Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/17

 And according to this philosopher, the chosen method of the Absolute was movement by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: every system, every concept, every situation calling forth from the vasty deep its opposite, its challenge; the conflict of the two finally reaching a reconciling synthesis or solution. Though logic would seem to imply that change must be unbroken in the future as in the past, Hegel in fact announced that the goal of the long process had been reached in Germany and the Prussian monarchy: God had labored through the centuries to produce the ideal situation in which Hegel found himself. But that naïve conviction did not prevent his great hypothesis from affecting deeply the thought of the modern age. If historians, working with concepts less ambitious—with concrete relations rather than with ultimates—have been inclined in recent days to avoid the Hegelian creed, theologians and statesmen have continued to the latest hour to find in it the weight of telling argument.

Near the close of Hegel's century, a German economist, Werner Sombart, seeking the dynamic of imperialism, reduced the process to the terms of an everlasting struggle among human societies over feeding places on the wide surface of the earth and over the distribution of the world's natural resources. While this doctrine is too sweeping in its universality, it is not without illustrations. For three thousand years or more the clash of ancient races and empire builders had, as its goal, possession of the rich valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, where food for congested populations could be won with ease and ruling classes could be readily founded on servile labor. Every one of the strong empires that rose in those fertile regions and enjoyed a respite of security was in turn overwhelmed by a conquering horde which coveted its land and its accumulated wealth. The spoils of industry were the rewards of valor. When the Athenian empire was at its height, no fewer than a thousand cities paid tribute to its treasury and a lucrative commerce, spread over the Mediterra-