THE GEOGRAPHIC ASPECT OF CULTURE 167 



evolution of humanity. Egypt, China, Chaldea, Assyria and Babylonia 

 typified the childhood of the race with its characteristic dependence 

 upon nature apparent even in its culture ; Greece with its love of form, 

 self-consciousness and passion for freedom represented the adolescent 

 stage; while physical development culminated in the forceful and pro- 

 saic Roman spirit, typical of manhood. The birth at this time of the 

 Child, in Bethlehem in Judea, was then not a casual event but a neces- 

 sity. The first Adam had been made a living soul, and in slow process 

 of time had attained his majority. The second Adam was made a 

 quickening spirit, creating a new form of energy which thenceforward 

 was destined to transform religion, philosophy, art, music, science, lan- 

 guage and sociology. Well may the Germans call its founder " der 

 Einzige." 



The connecting link between ancient and modern civilization during 

 this transition period was found in the church. Early in its history 

 the church had developed the institution of monasticism in the attempt 

 to check the flagrant social evils of the east and preserve the purity of 

 the northern races. The institution so established soon spread over all 

 Europe, one order alone, the Benedictines, having at one time over 

 40,000 monasteries. The spirit of brotherhood thus manifested by the 

 church was also apparent in the state in the development of feudalism 

 from slavery, and more especially in the principle of chivalry. 



The church, however, had a more direct influence upon culture by 

 reason of the schools which sprang up in the shelter of the monasteries, 

 and later developed into the early medieval universities. All learning, 

 and particularly mathematics, was confined to these conventual 

 schools, and comprised practically nothing more tban was essential to 

 the church. Learning was divided into the trivium and quadrivium, 

 the trivium consisting of grammar, logic and rhetoric, or, in short, the 

 mastery of the Latin language in which the services of the church were 

 conducted, and the quadrivium consisting of arithmetic, music, geom- 

 etry and astronomy. The latter were also limited to the needs of the 

 church, comprising arithmetic for keeping accounts, music for use in 

 church services, geometry for surveying the extensive property of the 

 church, and astronomy for the calculation of Easter. These constituted 

 the seven liberal arts, as enumerated in the line 



lingua, tropus, ratio; numerus, tonus, angulus, astra, 



and marked the limit of attainment, or, as expressed in a verse of the 

 eleventh century, 



Qui tria, qui septem, qui totum scibile novit. 



The most significant effect produced by the church upon culture, 

 however, arose in a manner unintentional and unforeseen. The rapid 

 growth of papal authority had led the church to undertake violent 

 measures for its own aggrandizement, chief of which was the crusades. 



