HISTORY OF CULTURE In its broadest sense Culture may be considered as identical with Civilization, and as thus embracing all the results of human effort to ameliorate the condition of the race. It is substantially in this sense that the word is used in the following "History," which, however, owing to the nature and arrangement of the work of which it forms a part, deals more with external features than with underlying principles or formative influences. Many of the topics that fall within its scope are treated at length in other volumes. What is here presented is a general sketch of the successive phases of social development in their historical sequence and connection.
The change from a migratory to a settled existence, from tribal aggre gations to organized communities, was the first step in a course of pro gressive improvement. There were doubtless innumerable attempts in this direction which proved premature and abortive. Yet the earliest civilization known to us maintained itself without interruption through a long succession of ages, and is believed to have passed its culmination and begun to decay before its influence extended beyond the region in which it was so firmly established. This is accounted for by the nature of the country. The valley of the Nile was specially fitted to become the cradle of civilization in its helpless infancy. It presented a unique combination of all the conditions requisite for a secure and continuous development—a soil perennially renewed by the agencies of Nature and demanding only the lightest labor and simplest methods for its efficient cultivation; a climate exempt from violent disturbances and destructive changes, and from the extremes that overtask or enervate the energies; complete facilities for internal intercourse and absence of all physical impediments to national unity and organization; and finally, an all-but impenetrable girdle of natural boundaries, affording almost absolute security and isolation.
The civilization of Egypt, purely indigenous not only in its origin but in its whole development—cast, as it were, in a mould, and thus complete in itself and uniform in all its parts—impresses us rather as a product of unconscious instinct than of free intellectual activity. It presents the spectacle of a varied and well-ordered industry, a high degree of know ledge and skill in the mechanical arts, and a social life systematically 117 framed and regulated, all apparently preserved and controlled by concep tions derived from the processes of Nature in a land where these pursued an unchanging round in evident conformity to a fixed sway and prescribed limits. Hence it was self-contained and self-sufficing, with no need or
capacity for absorption or expansion. It imported no elements from abroad, and it sought no dissemination by means of colonies or otherwise. Above all, it never gave birth to a literature—never, so to speak, became vocal. The monuments in which its conceptions were embodied excite curiosity and admiration; but, except in their occasional suggestions of a profound symbolism, they make no appeal to those feelings which seek in art the revelation of a common humanity.
In contrast with this secluded, homogeneous, and in a certain sense complete historical development, Western Asia exhibits a diversity and confusion of types, caused by incessant floods of migration and conquest, a continual shifting of the centres and bases of civilization, and an endless struggle against the irruptions of nomadism. Here the three great races which for so many ages competed for supremacy were in perpetual contact and collision. The superiority of the Semitic race seemed for a long time to be assured by its preponderance in numbers and the varied qualities and resources of the nations composing it—the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Lydians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Arabians, and others. But the successive attempts to bring these different branches under a single dominion that might have established the supremacy of the race and enabled it to defy the encroachments and assaults of its rivals had only a temporary success; and the kindred states and nationalities that had played the most conspicuous part in the development and extension of civilization were overwhelmed by repeated tides of invasion, until nothing remained but stranded wrecks and scattered waifs. After many centuries a fresh and unparalleled burst of energy and power in a Semitic people sent forth a stream of conquest that swept over the shores of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean on the west and to the plains of India on the east. But again the race which had thus asserted its tradi tional claim to universal mastery was compelled to succumb. Henceforth its condition was to be that of servitude, its place in history a blank. Yet all its failures are balanced by the singular ascendency of its ardent and fruitful spirit, the impulse which it gave to the nascent civilization of the Hellenic people, and the widespread and permanent rule of the religious conceptions and doctrines proclaimed by its prophets and teachers.