Nomads became agriculturists through conquest; but the habits and ideas gained in a nomadic life mingled with those of the conquered agriculturists, and yielded a new and superior result—superior because based on a wider range of experiences and bringing a greater number of elements into the problem of social development. Mountaineers brought down their ideas to combine them with those born of the plain. Deserts and river valleys poured their common thought results into new and more comprehensive minds. The great ebullition went on. East mingled with west, north with south, mountain with plain, seashore with interior; men's thoughts fused and boiled incessantly; new compounds constantly appeared; the range of ideas grew wider and higher; and mental development steadily advanced—though over the ruins of empires and through the ashes of man's most valued possessions.
It was a destructive process. Life vanished, wealth perished, nations disappeared. But mind remained, and mind infused by every invasion with new ideas. The raw material of progress continued undestroyed. Material production is only inorganic substance poured into the mold of an idea. Its loss is no permanent deprivation while the idea remains. Its destruction is a positive gain if it has aided in yielding a crop of fresh and superior ideas.
The considerations above taken seem to prove that war has been an efficient civilizing agent, despite its cruelty and destructiveness. Nor has its good influence been physical and intellectual only; it has been moral as well. In truth, intellectual development can not go far without instigating moral advancement. But war has a more immediate ethical influence through its influence in combining tribes into nations, nations into empires. It widens human sympathies, brings greater bodies of people under the softening influence of fellow-citizenship, extends more widely the sentiment of human brotherhood, and overcomes that feeling of hostility with which tribesmen are apt to regard all mankind beyond their narrow borders.
War would therefore appear to have benefited man in the past alike physically, mentally, and morally. It can not be claimed to be a necessary agent for these purposes in the enlightened nations of the present. It has been replaced by more efficient civilizing agencies, whose character we now need to consider. In modern times nations have learned how to avail themselves of each other's advantages without going to war for them. Commerce, travel, and emigration have gone far to overcome national isolation, and a peaceful commingling of peoples has taken the place of warlike invasion.
Commerce lay at the foundation of Grecian enlightenment.
