) and lop-sidedness in the followers (who become
). The latter defect is illustrated from cases of penalized minorities, e.g. the Jews, and from aberrations of modern athleticism;THE intelligible units of historical study are not nations or periods but ‘societies’. An examination of English history, chapter by chapter, shows that it is not intelligible as a thing-in-itself but only as a part of a larger whole. This whole contains parts (e.g. England, France, the Netherlands) that are subject to identical stimuli or challenges but react to them in different ways. An example from Hellenic history is introduced to illustrate this. The ‘whole’, or ‘society’, to which England belongs is identified as Western Christendom; its extension in space at different dates is measured, and its origins in time. It is found to be older, but only slightly older, than the articulation of its parts. Exploration of its beginnings reveals the existence of another society which is now dead, namely the Graeco- Roman or Hellenic society, to which ours is ‘affiliated’. It is also obvious that there are a number of other living societies—the Orthodox Christian, the Islamic, the Hindu and the Far Eastern societies—and also certain ‘fossilized’ relics of, at this stage, unidentified societies such as the Jews and the Parsees.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify, define, and name all the societies—or, rather, civilizations, for there are also primitive or non-’civilized’ societies—which have come into existence so far. The first method of search to employ is to take the existing civilizations already identified, examine their origins, and see if we can find civilizations now extinct to which these are affiliated as Western Christendom has been found to be affiliated to the Hellenic civilization. The marks of this relationship are (a ) a universal state (e.g. the Roman Empire), itself the outcome of a time of troubles, followed by (b ) an interregnum, in which appear (c ) a Church and (d ) a Völkerwanderung of barbarians in an heroic age. The Church and the Volkerwanderung are the products, respectively, of the internal and external ‘proletariats’ of a dying civilization. Employing these clues we find that:
The Orthodox Christian society is, like our own Western society, affiliated to the Hellenic society.
Tracing the Islamic society back to its origins we find that it is itself a fusion of two originally distinct societies, the Iranic and the Arabic. Tracing these back to their origin we find, behind a thousand years of ‘Hellenic intrusion’, an extinct society, to be called the Syriac society.
Behind the Hindu society we find an Indic society.
Behind the Far Eastern society we find a Sinic society.
The ‘fossils’ are found to be survivals from one or other of the extinct societies already identified.
Behind the Hellenic society we find the Minoan society, but we observe that the Hellenic society, unlike the other affiliated societies so far identified, did not take over a religion discovered by the internal proletariat of its predecessor. It might therefore be regarded as being not strictly affiliated to it.
Behind the Sinic society we find a Shang culture.
Behind the Indic society we find an Indus culture that stands in some relation to a contemporary Sumeric society.
As offspring of the Sumeric society we find two more societies, a Hittite and a Babylonic.
The Egyptiac society had no predecessor and no successor.
In the New World we can identify four societies: the Andean, the Yucatec, the Mexic, and the Mayan.
Thus we have, in all, twenty-one specimens of ‘civilizations’; and, if we divide the Orthodox Christian society into Orthodox-Byzantine (in Anatolia and the Balkans) and Orthodox-Russian, and the Far Eastern into Chinese and Japanese-Korean, we have twenty-three.
Civilizations have at any rate one point in common, that they are a separate class from primitive societies. These latter are very much more numerous but also very much smaller individually.
The erroneous idea that there is only one civilization, namely our own, is examined and dismissed; also the ‘Diffusionist’ theory that all civilization had its origin in Egypt.
Civilizations are, relatively speaking, a very recent phenomenon in human history, the earliest of them having originated no more than six thousand years ago. It is proposed to treat them as ‘philosophically contemporaneous’ members of a single ‘species’. The half-truth ‘History does not repeat itself is exposed as constituting no valid objection to the procedure proposed.
These are ‘three different methods of viewing and presenting the objects of our thought and, among them, the phenomena of human life’. The differences between these three techniques are examined and the uses of Science and Fiction in the presentation of the theme of History are discussed.
Of our twenty-three ‘civilized’ societies sixteen are affiliated to previous civilizations but six have emerged direct from primitive life. Primitive societies existing to-day are static, but it is clear that they must originally have been dynamically progressive. Social life is older than the human race itself; it is found among insects and animals, and it must have been under the aegis of primitive societies that sub-man rose to the level of man—a greater advance than any civilization has as yet achieved. However, primitive societies, as we know them, are static. The problem is: why and how was this primitive ‘cake of custom’ broken?
The factor that we are looking for must be some special quality in the human beings who started civilizations or some special features of their environment at the time or some interaction between the two. The first of these views, namely, that there is some innately superior race, e.g. the Nordic Race, in the world, which is responsible for the creation of civilizations, is examined and rejected.
The view that certain environments, presenting easy and comfortable conditions of life, provide the key to an explanation of the origin of civilizations is examined and rejected.
The fallacy in the two views already examined and rejected is that they apply the procedure of sciences which deal with material things to a problem that is really spiritual. A survey of the great myths in which the wisdom of the human race is enshrined suggests the possibility that man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort.
Before the dawn of civilization the Afrasian Steppe (the Sahara and the Arabian Desert) was a well-watered grassland. The prolonged and progressive desiccation of this grassland presented its habinitants with a challenge to which they responded in various ways. Some stood their ground and changed their habits, thus evolving the Nomadic manner of life. Others shifted their ground southwards, following the retreating grassland to the tropics, and thus preserved their primitive way of life—which they are still living today. Others entered the marshes and jungles of the Nile Valley and—faced with the challenge that it presented—set to work to drain it, and these evolved the Egyptiac civilization.
The Sumeric civilization originated in the same way and from the same causes in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and the Indus culture in the Indus Valley.
The Shang culture originated in the Yellow River Valley. The nature of the challenge which started it is unknown, but it is clear that the conditions were severe rather than easy.
The Mayan civilization arose in answer to the challenge of a tropical forest; the Andean in answer to that of a bleak plateau.
The Minoan civilization arose in answer to the challenge of the sea. Its founders were refugees from the desiccating coasts of Africa who took to the water and settled in Crete and other Aegean islands. They did not, in the first instance, come from the nearer mainlands of Asia or Europe.
In the cases of the affiliated civilizations the challenge that brought them into existence must have come primarily not from geographical factors but from their human environment, i.e. from the ‘dominant minorities’ of the societies to which they are affiliated. A dominant minority is, by definition, a ruling class that has ceased to lead and has become oppressive. To this challenge the internal and external proletariats of the failing civilization respond by seceding from it and thereby laying the foundations of a new civilization.
The explanation of the geneses of civilizations given in the last chapter rests on the hypothesis that it is difficult rather than easy conditions that produce these achievements. This hypothesis is now brought nearer to proof by illustrations taken from localities where civilization once flourished but subsequently failed and where the land has reverted to its original condition.
What was once the scene of the Mayan civilization is now again tropical forest.
The Indic civilization in Ceylon flourished in the rainless half of the island. This is now entirely barren, though the ruins of the Indic irrigation system remain as evidence of the civilization that once flourished here.
The ruins of Petra and Palmyra stand on small oases in the Arabian Desert.
Easter Island, one of the remotest spots in the Pacific, is proved by its statues to have been once a centre of the Polynesian civilization.
New England, whose European colonists have played a predominant part in the history of North America, is one of the bleakest and most barren parts of that continent.
The Latin townships of the Roman Campagna, till recently a malarial wilderness, made a great contribution to the rise of the Roman Power. Contrast the favourable situation and poor performance of Capua. Illustrations are also drawn from Herodotus, the Odyssey, and the Book of Exodus.
The natives of Nyasaland, where life is easy, remained primitive savages down to the advent of invaders from a distant and inclement Europe.
A series of pairs of contiguous environments is adduced. In each case the former is the ‘harder’ country and has also had the more brilliant record as an originator of one form or other of civilization: the Yellow River Valley and the Yangtse Valley; Attica and Boeotia; Byzantium and Calchedon; Israel, Phoenicia, Philistia; Brandenburg and the Rhineland; Scotland and England; the various groups of European colonists in North America.
We find that ‘virgin soil’ produces more vigorous responses than land which has already been broken in and thus rendered ‘easier’ by previous ‘civilized’ occupants. Thus, if we take each of the affiliated civilizations, we find that it has produced its most striking early manifestations in places outside the area occupied by the ‘parent’ civilization. The superiority of the response evoked by new ground is most strikingly illustrated when the new ground has to be reached by a sea-passage. Reasons for this fact are given, and also for the phenomenon that the drama develops in homelands and epic in overseas settlements.
Various examples from Hellenic and Western history are given to illustrate the point that a sudden crushing defeat is apt to stimulate the defeated party to set its house in order and prepare to make a victorious response.
Various examples show that peoples occupying frontier positions, exposed to constant attack, achieve a more brilliant development than their neighbours in more sheltered positions. Thus the ‘Osmanlis, thrust up against the frontier of the East Roman Empire, fared better than the Qaramanlis to the east of them; Austria had a more brilliant career than Bavaria thanks to being exposed to the prolonged assault of the Ottoman Turks. The situation and fortunes of the various communities in Britain between the fall of Rome and the Norman Conquest are examined from this point of view.
Certain classes and races have suffered for centuries from various forms of penalization imposed upon them by other classes or races who have had the mastery over them. Penalized classes or races generally respond to this challenge of being excluded from certain opportunities and privileges by putting forth exceptional energy and showing exceptional capacity in such directions as are left open to them—much as the blind develop exceptional sensitiveness of hearing. Slavery is perhaps the heaviest of penalizations, but out of the hordes of slaves imported into Italy from the Eastern Mediterranean during the last two centuries B.C. there arose a ‘freedmen’ class which proved alarmingly powerful. From this slave world, too, came the new religions of the internal proletariat, among them Christianity.
The fortunes of various groups of conquered Christian peoples under ‘Osmanli rule are examined from the same standpoint—particularly the case of the Phanariot Greeks. This example and that of the Jews are used to prove that so-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.
Can we say simply: the sterner the challenge the finer the response? Or is there such a thing as a challenge too severe to evoke a response? Certainly some challenges which have defeated one or more parties that have encountered them have ultimately provoked a victorious response. For example, the challenge of expanding Hellenism proved too much for the Celts but was victoriously answered by their successors the Teutons. The ‘Hellenic intrusion’ into the Syriac world evoked a series of unsuccessful Syriac responses—the Zoroastrian, the Jewish (Maccabaean), the Nestorian, and the Monophysite—but the fifth response, that of Islam, was successful.
None the less, it can be proved that challenges can he too severe: i.e. the maximum challenge will not always produce the optimum response. The Viking emigrants from Norway responded splendidly to the severe challenge of Iceland but collapsed before the severer challenge of Greenland. Massachusetts presented European colonists with a severer challenge than ‘Dixie’ and evoked a better response, but Labrador, presenting a severer challenge still, proved too much for them. Other examples follow: e.g. the stimulus of blows can be too severe, especially if prolonged, as in the effect of the Hannibalic War on Italy. The Chinese are stimulated by the social challenge involved in emigrating to Malaya but are defeated by the severer social challenge of a white man’s country, e.g. California. Finally, varying degrees of challenge presented by civilizations to neighbouring barbarians are reviewed.
This section is a continuation of the argument of the last example in the preceding section. Two groups of barbarians on the frontiers of Western Christendom in the first chapter of its history were so stimulated that they began to evolve rival civilizations of their own which were, however, nipped in the bud, namely the Far Western Celtic Christians (in Ireland and Iona) and the Scandinavian Vikings. These two cases are considered and the consequences that might have ensued if these rivals had not been swallowed and absorbed by the Christian civilization radiating from Rome and the Rhineland.
On Western Christendom the effect of this impact was wholly good, and Western culture in the Middle Ages owed much to Muslim Iberia. On Byzantine Christendom the impact was excessive and evoked a crushing re-erection of the Roman Empire under Leo the Syrian. The case of Abyssinia, a Christian ‘fossil’ in a fastness encircled by the Muslim World, is also noticed.
It might seem that, once a civilization had been brought into existence, its growth would be a matter of course; but this is not so, as is proved by the record of certain civilizations which have achieved existence but then failed to grow. The fate of these arrested civilizations has been to encounter a challenge on the border-line between the degree of severity which evokes a successful response and the greater degree which entails defeat. Three cases present themselves in which a challenge of this kind has come from the physical environment. The result in each case has been a tour de force on the part of the respondents which has so engrossed the whole of their energies that they have had none left over for further development.
The Polynesians achieved the tour de force of inter-insular voyaging between Pacific islands. It eventually defeated them and they relapsed into primitive life on their several now isolated islands.
The Eskimos achieved an extraordinarily skilled and specialized annual cycle adapted to life on the shores of the Arctic.
The Nomads achieved a similar annual cycle as herdsmen on the semi-desert Steppe. The ocean with its islands and the desert with its oases have many points in common. The evolution of Nomadism during periods of desiccation is analysed. It is noted that hunters become agriculturists before taking the further step of becoming Nomads. Cain and Abel are types of the agriculturist and the Nomad. Nomad incursions into the domains of civilizations are always due either to increased desiccation ‘pushing’ the Nomad off the Steppe or to the breakdown of a civilization creating a vacuum which ‘pulls’ the Nomad in as a participant in a Völkerwanderung.
The challenge to which the Ottoman system was a response was the transference of a Nomad community to an environment in which they had to rule sedentary communities. They solved their problem by treating their new subjects as human flocks and herds, evolving human equivalents of the sheep-dogs of the Nomad in the form of a slave ‘household’ of administrators and soldiers. Other examples of similar Nomad empires are mentioned, the Mamlūks for instance; but the ‘Osmanli system surpassed all others in efficiency and duration. It suffered, however, like Nomadism itself, from a fatal rigidity.
The Spartan response to the challenge of over-population in the Hellenic World was to evolve a tour de force which in many respects resembles that of the ‘Osmanlis, with the difference that in the Spartan case the military caste was the Spartan aristocracy itself; but they too were ‘slaves’, enslaved to the self-imposed duty of holding down permanently a population of fellow-Greeks.
Eskimos and Nomads, ‘Osmanlis and Spartans have two features in common: specialization and caste. (In the former pair, dogs, reindeer, horses, and cattle supply the place of the human slave castes of the ‘Osmanlis.) In all these societies the human beings are degraded by specialization as boat-men, horse-men or warrior-men to a subhuman level in comparison with the all-round men, the ideal of Pericles’ funeral speech, who alone are capable of achieving growth in civilization. These arrested societies resemble the societies of bees and ants, which have been stationary since before the dawn of human life on Earth. They also resemble the societies portrayed in ‘Utopias’. A discussion of ‘Utopias’ follows, in which it is shown that ‘Utopias’ are generally the products of civilizations in decline and are attempts, in so far as they have a practical programme, to arrest the decline by pegging the society at its actual level at the moment.
Growth occurs when the response to a particular challenge is not only successful in itself but provokes a further challenge which again meets with a successful response. How are we to measure such growth? Is it to be measured by an increasing control over the society’s external environment? Such an increasing control can be of two kinds: increasing control over the human environment, which normally takes the form of conquest of neighbouring peoples, and increasing control over the physical environment, which is expressed in improvements in material technique. Examples are then adduced to show that neither of these phenomena—neither political and military expansion nor improvement in technique—is a satisfactory criterion of real growth. Military expansion is normally a result of militarism, which is itself a symptom of decline. Improvements in technique, agricultural or industrial, show little or no correlation with real growth. In fact, technique may well be improving at a time when real civilization is declining, and vice versa.
Real progress is found to consist in a process defined as ‘etherialization’, an overcoming of material obstacles which releases the energies of the society to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material. The nature of this etherialization is illustrated by examples from Hellenic and modern Western history.
Two traditional views are current as to the relation of society to the individual: one represents a society as simply an aggregate of ‘atomic’ individuals, and the other regards the society as an organism and the individuals as parts of it, inconceivable except as members or ‘cells’ of the society to which they belong. Both these views are shown to be unsatisfactory, and the true view is that a society is a system of relations between individuals. Human beings cannot be themselves without interacting with their fellows, and a society is a field of action common to a number of human beings. But the ‘source of action’ is in the individuals. All growth originates with creative individuals or small minorities of individuals, and their task is twofold: first the achievement of their inspiration or discovery, whatever it may be, and secondly the conversion of the society to which they belong to this new way of life. This conversion could, theoretically, come about in one or other of two ways: either by the mass undergoing the actual experience which has transformed the creative individuals, or by their imitation of its externals—in other words, by mimesis . In practice the latter is the only alternative open in the case of all but a small minority of mankind. Mimesis is ‘a short cut’, but it is a route by which the rank and file, en masse , can follow the leaders.
The action of the creative individual may be described as a twofold motion of withdrawal-and-return: withdrawal for the purpose of his personal enlightenment, return for the task of enlightening his fellow men. This is illustrated from Plato’s parable of the Cave, from Saint Paul’s analogy of the seed, from the Gospel story and from elsewhere. It is then shown in practical action in the lives of great pioneers: Saint Paul, Saint Benedict, Saint Gregory the Great, the Buddha, Muhammad, Machiavelli, Dante.
Withdrawal followed by Return is also characteristic of the sub-societies which form the constituent parts of ‘societies’ in the proper sense. The period in which such sub-societies make their contributions to the growth of the societies to which they belong is preceded by a period in which they are markedly withdrawn from the general life of their society: for example, Athens in the second chapter of the growth of the Hellenic Society; Italy in the second chapter of the growth of the Western Society; and England in its third chapter. The possibility that Russia may be going to play a similar role in the fourth chapter is considered.
Growth as described in the foregoing chapter clearly involves differentiation between the parts of a growing society. At each stage some parts will make an original and successful response; some will succeed in following their lead by mimesis; some will fail to achieve either originality or mimesis, and succumb. There will also be increasing differentiation between the histories of different societies, and it is obvious that different societies have different predominating characteristics, some excelling in art, some in religion, others in industrial inventiveness. But the fundamental similarity in the purposes of all civilizations is not to be forgotten. Each seed has its own destiny, but the seeds are all of one kind, sown by the same Sower, in the hope of the same harvest.
Of twenty-eight civilizations that we have identified (including the arrested civilizations in the list) eighteen are dead and nine of the remaining ten—all, in fact, except our own—are shown to have already broken down. The nature of a breakdown can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a merely ‘dominant’ minority; an answering withdrawal of allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole. Our next task is to discover the causes of such breakdowns.
Some schools of thought have maintained that the breakdowns of civilizations are due to factors outside human control.
(i) During the decline of the Hellenic Civilization writers, both pagan and Christian, held that the decay of their society was due to ‘cosmic senescence’; but modern physicists have relegated cosmic senescence to an unbelievably distant future, which means that it can have had no effect on any past or present civilizations.
(ii) Spengler and others have maintained that societies are organisms, with natural transitions from youth and maturity to decay, like living creatures; but a society is not an organism.
(iii) Others have held that there is something inevitably dysgenic in the influence of civilization on human nature, and that after a period of civilization the race can only be restored by an infusion of barbaric ‘new blood’. This view is examined and dismissed.
(iv) There remains the cyclic theory of history, as found in Plato’s Timaeus , Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, and elsewhere. This probably originated in Chaldaean discoveries concerning our own solar system, and the vastly wider vision of modern astronomy has deprived the theory of its astronomical basis. There is no evidence in favour of the theory and much against it.
The argument of this chapter is the converse of that in chapter X (i), where it was shown that an increase in control over the physical environment, as measured by improvement in technique, and an increase in control over the human environment, as measured by geographical expansion or military conquest, are not the criteria or causes of growth. Here it is shown that the decline of technique and the geographical contraction caused by military aggression from outside are not the criteria or causes of breakdowns.
Several examples are adduced to show that the decay of technical achievement has been a result, not a cause, of breakdown. The abandonment of the Roman roads and of the Mesopotamian irrigation system was a result, not a cause, of the breakdowns of the civilizations that had formerly maintained them. The oncoming of malaria which is said to have caused breakdowns of civilizations is shown to have been a result of the breakdowns.
Gibbon’s thesis that ‘the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ was due to ‘Barbarism and Religion’ (i.e. Christianity) is examined and rejected. These manifestations of the external and internal proletariats of the Hellenic society were consequences of a breakdown of the Hellenic society that had already taken place. Gibbon does not begin his story far enough back; he mistakes the Antonine period for a ‘golden age’ when it was really an ‘Indian summer’. Various examples of successful aggression against civilizations are passed in review, and it is shown that in every case the successful aggression occurred after the breakdown.
Aggression against a society still in process of growth normally stimulates it to greater effort. Even when a society is already in decline, aggression against it may galvanize it into activity and give it a further lease of life. (The editor adds a note on the meaning of ‘breakdown’ as a technical term used in this Study.)
The only way in which the uncreative majority can follow the leadership of the creative leaders is by mimesis, which is a species of ‘drill’, a mechanical and superficial imitation of the great and inspired originals. This unavoidable ‘short cut’ to progress entails obvious dangers. The leaders may become infected with the mechanicalness of their followers, and the result will be an arrested civilization; or they may impatiently exchange the Pied Piper’s pipe of persuasion for the whip of compulsion. In that case the creative minority will become a ‘dominant’ minority and the ‘disciples’ will become a reluctant and alienated ‘proletariat’. When this happens the society enters on the road to disintegration. The society loses capacity for self-determination. The following sections illustrate ways in which this comes about.
Ideally each new social force released by creative minorities should beget new institutions through which it can work. Actually it works more often than not through old institutions designed for other purposes. But the old institutions often prove unsuitable and intractable. One of two results may follow: either the breakup of the institutions (a revolution) or their survival and the consequent perversion of the new forces working through them (an ‘enormity’). A revolution may be defined as a delayed and consequently explosive act of mimesis; an enormity as a frustration of mimesis. If the adjustment of institutions to forces is harmonious, growth will continue; if it results in a revolution, growth becomes hazardous; if it results in an enormity, breakdown may be diagnosed. Then follow a series of examples of the impact of new forces upon old institutions, the first group being impacts of the two great new forces at work in the modern Western Society:
the impact of Industrialism on slavery, e.g. in the Southern States of the U.S.A.;
the impact of Democracy and Industrialism on war, as seen in the intensification of warfare since the French Revolution;
the impact of Democracy and Industrialism on the parochial state, as shown in the hypertrophy of nationalism and the failure of the free trade movement in the Modern Western World;
the impact of Industrialism on private property, as illustrated by the rise of Capitalism and Communism;
the impact of Democracy on education, as illustrated by the rise of the Yellow Press and of Fascist dictatorships;
the impact of Italian efficiency on Transalpine governments, as illustrated (except in England) by the emergence of despotic monarchies;
the impact of the Solonian revolution on the Hellenic city-states, as illustrated by the phenomena of tyrannis, stasis , and hegemony;
the impact of Parochialism on the Western Christian Church, as illustrated by the Protestant Revolution, the ‘Divine Right of Kings’, and the eclipse of Christianity by patriotism;
the impact of the Sense of Unity on Religion, as illustrated by the rise of bigotry and persecution;
the impact of Religion on Caste, as shown in the Hindu Civilization;
the impact of Civilization on the Division of Labour, showing itself as esotericism in the leaders (who become
) and lop-sidedness in the followers (who become
). The latter defect is illustrated from cases of penalized minorities, e.g. the Jews, and from aberrations of modern athleticism;
the impact of Civilization on Mimesis, which is directed no longer, as in primitive societies, towards the traditions of the tribe, but towards pioneers. Too often the pioneers selected for imitation are not creative leaders but commercial exploiters or political demagogues.
History shows that the group which successfully responds to one challenge is rarely the successful respondent to the next. Various examples are given, and it is shown that this phenomenon corresponds with certain fundamental postulates of both Greek and Hebrew thought. Those who have succeeded once are apt, on the next occasion, to be found ‘resting on their oars’. The Jews, having responded to the challenges of the Old Testament, are worsted by the challenge of the New. The Athens of Pericles dwindles into the Athens of Saint Paul. In the Italian Risorgimento the centres which have responded in the Renaissance prove ineffective, and the lead is taken by Piedmont, which has had no part in previous Italian glories. South Carolina and Virginia, leading states of the U.S.A. in the first and second quarters of the nineteenth century, have failed to make a recovery from the Civil War comparable with that of the previously undistinguished North Carolina.
Idolization of the city-state proved, in the later stages of Hellenic history, a snare into which the Greeks fell but not the Romans. A ‘ghost’ of the Roman Empire caused the breakdown of the Orthodox Christian society. Illustrations are also given of the hampering effects of the idolization of kings, parliaments, and ruling castes, whether bureaucracies or priesthoods.
Illustrations from biological evolution show that perfect ‘technique’ or perfect adaptation to an environment often proves an evolutionary ‘cul de sac’, and that the less specialized and more ‘tentative’ organisms show greater survival power. The amphibians are contrasted favourably with the fishes, and the rat-like ancestors of man with their contemporaries, the giant reptiles. In the industrial sphere the success of a particular community in the first stages of a new technique, e.g. in the invention of the paddle-steamer, makes that community slower than others to adopt the more efficient screw-propeller. A brief review of the history of the art of war from David and Goliath to the present day shows that, at each stage, the inventors and beneficiaries of one innovation proceed to rest on their oars and allow the next innovation to be made by their enemies.
The three previous sections have presented illustrations of ‘resting on one’s oars’, which is the passive way of succumbing to the nemesis of creativity. We now pass on to the active form of aberration, summarized in the Greek formula 
(surfeit, outrageous behaviour, and destruction). Militarism is an obvious example. The reason why the Assyrians brought ruin on themselves was not because, like the victors reviewed at the end of the previous chapter, they allowed their armour to ‘rust’. From a military standpoint they were continuously and progressively efficient. Their ruin came because their aggressiveness exhausted them—besides rendering them intolerable to their neighbours. The Assyrians are an example of a military frontier province turning its arms against the interior provinces of its society. The similar cases of the Austrasian Franks and Timur Lenk are also examined, and other examples are cited.
A theme similar to that of the preceding paragraph is illustrated from a non-military sphere by the example of the Hildebrandine Papacy, an institution which failed after raising itself and Christendom from the depths to the heights. It failed because, intoxicated by its own success, it was tempted to make illegitimate use of political weapons in pursuit of inordinate aims. The controversy over Investiture is examined from this standpoint.
Is disintegration a necessary and invariable consequence of breakdown? Egyptiac and Far Eastern history show that there is an alternative, namely petrifaction, which was also nearly the fate of the Hellenic civilization and may be the fate of our own. The outstanding criterion of disintegration is the schism of the body social into three fractions: dominant minority, internal proletariat, and external proletariat. What has already been said about these fractions is recapitulated, and the plan of the following chapters is indicated.
The apocalyptic philosophy of Karl Marx proclaims that the class war will be followed, after the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, by a new order of society. Apart from Marx’s particular application of the idea, this is what actually happens when a society falls into the tripartite schism already noticed. Each of the fractions achieves a characteristic work of creation: the dominant minority a universal state, the internal proletariat a universal church, and the external proletariat barbarian war-bands.
Though militarists and exploiters are conspicuous among the characteristic types in dominant minorities, there are also nobler types: the legists and administrators who maintain the universal states, and the philosophic inquirers who endow societies in decline with their characteristic philosophies, e.g. the long chain of Hellenic philosophers from Socrates to Plotinus. Examples are cited from various other civilizations.
The history of the Hellenic society shows an internal proletariat recruited from three sources: citizens of the Hellenic states disinherited and ruined by political or economic upheavals; conquered peoples; victims of the slave-trade. All alike are proletarians in feeling themselves ‘in’ but not ‘of the society. Their first reactions are violent, but these are followed by ‘gentle’ reactions culminating in the discovery of ‘higher religions’ such as Christianity. This religion, like Mithraism and its other rivals in the Hellenic world, originated in one of the other ‘civilized’ societies conquered by Hellenic arms. The internal proletariats of other societies are examined and similar phenomena observed: e.g. the origins of Judaism and Zoroastrianism in the internal proletariat of the Babylonic society were similar to those of Christianity and Mithraism in the Hellenic society, though, for reasons given, their later development was different. The transformation of the primitive Buddhist philosophy into the Mahayana provided a ‘higher religion’ for the Sinic internal proletariat.
Abundant evidence can be adduced of the existence of an internal proletariat here—among other things, the existence of an ‘intelligentsia’ recruited from the proletariat as an agent of the dominant minority. The characteristics of an intelligentsia are discussed. The internal proletariat of the modern Western society has, however, shown itself markedly unfertile in the production of new ‘higher religions’, and it is suggested that this is due to the continued vitality of the Christian Church from which Western Christendom was born.
So long as a civilization is growing, its cultural influence radiates into and permeates its primitive neighbours to an indefinite distance. They become a part of the ‘uncreative majority’ which follows the creative minority’s lead. But when a civilization has broken down the charm ceases to act, the barbarians become hostile, and a military frontier establishes itself which may be pushed far afield but ultimately becomes stationary. When this stage has been reached, time works on the side of the barbarians. These facts are illustrated from Hellenic history. Violent and gentle responses by the external proletariat are pointed out. The pressure of a hostile civilization transforms primitive fertility religions of the external proletariat into religions of the Olympian ‘divine war-band’ type. The characteristic product of triumphant external proletariats is epic poetry.
Their history is reviewed and violent and gentle responses of the external proletariats are illustrated. Owing to the overwhelming material efficiency of the modern Western society, barbarism of the historic type has almost disappeared. In two of its remaining strongholds, Afghanistan and Sa’udi Arabia, native rulers are protecting themselves by adopting imitations of Western culture. However, a new and more atrocious barbarism has become rampant in the ancient centres of Western Christendom itself.
Dominant minorities and external proletariats are handicapped if they have an alien inspiration. For example, universal states founded by alien dominant minorities (such as British India) are less successful in making themselves acceptable than indigenous universal states like the Roman Empire. Barbarian war-bands provoke much more stubborn and passionate opposition if, like the Hyksos in Egypt and the Mongols in China, their barbarism is tinged with the influence of an alien civilization. On the other hand the ‘higher religions’ produced by internal proletariats generally owe their attractiveness to an alien inspiration. Nearly all the ‘higher religions’ illustrate this fact.
The fact that the history of a ‘higher religion’ cannot be understood unless two civilizations are taken into account—the civilization from which it has derived its inspiration and the civilization in which it has taken root—shows that the assumption on which this Study has hitherto been based—the assumption that civilizations, taken in isolation, are ‘intelligible fields of study’—begins at this point to break down.
When a society begins to disintegrate, the various ways of behaviour, feeling, and life characteristic of individuals during the growth stage are replaced by alternative substitutes, one (the former in each pair) passive, the other (the latter) active.
Abandon and self-control are alternative substitutes for creativity; truancy and martyrdom for the discipleship of mimesis.
The sense of drift and the sense of sin are alternative substitutes for the élan which accompanies growth; the sense of promiscuity and the sense of unity for the ‘sense of style’ which is the subjective counterpart of the objective process of differentiation which accompanies growth.
On the plane of life there are two pairs of alternative variations upon the movement towards a transfer of the field of action from the macrocosm to the microcosm which underlies the process previously described as etherialization. The first pair of alternatives—archaism and futurism—fail to achieve this transfer and breed violence. The second pair—detachment and transfiguration—succeed in making the transfer and are characterized by gentleness. Archaism is an attempt to ‘put back the clock’, futurism an attempt at a short cut to an impossible millennium on Earth. Detachment, which is a spiritualization of archaism, is a withdrawal into the fortress of the soul, an abandonment of ‘the world’. Transfiguration, which is a spiritualization of futurism, is the action of the soul which produces the ‘higher religions’. Examples of all four ways of life and of their relations to each other are given. Finally, it is shown that some of these ways of feeling and life are primarily characteristic of souls in dominant minorities, others of souls in proletariats.
The sense of drift is due to a feeling that the whole World is ruled by Chance—or Necessity, which is shown to be the same thing. The wide range of the belief is illustrated. Certain predestinarian religions, e.g. Calvinism, are productive of remarkable energy and confidence, and the cause of this, at first sight, curious fact is considered.
Whereas the Sense of Drift normally acts as an opiate, the Sense of Sin should be a stimulus. The doctrines of Karma and ‘Original Sin’ (which combine the ideas of sin and determinism) are discussed. The Hebrew Prophets furnish the classic case of the recognition of sin as being the true, though not the obvious, cause of national misfortunes. The teaching of the Prophets was taken over by the Christian Church and was thus introduced to a Hellenic world which for many centuries had been unconsciously preparing itself to receive it. The Western society, though inheriting the Christian tradition, seems to have discarded the sense of sin, which is an essential part of that tradition.
This is a passive substitute for the sense of style characteristic of civilizations in course of growth. It manifests itself in various ways, (a) Vulgarity and Barbarism in Manners . The dominant minority shows itself prone to ‘proletarianization’, adopting the vulgarities of the internal and the barbarisms of the external proletariat, until, in the final stage of dissolution, its way of life has become indistinguishable from theirs, (b) Vulgarity and Barbarism in Art is the price commonly paid for the abnormally wide diffusion of the art of a disintegrating civilization, (c) Lingue Franche . The intermingling of peoples leads to confusion and mutual competition of languages; some of them spread as ‘lingue franche’, and in every case their expansion entails a corresponding debasement. Many examples are examined as illustrations, (d) Syncretism in Religion . Three movements are to be distinguished: the amalgamations of separate schools of philosophy; the amalgamations of separate religions, e.g. the dilution of the religion of Israel by combination with the neighbouring cults, which was opposed with ultimate success by the Hebrew Prophets; and the amalgamation or syncretism of philosophies and religions with one another. Since philosophies are a product of dominant minorities and ‘higher religions’ a product of internal proletariats, the interaction here is comparable with that illustrated in (a ) above. Here, as there, the proletarians move some way towards the position of the dominant minority, but the dominant minority moves a far greater distance towards the position of the internal proletariat. For example, the Christian religion employs for its theological exegesis the apparatus of Hellenic philosophy, but this is a small concession compared with the transformation undergone by Greek philosophy between the ages of Plato and of Julian. (e) Cuius regio eius religio? This section is a digression arising out of the case of the philosopher-emperor Julian considered at the end of the previous section. Can dominant minorities make up for their spiritual weakness by using political force to impose the religion or philosophy of their choice? The answer is that, subject to certain exceptions, they will fail, and the religion which seeks the support of force will grievously injure itself thereby. The one apparently striking exception is the case of the spread of Islam, and this is examined and shown to be not really as much of an exception as it at first appears to be. An opposite formula, religio regionis religio regis , is nearer the truth: a ruler who, from cynicism or conviction, adopts the religion of his subjects prospers thereby.
This is the ‘active’ antithesis of the passive feeling of promiscuity. It expresses itself materially in the creation of universal states, and the same spirit inspires the concepts of an omnipotent law or an omnipresent godhead pervading and ruling the Universe. These two concepts are examined and illustrated. In the latter connexion the career of Yahweh, the ‘jealous god’ of the Hebrews, is traced from his beginnings as the ‘jinn’ of a Sinaitic volcano to his eventual sublimation as the historic vehicle for a purified and exalted conception of the One True God who is worshipped by the Christian Church, and an explanation is offered of his triumph over all his rivals.
This is an attempt to escape from an intolerable present by reconstructing an earlier phase in the life of a disintegrating society. Ancient and modern examples are given, the modern including the Gothic Revival and the artificial revival, for nationalistic reasons, of a variety of more or less extinct languages. Archaizing movements generally either prove sterile or transform themselves into their opposite, namely:
This is an attempt to escape the present by a leap into the darkness of an unknown future. It involves a scrapping of the traditional links with the past, and is in fact revolutionism. In art it expresses itself as iconoclasm.
As archaism may fall into the gulf of futurism, so futurism may rise to the heights of transfiguration. In other words, it may abandon the forlorn attempt to find its Utopia on the terrestrial plane and may seek it in the life of the soul, untrammelled by time and space. In this connexion the history of the post-Captivity Jews is examined. Futurism expressed itself in a series of suicidal attempts to create a Jewish Empire on Earth, from Zerubbabel to Bar Kokaba; transfiguration, in the establishment of the Christian religion.
Detachment is an attitude which finds its most uncompromising and exalted expression in a philosophy professing to represent the teaching of the Buddha. Its logical conclusion is suicide, for real detachment is possible only for a god. The Christian religion, on the other hand, proclaims a God who has voluntarily abandoned a detachment which it was clearly within His power to enjoy. ‘God so loved the World….’
Of the four ways of life here examined, transfiguration is the only one which presents a thoroughfare, and it does so by a transference of the field of action from the macrocosm to the microcosm. This is true also of detachment, but, whereas detachment is only a withdrawal, transfiguration is a withdrawal and return: a palingenesia, not in the sense of a rebirth of another example of an old species but in the sense of a birth of a new species of society.
In the growth stage creative individuals lead successful responses to successive challenges. In the disintegration stage they appear as saviours of or from the disintegrating society.
These are the founders and maintainers of universal states, but all the works of the sword prove ephemeral.
These are the archaists and futurists. These, too, take to the sword and suffer the swordsman’s fate.
This is Plato’s famous remedy. It fails on account of the incompatibility between the detachment of a philosopher and the coercive methods characteristic of political potentates.
Various imperfect approximations fall by the way and Jesus of Nazareth alone conquers death.
Disintegration proceeds not uniformly but by an alternation of routs and rallies. For example, the establishment of a universal state is a rally after the rout of a time of troubles, and the dissolution of a universal state is the final rout. As there is found to be usually one rally followed by a rout in the course of a time of troubles and one rout followed by a rally in the course of a universal state, the normal rhythm seems to be rout–rally–rout–rally–rout–rally–rout: three-and-a-half beats. This pattern is exemplified in the histories of several extinct societies, and then applied to the history of our own Western Christendom with a view to ascertaining what stage in its development our society has reached.
As differentiation is the mark of growth, so standardization i-the mark of disintegration. The chapter concludes with an indicas tion of the problems standing over for examination in the forthcoming volumes.
The course of the work down to the present point is summarized, and reasons are given for proceeding to a further examination, in successive Parts, of universal states, universal churches, and barbarian war-bands. Are universal states to be regarded simply as the final phases of civilizations or as prologues to further developments?
The citizens of universal states not only, in most cases, welcome their establishment but believe them to be immortal, and continue in this belief, not only when the universal state is obviously on the verge of dissolution but after it has disappeared, with the result that the institution reappears as a ‘ghost’ of its former self, e.g. the Roman Empire of the Graeco-Roman world as the Holy Roman Empire in the affiliated society of Western Christendom. An explanation may be found in the fact that a universal state marks a rally after a time of troubles.
The institutions of a universal state fail in the long run to preserve its existence, but at the same time serve the purposes of other institutions, more particularly, the purposes of the higher religions of the internal proletariats.
The universal state, by imposing order and uniformity, provides a medium of high conductivity, not only geographically between what had previously been separate parochial states, but also socially between the different classes of society.
The tolerance which the rulers of universal states find necessary for their own maintenance favours the spread of higher religions, as is illustrated by the common idea (expressed, for example, in Milton’s Nativity Ode) that the Roman Empire was providentially ordained for the benefit of the Christian Church. Such toleration is not, however, universal or absolute. At the same time this tolerance, in the form of anti-militarism, will prove advantageous to aggressive outsiders—barbarians or neighbouring civilizations.
Communications . Roads, sea routes, and their orderly maintenance serve others beside the Government, e.g. Saint Paul’s use of Roman roads. Will the higher religions of the present day make similar use of the world-wide system of communications provided by modern technology? If so, they will encounter problems which can be illustrated by the histories of Christian missions in non-Christian worlds at earlier dates.
Garrisons and Colonies serve purposes of civilization as well as of government, but also contribute to the pammixia and proletarianization which mark disintegrating societies. The most obvious beneficiaries are the barbarian war-bands, but the higher religions profit also. Illustration from the development of Islam. Mithraism spread from garrison to garrison along the frontier of the Roman Empire and Christianity from colony to colony, e.g. the significance of Corinth and Lyons, both of them colonies founded by the Roman Government, in the early history of the Christian Church.
Provinces . Contrasted policies illustrated from the history of the Sinic universal state, and the use of provincial organization by a higher religion illustrated from the development of the Christian Church.
Capital Cities . Various factors influence their location. The original capital of the conquerors who found the universal state may not prove permanently suitable. A survey of capitals and their migrations follows. Some capitals which have lost their political significance remain memorable as headquarters of religions.
Official Languages and Scripts . The problems confronting the rulers of universal states in the choice of official languages and their various solutions. The currency of some languages, e.g. Aramaic and Latin, has extended, in time and space, far beyond the empires in which they originally prevailed.
Law . Here again the rulers of universal states have differed greatly from one another in the extent to which they have imposed their own systems on their subjects. The legal systems of universal states have been utilized by communities for which they were not designed, e.g. the use of Roman Law by the Muslims and by the Christian Church, and the use of the Code of Hammurabi by the authors of the Mosaic Law.
Calendars; Weights and Measures; Money . The problems of calendar-making and the close association of calendars with religion. Our methods of measuring time are still part Roman, part Sumerian, and the French Revolution failed to revolutionize them. Weights and measures: the battle of the decimal and duodecimal systems. Money: its significance, and origin in Greek cities; its subsequent spread through the absorption of these cities into the Lydian and Achaemenian empires. Paper money in the Sinic world.
Standing Armies . The Roman Army a source of inspiration to the Christian Church.
Civil Services . Civil service problems illustrated by a comparison of the policies of Augustus, Peter the Great, and the British Rāj in India. Civil service êthos in the Sinic and British Indian services. The Roman Civil Service training of three great churchmen founders of Western Christendom.
Citizenship . Extension of citizenship a privilege conferred by the rulers of universal states; it helps to produce the egalitarian conditions in which the higher religions flourish.
Since churches grow in the decaying bodies social of universal states, they are naturally regarded as cancers, both by their contemporary opponents and by a school of modern historians. Reasons are given for regarding this view as mistaken; religions tend to quicken rather than destroy the sense of social obligation in their votaries.
Each of the civilizations of the third generation alive today has as its background a church, through which it is affiliated to a civilization of the second generation. The indebtedness of the Modern Western civilization to the Christian Church is analysed. By contrast, the civilizations of the second generation were affiliated to their predecessors by other links, and this fact suggests a revision of our hitherto accepted plan of the course of history.
The rises and falls of civilizations compared with the revolutions of a wheel whose purpose is to carry forward the chariot of Religion. The steps in religious progress represented by the names of Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew Prophets, and Christ are to be seen as products, respectively, of the disintegrations of the Sumeric, Egyptiac, Babylonic, and Hellenic societies. Does the forthcoming unification of the World today offer a prospect of a further advance? If so, the higher religions now existing have difficult lessons to learn.
An admission that the record of the Churches hitherto seems to disqualify them for the role here assigned to them.
The impact of Modern Science on Religion was not the first conflict of its kind. The conflict between the early Christian Church and Hellenic philosophy had ended in a compromise, in which the philosophers accepted the ‘Truth’ of Christian Revelation provided that that Revelation clothed itself in the language of the philosophers. These outworn Hellenic garments have long since become a source of embarrassment, enlisting the Christian Church in a number of non-religious lost causes with which Christianity had no concern. Religion must surrender to Science every province of intellectual knowledge to which Science can establish a title. Religion and Science are concerned with different kinds of truth, and the modern psychology of the Subconscious Psyche throws a profound light on the nature of the difference.
The distinguishing mark of the Churches is that they all have as a member the One True God. This differentiates them from all other types of societies, and the consequences of this difference are elucidated.
An examination of the vocabulary of technical terms which the Christian Church took over from the Hellenic civilization and transformed to new uses is an example of ‘etherialization’ and suggests that the Hellenic civilization served as an overture to Christianity.
The subsequent degradation of these same technical terms when taken over for secular use by the Western society which has emerged from, and emancipated itself from, the Christian Church.
The break-away of the affiliated civilization from the Church is due to false steps on the part of the Church, and these are an inevitable consequence of the embodiment of the spirit of Religion in an ecclesiastical institution for the purpose of ‘militancy on Earth’. Three types of false step are noted: (i) a political imperialism gives reasonable cause for offence to secular authorities as an interference with the proper discharge of their own duties; (ii) the economic success which inevitably attends the discharge of economic duties ‘heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men’; (iii) the idolization by a Church of its corporate self.
Can Religion promise no Golden Age ahead at the end of the journey? In an Other World perhaps, but not in this one. Original Sin presents an unsurmountable obstacle. This World is a province of the Kingdom of God, but it is a rebellious province, and, in the nature of things, it will always remain so.
An heroic age is the social and psychological consequence of the crystallization of a limes , or military frontier, between the universal state of a disintegrating civilization and the trans-frontier barbarians. It may be likened to a barrage or dam across a valley, creating a reservoir above it, and the implications of this simile are elaborated in this and the following sections of the chapter.
The pressure on the limes , or barrage, increases as the transfrontier barbarians learn the military techniques of the civilization that they are ‘up against’. The guardians of the civilization find themselves reduced to employing barbarians themselves, and these mercenaries turn against their employers and strike at the heart of the empire.
The triumphant barbarians are inevitably ruined by their own success, being totally unfitted to cope with the crisis that they have created. None the less, in their agony, they give birth to heroic legends, and ideals of conduct such as are expressed in the Homeric Aidôs and Nemesis and the Umayyad Hilm . The heroic age of disorder ends with surprising suddenness, and is followed by a ‘dark age’ in which the forces of law and order gradually reassert themselves. The ‘interregnum’ ends, and a new civilization begins.
Hesiod’s curious scheme of ‘Ages’—Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron, in which an ‘Age of Heroes’ is inserted between the Bronze and the Iron Ages. The ‘Age of Heroes’ is, in fact, the Age of Bronze described over again, in terms not of historic fact but of Homeric fancy. The glamour of the epic poetry produced by triumphant barbarism deceived Hesiod, the poet of the ‘dark age’ following. It also deceived, for example, the forerunners of the Third Reich who glorified the ‘blond beasts’ of ‘Nordic’ barbarism. Yet the barbarians served as a link through which those civilizations of the second generation that produced higher religions were affiliated to civilizations of the first generation.
An explanation of how demonic women came to play so conspicuous a part in the tragedies of heroic ages, not only in legend but also in fact.
Civilizations, which can be studied adequately in separation from each other in their phases of genesis, growth, and breakdown, cease to be intelligible fields of study in their final phase of disintegration. Their contacts in this phase have now to be studied. Certain geographical areas—Syria and the Oxus-Jaxartes Basin—have been conspicuous in the histories of these contacts, and it is no accident that these same areas and their immediate surroundings also contain the birthplaces of the higher religions.
We propose to begin by examining the encounters between the Modern West and all the other contemporary civilizations. The modern period of the history of the Western society can be dated from two events, one just before the close of the fifteenth century of our era, and the other just after the beginning of the sixteenth. The first was the mastering of the technique of oceanic navigation; the second was the break-up of the ‘medieval’ Western Christian Commonwealth which had been put together and held together by the Papacy. ‘The Reformation’ was, of course, a stage in a long process of evolution which had begun in the thirteenth century and was not completed till the seventeenth. But ‘the Reformation’ itself overtook the same generation as had witnessed the voyages of Columbus and da Gama. We shall next step backward in time and examine the contacts of the West in its ‘medieval’ phase with the two rival societies which it encountered; and then the contacts of the Hellenic society, concluding with a glance at some earlier contacts of the same order.
In dealing with the contacts of the Modern West, we shall find that these chapters of history, though known to us, in detail up to date, are most of them—perhaps all of them—unfinished, and leave off on a note of interrogation.
(i) The Modern West and Russia . The original patrimony of Russian Orthodox Christendom had suffered from invasions and conquests at the hands of the Western parochial state of Poland-Lithuania from the fourteenth century onwards—losses not fully retrieved until A.D. 1945. The radiation of the Western culture received a welcoming (’Herodian’) response from Peter the Great, but, after two centuries of Westernization on lines approved in the West itself, the Petrine regime was tried and found wanting in the ordeal of the First World War, and was supplanted by an heretical Westernizing regime: Communism.
(ii) The Modern West and the Main Body of Orthodox Christendom . In this society, which had been politically clamped together under the rule of an alien universal state, the Ottoman Empire, modern Western culture penetrated, not from above downwards, as in Russia, but from below upwards, from the seventeenth century onwards. This might have led to the Westernizing of the Pādishāh’s empire under Phanariot Greek influence. Unfortunately nationalist movements prevailed and led to the break-up of the empire into parochial states. Russia failed to secure the leadership of these peoples, either on Pan-Orthodox or on Pan-Slav lines, though a Russian Pan-Communist regime has now been imposed upon some of them.
(iii) The Modern West and the Hindu World . Here the West imposed itself in the form of an alien universal state, replacing another alien universal state, the Muslim Mughal Raj, which had already gone into liquidation. The British Rāj employed an Indian elite, much as the Ottoman Pādishāh had employed an Eastern Orthodox Christian elite. This Indian elite eventually succeeded (where the Phanariots had failed) in Indianizing the Raj while preserving it intact, with the large exception of the secession of Pakistan. The strong and weak points of the British Indian Civil Service are discussed, and the population problem indicated as the cloud on the horizon of India’s future.
(iv) The Modern West and the Islamic World . At the opening of the Modern Western period the two sister Islamic societies, Arabic and Iranic, blocked all the overland lines of access to other parts of the World from the domains of the Western and Russian societies, but a sensational reversal of fortune to Islam’s disadvantage was about to follow. Since this change in the balance of power the rulers of a number of Muslim states have been pursuing policies of Petrine ‘Herodianism’ with varying degrees of success. The Islamic world embraces the homelands of three out of the four primary civilizations of the Old World, and the natural agricultural wealth of these areas has now been reinforced by the discovery that they are rich in oil. In consequence they have become the ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’ of a twentieth-century World in which the West and Russia are in conflict.
(v) The Modern West and the Jews . The Jewish Diaspora did not fit into the Western system of homogeneous territorial states. In an historical survey starting, not from the opening of the Modern Age of Western history, but from the beginnings of the Western Christian society itself, three phases may be noted. In the first phase (e.g . in the history of Visigothia) the Jews, though unpopular and ill-treated, were found useful, since, in that age, the Western Christians were (as Cecil Rhodes said of the Oxford dons) ‘children in finance’. In the next phase, the Western Christians had learnt to ‘be their own Jews’, and the Jews were expelled (e.g. from England in A.D. 1291). In the third phase, the Western society was financially competent enough to allow the Jews back again (e.g. to England in A.D. 1655) and to welcome their expertise in business. The Liberal age which then ensued unhappily did not prove to be the end of the story. The section concludes with examinations of Anti-Semitism and of Zionism.
(vi) The Modern West and the Far Eastern and Indigenous American Civilizations . These civilizations had had no previous contact with the West before it presented itself in its Modern phase. To all appearance (though this may be deceptive) the American civilizations were completely obliterated. The stories of the impact of the Modern West on China and on Japan run curiously parallel. In both cases there is a reception of Western culture in its Early Modern religious form, followed by rejection; and, at a later date, an impact of Late Modern Western technology. The differences between the two histories are largely accounted for by the fact that China is a vast and sprawling empire and Japan a close-knit insular community. Both societies were, at the time of writing, in eclipse: China under Communism and Japan under American control. Both, like India, were facing a population problem.
(vii) Characteristics of the Encounters between the Modern West and its Contemporaries . ‘Modern Western’ civilization is ‘middle-class’ civilization. Those non-Western societies which had developed a middle class welcomed the Modern Western êthos. If a ruler of a non-Western civilization that had no indigenous middle class wished to ‘Westernize’, he had to create an artificial middle class for his purpose in the form of an intelligentsia. These intelligentsias ultimately turn against their masters.
(i) The Flow and Ebb of the Crusades . Medieval Western Christendom entered on a period of expansion in the eleventh century, followed by a period of collapse and withdrawal on some frontiers, though not on others, two centuries later. The causes of this expansion and subsequent retreat are analysed.
(ii) The Medieval West and the Syriac World . The Crusaders and their Muslim adversaries had much in common. Norman ‘Franks’ and Saljūq Turks were, both alike, ex-barbarians recently converted to the higher religion of the society which they had entered and, in many respects, dominated. The cultural radiation of the Syriac civilization into the less advanced Western Christian society affected poetry, architecture, philosophy, and science.
(iii) The Medieval West and Greek Orthodox Christendom . There was a greater antipathy between these two Christian Societies than between either of them and its Muslim neighbours. This mutual antipathy is illustrated by citations, on the one side, from the Lombard Bishop Liutprand’s account of his mission to Constantinople and, on the other side, from the picture of the Crusaders in Anna Comnena’s History .
(i) Encounters with the post-Alexandrine Hellenic Civilization . The Hellenic civilization in this phase had encounters with every contemporary civilization in the Old World, and the results of the consequent Hellenic radiation were not worked out and completed until several centuries after the Hellenic society itself had gone into dissolution. The Hellenic culture spread far beyond the conquests of Hellenic armies, e.g. into the Sinic world.
The career of Alexander marks an expansion in Hellenic history comparable with the conquest of the Ocean in the history of Western Christendom; but, whereas the West, in its Modern phase, was emancipating itself from its chrysalis religion, Christianity, the Hellenic civilization, having had no such religious chrysalis, was becoming increasingly hungry for religion.
(ii) Encounters with the pre-Alexandrine Hellenic Civilization . A conflict between three antagonists for mastery of the Mediterranean Basin, the rivals of the pre-Alexandrine Hellenic society being the Syriac society and a fossilized remnant of the Hittite society, namely, the Etruscans. The Syriac society manifested itself both in the Phoenician sea-power and, in the later stages of the story, in the Achaemenian Empire. The most important cultural conquest of the Greeks in this period turned out to be the Hellenization of Rome, which was achieved indirectly through a previous Hellenization of the Etruscans.
(iii) Tares and Wheat . The only fruitful results of encounters between civilizations are the works of peace. A glance at contacts between civilizations of the first generation, Indic and Sinic, Egyptiac and Sumeric, follows.
On the military level, a challenge from one side leads to a challenge from the other, and this, after redressing the balance, passes over into a counter-aggression and provokes a retort in turn. A chain of such encounters between ‘East’ and ‘West’ is traced from the Achaemenian Empire’s assault on Greece down to the twentieth-century reactions of non-Western peoples against Western imperialism.
A military response is not the only one possible. Communist Russia reinforces armaments with ideological warfare. Where a military response has been impossible, or has been tried and failed, some conquered peoples have reacted by maintaining their identity as communities by an intensive cultivation of their religion. A classic case of this response is that of the Jews since their dispersion. The supreme response is the creation of a higher religion which in due course takes the conquerors captive.
The result of the successful repulse of an assault may be the militarization of the victor, with ultimately disastrous results. Thus a victory over the Achaemenian invader led, within fifty years, to the breakdown of the Hellenic civilization.
The social price that a successfully aggressive civilization has to pay is a seepage of its alien victims’ culture into its own life-stream. The effect on the victims of assault is of the same order, but more complex. The introduction of Western ideals and institutions into non-Western societies often produces disconcerting results, for ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’. The attempt to introduce one element of an alien culture, while excluding the rest, is doomed to failure.
(i) Dehumanization . The successful assailant succumbs to hubris and regards the conquered as ‘under-dogs’. Thus the brotherhood of Man is denied. When ‘under-dog’ is regarded as a ‘heathen’ he may recover human status by conversion; when regarded as a ‘barbarian’ he may recover human status by passing an examination; but when he is regarded as a ‘native’ he has no hope, short of the overthrow or the conversion of his master.
(ii) Zealotism and Herodianism . The terms imply a clear-cut distinction between rejection and acceptance of the conqueror’s ethos, but a closer examination suggests that the distinction is not as clear-cut as it looks at first. The point is illustrated by a consideration of modern Japan, and of the careers of Gandhi and Lenin.
(iii) Evangelism . The self-defeat of the original Zealots and Herodians is set against the achievement of St. Paul.
‘Asia’ and ‘Europe’ originated as names of the opposite mainland coasts confronting Hellenic mariners on a voyage from the Aegean to the Black Sea. The attribution of political and cultural significance to the terms has led to nothing but confusion. ‘Europe’ is a sub-continent, with an ill-defined frontier, of the continent of ‘Eurasia’.
The origin of the term ‘renaissance’ is stated, and the meaning given to it in this Study explained.
The late Medieval Italian renaissance began earlier, and exercised a more enduring influence on the political plane than on the literary or the artistic. City states; secular monarchies; the Holy Roman Empire. Ecclesiastical coronation a renaissance of an Old Testament rite.
The revivals of Roman Law in Eastern Orthodox Christendom and in Western Christendom, and their consequences for Church and State.
The revivals of the Sinic Confucian philosophy in the Far Eastern society in China and of the Hellenic Aristotelian philosophy in Medieval Western Christendom were parallel events in several respects. The former survived until worsted by an intruding Modern Western ethos at the beginning of the twentieth century. The latter was shaken by the Hellenic literary renaissance of the fifteenth century and was finally worsted by the ‘Baconian’ scientific movement of the seventeenth century.
A conspicuous part was played by dynastic rulers in launching renaissances in this department, e.g. the prodigious libraries assembled by certain Chinese emperors. The Italian renaissance of Hellenic languages and literatures had an abortive forerunner in the ‘Carolingian renaissance’, which, in turn, had its roots in a renaissance in Northumbria. Renaissances cannot succeed until the society seeking to call up the ‘ghost’ of a dead civilization has itself reached the appropriate stage of development for performing the act of necromancy.
A number of examples are cited, besides the Western instance popularly known as ‘the Renaissance’. The course of this last is traced in architecture, sculpture, and painting. In all three departments the ultimate result was to sterilize originality.
The contemptuous attitude of Judaism to its successful Christian offspring, and the uneasy and ambiguous attitude of the Christian Church towards the Jewish ideals of monotheism and aniconism, are discussed. The Sabbatarianism and bibliolatry of the Protestant movement from the sixteenth century onwards furnish a clear example of a powerful and popular renaissance of Judaism within the Western Christian fold.
The ‘Law of Nature’ distinguished from the ‘Law of God’.
The notion that History reveals the workings of a Divine Providence, as maintained down to the time of Bossuet, has since been discredited. But the men of science, whose Law of Nature has replaced the Law of God in most departments of inquiry, have felt constrained to leave History in a state of lawlessness where anything may be expected to follow from anything else, as in the view of H. A. L. Fisher.
(a) The Private Affairs of Individuals . Insurance companies rely on a calculable regularity in human affairs.
(b) The Industrial Affairs of a Modern Western Society . Economists find themselves able to calculate wave-lengths of trade cycles.
(c) Rivalries of Parochial States: the Balance of Power . The fairly regular recurrences of war and peace cycles in the histories of several civilizations.
(d) The Disintegrations of Civilizations . Regularities in the rout-and-rally alternations, with suggested explanations.
(e) The Growths of Civilizations . The regularity traceable in breakdown and disintegration phases is here absent.
(f) ’There is no armour against Fate.’ Further illustrations are given of the persistence with which a tendency, thwarted first at one point and then at another, sometimes ultimately wins through.
The uniformities that we have discerned may be due to the working either of laws current in Man’s non-human environment or of laws inherent in the psychic structure of Man himself. These alternatives are examined, and it is found that Man’s dependence on the laws of non-human Nature diminishes with Man’s progress in technology. The succession of human generations is found to have great significance, three generations being the time-span of several kinds of changes in mental habit. The laws of the Subconscious Psyche, which psychologists were only just beginning to discover at the time of writing, are next considered as an influence on the course of history.
As regards the laws of non-human Nature, Man cannot alter them, but he can harness them to his own purposes. As regards the laws affecting human nature itself, a more cautious answer seems to be called for. The result will depend on Man’s relations, not just with his fellow men and himself, but above all with God his Saviour.
This recalcitrance is illustrated by a number of examples of ‘challenge and response’. Faced with a challenge, Man is free, within limits, to alter the pace of change.
Man does not live under the Law of Nature only, but also under the Law of God, which is Perfect Freedom. Contrasted views of the nature of God and His Law are examined.
The ensuing inquiry marked a departure from the standpoint, adopted and hitherto maintained throughout this Study , of treating all the civilizations known to history synoptically. The departure is justified by the facts that the Western society is the only one surviving that is not manifestly in disintegration, that in many respects it had become world-wide, and that its prospects were, in fact, the prospects of a ‘Westernizing world’.
There was no reason for supposing, on pseudo-scientific grounds, that, because all other civilizations had perished or were perishing, the West was bound to go the same way. Emotional reactions, such as ‘Victorian’ optimism and ‘Spenglerian’ pessimism, were equally void of cogency as evidence.
What light do our previous studies of breakdowns and disintegrations throw on our present problem? We have noted war and militarism as being the most potent cause of the breakdown of a society. The West has so far wrestled unsuccessfully with this disease. On the other hand it has achieved unprecedented successes in other directions: e.g. the abolition of slavery; the growth of democracy and education. The West also now displays the ominous division into dominant minority and internal and external proletariats. On the other hand, some remarkable successes have been achieved in coping with the problems of a diversity of internal proletariats within the Westernizing world.
The mastery of Man over non-human nature and the accelerating rapidity of social change are both without parallel in the histories of earlier civilizations. The plan of the following chapters is indicated.
Characteristics of the United States of America and of the Soviet Union, and of the attitude of the rest of the human race towards each of them.
The prospects of the human race compared with Heyerdahl’s raft, Kon-tiki , on approaching the reef. A future World Order would inevitably be something very different from the present United Nations Organization. The qualifications of the American nation for leadership are discussed.
The triumphs of modern technology had led to an unprecedented demand for ‘freedom from want’; but would Mankind be prepared to pay the price required for the satisfaction of this demand?
Modern technology had entailed a mechanization, or regimentation, not only of the manual workers, but also of their employers (nationalization, &c), of the civil service (’red tape’), and of the politicians (party discipline). The working-class organs of resistance (trade unions) had required further regimentation. The authors of the Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, had come out of a non-regimented society.
The American, the Russian, and the West European, especially the British, approaches analysed and compared.
Social life impossible without some measure both of personal liberty and of social justice. Technology tilts the balance in favour of the latter. What, in an age when the death-rate was being lowered by preventive medicine, were going to be the consequences of an uncontrolled ‘personal liberty’ to propagate the human species? The prospects of a Great Famine ahead are discussed, and the conflicts that it seemed likely to engender.
Suppose that the World Society found a successful solution of all these problems, would the human race thenceforth ‘live happy ever after’? No, because ‘original sin’ is born again in every child that comes into the World.
The writer, born into the age of the Late Victorian optimism, and encountering the First World War in early manhood, was struck by the parallels between the experience of his own society in his own lifetime and those of the Hellenic society, a study of which had provided the staple of his education. This raised in his mind the questions: Why do civilizations die? Is the Hellenic civilization’s fate in store for the Modern West? Subsequently his inquiries were extended to include the breakdowns and disintegrations of the other known civilizations, as further evidence for throwing light on his questions. Finally, he proceeded to investigate the geneses and growths of civilizations, and so this Study of History came to be written.