Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/115

 certain territory for one another and with one another, and who thus are socially bound together. But also the number of the territories increase whose inhabitants live in connection with each other, in order to work for each other and form one social union. Finally, the range of the territories entering into fixed social dependence on each other and forming a permanent social organisation with a common language, common customs, common laws, extends also.

After the death of Alexander of Macedon, the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean had formed already an international circle, with an international language—Greek. After the rise of the Romans all the lands round the Mediterranean became a still wider international circle, in which the national distinctions disappeared, and who held themselves to be the representatives of humanity.

The new religion of the circle which took the place of the old national religions was, from the very beginning, a world religion with one God, who embraced the entire world, and before whom all men were equal. This religion applied itself to all religions, and declared them all to be children of one God, all workers.

But in fact the moral law held good even here only for the members of their own circle of culture—for "Christians," for "believers." And the centre of gravity in Christianity came ever more and more towards the North and West during the migration of the peoples. In the South and East there formed itself a new circle of culture with its own morality—that of Islam—which forced its way forward in Asia and Africa, as the Christian one had done in Europe.

Now, however, this last expanded itself, thanks to capitalism, ever more and more to a universal civilisation which embraced Buddhists, Moslems, Parsees, Brahmins, as well as Christians, who more and more ceased to be real Christians.

Thus becomes formed a foundation for the final lealisation of that moral conception already expressed by Christianity, although too prematurely to be able to be realised itself for the majority of Christians, for