COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

552 COSMOS.
became extinguished with the national spirit, and thus vanished
]the two main supports of free institutions
publicity and individuality.
The eternal city had become the centre of too
extended a sphere, and the spirit was wanting which ought
to have permanently animated so complicated a state. Christianity
became the religion of the state when the empire was
already profoundly shaken, and the beneficent effects of the
mildness of the new doctrine were frustrated by the dogmatic
dissensions awakened by party spirit. That dreary contest
of knowledge and of faith had already then begun, which
continued through so many centuries, and proved, under
various forms, so detrimental to intellectual investigation.
If the Roman empire, from its extent and the form of con-
stitution necessitated by its relations of size, was wholly
unable to animate and invigorate the intellectual activity of
mankind, as had been done by the small Hellenic republics in
their partially developed independence, it enjoyed, on the
other hand, peculiar advantages to which we must here allude.
A rich treasure of ideas was accumulated as a consequence of
experience and numerous observations. The objective world
became considerably enlarged, and was thus prepared for that
meditative consideration of natural phenomena which has
characterised recent times. National intercourse was animated
by the Roman dominion, and the Latin tongue spread
over the whole west, and over a portion of Northern Africa.
In the east Hellenism still predominated long after the
destruction of the Bactrian empire under Mithridates the I., and
thirteen years before the irruption of the Saca3 or Scythians.
With respect to geographical extent, the Latin tongue
gained upon the Greek, even before the seat of empire had
been removed to Byzantium. The reciprocal transfusion of
these two highly organised forms of speech which were so rich
in literary memorials, became a means for the more complete
amalgamation and union of different races, whilst it was likewise
conducive to an increase of civilisation, and to a greater sus-
ceptibility for intellectual cultivation, tending, as Pliny says,
" to humanise men and to give them one common country."*
* This beneficial influence of civilisation, exemplified by the extension
of alanguage in exciting feelings of general good will, is finely characterised
in Pliny's praise of Italy :
" omnium terrarum alumna eadem et parens,.
numine Deum electa, quse sparsa congregaret imperia, ritusque molliret,