CIVILIZATION AND SCIENCE. 269 



levees, or the sinking of the soil by volcanic action. Many a tract of 

 waste-land in Italy, which in former times was thickly populated, 

 would still be productive were it not that the dragon of malaria keeps 

 watch on the golden fleece of the grain-harvest. The south of Spain 

 did not become barren till after Christian intolerance had driven out 

 the industrious Moors, and Gothic laziness had permitted their irriga- 

 tion-canals to become choked up. Wherever, therefore, sterility was 

 not produced by irresistible natural agencies, it was not the cause, but 

 rather the result, of the decay of the state. Under more favorable 

 political conditions, the ancient fertility of the soil might be restored, 

 but the evils of deforestation, as we see in Provence, can hardly ever 

 be repaired. 



It was not because the soil of the Mediterranean countries was im- 

 poverished in phosphoric acid and potash that the ancient civilization 

 went to ruin, but because that civilization was built on the quicksand 

 of aesthetics and speculativism, which was quickly swept away by the 

 tide of barbarian invasion. Suppose the legionaries had been armed 

 with flint-lock muskets, instead of the piliim, and that, instead of the 

 catapult and the ballista, the Romans possessed even such artillery as 

 was employed during the sixteenth century. Would not all the migrant 

 hordes, from the Cimbri and the Teutones down to the Vandals, have 

 been sent back home with broken heads ? True, the Romans beat back 

 the Teutones with the pilum alone, for, even with equal arms on both 

 sides, the superior military science, backed by higher mental and bodily 

 development, ever prevails over undisciplined masses of men. But, 

 had fire-arms taken the place of the pilum, the Romans would always 

 have triumphed over the barbarians, even without a Marius, and with- 

 out such terrible efforts as at Aquas Sextiag. It is vain to speculate in 

 history about what would have happened under altered circumstances. 

 So much, however, is clear, that, had not the ancients neglected to win 

 for themselves that absolute mastery over brute force which the sub- 

 jugation of Nature and the progressive improvement of industrial skill 

 always insure, the two ethnic elements of the " Nibelungenlied," 

 namely, Northern heroes and horsemen from the steppes of Asia, would 

 have been powerless against the Roman Empire, though its rottenness 

 stunk to heaven. And, had the ancients developed their inventiveness 

 sufficiently to originate the art of printing, then, despite the invasions 

 of the barbarians, we should not have to lament evermore the loss of 

 so many a masterpiece of poet, orator, and historian. 



IV. The Scholasttco-Ascetic Period. 



But the ancient culture succumbed. The night of the middle ages 

 settled down upon those shores of the Mediterranean once illumined 

 with the splendor of all that is grand and beautiful. To this was added 

 a peculiar fatality which made the intellectual ruin more complete, and 



