The Story of Evolution Part 17

Yet some recent historical writers, in their eagerness to set up indigenous civilisations apart from those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, pa.s.s to the opposite extreme. We are prepared to find civilisation developing wherever the situation of a people exposes it to sufficient stimulation, and we do find advance made among many peoples apart from contact with the great southern empires. It is uncertain whether the use of bronze is due first to the southern nations or to some European people, but the invention of iron weapons is most probably due to European initiative.

Again, it is now not believed that the alphabets of Europe are derived from the hieroglyphics of Egypt, though it is an open question whether they were not derived, through Phoenicia, from certain signs which we find on ancient Egyptian pottery.

If we take first a broad view of the later course of civilisation we see at a glance the general relation of east and west. Some difficulty would arise, if we pressed, as to the exact stage in which a nation may be said to become "civilised," but we may follow the general usage of archaeologists and historians. They tell us, then, that civilisation first appears in Egypt about 8000 B.C. (settled civilisation about 6000 B.C.), and in the Mesopotamian region about 6000 B.C. We next find Neolithic culture pa.s.sing into what may be called civilisation in Crete and the neighbouring islands some time between 4000 and 3000 B.C., or two thousand years after the development of Egyptian commerce in that region. We cannot say whether this civilisation in the AEgean sea preceded others which we afterwards find on the Asiatic mainland.

The beginning of the Hitt.i.te Empire in Asia Minor, and of Phoenician culture, is as yet unknown. But we can say that there was as yet no civilisation in Europe. It is not until after 1600 that civilisation is established in Greece (Mycenae and Tiryns) as an offshoot of AEgean culture. Later still it appears among the Etruscans of Italy--to which, as we know, both Egyptian and AEgean vessels sailed. In other words, the course of civilisation is very plainly from east to west.

But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting.

The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile sh.o.r.es was the appointed field of expansion. The land route from Egypt lay, not to the dreary west in Africa, but along the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean, through Syria and Asia Minor. The land route from Babylon lay across northern Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route had Crete for its first and most conspicuous station. Hence the gradual appearance of civilisation in Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the Greek islands is a normal and natural outcome of the geographical conditions.

But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains are fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less part in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we have discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a great influence on the development of Europe. The Hitt.i.tes, on the other hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region was Cappadocia, where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so characteristic a civilisation, that its doc.u.ments or inscriptions are almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia Minor.

Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots of the fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably a small and unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until a few centuries before the Christian Era. They then a.s.similated the culture of the more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their territory. The Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of dying Babylon.

The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of these older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete, but it spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its script are so distinctive that we must recognise it as a native development, not a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian commerce was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C.

the whole of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan monarchy, and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable artistic development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second millennium B.C.

But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks or h.e.l.lenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the third branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these that swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to the west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric population with the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the nations of modern Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth must be a short account of its civilisation.

The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater height than the older nations had ever done, was the h.e.l.lenes. There is no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the h.e.l.lenes, or even to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of the peninsula which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain why European civilisation began in Greece. The h.e.l.lenes had penetrated the region in which there was constant contact with all the varied cultures of the older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture, they could not live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence. Then the traders of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean rivals, brought the great pacific cultural influence of commerce to bear on them. After some hundreds of years of internal trouble, barbaric quarrels, and fresh arrivals from the north, Greece began to wear an aspect of civilisation.

Many of the Greeks pa.s.sed to Asia Minor, as they increased, and, freed from the despotism of tradition, in living contact with the luxury and culture of Persia, which had advanced as far as Europe, they evolved the fine civilisation of the Greek colonies, and reacted on the motherland.

Finally, there came the heroic struggle against the Persian invaders, and from the ashes of their early civilisation arose the marble city which will never die in the memory of Europe.

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.