When the Roman Empire broke up before the onslaught of the barbarians
there were two main elements which shaped the future of the West,
Christianity and the Germans. The Christian teaching preached equal
rights for all men and community of goods in an empire of masters and
slaves, but formulated the highest moral code, and directed the
attention of a race, which only aimed at luxury, to the world beyond the
grave as the true goal of existence. It made the value of man as man,
and the moral development of personality according to the laws of the
individual conscience, the starting-point of all development. It thus
gradually transformed the philosophy of the ancient world, whose
morality rested solely on the relations with the state. Simultaneously
with this, hordes of Germans from the thickly-populated North poured
victoriously in broad streams over the Roman Empire and the decaying
nations of the Ancient World. These masses could not keep their
nationality pure and maintain their position as political powers. The
States which they founded were short-lived. Even then men recognized how
difficult it is for a lower civilization to hold its own against a
higher. The Germans were gradually merged in the subject nations. The
German element, however, instilled new life into these nations, and
offered new opportunities for growth. The stronger the admixture of
German blood, the more vigorous and the more capable of civilization did
the growing nations appear.

In the meantime powerful opponents sprung up in this newly-formed world.
The Latin race grew up by degrees out of the admixture of the Germans
with the Roman world and the nations subdued by them, and separated
itself from the Germans, who kept themselves pure on the north of the
Alps and in the districts of Scandinavia. At the same time the idea of
the Universal Empire, which the Ancient World had embraced, continued to