THE HUMAN SPECIES. 215 



knowledge of the acquirements and experience each had gained 

 would be the result, although it might be obtained after col- 

 lision, by much slaughter and suffering, if not by the subjuga- 

 tion of one of the parties. Yet, out of these disasters rose 

 almost all the elements of civilization ; and it may be remarked, 

 ai a fact of constant occurrence, that human intelligence is per- 

 haps never fully awakened to a progressive social system from 

 suffering alone, but by intermixture, when races are packed 

 together on the ultimate border of a sea, checked or forced to 

 pass close upon or through each other, and to appeal to the 

 sword. Thus, Palestine and Egypt, seated on the bridge that 

 leads into Africa ; Ionia and Greece, on the ferry of the Helles- 

 pont; Tangier and Cadiz (the Bisepharat of antiquity) ; Bab- 

 el-mandel, the gate of tears, or passage into Africa ; even the 

 isthmus of Panama, all attest the fact, together with an addi- 

 tional result, which shows not so much the stationary people, 

 as that which has passed on, to be likewise foremost in civili- 

 zation. Such was Egypt compared with Syria, Greece in re- 

 spect to Asia Minor ; Spain with Africa ; such was Peru to 

 Mexico ; and Western Europe is now, in comparison, to the 

 east. 



Total civilization is not even produced by the mere compul- 

 sory mixture of nations moving in the same direction ; it 

 requires the additional influence of the modes of thinking and 

 acting, from sources coming through other latitudes, to pull 

 down and reconstruct a system that will accept of a progressive 

 march of reasoning, independent of ancestral routine. Had 

 the northern nations, by their own ambitious free wijj, not 

 crossed upon the older migratory movement that came from 

 east to west, such civilization as Egypt, Greece and Borne 

 had conferred, notwithstanding that marine influences had 

 greatly aided in the development, must have continued sta- 

 tionary, then decayed, until they fell to ruin.^ A want of 



* The power of habit, of educational prejudices, is forcibly seen, in 

 Christian Rome continuing wild beast and gladiatorial exhibitions, though 



