Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/843

Rh The intellectual growth of the Hindu people was certainly most pronounced in that early period when they were marching southward through hostile realms, and afterward fiercely fighting with the Indian aborigines for a home. It seems to have culminated shortly after this period, and before they sank into their subsequent state of profound peace. Since then they have produced literature, but have not advanced in civilization. In China, also, there is historical evidence of an ancient state of affairs widely different from that now existing. The earlier annals of the Chinese nation present us with a series of separate, independent provinces, among which China proper occupied but a contracted section in the northwest of the present empire. Gradually, through continued aggression, this province extended its borders, brought the others under a sort of feudal allegiance, and finally into complete subjection. During this period civilization was progressing. But since the final establishment of the empire within its present boundaries, and its inauguration of the policy of peace, progress seems to have halted, and mental stagnation to have replaced the ancient intellectual vitality.

If we now come to consider instances of warlike nations, it will be found that a complete parallel can not be made. Warlike nations do not subsist through uncounted generations like those at peace. They conquer and they are conquered; they destroy and they are destroyed; they die and leave their heirs. To consider them properly we must follow them through the long line of their descent, and see how the successive offspring have wrought with the talents of their far-off ancestry. This can not be easily done. Each heir has inherited from several warlike predecessors. There are no entailed estates of human progress, no fixed hereditary successions. The world has gathered up the scattered possessions of its broken peoples and built new empires upon their ruins.

Various examples of marked progress in warlike nations might be adduced from ancient history, particularly in the cases of Greece and Rome. In more modern times we have examples in the history of the Arabians after their proselyting outburst, of Spain after the expulsion of the Saracens, of Europe during the Crusades, and in the infiltration of liberal ideas into the European mind during the Napoleonic wars. But for a more complete illustration, equaling in length the period of the Chinese Empire, the history of western Europe during its whole civilized period must be taken, since, as the former presents us with an instance of almost unbroken peace, the latter yields an example of almost unceasing war. For several thousand years this region has been a theater of conflict: first, between Rome and its barbarian neighbors; second, between the Europeans and their Asiatic invaders;