The Unity of Western Civilization

Chapter I. the Grounds of Unity

The appeal to history. Previous great schisms in Europe which have been surmounted give hope for the present. The Reformation. The Napoleonic Wars.

The two points of view, (1) Man's nature itself tending to unity through conflict. (2) The stages in the process developed in history.

In pre-history conflict and diversity are predominant, though the necessities of life prescribe certain uniformities. Consolidation comes in favoured physical conditions, especially great river-basins like the Nile and the Euphrates.

The possibility of a world-unity first consciously envisaged in the Greco-Roman world. Greece gives unity in thought, Rome in practice. Order with a solid intellectual foundation established with the Roman Empire. In the mediaeval world a unity mainly spiritual is reached in the same framework. The position of Germany in this development. The break-up of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The enlargement of the known world and the growth of wealth and knowledge. This crisis still continues and has been recently accentuated by the birth-throes of nationalities. The supreme problem for international unity is now the reconciliation of national units with the interests of the whole. Underneath the superficial turmoil the great unifying forces of science and of common sentiments continue to grow and will ultimately prevail.

Chapter Ii. Unity in Prehistoric Times

Retrospect of the search for unity in man's affairs, in its political and scientific bearings.

The Unity of Man as an Animal Species. Ancient beliefs, doubts suggested by the practice of slavery, their solution, and the modern conception of a 'Human Family'.

The unity of man as a rational animal struggling against nature for subsistence. Archaeological evidence as to the reasonableness of primitive culture on its material side; doubts raised by man's irrational 'barbarities' on the social plane. Lévy Bruhl's hypothesis of a 'savage logic' and the Greek analysis of wrongdoing as rooted in ignorance.

Man's struggle with Nature in the N.W. Quadrant of the Old World. Unity here not to be found in the Food Quest. Prehistoric Europe shows variety of regimens, hoe-agriculture, pastoral nomadism. The wheel and the plough and the composite bread and cheese culture.

Race, Language, and Culture as Factors of Unity. The spread of the European Bread Culture is earlier than that of Indo-European Speech and probably than that of the 'Alpine' type of man. Race in Europe has led not to unity but to discord, and linguistic affinity does not ensure mutual intelligibility.

Chapter Iii. the Contribution of Greece and Rome

Contemporary history is the only genuine and important history, the present is the only object of historical knowledge; what the present is and how, properly conceived, it gives history its unity and justifies the study of what is past (ancient history); all history is our history, and otherwise without meaning or value to us. The history of classical antiquity is the history of the youth of the modern world, of the formation of the now latent but still potent hopes, fears, designs and thoughts which constitute the substratum of the European mind; how this still unites a divided Europe and affords a ground of hope for a restored and deepened union. Our debt to the Greeks: (a) the very notion of civilization, (b) the idea of its realization through knowledge, (c) the ideal of freedom as the inner spirit of true civilization. How the Greeks failed to work all this out in both theory and practice, and how nevertheless they taught their lesson to the world; the services of Greece to the world in the creation of Art, the Sciences, and Philosophy; the Greek ideal of a life beyond 'civilized' life, but rendered possible by it, and thus giving to civilized life a new and higher value; defects and merits of this ideal.

The Romans are inheritors of all this; how, while making it more prosaic, they rendered it more practical and more effectually realized it. All this most visible in the Imperial period. The Roman ideal: (a) world-wide peace, (b) secured and maintained by a centralized system of laws issuing from and enforced by a single power. Influence of this ideal on later and modern thought and practice. Causes of its decline and fall: (a) ignorance of the economic substructure of civilized life, (b) neglect of opportunities to extend and defend it, (c) the rise of the idea of nationality. The Revolution as the last great attempt to reinstate the full Roman ideal in its outworn form.

Lessons still to be learned by us from the study of both the success and the failure of Greco-Roman civilization; how the consideration of these may at once sober our expectations and inspire us with hope in the present. The forces which created it still maintain it and show no signs of exhaustion. But that they may continue in effect we must study these forces and learn the lessons the ancient experience of their working conveys, exerting ourselves first to understand Greco-Roman thought and practice and then to better their instruction.

Chapter Iv. the Middle Ages

I. The mediaeval world. Geographical extent. Economic structure: its features of uniformity and isolation: the effect of the rise of a national economy on mediaeval society. Linguistic basis. Mediaeval scheme that of a general European system of estates rather than of a balance of powers.

II. The unity of mediaeval civilization in its great period (1050-1300) ecclesiastical. The attempt of the Church to achieve a general synthesis of human life by the application of Christian principle. (1) The control of war and peace and the feudal world: the Truce of God and the Crusades: the papacy as an international authority: the mediaeval conception of war. (2) The control of trade and commerce and the economic world: just wages and prices: the mediaeval town. (3) The control of learning and education and the world of thought: reconciliation of Greek science and the Christian faith: allegorical interpretation of the world and its effects on natural science.

III. The mediaeval theory of society. The organic conception of society: mediaeval thought naturaliter Platonica. The one society of mankind. Hence (1) little conception of the State or sovereignty or State law; but the universal society has nevertheless to be reconciled in some way with the existence of different kingdoms. Hence, again, (2) no distinction of Church and State as two separate societies: these are two separate authorities, regnum and sacerdotium, but they govern the same society. The one society of mankind an ecclesiastical scheme uniting a great variety of personal groupings.

IV. The influence of law on the development of the kingdom into the state--a process begun early in England and France, but only generally achieved about 1500. The new conditions--geographical, economic, linguistic--which prepare the way for the new world of the sixteenth century. The gulf between that world and the old mediaeval world. The hope of unity to-day.

Chapter V. Unity and Diversity in Law

The Problem in the Ancient World. Law universal and supreme over mankind (Sophocles, Antigone). Law arbitrary and varying from place to place (Herodotus). Nature and convention. The 'rightlessness' of the stranger in antiquity. The law was a 'law of citizens'. Admission of the foreigner to legal protection. Rome develops a law of the men of all nations (ius gentium), which reacts upon the law of citizens (ius civile), and ultimately coalesces with it. The law of nature.

The break-up of the Ancient World; the Middle Ages. The invaders bring their own law with them. In the kingdoms which they founded each man had his 'personal law'. Local Law. Feudal Law. The beginnings of National Law: England, France, Germany. Roman Law in the Middle Ages. The Canon Law.

The Modern World. The reception of Roman Law. State Sovereignty. The Modern Codes. Unity and diversity of law within the political unit. The world divided into territories of the English Common Law and lands where Roman Law conceptions prevail. Forces making for unity: the notion of a 'law of nature'; the pursuit of common ends. International law, private and public.

Chapter Vi. the Common Elements in European Literature and Art

The question of the place of nationality in art and literature. It has little or no place in the Middle Ages. The mediaeval epic; its character. The mediaeval romance. Modern European art and literature transcends national conditions. The characteristics of the new European literature of the fourteenth century: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer. The drama of England and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Painting and sculpture from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. The classical mind, and the principle of good taste and common sense. The realism of Defoe and Hogarth, and the Spanish Picaresque novel. Sentimentalism in the eighteenth century. The poetry and painting of nature. The great revolution and the romantic movement. Great literature and art are not national but human.

Chapter Vii. Science and Philosophy

Western civilization possesses a certain unity (1) in the sense of unity of character, (2) in the fact that it has a common origin, ultimately in the Greco-Roman civilization but more immediately in mediaeval Christendom, and (3) in the sense that its parts have maintained a constant intercommunication of ideas. (4) The different qualities of German, French, and English thinkers have in large measure complemented one another, (5) and the history of science and of speculative philosophy is largely a history of the interaction of distinct national schools. (6) The same thing is true of political thought. (7) Thus the world of thought forms a commonwealth which is superior to all national differences and, in spite of the war, remains a foundation of a very genuine unity.

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