60 JORDAN— THE HUMAN HARVEST. [April i8, 



all that goes with the pomp and circumstance of war. The in- 

 dividuality of men was lost in the aggrandizement of the few. In- 

 dependence was swallowed up in ambition, patriotism came to have 

 a new meaning. It was transferred from the hearth and home to 

 the trail of the army. 



It does not matter to us now what were the details of the subse- 

 quent history of Rome. We have now to consider only a single 

 factor. In science, this factor is known as " reversal of selection. '^ 

 " Send forth the best ye breed !" That was the word of the Roman 

 war-call. And the spirit of Domination took these words literally, 

 and the best were sent forth. In the conquests of Rome, Vir, the 

 real man, went forth to battle and to the work of foreign invasion, 

 Homo, the human being, remained in the farm and the workshop 

 and begat the new generations. Thus " Vir gave place to Homo.'' 

 The sons of real men gave place to the sons of scullions, stable-boys, 

 slaves, camp-followers, and the rifif-raff of those the great victorious 

 army does not want. 



The fall of Rome was not due to luxury, effeminacy, corruption, 

 the wickedness of Nero and Caligula, the weakness of the train of 

 Constantine's worthless descendants. It was fixed at Philippi, when 

 the spirit of domination was victorious over the spirit of freedom. It 

 was fixed still earlier, in the rise of consuls and triumvirates and 

 the fall of the simple sturdy self-sufficient race who would brook no 

 arbitrary ruler. When the real men fell in war, or were left in far- 

 away colonies, the life of Rome still went on. But it was a different 

 type of Roman which continued it, and this new type repeated in 

 Roman history its weakling parentage. 



" It is puerile," says Charles Ferguson, " to suppose that king- 

 doms are made by kings. The kings could do nothing if the mob 

 did not throw up its cap when the king rides by. The king is con- 

 sented to by the mob, because of that in him which is mob-like. The 

 mob loves glory and prizes, so does the king. If he loved beauty 

 and justice, the mob would shout for him while the fine words were 

 sounding in the air, but he could never celebrate a jubilee or estab- 

 lish a dynasty. When the crowd gets ready to demand justice and 

 beauty, it becomes a democracy and has done with kings." 



