portugal
were to be united. Thereupon the Spanish arose in a state of
patriotic fury, surrounded a French army at Baylen, and com-
pelled it to surrender. It was an astonishing break in the
Prench career of victory.
The British were not slow to seize the foothold this insur-
rection gave them. A British army under Sir Arthur Welles-
ley (afterwards the Duke of Wellington) landed in Portugal,
defeated the French at Vimiero, and compelled them to retire
into Spain. The news of these reverses caused a very great ex-
citement in Germany and Austria, and the Tsar assumed a more
arrogant attitude towards his ally.
There was anothra* meeting of these two potentates at Erfurt,
in which the Tsar was manifestly less amenable to the dazzling
tactics of Napoleon than he had been. Followed four years
of unstable "ascendancy" for France, while the outlines on the
map of Europe waved about like garments on a clothesline on
a windy day. Napoleon's personal empire grew by frank an-
nexations to include Holland, much of western Germany, much
of Italy, and much of the eastern Adriatic coast. But one by
one the French colonies were falling to the British, and the
British armies in the Spanish peninsula, with the Spanish
auxiliaries, slowly pressed the French northward. All Europe
was getting very weary of Napoleon and very indignant with
him ; his antagonists now were no longer merely monarchs and
ministers, but whole peoples also. The Prussians, after the dis-
aster of Jena in 1806, had set to work to put their house in
order. Under the leadership of Freiherr von Stein they bad
swept aside their feudalism, abolished privilege and serfdom,
organized popular education and popular patriotism, accom-
plished, in fact, without any internal struggle nearly everything
that France had achieved in 1789. By 1810 a new Prussia
existed, the nucleus of a new Germany. And now Alexander,
908
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
inspired it would seem by dreams of world ascendancy even
crazier than his rival's, was posing again as the friend of lib-
erty. In 1810 fresh friction was created by Alexander's ob-
jection to Napoleon's matrimonial ambitions. For he was now
divorcing his old helper Josephinej because she was childless,
in order to secure the "continuity" of his "dynasty." Napo-
leon, thwarted of a Eussian princess, snubbed indeed by Alex-
ander, turned to Austria, and married the arch-duchess Marie
Louise. The Austrian statesmen read him aright. They were
very ready to throw him their princess. By that marriage
Napoleon was captured for the dynastic system ; he might have
been the maker of a new world, he preferred to be the son-in-
law of the old.
In the next two years this adventurer's affairs crumbled
apace. Nobody believed in his pretensions any more. He was
no longer the leader and complement of the revolution; no
longer the embodied spirit of a world reborn ; he was just a new
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 009
and nastier sort of autocrat. He had estranged all free-spirited
men, and lie had antagonized the church. Kings and Jacobins
■were at one, -when it came to the question of his overthrow.
Only base and self-seeking people supported him, because he
seemed to have the secret of success. Britain -was now his
inveterate enemy, Spain was blazing with a spirit that surely a
Corsican should have understood; it needed only a breach with
Alexander I to set this empire of bluff and stage scenery sway-
ing toward its downfall. The quarrel came. Alexander's feel-
ings for Napoleon had .always been of a very mixed sort ; he
envied Napoleon as a rival, and despised him as an underbred
upstart. Moreover, there was a kind of vague and sentimental
greatness about Alexander; he was given to mystical religiosity,
he had the conception of a mission for Eussia and himself to
bring peace to Europe and the world — by destroying Napoleon.
In that respect he had an imaginative greatness Napoleon
lacked. But bringing peace to Europe seemed to him qiiite
compatible with the annexation of Finland, of most of Poland,
and of great portions of the Turkish empire. This man's mind
moved in a luminous fog. And particularly he wanted to re-
sume trading with Britain, against which Napoleon had set his
face. For all the trade of Germany had been dislocated and
the mercantile classes embittered by the Napoleonic "Con-
tinental System," which was to ruin Britain by excluding Brit-
ish goods from every country in Europe. Eussia had suffered
more even than Germany.
The breach came in 1811, when Alexander withdrew from
the "Continental System." In 1812 a great mass of armies,
amounting altogether to 600,000 men, began to move towards
Eussia under the supreme command of the new emperor. About
half this force was Erench ; the rest was drawn from the Erench
allies and subject peoples. It was a conglomerate army like the
army of Darius or the army of Kavadh. The Spanish war was
still going on; Napoleon made no attempt to end it. Alto-
gether, it drained away a quarter of a million men from France.
He fought his way across Poland and Eussia to Moscow before
the winter — ^for the most part the Eussian armies declined bat-
tle— and even before the winter closed in upon him his posi-
tion became manifestly dangerous. He took Moscow, expecting
that this would oblige Alexander to make peace. Alexander
would not make peace, and Napoleon found himself in much
910 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the same position as Darius had been in 2,300 years before in
South Eussia. The Russians, still unconquered in a decisive
battle, raided his communications, wasted his army — disease
helped them; even before Napoleon reached Moscow 150,000
men had been lost. But he lacked the wisdom of Darius, and
would not retreat. The winter remained mild for an unusually
long time — ^he could have escaped; but instead he remained in
Moscow, making impossible plans, at a loss. He had been
marvellously lucky in all his previous flounderings; he had
escaped undeservedly from Egypt, he had been saved from de-
struction in Britain by the British naval victories,; but now
he was in the net again, and this time he was not to escape.
Perhaps he would have wintered in Moscow, but the Rus-
sians smoked him out; they set fire to and burnt most of the
city.
It was late in October, too late altogether, before he decided
to return. He made an ineffectual attempt to break through
to a fresh line of retreat to the south-west, and then turned
the faces of the survivors of his Grand Army towards the coun-
try they had devastated in their advance. Immense distances
separated them from any friendly territory. The winter was
in no hurry. For a week the Grand Army struggled through .
mud ; then came sharp frosts, and then the first fiakes of snow,
and then snow and snow. . . .
Slowly discipline dissolved. The hungry army spread itself
out in search of supplies until it broke up into mere bands of
marauders. The peasants, if only in self-defence, rose against
them, waylaid them, and murdered them; a cloud of light
cavalry — Scythians still — Shunted them dovsra. That retreat is
one of the great tragedies of history.
At last Napoleon and his staff and a handful of guards and
attendants reappeared in Germany, bringing no army with him,
followed only by straggling and demoralized bands. The Grand
Army, retreating under Murat, reached Konigsberg in a dis-
ciplined state, but only about a thousand strong out of six hun-
dred thousand. From Konigsberg Murat fell back to Posen.
The Prussian contingent had surrendered to the Russians; the
Austrians had gone homeward to the south. Everywhere scat-
tered fugitives, ragged, lean, and frost-bitten, spread the news
of the disaster.
Napoleon's magic was nearly exhausted. He did not dare to
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 911
stay with his troops in Germany; lie fled post haste to Paris.
He began to order new levies and gather fresh armies amidst
the wreckage of his world empire. Austria turned against him
(1813) ; all Europe was eager to rise against, this defaulting
trustee of freedom, this mere usurper. He had hetrayed the
new order; the old order he had saved and revived now de-
stroyed him. Prussia rose, and the German "War of Libera-
tion" began. Sweden joined his enemies. Later Holland re-
volted. Murat had rallied about 14,000 Frenchmen round his
disciplined nucleus in Posen, and this force retreated through ,
Germany, as a man might retreat who had ventured into a
cageful of drugged lions and found that the effects of the drug
were evaporating. Napoleon, with fresh forces, took up the
chief command in the spring, won a great battle at Dresden,
and then for a time he seems to have gone to pieces intellectually
and morally. He became insanely irritable, with moods of in-
action. He did little or nothing to follow up the Battle of
Dresden. In September the "Battle of the Nations" was fought
round and about Leipzig, after which the Saxons, who had
hitherto followed his star, went over to the allies. The end of
the year saw the French beaten back into France.
1814 was the closing campaign. France was invaded from
the east and the south ; Swedes, Germans, Austrians, Russians,
crossed the Rhine; British and Spanish came through the
Pyrenees. Once more Napoleon fought brilliantly, but now
he fought ineffectually. The eastern armies did not so much
defeat him as push past him, and Paris capitulated in March.
A little later at Fontainebleau the emperor abdicated.
In Provence, on his way out of the country, his life was en-
dangered by a royalist mob.
§ 5
This was the natural and proper end of Napoleon's career.
So this raid of an intolerable egotist across the disordered be-
ginnings of a new time should have closed. At last he was
suppressed. And had there been any real wisdom in the conduct
of human affairs, we should now have to tell of the concentra-
tion of human science and will upon the task his treacheTy
and vanity had interrupted, tiae task of building up a world
system of justice and free effort in the place of the bankrupt
912
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 913
ancient order. But we have to tell of nothing of the sort.
Science and wisdom were conspicuously absent from the great
council of the Allies. Came the vague humanitarianism and
dreamy vanity of the Tsar Alexander, came the shaken Habsr
burgs of Austria, the resentful HohenzoUerns of Prussia, the
aristocratic traditions of Britain, still badly frightened by the
revolution and its conscience all awry with stolen commons and
sweated factory children. No peoples came to the Congress,
but only monarchg and foreign ministers; and though you bray,
a foreign office in the bloodiest of war mortars, yet will its
diplomatic habits not depart from it. The Congress had hardly
assembled before the diplomatists set to work making secret
bargains and treaties behind each other's backs. ITothing could
exceed the pompous triviality of the Congress which gathered
at Vienna after a magnificent ceremonial visit of the allied
sovereigns to London. The social side of the Congress was very
strong, pretty ladies abounded, there was a galaxy of stars
and uniforms, endless dinners and balls, a mighty flow of bright
anecdotes and sparkling wit. Whether the two million dead
men upon the battlefields laughed at the jokes, admired the
assemblies, and marvelled at the diplomatists is beyond our
knowledge. It is to be hoped their poor wraiths got something
out of the display. The brightest spirit of the gathering was a
certain Talleyrand, one of !N"apoleon's princes, a very brilliant
man indeed, who had been a pre-revolutionary cleric, who had
proposed the revolutionary confiscation of the church estates,
and who was now for bringing back the Bourbons.
The allies, after the fashion of Peace Congresses, frittered
away precious time in more and more rapacious disputes ; the
Bourbons returned to France. Back came all the remainder
of the emigres with them, eager for restitution and revenge.
One great egotism had been swept aside — only to reveal a crowd
of meaner egotists. The new king was the brother of Louis
XVI ; he had taken the title of Louia XVIII very eagerly so
soon as he learnt that his little nephew (Louia XVII) was dead
in the Temple. He was gouty and clumsy, not perhaps ill-
disposed, but the symbol of the ancient system; all that was
rew in Prance felt the heavy threat of Teaction that came with
him. This was no liberation, only a new tyranny,^ a heavy and
inglorious tyranny iiistead of an active and splendid one. Was
there no hope for France but this ? The Bourbons showed par-
914 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
ticular malice against the veterans of the Grand Army, and
France was now full of returned prisoners of war, who found
themselves under a cloud. IsTapoleon had been packed off to a
little consolation empire of his own, upon the island of Elba.
He was still to he called Emperor and keep a certain state.
The chivalry or whim of Alexander had insisted upon- this
treatment of his fallen rival. The Habsburgs, who had toadied
to his success, had taken away his Habsburg empress — ^she went
willingly enough — ^to Vienna, and he never saw her again.
After eleven months at Elba Napoleon judged that France
had had enough of the Bourbons; he contrived to evade the
British ships that watched his island, and reappeared at Cannes
in France for his last gamble against fate. His progress to
Paris was a triumphal procession; he walked on white Bour-
bon cockades. For a hundred days, "the Hundred Days," he
was master of France again.
His return created a perplexing position for any honest
Frenchman, On the one hand there was this adventurer who
had betrayed the republic; on the other the dull weight of old
kingship restored. The allies would not hear of any further
experiments in republicanism; it was the Bourbons or Napo-
leon. Is it any wonder that on the whole France was with
Napoleon ? And he came back professing to be a changed man ;
there was to be no more despotism ; he would respect the con-
stitutional regime. . . .
He gathered an army, he made some attempts at peace with
the allies; when he found these efforts ineffectual,,. he struck
swiftly at the British, Dutch, and Prussians in Belgium, hopin^j
to defeat them before the Austrians and Eussians could come
•up. He did very nearly manage this. He beat the Prussians
at Ligny, but not sufficiently; and then he was hopelessly de-
feated by the tenacity of the British under Wellington at
Waterloo (1815), the Prussians, under Bliicher, coming in on
his right flank as the day wore on. Waterloo ended in a rout ;
it left Napoleon without support and without hope. France
fell away from him again. Everyone who had joined him was
eager now to attack him, and so efface that error. A pro-
visional government in Paris ordered him to leave the country ;
was for giving him twenty-four hours to do it in.
He tried to get to America, but Eochefort, which he reached,
was watched by British cruisers. France, now disillusioned
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 015
and xmcomfortatly royalist again, was hot in pursuit of tim.
He went aboard a Britisli frigate, the BellerophoUj asking to
te received as a refugee, tut being treated as a prisoner. He
was taken to Plymouth, and from Plymouth straight to the
lonely tropical island of St. Helena.
There he remained until his death from cancer in 1821,
devoting himself chiefly to the preparation of his memoirs,
which were designed to exhibit the chief events of his life in a
misleading and attractive light and to minimise his worst blun-
ders. One or two of the men with him recorded his conversa-
tions and set down their impressions of him.
These works had a great vogue in France and Europe. The
Holy Alliance of the monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia
(to which other monarchs were invited to adhere) laboured
under the delusion that in defeating !Kapoleon they had defeated
the Eevolution, turned back the clock of fate, and restored
Grand Monarchy — on a sanctified basis for evermore. The
cardinal document of the scheme of the Holy Alliance is said
to have been drawn up under the inspiration of the Baroness
von Eriidener, who seems to have been a sort of spiritual direc-
tor to the Russian emperor. It opened, "In the name of the
ICost Holy and Indivisible Trinity," and it bound the partici-
pating monarchs "regarding themselves towards their subjects
and armies as fathers of families," and "considering each other
as fellow-countrymen," to sustain each other, protect true
religion, and urge their subjects to strengthen and exercise
themselves in Christian duties. Christ, it was declared, was
the real king of all Christian peoples, a very Merovingian king,
one may remark, with these reigning sovereigns as his mayors
of the palace. The British king had no power to sign this docu-
ment, the pope and the sultan were not asked; the rest of the
European monarchs, including the king of France, adhered.
But the king of Poland did not sign because there was no king
in Poland; Alexander, in a mood of pious abstraction, was
sitting on the greater part of Poland. The Holy Alliance never
became an actual legal alliance of states ; it gave place to a real
league of nations, the Concert of Europe, which France joined
in 1818, and from which Britain withdrew in 1822.
There followed a period of peace and dull oppression in
Europe over which Alexander brooded in attitudes of ortho-
doxy, piety, and unquenchable self-satisfaction. Many people
910 THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
in those hopeless days were disposed to regard even Napoleon
•with charity, and to accept his claim that in some inexplicahle
way he had, in asserting himself, heen asserting the revolution
and France. A cult of him as of something mystically heroic
grew up after his death.
§ 6
For nearly forty years the idea of the Holy Alliance, the
Concert of Europe which arose out of it, and the series of
congresses and conferences that succeeded the concert, kept an
insecure peace in war-exhausted Europe, Two main things
prevented that period from being a complete social and inter-
national peace, and prepared the way for the cycle of wars
between 1854 and 1871. The first of these was the tendency
of the royal courts concerned, towards the restoration of unfair
privilege and interference with freedom of thought and writing
and teaching. The second was the impossible system of
boundaries drawn by the diplomatists of Vienna.
The obstinate disposition of monarchy to march back towards
paflt conditiong was first and most particularly manifest in
Spain. Here even the Inquisition was restored. Across the
Atlantic the Spanish colonies had followed the example of the
•United States and revolted against the European Great Power
system, when Napoleon set up his brother Joseph upon the
Spanish throne in 1810. The Washington of South America
was General Bolivar. . Spain was unable to suppress this revolt,
it dragged on much as the United States War of Independence
had dragged on, and at last the suggestion was made by Austria
in accordance with the spirit of the Holy Alliance, that the
European monarchs should assist Spain in this struggle. This
was opposed by Britain in Europe, but it was the prompt action
of President Monroe of the United States in 1823 whicJi con-
clusively warned off this projected monarchist restoration. He
announced that the United States would regard any extension
of the European system in the Western Hemisphere as a hostile
act. Thus arose the Monroe Doctrine, which has kept the Great
Power system out of America for nearly a hundred years, and
permitted the new states of Spanish America to work out their
destinies along their own lines. But if Spanish monarchism
lost its colonies, it could at least, under the protection of the
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPA&TE 917
Concert of Europe, do wliat it chose in. Europe. A popular in-
surrection in Spain' was crushed hj a French army in 1823,
■with a mandate from a European congress, and simultaneously
Austria suppressed a revolution in ISTaples. The moving spirit
in this conspiracy of governments against peoples was the Aus-
trian statesman, Mettemieh.
In 1824 Louis XVIII died, and was succeeded by that Count
d'Artois whom we have seen hovering ag an emigr6 on the
French frontiers in 1Y89 ; he toolc the title of Charles X.
Charles set himself to destroy the liberty of the press and uni-
versities, and to restore absolute government; the sum of a
billion francs was voted to compensate the nobles for the chateau
burnings and sequestrations of 1789. In 1830 Paris rose
against this embodiment of the ancient regime, and replaced
him by the son of that sinister Philip, Duke of Orleans, whose
execution was one of the brightest achievements of the Terror*.
The other continental monarchies, in face of the open approval
of the revolution by Great Britain and a strong liberal ferment
in Germany and Austria, did not interfere in this affair. After
all, France was still a monarchy. This young man, Xouis
Philippe (1830-48), remained the constitutional king of France
for eighteen years. He went down in 1848, a very eventful
year for Europe, of which we shall tell in the next chapter.
Such were the uneasy swayings of the peace of the Congress
of Vienna, which were provoked by the reactionary proceedings
to which, sooner or later, all monarchist courts seem by their
very nature to gravitate. The stresses that arose from the un-
scientific map-making of the diplomatists gathered force more
deliberately, but they were even more dangerous to the peace of
mankind. It is extraordinarily inconvenient to administer to-
gether tie affairs of peoples speaking different languages and
so reading different literatures and having different general
ideas, especially if those differences are exacerbated by religious
disputes. Only some strong mutual interest, such as the com-
mon defensive needs of the Swiss mountaineers, can justify a
close linking of peoples of dissimilar languages and faiths ; and
even in Switzerland there is the utmost local autonomy. TJlti-'
mately, when the Great Power tradition is certainly dead and
buried, those Swiss populations may gravitate towards their
natural affinities in Germany, France, and Italy. When, as in
Macedonia, populations are mixed in a patchwork of villages
918
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and districts, tlie cantonal system is imperatively needed. But
if the reader will look at tlie map of Europe as the Congress
of Vienna drew it, he will see that this gathering seems almost
as if it had planned the maximum of local exasperation. It
destroyed the Dutch Republic, quite needlessly, it lumped to-
gether the Protestant Dutch with the French-speaking Catholics
\ lA.^ — ^ zszr^FTTS^ri — c 1\
Vx
tctinzL — ■
"yPAIT-I
Bouiu3aiy of tJte GerTnan.
Conf cdcraiian. t^^^m^m^
of the old Spanish (Austrian) Netherlands, and set up a king-
dom of the Netherlands. It handed over not merely the old
republic of Venice, but all of North Italy as far as Milan to
the German-speaking Austrians. French-speaking Savoy it
combined with pieces of Italy to restore the kingdom of Sar-
dinia. Austria and Hungary, already a sufficiently explosive
mixture of discordant nationalities, Germans, Hungarians,
Czecho-Slovaks, Jugo-Slavs, Eumanians, and now Italians, was
made still more impossible by confirming Austria's Polish
acquisitions of 1772 and 1795. The Polish people, being catho-
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 919
lie and republican-spirited, were chiefly given over to the less
civilized rule of the Greek-orthodox Tsar, but important dis-
tricts went to Protestant Prussia. The Tsar was also confirmed
in his acquisition of the entirely alien Finns. The very dis-
similar Norwegian and Swedish peoples were bound together
under one king. Germany, the reader will see, was left in a
particularly dangerous state of muddle. Prussia and Austria
were both partly in and partly out of a German confederation,
which included a multitude of minor states. The King of Den-
mark came into the German confederation by virtue of certain
German-speaking possessions in Holstein. Luxembourg was in-
cluded in the German Confederation, though its ruler was also
king of the JSTetherlands, and though many of its peoples talked
French. Here was a crazy tangle, an outrage on the common
sense of mankind, a preposterous disregard of the fact that the
people who talk German and base their ideas on German litera-
ture, the people who talk Italian and base their ideas on Italian
literature, and the people who talk Polish and base their ideas
on Polish Jiterature, will all be far better off and most helpful
and least obnoxious to the rest of mankind if they conduct their
own affairs in their ovsna idiom within the ring-fence of their own
speech. Is it any wonder that one of the most popular songs in
Germany during this period declared that wherever the Ger-
man tongue was spoken, there was the German Fatherland ?
Even to-day men are still reluctant to recognize that areas
of government are not matters for the bargaining and interplay
of tsars and kings and foreign offices. There is a naiural arid
necessary political map of the world which transcends these
things. There is a test way possible of dividing any part of
the world into administrative areas, and a best possible kind of
government for every area, having regard to the speech and
race of its inhabitants, and it is the common concern of all men
of intelligence to secure those divisions and establish those
forms of government quite irrespective of diplomacies and flags,
"claims" and melodramatic "loyalties" and the existing po-
litical map of the world. The natural political map of thie
world insists upon itself. It heaves and frets beneath
the artificial political map like some misfitted giant. In
1830 French-speakng Belgium, stirred up by the current
revolution in France, revolted against its Dutch association in
the kingdom of the Netherlands. The Powers, terrified at the
.920 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
possibility of a republic and of annexation to France, hurried
in to pacify this situation, and gave the Belgians a monarch
from that rich breeding-ground of monarchs, Germany, Leopold
.1 of Saxe-Ooburg Gotha. There were also ineffectual revolts
in Italy and Germany in 1830, and a much more serious one
in Russian Poland. A republican government held out in War-
saw for a year against Nicholas I (who succeeded Alexander
in 1825), and was then stamped out of existence with great
violence and cruelty. The Polish language was banned, and
the Greek Orthodox church was substituted for the Roman
Catholic as the State religion. . . .
An outbreak of the natural political map of the world, which
occurred in 1821, ultimately secured the support of England,
France, and Russia. This was the insurrection of the Greeks
against the Turks. For six years they fought a desperate war,
while the governments of Europe looked on. Liberal opinion
protested against this inactivity; volunteers from every Euro-
pean country joined the insurgents, and at last Britain,. France,
and Russia took joint action. The Turkish fleet was destroyed
.by the French and English at the Battle of !N"avariho (1827),
.and the Tsar invaded Turkey. By the treaty of Adrianople
,(1829) Greece was declared free, but she was not permitted
to resume her ancient republican traditions. There is a sort
of historical indecency in a Greek monarchy. But a Greek
republic would have been dangerous to all monarchy in a Europe
that fretted under the ideas of the Holy Alliance. A German
king was .found for Greece, one Prince Otto of Bavaria, slightly
demented, but quite royal — ^he gave way to delusions about his
divine right, and was ejected in 1862— and Christian governors
were set up in the Danubian provinces (which are now Ru-
mania) and Serbia (a part of the Jugo-Slav region).
This was a partial concession to the natural political map, but
much blood had still to run before the Turk was altogether
expelled from these lands.
A little later the natural political map was to assert itself in
Italy and Germany.
CAREER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 921
xxxvin
THE REALITIES AND IMAGINATIONS OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTUEY
§ 1. The Mechanical Revolution. § 2. Relation of the Me-
chanical to the Industrial Revolution. § 3. The Fermenta-
tion of Ideas, 18^8. § 4. The Development of the Idea of
Socialism^ § 5. Shortcomings of Socialism as a Scheme of
Human Society. § 6. How Darwinism Affected Religious
and Political Ideas. § 7. The Idea of Nationalism. § 8.
Europe Between 1848 and 1878. § 9. The (Second)
Scravfible for Overseas Empires. § 10, The Indian Prece-
dent in Asia- § 11. The History of Japan. § 12. Close of
the Period of Overseas Expansion. § 13. The British Em-
pire in 1914.
§ 1
THE career and personality of Napoleon I bulks dispro-
portionately in the nineteenth century histories. He
"was of little significance to the broad onward movement
of human affairs ; he was an interruption, a reminder of latent
evils, a thing like the bacterium of some pestilence. Even
regarded as a pestilence, he was not of supreme rank ; he killed
far fewer people than the influenza epidemic of 1918, and pro-
duced less political and social disruption than the plague of
Justinian. Some such interlude had to happen, and some such
patched-up settlement of Europe as the Concert of Europe, be^
cause there was no worked-out system of ideas upon which a new
world could be constructed. And even the Concert of Europe
had in it an element of progress. It did at least set aside the
individualism of Machiavellian monarchy and declare that there
was a human or at any rate a European commonweal. If it
divided the world among the kings, it made respectful gestures
towards human unity and the service of God and man.
922
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 923
The permanently effective task before mankind which had
to he done before any new and enduring social and political
edifice was possible, the task upon which the human intelli-
gence is, with many interruptions and amidst much anger and
turmoil, still engaged, was, and is, the task of working out and
applying a Science of Property as a basis for freedom and
social justice, a Science of Currency to ensure and pre-
serve an efficient economic medium, a Science of Gov-
ernment and Collective Operations whereby in every community
men may learn to pursue their common interests in har-
mony, a Science of World Politics, through which the stark
waste and cruelty of warfare between races, peoples, and nations
may be brought to an end and the common interests of mankind
brought under a common control, and, above all, a world-wide
System of Education to sustain the will and interest of men
in their common human adventure. The real makers of history
in the nineteenth century, the people whose consequences will
be determining human life a century ahead, were those who
advanced and contributed to this fivefold constructive effort.
Compared to them, the foreign ministers and "statesmen" and
politicians of this period were no more than a number of
troublesome and occasionally incendiary schoolboys — and a few
metal thieves — playing about and doing transitory mischief
amidst the accumulating materials upon the site of a great build-
ing whose nature they did not understand.
And while throughout the nineteenth century the mind of
Western civilization, which the Renascence had released,
gathered itself to the task of creative social and political re-
construction that still lies before it, there swept across the world
a wave of universal change in human power and the material
conditions of life that the first scientific efforts of that liberated
mind had made possible. The prophecies of Eoger Bacon began
to live in reality. The accumulating knowledge and confidence
of the little succession of men who had been carrying on the
development of science, now began to bear fruit that common
men could understand. The most obvious firstfruit was the
steam-engine. The first steam-engines in the eighteenth century
were pumping engines used to keep water out of the newly
opened coal mines. These coal mines were being worked to
supply coke for iron smelting, for which wood-charcoal had pre-
viously been employed. It was James Watt, a mathematical ,
934 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
instrument maker of Glasgow, who improved this steam-pump-
ing engine and made it available for the driving of machinery.
The first engine so employed was installed in a cotton mill in
Nottingham in 1785. In 1804 Trevithick adapted the "Watt
engine to tralispbrt, and made the first locomotive. In 1825
the first railway, between Stockton and Darlington, was opened
for traffic. The original engine (locomotive No. 1, 1825) still
adorns Darlington platform. By the middle of the century a
network of railways had spread all over Europe.
Here was a sudden change in what had long been a fixed
condition of human life, the maximuln rate of land transport.
After the Russian disaster, Napoleon travelled from near Vilna
to Paris in 312 hours. This was a journey of about 1,400
miles. He was travelling with every conceivable advantage, and
he averaged under five miles an hour. An ordinary traveller
could not have done this distance in twice the time. These
were about the same maximum rates of travel as held good be-
tween Eome and Gaul in the first century a.d., or between
Sardis and Susa in the fourth century b.c. Then suddenly
came a tremendous change. The railways reduced this journey
for any ordinary traveller to less than forty-eight hours. That
is to say, they reduced the chief European distances to about a
tenth of what they had been. They made it possible to carry
out administrative work in areas ten times as great as any that
had hitherto been workable under one administration. The full
significance of that possibility in Europe still remains to be
realized. Europe is still netted in boundaries drawn in the
horse and road era. In America the effects were immediate.
To the United States of America, sprawling westward, it meant
the possibility of a continuous access to Washington, however
far the frontier travelled across the continent. It meant unity,
sustained on a scale that would otherwise have been impossible.
The steamboat was, if anything, a little ahead of the steam-
engine in its earlier phases. There was a steamboat, the Char-
lotte Dundas, on the Firth of Clyde Canal in 1802, and in 1807
an American named Fulton had a paying steamer. The Cler-
mont, with British-built engines, upon the Hudson river above
New York. The first steamship to put to sea was also an
American, the Phmnix, which went from New York (Hoboken)
to Philadelphia. So, too, was the first Ship using steam (she
also had sails) to cross the Atlantic, the Swvanndh (1819). All
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 02£,
these were paddle-wheel boats, and paddle-wheel boata are not
adapted to work in heavy seas. The paddles smash too easily,
and the boat is then disabled. The screw steamship followed
rather slowly. Many difficulties had to be surmounted before
the screw was a practicable thing. Not until the middle of the
century did the tonnage of steamships upon the sea begin to
overhaul that of sailing-ships. After that the evolution in sea
transport was rapid. For the first time men began to cross
the seas and oceans with some certainty as to the date of their
arrival. The transatlantic crossing, which had been an uncer-
tain adventure of several weeks — ^which might stretch to months
— ^was accelerated, until in 1910 it was brought down, in the
case of the fastest boats, to under five days, with a practically
notifiable hour of arrival. All over the oceans there was the
same reduction in the time and the same increase in the cer
tainty of human communications.
Concurrently with the development of steam transport upon
land and sea a new and striking addition to the facilities of
human intercourse arose out of the investigations of Volta,
Galvani, and Faraday into various electrical phenomena. The
electric telegraph came into existence in 1835. The first under^
seas cable was laid in 1851 between France and England. In
a few years the telegraph system had spread over the civilized
world, and news which had hitherto travelled slowly from
point to point became practically simultaneous throughout the
earth.
These things, the steam railway and the electrio telegraph,
were to the popular imagination of the middle nineteenth cen-
tury the most striking and revolutionary of inventions, but they
were only the most conspicuous and clumsy firstfruits of a far
more extensive process. Technical knowledge and skill were
developing with an extraordinary rapidity, and to an extraordi-
nary extent measured by the progress of any previous age. Far
less conspicuous at first in everyday life, but finally far more
important, was the extension of man's power over various struc-
tural materials. Before the middle of the eighteenth century
iron was reduced from its ores by means of wood-charcoal, was
handled in small pieces, and hammered and wrought into shape.
It was material for a craftsman. Quality and treatment were
enormously dependent upon the experience and sagacity of
the individual iron worker. The largest masses of iron that
926 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
could be dealt with under those conditions amounted at most
(in the sixteenth century) to two or three tons. (There was a
very definite upward limit, therefore, to the size of cannon.)
The blast furnace arose in the eighteenth century, and developed ■
with the use of coke. I^ot before the eighteenth century do we
find rolled sheet iron (1728) and rolled rods and bars (1783).
Nasmyth's steam hammer came as late as 18'36. The ancient
world, because of its metallurgical inferiority, could not use
steam. The steam-engine, even the primitive pumping engine,
could not develop before sheet iron was available. The early
engines seem to the modern eye very pitiful and clumsy bits
or ironmongery, but they were the utmost that the metallurgical
science of the time could do. As late as 1856 came the Bessemer
process, and presently (1864) the open-hearth process, in which
steel and every sort of iron could be melted, purified, and cast
in a manner and upon a scale hitherto unheard of. To-day in
the electric furnace one may see tons of incandescent steel
swirling about like boiling milk in a saucepan. Nothing in
the previous practical advances of mankind is comparable in
its consequences to the complete mastery over enormous masses
of steel and iron and over their texture and quality which man
has now achieved. The railways and early engines of all sorts
were the mere first triumphs of the new metallurgical methods.
Presently came ships of iron and steel, vast bridges, and a new
way of building with steel upon a gigantic scale. Men realized
too late that they had planned their railways with far too timid
a gauge, that they could have organized their travelling with
far more steadiness and comfort upon a much bigger scale.
Before the nineteenth century there were no ships in the
world much over 2,000 tons burthen ; now there is nothing won-
derful about a 50,000-ton liner. There are people who sneer
at this kind of progress as being a progress in "mere size," but
that sort of sneering merely marks the intellectual limitations
of those who indulge in it. The great ship or the steel-frame
building is not, as they imagine, a magnified version of the
small ship or building of the past ; it is a thing different in kind,
more lightly and strongly built, of finer and stronger materials ;
instead of being a thing of precedent and rule-of-thumb, it is a
thing of subtle and intricate calculation. In the old house or
ship, matter was dominant — ^the material and its needs had to
be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter has been captured,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 927
changed, coerced. Think of the coal and iron and sand dragged
out of the banks and pits, wrenched, wrought, molten, and cast,
to be flung at last, a slender, glittering pinnacle of steel and
glass, six hundred feet above the crowded city !
We have given these particulars of the advance in man's
knowledge of the metallurgy of steel and its results by way
of illustration. A parallel story could be told of the metallurgy
of copper and tin, and of a multitude of metals, nickel and
aluminium to name but two, unknown before the ninteenth cen-
tury davmed. It is in this great and growing mastery over
substances, over different sorts of glass, over rocks and plasters
and the like, over colours and textures, that the main triumphs
of the mechanical revolution have thus far been achieved. Yet
we are still in the stage of the firstfruits in the matter. "We
have the power, but we have still to learn how to use our power.
Many of the first employments of these gifts of science have
been vulgar, tawdry, stupid, or horrible. The artist and the
adaptor have still hardly begun to work with the endless variety
of substances now at their disposal.
Parallel with this extension of mechanical possibilities the
new science of electricity grew up. It was only in the eighties
of the nineteenth century that this body of inquiry began to
yield results to impress the vulgar mind. Then suddenly came
electric light and electric traction, and the transmutation of
forces, the possibility of sending power, that could be changed
into mechanical motion or light or heat as one chose, along a
copper wire, as water is sent along a pipe, began to come through
to the ideas of ordinary people. ...
The British and the French were at first the leading peoples'
in this great proliferation of knowledge ; but presently the Ger-
mans, who had learnt humility under Napoleon, showed such
zeal and pertinacity in scientific inquiry as to overhaul these
leaders. British science was largely the creation of Englishmen
and Scotchmen ^ working outside the ordiiaary centres of
erudition.^ We have told how in England the universities after
'But note Boyle and Sir Wm. Hamilton as conspicuous scientific men
who were Irishmen.
'It is worth noting that nearly all the great inventors in England dur-
ing the eighteenth century were working men, that inventions proceeded
from the workshop, and not from the laboratory. It is also worth noting
that only two of these inventors accumulated fortunes and founded
families. — E. B.
928 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the reformation ceased to have a wide popular appeal, how they
became the educational preserve of the nobility and gentry, and
the strongholds of the established church. A pompous and un-
intelligent classical pretentiousness dominated them, and they
dominated the schools of the middle ; and .upper classes. The
only knowledge recognized was an uncritical textual knowledge
of a selection of Latin and Greek classics, and the test of a good
style was its abundance of quotations, allusions, and stereotyped
expressions. The early development of British science went on,
therefore, in spite of the formal educational organization, and
in the teeth of the bitter hostility of the teaching and clerical
professions. French education, too, was dominated by the clas-
sical tradition of the Jesuits, and consequently it was not diffi-
cult for the Germans to organize a body of investigators, small
indeed in relation to the possibilities of the case, but large in
proportion to the little band of British and French inventors
and experimentalists. And though this work of research and
experiment was making Britain and France the most rich and
powerful countries in the world, it was not making scientific
and inventive men rich and powerful. There is a necessary un-
worldliness about a sincere scientific man ; he is too preoccupied
with his research to plan and scheme how to make money out of
it. The economic exploitation of his discoveries falls very easily
and naturally, therefore, into the hands of a more acquisitive
type ; and so we find that the crops of rich men which every
fresh phase of scientific and technical progress has produced in
Great Britain,' though they have not displayed quite the same
passionate desire to insult and kill the goose that laid the na-
tional golden eggs as the scholastic and clerical professions,
have been quite content to let that profitable creature starve.
Inventors and discoverers came by nature, they thought, for
cleverer people to profit by.
In this matter the Germans were a little wiser. The Ger-
man "learned" did not display the same vehement hatred of
the new learning. They permitted its development. The
German business man and manufacturer again had not quite
the same contempt for the man of science as had his British,
competitor. Knowledge, these Germans believed, might be a
cultivated crop, responsive to fertilizers. They did concede,
therefore, a certain amount of opportunity to the scientific mind ;
their public expenditure on scientific work was relatively
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 929
greater, and this expenditure was abundantly rewarded. By
the latter half of the nineteenth century the German scientific
worker had made German a necessary language for every sci-
ence student who wished to keep abreast with the latest work
in his department, and in certain branches, and particularly in
chemistry, Germany acquired a very great superiority over her
western neighbours. The scientific effort of the sixties and
seventies in Germany began to tell after the eighties, and the
Germans gained steadily upon Britain and France in technical
and industrial prosperity.
In an Outline of History such as this it is impossible to
trace the network of complex mental processes that led to the
incessant extension of knowledge and power that is now going
on ; all we can do here is to call the reader's attention to the
most salient turning-points that finally led the toboggan of
human affairs into its present swift ice-run of progress. We
have told of the first release of human curiosity and of the be-
ginnings of systematic inquiry and experiment. "We have told,
too, how, when the plutocratic Koman Systran and its resultant
imperialism had come and gone again, this process of inquiry
was renewed. We have told of the escape of investigation from
ideas of secrecy and personal advantage to the idea of publica-
tion and a brotherhood of knowledge, and we have noted the
foundation of the British Eoyal Society, the Florentine Society,
and their like as a consequence of this socializing of thought
These things were the roots of the mechanical revolution, and
so long as the root of pure scientific inquiry lives, that revolu-
tion will progress. The mechanical revolution itself began,
we may say, with the exhaustion of the wood supply for the
ironworks of England. This led to the use of coal, the coal
mine led to the simple pumping engine, the development of the
pumping engine by Watt into a machine-driving engine led on
to the locomotive and the steamship. This was the first phase
of a great expansion in the use of steam. A second phase in
the mechanical revolution began with the application of elec-
trical science to practical problems and the development of elec-
tric lighting, power transmission, and traction,
A third phase is to be distinguished when in the eighties a
new type of engine came into use, an engine in which the ex-
pansive force of an explosive mixture replaced the expansive
force of steam. The light, highly efiicient engines that were
930 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
thus made possible were applied to the automobile, and de-
veloped at last to reach such a pitch of lightness and efficiency
as to render flight — ^long known to be possible^ — a practical
achievement. A successful flying-machine — but not a machine
large enough to take up a human body — was made by Professor
Langley of the Smithsonian Institute of WasMngton as early
as 1897. By 1909 the aeroplane was available for human loco-
motion. There had seemed to be a pause in the increase of
human speed with the perfection of railways and automobile
road traction, but with the flying machine came fresh reductions
in tbe effective distance between one point of the earth's surface
and another. In the eighteenth century the distance from Lon-
don to Edinburgh was an eight days' journey; in 1918 the
Britisb Civil Air Transport Commission reported that the jour-
ney from London to Melbourne, half-way round the earth, would
probably, in a few years' time, be accomplished in that same
period of eight days.
Too much stress must not be laid upon these striking reduc-
tions in the time distances of one place from another. They
are merely one aspect of a much profounder and more mo-
mentous enlargement of human possibility. The science of
agriculture and agricultural chemistry, for instance, made quite
parallel advances during the nineteenth century. Men learnt
so to fertilize the soil as to produce quadruple and quintuple
the crops got from the same area in the seventeenth century.
There was a still more extraordinary advance in medical sci-
ence; the average duration of life rose, the daily efficiency
increased, the waste of life through ill-health diminished.
Now here altogether we have such a change in human life as
to constitute a fresh phase of history. In a little more than
a century this mechanical revolution has been brought about.
In that time man made a stride in the material conditions of
his life vaster than he had done during the whole long interval
between the palaeolithic stage and the age of cultivation, or
between the days of Pepi in Egypt and those of George III.
A new gigantic material framework for human affairs has come
into existence. Clearly it demands great readjustments of our
social, economical, and political methods. But these readjust-
ments have necessarily waited upon the development of the
mechanical revolution, and they are still only in their opening
stage to-day.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 931
§ 2
There is a tendency in many histories to confuse together
what we have here called the mechanical revolution, which was
an entirely new thing in human experience arising out of the
development, of organized science, a new step like the invention
of agriculture or the discovery of metals, with something else,
quite different in its origins, something for which there was
already an historical precedent, the social and financial develop-
ment which is called the industrial revolution. The two proc-
esses were going on together, they were constantly reacting upon
each other, but they were in root and essence different. There
would have been an industrial revolution of sorts if there had
been no coal, no steam, no machinery ; but in that case it would
probably have followed far more closely upon the lines of the
social and financial developments of the later years of the
Eoman republic. It would have repeated the story of dis-
possessed free cultivators, gang labour, great estates, great finan-
cial fortunes, and a socially destructive financial process.
Even the factory method came before power and machin-
ery. Factories were the product not of machinery, but
of the "division of labour." Drilled and sweated workers were
making such things as millinery, cardboard boxes and furniture,
and colouring maps and book illustrations, and so forth, before
even water-wheels had been used for industrial processes. There
were factories in Rome in the days of Augustus. iN'ew books,
for instance, were dictated to rows of copyists in the factories
of the book-sellers. The attentive student of Defoe and of the
political pamphlets of Fielding will realize that the idea of
herding poor people into establishments to work collectively for
their living was already current in Britain before the close of
the seventeenth century. There are intimations of it even as
early as More's Utopia (1516). It was a social and not a
mechanical development.
Up to past the middle of the eighteenth century the social
and economic history of western Europe was in fact retreading
the path along which the Eoman State had gone in the three
last centuries b.c. America was in many ways a new Spain,
and India and China a new Egypt. But the political disunions
of Europe, the political convulsions against monarchy, the rei-
calcitrance of the common folk and perhaps also the greater
882 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
accessibility of the westerii European intelligence to mechanical
ideas and inventions, turned the process into quite novel direc-
tions. Ideas of human solidarity, thanks to Christianity, were
far more widely diffused in this newer European world, political
power was not so concentrated, and the man of energy anxious
to get rich turned his mind, therefore, very willingly from the
ideas of the slave and of gang labour to the idea of mechanical
power and the machine.
The mechanical revolution, the process of mechanical inven-
tion and discovery, was a new thing in human experience, and
it went on regardless of the social, political, economic, and in-
dustrial consequences it might produce. The industrial revolu-
tion, on the other hand, like most other human affairs, was and
is more and more profoundly changed and deflected by the con-
stant variation in human conditions caused by the mechanical
revolution. And the essential difference between the amassing
of riches, the extinction of small farmers and small business
men and the phase of big finance in the latter centuries of the
Roman Republic on the one hand, and the very similar con-
centration of capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
on the other, lies in the profound difference in the character of
labour that the mechanical revolution was bringing about The
power of the old world was human power ; everything depended
ultimately upon the driving power of human muscle, the muscle
of ignorant and subjugated men. A little animal muscle, sup-
plied by draft oxen, horse traction, and the like, contributed.
"Where a weight had to be lifted, men lifted it; where a rock
had to be quarried, men chipped it out; where a field had to
be ploughed, men and oxen ploughed it ; the Roman equivalent
of the steamship was the galley with its banks of sweating
rowers. A vast proportion of mankind in the early civilizations
was employed in purely mechanical drudgery. At its onset,
power-driven machinery did not seem to promise any release
from such unintelligent toil. Great gangs of men were em-
ployed in excavating canals, in making railway cuttings and
embankments, and the like. The number of miners increased
enormously. But the extension of facilities and the output of
commodities increased much more. And as the nineteenth cen-
tury went on, the plain logic of the new situation asserted itself
more clearly. Human beings were no longer wanted as a source
of mere indiscriminated power. What could be done mechani-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 988
cally by a human being could be done faster and better by a
machine. The human being was needed now only where choice
and intelligence had to be exercised. Human beings were
wanted only as human beings. The drudge, on whom all the
previous civilizations had rested, the creature of mere obedi-
ence, the man whose brains were superfluous, had become un-
necessary to the welfare of mankind.
This was as true of such ancient industries as agriculture
and mining as it was of the newest metallurgica,l processes. For
ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, swift machines came for-
ward to do the work of scores of men.^ The Roman civiliza-
tion was built upon cheap and degraded human beings ; modern
civilization is being rebuilt upon cheap mechanical power. For
a hundred years power has been getting cheaper and labour
dearer. If for a generation or so machinery has had to wait
its turn in the mine, it is simply because for a time men were
cheaper than machinery.*
Ifow here was a change-over of quite primary importance in
human affairs. The chief solicitude of the rich and of the
ruler in the old civilization had been to keep up a supply of
drudges. As the nineteenth century went on, it became more
and more plain to the intelligent directive people that the
common man had now to be something better than a drudge.
He had to be educated — if only to secure "industrial efficiency."
He had to understand what he was about. From the days of
the first Christian propaganda, popular education had been
smouldering in Europe, just as it has smouldered in Asia wher-
ever Islam has set its foot, because of the necessity of making
the believer understand a little of the belief by which he is
saved, and of enabling him to read a little in the sacred books
by which his belief is conveyed. Christian controversies, with
their competition for adherents, ploughed the ground for the
harvest of popular education. In England, for instance, by
the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, the disputes
of the sects and the necessity of catching adherents young had
produced an abundance of night schools, Sunday schools, and a
series of competing educational organizations for children, the
'Here America led the old world.
'In Northumberland and Durham in the early days of coal mining they
were so cheaply esteemed that it was unusual to hold inquests on the
bodies of men killed in mine disasters.
934 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
dissenting British schools, the church National Schools, and
even Roman Catholic elementary schools. The earlier, less
enlightened manufacturers, unable to take a broad view of their
own interests, hated and opposed these schools. But here again
needy Germany led her richer neighbours. The religious
teacher in Brit^,in presently found the profit-seeker at his side,
unexpectedly eager to get the commonalty, if not educated, at
least "trained" to a higher level of economic efficiency.
The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of
rapid advance in popular education throughout all the West-
ernized world. There was no parallel advance in the education
of the upper classes, some advance no doubt, but nothing to
correspond, and so the great gulf that had divided that world
hitherto into the readers and the non-reading; mass became little
more than a slightly perceptible difference in educational level.
At the back of this process was the mechanical revolution, ap-
parently regardless of social conditions, but really insisting
inexorably upon the complete abolition of a totally illiterate
class throughout the world.
The economic revolution of the Roman republic had never
been clearly apprehended by the common people of Rome. The
ordinary Roman citizen never saw the changes through which
he lived, clearly and comprehensively as we see them. But the
industrial revolution, as it went on towards the end of the nine-
teenth century, was more and more distinctly seen as one whole
process by the common people it was affecting, because presently
they could read and discuss and communicate, and btecause they
went about and saw things as no commonalty had ever done
before.
In this Oidline of History we have been careful to indicate
the gradual appearance of the ordinary people as a class with a
will and ideas in common. It is the writer's belief that massive
movements of the "ordinary people" over considerable areas
only became possible as a result of the propagandist religions,
Christianity and Islam, and their insistence upon individual
self-respect. We have cited the enthusiasm of the commonalty
for the First Crusade as marking a new phase in social history.
But before the nineteenth century even these massive movements
were comparatively restricted. The equalitarian insurrections
of the peasantry, from the Wycliffe period onward, were confined
to the peasant communities of definite localities, they spread
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 935
oiily slowly into districts affected by similar forces. The town
artisan rioted indeed, but only locally. The chateau-burning of
the French revolution was not the act of a peasantry who had
overthrown a government, it was the act of a peasantry released
by the overthrow of a government. The Commune, of Paris was
the first effective appearance of the town artisan as a political
power, and the Parisian crowd of the First Eevolution was a
very mixed, primitive-thinking, and savage crowd compared with
any Western European crowd after 1830.
But the mechanical revolution was not only pressing educa-
tion upon the whole population, it was leading to a big-capital-
ism and to a large-scale reorganization of industry that was to
produce a new and distinctive system of ideas in the common
people in the place of the mere uncomfortable recalcitrance and
elemental rebellions of an illiterate commonalty. We have al-
ready noted how the industrial revolution had split the manu-
facturing class, which had hitherto been a middling and various
sort of class, into two sections, the employers, who became rich
enough to mingle with the financial, merchandizing, and land-
owning classes, and the employees, who drifted to a status closer
and closer to that of mere gang and agricultural labour. As the
manufacturing employee sank, the agricultural labourer, by the
introduction of agricultural machinery and the increase in his
individual productivity, rose. By the middle of the nineteenth
century, Karl Marx (1818-83), a German Jew of great schol-
arly attainments, who did much of his work in the British
Museum library in London, was pointing out that the organ-
ization of the working classes by the steadily concentrating group
of capitalist owners, was developing a new social classification
to replace the more complex class systems of the past. Prop-
erty, so far as it was power, was being gathered together into
relatively few hands, the hands of the big rich men, the capitalist
class ; while there was a great mingling of workers with little or
no property, whom he called the "expropriated," or "prole-
tariat"— a misuse of this word — ^who were bound to develop a
common "class consciousness" of the conflict of their interests
with those of the rich men. Differences of education and tradi-
tion between the various old«r social elements which were in
process of being fused up into the new class of the expropriated,
seemed for a time to contradict this sweeping generalization;
the traditions of the professions, the small employers, the farmer
936 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
peasant and the like were all different from one another and
from the various craftsman traditions of the workers ; hut with
the spread of education and the cheapening of literature, this
"Marxian" generalization hecomes now more and more accept-
able. These classes, who were linked at first by nothing but a
common impoverishment, were and are being reduced or raised
to the same standard of life, forced to read the same books and
share the same inconveniences. A sense of solidarity between
all sorts of poor and propertyless men, as against the profit-
amassing and wealth-concentrating class, is growing more and
more evident in our world. Old differences fade away, the dif-
ference between craftsman and open-air worker, between black
coat and overall, between poor clergyman and elementary school-
master, between policeman and bus-driver. They must all buy
the same cheap furnishings and live in similar cheap houses ;
their sons and daughters will all mingle and marry ; success at
the upper levels becomes more and more hopeless for the rank
and file. Marx, who did not so much advocate the class-war,
the war of the expropriated mass against the appropriating few,
as foretell it, is being more and more justified by events.^
§ 3
To trace any broad outlines in the fermentation of ideas
that went on during the mechanical and industrial revolution
of the nineteenth century is a very difficult task. But we must
attempt it if we are to link what has gone before in this history
with the condition of our world to-day.
It will be convenient to distinguish two main periods in the
hundred years between 1814 and 1914. First came the period
1814-48, in which there was a very considerable amount of
liberal thinking and writing in limited circles, but during which
there were no great changes or development of thought in the
general mass of the people. Throughout this period the world's
•It is sometimes argued against Marx that the proportion of people
who have savings invested has increased in many modern communities.
These savings are technically "capital" and their owners "capitalists" to
that extent, and this is supposed to contradict the statement of Marx
that property concentrates into few and fewer hands. Marx used many
of his terms carelessly and chose them ill, and his ideas were better than
his words. When he wrote property he meant "property so far as it is
power." The small investor has remarkably little power over his in-
vested capital.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 987
affairs were living, so to speak, on their old intellectual capital,
they were going on in accordance with the leading ideas of the
Revolution and the counter-revolution. The dominant liberal
ideas were freedom and a certain vague equalitarianism ; the
conservative ideas were monarchy, organized religion, social
privilege, and obedience.
Until 1848 the spirit of the Holy Alliance, the spirit of
Mettemich, struggled to prevent a revival of the European revo-
lution that IlTapoleon had betrayed and set back. In America,
both North and South, on the other hand, the revolution had
triumphed and nineteenth-century liberalism ruled unchallenged.
Britain was an uneasy country, never quite loyally reactionary
nor quite loyally progressive, neither truly monarchist nor truly
republican, the land of Cromwell and also of the Merry Mon-
arch, Charles; anti- Austrian, anti-Bourbon, anti-papal, yet
weakly repressive. We have told of the first series of liberal
storms in Europe in and about the year 1830 ; in Britain in 1832
a Reform Bill, greatly extending the franchise and restoring
something of its representative character to the House of Com-
mons, relieved the situation. Round and about 1848 came a
second and much more serious system of outbreaks, that over-
threw the Orleans monarchy and established a second Republic
in France (1848-52), raised North Italy and Hungary against
Austria, and the Poles in Posen against the Germans, and
sent the Pope in flight from the republicans of Rome. A very
interesting Pan-Slavic conference held at Prague foreshadowed
many of the territorial readjustments of 1919. It dispersed
after an insurrection at Prague had been suppressed by Aus-
trian troops.
Ultimately all these insurrections failed^- the current system
staggered, but kept its feet. There were no doubt serious social
discontents beneath these revolts, but as yet, except in the case
of Paris, these had no very clear form ; and this 1848 storm, so
far as the rest of Europe was concerned, may be best described,
in a phrase, as a revolt of the natural political map against
the artificial arrangements of the Vienna diplomatists, and the
system of suppressions those arrangements entailed.
The history of Europe, then, from 1815 to 1848 was, gen-
erally speaking, a sequel to the history of Europe from 1789 to
1814. There were no really new motifs in the composition.
The main trouble was still the struggle, though often a blind
9S8 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and misdirected struggle, of the interests of ordinary men
against the Great Power system which cramped and oppressed
the life of mankind.
But after 1848, from 1848 to 1914, though the readjust-
ment of the map still went on towards a free and unified Italy
and a unified Germany, there began a fresh phase in, the process
of mental and political adaptation to the new knowledge and
the new material powers of mankind. Came a great irruption
of new social,, religious, and political ideas into the general
European mind. In the next three sections we will consider
the origin and quality of these irruptions. They laid the
foundations upon which we base our political thought to-day,
but for a long time they had no very great effect on contempo'
rary politics. Contemporary politics continued: to run on in
the old lines, but with a steadily diminishing support in the
intellectual convictions and consciences of men. We have al-
ready described the way in which a strong intellectual process
undermined the system of Grand Monarchy in France before
1789. A similar undermining process was going, on throughout
Europe during the Great Power period of 1848-1914. Pro-
found doubts of the system of government and of the liberties
of many forms of property in the economic system spread
throughout the social body. Then, came the greatest and most
disorganizing war in history, so that it is still impossible to
estimate the power and range of the accumulated new ideas
of those sixtyrsix years. We have been through a greater
catastrophe even than the Napoleonic catastrophe, and we are
in a slack-water period, corresponding to the period 1815-30.
Our 1830 and our 1848. are still to come and show us where
we stand.
§4
We have traced throughout this history the gradual restric-
tion of the idea of property from the first unlimited claim of
the strong man to possess everything- and the gradual realiza-
tion of brotherhood as something transcending personal self-
seeking. Men were first subjugated into more than tribal
societies by the fear of monarch and deity. It is only within
the last three or at most four thousand years that we have any
clear evidence that voluntary self-abandonment to some greater
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 939
end, -without fee or reward, was an acceptable idea to men,
or that anyone had propounded it. Then we find spreading
over the surface of human affairs, as patches of sunshine spread
and pass over the hillsides upon a windy day in spring, the idea
that there is a happiness in self-devotion greater than any per-
sonal gratification or triumph, and a life of mankind different
and greater and more important than the sum of all the in-
dividual lives within it. We have seen that idea become vivid
as a beacon, vivid as sunshine caught and reflected dazzlingly by
some window in the landscape, in the teachings of Buddha, Lao
Tse, and, most clearly of all, of Jesus of Nazareth. Through
all its variations and corruptions Christianity has never com-
pletely lost the suggestion of a devotion to God's commonweal
that makes the personal pomps of monarchs and rulers seem
like the insolence of an overdressed servant and the splendours
and gratifications of wealth like the waste of robbers. No man
living in a community which such a religion as Christianity or
Islam has touched can be altogether a slave ; there is an ineradi-
cable quality in these religions that compels men to judge their
masters and to realize their own responsibility for the world.
As men have felt their way towards this new state of mind
from the fierce self-centred greed and instinctive combative-
ness of the early palaeolithic family group, they have sought
to express the drift of their thoughts and necessities very vari-
ously. They have found themselves in disagreement and con-
flict with old-established ideas, and there has been a natural
tendency to contradict these ideas flatly, to fly over to the abso-
lute contrary. Faced by a world in which rule and classes and
order seem to do little but give opportunity for personal self-
ishness and unrighteous oppression, the first impatient move-
ment was to declare for a universal equality and a practical
anarchy. Faced by a world in which property seemed little
more than a protection for selfishness and a method of enslave-
ment, it was as natural to repudiate all property. Our history
shows an increasing impulse to revolt against rulers and against
■ ownership. We have traced it in the middle ages burning the
rich man's chateaux and experimenting in theocracy and com-
munism. In the French revolutions this double revolt is clear
and plain. In France we find side by side, inspired by the
same spirit and as natural parts of the same revolutionary
movement, men who, with their eyes on the ruler's taxes, de-
940 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
clared that property should be inviolable, and others who, with
their eyes on the employer's hard bargains, declared that prop-
erty should be abolished. But what they are really revolting
against in each case is that the ruler and the employer, instead
of becoming servants of the community, still remain, like most
of mankind, self-seeking, oppressive individuals.
Throughout the ages we find this belief growing in men's
minds that there can be such a rearrangement of laws and pow-
ers as to give rule and order while still restraining the egotism
of any ruler and of any ruling class that may be necessary, and
such a definition of property as will give freedom without
oppressive power. We begin to realize nowadays that these ends
are only to be attained by a complex constructive effort; they
arise through the conflict of new human needs against, igno-
rance and old human nature; but throughout the nineteenth
century there was a persistent disposition to solve the problem
by some simple formula. (And be happy ever afterwards, re-
gardless of the fact that all human life, all life, is throughout
the ages nothing but the continuing solution of a continuous
synthetic problem.)
The earlier half of the nineteenth century saw a number of
experiments in the formation of trial human societies of a new
kind. Among the most important historically were the experi-
ments and ideas of Robert Owen (1771-1858), a Manchester
cotton-spinner. He is very generally regarded as the founder
of modem Socialism ; it was in connection with his work that
the word "socialism" first arose (about 1835).
He seems to have been a thoroughly competent business man ;
he made a number of innovations in the cotton-spinning indus-
try, and acquired a fair fortune at an early age. He was dis-
tressed by the waste of human possibilities among his workers,
and he set himself to improve. their condition and the relations
of employer and employed; This he sought to do first at his
Manchester factory and afterwards at New Lanark, where he
found himself in practical control of works employing about
two thousand people. Between 1800 and 1828 he achieved
very considerable things : he reduced the hours of labour, made
his factory sanitary and agreeable, abolished the employment
of very young children^ improved the training of his workers,
provided unemployment pay during a period of trade depres-
sion, established a system of schoolsi and made New Lanark
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 941
a model of better industrialism, while at the same time sus-
taining its commercial prosperity. He wrote vigorously to
defend the mass of mankind against the charges of intemperance
and improvidence which were held to justify the economic in-
iquities of the time. He held that men and women are largely
the product of their educational environment, a thesis that
needs no advocacy to-day. And he set himself to a propaganda
of the views that New Lanark had justified. He attacked the
selfish idolence of his fellow manufacturers, and in 1819, largely
under his urgency, the first Factory Act was passed, the first
attempt to restrain employers from taking the most stupid and
intolerable advantages of their workers' poyerty. Some of the
restrictions of that Act amaze us to-day. It seems incredible
now that it should ever have been necessary to protect little
children of nine ( !) from work in factories, or to limit the
nominal working day of such employees to twelve hours!
People are perhaps too apt* to write of the industrial revolu-
tion as though it led to the enslavement and overworking of
poor children who had hitherto been happy and free. But this
misinterprets history. From the very beginnings of civiliza-
tion the little children of the poor had always been obliged to
do whatever work they could do. But the factory system gath-
ered up all this infantile toil and made it systematic, conspic-
uous, and scandalous. The factory system challenged the quick-
ening human conscience on that issue. The British Factory
Act of 1819, weak and feeble though it seems to us, was the
Magna Carta of childhood ; thereafter the protection of the chil-
dren of the poor, first from toil and then from bodily starvation
and ignorance, began.
We cannot tellhere in any detail the full story of Owen's
life and thought. His work at New Lanark had been, he felt,
only a trial, upon a small working model. What could be done
for one industrial community could be done, he held, for every
industrial community in the country; he advocated a resettle-
ment of the industrial population in townships on the New
Lanark plan. For a time he seemed to have captured the imag-
ination of the world. The Times and Morning Post supported
his proposals; among the visitors io New Lanark was the
Grand Duke Nicholas who succeeded Alexander I as Tsar;
a fast friend was the Duke of Kent, son of George III and
father of Queen Victoria. But all the haters of change and
943 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
all — and there are always many such — ^who were jealous of
the poor, and all the employers who were likely to be, troubled
by his projects, were waiting for an excuse to counterTattaqk
him, and they found it in the expression of his religious opin-
ions, which were hostile to official Christianity, and through
those he was successfully discredited. But he continued to
develop his projects and experiments, of which the chief .was
a community at New Harmony in Indiana (U.S.A.), in which
he sank most of his capital. His partners bought him out
of the New Lanark business in 1828. ,
Owen's experiments and suggestions ranged very widely, and
do not fall under any single formula. There was nothing -doc-
trinaire about him. His New Lanark experiment, was the first
of a number of "benevolent, businesses" in the world; Lord
Leverhulme's Port Sunlight, the Cadburys' Bournville, and the
Ford businesses in America are contemporary instances ; it was
not really a socialist experimenl; at all; it was a "paternal"
experiment. But his proposals for state settlements were what
we should call state socialism to-day. His American experi-
ment and his later Writings point to a completer form of social-
ism, a much wider departure from the existing; state of affairs.
It is clear that the riddle of currency exercised Owen. He
understood that we can no more hope for real economic justice
while we pay for work with money of fluctuating value than
we could hope for a punctual world if there was a continual
inconstant variability in the length of an hour. One of his
experiments was an attempt at a circulation of labour notes rep-
resenting one ho.ur, five hours, or twenty hours of work. The
co-operative societies of to-day, societies of poor men which
combine fpr the collective buying and distribution of conimodi-
ties or f or collective manufacture or dairying or other forms of
agriculture, arose directly, out of his initiatives, though the
pioneer co-operative societies of his own time ended in failure.
Their successors have spread throughout the whole world, and
number to-day some thirty or forty million of adherents.
A point to note about: this early socialism of Owen's is- that
it was not at first at all "democratic." Its initiative was benevo-
lent, its early form patriarchal ; it was something up to which
the workers were to be educated by liberally disposed employ^
ers and, leaders. The first socialism was not a worker's move-
ment ; it was a master's movement.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 943
Concurrently with this work of Owen's, another and quite'
independent series of developments was going on in America
and Britain which was destined to come at last into reaction
with his socialistic ideas. The English law had long prohib-
ited combinations in restraint of txade, combinations to raise
prices or wages by concerted action. There had been no great
hardship in these prohibitions before the agrarian and indus-
trial changes of the eighteenth century let loose a great swarm
of workers living from hand to mouth and competing for in-
sufficient employment. Under these new conditions, the workers
in many industries found themselves intolerably squeezed. They
were played off one against another ; day by day and hour by
hour none knew what concession his fellow might not have
made, and what further reduction of pay or increase of toil
might not ensue. It became vitally necessary for the workers to
make agreements — illegal though they were — against such un-
derselling. At first these agreements had to be made and sus-
tained by secret societies. Or clubs, established ostensibly for
quite other purposes, social clubs, funeral societies, and the like,
served to mask the wage-protecting combination. The fact that
these associations were illegal disposed them to violence; they
were savage against "blacklegs" and "rats" who would not join
them, and still more savage with traitors. In 1824 the House
of Commons recognized the desirability of relieving tension in
these matters by conceding the right of workmen to form com-
binations for "collective bargaining" with the masters. This
enabled Trade Unions to develop with a large measure of free-
dom. At first very clumsy and primitive organizations and
with very restricted freedoms, the Trade Unions have risen
gradually to be a real Fourth Estate in the country, a great
system of bodies representing the mass of industrial workers.
Arising at first in Britain and America, they have, with
various national modifications, and under varying legal condi-
tions, spread to FrancCj Germany, and all the westernized
communities.
Organized originally to sustain wages and restrict intolerable
hours, the Trade Union movement was at first something alto-
gether distinct from socialism. The Trade Unionist tried to
make the best for himself of the existing capitalism and the ex-
isting conditions of employment ; the socialist proposed to change
the system. It was the imagination and generalizing power of
944 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Karl Marx wMcL brought these two movements into relation-
ship. He was a man with the sense of history very strong in
him ; he was the first to perceive that the old social classes that
had endured since the beginning of civilization were in process
of dissolution and regrouping. His racial Jewish commercial-
ism made the antagonism of property and labour very plain to
him. And his upbringing in Germany — where, as we have
pointed out^ the tendency of class to harden into caste was more
evident than in any other European country — made him con-
'ceive of labour as presently becoming "class conscious" and
collectively antagonistic to the property-concentrating classes.
In the Trade Union movement which was spreading over the
world, he believed he saw this development of class-conscious
labour.
What, he asked, would be the outcome of the "class war" of
the capitalist and proletariat? The capitalist adventurers, he
alleged, .because of their inherent greed and combativeness,
would gather power over capital into fewer and fewer hands,
until at last they would concentrate all the means of production,
transit, and the like into a form seizable by the workers, whose
class consciousness and solidarity would be developed pari passu
by the process of organizing and concentrating industry. They
would seize this capital and work it for themselves. This
would be the social revolution. Then individual property and
freedom would be restored, based upon the common ownership
of the earth and the management by the community as a whole
of the great productive services which the private capitalist
had organized and concentrated. This would be the end of the
"capitalist" system, but not the end of the system of capitalism.
State capitalism would replace private owner capitalism.
This marks a great stride away from the socialism of Owen.
Owen (like Plato) looked to the common sense of men of any
or every class to reorganize the casual and faulty political,
economic, and social structure. Marx found something more
in the nature of a driving force in his class hostility based
on expropriation and injustice. And he was not simply a
prophetic theorist ; he was also a propagandist of the revolt of
labour, the revolt of the so-called "proletariat." Labour, he
perceived, had a common interest against the capitalist every-
where, though under the test of the Great Power wars of the
time, and particularly of the liberation of Italy, he showed that
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 945
he failed to grasp the fact that labour everywhere has a common
interest in the peace of the world. But with the social revolution
in view he did succeed in inspiring the formation of an inter-
national league of workers, the First International.
The subsequent history of socialism is chequered between the
British'tradition of Owen and the German class feeling of Marx.
What is called Fabian Socialism, the exposition of socialism
by the London Fabian Society, makes its appeal to reasonable
men of all classes. What are called "Eevisionists" in German
Socialism incline in the same direction. But on the whole, it
is Marx who has carried the day against Owen, and the gen-
eral disposition of socialists throughout the world is to look
to the organization of labour and labour only to supply the
fighting forces that will disentangle the political and economic or-
ganization of human affairs from the hands of the more or less
irresponsible private owners and adventurers who now con-
trol it.
These are the broad features of the project which is called
Socialism. We will discuss its incompletenesses and inade-
quacies in our next section. It was perhaps inevitable that
socialism shbuld be greatly distraught and subdivided by doubts
and disputes and sects and schools; they are growth symptoms
like the spots on a youth's face. Here we can but glance at
the difference between state socialism, which would run the
economic business of the country through its political govem-
nient, and the newer schools of syndicalism and guild socialism
which would entrust a large measure in the government of each
industry to the workers of every grade — including the directors
and managers — engaged in that industry. This "guild social-
ism" is really a new sort of capitalism with a committee of
workers and officials in each industry taking the place of the
free private capitalists of that industry. The personnel becomes
the collective capitalist. 'Not can we discuss the undemocratic
idea of the Russian leader. Lenin, that a population cannot
judge of socialism before it has experienced it, and that a group
of socialists are therefore justified in seizing and socializing,
if they ean, the life of a country without at first setting up any
democratic form of general government at all, for which, sort
.of seizure he uses the Marxian phrase, a very imcompetent
'phrase, the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
All Eussia now is a. huge experiment in that dictatorship.
946 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The i "proletariat" is supposed to he dictating the government
of' Russia through committees of workmen and soldiers, the
Soviets, hut as a matter of fact these Soviets have little or no
real directive power. They assemble in meetings so big as
to be practically mass meetings, and the utmost they can do is
to give a general assent to the proceedings of the government.
The Petersburg Soviet, which the writer visited in September,
1920, was a mass meeting of over three thousand people, in-
capable of any detailed criticism or direction of the Bolshevik
government.^
§ 5
We are all socialists nowadays, said Sir William Harcourt
years ago, and that is loosely true to-day. There can be few
people who fail to realize the provisional nature and the dan-
gerous instability of our present political and economic system,
and still fewer who believe with the doctrinaire individualists
that profit-hunting "go as you please" will guide mankind to
any haven of prosperity and happiness. Great rearrangenaents
are necessary, and a systematic legal subordination of personal
self-seeking to the public good. So far most reasonable men are
socialists. But these are only preliminary propositions. How
far has socialism and modern thought generally gone towards
working out the conception of this new political and social order,
of which our world admittedly stands in need ? We are obliged
to answer that there is no clear conception of the new state to-
wards which we vaguely struggle, that our science of htiman
relationships is still so crude and speculative as to leave us with-
out definite guidance upon a score of primarily important issues.
In 1920 we are no more in a position to set up a scientifically
conceived political system in the world than were men to set
up an electric power station in 1820. They could not have done
that then to save their lives.
The Marxist system points us to an accumulation of revolu-
tionary forces in the modem world. These forces will continu-
ally tend towards revolution. But Marx assumed too hastily
that a revolutionary impulse would necessarily produce an
ordered state of a new and better kind. A revolution may stop
half-way in mere destruction. No socialist sect has yet defined
* Wells, Russia in the Shadows,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 947
its projected government clearly ; tke Bolsheviks in their Rus-
sian experiment seem to have been gxiided by a phrase, the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, and in practice, we are told, Trotsky
and Lenin have proved as autocratic as the less intelligent but
equally v?ell-meaning Tsar, Alexander I. We have been at
some pains to show from our brief study of the French revolu-
tion that a revolution can establish nothing permanent that
has not already been thought out beforehand and apprehended
by the general mind. The French republic, confronted with
unexpected difficulties in economics, currency, and international
relationships, collapsed to the egotisms of the newly rich people
of the Directory, and finally to the egotism of Napoleon. Law
and a plan, steadily upheld, are more necessary in revolutionary
times than in ordinary humdrum times, because in revolution-
ary times society degenerates much more readily into a mere
scramble under the ascendancy of the forcible and cunning.
If in general terms we take stock of the political and social
science of our age, we shall measure something of the prelimi-
nary intellectual task still to be done by mankind before we
can hope to see any permanent constructive achievements emerg-
ing from the mere traditionalism and adventuring that rule
our collective affairs to-day. This Socialism, which professes
to be a complete theory of a new social order, we discover, when
we look into it, to be no more than a partial theory — very
illuminating, so far as it goes — about property. We have already
discussed the relationship of social development to the restric-
tion of the idea of property. There are various schools of
thought which would restrict property more or less completely.
Communism is the proposal to abolish property altogether, or,
in other words, to hold all things in common. Modern Social-
ism, on the other hand — or, to give it a more precise name,
"Collectivism" — does clearly distinguish between personal prop-
erty and collective property. The gist of the socialist proposal
is that land and all the natural means of production, transit,
and distribution should be collectively owned. Within these
limits there is to be much free private ownership and unre-
stricted personal freedom. Given efficient administration, it
may be doubted whether many people nowadays would dispute
that proposal. But socialism has never gone on to a thorough
examination of that proviso for efficient administration.
Again, what community is it that is to own the collective
948 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
property J is it to be the sovereign or the township or the county
or the nation or mankind ? Socialism makes no clear answer.
Socialists are very free with the word "nationalize," but we
have been subjecting the ideas of "nations" and "nationalism"
to some destructive criticism in this Outline. If socialists
object to a single individual claiming a mine or a great stretch
of agricultural land as his own individual property, with a
right to refuse or barter its use and profit to others, why
should they permit a single nation to monopolize the mines
or trade routes or natural wealth of the territories in which
it lives, against the rest of mankind ? There seems to be great
confusion in socialist theory in this matter. And unless human
life is to become a mass meeting of the race in permanent ses-
sion, how is the community to appoint its officers to carry on
its collective concerns ? After all, the private owner of land or
of a business or the like is a sort of public official in so far as
his ownership is sanctioned and protected by the community.
Instead of being paid a salary or fees, he is allowed to make a
profit. The only valid reason for dismissing him from his own-
ership is that the new control to be substituted will be more
efficient and profitable and satisfactory to the community. And,
being dismissed, he has at least the same claim to consideration
from the community that he himself has shown in the past
to the worker thrown out of employment by a mechanical
invention.
This question of administration, the sound and adequate bar
to much immediate socialization, brings us to the still largely
unsolved problem of human association; how are we to secure
the best direction of human affairs and the maximum of will-
ing co-operation with that direction? This is ultimately a
complex problem in psychology, but it is absurd to pretend
that it is an insoluble one. Jhere must be a definite best, which
is the right thing, in these matters. But if it: is not insoluble,
it is equally unreasonable to pretend that it has been solved.
The problem in its completeness involves the Working out: of the
best methods in the following departments, and their complete
correlation: —
(i) Education. — The preparation of the individual for an
understanding and willing co-operation in the world's affairs.
(ii) Information. — The continuar truthful presentation of
public affairs to the individual for his judgment and approval.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 949
Closely connected ■with this need for current information is
the codification of the law, the problem of keeping the law plain,
clear, and accessible to all.
(iii) Representation. — The selection of representatives and
agents to act in the collective interest in harmony with the
general will based on this education and plain information.
(iv) The Executive. — The appointment of executive agents
and the maintenance of means for keeping them responsible
to the community, without at the same time hampering intelli-
gent initiatives.
(v) Thought and Research. — The systematic criticism of af-
fairs and laws to provide data for popular judgments, and
through those judgments to ensure the secular improvement
of the human organization.
These are the five heads under which the broad problem of
human society presents itself to us. In the world around us
we see makeshift devices at work in all those branches, ill co-
ordinated one with another and unsatisfactory in themselves.
We see an educational system meanly financed and equipped,
badly organized and crippled by the interventions and hostilities
of religious bodies ; we see popular information supplied chiefly
by a venal press dependant upon advertisements and subsidies ;
we see farfeical methods of election returning politicians to
power as unrepresentative as any hereditary ruler or casual
conqueror; everywhere the executive is more or less influenced
or controlled by groups of rich adventurers, and the pursuit of
political and social science and of public criticism is still the
work ,of devoted and eccentric individuals rather than a recog-
nized and honoured function in the state. There is a gigantic
task before right-thinking men in the cleansing and sweetening
of the politician's stable ; and until it is done, any complete
realization of socialism is impossible. While private adven-
turers control the political life of the state^ it is ridiculous to
think of the state taking over collective economic interests from
private adventurers.
Not only has the socialist movement failed thus far, to pro-
duce a scientifically reasoned scheme for the correlation of edu-
cation, law, and the exercise of public power, but even in the
economic field, as we have already pointed out, creative forces
Wait for the conception of a right organization of credit and a
right method of payment and interchange. It is a truism that
950 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the willingness of the worker depends, among other things,
upon his complete confidence in the purchasing power of the
currency in which he is paid. As this confidence goes, work
ceases, except in so far as it can be rewarded by payment in
goods. But there is no sufficient science of currency and busi-
ness, psychology to restrain governments from the most disturb-
ing interferences with the public credit and with the circulation.
And such interferences lead straight to the cessation of work,
that is, of the production of necessary things. Upon such vital
practical questions it is scarcely too much to say that the mass
of those socialists who would recast the world have no definite
ideas at all. Yet in a socialist world quite as much as in any
other sort of world, people must be paid, money for their work
rather than be paid in kind if any such thing as personal free-
dom is to continue. Here, too, there must be an ascertainable
right thing to do. Until that is determined, history in these
matters will continue to be not so much a record of experiments
as of flounderings.
And in another direction the social and political thinking
of the nineteenth century was, in the face of the vastness of the
mechanical revolution, timid, limited, and insufficient, and that
was in regard to international relations. The reader of social-
istic literature will find the socialists constantly writing and
talking of the "State," and never betraying any realization
that the "State" might be all sorts of organizations in all sorts
of areas, from the republic of San Marino to the British Em-
pire. It is true that Karl Marx had a conception of a solidarity
of interests between the workers in all the industrialized coun-
tries, but there is little or no suggestion in Marxist socialism
of the logical corollary of this, the establishment of a demo-
cratic world federal government (with national or provincial
"state" governments) as a natural consequence of his projected
social revolution. At most there is a vague aspiration. But if
there is any logic about the Marxist, it should be his declared
political end for which he should work without ceasing. Put
to the test of the war of 1914, the socialists of almost all the
European countries showed that their class-conscious interna-
tionalism was veneered very thinly indeed over their patriotic
feelings, and had to no degree replaced them. Everywhere
during the German war socialists denounced that war as made
by capitalist governments, but it produces little or no perma-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 951
nent effect to denounce a government or a world system unless
you have a vcorking idea of a better government and a better
system to replace it.
We state these things here because they are facts, and a living
and necessary part of a contemporary survey of human history.
It is not our task either to advocate or controvert socialism.
But it is in our picture to note that political and social life
are, and must remain, chaotic and disastrous, v^ithout the devel-
opment of some such constructive scheme as socialism sketches,
and to point out clearly how far away the world is at present
from any such scheme. An enormous amount of intellectual
toil and discussion and education and many years — ^whether
decades or centuries, no man can tell — ^must intervene before a
new order, planned as ships and railways are planned, runs, as
the cables and the postal deliveries run, over the whole surface
of our earth. And until such a new order draws mankind to-
gether with its net, human life, as we shall presently show by
the story of the European wars since 1854, must become more
and more casual, dangerous, miserable, anxious, and disastrous
because of the continually more powerful and destructive war
methods the continuing mechanical revolution produces.
§ 6^
While the mechanical revolution which the growth of phys-
ical science had brought about was destroying the ancient social
classification of the civilized state which had been evolved
through thousands of years, and producing new possibilities and
new ideals of a righteous human community and a righteous
world order, a change at least as great and novel was going on
in the field of religious thought. That same growth of scien-
tific knowledge from which sprang the mechanical revolution
was the moving cause of these religious disturbances.
In the opening chapters of this Outline we have given the
main story of the Record of the Eocks ; we have shown life for
the little beginning of consciousness that it is in the still wait-
ing vastness of the void of space and time. But before the
end of the eighteenth century, this enormous prospect of the
" For a closely parallel view of religion to that given here, see Outspoken
Essays, by Dean Inge, Essays VIII and IX on 8t. Paul and on InsUtu-
tionq,li9m wn4 Mysticism,
952 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
past whicli fills a modem mind with humility ^nd illiinitable
hope was hidden from the general consciousness of our race.
It was veiled by the curtain of a Sumerian legend. The heavens
were no more than a stage background to a little drama of
kings. Men had been too occupied with their own private pas-
sions and personal affairs to heed the intimations of their own
great destiny that lay about them everywhere.
They learnt their true position in space long before they
placed themselves in time. We have already named the earlier
astronomers, and told how Galileo was made to recant his as-
sertion that the earth moved round the sun. He was made
to do so by the church, and the church was stirred to make him
do so because any doubt that the world was the centre of the
universe seemed to strike fatally at the authority of Christianity.
Now, upon that matter the teller of modern history is obliged
to be at once cautious and bold. He has to pick his way be-
tween cowardly evasion on the one hand, and partisanship on
the other. As far as possible he must confine himself to facts
and restrain his opinions. Yet it is well to remember that nor
opinions can be altogether restrained. The writer has his own
very strong and definite persuasions, and the reader must bear
that in mind. It is a fact in history that the teaching of Jesus
of Nazareth had in it something profoundly new and creative;
he preached a new Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts and in the
world of men. There was nothing in his teaching, so far as
we can judge it at this distance' of time; to clash or interfiere
with any discovery or expansion of the history of the world
and mankind. But it is equally a fact in history that Sti. Paul
and his successors added to or completed or imposed upon or
substituted another doctrine for — as you may prefer to think — '
the plain and profoundly revolutionary teachings of Jesus by
expounding a subtle and complex theory of salvation, a salva-
tion which could be attained very largely by belief and formali-
ties, without any serious disturbance of the believer's ordinary
habits and occupations, and that this Pauline teaching did
involve very definite beliefs about the history of the world and
man. It is not the business of the historian to controvert or
explain these matters; the question of their ultimate signifi-
cance depends upon the theologian; the historian's concern is
merely with the fact that official Christianity throughout the
world adopted St. Paul's view so plainly expressed in his epis-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 953
ties and so untraceable in the gospels, tliat the meaning of
religion lay not in the future, but in the past, and that Jesus
was not so much a teacher of wonderful new things, as a pre-
destinate divine blood sacrifice of deep mystery and sacredness
made in atonement of a particular historical act of disobedience
to the Creator committed by our first parents, Adam and Eve,
in response to the temptation of a serpent in the Garden of
Eden. Upon the belief in that Fall as a fact, and not upon
the personality of Jesus. of Nazareth, upon the theories of Paul,
and not upon the injunctions of Jesus, doctrinal Christianity
built itself.
We have already noted that this story of the special creation
of the world and of Adam and Eve and the serpent was also
an ancient Babylonian story, and probably a still more ancient
Sumerian story, and that the Jewish sacred books were the
medium by which this very ancient and primitive "heliolithic"
serpent legend entered Christianity. Wherever official Chris-
tianity has gone, it has taken this story with it. It has tied it-
self up to that story. Until a century and less ago the whole
Christianized world felt bound to believe and did believe, that
the universe had been specially created in the course of six days
by the word of God a few thousand years before — according
to Bishop Ussher, 4004 b.c. (The Universal History, in forty-
two volumes, published in 1779 by a group of London book-
sellers, discusses whether the precise date of the first day of
Creation was March 21st or September- 21st, 4004 b.o;, and
inclines to the view that the latter was the more probable
season.)
Upon this historical assumption rested the religious fabric
of the Western and Westernized civilization, and yet the whole
world was littered, the hills, mountains, deltas, and seas
were bursting with evidence of its utter absurdity. The re-
ligious life of the leading nations, still a very intense and sin-
cere religious life, was going on in a house of history built
upon sand.
There is frequent recognition in classical literature of a
sounder cosmogony. Aristotle was aware of the broad princi-
ples of modern geology, they shine through the speculations of
Lucretius, and we have noted also Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-
1519) lucid interpretation of fossils. A Frenchman, Descartes
(1596-1650), speculated boldly upon the incandescent begin-
954 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
nings of our globe, and a Dane, Steno (1631-87), began the
collection of fossils and the description of strata. But it was
only as the eighteenth century drew to its close that the syste-
matic study of geology assumed such proportions as to affect
the general authority of the Bible version of that ancient
Sumerian narrative. Contemporaneously with the Universal
History quoted above, a great French naturalist, Buffon, was
writing upon the Epochs of Nature (1778), and boldly extend-
ing the age of the world to 70,000 or 75,000 years. He divided
his story into six epochs to square with the six days of the Crea-
tion story. These days, it was argued, were figurative days;
they were really ages. There was a general disposition to do
this on the part of the new science of geology. By that accom-
modating device, geology contrived to make a peace with ortho-
dox religious teaching that lasted until the middle of the nine-
teenth century.
We cannot trace here the contributions of such men as Hut-
ton and Playfair and Sir Charles Lyell, and the Frenchmen
Lamarck and Ciivier, in unfolding and developing the record
of the rocks. It was only slowly that the general intelligence
of the Western world was awakened to two disconcerting facts :
firstly, that the succession of life in the geological record did
not correspond to the acts of the six days of creation; and,
secondly, that the record, in harmony with a mass of biological
facts, pointed away from the Bible assertion of a separate crea-
tion of each species straight towards a genetic relation between
all forms of life, in which even man was included! The im-
portance of this last issue to the existing doctrinal system was
manifest. If all the animals and man had been evolved in this
ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden,
and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire
historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and
the reason for an atonement, upon which the current teaching
based Christian emotion and morality, collapsed like a house
of cards.
It was with something like horror, therefore, that great
numbers of honest and religious-spirited men followed the work
of the English naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809^82) ; in
1859 he published his Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, a powerful and permanently valuable exposition of
that conception of the change and development of species which
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 955
we have sketched briefly in Chapter III; and in 1871 he com-
pleted the outline of his work with the Descent of Man, which
brought man definitely into the same scheme of development
with the rest of life.
Many men and women are still living who can remember
the dismay and distress among ordinary intelligent people in the
Western communities as the invincible case of the biologists
and geologists against the orthodox Christian cosmogony un-
folded itself. The minds of many resisted the new knowledge
instinctively and irrationally. Their whole moral edifice was
built upon false history; they were too old and set to rebuild
it ; they felt the practical truth of their moral convictions, and
this new truth seemed to them to be incompatible with that.
They believed that to assent to it would be to prepare a moral
collapse for the world. And so they produced a moral collapse
by not assenting to it. The universities in England particu-
larly, being primarily clerical in their constitution, resisted the
new learning very bitterly. During the seventies and eighties
a stormy controversy raged throughout the civilized world.
The quality of the discussions and the fatal ignorance of the
church may be gauged by a description in Hackett's Comnwnr
place Book of a meeting of the British Association in 1860, at
which Bishop Wilberforce assailed Huxley, the great champion
of the Darwinian views, in this fashion.
Facing "Huxley with a smiling insolence, he begged to know,
was it through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed
his descent from a monkey? Huxley turned to his neighbour,
and said, 'The Lord hath delivered him into my hands.' Then
he stood before us and spoke these tremendous words, 'He
was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he
would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great
gifts to obscure the truth.' " (Another version has it : "I
have certainly said that a man has no reason to be ashamed
of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor
whom I should feel ashamed in recalling, it would rather be
a man of restless and versatile intellect who plunges into scien-
tific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to
obscure them by an aimless rhetoric and distract the attention
of his audience from the real point at issue by eloquent di-
gressions and skilled appeals to prejudice.") These words
were certainly spoken with passion. The scene was one of
956 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
great excitement. A lady fainted, says Hackett. . . . Such
was the temper of this controversy.
The Darwinian movement took formal Christianity una-
wares, suddenly. Formal Christianity was confronted with a
clearly demonstrable error in her theological statements. The
Christian theologians were neither wise enough nor mentally
nimble enough to accept the new truth, modify their formulae,
and insist upon the living and undiminished vitality of the
religious reality those formulae had hitherto sufficed to express.
For the discovery of man's descent from sub-human forms does
not even remotely touch the teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yet priests and bishops raged at Darwin ; foolish attempts were
made to suppress Darwinian literature and to insult and dis-
credit the exponents of the new views. There was much wild
talk of the "antagonism" of religion and science. Now m all
ages there have been sceptics in Christendom. The Emperor
Frederick II was certainly a sceptic ; in the eighteenth century
Gibbon and Voltaire were openly anti-Christian, and their writ-
ings influenced a number of scattered readers. But these were
exceptional people. . . . Now the whole of Christendom became
as a whole sceptical. This new controversy touched everybody
who read a book or heard intelligent conversation. A new
generation of young people grew up, and they found the de-
fenders of Christianity in an evil temper, fighting their cause
without dignity or fairness. It was the orthodox theology that
the new scientific advances had compromised, but the angry
theologians declared that it was religion.
In the end men may discover that religion shines all the
brighter for the loss of its doctrinal wrappings, but to the young
it seemed as if indeed there had been a conflict of science and
religion, and that in that conflict science had won.
The immediate effect of this great dispute upon the ideas
and methods of people in the prosperous and influential classes
throughout the westernized world was very detrimental indeed.
The new biological science was bringing nothing constructive
as yet to replace the old moral stand-bys. A real de-moraliza-
tion ensued. The general level of social life in those classes'
was far higher in the early twentieth than in the early seven-
teenth century, but in one respect, in respect to disinterested-
ness and conscientiousness in these classes, it is probable that
the tone of the earlier age was better than the latter. In the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 957
owning and active classes of the seventeenth century, in spite
of a few definite "infidels," there was probably a much higher
percentage of men and women who prayed sincerely, who
searched their souls to find if they had done evil, and who were
prepared to suffer and make great sacrifices for what they con-
ceived to be right, than in the opening years of the twentieth
century. There was a real loss of faith after 1859. The true
gold of religion was in many cases thrown away with the
worn-out purse that had contained it for so long, and it was not
recovered. Towards the close of the nineteenth century a crude
misunderstanding of Darwinism had become the fundamental
mindstuff of great masses of the "educated" everywhere. The
seventeenth-century kings and owners and rulers and leaders had
had the idea at the back of their minds that they prevailed by
the will of God ; they really feared him, they got priests to put
things right for them with him; when they were wicked, they
tried not to think of him. But the old faith of the kings, own-
ers, and rulers of the opening twentieth century had faded
under the actinic light of scientific criticism. Prevalent peo-
ples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they
prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the
strong and cuiming get the better of the weak and confiding.
And they believed further that they had to be strong, energetic,
ruthless, "practical," egotistical, because God was dead, and had
always, it seemed, been dead — ^which was going altogether
further than the new knowledge justified.
They soon got beyond the first crude popular misconception
of Darwinism, the idea that every man is for himself alone.
But they stuck at the next level. Man, they decided,' is a social
animal like the Indian hunting dog. He is much more than a
dog — but this they did not see. And just as in a pack it is
necessary to bully and subdue the younger and weaker for the
general good, so it seemed right to them that the big dogs of the
human pack should bully and subdue. Hence a new scorn for
the ideas of democracy that had ruled the earlier nineteenth
century, and a revived admiration for the overbearing and the
cruel. It was quite characteristic of the times that Mr. Kipling
should lead the children of the middle and upper-class British
public back to the Jungle, to learn "the law," and that in his
book Stalky and Co. he should give an appreciative description
ojf the torture of two boys by three others, whpibave by a sub-
958 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
terfuge tied up their victims helplessly before revealing their
hostile intentions.
It is worth while to give a little attention to this incident in
Stalky and Co., because it lights up the political psychology of
the British Empire at the close of the nineteenth century very
vividly. The history of the last half century is not to be under-
stood without an understanding of the mental twist which this
story exemplifies. The two boys who are tortured are "bullies,"
that is the excuse of their tormentors, and these latter have
further been incited to the orgy by a clergyman. Nothing can
restrain the gusto with which they (and Mr. Kipling) set
about the job. Before resorting to torture, the teaching seems
to be, see that you pump up a little justifiable moral indigna-
tion, and all will be well. If you have the authorities on your
side, then you cannot be to blame. Such, apparently, is the
simple doctrine of this typical imperialist. But every bully
has to the best of his ability followed that doctrine since the
human animal developed sufficient intelligence to be consciously
cruel.
Another point in the story is very significant indeed. The
head master and his clerical assistant are both represented as
being privy to the affair. They want this bullying to occur.
Instead of exercising their own authority, they use these boys,
who are Mr. Kipling's heroes, to punish the two victims. Head
master and clergyman turn a deaf ear to the complaints of an
indignant mother. All this Mr. Kipling represents as a most
desirable state of affairs. In this we have the key to the ugliest,
most retrogressive, and finally fatal idea of modem imperial-
ism ; the idea of a tacit conspiracy between the law and illegal
violence. Just as the Tsardom wrecked itself at last by a fur-
tive encouragement of the ruffians of the Black Hundreds, who
massacred Jews and other people supposed to be inimical to
the Tsar, so the good name of the British Imperial Government
has been tainted-^and is still tainted — ^by an illegal raid made
by Doctor Jameson into the Transvaal before the Boer War,
by the adventures which we shall presently describe, of Sir
Edward Carson and Mr. F. E. Smith (now Lord Birkenhead),
in Ireland and by the tacit connivance of the British govern-
ment in Ireland with the "reprisals" undertaken by the loyalists
against the perpetrators of Sinn Fein outrages. By such trea-
sons against their subjects, empires destroy themselves. The
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 959
true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies and navies,
but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truth-
ful and legal. So soon as a government departs from that
standard, it ceases to be anything more than "the gang in pos-
session," and its days are numbered.
We have already pointed out that there must be a natural
political map of the world which gives the best possible geo-
graphical divisions for human administrations. Any other po-
litical division of the world than this natural political map will
necessarily be a misfit, and must produce stresses of hostility
and insurrection tending to shift boundaries in the direction
indicated by the natural political map. These would seem to
be self-evident propositions were it not that the diplomatists at
Vienna evidently neither believed nor understood anything of
the sort, and thought themselves as free to carve up the world
as one is free to carve up such a boneless structure as a cheese.
Nor were these propositions evident to Mr. Gladstone. Most
of the upheavals and conflicts that began in Europe as the world
recovered from the exhaustion of the Napoleonic wars were
quite obviously attempts of the ordinary common men to get rid
of governments that were such misfits as to be in many cases
intolerable. Generally the existing governments were misfits
throughout Europe because they were not socially representa-
tive, and so they were hampering production' and wasting human
possibilities ; but when there were added to these universal an-
noyances differences of religion and racial culture between rul-
ers and ruled (as in most of Ireland), differences in race and
language (as in Austrian North Italy and throughout most of
the Austrian Empire), or differences in all these respects (as
in Poland and the Turkish Empire in Europe), the exaspera-
tion drove towards bloodshed. Europe was a system of gov-
erning machines abominably adjusted. From the stresses of
this maladjustment the various "nationalist" movements that
played so large a part in the history of the nineteenth century
drew their driving force.
What is a nation? What is nationality? If our story of
the world has demonstrated anything, it has demonstrated the
mingling of races and peoples, the instability of human divi-
960 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
sions, the swirling variety of human groups and human ideas
of association. A nation, it has been said, is an accumulation
of human beings who think they are one people; but we are
told that Ireland is a nation, and Protestant Ulster certainly
does not share that idea; and Italy did not think it was one
people until long after its unity was accomplished. When the
writer was in Italy in 1916, people were saying: "This war
will make us one nation." Again, are the English a nation oi
have they merged into a "British nationality" ? Scotchmen do
not seem to believe very much in this British nationality. It
cannot be a community of race or language that constitutes a
nation, because the Gaels and the Lowlanders make up the
Scotch "nation"; it cannot be a common religion,, for Eng-
land has scores; nor a common literature, or why is
Britain separated from the United States, and the Argentine
Republic from Spain ? We may suggest that a nation is in
effect any assembly, mixture, or confusion of people which is
either afflicted by or wishes to be afflicted by a foreign office
of its own, in order that it should behave collectively as if it
alone constituted humanity. We have already traced the de-
velopment of the Machiavellian monarchies into the rule of
their foreign offices, playing the part of "Powers." The
"nationality" which dominated the political thought of the
nineteenth century is really no more than the romantic and'
emotional exaggeration of the stresses . produced by the, dis-
cord of the ■■ natural political map with unsuitable political
arrangemeiats.
Throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly through-
out its latter half, there has been a great working up of this
nationalism in the world. All men are by nature piartisans and
patriots, but the natural tribalism of men in the nineteenth cen-
tury was unnaturally exaggerated, it was fretted and over-
stimulated and inflamed and forced into the nationalist mould.
Nationalism was taught in schools, emphasized by newspapers,
preached and mocked and sung into men. . Men were brought
to feel that they were as improper without a nationality as with-
out their clothes in a crowded assembly. Oriental peoples who
had never heard of nationality before, took to it as they took
to the cigarettes and bowler hats of the west. India, a galaxy
of contrasted races, religions, and cultures, Dravidian, Mongo-
lian, and Aryan, became a "nation." There were pferpleximg
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
961
962 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
cases, of course, as when a young Whitechapel Jew had to decide
whether he belonged to the British or the Jewish nation. Cari-
cature and political cartoons played a large part in this eleva-
tion of the cult of these newer and bigger tribal gods — for such
indeed the- modern "nations" are— to .their ascendancy over
the imagination of the nineteenth century. If one turns over
the pages of • Punch, that queer contemporary record of the
British soul, which has lasted now since, 1841, one finds the
figures. of Britannia, Hibernia, France, and Germahia embrac-
ing, disputing, reproving, rejoicing, grieving. It greatly helped
the diplomatists to carry on, their game of Great Powers to
convey polities in this form to the doubting general intelligence.
To the common man, resentful that his son should be sent
abroad to be shot, it was made clear that instead of this being
merely the result of the obstinacy and greed of two foreign
offices, it was really a necessary part of a righteous inevitable
gigantic struggle between two of thfese dim vast divinities.
France had been wronged by Germania, or Italia was showing
a proper spirit to Austria. The boy's death ceased to appear
an outrage on common sense; it assumed a sort of mythological
dignity. And insurrection could clothe itself in the same ro-
mantic habiliments as diplomacy. Ireland became a Cinderella
goddess, Cathleen ni Houlihan, full of heartrending and unfor-
givable wrongs; young India transcended its realities in the
worship of Bande Mataram.
The essential idea of nineteenth-century nationalism was
the "legitimate claim" of every nation to complete sovereignty,
the claim of every nation to manage all its affairs within its
own territory, regardless of any other nation. The flaw in this
idea is that the affairs and interests of every modern community
extend to the uttermost parts of the earth. The assassination of
Sarajevo in 1914, for example, which caused the great war,
produced the utmost distress among the Indian tribes of Lab-
rador because that war interrupted the marketing of the furs
upon which they relied for such necessities as ammunition,
without which they Could not get sufficient food. A world of
independent sovereign nations means, therefore, a world of per-
petual injuries, a world of states constantly preparing for or wag-
ing war. But concurrently and discordantly with the preaching
of this nationalism there was, among the stronger nationalities,
a, vigorous propagation of another set of ideas, the ideas of im-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 963
perialism, in which a powerful and advanced nation was con-
ceded the right to dominate a group of other less advanced
nations or less politically developed nations or peoples whose
nationality was still undeveloped, who were expected by the
dominating nation to be grateful for its protection and domi-
nance. This use of the word empire was evidently a different
one from its former universal significance. The new empires
did not even pretend to be a continuation of the world empire
of Rome.
These two ideas of nationality and, as the crown of
national success, "empire," ruled European political thought,
ruled indeed the political thought of the world, throughout the
latter half of the nineteenth century, and ruled it to the prac-
tical exclusion of any wider conception of a common human
welfare. They were plausible and dangerously unsound work-
ing ideas. They represented nothing fundamental and inal-
terable in human nature, and they failed to meet the new needs
of , world controls and v^orld security that the mechanical revo-
lution was every day making more imperative. They were
accepted because people in general had neither the sweeping
views that a study of world history can give, nor had they
any longer the comprehensive charity of a world religion. Their
danger to all the routines of ordinary life was not reialized until
it was too late.
§ 8
After : the middle of the nineteenth century, this world of
new powers and old ideas, this fermenting new wine in the
old bottles of diplomacy, broke out through the flimsy restraints
of the Treaty of Vienna into a series of wars. By an ironical
aqcident the new system of disturbances was preceded by a
peace festival:in London, the Great Exhibition of 1851,
The moving spirit in this exhibition was Prince Albert of
Saxe-Cpburg-Qotha, the nephew of Leopold I, the German king
■who had been placed upon the Belgian throne in 1831, and
who ^as also the maternal uncle of the young Queen Victoria
of England. She had become queen in 183Y at the^ age of
eighteen. The two young cousins — ^they were of the same age —
had married in 1840 under their uncle's auspices, and Prince
Albert was known to the British as the "Prince Opnsprt."
964 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
He was a young man of sound intelligence and exceptional
education, and he seems to have been greatly shocked by the
mental stagnation into which England had sunken. Oxford
and Cambridge, those once starry centres, were still recovering
but slowly from the intellectual ebb of the later eighteenth cen-
tury. At neither university did the aniiual matriculations
number more than four hundred. The examinations were for
the most part mere viva voce ceremonies. Except for two col-
leges in London (the University of London) and one in Dur-
ham, this was all the education on a university footing that
England had to offer. It was very largely the initiative of this
scandalized young German who had married the British queen
which produced the university commission of 1850, and it
was with a view to waking up England further that he promoted
the first International Exhibition which was to afford some
opportunity for a comparison of the artistic and industrial
products of the various European nations.
The project was bitterly opposed. In the House of Com-
mons it was prophesied that England would be overrun by
foreign rogues and revolutionaries who would corrupt the
morals of the people and destroy all faith and loyalty in the
country.
The exhibition was held in Hyde Park in a great building
of glass and iron — ^which afterwards was re-erected as the
Crystal Palace. Financially it was a great success. It made
many English people realize for the first time that theirs
was not the only industrial country in the world, and that
commercial prosperity was not a divinely appointed British
monopoly. There was the clearest evidence of a Europe recover-
ing steadily from the devastation of the Napoleonic wars, and
rapidly overtaking the British lead in trade and manufacture.
It was followed directly by the organization of a Science and
Art Department (1853), to recover, if possible, the educational
leeway that Britain had lost.
The exhibition released a considerable amount of interna-
tional talk and sentiment. It had already found expressjon in
the work of such young poets as Tennyson, who had glanced
down the vista of the future.
"Till the war-drums throb'd no longer, and the battle-flags
were furl'd.
In the Parliament of man, the Tederation of the world."
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 965
There was much shallow optimism on the part of comfortable
people just then. Peace seemed to be more secure than it had
been for a long time. The social gales of 1848 had blown,
and, it seemed, blown themselves out, Nowhere had the revo-
lution succeeded. In France it had been betrayed a second
time by a Bonaparte, a nephew of the first Napoleon, but a
much more supple man. He had posed as a revolutionary
while availing himself of the glainour of his name; he had
twice attempted raids on France during the Orleans monarchy.
He had written a manual of artillery to link himself to his
uncle's prestige, and he had also published an account of what
he allied to be Napoleonic views, Des Idees Napoleomennes
in which he jumbled up socialism, socialistic reform, and
pacificism with the Napoleonic legend. The republic of 1848
was soon in difficulties with crude labour experiments, and in
October he was able to re-enter the country and stand for elec-
tion as President. He took an oath as President to be faithful
to the democratic republic, and to regard as enemies all who
attempted to change the form of government. In two years'
time (December, 1852) he was Emperor of the French.
At first he was regarded with considerable suspicion %
Queen Victoria, or rather by Baron Stockmar, the friend and
servant of King Leopold of Belgium, and the keeper of the
international conscience of the British queen and her consort.
All this group of Saxe-Ooburg-Gotha people had a reasonable
and generous enthusiasm for the unity and well-being of
Germany — ^upon liberal lines — and they were disposed to
be alarmed at this Bonapartist revival. Lord Palmerston,
the British foreign minister, was, on the other hand,
friendly with the usurper from the outset; he offended
the queen by sending amiable dispatches to the French
President Vidthout submitting them for her examination
and so giving her sufficient time to consult Stockmar upon
them, and he was obliged to resign. But subsequently -the
British Court veered round to a more cordial attitude to the
new adventurer. The opening years of his reign promised a
liberal monarchy rather than a Napoleonic career; a govern-
ment of "cheap bread, great public works, and holidays," ^ and
he expressed himself warmly in favour of the idea of national-
ism, which was naturally a very acceptable idea to any liberal
^Albert Thomas in the EnoyclopcBdia Britannioa.
966
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
German intelligence. There had been a brief all-German par-
liament at Frankfort in 1848, which was overthrown in 1849
by the Prussian monarchy.
Before 1848 all the great European courts of the Vienna
settlement had been kept in a kind of alliance by the fear of a
-M^-p cf JURD?^ 1848-1371
Ptougia. to 1866...
..tciriloty 5eiaid
1666-7 -
TJ fifTm an Crm fpHoi-ati nry ISbd..*"* — »
German. 'Empire , 1871 -^^"^
pTaru:e...tgrTitorv acquired
(;5a.vnj^6'Nlcc,1660). .
terrLtcpiy ij33t
(AIsace-LoiraLnii.lS/l -
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(.L^mbardy, 1659. VeiiEtia.. Ii366 i
/Tot Ttalq see. also scparaie map]
second and more universal democratic revolution. After the
re-^olutionary failures of 1848 this fear was lifted, and they
were free to resume the scheming and counter-scheming of the
days before 1789— with the vastly more powerful armies and
fleets the first Napoleonic phase had given them. The game of
Great Powers was resumed with zest, after an interval of sixty
years, and it continued until it produced the catastrophe of
1914. ■ ..'
The Tsar of Russia, Nicholas I, was the first to move to-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
967
wards war. He resumed the traditional thrust of Peter the
Great towards Constantinople. ISTicholas invented the phrase
of the "siek man of Europe" for the Sultan, and, finding an
excuse in the misgovernment of the Christian population of
the Turkish empire, he occupied the Danubian principalities
in 1853. European diplomatists found themselves with a
yy^ KINGDCM of ITALYT ig6i .
question of quite the eighteenth-century pattern. The designs
of Eussia were understood to clash with the designs of France
in Syria, and to threaten the Mediterranean route to India
of Great Britain, and the outcome was an alliance of Erance
and England to bolster up Turkey and a war, the Crimean
War, vphich ended in the repulse of Eussia. One might have
thought that the restraint of Eussia was rather the business of
Austria and Germany, but the passion of the foreign offices of
968 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
France and; England for burning their fingers in Eussian affairs
has always been very difficult to control.
The next phase of interest in this revival of the Great Power
drama was the exploitation by the Emperor Napoleon III and
the king of the small kingdom of Sardinia in North Italy, of
the inconveniences and miseries of the divided state. of Italy,
and particularly of the Austrian rule in the north. The King
of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel, made an old-time bargain for
Napoleon's help in return for the provinces of Nice and Savoy.
The war between France and Sardinia on the one hand, and
Austria on the other, broke out in 1859, and was over in a few
weeks. The Austrians were badly beaten at Magenta and Sol-
ferino. Then, being threatened by Prussia on the Ehirie, Na-
poleon made peace, leaving Sardinia the richer for Lombardy.
The next move in the game of Victor Emmanuel, and of his
chief minister Cavour, was an insurrectionary movement in
Sicily led by the great Italian patriot Garibaldi. Sicily and
Naples were liberated, and all Italy, except only Eome (which
remained loyal to the Pope) and Venetia, which was held by
the Austrians, fell to the king of Sardinia. A general Italian
parliament met at Turin in 1861, and Victor Emmanuel be-
came the first king of Italy.
But now the interest in this game of European, diplomacy
shifted to Germany. Already the common sense of the natural
political map had asserted itself. In 1848 all Germany, in-
cludihg, of course, German Austria, was for a time united under
the Frankfort, parliament. But that sort of union was partic-
ularly offensive to all the German courts and foreign offices;
they did not want a Germany united by the will of its people,
they wanted Germany united by legal and diplomatic action —
as Italy was being united. In 1848 the German parliament
had insisted that the largely German provinces of Schleswig-
Holstein, which had been in the German Bund, must belong
to Germany. It had ordered the Prussian army to occupy
them, and the king of Prussia had refused to take his orders
from the German parliament, and so had precipitated the down-
fall of that body. Now the King of Denmark, Christian IX,
for no conceivable motive except the natural folly of kings,
embarked upon a campaign of annoyance against the Germans
in these two duchies. Prussian affairs were then very much
in, the hands of a minister of the seventeentb-century type,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 969
von Bismarck (count in 1865, prince in 1871), and lie saw
brilliant opportunities in this trouble. He became the cham-
pion of the German nationality in these duchies — it must be
remembered that the King of Prussia had refused to under-
take this role for democratic Germany in 1848 — and he per-
suaded Austria to side with Prussia in a military interven-
tion. Denmark had no chance against these Great Powers;
she was easily beaten and obliged to relinquish the duchies.
Then Bismarck picked a quarrel with Austria for the posses-
sion of these two small states. So he brought about a needless
and fratricidal war of Germans for the greater glory of Prus-
sia and the ascendancy of the Hohenzollem dynasty in Ger-
many. German writers of a romantic turn of mind represent
Bismarck as a great statesman planning the unity of Germany ;
but indeed he was doing nothing of the kind. The unity of
Germany was a reality in 1848. It was and is in the nature
of things. The Prussian monarchy was simply delaying the
inevitable in order to seem to achieve it in Prussian fashion.
That is why, when at last Germany was unified, instead of
bearing the likeness of a modem civilized people, it presented
itself .to the world with the face of this archaic Bismarck, with a
fierce moustache, huge jack boots, a spiked helmet, and a sword.
In this war between Prussia and Austria, Prussia had for
an ally Italy ; most of the smaller German states, who dreaded
the schemes of Prussia, fought on the side of Austria. The
reader will naturally want to know why Napoleon III did
not grasp this admirable occasion for statecraft and come into
the war to his own advantage. All the rules of the Great Power
game .required that he should. But Napoleon, unhappily for
himself, had got his fingers in a trap on the other side of the
Atlantic, and was in no position to intervene.
In order to understand the entanglement of this shifty gen-
tleman, it is necessary to explain that the discord in interests
between the northern and southern states of the American
union, due to the economic difFerences based on slavery, had at
last led to open civil war. The federal system established in
1789 had to fight the secessionist efForts of the confederated
slave-holding states. We have traced the causes of that great
struggle in Chapter XXXVI, § 6 ; its course we cannot relate
here, nor tell how President Lincoln (bom 1809, died 1865,
president from 1861) rose to greatness, how the republic was
970
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
cleansed from the stain of slavery, and how the federal govern-
ment of the union was preserved. The story of President Lin-
coln is in itself a great epic of union and order threatened and
saved, and it is with reluctance that it is treated so briefly here.
But in this Oidline we must cling closely to our main story.
For four long years (1861-65) this American civil war
swung to and fro, through the rich woods and over the hills of
Virginia between Washington and Richmond, until at last the
secessionist left was thrust back and broken, and Sherman, the
unionist general, swept
across Georgia to the sea in
the rear of the main confed-
erate (secessionist) armies.
All the elements of reaction
in Europe rejoiced during
the four years of republican
dissension; the British aris-
tocracy openly sided with
the confederate states, and
the British Government per-
mitted several privateers,
and particularly the Ala-
bama, to be launched in
England to attack the fed-
eral shipping. Napoleon
III was even more rash in his assumption that after all the
new world had fallen before the old. The sure shield of the
Monroe Doctrine, it seemed to him, was thrust aside for good,
the Great Powers might meddle again in America, and the
blessings of an adventurous monarchy be restored there. A
pretext for interference was found in certain liberties taken
with the property of foreigners by the Mexican president. A
joint expedition of French, British, and Spanish occupied
Vera Cruz, but Napoleon's projects were too bold for his allies,
and they withdrew when it became clear that he contemplated
nothing less than the establishment of a Mexican empire. This
he did, after much stiff fighting, making the Archduke Maxi-
milian of Austria Emperor of Mexico in 1864. The French
forces, however, remained in effectual possession of the coun-
try, and a crowd of French speculators poured into Mexico to
exploit its mines and resources.
'Bl^toarck-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 971
But in April, 1865, the civil war in the United States was
brought to an end with the surrender of the great southern
commander, General Lee, at Appomattox Court House, and
the little group of eager Europeans in possession of Mexico
found themselves faced by the victorious federal government
in a thoroughly grim mood, with a large, dangerous-looking
army in hand. The French imperialists were bluntly given
the alternative of war with the United States or clearing out
of America. In effect this was an instruction to go. This
was the entanglement which prevented Napoleon III from
interference between Prussia and Austria in 1866, and this
was the reason why Bismarck precipitated his struggle with
Austria.
While Prussia was fighting Austria, Napoleon III was try-
ing to escape with dignity from the briars of Mexico. He in-
vented a shabby quarrel upon financial grounds with Maxi-
milian and withdrew the French troops. Then, by all the rules
of kingship, Maximilian should have abdicated. But instead
he made a fight for his empire; he was defeated by his re-
calcitrant subjects, caught, and shot as a public nuisance in
1867. So the peace of President Monroe was restored to the
new v?orld. There remained only one monarchy in America,
the empire of Brazil, where a branch of the Portuguese royal
family continued to reign until 1889. In that year the em-
peror was quietly packed off to Paris, and Brazil came into line
with the rest of the continent.
But while Napoleon was busy with his American adventure,
Prussia and Italy were snatching victory over the Austrians
(1866). Italy was badly beaten at Custozza and in the naval
battle of Lissa, but the Austrian army was so crushed hj the
Prussian at the battle of Sadowa that Austria made an abject
surrender. Italy gained the province of Venetia, so making
one more step towards unity — only Eome and Trieste and a
few small towns on the north and north-western frontiers re-
mained—and Prussia became the head of a North German
Confederation, from which Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, Baden,
Hesse, and Austria were excluded.
Four years later came the next step towards the natural
political map of Europe, when Napoleon III plunged into
war against Prussia. A kind of self-destroying foolishness
urged him to do this. He came near to this war in 1867 so
972 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
soon as he was free from Mexico, by demanding Luxembourg
for France; he embarked upon it in 1870, when a cousin oi
the king of Prussia became a candidate for the vacant throne
of Spain. Napoleon had some theory in his mind that Austria,
Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, and the other states outside the North
German Confederation would side with him against Prussia.
He probably thought this would happen because he wanted
it to happen. But since 1848 the Germans, so fax as foreign
meddling was concerned, had been in spirit a united people;
Bismarck was merely imposing the HohenzoUem monarchy,
with pomp, ceremony, and bloodshed, upon accomplished facts.
All Germany sided with Prussia.
Early in August, 1870, the united German forces invaded
France. After the battles of Worth and Gravelotte, one
French army under Bazaine was forced into Metz and sur-
rounded there, and, on September 1st, a second, with which
was Napoleon, was defeated and obliged to capitulate at Sedan.
Paris found herself bare to the invader. For a second time
the promises of Napoleonism had failed France disastrously.
On September 4th, France declared herself a republic again,
and thus regenerated, prepared to fight for existence against
triumphant Prussianism. For though it was a united Ger-
many that had overcome French imperialism, it had Prussia
in the saddle. The army in Metz capitulated in October ; Paris,
after a siege and bombardment, surrendered in January, 1871.
With pomp and ceremony, in the Hall of Mirrors at Ver-
sailles, amidst a great array of military uniforms, the King
of Prussia was declared German Emperor, and Bismarck and
the sword of the HohenzoUerns claimed the credit for that
German unity which a common language and literature had
long since assured.
The peace of Frankfort was a HohenzoUem peace. Bis-
marck had availed himself of the national feeling of Germany
to secure the aid of the South German states, but he had no
grasp of the essential forces that had given victory to him and
to his royal master. The power that had driven Prussia to
victory was the power of the natural political map of Europe
insisting upon the unity of the German-speaking peoples. In
the east, Germany was already sinning against that natural
map by her administration of Posen and other Polish districts
Now greedy for territory, and particularly for iron mines, she
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY &73
annexed a considerable area of French-speaking Lorraine, in-
cluding Metz, and Alsace, which, in spite of its German
speech, was largely French in sympathy. Inevitably there was
a clash between German rulers and French subjects in these
annexed provinces; inevitably the wrongs and bitterness of
the subjugated France of Lorraine echoed in Paris and kept
alive the passionate resentment of the French. . . .
The natural map had already secured political recognition
in the Austrian Empire after Sadowa (1866). Hungary,
which had been subordinated to Austria, was erected into a
kingdom on an equal footing with Austria, and the Empire of
Austria had become the "dual monarchy" of Austria-Hungary.
But in the south-east of this empire, and over the Turkish
empire, the boundaries and subjugations of the conquest period
still remained.
A fresh upthrust of the natural map began in 1875, when
the Christian races in the Balkans, and particularly the Bul-
garians, became restless and insurgent. The Turks adopted
violent repressive measures, and embarked upon massacres of
Bulgarians on an enormous scale. Thereupon Russia inter-
vened (1877), and after a year of costly warfare obliged the
Turks to sign the treaty of San Stefano, which was, • on the
whole, a sensible treaty, breaking up the artificial Turkish
Empire, and to a large extent establishing the natural map.
But it had become the tradition of British policy to thwart
"the designs of Russia" — ^heaven knows why ! — ^whenever Rus-
sia appeared to have a design, and the British foreign office,
under the premiership of Lord Beaconsfield, intervened with
a threat of war if a considerable restoration of the Turks'
facilities for exaction, persecution, and massacre was not made.
For a time war seemed very probable. The British music-halls,
those lamps to British foreign policy,, were lit with patriotic
fire, and the London errand-boy on his rounds was inspired to
chant, with the simple dignity of a great people conscious of
its high destinies, a song declaring that:
"We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo,' if we do,
We got the ships, we got the men, we got the nmnn-aye too "...
and so on to a climax:
"The Euss'ns shall not 'ave Con-stan-te-no — pie."
' Hence "Jingo" for any rabid patriot.
974
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
In consequence of this British opposition, a conference was
assembled in 1878 at Berlin to revise the treaty of San Stefano,
chiefly in the interests of the Turkish and Austrian moii'-
archies, the British acquired the island of Cyprus, to which
they had no sort of right whatever, and which has never been
of the slightest use to them, and Lord Beaconsfield returned
triumphantly from the Berlin Conference, to the extreme ex
to Uhisirate. the.
TREATV^ BERLIN
^^ R U 5 S I A
A U S T R I,
by Kumania . .
CeAzd tyKumamato
JVcH- PriTidp.^of BuZgaria., 6*
aiiiOTiOTTious ppaviju:e£.Rumelia
Proposed 'Big Bulg-arian,'"
franiJier of Trkaiy of Sazi
asperation of Mr. Gladstone, with what the British were given
to understand at the time was "Peace with Honour."
This treaty of Berlin was the second main factor, the peace
of Frankfort being the first, in bringing about the great war
of 1914-18. '
These thirty years after 1848 are years of very great in-
terest to the student of international political methods^ Ke-
leased from their terror of a world-wide insurrection of the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 975
common people, the governments of Europe were doing their
best to resume the game of Great Powers that had been so
rudely interrupted by the American and French revolutions.
But it looked much more like the old game than it was in
reality. The mechanical revolution was making war a far
more complete disturbance of the general life than it had ever
been before, and the proceedings of the diplomatists were ruled,
in spite of their efforts to disregard the fact, by imperatives
that Charles V and Louis XIV had never known. Irritation
with misgovemment was capable of far better organization and
far more effective expression than it had ever been before.
Statesmen dressed this up as the work of the spirit of Na-
tionalism, but there were times and occasions when that cos-
tume wore very thin. The grand monarchs of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries had seemed to be free to do this or
that, to make war or to keep the peace, to conquer this province
or cede that as they willed ; but such a ruler as Napoleon III
went from one proceeding to another with something of the
effect of a man who feels his way among things unseen.
None of these European governments in the nineteenth cen-
tury was in fact a free agent. We look to-day at the maps of
Europe since 1814, we compare them with the natural map,
and we, see that the game the Great Powers played was indeed
a game of foregone conclusions. Whatever arrangements they
made that were in accordance with the natural political map
of the world, and the trend towards educational democracy,
held, and whatever arrangements they made contrary to these
things, collapsed. We are forced, therefore, to the conclusion
that all the diplomatic fussing, posturing, and scheming, all
the intrigue and bloodshed of these years, all the monstrous
turmoil and waste of kings and armies, all the wonderful atti-
tudes, deeds, and schemes of the Oavours, Bismarcks, Disraelis,
Bonapartes, and the like "great men," might very well have
been avoided altogether had Europe but had the sense to in-
struct a small body of ordinarily honest ethnologists, geog-
raphers, and sociologists to draw out its proper boundaries
and prescribe suitable forms of government in a reasonable
manner. The romantic phase in history had come to an end.
A new age was beginning with new and greater imperatives,
and these nineteenth-century statesmen were but pretending
to control events.
976
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY »77
We have suggested that in the political history of Europe
between 1848 and 1878, the mechanical revolution was not
yet producing any very revolutionary changes. The post-revo-
lutionary Great Powers were still going on within boundaries
of practically the same size and with much the same formalities
as they had done in pre-revolutionary times. But where the
increased speed and certainty of transport and telegraphic com-
munications were already producing very considerable changes
of condition and method, was in the overseas enterprises of
Britain and the other European powers, and in the reaction
of Asia and Africa to Europe.
The end of the eighteenth century was a period of , disrupt-
ing empires and disillusioned expansionists. The long and
tedious journey between Britain and Spain and their colonies
in America prevented any really free coming and going be-
tween the home land and the daughter lands, arid so the colonies
separated into new and distinct communities, with distinctive
ideas and interests and even modes of speech. As they grew
they strained more and more at the feeble and uncertain link
of shipping that joined them. Weak trading-posts in the
wilderness, like those of France in Canada, or trading estab-
lishments in great alien communities, like those of Britain in
India, might well cling for bare existence to the, nation which
gave them support and a reason for their existence. That
much and no more seemed to many thinkers in the early part
of the nineteenth century to be the limit set to overseas rule.
In 1820 the sketchy great European "empires" outside of
Europe that had figured so bravely in the maps of the middle
eighteenth century, had shrunken to very small dimensions.
Only the Russian sprawled as large as ever across Asia. It
sprawled much larger in the imaginations of many Europeans
than in reality, because of their habit of studying the geography
of the world upon Mercator's projection, which enormously
exaggerated the size of Siberia.
The British Empire in 1815 consisted of the thinly popu-
lated coastal river and lake regions of Canada, and a great
hinterland of wilderness in which the only settlements as yet
were the fur-trading stations of the Hudson Bay Company,
about a third of the Indian peninsula, under the rule of the
978
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 979
East India Company, the coast districts of the Cape of Good
Hope inhabited by blacks and rebellious-spirited Dutch settlers ;
a few trading stations on the coast of West Africa, the rock
of Gibraltar, the island of Malta, Jamaica, a few minor
slave-labour possessions in the West Indies, British Guiana in
South America, and, on the other side of the world, two dumps
for convicts at Botany Bay in Australia and in Tasmania.
Spain retained Cuba and a few settlements in the Philippine
Islands. Portugal had in Africa some vestiges of her ancient
claims. Holland had various islands and possessions in the
East Indies and Dutch Gniana, and Denmark an island or so
in the West Indies. France had one or two West Indian
Islands and French Guiana. This seemed to be as much as
the European powers needed, or were likely to acquire of
the rest of the world. Only the East India Company showed
any spirit of expansion.
In India, as we have already told, a peculiar empire was
being built up, not by the British peoples, nor by the British
Goverimient, but by this company of private adventurers with
their monopoly and royal charter. The company had been
forced to become a military and political power during the
years of Indian division and insecurity that followed the break-
up of India after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. It had
learnt to trade in states and peoples during the eighteenth cen-
tury. Clive founded, Warren Hastings organized, this strange
new sort of empire; French rivalry was defeated, as we have
already toM; and by 1798, Lord Momington, afterwards the
Marquis Wellesley, the elder brother of that General Wellesley
who became the Duke of Wellington, became Governor-General
of India, and set the policy of the company definitely upon the
line of replacing the fading empire of the Great Mogul by its
own rule. Napoleon's expedition to Egypt was a direct attack
upon the empire of this British company. While Europe was
busy with the Napoleonic wars, the East India Company, under
a succession of governors-general, was playing much the same
role in India that had been played before by Turkoman and
such4ike invaders from the north, but playing it with a greater
efficiency and far less violence and cruelty. And after the peace
of Vienna it went on, levying its revenues, making wars, sending
ambassadors to Asiatic powers, a quasi-independent state, a state,
however, with a marked disposition to send wealth westward.
980 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
In a previous chapter we have sketched the break-up of the
empire of the Great Mogul and the appearance of the Mahratta
states, the Rajput principalities, the Moslem kingdoms of
Oudh and Bengal, and the Sikhs. We cannot tell here in any
detail how the British company made its way to supremacy
sometimes as the ally of this power, sometimes as that, and
finally as the conqueror of all. Its power spread to Assam,
Sind, Oudh. The map of India began to take on the outlines
familiar to the English schoolboy of to-day, a patchwork of
native states embraced and held together by the great provinces
under direct British rule. . . .
Now as this strange unprecedented empire of the company
grew in the period between 1800 and 1858, the mechanical revo-
lution was quietly abolishing the great distance that had once
separated India and Britain. In the old days the rule of the
company had interfered little in the domestic life of the Indian
states; it had given India foreign overlords, but India was
used to foreign overlords, and had hitherto assimilated them.;
these Englishmen came into tlie country young, lived there
most of their lives, and became a part of its system. But now
the mechanical revolution began to alter this state of affairs.
It became easier for the British officials to go home and to
have holidays in Europe, easier for them to bring out wives and
families; they ceased to be Indianized; they remained more
conspicuously foreign and western — and there wsjre more of
them. And they began to interfere more vigorously with Indian
customs. Magical and terrible things like the telegraph and
the railway arrived. Christian missions became offensively
busy. If they did not make very many converts, at least they
made sceptics among the adherents of the older faiths. The
young men in the towns began to be "Europeanized" to the
great dismay of their elders.
India had endured many changes of rulers before, but never
the sort of changes in her ways that these things portended.
The Moslem teachers and the Brahmins were alike alarmed, and
the British were blamed for the progress of mankind. Conflicts
of economic interests grew more acute with the increasing near-
ness of Europe ; Indian industries, and particularly the ancient
cotton industry, suffered from legislation that favoured the
British manufacturer. A piece of incredible folly on the part
of the company precipitated an outbreak. To the Brahmin a
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY dSl
cow is sacred ; to the Moslem the pig is unclean, A new rifle,
needing greased cartridges — which the men had to bite — was
served out to . the company's Indian soldiers ; the troops dis-
covered that their cartridges were greased with the fat of cows
and swine. This discovery precipitated a revolt of the com-
pany's Indian army, the Indian Mutiny (1857). First the
troops mutinied at Meerut. Then Delhi rose to restore the
empire of the Great Mogul. . . .
The British public suddenly discovered India. They became
aware of that little garrison of British people, far away in
that strange land of fiery dust and weary sunshine, fighting for
life against dark multitudes of assailants. How they got there
and what right they had there, the British public did not ask.
The love of one's kin in danger overrides such questions.
There were massacres and cruelties. 185Y was a year of pas-
sionate anxiety in Great Britain. With mere handfuls of
troops the British leaders, and notably Lawrence and Nichol-
son, did amazing things. They did not sit down to be besieged
while the mutineers organized and gathered prestige ; that would
have lost them India for ever. They attacked often against
overwhelming odds. "Clubs, not spades, are trumps," said
Lawrence. The Sikhs, the Gurkhas, the Punjab troops stuck
to the British. The south remained tranquil. Of the massacres
of Cawnpore and Lucknow in Oudh, and how a greatly out-
numbered force of British troops besieged and stormed Delhi,
other histories must tell. By April, 1859, the last embers of
the blaze had been stamped out, and the British were masters
of India again. In no sense had the mutiny been a popular
insurrection ; it was a mutiny merely of the Bengal Army, due
largely to the unimaginative rule of the company officials. Its
story abounds in instances of Indian help and kindness to Brit-
ish fugitives. But it was a warning.
The direct result of the mutiny was the annexation of the
Indian Empire to the British Crown. By the Act entitled
An Act for the Better Oovernment of India, the Governor-
General became a Viceroy representing the Sovereign, and the
place of the company was taken by a Secretary of State for
India responsible to the British Parliament. In 1877, Lord
Beaconsfield, to complete this work, caused Queen Victoria to be
proclaimed Empress of India.
Upon these extraordinary lines India and Britain are linked
m THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
at the present time. India is still the empire of the Great
Mogul, expanded, but the Great Mogul has been replaced by
the "crowned republic" of Great Britain, India is an autocracy
without an autocrat. Its rule combines the disadvantage of
absolute monarchy with the impersonality and irresponsibility
of democratic officialdom. The Indian with a complaint to
make has no visible monarch to go to ; his Emperor is a golden
symbol; he must circulate pamphlets in England or inspire a
question in the British House of Commons. The more occu^pied
Parliament is with British affairs, the less attention India will
receive, and the more she will be at the mercy of her small group
of higher officials.
This is manifestly impossible as a permanent state of affairs.
Indian life, whatever its restraints, is moving forward with the
rest of the world; India has an increasing service of news-
papers, an increasing number of educated people affected by
Western ideas, and an increasing sense of a common grievance
against her government. There has been little or no corre-
sponding advance in the education and quality of the British
official in India during the past seventy years. His tradition
is a high one ; he is often a man of exceptional quality, but the
system is unimaginative and inflexible. Moreover, the military
power that stands behind these officials has developed neither in
character nor intelligence during the last century. No other
class has been so stagnant intellectually as the British military
caste. Confronted with a more educated India, the British
military man, uneasily aware of his educational defects and
constantly apprehensive of ridicule, has in the last few years
displayed a disposition towards spasmodic violence that has had
some very lamentable results. Eor a time the great war alto-
gether diverted what small amount of British public attention
was previously given to India, and drew away the more intelli-
gent military men from her service. During those years, and
the feverish years of unsettlement that followed, things occurred
in India, the massacre of an unarmed crowd at Amritzar in
which nearly two thousand people were killed or wounded,
floggings and humiliating outrages, a sort of official's Terror,
that produced a profound moral shock when at last the Hunter
Commission of 1919 brought them before the home public. In
liberal-minded Englishmen, who have been wont to regard their
empire as an incipient league of free peoples, this revelation
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 983
of the barbaric quality in its administrators produced a very
understandable dismay. . . .
But the time has not yet come for writing the chapter of
history that India is opening for herself. . . . We cannot dis-
cuss here in detail the still unsettled problems of the new India
that struggles into being. Already in the Government of India
Act of 1919 we may have the opening of a new and happier
era that may culminate in a free and willing group of Indian
peoples taking an equal place among the confederated states
of the world. . . .
The growth of the British Empire in directions other than
that of India was by no means so rapid during the earlier half
of the nineteenth century. A considerable school of political
thinkers in Britain was disposed to regard overseas possessions
as a source of weakness to the kingdom. The Australian settl&-
ments developed slowly until in 1842 the discovery of valuable
copper mines, and in 1851 of gold, gave them a new importance.
Improvements in transport were also making Australian wool
an increasingly marketable commodity in Europe. Canada, too,
was not remarkably progressive until 1849; it was troubled
by dissensions between its French and British inhabitants, there
were several serious revolts, and it was only in 1867 that- a
new constitution creating a Federal Dominion of Canada re-
lieved its internal strains. It was the railway that altered the
Canadian outlook. It enabled Canada, just as it enabled the
United States, to expand westward, to market its corn and
other produce in Europe, and in spite of its swift and extensive
growth, to remain in language and sympathy and interests one
community. The railway, the steamship, and the telegraphic
cable were indeed changing all the conditions of colonial
development.
Before 1840, English settlements had already begun in
New Zealand, and a New Zealand Land Company had been
formed to exploit the possibilities of the island. In 1840 New
Zealand also was added to the colonial possessions of the British
Crown.
Canada, as we have noted, was the first of the British pos-
sessions to respond richly to the new economic possibilities the
new methods of transport were opening. Presently the re-
publics of South America, and particularly the Argentine
Republic, began to feel, in their cattle trade and coffee growing,
984 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the increased nearness of the European market. Hitherto the
chief commodities that had attracted the European powers into
unsettled and barbaric regions had been gold or other metals,
spices, ivory, or slaves. But in the latter quarter of the nine-
teenth century the increase of the European populations was
obliging their governments to look abroad for staple foods ; and
the growth of scientific industrialism was creating a demand
for new raw materials, fats and greases of every kind, rubber,
and other hitherto disregarded substances. It was plain that
Great Britain and Holland and Portugal were reaping a great
and growing commercial advantage from their very consider-
able control of tropical and sub-tropical products. After 1871
Germany and presently France and later Italy began to look
for unannexed raw-material areas, or for Oriental countries
capable of profitable modernization.
So began a fresh scramble all over the world, except in the
American region where the Monroe Doctrine now barred such
adventures, for politically unprotected lands. Close to Europe
was the continent of Africa, full of vaguely known possibilities.
In 1850 it was a continent of black mystery; only Egypt and
the coast were known. A map must show the greatness of the
European ignorance at that time. It would need a book as long
as this Outline to do justice to the amazing story of the ex-
plorers and adventurers who first pierced this cloud of dark-
ness, and to the political agents, administrators, traders, set-
tlers, and scientific men who followed in their track. Wonder-
ful races of men like the pigmies, strange beasts like the okapi,
marvellous fruits and flowers and insects, terrible diseases,
astounding scenery of forest and mountain, enormous inland
seas and gigantic rivers and cascades were revealed; a whole
new world. Even remains (at Zimbabwe) of some unrecorded
and vanished civilization, the southward enterprise of an early
people, were discovered. Into this new world came the Euro-
peans, and found the rifle already there in the hands of the
Arab slave-traders, and negro life in disorder. By 1900, as
our second map must show, all Africa was mapped, explored,
estimated, and divided between the European powers, divided
with much snarling and disputation into portions that left each
power uneasy or discontented. Little heed was given to the
welfare of the natives in this scramble. The Arab slaver was
indeed curbed rather than expelled, but the greed for rubber,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
985
which was a wild product collected under compulsion by the
natives in the Belgian Congo, a greed exacerbated by th» pitiless
avarice of the King of the Belgians, and the clash of inexperi-
enced European administrators with the native population in
many other annexations, led to horrible atrocities. No Euro-
pean power has perfectly clean hands in this matter.
We cannot tell here in any detail how Great Britain got
possession of Egypt in 1883, and remained there in spite of
the fact that Egypt was technically a part of the Turkish
Empire, nor how nearly this scramble led to war between France
and Great Britain in 1898, when a certain Colonel Marchand,
crossing Central Africa from the we«t coast, tried at Fashoda
to seize the Upper Nile. In Uganda the French Catholic and
986
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the British Anglican missionaries disseminated a form of Chris-
tianity so heavily charged with the spirit of Napoleon, and so
finely insistent upon the nuances of doctrine, that a few years
after its first glimpse of European civilization, Mengo, the capi-
tal of Uganda, was littered with dead "Protestants" and "Oatho-
ft. S I A
AFRICA
1914
F-A ^
German- — ^^^;^ij
BeZgxan —
Spaidah . . .
ItaKan. —
lies" extremely difficult to distinguish from the entirely un-
spiritual warriors of the old regime.
Nor can we tell how the British Government first let the
Boers, or Dutch settlers, of the Orange Eiver district and the
Transvaal set up independent republics in the inland parts of
South Africa, and then repented and annexed the Transvaal
Republic in 1877; nor how the Transvaal Boers fought for
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 987
freedom and won it after the Battle of Majuba Hill (1881).
Majuba Hill was made to rankle in the memory of the English
people by a persistent press campaign. A war with both re-
publics broke out in 1899, a three years' war enormously costly
to the British people, which ended at last in the surrender of
the two republics.
Their period of subjugation was a brief one. In 1907, after
the downfall of the imperialist government which had con-
quered them, the Liberals took the South African problem in
hand, and these former republics became free and fairly will-
ing associates with Cape Colony and Natal in a confederation
of all the states of South Africa as one self-governing republic
under the British Crown.
In a quarter of a century the partition of Africa was com-
pleted. There remained unannexed three comparatively small
countries: Liberia, a settlement of liberated negro slaves on
the west coast; Morocco, under a Moslem Sultan; and Abys-
sinia, a barbaric country, with an ancient and peculiar form of
Christianity, which had successfully maintained its independ-
ence against Italy at the Battle of Adowa in 1896.
§ 10
It is difficult to believe that any large number of people really
accepted this headlong painting of the map of Africa in Euro-,
pean colours as a permanent new settlement of the world's
affairs, but it is the duty of the historian to record that it was
so accepted. There was but a shallow historical background
to the European mind in the nineteenth century, hardly any
sense of what constitutes an enduring political system, and no
habit of penetrating criticism. The quite temporary advantages
that the onset of the mechanical revolution in the west had given
the European Great Powers over the rest of the old world were
regarded by people, blankly ignorant of the great Mongol con-
quests of the thirteenth and following centuries, as evidences
of a permanent and assured leadership. They had no sense of
the transferability of science and its fruits. They did not
realize that Chinamen and Indians could carry on the work of
research as ably as Frenchmen or Englishmen. They believed
that there was some innate intellectual drive in the west, and
988 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
some innate indolence and conservatism in the east, that assured
the Euisopeans a world predominance for ever.
The consequence of this infatuation -was that the various
European foreign offices set themselves not merely to scramble
with the British for the savage and undeveloped regions of
the world's surface, but also to carve up the populous and
civilized countries of Asia as though these peoples also were
no more than raw material for European exploitation. The
inwardly precarious but outwardly splendid imperialism of
the British ruling class in India, and the extensive and profit-
able possessions of the Dutch in the East Indies, filled the
ruling and mercantile classes of the rival Great Powers with
dreams of similar glories in Persia, in the disintegrating Otto-
man Empire, and in Further India, China, and Japan. In
the closing years of the nineteenth century it was assumed, as
the reader may verify by an examination of the current litera-
ture of the period, to be a natural and inevitable thing that all
the world should fall under European dominion. With a
reluctant benevolent effort the European mind prepared itself
to take up what Mr. Eudyard Kipling called "the White Man's
Burthen" — that is to say, the lordship of the earth. The
Powers set themselves to this enterprise in a mood of jostling
rivalry, with half-educated or illiterate populations at home,
with a mere handful of men, a few thousand at most, engaged in
scientific research, with their internal political systems in a state
of tension or convulsive change, with a creaking economic system
of the most provisiQnal sort, and with their religions far gone in
decay. They really believed that the vast populations of eastern
Asia could be permanently subordinated to such a Europe.
Even to-day there are many people who fail to grasp the es-
sential facts of this situation. They do not realize that in
Asia the average brain is not one whit inferior in quality to
the average European brain ; that history shows Asiatics to be
as bold, as vigorous, as generous, as self-sacrificing, and as
capable of strong collective action as Europeans, and that there
are and must continue to be a great many more Asiatics than
Europeans in the world. It has always been difficult to re-
strain the leakage of knowledge from one population to another,
land now it becomes impossible. Under modern conditions
world-wide economic and educational equalization is in the
long run inevitable. An intellectual and moral rally of the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 989
Asiatics is going on at the present time. The slight leeway of
a century or so, a few decades may recover. At the present
time, for example, for one Englishman who knows Chinese
thoroughly, or has any intimate knowledge of Chinese life and
thought, there are hundreds of Chinamen conversant with every-
thing the English know. The balance of knowledge in favour
of India may be even greater. To Britain, India sends stu-
dents; to India, Britain sends officials, for the most part men
untrained in scientific observation. There is no organization
whatever for the sending of European students, as students, to
examine and inquire into Jndian history, archaeology, and cur-
rent affairs or for bringing learned Indians into contact with
British students in Britain.
Since the year 1898, the year of the seizure of Kiau-Chau
by Germany and of Wei-hai-wei by Britain, and the year after
the Russian taking of Port Arthur, events in China have moved
more rapidly than in any other country except Japan. A great
hatred of Europeans swept like a flame over China, and a po-
litical society for the expulsion of Europeans, the Boxers, grew
up and broke out into violence in 1900. This was an outbreak
of rage and mischief on quite old-fashioned lines. In 1900
the Boxers murdered 250 Europeans and, it is said, nearly
30,000 Christians. China, not for the first time in history,
was under the sway of a dowager empress. She was an igno-
rant woman, but of great force of character and in close sym-
pathy with the Boxers. She supported them, and protected
those who perpetrated outrages on the Europeans. All that
again is what might have happened in 500 b.c. or thereabouts
against the Huns.
Things came to a crisis in 1900. The Boxers became more
and more threatening to the Europeans in China. Attempts
were made to send up additional European guards to the Peking
legations, but this only precipitated matters. The German
minister was shot down in the streets of Peking by a soldier of
the imperial guard. The rest of the foreign representatives
gathered together and made a fortification of the more favour-
ably situated legations and stood a siege of two months. A
combined allied force of 20,000 under a German general then
marched up to Peking and relieved the legations, and the old
Empress fled to Sian-fu, the old capital of Tai-tsung. Some
of the European troops committed grave atrocities upon the
990 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Chinese civil population.^ That brings one up to about the level
of 1850, let us say.
There followed the practical annexation of Manchuria by
Russia, a squabble among the powers, and in 1904 a British
invasion of Tibet, hitherto a forbidden country. But what did
not appear on the surface of these events, and what made all
these events fundamentally different, was that China now con-
tained a considerable number of able people who had a Euro-
pean education and European knowledge. The Boxer Insur-
rection subsided, and then the influence of this new factor
began to appear in talk of a constij;ution (1906), in the sup-
pression of opium-smoking, and in educational reforms. A con-
stitution of the Japanese type came into existence in 1909,
maiking China a limited monarchy. But China is not to be
moulded to the Japanese pattern, and the revolutionary stir con-
tinued. Japan, in her own reorganization, and in accordance
with her temperament, had turned her eyes to the monarchist
west, but China was looking across the Pacific. In 1911 the
essential Chinese revolution began. In 1912 the emperbr abdi-
cated, and the greatest community in the world became a repub-
lic. The overthrow of the emperor was also the overthrow of the
Manchus, and the Mongolian pigtail, which had been worn by
the Chinese since 1644, ceased to be compulsory. It continues,
however, to be worn by a large proportion of the population.
At the present time it is probable that there is more good
brain matter and more devoted men working out the moderniza-
tion and the reorganization of the Chinese civilization than we
should find directed to the welfare of any single European
people. China will presently have a modernized practicable
script, a press, new and vigorous modern universities, a reor-
ganized industrial system, and a growing body of scientific and
economic inquiry. The natural industry and ingenuity of her
vast population will be released to co-operate upon terms of
equality with the Western world. She may have great internal
difficulties ahead of her yet ; of that no man can judge. Never-
theless, the time may not be very distant when the Federated
States of China may be at one with the United States of Amer-
ica and a pacified and reconciled Europe in upholding the
organized peace of the world.
'See Putnam Weale's Indiscreet Letters from Pekin, a partly fictitious
book, but true and vivid in its effects.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 991
§ 11
The pioneer country, however, in the recovery of the Asiatic
peoples was not China, but Japan. We have outrun our story
in telling of China. Hitherto Japan has played but a small part
in this history; her secluded civilization has not contributed
very largely to the general shaping of human destinies; she
has received much, but she has given little. The original in-
habitants of the Japanese Islands were probably a northern peo-
ple with remote Nordic affinities, the Hairy Ainu. But the
Japanese proper are of the Mongolian race. Physically they
resemble the Amerindians, and there are many curious re-
semblances between the prehistoric pottery and so forth of
Japan and similar Peruvian products. It is not impossible that
they are a back-flow from the trans-Pacific drift of the early
heliolithic culture, but they may also have absorbed from the
south a Malay and even a Negrito element.
Whatever the origin of the Japanese, there can be no doubt
that their civilization, their writing, and their literary and
artistic traditions are derived from the Chinese. They were
emerging from barbarism in the second and third century of
the Christian Era, and one of their earliest acts as a people
outside their own country was an invasion of Korea under a
queen Jingo, who seems to have played a large part in estab-
lishing their civilization. Their history is an interesting and
romantic one; they developed a feudal system and a tradition
of chivalry ; their attacks upon Korea and China are an Eastern
equivalent of the English wars in France. Japan was first
brought into contact with Europe in the sixteenth century ; in
1542 some Portuguese reached it in a Chinese junk, and in 1549
a Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, began his teaching there.
The Jesuit accounts describe a country greatly devastated by
perpetual feudal war^ For a time Japan welcomed European
intercourse, and the Christian" missionaries made a great num-
ber of converts. A certain William Adams, of Gillingham, in
Kent, became the most trusted European adviser of the Japa-
nese, and showed them how to build big ships. There were
voyages in Japanese-built ships to India and Peru. Then arose
complicated quarrels between the Spanish Dominicans, the
Portuguese Jesuits, and the English and Dutch Protestants,
each warning the Japanese against the evil political designs of
992 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the others. The Jesuits, in a phase of ascendancy, persecuted
and insulted the Buddhists with great acrimony. These troubles
interwove with the feudal conflicts of the time. In the end the
Japanese came to the conclusion that the Europeans and their
Christianity were an intolerable nuisance, and that Catholic
Christianity in particular was a mere cloak for the political
dreams of the Pope and the Spanish monarchy — already in
possession of the Philippine Islands; there was a great and
conclusive persecution of the Christians, and in 1638 Japan
with the exception of one wretched Dutch factory on the minute
island of Deshima in the harbour of Nagasaki was absolutely
closed to Europeans, and remained closed for over 200 years.
The Dutch on Deshima were exposed to almost unendurable
indignities. They had no intercourse with any Japanese except
the special officials appointed to deal with them. During those
two centuries the Japanese remained as completely cut off from
the rest of the world as though they lived upon another planet.
It was forbidden to build any ship larger than a mere coasting
boat. No Japanese could go abroad, and no European enter
the country.
For two centuries Japan remained outside the main current
of history. She lived on in a state of picturesque feudalism
enlivened by blood feuds, in which about five per cent, of the
population, the samurai, or fighting men, and the nobles and
their families, tyrannized without restraint over the rest of the
population. All common men knelt when a noble passed; to
betray the slightest disrespect was to risk being slashed to death
by his samurai. The elect classes lived lives of romantic adven-
ture without one redeeming gleam of novelty; they loved,
murdered^ and pursued fine points of honour — ^which probably
bored the intelligent ones extremely. We can imagine the
wretchedness of a curious mind, tormented by the craving
for travel and knowledge, cooped up in these islands of empty
romance.
Meanwhile the great world outside went on to wider visions
and new powers. Strange shipping became more frequent, pass-
ing the Japanese headlands; sometimes ships were wrecked and
sailors brought ashore. Through the Dutch settlement at
Deshima, their one link with the outer universe, came warnings
that Japan was not keeping pace with the power of the Western
world. In 1837 a ship sailed into Yedo Bay flying a strange
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 993
flag of stripes and stars, and carrying some Japanese sailors
she had picked up far adrift in the Pacific. She was driven off
by a cannon shot. This flag presently reappeared on other ships.
One in 1849 came to demand the liberation of eighteen ship-
wrecked American sailors. Then in 1853 came four American
warships under Commodore Perry, and refused to be driven
away. He lay at anchor in forbidden waters, and sent messages
to the two rulers who at that time shared the control of Japan.
In 1854 he returned with ten ships, amazing ships propelled
by steam, and equipped with big guns, and he made proposals
for trade and intercourse that the Japanese had no power to
resist. He landed with a guard of 500 men to sign the treaty.
Incredulous crowds watched this visitation from the outer world,
marching through the streets.
Russia, Holland, and Britain followed in the wake of Amer-
ica. Foreigners entered the country, and conflicts between them
and Japanese gentlemen of spirit ensued. A British subject
was killed in a street brawl, and a Japanese town was bom-
barded by the British (1863). A great nobleman whose estates
commanded the Straits of Shimonoseki saw fit to fire on foreign
vessels, and a second bombardment by a fleet of British, French,
Dutch, and American warships destroyed his batteries and scat-
tered his swordsmen. Finally an allied squadron (1865), at
anchor off Kioto, imposed a ratification of the treaties which
opened Japan to the world.
The humiliation of the Japanese by these events was intense,
and it would seem that the salvation of peoples lies largely in
such humiliations. With astonishing energy and intelligence
they set themselves to bring their culture and organization up
to the level of the European powers. Never in all the history
of mankind did a nation make such a stride as Japan then did.
In 1866 she was a mediaeval people, a fantastic caricature of
the extremist romantic feudalism ; in 1899 hers was a completely
Westernized people, on a level with the most advanced Euro-
pean powers, and well in advance of Eussia. She completely
dispelled the persuasion that Asia was in some irrevocable way
hopelessly behind Europe. She made all European progress
seem sluggish and tentative by comparison.
We cannot tell here in any detail of Japan's war with China
in 1894-95. It demonstrated the extent of her Westernization.
She had an eflBcient Westernized army and a small but sound
994 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
fleet. But the significance of her renascence, though it was
appreciated by Britain and the United States, who were already
treating her as if she were a European state, was not under-
stood by the other Great Powers engaged in the pursuit of new
Indias in Asia. Russia was pushing down through Manchuria
to Korea, France was already established far to the south in
Tonkin and Annam, Germany was prowling hungrily on the
look-out for some settlement. The three powers combined to
prevent Japan reaping any fruits from the Chinese war, and
particularly from establishing herself on the mainland at the
points commanding the Japan Sea. She was exhausted by
her war with China, and they threatened her with war.
In 1898 Germany descended upon China, and, making the
murder of two missionaries her excuse, annexed a portion of
the province of Shang-tung. Thereupon Russia seized the Liao-
tung peninsula, and extorted the consent of China to an exten-
sion of her trans-Siberian railway to Port Arthur ; and in 1900
she occupied Manchuria. Britain was unable to resist the imita-
tive impulse, and seized the port of Wei-hai-wei (1898). How
alarming these movements must have been to every intelligent
Japanese a glance at the map will show. They led to a war
with Russia which marks an epoch in the history of Asia, the
close of the period of European arrogance. The Russian people
were, of course, innocent and ignorant of this trouble that was
being made for them half-way round the world, and the wiser
Russian statesmen were against these foolish thrusts ; but a gang
of financial adventurers surrounded the Tsar, including the
Grand Dukes, his cousins. They had gambled deeply in the
prospective looting of Manchuria and China, and they would
suffer no withdrawal. So there began a transportation of great
armies of Japanese soldiers across the sea to Port Arthur and
Korea, and the sending of endless trainloads of Russian peas-
ants along the Siberian railway to die in those distant
battlefields.
The Russians, badly led and dishonestly provided, were
beaten on sea and land alike. The Russian JBaltic Fleet sailed
round Africa to be utterly destroyed in the Straits of Tshu-
shima. A revolutionary movement among the common people
of Russia, infuriated by this remote and reasonless slaughter,
obliged the Tsar to end the war (1905) ; he returned the south-
ern half of Saghalien, which had been seized by Russia in 1875,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
995
996 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
evacuated Manchuria, resigned Korea to Japan. The White
Man was beginning to drop his load in eastern Asia. For some
years, however, Germany remained in uneasy possession of
Kiau-Ohau.
§ 12
We have already noted how the enterprise of Italy in Abys-
sinia had been checked at the terrible battle of Adowa (1896),
in which over 3,000 Italians were killed and more than 4,000
taken prisoner. The phase of imperial expansion at the expense
of organized non-European states was manifestly drawing to a
close. It had entangled the quite sufficiently difficult political
and social problems of Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Ger-
many, and Russia with the affairs of considerable alien, un-
assimilable, and resentful populations ; Great Britain had Egypt
(not formally annexed as yet), India, Burmah, and a variety
of such minor problems as Malta and Shanghai; France had
cumbered herself with Tonkin and Annam in addition to Algiers
and Tunis ; Spain was newly entangled in Morocco ; Italy had
found trouble for herself in Tripoli ; and German overseas im-
perialism, though its "place in the sun" seemed a poor one,
derived what satisfaction it could from the thought of a prospec-
tive war with Japan over Kiau-Ohau. All these "subject" lands
had populations at a level of intelligence and education very
little lower than those of the possessing country; the develop-
ment of a native press, of a collective self-consciousness, and of
demands for self-government was in each case inevitable, and
the statesmen of Europe had been far too busy achieving these
empires to have any clear ideas of what they would do with
them when they got them.
The Western democracies, as they woke up to freedom, dis-
covered themselves "imperial," and were considerably em-
barrassed by the discovery. The East came to the Western capi-
tals with perplexing demands. In London the common English-
man, much preoccupied by strikes, by economic riddles, by
questions of nationalization, municipalization, and the like,
found that his path was crossed and his public meetings at
tended by a large and increasing number of swarthy gentlemen
in turbans, fezes, and other strange headgear, all saying in
effect : "You have got us. The people who represent your gov-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 997
ermnent have destroyed our own government, and prevent us
from making a new one. What are you going to do with us ?"
§ 13
We may note here briefly the very various nature of the con-
stituents of the British Empire in 1914. It was and is a quite
unique political combination; nothing of the sort has ever
existed before.
First and central to the whole system was the "crowned re-
public" of the United British Kingdoms, including (against
the will of a considerable part of the Irish people) Ireland.
The majority of the British Parliament, made up of the three
united parliaments of England, Scotland, and Ireland, deter-
mines the headship, the quality and policy of the ministry, and
determines it largely on considerations arising out of British
domestic politics. It is this ministry which is the effective
supreme government, with powers of peace and war, over all
the rest of the empire.
Next in order of political importance to the British States
were the "crowned republics" of Australia, Canada, N'ew-
foundland (the oldest British possession, 1583), New Zealand,
and South Africa, all practically independent and self-
governing states in alliance with Great Britain, but each with
a representative of the Crown appointed by the Government
in office;
Next the Indian Empire, an extension of the empire of the
Great Mogul, with its dependent and "protected" states reach-
ing now from Baluchistan to Burmah, and including Aden, in
all of which empire the British Cvown and the Indian Office
(under Parliamentary control) played the role of the original
Turkoman dynasty;
Then the ambiguous possession of Egypt, still nominally a
part of the Turkish Empire and still retaining its own monarch,
the Khedive, but under almost despotic British official rule ;
Then the still more ambiguous "Anglo-Egyptian" Sudan prov-
ince, occupied and administered jointly by the British and by
the (British controlled) Egyptian Government;
Then a number of partially self-governing communities, some
British in origin and some not, with elected legislatures and
998 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
an appointed executive, such as Malta/ Jamaica, the Bahamas,
and Bermuda;
Then the Crown colonies, in which the rule of the British
Home Government (through the Colonial Office) verged on
autocracy, as in Ceylon, Trinidad, and Fiji (where there was
an appointed council), and Gibraltar and St. Helena (where
there was a governor) ;
Then great areas of (chiefly) tropical lands, raw-product
areas, with politically weak and under-civilized native commu-
nities, which were nominally protectorates, and administered
either by a High Commissioner set over native chiefs (as in
Basutoland) or over a chartered company (as in Ehodesia). In
some cases the Foreign Office, in some cases the Colonial Office,
and in some cases the India Office had been concerned in acquir-
ing the possessions that fell into this last and least definite class
of all, but for the most part the Colonial Office was now
responsible for them.
It will be manifest, therefore, that no single office and no
single brain had ever comprehended the British Empire as a
whole. It was a mixture of growths and accumulations entirely
different from anything that has ever been called an empire
before. It guaranteed a wide peace and security ; that is why
it was endured and sustained by many men of the "subject"
races — in spite of official tyrannies and insufficiencies, and of
much negligence on the part of the "home" public. Like the
"Athenian empire," it was an overseas empire ; its ways were
sea ways, and its common link was the British ISTavy. Like all
empires, its cohesion was dependent physically upon a method
of communication; the development of seamanship, ship-build-
ing, and steamships between the sixteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies had made it a possible and convenient Pax — the "Pax
Britannica," and fresh developments of air or swift land trans-
port or of undersea warfare might at any time make it incon-
venient or helplessly insecure.
■'A new and much more liberal Maltese constitution was promulgated
in June, 1920, practically putting Malta on the footing of a self-governing
colony.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
999
XXXIX
THE INTERNATIONAL CATASTEOPHE OF 1914
1. The Armed Peace Before the Oreat War. § 2. Imperial
German^/. § 3. The Spirit of Imperialism in Britain and
Ireland. § 4. Imperialism in France, Italy, and the Balkans.
§ 5. Russia a Grand Monarchy. § 6. The United States
and the Imperial Idea. § 7. The^ Immediate Causes of the
Great War. § 8. A Summary of the Great War Up to 1917.
§ 9. The Great War from the Russian Collapse to the Armis-
tice. § 10, The Political, Economical, and Social Disorgani-
zation Caused hy the War. § 11. President Wilson and the
Problems of Versailles. § 12. Summary of the First Cove-
nant of the League of Nations. § 13. A General Outline of
the Treaties of 1919 and 1920.
FOE thirty-six years after the Treaty of San Stefano and
the Berlin Conference, Europe maintained an uneasy
peace within its borders ; there was no war between any
of the leading states during this period. They jostled, brow-
beat, and threatened one another, but they did not come to
actual hostilities. There was a general realization after 1871
that modern war was a much more serious thing than the pro-
fessional warfare of the eighteenth century, an effort of peoples
as a whole that might strain the social fabric very severely, an
adventure not to be rashly embarked upon. The mechanical
revolution was giving constantly more powerful (and expensive)
weapons by land and sea, and more rapid methods of transport ;
and making it more and more impossible 'to carry on warfare
without a complete dislocation of the economic life of the com-
munity. Even the foreign offices felt the fear of war.
But though war was dreaded as it had never been dreaded
in the world before, nothing was done in the way of setting up
1000
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1001
a federal control to prevent Iranian affairs drifting towards war.
In 1898, it is true, the young Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917)
issued a rescript inviting the other Great Powers to a confer-
ence of states "seeking to make the great idea of universal
peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord." His
rescript recalls the declaration of his predecessor, Alexander I,
which gave its tone to the Holy Alliance, and it is vitiated by
the same assumption that peace can be established between sov-
ereign governments rather than by a broad appeal to the heeds
and rights of the one people of mankind. The lesson of the
United States of America, which showed that there could be
neither unity of action nor peace until the thought of the "people
of Virginia" and the "people of Massachusetts" had been swept
aside by the thought of the "people of the United States," went
entirely disregarded in the European attempts at pacification.
Two conferences were held at The Hague in Holland, one in
1899 and another in 1907, and at the second nearly all the
sovereign states of the world were represented. They were"
represented diplomatically, there was no direction of the general
intelligence of the world to their deliberations, the ordinary
common man did not even know that these conferences were
sitting, and for the most part the assembled representatives
haggled cunningly upon points of international law affecting
war, leaving aside the abolition of war as a chimsera. These
Hague Conferences did nothing to dispel the idea that inter-
national life is necessarily competitive. They accepted that idea.
They did nothing to develop the consciousness of a world com-
monweal overriding sovereigns and foreign offices. The interna-
tional lawyers and statesmen who attended these gatherings were
as little disposed to hasten on a world comnaonweal on such a
basis as were the Prussian statesmen of 1848 to welcome an all-
German parliament overriding the rights and "policy" of the
King of Prussia.
In America a series of three Pan-American conferences in
1889, 1901, and 1906 went some way towards the development
of a scheme of international arbitration for the whole American
continent.
The character and good faith of Nicholas II, who initiated
these Hague gatherings, we will not discuss at any length here.
He may have thought that time was on the side of Eussia. But
of the general unwillingness of the Great Powers to face the
1002 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
prospect of a merger of sovereign powers, without wliicli perma-
nent peace projects kxe absurd, there can be no sort of doubt
whatever. It was no cessation of international competition with
its acute phase of war that they desired, but rather a cheapening
of war, which was becoming too costly. Each wanted to econo-
mize the wastage of minor disputes and conflicts, and to establish
international laws that would embarrass its more formidable
opponents in war-time without incommoding itself. These were
the "practical ends they sought at the Hague Conference. It
was a gathering they attended to please Nicholas II, just as the
monarchs of Europe had subscribed to the evangelical proposi-
tions of the Holy Alliance to please Alexander I; and as they
had attended it, they tried to make what they conceived to be
some use of it.
The peace of Frankfort had left Germany Prussianized and
united, the most formidable of all the Great Powers of Europe.
France was humiliated and crippled. Her lapse into repub-
licanism seemed likely to leave her without friends in any
European court, Italy was as yet a mere stripling. Austria
sank now rapidly to the position of a confederate in German
policy. Eussia was vast, but undeveloped; and the British
Empire was mighty only on the sea. Beyond Europe the one
power to be reckoned with by Germany was the United States
of America, growing now into a great industrial nation, but
with no army nor navy worth considering by European
standards.
The new Germany which was embodied in the empire that
had been created at Versailles was a complex and astonishing
mixture of the fresh intellectual and material forces of the
world, with the narrowest political traditions of the European
system. She was vigorously educational ; she was by far the
most educational state in the world; she made the educational
pace for all her neighbours and rivals. In this time of reckon-
ing for Germany, it may help the British reader to a balanced
attitude to recall the educational stimulation for which his coun-
try has to thank first the German Prince Consort and then
German competition. That mean jealousy of the educated
common man on the part of the British ruling class, which no
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1003
patriotic prido or generous impulse had ever sufficed to over-
come, went dovra. before a growing fear of German efficiency.
And Germany took up tlie organization of scientific research
and of the application of scientific method to industrial and
social development with such a faith and energy as no other
community had ever shown before. Throughout all this period
of the armed peace she was reaping and sowing afresh and
reaping again the harvests, the unfailing harvests, of freely
disseminated knowledge. She grew swiftly to become a great
manufacturing and trading power; her steel output outran the
British ; in a hundred new fields of production and commerce,
where intelligence and system was of more account than mere
trader's cunning, in the manufacture of optical glass, of dyes
and of a multitude of chemical products and in endless novel
processes, she led the world.
To the British manufacturer who was accustomed to see in-
ventions come into his works, he knew not whence nor why,
begging to be adopted, this new German method of keeping and
paying scientific men seemed abominably unfair. It was com-
pelling fortune, he felt. It was packing the cards. It was
encouraging a nasty class of intellectuals to interfere in the
affairs of sound business men. Science went abroad from its
first home like an unloved child. The splendid chemical indus-
try of Germany was built on the work of the Englishman Sir
William Perkin, who could find no "practical" English business
man to back him. And Germany also led the way in many
forms of social legislation. Germany realized that labour is a
.national asset, that it deteriorates through unemployment, and
that, for the common good, it has to be taken care of outside
the works. The British employer was still under the delusion
that labour had no business to exist outside the works, and that
the worse such exterior existence was, the better somehow for
him. Moreover, because of his general illiteracy, he was an
intense individualist: his- was the insenate rivalry of the vulgar
mind ; he hated his fellow manufacturers about as much as he
hated his labour and his customers. German producers, on
the other hand, were persuaded of the great advantages of
combination and civility; their enterprises tended to flow
together and assume more and more the character of national
undertakings.
This educating, scientific, and organizing Germany was the
1004 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
natural development of tlie liberal Germany of 1848 ; it had its
roots far back in the recuperative effort that drew its impulse
from the shame of the Napoleonic conquest. All that was good,
all that v^as great in this modern Germany, she owed indeed
to her schoolmasters. But this scientific organizing spirit was
only one of the two factors that made up the new German
Empire. The other factor was the HohenzoUern monarchy
which had survived Jena, vsrhieh had tricked and bested the
revolution of 1848, and which, under the guidance of Bismarck,
had now clambered to the legal headship of all Germany out-
side Austria. Except the Tsardom, no other European state
had so preserved the tradition of the Grand Monarchy of the
eighteenth century as the Prussian. Through the tradition of
Frederick the Great, Machiavelli now reigned in Germany. In
the head of this fine new modem state, therefore, there sat no
fine modern brain to guide it to a world predominance in world
service, but an old spider lusting for power. Prussianized Ger-
many was at once the newest and the most antiquated thing in
Western Europe. She was the best and the wickedest 'state of
her time.
The psychology of nations is still but a rudimentary science.
Psychologists have scarcely begun to study the citizen side of
the individual man. But it is of the utmost importance to our
subject that the student of universal history should give some
thought to the mental growth of the generations of Germans
educated since the victories of 1871. They were naturally in-
flated by their sweeping unqualified successes in war, and by
their rapid progress from comparative poverty to wealth. It .
would have been more than human in them if they had not
given way to some excesses of patriotic vanity. But this re-
action was deliberately seized upon and fostered and devel-
oped by a systematic exploitation and control of school and
college, literature and press, in the interests of the Hohen-
zoUem dynasty. A teacher, a professor, who did not teach and
preach, in and out of season, the racial, moral, intellectual, and
physical superiority of the Germans to all other peoples, their
extraordinary devotion to war and their dynasty, and their
inevitable destiny under that dynasty to lead the world, was
a marked man, doomed to failure and obscurity. German his-
torical teaching became an immense systematic falsification of
the human past, with a view to the Hohenzollem future. All
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1005
other nations were represented as incompetent and decadent;
the Prussians were the leaders and regenerators of mankind.
The young German read this in his school-books, heard it in
church, found it in his literature, had it poured into him with
passionate conviction by his professor. It was poured into
him by all his professors; lecturers in biology or mathematics
would break off from their proper subject to indulge in long
passages of patriotic rant. Only minds of extraordinary tough-
ness and originality could resist such a torrent of suggestion.
Insensibly there was built up in the German mind a conception,
of Germany and its emperor as of something splendid and
predominant as nothing else had ever been before, a godlike
nation in "shining armour" brandishing the "good German
sword" in a world of inferior — and very badly disposed —
peoples. We have told our story of Europe; the reader may
judge whether the glitter of the German sword is exceptionally
blinding. Germania was deliberately intoxicated, she was sys-
tematically kept drunk, with this sort of patriotic rhetoric. It
is the greatest of the Hohenzollern crimes that the Crown con-
stantly and persistently tampered with education, and partic-
ularly with historical teaching. No other modern state has
so sinned against education. The oligarchy of the crowned
republic of Great Britain may have crippled and starved edu-
cation, but the Hohenzollern monarchy corrupted and pros-
tituted it.
It cannot be too clearly stated, it is the most important fact
in the history of the last half century, that the German people
was methodically indoctrinated with the idea of a German
world-predominance based on might, and with the theory that
war was a necessary thing in life. The key to German his-
torical teaching is to be found in Count Moltke's dictum:
"Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful
dream. War is an element in the order of the world ordained
by God." "Without war the world would stagnate and lose
itself in materialism." And the anti-Christian German phi-
losopher, Nietzsche, found himself quite at one with the pious
field-marshal. "It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment," he
observes, "to expect much (even anything at all) from man-
kind if it forgets how to make war. As yet no means are known
which call so much into action aS a great war that rough energy
bom of the camp, that deep impersonality bom of hatred, that
looe
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervour
born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud
indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fel-
lows, that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs
when it is losing its vitality." ^
This sort of teaching, which pervaded the German Empire
from end to end, was bound to be noted abroad, bound to alarm
every other power and
people in the world, bound
to provoke an anti-Ger-
man confederation and it
was accompanied by a
parade of military, and
presently of naval, prep-
aration that threatened
France, Eussia, and Brit-
ain alike. It affected the
thoughts, the manners,
and morals of the entire
German people. After
1871, the German abroad
thrust out his chest and
raised his voice. He threw
a sort of trampling quality
even into the operations of
commerce. His machinery
came on the markets of
the world, his shipping
took the seas with a splash
of patriotic challenga
His very merits he used as
a means of offence. (And probably most other peoples, if they
had had the same experiences and undergone the same training,
would have behaved in a similar manner.)
By one of those accidents in history that personify and pre-
cipitate catastrophes, the ruler of Germany, the emperor Wil-
liam II, embodied the new education of his people and the
Hohenzollem tradition in the completest form. He came to
the throne in 1888 at the age of twenty-nine; his father, Fred-
' These quotations are from Sir Thomas Barclay's article "Peace" in
the EnoyoliypcBdia Britannica.
The Etnperor "William. IT.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1007
erick III, had succeeded his grandfather, William I, in the
March, to die in the June of that year. WiUiam II was the
grandson of Queen Victoria on his mother's side, but his tem-
perament showed no traces of the liberal German tradition
that distinguished the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family. His head
was full of the frothy stuff of the new imperialism. He
signalized his accession by an address to his army and navy;
his address to his people followed three days later. A high note
of contempt for democracy was sounded: "The soldier and the
army, not parliamentary majorities, have welded together the
German Empire. My trust is placed in the army." So the
patient work 9f the German schoolmasters was disowned, and
the HohenzoUem declared himself triumphant.
The next exploit of the young monarch was to quarrel with
the old chancellor, Bismarck, who had made the new German
Empire, and to dismiss him (1890). There were no profound
differences of opinion between them, but, as Bismarck said, the
Emperor intended to be his own chancellor.
These were the opening acts of an active and aggressive
career. This William II meant to make a noise in the world,
a louder noise than any other monarch had ever made. The
whole of Europe was soon familiar with the figure of the new
monarch, invariably in military uniform of the most glittering
sort, staring valiantly, fiercely moustached, and with a withered
left arm ingeniously minimised. He affected silver shining
breastplates and long white cloaks. A great restlessness was
manifest. It was clear he conceived himself destined for great
things, but for a time it was not manifest what particular great
things these were. There was no oracle at Delphi now to tell
him that he was destined to destroy a great empire.
The note of theatricality about him and the dismissal . of
Bismarck alarmed many of his subjects, but they were pres-
ently reassured by the idwi that he was using his influence in
the cause of peace and to consolidate Germany. He travelled
much, to London, Viepna, Rome — ^where he had private con-
versations with the Pope — to Athens^ where his sister married
the king in 1889, and to Constantinople. He was the first
Christian sovereign to be a Sultan's guest. He also went to
Palestine. A special gate was knocked through the ancient wall
of Jerusalem so that he could ride into that place ; it was be-
neath his dignity to walk in. He induced the Sultan to com-
1008 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
mence the reorganization of the Turkish Army upon German
lines and under German officers. In 1895 he announced that
Germany was a "world power," and that "the future of Ger-
many lay upon the water" — regardless of the fact that the
British considered that they were there already — and he began
to interest himself more and more in the building up of a great
navy. He also took German art and literature under his care ;
he used his influence to retain the distinctive and blinding
German blackletter against the Eoman type used by the rest
of western Europe, and he supported the Pan-German move-
ment, which claimed the Dutch, the Scandinavians, the Flemish
Belgians, and the German Swiss as members of a great German
brotherhood — as in fact good assimilable stuff for a hungry
young empire which meant to grow. All other monarchs in
Europe paled before him.
He used the general hostility against Britain aroused through-
out Europe by the war against the Boer Eepublics to press for-
ward his schemes for a great navy, and this, together with the
rapid and challenging extension of the German colonial em-
pire in Africa and the Pacific Ocean, alarmed and irritated
the British extremely. British liberal opinion in particular
found itself under the exasperating necessity of supporting an
ever-increasing British Navy. "I will not rest," he said, "until
I have brought my navy to the same height at which my army
stands." The most peace-loving of the islanders could not ignore
that threat.
In 1890 he had acquired the small island of Heligoland from
Britain. This he made into a great naval fortress.
As his navy grew, his enterprise increased. He proclaimed
the Germans "the salt of the earth." They must not "weary
in the work of civilization; Germany, like the spirit of Im-
perial Rome, must expand and impose itself." This he said
on Polish soil, in support of the steady efforts the Germans
were making to suppress the Polish language and culture, and
to Germanize their share of Poland. God he described as his
"Divine Ally." In the old absolutisms the monarch was either
God himself or the adopted agent of God; the Kaiser took
God for his trusty henchman. "Our old God," he said af-
fectionately. When the Germans seized Kiau-Chau, he spoke
of the German "mailed fist." When he backed Austria against
Russia, he talked of Germany in her "shining armour."
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1009
«
The disasters of Russia in Manchuria in 1905 released the
spirit of German imperialism to bolder aggressions. The fear
of a joint attack from France and Russia seemed lifting. The
emperor made a kind of regal progress through the Holy Land,
landed at Tangier to assure the Sultan of Morocco of his sup-
port against the French, and inflicted upon France the crown-
ing indignity of compelling her by a threat of war to dismiss
Delcasse, her foreign minister. He drew tighter the links be-
tween Austria and Germany, and in 1908, Austria, with his
support, defied the rest of Europe by annexing from the Turk
the Yugo-Slav provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. So by
his naval challenge to Britain and these aggressions upon France
and the Slavs he forced Britain, France, and Russia into a
defensive understanding against him. The Bosnian annexa-
tion had the further effect of estranging Italy, which had
hitherto been his ally.
Such was the personality that the evil fate of Germany
set over her to stimulate, organize, and render intolerable to
the rest of the world the natural pride and self-assertion of
a great people who had at last, after long centuries of
division and weakness, escaped from a jungle of princes to
unity and the world's respect. It was natural that the
commercial and industrial leaders of this new Germany
who were now getting rich, the financiers intent upon over-
seas exploits, the officials and the vulgar, should find this
leader very much to their taste. Many Germans who thought
him rash or tawdry in their secret hearts, supported him
publicly because he had so taking an air of success. Hoch der
Kaiser!
Yet Germany did not yield itself without a struggle to the
strong-flowing tide of imperialism. Important elements in Ger-
man life struggled against this swaggering new autocracy. The
old German nations, and particularly the Bavarians, refused
to be swallowed up in Prussianism. And with the spread of
education and the rapid industrialization of Germany, organ-
ized labour developed its ideas and a steady antagonism to the
military and patriotic clattering of its ruler. A new political
party was gi'owing up in the state, the Social Democrats, pro-
fessing the doctrines of Marx. In the teeth of the utmost oppo-
sition from the official and clerical organizations, and of vio-
lently repressive laws against its propaganda and against com-
1010 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
binations, this party grew. The Kaiser denounced it again and
again; its leaders were sent to prison or driven abroad. Still
it grew. When he came to the throne it polled not half a mil-
lion votes ; in 1907 it polled over three million. He attempted
to concede many things, old age and sickness insurance, for
example, as a condescending gift, things which it claimed for
the workers as their right. His conversion to socialism was
noted, but it gained no converts to imperialism. His naval
ambitions were ably and bitterly denounced; the colonial
adventures of the new German capitalists were incessantly
attacked by this party of the common sense of the common
man. But to the army, the Social Democrats accorded a
moderate support, because, much as they detested their home-
grown autocrat, they hated and dreaded the barbaric and
retrogressive autocracy of Eussia on their eastern frontier
more.
The danger plainly before Germany was that this swagger-
ing imperialism would compel Britain, Russia, and France into
a combined attack upon her, an offensive-defensive. The Kai-
ser wavered between a stiff attitude towards Britain and clumsy
attempts to propitiate her, while his fleet grew and while he
prepared for a preliminary struggle with Russia and France.
When in 1913 the British government proposed a cessation on
either hand of naval construction for a year, it was refused.
The Kaiser was afflicted with a son and heir more HohenzoUern,
more imperialistic, more Pan-Germanic than his father. He
had been nurtured upon imperialist propaganda. His toys
had been soldiers and guns. He snatched at a premature pop-
ularity by outdoing his father's patriotic and aggressive atti-
tudes. His father, it was felt, was growing middle-aged and
over-careful. The Crown Prince renewed him. Germany had
never been so strong, never so ready for a new great adventure
and another harvest of victories. The Russians, he was in-
structed, were decayed, the French degenerate, the British on
the verge of civil war. This young Crown Prince was but a
sample of the abounding upper-class youth of Germany in the
spring of 1914. They had all drunken from the same cup.
Their professors and teachers, their speakers and leaders, their
mothers and sweethearts, had been preparing them for the great
occasion that was now very nearly at hand. They were full of
the tremulous sense of imminent conflict, of a trumpet call to
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1011
stupendous achievements, of victory over mankind abroad, tri-
umph over the recalcitrant workers at home. The country was
taut and excited like an athletic competitor at the end of his
training.
§ 3
Throughout the period of the armed peace Germany was
making the pace and setting the tone for the rest of Europe.
The influence of her new doctrines of aggressive imperialism
was particularly strong upon the British mind, which was ill-
equipped to resist a strong intellectual thrust from abroad.
The educational impulse the Prince Consort had given had died
away after his death; the universities of Oxford and Cam-
bridge were hindered in their task of effective revision of
upper-class education by the fears and prejudices the so-called
"conflict of science and religion" had roused in the clergy who
dominated them through Convocation; popular education was
crippled by religious squabbling, by the extreme parsimony of
the public authorities, by the desire of employers for child la-
bour, and by individualistic objection to "educating other peo-
ple's children." The old tradition of the English, the tradition
of plain statement, legality, fair play, and a certain measure
of republican freedom had faded considerably during the
stresses of the iN^apoleonic wars; romanticism, of which Sir
Walter Scott, the great novelist, was the chief promoter, had
infected the national imagination with a craving for the florid
and picturesque. "Mr. Briggs," the comic Englishman of
Punch in the fifties and sixties, getting himself into highland
costume and stalking deer, was fairly representative of the
spirit of the new movement. It presently dawned upon Mr.
Briggs as a richly coloured and credible fact he had hitherto
not observed, that the sun never set on his dominions. The
country which had once put Clive and Warren Hastings on
trial for thfeir unrighteous treatment of Indians, was now per-
suaded to regard them as entirely chivalrous and devoted fig-
ures. They were "empire builders." Under the spell of Dis-
raeli's Oriental imagination, which had made Queen Vic-
toria "empress," the Englishman turned readily enough to-
wards the vague exaltations of modern imperialism.
The perverted ethnology and distorted history which was
1012 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
persuading the mixed Slavic, Keltic, and Teutonic Germans
that they were a wonderful race apart, was imitated hy Eng-
lish writers who began to exalt a new ethnological invention, the
"Anglo-Saxon." This remarkable compound was presented as
the culmination of humanity, the crown and reward of the ac-
cumulated effort of Greek and Eoman, Egyptian, Assyrian,
Jew, Mongol, and such-like lowly precursors of its white splen-
dour. The senseless legend of German superiority did much to
exacerbate the irritations of the Poles in Posen and the French
in Lorraine. The even more ridiculous legend of the superior
Anglo-Saxon did not merely increase the irritations of English
rule in Ireland, but it lowered the tone of British dealings with
"subject" peoples throughout the entire world. For the cessa-
tion of respect and the cultivation of "superior" ideas are
the cessation of civility and justice.
The imitation of German patriotic misconceptions did not
end with this "Anglo-Saxon" fabrication. The clever young
men at the British universities in the eighties and nineties,
bored by the flatness and insincerities of domestic politics, were
moved to imitation and rivalry by this new teaching of an arro-
gant, subtle, and forceful nationalist imperialism, this com-
bination of Machiavelli and Attila, which was being imposed
upon the thought and activities of young Germany. Britain,
too, they thought, must have her shining armour ami wave her
good sword. The new British imperialism found its poet in
Mr. Kipling and its practical support in a number of financial
and business interests whose way to monopolies and exploita-
tions was lighted by its glow. These Prussianizing English-
men carried their imitation of Germany to the most extraor-
dinary lengths. Central Europe is one continuous economic
system, best worked as one ; and the new Germany had achieved
a great customs union, a ZoUverein of all its constituents. It
became naturally one compact system, like a clenched fist. The
British Empire sprawled like an open hand throughout the
world, its members different in nature, need, and itlationship,
with no common interest except the common guarantee of
safety. But the new Imperialists were blind to that difference.
If new Germany had a Zollverein, then the British Empire
must be in the fashion; and the natural development of its
various elements must be hampered everywhere by "imperial
preferences" and the like. . . .
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1013
Yet the imperialist movement in Great Britain never had
the authority nor the unanimity it had in Germany. It was
not a natural product of any of the three united but diverse
British peoples. It was not congenial to them. Queen Victoria
and her successors, Edward VII and George V, were indis-
posed, either by temperament or tradition, to wear "shining
armour," shake "mailed fists," and flourish "good swords" in
the Hohenzollem fashion. They had the wisdom to refrain
from any overt meddling with public ideas. And this "Brit-
ish" imperialist movement had from the first aroused the hos-
tility of the large number of English, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch
writers who refused to recognize this new "British" nationality
or to accept the theory that they were these "Anglo-Saxon"
supermen. And many great interests in Britain, and notably
the shipping interest, had been built up upon free trade, and
regarded the fiscal proposals of the new imperialists, and the
new financial and mercantile adventurers with whom they were
associated, with a justifiable suspicion. On the other hand,
these ideas ran like wildfire through the military class, through
Indian officialdom and the like. Hitherto there had always
been something apologetic about the army man in England.
He was not native to that soil. Here was a movement that
promised to make him as splendidly important as his Prussian
brother in arms. And the imperialist idea also found support
in the cheap popular press that was now coming into existence
to cater for the new stratum of readers created by elementary
education. This press wanted plain, bright, simple ideas
adapted to the needs of readers who had scarcely begun to think.
In spite of such support, and its strong appeal to national
vanity, British imperialism never saturated the mass of the
British peoples. The English are not a mentally docile people,
and the noisy and rather forced enthusiasm for imperialism and
higher tariffs of the old Tory Party, the army class, the country
clergy, the music-halls, the assimilated alien, the vulgar rich
and the new large employers, inclined the commoner sort, and
particularly organized labour, to a suspicious attitude. If the
continually irritated sore of the Majuba defeat permitted the
country to be rushed into the needless, toilsome, and costly
conquest of the Boer republics in South Africa, the strain of
that adventure produced a sufficient reaction towards decency
and justice to reinstate the Liberal Party in power, and to
1014 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
undo the worst of that mischief by the creation of a South
African confederation. Considerable advances continued to
be made in popular education, and in the recovery of public
interests and the general wealth from the possession of the
few. And in these years of the armed peace, the three British
peoples came very near to a settlement, on fairly just and rea-
sonable lines, of their long-standing misunderstanding with
Ireland. The great war, unluckily for them, overtook them in
the very crisis of this effort.
Like Japan, Ireland has figured but little in this Outline of
History, and for the same reason, because she is an extreme
island country, receiving much, but hitherto giving but little
back into the general drama. Her population is a very mixed
one, its basis, and probably its main substance, being of the dark
"Mediterranean" strain, pre-Nordic and pre-Aryan, like the
Basques and the people of Portugal and south Italy. Over
this original basis there flowed, about the sixth century b.c. —
we do not know to ^vhat degree of submergence — a wave of
Keltic peoples, in at least sufficient strength to establish a
Keltic language, the Irish Gaelic. There were comings and
goings, invasions and counter-invasions of this and that Keltic
or Kelticized people between Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and
England. The island was Christianized in the fifth century.
Later on the east coast was raided and settled by Northmen,
but we do not know to what extent they altered the racial
quality. The Norman-English came in 1169, in the time of
Henry II and onward. The Teutonic strain may be as strong
or stronger than the Keltic in modem Ireland. Hitherto
Ireland had been a tribal and barbaric country, with a few
centres of security wherein the artistic tendencies of the more
ancient race found scope in metal-work and the illumination
of holy books. Now, in the twelfth century, there was an im-
perfect conquest by the English Crown, and scattered settlements
by Normans and English in various parts of the country. From
the outset profound temperamental differences between the
Irish and English were manifest, differences exacerbated by
a difference of language, and these became much more evident
after the Protestant Eeformation. The English became Prot-
estant; the Irish by a natural reaction rallied about the per-
secuted Catholic church.
The English rule in Ireland had been from the first an in-
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1015
termittent civil war due to the class of languages and the dif-
ferent laws of land tenure and inheritance of the two peoples.
The rehellions, massacres, and subjugations of the unhappy
island during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I we cannot
tell of here; but under James came a new discord with the
confiscation of large areas of Ulster and their settlement with
Presbyterian Scotch colonists. They formed a Protestant com-
munity in necessary permanent conflict with the Catholic re-
mainder of Ireland.
In the political conflicts during the reign of Charles I and
the Commonweal, and of James II and William and Mai-y,
the two sides in English affairs found sympathizers and allies
in the Irish parties. There is a saying in Ireland that Eng-
land's misfortune is Ireland's opportunity, and the English
civil trouble that led to the execution of Strafford was the occa-
sion also of a massacre of the English in Ireland (1641). Later
on Cromwell was to avenge that massacre by giving no quarter
to any men found under arms, a severity remembered by the
Irish Catholics with extreme bitterness. Between 1689 and
1691 Ireland was again torn by civil war. James II sought
the support of the Irish Catholics against William III, and
his adherents were badly beaten at the battles of the Boyne
(1690) and Aughrim (1691).
There was a settlement, the Treaty of Limerick, a disputed
settlement in which the English Government promised much in
the way of tolerance for Catholics and the like, and failed to
keep its promises. Limerick is still a cardinal memory in the
long story of Irish embitterment. Comparatively few English
people have even heard of this Treaty of Limerick ; in Ireland
it rankles to this day.
The eighteenth century was a century of accumulating griev-
ance. English commercial jealousy put heavy restraints upon
Irish trade, and the development of a wool industry was de-
stroyed in the south and west. The Ulster Protestants were
treated little better than the Catholics in these matters, and
they were the chief of the rebels. There was more agrarian
revolt in the north than in the south in the eighteenth century.
Let us state as clearly as our space permits the parallelisms
and contrasts of the British and Irish situation at this time.
There was a parliament in Ireland, but it was a Protestant
parliament, even more limited and corrupt than the contempo-
1016
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Tary Britlsli Parliament; there was a considerable civilization
in and about Dublin, and much literary and scientific activity,
conducted in English and centring upon the Protestant uni-
versity of Trinity College. This was the Ireland of Swift,
Goldsmith, Burke, Berkeley, and Boyle. It was essentially a
part of the English culture. It had nothing distinctively
Irish about it. The Catholic religion and the Irish language
were outcast and persecuted things in the darkness at thia time.
It was from this Ireland of the darkness that the recalci-
trant Ireland of the twentieth century arose. The Irish Par-
liament, its fine literature, its science, all its culture, gravitated
naturally enough to London, because they were inseparably a
part of that world. The more prosperous landlords went to
England to live, and had their children educated there. This
meant a steady drain of wealth from Ireland to England in the
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1017
form of rent, spent or invested out of the country. The in-
creasing facilities of communication steadily enhanced this
tendency, depleted Dublin and bled Ireland white. The Act of
Union (January 1st, 1801) was the natural coalescence of
two entirely kindred systems, of the Anglo-Irish Parliament
with the British Parliament, both oligarchic, both politically
corrupt in the same fashion. There was a vigorous opposition
to the Union on the part not so much of the outer Irish as of
Protestants settled in Ireland, and a futile insurrection under
Robert Emmet in 1803. Dublin, which had been a fine Anglo-
Irish city in the middle eighteenth century, was gradually de-
serted by its intellectual and political life, and invaded by the
outer Irish of Ireland. Its fashionable life became more and
more official, centering upon the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin
Castle ; its intellectual life flickered and for a time nearly died.
But while the Ireland of Swift and Goldsmith was part
and lot with the England of Pope, Dr. Johnson, and Sir
Joshua Keynolds, while there has never been and is not now
any real definable difference except one of geography between
the "governing class" in Ireland and in Britain, the Irish under-
world and the English underworld were essentially dissimilar.
The upward struggle of the English "democracy" to education,
to political recognition, was different in many respects from the
struggle of the Irish underworld. Britain was producing a
great industrial population, Protestant or sceptical; she had
agricultural labourers indeed, but no peasants. Ireland, with
no coal, with a poorer soil and landlords who lived in England,
had become a land of rent-paying peasants. Their cultivation
was allowed to degenerate more and more into a growing of
potatoes and a feeding of pigs. The people married and bred ;
except for the consumption of whisky when it could be got, and
a little fighting, family life was their only amusement. Here
are the appalling consequences. The population of Ireland
in 1785 was 2,845,932,
in 1803 was 5,536,594,
in 1845 was 8,295,061,
at which date the weary potato gave way under its ever-growing
burthen and there was a frightful famine. Many died, many-
emigrated, especially to the United States ; an outflow of emi-
gration began that made Ireland for a time a land of old people
and empty nesta.
1018 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Now because of tlie Union of the Parliaments, the enfran-
chisement of the English and Irish populations went on simul-
taneously. Catholic enfranchisement in England meant Cath-
olic enfranchisement in Ireland. The British got votes be-
cause they wanted them; the Irish commonalty got votes be-
cause the English did. Ireland was over-represented in the
Union Parliament, because originally Irish seats had been easier
for the governing class to manipulate than English ; and so it
came about that this Irish and Catholic Ireland, which had
never before had any political instrument at all, and which
had never sought a political instrument, suddenly found itself
with the power to thrust a solid body of members into the leg-
islature of Great Britain. After the general election of 1874,
the old type of venal Irish member was swept aside, and the
newly enfranchised "democracy" of Britain found itself con-
fronted by a strange and perplexing Irish "democracy," dif-
ferent in its religion, its traditions, and its needs, telling a tale
of wrongs of which the common English had never heard,
clamouring passionately for a separation which they could not
understand and which impressed them chiefly as being need-
lessly unfriendly.
The national egotism of the Irish is intense; their circum-
stances have made it intense ; they were incapable of considering
the state of affairs in England; the new Irish party came into
the British Parliament to obstruct and disorder English, busi-
ness until Ireland became free, and to make themselves a nui-
sance to the English. This spirit was only too welcome to the
oligarchy which still ruled the British Empire; they allied
themselves with the "loyal" Protestants in the north of Ireland
— loyal that is to the Imperial Government because of their
dread of a Catholic predominance in Ireland — and they watched
and assisted the gradual exasperation of the British common
people by this indiscriminate hostility of the common people
of Ireland.
The story of the relation of Ireland to Britain for the last
half-century is one that reflects the utmost discredit upon the
governing class of the British Empire, but it is not one of
which the English commons need be ashamed. Again and
again they have given evidences of goodwill. British legisla-
tion in relation to Ireland for nearly half a century shows a
series of clumsy attempts on the part of liberal England, made
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1019
in the face of a strenuous opposition from the Conservative
Party and the Ulster Irish, to satisfy Irish complaints and
get to a footing of fellowship. The name of Parnell, an Irish
Protestant, stands out as that of the chief leader of the Home
Sule movement. In 1886 Gladstone, the liberal British prime
minister, brought political disaster upon himself by introduc-
ing the first Irish Home Rule Bill, a genuine attempt to give
over Irish affairs for the first time in history to the Irish peo-
ple. The bill broke the Liberal Party asunder ; and a coalition
government, the Unionist Government, replaced that of Mr.
Gladstone.
This digression into the history of Ireland now comes up to
the time of infectious imperialism in Europe. The Unionist
Government, which ousted Mr. Gladstone, had a predomi-
nantly Tory element, and was in spirit "imperialist" as no pre-
vious British Government had been. The British political
history of the subsequent years is largely a history of the conflict
of the new imperialism, through which an arrogant "British"
nationalism sought to override the rest of the empire against
the temperamental liberalism and reasonableness of the Eng-
lish, which tended to develop the empire into a confederation
of free and willing allies. ISTaturally the "British" imperial-
ists wanted a subjugated Irish ; naturally the English Liberals
wanted a free, participating Irish. In 1892 Gladstone strug-
gled back to power with a small Home Eule majority ; and in
1893 his second Home Hule Bill passed the Commons, and
was rejected by the Lords. It was not, however, until 1895
that an imperialist government took office. The party which
sustained it was called not Imperialist, but "Unionist" — an odd
name when we consider how steadily and strenuously it has
worked to destroy any possibility of an Empire commonweal.
These Imperialists remained in power for ten years. We have
already noted their conquest of South Africa. They were de-
feated in 1905 in an attempt to establish a tariff wall on the
Teutonic model. The ensuing Liberal Government then turned
the conquered South African Dutch into contented fellow-
subjects by creating the self-governing Dominion of South
Africa. After which it embarked upon a long-impending strug-
gle with the persistently imperialist House of Lords.
This was a very fundamental struggle in British affairs. On
the one hand were the Liberal majority of the people of Great
1020 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Britain honestly and wisely anxious to put this Irish affair
upon a new and more hopeful footing, and, if possible, to change
the animosity of the Irish into friendship; on the other were
all the factors of this new British Imperialism resolved at any
cost and in spite of every electoral verdict, legally, if possible,
but if not, illegally, to maintain their ascendancy over the af-
fairs of the English, Scotch, and Irish and all the rest of the
empire alike. It was, under new names, the age-long internal
struggle of the English community; that same conflict of a
free and liberal-spirited commonalty against powerful "big
men" and big adventurers and authoritative persons which we
have already dealt with in our account of the liberation of
America. Ireland was merely a battleground as America had
been. In India, in Ireland, in England, the governing class
and their associated adventurers were all of one mind ; but the
Irish people, thanks to their religious difference, had little
sense of solidarity with the English. Yet such Irish states-
men as Eedmond, the leader of the Irish party in the House
of Commons, transcended this national narrowness for a time,
and gave a generous response to English good intentions.
Slowly yet steadily the barrier of the House of Lords was
broken down, and a third Irish Home Rule Bill was brought
in by Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, in 1912. Throughout
1913 and the early part of 1914 this bill was fought and re-
fought through Parliament. At first it gave Heine Rule to all
Ireland ; but an Amending Act, excluding Ulster on certain con-
ditions, was promised. Thus struggle lasted right up to the
outbreak of the Great War. The royal assent was given to this
bill after the actual outbreak of wat, and also to a bill suspend-
ing the coming into force of Irish Home Rule until after the
end of the war. These bills were put upon the Statute Book.
But from the introduction of the third Home Rule Bill
onward, the opposition to it had assumed a violent and extrava-
gant form. Sir Edward Carson, a Dublin lavryer who had
become a member of the English Bar, and who had held a legal
position in the ministry of Mr. Gladstone (before the Home
Rule split) and in the subsequent imperialist government, was
the organizer and leader of this resistance to a reconciliation
of the two peoples. In spite of his Dublin origin, he set up
to be a leader of the Ulster Protestants ; and he brought to the
conflict that contempt for law which is all too common a char-
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1021
acteristic of the successful barrister, and those gifts of per-
sistent, unqualified, and uncompromising hostility which dis-
tinguish a certain type of Irishman. He was the most "un-
English" of men, dark, romantic, and violent; and from the
opening of the struggle he talked with gusto of armed resist-
ance to this freer reunion of the English and Irish which the
third Home Rule Bill contemplated. A body of volunteers
had been organized in Ulster in 1911, arms were now smug-
gled into the country, and Sir Edward Carson and a rising
lawyer named F. E. Smith, trapped up in semi-military style,
toured Ulster, inspecting these volunteers and inflaming local
passion. The arms of these prospective rebels were obtained
from Germany, and various utterances of Sir Edward Car-
son's associates hinted at support from "a great Protestant
monarch." Contrasted with Ulster, the rest of Ireland was
at that time a land of order and decency, relying upon its
great leader Redmond and the good faith of the three British
peoples.
Now these threats of civil war from Ireland were not in
themselves anything very exceptional in the record of that un-
happy island; what makes them significant in the world's
history at this time is the vehement support, they found among
the English military and governing classes, and the immunity
from punishment and restraint of Sir Edward Carson and his
friends. The virus of reaction which came from the success
and splendour of German imperialism had spread widely, as we
have explained, throughout the prevalent and prosperous classes
in Great Britain. A generation had grown up forgetful of
the mighty traditions of their forefathers, and ready to ex-
change the greatness of English fairness and freedom for
the tawdriest of imperialisms. A fund of a million pounds was
raised, chiefly in England, to support the Ulster Rebellion, an
Ulster Provisional Government was formed, prominent English
people mingled in the fray and careered about Ulster in auto-
mobiles, assisting in the gun-running, and there is evidence
that a number of British officers and generals were prepared
for a pronunciamento upon South American lines rather than
obedience to the law. The natural result of all this upper-class
disorderliness was to alarm the main part of Ireland, never
a ready friend to England. That Ireland also began in its
turn to organize "National Volunteers" and to smuggle arms.
1022 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
The military authorities showed themselves much keener in
the suppression of the Nationalist than of the Ulster gun
importation, and in July, 1914, an attempt to run guns
at Howth, near Dublin, led to fighting and bloodshed in the
Dublin streets. The British Isles were on the verge of civil
war.
Such in outline is the story of the imperialist revolutionary
movement in Great Britain up to the eve of the Great War.
For revolutionary this movement of Sir Edward Carson and
his associates was. It was plainly an attempt to set aside par-
liamentary government and the slow-grown, imperfect liberties
of the British peoples, and, with the assistance of the army, to
substitute a more Prussianized type of rule, using the Irish
conflict as the point of departure. It was the reactionary effort
of a few score thousand people to arrest the world movement
towards democratic law and social justice, strictly parallel to
and closely sympathetic with the new imperialism of the Ger-
man junkers and rich men. But in one very important re-
spect British and German imperialism differed. In Germany
it centred upon the crown ; its noisiest, most conspicuous advo-
cate was the heir-apparent. In Great Britain the king stood
aloof. By no single public act did King George V betray the
slightest approval of the new movement, and the behaviour
of the Prince of Wales, his son and heir, has been equally
correct.
In August, 1914, the storm of the Great War burst upon
the world. In September, Sir Edward Carson was denouncing
the placing of the Home Rule Bill upon the Statute Book.
On the same day, Mr. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish
majority, the proper representative of Ireland, was calling
upon the Irish people to take their equal part in the burthen
and effort of the war. For a time Ireland played her part in
the war side by sjde with England faithfully and well, until
in 1915 the Liberal Government was replaced by a coalition,
in which, through the moral feebleness of Mr. Asquith, the
prime minister, this Sir Edward Carson figured as Attorney-
General (with a salary of £7,000 and fees), to be replaced
presently by his associate in the Ulster sedition. Sir F. E.
Smith,
Grosser insult was never offered to a friendly people. The
WPrk of reconciliation, begun by Gladstone in 1886, and brought
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1023
so near to completion, in 1914, was completely and finally
wrecked.
In the spring of 1916 Dublin revolted unsuccessfully against
this new government. The ringleaders of this insurrection,
many of them mere boys, were shot with a deliberate and
clumsy sternness that, in view of the treatment of the Ulster
rebel leaders, impressed all Ireland as atrociously unjust. A
traitor. Sir Eoger Casement, who had been knighted for pre-
vious services to the empire, was tried and executed, no doubt
deservedly, but his prosecutor was Sir F. E. Smith of the Ulster
insurrection, a shocking conjunction. The Dublin revolt had
had little support in Ireland generally, but thereafter the move-
ment for an independent republic grew rapidly to great pro-
portions. Against this strong emotional drive there struggled
the more moderate ideas of such Irish statesmen as Sir Hor-
ace Plunkett, who wished to see Ireland become a Dominion,
a "crowned republic" that is, within the empire, on an equal
footing with Canada and Australia.
When in December, 1919, Mr. Lloyd George introduced his
Home Rule Bill into the Imperial Parliament there were no
Irish members, except Sir Edward Carson and his followers,
to receive it. The rest of Ireland was away. It refused to
begin again that old dreary round of hope and disappointment.
Let the British and their pet Ulst«rmen do as they would,
said the Irish. . . .
§4
Our studies of modem imperialism in Germany and Britain
bring out certain forces common to the two countries, and we
shall find these same forces at work in variable degrees and
with various modifications in the ease of the other great modern
communities at which we shall now glance. This modern im-
perialism is not a synthetic world uniting movement like the
older imperialism ; it is essentially a megalomaniac nationalism,
SL nationalism made aggressive by prosperity; and always it
finds its strongest support in the military and official castes,
and in the enterprising and acquisitive strata of society, in
new money, that is, and big business; its chief critics in the
educated poor, and its chief opponents in the peasantry and the
1024
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
labour masses. It accepts monarchy where it finds it, but it
is not necessarily a monarchist movement. It does, however,
need a foreign ofiice of the traditional type for its full develop-
ment. Its origin, which we have traced very carefully in this
book of our history, makes this clear. Modem imperialisn is
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the natural development of the Great Power system which arose
with the foreign office method of policy, out of the Machia-
vellian monarchies after the break-up of Christendom. It will
only come to an end when the intercourse of nations and peo-
ples through embassies and foreign offices is replaced by an
assembly of elected representatives in direct touch with their
peoples.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1025
French imperialism during the period of the Armed Peace
in Europe was natul'ally of a less confident type than the Ger-
man. It called itself "nationalism" rather than imperialism,
and it set itself, by appeals to patriotic pride, to thwart the
efforts of those socialists and rationalists who sought to get
into touch with liberal elements in German life. It brooded
upon the Revanche, the return match with Prussia. But in
spite of that preoccupation, it set itself to the adventure of
annexation and exploitation in the Par East and in Africa,
narrowly escaping a war with Britain upon the Pashoda clash
(1898), and it never relinquisTied a dream of acquisitions in
Syria. Italy, too, caught the imperialist fever ; the blood-letting
of Adowa cooled her for a time, and then she resumed in 1911
with a war upon Turkey and the annexation of Tripoli. The
Italian imperialists exhorted their countrymen to forget Maz-
zini and remember Julius Csesar ; for were they not the heirs
of the Roman Empire ? Imperialism touched the Balkans ;
little countries not a hundred years from slavery began to
betray exalted intentions; King Perdinand of Bulgaria as-
sumed the title of Tsar, the latest of the pseudo-Csesars, and in
the shop-windows of Athens the curious student could study
maps showing the dream of a vast Greek empire in Europe
and Asia.
In 1913 the three states of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece
fell upon Turkey, already weakened by her war with Italy,
and swept her out of all her European possessions except the
country between Adrianople and Constantinople; later in that
year they quarrelled among themselves over the division of the
spoils. Rumania joined in the game and helped to crush
Bulgaria. Turkey recovered Adrianople. The greater im-
perialisms of Austria, Russia, and Italy watched that conflict
and one another, . . .
§ 5
While all the world to the west of her was changing rapidly,
Russia throughout the nineteenth century changed very slowly
indeed. At the end of the nineteenth century, as at its be-
ginnmg, she was s*-'ll a Grand Monarchy of the later seven-
teenth-century type standing on a basis of barbarism, she was
1026 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
still at a stage where court intrigues and imperial favouriteis
could control her international relations.' She had driven a
great railway across Siberia to find the disasters of the Japa-
nese war at the end of it; she was using modern methods
and modern weapons so far as her undeveloped industrialism
and her small supply of sufficiently educated people permitted ;
such writers as Dostoievski had devised a sort of mystical im-
perialism based on the idea of Holy Russia and her mission,
coloured by racial illusions and anti-Semitic passion; but, as
events were to show, this had not sunken very deeply into the
imagination of the Russian masses. A vague, very simple
Christianity pervaded the illiterate peasant life, mixed with
much superstition. It was like the pre-reformation peasant
life of France or Germany. The Russian moujik v^as sup-
posed to worship and revere his Tsar and to love to serve a gen-
tleman; in 1913 reactionary English writers were still praising
his simple and unquestioning loyalty. But, as in the case of
the western European peasant of the days of the peasant re-
volts, this reverence for the monarchy was mixed up with the
idea that the monarch and the nobleman had to be good and
beneficial, and this simple loyalty could, under sufficient prov-
ocation, be turned into the same pitiless intolerance of social
injustice that burnt the chateaux in the Jacquerie (see Chapter
XXXIV, § 3) and set up the theocracy in Miinster (Chapter
XXXIV, § 3). Once the commons were moved to anger, there
were no links of understanding in a generally diffused education
in Russia to mitigate the fury of the outbreak. The upper
classes were as much beyond the sympathy of the lower as a
different species of animal. These Russian masses were three
centuries away from such nationalist imperialism as Germany
displayed.
And in another respect Russia differed from modern West-
ern Europe and paralleled its mediaeval phase, and that was
in the fact that her universities were the resort of many very
poor students quite out of touch and out of sympathy with the
bureaucratic autocracy. Before 1917 the significance of the
proximity of these two factors of revolution, the fuel of dis-
content and the match of free ideas, was not recognized in
European thought, and few people realized that in Russia
more than in any other country lay the possibilities of a fun-
damental revolution.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1027
§ 6
When we turn from these European Great Powers, with
their inheritance of foreign offices and national policies, to the
United States of America, which broke away completely from
the Great Power System in 1776, we find a most interesting
contrast in the operation of the forces which produced the
expansive imperialism of Europe. For America as for Europe
the mechanical revolution had brought all the world within the
range of a few days' journey. The United States, like the
Great Powers, had world-wide financial and mercantile inter-
ests; a great industrialism had grown up and was in need of
overseas markets; the same crises of belief that had shaken
the moral solidarity of Europe had occurred in the American
world. Her people were as patriotic and spirited as any. Why
then did not the United States develop armaments and an
aggressive policy ? Why was not the stars and stripes waving
over Mexico, and why was there not a new Indian system
growing up in China under that flag? It was the American
who had opened up Japan. After doing so, he had let that
power Europeanize itself and become formidable without a
protest. That alone was enough to make Machiavelli, the father
of modern foreign policy, turn in his grave. If a European-
ized Great Power had been in the place of the United States,
Great Britain would have had to fortify the Canadian frontier
from end to end — it is now absolutely unarmed — and to main-
tain a great arsenal in the St. Lawrence. All the divided
states of Central and South America would long since have
been subjugated and placed under the disciplinary control of
United States officials of the "governing class." There would
have been a perpetual campaign to Americanize Australia and
New Zealand, and yet another claimant for a share in tropical
Africa.
And by an odd accident America had produced in President
Eoosevelt (President 1901-1908) a man of an energy as rest-
less as the German Kaiser's, as eager for large achievements,
as florid and eloquent, an adventurous man with a turn for
world politics and an instinct for armaments, the very man,
we might imagine, to have involved his country in the scram-
ble for overseas possession.
There does not appear to be any other explanation of this
1028 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
general restraint and abstinence on the part of the United
States except in their fundamentally different institutions and
traditions. In the first place the United States Government
has no foreign office and no diplomatic corps of the Euroj^ean
type, no body of "experts" to maintain the tradition of an ag-
gressive policy. The president has great powers, but they are
subject to the control of the senate, which again is responsible
to the state legislatures and the people. The foreign relations
of the country are thus under open and public control. Secret
treaties are impossible under such a system, and foreign pow-
ers complain of the difficulty and uncertainty of "understand-
ings" with the United States, a very excellent state of affairs.
The United States is ^ constitutionally incapacitated, therefore,
from the kind of foreign policy that has kept Europe for so
long constantly on the verge of war.
And, secondly, there has hitherto existed in the States no
organization for and no tradition of what one may call non-
assimilable possessions. Where there is no crown there cannot
be crown colonies. In spreading across the American conti-
nent, the United States had developed a quite distinctive
method of dealing with new territories, admirably adapted for
unsettled lands, but very inconvenient if applied too freely to
areas already containing an alien population. This method was
based on the idea that there cannot be in the United States
system a permanently subject people. The first stage of the
ordinary process of assimilation had been the creation of a "ter-
ritory" under the federal government, having a considerable
measure of self-government, sending a delegate (who could not
vote) to congress, and destined, in the natural course of things,
as the country became settled and population increased, to
flower at last into full statehood. This had been the process
of development of all the latter states of the Union ; the latest
territories to become states being Arizona and New Mexico
in 1910. The frozen wilderness of Alaska, bought from Rus-
sia, remained politically undeveloped simply because it had an
insufficient population for state organization. As the annexa-
tions of Germany and Great Britain in the Pacific threatened
to deprive the United States navy of coaling stations in that
ocean, a part of the Samoan Islands (1889) and the Sandwich
Islands (Hawaii) were annexed (1898). Here for the first
» "Is," not "are." Since the Civil War the U. S. A. is one nation. A. C.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1029
time the United States had real subject populations to deal
with. But in the absence of any class comparable to the Anglo-
Indian officials who sway British opinion, the American pro-
cedure followed the territorial method. Every effort was made
to bring the educational standards of Hawaii up to the Ameri-
can level, and a domestic legislature on the territorial pattern
was organized so that these dusky islanders seem destined ulti-
mately to obtain full United States citizenship. (The small
Samoan Islands are taken care of by a United States naval
administrator.)
In 1895 occurred a quarrel between the United States and
Britain upon the subject of Venezuela, and the Monroe Doc-
trine was upheld stoutly by President Cleveland. Then Mr.
Olney made this remarkable declaration: "To-day the United
States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat
is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition."
This, together with the various Pan-American congTesses that
have been held, point to a real open "foreign policy" of alli-
ance and mutual help throughout America. Treaties of ar-
bitration hold good over all that continent, and the future seems
to point to a gradual development of inter-state organization,
a Pax Americana, of the English-speaking and Spanish-speak-
ing peoples, the former in the role of elder brother. Here is
something we cannot even call an empire, something going far
beyond the great alliance of the British Empire in the open
equality of its constituent parts.
Consistently with this idea of a common American welfare,
the United States in 1898 intervened in the affairs of Cuba,
which had been in a state of chronic insurrection against Spain
for many years. A brief war ended in the acquisition of Cuba,
Porto Eico, and the Philippine Islands. Cuba is now an inde-
pendent self-governing republic. Porto Kico and the Philip-
pines have, however, a special sort of government, with a pop-
ularly elected lower house and an upper body containing mem-
bers appointed by the United States senate. It is improbable
thai either Porto Rico or the Philippines will become states in
the Union. They are much more likely to become free states
in some comprehensive alliance with both English-speaking and
Latin America.
Both Cuba and Porto Eico welcomed the American inter-
vention in their affairs, but in the Philippine Islands there
1030 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
was a demand for complete and immediate freedom after the
Spanish war, and a considerable resistance to the American
military administration. There it was that the United States
came nearest to imperialism of the Great Power type, and that
her record is most questionable. There was much sympathy with
the insurgents in the states. Here is the point of view of ex-
President Eoosevelt as he wrote it in his Aidohiography (1913) :
"As regards the Philippines, my belief was that we should
train them for self-government as rapidly as possible, and then
leave them free to decide their own fate. I did not believe in
setting the time-limit within which we would give them inde-
pendence, because I did not believe it wise to try to forecast
how soon they would be fit for self-government; and once
having made the promise, I would have felt that it was impera-
tive to keep it. Within a few months of my assuming office
we had stamped out the last armed resistance in the Philip-
pines that was not of merely sporadic character; and as soon
as peace was secured, we turned our energies to developing
the islands in the interests of the natives. We established
schools everywhere ; we built roads ; we administered an even-
handed justice; we did everything possible to encourage agri-
culture and industry; and in constantly increasing measure
we employed natives to do their own governing, and finally
provided a legislative chamber. . . . We are governing, and
have been governing, the islands in the interests of the Fili-
pinos themselves. If after due time the Pilipinos themselves
decide that they do not wish to be thus governed, then I trust
that we will leave ; but when we do leave, it must be distinctly
understood that we retain no protectorate — and above all that
we take part in no joint protectorate — over the islands, and give
them no guarantee, of neutrality or otherwise; that in short,
we are absolutely quit of responsibility for them, of every kind
and description."
This is an entirely different outlook from that of a British
or French foreign office or colonial office official. But it is not
very widely different from the spirit that created the Domin-
ions of Canada, South Africa, and Australia, and brought
forward the three Home Rule Bills for Ireland. It is in the
older and more characteristic English tradition from which the
Declaration of Independence derives. It sets aside, without
discussion, the detestable idea of "subject peoples."
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1081
Here we will not enter into political complications attendant
upon the making of the Panama Canal, for they introduce no
fresh light upon this interesting question of the American
method in world politics. The history of Panama is American
history purely. But manifestly just as the internal political
structure of the Union was a new thing in the world, so, too,
were its relations with the world beyond its borders.
§ 7
We have been at some pains to examine the state of mind
of Europe and of America in regard to international relations
in the years that led up to the world tragedy of 1914 because,
as more and, more people are coming to recognize, that great
war or some such war was a necessary consequence of the men-
tality of the period. All the things that men and nations do
are the outcome of instinctive motives reacting upon the ideas
which talk and books and newspapers and schoolmasters and
so forth have put into people's heads. Physical necessities,
pestilences, changes of climate, and the like outer things may
deflect and distort the growth of human history, but its living
root is thought.
All human history is fundamentally a history of ideas. Be-
tween the man of to-day and the Cro-Magnard the physical and
mental differences are very slight; their essential difference
lies in the extent and content of the mental background which
we have acquired in the five or six hundred generations that
intervene.
We are too close to the events of the Great War to pretend
that this Outline can record the verdict of history thereupon,
but we may hazard the guess that when the passions of the
conflict have faded, it will be Germany that will be most blamed
for bringing it about, and she will be blamed not because she
was morally and intellectually very different from her neigh-
bours, but because she had the common disease of imperialism
in its most complete and energetic form. No self-respecting
historian, however superficial and popular his aims may be, can
countenance the legend, produced by the stresses of the war,
that the German is a sort of human being more cruel and
abominable than any other variety of men. AH the great states
of Europe before 1914 were in a condition of aggressive na-
1032 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
tionalism and drifting towards war; the government of Ger-
many did but lead the general movement. She fell into the
pit first, and she floundered deepest. She became the dreadful
example at which all her fellow sinners could cry out.
For long, Germany and Austria had been plotting an exten-
sion of German influence eastward through Asia Minor to the
East. The German idea was crystallized in the phrase "Berlin
to Bagdad." Antagonized to the German dreams were those
of Russia, which was scheming for an extension ©f the Slav
ascendancy to Constantinople and through Serbia to the Ad-
riatic. These lines of ambition lay across one another and
were mutually incompatible. The feverish state of affairs in
the Balkans was largely the outcome of the intrigues and propa-
gandas sustained by the German and Slav schemes. Turkey
turned for support to Germany, Serbia to Eussia. Kumania
and Italy, both Latin in tradition, both nominally allies of
Germany, pursued remoter and deeper schemes in common.
Ferdinand, the Tsar of Bulgaria, was following still darker
ends ; and the squalid mysteries of the Greek court, whose king
was the German Kaiser's brother-in-law, are beyond our pres-
ent powers of inquiry.
But the tangle did not end with Germany on the one hand
and Eussia on the other. The greed of Germany in 1871 had
made France her inveterate enemy. The French people, aware
of their inability to recover their lost provinces by their own
strength, had conceived exaggerated ideas of the power and
helpfulness of Eussia. The French people had subscribed
enormously to Eussian loans. France was the ally of Eussia.
If the German powers made war upon Eussia, France would
certainly attack them.
Now the short eastern French frontier was very strongly
defended. There was little prospect of Germany repeating the
successes of 1870-71 against that barrier. But the Belgian
frontier of France was longer and less strongly defended. An
attack in overwhelming force on France through Belgium
might repeat 1870 on a larger scale. The French left might
be swung back south-eastwardly on Verdun as a pivot, and
crowded back upon its right, as one shuts an open razor. This
scheme the German strategists had worked out with great care
and elaboration. Its execution involved an outrage upon the
law of nations because Prussia had undertaken to guarantee
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1083
the neutrality of Belgium and had no quarrel with her, and it
involved the risk of bringing in Great Britain (which power
was also pledged to protect Belgium) against Germany. Yet
the Germans believed that their fleet had grown strong enough
to make Great Britain hesitate to interfere, and with a view
to possibilities they had constructed a great system of strategic
railways to the Belgian frontier, and made every preparation
for the execution of this scheme. So they might hope to strike
down France at one blow, and deal at their leisure with Kussia.
In 1914 all things seemed moving together in favour of the
two Central Powers. Kussia, it is true, had been recovering
since 1906, but only very slowly; France was distracted by
financial scandals. The astounding murder of M. Calmette,
the editor of the Figaro^ by the wife of M. Caillaux, the min-
ister of finance, brought these' to a climax in March; Britain,
all Germany was assured, was on the verge of a civil war in
Ireland. Repeated efforts were made both by foreign and Eng-
lish people to get some definite statement of what Britain
would do if Germany and Austria assailed France and Eussia;
but the British Foreign Secretary maintained a front of heavy
ambiguity up to the very day of the British entry into the war.
As a consequence, there was a feeling on the continent that
Britain would either not fight or delay fighting, and this may
have encouraged Germany to go on threatening France. Events
were precipitated on June 28th by the assassination of
the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian
Empire, when on a state visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bos-
nia. Here was a timely excuse to set the armies marching.
"It is now or never," said the German Emperor. Serbia was
accused of instigating the murderers, and notwithstanding the
fact that Austrian commissioners reported that there was no
evidence to implicate the Serbian government, the Austro-Hun-
garian government contrived to press this grievance towards
war. On July 23rd Austria discharged an ultimatum at Serbia,
and, in spite of a practical submission on the part, of Serbia,
and of the efforts of Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign
Secretary, to call a conference of the powers, declared war
against Serbia on July 28th.
Eussia mobilized her army on July 30th, and on August 1st
Germany declared war upon her. German troops crossed into
French territory next day, and, simultaneously with the deliv-
1034 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
erjr of an ultimatum to the unfortunate Belgians, the big
flanking movement through Luxembourg and Belgium began.
Westward rode the scouts and advance guards. Westward
rushed a multitude of automobiles packed with soldiers. Enor-
mous columns of grey-clad infantry followed ; round-eyed, fair
young Germans they were for the most part — law-abiding,
educated youngsters who had never yet seen a shot fired in
anger. "This was war," they were told. They had to be
bold and ruthless. Some of theni did their best to carry out
these militarist instructions at' the expense of the ill-fated
Belgians. " ■
A disproportionate fuss has been made over the detailed
atrocities in Belgium,' disproportionate, tbat is, in relation to the
fiindamental atrocity of August; 1914, which was the invasion
of Belgium. Gfiven that, the casual shootings and lootings, the
wanton destruction of property, the plundering of inns and of
food and drink shops by hungry arid weary men, and the con-
sequent rapes arid incendiarism follow naturally enough. ' Only
very siniple people believe that an army in the field can main-
tain as high a level of honesty, decency, and justice as a settled
coriimuriity at home. And the tradition of the Thirty Years'
War still influenced the Prussian army. It has been customary
in the countries allied agairiSfGennany to treat all this vileness
and bloodshed of the Belgian months as though nothing of the
-sort had ever happened before, and as if it were due to some
distinctively evil strain in the German character. They were
nickrianied "Huns." But nothing could be less like the sys-
teriiatic destructions of these nomads (who once proposed to
exterminate the entire Chinese population in order to restore
Ohina to pasture) than the German crimes in Belgium. Much
of that crime was the drunken brutality of men who for the
first tiriie in their lives were free to use lethal weapons, much
of it was the hysterical violence of men shocked at their own
proceedings and in deadly fear of the revenge of the people
whose country they had outraged, and riiuch of it was done
under duress because of the theory that men should be terrible
in warfare and that populations are best subdued by fear. The
German common people were bundled from an orderly obedi-
ence into this war in such a manner that atrocities were bound
to ensue. They certainly did horrible and disgusting things.
But any people who had been worked up for war and led into
THE CATASTROPHE QF 1914
1035
war as the Germans were, would have behaved in a similar
manner.
On the night of August 2nd, while most of Europe, still under
the tranquil inertias of half a century of peace, still in the
habitual enjoyment of such a widely diffused plenty and
cheapness and freedom as no man living will ever see again,
was thinking about its summer holidays, the little Belgian
village of Vise was ablaze, and stupefied rustics were being led
out and shot because it was alleged someone had fired on the
invaders. The ofiicers who ordered these acts, the men who
obeyed, must surely have felt scared at the strangeness of the
things they did. Most of them had never yet seen a violent
death. Aiad they had set light not to a village, but a world.
1086 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
It was the beginning of the end of an age of comfort, confi-
dence, and gentle and seemly behaviour in Europe.
• So soon as it was clear that Belgium was to be invaded,
Great Britain ceased to hesitate, and (at eleven at night on
August 4tb) declared war upon Germany. The following day
a German mine-laying vessel was caught off the Thames mouth
by the cruiser AmpMon and sunk, — ^the first time that the
British and Germans had ever met in conflict under their own
national flags upon land or water. ...
All Europe still remembers the strange atmosphere of those
eventful sunny August days, the end of the Armed Peace. F6r
nearly half a century the Western world had been tranquil
and had seemed safe. Only a few middle-aged and ageing
people in France had had any practical experience of warfare.
The newspapers spoke of a world catastrophie, but that con-
veyed very little meaning to those for w'hom the vrorld had
always seemed secure, who were indeed almost incapable of
thinking of it as otherwise than secure. In Britain particu-
larly for some weeks the peace-time routine continued in a
slightly dazed fashion. It was like a man still walking about the
world unaware that he has contracted a fatal disease which will
alter every routine and habit in his life. People went on with
their summer holidays; shops reassured their customers with
the announcement "business as usual." There was much talk
and excitement when the newspapers came, but it was the talk
and excitement of spectators who have no vivid sense of par-
ticipation in the catastrophe that was presently to involve
them all.
§ 8
We will now review very briefly the main phases of the world
struggle which had thus commenced. Planned by Germany, it
began with a swift attack designed to "knock out" France while
Russia was still getting her forces together in the East. For
a time all went well. Military science is never up to date
under modern conditions, because military men are as a class
unimaginative, there are always at any date undeveloped in-
ventions capable of disturbing current tactical and strategic
practice which the military intelligence has declined. The
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1037
German plan had been made for some years; it was a stale
plan; it could probably have been foiled at the outset by a
proper use of entrenchments and barbed wire and machine
guns, but the French were by no means as advanced in their
military science as the Germans, and they trusted to methods
of open warfare that were at least fourteen years behind the
times. They had a proper equipment neither of barbed wire
nor machine guns, and there was a ridiculous tradition that
the Frenchman did not fight well behind earthworks. The Bel-
gian frontier was defended by the fortress of LiSge, ten or
twelve years out of date, with forts whosei armament had' been
furnished and fitted in many cases by German l3ontractors ; and
the French north-eastern frontier was very badly equipped.
Ifaturally the German armament firm of Krupp had provided
nutcrackers for these nuts in the form of exceptionally heavy
guns firing high explosive shell. These defences proved there-
fore to be mere traps for their garrisons. The French attacked
and failed in the southern Ardennes. The German hosts
swung round the French left with an effect of being irresistible ;
Liege fell on August 9th, Brussels was reached on August 20th,
and the small British army of about 70,000, which had arrived
in Belgium, was struck at Mons (August 22nd) in overwhelm-
ing force, and driven backward in spite of the very deadly rifle
tabtics it had learnt during the South African War. The little
British force was pushed aside westward, and the German
right swept down so as to leave Paris to the west and crumple
the entire French army back upon itself.
So confident was the German higher command at this stage
of having won the war, that by the end of August German
troops were already being withdrawn for the Eastern front,
where the Eussians were playing havoc in East and West Prus-
sia. And then came the French counter-attack, strategically
a very swift and brilliant counter-attack. The French struck
back on their centre, they produced an unexpected army on
their left, and the small British army, shaken but reinforced',
was still fit to play a worthy part, in the counter-stroke. The
German right overran itself, lost its cohesion, and was driven
back from the Marne to the Aisne (Battle of the Marne, Sep-
tember 6th to 10th). It would have been driven back farther
had it not had the art of entrenchment in reserve. Upon the
Aisne it stood and dug itself in. The heaTy guns, the high
1038 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
explosive shell, the tanks, needed by the allies to smash up
these entrenchments, ; did not yet exist.
The Battle of the Marne shattered the original German plan.
For a time Trance was saved,. But the German was not de-
feated; he had still a great offensive superiority in men and
equipment. His fear of the Russian in the east had been re-
lieved by, a tremendous victory at Tannenberg. His next phase
was a headlong, less elaborately planned campaign to outflank
the left of the allied armies and to seize the Channel ports and
cut.pff stjpplies coming from Britain to France. Both armies
extended to the west in a sort of race to the coast. Then the
Germans, with -a great superiority of guns and equipment,
struck, at the British round and about Ypres. They came
very near to a break through, but the British held them.
. The war on th& Western front settled down to trench war-
fare. Neither side hadv^ the science and equipment needed to
solve the problem of breaking through modern entrenchments
and entanglements, and both sides were now compelled to resort
to scientific men, inventors, and such-like unmilitary persons
for counsel and help in. their difficulty. At that time the essen-
tial problem of trenehi warfare, had already beeji solved ; there
existed in England, for instance, the model of a tank, which
would have given the allies a swift and easy victory before
1916; but the professional military jtnind is by necessity an iu-
f erior and unimaginative mind ; no man of high intellectual
quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling ;
nearly all supremely great soldiers have been either inexperi-
enced, fresh-minded young men like Alexander, Napoleon, and
Hoche,: politicians turned : soldiers like Julius Caesar, nomads
like the Hun and Mongol captains, or amateurs like Crom-
well and Washington; whereas this war after fifty years of
militarism was a hopelessly professional war; from first to
last it was impossible to, get it out of the hands of the regular
generals, and neither the .German nor allied headquarters was
disposed to regard an invention with toleration that would de-
stroy their traditional methods. The tank was not only dis-
agreeably strange to these military gentlemen, but it gave an
unprofessional protection to the common soldiers within it. The
Germans, however, did make some innovations. In February
(28) they produced a rather futile novelty, the flame projector,
the user of which „5vas in constant danger of being burnt alive,
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914
1039
and in April, in the midst of a second great offensive upon the
British (second Battle of Ypres, April I7th to May I7th),
they employed a cloud of poison gas. This horrible device was
iised against Algerian and Canadian troops; it shook them
by the physical torture it inflicted, and by the anguish of those
FRONT
igi5-ts
*
PlliiA Uiw.. Mirdi 1915 _^_^_
- Afril 1917
Gzpmzii Una , July 1916 •■■•w^.^h.
AULid Urte. , Nov. 11'^ 191S ..^.^_
who died, but it failed to break through them. For some
weeks chemists were of more importance than soldiers on the
allied front, and within six weeks the defensive troops were
already in possession of protective methods and devices.
For a year and a half, until July, 1916, the Western front
remained in a state of indecisive tension. There were heavy
attacks on either side that ended in bloody repulses. The
French made costly but glorious thrusts at Arras and in Oham-
1040 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
pagne in 1915, the British at Loos. From Switzerland to the
North Sea there ran two continuous lines of entrenchment,
sometimes at a distance of a mile or more, sometimes at a dis-
tance of a few feet (at Arras e,g.), and in and behind these
lines of trenches millions of men toiled, raided their enemies,
and prepared for sanguinary and foredoomed offensives. In
any preceding age these stagnant masses of men would have
engendered a pestilence inevitably, but here again modern sci-
ence had altered the conditions of warfare. Certain novel
diseases appeared, trench feet for instance, caused by prolonged
standing in cold water, new forms of dysentery, and the like,
but none developed to an extent to disable either combatant
force. Behind this front the whole life of the belligerent na-
tions was being turned more and more to the task of maintain-
ing supplies of food, munitions, and, above all, men to supply
the places of those who day by day were killed or mangled.
The Germans had had the luck to possess a considerable number
of big siege guns intended for the frontier fortresses; these
were now available for trench smashing with high explosive,
a use no one had foreseen for them. The Allies throughout
the first years were markedly inferior in their supply of big
guns and ammunition, and their losses were steadily greater
than the German. Mr. Asquith, the British Prime Min-
ister, though a very fine practitioner in all the arts of Par-
liament, was wanting in creative ability; and it is probably
due to the push and hustle of Mr. Lloyd George (who pres-
ently ousted him in December, 1916) and the clamour of the
British press that this inferiority of supplies, was eventually
rectified.
There was a tremendous German onslaught upon the French
throughout the first half of 1916 round and about Verdun.
The Germans suffered enormous losses and were held, after
pushing in the French lines for some miles. The French losses
were as great or greater. "lis ne passeront pas" said and sang
the French infantry — and kept their word.
The Eastern German front was more extended and less sys-
tematically entrenched than the Western. For a time the Eus-
sian armies continued to press westward in spite of the Tan-
nenberg disaster. They conquered nearly the whole of Galicia
from the Austrians, took Lemberg on September 2nd, 1914, and
the great fortress of Przemysl on March 22nd, 1915. But
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1041
after tlie Germans had failed to break the Western front of
the Allies, and after an ineffective Allied offensive made -with-
out proper material, they turned to Russia, and a series of
heavy blows, with a novel use of massed artillery, were struck
first in the south and. then at the north of the Russian front.
On June 22nd, Przemysl was retaken, and the whole Russian
line was driven back until Vilna (September 2nd) was in
German hands.
In May, 1915 (23rd), Italy joined the allies, and declared
war upon Austria. (Not until a year later did she declare
war on Germany.) She pushed over her eastern boundary
towards Goritzia (which fell in the summer of 1916), but her
intervention was of little use at that time to either Russia or
the two Western powers. She merely established another line
of trench warfare among the high mountains of her picturesque
north-eastern frontier.
While the main fronts of the chief combatants were in this
state of exhaustive deadlock, both sides were attempting to
strike round behind the front of their adversaries. The Ger*
mans made a series of Zeppelin, and later of aeroplane raids
upon Paris and the east of England. Ostensibly these aimed
at depots, munition works, and the like targets of military
importance, but practically they bombed promiscuously at in-
habited places. At first these raiders dropped not very effective
bombs, but later the size and quality of these missiles increased,
considerable numbers of people were killed and injured, and
very much damage was done. The English people were roused
to a pitch of extreme indignation by these outrages. Although
the Germans had possessed Zeppelins for some years, no one
in authority in Great Britain had thought out the proper
methods of dealing with them, and it was not until late in
1916 that an adequate supply of anti-aircraft guns was brought
into play and that these raiders were systematically attacked
by aeroplanes. Then came a series of Zeppelin disasters, and
after the spring of 1917 they ceased to be used for any purpose
but sea scouting, and their place as raiders was taken by large
aeroplanes (the Gothas). The visits of these latter machines
to London and the east of England became systematic after
the summer of 1917. All through the winter of 1917-18, Lon-
don on every moonlight night became familiar with the banging
of warning maroons, the shrill whistles of the police alarm, the
1042 THE OUTLINE OP HISTORY
hasty clearance of the streets, the distant rumbling of scores
and hundreds of anti-aircraft guns growing steadily, to a wild
uproar of thuds and crashes, the swish of flying shrapnel, and
at last^ if any of the raiders got through the barrage, with the
dull heavy bang of the bursting bombs. Then presently, amidst
the diminuendo of the gunfire would come the inimitable rush-
ing sound of the fire brigade engines and the hurry of the
ambulances. . . . War was brought home to every Londoner
■by these experiences.
' While the Germans were thus assailing the nerve of their
enemy home population through the air, they were also attack-
ing the overseas trade of the British by every means in their
ipower. At the outset of the war they had various trade de-
stroyers scattered over the world, and a squadron of powerful
modern cruisers in the Pacific, namely, the Scharnhorst, the
Crneisenau, the Leipzig, the Numberg, and the Dresden. Some
of the detached cruisers, and particularly the Emden, did a
considerable amount of commerce destroying before they were
hunted down, and the main squadron caught an inferior Brit-
ish force off the coast of Chile and sank the Good Hope and
the Monmouth on November 1st, 1914. A month later these
German ships were themselves pounced upon by a British force,
and all (except the Dresden) sunk by Admiral Sturdee in the
Battle of the Falkland Isles. After this conflict the allies re-
mained in undisputed possession of the surface of the sea, a
supremacy which the great naval Battle of Jutland (May 1st,
1916) did nothing to shake. The Germans concentrated their
attention more and more upon submarine warfare. From the
beginning of the war they had had considerable submarine suc-
cesses. On one day, September 22nd, 1914, they sank three
powerful cruisers, the Ahovkir, the Hague, and the Cressy, with
1,473 men. They continued to levy a toll upon British ship-
ping throughout the war; at first they hailed and examined
passenger and mercantile shipping, but this practice they dis-
continued for fear of traps, and in the spring of 1915 they
began to sink ships without notice. In May, 1915, they sank
the great passenger liner, the Lusitania, without any warning,
drowning a number of American citizens. This embittered
American feeling against them, but the possibility of injuring
and perhaps reducing Britain by a submarine blockade was
«o great, that they persisted in a more and more intensified
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1043
submarine campaign, regardless of the danger of dragging the
United States into the circle of their enemies.
Meanwhile, Turkish forces, very ill-equipped, were making
threatening gestures at Egypt across the desert of Sinai.
And while the Germans were thus striking at Britain, their
least accessible and most formidable antagonist, through the
air and under the sea, the French and British were also em-
barking upon a disastrous flank attack in the east upon the
Central Powers through Turkey. The Gallipoli campaign was
finely imagined, but disgracefully executed. Had it succeeded,
the Allies would have captured Constantinople in 1915. But
the Turks were given two months' notice of the project by a
premature bombardment of the Dardanelles in February, the
scheme was also probably betrayed through the Greek Court,
and when at last British and French forces were landed upon
the Gallipoli peninsula in April, they found the Turks well
entrenched and better equipped for trench warfare than them-
selves. The Allies trusted for heavy artillery to the great guns
of the ships, which were comparatively useless for battering
down entrenchments, and among every other sort of thing that
they had failed to foresee, they had not foreseen hostile sub-
marines. Several great battleships weife lost ; they went down in
the same clear waters over which the ships of Xerxes had once
sailed to their fate at Salamis. The story of the Gallipoli cam-
paign from the side of the Allies is at once heroic and pitiful, a
story of courage and incompetence, and of life, material, and
prestige wasted, culminating in a withdrawal in January, 1916.
Linked up closely with the vacillation of Greece was the
entry of Bulgaria into the war (October 12th, 1915). The
king of Bulgaria had hesitated for more than a year to make
any decision between the two sides. Now the manifest failure
of the British at Gallipoli, coupled with a strong Austro-Ger-
man attack in Serbia, swung him over to the Central Powers.
While the Serbs were hotly engaged with the Austro-German
invaders upon the Danube he attacked Serbia in the rear, and
in a few weeks the country had been completely overrun. The
Serbian army made a terrible retreat through the mountains
of Albania to the coast, where its remains were rescued by
an Allied fleet.
An Allied force landed at Salonika in Greece, and pushed
inland towards Monastir, but was unable to render any effectual
1044 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
assistance to the Serbians. It was the Salonika plan which
sealed the fate of the Gallipoli expedition.
To the east, in Mesopotamia, the British, using Indian
troops chiefly, made a still remoter flank attack upon the Central
Powers. An army, very ill provided for the campaign, was
landed at Basra in the November of 1914, and pushed up to-
wards Bagdad in the following year. It gained a victory at
Ctesiphon, the ancient Arsacid and Sassanid capital within
twenty-five miles of Bagdad, but the Turks were heavily rein-
forced, there was a retreat to Kut, and there the British army,
under General Tovmshend, was surrounded and starved into
surrender on April 29th, 1916.
All these campaigns in the air, under the seas, in Russia,
Turkey, and Asia, were subsidiary to the main front, the front
of decision, between Switzerland and the sea; and there the
main millions lay entrenched, slowly learning the necessary
methods of modern scientific warfare. There was a rapid prog-
ress in the use of the aeroplane. At the outset of the war this
had been used chiefly for scouting, and by the Germans for
the dropping of marks for the artillery. Such a thing as
aerial fighting was unheard of. In 1916 the aeroplanes carried
machine guns and fought in the air; their bombing work was
increasingly important, they had developed a wonderful art
of aerial photography, and all the aerial side of artillery work,
both with aeroplanes and observation balloons, had been enor-
mously developed. But the military mind was still resisting
the use of the tank, the obvious weapon for decision in trench
warfare.
Many intelligent people outside military circles understood
this quite clearly. The use of the tank against trenches was an
altogether obvious expedient. Leonardo da Vinci invented an
early tank, but what military "expert" has ever had the wits
to study Leonardo ? Soon after the South African War, in
1903, there were stories in magazines describing imaginary
battles in which tanks figured, and a complete working model
of a tank made by Mr. J. A. Corry of Leeds, was shown to the
British military authorities — who of course rejected it — ^in
1911. Tanks had been invented and re-invented before the
war began. But had the matter rested entirely in the hands
of the military, there would never have been any use of tanks.
It was Mr. Winston Churchill, who was at the British Admir-
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1046
alty in 1915-16, who insisted upon the manufacture of the first
tanks, and it was in the teeth of the grimmest opposition that
they were sent to France. To the British navy, and not to the
army, military science owes the use of these devices. The
German military authorities were equally set against them. In
July, 1916, Sir Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief,
began a great offensive which failed to break through the Ger-
man line. In some places he advanced a few miles; in others
he was completely defeated. There was a huge slaughter of
the new British armies. And he did not use tanks.
In September, when the season was growing too late for a
sustained offensive, tanks first appeared in warfare. A few
were put into action by the British in a not very intelligent fash-
ion. Their effect upon the German was profound, they pro-
duced something like a panic, and there can be little doubt that
had they been used in July in sufficient numbers and handled
by a general of imagination and energy, they would have ended
the war there and then. At that time the Allies were in greater
strength than the Germans upon the Western front. The odds
were roughly seven to four. Russia, though fast approaching
exhaiistion, was still fighting, Italy was pressing the Austrians
hard, and Eumania was just entering the war on the aide of
the Allies. But the waste of men in this disastrous July of-
fensive, and the incompetence of the British military command,
brought the Allied cause to the very brink of disaster.
Directly the British failure of July had reassured the
Germans, they turned on the Rumanians, and the winter of
1916 saw the same fate overtake Rumania that had fallen upon
.Serbia in 1915. The year that had begun with the retreat
from Gallipoli and the surrender of Kut, ended with the crush-
ing of Eumania and with volleys fired at a landing party of
French and British marines by a royalist crowd in the port of
Athens. It looked as thou^ King Constantine of Greece meant
to lead his people in the footsteps of King Ferdinand of Bul-
garia. But the coast-line of Greece is one much exposed to
naval action. Greece was blockaded, and a French force from
Salonika joined hands with an Italian force from Valona to
cut the king of Greece off from his Central European friends.
(In July, 1917, Constantine was forced to abdicate by the
Allies, and his son Alexander was made king in his place.)
On the whole, things looked much less dangerous for the
1046 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Hohenzollem imperialism at the end of 1916 than they had done
after the failure of the first great rush at the Marne. The
Allies had wasted two years of opportunity. Belgium, Serbia,
and Rumania, and large areas of France and Russia, were
occupied by Austro-German troops. Counterstroke after coun-
terstroke had failed, and Eussia was now tottering towards a
collapse. Had Germany been ruled with any wisdom, she
might have made a reasonable peace at this time. But the
touch of success had intoxicated her imperialists. . They wanted
not safety, but triumph, not world welfare, but world empire.
"World power or downfall" was their formula; it gave their
antagonists no alternative but a fight to a conclusive end.
§ 9
Early in 191Y Eussia collapsed.
By this time the enormous strain of the war was telling
hardly upon all the European populations. There had been
a great disorganization of transport everywhere, a discontinu-
ance of the normal repairs and replacements of shipping, rail-
ways, and the like, a using-up of material of all sorts, a
dwindling of food production, a withdrawal of greater and
greater masses of men from industry, a cessation of educa-
tional work, and a steady diminution of the ordinary securi-
ties and honesties of life. iN^owhere was the available direc-
tive ability capable of keeping a grip upon affairs in the face
of the rupture of habitual bonds and the replacement of the
subtle disciplines of peace by the clumsy brutalities of military
"order." More and more of the European population was being
transferred from surroundings and conditions to which it was
accustomed, to novel circumstances which distressed, stimulated,
and demoralized it. But Eussia suffered first and most from
this universal pulling up of civilization from its roots. The
Russian autocracy was dishonest and incompetent. The Tsar,
like several of his ancestors, had now given way to a crazy
pietism, and the court was dominated by a religious impostor,
Easputin, whose cult was one of unspeakable foulness, a reek-
ing scandal in the face of the world. Beneath the rule of this
dirty mysticism, indolence and scoundrelism mismanaged the
war. The Eussian common soldiers were sent into battle with-
out guns to support, them, vsdthout even rifle ammunition ; they
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1047
were wasted by their officers and generals in a delirium of
militarist enthusiasm. Tor a time they seemed to be suffering
mutely as the beasts suffer; but there is a limit to the endur-
ance even of the most ignorant. A profound disgust for the
Tsardom was creeping through these armies of betrayed and
wasted men. From the close of 1915 onwards Russia was a
source of deepening anxiety to her Western allies. Through-
out 1916 she remained largely on the defensive, and there
were rumours of a separate peace with Germany. She gave
little help to Rumania.
On December 29th, 1916, the monk Rasputin was mur-
dered at a dinner-party in Petrograd, and a belated attempt
was made to put the Tsardom in order. By March things were
moving rapidly; food riots in Petrograd developed into a revo-
lutionary insurrection; there was an attempted suppression of
the Duma, the representative body, attempted arrests of lib-
eral leaders, the formation of a provisional government under
Prince Lvoff, and an abdication (March 15th) by the Tsat.
For a time it seemed that a moderate and controlled revolution
might be possible — perhaps under a new Tsar. Then it be-
came evident that the destruction of confidence in Russia had
gone too far for any such adjustments. The Russian people
were sick to death of the old order of things in Europe, of
Tsars and of wars and great powers ; it wanted relief, and that
speedily, from unendurable miseries. The Allies had no un-
derstanding of Russian realities ; their diplomatists were igno-
rant of Russian, genteel persons, with their attention directed
to the Russian Court rather than Russia, they blundered stead-
ily with the new situation. There was little goodwill among
the diplomatists for republicanism, and a manifest disposition
to embarrass the new government as much as possible. At
the head of the Russian republican government was an eloquent
and picturesque leader, Kerensky, who found himself assailed
by the deep forces of a profounder revolutionary movement,
the "social revolution," at home and cold-shouldered by the
Allied governments abroad. His allies would neither let him
give the Russian people land nor peace beyond their frontiers.
The French and the British press pestered their exhausted ally
for a fresh offensive, but when presently the Germans made
a strong attack by sea and land upon Riga, the British Ad-
miralty quailed before the prospect of a Baltic expedition in
1048 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
relief. The new Kussian republic had to fight unsupported.
In spite of their great naval predominance and the bitter pro-
tests of the great English admiral, Lord Fisher (1841-1920),
it is to be noted that the Allies, except for some submarine at-
tacks, left the Germans the complete mastery of the Baltic
throughout the war.
The Russian masses were resolute to end the war. There
had come into existence in Petrograd a body representing the
workers and common soldiers, the Soviet, and this body clam-
oured for an international conference of socialists at Stock-
holm. Food riots were occurring in Berlin at this time, war
weariness in Austria and Germany was profound, and there
can be little doubt, in the light of subsequent events, that such
a conference would have precipitated a reasonable peace on
democratic lines in 1917 and a German revolution. Kerensky
implored his Western allies to allow this conference to take
place, but, fearful of a world-wide outbreak of socialism and
republicanism, they refused, in spite of the favourable re-
sponse of a small majority of the British Labour Party. With-
out either moral or physical help from the Allies, the "moderate"
Russian republic still fought on and made a last desperate
offensive effort in July. It failed after some preliminary suc-
cesses and another grieat slaughtering of Russians.
The limit of Russian endurance was reached. Mutinies
broke out in the Russian armies, and particularly upon the
northern front, and iipon November 7th, 1917, Kerensky's
government was overthrown and power was seized by the Soviet
Government, dominated by the Bolshevik socialists under Lenin,
and pledged to make peace regardless of the Western powers.
Russia passed definitely "out of the war."
In the spring of 1917 there had been a costly and ineffec-
tive French attack upon the Champagne front which had failed
to break through and sustained enormous losses. Here, then,
by the end of 1917, was a phase of events altogether favourable
to Germany, had her government been fighting for security
and well-being rather than for pride and victory. But to the
very end, to the pitch of final exhaustion, the people of the Cen-
tral Powers were held to the effort to realize an impossible
world imperialism.
To that end it was necessary that Britain should be not
merely resisted, but subjugated, and in order to do that Ger-
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1049
many had already dragged America into the circle of her ene-
mies. Throughout 1916 the submarine campaign had been
growing in intensity, but hitherto it had respected neutral ship-
ping. In January, 1917, a completer "blockade" of Great
Britain and France was proclaimed, and ail neutral powers
were warned to withdraw their shipping from the British
seas. An indiscriminate sinking of the world's shipping began
which compelled the United States to enter the war in April
(6th) 1917. Throughout 1917, while Eussia was breaking up
and becoming impotent, the American people were changing
swiftly and steadily into a great military nation. And the
unrestricted submarine campaign for which the German im-
perialists had accepted the risk of this fresh antagonist, was
far less successful than had been hoped. The British navy
proved itself much more inventive and resourceful than the
British army ; there was a rapid development of anti-submarine
devices under water, upon the surface, and in the air; and
after a month or so of serious destruction, the tale of sub-
marine sinkings declined. The British found it necessary to
put themselves upon food rations; but the regulations were
well framed and ably administered, the public showed an ex-
cellent spirit and intelligence, and the danger of famine and
social disorder was kept at arm's length.
Yet the German imperial government persisted in its course.
If the submarine was not doing all that had been expected,
and if the armies of America gathered like a thunder-cloud,
yet Eussia was definitely down; and in October the same sort
of autumn offensive that had overthrown Serbia in 1915 and
Eumania in 1916 was now turned with crushing effect against
Italy. The Italian front collapsed after the Battle of Oapo-
retto, and the Austro-German armies poured down into Venetia
and came almost within gunfire of Venice. Germany felt justi-
fied, therefore, in taking a high line with the Eussian peace pro-
posals, and the peace of Brest Litovsk (March 2nd, 1918) gave
the Western allies some intimation of what a German victory
would mean to them. It was a crushing and exorbitant peace,
dictated with the utmost arrogance of confident victors.
All through the winter German troops had been shifting
from the Eastern to the Western fronts and now, in the spring
of 1918, the jaded enthusiasm of hungry, weary, and bleeding
Germany was lashed up for the one supreme effort that was
1050 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
really arid truly to end the war. For some months American
troops had been in France, but the bulk of the American army
was still across the Atlaritic. It was high time for the final
conclusive blow upon the Western front, if such a blow was
ever to be delivered. The first attack was upon the British
in the Somme region. The not very brilliant cavalry, generals
who were still in command of a front upon which cavalry was
a useless encumbrance • were caught napping; and on March
21st, in ".Gough's Disaster," the fifth British army was driven
back in disorder. The jealousies of the British and French
generals had preyented any unified command of the Allied
armies in France, and there was no general reserve whatever
behind Gough. Thousands of guns were lost, and scores of
thousands of prisoners. Many of these losses were due to the
utter incompetence of the higher command. !No less than a
hundred tanks were abandoned because they ran out of petrol!
The British were driven back almost to Amiens. Through-
out April and May the Germans rained offensives on the Allied
front. They came rieai" to a break through in the north, and
they made a great drive back to the Mame, which they reached
again on May 30th, 1918.
This was the climax of the German effort. . Behind it was
nothing but an exhausted homeland. The Allied politicians
intervened in the quarrels of their professional soldiers, and
Marshal Foch was put in supreme command of all the Allied
armies. Fresh troops were hurrying from Britain across the
Channel, and America was now pouring men into France by
the hundred thousand. In June the weary Austrians made a
last effort in Italy, and collapsed before an Italian counter-
attack. Early in June Foch began to develop a counter-attack
in the Marne angle. By July the tide was turning, and the
Germans were reeling back. The Battle of Chateau Thierry
(July 18th) proved the quality of the new American armies.
In August the British opened a great and successful thrust
into Belgium, and the bulge of the German lines towards
Amiens wilted and collapsed. Germany had finished. The
fighting spirit passed out of her army, and October was a story
of defeat and retreat along the entire Western front. Early
in November British troops were in Valenciennes and Ameri-
cans in Sedan. In Italy also the Austrian armies were in a
state of disorderly retreat. But everywhere now the Hohen-
THE CATASTROPHE OP 1914 1051
•zoHem and Habsburg forces were collapsing. The smash ^t
; the end was amazifagly swift. Frenchmen and Englishmen could
not believe their newspapers as day after day they announced
the capture of more hundreds of guns and more thousands of
prisoners.
In September a great allied offensive against Bulgaria had
produced a revolution in that country and peace proposals.
Turkey had followed with a capitulation at the end of October,
and Austro-Hungary on November 4th. There was an attempt
to bring out the German Fleet for a last fight, but the sailors
mutinied (November 7th).
The Kaiser and the Crown Prince bolted hastily, and with-
out a scrap of dignity, into Holland. On November 11th an
armistice was signed and the war was at an end. ...
For four years and a quarter the war had lasted, and grad-
ually it had dra.wn nearly everyone in the Western world, at
least, into its vortex. Upwards of ten millions of people had
been actually killed through the fighting, another twenty or
twenty-five million had died through the hardships and dis-
orders entailed. Scores of millions were suffering and en-
feebled by under-nourishment and misery. A vast proportion
of the living were now engaged in war work, in drilling and
armament, in making munitions, in hospitals, in working as
substitutes for men who had gone into the armies and the like.
Business men had been adapting themselves to the more hectic
methods necessary for profit in a world in a state of crisis.. The
war had become, indeed, an atmosphere, a habit of life, a new
social order. Then suddenly it ended'.
In London the armistice was proclaimed abojut midday on
November 11th. It produced a strangei cessajtion of every
ordinary routine. Clerks poured out of their ofiices and would
not return, assistants deserted their shops, omnibus drivers and
the drivers of military lorries set out upon journeys of their
own devising with picked-up loads of astounded and cheering
passengers going nowhere in particular and careless whither
they went. Vast vacant crowds presently choked the streets,
and every house and shop that possessed such adornments hung
out flags. When night came, many of the main streets^ which
had been kept in darkness for mapy months , because, of the
air raids, were brightly, lit. It was very strange to see throng-
ing multitudes assembled, in an artificial light again. Every-
1052
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
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one felt aimleas, with a kind of strained and aching relief.
It was over at last. There would be no more killing in Francei,
no more air raids — and (things wojild get better. People
wanted to laugh, and weep — and could do neither. Youths of
spirit and young soldiers on leave formed thin noisy proces-
sions that shoved their way through the general drift, and did
their best to make a jollification. A captured German gun
was hauled from the Mall, where a vast array of such trophies
had been set out, into Trafalgar Square, and its carriage burnt.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914
105S
rRONT TIUSSIA'
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Squibs and crackers were thrown about. But there was little
concerted rejoicing. Nearly everyone had lost too much and
suffered too much to rejoice with any fervour.
§ 10
The world in the year after the great war was like a man who
has had some vital surgical operation very roughly performed,
and who is not yet sure whether he can now go on living or
105* THE OUTLINE OF HISTOEY
whether he has not been so profoundly shocked an3^ injured
that he-will presently fall down and die. It was a world dazed
and stufined. German militarist imperialism had been de-
feated, but at an overwhelming, cost. It had come Very near
to victory. Everything i went on, now tbat the strain of >the
conflict had ceased, ratHer laxly, rather! weakly, and with a
gusty and uncertain teniper. There wa^ a universal hunger -
for peace, a universal desire for the lost safety and liberty and;
prosperity of |pr€|-war times, without any power of will to
achieve and secure these things. ;
Just; as with the Roman . Hepublic under the long strain
of the jPunic War, so now there had been a great release of
yiojencb and cruelty, and a profound deterioration in financial
and economic morality.? Generous spirits had sacrificed them-
selves freely |to the urgent demands of the war, but the sly and
base of the "worlds of business and money had watched the
convulsive opportiinities; of the time and secured a firm grip
upon the resources and political power of their countries.
Everywhere men who would, have been regarded as shady ad-
venturers befbre 1914: had acquired power and influence while
better men toiled unprofitably. Such, men as Lord Ehondda,
the British food controller, killed themselves with hard work,
while the wair profiteer waxed rich and secured his grip upon
press and party organization.
In the course of the war there had been extraordinary ex-
periments in collefetive m^nageinent in nearly all the belligerent^
countries. It was ; realized that the common expedieiits of peace-;
time commerce, tha higgling of the market, the holding out for!
a favourable bargain, were incompatible with the swift needsj
of warfare. Transport, fuel, food supply, and the distribution:
of the raw materials not only of clothing, housing, and thei
like, but of everything needed for war munitions, had been
brought' under public control. No longer had farmers been
allowed to under-farm; cattle had been put upon deer-parks
and grasslands ploughed up, with or without the owner's ap-
proval. Luxury building and speculative company promotion
had been restrained. In eifect, a sort of emergency socialist
state had been established throughout belligerent Europe. It
was rough-and-ready and wasteful, but it was more effective than
the tangled incessant profit-seeking, the cornering and fore-
stalling and incoherent productiveness of "private enterprise.''
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1055
In the earlier years of the war there was a very widespread
feeling of hrotherhood and the common interest in all the
belligerent states. The common men were everywhere sacrific-
ing life and health for what they believed to: be the common
good of the state. In return, it was promised, there would
be less social injustice after the war, a more universal devotion
to the common welfare. In Great Britain, for instance, Mr.
Lloyd George was particularly insistent upon his intraition to
make the after-war Britain "a land fit for heroes." He fore-
shadowed the continuation of this new war communism into
the peace period in discourses of great fire and beauty. In
Great Britain, there was created a Ministry of Keconstruction,
which was understood to be planning a new and more generous
social order, better labour conditions, better housing, extended
education, a complete and scientific revision of the economic
system. Similar hopes of a better world sustained, the com-
mon soldiers of France and Germany and Italy. It was prfr
mature disillusionment that caused the Kussiah collapse. So
that twc* mutually dangerous streams of anticipation were run-
ning through the minds of men in Western Europe towards
the end of the war. The rich and adventurous men, and par-
ticularly the new war profiteers, were making their plans to
prevent such developments as that air transport should become
a state property, and to snatch back manufactures, shipping,
land transport, the public services generally, and the trade in
staples from the hands of the commonweal into the grip of
private profit ; they were securing possession of newspapers and
busying themselves with party caucuses and the like to that
end; while the masses of common men were looking forward
naively to a new state of siociety planned almost entirely in
their interest and according to generous general ideas. The
history of 1919 is largely the clash- of these two streams of an-
ticipation. There was a hasty selling off, by the "business!' govr
emment in control, of every remunerative ipublic enterprise to
private speculators. . . . By the middle of 1919 the labour
masses throughout the world were manifestly disappointed and
in a thoroughly bad temper. The British "Minister of Recon-
struction" and its foreign equivalents were exposed as a soothing
sham. The common man felt he had been cheated. There was
to bfe no reconstruction, but only a restoration of the old order-
in the harsher form necessitated by the poverty of the new time.
1056 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
For four years the drama of the war had obscured the social
question which had been developing in the Western civilizations
throughout the nineteenth century. Now that the war was over,
this question reappeared gaunt and bare, as it had never been
seen before.
And the irritations and hardships and the general insecurity
of the new time were exacerbated by a profound disturbance of
currency and credit. Money, a complicated growth of conven-
tions rather than a system of values, had been deprived within
the belligerent countries of the support of a gold standard.
Gold had been retained only for international trade, and every
government had produced excessive quantities of paper money
for domestic use. With the breaking down of the war-time
barriers the international exchange became a wildly fluctuating
confusion, a source of distress to everyone except a few gamblers
and wily speculators. Prices rose and rose — ^with an infuriating
effect upon the wage-earner. On the one hand was the employer
resisting his demands for more pay; on the other hand, food,
house-room, and clothing were being steadily cornered against
him. And, which was the essential danger of the situation, he
had lost any confidence he had ever possessed that any patience
or industrial willingness he displayed would really alleviate the
shortages and inconveniences by which he suffered.
In the speeches of politicians towards the close of 1919 and
the spring of 1920, there was manifest an increasing recognition
of the fact that what is called the capitalist system — ^the private
ownership system that is, in which private profit is the working
incentive — ^was on its trial. It had to produce general prosperity,
they tidmitted, or it had to be revised. It is interesting to note
such a speech as that of Mr. Lloyd George, the British premier,
delivered on Saturday, December 6th, 1919. Mr. Lloyd George
had had the education and training of a Welsh solicitor; he
entered politics early, and in the course of a brilliant parlia-
mentary career he had had few later opportunities for reading
and thought. But being a man of great natural shrewdness, he
was expressing here very accurately the ideas of the more in-
telligent of the business men and wealthy men and ordinary
citizens who supported him.
"There is a new challenge to civilization," he said. "What is
it ? It is fundamental. It affects the whole fabric of society as
we know it; its commerce, its trade, its industry, its finance,
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1057
its social order — all are involved in it. There are those who
maintain that the prosperity and strength of the country have
heen built up by the stimulating and invigorating appeal to in-
dividual impulse, to individual action. That is one view. The
State must educate ; the State must assist where necessary ; the
State must control where necessary ; the State must shield the
weak against the arrogance of the strong; but the life springs
from individual impulse and energy. (Cheers.) That is one
view. What is the other ? That private enterprise is a failure,
tried, and found wanting — a complete failure, a cruel failure.
It must be rooted out, and the community must take charge as
a community, to produce, to distribute, as well as to control.
. "Those are great challenges for us to decide. We say that
the ills of private enterprise can be averted. They say, 'No,
they cannot. No ameliorative, no palliative, no restrictive, no
remedial measure will avail. These evils are inherent in the
system. They are the fruit of the tree, and you must out it
down.' That is the challenge we hear ringing through the
civilized world to-day, from ocean to ocean, through valley and
plain. You hear it in the whining and maniacal shrieking of
the Bolshevists. You hear it in the loud, clear, but more re-
strained tones of Congresses and Conferences. The Bolshevists
would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror.
Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks —
especially craiJis. (Laughter.)
"Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks
and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get
it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for
by the starvation of his children — that torture is something that
private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake. (Cheers.)
Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go.
We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.
If I — and I say this deliberately — if I had to choose between
this fabric I believe in, and allowing millions of men and women
and children to rot in its cellars, I would not hesitate one hour.
That is not the choice. Thank God it is not the choice. Pri-
vate enterprise can produce more, so that all men get a fair
share of it. . . ." ^
Here, put into quasi-eloquent phrasing, and with a jest
adapted to the mental habits of the audience, we have the com-
^The Times, December 8th, 1919.
1058 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
mon-aense view of the ordinary prosperous man not only of
Great Britain, but of America or France or Italy or Germany.
In quality and tone it is a fair sample of British political
thought in 1919. The prevailing economic system has made
us what we are, is the underlying idea; and we do not want
any process of social destruction to precede a renascence of
society, we do not want to experiment with the fundamentals of
our social order. Let us accept that. Adaptation, Mr. Lloyd
George admitted, tliere had to be. Now this occasion of his
speaking was a year and a month after the Armistice, and for
all that period private enterprise had been failing to do all
that Mr. Lloyd George was so cheerfully promising it would do.
The community was in urgent need of houses. Throughout the
war there had been a cessation not only of building, but of
repairs. The shortage of houses in the last months of 1919
amounted to scores of thousands in Britain alone. ^ Multitudes
of people were living in a state of exasperating congestion, and
the most shameless profiteering in apartments and houses was
going on. It was a difficult, but not an impossible situation.
Given the same enthusiasm and energy and self-sacrifice that
had tided over tbe monstrous crisis of 1916, the far easier task
of providing a million houses could have been performed in a
year or so. But there had been corners in building materials,
transport was in a disordered state, and it did not pay private
enterprise to build houses at any rents within tbe means of the
people who needed them. Private enterprise, therefore, so far
from bothering about the public need of housing, did nothing
but comer and speculate in rents and sub-letting. It now de-
manded grants in aid from the State — in order to build at a
profit. And there was a great crowding and dislocation of
goods at the depots because there was insufficient road trans-
port. There was an urgent want of cheap automobiles to move
about goods and workers. But private enterprise in the auto-
mobile industry found it far more profitable to produce splendid
and costly cars for those whom the war had made rich. The
munition factories built with public money could have been
converted very readily into factories for the mass production
of cheap automobiles, but private enterprise had insisted upon
these factories being sold by the State, and would neither meet
the public need itself nor let the State do so. So, too, with the
•Authorities vary between 250,000 and a million houaes.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1059
world in the direst discomfort for need of shipping, private
enterprise insisted upon the shutting down of the newly con-
.structed State shipyards. Currency was dislocated everywhere,
but private enterprise was busy buying and selling francs or
marks and intensifying the trouble. While Mr. George was
making the very characteristic speech we have quoted, the dis-
content of the common man was gathering everywhere, and little
or nothing was being done to satisfy his needs. It was becoming
very evident that unless there was to be some profound change
in the spirit of business, under an unrestrained private enter-
prise system there was little or no hope, in Europe at any rate,
of decent housing, clothing, or education for the workers for
two or three generations.
These are facts that the historian of mankind is obliged to
note with as little comment as possible. Private enterprise in
Europe in 1919 and 1920 displayed neither will nor capacity
for meeting the crying needs of the time. So soon as it was
released from control, it ran naturally into speculation, corner-
ing, and luxury production. It followed the line of maximum
profit. It displayed no sense of its own dangers ; and it resisted
any attempt to restrain and moderate its profits and make itself
serviceable, even in its own interest.^ And this went on in
the face of the most striking manifestations of the extreme re-
calcitrance on the part of the European masses to the prolonged
continuance of the privations and inconyeniences they suffered.
In 1913 these masses were living as they had lived since birth ;
they were habituated to the life they, led. The masses of 1919,
on the other hand, had been uprooted everywhere, to go into
the armies, to go into munition factories, and so on. They
had lost their habits of acquiescence, and they were hardier and
more capable of desperate action. Great multitudes of men
had gone through such brutalizing training as, for instance,
bayonet drill ; they had learnt to be ferocious, and to think less
either of killing or being killed. Social unrest had become,
therefore, much more dangerous. Everything seemed to point
to a refusal to tolerate the current state of affairs for many
years. Unless the educated and prosperous and comfortable
people of Europe could speedily get their private enterprise
under suiBcient restraint to make it work well and rapidly for
the common good, unless they could develop the idea of business
as primarily, a form of public service and not primarily a method
1060 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
of profit-making, unless they could in their own interest achieve a
security of peace that would admit of a cessation not only of war
preparation, but of international commercial warfare, strike and
insurrection promised to follow strike and insurrection up to a
complete social and political collapse. It was not that the masses
had or imagined that they had the plan of a new social, political,
and economic system. They had not, and they did not believe
they had. The defects we have pointed out in the socialist scheme
(Chapter XXXVIII, § 5) were no secret from them. It was a
much more dangerous state of affairs than that. It was that they
were becoming so disgusted with the current system, with its
silly luxury, its universal waste, and its general misery, that they
did not care what happened afterward so long as they could
destroy it. It was a return to a state of mind comparable to that
which had rendered possible the debacle of the Koman Empire.
Already in 1919 the world had seen one great community
go that way, the Russian people. The Russians overturned the
old order and submitted to the autocratic rule of a small group
of doctrinaire Bolshevik socialists, because these men seemed to
have somfething new to try. They wrecked the old system, and
at any cost they would not have it back. The information avail-
able from Russia at th^ time of writing this summary is still
too conflicting and too obviously tainted by propagandist aims
for us to form any judgment upon the proceedings and methods
of the Soviet Government, but it is very plain that from No-
vember, 1917, Russia has not only endured that government
and its mainly socialistic methods, but has fought for it success-
fully against anything that seemed to threaten a retura to the
old regime.
We have already (§ 5) pointed out the very broad differences
between the Russian and the Western communities, and the
strong reasons there are for doubting that they will move upon
parallel lines and act in similar ways. The Russian peasants
were cut off by want of education and sympathy from the small
civilized community of prosperous and educated people which
lived upon them. These latter were a little separate nation.
The peasants below, under the really quite alien incitement of
the Bolshevik socialists, have thrown that separate nation off
and destroyed it. In the towns, and in the towns alone, com-
munism rules (1920) ; the rest of Russia is now no more than
a wilderness of barbaric peasantry; But there is much more
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1061^
unity of thought and feeling between class and class in the
West than in Russia, and particularly in the Atlantic commu-
nities. Even if they wrangle, classes can talk together and
understand each other. There is no unhroken stratum of
illiterates. The groups of rich and speculative men, the "bad
men" in business and affairs, whose freedoms are making the
very name of "private enterprise" stink in the nostrils of the
ordinary man, are only the more active section of very much
larger classes, guilty perhaps of indolence and self-indulgence,
but capable of being roused to a sense not merely of the wicked-
ness but of the danger of systematic self-seeking in a strained,
impoverished, and sorely tried world.
In one way or another it seems inevitable now that the new
standard of well-being which the mechanical revolution of the
last century has rendered possible, should become the general
standard of life. Eevolution is conditional upon public dis-
comfort. Social peace is impossible without a rapid ameliora-
tion of the needless discomforts of the present time. A rapid
resort to willing service and social reconstruction on the part
of those who own and rule, or else a world-wide social revolu-
tion leading towards an equalization of conditions and an at-
tempt to secure comfort on new and untried lines, seem now to
be the only alternatives before mankind. The choice which
route shall be taken lies, we believe, in western Europe, and
still more so in America, with the educated, possessing, and
influential classes. The former route demands much sacrifice,
for prosperous people in particular, a voluntary assumption of
public duties and a voluntary acceptance of class discipline and
self-denial; the latter may take an indefinite time to traverse,
it will certainly be a very destructive and bloody process, and
whether it will lead to a new and better state of affairs at last
is questionable. A social revolution, if ultimately the Western
European States blunder into it, may prove to be a process ex-
tending over centuries; it may involve a social breakdown as
complete as that of the Eoman Empire, and it may necessitate
as slow a recuperation.
§ 11
We have dealt with the social and economic disorder of the
European communities, and the rapid return of the "class-war"
1062 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to the foreground of attention, before giving any account of
the work of world settlement that centred on the Peace Confer-
ence at Paris, because the worried and preoccupied : state of
everyone concerned with private problems of income, prices,
employment, and the like goes far to explain the jaded atmos-
phere in which that Conference addressed itself to the vast
task before it. .
The story of the Conference turns very largely upon the ad-
venture of one particular man, one of those men whom accident
or personal quality picks out as a type to lighten the task of
the historian. We have in the course of this history found it
very helpful at times to focus our attention upon some indi-
vidual, Buddha,' Alexander the Great, Yuan Ohwang, the Em-
peror Frederick II and Charles V and Napoleon I for example,
and to let him by reflection illuminate the period in which he
lived. The conclusion of the Great War can be seen most easily
as the riseof the American President, President Wilson, to'pre-
dominant importance in the world's hopes and attention, and
his failure to justify that predominance.
President Wilson (bom 1856) had previously been a promi-
nent student and teacher of history, constitutional law, and the
political sciences generally. He had held various professorial
chairs, and had been President of Princeton University (New
Jersey). There is a long list of books to his credit, and they
show a mind rather exclusively directed to American history and
American politics. He was mentally the new thing in history,
negligent of and rather ignorant of the older things out of
which his new world had arisen. He retired from academic
life, and was elected Democratic Governor of New Jersey in
1910. In 1913 he became the Democratic presidential candi-
date, and as a eonsequence of a violent quarrel between ex-
President Eoosevelt and President Taft, which split the domi-
nant Eepublican party, he became President of the United
States.
The events of August, 1914, seem to have taken President
Wilson, like the rest of his fellow-countrymen, by surprise. We
find him cabling an offer of his services as a mediator on
August 3rd. Then, for a time, he and America watched the
conflict. At first neither the American people nor their Presi-
dent seem to have had a very clear or profound understanding
of that long-gathered catastrophe. Their tradition for a century.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1063
had been to disregard tlie problems of the Old World, and it
was not to be lightly changed. The imperialistic arrogance of
the German Court and the stupid inclination of the German
military authorities towards melodramatic "frightfulness," their
invasion of Belgium, their cruelties there, their use of poison
gas, and the nuisance of their submarine campaign, created a
deepening hostility to Germany in the United States as the
war proceeded; but the tradition of political abstinence and
the deep-rooted persuasion that America possessed a political
morality altogether superior to European conflicts, restrained
the President from active intervention. He adopted a lofty
tone. He professed to be unable to judge the causes and justice
of the Great War. It was largely his high pacific attitude that
secured his re-election as President for a second term. But
the world is not to be mended by merely regarding evil-doers
with an expression of rather undiscriminating disapproval. By
the end of 1916 the Germans had been encouraged to believe
that under no circumstances whatever would the United States
fight, and in 1917 they began their unrestricted submarine war-
fare and the sinking of American ships without notice. Presi-
dent Wilson and the American people were dragged into the
war by this supreme folly. And also they were dragged into a
reluctant attempt to define their relations to Old World politics
in some other terms than those of mere aloofness. Their
thoughts and temper changed very rapidly. They came into
the war side by side with the Allies, but not in any pact with
the Allies. They came into the war, in the name of their own
modem civilization, to punish and end an intolerable political
and military situation.
Slow and belated judgments are sometimes the best judg-
ments. In a series of "notes," too long and various for detailed
treatment in this Outline, thinking aloud, as it , were, in the
hearing of all mankind. President Wilson sought to state the
essential differences of the American State from the Great
Powers of the Old World. We have been at some pains in this
history to make plain the development of these differences. He
unfolded a conception of international relationships that came
like a gospel, like the hope of a better world, to the whole eastern
hemisphere. Secret agreements were to cease, "nations" were
to determine their own destinies, militarist aggression was to
cease, the seaways were to be free to all mankind. These com-
1064 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
monplaces 6f American thought, these secret desires of every
sane man, came like a great light upon the darkness of anger
and conflict in Europe. At last, men felt, the ranks of diplo-
macy were broken, the veils of Great Power "policy" were rent
in twain. Here with authority, with the strength of a powerful
new nation behind it, was the desire of the common man
throughout the world, plainly said.
Manifestly there was needed some over-riding instrument of
government to establish world law and maintain these broad
and liberal generalizations upon human intercourse. A number
of schemes had floated in men's minds for the attainment of that
end. In particular there was a movement for some sort of world
league, a "League of iN^ations." The American President
adopted this phrase and sought to realize it. An essential con-
dition of the peace he sought through the overthrow of German
imperialism was, he declared, to be this federal organ. This
League of ^Nations was to be the final court of appeal in inter-
national affairs. It was to be the substantial realization of the
peace. Here again he awakened a tremendous echo.
President Wilson was the spokesman of a new age. Through-
out the war, and for some little time after it had ended, he heldj
so far as the Old World was concerned, that exalted position.
But in America, where they knew him better, there were doubts.
And writing as we do now with the wisdom of subsequent events,
we can understand these doubts. America, throughout a century
and more of detachment and security, had developed new ideals
and formulae of political thought, without realizing with any
intensity that, under conditions of stress and danger, these ideals
and formulae might have to be passionately sustained. To her
community many things were platitudes that had to the Old
World communities, entangled still in ancient political compli-
cations, the quality of a saving gospel. President Wilson was
responding to the thought and conditions of his own people and
his own country, based on a liberal tradition that had first found
its full expression in English speech ; but to Europe and Asia
he seemed to be thinking and saying, for the first time in his-
tory, things hitherto undeveloped and altogether secret. And
that misconception he may have shared.
We are dealing here with an able and successful professor of
political science, who did not fully realize what he owed to his
contemporaries and the literary and political atmosphere he had
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1065
breathed throughout his lifej and who passed very rapidly, after
his re-electioH' as President, from the mental attitudes of a po-
litical-leader to those of a Messiah. His "notes" are a series of
exJ)lorations of the elements of the world situation. When at
lastj in his address to Congress of January 8th, 1918, he pro-
due€(d his Fourteen Points as a definite statement of the Ameri-
can peace intentions, they were, as a statement, far better in
their spirit than in their arrangement and matter. This docu-
ment demanded open agreements between nations and an end
to secret diplomacy, free navigation of the high seas, free com-
merce, disarmainent, and a number of political readjustments
upon the lines of national independence. Finally in the Four-
teenth Point it required "a general association of nations" to
guarantee the peace of the world.
These Fourteen Points had an immense reception throughout
the world. Here at last seemed a peace for reasonable men
everywhere, as good and acceptable to honest and decent Ger-
mans and Russians, as to honest and decent Frenchmen and
Englishmeii and Belgians ; and for some months the whole world
was lit by faith in Wilson. Could they have been made the
basis of a world settlement in 1919, they would forthwith have
opened a new and more hopeful era in human affairs.
But, as we must tell, they did not do that. There was about
President Wilson a certain egotism ; there was in the generation
of people in the United States to whom this great occasion came,
a generation bom in security, reared in plenty and, so far as
history goes, in ignorance, a generation remote from the tragic
issues that had made Europe grave, a certain superficiality and
lightness of mind. It was not that the American people were
Superficial by nature and necessity, but that they had never
been deeply stirred by the idea of a human community larger
than their own. It was an intellectual but not a moral convic-
tion, with them. One had on the one hand these new people
of the new world, with their new ideas, their finer and better
ideas, of peace and world righteousness, and on the other the old,
bitter, deeply entangled peoples of the Great Power system;
and the former were crude and rather childish in their immense
inexperience, and the latter were seasoned and bitter and in-
tricate. The theme of this clash of the raw idealist youthfulness
of a new age with the experienced ripeness of the old, was treated
years ago by that great novelist, Henry James, in a very
1066
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
typical story called Daisy MUler. It is the pathetic story of a
frank, trustful, high-minded, but rather simple-minded Ameri-
can girl, with a real disposition towards righteousness and a
great desire for a "good time," and how she came to Europe
and was swiftly entangled and put in the wrong, and at last
driven to welcome death by the complex tortuousness and obsti-
nate limitations of the older world. There have been a thou-
sand variants of that theme in- real life, a thousand such trans-
Atlantic tragedies, and the story
of President Wilson is one of
them. But it is not to be sup-
posed, because the new thing
succumbs to the old infections,
that is the final condemnation
of the new thing.
Probably no fallible human
being manifestly trying to do
his best amidst overwhelming
circumstances has been sub-
jected to such minute, search-
ing, and pitiless criticism as
President Wilson. He is
blamed, and it would seem that
he is rightly blamed,' for conducting the war and the ensuing
peace negotiations on strictly party lines. He remained tjie
President representing the American Democratic Party, when
circumstances conspired to make him the representative of the
general interests of mankind. He made no attempt to forget
party issues for a time, and to incorporate with himself such
great American leaders as ex-President Roosevelt, ex-President
Taft^ and the like. He did not draw fully upon the moral and
intellectual resources of the States ; he made the whole issue
too personal, and he surrounded himself with merely personal
adherents. And a still graver error was his decision to come to
the Peace Conference himself. Nearly every experienced critic
seems to be of opinion that he should have remained in Amer-
ica, in the role of America, speaking occasionally as if a nation
spoke. Throughout the concluding years of the war he had
by t'lat method achieved an unexampled position in the world.
Says Dr. Dillon : ^ "Europe, when the President touched
'In his book, The Peace Conference.
Pre«ldeat T^C'lUoa
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914
1067
its shores, was as clay ready for the creative potter, l^ever
before were the nations so eager to follow a Moses who would
take them to the long-proniised land where wars are prohibited
and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe
and affection. Labour leaders in Paris told me that they shed
tears of joy in his presence, and that their comrades would go
through fire and water to help him to realize his noble schemes.
To the working classes in Italy
his nanie was a heavenly clarion
at the sound of which the earth
would be renewed. The Ger-
mans regarded him and his
humane doctrine as their sheet-
anchor of safety. The fearless
M.. Cletoencgatt
Herr Muehlon said: 'If Presi-
dent Wilson were to address the
Germans, and pronounce a
severe sentence upon them, they
would accept it with resigna-
tion and without a murmur and
set to work at once.' In Ger-
man-Austria his fame was that
of a saviour, and the mere mention of his name brought balm
to the suffering and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. . . ."
Such was the overpowering expectation of the audience
to which President Wilson prepared to show himself. He
reached France on board the Oeorge Washmgton in December,
1918.
He brought his wife with him. That seemed no doubt a per-
fectly natural and proper thing to an American mind. Quite
a number of the American representatives brought their wives.
Unhappily a social quality, nay, almost a tourist quality, was
introduced into the world settlement by these ladies. Transport
facilities were limited, and most, of them arrived in Europe with
a radiant air of privilege. They came as if they came to a
treat. They were, it was intimated, seeing Europe under ex-
ceptionally interesting circumstances. They would visit Ches-
ter, or Warwick, or Windsor en route — for they might not have
a chance of seeing these celebrated places again. Important
interviews would be broken- off to get in a visit to some "old
1068
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
historical mansion." This may seem a trivial matter to note in
a History of Mankind, but it was such small human things as
this that threw a miasma of futility over the Peace Conference
of 1919. In a little while one discovered that Wilson, the Hope
of Mankind, had vanished, and that all the illustrated fashion
papers contained pictures of a delighted tourist and his wife,
grouped smilingly with crowned heads and such-like enviable
company. ... It is so easy to be wise after the event,
and to perceive that he should not have come over.
The men he had chiefly to
deal with, for example M.
Clemenceau (France), Mr.
Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour
(Britain), Baron Sonnino and
Signer Orlando (Italy), were
men of widely dissimilar his-
torical traditions. But in one
respect they resembled him and
appealed to his sympathies.
They, too, were party poli-
ticians, who had led their coun-
try through the war. Like
himself they had failed to
grasp the necessity of entrust-
ing the work of settlement to more specially qualified men.
"They were the merest novices in international affairs. Geog-
raphy, ethnology, psychology, and political history were sealed
books to them. Like the Eector of Louvain University, who
told Oliver Goldsmith that, as he had become the head of that
institution without knowing Greek, he failed to see why it
should be taught there, the chiefs -of State, having obtained the
highest position in their respective countries without more than
an inkling of international affairs, were unable to realize the
importance of mastering them or the impossibility of repairing
the omission as they went along. . . ." ^
"What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible de-
gree have been supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more
happily endowed than themselves. But they deliberately chose
mediocrities. It is a mark of genial spirits that they are well
served, but the plenipotentiaries of the Conference were not
'Oillon.
"y^.Hovjl Geartgt
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1069
characterized by it. Away in the background some of them had
familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were wont
to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight
of the world-stage were gritless and pithless.
"Aa the heads of the principal Governments implicitly
claimed to be the authorized spokesmen of the human race, and
endowed with unlimited powers, it is worth noting that this
claim was boldly challenged by the people's organs in the Press.
Nearly all the journals read by the masses objected from the
first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers, Mr. Wilson
being excepted. . . ." ^
The restriction upon our space in this Outline will not
allow us to tell here how the Peace Conference shrank from a
Council of Ten to a Council of Four (Wilson, Clemenceau,
Lloyd George, and Orlando), and how it became a conference
less and less like a frank and open discussion of the future of
mankind, and more and more like some old-fashioned diplomatic
conspiracy. Great and wonderful had been the hopes that had
gathered to Paris. "The Paris of the Conference," says Dr.
Dillon, "ceased to be the capital of France. It became a vast
cosmopolitan caravanserai teeming with unwonted aspects of
life and turmoil, filled with curious samples of the races, tribes,
and tongues of four continents who came to watch and wait for
the mysterious to-morrow.
"An Arabian ^Nights' touch was imparted to the dissolving
panorama by strange visitants from Tartary and Kurdistan,
Korea and Aderbeijan, Armenia, Persia, and the Hedjaz —
men with patriarchal beards and scimitar-shaped noses, and
others from desert and oasis, from Samarkand and Bokhara.
Turbans and fezes, sugar-loaf hats and head-gear resembling
episcopal mitres, old military uniforms devised for the embry-
onic armies of new states on the eve of perpetual peace, snowy-
white burnouses, flowing mantles, and graceful garments like
the Eoman toga, contributed to create an atmosphere of dreamy
unreality in the city where the grimmest of realities were being
faced and coped with.
"Then came the men of wealth, of intellect, of industrial
enterprise, and the seed-bearers of the ethical new ordering,
members of economic committees from the United States,
•Dillon. And see his The Peace Gonferenoe, chapter iii, for instances
of the amazing ignorance of various delegates.
1070, THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, India, and Japan, representa-
tives of naphtha industries and far-off coal mines, pilgrims,
fanatics and charlatans from all climes, priests of all {religions^
preachers of every doctrine, who mingled with princes, field-
marshals, statesmen, anarchists, builders-up and pullers-down.
AH of them burned with desire to be near to the crucible in
which the political and social systems of. the world were to be
melted and recast. Every day, in my walks, in my apartment,
or at restaurants, I met emissaries from lands and peoples whose
very names had seldom been heard of before in the West. A
delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks called on me, and dis-
coursed of their ancient cities of Trebizond, Samsoun, Tripoli,
Kerassund, in which I resided many years ago, and informed
me that they, too, desired to become welded into an independent
Greek Republic, and had come to have their claims allowed.
The Albanians were represented by my old friend Turkhan
Pasha, on the one hand, and by my friend Essad Pasha on the
other — ^the former desirous of Italy's protection, the latter de-
manding complete independence. Chinamen, Japanese, Koreans,
Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians, Mingrelians,
Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and Negroids from Africa and
America were among the tribes and tongues foregathered in
Paris to watch the rebuilding of the political world system- and
to see where they 'came in.' ..."
To this thronging, amazing Paris, agape for a new world,
came President Wilson, and found its gathering forces domi-
nated by a personality narrower, in every way more limited and
beyond comparison more forcible than himself : the French Pre-
mier, M. Clemenceau. At the instance of President Wilson, M.
Clemenceau was elected President of the Conference. "It was,"
said President Wilson, "a special tribute to the sufferings and
sacrifices of France." And that, unhappily, sounded the hey-
note of the Conference, whose sole business should have been
with the future of mankind.
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was an old journalist poli-
tician, a great denouncer of abuses, a great upsetter of govern-
ments, a doctor who had, while a municipal councillor, kept a
free clinic, and a fierce, experienced duellist. None of his
duels ended fatally, but he faced them with great intrepidity.
He had passed from the medical school to republican journalism
in the days of the Empire. In those days he was an extremist
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1071
of tJie left. He was for a time a teacher in America, and he
married and divorced an American wife. He was thirty in the
eventful year 1871. He returned to France after Sedan, and
flung himself into the stormy politics of the defeated nation
with great fire and vigour. Thereafter France was his world,
the France of vigorous journalism, high-spirited personal quar-
rels, challenges, confrontations, scenes, dramatic effects, and
witticisms at any cost. He was what people call "fierce stuff,"
he was nicknamed the "Tiger," and he seems to have been rather
proud of his nickname. Professional patriot rather than states-
man and thinker, this was the man whom the war had flung up
to misrepresent the fine mind and the generous spirit of France.
His limitations had a profound effect upon the conference, which
was further coloured by the dramatic resort for the purpose of
signature to the very Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in which
Germany had triumphed and proclaimed her unity. There the
Germans were to sign. To M. Olemenceau and to France, in
that atmosphere, the war ceased to seem a world war ; it was
merely the sequel of the previous confiict of the Terrible Year,
the downfall and punishment of offending Germany. "The
world had to be made safe for democracy," said President Wil-
son. That from M. Clemenceau's expressed point of view was
"talking like Jesus Christ." The world had to be made safe
for Paris. "Talking like Jesus Christ" seemed a very ridicu-
lous thing to many of those brilliant rather than sound diplo-
matists and politicians who made the year 1919 supreme in the
history of human insufficiency.
(Another flash of the "Tiger's" wit, it may be noted, was
tihat President Wilson with his fourteen points was "worse"
than God Almighty. "Le bon Dieu" only had ten. . . .)
M. Clemenceau sat with Signer' Orlando in the more central
chairs of a semicircle of four in front of the fire, says Keynes.
He wore a black frock-coat and grey suede gloves, which he
never removed during these sessions. He was, it is to be noted,
the only one of these four reconstructors of the world who could
understand and speak both French and English.
The aims of M. Clemenceau were simple and in a manner
attainable. He wanted all the settlement of 1871 undone. He
wanted Germany punished as though she was a uniquely sinful
nation and France a sinless martyr land. He wanted Germany
so crippled and devastated as never more to be able to stand up
1072 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
to France. He wanted to hurt and humiliate Germany more
than France had been hurt and humiliated in 1871. He did
not care if in breaking Germany Europe was broken ; his mind
did not go far enough beyond the Rhine to understand that possi-
bility. He accepted President Wilson's League of Nations as
an excellent proposal if it would guarantee the security of
France whatever she did, but he preferred a binding alliance
of the United States and England to raaintain, uphold, and
glorify France under practically any circumstances. He wanted
wider opportunities for the exploitation of Syria, North Africa,
and so forth by Parisian financial groups. He wanted indemni-
ties to recuperate France, loans, gifts, and tributes to France,
glory and homage to France. France had suffered, and France
had to be rewarded. Belgium, Russia, Serbia, Poland, Armenia,
Britain, Germany, and Austria had all suffered too, all man-
kind had suffered, but what would you ? That was not his affair.
These were the supers of a drama in which France was for him
the star. ... In much the same spirit Signer Orlando seems
to have sought the welfare of Italy.
Mr. Lloyd George brought to the Council of Foiir the subtlety
of a Welshman, the intricacy of a European, and an urgent
necessity for respecting the nationalist egotism of the British
imperialists and capitalists who had returned him to power.
Into the secrecy of that council went President Wilson with
the very noblest aims for his newly discovered American world
policy, his rather hastily compiled Fourteen Points, and a
project rather than a scheme for a League of Nations.
"There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank
more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the
Council Chamber." From the whispering darknesses and fire-
side disputes of that council, and after various comings and
goings we cannot here describe, he emerged at last with his
Fourteen Points pitifully torn and dishevelled, but with a little
puling infant of a League of Nations, which might die or which
might live and grow — no one could tell. This history cannot
tell. We are at the end of our term. But that much, at least,
he had saved. , . .
§ 12
This homunculus in a bottle which it was hoped might be-
come at last Man ruling the Earth, this League of Nations as
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1073
it was embodied in the Covenant of April 28th, 1919, was not a
league of peoples at all ; it was the world discovered, a league
of "states, dominions, or colonies." It was stipiilated that these
should be "fully self-governing," but there was no definition
whatever of this phrase. There was no bar to a limited franchise
and no provision for any direct control by the people of any
state. India figured — j^resnmably as a "fully self-governing
state !" An autocracy would no doubt have been admissible as
a "fully self-governing" democracy with a franchise limited to
one person. The League of the Covenant of 1919 was, in fact,
a league of "representatives" of foreign offices, and it did not
even abolish the nonsense of embassies at every capital! The
British Empire appeared once as a whole, and then India (!)
and the four dominions of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and
ISTew Zealand appeared as separate sovereign states. The Indian
representative was, of course, sure to be merely a British nomi-
nee; the other four would be colonial politicians. But if the
British Empire was to be thus dissected, a representative of
Great Britain should have been substituted for the Imperial
representative, and Ireland and Egypt should also have been
given representation. Moreover, either !New York State or
Virginia was historically and legally almost as much a sovereign
state as New Zealand or Canada. The inclusion of India raised
logical claims for French Africa and French Asia. One French
representative did propose a separate vote for the little princi-
pality of Monaco.
There was to be an assembly of the League in which every
member state was to be represented and to have an equal voice,
but the working directorate of the League was to vest in a
Council, which was to consist of the representatives of the
United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, with four
other members elected by the Assembly. The Council was to
meet once a year; the gatherings of the Assembly were to be
at "stated intervals," not stated.
Except in certain specified instances the league of this Cove-
nant could make only unanimous decisions. One dissentient on
the council could bar any proposal — on the lines of the old
Polish liberum veto (Chapter XXXV, § 7). This was a quite
disastrous provision. To many minds it made the Covenant
League rather less desirable than no league at all. It was a
complete recognition of the tlnalienable sovereignty of statesj
1074i THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and a . repudiation of the idea of an overriding commonweal
of mankind. This provision practically barred the way to all
arpendments to the league Constitution in future except by the
clumsy expedient of a simultaneous withdrawal of the majority
of member states desiring a change, to form the league again
on new lines. , The covenant made inevitable such a final wind-
ing-up of the league it created, and that was perhaps the best
thing about it.
The following powers, it was proposed, should be excluded
from the original league : Germany, Austria, Russia, and what-
ever remains there were of the Turkish Empire. But any of
these might subsequently be included with the assent of two-
thirds of the Assembly. The original membership of the league
as specified in the projected Covenant was: the United States
of America, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, the British Empire
(Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and India),
China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, the
Hedjaz, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama,
Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene
State, Siam, Czecho-Slovakia, and Uruguay. To which were
to be added by invitation the following powers which had been
neutral in the war: the Argentine Republic, Chile, Colombia,
Denmark, Holland, Norway, Paraguay, Persia, Salvador, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, and Venezuela.
Such being the constitution of the league, it is scarcely to be
wondered at that its powers were special and limited. It wa!s
given a seat at Geneva and a secretariat. It had no powers
even to inspect the military preparations of its constituent states,
or to instruct a military and naval staff to plan out the armed
co-operation needed to keep the peace of the world. The French
representative in the League of Nations Commission, M. Leon
Bourgeois, insisted lucidly and repeatedly on the logical neces-
sity of such powers. As a speaker he was rather copious and
lacking in "spice" of the Clemenceau quality. The final scene
in the plenary session of April 28th, befare the adoption of the
Covenant, is described compactly by Mr. Wilson Harris, the
crowded Banqueting Hall at the Quai d'Orsay, with its "E".
of tables for the delegates, with secretaries and officials lining
the walls and a solid mass of journalists at the lower end pf
the room. "At the head of the room the 'Big Thve^' ^diveifteti
themselves in undertones at the expense of the worthy ',M.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914
1075
1076 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Bourgeois, now launclied, with the help of what must have been
an entirely superfluous sheaf of notes, on the fifth rendering of
his speech in support of his famous amendments."
They were so often "diverting themselves in undertones,"
those three men whom God had mocked with the most tre-
mendous opportunity in history. Keynes (op. cit.) gives other
instances of the levities, vulgarities, disregards, inattentions,
and inadequacies of these meetings.
This poor Covenant arrived at in this fashion returned with
President Wilson to America, and there it was subjected to an
amount of opposition, criticism, and revision which showed,
among other things, how relatively unimpaired was the mental
energy of the United States. The Senate refused to ratify the
covenant, and the first meeting of the League Council was held
therefore without American representatives. The close of 1919
and the opening months of 1920 saw a very curious change
come over American feeling after the pro-French and pro-
British enthusiasms of the war period. The peace nego-
tiations reminded the Americans, in a confused and very
irritating way, of their profound differences in intemati©iial
outlook from any European power that the war had for a time
helped them to forget. They felt they had been "rushed" into
many things without due consideration. They experienced a
violent revulsion towards that policy of isolation that had broken
down in 1917. The close of 1919 saw a phase, a very uider-
standable phase, of passionate and even violent "Americanism,"
in which European imperialism and European socialism were
equally anathema. There may have been a sordid element in
the American disposition to "cut" the moral responsibilities the
United States had incurred in the affairs of the Old World, and
to realize the enormous financial and political advantages the
war had given the new world; but the broad instinct of the
American people seems to have been sound in its distrust of the
proposed settlement.
§13
The main terms of the Treaties of 1919-20 with which the
Conference of Paris concluded its labours can be stated much
more vividly by a few maps than by a written abstract. We
need scarcely point out how much those treaties left unsettled,
THE "CATASTROPHE OF 1914
1077
W78 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
but we may perhaps enumerate some of the more salient breaches
of the Twelve that survived out of the Fourteen Points at the
opening of the Conference.
One initial cause of nearly all those breaches lay, we believe,
in the complete iihprfeparedness and unwillingness of that pre-
existing league of nations, subjected states and exploited areas,
the British Empire^ to submit to any dissection and adaptation
of its systeni or to any control of its naval and aerial armament.
A kindred contributory cause was the equal unpreparedness 'of
the American mind for any interference with the ascendancy of
the United States in the New World (compai-e Secretary Olney's
declaration in this chapter, § 6) . Neither of those Great Powers,
who w^re "necessarily dominant and leading powers at Paris,
had properly thought out the implications of, a League of
Nations in relation to these older arrangements)^, and so their
support of that project had to, most European observers a curi-
ously hypocritical air; it was as if they wished to retain jiiid
ensure their own vast predominance and security while at the
same tim'e restraining any other power from such expansions,
anuexations, and alliances as might create a rival and competi-
tive imperialism. Their failure to set an example of interna-
tional confidence de|Stroyed all possibility of international con-
fidence in the other nations represented at Paris.
Even more unfortunate was the refusal of the Americans to
assent to the Japanese demand for a recognition of racial
equality.
Moreover, the foreign offices of the British, the French,: and
the, Italians were haunted by traditional schemes of aggregision
entisrely incompatible with the new ideas. A League of Nations
that is tb be of any appreciable value to mankind must super-
sede imperialisms; it is either a super-imperialism, a liberal
world-empire of united states, participant or in tutelage, or it
is nothing ; but few of- the people at the Paris Conference had
the mental vigour even to assert this obvious consequence of
the League proposal. They wanted to be at the same time bound
and. free, to, ensure peace for ever, but. to keep their weapons
in their hands. Accordingly the old annexation projects of the
Great Power period were hastily and thinly camouflaged as
proposed acts of this poor little birth of April 28th. The newly
born and barely animate League was represented to be dis-
tributing, with all the reckless munificence of a captive pope,
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914
1079
1080 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
"mandates" to the old imperialisms that, had it been the young
Hercules we desired, it would certainly have strangled in its
cradle. Britain was to have extensive "mandates" in Mesopo-
tamia and East Africa ; France was to have the same in Syria ;
Italy was to have all her holdings to the west and south-east
of Egypt consolidated as mandatory territory. Clearly, if the
weak thing that was being nursed by its Secretary in its cradle
at Geneva into some semblance of. life, did presently succumb
to the infantile weakness of all institutions born without pas-
sion, all these "mandates" would become frank annexations.
Moreover, all the Powers fought tooth and nail at the Confer-
ence for "strategic" frontiers — ^the ugliest symptom of all. Why
should a state want a strategic frontier unless it contemplates
war? If on that plea Italy insisted upon a subject population
of Germans in the southern Tyrol and a subject population of
Yugo-Slavs in Dalmatia, and if little Greece began landing
troops in Asia Minor, neither France nor Britain was in a posi-
tion to rebuke these outbreaks of pre-millennial method.
We will not enter here into any detailed account of how
President Wilson gave way to the Japanese and consented to
their replacing the Germans at Kiau Chau, which is Chinese
property, how the almost purely , German city of Danzig was
practically, if not legally, annexed to Poland, and how. the
Powers disputed over the claim of the Italian imperialists, a
claim strengthened by these instances, to seize the Yugo-Slay port
of Fiume and deprive the Yugp-Slavs of a good Adriatic outlet.
Nor will we do more than note the complex arrangeinents and
justifications that put the French in possession of the Saar val-
ley, which is German territory, or the entirely iniquitous breach
of the right of "self-determination" which practically forbatie
German Austria to unite — as it is natural and proper that she
should unite — ^with the rest of Germany. These burning ques-
tions of 1919-20 which occupied the newspapers and the minds
of statesmen and politicians, and filled all our wastepaper
baskets with propaganda literature, may seem presently : very
incidental things in the larger movement of these times. All
these disputes, like the suspicions and tetchy injustices of a
weary and irritated man, may lose their importance as the tone
of the world improves, and the still inadequately apprehended
lessons of the Great War and the Petty Peace that followed it,
begin to be digested by the general intelligence of mankind.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1081
It is worth while for the reader to compare the treaty maps
we give with what we have called the natural political map of
Europe. The new arrangements do approach this latter more
closely than any previous system of boundaries. It may be a
necessary preliminary t« any satisfactory league of peoples,
that each people should first be in something like complete
possesion of its own household.
§ 14
A FOEECAST OF THE NEXT WAE
The failure to produce a more satisfactory world settlement
in 1919-20 was, we have suggested, a symptom of an almost
universal intellectual and moral lassitude resulting from the
overstrain of the Great War. A lack of fresh initiative is
characteristic of a fatigue phase; everyone, for sheer inability
to change, drifts on for a time along the lines of mental habit
and precedent.
^Nothing could be more illustrative of this fatigue inertia than
the expressed ideas of military men at this time. It will round
off this chapter in an entirely significant way, and complete
our picture of the immense world interrogation on which our
history must end, if we give here the briefest summary of a
lecture that was delivered to a gathering of field-marshals, gen-
erals, major-generals, and the like by Major-General Sir Louis
Jackson at the Royal United Service Institution in Lon-
don one day in December, 1919. Lord Peel, the British Under-
Secretary for War, presided, and the reader must picture to
himself the not too large and quite dignified room of assembly
in that building, and all these fine, grave, soldierly figures
quietly intent upon the lecturer's words. He is describing,
with a certain subdued enthusiasm, the probable technical de-
velopments of military method in the "next war."
Outside, through the evening twilight of Whitehall, flows
the London trafiic, not quite so abundant as in 1914, but still
fairly abundant; the omnibuses all overcrowded because there
are now not nearly enough of them, and the clothing of people
generally shabbier. Some little way dovm Whitehall is a tem-
porary erection, the Cenotaph, with its base smothered with a
vast, pathetic heap of decaying wreaths, bunches of flowers, and
the like, a cenotaph to commemorate the eight hundred thou-
1082 THE OUTLINE OE HISTORY
sand young men of the Empire who have been killed in the
recent struggle. A few people are putting fresh flowers and
wreaths there. One or two are crying.
The prospect stretches out beyond this gathering into the
grey vastness of London^ where people are now crowded as
th^y have never been crowded before; whose food is dear and
employment more uncertain than it has ever been. But let not
the spectacle be one of unrelieved gloom ; Regent Street, Oxford
Street, and Bond Street are bright with shoppers and congested
with new automobiles, because we must remember that every-
body does not lose by a war. Beyond London the country sinks
into night, and across the narrow sea are North France and
Belgium devastated, Germany with scores of thousands of her
iiifants dwindling and dying for want of milk, all Austria starv-
ing. Half the population of Vienna, it is believed' unless
American relief comes, quickly, is doomed to die of hardship
before the spring. Beyond that bleak twilight stretches the
darkness of Russia. There, at least, no rich people are buying
anything, and no military men are reading essays on the next
war. But in icy Petrograd is little food, little wood, and no
coal. All the towns of Russia' southward as far as the snow
reaches are in a similar plight, and in the Ukraine and to the
south a ragged and dingy war drags to its end. Europe is
bankrupt," and people's pockets rustle with paper money whose
purchasing power dwindles as they walk about with it.
But now we will return to Sir Louis in the well-lit room at
the United Service Institution.
He was of opinion — we follow the report in next morning's
Times * — that we were merely on the eve of the most extensive
modifications of the art of war known to history. It behoved us,
therefore — us being, of course, the British and not the whole
of mankind — to get on with our armaments and to keep ahead ;
a fine opening generalization. "It was necessary to develop
new arms. , . . The nation which best did so would hare a
great advantage in the next war. There were people who were
crying aloud for a- reduction of armaments "
(But there the Director of Trench Warfare and Supplies
was wrong. They were just crying at the cenotaph, poor, soft,
' Checked by subsequent comparison with the published article in the
Jour, of the Roy United Service Institution, vol. Ixv, No. 457, February,
1920.
THE CATASTRPPHE OF 1914 1083
and . stupid souls, because a spa . or a brother or a father was
dead.)
Sir Louis believed that one of the greatest developments in
the art of warfare would be brought about in mechanical trans-
port. The tank he treated with ingratitude. The^e" military
gentlemen are ungrateful to an invention which shoved and
butted them into victory almost in spite of themselves. The
tank, said Sir Louis, was "a freaL ... The outstanding fea-
ture" of the tank, .he said, was that it made mechanical trans-
port independent of the roads. : Hitherto armies on the march
had only been able to spoil the roads; now their transport
on caterpillar wheels would advance 'in open order on a broad
front carrying guns, munitions, supplies, bridging equipment,
rafts, and men — and incidentally ploughing up and destroying
hedges, ditches, fields, and cultivation generally. Armies
would wallow across the country, leaving nothing behind but
dust and mud. ■ ;
So our imaginations are led up to the actual hostilities;
Sir Louis was in favour of gas. For punitive expeditions
particularly, gas was to be recommended. And here he startled :
and disconcerted his hearers by a gleam of something approach-
ing sentimentality. "It might he possible," he said, "to come
to some agreement that no gas should be used which, caused
unnecessary suffering." But there his heart spoke rather than
his head ; it should have been clear to him that if law can so i
far Override warfare as to prohibit any sort of evil device;
whatever, it can override warfare to the extent of prohibiting
it altogether* And where would Sir Louis Jackson and his
audience be then? War is war; its only law is the law that;
the maximum destruction of the forces of the enemy is neces-
sary. To that law in warfare all considerations of humanity
and justice are subordinate.
From gas Sir Louis passed to the air. Here he ptedicted
"most important advances. . . . We need not trouble ourselves
yet with flying destroyers or flying concrete forts, but in twenty
years' time the Air Force Estimates might be the most impor-
tant part of our preparations for war." He discussed the con^
version of commercial flying machines to boniibing and recon-
naissance uses, and the need for special types of fighting ma-
chine in considerable numbers, and always ready. He gave;
reasons for supposing that the bombers in the next war would
1084 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
not have the same targets near the front of the armies, and
would secure better results by going further afield and bombing
the centres "where stores are being manufactured and troops
trained." As everyone -who stayed in London or the east of
England in 1917-18 knows, this means the promiscuous bomb-
iiig of any and every centre of population. But, of course,
the bombing of those 'prentice days would be child's play to
the bombing of the "next war." There would be countless more
aeroplanes, bigger and much nastier bombs. . . ,
Sir Louis, proceeding with the sketch, mentioned the "de-
struction of the greater part of London" as a possible incident
in the coming struggle. And so on to the culminating moral,
that the highest pay, the utmost importance, the freest expendi^-
ture, must be allowed to military gentlemen. "The expense
entailed is in the nature of an absolutely necessary insurance."
With which his particular audience warmly agreed. And a
certain Major-General Stone, a little forgetful of the source of
his phrases,^ said he hoped that this lecture "may be the
beginning not of trusting in the League of Nations, but in
our own right hand and our stretched-out arm!"
But we willnot go on with the details of this dream. For
indeed no Utopia was ever so impossible as this forecast of a
world in which scarcely anything but very carefully sandbagged
and camouflaged: G.H.Q. would be reasonably safe, in which
countless bombers would bomb the belligerent lands incessantly
and great armies with lines of caterpillar transport roll to
and fro, churning the fields of the earth into blood-streaked mud.
There is not energy enough and no will whatever left in the
world for such things. Generals who cannot foresee tanks
cannot be expected to foresee or understand world bankruptcy ;
still less are they likely to understand the limits imposed upon
military operations by the fluctuating temper of the common
man. Apparently these military authorities of the United
Service Institution did not even know that warfare aims at the
production of states of mind in the enemy, and is sustained by
states of mind. The chief neglected factor in the calculations
of Sir Louis is the fact that no people whatever will stand
such warfare as he contemplates, not even the people on the
winning side. For as northern France, south-eastern Britain,
and north Italy now understand, the victor in the "next war"
*Cp. Psalm cxxxvi.
THE CATASTROPHE OF 1914 1085
may be bombed and starved almost as badly as the loser, A
phase is possible in which a war-tormented population may
cease to discriminate between military gentlemen on this side
or that, and may be moved to destroy them as the common
enemies of the race. The Great War of 1914-18 was the cul-
mination of the military energy of the Western populations,
and they fought and fought well because they believed they
were ■ fighting "the war to end war." They were. German
imperialism, with its organized grip upon education and its
close alliance with an aggressive commercialism, was beaten
and finished. The militarism and imperialism. of Britain and
France and Italy are by comparison feeble, disorganized, and
disorganizing survivals. They are things "left over" by the
Great War. They have no persuasive power. They go on —
for sheer want of wits to leave ofF. No European Government
will ever get the Saine proportion of its pebple into the ranks
and into its munition works again as the governments of 1914-
18 did. Our world is very weak and feeble still (1920), but
its war fever is over. Its temperature is, if anything, sub-
normal. It is doubtful if it will take the fever again for a long
time. The alterations in the conditions of warfare are already
much profounder than such anthorities as Sir Louis Jackson
suspect.^
'Here is another glimpse of the a^eeable dreams that fill the contem-
porary military mind. It is from Fuller's recently published Tanks in
the Great War. Colonel Fuller does not share that hostility to tanks
characteristic of the older type of soldier. In the next war, he tells us:
"Fast-moving tanks, equipped with tons of liquid gas . . . will cross the
frontier and obliterate every living thing in the fields and farms, the
villages, and cities of the enemy's country. Whilst life is being swept
away around the frontier, fleets of aeroplanes will attack the enemy's
gi-eat industrial and governing centres. All these attacks will be made,
a,t first, not against the enemy's army . . . but against the civil popula-
tion, in order to compel it to accept the will of the- attacker."
For a good, well-balanced account of what modern war really means,
see Philip Gibbs, Realities of War.
XL
THE 'N'EXT ST4.GE OF HISTOEY
1. The Possible Unification of Men's Wills in Political Mat-
ters. > § 2. How a F6deral World Government may Come
About. § 3. Some Fundamental Cha/racteiHMics of a Modem
World Staie. § 4. What this World MigJit 'he were it under
one Law and Justice.
WE have broug;ht this Outline of History up to the thresh'
old of our own times, but we have brought it to no
conclusion. ' It breaks off at a dramatic phase of ex-
pectation. , Nobody believes that the system of settlements
grouped about the Treaty of Versailles is a permanent arrange-
ment of the world's affairs. These Treaties were the end of
the war and not the establishment of a new order in the world.
That new order has now to be established. In social and eco-
nomic as in international affairs we are in the dawn of a great
constructive etfiirt. The story of life which began inestimable
millions of years ago, the adventure of mankind which was al-
ready afoot half a million years ago, rises to a crisis in the
immense interrogation of to-day. The drama becomes our-
selves. It is you, it is I, it is all that is happening to us and
all that we 'are doing which will supply the next chapter of
-this continually expanding adventure of mankind.
Our history has traced a steady growth of the social and
political Units into which' men haye combinedr In the brief pe-
riod of ten thousand years these units have grown from the
small family tribe of the early neolithic culture to the vast
united realms — vast yet still too small and partial — of the
present time. And this change in size of the state — a change
manifestly incomplete — ^has been accompanied by profound
changes in its nature. Compulsion and servitude have given
way to ideas of associated freedom, and the sovereignty that
1086
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1087
was once concentrated in an: autocratip king and god, has. been
widely diffused throughout the community. Until the Roman
republic extended itself to all Italy, there had been no free
community larger than a city state; all great communities were
communities of obedience under a monarch. The great united
republic of the United States would have been impossible
before the printing press and the railway. The telegraph
and telephone,, the aeroplane, the continual progress of land
and sea transit, are now insisting .upon a still larger political
organization. ,.
. If our Outline. has-heen faithfully drawn, and if these brief
conclusions are sound, it follows that we are engaged upon an
immense tdsk of adjustment to these great lines upon which our
affairs are moving. Our wars, our social conflict, our enor-
mous economic stresses,^ are all aspects of that adjustment.
The loyalties and- allegiances to-day: are at best provisional
loyalties and allegiances; Our true State, . this state that is
already beginning, . this gtate to which every man owes his ut-
most political effort, must be now ..this nascent Federal World
State to which human necessities- point. Our true God now
is the God of all men. Nationalism as a God must follow the
tribal gods to limbo.- Our. true. nationality is mankind.
How far will modem men layihpld upon, and identify them-,
selves with this necessity and set themselves to revise their ideas,
remake their institutions, , and, educate- the coming generations
to this fina:l extension of citizenship? How far will they re-
main dark, obdurate^, habitual, and traditional, resisting the
convergent forces that offer them either unity or misery ?
Sooner or later that unity. must come or else plainly jnen must
perish by their own inveiitions. We, because we believe in the
power of reason and in the increasing good will in men, find
ourselves compelled to reject the latter possibility. But the
way to the former may be very long and tedious, very tragic
and wearisome^ a martydom of many generations, or it may be
travelled over almost swiftly in the course of a generation or so.
That depends upon forces whose nature we understand to some
extent now, but not their power. There has to be a great proQ-
ess. of education, by precept and by information and by ex-
perience, but there are as yet no quantitative, measures of edu-
cation to tell us how much has to be learnt or how soon that
learning can be done. Our estimates vary with our moods; the
1088 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
time may be mucli longer than our hopes and much shorter than
our fears.
The terrible experiences of the Great War have made very
many men who once took political things lightly take them now
very gravely. To a certain small number of men and women
the at4;ainment of a world peace has become the supreme work
in life, has become a religious self-devotion. To a much greater
number it has become at least a ruling motive. Many such
people now are seeking Ivays of working for this great end,
or they are already working for this great end, by pen and
persuasion, in schools and colleges and books, and in the
highways and byways of public life. Perhaps now most
human beings in the world are well-disposed towards such ef-
forts, but rather confusedly disposed; they are without any
clear sense of what must be done and what ought to be pre^
veiited, that human solidarity may be advanced. The world-
wide outbreak of faith and hope in President Wilson, before
he began to wilt and fail us, was a very significant thing
indeed for the future of mankind. Set against these motives
of unity indeed are other motives entirely antagonistic, the
fear and hatred of strange things and peoples, love of and trust
in the old traditional thing, patriotisms, race prejudices, sus-
picions, distrusts-^-and the elements of spite, scoundrelism, and
utter selfishness that are so strong still in every human soul.
The overriding powers that hitherto in the individual soul
and in the community have struggled and prevailed against
the ferocious, base, arid individual impulses that divide us from
one another, have been the powers of religion and education.
Religion and education, those closely interwoven influences,
have made possible the greater human societies whose growth
we have traced in this Outline; they have been the chief syn-
thetic forces throughout this great story of enlarging human
co-operations that we have traced from its beginnings. We
have found in the intellectual and theological conflicts of the
nineteenth century the explanation of that curious exceptional
disentanglement of religious teaching from formal education
which is a distinctive feature of our age, and we have traced
the consequences of this phase of religidus disputation and con-
fusion in the reversion of international politics towards a brutal
nationalism arid^ in the backward drift of industrial and busi-
ness life towards harsh, selfish, and uncreative profit-seeking.
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1089
There has been a slipping off of ancient restraints; a real de-
civilization of men's minds. We would lay stress here on the
suggestion that this divorce of religious teaching from organ-
ized education is necessarily a temporary one, a transitory dis-
location, and that presently education must become again in
intention and spirit religious, and that the impulse to devo-
tion, to universal service and to a complete escape from self,
which has been the common underlying force in all the great
religions of the last five and twenty centuries, an impulse which
ebbed so perceptibly during the prosperity, laxity, disillusion-
ment, and scepticism of the past seventy or eighty years, will
reappear again, stripped and plain, as the recognized funda-
mental structural impulse in human society.
Education is the preparation of the individual for the com-
munity, and his religious training is the core of that prepara-
tion. With the great intellectual restatements and expansions
of the nineteenth century, an educational break-up, a confu-
sion and loss of aim in education, was inevitable. We can no
longer prepare the individual for a community when our ideas
of a community are shattered and undergoing reconstruction.
The old loyalties, the old too limited and narrow political and
social assumptions, the old t6o elaborate religious formulae,
have lost their power of conviction, and the greater ideas of a
world state and of an economic commonweal have been win-
ning their way only very slowly to recognition. So far they
have swayed only a minority of exceptional people. But out
of the trouble and tragedy of this present time there may
emerge a moral and intellectual revival, a religious revival, of a
simplicity and scope to draw together men of alien races and
now discrete traditions into one common and sustained way
of living for the world's service. We cannot foretell the scope
and power of such a revival ; we cannot even produce evidence
of its onset. The beginnings of such things are never con-
spicuous. Great movements of the racial soul come at first "like
a thief in the night," and then suddenly are discovered to be
powerful and world-wide. Religious emotion — stripped of cor-
ruptions and freed from its last priestly entanglements — ^may
presently blow through life again like a great wind, bursting
the doors and flinging open the shutters of the individual life,
and making many things possible and easy that in these present
days of exhaustion seem almost too difficult to desire.
1090 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
§ 2
If we suppose a sufficient righteousness and intelligence in
men to produce presently, from the tremendous lessons of his-
tory, an effective will for a world peace — that is to say, an
effective will for a world law under a world government — ^for in
no other fashion is a secure world peace conceivable — in what
manner may we expect things to move towards this end ? That
movement will certainly not go on equally in every country,
nor is it likely to take at first one uniform mode of expression.
Here it will find a congenial and stimulating atmosphere, here
it will find itself antagonistic to deep tradition or racial idio
syncrasy or well-organized base oppositions. In some cases
those to whom the call of the new order has come will be living
in a state almost ready to serve the ends of the greater political
synthesis, in others they will have to fight like conspirators
against the rule of evil laws. There is little in the political
constitution of such countries as the United States or Switzer-
land that would impede their coalescence upon terms of frank
give and take with other equally civilized confederations;
political systems involving dependent areas and "subject peo-
ples" such as the Turkish Empire was before the Great War,
seem to require something in the nature of a brea;king up before
they can be adapted to a federal world system. Any state
obsessed by traditions of an aggressive foreign policy will be
difficult to assimilate into a world combination. But though
here the government may be helpful, and here dark and hos-
tile, the essential task of men of goodwill in all states and
countries remains the same, it is an educational task, and its
very essence is to bring to the minds of all men everywhere,
as a necessary basis for world co-operation, a new telling and
interpretation, a common interpretation, of history.
Does this League of Nations which has been created by the
covenant of 1919 contain within it the germ of any permanent
federation of human effort? Will it grow into something for
which, as Stallybrass says, men will be ready to "work whole-
heartedly and, if necessary, fight" — as hitherto they have been
willing to fight for their country and their own people ? There
are few intimations of any such enthusiasm for the League at
the present time. The League does not even seem to know how
to talk to common men. It has gone into official buildings, and
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1091
comparatively few people in the world understand or care what
it is doing there. It may be that the League is no more than
a first project of union, exemplary only in its insufficiencies
and dangers, destined to be superseded by something closer
and completer as were the United States Articles of Confedera-
tion by the Federal Constitution. The League is at present
a mere partial league of governments and states. It empha-
sizes nationality; it defers to sovereignty. What the world
needs is no such league of nations as this nor even a mere
league of peoples, but a world league of men. The world per-
ishes unless sovereignty is merged and nationality subordinated.
And for that the minds of men must first be prepared by ex-
perience and knowledge and thought. The supreme task before
men at the present time is political education.
It may be that several partial leagues may precede any world
league. The common misfortunes and urgent common needs
of Europe and Asia may be more efficacious in bringing the.
European and Asiatic states to reason and a sort of unity, than
the mere intellectual and sentimental ties of the United States
and Great Britain and France. A United States of the Old
World is a possibility to set against the possibility of an At-
lantic union. Moreover, there is much to be said for an Amerir
can experiment, a Pan-American league, in which the New
World European colonies would play an in-and-out part as
Luxembourg did for a time in the German confederation.
We will not attempt to weigh here what share may be taken
in the recasting and consolidation of human affairs by the
teachings and propaganda of labour internationalism, by the
studies and needs of international finance, or by such boundary-
destroying powers as science and art and historical teaching.
All these things may exert a combined pressure, in which it may
never be possible to apportion the exact shares. Opposition
may dissolve, antagonistic cults flatten out to a common culture,
almost imperceptibly. The bold idealism of to-day may seem
mere common sense to-morrow. And the problem of a fore-,
cast is complicated by the possibilities of interludes and back-
waters. History has never gone simply forward. More
particularly are the years after a great war apt to be years
of apparent retrocession ; men are too weary to see what has
been done, what has been cleared away, and what has been
made possible.
109^ THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Among the things that seem to move commandingly towards
an adequate world control at the present time are these : —
(1) The increasing destruetiveness and intolerableness of
war waged with the new powers of science.
(2) The inevitable fusion of the world's economic affairs into
one system, leading necessarily, it would seem, to some common
control of currency, and demanding safe and uninterrupted
communications, and a free movement of goods and people by
sea and land throughout the whole world. The satisfaction of
these needs will require a world control of very considerable
authority and powers of enforcement.
(3) The need, because of the increasing mobility of peoples,
of effectual controls of health everywhere.
(4) The urgent need of some equalization of labour condi-
tions, and of the minimum standard of life throughout the
world. This seems to carry with it, as a necessary corollary,
the establishment of some minimum standard of education for
everyone.
(6) The impossibility of developing the enormous benefits
of flying without a world control of the air-ways.
The necessity and logic of such diverse considerations as
these push the mind irresistibly, in spite of the clashes of race
and tradition and the huge difficulties created by differences in
language, towards the belief that a conscious struggle to estab-
lish or prevent a political world community will be the next
stage in human history. The things that require that world
community are permanent needs, one or other of these needs
appeals to nearly everyone, and against their continuing per-
sistence are only mortal difficulties, great no doubt, but mortal ;
prejudices, passions, animosities, delusions about race and coun-
try, egotisms, and such-like fluctuating and evanescent things,
set up in men's minds by education and suggestion; none of
them things that make now for the welfare and survival of the
individuals who are under their sway nor of the states and
towns and associations in which they prevail.
§ 3
The attainment of the world state may be impeded and may
be opposed to-day by many apparently vast forces ; but it has,
urging it on, a much more powerful force, that of the free and
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1093
growing common intelligence of mankind. To-day there is
in the world a small but increasing number of men, historians,
archaeologists, ethnologists, economists, sociologists, psycholo-
gists, educationists, and the like, who are doing for human in-
stitutions that same task of creative analysis which the scientific
men of the seventeenth and eighteenth century did for the
materials and jnechanism of human life ; and just as these lat-
ter, almost unaware of what they were doing, made telegraphy,
swift transit on sea and land, flying and a thousand hitherto
impossible things possible, so the former may be doing more
than the world suspects, or than they themselves suspect, to
clear up and make plain the thing to do and the way to do it,
in the greater and more urgent human affairs.
Let us ape Koger Bacon in his prophetic mood, and set down
what we believe will be the broad fundamentals of the coming
world state.
(i) It will be based upon a common world religion, very
much simplified and universalized and better understood. This
will not be Christianity nor Islam nor Buddhism nor any such
specialized form of religion, but religion itself pure and unde-
filed ; the Eightfold Way, the Kingdom of Heaven, brotherhood,
creative service, and self-f orgetfulneas. Throughout the world
men's thoughts and motives will be turned by education, exam-
ple, and the circle of ideas about them, from the obsession of
self to the cheerful service of human knowledge, human power,
and human unity.
(ii) And this world state will be sustained by a universal
education, organized upon a scale and of a penetration and
quality beyond all present experience. The whole race, and
not simply classes and peoples, will be educated. Most parents
will have a technical knowledge of teaching. Quite apart
from the duties of parentage, perhaps ten per cent, or more of
the adult population will, at some time or other in their lives,
be workers in the world's educational organization. And
education, as the new age will conceive it, will go on through-
out life; it will not cease at any particular age. Men and
women will simply become self-educators and individual stu-
dents and student teachers as they grow older.
(iii) There will be no armies, no navies, and no classes of
unemployed people either wealthy or poor.
(iv) The world state's organization of scientific research
1094 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
and record comparied with that of to-day will be like an ocean
liner beside the dug-out canoe of some early heliolithic
wanderer.
(v) There will be a vast free literature of criticism and
discussion.
(vi) The world's political organization will be democratic,
that is to say, the government and direction of affairs will be
in immediate touch with and responsive to the general thought
of the educated whole population.
(vii) Its economic organization will be an exploitation of
all natural wealth and every fresh possibility science reveals,
by the agents and servants of the common government for the
common good. Private enterprise will be the servant — a useful,
valued, and well-rewarded servant — and no longer the robber
master of the commonweal.
(viii) And this implies two achievements that seem very
difficult to us to-day. They are matters of mechanism, but
they are as essential to the world's well-being as it is to a sol-
dier's, no matter how brave he may be, that his machine gun
should not jam, and to an aeronaut's that his steering-gear should
not fail him in mid-air. Political well-being demands that
electoral methods shall be used, and economic well-being re-
quires that a currency shall be used, safeguarded or proof
against the contrivances and manipulations of clever, dishon-
est men.^
§ 4
There can be little question that the attainment of a federa-
tion of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of
social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality
of opportunity to most of the children born into the world,
would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to
open a new phase in human history. The enormous waste
caused by military preparation and the mutual annoyance of
competing great powers, and the still more enormous waste due
to the under-productiveness of great masses of people, either
because they are too wealthy for stimulus or too poor for effi-
ciency, would cease. There would be a vast increase in the
supply of human necessities, a rise in the staiidard of life
' See Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization.
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1095
and in what is considered a necessity, a development of transport
and every kind of convenience ; and a multitude of people would
be transferred from low-grade production to such higher work
as art of all kinds, teaching, scientific research, and the like.
All over the world there would be a setting free of human
capacity, such as has occurred hitherto only in small places and
through precious limited phases of prosperity and security.
Unless we are to suppose that spontaneous outbreaks of super-
men have occurred in the past, it is reasonable to conclude
that the Athens of Pericles, the Florence of the Medici, Eliza-
bethan England, the great deeds of Asoka, the Tang and Ming
periods in art, are but samples of what a whole world of sus-
tained security would yield continuously and cumulatively.
Without supposing any change in human quality, but merely
its release from the present system of inordinate waste, history
justifies this expectation.
We have seen how, since the liberation of human thought in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a comparatively few
curious and intelligent men, chiefly in western Europe, have
produced a vision of the world and a body of science that is now,
on the material side, revolutionizing life. Mostly these men
have worked against great discouragement, with insufficient
funds and small help or support from the mass of mankind.
It is impossible to believe that these men were the maximum
intellectual harvest of their generation. England alone in the
last three centuries must have produced scores of Newtons
who never learnt to read, hundreds of Daltons, Darwins, Ba-
cons, and Huxleys who died stunted in hovels, or never got a
chance of proving their quality. All the world over, there must
have been myriads of potential first-class investigators, splendid
artists, creative minds, who never caught a gleam of inspiration
or opportunity, for every one of that kind who has left his
mark upon the world. In the trenches of the Western front
alone during the late war thousands of potential great men died
unfulfilled. But a world with something like a secure interna-
tional peace and something like social justice, will fish for
capacity with the fine net of universal education, and may ex-
pect a yield beyond comparison greater than any yield of able
and brilliant men that the world has known hitherto.
It is such considerations as this indeed which justify the con-
centration of effort in the near future upon the making of a
1096 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
new world state of righteousness out of our present confusions.
War is a horrible thing, and constantly more horrible and
dreadful, so that unless it is ended it will certainly end human
society ; social injustice, and the sight of the limited and cramped
human beings it produces, torment the soul; but the strongest
incentive to constructive political and social work for an im-
aginative spirit lies not so much in the mere hope of escaping
evils as in the opportunity for great adventures that their sup-
pression will open to our race. We want to get rid of the mili-
tarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is
an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stands hectoring and
blustering in our way to achievement. We want to abolish
many extravagances of private ownership just as we should
want to abolish some idiot guardian who refused us admission
to a studio in which there were fine things to do.
There are people who seem to imagine that a world order and
one universal law of justice would end human adventure. It
would but begin it. But instead of the adventure of the past,
the "romance" of the cinematograph world, the perpetual reiter-
ated harping upon the trite reactions of sex and combat and the
hunt for gold, it would be an unending exploration upon the
edge of experience. Hitherto man has been living in a slum,
amidst quarrels, revenges, vanities, shames and taints, hot de-
sires and urgent appetites. He has scarcely tasted sweet air
yet and the great freedoms of the world that science has enlarged
for him.
To picture to ourselves something of the wider life that
world unity would open to men is a very attractive speculation.
Life will certainly go with a stronger pulse, it will breathe a
deeper breath, because it will have dispelled and conquered a
hundred infections of body and mind that now reduce it to
invalidism and squalor. We have already laid stress on the
vast elimination of drudgery from human life through the crea-
tion of a new race of slaves, the machines. This — and the dis-
appearance of war and the smoothing out of endless restraints
and contentions by juster social and economic arrangements —
will lift the burthen of toilsome work and routine work, that
has been the price of human security since the dawn of the first
civilizations, from the shoulders of our children. Which does
not mean that they will cease to work, but that they will cease to
do irksome work under pressure, and will work freely, plan-
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1097
ning, making, creating, according to their gifts and instincts.
They will fight nature no longer as dull conscripts of the pick
and plough, but for a splendid conquest. Only the spiritless-
ness of our present depression blinds us to the clear intima-
tions of our reason that in the course of a few generations every
little country town could become an Athens, every human being
could be gentle in breeding and healthy in body and mind, the
whole solid earth man's mine and its uttermost regions his
playground.
In this Outline we have sought to show two great systems
of development interacting in the story of human society. We
have seen, growing out of that later special neolithic culture, the
heliolithic culture in the warmer alluvial parts of the world,
the great primordial civilizations, fecund systems of subjuga-
tion and obedience, vast multiplications of industrious and sub-
servient men. We have shown the necessary relationship of
these early civilizations to the early temples and to king-gods
and god-kings. At the same time we have traced the develop-
ment from a simpler neolithic level of the wanderer peoples,
who became the nomadic peoples, in those great groups the
Aryans and the Hun-Mongol peoples of the north-west and the
north-east and (from a heliolithic phase) the Semites of the
Arabian deserts. Our history has told of a repeated overrun-
ning and refreshment of the originally brunet civilizations by
these hardier, bolder, free-spirited peoples of the steppes and
desert. We have pointed out how these constantly recurring
nomadic injections have steadily altered the primordial civiliza-
tions both in blood and in spirit; and how the world religions
of to-day, and what we now call democracy, the boldness of
modem scientific inquiry and a universal restlessness, are due
to this "nomadization" of civilization. The old civilizations
created tradition, and lived by tradition. To-day the power of
tradition is destroyed. The body of our state is civilization
still, but its spirit is the spirit of the nomadic world. It is the
spirit of the great plains and the high seas.
So that it is difficult to resist the persuasion that so soon
as one law runs in the earth and the fierceness of frontiers
ceases to distress us, that urgency in our nature that stirs
us in spring and autumn to be up and travelling, will have
its way with us. We shall obey the call of the summer pastures
and the winter pastures in our blood, the call of the mountains,
1098 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
the desert, and the sea. For some of us also, who may be of a
different lineage, there is the call of the forest, and there are
those who would hunt in the summer and return to the fields for
the harvest and the plough. But this does not mean that men
will have become homeless and all adrift. The normal nomadic
life is not a homeless one, but a movement between homes.
The Kalmucks to-day, like the swallows, go yearly a thousand
miles from, one home to another. The beautiful and convenient
cities of the coming age, we conclude, will have their seasons
when they will be full of life, and seasons when they will seem
asleep. Life will ebb and flow to and from every region sea-
sonally as the interest of that region rises or declines.
There will be little drudgery in this better-ordered world.
Natural power harnessed in machines will be the general
drudge. What drudgery is inevitable will be done as a service
and duty for a few years or months out of each life ; it will not
consume nor degrade the whole life of anyone. And not only
drudges, but many other sorts of men and ways of living which
loom large in the current social scheme will necessarily have
dwindled in importance or passed away altogether. There will
be few professional fighting men or none at all, no custom-
house officers; the increased multitude of teachers will have
abolished large police forces and large jail staffs, mad-houses
will be rare or non-existent; a world-wide sanitation will have
diminished the proportion of hospitals, nurses, sick-room at-
tendants, and the like ; a world-wide economic justice, the float-
ing population of cheats, sharpers, gamblers, forestallers, para-
sites, and speculators generally. But there will be no diminu-
tion of adventure or romance in this world of the days to come.
Sea fisheries and the incessant insurrection of the sea, for
example, will call for their own stalwart types of men; the
high air will clamour for manhood, the deep and dangerous
secret places of nature. Men will turn again with renewed
interest to the animal world. In these disordered days a stupid,
uncontrollable massacre of animal species goes on — from cer-
tain angles of vision it is a thing almost more tragic than human
miseries; in the nineteenth century dozens of animal species,
and some of them very interesting species, were exterminated ;
but one of the first fruits of an effective world state would be
the better protection of what are now wild beasts. It is a
strange thing in human history to note how little has been done
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY , 1099
since the Bronze Age in taming, using, befriending, and ap-
preciating the animal life about us. JBut that mere witless
killing which is called sport to-day would inevitably give
place in a better educated world community to a modification
of the primitive instilicts that find expression in this way,
changing them into an interest not in the deaths, but in the
lives of beasts, and leading to fresh and perhaps very strange
and beautiful attempts to befriend these pathetic, kindred
lower creatures we no longer fear as enemies, hate as rivals, or
need as slaves. And a world state and universal justice does
not mean the imprisonment of our race in any bleak institu-
tional orderliness. There will still be mountains and the sea,
there will be jungles and great forests, cared for indeed and
txeasured and protected; the great plains will still spread be-
fore us and the wild winds blow. But men will not hate so
much, fear so much, nor cheat so desperately — and they will
keep their minds and bodies cleaner.
There are unhopeful prophets who see in the gathering to-
gether of men into one community the possibility of violent
race confiiets, conflicts for "ascendancy," but that is to suppose
that civilization is incapable of adjustments by which men of
different qualities and temperaments and appearances will live
side by side, following different roles and contributing diverse
gifts. The weaving of mankind into one community does not
imply the creation of a homogeneous community, but rather the
reverse ; the welcome and the adequate utilization of distinctive
quality in an atmosphere of understanding. It is the almost
universal bad manners of the present age which make race in-
tolerable to race. The community to which we may be mov-
ing will be more mixed — ^which does not necessarily mean
more interbred — ^more various and more interesting than any
existing community. Communities all to one pattern, like boxes
of toy soldiers, are things of the past rather than the future.
But one of the hardest, most impossible tasks a writer can
set himself, is to picture the life of people better educated,
happier in their circumstances, more free and more healthy
than he is himself. We know enough to-day to know that there
is infinite room for betterment in every human concern. Noth-
ing is needed but collective effort. Our poverty, our restraints,
our infections and indigestions, our quarrels and misunder-
standings, are all things controllable and removable by con-
1100 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
certed human action, but we know as little how life would feel
without them as some poor dirty ill-treated, fierce-souied crea-
ture born and bred amidst the cruel and dingy surroundings
of a European back street can know what it is to bathe every
day, always to be clad beautifully, to* climb mountains for
pleasure, to fly, to meet none but agreeable, well-mannered
people, to conduct researches or make delightful things. Yet
a time when all such good things will be for all men may be
coming more nearly than we think. Each one who believes
that brings the good time nearer ; each heart that fails delays it.
One cannot foretell the surprises or disappointments the
future has in store. Before this chapter of the World State
can begin fairly in our histories, other chapters as yet unsus-
pected may still need to be written, as long and as full of con-
flict as our account of the growth and rivalries of the Great
Powers. There may be tragic economic struggles, grim grap-
plings of race with race and class with class. It may be that
"private enterprise" will refuse to learn the lesson of service
without some quite catastrophic revolution, and that a phase of
confiscation and amateurish socialistic government lies before
us. We do not know; we cannot tell. These are unnecessary
disasters, but they may be unavoidable disasters. Human his-
tory becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe. Against the unifying effort of Christendom and
against the unifying influence of the mechanical revolution,
catastrophe won — at least to the extent of achieving the Great
War. We cannot tell yet how much of the winnings of catas-
trophe still remain to be gathered in. New falsities may arise
and hold men in some unrighteous and fated scheme of order
for a time, before they collapse amidst the misery and slaugh-
ter of generations.
Yet, clumsily 'jr smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses
and will progress. In this Outline, in our account of palae-
olithic men, we have borrowed a description from Mr. Worth-
ington Smith of the very highest life in the world some fifty
thousand years ago. It was a bestial life. We have sketched,
too, the gathering for a human sacrifice, some fifteen thousand
years ago. That scene again is almost incredibly cruel to a
modem civilized reader.
Yet it is not more than five hundred years since the great
empire of the Aztecs still believed that it could live only by the
THE NEXT STAGE OF HISTORY 1101
shedding of blood. Every year in Mexico hundreds of human
victims died in this fashion : the body vyas bent like a bow over
the curved stone of sacrifice, the breast was slashed open with
a knife of obsidian, and the priest tore out the beating heart
of the still living victim. The day may be close at hand when
we shall no longer tear out the hearts of men, even for the
sake of our national gods. Let the reader but refer to the
earlier time charts we have given in this history, and he will
see the true measure and transitoriness of all the conflicts,
deprivations, and miseries of this present period of painful
and yet hopeful change.
CHEOl^OLOGIOAL TABLE
TO conclude this Outline, we give here a Table of Leading
Events from the year 800 e.g. to 1920 a.d. FoUoyFitg
that we give five time diagrams covering the periq^
from 1000 e.g. onward, which present the trend of events in
a graphic form.
It is well that the reader should keep in mind an idea of
the true proportions of historical to geological time. The scale
of the five diagrams at the end is such that by it the time dia-
gram on page 142 would be about 8^2 times as long, that is to
say about 4 feet; that on page 47 showing the interval since
the Eoliths, 555 feet, and that on page 11 representing the
whole of geological time would be somewhere between 12 and,
at the longest and most probable estimate, 260 miles! Let the
reader therefore take one of these chronological tables we give,
and imagine it extended upon a long strip of paper to a distance
of 55 feet. He would have to get up and walk about that
distance to note the date of the painting of the Altamira caves,
and he would have to go ten times that distance by the side
of the same narrow strip to reach the earlier Neanderthalers.
A mile or so from home, but probably much further away, the
strip might be recording the last of the dinosaurs. And this
on a scale which represents the time from Columbus to ourselves
by three inches of space ! .
Chronology only begins to be precise enough to specify the
exact year of any event after the establishment of the eras of
the Eirst Olympiad and the building of Rome.
About the year 1000 e.g. the Aryan peoples were establishing
themselves in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Balkans,
and they were established in North India. Cnossos was already
destroyed, and the spacious times of Egypt, of Thotmes III,
Amenophis III, and Eameses II were three or four centuries
away. Weak monarchs of the XXIst Dynasty were ruling
in the Nile Valley. Israel was united under her early kings;
1102
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1103
Saul or David or possibly even Solomon may have been reign-
ing. Sargon I (2750 b.c. of the Akkadian Sumerian Empire
was a remote memory in Babylonian history, more remote than
is Constantine the Great from the world of the present day.
Hammurabi had been dead a thousand years. The Assyrians
were already dominating the less military Babylonians. In
1100 B.C. Tiglath Pileser I had taken Babylon. But there
was no permanent conquest; Assyria and Babylonia were still
separate empires. In China the new Chow dynasty was flour-
ishing. Stonehenge in England was already a thousand years
old.
The next two centuries saw a renascence of Egypt under the
XXII Dynasty, the splitting up of the brief little Hebrew
kindgom of Solomon, the spreading of the Greeks in the Bal-
kans, South Italy and Asia Minor, and the days of Etruscan
predominance in Central Italy. We may begin our list of
ascertainable dates with
B.O.
800. The building of Carthage.
790. The Ethiopian conquest of Egypt (founding the XXVth
Dynasty) .
776. First Olympiad.
753. Kome built.
745. Tiglath Pileser III conquered Babylonia and founded
the New Assyrian Empire.
738. Menahem, king of Israel, bought off Tiglath Pileser III.
735. Greeks settling in Sicily.
722. Sargon II armed the Assyrians with iron weapons.
721. He deported the Israelites.
704. Sennacherib.
701. His army destroyed by a pestilence on its way to Egypt.
680. Esarhaddon took Thebes in Egypt (overthrowing the
Ethiopian XXVth Dynasty).
667. Sardanapalus.
664. Psammetichus I restored the freedom of Egypt and
founded the XXVIth Dynasty (to 610). He was as-
sisted against Assyria by Lydian troops sent by Gyges.
608. Necho of Egypt defeated Josiahj king of Judah, at the
Battle of Megiddo.
606. Capture of ISTineveh by the Chaldeans and Medes. Eoun-
dation of the Chaldean Empire,
1104 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
B.C.
604. Necho pushed to the Euphrates and was overthrown by
Nebuchadnezzar II. Josiah feU with him.
586. liTebuchadnezzar carried off the Jews to Babylon. Many
fled to Egypt and settled there.
550. Gyrus the Persian succeeded Cyaxares the Mede.
Cyrus conquered Croesus.
Buddha lived about this time. So also did Confucius
and Lao Tse.
539. Cyrus took Babylon and founded the Persian Empire.
527. Peisistratus died.
525. Cambyses conquered Egypt.
521. Darius I, the son of Hystaspes, ruled from the Helles-
pont to the Indus.
His expedition to Scythia.
490. Battle of Marathon.
484. Herodotus bom. ^schylus won his first prize for
tragedy.
480. Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis.
479. The Battles of Platsea and Myeale completed the re-
pulse of Persia.
474, Etruscan fleet destroyed by the Sicilian Greeks.
470. Voyage of Hanno.
466. Pericles.
465. Xerxes murdered.
438. Herodotus recited Ms History in Athens.
431. Peloponnesian War began (to 404).
428. Pericles died. Herodotus died.
427. Aristophanes began his career. Plato bom. He lived
to 347.
401. Eetreat of the Ten Thousand.
390. Brennus sacked Eome.
366. Camillus built the Temple of Concord.
359. Philip became king of Macedonia.
338. Battle of Chaeronia.
336. Macedonian troops crossed into Asia, Philip murdered.
334. Battle of the Granicus.
333. Battle of Issus.
332. Alexander in Egypt.
331. Battle of Arbela.
330. Darius III killed.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1105
B.C.
323. Death of Alexander the Great.
321. Rise of Chandragupta in the Punjab. The Romans
completely beaten by the Samnites at the battle of the
Gaudine Forks.
303. Chandragupta repulsed Seleucus.
285. Ptolemy Soter died.
281. Pyrrhus invaded Italy.
280. Battle of Heraclea.
279; Battle of Ausculum.
278. Gauls' raid into Asia Minor and settlement in Galatia.
275. Pyrrhus left Italy.
264; First Punic War. (Asoka began to reign in Behar —
to 227.) First gladiatorial games in Rome.
260. Battle of Mylse.
256. Battle of Ecnomus.
246. Shi Hwang-ti became king of Ch'in.
242. Battle of ^gatian Isles..
241. End of First Punic War.
225. Battle of Telamon. Roman armies in lUyria.
220. Shi Hwang-ti became emperor of China.
[Note that the date given to Shi Hwang-ti in the dia-
gram on p. 142 is incorrect.]
219. Second Punic War.
216. Battle of Cannae.
214. Great Wall of China- begun.
21«. Death of Shi Hwang-ti.
202. Battle of Zama.
201. End of Second Punic War.
200-197. Rome at war with Macedonia..
192. War with the- Sdeucids.
190. Battle of Magnesia..
149. Third Punic War. (The Tueh-Chi came into Western
. - ; Turkestan.) :
146. Carthage destroyed. Corinth destroyed.
133. Attains bequeathed Pergamum to Rome. Tiberius Grac-
chus killed.
121. Gaius' Gracchus killed.
118. War with Jugurtha.
106*. War Veith Jjigurtha ended;
102. Marius drove back Germans.
1106 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
B.C.
100. Triumph of Mariua. (Wu-ti conquering the Tarim
valley.)
91. Social war.
89. All Italians became Roman citizens.
86. Death of Marius.
78. Death of Sulla.
73. The revolt of the slaves under Spartacus.
71. Defeat and end of Spartacus.
66. Pompej led Eoman troops to the Caspian and Euphrates.
He encountered the Alani.
64. Mithridates of Pontus died.
53. Crassus killed at Carrhae. Mongolian elements with
Parthians.
48. Julius Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalos.
44. Julius Caesar assassinated.
31. Battle of Actium.
27. Augustus Caesar princeps (until 14 a.d.).
4. True date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
A.D. Christian Era began.
6. Province' of Moesia established.
9. Province of Pannonia established. Imperial boundary
carried to the Danube.
14. Augustus died. Tiberius emperor.
30. Jesus of Nazareth crucified.
37. Caligula succeeded Tiberius.
41. Claudius (the first emperor of the legions) made em-
peror by» pretorian guard after murder of Calig-
ula.
64. Nero succeeded Claudius.
61. Boadicea massacred Eoman garrison in Britain.
68. Suicide of Nero. (Galba, Otho, Vitellus, emperors in
succession.)
69. Vespasian began the so-called Flavian dynasty.
79. Titus succeeded Vespasian.
81. Domitian.
84. North Britain annexed.
96. Nerva began the so-called dynasty of the Antonines.
98. Trajan succeeded Nerva.
102, Pan Chau on the Caspian Sea. (Indo-Scythians in-
vading North India.)
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1107
A.I).
117. Hadrian succeeded Trajan. Eoman Empire at its
greatest extent.
138. Antoninus Pius succeeded Hadrian. (The Indo-Scy-
thians at this time were destroying the last traces of
Hellenic rule in India.)
150. [About this time Kanishka reigned in India, Kashgar,
Yarkand, and Kotan.]
161. Marcus Aurelius succeeded Antoninus Pius.
164. Great plague began^ and lasted to the death of M.
Aurelius (180). This also devastated allAsia.
180. Death of Marcus Aurelius.
(Nearly a century of war and disorder began in the
Roman Empire.)
220. End of the Han dynasty. Beginning of four hundred
years of division in China.
227. Ardashir I (first Sassanid shah) put an end to Arsacid
line in Persia.
242. Mani began his teaching.,
247. Goths crossed Danube in a great raid.
251. Great victory of Goths. Emperor Decius killed.
260. Sapor I, the second Sassanid shah,, took Antioch, cap-
tured the Emperor Valerian, and was cut up on his
return from Asia Minor by Odenathus of Palmyra.
269. The Emperor Claudius defeated the Goths at Nish.
270. Aurelian became emperor.
272. Zenobia carried captive to Home. End of the brief
glories of Palmyra. '
275. Probus succeeded Aurelian.
276. Goths in Pontus. The Emperor Probus forced back
Franks and Alemanni.
277. Mani crucified in Persia.
284. Diocletian became emperor.
303. Diocletian persecuted the Christians.
311. Galerius abandoned the persecution of the Christians.
312. Constantine the Great became emperor.
313. Constantine presided over a Christian Council at Aries.
321. Fresh Gothic raids driven back.
323. Constantine presided over the Council of Nicsea.
337. Vandals driven by Goths obtained leave to settle in
Pannonia.
1108 THE OUTLINE OF. HISTORY
A.D.
337. Oonstantine baptized on hia deatkbed.i
354. St. Augustine born.
361-3. Julian the Apostate attempted' to substitute Mithraism
for Christianity.
379. Theodosius the Great (a Spaniard) emperor.
390. The statute of Serapis at Alexandria broken up.
392, Theodosius the Great emperor of east and west.
395. Theodosius the Great died. Honorius and Arcadius
jredivided the empire with Stilicho and Alaric as
thieir masters and protectors.
410. The Visigoths under Alaric captured Rome.
425. Vandals settling in south of Spain. Huns in Pannonia,
Goths in Dalmatia. Visigoths and Suevi in Portugal
and North Spain. • English invading Britain. .
429. Vandals under Genseric invaded Africa.
439. Vandalsi took Carthage.
448. Priscus visited Attila.
451. Attila raided Gaul and was defeated by Franks, Ale-
manni, and Komans at Troyes.
453. Death of Attila.
455. Vandals sacked Rome.
470. Ephthalites? raid into India.
476. Odoaeer, king of a medley of Teutonic tribes, informed
Constantinople that there was no emperor in the West.
End of the Western Empire.
480. St. Benedict born.
481. Clovis in France. The Merovingians.
483. Nestorian church broke away from the Orthodox Chris-
tian church. .
493. Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, conquered Italy and became
King of Italy, but was nominally subject to Constan-
tinople.
(Gothic kings in Italy. Goths settled on special con-
fiscated lands as a garrison.)
527. Justinian emperor.
528. Mihiragula, the (Ephthalite) Attila of India, over-
thrown.
529. Justinian closed the schools at Athens^ which had flour-
ished nearly a thousand years. Belisarius ( Justiniail's
general) took Naples.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1109
A.D.
531. Ghosroes' I began to reign.
543. Great pkgue' in' Constantinople.
544. St. Benedict died.
553. Goths expelled from Italy by Justinian. CassiodorTis
founded his monastery.
565. Justinian died. The Lombards conquered most of
Iforth Italy (leaving Eavenna and Kome Byzantine).
The Turks broke up the Ephthalites in Western Turke-
' Stan.
570. Muhammad bom.
579. Ghosroes I died.
(The Lombards dominant in Italy.)
590. Plague raged in Rome. (Gregory the Great — Gregory
I — and the vision of St. Angelo.) Ghosroes II began
to reign.
610. Heraclius began to reign.
619.' Ghosroes II held Egypt, Jerusalem^ Damascus, and had
armies on Hellespont. Tang dynasty began in Ghina.
622. The Hegira.
623. Battle of Badr.
627. Great Persian defeat at Nineveh by Heraclius. The
Meccan Allies besieged Medina. Tai Tsung became
Emperor of China.
628. Kavadh II murdered and succeeded his father, Ghos-
roes II.
Muhammad wrote letters to all the rulers of the earth.
629. Yuan Chwang started for India. Muhammad entered
Mecca.
632. Muhammad died. Abu Bekr Caliph.
634. Battle of the Yarmuk. Moslems took Syria. Omar
second Caliph.
635. Tai Tsung received Nestorian missionaries.
637. Battle of Kadessia.
6^8: Jerusalem surrendered to Omar.
64:2. Heraclius died.
643. Othman third Caliph.
645. Yuan Chwang returned to Singan.
655. Defeat of the Byzantine fleet by the Moslems.
656. Othman murdered at Medina.
661. Ali niurdered.
1110 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
662. Moawlya Caliph. (First of the Omayyad caliphs.)
668. The Caliph Moawiya attacked Coiistaiitinople by sea —
Theodore of Tarsus became Archbishop of Canterbury.
675. Last of the sea attacks by Moawiya on Constantinople.
687. Pepin of Hersthal, mayor of the palace, reunited Aus-
trasia and I^eustria.
711. Moslem army invaded Spain from Africa.
714. Charles Martel, mayor of the palace.
715. The domains of the Caliph Walid I extended from the
Pyrenees to China.
717-18. Suleiman, son and successor of Walid, failed to take
Constantinople^ The Omayyad line passed its climax.
732. Charles Martel defeated the Moslems near Poitiers.
735. Death of the Venerable Bede.
743. Walid II Caliph — ^the unbelieving Caliph.
749. Overthrow of the Omayyads. Abdul Abbas, the first
Abbasid Caliph. Spain remained Omayyad. Begin-
ning of the break-up of the Arab Empire.
751. Pepin crowned King of the French.
755. Martyrdom of St. Boniface.
768. Pepin died. '
771. Charlemagne sole king.
774. Charlemagne conquered Lombardy.
776. Charlemagne in Dalmatia.
786. Haroun-al-Easchid Abbasid Caliph in Bagdad (to 809).
795. Leo III became Pope (to 816).
800. Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West.
802. Egbert, formerly an English refugee at the court of
Charlemagne, established himself; as King of Wessex.
810. Krum of Bulgaria defeated and killed the Emperor
Nicephorus.
814. Charlemagne died, Louis the Pious succeeds him.
828. Egbert became first King of England.
843. Louis the Pious died, and the Carlovingian Empire
went to pieces. Until 962 there was no regular suc-
cession of Holy Eoman Emperors, though the title
appeared intermittently.
850. About this time Rurik (a Northman) became ruler of
Novgorod and Kieff.
852. Boris first Christian King of Bulgaria (to 884).
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1111
A.D.
865. The fleet of the Russians (Northmen) threatened Con-
stantinople.
886. The Treaty of Alfred of England and Guthrum the
Dane, establishing the Danes in the Danelaw.
904. Russian (ISTorthmen) fleet off Constantinople.
912. Eolf the Ganger established himself in Normandy.
919. Henry the Fowler elected King of Germany.
928. Marozia imprisoned Pope John X.
931. John XI Pope (to 936).
936. Otto I became King of Germany in succession to his
father, Henry the Powler. ., ,,
941. Russian fleet again threatened Constantinople.
955. John XII Pope.
960. Northern Sung Dynasty began in China.
962. Otto I, King of Germany, crowned Emperor (first
Saxon Emperor) by John XII.
963. Otto deposed John XII.
969. Separate Eatimite Caliphate set up in Egypt.
973. Otto II.
983. Otto III.
987. Hugh Capet became King of France, End of the
Garlovingian line of French kings.
1016. Canute became King of England, Denmark, and
Norway.
1037. Avicenna of Bokhara, the Prince of Physicians, died.
1043. Russian fleet threatened Constantinople.
1066. Conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy.
1071. Revival of Islam under the Seljuk Turks. Battle of
Melasgird.
1073. Hildebi-and became Pope (Gregory VII) to 1085.
1082. Robert Guiscard captured Durazzo.
1084. Robert Guiscard sacked Rome.
1087-99. Urban II Pope.
1094. Pestilence.
1095. Urban II at Clermont summoned the First Crusade.
1096. Massacre of the People's Crusade.
1099. Godfrey of Bouillon captured Jerusalem. Paschal II
Pope (to 1118).
1138. Kin Empire flourished. The Sung capital shifted from
Naoking to Hang Chau,
1112 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
114Y. The Second Crusade. Foundation of the Christian
Kingdom of Portugal,
1169. Saladin Sultan of Egypt
1176. Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged supremacy of the
Pope (Alexander III) at Venice.
1187. Saladin captured Jerusalem.
1189. The Third Crusade.
1198. Averroes of Cordoba, the Arab philosopher, died. Inno-
cent III Pope (to 1216). Frederifek II (aged four),
KiHg of Sicily, became his ward.
1202. The Fourth- Crusade attacked the Eastern Empira
1204. Captures of Constantinople by the Latins.
1206. Kutub founded Moslem state at Delhi.
1212. The Children's Crusade.
1214. Jengia Khan took Peking;
1215. Magna Carta signed.
1216. Honorius III Pope.
1218. Jengis Khan invaded Kharismia.
1221. Failure and return of the Fifth Crusade. St. Dominic
died (the Dominicans).
1226. St. Francis of Assisi died. (The Franciscans.)
1227. Jengis Khan died, Khan from the Caspian to the Pacific,
and was succeeded by Ogdai Khan.
Gregory IX Pope.
1228. Frederick II embarked upon. the Sixth Crusade, and
acquired Jerusalem. -. ,
1234. Mongols completed conquest of the Kin Empire with
the help of the Sung Empire.
1239. Frederick II excommunicated for the second time.
1240. Mongols destroyed Kieff. Eussia tributary to. the
Mongols.
1241. Mongol victory at Liegnitz in Silesia.
1244. The Egyptian Sultan recaptured Jerusalem. This led
to the Seventh Crusade.
1245. Frederick II re-excommunicated. The men of Schwyz
burnt the castle of New Habsburg.
1250i St. Louis of France ransomed. Frederick 11^ the. last
Hohenstaufen Emperor, died. German interregnum
until 1273.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1118
A.D.
1254.. Mangu Khan became Great Khan, Kublai Khan gov-
ernor of China.
1258. Hulagu Khan took and destroyed Bagdad.
1260. Kublai Khan became Great Khan. Ketboga defeated
in Palestine.
1261. The Greeks recaptured Constantinople from the Latins.
1269. Kublai Khan sent a message of inquiry to the Pope by
the older Polos.
1271. Marco Polo started upon his travels.
1273. Eudolf of Habsburg elected Emperor. The Swiss
formed their Everlasting League.
1280. Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty in China..
1292. Death of Kublai Khan.
1293. Roger Bacon, the prophet of experimental science, died.
1294. Boniface ,VIII Pope (to 1303).
1295. Marco Polo returned to Venice.
1303. Death of Pope Boniface VIII after the . outrage of
Anagni by Guillaume de Nogaret
1305. Clement V Pope. The papal court set up at Avignon.
1308. Duns Scotus died.
1318. Four Franciscans burnt :for heresy at Marseilles.
1347. Occam died.
1348. The Great Plague, the Black Death.
1358.. The Jacquerie in France.
1360. In China the Mongol (Yuan) Dynasty fell, and was
succeeded by the Ming Dynasty (to 1644).
1367. Timurlane assumed the title of Great Khan.
1377. Pope Gregory XI returned to Home.
1378. The Great Schism. Urban VI in Rome, Clement VII
at Avignon.
1381. Peasant revolt in England. Wat Tyler murdered in
the presence of King Eichard II.
1384. .Wycliffe died. .
139fir. Huss preached Wycliffism at Prague.
1405, Death of Timurlane.
1414-18. The Council of Constance. Huss burnt (1415).
1417. The Great Schism ended, Martin V Pope..
1420. The Hussites revolted. Martin V preached a crusade
against them.
1114 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
1431. The Catholic Crusaders dissolved before the Hussites at
Domazlice. The Council of Basle met.
1436. The Hussites came to terms with the church.
1439. Council of Basle created a fresh schism in the church.
1445. Discovery of Cape Verde by the Portuguese.
1446. First printed books (Coster in Haarlem).
1449. End of the Council of Basle. . : i
1453. Ottoman Turks under Muhammad II took Constanti-
nople.
1480. Ivan III, Grand-duke of Moscov?, threw off the Mongol
allegiance.
1481. Death of the Sultan Muhammad II while preparing
for the conquest of Italy. Bayazid II Turkish Sultkn
'(to 1512).
1486. Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
1492. Columbus crossed the Atlantic to America. Kodrigo
Borgia, Alexander VI, Pope (to 1503).
1493. Maximilian I became Emperor.
1498. Vasco da Gama sailed round the Cape to India.
1499. Switzerland became an independent republic.
1500. Charles V born.
1509. Henry VIII King of England.
1512. Selim Sultan (to 1520) . He bought the title of Caliph.
Fall of Soderini (and Machiavelli) in Florence.
1513. Leo X Pope.
1515. Francis I King of France.
1517. Selim annexed Egypt. Luther propounded his theses
at Wittenberg.
1519. Leonardo da Vinci died. Magellan's expedition started
to sail round the world. Cortez entered Mexico city.
1520. Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan (to 1566), who ruled
from Bagdad to Hungary. « Charles V Emperor.
1521. Luther at the Diet of Worms. Loyola wounded at
Pampeluna. '
1525. Baber won the battle of Panipat, captured Delhi, and
founded the Mogul Empire.
1527. The German troops in Italy, under the Constable of
Bourbon^itook and pillaged Kome,
J539, Suleimap besieged Vienna,
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1115
A.D.
1530. Pizarro invaded Peru. Charles V crowned by the
Pope. Henry VIII began his quarrel with the
Papacy.
1532. The Anabaptists seized Miinster.
1535. Fall of the Anabaptist rule in Miinster.
1539. The Company of Jesus founded.
1543. Copernicus died.
1545. The Council of Trent (to 1563) assembled to put the
church in order.
1546. Martin Luther died.
1547. Ivan IV (the Terrible) took the title of Tsar of Eus-
sia. Francis I died.
1549. First Jesuit missions arrived in South America.
1552. Treaty of Passau. Temporary pacification of Ger^
many.
1556. Charles V abdicated. Akbar Great Mogul (to 1605).
Ignatius of Loyola died.
1558. Death of Charles V.
1563. End of the Council of Trent and the reform of the
Catholic Church.
1564. Galileo born.
1566. Suleiman the Magnificent died.
1567. Kevolt of the Netherlands.
1568. Execution of Counts Egmont and Horn.
1571. Kepler born.
1573. Siege of Alkmaar.
1578. Harvey born.
1583. Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition to Virginia.
1601. Tycho Brahe died.
1603. James I King of England and Scotland. Dr. Gilbert
died.
1605. Jehangir Great Mogul,
1606. Virginia Company founded.
1609. Holland independent.
1618. Thirty Years' War began.
1620. Mayflower expedition founded New Plymouth. First
, negro slaves landed at Jamestown (Va.).
1625. Charles I of England.
1626. Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) died.
1116 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
1628. Shah Jehan Great Mogul. The English Petition of
Bight.
1629. Charles I of England began his eleven years of rule
without a parliament.
1630. Kepler died.
1632. Leeuwenhoek born. Gustavus :^dolphus killed at the
Battle of Liitzen.
16*34. Wallenstein murdered.
1638. Japan closed to Europeans (until 1865).
1640. Charles I of England summoned the Long Parliament.
1641. Massacre of the English in Ireland.
1642. Galileo died. Newton born.
1643. Louis XIV began his reign of seventy-two years.
1644. The Manchus ended the Ming dynasty.
1645. Swine pens in the inner town of Leipzig pulled down.
1648. Treaty of Westphalia. Thereby Holland and Switzer-
land were recognized as free republics and Prussia
became important. The treaty gave a complete vic-
tory neither to the Imperial Crown nor to the Princes.
War of the Fronde; it ended in the complete vic-
tory of the French crown.
1649. Execution of Charles I of England,
1658. Aurungzeb Great Mogul. Cromwell died.
1660. Charles II of England.
1674. Nieuw Amsterdam finally became British by treaty and
was renamed "New York.
1683. The last Turkish attack on Vienna defeated by John
III of Poland.
1688. The British Revolution. Flight of James IL William
and Mary began to reign.
1689. Peter the Great of Eussia. (To 1725.)
1690. Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
1694. Voltaire born.
1701. Frederick I first King of Prussia.
1704:. John Locke, the father of modem democratic theory,
died.
1707. Death of Auruiigzeb. The empire of the Great Mogul
disintegrated.
1713. Frederick the Great of Prussia bom;
1714. George I of Britain.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1117
A.D.
1715. Louis XV of France.
1727. Newton died. George II of Britain.
1732. Oglethorpe founded Georgia.
1736. Nadir Shah raided India. (The beginning of twenty
years of raiding and disorder in India.)
1740. Maria-Theresa began to reign. (Being a woman, she
could not be empress. Her husband, Francis I, was
emperor until his death in 1765, when her son, Joseph
II, succeeded him.)
Accession of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.
1741. The Empress Elizabeth of Russia began to reign.
1755^63. Britain and France struggled for America and India.
France in alliance with Austria and Russia against
Prussia and Britain (1756-63) ; the Seven Years'
War.
1757. Battle of Plassey.
1759. The British general, Wolfe, took Quebec.
1760. George III of Britain.
1762. The Empress Elizabeth of Russia died. Murder of the
Tsar Paul, and accession of Catherine the Great of
Russia (to 1796).
1763. Peace of Paris; Canada ceded to Britain. British
dominant in India.
1764. Battle of Buxar.
1769. Napoleon Bonaparte born.
1774. Louis XVI began his reign. Suicide of Clive. • The
American revolutionary drama began.
1775. Battle of Lexington.
1776. Declaration of Independence by the United States of
America.
1778. J. J. Rousseau, the creator of modem democratic senti-
ment, died.
1780. End of the reign of Maria-Theresa. The Emperor
Joseph (1765 to 1790) succeeded her in the hereditary
Habsburg dominions.
1783. Treaty of Peace between Britain and the new United
States of America. Quaco set free in Massachu-
setts.
1787. The Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia set up
the Federal Government of the United States. France
1118 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
discovered to be bankrupt. The Assembly of the
Notables.
1788. First Federal Congress of the United States at New
York.
1789. The French States-General assembled. Storming of
the Bastille.
1791. The Jacobin Kevolution. Flight to Varennes.
1792. France declared war on Austria. Prussia declared war
on France. Battle of Valmy. France became a
republic.
1793. Louis XVI beheaded.
1794. Execution of Robespierre and end of the Jacobin re-
public. Rule of the Convention.
1795. The Directory. Bonaparte suppressed a revolt and went
to Italy as commander-in-chief.
1797. By the Peace of Campo Formio Bonaparte destroyed
the Republic of Venice.
1798. Bonaparte went to Egypt. Battle of the Nile.
1799. Bonaparte returned. He became First Consul with
enormous powers.
1800. Legislative union of Ireland and England enacted Jan-
uary 1st, 1801.
Napoleon's campaign against Austria. Battles of
Marengo (in Italy) and Hohenlinden (Moreau's
victory).
1801. Preliminaries of peace between France, England, and
Austria signed.
1803. Bonaparte occupied Switzerland, and so precipitated
war,
1804. Bonaparte became Emperor. Francis II took the title
of Emperor of Austria in 1805, and in 1806 he
dropped the title of Holy Roman Emperor. So the
"Holy Roman Empire" came to an end.
1805. Battle of Trafalgar. Battles of TJlm and Austerlitz.
1806. Prussia overthrown at Jena.
1807. Battles of Eylau and Friedland and Treaty of Tilsit.
1808. Napoleon made his brother Joseph King of Spain.
1810. Spanish America became republican.
1811, Alexander withdJrew from the "Continental Sys-
tem."
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1119
A.D.
1812. Moscow.
1814. Abdication of Napoleon. Louis XVIII.
1815, The Waterloo campaign. The Treaty of Vienna.
1819. The First Factory Act passed through the eiforts of
Robert Owen.
1821. The Greek revolt.
1824. Charles X of France.
1825. Nicholas I of Russia. First railway, Stockton to Dar-
lington.
1827. Battle of Navarino.
1829. Greece independent.
1830. A year of disturbance. Louis Philippe ousted Charles
X. Belgium broke away from Holland. Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha became king of this new country,
Belgium. Russian Poland revolted ineffectually.
1832. The First Reform Bill in Britain restored the demo-
cratic character of the British Parliament.
1835. The word socialism first used.
1837. Queen Victoria.
1840. Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha.
1848. Another year of disturbance. Republics in France and
Rome. The Pan-slavic conference at Prague. All
Germany united in a parliament at Frankfort. Ger-
man unity destroyed by the King of Prussia.
1851. The Great Exhibition of London.
1852. Napoleon III Emperor of the French.
1854. Perry (second expedition) landed in Japan. Nicholas
I occupied the Danubian provinces of Turkey.
1854-56. Crimean "War.
1856. Alexander II of Russia.
1857. The Indian Mutiny.
185?: Robert Owen died.
1859. Franco- Austrian war. Battles of Magenta and Sbl-
ferino.
1861. Victor Emmanuel First King of Italy. Abraham Lin-
coln became President, U.S.A. The American Civil
War beganJ
1863, British bombarded a Japanese town.
1864. Maximilian became Emperor of Mexico.
1120 THE OtTTLINE OF HISTORY
A.D.
1865. Surrender of Appomattox Court House. Japan opened
to the world.
1866. Prussia and Italy attacked Austria (and the south Ger-
man states in alliance with her). Battle of Sadowa.
1867. The Emperor Maximilian shot.
1870, Napoleon III declared war against Prussia.
1871. Paris surrendered (January). The King of Prussia
became William I, "German Emperor." The Hohen-
zoUern Peace of Frankfort.
1875. The "Bulgarian atrocities."
1877. Eusso-Turkish War. Treaty of San Stefano. Queen
Victoria became Empress of India.
1878. The Treaty of Berlin. The Armed Peace of forty-six
years began in western Europe.
1881. The Battle of Majuba Hill. The Transvaal free.
1883. Britain occupied Egj'pt. ,
1886. Gladstone's first Irish Home Euie Bill.
1888. Frederick II (March), William II (June), German
Emperors.
1890. Bismarck dismissed. Heligoland ceded to Germany by
Lord Salisbury.
1894^5. Japanese war with China,
1895. "Unionist" (Imperialist) government in Britain.
1896. Battle of Adowa.
1898. The Fashoda quarrel between France and Britain. Ger-
many acquired Kiau-Chau.
1899. The war in South Africa began (Boer war).
1900. The Boxer risings in China. Siege of the Lei^ations at
Peking.
1904, The British invaded Tibet. ' ' ;
1904-5, Russo-Japanese war.
1906. The "Unionist" (Imperialist) party in Gi-eat Britain
defeated by the Liberals upon the question of tariffs.
1907. The Confederation of South Africa established.
1908. Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1909. M. Bleriot flew in an a;eroplane from France to Eng-
land.
1911. Italy made war on Turkey and seized" Tripoli.
1912. China became a republic.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1121
1913. The Balkan league made war on Turkey. Bloodshed, at
Londonderry in Ireland caused by "Unionist" gun
running.
1914. The Great War in Europe began (for which see special
time chart, pp. 1052-53). •
1917. The two Eussian revolutions. Establishment of the
Bolshevik regime in Eussia.
1919-20. The Clemeneeau Peace of Versailles.
1920. Eirst meeting of the League of Nations, from which
Germany, Austria, Eussia, and, Turkey were excluded,
and at which the United States was not represented.
And here our List of Events breaks off with a note of interred
gation. . '
1122
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
sr^«»6«R^,i^ S III
" « I I i li.
4lJ F A M
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1123
1124
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1125
1126
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
INDEX
KEY TO PRONUNCIATION
VOWELS
a as in far (far), father (fa' thli), mikado (mi ka' d5).
i „ „ fat (fS,t), ample (&mpl), abstinence (S.b'stin&iB).
a „ „ fate (fat), wait (wS,t), deign (dSin), jade (jad).
aw „ „ fall (fawl), appal (a pawlO, broad (brawd).
a „ „ fair (far), bear (bar), where (hwar).
e „ „ bell (bel), bury (ber'i).
5 „ „ her (hSr), search (sSrch), word (w8rd), bird (bSrd).
i „ „ beef (bef), thief (thef), idea (i de' d), beer (ber), casino (kdE s€' n5)
i „ „ bit (bit), lily (Ul' i), nymph (nimf), build (bUd).
i „ „ bite (bit), analyse (&n' dUz), light (lit).
o „ „ not (not), watch (wooh), cough (kof), sorry (sor'i).
6 „ „ no (no), blow (bio), brooch (broch).
8 „ „ north (north), absorb (db sorb').
00 „ „ food (food), do (doo), prove (proov), blue (bloo), strew (stroo).
u „ „ bull (bul), good (gud), would (wud).
i „ „ sun (stSn), love (Iflv), enough (^nflf).
fl „ „ muse (muz), stew (stil), cure (kOr).
on „ „ bout (bout), bough (bou), crowd (kroud).
oi „ „ join (join), joy (joi), buoy (boi).
A short mark placed over a, e, o, or u (d, i, 6, i2) signifies that thi
vowel has an obscure, indeterminate, or slurred sound, as in: —
advice (<Jd visO. current (kilr'&t), notion (n5' shdn),
breakable (bra' kdbl), sailor (sa'ldr), pleasure (plezh'Ar).
CONSONANTS
"g" is used only for the sibilant "s" (as in "toast," tost, "place,"
plas); the sonant "s" (as in "toes," "plays") is printed "z" (toz, plaz).
"c" (except in the combinations "oh" and "cA"), "q" and "x" are
not used.
b, d, f, h (but see the combinations below), k, 1, m, n (see n below), p, r,
t, V, z, and w and y when used as consonants have their usual values.
ch as in church (chSrch), batch (b&ch), capriccio (ka pre' cho).
th „ „ loch GocA), coronach (kor'onacA), clachan (kl&cA' an).
C ., „ get (get), finger (fing'g^r).
j „ „ join (join), judge (jiij), germ (jgrm), ginger (jin' j&).
gh (in List of Proper Names only) as in Ludwig (luf vigh).
hi ( „ „ „ „ ) „ „ LlandUo (hl&n dl' Id),
hw as in white (hwit), nowhere (u6' hwar).
n „ „ cabochon (ka bd shon"), coug6 (kon'zha).
Eh „ „ shawl (shawl), mention (men'sh^n),
zh „ „ measure (mezh'ilr), vision (vizh'dn).
th „ „ thin (thin), breath (breth).
A „ „ thine (tAIn), breathe (brefA).
The accent (') foUowi the syllable to be stressed.
INDEX
A
Aak (ar) Vallet, 754
Aaronson, Aaron, 131
Abbasids (0, bis' idz), 595, 601, 625, 628,
636, 667, 686, 1110
Abd Manif (abd man ef), 571
Abdal Malik (abd al ma' lik), 594
Abelard, P., 728
Aboukir (a boo ker'), 895, 896
Aboukir, cruiser, 1042
Abraham the Patriarch, 142, 218, 221,
231, 232, 500, 572
Absolutism, 768
Abu Bekr (a' boo bek' &), 672-73, 579-
88, 599, 1109
Abul Abbas, 596, 1110
Abul Fazl (a' bool fa' zl), 695.
Abydos (d bl' dos), 283-88
Abyssinia, 121, 126, 986
Abyssinian Christians, 524, 539, 568,
572; language, 120
Acad^mie des Sciences, 791
Academy, Greek, 299-301
Academy of Inscriptions, 857
Acre, 157, 896
Acropolis (a. krop' d lis), 257, 285
Act of Union, 1017
Actium &,k'tHim), battle of, 444, 1106
Acts of the Apostles, 510, 611
Adam and Eve, 953
Adams, Prof. G. B., 611
Adams, John, 849
Adams, Samuel, 837, 849
Adams, William, 991
Addington, 903
Aden, 126, 144, 597, 997
Adowa (a'dowa), battle of, 561, 625,
996, 1025, 1120
Adrianople, 481, 683, 1025; Treaty of,
920
Adriatic, 216, 331, 386, 395, 404, 468,
489, 527, 537, 617, 644, 907, 1032
Adriatic river, 89, 90
>£gatian Isles, 403, 1105
JEgean (Sje'du) cities, 177; civilization,
169-62, 221, 252; Dark Whites, 382;
hunters, 267
.^gina (eji'na), 285
Mneid (e'neid), the, 382
.iEolic dialect, 252
Aeroplanes, 3, 930, 1041, 1044
Aeschylus (es'kilils), 166, 1104
Afghanistan, 120, 147, 369, 371, 647-
49, 662, 693, 806
Africa, 43, 81, 91, 114, 120, 121, 129, 221,
421, 439, 674, 699; peoples of, 65, 81,
108, 111, 113, 125-26, 143, 162, 158,
177, 712; languages of, 124^25; early
trade with, 162, 215; Moslems in,
587, 590, 696, 606, 616, 628, 632, 1110;
voyages and travels in, 163, 439,
741-43, 803; Phoenicians in, 381, 493,
660; Roman, 402, 409, 427, 467, 488,
626; Vandals in, 482, 527, 536, 1108;
slavery in, 748, 780; modern exploita-
tion of, 886-87, 979, 985, 1009
Africa, Central, 125, 486; East, 29, 248;
South (see South Africa); West, 166,
768
African lung fish, 21
Agincourt, 736
Agriculture, early, 77, 84-87, 100, 107,
125, 136, 196, 242; slaves in, 201;
Arab knowledge of, 603; in Great
Britain, 820-22
Agriculturists, 206, 208, 211
Agrimentum (,&g ri men' ti2m) , 402
Agrippina (&g ri pi' n&), 464
Ahriman (a' ri man), 645-47
Ainu (i'noo), 108,811,991
Air, the, 3, 19
Air Force, 595
Aisne (an), 1037; battle of the, 612
Aix-la-Chapelle, 627
Akbar (ak' b6r), 693, 805, 1115
Akhnaton (ak na' ton), 193-94. ^Sea
Amenophis IV)
Akkadia (and Akkadians), 137, 188
Akkadian-Sumeriau Empire, 142, 1103
Alabama, the, 970
Alamanni, 480, 613, 1108
Alans, 476, 481, 548, 1106
Alaric (.&!' & rik), 481, 489, 1109
Alaska, 1028
Alban, St., 614
1129
1130
INDEX
Alban Mount, 383
Albania, 1044
Albert, Prince Consort, 963, 1011, 1114
Albertus Magnus, 400
Albigenses (&l bi jeu' sez), 655-58
Aloarez (2,1 car' ez), 763
Alchemists, 731
Alcibiades (8,1 si bi' di dez), 299
Alcmseonidae (Mk me on' i de) , 264
Alcohol, discovery of, 602
Alcuin (Sr kwin), 624
AlKtnanni. (See Alamanni)
Aleppo, 640
Alexander the Great, 141, 144, 147, 151,
162, 194, 195, 217, 293, 302-3, 309,
341, 342, 350, 367, 380, 387, 400,
436, 439, 452, 470, 474, 489, 519,
662, 616, 642, 675, 705, 755, 850, 1105;
empire of (maps), 335, 339; mother
of, 387
Alexander, son of Alexander the Great,
336
Alexander II, king of Egypt, 430
Alexander I, tsar of Russia, 905-8,
913-16, 919, 941, 947, 1000-2, 1119
Alexander II, tsar of Russia, 1119
Alexander III (pope), 659-61, 1119
Alexander VI (pope), 751, 1113
Alexandretta, 322, 325
Alexandria, 10, 325, 331, 337-38, 367,
396, 428, 455, 461, 466, 491, 510, 532,
535, 600, 655, 895, 899, 1108; mu-
seum at, 303, 343, 350, 408, 422,
657; culture and religion of, 303, 352,
513, 523, 602; library at, 344, 350;
Serapeum, 352, 353
Alexandrian cities, 215
Alexius Comnenus (S, lek' si Us kom ne'-
n^), 639-43
Alfred, king, 618, 707, 1111
Algse, 7
Algebra (tViehrd), 164, 602, 652
Algeria, 76, 163, 1025
Algiers, 687, 780, 996
Ali (a' le) , nephew of Muhammad, 572,
673, 579, 691, 595, 628, 1109
Alkmaar (alk mar'), siege of, 771, 773
Allah, 671, 586, 691-92
Alleghany mountains, 828
Allen, Grant, 102
Alp Arslan (alp ars Ian'), 636
Alphabets, 173, 254, 361, 548, 558-60
Alps, the, 38, 55, 404, 407, 437, 527, 623,
627, 646, 749
Alsace, 480, 755, 786, 795, 972-74
Alstadt, 736
Altai (al' ti), the, 474, 654
Altamira (al tdi mer' dO , cave of, 72j
1102
Aluminium, 927
Alva, General, 770-3
Alyattes (S li at' ez), 266
Amadis (Sm' d dis) de Gaul, 723
Ambar, 696
Amber, 72, 461
Amenophis (S.meno'fis) II, 227
Ameuophis III, 146, 165, 188, 192
Amenophis IV, 142, 165, 188, 192-94;
197, 220, 351, 381
America, 43, 46, 76, 165, 805, 937; pre-
historic, 75, 76, 82, 115, 163; races of,
108, 111, 125, 154; languages of, 117,
124; discovery of, 555-56, 660, 618,
648 sqq., 678, 742, 749, 801, 818, 1114;
European settlements in, 801-4, 821-
23, 826-40, 850, 1116. (See also
United States)
America, Central, drawings, 153
America, South, 153, 724, 743, 746^8,
916, 983, 1116-18
American Indians, 85, 94, 107, 113, 124-
26, 153, 171, 724, 746, 804, 991
American king-crab, 8; picture writing,
153
Amiens, 1050; Peace of, 490, 492
Amir, 684
Amman (Philadelphia), 641-43
Ammon, 192, 193, 325, 341, 351, 523
Ammonites, 33
Ammonites, a people, 232
AmcEba {dme'hd), 13
Amorites, 138, 218
Amos the prophet, 233
Amphibia, 22, 24, 26, 38-39, 42
Amphictyonies (am fik' ti <5n iz) , 263,
669, 673
Amphion, cruiser, 1036
Amphipolis (5.m fip' d lis), 314
Amritzar (&m rit' sdr) , 982
Amur (a moor'), 809
Anabaptists, 715-20, 1115
Anabasis (d o&h' d sis) , the, 290
Anagui (a nan' ye), 663, 1113
Anatolia, 636, 682
Anatolian peninsula, 644
Anatomy, 343, 344, 733
Anaxagoras j_ (&n dk sSg' 6 rSs), 296,
302-7
Andaman (Sn' dd mfin) Islands, 109
Andes, 38
Angelo, St., 1109
Angles, 482, 626, 614, 619, 630
Anglia, East, 606
Anglo-Norman feudalism, 608
INDEX
1131
"Anglo-Saxon," 1012
Anglo-Saxons, 492, 526, 532, 611, 690,
709
Animals, 8, 14, 17-18, 20-22, 40. 42,
48, 50, 77, 81, 83, 87, 96, 196. (See
also Mammals)
Anio, the, 392, 631
Anna Comnena (kom ne' nd) , 644
Annam, 654, 561, 811, 994, 996
Anne, queen, 781
Anselm, St., 728
Antarctic birds, 32
Antigonus (Sn tig' o niis), 337
Antimony, 80
Antiooh, 457, 511, 525, 538, 542, 585,
642, 1107
Antiochus (Sn tl' tf kils) III, 406, 413,
415
Antiochus IV, 496
Antonines, 455, 460, 466, 470, 1106
Antoninus (Sn to ni' nils) , Marcus Aure-
lius, 455, 467, 469, 712, 1107
Antoninus Pius, 455, 463, 1107
Antony, 442, 444
Antwerp, 736, 741
Anu, 188
Anubis (<8 nQ' bis), Egyptian god, 179
Anytus (an'itiis), 299
Apamea (&p d me' d) , 642
Apes, 49, 51, 54, 175; anthropoid, 44, 47,
48
Apion, 430
Apis (a' pis), 324,451, 512
Apollinaris Sidonius, 527
Apollo, 263, 273, 632
ApoUonius (S, j>6 16' ni Us), 343
Appian Way, 394, 436
Apples, 86
Appomattox Court House, 971, 1119
Aquileia (& kwS la' yiJ) , 395, 487
Aquinas {d kwi' nds) , 728
Arabia, 81, 91, 120, 121, 126, 133, 142,
163, 173, 214, 220, 233, 342, 461, 639,
544, 654, 567, 669, 571, 677, 582, 584,
591, 616, 640, 660. (-See also Arabs)
Arabian Nights, the, 597
Arabic language and literature, 121, 122,
469, 594, 596, 599, 718
Arabs, 275, 494, 554, 567, 574, 582, 585,
593, 596, 603, 606, 625, 675, 708, 718;
culture of, 600, 726
Aral sea, 120, 126, 329, 731
Aral-Caspian region, 267
Arameans, 139, 201, 206, 494, 551, 567
Arbela (arbe'M), battle of, 327, 411,
1104
Arcadius, 482, 1108
Archaeopteryx (ar ke op' t^r iks), 32
ArchsBOzoic (ar ke o z6' ik) period, 7.
(iSee also Azoic)
Archers, 182, 314
Archimedes (ar ki me' dez), 345, 408,
463
Architecture, 626, 736
Arctic birds, 32; circle, 553; Ocean, 120;
seas, 702
Ardashir (ar dasher'), I, 638, 646, 1107
Ardennes, 1037
Argentine republic, 127, 983
Argon, 680
Argonne, 875
Argos, 388
Ariadne {&i i S,d' ni), 161
Arians (ar' i dnz), 616, 522
Aridseus (Sr i de' *s), 318, 336
Aristagoras (S.r is t&g' d r^), 289
Aristarchus, 326
Aristides (a,r is ti'dez), 263, 285, 294
Aristocracy, 135, 208, 268
Aristodemus (di is td de' mils) , 284
Aristophanes (&r is tof d nez), 166, 1104
Aristotle, 165, 256, 264, 301-9, 321,
325, 334, 340, 343, 350, 372, 424, 459,
491, 600, 601, 653, 705, 726, 730, 795;
Politics of, 258-62, 396, 398
Arithmetic, 164-65
Arius ((J rl' lis), 616, 522
Arizona, 1028
Ark of bulrushes, 155
Ark of the Covenant, 188, 222-26
Aries (arl), 522, 530, 1107
Armadillo, giant, 76, 153
Armenia (and the Armenians), 240,
268, 337, 436, 452, 455, 475, 476,
524, 537, 641, 628. 636, 675, 679,
682, 712
Armenian language, 118, 240
Arno, 385, 394, 395
Arras, 869, 1039
Arrow, 437
Arrow heads, 77, 78, 85, 100
Arrow straighteners, 69-74
Arsacids (arsas'idz), 462-637, 1107
Arses, 290
Art, Buddhist, 367; Cretan, 159-60;
Neolithic, 98; Palaeolithic, 71, 74, 93,
99
Artabanus (ar td ba' niia), 283
Artaxerxes II, 290, 306
Artaxerxes III, 290
Artillery, 314, 684
Artisans, 206-12
Artois (ar twa'), Count of. (See Charley
1132
INDEX
Aryan, languages and literature, 104,
118, 121, 127, 129, 236, 238, 239, 243,
329, 381, 797; peoples and civiliza-
tions, 99, 118, 125, 134, 142, 186, 190,
221, 236, 239, 243, 255, 265-66, 268,
330, 354, 381, 382, 472, 476, 480,
485, 703, 726, 740, 746
Aryan Way, the, 355, 361, 371, 379, 384
As, Roman coin, 400
Ascalon, 221
Asceticism, 359
Ashdod, 189, 221
Ashtaroth (Ssh' U roth), 222, 225, 227
Asia, general and early period, 43, 49,
65, 56, 65, 75, 81, 87, 119, 121-26,
143, 214, 239, 265, 267, 464, 474, 478,
484, 545, 548, 636, 662, 666-69, 675,
712, 726, 742, 797, 936, 990, 1107;
Greeks in, 274, 318, 331, 337; Romans
in, 338, 412, 430, 461, 468; tribes
and people of, 437, 472, 480, 674,
687, 694, 696, 809, 815; Christianity
in, 447, 519, 524, 538, 634, 675,
678; Turks in, 539-40, 589, 593, 616,
628, 630, 681, 683; voyages and trav-
' els in, 548, 561, 743, 749, 988 >
Asia, Central, 75, 108, 125, 126, 239,
267, 469, 597, 699, 749, 809; tribes,
people, and civilization of, 133, 329,
435, 525, 688
Asia, Eastern, 108, 111
Asia, Southeastern, languages of, 123
Asia, Western, 68, 114, 667, 725; tribes,
people, and civilization of, 111, 112,
164, 177, 726
Asia Minor, 80, 119, 165, 208, 239,
268, 275, 337, 443-45, 449, 538, 543,
594, 673, 697; tribes and people of,
135, 158, 239, 265-66,330, 382;
Greeks in, 252, 254, 259, 265, 289,
1107; Gauls in, 337, 384, 1105; Turks
in, 596, 598, 636, 667, 674, 681
Asiatics, intellectual status of, 988
Asoka (aso'ka), King, 142, 350, 368,
369, 421, 649, 564, 693, 1106
Aspasia (&s pa' shi d), 293, 298
Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 1020, 1040
Ass, wild, 163
Assam, 980
Assist (a se' zi), 658
Assur, 139, 351
Assurbanipal. {See Sardanapalua)
Assyria (and Assyrians), 139-40, 146,
151, 161, 168, 183-92, 197, 202, 218,
229-33, 266-67, 269, 276, 290, 325,
326, 381, 455, 494, 794, 1103
Assyrian language and writing, 120, 172
Asteroids, 2
Astrologers, 731
Astronomy, 2, 184, 307, 602, 675, 731
Athanasius, 515, 522
Atheism, 879
Athene (tf the' ne), 296
Athens, 204, 252-65, 280-301, 315, 319,
321, 327, 391, 394, 400, 464, 611, 643,
1007, 1026, 1045; social and political,
166, 258-60, 296, 298-301, 310-12,
393, 395, 706; literature and learning,
291, 309, 342, 343, 348, 634, 557, 1108
Atkinson, C. F., 872
Atkinson, J. J., 59, 95, 885
Atlantic Ocean, 65, 88, 90, 108, 119, 461,
560, 588, 648, 749, 817; navigation of,
163, 741, 743, 746, 924, 1114
Atlantosaurus (^t l&n to saw' rtis), 29
Atmosphere, 3, 6
Aton (a' ton), Egyptian godt 193
Atonement, 499, 511
Attains (at' (J Ills), 317
Attains I, 338
Attalus III, 338, 430, 1105
Attica (W i kdf), 280-81, 391
Attila (at'ildJ), 485, 629, 560, 607, 1108
Aughrim, battle of, 1015
Augsburg, 761-65
Augurs, Roman, 397
Augustine, St., Bishop of Hippo, 514,
526, 526, 637, 1108
Augustus Ccesar, Roman Emperor, 448,
452, 463, fro, 520, 640, 1106
Aurangzeb. (See Aurungzeb)
Aurelian, emperor, 455, 481, 623, 538,
1107
Aurignacian (aw rig na' shun) age, 73,
243
Aurungzeb (aw riing zab'), 693, 806, 979,
1116
Ausculum, battle of, 387, 1106
Austerlitz, 905, 1118
AustraUa, 62, 152, 556, 979, 983, 997;
aborigines of, 109-11
Australian language, 129; lung-fish, 22;
throwing-stick, 69
Australoids, 111, 125, 152
Austrasia, 610, 612
Austria, 766, 769, 783, 792-95, 801, 826,
859, 865, 872, 974; wars with France,
872, 876, 894, 899, 905, 911, 1119;
war with Prussia, 970-72, 1120; in
Great War, 1033, 1060, 1080, 1120
Autocracy, 290, 774
Automobiles, 930
Avars, 487, 491, 537, 541, 689, 612, 632,
673
INDEX
11S3
Avebury, 83, 142, 383
Avebury, Lord, 78, 80, 83
Averroes (,d ver' d ez), 601, 658, 726, 728,
1112
Avicenna (&vi sen' (li),llll
Avignon (a ve nyon'). 649, 663, 687, 708,
1113
Axes, ancient, 77, 80, 85, 101
Axis of earth, 44
Ayesha (S'^shd), 577, 591
Azilian age, 69, 73, 74, 89, 103, 119
Azoic (a zo'ik) period, 7, 11, 14
Azores, 741
Aztecs, 746
B
Baal, 180, 222, 230
Baalbek (bal bek'), 542, 668
Babel, Tower of, 136
Baber, 693, 755, 805, 1114
Baboons, 49, 60, 175
Babylon (and Babylonia), 138, 147, 164,
168, 172, 188, 200, 205, 209, 217, 218,
229, 232, 266, 270, 274, 289, 290, 307,
325, 327, 331, 336, 350, 355, 363, 376,
384, 428, 437, 439, 461, 494, 506, 541-
45, 661, 662, 667, 636, 691, 824, 886,
1102-6; religion of, 181, 183 188,
189, 217, 234, 341, 369
Bacchus, 445
Bacharach, 737
Back Bay, 837
Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, 302, 733,
1115
Bacon, Roger, 230, 233, 923, 1115
Bactria (and Bactrians), 337, 475,
537
Baden, 971
Badr (bad'Sr), battle of, 573, 592,
1109
Baedeker, 793
Baganda, 152
Bagaudse, 716
Bagdad, 696, 602, 625, 628, 636, 640, 645,
667, 674, 687, 691, 1032, 1044, 1110,
1113
Bagoas (b&g5'S.s), 290
Bahamas, 804, 998
Baikal (bl kal'), 670
Baldwin of Flanders, 646, 770
Balearic Isles, 482
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 1068
Balkan peninsula, 75, 120, 142, 239, 262,
267, 337, 485, 623, 682, 699, 740, 973,
1024, 1032, 1102, 1120
Balkash, lake, 669
Balkh, 679
Ball, John, 716
BalUol College, 660
Balloons, 3
Baltic Sea, 45, 75, 120, 126, 440, 461, 468,
476, 480, 617, 618, 630, 635, 689, 739,
786, 816, 1048
Baltimore, Lord, 829
Baluchistan. (See Beluchistan)
Bambyce (b&mbl'se), 642
Bannockburn, 735
Bantu, 124, 129, 135
Barbados, 803
Barbarians, 817-18
Barbarossa, Frederick. (See Frederick
I, emperor)
Barca family, 405
Barcelona, 616, 736
Bards, 175, 243-44
Barley, 84, 242, 485
Baroda (ba r5' dd), 806
Barons, Revolt of the, 774
Barras (ba ra'), 883, 894
Barrows, 82, 236, 241, 245
Barry, Comtesse du. {See Du Barry)
Basle, Council of, 664, 712, 1114
Basque language, 127, 129, 135, 236;
race, 127, 129, 238, 1014
Basra, 601, 1044
Bassompierre, 863
Bastille, 858, 1118
Basu, Bhupendranath, 248, 261
Basutoland, 998
Batavian Republic, 891
Bats, 29
Bauernstand, 209
Bavaria (and Bavarians), 613, 621, 736,-
971, 1009
Bayezid (bl e zedO Hi Sultan, 685,
1114
Baylen, 907
Bazaiqe, General, 971
Beaconsfield, Earl of, 782, 973, 981
Bears, 52, 67, 71, 73
Beauharnais, Josephine de, 894, 90S
Beauty, artistic, 160
Beaver, European, 52
Beazley, Raymond, 631
Bede, the Venerable, 529, 614, 1110
Bedouins, 206, 218, 544, 668, 674, 676,
582, 589
Beech, fossil, 37
Bees, 37
Behar, 1105
Behring Straits, 76, 125, 126
Bektashi, order of dervishes, 683
Bel, 189, 222, 274
1134,
INDEX
Belgium, 610, 642, 754, 771, 872, 876,
883, 891, 914, 919, 1032, 1034, 1037,
1113
Belisarius, 532
Bellerophon (be ler' 6 fon), frigate, 915
Bel-Marduk (bel mar' dook), 189, 193,
327, 351, 523
Belshazzar, 190, 274
Beluchistan (bel oo chi stan') > 997; lan-
guages of, 135
Benaiah, 226
Benares (bena'rez), 356, 360, 365, 384,
475, 549
Benedict, St., 531, 535, 600, 660,
1109
Benedictines, 533, 723
Beneventum, 388
Bengal, 250, 331, 355, 357, 693, 806,
808
Bengal, Bay of, 126
Benin, 420
Benjamin, tribe of, 223
Beowulf (ba' d wulf), 245, 251
Berar, 693
Berber language, 121-25, 238
Berbers, 152
Bergen, 736, 739, 741
Berkeley, George, 1016
BerU^re, 532
Berlin, Treaty of, 974, 1000, 1071,
1120
Bermuda, 998
Bernard, brother, 658
Bes, Egyptian god, 179
Bessemer process, 926
Bessus, satrap, 328
Bethlehem, 498
Beth-shan, 225
Bburtpur (bhSrt poor'), 805
Bible, the, 139, 222, 228, 342, 350, 494,
496, 625, 656, 660, 709, 710, 718, 720,
725, 766, 794
Birch tree, 37 '
Birds, 3, 29, 32, 40
Birkenhead, Lord. (See Smith, Sir F. E.)
Birth-rate in ancient Athens, 264
Biscay, Bay of, 905
Bismarck, Prince, 968, 971, 1004, 1007,
1120
Bison (bi' S(5n), 52, 57, 70, 71, 75, 153
Bithynia, 337, 415, 430, 436, 441, 488,
521
Black Death, 712, 1113
Black Friars, 658
Black Hundred, 958
Black lead, 7
Black Prince, 735 ^ ,i
Black Sea, 89, 120, 126, 142, 202, 239,
253, 266, 289, 294, 337, 437, 440, 476,
480, 521, 527, 542, 631, 635, 640, 672
Blake, Admiral, 780, 806
Bleriot, M., 1120
Blind bards, 244
Blood sacrifice, 511, 613, 708
Blue Mountains, 828
Blucher, Marshal, 914
Blues, faction of the, 797
Blunt, W. S., Ill
Bo Tree, 360, 371
Boadicea (bo i de se' S), 454, 1106
Boars, 52
Boats, 153-59. (See also Ships)
Body, painting of, 71
Boeotia (be 5' shi d!), 285
Boer Republics, 987, 1008, 1013
Boer War, 417, 958, 1008
Boethius (bo e' thi Ha), 602
Bohemia (and Bohemians), 482, 616,
640, 711, 712, 720, 785
Bohemond, 644
Bokhara (bo kha' ra), 474, 601, 670, 678
Boleyn, Anne, 761
Bolivar (bol' i var). General, 916
Bologna (bolon'ya), 724, 726, 736, 760
Bolshevists, 947, 1048, 1057, 1060
Bombay, 807
Bonaparte, Joseph, 904, 907, 916, 1119
Bonaparte, Louis, 904
Bonaparte, Lucien, 897
Bonaparte, Napoleon. (See Napoleon I)
Boncelles (bon sel'), 51
Bone carvings, 73-4; implements, 69, 74,
85, 613, 616
Boniface, St., UIO
Boniface VIII, Pope, 662, 1112
Boniface, Roman Governor, 484
Book-keeping, Aramean, 200
Books, 195, 344, 348, 718. (See also
Printing)
Bordeaux, 736
Borgia, Alexander. (See Alexander VI,
Pope)
Borgia, Csesar and Lucrezia, 751
Boris, king of Bulgaria, 635, 1110
Borneo, 115, 560
Bosnia, 1009, 1120
Bosphorus, 89, 119, 252, 253, 265, 275,
279, 282, 288, 322, 489, 521, 540, 542,
594, 596, 642, 682
Bosses, American, 258
Boston, Mass., 836, 840
Bostra, 544
Botany Bay, 979
Botticelli (bot i chel' i), 740
INDEX
11S5
Boulogne, 736, 904
Bourbon, Constable of, 759, 1114
Bourbon, Duke of, 859
Bourbons, 900, 913
Bourgeois (boorzhwaO, L6on, 1073-76
Bournville, 942
Bow and arrow, 74, 85, 437
Bowmen, Mongol, 679
Boxer rising, 989, 990
Boyle, Robert, 927, 1016
Boyne, battle of the, 1015, 1116
Brachiopods (brS,k' i 6 podz), 8, 18
Brachycephalic (br&k 1 se f&l' ik) skull,
113
Brahe (bra'h^), Tyoho, 732, 1115
Brahma, 374, 694
Brahminism (and Brahmins), 211-13,
564-5-6, 355-6, 365, 368, 378, 549,
669, 697, 805, 980
Brain, 43, 58, 67
Brandenburg, elector of, 786
Brass, 80
Brazil, 747, 748, 755, 971
Bread in Neolithic Age, 84
Bread-fruit tree, 37
Breasted, J. H., 198
Breathing, 19, 24
Bremen, 634, 736-39
Brennus, 385, 1104
Breslau, 736
Brest-Litovsk (brest le tov' sk), 1049
Breton language, 238
Briareus (brl'aroos), 216
Brienne, 892
Brindisi (bren' de ze), 632
Bristol, 713
Britain, 45, 83, 97, 214, 422, 463, 534,
606, 616, 630; invasions of, 481, 526,
1108; Roman, 165, 166, 435, 439, 451-
55, 492, 605, 614, 1106; Keltic, 482.
(See oLio England and Great Britain)
British Association, 955
British Civil Air Transport Commission,
930
British Empire (1815), 977, (1914),
997-99
British Empire, political life of, 424
British Museum, 935
"British" nationality, 1012
"British schools," 934
Britons, ancient. (See Britain)
Brittany, 115, 482, 616, 755
Broglie, Marshal de, 858
Brontosaurus (bron td saw' rjis) , 27
Bronze, 79, 88, 153, 242; Chinese vessels
of, 150; ornaments, 85; weapons, 80
Bronze Age, 80, 101, 103, 142, 144, 157
Brown, Campbell, 602
Bruce, Robert the, 735
Bruges (broozh), 736, 739, 770
Brunellesco (broo n^les' k5), 740
Brunswick, Duke of, 872, 875
Brussels, 876, 1037
Brutus, 421, 443
Bubonic plague, 529
Buda-Pesth (boo' i& pest), 760
Buddha (bud' S), 142, 212, 358, 360, 371,
376, 462, 497, 505, 513, 530, 545, 547,
564^65, 657, 842, 1105; Ufe of, 354
sqq.\ teaching of, 311, 360, 376, 939
Buddhism, 212, 350, 355, 505, 530, 548-
49, 553, 559, 564-65, 572, 667, 669,
675, 679, 687, 810. (See also Buddha)
Buddhist art, 366
Budge, WalUs, 144, 192
Buffon, Comte de, 954
Building, 144
Bulgaria (and Bulgarians), 451, 481,
527, 589, 623, 634, 637, 661, 682, 690,
973, 1024, 1025, 1043, 1051, 1110
Bulgarian atrocities, 1120
Bulgarian language, 238
Bull fights, Cretan, 215
Bunbury, 162
Burgerstand, 239
Burgoyne, General, 837
Burgundy (and Burgundians) , 432, 527,
612, 735, 755, 770, 795, 865
Burial, early, 63, 71, 81, 93, 100, 143,
236, 241, 245
Burke, Edmund, 1016
Burmah (and Burmese), 85, 148, 678,
811, 997
Burmese language, 123
Burnet, 297
Burning the dead, 241
Bushman language, 129
Bushmen, 72, 111, 168
Butter in Neolithic Age, 84
Butterflies, 14, 37
Buxar, 808, 1117
Byzantine architecture, 625
Byzantine church. (See Greek Church)
Byzantine Empire, 451, 489, 540, 557,
582-85, 589, 592, 603, 606, 618, 623,
624, 628-33, 636, 638, 644, 1109-11
Byzantium (bi zSn' tyilm) , 323, 556,
583, 590, 601, 622, 626, 638, 666, 698,
797. (See oho Constantinople)
C
Cabtjl (ka' bul), 328, 693
Cadbury, Messrs., 942
11S6
INDEX
Cadiz (ka' diz), 895
Caen (kare), 870
Cffisar, title, etc., 455, 492, 512, 516, 619,
624
Ctesar, Julius, 84, 103, 142, 341, 398,
419, 424, 436, 440, 447, 458, 463, 470,
618, 895, 897
Cffisars, the, 454, 467, 488
Cahors, 757
Caiaphas (ki' d Ida) , 508
Caillaux, M., 1033
Cainozoio (kl nd zo' ik) period, 10, 12,
33, 35, 40, 43, 49
Cairo, 601, 602
Calabria, 409, 632, 633
Calcutta, 807
Calder, Admiral, 905
Calendar, the, 99
CaUcut, 743, 807
California, 206
Caligula (kS, lig' u W) , 454, 1106
Caliphs, 581, 584, 589, 600, 607, 625,
628, 636, 685, 704, 1110, 1114
Callicratidas (k& li kra' ti dS.s) , 321
Callimachus (kd lim' d kAs) , 345
Callisthenes (kd lis' th£ nez), 334
Calmette, 1033
Calonne, 857-868
Cambodia, 561
Cambridge, University of, 459, 964,
1011
Cambridge, Mass., 838
"Cambulac," 679
Cambyses (kambi'sez), 274, 324, 1104
Camels, 43, 163, 272
Camillus (od mil' ils), 393, 430, 433, 1104
Campanella, 766
Campo Formio, peace of, 895
Camptosaurus (k&mp td saw' rus) , 27
Canaan (and the Canaanites), 218, 567
Canada, 7, 127, 805, 826-33, 839, 978,
983, 997, 999, 1117
Canary Isles, 741
Candahar, 331
Candles, ceremonial, 353
Cannse (k&n'e), battle of, 408, 411,
1105
Cannes, 914
Cannibalism, 236, 743, 746
Cannon, 785-817
Canoes, 156
Canterbury, 613; archbishops of, 614,
illO
Canton, 554, 561
Canusium (cd nQz' i Urn), 464
Canute, 630, 1111
Cape Colony, 987
Capernaum, 507
Capet (ka pa'), Hugh, 626, 735, 1111
Capitalism, 726, 824, 935, 943, 1056
Caporetto, battle of, 1049
Cappadocia, 337, 541, 544
Capua (kSp' u d), 408, 435
Cardinals, 663, 687
Caria (ka'ri d), 317-18, 642
Caribou (kSri boo'), 58, 94, 107
Carlovingians, 621, 1110, 1111
Carlyle, Thomas, 792, 861 sqq., 881
Carnao, 82, 242
Carnivores, early type of, 43
Carnivorous animals, 31
Carnot (kar no'), L. N. M., 883, 894
Carolina, 803, 829, 831, 836
Carpathians, 634
Carrhae, 437, 468, 537, 1106
Carson, Sir Edward, 262, 958, 1019, 1022
Carthage (and the Carthaginians), 142,
158, 162-63, 184, 215, 232, 253, 324,
342, 380, 383, 388, 428, 440, 444, 461,
478, 488, 493, 495, 606, 653, 704, 740,
1103-8; war with Rome, 388, 401, 417
Carvings, Palaeolithic. (See Art)
Casement, Sir Roger, 1023
Cash, Chinese, 551
Caspian Sea, 89, 97, 119, 126, 239, 267,
275, 329, 430, 436, 439, 476, 480,
548, 554, 631, 670, 713, 1104, 1105,
1106, 1112
Caspian-Famir region, 496
Cassander, 337
Cassiodorus (kSisi iJdor' lis), 533, 535,
600, 60S, 1109
Cassiterides (k&s i ter' i dez), 163
Cassius, Spurius, 392
Caste, 210, 211
Castile, 744, 755
Castlemaine, Lady, 781
Cat, 43, 175
Catalonians, 741
Catapult, 314
Caterpillars, 62
Cathars, 655
"Cathay," 679
Catnerine the Great, 792, 813, 816, 849,
1117
Catherine II, 800, 905
Catholicism, 702, 709, 719, 728, 750,
765, 783, 789, 798, 829, 1014, 1015,
1018
Catiline, 441
Cato, Marcus Porcius, 405, 409, 412,
417, 421, 428, 457
Cattle, 52, 75, 163. (.See also Animals)
Caucasian languages, 118, 135
INDEX
1137
Caucasians, 110-16, 118-26, 702
Caucasus (kaw' kd site), 80, 128, 275,
641
Caudine Forks, 1105
Cavaliers, 777, 778
Cavalry, 314
Cave drawings, 73-4; dwellings, 236;
men, 50, 54, 57, 67
Cavour, 968
Cawnpore, 981
Caxton, William, 717
Celebes (sel' e bez), pile dwellings, 82
Celibacy, 352, 638, 709
Celt-Iberian script, 173
Celtic. (See Keltic)
Celts, bronze, ipi
Cenotaph (Whitehall), 1081
Ceremonies, early use of, 97
Cervantes (s& v&n' tez), 700
Ceylon, 360, 371, 462, 562, 806, 998
Chaeronea (kerdne'tf), battle of, 312,
315, 1104
Chalcedon (kS,l se' don), 523, 539
Chaldea (and the Chaldeans), 140, 146,
147, 190, 207, 230, 260, 292, 327, 437,
567, 1103
Chaldean writing, 172
Chalons, 867
Champagne, depart., 1040, 1048
Chancellor, Lord, of England, 721
Chandernagore, 807
Chandragupta (chan dra goop' ta) , 368,
380, 1105
Chang Daoling, 371
Chang-tu, 373
Channa, the charioteer, 356
Channing, 840, 882
Chapman, G., 245
Charcoal, 824
Chariots, 138, 247, 314, 326
Charlemagne, emperor, 371, 481, 5S3-54,
612-16-18-19, 634, 660-62, 675, 693,
707, 765, 763, 767, 788, 904, 1110
Charles V, emperor, 700, 722, 739 aqq.,
755, 770, 783, 793, 1114H6
Charles I, king of England, 768-75-78-
81, 787, 791, 803, 829, 862
Charles II, king of England, 733, 780,
788, 794, 803, 829
Charles VII, king of France, 735
Charles IX, king of France, 829
Charles X, king of France, 917
Charles III, king of Spain, 816
Charlotte Dundas, steamboat, 924
Charmides (kar' mi dez) , 299
Charon, 421
Charter House, London, 713
Chateau Thierry, 1050
Chateauroux, Duchess of, 791
Chatham, Earl of. (See Pitt, William)
Cheese, 84
Chellean age, 46, 52, 58-60, 66
Chelles, 68
Chemistry, 602
Chemosh (ke'mosh), 227
Chen, L. Y., 154, 171
Chen, Tuan, 372
Cheops (ke' ops_), 144
Chephren (kef'ren), 144, 190-91
Cherry-tree, 436
Chieftains, 103, 247
Child labour, 941
Chimpanzee, 47, 51, 163
Chin, absence of, 54
China, 62, 78, 85, 126, 371, 461, 647,
549, 682, 677, 694, 735, 749, 810;
history (early history and great age of),
142, 148-51, 195, 213, 329, 331, 467,
469-76, 537, 540, 650-55, 1103, 1107,
1109; (lOiA to 18th century), 666, 667-
79, 694, 698, 712, 810, 815, 1112, 1113;
(20th century), 988-96, 1120; Chris-
tianity in, 672, 725; civilization and
culture, 112, 115, 142, 148, 213, 261,
257, 525, 547, 650, 654 sgg., 603, 666,
707, 719; other religions of, 195, 366,
369, 373, 375, 810; social, 428, 550,
991. (See also Chow, Han, Kin, Ming,
Shang, Sung, Suy, Tang, Tsing, Wei,
and Yuan dynasties)
China, Great Wall of, 162, 213, 455, 562,
1105
Chinese, the, 47, 125; classics, 170, 568;
coinage, 551; emperor, 183, 195, 485;
language, 123, 126, 129, 168, 170, 559;
script, 169, 172, 214, 558, 811
Chios (ki' OS), 643
Chnemu, Egyptian god, 182
Chosroes (koz'roez) I, 539, 588, 765,
1109
Chosroes II, 462, 639, 544, 568, 646, 1110
Chow dynasty, 142, 160, 161, 195, 372,
1103
Christ. (See Jesus of Nazareth)
Christian IX, 968
Christian era, 1106
Christian science, 726
Christianity, 235, 449, 493, 538, 690, 720,
794, 814, 954, 956; history (early), 423,
511 sgg., 522, 524, 616, 618, 1107;
(middle ages), 615, 628, 637-40, 650,
659, 711; and Buddhism, 368, 379; and
Islam, 679, 681, 593 sgg., 598, 645,
675, 710; and Judaism, 708; and learn-
1138
INDEX
ing,531 sqq. ; missions and propaganda,
420, 554, 613, 675, 687, 707, 900, 933-
34, 991-92; official, 523 sqq., 619, 814,
953; ritual of, 353, 378, 467, 513, 523,
653, 708, 716; sects, 616, 667, 677;
spirit of, 352, 467, 499, 716, 938. (.See
also Jesus of Nazareth)
Chronicles, book of the, 222
Chronology, 615
Ch'u, state of, 151
Church, the, 521, 525, 602, 650, 652, 655,
661, 708, 722, 732, 734, 821, 1113-14
Churches, orientation of, 183
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston, 1044
Cicero, M. TuUius, 419, 423, 443, 446
Cilioia, 419, 541, 636, 643, 679
Cilician Gates, 597, 642
Cimmerians, 239, 266, 268, 330, 472, 682
Cincinnatus, Order of, 901
Circumcision, 112
Cistercian order, 709
Citizenship, 259, 261
City Sta.tes, Chinese, 151; Greek, 256,
264, 306, 807, 312, 388; Sumerian, 137
CiviUzation, 556, 698, 704, 716, 767;
Aegean, 169-63; Hellenic, 254 sqq.;
prehistoric. 111, 240 sgg., 246-48; prim-
itive, 163, 251, 702. (See also Culture)
Clans, 242
Class consciousness, 935, 944; distinc-
tion, 134, 209; war, 210
Classes, social, 204, 213
Classics, study of the, 928
Classification, 726
Claudius, emperor (a.d. 41-54), 454,
1106
Claudius, emperor (a.d. 268-270), 481,
1106
Claudius, Appius, decemvir, 392
Claudius, Appius, the Censor, 394-98
Claudius, Consul, 401
Clay documents, 136, 144, 189; model-
ling. Palaeolithic, 73
Clemenceau, G. B., 1068-71, 1120
Clement V (pope), 663, 1113
Clement VII (anti-pope), 633, 1113
Cleon, 297
Cleopatra, 440, 445
Cleopatra (wife of Philip II), 317, 319
Clergy, taxation of, 650
Clermont, 639, 1111
Clermont, steamer, 924
Cleveland, President, 1029
Climate, change of, 15, 17, 33, 37, 44, 81,
241, 247, 269, 473, 478; effect of, 176,
266
CUtus (kli' tils), 334, 705
Clive, Robert, Lord, 807, 979, 1011, 1117
Clodius, 441
Clothing, 82, 85
Clovis, 610, 612, 1108
Clyde, Firth of, 924
Cnossos (nos' ds), 142, 161-62, 168, 177,
199, 206, 231, 262, 254, 265, 268, 381,
382, 556, 1102
Coal, 24, 25, 824, 923, 929
Cockroaches, 24
Code Napoleon, 901, 902
Coinage, earliest, 165; Athenian, 166;
Bactrian, 337; Carthaginian, 400;
Lydian, 266; Roman, 388, 399
Coinage of stamped leather, 653
Coke, 824
Cole, Langton, 158
Collectivism, 947
Cologne, 625, 736, 739
Colonies, British, 826, 828, 997; scram-
ble for, 977-87
Colorado, 26
Colosseum, 650, 606
Columba, St., 614
Columbus, Bartholomew, 742
Columbus, Christopher, 741 sgg., 755,
1102, 1114
Comedy, Greek, 307
Comet, 2, 629
Commagene (kom <8 je' ne) , 542
Commodus (kom' 6 dila) , 456, 457
Commons, House of, 774-82, 787, 833,
844, 858, 937
Commune, French Revolution, 872, 880
Communism, 712, 716, 819, 820, 885,
945, 947
Communities, 242, 702, 706
Community of obedience, 842; of will,
842
Comnena, Anna. (See Anna)
Comnenus, Alexius. (See Alexius " Com-
panions," equestrian order, 312, 314
Compass, 565-56, 749
Concert of Europe, 915, 916, 922
Concord, Mass., 837, 840
Concord, Temple of, 430, 1104
Condor, the, 3
Condoroet (kon dor sa^r 901
Confucianism, 371, 376
Confucius, 142, 213, 371, 376, 384, 505,
539, 545, 556
Congo, 125, 985
Congress, American, 846
Congress, 1st Colonial, 836
Conifers, 26
Connecticut, 828, 831, 836, 846
Conrad II, 627
INDEX
1189
Conrad III, 627
Constance, 710
Constance, Council of, 660, 664, 710,
1113
Constantine I the Great, 371, 420, 447,
457, 481, 488, 516, 519, 523, 536,
538-39, 546, 566, 693, 817, 1107
Constantine, King of Greece, 1045
Constantinople, 482, 485, 492, 521, 529,
535-6-7-8-9, 568, 584-5, 589, 594,
622, 631, 634, 637, 640, 646, 661, 672,
678, 683, 689, 691, 739, 770, 797, 967,
1025, 1032, 1107-14. (See aiso Byzan-
tium)
Consuls, Roman, 389
Convicts sent to New England, 832
Cooking, 77, 78
Co-operative Societies, 942
Copernicus (ktf pSr' ni kiis) , 732, 1115
Copper, 2, 78, 153, 746, 927
Copper axes, 101
Coptic language, 121
Corday, Charlotte, 870
Cordoba (kor'do ba), 601-2
Corfu (korfoo'), 736
Corinth (and Corinthians), 254, 284,
318, 324, 417, 423, 428, 439, 441, 464,
488, 511, 1105
Corinth, isthmus of, 284
Cornish people, 119
CornwaU, 79, 163, 526, 605, 616, 780
Cornwallis, General, 839
Corrosive sublimate, 602
Corsets, 160
Corsica, 404, 482, 893
Cortez, 747, 1114
Corvus, the, 402
Cossacks, 795, 809, 810
Coster, printer, 717, 1114
Cotton industry, 824
Cotylosaur (kot'i Msawr), 23
Councils, Church, 638, 659, 665, 710,
712, 724, il07, 1113
Counting, 118
"Counts of Asia Minor," 698
Court system, 205
Couvade (kuvad'), 113
Cow, sacred to Brahmins, 981
Cow deities, 180
Crabiapples, 85
Crabs, 8
Cranach, 757
Cranium, of apes, 54; Piltdown. (See
Piltdown)
Crassus, 410, 436, 441, 475, 537, 585,
1106
Crawley, A. E., 102
Creation, story of, 218, 231, 953
Crecy, 735
Credition, 616
Creeds, Christian, 515, 525, 637, 1107
Cremation, 242
Cressy, cruiser, 1042
Cretan LabjTinth, 160; language, 129,
227; script, 172
Crete (and Cretans), 142, 158-62, 177,
215, 221, 265, 266
Crimea, 678, 712
Crimean War, 967, 1114
Criminals, Roman, 422; used for vivi-
section, 343
Crispus, son of Constantine, 626
Critias, 299
Croatia, 537
Crocodiles, 28, 32
Croesus (kre'siis), 165, 264, 270, 274;
355, 1104
Cro-Magnon race, 66, 72, 103
Cromwell, Oliver, 777, 780, 834, 1015
Cromwell, Thomas, 753
Cross, in Buddhist ritual, 368; true, 539,
646
Crown, the power of the, 782
Crucifixion, 513
Crusades, 599, 644, 647, 657, 661, 685,
711, 735, 770, 934, 1111-14
Crustaceans, 21
Crystal Palace, 964
Crystals, 14
Ctesiphon (tes' i fon), 539, 543, ' 545-47,
555, 588, 596, 646, 691, 1044
Cuba, 748, 979, 1029
Cubit, length of, 228
Culture, Aryan, 242-51; Heliolithio,
112, 127, 132, 135, 142, 148, 153,
157, 169, 242, 354; Neolithic, 76, 81,
88 sqq., 98, 111, 112, 119, 132, 143, 148,
151-54; prehistoric and primitive, 57
sqq., 92 sqq. (See also Civilization)
Cuneiform (ku' n^i form), 137, 172, 215
Cup, pebble, 69
Currency, 887-90, 923, 942, 950, 1056
Cusseans, 336
Custozza, 971
Cuvier (ku-vya), 954
Cyaxares (si S,k' sd rez), 269, 1104
Cycads (si'kddz), 25, 37
Cynics, 304
Cyprus, 80, 158, 270, 289, 324, 337, 974
Cyrenaica (sir e ua' i kd), 430
Cyrene (si re' ne), 458
Cyrus, the Great, 140-42, 165, 190, 202,
217, 230, 264, 269, 273, 314, 331, 355,
380, 451, 470, 543, 645, 1104
1140
INDEX
Cyrus, the Younger, 290
Czecho-Slovaks, 918
Czechs (cheks), 482, 712
D
Dacia, 456, 481, 491, 636
Dsedalus (de' ddliis), 160
Dagon, 189, 351
Dalai Lama (da li' la' ma) , 376
Dalmatia, 482, 527, 537, 616, 622, 1079,
1107, 1109
Damascus, 130, 164, 214, 452, 539, 544,
667, 584, 685, 593, 596, 602, 713, 1109
Damask, 214
Damietta, 646
Damon, friend of Pericles, 296
Dancing, 243
Danelaw, 618, 1111
Danes, 617, 618, 630, 770, 1111
Dante, 338
Dantou, 869, 872-81
Danzig, 736, 800, 1080
Danube, 119, 240, 275-78, 314, 320, 329,
436, 437, 452, 455, 461, 468, 473, 475,
479, 480, 481, 485, 491, 527, 537, 548,
616, 634, 641, 700, 815, 1043, 1106
Danubian provinces, 920, 967
Dardanelles, 252, 681, 1043
Darius (dd ri' Ha) I, 191, 274, 277, 282,
287, 328, 1104
Darius II, 289
Darius III, 322, 325, 326, 332, 337, 437,
470, 682, 909
Dark ages, the, 528
Dartmouth, Lord, 851
Darwin, Charles, 50, 954
Darwinism, 964-58
David, King, 225-30, 493, 498, 503, 715,
1103
Davids, Rhys, 359, 360, 367
Dawes, 837
Day, length of, 4, 37
Dead, eating the, 143
Dead Sea, 89
Debtor, slavery as fate of, 199
Decimal notation, 602
Deoiua, Emperor, 467, 481, 616, 1107 ,
Declaration of Independence, 839, 842
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(Gibbon), 813-19
Deer, 53
Defoe, Daniel, 786, 821, 851
Deformities, 113
Delaware, 831, 836
Delhi, 669, 691, 805, 806, 981, 1112, 1114
Dehan League, 264, 294
Delos, Island of, 261, 263
Delphi, 263, 271, 313, 337, 464
Delphi, oracle of, 256, 270, 271
Delphic amphictyony, 314
Demeter (de me' ter), 316, 466
Democracy, 259, 262, 390, 822, 844
Demos, 259
Demosthenes (d^mos th^nez), 306, 310,
319, 329, 406, 443
Deniker, 76
Denmark, 81, 83, 468, 630, 720, 761, 780,
793, 802, 816, 919, 969, 979, 1111
Deportation, 138
Dervishes, 683
Descartes (da kart'), 953
Deshima, 992
Deuteronomy, Book of, 221
Devon, 780
Dewlish, 68
Dialects, 252
Diaspora (di as' p<5 riJ), 360, 493, 496
Diaz (de' as), 741, 1114
Dickens, Charles, 736
Dicrorerus (di krd're' liia), 41
Dictator, Roman, 393
Diderot (ded ro'), 856
Diet (assembly), 784, 800
Dillon, Dr., 1066-68
Dinosaurs (di' nd sawrz), 28, 32
Dinothere (di' nd ther) , 41
Diocletian, 467, 488, 516, 520, 523, 1107
Dionysius, god, 316
Dionysius of Syracuse, 372, 401
Diplodocus (dip lod' d kits), 27
Disease, infectious, 96
Dispensations, papal, 649, 657
Disraeli, Benjamin. (iSee Beaconsfield,
Earl of)
Divans, 597
Divination, 398
Divua Caesar, 455
Dixon line, 829, 832
Dnieper (ne' p&), 119, 439, 476, 480, 672,
809
Doctors, 178
Dog, the, 43, 77, 81, 83, 87, 175
Dolmens, 82
Domazlioe, 711, 1114
Dominic, St., 658-59, 1112
Dominican Order, 658-59, 677, 748, 991,
1112
Domitian, 455, 1106
Don, river, 119, 476, 809
Don Cossacks, 809
Donatello, 740
Doric dialect, 252
Dorset, 58
INDEX
1141
Dortmund, 740
Dostoievski (dos t(5 ef ski), 1026
Dover, 736
Dover, Straits of, 436
Dragon flies, 24
Dragonnades, 789, 803
Dravidian civilization, 142, 147, 354,
702; language, 124, 135
■ Dravidians, 114, 124, 128, 211, 251, 265,
694
Drepanum (drep' a nQm), 403
Dresden, cruiser, 1042
Dresden, battle of, 911
Drogheda, 779
Druids, 105
Drums, Neolithic, 86
Drusus, Livius, 433
Dryopithecus (dri d pi the' kiia) , S3
Dubarry, Comtesse, 791
Dublin, 1016, 1022
Duma, the, 1047
Dumouriez (du moo ryaO , General, 875
Dunbar, battle of, 780
Dunce, derivation of, 729
Dunkirk, 781
Duns Scotus, 728, 1113
Dupleix (duplaO, 807
Durazzo (du rad' zo), 488, 632, 637,
644
Durham, University of, 964
Diisseldorf, 54
Dutch language, 611, 770; people, 611;
Repubhc, 769-72, 918; settlements
and seamanship, 744, 801, 830, 988,
993. (See also Holland)
Dwellings, Neolithic, 85
Dyeing, 603
Dynamics, 732
E
Earth, the, 1-5, 11, 43, 44
East, orientation to, 182
East India Company, 808, 836, 979
Easter, feast of, 99
Eastern lamb, 511
Eastern (Greek) Empire. (See Byzan-
tine Empire)
Ebenezer, 222
Ebro, river, 405, 407
Ecbatana (ek b&t' d nd), 546
Echidna (ekid'niS), 40
Economists, French, 865
Eoonomus (e kon' 6 miis) , battle of, 403,
1105
Eden, garden of, 953
Edessa, 542, 643, 644
Edom, 794
Education, 208, 212, 213, 438, 634, 696,
706, 724, 819, 820, 848, 901, 923, 928,
933, 934, 948
Edward I, 774
Edward VI, 773, 775
Edward VII, 783, 1013
Edward, Prince of Wales, son of George
V, 1022
Egbert, 616, 618, 1110
Eggs, 26, 39, 40, 85
Egibi (ege'be), 207
Eginhard, 623, 624
Egmont, Count of, 770, 771
Egypt, 80, 121, 337, 452, 489, 494-98,
540, 567, 597, 647, 657, 699, 712,
1109; history (early), 103, 115, 131,
140-43, 146, 158, 166, 172, 177, 189,
198, 203, 209, 215, 218, 228, 232, 257,
265-66, 271, 274, 282, 289, 290, 303,
451, 567, 747, 1103; (and Greece),
324, 331, 342, 1103; (and Rome), 413,
430, 440-41, 462; (and Islam), 589,
593, 596, 601, 628, 636, 667, 674, 682,
685, 1112-13; (modern period), 895,
896, 902, 979, 985, 997, 1025, 1119-20;
Christianity in, 525, 531, 639, 708;
Jews in, 343, 376, 496, 1114; Kingship
in, 191-93, 205, 450; religious systems,
144, 180-87, 191-92, 234, 324, 350,
352, 367, 466, 513
Egyptian language, 121
Egyptian script, 153, 172
Egyptian shipping, 214
"Egyptians" (Gipsies), 697
Elam (e'ia,m), 135, 268
Elamite language, 129
Elamites, 135, 140, 188, 327, 666
Elba, 914
Elections, 425, 848
Electricity, 927, 929
Electrum, 166
Elephants, 43, 52, 57, 75, 153, 156, 268,
328, 389, 403-11, 585
Eli, judge, 228, 223
Elixir of life, 731
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 773, 775,
808, 828
Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, 792, 1117
El-lU, 136
Emden, cruiser, 1042
Emesa (em' e b&) , 542
Emirs, 596
Emperor, title of, 492
Emperors of Germany, 755
Employers and employed, 824, 935
Enclosure Acts, 823-5
"Encyclopsedists," the, 855
1142
INDEX
England, 529, 628, 630, 735, 757, 960,
996; history {early), 38, 74, 647, 605,
614, 618, 630, 1110; {under the Nor-
mans), 631, 1111; {in the \3th and lith
centuries), 731, 736; {Civil war), 773,
777-79, 829; {war with Holland), 777-
80, 829; {war with Spain), 780; {reign
of Charles 11), 780; {in 18ft century),
780-2; {and America), 803-5; {union
with Ireland), 1118; political and con-
Btitutioual, 396, 399, 740, 767, 768,
781-82, 785, 787; reUgion, 613-19,
664, 708, 721, 761, 7T5, 776, 780,
802, 829; social, 713, 795, 820, 868,
879, 1113. (iSee also Britain, Great
Britain, and the Great War)
English, the, 614, 630, 1108
English language, 118, 558, 614, 718
English seamen, 743
Entelodont (en tel' o dout), 39
Eoanthropus (e 6 dn thro' piis), 46, 53-7.
{See also Man)
Eocene (§' 6 sen) period, 38-44
Eohippus, 43
EoUthic age, 55
Eoliths, 51, 1102
Ephesus (ef e siis), 288, 321, 511, 643
Ephesus, Council of, 523
Ephthalite (ef thdf lit) coins, 551
Ephthalites, 648, 665, 1108, 1109
Epics, 243, 245
Epictetua (ep ik te' tils), 423
Epicureans (epi ku re' (ins), 304, 306,
553
Epirus (epi'riis), 317, 318, 386, 632
Equality, 581, 842
Equisetums (ek wi se' tiimz) , 22
Eratosthenes (er d tos' the nez), 10, 343,
344, 348
Erech, 137
Eretria, 281
Erfurt, 907
Eridu (a'ridoo), 136, 141, 156, 691
Esarhaddon (e siJr h&d' »n), 189, 190,
229, 269, 1103
Essad Pasha, 1070
Essex, 543, 605
Esthonians, 795
Ethiopia (and Ethiopians), 146, 193,
325, 1103
Ethiopian dynasty, 143, 1102
Ethiopic language, 121
Ethnologists, 110
Etiquette in China, 373
Etruria, 384
Etruscans, 382, 383, 393, 397, 705,
1103-4
Euclid, 343, 602
Euphrates, 115^ 136, 140, 145, 148, 155,
181, 193, 230, 267, 437, 452, 468, 489,
537, 542, 568, 1106
Euripides (ii rip' i d5z), 299, 312, 334
Europe, 118, 124, 127; Christianity in,
447, 524, 531, 616, 648, 654, 659, 664,
675, 706, 718-20, 723, 761, 785, 794,
796, 819; common cause in, 639-41-;
Concert of, 916, 922; feudaUsm in,
607 sqq., 610; history (general), 282,
526-28, 607-8, 619, 668, 698, 737,
757, 762, 767, 783, 786, 791, 798, 801,
812, 818, 820, 903, 911, 914, 916-20;
Huns in, 486, 548; Imperialism in,
996-98, 1000 sqq.; industrial revolu-
tion in, 824; intellectual development
in, 602, 653, 706, 725, 731; languages
of, 127; literature of , 718; "Marriage
with Asia," 332; mechanical revolu-
tion in, 931 sqq.; monarchy in, 765,
771, 786-93, 801; Mongolians in, 476,
673, 726; Moslems in, 593, 606, 612,
628, 682, 740-43, 749, 754; natural
poUtioal map of, 921, 971, 976, 981;
peoples and races of, 76, 107, 110, 111,
236, 475, 478, 697, 815; Powers of,
795-97, 801, 826, 999; prehistoric, 44,
52, 55, 57, 66, 73, 76, 80, 88, 104, 109,
112, 118, 131, 142, 151, 177, 183, 242,
243, 266, 267, 746; social development
in, 700, 717, 734, 756, 767, 773, 797,
818-22, 935, 937. {See also Great
War)
Europeans descended from Neolithic
man, 78
Euryptolemus (a rip tol' 6 Totia), 295
Eusebius (fi se' bi Us) , 522
Evans, Sir Arthur, 117
Evans, Sir John, 107
Everlasting League, 754, 1113
Evolution of the Earth, 3
Examinations, 211, 560
Excommunication, 645
Executive, the, 949
Exodus, book of, 220
Experience, 174
Exploration, 163-64
"Expropriated," the, 935
Ex votos, 177, 353
Eylau (i' lou), battle of, 905
Ezekiel, 231, 233
Fabian Society, 945
Fabius, 409-10
INDEX
1143
FactorJea, growth of, 824
Factory Act, 940-41, 1119
Factory system, 931, 940
Faizi (fa'izi), 695
Falkland Isles, battle of, 1042
Family groups, 82, 131, 246
Faraday, M., 925
Farming, Arab knowledge of, 603
Farrar, F. W., 456
Fashoda (fasho'da), 985, 1025, 1120
Fatepur-sikri (f ut e poor' sik' ri) , 695,
696
Fatima (fat'imii), 591, 628
Fatimite caliphate, 628, 640, 685, 1111
Fauna, early, 74
Fausta, 520
Faustina (f aws tl' nd) , 456
Fear, 94
Feasts, Aryan, 242
Feathers, 30, 35
Ferdinand I, emperor, 783, 962-63
Ferdinand, king of Bulgaria, 1025, 1032,
1045
Ferdinand, king of Spain, 742, 755
Fermentation, 242
Ferns, 20, 22
Ferrero (fer ra' ro), 389, 424, 432
Fetishism, 93, 99
Feudal system, the, 607 sqq.
Fezzan, 88
Fiefs, 608
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 757
Fielding, H., 821, 931
Fiji, 998
Finance, 428-30, 757, 768
Finland (and the Finns), 476, 909,
919
Finland, Gulf of, 816
Finnish language, 123
Finno-Ugrian language, 487
Fire, early use of, 57, 59
Fish, 8, 19, 21, 38
Fisher, Lord, 1048
Fisher, Osmond, 58
Fishing, 85
Fiume (fu'ma), 1080
Five Classics, the, 571
Flame projectors, 1038
Flanders, 631, 642
Flavian dynasty, 455, 1106
Flax, 85
Fleming, Bishop, 660
Flemings, the, 611, 645, 735
Flemish language, 611
Flint implements, 46, 51, 54, 57, 67, 69,
74, 79, 85, 107
Flood, story of the, 218, 230
Florence, 736, 740, 750-52, 757, 790, 792,
1114
Florentine Society, 929
Florida, 830
Flowers, Cainozoic, 37
Flying machines, 160, 730, 930
Fontainebleau (fon tan bio'), 904, 911
Food, 13, 19, 61-2, 84, 132
Fools, 243
Foot of apes, men, and monkeys, 49
Ford businesses, 942
Forests, 77
Fort St. Augustine, 830
Fossils, 6, 10, 21, 33, 37, 43, 50, 954
Fouoher, 367
"Fourteen Points," the, 1065, 1071
Fowl, domestiqated, 84, 86
Fox, the, as food, 81
France, 81; history (to Revolutionary
period), 71, 163, 482-84, 527, 547, 589,
606, 611, 613, 616, 626, 644, 651, 655,
663, 715, 716, 725, 734-35, 749-60,
768-70; 783-88, 794, 801, 816, 821,
826, 1107, 1114; (Revolutionary pe-
riod), 716, 793, 896, 1118; (Napoleonic
period), 898, 1118; (to Great War),
914-15, 919, 937, 965-72, 1009-10,
1032, 1118; (Greai War), 612, 1036
sqq.; Imperialism, 998, 1025; over-^
seas dominions, 802, 826-33, 839, 977,
992. (See also Franks, Gaul)
Francis, St., of Assisi, 657, 720, 812, Ilia
Francis I, emperor, 1115
Francis II, emperor, 1118
Francis I, king of France, 755-61, 1114
Francis Ferdinand, archduke, 1033
Franciscan Order, 657-59, 728, 749,
1112-13
Frankfort, 736, 966, 1119; Peace of, 972:-
73, 1002, 1120
Franklin, Benj., 849 .
Franks, the, 480, 487, 491, 606, 610-16,
621, 626, 634, 643, 690, 703, 1107
Frazer, Sir J. G., .100, 102
Flrederick I (Barbarossa), emperor, 645,
651, 653, 661, 1112
Frederick II, emperor, 645, 647, 652, 673,
678, 708, 719, 755, 783, 956, 1112
Frederick III, emperor, 755
Frederick I, king of Prussia, 791, 1116
Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia,
791, 798, 813, 816, 846, 1117
Frederick III, king of Prussia, 1007
Frederick, don, 772
Frederick, Margraveof Brandenburg, 711
Free discussion, 717; trade in Athens,
394
1144
INDEX
Free intelligence, 204
Freedom, 201, 826
Freeman's Farm, 839
French language, 118, 491, 611, 630, 718,
754, 770
Preya (frl'(i),613
Friara, the, 722, 729. (See also Francis-
can Order)
Friedland (fred'lant), battle of, 905,
1118
Frisian coast, 468; language, 770
Frisians, the, 613
Frog, the, 22
Froissart (frwa sar'). 714
Fronde, the, 787
Fu, S. N., 553
Fuggers, the, 757-58, 820 ,
Fulas, 152
Fulton, R., 924
Furnace, blast, 926; electric, 926
Future life, belief in, 93, 466
G
Gaelic, 238, 1015
Gage, General, 837, 839
Galatia, 384, 1105
Galatiaus, 337, 338, 682
Galba, 455, 1106
Galerius, 517, 518, 1107
Galicia, 1040
Galilee, 507, 510, 513, 542
Galileo (gSl i IS' 5), Galilei, 732, 733, 952,
1115
Gallas, language of the, 121
Galvani, 925
Gama, Vasco da (v&s ko' da ga' ma), 744,
806, 1114
Gamaliel, 511
Gambia, 163
Games, 264
Gametes (gS.m ets') , 20
Gandhara (gan d ha' ra), 367
Ganesa (ga na' sha) , 377
Gang labour, 207, 226
Ganges, 126, 147, 210, 211, 328, 331, 364,
369, 667
Garibaldi, 768
Gas, 240, 556
Gas in warfare, 1039, 1083
Gaspee, vessel, 835
Gath, 221
Gaul (and the Gauls), 142, 330, 337, 384,
392-95, 404, 407, 433-36, 439, 470,
481, 487, 489, 527, 534, 606, 611, 626,
815, 1105-8
Gaulish language, 238
Gautama (gou' ta ma). (iSfee Buddha)
Gaza, 202, 221, 321, 324
Gazelle, 43
Gaztelu, 762
Genesis, book of, 98, 218-21
Geneva, 754, 813, 1074
Genoa (ien'dfd) and the Genoese, 640,
644, 678, 712, 736, 739, 741, 891
Genserio (jen's&ik), 482, 1108
Gentiles, the, 504
Geography, 2
Geology, 953
Geometry, 602
George I, 781, 782, 1116
George II, 782, 1117
George HI, 782, 835, 1117
George IV, 783
George V, 770, 1013, 1022
George, Lloyd, 1023, 1040, 1053-59,
1068, 1072
Georgia, 831, 836, 970, 1117
Gerasa Qei' d ad) , 542
Gerash, 544
'Gerbert (gar' ber), 602
German language, 118, 238, 611, 718,
770; songs and tales, 624
Germany, 75, 81, 268; history (to Saxon
kings), 434-36, 440, 451, 463, 468-69,
480, 484, 524, 610-12, 616, 622, 703;
(Saxon kings to Napoleonic period),
627, 632, 639, 645, 651, 662, 663, 700,
715-21, 735, 739, 744, 753-64, 767,
770, 787, 794-97, 803-5, 814-17, 831,
■ 832, 833, 839, 904-5, 1111-16; (War
of Liberation to the Great War), 911,
919, 928, 935-38, 965-74, 994-96,
1002; (Great War), 1023 agq.; class
distinction in, 209; Imperialism of,
946, 1004-11, 1031
Gethsemane, 508
Ghent, 736, 754, 770
Gibbon, Edward, 460-64, 485, 486, 615,
518, 620, 629, 539, 625, 627, 632, 813-
17, 825, 826, 854, 956
Gibraltar, 90, 163, 461, 606, 983, 998
Gideon, 222
Gigantosaurus (j! g&n td saw' T^) , 29
Gilbert, Dr., 733, 1115
Gilboa, Mount, 22S
Gills, 19, 21, 38
Gin, 165
Giotto (jot' 6), 740
Gipsies, 697, 698
Gipsy language, 698
Giraffe, 43
Giroudins, 872
Gizeh (gez£), 144, 181.
INDEX
1145
Glacial Age. (See Ice Age) -
Gladiators, 421, 423, 435, 458, 462, 530,
1105
Gladstone, W. E., 293, 974, 1022, 1120
Glasfurd, A. I. R., 85, 96
Glass, 603
Glastonbury, 83, 242
Glauoia, 433
Glyptodon (glip' t<Jdon), 76, 153
Gneisenau (gnl' ze nou) , cruiser, 1042
Gneiss (nis), fundamental, 6
Gnosticism (nos' ti sism), 514, 524
Goats in lake dwellings, 83
Gobi Desert, 126, 473, 554, 561, 563
God, 514, 523, 595, 732; idea of one true,
234, 341, 363, 376, 466, 493-95, 500,
571-73, 577, 584, 696; of Judaism, 305
sqq., 350, 581; Kingdom of, 498, 662,
677, 708, 796
Godfrey of Bouillon, 642, 770, 1111
Gods, 178, 180, 185, 188, 351; Aryan,
256; Egyptian, 180-83, 191-94;
Greek, 256, 305; Japanese, 367;
tribal, 104, 283
Goethe, 869
Gold, 78, 88, 465, 653, 888
Golden Horde, the, 694, 809
Goldsmith, Oliver, 821, 1017, 1068
Golgotha, 508
Good Hope, Cape of, 806, 979, 1114
Good Hope, cruiser, 1042
Goods, consumable, 889
Gorham, Nathaniel, 846
Gorilla, 47, 163
"Gorillas," 184
Goshen, land of, 220
Gospels, the, 497, 499, 507-11, 516, 523,
709, 954
Gotha (go'ta), aeroplane, 1041
Gothic architecture, 736; language, 238
Goths, 457, 472, 476, 481, 487-91, 5271
630,. 532, 636, 606, 610, 631, 1107-8
Gough, General, 1060
Government, 185, 397, 706, 922
Gracchi, the, 432, 707
Gracchus, Caius, 431, 1106
Gracchus, Tiberius, 427-31, 1105
Grain, as food, 84, 87, 134
Granada, 742
Grand E«monstrance, 777
Granicus (grd nl' kiis), battle of the, 321,
1104
Grape, 242
Graphite, 7
Grasses, 37, 43
Gravelotte (grav lot'H 972
Gr»vp,3end, 780
Gravitation, law of, 733
Gray, G. B., 220
Great Britain, history (general), 795,
997; (and India), 693-96, 805-9; (and
America) 802, 806, 823, 827-28, 833-
34; (and French Revolution), 873, 876;
(in Napoleonic period), 894-96, 902,
904, 908, 1117; (war with Turkey), 920;
(Crimean war), 967; (suspicion of
Russia), 973; (in alliance against Ger-
many), 1008-9; (the Great War), 1033
sqq., (effect of Great War on), 1053
sqq.; constitutional, political, and
social, 426, 821-22, 844, 865, 883, 927,
936, 1011, 1118-19; expansion and Im-
perialism, 797, 977-87, 991, 996, 997,
1011-23, 1120. (See also Britain and
England)
Great Exhibition, the, 964, 1119
Great Mogul, 805, 808
Great ox. (See Aurochs)
Great Schism. (See Papal Schism)
Great War, the, 613, 725, 775, 785,
1033 sqq., 1120
Greatness, 849
Greece (and the Greeks), 65, 80, 86, 221,
263-68, 381-82, 703, 718, 746; history
(to war with Persia), 158-62, 177, 221,
252 sqq., 1103; (war with Persia),
263, 275, 278-90, 1104; (to 15th cen-
tury), 292, 301, 306, 310-16, 320, 324,
337, 384, 480, 541, 552, 643, 662,
682-86, 1113; (modem), 920, 1026,
1119; civilization, 264r-65, 307, 389,
423, 542, 1043, 1045; constitutional,
256-65, 304-7, 313, 320, 389; religion,
185, 265-66, 316, 350, 612; thought
and learning, 248, 303-6, 340-43, 419,
557, 600
Greek alphabet, 172; archipelago, 89,
202; Church, 525, 538, 622, 624, 637-
38, 643-45, 661, 920, 1108; language
and literature, 118, 140, 238, 243,
252-54, 297, 300, 306, 310, 342, 350,
459, 463, 489, 510, 636, 543, 696,
699, 614; warfare, 624, 718
Greek (Eastern) Empire, see Eastern
(Greek) Empire
Green, J. R., 713
Green flag, 628
Greenland, 56, 618, 741
"Greens," faction of the, 797
Gregory, Sir R. A., 733
Gregory I, the Great, 534, 561, 606, 614,
660, 712, 725, 1109
Gregory VII, 637, 638, 648, 660, 709,
726, 1111
1146
INDEX
Gregory IX, 647, 651, 708, 1112
Gregory XI, 663, 687, 1113
Grey, Sir Edward, 1033
Grey Friars. (See Franciscan Order)
Grimaldi race, 67, 72, 89
Grimm's Law, 118
Grisons, 491
Grote, 299
Growth, 13
Guadalquivir (gaw ddl kwiv' Sr) , 744
Guianas, the, 979
Guilds, 209
Guillemard, 744
Guillotine, 878
Guiscard (geskar'), Robert, 632, 644,
1111
Gulf Stream, 17
Gum-tree, 37
Gunpowder, 556, 670, 735, 817
Guptas (goop' tds), 549
Gurkhas, 981
Gustavus Adolphus, 786, 802
Gutenberg, 717
Guthrum, 618, 1111
Gwalior, 806
Gyges (gl' jez), 266, 1103
H
Haarlem (har'lem), 770, 772, 1114
Habsburgs, 662, 700, 754-57, 783, 786,
794, 799, 913, 914
Hackett, 955
Hadrian, 455, 464, 1107
Hadrian, tomb of, 606
Hadrian's wall, 455
Hague Conferences, 1001
Haig, Sir Douglas, 1045
Hair, 34, 40
Halicarnassus (hS.1 i k&r o&a' Ha) , 202,
204, 289, 321, 324 .
Hall, 164
Ham, sou of Noah, 110
Hamburg, 736, 739
Hamiloar, 404, 407
Hamilton, Alexander, 849
Hamilton, Sir William, 927
Hamites, 125, 148, 187
Hamitic languages, 121, 128, 129; ships,
158
Hammond, 819
Hammurabi (hS,m moo ra' be) , 138, 142,
145, 147, 188, 200, 218, 327, 1103
Han dynasty, 151, 195, 212, 371, 439,
470, 472, 475, 550, 1107
Hancock, 837
Hang Chau (hang'ohou), 669, 1111
Hannibal, 405-10, 415
Hanno, 142, 163-67, 177, 184, 405, 439,
461, 741, 1104
Hanover, 882
Hanover, elector of. (iSee George I)
Hanoverian dominions, 795
Hanoverian dynasty, 782, 787
Hansa towns, 739-44
Hanse merchants, 816
Harcourt, Sir William, 946
Hare, the, 84
Hariti,366
Haroun-al-Raschid (ha roon al ra' shed),
596, 598, 625, 1110
Harpagos (bar' pd gds), 272
Harpalus (har' pd lifts), 318, 329
Harpoons, 69
Harran, 543
Harris, H. Wilson, 1074
Harvey, John, 733, 1115
Hasan, son of Ali, 592, 596
Hasdrubal, 405-9
Hastings, Warren, 808, 979, 1011
Hatasu (ha' ta soo) , Queen of Egypt, 146
Hathor, 182, 192, 351, 352
Hatra, 543
Hatred, 405
Hauran, 544, 568
Hawk gods, 180
Hearths, 242
Heaven, Kingdom of, 498, 501, 506, 5ia
952. (See also God)
H6bert, 879
Hebrew language, 120, 494, 496; litera-
ture, 232; prophets, 522; thought,
305; moral teaching, 164. (See oho
Jewish)
Hebrews, 188, 220-23, 568. (See also
Jews)
Heoataeus (hek d te' lis) , 166
Hector, 245
Hedgehogs, 43
Hegira (hej' i rd), 573, 577, 582, 1109
Heidelberg man, 52, 54, 63
Hekt, 182
Helen of Troy, 161
Helena, Empress, 539, 646
Helena, mother of Conatantine, 520
Heligoland, 1008, 1120
Heliolithic (he li d lith' ik) culture, 112,
115, 128, 132, 142, 148, 163-59, 168,
242, 354, 746, 991
Heliolithic peoples, 152
Heliopolis (he li op' o Us), (Baalbek), 542
Hellenes, 252
Hellenic civilization, 254 sqq., 589, 726;
tradition, 401
INDEX
1147
Hellenism, 368, 494
Hellespont, 282, 287-88, 306, 314, 321,
451, 541, 585, 643, 697, 1104, 1109
Helmolt, H. F„ 404, 584, 588, 696
Helmont, van, 240
Helots, 256
Hen. (See Fowl, domesticated)
Henriot, 880
Henry II, German Emperot, 626
Henry % German Eiripe'r'or, 627
Henry Vl, Geririan Ettiperor, 651
Henry II, tCliii 6i England,' 1014
Henry III, King of England, 774
Henry V, King of England, 735
Henry VII, King of England, 742, 773,
775 . .
Henry VIII, King of England, 753, 755,
759, 760, 773; 775, 1115
Henry of Prussia, Prince, 846
Henry the Fowler, 627, 635
Henry, Patrick, 834, 849
Hephsestion (he fes' ti Sn), 334, 440
Heraclea (her (S kle'a), 387, 1105
Heraclius (her ak'li «s), 536, 539, 544,
555, 567, 583-85, 646, 1109
Heraldry, 209
Herat, 328, 525
Herbivorous animals, 28, 29
Hercules, demi-god, 341, 445
Hercules, son of Alexander, 336
Hercules, temple of, 177
Herdsmen; 206, 208
Hereditary rule, 703
Heredity, 175
Heretics, 658
Heristhal, 612
Hermon, Mount, 85, 131
Heme Island, 163
Hero, 343, 468
Herodes Attiius (her 6' dez at' i kiis),
464
Herodians, 503
Herodotus (he rod' (5 ttfs) , 132, 163, 166,
184, 202, 209, 234, 264, 268-74, 281,
287, 290, 294, 298, 300, 341, 345, 427,
461, 536, 561, 585, 1104
Herods, the, 495, 498, 503
HerophUus (h^rof i l*s), 343
Herzegovina (hgrt se gov' ^ nd) , 1009,
1120
Hesperornis (hes per or' nis) , 35
Hesse (hes' ^ and Hessians, 616, 760,
971
Hezekiah, King, 229
Hieratic script, 173
Hiero (hi' it 6), 401, 403, 408
Hieroglyphics, 154-57, 173 ''
Hieronymua (hi it on' i to.'S.b) of Syra-
cuse, 408
Hildebrand. (.See Gregory VII)
Himalayas, 38, 126, 474
Hindu deities, 374, 376; priests, 249;
schools, 696
Hindu KusH, 693
Hindus, 2ll, 240, 248, 467, 694, 697,
806
Hindustan, 669, 693
HipiparchU3,-342
Hipt)ias, 280
Hippo'; 484, .525
Hippdpoiainus, 26, 52, 57
Hippopotattiua deities, 144, 180
Hira,, 584, 585
Hiram, King of Sidon, 225-27
Hirth, 37,3, 506
Histiseus, 278, 289, 489
Hittites, 138, 142, 146, 165, 218, 221,
222, 240, 275'
Hi-ung-nu. (See Huns)
Hague, cruiser, 1042
Hohenlinden, battle of, 624
Hohenstaufens .(ho en stou' f&), 627,
662, 739, 754, 783
Hojhenzollerns, 786, 791, 913, 969, 972,
1004
Holland, 469, 527, 616, 717, 739, 744,
749, 771, 773, 779, 780, 786, 802, 806,
830, 877, 883, 891, 903-4, 911, 979,
984, 1119
Holly, 37
Holstein, 919
Holy Alliance, 915, 916, 920, 937, 1000,
1002
Holy Land. (See Crusades and Pales
■tine)
Holy Roman Empire, 623, 628, 632, 690,
730, 754, 757, 764, 767, 805, 1118
Homage, 609 .
Home Rule Bill, 262
Homer, 85, 164, 173, 252, 437
Homo antiquus. (See Neanderthal man;
Heidelbergensis, see Heidelberg man;
Neanderthalensis, see Neanderthal
man; primigenius, see Neanderthal
man; apiens, see Man, true)
Homs; 542
Honduras (hon dur' ds), British, 803
Honey, 243
Honoria, 484
Honorius, 481
Honorius III, pope, 651, 1112
Hopf, Ludwig, 100
Hophni, 223
Horn, Count of, 770, 771
1148
INDEX
Horn implements, 69, 79
Horrabin, F., 89
Horses, 43, 48, 62, 70, 135," 239, 241,
459 .
Horticulture, 196
Horus, 191, 195, 351, 35*3, 367, 613
Hotel Cecil, 542 ' , , ■'
Hottentot language, 129
Households, growth of, 199
Houses, stone, 242
Howard, the philanthropist, 882
Hrdlicka, Dr., 76 ■ ' .
Hsia, Empire of, 672 • .
Hue, 367
Hudson Bay Company, 803
Hudson Bay Territory, 125
Hudson Biver, 839, 924 . '
Hugo, Victor, 899
Huguenots, 795, 803, 830
Halagu, 674, 678, 680, 691, fl3, 111,3
Human association, 949
Human sacrifice, 87, 100, 747
Hungary (and the Hungarians), 79, 481,
487, 521, 616, 635, 642, 663; 673, 683,
687, 699, 740, 759-QO, 784, '809, 918,
937, 973, 1114. (See also Austria)
Huns, 150-52, 195, 330, 439, 462, 468,
472-82, 484, 487, 548, 553, 563, 635,
667, 669, 673, 702, 815, 1108 •
Hunter Commission, 982
Hunting, 70, 76, 84, 94, 267
Husein, son of Ali, 592, 595
Huss, John, 664, 710, 758, 812, 821,
1113
Hussites, 711, 715, ill3
Hut urns, 86
Hutcfhinson, 129
Hutton, 954
Huxley, Prof., Ill, 955
Hwang-ho (hwSng'ho), river, 151, 470,
679 .
Hysena, cave, 57
Hysenodon (hi e' no don), 39
Hyde Park, 964
Hyksos, 142, 145, 567
Hyracodon (hi r&k' o don), 39
Hystaspes (Ids t&s'i>ez), 274, 1104
I
Ibebiait language, 236
Iberians, 74, 111, 142, 158, 221,' 236,
241, 246, 381. (See also Mediterra-
nean race)
Ibex, 71
Ibn Batuta (ibn ba too' ta), 713
Ibn-rushd. (See Averroes)
Ibrahim, son of Muhammad, 579
Icarus (ik' (J nis), 161 , . ,
Ice, effect. of, 44 . • ' • •'.,*
Ice Age, 38, 43,'45';'51, .5B,b'2, l25", 267
Iceland, 618, 741, 802 .
Icelandic language, 238
Ichabod, 223 • -
Ichthyosaurs (ik' thi i5 sawr^),'28, 32 ■
Iconium, 636 '
Ideograms, 169, 170
Ideographs, 173 ■ , ;
Idumeans, 494 - '. , . ,
Ignatius, St., of Loyola^ 722, 724, 812,
1114, 1115 - . ' ■
Iliad, the. ' (See Homer)
Ilkhan, Empire of, 680, 687
lUyria, 314, 317, 320, 404, 412, 682, 1104
Immprtality, idea of, 352, 362, 467
Iraperator, title of, 492
Imperial preference, 1011- '3
Imperialism, 261, 959, 962, 988, 989
1000 sqq., 1023-24
Implements, bronze, 101; Chellean, 52;
copper, 79; earliest use of, 51;' flint,
54, 57, 61, 67, 69, 85; horn, 69, 79;
iron, 80; Neolithic, 77, 78, 86, 100;
Palaeolithic, 56, 77, 107; Pliocene, 51-
3; stone, 50, 60, 77, 78, 215; use of
by animals, 51 ; wooden, 57
Inca of Peru, 746
India, 81, 85, 152, 251, 275, 338, 369, 421,
439, 461, 475, 547, 592, 598, 669, 691,
698, 703,817, 895; history (Alexavder
in), 320, 328, 332, 367, 439; (Irido-
Scythians in), 474; 549, 11Q7; (flph-
thalites in), 548, 1107; (Mongols in),
476, 675, 697; (17lh and 18th cerir-
turies), 805-7,811; (BHtish in) , 694,
806-9, 827, 834, 977-82, 991, 997,
1011, 1117-19; civilization, social de-
velopment and culture 111, 142, 147,
210-14, 248, 257, 354, 368, 697, 704,
981; European settlements in, 805-9,
827, 834, 1117; languages of, 124, 239,
698; peoples and races, 107-9, 111,
125, 126, 142, 265, 329, 550, 667, 747;
religions of, 378, 524, 545, 669, 675,
697, 724; trade of, 342, 462, 806;
travels and voyages to, 462, 561-62,
679, 741-44, 990, 1108, 1114
Indian corn, 85
Indian ocean, 81, 87, 156, 743
Indians, American. (See American In-
dians)
Indies, East, 32, 115, 125, 128, 163, 156,
214, 806, 979, 988
Indies, West, 743, 802, 852, 979 '
INDEX
1149
Individual, the ?ree,'2C(l
Individuality, in reproduction, 13
Indo-European languages. (See Aryan
languages)
Indo-Iranian language, 238; people, 466
Indore, 806
Indo-Scythians, 475, 538, 549, 1106
Indulgences, 657, 758
Indus, 126, 251, 275, 327, 331, 337, 368,
436, 451, 691, 1104
Industrial Revolution, 825, 931-34, 941
Industrialism, 823
Infanticide, 104
Influenza, 922
Information, 948
Inge, Dean, 507, 951
Innes, A. D., 773
Innocent III, pope, 646, 647, 651, 661,
725, 1112
Innocent IV, 646, 652, 677
Inns, early, 166
Innsbruck, 762
Inquisition, the, 659, 723, 764, 916
Insects, 3, 21, 23
Instruments, Neolithic musical, 86
Interglacial period, 43, 51, 52, 55, 57
"International," the, 945
International relationship, 891
Internationalism, 960
Intoxicants, 242, 251
Investitures, 609, 638, 649
Ion, poet, 295
lona, 614
Ionian Islands, 894
lonians, 264, 266, 275, 279, 285, 288, 682
Ipsus (ip' stts) , battle of, 237
Irak, 598
Iran (e ran'), 437, 547
Ti'ftTiifl.Tm ^48
Ireland, '65, 78, 82, 155, 251, 262, 624,
605, 614, 631, 661, 735, 779-81, 968,
960, 997, 1011-23, 1119-20
Irish Catholics, 777-79, 796; language,
119, 238; prisoners, 831; race, 238
Irish sea, 56
Iron,' 2, 69; as currency, 165; use of, 80,
134, 161, 153, 824, 924r-27, 1103
Iron Age, 80
Iionsides, 778
Iroquois (ir d kwoi') tribes, 832
Irrigation, 136
Irving, Washington, 803
Isaac, patriarch, 218-20
Isabella of Castile, 742, 755
Isaiah, 602
Ishma«l, 220
Ishtar, 188 ■
Isis, 182, 192, 351-52, 367, 466, 467, 499,
512-13
Iskender, 331
Islam, 235, 379, 506, 5571 570 sgq., 702,
750; and Christianity, 599, 628, 676,
708; propaganda of, 681, 694, 616,
675, 687, 706, 805, 933-34; teaching
of, 579 sqg., 628, 697, 706, 939. (.See,
also Moslems, and Muhammada'nism)
Isocrates (Isok'rd tez), 298, 300, 307,
310, 331, 340
Ispahan (Ispahan'), 691
Israel, Kingdom of (and Israelites), 139,
217sgg., 266, 704, 796, 1102. (See also
Jews)
Issik Kul (is'ikkool), 562
Issus, battle of, 322, 326, 686, 642, 1104
ItaUan language, 118, 381, 754
Italy (and Italians), 78, 142, 158, 221,
380,, 382, 454, 533, 682, 703, 1106; his-
tory (Greeks in), 253, 294, 382, 385-87,
1104-5; (Oauls in), 380, 385, 404;
(Roman), 387, 394, 426, 430-36, 451,
706; (invasion by Hannibal), 408-10;
(Goths in), 480, 527, 610, 631, 1108;
(Huns in), 486; (Lombards in), 527,
537, 621, 712, 1110; (Charlemagne in),
621-22; (Germans in), 623, 1114; (Nor-
mans in), 631, 632, 640; (Saracens
in), 632; (Magyars in), 632; (13th-18th
cent.), 647, 651, 653, 662, 685-87, 739,
750-52, 768, 768, 785-91, 1114; (Na-
poleonic period), 786, 883, 890, 894-95,
902, 906, 1118; (to unification of),
618-19, 936-38,' 960; (Kingdom of),
968-72, 992, 996, 1025, 1041, 1120;
imperiahsm of, '996, 1025. (See also
Rome and Great War) .
Ivan III, 689, 1114;' IV (the Terrible),
689, 1115
Ivory, trade in, 214
Ivy, fossil, 37
J
Jacob, patriarch, 218 sq.
Jacobins, French, 869, 877 sqq., 887,
893, 1118
Jacquerie, 715, 1026, 1113
Jade, 88
Jaffa, 896
Jaipur (jlpoor'), 806.
Jamaica, 803, 979, 998
James I, 82, 768, 788, 803, 828
James II, 781, 1016
James, St., 603
James, Henry, 1066
Jameson, Dr., 958
1150
INDEX
Jamestown, 832, 851
Janissaries, 683, 691
Japan, 109, 367, 371, 679, 742-44, 811,
992-94, 1119-20
Japanese, 49, 990
Japanese language and writing, 121, 558
Japhet, 110
Jarandilla, 762
Jarrow, 614
Java, 51, 743
Jaw, chimpanzee, 54; human, ib. Pilt-
down (see Piltdown)
Jefferson, Tho., 840, 849 sgg.
Jehad (jehad'), "holy war," 645
Jehan (jehan'). Shah, 693
Jehangir, 693
Jehovah; 222, 226, 23.0, 257, 351
Jena (ya' nd), battle of, 905, 907, 1004,
1118
Jengis Khan (jen'gis kan), 667, 669 sq.,
6t5 sq., 681, 688 sqq., 809, 1112
Jerome of Prague, 710
Jerusalem, 191, 217, 226-33, 350, 452,
495, 502, 503, 607, 511, 525, 539, 544,
586, 588, 628, 639, 642-47, 661, 679,
1007, 1109, 1111
Jesuits, 678, 687, 722, 749, 928, 9.91, 1113
sq.
Jesus, spirit and teaching of, 234, 423,
496 sqq., 522, 539, 547, 572, 578 sgq.,
619, 628, 649, 654 sgg., 677, 687, 708,
sq., 716, 721, 812, 843, 886, 902, 939,
952, 1106 sq.
Jewellery, iron, 80
Jewish religion and sacred books, 218,
233, 234, 341, 350, 376, 466, 495,
499, 600, 953
Jews, 146, 191, 217, 230-35, 254, 342,
352, 493-95, 530, 568-74, 584, 694,
597, 600, 606, 635, 652, 682, 706, 793,
798, 1106. (.See also Judaism)
"Jingo," 973
Jingo, queen, 991
Joab, 226
Joan of Are, 735
Job, Book of, 8S, .232
Jodhpore (iod poor'). Raja of, 695
John, King of England, 645
John II, king of Portugal, 742
John III, king of Poland. (See Sobiesky,
John)
John VI, pope, 660
John X, pope, 627, 1111
John XI, pope, 627, 1111
John XII, pope, 627, 637, 660, 1111
John, Prester, 679
John, St., 503; Gospel of, 497, 614
Johnson, Samuel, 1017
Jones, H. Stuart, 446, 463
Joppa, 221
Jordan, river, 218, 684
Joseph, St., 498
Joseph II, emperor, 792, 1117
Josephine, empress. (See Beauharnais)
Josephus, 430, 494 sq.
Joshua, 221
Josiah, king of Judah, 299, 1103
Judah, kingdom of, 227, 794
Judaism, 378, 493, 581, 702, 708. (See
also Jews)
Judas, 508
Judea, 142, 217, 308, 376, 466, 494 sgg.,
507 sgg., 570, 592
Judges, Book of, 222 sg.
Judges of Israel, 400, 704
Jugo-Slavs (u'goslavz). (See Yugo-
slavs)
Jugurtha (joo gSr' thS.), 432 sg., 1105
Julian, the Apostate, 546, 1106
Julius III, 763
Jung, 304
Jungle fo 1, 85
Juno, 163
Junot, Mme., 893
Jupiter, 351 sg., 383, 613
Jupiter, planet, 2
Jupiter Serapis, 351
Justinian, 527 sg., 554, 610, 621 sg., 712,
922, 1108
Jutes, 482, 526, 619
Jutland, battle of, 1042
Kaaba (ka' d hd), 569 sgg., 577, 592
Kadessia, battle of, 585, 1109
Kadija (ka de' ja), 570 sgg.
Kaffirs, 164
Kaisar-i-Hind, 492, 694
Kaisar-i-Roum, 492
Kaiser, Austrian, 492; German, 492
Kali (ka' 16), 377
Kalifa. (See Caliph)
Kalinga, 369
Kalmucks (kai' miiks), 107, 113, 473, 688
Kanishka (kanish'ka), 549, 564, 1107
Kao-ohang, 563
Karakorum (ka ra kor' dm), 672 sgg., 694
Karma (kar'md), doctrine of, 363
Karnak, 146
Kashgar (kashgar'), 474, 549, 562, 588,
670, 679
Kashmir, Buddhists in, 371
Kavadh, 545, 555, 567, 909, 1109
INDEX
1151
Kazan (kazan'), 678
Keane, A. H., 127
Keith, Dr. A., 53 sg.
Keltic languages, 238, 251, 381, 527
Keltic race, 142, 238, 330, 337, 482, 605,
770, 1014
Kent, Duke of, 941
Kent, Kingdom of, 605
Kepler, 732
Kerensky, 1047
Kerne Island, 163
Ketboga, 691
Keynes, J. M., 1076
Khalid (kaled'), 584s3.
Khana,563,674sgg., 688 sgg., 704, 1112 sg.
Kharismia, 667, 670, 1112
Khazais (kazafz'), 635
Khedive, the, of Egypt, 997
Khitan people, 669, 679
Khiva (ke'va), 669, 679
Khokand (ko kand'), 474, 670
Khorasan (ko'rasan'), 596, 602
Khotan (ko tan'), 549, 679, 1107
Khyber Pass, 328, 475, 562, 806
Kiau-Chau (kyou' chou'), 996 sg., 1080,
1120
Kidnapped children sent to New Eng-
land, 831
Kieff, 631, 689, 694, 1110; Grand Duke
of, 672
Kin Empire, 669 sg., 688, 811, 1111
Kings, Book of, 140, 222, 225, 229
Kings (and kingship), 104, 185, r97 sgg.,
205 sgg., 223, 247 sgg., 255 sg., 368, 703,
750, 785, 833, 916 sg.; divine right of,
774, 777
Kioto (kyo'to), 993
Kipchafc, Empire, 674, 688 sg.
Kipling, Radyard, 957, 988, 1012
Kii^his (kirggz'), 670; steppe, 554
Kitchen-middens, 81, 83, 119
Kiwi, 153
Knighthood, 398, 757
Knights, 209, 736; of the Shire, 397, 774
Knives, flint, 79
Knots, records by means of, 154
Knowledge, diffusion of, 340, 499
Konia, 636
Konigsberg, 736, 910
Koran, 574 sg., 581, 594 sg., 806
Korea, 558 sg., 811, 991
Korean alphabet, 559; language, 123
Kosciusko (kos i iis' ko), 801
Krapina, 54
Kremlin, the, 792
Krishna (fcrish' nd), 377
Kriidener, Baroness von, 915
Krum, Prince of Bulgaria, 623, 634, 1110
Krupp, firm of, 1037
Kshatriyas (ksha tre' yaz), 211
Kuan-yin, 367
Kublai Khan (koo'bllkan), 674 sg^.,
687 sg., 704, 1113 sg.
Kuen-lun (kwen loon') mountains, 147,
474, 562
Kufa, 601
Kushan (kbo shan') dynasty, 549
Kusinagara, 565
Kut, 1044
Kutub, 669, 1112
L
Labotjb, 197, 207, 213, 747, 942, 1003
Labour Colleges, 419
Labourers, Statute of, 715
Labrador, 58, 94, 107, 962
Labyrinth, Cretan, 159-62
Lacedemon (las e d6' mto) , 254
Lacedemonians, 258, 271, 281
LadS, 279
Ladrones (la dronz'), 743
Ladysmith, 417
Lafayette (la fa yet'). General, 839,
860-63, 869, 872
Lagash (la' gash), 141
Lahore, 670
Lake dwellings, 82, 87, 103. (See also
Pile dwellings)
Lamas, Grand, 368
Lamfcalle, princess de, 875
Lamps, Pailseolithic, 74
Lande head, teonzes 101
Land, tenure of, 197, 213
Lang, Andrew, 59
Langley, Prof., 930
Languages of mattkind, 97, 103, 117, 129,
135, 172, 238, 243, 381
Laodicea (la o di se' iJ) , 643
Lao Tse (la'otze"), 371, 375, 505, 553,
566, 667, 939, 1104
Lapland, 123
Larsa, 141
Las Casas (las ka' sas), 748, 851
Lateran, the, 622, 628, 637, 648, 654-55,
661
Latin emperors, 662, 783; language and
literature, 137, 236, 395, 459, 463, 489-
91, 526, 535, 611, 625, 635-36, 690, 719
Latins, the, 381-83, 1106-9
Latium, 382
Laud, Archbishop, 776
Law, 260, 536, 610
Lawrence, General, 981
Leagueof Nations, 1064-65, 1072-78, 1121
1152
INDEX
Learning, 184, 675
Leather, Arabian, 603; money, 165, 653
Lebanon, 226, 542, 544
Lecointre (le kwantr'), 863
Lee, General, 847, 971
Leeuwenhoek (la' vSn huk), 733
Legge, 353, 467
Legion of Honour, 900
Leicestershire, 715
Leiden, 770
Leipzig (lip' sik), 736; battle of, 911
Leipzig, cruiser, 1042
Lemberg, 1040
Lemming, 44
Le Moustier, 58
Lemurs, 43, 49
Lena, river, 816
Lenin (len'iu), 946-48, 1048
Leo I, 487; III, 622, 624, 660, 1125;
X, 755-58, 1114
Leo the Isaurian, 594
Leonidas (le on' i dSs) , 284
Leopold I, of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 920,
963, 1119
Leopold, king of Belgium, 965
Lepanto, battle of, 700, 742
Lepers, 657
Lepidus (lep' i dus), 44'4
Levant, the, 749
' Levantine lake, 155
Leverhulme, Lord, 942
Levites, 226
Leviticus, Book of, 221
Lex Valeria, 391
Lexington, 824, 1117
Lhassa, 326, 373
Liang-chi-chao, 151
Liao-tung (le ou' toong'), 994
Liberal Party, 1013
Liberia, 163, 986
Libraries, 231, 344
Libyan script,. 173
Licinian Rogations and Laws, 393, 430,
552
Licinius, 393
Lifege (liazh'), 1037
Liegnitz (lig'nits), battle of, 673, 1112
Life, 3, 14, 35; early forms of, 3-12, 18-
24, 25; intellectual development of
human, 173-76
Light, essential to plants, 20
Ligny (le nye*), 914
Liguiian republic, 891
Lilybseum, 402
Limerick, Treaty of, 1015
Lincoln, Abraham, 293, 969, 1119
Lion, the, 51, 56, 75, 248, 267
Lippi, Filippo, 740
Lisbon, 458, 644, 736, 743, 762, 806
Lissa, battle of, 972
Literature, prehistoric, 243
Lithuania, 689, 795
Liu Yu, 554
Liverpool, 924, 1119
Lizards, 32
Llama, 42, 153
Lloyd, 294
Lloyd, L., 243
Lob Nor, 679
Lochau (16 chou'), 761
Locke, John, 833, 855, 1116
Lockyer, Sir Norman, 183
Logic, study of, 726
Loire (Iwar), the, 611
Lombardy (and Lombards), 491, 527,
529, 533, 537, 610, 621, 712, 772, 904,
968, 1109
London, 713-14, 736, 739, 777, 799, 808,
836, 905, 913, 935, 963, 996, 1016,
1041, 1051, 1119
London, Royal Society. (See Royal
Society of London)
London, University of, 964
Londonderry; 1021-23, 1120
Longinus (Ion jl' nils), 464
Long Island Sound, 828
Longwy (Ion ve'), 873
Loos, 1040
Lopez de Recalde, Inigo. (See Ignatius,
St., of Loyola)'
Lords, House of, 398, 420, 775, 779-82,
787, 844
Lorraine, 972-73, 1012
Lost Ten Tribes, 138
Louis the Pious, 612, 626-26, 1110
Louis VII, 644; IX, 648, 677, 1112; XI,
735; XIV, 781, 787-89, 792, 798, 803,
857, 876, 899; XV, 791, 794-95, 813,
900, 1117; XVI, 791-94, 816, 849, 857
sqq., 882, 913; XVII, 913; XVIII,
913, 1117-18
Louis Philippe, 917, 1118
Louisiana,' 805, 833
Louvain University, 1068
Loyalty, modern conceptions of, 958
Loyola (loi 6' Id), St. (See Ignatius,
St., of Loyola)
Lu, 372
Lubbock, ' Sir John. (See Avebury,
Lord)
Lubeck, 739
Lucerne, Lake of, 754
Lu-chu Islands, 552
Lucknow, 805, 981
INDEX
1153
Lucretius (10 kre' shi Us), 419, 462, 953
LucuUus (IC kar Us), 436
Luke, St., 497
Lunar month, 99
Lung-fish, 21
Lungs, 22, 42
"Lur," bronze, 101
Lusitania, hner, 1042
Luther, Martin, 719-23, 758, 761, 1114
Lutterworth, 660
Lutzen (luf s^n), 786
Lutzow, Count, 711
Luxembourg, 972, 1034
Luxembourg Palace, 897
Luxor, 146, 192
Lvoff, Prince, 1047
Lyceum, Athens, 301, 303
Lycia, sea-battle of, 593
Lycurgus (UkSr'giis), 166
Lydia (and Lydians), 165, 264-66, 269
sqq., 274, 314, 337, 355, 413, 682, 1103
Lydian language, 128; script, 171
Lyell, Sir C, 952
Lyons, 488, 878
Lysimachus (ll sim'd kHa), 337
M
Macatilat, Lohd, 384, 819-20
Macaulay Island, 162
Maccabeans, 495, 570
Macedon, 543
Macedonia (and the Macedonians), 158,
253, 259, 279, 288, 306, 311, 328, 332,
336, 342, 369, 387, 408, 412, 568, 608,
682, 705, 817, 917, 1104
Machiavelli (ma ke a vel' e) , N., 751,
758, 765,792, 1004, 1114
Machinery, 824, 932
Madagascar, 153
Madeira, 741
Madhurattha Vilasini (mad' hoo rat'-
t'ha vi la' si ne), 360
Madison, 849
Madras, 249, 369, 702, 807
Maeander (me &n' der), 643
Melius, Spurius, 392, 431
Magdal^uian Age, clothing, 347; hun-
ters, 267
Magdeburg, 736, 786
Magellan, Ferdinand, 743, 1114
Magenta, 968, 1119
Magic and magicians, 104, 178
Magna Carta, 774, 1112
Magna Grxcia, 253, 266, 385, 386
Magnesia, 338, 413, 1105
Magnetism, 733
Magyar Iang^age, 173, 487, 635
Magyar's (majarz'), 487, 527, 632, 673
Mahaffy,.301, 331
Mahrattas, 805
MaiUard, 862
Maimonides (ml mou' i dez) , 600
Maine, 829-31
Mainz (mints), 624, 717
Maize, 85, 153
Majuba, 986, 1013, 1120
Malabar, 462
Malay-Polynesian languages, 124
Malays, 148
Mallet, 855
Malory, Sir Thomas, 244
Malta, 780, 895, 979, 996
Mamelukes, 683, 685, 691
Mammals, 33, 45, 50. (See also Ani-
mals)
Mammoth, 44, 48, 52, 57, 59, 70, 72, 75
Man, 3, 4, 17, 26, 47, 48, 75, 78, 80, 84,
104; ancestry of, 36, 43, 44, 47, 60,
954; brotherhood of, 507; early, 43,
65, 67, 70, 75, 80, 87, 92, 105, 215,
347, 885; Eoanthropus, 46, 63; Hei-
delberg, 46, 52, 64, 63; life of common,
197; as mechanical power, 933; Ne-
anderthal, 46, 54, 66, 69, 71, 81, 93;
primeval, 59, 62; and the State, 795
Manchester, 940, 1119
Manchu (m&n choo') language, 123
Manchuria, 474, 561, 811, 991-95, 1009
Manchus,' 688, 811, 991
Mandarins, 212
Mangu Khan, 674, 677, 1113
Mani (ma'ne), 546, 572, 578-82, 1107
Manichaeans (m&ni kg' (inz), 524, 546,
594, 656
Manichaeism, 546
Manif (ma nef)> 577
Mankind, 106, 235, 308; brotherhood of,
797
Manlius, Marcus, 392, 406, 431
Manny, Sir Walter, 713
Manresa (man ra' ad). Abbey of, 723
Mansfield, Lord, 862
Mansur, 696
Mantua (mSln'tya S), 876
Manuscripts, 345, 548, 717
"Manzi," 679
Manzikert (m&n' zi kSrt), 636
Mara, Indian god, 357
Marat (mara'), 869-71
Marathon, 280-84, 292, 294
Marchand, Colonel, 986
Marcus AureUus. (See Antoninus)
Mardonius (mar do ni jis) , 287, 288
1154
INDEX
Marduk (mar dook), a god, 180
Marengo, 899, 1118
Maria Theresa, 801, 803, 1117
Marie Antoinette, 856
Marie Louise, Archduchess, 908
Mariner's compass, 555, 556, 681
Maritime power, 162
Marius (mar' i Us), 418, 432-35,441, 1105
Mark, St., 497, 502, 603
Marly, 862
Marne, 1038, 1060
Marozia, 626, 1111
Marriage and intermarriage, 180, 192,
208, 249
Mars, god, 613
Mars, planet, 2, 3
Marseillaise, the, 876
Marseilles (mar salzO. 253, 381, 408, 646,
658, 736, 759, 878, 1113
Marston Moor, 778
Martel, Charles, 612, 613, 1110
Martin V, Pope, 660, 664, 710
Marx, Karl, 935, 936, 944, 946, 950, 1009
Marxists, 210
Mary, the Egyptian, 578, 579
Mary, the Virgin, 499, 513
Mary I, Queen of England, 773, 774
Mary II, Queseu of England, 781
Maryland, 829-32, 836
Mas d'AzU, 74
Masai hunters, 267
Masked Tuaregs, 121
Mason, Capt. John, 829
Mason and Dixon line, 829, 831
Maspero, 193, 195
Mass, the, 708
Massachusetts, 829, 831, 836, 843, 848,
852, 882
Massage, 113
Massinissa, King, 411 '
Mathematics, 600, 602, 675
Matthew, St., 497, 501, 610
Maulvi Muhammad, Ali, 574
Mauritius, 806
Maxentius, 519
Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 970,
971, 1119, 1120
Maximilian I, 755, 1114
Maximin, 485
Maya (ma' ya) writing, 154
Mayence. (See Mainz)
Mayflower, the, 803, 829, 831
Mayor, 422
Mayor of the Palace, 612
Mazarin, Cardinal, 787, 788, 796
Mazdaism, 647, 681
Mecca, 569, 581, 689, 396
Meccan allies, 1109
Mechanical Revolution, the, 922-36,
961, 963, 977, 980, 987, 1000, 1061
Medes, 140, 146, 190, 229, 239, 265, 268,
281, 289, 292, 330, 384, 472, 1103
Media (me' di A), 139, 232, 270, 275. 329,
437, 452
Medici (med' i ch§) family, 740, 761-52
Medicine, 343, 600, 602
Medina (m^de'niJ), 646, 654, 567, 668,
673, 674, 580-86, 589-96
Mediterranean, 120, 126, 132, 137, 165,
161, 164, 218, 253, 338, 380, 401, 437,
458, 468, 470, 488, 494, 541, 593, 618,
630, 699, 739, 741, 746, 749, 780
Mediterranean alphabets, 173, 253, 658;
civilization, 115, 142; early, 172, 182,
489; navigation of, 155, 157, 162,
442; race and peoples, 74, 81, 108, 110,
111, 121, 126, 162, 221, 238, 240, 263,
381, 466; valley, 55, 88, 90, 132
Medway, 781
Meerut, 981
Megabazus (meg d ba' ztfs), 279
Megalithic monuments, 83, 113
Megara (meg' d id), 285
Megatherium, 76, 163
Megiddo, 229, 1103
Melanesia, 115
Melasgird, 636, 1111
Memphis, 274, 307, 325, 351
Menahem (men' §. hem), 229, 1103
Menelaus (men^la'tis), 246
Menes (me' nez), 142, 160
Mengo, 986
Mercator's projection, 474
Mercenary armies, 762
Merchants, 206, 211
Mercia, 606, 614, 61S
Mercury, god, 391
Mercury, planet, 2
Merodach (mer'o da,k), 188
Merovingians, 612, 783
Merv, 525
Merycodus (mer 1 ko' dSs), 41
Mesopotamia, 76, 103, 131-32, 138, 142-
44, 165, 177, 187, 196, 256, 331, 439,
465, 491, 637-44, 567, 584, 686, 596,
679, 688, 690, 704, 1044
Mesozoic (mestizo'ik) period, 8, 11,
25-43, 60, 51, 700
Messiah, 231, 466, 493, 499, 604-9
Messina (m^se'nd), Straits of, 388,
394, 401, 403
Metallurgy, 927
Metals, 78, 80, 152, 163, 166, 731
Metaurus, 409
INDEX
1155
Methodist revival, 8l3
Methuselah, 99
Metternich, 917, 937
Metz, 863, 972
Mexico (and the Mexicans), 112, 148,
153, 154, 742, 747, 748, 970, 972, 1115
Mey, Peter Van der, 771
Michael VTI, emperor, 637
Michael Vlil. (See Palseologus.Michael)
Michelatfg'elo, 740
Miohelih guided, 169
Miokleg^rtH, 668
MicrosobpS, 734
Middelburg, 789
Midianitfes, 222
Midsummer day, 181, 183
Midwinter day, 183
Migrations, 78, 474-80, 483
Mihiragula (mi her d goo' la), 550, 1108
Miklagard, 618
Milan, 487, 488, 736, 740, 752, 753, 759,
760, 904, 918
Miletus (mi le' tils), 254, 262, 278, 288,
321
MiUtary organization, 136; service, 261;
tactics, 785
Milk, 70, 84, 134, 473
Millet, 486
Milligan, Joseph, 129
Miltenburg, 737
Miltiades (mil tl' (Sdez), 278, 294
Milvian Bridge, 519
Minerals, 8
Ming dynasty, 171, 555, 557, 677, 688,
724, 811, 1113
Minos (mi'nos), 142, 159, 161, 179, 266
Mindteur (miii' o tawr), 159, 161
Minstrels, 244
Miocene (mi' d sen) period, 38, 41-53, 70
Mirabeau (me ra bo), 859, 864-65
Misraim and Misrim, 220
Missionaries (and missions), 371, 613,
614, 675, 677, 724, 985, 1115
Mississippi, 833
Mitauni, 138
Mithraic inscriptions, 423
Mithraic Sun-day, 499
Mithraism, 466, 612, 513, 546, 654, 708,
1108
Mithras, 352, 465, 513, 546
Mithridates (mithri da' tez), 434, 435,
1106
Mo Ti, 505
Moa, 153
Moab (and Moabites), 222, 232, 794
Moawijs. (.See Muawija)
MoBSia, 491, 636, 1106
Mogul, Greaf, 997, 1116
Mogul dynasty, 693, 1116
Mohammed. (See Muhammad)
Mokanna, 596
Moloch, 227
Moltke, Count, 1005
Moluccas, 743
Mommseui 215j 311, 766, 768
MbnarcW; 769, 771^ 7^6-93, 799, 801,
j, S83i9i5 ,-
Mbhastferles (arid nionasticism) , 530
kda-'i 6i4, 667; 709.
Mottastif (mSnastSr'), 1043
Money; 164-65, 380, 391, 427, S51, 888.
(See also Currency)
Mongolia, 469, 472, 561, 672-80, 811
Mongolian languages, 126, 129; races
and peoples. 111, 116, 126, 152, 239,
266, 329, 330, 436, 437, 472-78, 527,
682, 700, 703, 797, 809, 810, 990
Mongoloid tribes, 153, 744
Mongols, 469, 473, 479, 486, 647, 666
sqq., 675, 682, 687, 688, 689, 700, 703,
726, 740, 749, 809, 817, 1112, 1113
Monkeys, 43, 48
Monks. (See Monasteries)
Monmouth, cruiser, 1042
Monosyllabic language, 123
Monotheism, 581
Monroe, President, 916, 971
Monroe doctrine, 970, 984, 1029
Mons, 1037
Monte Cassino, 631, 533
Montesquieu, 854
Montezuma (mon te zoo' tad), 747
Montfort, Simon de, 774
Montreal, 804
Montserrat, 723
Moon, 2, 98
Moorish buffoon, 486
Moorish paper, 718
Moors, 422, 749
Moose, 52
Moral ideas, 233
Moravia, 482
More, Sir Thomas, 766, 931
Moreau, General, 890, 1118
Morelly, 855
Morning Post, 941
Mornington, Lord, 979
Morocco, 163, 702, 987, 996, 1009,
1025
Morris, WiUiam, 866
Mortar, pebble, 69
Morte d'Arthur, 244
Mosasaurs (mo' ad sawrz), 28, 32
Moscow, 689, 694, 792, 909, 1118
1156
INDEX
Moscow, Grand Duke of, 689, 1114
Moscow, Taar of, 809
Moses, 142, 146, 155,"i87;-220, 231,'547
Moslem schools, 697; universities, 'fiOl
Moslems, the, 583-93, 597, 628, 635,
639,645-46,657, 668, 674, 689, 696,
700, 718, 981, 1109-ll;-iu Europe,
593-95, 606, 612, 616,; 621, 632, 652,
742, 793, 1111, (See aUo Crusades and
Islam) . . ' •
Mosses, 20
Mosso, 156
Most, 711
Mosul, 642, 691
Motley, 771-72 ,
Mounds, 83, 95 , _
Mountains (and mountaineering), 3, 38
Mousterian Age (and implements^ , 46,
58, 60, 66
Muawija (mooa we' ya), 589-94, 1110
Mudfish, 21, 42
Muehlon, Herr, 1067
Muhammad (mii hSm' dS), prophet, 235,
497, S06, 545, 555, 561, 567, 685, 696,
708; life of, 570 sqq., 591, 592; teach-
ing of, 579-82, 594
Muhammad II, sultan, 752, 1114
Muhammad-Ibn-Musa, 602
Muhammadan communistic movement,
716
Muhammadanism, 594, 606, 694; (See
also Islam aTiii Muhammad)
Mulberry tree, 458
Mules, 110
Miilhausen (mul'hou zfe), 891
MiiUer,, Max, 180
Mummies, 112
Munich (mu' nik), 731
Munster (mun'ster), 715, 1026, 1115
Milnster, Bishop of, 715
Munzuk, 486
Murad I, 683
Murat (mu ra'), 910
Murzuk, 88
Muscovites, 793
Muscovy, empire of, 792
Musical instruments, 86
Musk ox, 44, 48, 57, 75
Muskets, 785
Mycale (mik' & le), 288, 290, 1104
MycensB (mi se' ne), 80, 254, 265, 267
Myoenean (ml se ne' (Jn) architecture,
■ 383 '
Mycerinus (mis S rl' n&), 144
Mylffi, 402, 1105 \
Myos-hormos, 462
Myrina . (mi ri' n*) ,385
Myron, 294
Mysteries, religious, 316
Mythology, 100, 304
N •; :
Nabatean Kings, 542
Nabonidus (nSb o ni' dus) , 190-93, 197,
217, 226, 23i; 269, 274, 327, 355
Nadir Shah (na'dgr sha'), 806, 1117.
Nagasaki (na ga sa' ke), 992
Nalanda, 564
Nanking, 669, 1111
Naples, 385, 440, 531-32, 653, 736, 766,
891, 904, 917, 968, 1108 ;
Napoleon I, 653, 765, 872, 876, 883; 892-
915, 922, 924, 979, 1117-18; III, 492,
965-73, 975, 1119-20
Narbonne, 736
Naseby, 778
Nasmyth, 926
Natal, 987 ,
Nathan, 225
"National Schools," 934
Nationahsm, 959-63; 975, 1023-24
Nationalization, 947
Natural rights, selection, 15
Nautilus, Pearly, 33
Naval tactics, Roman, 403
Navarino (nS,v a re' no) , battle of, 920,
1119
Navigation, early, 155-64, 241
Nazarenes, 510-13, _
Neanderthal (na an' der tal) man, 46,
54, 66, 67, 71, 81, 93, 420, 427
Nebuchadnezzar (neb u k(Sd nez' &t) (the
Great) II, 140, 146, 162, 217, 228, 230,
269, 324, 327, 1104
Nebulse, 1
Necho (ne'ko), Pharaoh', 146, 163, 229,
342, 439, 461, 741,, 1103-4
Necker, 863 .;
Needles, bone, 69
Negritos, 991
Negroes, 47, 51, 110, 119, 143, 152, 462,
749, 832, 851, 852
Negroid race, 67, 109, 112, 143
Nehemiah, 232'
Nelson, Horatio, 895-97, 905
Neohipparion, 41
Neolithic Age, 55, 80, 83, 119-20, 125-27,
142, 143, 241; agriculture, 85-7, 100,
135, 267; civilization and culture, 77,
98-104, 111-12, 119, 131-34, 140, 144,
148, 155-59, 242-46; man, 75-8, 97-8,
102-4, 111, 125, 168, 215, 246, 249, 847
Neo-platonism, ,514(,X2Q . -.i
INDEX
1157
Nepal (niJpawl'), 355, 561, 562, 811
Nephthys (nef'thls), 192
Neptune, planet, 2
Nero, 454-55, 512, 531, 1106
Nerva, 455, 1124
Nestorlan Christians, 525, 538, 547, 554,
600, 667, 677, 679
Netherlands, the, 755, 762, 769, 770-73,
788, 803, 918-20. (See also Dutch Re-
public and Holland)
Nets, flax, 85
Neustadt (noi' stat), 736
Neustria, 612-13, 1110
Neva, river, 792
New Amsterdam, 803, 829-32
New England, 45, 741, 802, 828-32
Newfoundland, 803, 997
New Guinea, 108, 111, 129
New Habsburg, 754, 1112
New Hampshire, 828, 831, 836
New Harmony (U.S.A.), 942
New Jersey, 831, 836; 844, 1062
New Lanark, 941-42
Newmarket, 781
New Mexico, 1028
New Orleans, 804
New Plymouth, 829
Newton, Sir Isaac, 348, 462, 733, 1116
Newts, 21
New Year, festival of, 183
New York, 426, 459, 736, 802, 831, 836,
839, 846, 924, 1118
New Zealand, 153, 983, 998-99
Niarchus, 318
Nicsea (m se' d), 522-23, 636, 642, 1107
Nice, Province- of, 968
Nicene (ni' sen) Creed, 522, 624, 1107
Nieephorus (nl sef 5 riSs), 623, 1110
Nicholas 1, tsar, 920, 941, 966, 1119; II,
1001
Nicholas of Myra, 522
Nicholson, Gen. John, 981
Nickel, 2, 927
Nicomedes (niko me' dez), King of
Bithynia, 430
Nicomedia, 488, 518,. 521
Niemen (ne' men) , 905
Nietzsche (ne' ch^, 1005
Nieuw Amsterdam. (See New Amster-
dam)
Nile, the, 89-90, 107, 125, 146, 1S2, 156-
57, 215, 255, 462, 702, 985; battle of,
896, 1118; delta, 144, 164, 181; valley,
143, 214, 1102
Nineveh (nin'ev^),' 138-40, 146, 190,
231, 269, 326, 537, 539, 543, 645, 691,
1103, 1109
Nippur (nip poor'), 103, 131, 136, 142,
215, 691
Nirvana (nir va' n&), 362, 364, 370
Nish, 457, 481, 485, 520, 1107
Nisibin, 543
Nitrate of silver, 602
Nitric acid, 602
Noah, 110
Nobility, 200, 205
Nogaret, Guillaume de, 663, 1113
Nomadism (and Nomads), 84, 107, 133,
135, 246, 329, 548, 567, 666, 670, 689,
697-98, 703-4
Nominalism, 728 sgg.
Nonconformity, 721
Nordic race, 123, 152, 266, 312, 316, 329,
475, 608, 630, 682, 703, 709, 726, 797,
811, 1014
Normandy (and the Normans), 618,
631-32, 637-42, 735, 865, 1111; duke-
dom of, 626, 630
Norse language, 238, 619
Northmen, 468, 617, .618, 628-30, 635,
709, 1014
North Sea, the, 55, 468, 630, 739-40, 741
Northumberland, 933
Northumbria, kingdom of, 605, 615
Norway, 75, 526, 616, 630, 661, 720,
761, 803, 919, 1111
Norwegian language, 238
Norwich, 713
Nottingham, 777, 924
Nova Scotia, 741
Novgorod (novgorod'), 631, 689, 736,
739, 1110
Nubia, 200
Nubian wild ass, 163
Numbers, use of, 97
Numerals, Arabic, 164, 602, 652
Numidia (and Numidians), 407, 410,
416, 432, 463'
Nuns, 709 '
Nuremberg, 736; Peace of, 761
Niimberg (nurn bereft) , cruiser, 1042
O
Oak, 45
Oars, 156
Obedience and will, 702-7
Obi (6' be), river, 329, 816
Occam, 729, 730, 1113
Ocean, 3
Oceania, 153
Octavian. (See Augustus)
Odenathus (od e na' thiis), 538, 568,.
1107
Odin, 613
1158
INDEX
Odoacer (o d5 a' a&), 623, 1108
Odysseus, 437
Odyssey. (.See Homer)
CGcumenicai councils, 522
Offerings, 178
Ogdai Khan, 672, 673, 1112
Oglethorpe, 830, 1117
Ohio (6 hi' 6), 45, 833
"Old Man" in religion, 95, 102-4, 885
Oligarchies, 258, 260
OUgocene (ol' i gd sen) period, 38, 39, 50,
51
Olney, Mr., 1029, 1078
Olympiad, first, 264, 1103
Olympian games, 264
Olympias, 316 sqq., 329, 336, 343, 387
Olympus, mount, 283
Omar I, caUph, 584-89, 647, 1109
Omayyads (omi'yadz), 591-601, 625,
628, 1110
O'Neil of Tyrone, 82
Oppossum, 43
Oracles, 194, 256, 270
Orange, house of, 773
Orange, Duke of, 772
Orange River, 986
Orang-outang, 46
Orbit of earth, 44
Orient, ship, 896
Orientation of temples, 181, 183
Origen (or' i j&), 514
Orissa, 378
Orlando, Signor, 1068, 1071
Orleans, 487, 736, 937
Ormonde, Duke of, 819
Ormuz, 679
Ormuzd (or' mjizd) , 545, 546
Ornaments, 85
Ornithorhynchus (or nith d ring' kiis) , 40
Orpheus (or' fiis), 466
Orphic cult, 316
Orsini (or se ne) , family, 663
Orthodox Church. (See Greek Church)
Osborn, Prof. H. P., 65, 462
Osiris (d sir' is), 192, 351, 352
Osman, House of, 683
Oatia, 428
Ostracism, 263
Ostrogoths, 476, 481, 527, 631, 1108
Othman, 589, 591, 1109
Otho, Emperor, 455, 1109
Otis, James, 834
Otranto, 685
Otters, 26, 52
Otto I, 627, 635, 660, 1111
Otto II, 627, 1111
Otto III, 627, 1111
Otto of Bavaria, 920
Ottoman Empu-e, 681-87, -691, 692, 696,
697, 736, 1114. (See also Turkey and
Turks)
Oudh (oud), 805, 808, 981
Ovid, 10
Owen, Robert, 940-45, 1119
Ownership, 885
Ox, great, 75
Ox-carts, 221
Oxen, 83, 162, 241, 247
Oxford, 459, 601, 659, 712, 726, 728,
729, 736, 777, 813, 819, 835, 862, 964,
1011
Oxide of iron, 7
Oxus, 550
Oxydactylus (ok si dak' ti Ws), 41
Oxygen (ok' si jen), 19
Pacific Ocean, 33, 62, 115, 152, 214,
672, 702, 742, 747, 811, 1008, 1112
PaddUng in navigation, 157
Padua, 487
Paine, Tom, 849
Painted pebbles, 73 sg., 74
Painting, Palaeolithic, 71
Paionia, 288
Pateoanthropus Heidelbergensis (pSl-
e 5 an thro' pds hi' d^I bSrg en' sis) ,
46, 52, 54
Palaeolithic age, 46, 55, 65, 68, 74, 80,
143; art, 71, 93, 99; implements, 57,
60, 77, 107; man, 62, 65, 76, 80, 87, 98,
104, 108, 112, 117, 118, 129, 152, 168,
215, 347, 746, 759, 885
Palaeologus (pa,l e ol' d gfis), Michael
(Michael VIII), 662; Zoe, 689
Falaeopithecus (pal e o pi the' kits) , 50
Palaeozoic (paleozo'ik) period, 8, 16,
19, 24, 25, 36, 38. 42
Palais Royal, 860
Palermo (pdS ler' mo) , 403
Palestine, 202, 218-21, 227, 382, 493,
568, 636-37, 644, 657, 667, 674, 679,
691, 1007, 1113
Pali (pa' li) language, 355
Palms, Cainozoio, 37
Palmyra (pM mS'rd), 538, 542 sqq., 568,
1107
Palos (pa' 16s), 741
Pamir (pa mer') Plateau, 329
Pamirs, 562, 589, 670, 688, 740
Pampeluna (pam p^loo' na), 722, 1114
Pamphylia (pS,m fil' i d) , 643
Panama Canal, 1031
INDEX
1159
Panama, Isthmus of, 743, 746
Pan-American Conferences, 1001, 1029
Pan Chau, 1106
Pan-German movement, 1008
Panipat (pa'nepiit), 693, 1114
Pannonia (pa n5' ni d), 481, 527, 1106
Panth,er in Europe, 268
Papacy (incl. popes), policy of, 654;
outline of, 6S0; and the Great War,
725; and world dominion, 802; mis-
cellaneous, 526, 533, 607, 612, 621 egg.,
632, 637, 644 sgg., 659, 663, 677 sg.,
684 sgg., 708 sg.,720,724,744, 758, 796,
937, 1113. (See also Rome, Church of)
Papal Schism, 663, 710, 1113
Paper, introduction and use of, 144, 346,
603, 681, 717 sg., 758
Papua (pa'puii), tjrpe of mankind in,
108
Papuan speech, 129
Papyrus (p(J pl'rils), 144, 347, 603
Parchment, 603
Parchment promissory notes, 653
Pariahs, 211
Paris, Peace of, 830, 1117; during the
Revolution, 858 sgg.; Napoleon in,
892, 904, 910, 914, capitulation of,
911; rising against Charles X, 917;
revolution of 1848, 938; siege of, 972;
Zeppelin raids on, 1041; Peace Con-
ference at, 1061-72, 1076-81; miscel-
laneous, 736, 839, 901, 935, 1120
Paris, University of, 724, 729, 820
Parker, E. H., 470
Parliament, government by, 750; Eng-
lish, 773-83, 798, 808, 833 sg., 1017 sg.,
1118; PoUsh, 801
Parliamentary Monarchy in Europe, 793
Parma, 652
Parmenio (par me' ni o), 318, 333
Parsees, 545, 696
Parthenon (par' th^ nfa) , 2'94
Parthia (and Parthians), 330 sg., 337,
436 sgg., 452, 455, 468, 472 sg., 537,
542 sg., 1106
Paschal 11, 1111
Passau (pas' ou). Treaty of, 762, 1115
Passover, Feast of the, 507 sg.
Passy (pa se'), 864
Pasteur (pas tur') , 348
Patricians, Roman, 389-96
Patriotism, 260, 364, 797
Pattison, Prof. Pringle, 729
Patzinaks, 635
Paul, St., 337, 423, 507, 510 sgg., 952
Paul, Tsar of Russia, 1117
Paulicians, 524
Pauline epistles, 510 sg.
Pauline mysteries, 513
Pa via (pa ve' d) , 759
Peace, universal, 234, 653
Peace Conference. (See Paris)
Peas, as food, 85
Peasant revolts, 714 sg., 758, 821, 984,
1113
Peasants, 118, 198
Peounia, 164
Pecus, 165
Peers, Council of, 776
Pegu (pegoo'), 679
Peisistratidse (pi sis tra' ti de), 264
Peisistratus (pi sis' trd t^s), 258, 280-85,
391, 1104
Pekinese language, 123
Peking, 183, 561, 669, 674 sg., 694, 792,
811, 989, 1112, 1120
Peloponnesian War, 291, 1104
Pelycosaurs (pel'i ktfsawrz), 23
Pendulum, invention of, 602
Penelope, 248
Penn, William, 829
Pennsylvania, 829, 831, 843 sg., 850
Pentateuch, 218 sgg., 231
Pepi, 145, 342, 765
Pepin (pep' in) I, 612, 616, 1110; son of
Charlemagne, 621; of Heristhal, 612,
1110
Pepys, Samuel, 781
Pergamum (p6r' gd miim) , 337, 430 sg.,
436
Pericles (per'i klez), 259, 290 sgg., 307,
457, 712 sg., 740, 1104; Age of, 300
sg., 308
Perihelion, 44
Peripatetic school, 343
Periplus, of Hanno, 163, 184
Perkin, 1003
Perry, Commodore, 993, 1119
Persepolis (p6rsep'<51is), 307, 327, 584
Persia (and the Persians), 81, 109, 164,
190, 229-30, 240, 257, 267, 315, 319,
331, 336-37, 386, 436, 440, 462, 467,
470, 472, 479, 543, 547-48, 554^57,
568, 583-85, 631, 636, 666, 670, 675-
79, 687, 699, 716, 735, 806, 817, 1107;
history (rise of), 140, 144, 146, 152,
190, 202, 259, 261-64, 267-71; (.Em-
pire), 452, 1105-8; (war with Greece),
274 sgg.; (war with Alexander), 321,
324-30, 1123; (Sassanid Empire),
457, 537-39, 545, 596, 1109; (Islam
and Persia), 585-96, 628; (Mongol
Empire), 673, 689, 694; religion of,
350-52, 518, 524, 638, 545-46, 564, 696
1160
INDEX
Persian Gulf, 126, 132, 136, 156, 329, 679
Persian language, 118, 140, 240, 698
Peru, 112, 115, 153-54, 746-49, 991, 1115
Peshawar (p^shawr'), 367, 562
Pestilence, 74, 457, 470, 529, 552, 606,
610, 621, 640, 712, 923, 1107 sqq.
Peter, St., 85, 508, 622, 662; the Great,
792 sg., 809, 967, 1116; the Hermit,
639 sq «
Peterhof, 792
Petition of Right, 776
Petra (pe' tid), 568
Petrie, Flinders, 143
Petrograd, 792, 1047
Petronius (p^tro' ni Us), 458
Petsohenegs, 635 sg.
Phalanx, 313 sg.
Phanerogams, 22
Pharaohs, the, 145, 159, 191 sg., 197
sgg., 220, 227, 342 sg., 439, 461
Pharisees, 496, 502
Pharsalos (far sa' Wa), battle of, 441, 1106
Pheidippides (fl dip' i dez), 281
Phidias (fid' i &s), 294 sg.
Philadelphia (ancient), 542, 643; U. S. A.,
829, 839 sg., 846, 1117
Philip, of Hesse, 761
Philip of Macedon, 292, 302, 306 sgg.,
331 sgg., 340, 343, 372, 489, 1104
PhiUp, King of France, 663
Philip II, King of Spain, 762, 770 sg.,
783, 793, 839
Philip, Duke of Orleans, 860, 882, 917
Philippine Islands, 743, 979, 992, 1029
Phihstia (and Philistines), 142, 188, 221
sgg., 382
Philonism, 514
Philosophy, primitive, 92; Greek, 304,
349; medicinal, 727 sgg.; experi-
mental, 734
Philbtas (fi 16' tda), 318, 333
Phinehas, 223
Phocians (fo' shi anz), 313
Phoenicia (fe nish' d), and Phoenicians,
158 sgg., 168, 177, 214, 218 sg., ,225,
228 sgg., 279-85,324-37, 342, 493, 560;
language and script, 120, 173; colonies,
253, 383
Phoenix, steamship, 924
Phonetic spelling, 559
Phonograms, 170 sg.
Phrygia (frij'id), and Phrygians, 253,
265, 330, 337, 382, 682
Phrygius, 318
Physics, 602
Physiocrats, 855
Fiacenza (pya chen' tsa) , 639
Pictographs, 169 sgg.
Plots, 461
Picture writing, 144, 153, 173
Piedmont, 876
Pig, 48, 169; unclean to Moslems, 981
Pigtails, Chinese, 688, 811, 990
Pilate, Pontius, 507
Pile dwellings, 80, 132. (See also Lake
dwellings) ^
Pilgrim Fathers, 851
Pilgi:ims, 632, 639
Pillnitz, 872
Piltdown skull, 46, 53 sgg.
Pindar (pin' ddr), 320
Pins, bone, 85
Piracy, 739
Pisa, 732, 736
Pithecanthropus (pith e kJln- thro pfis) ,
erectus, 46, 49 sgg.
Pitt, William, the "Younger," 903
Pius, VII, 903
Pixodarus (piksddar'iSs), 318
Pizarro (pizar'6), 747, 1115
Placentia (pW sen' shi d). (See Piaoenza)
Plague. (See Pestilence) •
Plaiting, Neolithic, 78
Planets, 2 sg.
Plants, 8 sgg.
Plassey, battle of, 808, 1117
Platsea (pWte'd), battle of, 284, 288
sgg., 296, 1104
Plato, 292, 298, 299 sgg., 340, 372, 491,
539, 726, 766, 944, 1104
Playfair, 954
Plebeians, Roman, 389 sgg., 418, 419
Pleistocene (plis' to sen) Age, 38, 44, 46,
48 sg., 75, 121, 197
Flesiosaurs (pie' zi 6 sawrz) , 28, 32, 36
Pliny, theelder, 132 ; the younger, 463, 602
Pliocene (pli' 6 sen) Age, 38, 44, 46, 51
sg., 215
Plotiuus (pli5 ti' n?Js), 348, 514
Plunkett, Sir Horace, 1023
Plutarch, 263, 293 sg., 316,320, 332, 336,
406, 432, 435, 442 sgg., 520, 894
Pluvial Age, 126 sg., 246
Plymouth, 915; (New, England) , 851
Plymouth Company 828
Po, valley of the, 330, 384, 395, 404
Pocahontas (po kd hon' tds), 828
Pocock, R. I., 72
Pooook, Roger, 239, 479
Poitiers, 612, 735, 1110
Poland, 635, 664, 673, 685, 690, 735, 787,
795, 798-801, 809, 816, 823, 826, 865,
872, 906-8, 915, 918-20, 937, 1080,
1116, 1119
INDEX
1161
Polish language, 238
Political ideas, common, 449
Politics (and Politicians), 426, 700, 796
Polo, Maffeo, 678
Polo, Marco, 678, 681, 741, 751, 1113
Polo, Nicolo, 678
Polyclitus (pol i kll' tils), 294
Polynesia, il5, 128; languages of, 121:,
129; peoples of, 81, 116, 124
Pompadour, Madame de, 791
Pompeii (pom pa' ye), 421
Pompey, 436, 439-43, 467-70, 476, 496,
546, 1106
Pondicherry, 807
Pontifex maximus, 619
Pontus, 481, 541
Poor, the, 818 aq.
Poor Laws, 766
Pope, Alex., 1017
Popes. (See Papacy)
Poplioola (pop lik' (5 Id) , Valerius, 391
Poppaea (pd pe' (J), 454
Poptilar education, Christianity and, 700
sqq.
Port Arthur, 989, 994
Port Sunlight, 942
Porto Rico, 1029
Portugal (and Portuguese), 163, 238, 482,
491, 664, 907, 1014, 1108, 1112-14;
overseas trade and expansion of, 740-
44, 747-49, 801, 807, 852, 979, 984, 991
Porus (p6' nls), king, 328 sq., 368
Posen, 910, 937, 972, 1012
Post horses in ancient Persia, 275
Potash, 602
Potato, 154
Potomac, river, 847
Potsdam, 792 ■
Pottery, 77, 82 sq., 100 sq., 383, 603
Poultry. (See Fowl)
Powers, Great, 767 sqq., 797, 802, 826,
917, 966, 975, 1024
Prague, 710, 732, 937 sq., 1119; Univer-
sity of, 710
Prayer-flags, Buddhist, 378
Prayer-wheels, 376
Presbyterianism, 776
Prescott, 762 sq.
Press, free, 843 ; in politics, 396
Prester John, 679
Priam (pri'iJm), 283
Pride, Colonel, 779 aq.
Priestcraft (inol. Priesthood and Priests),
96, 100, 103, 150, 178-89, 193-95, 205,
208, 225, 247, 251, 256, 369, 582, 649,
709-10, 796
Primal law, 59
Prince, character of a, 751 aqq.
Princes, an exclusive class, 209
Princeton, Univ. of, 1062
Printing, 175, 347, 396, 717 sq:, 724, 731,
1114; Chinese, 550
Priscus (pris' kfis), 485 sq., 607, 1108
Prisoners as slaves, 851
Prisons, English, 882
Private enterprise, 822 aq., 1056 sqq.;
ownership, 822; property, 782
Probus (pro'btls), emperor, 481, 1107
Production, distribution and profits of,
823; of machinery, 824
Profit, 878
Prokop the Great, 711
Proletariat, 210, 390, 935, 944 sqq.
Promissory notes, early, 165
Property, 201, 207, 705, 769, 855, 882
sqq., 923, 936 sq., 946
Prophets, Jewish, 104 sq.
Proterozoic (prot ii 6 zo' ik) period, 8,
11, 14, 17 S3.
Protestantism, 709, 725, 761-62, 769-81,
770, 785, 789, 793, 802, 815, 819-20,
828-32, 991, 1014-21
Provence, 913
Proverbs, book of, 232
Providence, Rhode Island, 836
Prussia, 786, 791, 795-800, 827, 858, 865,
872, 904, 908, 914, 919, 968-72, 1004,
1119-20
Przemysl (pshem'isl), 1041
Psalms, 2?2
Psammetichus (sa met' i kiss), 146, 229,
266, 1103
Pskof, 736
Pteria (te'rid), 272
Ptolemies, 337, 342, 371, 494
Ptolemy (tol'^mi) I, 318, 342, 344,
348-55, 557, 1105; Ptolemyll, 344-45;
Ptolemy III, 345
Public opinion, growth of, 708
Public schools. (See Schools, public)
"Pul," Assyrian monarch, 229
Pultusk, 9p4
Punch, 962, 1011
Punic (pu' nik) language, 457; wars, 142,
388 aq., 394, 398 aqq., 1105
Punjab, 147, 330, 367 sq., 674, 693 aq.,
806, 1105
Puritans, 780, 830
Pyramids, 103, 144 sg., 181, 202, 215;
battle of the, 894
Pyrenees, 127, 482, 593, 606, 610 aq.,
616, 789, 910, 1110
Pyrrhus (pir' fis), 386 sqq., 401, 632, 1105
Pytho (pi'tho), 271
1162
INDEX
QtJAOo, 1117
Quadrupedal reptile^, 28
Quartzite implements, 107
Quebec, 805, 1117
Quipus, 154
Quixada (ke ha' da) , 762
R
E.A, 193
Races of mankind, 66, 67, 74, 89,
106-19
Radiolaria, 8
Ragusa (ra goo' za), 736
Rahab, month of, 574
Rai, Lajpat, 980
Railways, 924, 1119
Rajgir, 357
Rajput (raj poof) clans, 550
Rajput princes, 805
Rajputaua, 550, 735, 803
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 828
Ramah, 224
Rambouillet (ron boo ya') , 862
Ramesea (ram'esez) II, 142, 146, 220,
221, 228, 342, 1102
Rameses III, 191, 221
Raphael, 740
Rasputin (ras poof in) , 1047
Ratisbon, Diet of, 761
Ratzel, 154, 479
Ravenna, 482, 484, 488, 527, 625, 1109
Rebus, 172
Reconstruction, Ministry of, 1055
Red Cross, 754
Red Indians, 473, 832
Red Sea, 121, 126, 132, 156, 157, 220,
226, 228, 342, 457, 462
"Red Sea" river, 89, 92
Redmond, John, 1021, 1022
Reed pipes, 86
Reform Bill, 937, 1119
Reformation, the, 518, 720, 724, 758,
819, 820
Regicide, 779 ,
Reindeer, 48, 57, 58, 70, 72, 76, 87
Reindeer Age, 60, 69, 73-4
Reindeer men, 76, 81, 87, 93, 103, 241
Religion, 94r-7, 101, 180, 348-52, 506
sqq., 723, 855, 957; "Old Man" in,
24, 100-4
Religious wars, 761
Remus (re' mtis) and Romulus (rom' Q-
liis), 383
Renaissance, 699, 740
Renascence, 699
Rent, 197, 208
Reparation, 164
Representation, political, 425, 845, 949
Reproduction, 13, 15; of amphibia, 22;
of mammals, 40
Reptiles, 22, 23, 25 sqq.
Republicanism, 798, 813, 891
Republics, 258, 702, 703
Retailers, 207
Revere, Paul, 837, 840
"Revisionists," 945
Revolution, 939, 947
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 1017
Rhine, 52, 436, 437, 452, 455, 468, 475,
481, 484, 633, 758, 786, 788, 815, 875,
911, 968
Rhinelaud, 527, 611, 632, 642, 770
Rhinoceros, 43, 44, 48, 52, 57
Rhode Island, 828, 831, 836, 842, 847
Rhodes, 338, 643
Rhodesia, 998
Rhondda, Lord, 1054
Rhone valley, 527
Rice, 560
Richard I, Coeur de Lion, 645, 774
Richard II, 715, 1112
Richelieu, Cardinal, 787, 796, 803
Richmond, 970
Ridgeway, W., 80
Riga, 736, 739, 1047
Righteousness, 341
Rio de Oro (re' o da 6' ro), 163
Ritual, 708. (See also Christianity)
Riviera (re ve ar' a) , French, 381 ; Italian,
891
Robert of Sicily. (See Guiscard, Robert)
Robertson, 763
Robespierre (ro bes pyar'), 869, 876-
81, 893, 1118
Robinson, J. H., 662, 803
Roohefort, 914
Rocks, 6, 9, 20
Rocquain, 855
Roger I, King of Sicily, 651
Rolf the Ganger, 619, 630, 1126
Roman coins, 389
Roman Empire, 447 sqq. • social and po-
litical state of, 457, 462-69, 472, 478,
726; fall of, 478, 480, 482; separation
into Eastern and Western Empires,
488, 491; later Roman Empire (West-
ern), 519, 526, 535, 539, 553, 555, 606,
619, 621, 623, 631, 717, 814, 816, 1107.
{See also Eastern (Greek) Empire)
Roman law, 394, 537; roads, 394, 468
Roman Republic (19th century), 891,
1119
Romansch language, 612, 754
INDEX
1163
Rome, 435, 439, 449, 475, 492, 495, 512,
627, 531, 537, 641, 654, 568, 614, 685,
739, 750, 758, 824, 968, 971, 1007;
early history of, 380-86, 392, 1103,
1104; war with Carthage, 388; social
and political state of, 389-98, 405,
412-31, 437, 445, 550, 705, 931, 1105;
assemblies of, 396, 398, 418, 419, 425,
436; patricians and plebeians, 389-96,
418-19; Senate, 389, 393, 396-400,
413, 415-19, 425-35, 443-45, 454;
Consuls of, 389, 398; colonies of, 390,
394, 464; Punic wars, 142, 388 aq.,
394, 398 sgg., 1123; military system of,
417, 436, 450; bequests to, 430, 1105;
Social war, 433, 1106; monarchy in,
and the fall of the Republic, 442-50;
Roman Empire (see above) ; plague in,
629, 606, 1109; true cross at, 539,
647; "duke of," 607; Pepin crowned
at, 623 ; in 10th century, 627 ; sacked
byGuiscard, 632, 1126; Germans raid,
759, 1114; Charlemagne crowned at,
767
Rome, Church of (inc. general Christian
associations), 612-14, 525, 605-7, 614,
619-23, 637, 639, 649, 653-64, 688,
694, 763, 768, 767, 781, 900. (.See also
Catholicism and Papacy)
Romulus and Remus, 383
Roosevelt, President, 1027, 1030, 1062,
1066
Rose, Holland, 893, 896, 902
Roses, Wars of the, 735
Ross, 470, 696
Rostro-carinate implements, 46, 60, 216
Roth, H. L., 78
"Roum," Empire of, 682
Roumania (and the Roumanians), 491,
635, 674, 683, 918, 920, 1025, 1045
Rousseau (rooso'), J- J-, 865, 856, 869,
877, 893, 1117
Rowing, 157, 402
Roxana, 332, 336
Royal Asiatic Society, 564
Royal families, marriage of, 208
Royal Society of London, 557, 791, 929
Rubicon (roo' bi kto), the, 441
Rudolf I, German Emperor, 754, 1113
Rulers, deification of, 415
Ruling families, 258
Rumansch language. {See Romansch
language)
Rump Parliament, 779
Rurik, 631, 1110
Russia, 75, 76, 118, 126, 142, 232, 267,
275, 329, 436, 467, 470, 473, 476,. 481,
488, 494, 521, 582, 618, 628, 631, 635,
674, 687, 689, 694, 699, 716, 735, 786,
793-99, 809-10, 814, 816, 826, 865,
905, 909, 920", 945, 966, 974, 991-96,
1009, 1010, 1026, 1032, 1033, 1046,
1047, 1111,1121. (See also Great War)
Russian language, 118, 236, 558
Rustam, 585
Rusticiano, 678
Ruth, Book of, 222
Rutilius, P. Rufus, 433
S
Saae (sar) Vallet, 1080
Sabbath, Jewish, 495, 499, 500, 514
Sabellians, 693
Sachsenhausen (sach' sen hou zen), 736
Sacraments, 100, 1C2
Sacrifice, 102, 150-53, 178, 247, 746, 953;
human, 88, 100, 104, 420
Sadducees, 496
Sadowa (sa' do va), battle of, 971, 973,
1120
Safiyya (safye'ja), 578-79
Sagas, 245, 618
Saghalien (sa ga len') , 994
Sahara, 65, 126, 152, 162, 1026
Sails, use of, 157
St. Andrew's, 869
St. Angelo, castle of, 606, 627, 649, 759
St. Gall, monastery of, 634
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 862
St. Gothard Pass, 740
St. Helena, 915, 998
St. Just, 878
St. Lawrence river, 803
St. Medard, 613
St. Peter's, Rome, 513, 758
St. Petersburg. (See Petrograd)
St, Sophia, Church of, 536, 684
Sainte Menehould, 868
Sakas (sa' kas) , 549
Sakya (sa' kya) clan, 355
Saladin (sSl' ddin), 645, 667, 1112
Salanus (sal' d mis), 285, 292, 296, 402,
585, 1104
SaUsbury, Lord, 1120
Salmon of Reindeer Age, 73
Salonika, 1043
Salt, 88
Salvation, Christian theory of, 952
Salvation Army, 352, 724
Samaria, 139, 232
Samarkand, 328-32, 474, 525, 562, 663,
670, 691, 693
Samnites, 386, 1105
1164
INDEX
Samoan Islands, 102S
Samos, 254, 293
Samoyed (s5in' <5 yed) language, 123
Samson, 222, 231
Samuel, Book of, 222-25
Samurai (a^m' u ri), 222-25, 992
San Casciano, 751
Sanderson, F. W., 820
Sandracottus. (See Chandragupta)
Sandstone, 5
Sandwich Islands, 1028
Sanscrit, 239, 251, 559, 695
Sans Souci (san soo se'), park of, 792
San Stefano, treaty of, 973, 1000, 1120
Santa Maria, ship, 742
Sapor I, 538, 546, 1107
Saracens, 626
Sarajevo-(sarI' v5), 962, 1033
Saratoga, 839
Sardanapalus (sar ddEnd pa'liSs), 140,
189, 228, 231, 266, 1103
Sardes, 643
Sardinia, 162, 404, 482, 755, 918, 968
Sardis, 265, 272, 279, 288, 321
Sargon I, 103, 137-42, 190, 215, 520,
765, 1122; II, 139-42, 146, 189, 228,
268, 1103
Sarmatians, 239, 472, 635
Sarum, Old, 782
Sassanids (s&s' d nidz), 452, 546, 596,
1107. (See also Persia)
Saturn, planet, 2
Saturninus (s^t iSr nl' nHs), 433
Saul, king of Israel, 225, 1103
Saul of Tarsus. (See Paul, St.)
Savannah, 804, 830
Savannah, steamship, 924
Save, river, 488
Savoy, 780, 792, 876, 918, 968
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family, 1007
Saxony (and the Saxons), 482, 527, 589,
613, 616-21, 626, 630, 787, 792, 911,
1111
Saxony, Duke of, 711; Elector of, 758
Sayce, Prof., 156, 199, 207
Scandinavia, 75, 238, 462, 468, 476
Schamhorst, cruiser, 1042
Scheldt, the, 640, 876
Schism, the Great, 663, 687, 710, 1113
Schleswig-Holstein, 968
Schmalkalden, 760
Schmalkaldic league, 760
Schmidt, Dr., 696
Schmit, E., 695
Scholars, 348
Schools, monastic, 624 ; public, 820 ag.
Schurtz, Dr., 484, 584, 588
Schwill, 602
Schwyz (shvits), 753, 754, 1112
Science, 341 sqq., 601, 730 sqg.; exploita^
tion of, 927-29, 945; and religion, 507,
732, 733, 957
Science and Art Department, 964
Scientific research, 729
Soilly Isles, 162
Soind (sind), 674
Scipio, Lucius, 413
Scipio, P. Cornelius, 408
Scipio (sip' i 6) , Africanus, the Elder,
409-13, 415, 417, 429, 468
Scipio Africanus Minor, 409, 415, 431
Scipio Nasioa (nd si' kd), 415, 431
ScorpioUj 21, 24
Scorpion, sea. (See Sea-scorpion)
Scotch colonists, 82
Scotland, 45, 82, 83, 461, 605, 630, 664,
720-22, 734, 735, 777-78, 795, 809,
960, 997
Soott, Michael, 6S3
Scott, Sir Walter, 1011
Scriptures, Arabic, 588; Christian, 547,
554
Scythia (sith' i d) and the Scythians, 190,
202, 240, 268-69, 275-78, 320, 330,
332, 422, 436-40, 462, 472-77, 486,
630, 635, 672, 688, 910, 1104
Sea, depth of, 3
Sea fights, ancient, .285
Sea power, ancient, 321-23, 592
Sea trade, 740
Seamanship, early, 155-59, 162, 164,
208, 214, 741 sqq.
Seas, primordial, 6, 7, 18, 19
Sea-scorpion, 8, 20
Seasons, the, 97, 99
Seaweed, 19
Secunderabad (se kiin d^r d bad'), 331
Sedan, 972, 1050
Seeley, Sir J. R., 700-1
Seine, the, 107
Seleucia, 542
Seleucid (se lu' sid) dynasty, 337-38,
367, 371, 413, 452, 494, 537, 1105
Seleucus (sc? lu' kHs) I, 337, 369
Selfishness, 365
Selim (salem'), sultan, 685
Seljuks (seljooks'), 599, 636-40, 667,
674, 1111. (See also Turks)
Semites (and Semitic peoples), 115,
120-26, 157, 164, 172, 180, 185, 206,
240, 567, 586, 666, 707, 726, 797
Semitic languages, 120, 121, 129
Seneca (sen' i kd), 422
Senegal river, 164
INDEX
1165
Sennacherib (se nak'^rib), 139-40, 146,
189, 229, 1103
Sepulchre, Holy, 624, 630, 639, 642 .
Sequoias (a^kwoi'dz), 37 '
Serapeum (ser & p5' lim), 351-52, 708
Serapia (sera' pis), 351-62,' 367, 466,
511-13, 523, 1108
Serbia (and the Serbs); "'457, 481, 527,
537, 589, 682, 920, 1025, 1033--34,
1043-45
Serbian language, 238
Serfdom, 521
Sergius III, Pope, 626
Serpent in religion, 100, 113, 953
Servants, domestic, 207
Set, Egyptian god, 180
Seton-Karr, Sir H. W., 107
Seven Years' War, 833, 1117
Severus (s^ ver' tfs), Septimus, 456
Seville, 744
Sex, 102
Shale, 5
Shalmaneser (shai mS, ne' z&), 139, 229
Shamanism, 675, 689, 705
Shamash, 188
Shang dynasty, 142, 150
Shanghai (sh&ng hi'), 996
Shang-tung, 994
Shaving the face, 333
Sheep in lake dwellings, 83
Shekel, 165
Sheldonian Theatre, 819
Shell Age, supposed, 51
SheUfish, 8
Shells, as ornaments, 67
Shem, 110
Shen-si, 553
Sherbro Island, 163
Sherman, General, 970
Shi Hwang-ti, emperor, 142, 151, 195,
470, 473-74, 765, 1105
Shiites (she' Its), 592-94, 628, 635-36,
645, 694, 8(J5
Shiloh, 223
Shimei, 225
Shimonoseki (she' mii no sek' S) , Straits
of, 993
Shipbuilding, 631, 926
Ships, earliest, 165-59
Shishak (shi' shak), 146, 227
Shrines, 177, 263
Siam (and Siamese), 148, 561
Siamese language, 123
Siberia, 76, 123, 125, 462, 474, 552, 674,
691, 809
Siberian railway, 994, 1026
SioiUes, Two, 755, 907
Sicily, 158, 162, 253, 324, 381, 386-87,
401-3, 412, 417, 428, 435, 482, 630,
632, 642, 651-54, 662, 739, 896, 918,
967, 1103
Sickles, earthenware, 135
Siddhattha Gautama (sid hat' t'ha goii'-
tama). (See Buddha)
Sidon, 158, 162, 208, 218, 228, 279, 322-25
Sieyes (syayes'), 898
Sign-language, 117
Sikhs (seks), 806, 981
SUbury, 83, 105
Silesia, 673, 801
Silk, 214, 459, 789
Silver as standard of value, 16S
Sin, idea of, 746
Sind, 981
Singan, 561-65, 1109
Singing, 86
Sinope (si no' pe), 542
Siris, 288
Sirius (sir' i lis) , a star, 181
Sirmium, 488
Sistrum, 352
Siva, 374
Sivapithecus (si vd pi the' kiits), 50
SiwaUk HiUs, 50
Skins, use of, as clothing, 64, 85 ; in-
flated, as boats, 155
Slate, 5
Slavery (and slaves), 197-202, 256-61,
307, 389, 422-23, 459, 612, 552, 598,
691, 705, 748, 824, 832, 850 aqq. ; Ameri-
can, 886, 1119
Slavic tribes', 456
Slavonian dialect, 238
Slavonic languages, 635
Slavs, 537, 689", 613; ■621; 626, 635, 689
Sloth, 153
Smelting, 78, 80
Smerdis, 274
Smilodon (sndi'Io doii), 43
Smith, Elliot, 112, 113 '
Smith; Rt. Hon. F. E., 958; 1021
Smith, John, 828
Smith, Wbrthington, 59
Smithsonian Institution, 930
Smyrna, 643
Sobiesky (so byes' ki), John (John III),
799, 1116
Social Contract, 843, 863
Social Democrats, 1010
Social War, the, 433, 1106
SociaUsm, 855, 885-91, 940 aqq., 1119
Society, beginning of humaii, 248
Socrates (sok'rd tez), 85, 298i 3Q0-2,
308, 368, 375' ; ~ -■ .. ; '
1166
INDEX
Boderini, 750-62, 1114
Boisaons, 612
Solar year, 99
Solent, the, 107
Splferino- (sol f^ re' no), battle of, 968,
1119
Soli^; ensign, 772
Sblttmon, King) 146, 224-32, 493, 1003
Solbn-, 166, 273
SoiUtr^l 70, 94 .. .
Soiuteto Agrfi ^67, 746
Somalllktta) 107; i26, 163
Somalia; language of, 121
Soihersetti J., 852
Somttie, ih<e, 107: battle of, 882, 1050
Sonnino, Baron, 1068
Sonoy, Governor, 772
SocSthaayers, 2S6
Sophists, Greek, 298
Sophocles (sof o klez), 298
Soudan, tribes of, 88
Soul, the, 102
South Africa, 417, 986, 997, 999, 1013,
1019, 1120
South Sea Islanders, 61
Southampton, 736
Soviets (sov'yets), 946, 1048, 1060
Sowing, and burial, 100; and human
sacrifice, 104
Space, 1, 12
Spain, 71, 81, 111, 127, l42, 158, 162,
381-83, 612, 536, 606, 664, 700, 718,
735, 796; history {Carthaginians in),
404-10; (Ramana in); 412, 416,
429-32, 439, 452, 468, 494; {Vandala
in), 481, 484, 1108; {Under the Goihs),
527, 621, 1108; (Modri in), 492, 589,
624, 628, 750, 794, 1110: (Wh-mth
cent.), 742-43, 749-58, 762-63, (17ft-
18ft cent.), 7'67-73, 780, 783, 789, 794,
801, 826, 1029; (19ft cent), 839, 916,
972, 1029; overseas dominions, 154,
744, 747; colonial expansion, 802-3,
830, 833, 839, 853, 916, 977, 996
Spanish language, 118, 491, 718, 747
Sparta, 254-58, 281-84, 291, 297-99,
312, 320
Spartacus (spar' td kfis), 435, 1106
Species, 13, 17, 21, 107, 109
Speech, development of, 54, 59, 93, 99,
118, 129, 168-70
Sphinx, the, 181
Spices, Oriental, 806
Spiders, early, 24
Spinnerets of spiders, 24
Stloleto (Spb la' t6); S3l
Spotel, 20
Spy, 54
Stag, 73, 75
Stagira (stajir'd), 301
Stalky and Co., 957
StambUl (stam bool'), 685
Stamp Acts', 835
Stamps Used for signatures, 347
Stars') I, 3; and early man, 97
■Stat^i fHe; 420m-'i 4S0, 752, 795, 950
Stalt&^GfenerSli-the, 785, 856-57, 1118
Steani! .iise of i .§2'4, ,^Sl'9
Steamboat; intV'dWction of the, 924
StSam-ehgine, in'veiltion of, 825, 923,
924
Steam-hamflier, 926
Steam-power; 825
Steel, 214, 326
Stegos'auriis (StSg d saw' riis), 27
Stein, Freiherr von, 907
Steno; 953
Stettin, 736
Stilicho (stil'ikS), 482, 488, 1108 ,
Stockholm, 1048
Stockmar, Baron, 965
Stoicism, 304, 307, 510
Stone, early use of, 242
Stone, Major-Gen., 1084
Stone Age, 50, 52, 55, 60, 77, 83, 144,
159, 215
Stouehenge, 82, 83, 113, 142, 183, 242,
1103
Stopes, Dr. Marie, 25
story-telling', primitive, 99
Strabo (stra' ho), 10
Strafford, Earl of, 777-78, 1015
Strata, geological, 6
Strikes in ancient Rome, 391
Stuart dynasty, 781
Sturdee, Aditiiral, 1042
Styria, 755
Subiaco (soo be a' ko), 531
Submarine warfare, 1042, 1049
Sudan, the, 997
Sudras, 211, 564
Suetonius (su e to' ni Ha), 454, 520
Suevi (swe' vl), 482, 527, 1108
Suez, 121, 143, 163
Suffering, cause of, 361
Suffrage, manhood, 843
Sugar, 602
Suleiman (soo la man'), the Masnifioent,
589, 594, 843, 845, 1110, H14
Sulla, 434-35, 441, 1106
Siilphuric acid, 602
Siilpicius (s)il pish' i lis), 434
Sultan, Tutkish, 492
Sumatra, 680
INDEX
1167
Sumer (inol. Sumeria and Sumerians),
108, 135, 142, 148, 153-57, 172, 177,
185-91, 196, 201, 215, 235, 257, 268,
313
Sumerian language and writing, 103,
129, 135, 136, 144, 558
Sun, the, 1, 2; worship, 100, 180, 352
Sunday, 511, 708; schools, 933
Sung dynasty, 555-57, 561, 668, 675, 1111
Sunuites, 636, 645, 696
"Sunstone," 112
Superior Lake, 171
Surrey, 864
Susa, 135, 202, 274-78, 285-86, 307, 327-
28, 332
Sussex, 53, 605, 824
Suy dynasty, 553
Swabians, 611
Swastika (swSs' ti kdi), 113, 246
Sweden (and the Swedes), 75, 480, 526,
616, 720, 761, 780, 785, 793-94, 799,
802, 806, 816, 829, 911, 919
Swedish language, 238
Swift, Dean, 1017
Swimming-bladder, 21
Swine, keeping of, 736
Switzerland (including the Swiss), 80, 82,
87, 132, 152, 241, 491, 634, 759, 786,
827, 864, 873, 883, 891, 903, 917, 1114,
1118
Swords, bronze, 101
Sykes, Ella and Percy, 475
Sykes, Sir Mark, 540, 572, 595, 682, 685
Syndicalism, 945 *
Syracuse, 299
Syria (and Syrians), 75, 126, 139, 140,
146, 193, 207, 218, 229-30, 274, 289,
322, 537, 540-44, 567, 570-73, 585,
636, 643, 661, 667, 674, 690, 691, 708,
967, 1025
Syrian language, 548, 600
Tabriz, 680
Tabu, 95
Tachov (tak' hov), 711
Tadpoles, 22, 39
Taft, President, 1062, 1066
Tagus valley, 762
Tain, an Irish epic, 251
Tai-tsung, 554, 561, 566-67, 667, 1109
Talleyrand, 913
TalUen, 880
Tammany, 426
Tancred, 644
Tang dynasty, 550-57, 561, 667, 1109
Tangier, 1009
Tanks, 1038, 1044, 1084-So
Tannenberg, 1038
Taoism (ta' 6 izm), 372, 376
Tapir, 43
Tarentum, 386, 408
Tarim (tarem), valley, 147, 1106
Tarpeian Rock, 393
Tarquins, the, 384, 390
Tartar language, 123, 679
Tartars (and Tartary), 330, 548, 669,
673, 679, 689, 690, 795, 809, 816
Tashkend, 562
Tasmania (and Tasmanians), 62, 108,
746, 979; language, 129
Taurus mountains, 337-38, 589, 593,
599, 607, 683, 769
Taxation, 206, 260
Taxilla,.564
Tayf (tJ'if),573
Taylor, H. O., 729
Tea, 551, 838
Teeth, 32, 52, 54, 65
Telamou (tel' d miSn) , battle of, 404-7,
1105
Tfelegraph, electric, 925
Tel-el-Amama (tel el amar' na), 146,
165, 188, 227
Telescope, invention of the, 732
Tell, William, 754
Tempe (tem' pe), vale of, 283
Temples, 137, 177-85, 192, 255
Ten Thousand, Retreat of the, 1104
Ten Tribes, 139
Teneriffe, 780
Tennyson, Lord, 246, 964
Testament, Old, 85, 217, 230, 233; New,
85
Tetrabelodon (tet id, bel' S d<5n), 41
Teutonic Knights, 816
Teutonic tribes, 231, 439, 456, 491, 1108
Texel, 876
Textile fabrics, Arab, 602
Thames, the, 107, 739, 786, 1036
Thatcher, 602
Thebes (thebz) and Thebans, 215, 254,
284, 313-14, 1103
Themistocles (th^ mis' to klez) , 263, 285
Theocrasia, 351, 352, 466, 512, 708
Theodora, Empress, 536
Theodora, sister of Marozia, 626
Theodore of Tarsus, 614, 1110
Theodoric (the od' d rik) the Goth, 487,
527, 602, 1108
Theodosius (the 6 do' shi Us), the Great,
482, 524, 1108
Theriodont (the' ri o dont) reptiles, 40
Theriomorpha, 28
1168
INDEX
Thermopylae (tWr mop' i le) , 283, 1104
Theseus (th§'sus), 161
Thespians, 284
Thessalus (thes' & life), 388
Thessaly (and Thessahans) , 326, 387, 441
Thibet, 371, S49
Thien Shan, 474, 562
Thiers (tyar), 801
Thirty Tyrants, 299
Thirty Years' War, 786, 812, 839, 1034
Thomas, Albert, 965
Thompson, R. Campbell, 135
Thor, 613
Thoth-lunus (thoth'lu' nfe), Egyptian
god, 182
Thothmes (thoth'mez), 145, 228, 267,
342, 1102
Thought and research, 304, 949
Thrace (thras) and Thraoians, 253, 277-
78, 288, 314, 320, 337, 585, 638
Three Teachings, the, 375
Throwing sticks, 69
Thucydides (thu sid' i dez), 292
Thuringians, 616
Tian Shan, 474
Tiber, river, 382, 391, 606 •
Tiberius Caesar, 452, 496, 507, 1106
Tibet, 162> 376, 473, 613. 561, 674, 688,
811, 990, 1120
Tibetan language, 123
Tides, 5
Tiger, sabre-toothed, 43, 48, 52, 57
Tiglath Pileser (tig' l&th pi le'z6r) I, 138,
142; III, 229, 268, 1103
Tigris, 132, 138, 156, 181, 202, 537, 568,
667
Tii, Queen, 192
Tille, Dr., 741
TiUy, 746
Tilsit, Treaty of, 907, 1118
Time, 12, 98, 99, 1102
Times, the, 941
Timou (tl' mdn), 444
Timurlane, 692, 697, 809, 1113
Tin, ,2, 79, 80, 163, 214, 927
Tinstone, 79
Tiryns (tl'rinz), 254
Titanothere (ti' tdn S thSr), 39, 43
Titus, 255, 495, 1106
Tobacco, 240, 828, 831
Toe, great, 48
To^kin, 994, 996
Torr, Cecil, 157, 200
Tortoises, 28, 32
Torture, use of, 882
Tory Party, 1013
Toulon, 878, 893-94
Toura, 736
Towers of Silence, 546
Town life, European, 735 sqq.
Townshend, General, 1044
Township, primitive, 197
Tracheal tubes, 21
Trachodon (tr&k' o don), 30
Trade, early, 88, 154r-67, 199, 205-
routes, 737; sea, 739
Trade Unions, 419, 463, 943
Tradition, 42, 94-99, 174
Trafalgar, battle of, 905, 1118
Trajan (tra'jdn), 454-59, 538, 568, 1106
Transmigration of souls, 363-65
Transport, 924, 1083
Transubstantiation, 709
Transvaal, 958, 986, 1120. (iSee also
South Africa)
Transylvania, 455, 673
Trasimere, Lake, 408
Travels, early, 166, 924
Trees, 22
Trench warfare, 1037
Trent, Council of, 724, 1115
Tresas, 284
Trevithick, 924
Trianon, the, 863
Tribal system, 24, 688
TriloWtes, 8, 18
Triceratops (tri ser' d tops), 30
Trieste, 971
Trigonometry, 602
Trinidad, 998
Trinilr 61, 52
Trinitarians, 615, 523
Trinity, doctrine of the, 499, 516, 693
Trinity College, Dublin, 1016
TripoU, 840, 997, 1025, 1121'
Trojans, 161, 382
Troltsoh, 525
Trotsky, 947
Troy, 161, 254, 268, 283, 381
Troyes (trwa), battle of, 486, 1108
Trumpet, bronze, 101
Tsar, title of, 492
Tshushima (tsoo she' ma). Straits of, 994
Ts'i (dynasty and state), 151,. 439
Ts'in (dynasty and state), 1 1, 195
Tuaregs, 121, 152
Tuileries, 866-66, 872-73
Tulip tree, 37
Tunis, 403, 848, 996
Turanian language. (See TJral-Alt^io
languages) .. " ,.
Turanians, 125, 548, 594, 632, 682 ' .
Turkestan, 120, 126, 152, 214, 267,
328, 330, 366, 371, 474, 479, 525, 539,
INDEX
1169
547, 548, 563, 583, 589, 598, 636, 670,
674, 681, 687, 691, 811, 1105, 1109
Turkey, 762, 909, 920, 967, 974, 1007,
1024, 1025, 1043-44, 1045, 1077, 1120.
(See diso Turks)
Turkey, Great, 674
Turkhau Pasha, 1070
Turkish fleet, 700; language and litera^
ture, 123, 548, 682; peoples, 470, 494,
548, 636, 699, 811 (see also Turks);
princes, 684
Turko-Finnic language, 635
TurkcKFinnish peoples, 486, 527
Turkomans, 479, 691, 811, 997
Turks, 330, 478, 539, 547-48, 563, 589,
699, 667, 681, 1109; and the Crusades,
642 «gg.;. Ottoman, 536, 681 sqq., 697,
699, 740-41, 749, 752, 755, 759-63,
783, 792, 799, 896, 1114-16; Seljuk,
636-39, 674, 682, 1111
Turtles, 28, 32
Tuscany, 779, 787, 792
Tusculum, 405
Tushratta, King, 138, 146, 188
Twelve Tables, the, 392, 419
Tyler, Watt, 715, 1113
Tylor, E. B., 102
Tyndale, Bible of, 221
Tyrannosaurua (ti rSn 6 saw' tUs) , 29
Tyrants, 258
Tyre, 142, 157, 162, 202, 206, 208, 218,
232, 279, 321-26, 331, 401, 495-96,
704, 795
Tyrol, 832, 1080
U
Uganda, 152, 616, 985
XJhud, battle of, 514
Uigurs (we'goorz), 670
Uintathere (u in' t& ther), 39, 43
Ukraine Cossacks, 809
Ukrainia (and Ukrainians), 689. 795
Uhn, 1118
Ulster, 32, 960, 1014-23
Uncleanness, 96, 101
"Unionist" party, 1019
United Pro-vinoes. (See Holland)
United Service Institution, 1081, 1084
United States, 473, 840, 844; constitu-
tion, 840 sg., 859, 916, 1117; political
and social conditions, 209, 258, 424,
839, 842, 883, 886, 924, 933, 1065;
slavery in, 749, 839; Declaration of
Independence, 839, 1117; treaty with
Britain, 840-41, 1117; Civil War, 965,
1119; modem foreign policy of, 1027-
31; in Great War, 1049, 1062, 1076.
(See also America)
Universal History, the, 953
Universal law, 768
Universals, 731
Universe, 952
Universities, 601, 653, 726, 819, 927
University Commission, 964
Unterwalden (oon' ter val den) , 754
Ur, 141
Ural mountains, 119
Ural-Altaic languages, 123, 150, 239, 243;
people, 487
Uranus (Or' d nils) ,2
Urban II, Pope, 637, 638, 648, 662, 724,
1111
Urban VI (pope), 663, 1113
Uri, 754
Urns, 86
Uruk, 141
Urumiya (fl ril me' ya) , lake, 268
Ussher, Bishop, 953
Usury, 207
Utica (u'tikd), 158
Utopias, 300, 302, 766
Utrecht, 770
Vaisyas (vis' yaz), 211
Valais, 491
Valenciennes, 1050
Valens, Emperor, 481
Valerian, Emperor, 458, 538, 1107
ValladoUd, 762, 764
Valmy, battle of, 875, 1118
Valona, 1045
Value, 164, 165
Van, 268
Vandals, 467, 481, 484, 492, 527, 589.
1107
Varangians (vd r&u' ji Anz), 631
Vareunes (varen'), 868-71, 1118
Varro, 408
Vasa (va' ad) , Gustava, 784
Vatican, 622, 649, 663
Vedas (va'ddz), 243, 251, 806
Vegetarians, 251, 356
Vegetation, 26
Veil (vS'j^),384, 393, 417
Vendue, 879, 894
Venetia, 968, 971, 1049
Venezuela, 1029
Venice (and the Venetians), 641, 645,
660, 678, 680, 685, 700, 736, 739, 741,
895, 918, 1049, 1112, 1113, 1118
1170
INDEX
Venus, goddess, 613
Venus, planet, 2, 3
Vera Cruz, 970
Verbal tradition, 175
Verde, Cape, 1114
Verde, Cape, Islands, 744
Verdun, 873, 875, 1032
Verona, 736, 876
Versailles, 788, 792, 798, 858-68, 972,
1002, 1071; Peace of, 1076 sqq., 1121
Verulam, Lord. (See Bacon, Sir Francis)
Vespasian (ves pa' zhi dn), 456, 463, 496,
1106
Vessels of stone, 159
Vesuvius, 435
Via Flaminia, 404
Victims, human, 512
Victor Emmanuel, 968, 1119
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 783,
963, 965, 981, 1007, 1011, 1119, 1120
Victory, flagship, 905
Vienna, 760, 799, 914, 1009, 1114, 1116;
Congress of, 913, 916, 918, 963, 1118
Vigilius, 486
Vikings (vik'iugs), 617, 631
Village, the, 82, 198
Vilna, 924, 1041
Vimeiro (ve ma' e ro), 907
Vinci (vin' che) , Leonardo da, 461, 953,
1044, 1114
Vindhya (vind' ya) mountains, 357
Vinland, 741
Virgil, 382, 460
Virginia, 829, 831, 835, 839, 843, 847,
851, 852, 970
Virtue, 298
Visfe, 1035
Vishnu, 249, 374
Visigoths, 476, 481, 486, 527, 1108
Vistula, 673
Vitellus, 456, 1106
Vitloria, ship, 744
Viviparous animals, 40
Vivisection, 343, 422
Vocabulary of man, 118
Volga, 120, 126, 371, 487, 527, 816
Volscians, 392
Volta, 925
Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 791, 792, 813, 815,
956, 1116
Votes, 707
Vowels, 254
Voyages, 162-63
Vulgate, the, 527
W
Waobs, 199, 714
Wagons, 243
Waldenses, 656, 657
Waldo, 656, 657
Wales, 155, 527, 605, 735
Walid (wa led' ) I, 593, 1110
Walid II, 595, 1110
Wallace, William, 735
Wallenstein, 786
Walpole, Sir Robert, 781
War, Great. (See Great War)
War and warfare, 198, 242, 312, 314, 785,
959, 1000, 1005, 1036
War of American Independence, 839 sgq.
Warsaw, 920
Warwick, Lord, 777
Washington, 450, 827, 847, 900, 930, 970
Washington, George, 839, 847, 849, 853,
897
Water, 19, 824
Waterloo, 914, 1118
Watt, James, 824, 923, 929
Weale, Putnam, 990
Weapons, 58, 80, 85, 151, 1103
Weaving, 78
Wedmore, Treaty of, 619
Wei dynasty, later, 554
Wei-hai-wei (wa hi wa'), 989, 994
Wellesley, Marquis. (See Mornington,
Lord)
Wellesley, Sir Arthur. (See Wellington,
Duke of)
Wellington, Duke of, 907, 914
Wells, J., 392, 403
Welsh, the, 795
Welsh language, 238 .
Were-wolf, 93
Wessex, 605, 616, 1110
Western civilization, 557
Westminster, 397, 420, 737, 776, 780, 782
Westphalia, Peace of, 773, 786, 827
Whales, 28
Wheat, 84, 131
Whigs, 835
White Man's Burthen, 988
Whitehall, 777, 779, 1081
Wilberforce, Bishop, 955
Wilhelm I, German Emperor, 1007
Wilhelm II, German Emperor, 624,
1006-11, 1120
Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Germany,
1010
Will and obedience, 707
William I, etc.. Emperors of Germany.
(See Wilhelm)
William the Conqueror, 347, 631, 1111
WUliam III, Prince of Orange, 781. 1016,
1116
INDEX
1171
William IV, King of England, 783
WilUam the Silent, 770
Williams, Harold, 635
Williams, S. Wells, 470
Wilson, W., President of U.S.A., 776,
1062, 1064, 1065-72, 1076, 1080
Wiltshire, 83
Winckler, H., 141, 290-94
Windsor, 777
Wine, 829
Wiriath, 857
Wisby, 736
Witchcraft, 96, 316
Wittenberg, 758, 1114
Wolfe, General, 805, 1117
Wolsey, Cardinal, 757
Wolves, 52, 383
Women, 193, 260, 579, 721, 847
Wood, 57
Wood blocks, for printing, 718
Woollen industry, 824
Workmen, 943
World (geographical), 287, 344, 744,
747; (political), 340, 827, 919, 922,
976
World, Old, nursery of mankind, 76
World dominion (and unity), 340, 341,
637, 654, 796, 797, 802, 811
Worms, Diet of, 758, 1114
Worship, 100
Worth (vert), 972
Wright, W. B., 74, 90
Writing, 137, 144, 154, 160, 168-80,
244, 245, 359, 558, 624
Written word, 232
Wu Ti, 475, 1106
Wu Wang, 150
Wilrtemberg, 75, 971
Wyoliffe, John, and his followers, 659,
664, 709, 715, 758, 819, 821, 1113
Xavibr (za' vi er) , Francis, 991
Xenophon, 290, 299, 301, 306
Xerxes (zgrk' sez), 282-89, 306, 327, 470,
682, 1104
Y
Yanbu, 554
Yang-chow, S79
Yang-tse valley, 151, 470
Yang-tse-kiang (yang tsa ke ang') , 147
Yarkand, 549, 1107
Yarmuk, 684, 1109
Year, Moslem, 574; solar, 99
Yeast, 242
Yedo bay, 992
Yeliu Chutsai, 672
Yemen, 539, 568, 570
York, 458, 776
Yorkshire, 713
Yorktown, 839
Ypres (e'pr), 770, 1037, 1039
Yuan Chwang, 470, 561 sgg., 588, 598,
666, 680, 1109
Yuan dynasty, 675, 677, 688, 1118
Yucatan, 154, 747
Yueh-Chi, 474, 548, 561, 1105
Yugo-Slavia (and Yugo-Slavs), 537. 681,
918 sg., 1009, 1079
Yuste (yoos' ta), 762, 764
Zadok, 225
Zaid (za'id), 577
Zainib, 577
Zama (za' md), 409-12, 415, 1105
Zanzibar, 743
Zara, 645
Zarathustra (za id thoos' trd). (See Zo-
roaster)
Zebedee, 503
Zeid (zid), a slave, 572
Zend Avesta, 545
Zenobia, 464, 538, 1107
Zeppelin raids, 1041
Zeus (zus), 338, 351
Zeuxis (zuk' sis), 312
Zimbabwe (zem bab' wa), 984
Zinc, 80
Ziska, 710
Zodiac, 183
ZoUverein (tsol' fer In) , 1012
Zoroaster (z6 ro §.s' ter) and Zoroastri-
anism, 462, 465, 538, 545, 547, 570,
681, 594
Zoroastrian language, 547
Zosimus (zos' i miis), 521
Zulus, 164, 313
Zyp, the, 771
IJMr. WELLS has also written the
following novels:
LOVE AMD ME. LEWISHAM
KIPPS
MR. POLLY
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
ANN VERONICA
TONO BUNGAY
MARRIAGE
BEALBY
THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HABMAN
THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT
MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH
THE SOUL OF A BISHOP
JOAN AND PETER
THE UNDYING FIRE
T[ The following fantastic and imagina-
tive romances:
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
THE TIME MACHINE
THE WONDERFUL VISIT
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
THE SEA LADY
THE SLEEPER AWAKES
THE FOOD OF THE GODS
THE WAR IN THE AIR
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON
IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET
THE WORLD SET FREE
And numerous Short Stories now collected in
One Volume under the title of
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
Ti A Series of books upon Social, Reli-
gious and Political questions:
ANTICIPATIONS (1900)
MANKIND IN THE. MAKING
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
A MODERN UTOPIA
THE FUTURE IN AMERICA
AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE
WORLD
WHAT IS COMING?
WAR AND THE FUTURE
IN THE FOURTH YEAR
GOD THE INVISIBLE KING
RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS
THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION
U And two little books about children's
play, called:
FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS
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