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The Civilizations of India and China. – Before leaving the subject of the Oriental civilizations, at least brief mention must be made of the development of the Hindu philosophy and religion. In the valleys of the great rivers of India, in the shadow of the largest mountains rising to the skies, there developed a great people of great learning and wonderful philosophy. In their abstract conceptions they built up the most wonderful and complex theogony and theology ever invented by men. This system, represented by elements of law, theology, philosophy and language, literature and learning, is found in the Vedas and the great literary remnants of the poets. They reveal to us the intensity of learning at the time of the highest development of the Indian philosophy. However, its influence, wrapped up in the Brahminical religion of fatalism, was largely non-progressive.

Later, about 500 years before Christ, when Gautama Buddha developed his ethical philosophy of life, new hope came into the world. But this did not stay for the regeneration of India, but, rather, declined and passed on into China and Japan. The influence of Indian civilization on Western civilization has been very slight, owing to the great separation between the two, and largely because their objectives have been different. The former devoted itself to the reflection of life, the latter resolved itself into action. Nevertheless, we shall find in the Greek philosophy and Greek religion shadows of the learning of the Orient. But the Hindu civilization, while developing much that is grand and noble, like many Oriental civilizations, left the great masses of the people unaided and unhelped. When it is considered what might have been accomplished in India, it is well characterized as a "land of regrets."

In the dispersion of the human race over the earth, one of the first great centres of culture was found in Thibet, in Asia. Here is supposed to be the origin of the Mongolian peoples, and the Chinese represent one of the chief branches of the Mongolian race. At a very early period they developed an advanced stage of civilization with many commendable features. Their art, the form of pottery and porcelain, their traditional codes of law, were influential in the Far East. Their philosophy culminated in Confucius, who lived about 500 years before Christ, and their religion was founded by Tao Tse, who existed many centuries before. He was the founder of the Taoan religion of China. But the civilization of China extended throughout the Far East, spread into Korea, and then into Japan. It has had very little contact with the Western civilization, and its history is still obscure, but there are many marvellous things done in China which are now in more recent years being faithfully studied and recorded. Their art in porcelain and metals had its influence on other nations and has been of a lasting nature.

The Coming of the Aryans. – The third great branch of the Caucasian people, whose primitive home seems to have been in central Asia, is the Aryan. Somewhere north of the great territory of the Semites, there came gradually down into Nineveh and Babylon and through Armenia a people of different type from the Semites and from the Egyptians. They lived on the great grassy plains of central Asia, wandering with their flocks and herds, and settling down long enough to raise a crop, and then move on. They lived a simple life, but were a vigorous, thrifty, and family-loving people; and while the great civilization of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt was developing, they were pushing down from the north. They finally developed in Persia a great national life.

Subsequently, under Darius I, a great Aryan empire was established in the seats of the old civilization which he had conquered, whose extent was greater than the world had hitherto known. It extended over the old Assyrian and Babylonian empires, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, in Caucasian and Caspian regions; covered Media and Persia, and extended into India as far as the Indus. The old Semitic civilizations were passing away, and the control of the Aryan race was appearing. Later these Persians found themselves at war with the Greeks, who were of the same racial stock. The Persian Empire was no great improvement over the later Babylonian and Assyrian Empires. It had become more specifically a world empire, which set out to conquer and plunder other nations. It might have been enlightened to a certain extent, but it had received the idea of militarism and conquest. It was the first great empire of the Orient to come in contact with a rising Western civilization, then centering in Greece.

This Aryan stock, when considered in Europe or Western civilization, is known as the Nordic race. In the consideration of Western civilization further discussion will be given of the origin and dispersion of this race.

SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Study the economic foundation of Egypt. Babylon. Arabia.

2. Why did Oriental nations go to war? Show by example.

3. What did Egypt and Babylon contribute of lasting value to civilization?

4. What was the Hebrew contribution?

5. Why did these ancient empires decline and disappear?

6. Study the points of difference between the civilization of Babylon and Egypt and Western civilization.

7. Contrast the civilization of India and China with Western civilization.

CHAPTER X
THE ORIENTAL TYPE OF CIVILIZATION

The Governments of the Early Oriental Civilizations. – In comparing the Oriental civilizations which sprang up almost independently in different parts of Asia and Africa with European civilizations, we shall be impressed with the despotism of these ancient governments. It is not easy to determine why this feature should have been so universal, unless it could be attributed to human traits inherent in man at this particular stage of his development. Perhaps, also, in emerging from a patriarchal state of society, where small, independent groups were closely united with the oldest male member as leader and governor of all, absolute authority under these conditions was necessary for the preservation of the tribe or group, and it became a fixed custom which no one questioned.

Subsequently, when the population increased around a common centre and various tribes and groups were subjected to a central organization, the custom of absolute rule was transferred from the small group to the king, who ruled over all. Also, the nature of most of these governments may have been influenced by the type of religion which prevailed. It became systematized under the direction of priests, who stood between the people and the great unknown, holding absolute sway but working on the emotion of fear. Perhaps, also, a large group of people with a limited food supply were easily reduced to a state of slavery and dwelt in a territory as a mass of unorganized humanity, subservient only to the superior directing power. It appears to be a lack of organized popular will. The religions, too, looked intensely to the authority of the past, developing fixity of customs, habits, laws, and social usages. These conditions were conducive to the exercise of the despotism of those in power.

War Existed for Conquest and Plunder. – The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the glory of the rulers. Hence, wars of conquest were frequent, always accompanied with the desire for plunder of territory, the wealth of temples, and the coffers of the rulers. Many times wars were based upon whims of kings and rulers and trivial matters, which can only be explained through excessive egoism and vanity; yet in nearly every instance the idea of conquest was to increase the wealth of the nation and power of the king by going to war. There was, of course, jealousy of nations and rivalry for supremacy, as the thousand years of war between Egypt and Babylonia illustrates, or as the conquest of Babylon by Assyria, or, indeed, the later conquest of the whole East by the Persian monarchs, testifies. These great wars were characterized by the crude struggle and slaughter of hordes of people. Not until the horse and chariot came into use was there any great improvement in methods of warfare. Bronze weapons and, later, iron were used in most of these wars. It was merely barbarism going to war with barbarism in order to increase barbaric splendor.

Religious Belief Was an Important Factor in Despotic Government. – In the beginning we shall find that animism, or the belief in spirits, was common to all nations and tribes. There was in the early religious life of people a wild, unorganized superstition, which brought them in subjection to the control of the spirits of the world. In the slow development of the masses, these ideas always remained prominent, and however highly developed religious life became, however pure the system of religious philosophy and religious worship, as represented by the most intelligent and farthest advanced of the people, it yet remains true that the masses of the people were mastered and ruled by a gross superstition; and possibly this answers the question to a large extent as to why the religion of the Orient could, on the one hand, reach such heights of purity of spirit and worship and, on the other, such a degradation in thought, conception, and practice. It could reach to the skies with one arm and into the grossest phases of nature-worship with the other.

It appears the time came when, as a matter of self-defense, man must manipulate and control spirits to save himself from destruction, and there were persons particularly adapted to this process, who formed the germs of the great system of priesthood. They stood between the masses and the spirits, and as the system developed and the number of priests increased, they became the ones who ruled the masses in place of the spirits. The priesthood, then, wherever it has developed a great system, has exercised an almost superhuman power over the ignorant, the debased, and the superstitious. It was the policy of kings to cultivate and protect this priesthood, and it was largely this which enabled them to have power over the masses. Having once obtained this power, and the military spirit having arisen in opposition to foreign tribes, the priests were at the head of the military, religious, and civil systems of the nation. Indeed, the early king was the high priest of the tribe, and he inherited through long generations the particular function of leader of religious worship.

It will be easy to conceive that where the art of embalming was carried on, people believed in the future life of the soul. The religious system of the Egyptians was, indeed, of very remarkable character. The central idea in their doctrine was the unity of God, whom they recognized as the one Supreme Being, who was given the name of Creator, Eternal Father, to indicate the various characters in which he appeared. This pure monotheism was seldom grasped by the great masses of the people; indeed, it is to be supposed that many of the priestly order scarcely rose to its pure conceptions. But there were other groups or dynasties of gods which were worshipped throughout Egypt. These were mostly mythical beings, who were supposed to perform especial functions in the creation and control of the universe. Among these Osiris and Isis, his wife and sister, were important, and their worship common throughout all Egypt. Osiris came upon the earth in the interests of mankind, to manifest the true and the good in life. He was put to death by the machinations of the evil spirit, was buried and rose, and became afterward the judge of the dead. In this we find the greatest mystery in the Egyptian religion. Typhon was the god of the evil spirits, a wicked, rebellious devil, who held in his grasp all the terrors of disease and of the desert. Sometimes he was in the form of a frightful serpent, again in the form of a crocodile or hippopotamus.

Seeking through the light of religious mystery to explain all the natural phenomena observed in physical nature, the Egyptians fell into the habit of coarse animal worship. The cat, the snake, the crocodile, and the bull became sacred animals, to kill which was the vilest sacrilege. Even if one was so unfortunate as to kill one of these sacred animals by accident, he was in danger of his life at the hands of the infuriated mob. It is related that a Roman soldier, having killed a sacred cat, was saved from destruction by the multitude only by the intercession of the great ruler Ptolemy. The taking of the life of one of these sacred creatures caused the deepest mourning, and frequently the wildest terror, while every member of the family shaved his head at the death of a dog.

There was symbolism, too, in all this worship. Thus the scarabeus, or beetle, which was held to be especially sacred, was considered as the emblem of the sun. Thousands of these relics may be found in the different museums, having been preserved to the present time. The bull, Apis, not only was a sacred creature, but was held to be a real god. It was thought that the soul of Osiris pervaded the spirit of the bull, and at the bull's death it passed on into that of his successor. The worship of the lower forms of life led to a coarseness in religious belief and practice. How it came about is difficult to ascertain. It is supposed by some scholars that the animal worship had its origin in the low form of worship belonging to the indigenous tribes of Egypt, and that the higher order was introduced by the Hamites, or perhaps by the Semites who mingled with and overcame the original inhabitants of the Nile valley. In all probability, the advanced ideas of religious belief and thought were the essential outcome of the learning and speculative philosophy of the Egyptians, while the old animal worship became the most convenient for the great masses of low and degraded beings who spent their lives in building tombs for the great.

The religious life of the Egyptians was protected and guarded by an elaborate priesthood. It formed a perfect hierarchy of priest, high priest, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sculptors, embalmers, besides all the attendants upon the services of worship and religion. Not only was this class privileged among all the castes of Egypt as representing the highest class of individuals, but it enjoyed immunity from taxation and had the privilege of administering the products of one-third of the land to carry on the expenses of the temple and religious worship. The ceremonial life of the priests was almost perfect. Scrupulous in the care of their person, they bathed twice each day and frequently at night, and every third day shaved the entire body. Their linen was painfully neat, and they lived on plain, simple food, as conducive to the service of religion. They exerted a great power not only over the religious life of the Egyptians but, on account of the peculiar relation of religion to government, over the entire development of Egypt.

The religion of Oriental nations was non-progressive in its nature. It had a tendency to repress freedom of thought and freedom of action. Connected as it was with the binding influence of caste, man could not free himself from the dictates of religion. The awful sublimity of nature found its counterpart in the terrors of religion; and that religion attempted to answer all the questions that might arise concerning external nature. It rested upon the basis of authority built through ages of tradition, and through a continuous domineering priest-craft. The human mind struggling within its own narrow bounds could not overcome the stultifying and sterilizing influence of such a religion. The lower forms of religion were "of the earth, earthy." The higher forms consisted of such abstract conceptions concerning the creation of the earth, and the manipulation of all the forces of nature and the control of all the powers of man, as to be entirely non-progressive. There could be no independent scientific investigation. There could be no rational development of the mind. The religion of the Orient brought gloom to the masses and cut off hope forever. The people became subject to the grinding forces of fate. How, then, could there be intellectual development based upon freedom of action? How could there be any higher life of the soul, any moral culture, any great advancement in the arts and sciences, or any popular expression regarding war and government?

Social Organization Was Incomplete. – All social organization tended toward the common centre, the king, and there was very little local organization except as it was necessary to bring the people under control of official rule. There were apparently very few voluntary associations. Among the nobility, the priests, and ladies of rank, we find frequently elaborate costumes of dress, manifold ornaments, necklaces, rings, and earrings; but whatever went to the rich seemed to be a deprivation of the poor. Indeed, when we consider that it cost only a few shillings at most to rear a child to the age of twenty-one years in Egypt, we can imagine how meagre and stinted that life must have been. The poorer classes of people dressed in a very simple style, wearing a single linen shirt and over it a woollen mantle; while among the very poor much less was worn.

However, it seems that there was time for some of the population to engage in sports such as laying snares for birds, angling for fish, popular hunts, wrestling, playing checkers, chess, and ball, and it appears that many of these people were gifted in these sports. Just what classes of people engaged in this leisure is difficult to determine. Especially in the case of Egypt, most of the people were condemned to hard and toilsome labor. Probably the nobility and people of wealth were the only classes who had time for sports. The great temples and palaces were built with solid masonry of stone and brick, but the dwelling-houses were constructed in a light, graceful style, surrounded with long galleries and terraces common at this period of development in Oriental civilization. The gardening was symmetrical and accurate, the walks led in well-defined lines and were carefully conventional. The rooms of the houses, too, were well arranged and tastefully decorated, and members of the household distributed in its generous apartments, each individual finding his special place for position and service.

For the comparatively small number of prosperous and influential people, life was refined and luxurious so far as the inventions and conveniences for comfort would permit. They had well-constructed and well-appointed houses, and, judging from the relics discovered in tombs and from the records and inscriptions, people wore richly decorated clothing and lovely jewels. They had numerous feasts with music and dancing and servants to wait upon them in every phase of life. It is related, too, that excursions were common in summer on the great rivers. But even though there was a life of ease among the wealthy, they were without many comforts known to modern times. They had cotton and woollen fabrics for clothing, but no silk. They had dentists and doctors in those days, and teeth were filled with gold as in modern times. Their articles of food consisted of meat and vegetables, but there were no hens and no eggs. They used the camel in Mesopotamia and walked mostly in Egypt, or went by boat on the river. However, when we consider the change of ancient Babylon to Nineveh, and the Egyptian civilization of old Thebes to that which developed later, there is evidence of progress. The religious life lost a good many of its crudities, abolished human sacrifice, and developed a refined mysticism which was more elevating than the crude nature-worship.

The rule of caste which settled down over the community in this early period relegated every individual to his particular place. From this place there could be no escape. The common laborers moving the great blocks of stone to build the mighty pyramids of the valley of the Nile could be nothing but common laborers. And their sons and their daughters for generation after generation must keep the same sphere of life. And though the warriors fared much better, they, too, were confined to their own group. The shepherd class must remain a shepherd class forever; they could never rise superior to their own surroundings. So, too, in Babylon and India. There was, indeed, a slight variation from the caste system in Egypt and in Babylon, but in India it settled down from the earliest times, and the people and their customs were crystallized; they were bound by the chain of fate in the caste system forever. We shall see, then, that the relation of the population to the soil and the binding influences of early custom tended to develop despotism in Oriental civilization.

The result of all this was that there was no freedom or liberty of the individual anywhere. With caste and despotism and degradation men moved forward in political and religious life as on a plane which inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its source at all, was of divine origin, and though those who ruled might stop to consider for an instant their own despotic actions, and in special cases yield in clemency to their subjects, from the subject's standpoint there could be nothing but to yield to the despotism of kings and the unrelenting rule of government.

We shall find, then, that with all of the efforts put forth the greater part was wasted. Millions of people were born, lived, and died, leaving scarcely a mark of their existence. No wonder that, as the great kings of Egypt saw the wasting elements of time, the waste of labor in its dreary rounds, having employed the millions in building the mighty temples dedicated to the worship of the gods; or having built great canals and aqueducts to develop irrigation that greater food supply might be assured, thus observing the majesty of their condition in relation to other human beings, they should have employed these millions of serfs in building their own tombs and monuments to remain the only lasting vestige of the civilization long since passed away. Everywhere in the Oriental civilization, then, are lack of freedom and the appearance of despotism. Everywhere is evidence of waste of individual life. No deep conception can be found in either the philosophy or the practice of the Egyptians or the Babylonians of the real object of human life. And yet the few meagre products of art and of learning handed down to European civilization from these Oriental countries must have had a vast influence in laying the foundations of modern civilized life.

Economic Influences. – In the first place, the warm climate of these countries required but little clothing; for a few cents a year a person could be clothed sufficiently to protect himself from the climate and to observe the rules of modesty so far as they existed in those times. In the second place, in hot climates less food is required than in cold. In cold countries people need a large quantity of heavy, oily foods, while in hot climates they need a lighter food and, indeed, less of it. Thus we have in these fertile valleys of the Orient the conditions which supply sustenance for millions at a very small amount of exertion or labor. Now, it is a well-established fact that cheap food among classes of people who have not developed a high state of civilization favors a rapid increase of population. The records show in Babylon and Egypt, as well as in Palestine, that the population multiplied at a very rapid rate. And this principle is enhanced by the fact that in tropical climates, where less pressure of want and cold is brought to bear, the conditions for successful propagation of the human race are present. And this is one reason why the earliest civilizations have always been found in tropical climates, and it was not until man had more vigor of constitution and higher development of physical and mental powers that he could undertake the mastery of himself and nature under less favorable circumstances.

The result was that human life became cheap. The great mass of men became so abundant as to press upon the food supply to its utmost limit. And they who had the control of this food supply controlled the bodies and souls of the great poverty-stricken mass who toiled for daily bread. Here we find the picture of abject slavery of the masses. The rulers, through the government, strengthened by the priests, who held over the masses of the lower people in superstitious awe the tenets of their faith, forced them into subjection. There was no value placed upon a human life; why, then, should there be upon the masses of individuals?

We shall find, too, as the result of all this, that the civilization became more or less stationary. True, there must have been a slow development of religious ideas, a slow development of art, a slow development of government, and yet when the type was once set there was but little change from century to century in the relation of human beings to one another, and their relation to the products of nature. When we consider the accomplishments of these people we must not forget the length of time it took to produce them. Reckon back from the present time 6,000 years, and then consider what has been accomplished in America in the last century. Think back 2,000 years, and see what had been accomplished in Rome from the year of the founding of the imperial city until the Caesars lived in their mighty palaces, a period of seven and a half centuries. Observe, too, what was accomplished in Greece from the time of Homer until the time of Aristotle, a period of about six and a half centuries; then observe the length of time it took to develop the Egyptian civilization, and we shall see its slow progress. It is also to be observed that the Egyptian civilization had reached its culmination when Greece began, and had begun its slow decline. After considering this we shall understand that the civilization of Egypt finally became stationary, conventionalized, non-progressive; that it was only a question of time when other nations should rule the land of the Pharaohs, and that sands should drift where once were populous cities, covering the relics of this ancient civilization far beneath the surface.

The progress in industrial arts and the use of implements was, of necessity, very slow. Where the laboring man was considered of little value, treated as a mere physical machine, to be fed and used for mechanical purposes alone, it mattered little with what tools he worked. In the building of the pyramids we find no mighty engines for the movement of the great stones, we find no evidence of mechanical genius to provide labor-saving machines. The inclined plane and rollers, the simplest of all contrivances, were about the only inventions. Also, in the buildings of Babylon, the tools with which men worked must of necessity have been very poor. It is remarkable to what extent modern invention depends upon the elevation of the standard of life of labor, and how man through intelligence continually makes certain contrivances for the perfection of human industry. However, if we consider the ornaments used to adorn the person, or for the service of the rich, or the elaborate clothing of the wealthy, we shall find quite a high state of development in these lines, showing the greatest contrast between the condition of the laboring multitudes on the one hand and the luxurious few on the other. Along this line of the rapid development of ornaments we find evidence of luxury and ease, and, in the slow development of industrial arts, the sacrifice of labor. And all of the advancement in the mighty works of art and industry was made at the sacrifice of human labor.

To sum this up, we find, then, that the influence of despotic government, of the binding power of caste, of the prevalence of custom, of the influence of priestcraft, the retarding power of a non-progressive religion, concentration of intelligence in a privileged class that seeks its own ease, the slow development of industrial implements, and the rapid development of ornaments, brought decay. We see in all of this a retarding of improvement, a stagnation of organizing effort, and the crystallization of ancient civilization about old forms, to be handed down from generation to generation without progress.

Records, Writing, and Paper. – At an early period papyrus, a paper made of a reed that grows along the Nile valley, was among the first inventions. It was the earliest artificial writing material discovered by any nation of which we have a record; and we are likely to remember it from its two names, biblos and papyrus, for from these come two of our most common words, bible and paper. Frequently, however, leather, pottery, tiles, and stone, and even wooden tablets, were used as substitutes for the papyrus. In the early period the Egyptians used the hieroglyphic form of writing, which consisted of rude pictures of objects which had a peculiar significance. Finally the hieratic simplified this form by symbolizing and conventionalizing to a large extent the hieroglyphic characters. Later came the demotic, which was a further departure from the old concrete form of representation, and had the advantage of being more readily written than either of the others.²⁰ These characters were used to inscribe the deeds of kings on monuments and tablets, and when in 1798 the key to the Egyptian writing was obtained through means of the Rosetta stone, the opportunity for a large addition to the history of Egypt was made. Strange as it may seem, these ancient people had written romances and fairy tales; one especially to be mentioned is the common Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, written more than thirteen centuries B.C. But in addition to these were published documents, private letters, fables, epics, and autobiographies, and treatises on astronomy, medicine, history, and scientific subjects.