THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 11 



origin of that change we do not know. It was quite possibly 

 the culmination of climatic changes occurring in the great 

 plains of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In the course 

 of it, Crete lost her control of the northern Mediterranean 

 and finally vanished from the list of the empires. The 

 Achaean Greek civilization that Crete had founded disap- 

 peared in its turn. The Hittite Empire, attacked in the 

 north, pressed through to the south, came into conflict with 

 the new power of Assyria, and was destroyed. Assyria con- 

 quered Babylonia and expanded its new empire, which was 

 eventually to overrun Egypt itself. 



In the fifth century a.d., a similar rapid change in the 

 organization of world power and, consequently, in the eco- 

 nomic and social life of the civilized world took place. The 

 Gothic invasion of Italy after the division of the empire 

 between Rome and Constantinople terminated the domina- 

 tion of the western world by Rome. 



In the fifteenth century, again, centralized monarchies took 

 the place of the feudal system, and that system that had ruled 

 the world for a thousand years deliquesced and changed be- 

 fore the eyes of men. And then Northern Europe largely 

 abandoned its traditional religion and established a new 

 church, carrying with it altogether new and different social 

 relations. 



But the progress made in the material aspects of civiliza- 

 tion in the three hundred years that have elapsed since the 

 birth of Newton is as great as that made from the neolithic 

 period to the time of his birth. A man of Newton's day who 

 left London or Paris and by some Time Machine found 

 himself in ancient Rome, Athens, or Thebes would have 

 missed few of the conveniences and amenities of life to which 

 he had been accustoined. In some respects, indeed, he might 

 have found himself better off. The water supply and the 

 drainage system of ancient Rome were better than those of 

 Elizabethan London. The buildings of Thebes or Athens or 

 Rome were greatly superior to those of London or Paris in 

 the seventeenth century. The mind of man, the intellectual 



