Our modern civilization is built up on three great corner-stones, three
inestimably valuable heritages from the past. The Græco-Roman
civilization gave us our arts and our philosophies, the bases of
intellectual power. The Hebrews bequeathed to us the religious idea,
which has saved man from despair, has been the potent stimulus to two
thousand years of endurance and hope. The Teutons gave us a healthy,
sturdy, uncontaminated physique, honest bodies and clean minds, the lack
of which had made further progress impossible to the ancient world.

This last is what made necessary the barbarian overthrow of Rome, if the
world was still to advance. The slowly progressing knowledge of the arts
and handicrafts which we have seen passed down from Egypt to Babylonia,
to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss.
The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many
were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the
heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the
past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the
type. Man had become wise, but worthless.

As though on purpose to prove to future generations how utterly
worthless, the Roman civilization was allowed to continue uninterrupted
in one unneeded corner of its former domains. For over a thousand years
the successors of Theodosius and of Constantine held unbroken sway in
the capital which the latter had founded. They only succeeded in
emphasizing how futile their culture had become.

The entire ten centuries that followed the overthrow of Rome have long
been spoken of as the "Dark Ages," but, considering how infinitely