INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 199 



Bpiiit and on the force of religious convictions. Christianity 

 has materially contributed to call forth this idea of the unity 

 of the human race, and has thus tended to exercise a favor- 

 able influence on the hunuinization of nations in their morals, 

 manners, and institutions. Although closely interwoven with 

 the earliest doctrines of Christianity, this idea of humanity 

 met with only a slow and tardy recognition ; for at the time 

 when the new faith was raised at Byzantium, from political 

 motives, to be the established religion of the state, its adher- 

 ents were already deeply involved in miserable party dissen- 

 sions, while intercourse with distant nations was impeded, and 

 the foundations of the empire were shaken in many directions 

 by external assaults* Even the personal freedom of entire 

 races of men long found no protection in Christian states from 

 ecclesiastical land-owners and corporate bodies. 



Such unnatural impediments, and many others which stand 

 in the way of the intellectual advance of mankind and the 

 ennoblement of social institutions, will all gradually disappear. 

 The principle of individual and political freedom is implanted 

 in the ineradicable conviction of the equal rights of one sole 

 human race. Thus, as I have already remarked,* mankind 

 presents itself to our contemplation as one great fraternity and 

 as one independent unity, striving for the attainment of one 

 aim — the free development of moral vigor. This considera- 

 tion of humanity, or, rather, of the tendency toward it, which, 

 sometimes checked, and sometimes advancing with a rapid 

 and powerful progressive movement — and by no means a dis- 

 covery of recent times — belongs, by the generalizing influence 

 of its direction, most specially to that which elevates and 

 animates cosmical life. In delineating the great epoch of the 

 history of the universe, which includes the dominion of the 

 Romans and the laws which they promulgated, together with 

 the beginning of Christianity, it would have been impossible 

 not to direct special attention to the manner in which the 

 religion of Christ enlarged these views of mankind, and to 

 the mild and long-enduring, although slowly-operating, influ- 

 ence which it exercised on general, intellectual, moral, and 

 social development. 



• See vol. i., p. 358 ; and compare, also, Wilhelm von Humboldt 

 Kj&er die Kav^iSprache, bd. i., s. xxxviiL 



