TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILIZATION. 707 



her own troops, rules the two liunclred millions of ludia ; how was it 

 possible for her to remain victor in opposition to their terrific and fanat- 

 ical revolt in IS.jT ? How does it happen that we, Europeans or (not 

 l>articularly to mention the European-settled America,) that the At- 

 lantic nations alone compass the earth with railroads, surround it with 

 telegraph lines, traverse its water girdle with mighty ships, and that 

 to all this the other five-sixths of the earth's inhabitants have not added 

 a span — the same five-sixths which still, for the greater part, are 

 grandly organized and highly cultivated ? 



There are different ways of explaining this astonishing fact, or rather, 

 of at least attempting to determine it comprehensively. Klemm, the 

 industrious Leipsic collector, who was a pre-historian long before the 

 discovery of pile habitations, has propounded the distinction between 

 " active" and " passive" peoples ; and many to-day follow him therein. 

 To him the Atlantic nations are the active ; all others, down to the utterly 

 uncultivated, the passive. According to this theory we make history, 

 they suffer it. Although this discrimination appears to have so much 

 in its favor it does not hold. ISTations can (as history teaches) be a 

 long time active, then passive, and later again active. Activity and 

 passivity are not to nations indwelling characteristics, but circum- 

 stances into which and out of which they can fall without changing 

 their spiritual, essential position. One proof of reality the Klemm 

 theory does not stand. Europe could, to-morrow, unyoked from Asia, 

 be made passive without losing the character which makes railroads, 

 steamships and telegraphs belong to her as her spiritual possession. 

 The Arabian, on the contrary, could destroy the products of scientific 

 technology as the pretended Omar the books, but would not be able to 

 re-produce them, as has many times been done in case of the books. 



Others have supposed, and still believe, that it is Christianity that 

 establishes the distinction. 



This however does not stand the test. Of course a considerable part 

 ot the thinking which resulted in metamorpliosed inventions and 

 discoveries was done in the Christian empire, but by no means all. 

 What an innovation was made by the art of printing, and yet we 

 know that 1,000 years earlier the Chinese had found a way to this art. 

 Gunpowder, too, that marks so decisive a step in the progress of our 

 civilization, was used by the Arabians long before the time of the 

 Freiburg monks. Then in mechanics we find those important power 

 machines, the water wheels, are very old and of Asiatic origin. 



But passing from these examples to a genuine offspring of Europe, 

 the steam-engine, watching its gradual development up to its actual 

 use — tlie time of the Kenaissance — in Italy, Germany, France, and 

 England, but never outside of Christendom, eVen this, we find, does 

 not encounter progress, but on the contrary, its adherents often oppose 

 it up to the last. 



We look further and do we not find to-day Christians living in the 



