XL] THE RACES OF THE DANUBE. 209 



allowing for all possible mitigating considerations, it 

 seems difficult to regard the conquest of Constanti- 

 nople and the territory south of the Danube as any- 

 thing but a great calamity. 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 regenerate, but the work 

 of civilisation in the European sense, if it is to be 

 done at all, must be begun from the beginning. The 

 very germs of constitutionalism, of legality, of govern- 

 ment 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 civilisations. 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 invari- 

 ably failed, in the long run, when brought into com- 

 petition with the more mobile societies of Europe ; 

 and for this reason, in spite of the romantic splendour 

 and the scientific achievements which immortalise the 



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