Chapter IV: The Development to Humanity (1)

1. THE CONCEPT 'HUMANITY.'

The question, Do we live in an enlightened age? was answered by Kant, with reference to his own time--which, as is well known, laid claim to the distinction--flatly in the negative. He added, however, that the age was doubtless one of increasing enlightenment. One might, perhaps, be even more justified in raising a similar question with reference to the relation of our own and of preceding ages to a universally human culture, and in answering: We are on the way to this goal, but are still far from having actually reached it. Indeed, in view of human imperfection, it may be doubted whether we will ever be able to reach it, unless the imperfection itself be included as an element in such a culture. The ambiguity of the word 'humanity' is such that it may signify human weaknesses as well as human sympathy and other virtues. It was in the latter, the more favourable, sense of the term that Herder, even in his day, attempted, in his "Ideas," to portray the history of mankind as an "education to humanity." This expression suggests that history manifests only a ceaseless striving toward true humanity; the goal itself lies beyond the reach of possible experience.

Now, a survey of the course of progress described in the preceding chapters may well cause us to doubt whether the presupposition from which Herder set out in his reflections on the philosophy of history is correct. The assumption that factors preparatory to the development to humanity are already to be found in the original nature of man--indeed, even earlier than this, in the general conditions of his natural environment--is not beyond question. Neither primitive nor totemic man shows the faintest trace of what we should, strictly speaking, call humanity. He gives evidence merely of an attachment to the nearest associates of horde or tribe, such as is foreshadowed even among animals of social habits. In addition, he exhibits but occasional manifestations of a friendly readiness to render assistance when danger threatens at the hands of strangers.

It is not until the heroic age that we encounter phenomena such as might properly be interpreted to indicate the gradual rise of feelings of humanity. But if we take into account the entire character of this age, we are more inclined to contrast it, precisely when it reaches its zenith, with all that we to-day understand by humanity. Consider, for example, the sharply demarcated State organizations of the heroic era, its depreciation of strange peoples, and its repudiation of universal human ties, brusquely expressed during times of war in its treatment of the enemy and, during times of peace, in slavery. The question as to whether and in how far the beginnings of our ideas of humanity reach back into the past and prevail at lower levels of culture, is confronted with a serious difficulty. Conceptions such as these are obviously themselves products of a long development and have been in constant flux. The concept 'humanity' suffers from an ambiguity which has attached to it ever since the time of its origin, and which has in no wise diminished as the word has acquired broader meanings. The word _humanitas_, which in later classical Latin was practically equivalent to our concept 'human nature,' in both its good and its bad connotations, acquired an additional meaning in the language of mediæval scholars. During this period of strong partiality for abstract word formations, the term came to be used also for the collective concept 'mankind,' that is, the Roman _genus hominum_--a concept independent of value judgments of any sort. Thus, the word passed over into our more modern languages with a twofold significance. Although the German language developed the two words _Menschlichkeit_ and _Menschheit_, corresponding to the conceptual distinction just indicated, the two meanings were again combined in the foreign word _Humanität_. This is exemplified by Herder's phrase, _Erziehung zur Humanität_ (education to humanity). For, in using this phrase to sum up the meaning of history, Herder meant that the striving which underlies all history was not merely for the development of the qualities of humanity (_Menschlichkeit_), in the highest sense of the term, but also essentially for their gradual extension to the whole of mankind (_Menschheit_).

But, whatever our opinion concerning the possible success of such striving and concerning the relation of its two phases, there can be no doubt that the concept 'humanity,' which has become common property among civilized peoples, combines an objective with a subjective aspect. On the one hand, 'humanity' means the _whole_ of mankind, or, at any rate, a preponderant part of it, such as may be regarded as representative of the whole. On the other hand, 'humanity' is a value-attribute. It has reference to the complete development of the ethical characteristics which differentiate man from the animal, and to their expression in the intercourse of individuals and of peoples. This latter thought incorporates in the term 'humanity' the meaning both of 'mankind' and of 'human nature,' although it ignores the secondary implication of human imperfection which 'human nature' involves and takes into account only its laudable characteristics. Humanity, when predicated of an individual, means that he transcends the limits of all more restricted associations, such as family, tribe, or State, and possesses an appreciation of human personality as such; in its application to human society, it represents a demand for an ideal condition in which this appreciation of human worth shall have become a universal norm. This ideal, however, is subject to growth, and, like all ideals, is never completely realizable. Hence the following sketch of the conditions which succeed the age of heroes and gods cannot undertake to do more than point to the phenomena that give expression to the new motives that dominate this later period. Sharp demarcations are in this instance even less possible than in the case of the earlier stages of human development. The more comprehensive the range of human strivings and activities, the more gradual are the transitions and the more fully are the underlying motives--precisely because they involve the universally human--foreshadowed in the natural predispositions and impulses of man. Tendencies to esteem man as man, and a willingness to render him assistance, are not foreign even to the primitive mind. Even at the beginnings of human culture there are present, dimly conscious, those tendencies out of which the idea of humanity may finally develop. Moreover, every later advance seems to lead in the direction of this conception. The transition from tribe into State, the changing intercourse of peoples, and the spread over wide regions of the mental creations of a single people, of language, religion, and customs--all these phenomena are obviously steps on the way to the idea of humanity and to its permanent incorporation into all departments of human endeavour. Neither in its rise nor in its further changes, moreover, does this new idea entail the disappearance of previous conditions or of the psychical factors involved in their development. On the contrary, humanitarian culture takes up into itself the creations of preceding eras, und allows them to take firmer root. Thus, the idea of a cultural community of peoples has not weakened, but, so far as we may conclude from the past course of history, has strengthened and enriched, the self-consciousness of separate peoples and the significance of the individual State. The dissemination of cultural products has not resulted in their decrease. National differences have led rather to the increase of these products, and have thus enhanced the value attaching to the spiritual distinctiveness of a people and of the individual personality. That we may here, even more than in the case of the earlier periods of cultural history, speak only of _relative_ values, needs scarcely be remarked. Humanitarian development includes a vast number of new conditions, in addition to those that underlie the preceding stages of culture. Since, moreover, the synthesis at which this development aims is everywhere still in the process of becoming, the way itself is for the time being the attainable goal. We may neither be said to be on the way _to_ humanity, if we mean by this a condition in which none but humanitarian interests prevail, nor does a humanitarian age, in the sense of the exclusion of more restricted human relations, appear at all within the field of vision disclosed to us as a result of past history. As a legacy from the primitive era, man has permanently retained not only the general needs of individual life but also the most restricted forms of family and tribal organization. In like manner, it will be impossible for an age of humanity ever to dispense with the more limited articulations of State and society that have arisen in the course of cultural development. Scarcely any general result stands out as more certain, in a retrospective survey of our investigations, than the fact that, while every period discards as worthless a vast number of products, some of which were valuable to an earlier age, there are other products which prove to be imperishable. From this point of view, that which precedes is not merely preparatory to the further course of development but is itself the beginning of the development. The immediate beginning, however, is veiled in obscurity. The earlier age is ever unconsciously preparing the way for one that is to come. The clan of primitive tribal organization had no idea of a coming State, nor had the ancient demon worshipper any notion of a cult of rewarding and punishing celestial deities, yet State and deity cult could not have arisen except for clan and demon-belief. Similarly, the earlier modes of collective life possessed the idea of humanity only in the form of a hidden germ. Hence we may not properly describe these preparatory stages, which exhibit phenomena of a different and, in part, an entirely dissimilar sort, as a development to humanity. The term applies rather to an age in which the idea of humanity, having come to clear consciousness, exercises an influence upon the various phases of culture, and is entertained by a sufficiently large portion of mankind to insure its permanent effectiveness. But even with this limitation the development may not be regarded as one of uninterrupted progress. However widely disseminated the humanitarian idea may come to be, there will remain localities and levels of culture to which it has not penetrated. But, inasmuch as peoples of very different cultural stages enter into relations with one another, the possibility is open for such a turn of events as will obscure the idea of the development to humanity for long periods. That such deviations from the path of progress have frequently occurred in the past is certain; that they are never to occur in the future is scarcely probable. For this reason one can scarcely hope to do more than to show that, in spite of such retrogressions, the development to humanity forms a generally connected whole, and that here also psychological law is regnant.

That such law prevails is at once evident from the fact that of the two conceptions which we have found to be involved in the idea of humanity, the _external_ and objective concept expressed by the collective term 'mankind' is historically the earlier; the concept referring to _inner_ characteristics, and associated in the consciousness of the individual with clearly defined value-feelings, follows only gradually. We might express this relationship by the phrase, Mankind must prepare the way for human nature. This does not imply that isolated manifestations of the latter might not long precede the rise of the idea of mankind--indeed, must necessarily have preceded it, in so far as a predisposition is concerned. It means merely that human nature did not, as a matter of fact, attain to its complete development, nor was it able to do so, until after the idea of the unity of mankind had progressed beyond the stage of vague impulses or of recognition on the part of but a few individuals in advance of their age. In other words: The collective concept 'mankind,' as representing, not merely a generic term created by the intellect, but a real totality ultimately uniting all its members in a social whole, preceded the concept 'human nature,' as connoting a recognition of universal human rights to which each of the members of the human race may lay claim, and of duties which he, in turn, owes to human society. The case could not be otherwise. Unless the idea of mankind were already present in some form, even though this be at the outset inadequate, the requirement that an individual give expression to humanitarian sentiments would be impossible, since there would be no object of the activity. If we consider the sequence of the various phenomena involved in the development to humanity, we find a striking agreement between history and the results to which our analysis of the concept 'humanity' has led us. The earliest of the phenomena here in question dates far back to the beginnings of the events known to us through historical monuments, and consists in the rise of _world empires_. Though the term 'world empire' is sometimes used to refer merely to a great kingdom that results from the absorption of a number of separate States, such a use of the word does not do justice to its meaning. The idea of world empire really comes into existence only at the moment when such a kingdom lays claim to embracing the terrestrial part of the universe, and therefore the whole of mankind, however much this claim may represent a mere demand which has never, of course, actually been realized. The very fact of the demand, however, itself involves the conscious idea of a unity embracing the whole of mankind. Moreover, the endeavour to realize this ambition follows with inner necessity in the case of all political organizations that call themselves world empires, particularly at the period of their zenith and of an increasing consciousness of power. This leads to further important results, which, though at first doubtless not consciously sought, nevertheless later increasingly become the object of voluntary endeavour. Though externally retaining the traditional political organization, the world empire required an extension of the institutions of law and of administration that had thus far prevailed in the more limited State. A similar change gradually took place in connection with intercourse and its fostering agencies, and subsequently in connection with language, customs, and religious beliefs. Thus, it was the world empire that first prepared the way for _world culture_, only meagre beginnings of which existed in the period of a more restricted political life. The extension of wants and of the means of their satisfaction was first evident in the field of commerce, though a similar tendency came more and more to prevail in the various departments of mental life. Pre-eminent among these interests was the one which is the most universal and is based on the most common needs, such as are experienced by all members of human society, namely, _religion_. Thus, as one of the last of the creations possessing universal human significance, _world religion_ makes its appearance. The preceding age did not progress beyond national religions. However much the mythological elements of cult, in particular, may have travelled from one people to another, these elements were assimilated by the national religions. Inasmuch as these religions continued, on the whole, to preserve their own identities, the fact that any elements were of foreign origin very soon disappeared from the folk-consciousness. Not until the period which we are now discussing do we find religions that lay claim to being universal. Even though this claim may remain a mere demand, just as in the case of the world empire, it is precisely as such that every historical world religion has asserted its influence. This striving for universality is far keener in connection with world religion than it is in the case of world empire and world culture. In comparison with this endeavour to become universal, the fact that no period ever witnessed merely a single world religion is relatively unimportant, though not to be overlooked in considering the spiritual needs of mankind. Disregarding subordinate religions and such as are of less significance for culture as a whole, there are at least _two_ great world religions, Christianity and Buddhism. These have asserted themselves side by side, and will presumably continue further to maintain themselves, inasmuch as they correspond to sharply defined characteristics of universal world culture. Finally, world culture and the world religions form the basis of _world history_, a third element in the collective consciousness of mankind. If we understand by 'world history,' not the political or cultural events that simultaneously run their independent courses, but the historic consciousness of mankind itself, combining the idea of mankind as a unity with that of the development of this unity in accordance with law, then world history, in this, the only accurate meaning of the term, is the last of all the factors involved in the idea of humanity. Since the individual who is developing in the direction of the ideal of humanity mirrors all other aspects of human nature, world history ultimately becomes for him the gradual realization of the idea of humanity. Thus, world empires, world culture, world religions, and world history represent the four main steps in the development to humanity.

2. WORLD EMPIRES.

Even in the midst of the spiritual forces dominating the heroic age there are phenomena that foreshadow a development transcending the limits of this period. Of these phenomena, none is more prominent than the striving for world dominion. The first battles of early political organizations, and the victories over conquered peoples, led to an enhanced consciousness of power on the part of the individual State. This consciousness found expression, first in strife between neighbouring dominions, and later, as soon as one of these had gained the supremacy, in the establishment of an empire including many separate States. Such an impulse to transcend the limits of the single State is so natural and so directly prefigured in the motives to individual action that we come upon it wherever any historically active political organizations have arisen. In the realms of western Asia, such attempts are to be found from the time of the Sumerian and Accadian States down to the struggle of Babylon and Assyria for the rulership of the world. Egypt had a succession of dynasties which at first glance might seem to simulate a unified history, but which in reality represents the transference of supreme power from one State or city to another, and along with this the growing ambition for a single all-embracing dominion. The same phenomenon appears in the struggle of the Greek and Latin tribes for hegemony, and also in the foundation of the great Persian kingdom of the Achæmenidæ; the latter gave way to the world empire of Alexander, which, though of short duration, was never again equalled in magnitude; succeeding it, came the world empire of the Romans, the last that could properly lay claim to the name.

It is in Egypt, on the one hand, and in the succession of West-Asiatic kingdoms, on the other, that the first stages of this development of a world kingdom out of the dominance of one powerful State over a number of vassal States are clearly exhibited. The struggle for supremacy, in which vassal might elevate himself to the position of ruler and lord be reduced to vassal, and in which newly immigrant peoples often took a decisive part, immeasurably enhanced the striving to extend the sphere of dominion. This development reached its culmination when the supreme ruler of a power that dominated a very considerable number of vassal States expressly asserted the claim of being _ruler of the world_. The fact that such a claim was made wherever a supremacy of this sort came into existence under conditions of relatively limited intercourse, testifies to the immanent necessity of the development. Wherever the domain of such an empire approximated the limits of the known world, the universal State was conceived as including also the rest of the inhabited earth. This conception came to expression in the title which the ruler regularly assumed. He laid claim to being the king of kings, the overlord of the world, the ruler of the 'four quarters of the earth.' Through a reversal of that process of transference by which the characteristics of the terrestrial State were carried over, in deity cult, to the divine State, the ruler of the terrestrial State now himself became a god. This accounts for the surprising uniformity with which the idea of a god-monarch arose wherever that of a world monarch was developed. In the pre-Babylonian realms of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, the ruler erected his own image, as an object of worship, in the temple; in the land of the Pharaohs, the heads of the sphinxes placed in front of the temples bore the features of the monarch. Even Alexander the Great commanded that the Egyptian priests greet him as a son of the god Amon Re; after acquiring the authority of the great Persian kings, he demanded from those about him the external signs of divine adoration. Similarly, the Roman emperors of the period from Diocletian down to Constantine. In spite of their inclination toward republican offices and customs, which by their very nature militated against such ceremonial, these emperors accepted the idea that the world ruler should be worshipped in cult. As the god-idea gained increasing power, however, deity cult itself presented a counteracting influence to the fusion of the ideas of world ruler and deity. A rivalry arose between god and ruler. The king whose omnipotence led to his deification repelled the ruler of heaven, and the ruler of heaven and earth, on his part, refused to tolerate any rival of earthly origin. This led to a temporary compromise in which the ruler, though not himself regarded as a deity, was nevertheless held to be the son of a god, as well as the agent who executed the divine will. Or, after the pattern of hero myths, and in remote resemblance to ancestor cult, the ruler was believed to enter into the heaven of gods upon his death, so that it came to be only the deceased ruler who received divine adoration. The later rulers of Babylon, for example, called themselves the sons of Marduk, who was the chief god of Babylonia, and the features of this deity were given to the image of Hammurabi. The Roman emperors, on the other hand, from the time of Augustus on, were accorded divine reverence after death. When the king, realizing the exalted character of divine majesty, finally came to feel himself entirely human, these practices vanished. The emperor now became either the mere representative of the deity or one who was divinely favoured above other men. Hence the development terminates in a formula of royalty which has even yet not disappeared--the formula, "by the grace of God."

The development which we have described progressed continuously from beginnings that were almost contemporary with those of States until it eventuated in the world State. What, we must now ask, were its motivating forces? We cannot ascribe it to a craving for power which overmasters the ruler of the single State as soon as he has successfully conquered a foreign territory and a foreign people. Doubtless this factor was operative, yet it was obviously an effect rather than a cause, although an effect which, in the reciprocal relations of impulses, itself forthwith became a cause. But the immediate and decisive factors that led to the idea of establishing a world State, are to be found only partly in the motives underlying the extension of the single State into a world State, and in the results connected with the attainment of this ambition. These motives and results were, in the first instance, of an external nature. They consisted in the fact that the world State enjoyed increased means of subsistence and power by reason of the tribute which it received from subjugated provinces or from vassal States. Tributes of grain and cattle, of precious stones and metals, and especially of valuable human material, were placed at the command of the Pharaoh, or of the Babylonian or Persian monarch, for the building of his canals, his temples, and his palaces, for military services, and for an officialdom more directly subject to his will than were free-born natives. Everything which the single State required for its maintenance was demanded in a heightened degree by the world empire. Thus, it was the concentration of the means of subsistence and power that led to the displacement of the single State by the world empire, just as it was the same influence, on a smaller scale, that gave to the State its ascendancy over the earlier tribal organization. In extending its authority over wider and wider territory, the world empire itself finally perished as a result of the increasing difficulty in unifying its forces. It either broke up into separate States or a similar process of expansion started anew within the same boundaries, beginning now with one of the erstwhile vassal States and now with a new tribe that migrated into the territory. The first of these changes is illustrated by the Babylonian-Assyrian empires; the other, by the catastrophes suffered almost contemporaneously by the realm of the Pharaohs, through the influx of the Hyksos, and by Babylon, at the hands of the conquering hordes of the Hittites. The same phenomena recur in the partition of the empire of Alexander the Great and in the downfall of the Roman world empire. Unless world empires degenerate into a mere semblance of universal dominion, as did the Holy Roman Empire, they obviously become the more short-lived in proportion as history comes to move the more rapidly. Hence the Napoleonic attempt to revive the old idea in a new form became a mere episode. The single State finally triumphed over the world empire, and everything goes to show that the idea of an all-embracing world empire is little likely to recur unless the continuity of history is to be seriously interrupted.

It thus appears that the idea of establishing a world empire is not to be accounted for solely in terms of a constant striving to augment the means of power. Such endeavour prevails now, no less than formerly, in every State that has in any way attained to an independent development of its power. At the present time, however, none but at most an occasional Utopian dreamer adheres to the idea of creating an all-inclusive world State. Even where this occurs the idea is completely antithetical to that of earlier times. The ideal which is at present proposed for the distant future involves, not the extension of any single State into a world State, but rather the dissolution of existing States and the establishment of a society of universal peace among nations, such as would render entirely superfluous any instruments of power on the part of the State itself. But we have further evidence that the impulse to increase the means of power could not have been the only, nor even the decisive, factor in the development of the idea of a world empire. This evidence is to be found in the fact that, while a world empire never existed except as an idea, the age in which this idea dominated history regarded the world empire as a reality. Hence there must have been other motives, of an ideal nature, to bridge over the chasm between idea and reality in such wise as to identify the former with the latter. Though it is possible to urge, in explanation, that the knowledge of the real world was at that time limited, this does not solve the problem. Even though the Babylonian king might have felt satisfied to call himself the ruler over the four quarters of the earth because practically all countries of which he had knowledge in the four directions of the wind paid tribute to him, this of itself is not adequate to account for the fact that he regarded the universality as absolute and not relative. Over and above the fact of a limitation of knowledge, there was requisite particularly the idea of the _unity of the world_, and the application of this idea to the reality given in perception. This idea of unity is similar to that of the absolute unity of the world-order whose centre is the earth, an idea that dominated the astronomical conceptions of antiquity. Both ideas, that of a world empire embracing the whole of mankind and that of a universe whose centre is the earth and whose boundary is the crystal sphere of the heaven of fixed stars, sprang from the same mythological world-view that also found expression in the conception of a divine State projected from earth into heaven. To these gods, with a supreme deity at their head, belonged the rulership of the world. Whenever a change in the city that formed the centre of the terrestrial world empire resulted in a new supreme deity, the conditions of the earthly kingdom were all the more faithfully mirrored in the divine kingdom, for the other gods became, as it were, the vassals of this supreme deity. This mythological picture, projected from the earth to heaven, was necessarily reflected back again to earth. Herein lies the deeper significance of the idea that the ruler of the world empire is himself a god, or, at the least, a person of divine lineage and the representative of the supreme guardian deity of the kingdom. It is precisely because of this connection with mythological conceptions that world empires were but transitory. The period of their zenith and, more particularly, the period in which they possessed a fair degree of stability, coincided absolutely with the time at which deity myth was at its height. In the age of a waning deity belief, it was only the influence of numerous elements of secular culture, combined with a high degree of adaptability to the conditions of individual States, such as the Roman mind acquired under the conjunction of unusual circumstances, that enabled the idea of a world empire to be again carried into realization, within the limits which we have set to the term. Proof of the inner connection between the idea of a world empire and a mythological conception of the world, is to be found even in the case of Diocletian, the last powerful representative of the idea of a world kingdom. Diocletian not only invested the Roman emperor with the attributes of the Oriental world ruler of ancient times, but also claimed for himself the worship due to an earthly Jupiter.

3. WORLD CULTURE.

Inasmuch as the world empire belongs essentially to the age of deity cults, it is not so much a realization of the idea of humanity as a preparation for it, presaging a development beyond that of the single State. That this is the case manifests itself even in the temporal sequence of the phenomena. For it is at most anticipatory elements of the idea of humanity that are embodied in the world empire. With the disintegration of world empires, however, partly as their after-effect and partly as the result of their dissolution, we find phenomena of a new sort--those comprehended under the term _world culture_. In so far as the rise of world empire involves factors that lead to world culture, these affect primarily the material aspect of the life of peoples--world intercourse, the resulting multiplication of needs on the part of peoples, and the exchange of the means for the satisfaction of these needs. The spiritual phases of culture, which outlast these external and material phases, make their appearance more particularly at the time when the world empire is approaching its end. Since, however, it is these spiritual phases that are of predominant significance, world culture as a whole is to be regarded as an after-effect of world empire rather than as a direct result toward which the latter has contributed. The reason for this is not far to seek. It lies in the one-sided striving for the acquisition of external means of power, and in the consequent despotic pressure which the world empire, particularly in ancient times, brought to bear upon its separate members. It is also connected, however, with the fact that the dissolution of world empires usually brings in its wake migrations and a shifting of peoples. Even within the culture of the ancient Orient, the spread of the elements of myth and saga, as well as of the products of art and science, came especially with the destruction of earlier world empires and the reconstruction of others. The empire of Alexander the Great led to what was perhaps the greatest epoch of world culture in the history of civilization, yet the latter was conditioned, not so much directly by this empire, as by its disintegration at the time of the Diadochi. Similarly, the downfall of the last world empire that may properly lay claim to the name--the Græco-Roman kingdom--likewise resulted in a great cultural movement, due in part to the shifting of peoples which took place at this time, though more especially to the spread of Christianity. Here, again, the fact that the world empire was preparatory to world culture is substantiated. For the dying world empire employed even the last powers over which, in its final agony, it still had control, to pave the way for the world religion that was taking its rise.

Nevertheless, as a result of the tremendous resources which, in the beginnings of a higher civilization, were possessed by the world empire alone, there was _one_ field in which the period of such empires was directly creative and in which it set an example to future ages. I refer to the technique of mass and to the monumental art connected with it. The streets, viaducts, and magnificent edifices of the period of the Roman emperors have long aroused the wonder and admiration of later generations, as monuments of a power that had unlimited means at its command. The constructions of the Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and Persian world empires lacked the artistic execution which the influence of Greek art made possible to the constructions of the Romans. We have now come to know, however, that the former were not surpassed by the latter in the immensity which resulted from the consciousness, on the part of the builders, that they had countless human forces at their disposal. The canals and roadways of the Egyptian and Babylonian monarchs, moreover, also give clear evidence that the needs of agriculture and commerce were provided for in a way that would have been impossible, in these early stages of world culture, except through the resources at the command of a world State. The extension of intercourse resulting from world empire is to be regarded as at least a partial factor in the transition to the institution of money. It exercised an influence also toward the development of a system of writing, whose purpose it was to communicate the decrees of government to officials and vassals, and to preserve a record of the deeds of rulers and of the laws enacted by them. In this wise, the material aspects of world culture exerted an influence upon the mental aspects, whose direct expressions are speech and writing.

As regards the relation of speech and writing, the two fundamental elements of all culture, the culture of individuals and world culture show an important difference. In the culture of individuals, of course, speech long precedes writing, verbal expression being crystallized into writing only after a relatively high level of culture has been attained. In world culture, on the other hand, writing paved the way for verbal intercourse. The reason for this difference lies in the fact that speech is a natural product of the direct intercourse of individuals who are sharing a common life. Writing, however, is an invention by which individuals seek to disseminate and to preserve the ideas embodied in speech far beyond the spacial and temporal bounds that limit oral communication. Hence, communication in writing is the first step from folk culture to world culture. The simplicity of the characters which it employs enables it to pass from one people to another and from one generation to the next even more readily than does the speech of commerce. For though the latter is of a more universal character than the many separate mother tongues, it asserts itself only with difficulty in competition with them. The history of cuneiform writing is especially instructive as regards the point under present discussion. The Semitic people, whose migration to Babylonia succeeded that of the Sumerians, lost all knowledge of the Sumerian language, but they preserved the written texts as sacred. In the course of folk migrations, cuneiform writing likewise penetrated to the coast regions of Asia Minor, although in this instance it was continually used to express new idioms not to be found in the land of its origin. Letters have been found representing a correspondence between certain Babylonian kings and Egyptian Pharaohs, and dating from the fifteenth century before Christ. These letters, called Tel-el-Amarna letters after the place of their discovery, are a remarkable testimony to the fact that the demands of commerce gradually cause speech to follow in the wake of writing, even though the means which the Babylonian employs to make his cuneiform writing intelligible indicates that his Egyptian correspondent possessed only a slight acquaintance with the Babylonian language.

It was not until a much later time that any language of intercourse and literature became sufficiently widespread to be called a world language, even in that relative sense which attaches to all universal terms of this sort. This occurred, in the case of the _Greek_ language, under the rule of the Diadochi. In this instance, again, the first advance in the direction of world culture followed, in the main, upon world empire. For, though we must admit that the empire of Alexander was of altogether too brief a duration for such a purpose, it is nevertheless true that it witnessed only the beginnings of a world dominance of Greek language and culture. Taking into account the narrow limits of the cultural world of that period of history, there has been no age since that of the Diadochi concerning which we would be prepared to say that it attained to so widespread a dissemination of a uniform culture. The striving beyond a national to a world culture which took place at that time was, of course, the fruition of far earlier tendencies. The fact that the Greek colonies retained the language and customs of the mother country was itself a preparatory step. Following the train of colonists were individual travellers, whose desire for knowledge led them beyond the regions where the Greek language was known. Even in that early day, Pythagoras and Xenophanes, Herodotus and Xenophon, Democritus and Plato made extensive travels throughout the lands bordering on the Mediterranean. Alexander's expedition to India, a country which had up to that time been regarded as a marvellous fairyland, marked the culmination of the journeys to remote regions which had, at the outset, been undertaken by individuals. Nevertheless, the spread of the impulse to wander remains of primary significance for the Hellenistic period. The warrior, the tradesman, and the physician share this impulse with the scholar and the artist. In the age of tribal organization, it was the tribe or clan that travelled to distant places, its object being to escape the pressure of want and the need threatened by the exhaustion of the hunting-grounds or the soil; in the heroic age, it was the people as a whole who left their homes, either because they were crowded out by enemies or because they were eager to assert their power by establishing cities and States; in the age under present consideration, it is the individual who is seized with the longing for travel, his purpose being to find elsewhere more favourable opportunities for the exercise of his vocation, or, perhaps, to see the world, and thus to enlarge his field of experience and his knowledge. The large and rapidly growing cities that spring up into centres of the new world culture attract the people of all lands, as do also the ancient and far-famed seats of intellectual culture. In Alexandria, Pergamus, Athens, and, finally, in Rome, there mingle representatives of all races--of the Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, and Italic peoples. Greek is the language of common intercourse. Alexandria, however, gradually displaces Athens as the chief seat of science. The latter comes to be fostered, not by Greeks, but, in large part, by individuals of other nationalities, particularly those of the Orient.

This new world culture possesses two distinctive characteristics. The first of these consists in a growing indifference to the State as such. The second, antithetical to the former and yet most closely related to it, is a high appreciation of the individual personality, connected with which is a tendency on the part of the individual to develop his own personality and to assert his rights. That which the public values undergoes a change. The emphasis shifts, on the one hand, from the State to a culture which is universally human, and thus independent of State boundaries; it passes, on the other hand, from political interests, in part, to the individual personality and, in part, to universal spiritual development. Thus, world culture is at once cosmopolitan and individualistic. As respects both these characteristics, however, the interest in humanity finds expression in a transcendence of the limits of a single people. Here, again, preparatory stages will be found far back in Greek culture. As early as the time of the Sophists, individuals, wandering from city to city as travelling teachers, proclaim the spirit of personal freedom and the dependence of all social institutions and ties upon the will of the individual. When we come to the Epicurean and Stoic schools, which reach over into the period of early world culture, the idea of humanity in both its aspects receives its classic expression, though with differing emphases, conditioned by the ethical and religious needs as a whole. Similar conditions prevail in the positive sciences. In natural science, which reached its first classical development in the Alexandrian period, an interest in universal natural laws, as discovered in astronomy and mechanics, occurs side by side with an absorption in descriptive observations of the most detailed sort. History fluctuates between attempts at an abstract schematization of the epochs of political development, after the pattern of the Aristotelian classification of the forms of the State, and biographical accounts of dominating personalities and their deeds. Similarly, philology combines the grammatical disputes of the Peripatetic and Stoic schools--disputes as yet unfruitful in their abstract generalities--with that minute pursuit of literary studies which has since given the period the discreditable name of 'Alexandrianism.' Art also manifests this _coincidentia oppositorum_. The monumental edifices of this epoch exhibit a tendency toward the colossal, whereas sculpture is characterized by a painstaking and individualizing art of portraiture; the drama portraying the pompous action of ruler and State, appears alongside of the play of civic intrigue and the mime.

As the result both of inner dissolution and of the aggression of new peoples who were just entering upon their political development, Hellenistic world culture underwent disintegration. It first split up into Greek and Roman divisions, in correspondence with the partition of the Roman world empire and that of the Christian Church connected with it. Except the fact of the separation itself, nothing shows more significantly how far both divisions were from possessing a world culture than does the decline of that indispensable means of common culture, language. The West preserved meagre remnants of the Latin civilization, the East, fragments of the Greek civilization. In the course of the centuries, the clergy of the West developed a class of scholars who were out of sympathy with the prevailing tendencies toward national culture. In the East, the barbarian nations, which the Church barely succeeded in holding together, exercised a benumbing influence upon culture; cultural activity, therefore, sank into a dull lethargy. The ancient world empires, whose last brilliant example, the monarchy of Alexander, had formed the transition to the first great world culture, gave place, at this later time, to _world religion_. As the result of struggles which, though long, were assured of ultimate success, world religion subjected the political powers to its authority. Destined, in the belief of peoples, to be imperishable, this religion outlived the changing forms of the secular State, and was the only remaining vehicle of world culture, fragmentary as this may have been. But the inner dissolution to which the last of the great world empires, that of Rome, succumbed, overpowered also the Church as soon as the latter endeavoured to become a new world State and insisted on the duty of believers to render obedience to it. When this occurred, the world culture fostered by it necessarily proved too weak to assimilate the new tendencies which were beginning to manifest themselves. Conditions were ripe for the striving to achieve a new culture. In contrast with the ideal of the Church, this culture was concerned with the actual world, and therefore felt itself related to the cultural idea of antiquity. Thus arose the culture of the Renaissance. In it, we again have a world culture in the true sense of the word, even though it was shared, at the outset, only by the ambitious and the educated, as had, indeed, also essentially been the case with its prototype.

The culture of the Renaissance formulated its ideal by reference both to the past and to the future. It sought to revive the world culture of the Græco-Roman period, but yet to give to the latter a content suited to the spirit of the new age and to the tasks awaiting it. Hence the Renaissance was not merely a rebirth, as its name might suggest, but a new world culture. Though possessing many traits in common with the older culture of Hellenism, it bore, in an even greater measure, its own peculiar stamp. The most noteworthy feature common to the two was their combination of universalism and individualism--a feature that is, perhaps, characteristic of world culture as such. Apparently both universalism and individualism become more prominent with the course of time. During the period of the Renaissance, the cultivation--one might almost say the cult--of the individual personality probably reached the highest point that it had as yet attained. The human monster, who violated without compunction all laws of propriety and custom, and the ascetic zealot, who sacrificed himself for a visionary ideal, could both alike arouse admiration because of the uniqueness of their characters. Along with this emphasis of individual personality, there flourished social ideals of a religious and a political nature. It was under this influence that the reformation of the church began its work and that new political theories and Utopian accounts of a happy future for the human race made their appearance. In still another respect does the age of the Renaissance appear to be a genuine revival, in an enlarged world, of the Hellenistic period. Again the individual is overpowered by the impulse to travel, and, as a consequence, the age of great geographical discoveries is inaugurated. The voyages of the great discoverers--of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan--were the result, for the most part, of personal initiative. And, though other motives may have lurked in the background, the discoverers themselves were chiefly inspired by that desire to wander which, more than a century earlier, had led the Venetian Marco Polo to travel alone in the distant lands of eastern Asia.

But, in certain essential particulars, the later period of world culture possessed a character all its own. The basis of culture was no longer a world State, but a world Church. No longer, moreover, was there an indifference to the State, as had been so generally the case in Hellenistic times. A heightened political interest was everywhere beginning to be manifest. That which long continued to give this period its unique stamp was the struggle between State and Church. The social impulses tended in the direction of a new political order, and to a certain extent, even at this time, toward a social reconstruction. The world culture of this period, moreover, sustained a completely altered relation to language, that universal vehicle both of mental life and of the material culture which grows up out of the intercourse of peoples. It was not a world language, such as results naturally from the authority of a world empire, that constituted the basis of the new cultural unity. On the contrary, the latter was dependent upon a multiplicity of languages, which gave expression to the mental individuality of peoples just as did the national States to the diversity of particular political and social interests. The influence of more extensive educational activities made itself felt. The forms of commerce and of the interchange of the mental products of nations were manifold, yet education rendered the means of material and intellectual intercourse common property so far as this was possible and necessary. Thus, world culture itself acquired a new foundation. A world language must of necessity be an active and a living language, and, in view of the fact that all social institutions are historically conditioned, it can attain its supremacy only through the influence of a world empire. Hence every world culture whose basis is a unity of language, in the sense of a world language, is doomed to be transitory. Fragments of such a culture may survive, but it itself must perish along with the language by which it is sustained and, more remotely, with the political power by which the language is upheld. All this is changed as soon as world culture is established on the basis of a multiplicity of national tongues as well as of national States. Then, for the first time, may world culture become more than merely an occasional epoch of history; thenceforth it may enjoy a permanent development. With this in mind, one may say that the period of the Renaissance laid the foundation for a new form of world culture, whose characteristic feature is that combination of humanistic and national endeavour which is still prevalent throughout the civilized world.

4. WORLD RELIGIONS.

One of the most significant marks of the heroic age is the existence of national religions. Just as each race possesses its own heroes, so also does it have its own gods, who are reverenced as its protectors in wars with foreign peoples. True, gods and their cults may occasionally pass over from one people to another. Wherever there is an assimilation of foreign cults, however, all traces of origin disappear; the gods who are taken over from other peoples are added to the company of native gods, and enrich the national pantheon. So far as these conditions are concerned, world empires bring few changes. At most, they expressly subordinate the gods of conquered lands to the god of the ruling city, and thus prepare for the idea of an all-comprehensive divine State corresponding to the universal terrestrial State. The decisive step in the completion of this development is taken only under the influence of the world culture that grows up out of the world empire. The special national deities that represent the particular interests of individual peoples then inevitably recede in favour of gods and cults sustained by universal human needs, in which case the cults are, on the whole, identical, even though the deities bear different names.