March 31, 1921] 



NATURE 



147 



tion they resemble the civilisations of the Near 

 East. Further, in those early days there was a 

 widespread belief in the efficacy of gold and other 

 substances as "givers of life," and there are his- 

 torical instances of expeditions setting out to seek 

 for the earthly paradise, where such substances 

 could be found — in America there are traditions 

 of the arrival of highly civilised strangers on such 

 an errand. The early sites of civilisation in the 

 outlying parts of the world are near sources of 

 gold, pearls, and other substances formerly 

 credited with life-giving powers. So there is 

 reason for concluding that there was a great 

 movement of culture, the chief motive for which 

 was the search for the elixir of life. 



The ancients have left their traces on most of 

 the goldfields and other similar sources of wealth 

 of the earth, and they were apparently searching 

 for others ; but this search was abruptly aban- 

 doned. Regions that must have hummed with 

 activity in days long past have, during many 

 centuries, been peopled by tribes indifferent to the 

 wealth at their disposal, so that goldfields worked 

 thousands of years ago have only recently been 

 reopened. 



It is necessary to account for the fact that the 

 early civilisation of the world carried within 

 itself the germs of its decay and even destruc- 

 tion. 



In the Near East appeared the first ruling class 

 known to us. The kings there were from the first 

 intimately associated with the maintenance of the 

 irrigation systems on which such early communi- 

 ties chiefly depended for their food supply. In 

 the earliest civilisations in the outlying parts of the 

 earth there were ruling families so closely allied 

 in their peculiar culture to those of the Near East 

 that there is reason to believe that they were 

 derived thence, directly or indirectly. 



The process is known by which the new com- 

 munities were formed around the old centres of 

 civilisation. Members of the ruling class went 

 out from their homes and imposed themselves else- 

 where as a new ruling class, and this process has 

 i^one on until the earth has become covered with 

 a network of States formed of a ruling class 

 dominating people differing from them in culture 

 and often in race. From the beginning, ruling 

 classes have possessed - beliefs and practices 

 peculiar to themselves ; they universally use 

 heraldic emblems, the lion and the eagle playing 

 a prominent part in connection with the kingship ; 

 a claim is often made to descent from an ancestor 

 borne to a god by an earthly mother ; in the early 

 States we find the belief in a land of the dead in 

 the sky invariably associated with the ruling class ; 

 the kings of the earlier States were supposed to 

 be responsible for the welfare of the community ; 

 and there is a widespread association between 

 royalty, the building of pyramids, and the pre- 

 servation of the dead- — all of which goes to sup- 

 port the theory that the ruling class of any country 

 is derived from that of some other country, so 

 that all the ruling classes of the world have 



NO. 2683, VOL. 107] 



originated ultimately by a continuous developing 

 process from one group in the Near East, the 

 place where they can first be detected. 



The earliest peoples on the earth used no 

 weapons that we have traces of, and the study of 

 the remains of the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic 

 ages shows that these peoples were mainly, if not 

 entirely, peaceful. The hunting tribes that live 

 on the earth are all peaceful, and their standard 

 of behaviour and morality is higher than that of 

 civilised communities. War is the accompaniment 

 of ruling classes. In their beginnings in all parts 

 of the earth they did not indulge much in wai, 

 except to obtain slaves and victims for sacrifice, 

 but the ruling classes of the daughter States 

 struggled with each other for the possession of 

 power and wealth ; and often a military genius 

 arose among them who welded many communities 

 by conquest into an empire that usually fell to 

 pieces on his death or defeat at the hands of some 

 rival. In this way much of the old civilisation of 

 the earth was destroyed, and the arrival of bar- 

 barians with ruling classes derived from more 

 advanced peoples can, in a large number of cases, 

 be shown to account for the sudden cessation of 

 the onward march of civilisation into the outlying 

 parts of the earth. 



The earliest ruling families claimed to possess 

 the whole realm, and were enabled to divert much 

 of the energies of their subjects to such purposes 

 as the building of temples and palaces, and to the 

 accumulation of the means of upkeep of such 

 establishments. As a result of the combination 

 of the domination of ruling families and their sub- 

 sequent incessant struggles for power, there has 

 ensued in all parts of the earth the' decay and 

 death of civilisations. The domination at home 

 has apparently caused the arts and crafts to decay 

 and become stereotyped, and the warfare engen- 

 dered by these ruling classes has completed the 

 work of destruction. 



It remains to account for the fact that the 

 daughter States were so much more warlike than 

 those that gave rise to them. The explanation 

 suggested by the facts is that the rulers of the 

 original States were chiefly occupied with duties 

 connected with the welfare of the community — 

 for this was the real source of their prestige — and 

 were obliged incessantly to perform ceremonies for 

 that end. They were hide-bound in etiquette, and 

 apparently had but little personal initiative; but 

 the young men who went out to found kingdoms 

 threw over the restraints of their homes, and, with 

 their followers, abandoned themselves to military 

 pursuits, with results that are reflected in the 

 social, economic, and religious life of the com- 

 munities formed by them. One important conse- 

 quence of this process was the formation in places 

 of pastoral communities derived from those prac- 

 tising irrigation. These men, with checks and 

 restraints removed, established the most warlike 

 States that the world has known, and these States 

 have ever been distinguished by cruelty beyond 

 any that the world has known. It would seem 



