inert bulk of conservative custom handed down through unnumbered cycles and guarded by countless millions of the human race, until eventually they had planted their banner of triumph on the battlements of ancient civilizations. And yet this epic, grander by far than any sung by the bards of eld, this marvellous tale of migration to every part of the globe, has been told hitherto only in fragments, as a series of episodes more or less detached, as an account merely of activities performed by individual nations; whereas in reality it was a gigantic achievement, not of a group, of a society, of a country, or of several of them, but of a great division of the human race, of the European, who has brought the whole earth within. the circuit of his deeds, made the world his home and rendered mankind everywhere his tributary.

Grandiose as this aspect of the movement is, and thrilling as is its appeal to an imagination that finds in fact a greater stimulus than in figment, it is after all a story. That it has not found a suitable narrator may be attributable, of course, to the tremendous scope and complexity of the theme; but this view is hardly tenable when one remembers how often "histories of colonization" and "histories of the world" have been written. A better reason for the neglect is that no one seems to have understood that the contact of Europeans with non-Europeans, extending to the uttermost parts of the earth, has possessed a vital significance that must be surveyed and estimated before the modern age and its problems can be appreciated in the full degree of their importance.

For every land the hour of redemption comes when the gifts that nature has bestowed upon it are put in order of development. That for many of them this hour arrived when the European set foot upon their shores can hardly be denied. But this is not the only, or even the principal, phase of the matter. Since the movement of expansion started, by far the greater part of the world has been occupied by Europeans. and made subject to the influence of European civilization. Europe today is no more than a portion of the "European world." The earth, almost in its entirety, is European in outlook, spirit and accomplishment. The expansion of Europe

has given rise to the concept of human solidarity, to the cosmopolitan idea that includes all races in the community of mankind.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the vast field of action which the European has made his own comprises two distinct areas: one inhabited by aboriginal folk having little or no civilization at all comparable with that of Europe, and the other occupied by certain peoples of Asia who had attained much earlier than the Europeans themselves a degree of civilization not only comparable with, but in some respects quite superior to, that which had been evolved in Europe. It is the expansion of Europe which has brought face to face the two great centres of culture that for many a century had looked in opposite directions. East and West have thus been joined in close and intimate contact with extraordinary results for both.

Whatever the height of civilization attained by the people of the Orient, they had never risen to the cosmopolitan concept. Lacking the spirit of altruism, it would seem, they had attained no common consciousness of the idea that, in addition to a sense of duty toward one's self, there might be a higher and nobler duty comprehending all mankind in its sweep of vision and action. It is the European who has devised, cherished and applied the thought of the advantage of all peoples, of achievements for the general benefit of the human race, of relationships and associations of service to all inhabitants on the face of the globe. It is he who has developed international and interracial relations of every conceivable description.

While the expansion of Europe, furthermore, has served to rend aside the veil that hid so long from the Occident the truly wondrous culture of the Orient and all the fascination of the fabled "Indies," it has accomplished vastly more. The increasing intercourse of West and East has effected a peculiar interchange of respect. Under the rays of the Eastern sun the colder temperament of the European has warmed into admiration for arts that he had long deemed magnificent, but more or less uncouth. Out of the waves of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific another New World has come forth, a gigantic phe

nomenon arisen, before a Europe that had almost ignored Asia as a factor in world development. Europe, therefore, has come more and more to recognize and appreciate the age-long civilization of the Orient and its treasures, just as the Orient in turn has begun to understand and utilize the superior achievements of Europe, in the material, technical, mechanical and scientific sense at least. Through a reciprocal rubbing away of their rougher points of contact, the two greatest divisions of mankind, the European and the Asiatic, have become conscious in everincreasing measure of the duty of laying aside narrow-mindedness and the overvaluation of self, the duty also of bearing forth to humanity at large their gradually awakening mutuality of esteem.'

Marvellous in extent and degree as the diffusion of European civilization over the world has been, the concept is subject to a double limitation. In the first place, viewing the breadth and depth of its application, the process has little more than begun. Secondly, even the most hopeful of enthusiasts for European culture can hardly expect that the various types of Asiatic civilization will eventually become transformed into European, or fail to perceive that European culture itself must be more and more influenced by Asiatic ideas and institutions. From the contact, indeed, of Occident and Orient it may safely be assumed that a universal civilization will not be the outcome. On the other hand, certain common traits will be evolved, the intellectual bounds, and perhaps in some measure the racial bounds, will fall away, and civilized peoples the world over, drawn closer by the expansion of Europe, may learn to understand one another in the consciousness of a common humanity.

In view of what has been demonstrated by many a historian, no one would doubt the eminence of the rôle of Greece and Rome to say nought of the ancient empires that preceded them and the power of the Roman Church, in shaping the destinies of European mankind, even if the forces thus engendered were limited necessarily by considerations arising out

'Hermann Brunnhofer, Oestliches Werden (Berne, 1907), pp. 112-113.

of the relatively small area in which they originally operated. And when the civilization that was their joint product spread over the entire globe, and brought under its sway vast regions and untold millions of peoples, either little known or absolutely unknown before the fifteenth century, the resultant action and reaction must have become mighty factors in human history. The "Renaissance," the "Reformation," the "French Revolution," the "Industrial Revolution," "Nationalism and Democracy," have been examined, described and evaluated with reference to the particular period of which they form a part. But a movement greater than these and contemporaneous with them has been comparatively ignored. Actually they seem to have been born and bred in Europe alone, and thus to have communicated their influence to the rest of the world; and yet, how far were they in reality the product of Europe's ventures beyond its own frontiers; and if not wholly the product, how far was their inception or development affected by such ventures oversea and overland in distant portions of the earth? This is a question that has remained substantially without an answer.

Wherever, accordingly, the energies of Europeans in modern times have ranged beyond the bounds of their continent, into America, Africa, Asia, Australia and the isles of the sea, the results that followed have been viewed more or less as incidents in the national experience of a particular state. If Europeans settled in a remote region or dealt with its inhabitants, the phenomena to which this association gave rise have not been held to possess a significance of their own, quite apart from the areas or persons or nation immediately concerned. The successive widening through the centuries of the relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans and their respective territories, was, it has been assumed, a feature peculiar to the local history of the participants, which had no meaning as a tremendously potent factor in the evolution of mankind.

If we narrow the field of observation to any particular present-day European nation, which holds possessions located elsewhere than on the continent of Europe and inhabited by peoples not of European ancestry, or which maintains close

connections with countries reputed "backward," regardless of the ancestry of their citizens, we are likely to view the relations thus existing partly from the standpoint of a more or less evident imperialism and partly from that of the "white man's burden," the former inherited from the period before the nineteenth century and the latter a product of subsequent growth. Just as the one suggests exploitation, so the other conveys the idea of the duty of imparting the blessings of the European type of civilization-or rather the concept of what that stage of progress may be. In both policies contempt for an assumed inferior seems implicit. A nation holding dependencies tenanted by "backward" folk is indeed only too prone to regard its own mission to them as one intended solely for their benefit. That other countries similarly advantaged or encumbered are engaged in a like occupation it will freely admit, provided, however, that the boundaries of their respective spheres of ownership or action are kept sufficiently far apart. Should the lines overlap and sharp competition ensue, then the other nation perforce must be cherishing imperialistic designs that menace the peace of the world.

On the other hand, one often hears the term "world" applied to a thousand varieties of action among nations and peoples. "World commerce," "world politics," "world congresses," "world courts," and "world leagues" are expressions freely used with reference to all sorts of possible adjustments among aggregations of humanity, and without the slightest attempt to ascertain the conditions under which it has become possible to discuss such phenomena. So, too, the present and future of so-called "backward" countries and peoples located beyond the confines of Europe occupy many a page of print and furnish many a topic for public and private discourse; but the circumstances under which those countries and peoples have come within the knowledge, and been rendered subject to the influence or control, of Europeans, and the nature also of the relationship thus set up, have never been investigated so as to furnish the background or antecedents indispensable for understanding them. Only when a world consciousness, as it were, has been attained on the basis of how and why it has