Part 17 (2/2)
The Romans had meantime been advancing. We may neglect the older Italian culture, as it had far less to do with the making of Italy and Europe than the influence of the east. By about 500 B.C. Rome was a small kingdom with a primitive civilisation, busy in subduing the neighbouring tribes who threatened its security, and unconsciously gathering the seeds of culture which some of them contained. By about 300 B.C. the vigour of the Romans had united all the tribes of Italy in a powerful republic, and wealth began to acc.u.mulate at Rome. Not far to the east was the glittering civilisation of Greece; to the south was Carthage, a busy centre of commerce, navigation, and art; and from the Mediterranean came processions of s.h.i.+ps bringing stimulating fragments and stories of the h.o.a.ry culture of the east. Within another two hundred years Rome annihilated Carthage, paralysed and overran Greece, and sent its legions over the Asiatic provinces of the older empires. By the beginning of the Christian Era all that remained of the culture of the old world was gathered in Rome. All the philosophies of Greece, all the religions of Persia and Judea and Egypt, all the luxuries and vices of the east, found a home in it. Every stream of culture that had started from the later and higher Neolithic age had ended in Rome.
And in the meantime Rome had begun to disseminate its heritage over Europe. Its legions poured over Spain and Gaul and Germany and Britain.
Its administrators and judges and teachers followed the eagles, and set up schools and law-courts and theatres and baths and temples. It flung broad roads to the north of Britain and the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Under the shelter of the ”Roman Peace” the peoples of Europe could spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands.
Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation.
Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed. The physical deterioration of the citizens of Rome was a small matter in its fall. Fiscal and imperial blunders loosed the frame of its empire. The resources were still there, but there was none to organise and unify them. The imperial system--or chaos--ruined Rome. And just when the demoralisation was greatest, and the Teutonic tribes at the frontiers were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system. A fierce and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe, threw themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes upon the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but there was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation underfoot, and Europe pa.s.sed into the Dark Ages.
One more application of the evolutionary principle, and we close the story. The ”barbarians”--the Goths and Vandals and their Germanic cousins--were barbaric only in comparison with the art and letters of Rome. They had law, polity, and ideals. European civilisation owes elements to them, as well as to Rome. To say simply that the barbarians destroyed the inst.i.tutions of Rome is no adequate explanation of the Dark Ages. Let us see rather how the Dark Ages were enlightened.
It is now fully recognised that the reawakening of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was very largely due to a fresh culture-contact with the older civilisations. The Arabs had, on becoming civilised, learned from the Nestorians, who had been driven out of the Greek world for their heresies, the ancient culture of Greece. They enshrined it in a brilliant civilisation which it inspired them to establish. By the ninth century this civilisation was exhibited in Spain by its Moorish conquerors, and, as its splendour increased, it attracted the attention of Europe. Some Christian scholars visited Spain, as time went on, but the Jews were the great intermediaries in disseminating its culture in Europe. There is now no question about the fact that the rebirth of positive learning, especially of science, in Europe was very largely due to the literature of the Moors, and their luxury and splendour gave an impulse to European art. Europe entered upon the remarkable intellectual period known as Scholasticism. Besides this stimulus, it must be remembered, the scholars of Europe had at least a certain number of old Latin writers whose works had survived the general wreck of culture.
In the fifteenth century the awakening of Europe was completed. The Turks took Constantinople, and drove large numbers of Greek scholars to Italy. Out of this catastrophe issued the great Renaissance, or rebirth, of art, science, and letters in Italy, and then in France, Germany, and England. In the new intellectual ferment there appeared the great artists, great thinkers and inventors, and great navigators who led the race to fresh heights. The invention of printing alone would almost have changed the face of Europe. But it was accompanied by a hundred other inventions and discoveries, by great liberating and stimulating movements like the Reformation, by the growth of free and wealthy cities, and by the extension of peace over larger areas, and the concentration of wealth and encouragement of art which the growth and settlement of the chief European powers involved. Europe entered upon the phase of evolution which we call modern times.
The future of humanity cannot be seen even darkly, as in a gla.s.s. No forecast that aspires beyond the immediate future is worth considering seriously. If it be a forecast of material progress, it is rendered worthless by the obvious consideration that if we knew what the future will do, we would do it ourselves. If it is a forecast of intellectual and social evolution, it is inevitably coloured by the intellectual or social convictions of the prophet. I therefore abstain wholly from carrying the story of evolution beyond realities. But I would add two general considerations which may enable a reflective reader to answer certain questions that will arise in his mind at the close of this survey of the story of evolution.
Are we evolving to-day? Is man the last word of evolution? These are amongst the commonest questions put to me. Whether man is or is not the last word of evolution is merely a verbal quibble. Now that language is invented, and things have names, one may say that the name ”man” will cling to the highest and most progressive animal on earth, no matter how much he may rise above the man of to-day. But if the question is whether he WILL rise far above the civilisation of to-day, we can, in my opinion, give a confident answer. There is no law of evolution, but there is a fact of evolution. Ten million years ago the highest animal on the earth was a reptile, or, at the most, a low, rat-like marsupial.
The authorities tell us that, unless some cosmic accident intervene, the earth will remain habitable by man for at least ten million years. It is safe to conclude that the man of that remote age will be lifted above the man of to-day as much as we transcend the reptile in intelligence and emotion. It is most probable that this is a quite inadequate expression of the future advance. We are not only evolving, but evolving more rapidly than living thing ever did before. The pace increases every century. A calm and critical review of our development inspires a conviction that a few centuries will bring about the realisation of the highest dream that ever haunted the mind of the prophet. What splendours lie beyond that, the most soaring imagination cannot have the dimmest perception.
And the last word must meet an anxiety that arises out of this very confidence. Darwin was right. It is--not exclusively, but mainly--the struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step of future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least we may say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as in the past, upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against tooth, is a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed necessary to evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. But a new thing has come into the story of the earth--wisdom and fine emotion. The processes which begot animal types in the past may be superseded; perhaps must be superseded. The battle of the future lies between wit and wit, art and art, generosity and generosity; and a great struggle and rivalry may proceed that will carry the distinctive powers of man to undreamed-of heights, yet be wholly innocent of the pa.s.sion-lit, blood-stained conflict that has. .h.i.therto been the instrument of progress.
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