We have seen that the Romans called the Britons "barbarians" (S2).
But we should bear in mind that all the progress which civilization
has since made is built on the foundations which those primitive races
slowly and painfully laid during unnumbered centuries of toil and
strife.
To them we owe man's wonderful discovery of the power to produce
fire. To them we are indebted for the invention of the first tools,
the first weapons, and the first attempts at architecture and
pictorial art. They too tamed the dog, the horse, and our other
domestic animals. They also discovered how to till the soil and how
to mine and manufacture metals. In fact those "barbarians" who lived
in "the childhood of the world," and who never wrote a line of
history, did some things equal to any which history records, for out
of wild plants and trees they developed the grains and fruits which
now form an indispensable part of "our daily bread."
Finally, through their incessant struggles with nature, and incessant
wars among themselves, those rude tribes learned to establish forms of
self-government for towns or larger districts. Many of their salutary
customs--their unwritten laws--still make themselves felt in the
world.[1] They help bind the English nation together. They do even
more than that, for their influence can be traced in the history of
newer nations, which, like the American republic, have descended from
the great mother-countries of Europe.
[1] For example, parts of the "Common Law" can be traced back, through
English "dooms" (decisions or laws), to prehistoric times. See
E. A. Freeman in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th edition, VIII,
276). The New England "Town Meeting" can be likewise traced back to
the German ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons.
[Figures: Carved bone, flint dagger, and bronze spearhead]