OCR Text |
Show 13.1 133 tion. the wickedness of Nero and Caligula, the weakness of the train of Constantine's worthless descendants. It was tixed at of man thus as an inhabitant, a species in nature among other Philippi, when the spirit of domination was victorious over the spirit of freedom. 11 was tixed still earlier, in the rise of consuls selfvsufficicnt and triumviratcs and the fall of the simple, sturdy, real men tell the \\"hen ruler. arbitrary no brook would who race in war. or were left in faraway colonies, the lite of Rome still went on. But it was a ditl‘erent type of Roman which continued, and this new type repeated in Roman history its weakling pareutage. AWN" i «new mum Thus we read in Roman history the rise of the mob and of the emperor who is the mobs exponent. lt is not the presence of the emperor which makes imperialism. it is the absence of the people, the want of men. Babies in their day have been emperors, A wooden image would serve the same purpose. More than once it has served it. The decline of a people can have but one cause: the decline in the type from which it draws its sires. A herd of cattle can deteriorate in no other way than this, and a race of men is under the same laws. By the rise in absolute power. as a sort of historical barometer, we may mark the decline in the breed of the people. "'6 see this in the history of, Rome. The conditional power of lulius Ca'sar, resting on his own tre» mendous personality, showed that the days were past of Cincin- natus and of Vlunius Brutus. The power of Augustus showed the same. But the decline went on. It is written that "the little finger of Constantine was thicker than the lotus Of Augustus" The emperor in the time of Claudius and Caligula was not the strong man who held in check all lesser men and organizations. He was the creature of the mob. and the mob. intoxicated with its own work, worshiped him as divine. Doubtless the last emperor, Augustulus Romulus. before he was thrown into the scrapvheap of history. was regarded in the mob's eyes and his own as. the m rst godlike of them all. What have the historians to say of these matters? Very few have grasped the full significance of their own words, for very few have looked on men as organisms, and on nations as dependent on the specific character of the organisms destined for their reproduction. So far as I know, Benjamin Franklin was the first to think species, and dependent on nature's forces as other animals and other inhabitants must be. Franklin said: "If one power singly were to reduce its standing army it would be instantly overrun by other nations. Yet I think there is one effect of a standing army which must in time be felt so as to bring about the abolition of the system. A standing: army not only diminishes the population of a country, but even the size and breed of the human species. For an army is the tlower of the nation. All the most vigorous, stout and well-made men in a kingdom are to be found in the army, and these men in general cannot marry." What is true of standing armies is far more true of armies that fight and fall, for. as Franklin said again, "War; are not paid for in war times; the bill comes later." In Otto Seeck's great history of "The Downfall of the Ancient World" ("Der Untergaug der .»\ntil<en Welt" l. he finds this downfall due solely to the rottingr out of the best ("Die Ausrottung der Besten"). The historian of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" or any other empire is engaged solely with the details of the process by which the best men are exterminated. Speaking of Greece, Dr. Seeek says. "A w ‘alth of force of spirit went down in the suicidal wars." "In Rome, Marius and Cinna slew the aristocrats by hundreds and thousands. Sulla destroyed the democrats, and not less tltt:>roughly. \\'hatever of strong blood survived, fell as an offeringr to the proscriptiou of the Trium\‘irate." "The Romans had less of spontaneous force to lose than the Greeks. Thus desolation came to them sooner. Whoever was bold enough to rise politically in Rome was almost without exception thrown to the ground. Only cowards remainml, and from their brood came forward the new generations. t'owardice showed itself in lack of originality and in slavish followings; of masters and traditions." The Romans of the Republic could not have made the his- tory of the Roman Fmpire. in their hands it would have been still a republic. Could they have held aloof from workl-eonquer- ing schemes, Rome might have remained a republic, eudurim: |