Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/84

 46 General History oj Europe Finally, in religion the East developed the earliest belief. in one God and his fatherly care for all men, and laid the founda- tions of a religious life from which came forth the founder of the leading religion of the civilized world today. For these things, accomplished most of them while Europe was still unde- veloped, our debt to the Orient is enormous. 68. Lack of Freedom, Political and Mental, in the Ancient Orient. There were some very important things, however, which the Orient had not yet gained. It had always accepted as a matter of course the rule of a king. It had never occurred to anyone there that the people should have something to say about how they should be governed. No one had ever gained the idea of a free citizen, with the feeling we call patriotism and a right to influence the selection of government officials. Liberty as we understand it was unknown, and the rule of the people, which we call "democracy," was never dreamed of in the Orient. Just as the orientals accepted the rule of kings without ques- tion, so they accepted the rule of the gods. They thought that every storm was due to the interference of some god and that every eclipse must be the angry act of a god or demon. Hence the orientals made little inquiry into the natural causes of such things. In general, then, they suffered from a lack of freedom of the mind a kind of intellectual bondage to religion and to old ideas. Under these circumstances natural science could not go very far, and religion was much darkened by superstition. 69. Transition to Europe. There were, therefore, still bound- less things for mankind to do in government, in thought about the natural world, in gaining deeper insight into the wonders and beauties of nature, as well as in art, in literature, and in many other lines. This future progress was to be made in Europe that Europe which we left, at the end of our first chapter, in the Late Stone Age. Therefore, we must now turn back, to follow across the eastern Mediterranean the course of rising civilization, as it passed from the Orient to our forefathers in early Europe four to five thousand years ago.