CHAP, xx SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 3<DI 



usually develop an enthusiasm for their conquerors. 

 Like the natives of America, they regard the higher 

 race as half-divine beings. A whole civilisation or 

 semi-civilisation falls into wreck, and a higher or 

 stronger one takes its place. It is truly pitiful to 

 read of some of the forms this takes, e.g. in Rhode- 

 sian Africa, where the black women despise and 

 desert the men of their own tribe, and know nothing 

 better than to yield themselves to the white men. 



Later on in evolution a race may be conquered 

 'which is possessed of high attainments in culture. 

 But by this time the higher culture is able to rise 

 superior to the rude test of efficiency on the field of 

 battle, and the great task of unifying humanity still 

 goes on, though under somewhat different conditions. 

 Greek culture poured eastward like a flood in the track 

 of Alexander's conquests, but it filtered westwards 

 too in spite of the arms of Metellus or Mummius. 

 Grcecia capta the thing has become a proverb. 

 Not less notable and not less hackneyed is the case 

 of the barbarian conquerors of the Roman empire, 

 who went to school to the civilisation which they had 

 overrun. Even the break-up of the empire into 

 many national kingdoms, and the disappearance of 

 the common Latin speech before the new romance 

 formations or the native languages of Teutonic races, 

 even these changes did not signify mere retrogres- 

 sion. The new nations were not indifferent to the 

 rest of Christendom. They felt themselves members 

 of one great civilisation, making their characteristic 

 contributions to the common stock, and making them 

 all the better because each nation took its own way. 

 Even the aberrations of modern nationalism do not 



