178 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



of the acquirements and experience each had gained 

 would be the result, although it might be obtained after 

 collision, by much slaughter and suffering, if not by 

 the subjugation of one of the parties. Yet, out of these 

 disasters rose almost all the elements of civilization; 

 and it may be remarked, as a fact of constant occur- 

 rence, that human intelligence is perhaps never fully 

 awakened to a progressive social system from suffering 

 alone, but by intermixture, when races are packed 

 together on the ultimate border of a sea, checked or 

 forced to pass close upon or through each other, and to 

 appeal to the sword. Thus, Palestine and Egypt, seated 

 on the bridge that leads into Africa ; Ionia and Greece, 

 on the ferry of the Hellespont; Tangier and Cadiz 

 (the Bisepharat of antiquity) ; Bab-el-mandeb, the gate 

 of tears, or passage into Africa ; even the isthmus of 

 Panama, all attest the fact, together with an additional 

 result, which shows not so much the stationary people, 

 as that which has passed on, to be likewise foremost in 

 civilization. Such was Egypt compared with Syria, 

 Greece in respect to Asia Minor ; Spain with Africa ; 

 such was Peru to Mexico ; and Western Europe is now, 

 in comparison, to the east. 



Total civilization is not even produced by the mere 

 compulsory mixture of nations moving in the same 

 direction ; it requires the additional influence of the 

 modes of thinking and acting, from sources coming 

 through other latitudes, to pull down and reconstruct 

 a system that will accept of a progressive march of 

 reasoning, independent of ancestral routine. Had the 



