this land of many memories and of eager hopes, I come from a young
nation, which is by blood akin to, and yet different from, each of the
great nations of Middle and Western Europe; which has inherited or
acquired much from each, but is changing and developing every
inheritance and acquisition into something new and strange. The German
strain in our blood is large, for almost from the beginning there has
been a large German element among the successive waves of newcomers
whose children's children have been and are being fused into the
American nation; and I myself trace my origin to that branch of the
Low Dutch stock which raised Holland out of the North Sea. Moreover,
we have taken from you, not only much of the blood that runs through
our veins, but much of the thought that shapes our minds. For
generations American scholars have flocked to your universities, and,
thanks to the wise foresight of his Imperial Majesty the present
Emperor, the intimate and friendly connection between the two
countries is now in every way closer than it has ever been before.
Germany is pre-eminently a country in which the world movement of
to-day in all of its multitudinous aspects is plainly visible. The
life of this University covers the period during which that movement
has spread until it is felt throughout every continent; while its
velocity has been constantly accelerating, so that the face of the
world has changed, and is now changing, as never before. It is
therefore fit and appropriate here to speak on this subject.
When, in the slow procession of the ages, man was developed on this
planet, the change worked by his appearance was at first slight.
Further ages passed, while he groped and struggled by infinitesimal
degrees upward through the lower grades of savagery; for the general
law is that life which is advanced and complex, whatever its nature,
changes more quickly than simpler and less advanced forms. The life of
savages changes and advances with extreme slowness, and groups of
savages influence one another but little. The first rudimentary
beginnings of that complex life of communities which we call
civilization marked a period when man had already long been by far the
most important creature on the planet. The history of the living world
had become, in fact, the history of man, and therefore something
totally different in kind as well as in degree from what it had been
before. There are interesting analogies between what has gone on in
the development of life generally and what has gone on in the
development of human society, and these I shall discuss elsewhere.[9]
But the differences are profound, and go to the root of things.
[9] In the Romanes Lecture at Oxford.--L.F.A.
Throughout their early stages the movements of civilization--for,
properly speaking, there was no one movement--were very slow, were
local in space, and were partial in the sense that each developed
along but few lines. Of the numberless years that covered these early
stages we have no record. They were the years that saw such
extraordinary discoveries and inventions as fire, and the wheel, and
the bow, and the domestication of animals. So local were these
inventions that at the present day there yet linger savage tribes,
still fixed in the half-bestial life of an infinitely remote past, who
know none of them except fire--and the discovery and use of fire may
have marked, not the beginning of civilization, but the beginning of
the savagery which separated man from brute.
Even after civilization and culture had achieved a relatively high
position, they were still purely local, and from this fact subject to
violent shocks. Modern research has shown the existence in prehistoric
or, at least, protohistoric times of many peoples who, in given
localities, achieved a high and peculiar culture, a culture that was
later so completely destroyed that it is difficult to say what, if
any, traces it left on the subsequent cultures out of which we have
developed our own; while it is also difficult to say exactly how much
any one of these cultures influenced any other. In many cases, as
where invaders with weapons of bronze or iron conquered the neolithic
peoples, the higher civilization completely destroyed the lower
civilization, or barbarism, with which it came in contact. In other
cases, while superiority in culture gave its possessors at the
beginning a marked military and governmental superiority over the
neighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it a
certain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk at
the mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savage
souls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people that
had been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling waves
of barbarism wash over them. But we are not yet in position to speak
definitely on these matters. It is only the researches of recent years
that have enabled us so much as to guess at the course of events in
prehistoric Greece; while as yet we can hardly even hazard a guess as
to how, for instance, the Hallstadt culture rose and fell, or as to
the history and fate of the builders of those strange ruins of which
Stonehenge is the type.
The first civilizations which left behind them clear records rose in
that hoary historic past which geologically is part of the immediate
present--and which is but a span's length from the present, even when
compared only with the length of time that man has lived on this
planet. These first civilizations were those which rose in Mesopotamia
and the Nile valley some six or eight thousand years ago. As far as we
can see, they were well-nigh independent centres of cultural
development, and our knowledge is not such at present as to enable us
to connect either with the early cultural movements, in southwestern
Europe on the one hand, or in India on the other, or with that Chinese
civilization which has been so profoundly affected by Indian
influences.
Compared with the civilizations with which we are best acquainted, the
striking features in the Mesopotamian and Nilotic civilizations were
the length of time they endured and their comparative changelessness.
The kings, priests, and peoples who dwelt by the Nile or Euphrates are
found thinking much the same thoughts, doing much the same deeds,
leaving at least very similar records, while time passes in tens of
centuries. Of course there was change; of course there were action and
reaction in influence between them and their neighbors; and the
movement of change, of development, material, mental, spiritual, was
much faster than anything that had occurred during the æons of mere
savagery. But in contradistinction to modern times the movement was
very slow indeed, and, moreover, in each case it was strongly
localized; while the field of endeavor was narrow. There were certain
conquests by man over nature; there were certain conquests in the
domain of pure intellect; there were certain extensions which spread
the area of civilized mankind. But it would be hard to speak of it as
a "world movement" at all; for by far the greater part of the
habitable globe was not only unknown, but its existence unguessed at,
so far as peoples with any civilization whatsoever were concerned.
With the downfall of these ancient civilizations there sprang into
prominence those peoples with whom our own cultural history may be
said to begin. Those ideas and influences in our lives which we can
consciously trace back at all are in the great majority of instances
to be traced to the Jew, the Greek, or the Roman; and the ordinary
man, when he speaks of the nations of antiquity, has in mind
specifically these three peoples--although, judged even by the history
of which we have record, theirs is a very modern antiquity indeed.
The case of the Jew was quite exceptional. His was a small nation, of
little more consequence than the sister nations of Moab and Damascus,
until all three, and the other petty states of the country, fell under
the yoke of the alien. Then he survived, while all his fellows died.
In the spiritual domain he contributed a religion which has been the
most potent of all factors in its effect on the subsequent history of
mankind; but none of his other contributions compare with the legacies
left us by the Greek and the Roman.
The Græco-Roman world saw a civilization far more brilliant, far more
varied and intense, than any that had gone before it, and one that
affected a far larger share of the world's surface. For the first time
there began to be something which at least foreshadowed a "world
movement" in the sense that it affected a considerable portion of the
world's surface and that it represented what was incomparably the most
important of all that was happening in world history at the time. In
breadth and depth the field of intellectual interest had greatly
broadened at the same time that the physical area affected by the
civilization had similarly extended. Instead of a civilization
affecting only one river valley or one nook of the Mediterranean,
there was a civilization which directly or indirectly influenced
mankind from the Desert of Sahara to the Baltic, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the westernmost mountain chains that spring from the
Himalayas. Throughout most of this region there began to work certain
influences which, though with widely varying intensity, did
nevertheless tend to affect a large portion of mankind. In many of the
forms of science, in almost all the forms of art, there was great
activity. In addition to great soldiers there were great
administrators and statesmen whose concern was with the fundamental
questions of social and civil life. Nothing like the width and variety
of intellectual achievement and understanding had ever before been
known; and for the first time we come across great intellectual
leaders, great philosophers and writers, whose works are a part of all
that is highest in modern thought, whose writings are as alive to-day
as when they were first issued; and there were others of even more
daring and original temper, a philosopher like Democritus, a poet like
Lucretius, whose minds leaped ahead through the centuries and saw what
none of their contemporaries saw, but who were so hampered by their
surroundings that it was physically impossible for them to leave to
the later world much concrete addition to knowledge. The civilization
was one of comparatively rapid change, viewed by the standard of
Babylon and Memphis. There was incessant movement; and, moreover, the
whole system went down with a crash to seeming destruction after a
period short compared with that covered by the reigns of a score of
Egyptian dynasties, or with the time that elapsed between a Babylonian
defeat by Elam and a war sixteen centuries later which fully avenged
it.
This civilization flourished with brilliant splendor. Then it fell. In
its northern seats it was overwhelmed by a wave of barbarism from
among those half-savage peoples from whom you and I, my hearers, trace
our descent. In the south and east it was destroyed later, but far
more thoroughly, by invaders of an utterly different type. Both
conquests were of great importance; but it was the northern conquest
which in its ultimate effects was of by far the greatest importance.
With the advent of the Dark Ages the movement of course ceased, and it
did not begin anew for many centuries; while a thousand years passed
before it was once more in full swing, so far as European
civilization, so far as the world civilization of to-day, is
concerned. During all those centuries the civilized world, in our
acceptation of the term, was occupied, as its chief task, in slowly
climbing back to the position from which it had fallen after the age
of the Antonines. Of course a general statement like this must be
accepted with qualifications. There is no hard and fast line between
one age or period and another, and in no age is either progress or
retrogression universal in all things. There were many points in which
the Middle Ages, because of the simple fact that they were Christian,
surpassed the brilliant pagan civilization of the past; and there are
some points in which the civilization that succeeded them has sunk
below the level of the ages which saw such mighty masterpieces of
poetry, of architecture--especially cathedral architecture--and of
serene spiritual and forceful lay leadership. But they were centuries
of violence, rapine, and cruel injustice; and truth was so little
heeded that the noble and daring spirits who sought it, especially in
its scientific form, did so in deadly peril of the fagot and the
halter.
During this period there were several very important extra-European
movements, one or two of which deeply affected Europe. Islam arose,
and conquered far and wide, uniting fundamentally different races into
a brotherhood of feeling which Christianity has never been able to
rival, and at the time of the Crusades profoundly influencing European
culture. It produced a civilization of its own, brilliant and here and
there useful, but hopelessly limited when compared with the
civilization of which we ourselves are the heirs. The great cultured
peoples of southeastern and eastern Asia continued their checkered
development totally unaffected by, and without knowledge of, any
European influence.
Throughout the whole period there came against Europe, out of the
unknown wastes of central Asia, an endless succession of strange and
terrible conqueror races whose mission was mere destruction--Hun and
Avar, Mongol, Tartar, and Turk. These fierce and squalid tribes of
warrior horsemen flailed mankind with red scourges, wasted and
destroyed, and then vanished from the ground they had overrun. But in
no way worth noting did they count in the advance of mankind.
At last, a little over four hundred years ago, the movement towards a
world civilization took up its interrupted march. The beginning of the
modern movement may roughly be taken as synchronizing with the
discovery of printing, and with that series of bold sea ventures which
culminated in the discovery of America; and after these two epochal
feats had begun to produce their full effects in material and
intellectual life, it became inevitable that civilization should
thereafter differ not only in degree but even in kind from all that
had gone before. Immediately after the voyages of Columbus and Vasco
da Gama there began a tremendous religious ferment; the awakening of
intellect went hand in hand with the moral uprising; the great names
of Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo show that the mind of man
was breaking the fetters that had cramped it; and for the first time
experimentation was used as a check upon observation and theorization.
Since then, century by century, the changes have increased in rapidity
and complexity, and have attained their maximum in both respects
during the century just past. Instead of being directed by one or two
dominant peoples, as was the case with all similar movements of the
past, the new movement was shared by many different nations. From
every standpoint it has been of infinitely greater moment than
anything hitherto seen. Not in one but in many different peoples there
has been extraordinary growth in wealth, in population, in power of
organization, and in mastery over mechanical activity and natural
resources. All of this has been accompanied and signalized by an
immense outburst of energy and restless initiative. The result is as
varied as it is striking.
In the first place, representatives of this civilization, by their
conquest of space, were enabled to spread into all the practically
vacant continents, while at the same time, by their triumphs in
organization and mechanical invention, they acquired an unheard-of
military superiority as compared with their former rivals. To these
two facts is primarily due the further fact that for the first time
there is really something that approaches a world civilization, a
world movement. The spread of the European peoples since the days of
Ferdinand the Catholic and Ivan the Terrible has been across every sea
and over every continent. In places the conquests have been ethnic;
that is, there has been a new wandering of the peoples, and new
commonwealths have sprung up in which the people are entirely or
mainly of European blood. This is what happened in the temperate and
sub-tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, in Australia, in
portions of northern Asia and southern Africa. In other places the
conquest has been purely political, the Europeans representing for the
most part merely a small caste of soldiers and administrators, as in
most of tropical Asia and Africa and in much of tropical America.
Finally, here and there instances occur where there has been no
conquest at all, but where an alien people is profoundly and radically
changed by the mere impact of Western civilization. The most
extraordinary instance of this, of course, is Japan; for Japan's
growth and change during the last half-century has been in many ways
the most striking phenomenon of all history. Intensely proud of her
past history, intensely loyal to certain of her past traditions, she
has yet with a single effort wrenched herself free from all hampering
ancient ties, and with a bound has taken her place among the leading
civilized nations of mankind.
There are of course many grades between these different types of
influence, but the net outcome of what has occurred during the last
four centuries is that civilization of the European type now exercises
a more or less profound effect over practically the entire world.
There are nooks and corners to which it has not yet penetrated; but
there is at present no large space of territory in which the general
movement of civilized activity does not make itself more or less felt.
This represents something wholly different from what has ever hitherto
been seen. In the greatest days of Roman dominion the influence of
Rome was felt over only a relatively small portion of the world's
surface. Over much the larger part of the world the process of change
and development was absolutely unaffected by anything that occurred in
the Roman Empire; and those communities the play of whose influence
was felt in action and reaction, and in inter-action, among
themselves, were grouped immediately around the Mediterranean. Now,
however, the whole world is bound together as never before; the bonds
are sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but they are bonds
nevertheless.
Frowning or hopeful, every man of leadership in any line of thought or
effort must now look beyond the limits of his own country. The student
of sociology may live in Berlin or St. Petersburg, Rome or London, or
he may live in Melbourne or San Francisco or Buenos Aires; but in
whatever city he lives, he must pay heed to the studies of men who
live in each of the other cities. When in America we study labor
problems and attempt to deal with subjects such as life insurance for
wage-workers, we turn to see what you do here in Germany, and we also
turn to see what the far-off commonwealth of New Zealand is doing.
When a great German scientist is warring against the most dreaded
enemies of mankind, creatures of infinitesimal size which the
microscope reveals in his blood, he may spend his holidays of study in
central Africa or in eastern Asia; and he must know what is
accomplished in the laboratories of Tokyo, just as he must know the
details of that practical application of science which has changed the
Isthmus of Panama from a death-trap into what is almost a health
resort. Every progressive in China is striving to introduce Western
methods of education and administration, and hundreds of European and
American books are now translated into Chinese. The influence of
European governmental principles is strikingly illustrated by the fact
that admiration for them has broken down the iron barriers of Moslem
conservatism, so that their introduction has become a burning question
in Turkey and Persia; while the very unrest, the impatience of
European or American control, in India, Egypt, or the Philippines,
takes the form of demanding that the government be assimilated more
closely to what it is in England or the United States. The deeds and
works of any great statesman, the preachings of any great ethical,
social, or political teacher, now find echoes in both hemispheres and
in every continent. From a new discovery in science to a new method of
combating or applying Socialism, there is no movement of note which
can take place in any part of the globe without powerfully affecting
masses of people in Europe, America, and Australia, in Asia and
Africa. For weal or for woe, the peoples of mankind are knit together
far closer than ever before.
So much for the geographical side of the expansion of modern
civilization. But only a few of the many and intense activities of
modern civilization have found their expression on this side. The
movement has been just as striking in its conquest over natural
forces, in its searching inquiry into and about the soul of things.
The conquest over Nature has included an extraordinary increase in
every form of knowledge of the world we live in, and also an
extraordinary increase in the power of utilizing the forces of
Nature. In both directions the advance has been very great during the
past four or five centuries, and in both directions it has gone on
with ever-increasing rapidity during the last century. After the great
age of Rome had passed, the boundaries of knowledge shrank, and in
many cases it was not until well-nigh our own times that her domain
was once again pushed beyond the ancient landmarks. About the year 150
A.D., Ptolemy, the geographer, published his map of central Africa and
the sources of the Nile, and this map was more accurate than any which
we had as late as 1850 A.D. More was known of physical science, and
more of the truth about the physical world was guessed at, in the days
of Pliny, than was known or guessed until the modern movement began.
The case was the same as regards military science. At the close of the
Middle Ages the weapons were what they had always been--sword, shield,
bow, spear; and any improvement in them was more than offset by the
loss in knowledge of military organization, in the science of war, and
in military leadership since the days of Hannibal and Cæsar. A hundred
years ago, when this University was founded, the methods of
transportation did not differ in the essentials from what they had
been among the highly civilized nations of antiquity. Travellers and
merchandise went by land in wheeled vehicles or on beasts of burden,
and by sea in boats propelled by sails or by oars; and news was
conveyed as it always had been conveyed. What improvements there had
been had been in degree only and not in kind; and in some respects
there had been retrogression rather than advance. There were many
parts of Europe where the roads were certainly worse than the old
Roman post-roads; and the Mediterranean Sea, for instance, was by no
means as well policed as in the days of Trajan. Now steam and
electricity have worked a complete revolution; and the resulting
immensely increased ease of communication has in its turn completely
changed all the physical questions of human life. A voyage from Egypt
to England was nearly as serious an affair in the eighteenth century
as in the second; and the news communications between the two lands
were not materially improved. A graduate of your University to-day can
go to mid-Asia or mid-Africa with far less consciousness of performing
a feat of note than would have been the case a hundred years ago with
a student who visited Sicily and Andalusia. Moreover, the invention
and use of machinery run by steam or electricity have worked a
revolution in industry as great as the revolution in transportation;
so that here again the difference between ancient and modern
civilization is one not merely of degree but of kind. In many vital
respects the huge modern city differs more from all preceding cities
than any of these differed one from the other; and the giant factory
town is of and by itself one of the most formidable problems of modern
life.