COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of commerce, and bringing aggressive warfare 

 to an end in the Pax Romana^ then there be- 

 came possible a cosmopolitan spirit, a Christian 

 feeling, which regarded all men as legally and 

 ethically equal, — equal before the Emperor, 

 and equal before God. To trace the slow growth 

 of this feeling in the annals of Roman law and 

 of Stoic philosophy, and to observe its culmi- 

 nation in the genesis of Christianity,^ is to ob- 

 tain the key to Roman history. 



But great political changes were necessary 

 before Rome could carry to the end its great 

 work, — partly because it had increased in size 

 so much faster than it increased in structure. It 

 crushed autonomism too rapidly. It developed 

 imperialism at the expense of nationality. And 

 hence the time at last arrived when the mutual 

 cohesion of its provinces became too slight to 

 withstand those barbaric assaults from without, 

 which — as we should be careful to remember 

 — had all along been intermittently attempted 

 from the days of Brennus to those of Alaric. 

 For a time, European society seemed likely to 



1 Of course it is not meant to imply that other elements 

 were not at work in the genesis of Christianity. The growth 

 of what Matthew Arnold calls the ** spirit of Hebraism," not 

 in Judaea merely, but throughout the Grasco-Roman world, is 

 an interesting phenomenon in this connection, but the treat- 

 ment of it does not fall within the scope of the present 

 exposition. 



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