THE MEDIAEVAL MIND 69 



the Greeks. After Boetius the classical spirit vanished 



from the earth. The schools of philosophy at Athens 



were closed in 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian. 



The break with the past was much more complete 



than the mere fall of Greece as a civilizing influence 



and of Rome as a world-power necessarily involved. 



Not only were Athens and Rome destroyed as political 



states and social civilizations, but both the race of 



the Greeks, the artists and philosophers, and the race 



of the Romans, the lawyers and administrators, had 



ceased to be. Malaria had made vast tracts of country 



uninhabitable, swarms of alien immigrants had 



corrupted the purity of the blood, while the fall in the 



birth-rate among the nobler and abler stocks and the 



constant drain of incessant wars and among the 



Romans of foreign administration, had lowered the 



average quality of the nations. The definite races 



of Greece and Rome, which had effected such great 



things in the history of the world, had given place 



to mongrel, cross-bred populations, composed of 



incompatible Northern, Mediterranean, African and 



Semitic elements, fated, by their lack of cohesion, 



want of common ideals and disregard of statecraft, 



to inward decay and outward destruction at the 



hand of the first strong, pure-bred people that 



encountered them. Thus the overthrow of Rome by 



Northern Teutons was not essentially a destruction 



of civilization by barbarians. It was much more 



the clearing away of a doomed and crumbling ruin, 



in preparation for future rebuilding. 



A new civilization had to be evolved from chaos ; 

 nations with definite ideals and well-marked character- 

 istics had to reform out of the medley of races comprised 



