The Historians' History of the World 04

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Professor in the University of Berlin.

It is a primary law of development that each generation should supplant and supersede that which preceded it. The parents bring forth the child, and when the child has advanced to full maturity they themselves lapse into oblivion; and the same fate overtakes their children and children’s children.

So it is with nations. One civilisation rises above the level of the rest, then sinks, yielding place to the fresh vigour of younger nations, to which it bequeaths its heritage of culture. For a while the elder mother-nation is held in remembrance as a teacher and model; but ultimately—when the new generation of nations has grown strong enough to maintain an independent existence—the elder vanishes to return no more.

Such a stage we ourselves seem to have reached. The peoples of the Classic Age have long passed away, but in the Renaissance the culture of their time rose again from the dead. A bevy of daughters entered upon the heritage of this mother—Italy, France, England, Germany, and many others—and added to it, each after her own fashion. Then they outgrew the imitation and mere echo of the antique, passing on to express in act an independent culture of their own; and now the time seems to have come when the modern spirit claims absolute liberty of action in every sphere, without the slightest reference to the traditions of antiquity. For the modern technician, the modern naturalist, the modern historian, the modern artist, the modern poet, the ancient world has no message. It is dead—dead past recovery, as we may say.

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