76 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



needs give life not only to practical work, but to 

 scientific research. Examples abound. Does 

 Germany desire to acquire possessions beyond 

 the sea? At once there arises a literature on 

 colonial geography, methods of colonization, 

 colonial legislation. Does she wish to augment 

 her fleet? Her writers investigate history to see 

 if there exists a necessary connexion between a 

 powerful fleet and a prosperous commerce/ And 

 so forth. The picture may be, as regards Ger- 

 many, rather highly coloured; but it represents 

 what would happen in an ideal Germany, or in 

 any country which realizes the relations between 

 knowledge and action. 



But it may be said that all the facts of ancient 

 history have been known by our ancestors for 

 generations, and have been taken into account by 

 our statesmen and publicists. Nothing could be 

 less true than such an assertion. We are only 

 beginning, by the help of exploration, excavation, 

 renewed study of historians, to understand what 

 really took place in the ancient world. The con- 

 ventional notions on the subject which we in- 

 herit from our fathers are as unlike the reality as 

 the engravings of the Tower of Babel which we 

 find in old illustrated Bibles are unlike the 

 palaces which actually existed at Babylon.* For 

 example we have begun in recent years to realize 

 how great a part in ancient history was played by 



* No recently published work shews this more clearly 

 than Professor E. Meyer's Kleine Schriften. 



