Epidemics. 283 



more comprehensive and masterly, science has no sufficient 

 basis in past history to speak with anything like decision ; 

 but it is well known, among a large number of the students 

 of 'the Bible, that a great and widespread benevolence is 

 confidently expected by a large number of Christian men, 

 and that the principle of association will, ere this is con- 

 summated, be ushered in by one or two extremely extensive 

 battle-fields, which, from the wide area from which the 

 combatants will gather, would be totally impossible without 

 considerable experience, and unless the minute ramifica- 

 tions of the general principles of association had taken an 

 abiding place among the inhabitants of the entire civilized 

 world. 



Like epidemic eras, the anthropological eras bear a close 

 analogy. 



If, after the first two or three centuries of an epidemic, we 

 have some new forms, or interlockings, or amalgamations, 

 and towards the 450 or 500 years we have a leaning to decay, 

 as in the Levant plague ; or, like leprosy, changing its forms, 

 and spreading wider at one time than another within given 

 periods, so in the extension and rise of empires we have the 

 same. Greece had existed as a power for nearly 300 years 

 when it attained its highest glory ; but little over a century 

 had gone over its climax of glory, when it merged into a 

 Macedonian monarchy, and, ere 500 years had passed over, 

 its glory was fast fading and dying out ; whilst Rome came 

 from under her Samnite victories and Punic wars to be, 

 within 400 years of her foundation, a consolidated power, 

 which, for about 200 years, she had being making strenuous 

 efforts. Her wide-spread dominion quickly followed suit, 

 and, like the spread of leprosy in the twelfth century from 

 being but little known in South Europe, it passed its original 

 bounds in a new epidemic era so Rome attained in a new 

 epidemic era, under Sylla, Marius, Pompey, Caesar, and or* 



