COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



was a real danger that the nascent civilization 

 of higher type might be extinguished by the 

 long-established civilization of far lower type, 

 or even by barbarism, through mere disparity 

 of numbers. We do not know how often in 

 prehistoric times some little gleam of civiliza- 

 tion may have been put out by an overwhelm- 

 ing wave of barbarism, though by reason of the 

 great military superiority which even a little 

 civilization gives, such occurrences are likely to 

 have been on the whole exceptional. This great 

 superiority is well exemplified in the ease with 

 which the Greeks defeated ten times their own 

 number of Asiatics at Marathon, and afterwards 

 at Kynaxa. Nevertheless it cannot be ques- 

 tioned that the invasions of b. c. 490 and 480 

 were fraught with serious danger to Grecian in- 

 dependence, and if Datis or Mardonios had hap- 

 pened to possess the military talent of Cyrus 

 or of Timour, the danger would have been 

 alarming indeed. Now if little Greece had thus 

 been swallowed up by giant Persia, and the 

 nascent political and intellectual freedom extin- 

 guished in Athens as it was in the Ionic cities 

 of Asia Minor, the entire future history of 

 Macedonia, of Rome, and of Europe, would 

 have been altered in a way that is not pleasant 

 to contemplate. When we reflect upon the 

 enormous place in human history which is 

 filled by the products of Athenian intellectual 



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