Principles of western civilisation

152 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

If we endeavour to answer this question there is immediately called up before the mind, even in the broken and disjointed sequences in which science is as yet able to present it, an imposing spectacle. For thousands of years,—first of all through the buried records of the past, then in the dim twilight of tradition, and last of all in the full light of history,—we see moving across the territories of Europe, in successive waves from the north and east, the ancestors of the peoples who have made, and who continue still to make to an increasing degree, the most notable part of the recorded history of the human race. Although many cardinal points concerning the invasions, the migrations, and the conflicts of the conquering peoples, from whom the prevailing races in later European history, as well as the races which founded the Greek and Roman civilisations, are descended, are as yet under dispute; of the movements themselves, of their general character, and of the world-shaping effects of conflict and conquest to which they gave rise, there is no room for doubt. From the period at which, long before the dawn of history, the migrations and conquests of the tribes from which the existing European races are descended began, down to the period in history when, in the presence of the decaying Roman empire, the last waves of the conquering invaders were brought to rest in the territories they were to occupy in modern history, we have presented a movement in the world’s history with an impetus and a meaning behind it of which there can be no mistaking the character.

It is impossible for science as yet to follow in any