cu. XX.-] CONDITIONS OF PROGEESS. 277 



out for Assyria and Northern India. But no suc"h early 

 cessation of competition could have occurred in the case of 

 our Aryan forefathers. Little as we know concerning the 

 circumstances of their prehistoric development, we know at 

 least that it took place on the great highway between the 

 teeming mainland of Asia and the coveted peninsula of Europe. 

 In tliis swarming region there was kept up until quite recent 

 times that intense competition of tril^e with tribe which had 

 all but died out in Egypt and China before the dawn of 

 history. All this entailed for each winning tribe a greater 

 heterogeneity of environment than in any other instance- 

 Under such circumstances uniformity could hardly have 

 carried the day so far as to crush out flexibility. Continual 

 change of foes to be overcome, and of natural obstacles to 

 be surmounted, must have given the advantage at last to 

 those tribes which had gained enough uniformity to ensure 

 concerted action, without sacrificiug their versatility of mind 

 in the process. 



To some such considerations as these we must look for 

 the partial explanation of the fact that at the beginnings 

 of recorded history we find in the European Aryans all the 

 essential elements of progressiveness. The continuance of 

 this progressiveness during the historic period is a fact which 

 need not long detain us. Since the beginnings of Mediter- 

 ranean civilization, the heterogeneity of the environment has 

 been too great, and the changes in the environment too rapid, 

 to allow of general stagnation ; while the assaults of outer 

 barbarism have been for the most part warded off by the 

 military superiority which this higher civilization has en- 

 tailed. At times there has been an appearance of danger 

 that much of this hard-won advantage might be lost, not 

 merely through assaults from without, but through causes 

 internally operating. After the earlier incentives to noble 

 %nd varied activity connected with the autonomous spirit 

 oad been destroyed by the universal hegemony of Eome, the 



