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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



duce the industrial type of regime, although a 

 civilization once produced under that regime 

 may retrograde to the militant or predatory type 

 without necessarily losing the whole, or even any 

 important part, of its culture. Hence it results 

 that no great civilization could spring up spon- 

 taneously among the scattered lands of the Carib- 

 bean or the Malayan Sea ; while among the little 

 islands of Hellas, lying within sight of one an- 

 other, almost landlocked on every side, and gov- 

 erned (as Curtius has pointed out l ) by singularly 

 even and predictable meteorological conditions, 

 the first free and subjective culture of the world 

 found its birthplace, and all after-cultures their 

 shrine. 



But why, the objector will once more urge, 

 should not the Caribbean and the Malay Archi- 

 pelagos have developed in like manner an indus- 

 trial and commercial type of society? Because 

 the necessary elements for such a type were then 

 and there wanting. The various West Indian 

 Islands, to take a special example, all produce 

 exactly the same food-stuffs and mercantile raw 

 material; interchange of commodities between 

 them was, and still is, impracticable. Even at 

 the present day, the intercourse between Barba- 

 does and Jamaica is practically nil, while the in- 

 tercourse between either of the two and England 

 or America is relatively enormous. The sugar, 

 the rum, the coffee, the pimento, the anatto of 

 the one do not need to be exchanged against the 

 sugar, the rum, the coffee, the pimento, the anat- 

 to of the other ; but they do require to be ex- 

 changed against the piece-goods of Manchester, 

 the hardware of Birmingham, the salt-fish and 

 timber of Canada, the flour and the bacon of the 

 Western States. Similarly, before the arrival of 

 European invaders, with their extended seaman- 

 ship, the West Indian Islands had nothing to 

 gain by intercourse with one another. Their re- 

 lations were almost entirely confined to cannibal 

 expeditions of the more warlike against the more 

 peaceful tribes. The plantains, yams, and other 

 food-stuffs, of the one were equally grown upon 

 the others. Metals were rare, and their use (I 

 believe) unknown. Gold was found in some of 

 the islands ; and it was with this, perhaps, that 

 the polished hatchets of green-stone commonly 

 scattered over the archipelago were purchased 

 from their original manufacturers on the main- 



1 Let me here acknowledge once for all the great 

 assistance I have derived from this suggestive writer, 

 whose views have led me on to those expressed in the 

 text, which are yet diametrically opposite to the final 

 conclusions of the acute historian himself. 



land ; but no other trace of an extended traffic 

 can be discovered among the strikingly scanty 

 remains of the aboriginal inhabitants. In short, 

 trade did not exist in the West Indies before 

 their colonization from Europe and Africa, be- 

 cause they produced nothing in which the natives 

 could trade. 



Widely different was the case of Hellas. 

 Here, once more, we owe to Curtius the develop- 

 ment of the pregnant truth that Hellas stands 

 alone in the variety and wealth of her natural 

 productions. Within, at the most, six degrees 

 of latitude, she stretches from all but sub-tropi- 

 cal Rhodes and Crete and Cythera, to all but 

 sub-arctic Thrace. Corn, wine, wool, cattle, 

 hides, horns, timber, dye-stuffs, oil, iron, and 

 copper — these formed good raw material for a 

 nascent trade. The silver of Laurium and the 

 gold of Pactolus gave scope for the arts of coin- 

 ing and ornament ; while the marble of Paros or 

 Pentelicus supplied a magnificent quarry for the 

 sculptors who were to be. Cut off by mountains 

 and straits into a thousand parts, whose connect- 

 ing path lay over the most navigable of seas, 

 Hellas was literally and not figuratively predes- 

 tined to become an important trading-country at 

 the earliest age of advanced navigation. 



This, however, is not by itself enough to ac- 

 count for the intellectual and aesthetic supremacy 

 of the Hellenic mind. Such internal trade with 

 men of one's own race and speech, but little dif- 

 ferentiated comparatively by position and cir- 

 cumstances, would not probably suffice to pro- 

 duce that higher, freer, more catholic intelligence 

 which forms the central characteristic of Hellen- 

 ism. Let us look once more at a parallel case, 

 that of China. The Celestial Empire is also 

 noticeable for the great variety of its natural 

 resources and its internal trade. Shut off until 

 lately by mountains and table-lands from all 

 other civilized peoples, the Chinese have yet suc- 

 ceeded in developing for themselves a very con- 

 siderable culture, which nevertheless falls hope- 

 lessly short of Hellenism in every one of the 

 strong Hellenic peculiarities. The civilization of 

 China is notably mechanical, objective, unintel- 

 ligent, wooden. She has silk, and fine fabrics, 

 and exquisite porcelain, and delicate ivory-work, 

 and architecture which, if not beautiful in our 

 Western eyes, is yet highly evolved. She feeds, 

 and clothes, and houses herself, from her own ' 

 unaided resources. She has wrought out her 

 native school of painting, of sculpture, and of 

 decoration — a school which, though it does not 

 reach the same level with the highest products 



