226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proportional to the intimacy of the contact, or rather to the readiness 

 with which they endeavor to conform themselves to the manners of 

 their new neighbors. Here is an important point. There is no mys- 

 terious influence, no " blight," caused by civilization. There is much 

 loose talk about barbarians " melting away " before the light of prog- 

 ress. It may do for the poet to speak of the withering breath of civil- 

 ization as blasting the child of Nature, but the real cause of the de- 

 pressing effect of our civilization upon the savage lies in himself, and 

 in his sudden attempt to assimilate what is foreign to the whole tenor 

 of his personal habits, confirmed as they are by centuries of inherited 

 experience. The instances, plentiful enough, of race-decay following 

 civilization, are all in peoples in whom circumstances have led to a 

 sudden and unnatural conformity with the manners of a stronger and 

 more advanced nation. This has occurred generally where the savages 

 have been brought in contact either with a conquering people or with 

 missionaries, the latter cause operating for the most part only when 

 the barbarous tribe was small and the Christianizing influence there- 

 fore especially strong, as in the Sandwich Islands. In one notable 

 case the method of contact has been by the barbarians themselves be- 

 coming conquerors. Let us examine this latter instance first. The 

 earliest authentic historical record of the Goths as a people shows them 

 in the latter half of the third century living north of the Danube. 

 For a hundred years they had very little connection with any more 

 civilized nation. Then, on the appearance of the Huns in 376, a part 

 of the nation (later to be known as the Visigoths) advanced south of 

 the Danube, the eastern division of the tribe, or Ostrogoths, remaining 

 on the northern side of the river, and mingling with the invading 

 Huns. The latter portion, therefore, were not brought into connection 

 with either branch of the Roman Empire, while the western Goths, 

 gradually adopting a form of the Christian faith, and being enlisted 

 in the Roman armies, were slowly being acted upon by southern civil- 

 ization. Of course, the effect of the change was much less marked 

 than that of the contact of barbarism with modern civilization ; still, 

 undoubtedly, a considerable modification of the character and customs 

 of the western Goths was made, and it occurred gradually enough to 

 diminish its shock. For many years they fought, alternately under 

 and against the eagles, and when finally, under Alaric, their power 

 became supreme in Italy, early in the fifth century, they retired into 

 Gaul very soon after the first sack of Rome. Afterward, though they 

 joined with the Italians against the combined forces of the Huns and 

 Ostrogoths, yet their association was mostly with the provincial repre- 

 sentatives of the Roman civilization, and they gradually assumed their 

 permanent position in Aquitania and Spain, where they left their im- 

 press as a constituent part of the Provence nation.* 



In marked contrast with this was the contact of the Ostrogoths 



* Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," chapter xxxi, et seq. 



