224 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



the Arabs, and after allowing for all possible mit- 

 igating considerations, it seems difficult to regard 

 the conquest of Constantinople and the territory 

 south of the Danube as anything but a great ca- 

 lamity. How much or how little capacity for 

 renovation, under the influence of modern ideas, 

 may have been latent in the Byzantine Empire, 

 we now shall never know. But, far as it had 

 sunk, politically and socially, toward the Asiatic 

 type of a community, its regeneration could 

 hardly have been as hopeless an affair as is that 

 of its Ottoman successor. In such a society as 

 that of the Turks there is, indeed, nothing to re- 

 generate, but the work of civilization in the Eu- 

 ropean sense, if it is to be done at all, must be 

 begun from the beginning. The very germs of 

 constitutionalism, of legality, of government by 

 discussion, are wanting there as they have never 

 been wanting in any European community in the 

 worst of times. This has been the essential vice of 

 all the Mussulman civilizations. Their theocratic 

 type of constitution crushes out all flexibility of 

 mind or individuality of character, and quenches 

 all desire of change. For this reason they have 

 invariably failed, in the long run, when brought 

 into competition with the more mobile societies of 

 Europe ; and for this reason, in spite of the ro- 



