chapter v. summary and conclusion - ickshugokim201… · · 2016-12-30chapter v. summary and...

Chapter V. Summary and Conclusion

Boon I. From the Beginning to the Rise of Islam 505

CHAPTER V SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

1. SUMMARY 507

2. CONCLUSION 517

APPENDIX: A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee Book I-VI 526

(Please CLICK EACH LINE of the Middle Column TO SEE THE CONTENTS)

Photo V-0-1. Neolithic Agricultural Revolution Accessed 9 March 2018, http://globalfoodpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/agricultural_revolution.jpg

http://globalfoodpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/agricultural_revolution.jpg



Chapter V consists of Summary, Conclusion, and Appendix: a short summary of A Study of

History (Part I from volume I to VI) written by Arnold J. Toynbee starting from 1934.

Arnold J. Toynbee and Bill Durant wrote a great series of history books respectively, inspired

this author to write a series of seven volumes on history as a summary of my readings. Toynbee

published the first volume of A Study of History in 1934, when Great Britain was supreme in the

international affairs just five years before the World War II, in which he considers two important

points in analyzing history. First, he expresses that the Western World in our age has been

dominated by two institutions: the Industrial System of economy and Democracy in politics.1

Presumably owing to the general spirit of Nationality in the 1930s, he wants to use the term

Nationalism rather than Democracy as one of the two forces exercising dominion de facto over

our Western Society in his age. Second, he questions: “What is the intelligible field of study which

Western historians will discover for themselves in this new age?” He concludes “that the relativity

of historical thought to the social environment was absolute; and in that case it would be useless

to gaze any longer at the moving film of historical literature in the hope of discerning in it the

lineament of some abiding form.” According to him, Great Britain is a good choice to test their

outlook in the light of the historical facts as a national state as well as a Great Power despite its

geographical and political isolation from the continent. For example, the Feudal System or the

Reformation is not the intelligible field for Britain to initiate historical thought. But institutions

of the Parliamentary System or of the Industrial System are “commonly regarded as having been

first evolved locally in England and afterwards propagated from England into other part of the

World.” His relativity of historical thought is based on the comparison of historical facts between

different places as well as different times. Unlike Toynbee, in The Story of Civilization published

during the period 1935-75, Bill Durant differently but extensively expresses that “history should

be written collaterally as well as lineally, synthetically as well as analytically.”

In this regard, on the one hand, for the extension of the field of historical thought in space by

the change of time, Toynbee tests different civilizations. Such a historical event as the conversion

of Christianity, the feudal system, the renaissance, the reformation, geographical discovery, or

scientific development is compared with other nation states or regions respectively. In taking

spatial cross-sections on the planes of politics, economy, and socio-culture; the geographical limits

of the society are examined progressively at several different times. In each case of comparison,

“we must draw a sharp distinction between relations of two kinds: those between communities

within the same society and those of different societies with one another.” On the other hand, to

explain the extension of our field of historical thought in time, we can take a specific time like

about A.D. 775. Charlemagne, the oldest son of the Pepin III, became the first ruler of the Frankish

Kingdom in 768. In 800 he was crowned by the Pope as the Emperor of the Roman Empire. His

dominion was partitioned between three grandsons by the Treaty of Verdun in A.D. 843, which

partition was similar to the modern states of France, Germany, and Italy. We further observe this

development with two things: “first, that in tracing the life of the Western Society back behind our

earliest spatial cross-section at A.D. 775, we begin to find it presented to us in terms of something

other than itself – in terms of the Roman Empire and the society to which the Roman Empire

belonged – and, second, that any elements which we can trace back from Western History into the

history of that other society may have quite different functions and different degree of importance

in these two different associations.”2 This enables us to draw a positive conclusion regarding “the

backward extension of our Western Society in Time” with the emphasis of the continuity between

successive periods or phases as well as between the lives of different societies. Since Toynbee’s

approaching history is unique in terms of the geneses, growths, breakdowns, and disintegrations

of civilizations, first six volumes of his series are summarized in the Appendix.



CHAPTER V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

1. SUMMARY

Politics and Religion: In the prehistoric period, Paleolithic people (-10,000 B.C.) used tools made

of stone for hunting, fishing, and gathering food; Mesolithic people began to cultivate land by

attaching a stone blade to wooden hand; Neolithic people (7000-3000 B.C.) ended the hunting way

of life and developed agriculture with metal tools; Bronze people (3000-1200 B.C.) heated metal-

bearing rocks and molded them to produce tools and weapons; since then, the use of iron became

common in daily life. The early civilization independently developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt,

India, and China in the fourth millennium B.C. owing to favorable environments of nature: river

valley, rich soil, fine weather, and the dense population. The other factor was in “the capacity of

the peoples on the spot to take advantage of an environment or rise to a challenge” as well as

external contacts for exchanges of goods with new knowledge. The basic economic and social

organization was an agricultural village as a tribal community. Since natural endowment and

technological progress were different, there appeared exchanges of surplus for deficiency between

tribes. As farming, manufacturing, and trade were gradually expanded, the villages were trans-

formed into urbanized towns and cities; which became the center for political, military, economic,

social, cultural, and religious development. Economic power formed a new social structure: kings,

high priests, political leaders, and warriors were on the top; farmers, artisans, and craftsmen in the

middle; and slaves at the bottom. The development of writing made it possible for the people to

keep their records, and artistic and intellectual activities were performed with material progress.

Since India and China did not closely affect the western hemisphere in this period, our discussions

begin from two civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egypt, as the founding stones of western history.

Mesopotamian civilization was created by the Sumerians who established independent city-

states in the valleys of Tigris and Euphrates Rivers by around 3000 B.C. Semitic peoples migrated

into the river valleys of Mesopotamia, and developed later civilizations among which the Babyl-

onian Empire was most significant under the rule of Hammurabi. By 2000 B.C., the Hittites, Indo-

European people, migrated into Asia Minor, destroyed Babylon and established their kingdom,

which power reached at Syria and northern Palestine. Meanwhile, the Egyptians created another

civilization on the bank of the Nile, and the early dynasties lasted four centuries until 2700 B.C.,

and the middle kingdom remained five centuries until 2200 B.C. The rise and fall of dynasties

created the new kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.) expanding its territory to the south and the east. By

around 1200 B.C., the destruction of the Hittites and weakening of Egypt caused power vacuum in

the Near East, which invited small kingdoms or city-states to emerge. The Sea Peoples including

Philistines, Sicilians, Sardinians, and Etruscans swept over Asia Minor and Syria; the Phoenicians

became “the traders, shipbuilders, navigators, and colonizers” in the Mediterranean; and Hebrew

established a new kingdom. All of them had enjoyed political freedom until the Assyrians

dominated the Near East in the eighth century B.C. The Assyrian Empire was defeated by the

coalition of the Chaldeans and Medes in 605 B.C. which were also conquered by rising Persia in

539 B.C. The actors of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were Caucasians, who are classified into

three linguistic groups: Hamitics, Semitics, and Indo-Europeans. The Hamitics evolved in north

and northeast Africa; the Semitics did in the Arabian Peninsula; and the Indo-Europeans came

from southern Russia by 4000 B.C. and entered Asia Minor by 2000 B.C. The latter group includes

the Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic speaking peoples. During

2000-1500 B.C., the Semitic people mingled with the Indo-European speaking people in

Mesopotamia, while the Hamites were similarly intermixed with the Semites in Egypt.



Passing through the Dark Age, the ancient Greeks experienced two developments during 750-

500 B.C.: evolution of city-state and colonization of Greek cities. Each city-state needed the unity

of citizens relying on local patriotism, which created a new military system of “hoplite” forming

a phalanx in the battle. The rising population and lack of arable land forced the Greeks to migrate

toward the Mediterranean and the Black Seas; that increased their trade with colonies. Among

Greek city-states, the Spartans created a military state, while the Athenians developed a

democratic system. In the classical period, the Greeks fought two major wars: the Persian Wars

and the Peloponnesian War. As Darius expanded the power of the Persian Empire, the rising

Greeks supported the Ionian Greek cities against Persia. The Persian Wars (499-449 B.C.) came

from a conflict between Greek freedom and oriental despotism, but more from Persian expansion

and revenge for Greek intervention. Darius invaded Greek cities in 490 B.C. and Xerxes in 480

B.C., but both were defeated. After the wars, the Athenians formed the Delian League against

Persia in 478 B.C., which became an instrument of Greek imperialism. The Peloponnesian War

(431-404 B.C.) was caused by the arising fear of the Spartans to the growth of Athenian power.

Athens finally fell into Sparta, but the Greek cities were so exhausted that rising Macedonia

dominated them in 338 B.C., when Philip II forced the Greek cities to join the Corinthian League,

controlling their foreign affairs but giving autonomy of their domestic affairs. His son Alexander

the Great suppressed the revolts of the Greek cities; invaded and conquered Asia Minor, Syria,

Palestine, Egypt, Persia; and subdued modern Pakistan and entered the Indus valley. Alexander

destroyed the Persian monarchy and extended Greco-Macedonian rule to the region, but after his

death in 323 B.C. his empire was divided into four Hellenistic kingdoms – Macedonia, Syria,

Pergamum, and Egypt – ruled by his powerful generals. Hellenistic ideals pursued imperial cosmo-

politanism through cultural exchanges with the east, but their rule lost efficiency in controlling of

resources in the overextended territory, so that the rising power of Rome inherited them.

The Roman monarchy began in 753 B.C. as an oligarchy of seven tribal leaders, and moved to

the Roman Republic (509-30 B.C.) by expelling the Etruscans. Until 133 B.C., the Romans

developed a more democratic institution by extending political and social equality to the plebian

lower class, and expanded its political and military control in Italy and later the Mediterranean

region. They destroyed Carthage by three Punic Wars and subdued Macedonia by four Mace-

donian Wars. During 133-30 B.C., the territorial expansion faced serious problems: the decline of

small landowners and corruption in the government. Reformers were assassinated, and the

republic moved into the empire through three civil wars: Marius vs. Sulla, Pompey vs. Caesar, and

Octavian vs. Anthony. Augustus transformed Rome from a city-state to the Roman Empire by

pursuing a defensive imperialism that limited the boundaries to the Rhine and Danube, the

Euphrates, and Arabia and Africa. He restructured the army into legions, Praetorian Guard, and

auxiliary forces; and used the army as an agent of Romanization. As the civil wars stopped, the

Romans achieved peace and prosperity. But military expansion and continuous campaigns induced

economic downfall; and the urbanization of provincial towns made the economic center shift to

provinces, which expedited the depopulation of Italy. As the empire rapidly declined since

Commodus, Diocletian (284-305) pursued aggressive reforms by dividing the empire into the east

and the west, which demanded more supply, payroll, and recruitment. Christianity was recognized

as a lawful religion by Constantine (272-337) who moved his capital to Constantinople in 330.

Since 400, the imperial army had heavily depended upon Germanic recruits, and both military and

civil positions in the government were largely filled by Germans. Romanization by the army meant

militarization, and recruitment of Germans in military and civil services caused barbarization of

the empire. Finally, the western Roman Empire fell into the hands of Germans in 476 because its

political-military institutions could not be supported by its economy.



After the fall of Rome, there were three developments: Germanic kingdoms, the Byzantine

Empire, and the rise of Islam. First of all, the Huns moved into the Black Sea region in the late

fourth century, and pushed Germans - Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Burgundians,

Franks, and Angels and Saxons. Moving westward, the Visigoths finally settled in Spain and

established a kingdom, which was conquered by the Muslims in 713. The Vandals moved west-

ward to Spain, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and settled in northern Africa, but were defeated by

Justinian in 534. Being ruled by the Huns, the Ostrogoths regained independence and established

a kingdom in Rome in 491, but were conquered by Justinian in 535. The Lombards invaded

northern and central Italy and established a kingdom in 568, but were conquered by Charlemagne.

The Burgundians settled in Savoy and spread toward Lyon, and moved into the Roman land, but

were overthrown by the Franks in 532. As the Franks rose from the northern corner of Gaul,

Clovis (482-511) inherited the Merovingian throne, conquered both Gaul and Germany, and

moved his capital to Paris; which dynasty had remained until Pepin III open the Carolingian

dynasty in 751. The Angels and Saxons conquered the Britons after the withdrawal of Roman

legions in 409. Meanwhile, the east was largely divided into two powers: the eastern Roman

Empire and the Persian Empire. In the eastern Roman Empire later called the Byzantine Empire,

Justinian (527-65), making peace with Persia, restored the Mediterranean world by destroying the

Vandals in northern Africa, the Ostrogoths in Italy, and the southern shore of the Visigoths in

Spain; although the empire could not maintain the expanded frontiers. Justinian codified the

Roman law as the basis of the empire, which was a great contribution to western civilization. On

the other hand, the Persians invaded and captured Syria, Palestine, and Egypt from the Byzantine

during 616-19. Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610-41), after ten years of preparation, counter-

attacked Persia from the rear through the Black Sea to revenge the past. Since then, the Persians

became extremely weakened, and its Sasanian dynasty finally fell to the Arabs in 642.

In religion, the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt worshipped many gods of nature:

the former prayed for earthly goods, but the latter believed immortality, revival of life after the

death. The Persians worshipped Zoroaster (630?-550? B.C.) who preached an ethical dualism: the

followers of truth will be led to paradise and the adherents of lie will fall into hell. Judaism has

been the religion of the Israelites entering into the covenant agreement with the God: Yahweh

protects the Israelites while the Israelites worship Yahweh as written in the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Greek cities worshipped the Olympians with intense cults of local deities: the Olympians were

the twelve major gods and goddesses having their home at the mount of Olympus. The Romans

had three main gods – Jupiter as a sky god, Mars as a warrior god, and Quirinus as god of war –

and they accepted the Greek gods and adopted Greek mythology. Jesus of Nazareth (6 B.C.- A.D.

29) and his twelve apostles established Christianity by preaching on love of God, love of neighbor,

the existence of heavenly kingdom for salvation, and the continuity of the Hebrew Scriptures. The

Christian church developed a centralized administration in accordance with the Roman imperial

system. After the fall of Rome, the Catholic Church played an important role to civilize wild

barbarians in the west. Muhammad (570-632) established Islam at Medina with the holy scriptures,

the Koran, largely adopted from Judaic doctrines. After his death, Abu Beker succeeded him,

followed by the Caliph Omar (634-44), which clan became the Shiites. When the Byzantine and

Persians exhausted themselves by wars, the Arabs conquered Syria in 640 and Persia and Egypt

in 641; and a half million Arabs migrated into the conquered lands. After the death of Omar, the

Quraish aristocracy in Mecca gained power. Muawiyah established the Umayyad dynasty (661-

750), which clan became the Sunnites, and moved his capital from Medina to Damascus.

Conquering North Africa, the Muslims invaded Spain and subdued most of them, and expanded

its territory to the Central Asia beyond the Oxus River during 711-13.



Economy and Society: The economy of the ancient Near East was dominated by agriculture,

but industry and trade grew as the farm surplus demanded exchanges for their other needs. In

ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians utilized a land of fertile soil overflowed from the rivers and

developed an irrigation system. They produced abundant crops, woolen textiles, pottery, and the

metal work mixed with copper and tin to produce bronze. They traded with the eastern

Mediterranean by using wheels and with India by water. Goods were traded by barter, but gold

and silver were used as standards of value. They developed a feudal system: the king gave lands

to his chieftains after victories of wars; and his generals run the estates and provided soldiers,

supplies, and finance for the king in return. Meanwhile, ancient Egypt was surrounded by natural

barriers and relatively isolated from Mesopotamia, so that their land was naturally protected from

foreign invasions. The agriculture owed to fertile soil overflowed from the Nile. The land was

owned by the Pharaoh, the feudal barons, or other wealthy men. The ruling class managed king’s

lands, and the farmers worked on the land mostly owned by the upper class or partially by

themselves. The government monopolized mining for industry and military purposes: copper was

mined in small quantity, iron was imported from Arabia, and gold mines were founded along the

eastern coast of Nubia, while they used bronze weapons and wheels. The Egyptian engineers were

superior to the Greeks or Romans or even to any Europeans before industrial revolution: they

constructed canals from the Nile to the Red Sea, built ships, and provided transport by water, but

roads were few and bad except the military highway through Gaza to Euphrates. The ancient

Persians depended on agriculture that was considered as the noblest occupation. The peasant

proprietors engaged in farming on lands jointly with several families; and the feudal barons

cultivated their lands in part by tenants in return for shares of crops, and in part by foreign slaves.

They used the irrigation system guiding water from the mountainous high lands to low fields; and

they produced barley and wheat, and ate meat and drank wine.

The ancient Greeks received science and technology from the Egyptians of geometry and

skills in pottery, textile, metalworking, and ivory; from the Phoenicians of the alphabet and

shipbuilding technique; from the Babylonians of the system of weight and measures, water clock

and sundial, monetary units, astronomical principles, instruments, records, and calculations.

Lydia traded with the Ionian Greeks which promoted banking by issuing a state-guaranteed

coinage, which spread to Greece. The Greek economy was agricultural, but the Athenians

imported grain mostly from Egypt and Sicily: the rising population was a problem in Greek cities

so that politicians favored emigration to overseas to resolve the problem. Attica was rich in marble,

iron, zinc, silver, and lead; and the mines of Laurium were the source of Athenian treasury. The

Athenians made clothes and blankets at home, and bought necessities directly from craftsmen.

The public project of the Delian League revived the Athenian economy. The growth of industry

and trade made manufacturers and merchants rich, which created a new social class. The landed

aristocracy having political power united rich merchants and manufacturers having economic

power; which created the political-economic complex through marriages and other ways. This

produced an upper class of oligarchs and divided Greek society into two cities: the rich and the

poor. Since the poor captured the Assembly and imposed heavy taxes on property and income,

the middle class distrusted democracy. This was the beginning of the collapse of Athens and the

rise of Macedonia. The Hellenistic economy in Greece and Macedonia, Syria, Pergamum, and

Egypt was basically not different from the Greek period. Trade was expanded owing to reduced

barriers, and improved conditions of roads and harbors which facilitated transportations from India

to the Persian Gulf or Red Sea, from Seleucia to Antioch and Ephesus, and from Coptos on Nile

to Alexandria and the Mediterranean. Money transactions replaced barter and bankers provided

credit for trade. The Hellenic society had no integrated system to form an empire.



The Roman conquest made the Hellenistic territories become the property of the Roman state,

and capital was concentrated in the hands of Roman citizens and of residents in the Italian cities.

The influx of goods, slaves, and money from the Roman provinces into Italy stimulated its

economy. The abundant slaves lowered wages and replaced rural peasants, many of whom sold

their lands and either settled in cities or migrated to the east. Similarly, slaves replaced urban

workers, which raised the number of urban proletariats. The decrease in small-land holders and

the increase in urban proletariats changed the traditional aristocratic regime to an oligarchy of rich

noble families, which threatened the republic and caused the civil war. Augustus ended internal

and external wars, which revived the economy: he pursued no interference in the market, and made

Italy the economic center in the west. In the first and second centuries, the ownership of land was

concentrated to city bourgeoisie, the imperial aristocracy, and the state; and small landowners

became tenant farmers. Hence, agriculture gradually decayed by low productivity without

incentives. The growth of commerce within as well as between provinces decentralized markets

and challenged Italian merchants. The provinces specialized their own manufacturing, which

expedited industrial decentralization. While the major cities in provinces were urbanized with the

rising population, the economic gravity of the empire gradually shifted from Italy to the provinces.

In the third and fourth centuries, the imperial finance was desperate due to civil war followed by

external wars; causing to raise taxes. The constitutional monarchy was assisted by experts based

on the city bourgeoisie, but the military monarchy was assisted by non-experts based on country

peasants. Hence, the empire suffered from corruption and inefficiency of the bureaucracy and

became impoverished. The tax payers were almost robbed by the state, and the bourgeoisie was

ruined by repeated confiscations, so that their number constantly decreased and finally disappeared.

Diocletian pursued structural reforms, but faced continuous inflation and empty of the treasury.

Higher civilization of Greece and Rome was absorbed by barbarism.

The Germans penetrated into Roman society through the Romanization, militarization, and

barbarization. The Roman army legions stationed in the frontier provinces and became a powerful

engine of economic transformation; they used slaves and barbarians to fight other barbarians and

were rapidly assimilated; and the wealthy elite monopolized the economy and became powerful

landlords who held their dependents bounded to the land, which was the preliminary stage of the

feudalism. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the ownership of lands could not be stable, but

was passed to new conquerors: the Ostrogoths, Lombards, Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks.

Royal property was scattered and often lay side by side with church property. The Franks produced

primarily wheat and barley, and grew vine and made wine; though their majority still lived in the

countryside, the cities played a vital role as commercial and industrial centers. Despite barbarian

pillages and Gallo-Roman internal wars, Roman roads and commercial water-ways functioned

continuously, which helped the circulation of goods in the sixth and seventh centuries. The

Byzantine kept a centralized administration at Constantinople. Until Justinian, foreign trade

flourished owing to well-maintained Roman roads, and building of maritime fleets with many

ports in the east and the west. All Syria throve in trade because of its location linking Constan-

tinople with Persia and Egypt. After the collapse of the Justinian order, the expansion of Persia

and the rise of Islam seriously reduced holdings of lands and people. The Persians developed

industry and commerce. Silk weaving was introduced from China; Chinese merchants came to

Persia to sell raw silk and buy rugs, jewels, rouge; and Armenians, Syrians, and Jews connected

Persia, Byzantium, and Rome. The Arabs were basically nomad Beduins, herdsmen moving with

their flocks; but after the Muslim conquest, their economy covered the wider range. Moslem

merchants dominated the Mediterranean until the Crusades controlled the Red Sea from Ethiopia,

and reached over the Caspian into Mongolia up to Volga.



Political Philosophy: Ancient Ionian Greeks had opportunities to contact cosmology and

theology of the Near East, which opened their eyes and widened visions; which philosophical

ideas penetrated into the Mediterranean islands. Thales founded the Ionian school of philosophy,

followed by several others. The Sophists such as Protagoras or Gorgias appeared in Greek cities

and taught logic and rhetoric. Meantime, Socrates began to teach students not for pay but for love

of truth by using a dialogue method to guide human reasons toward justice, love, and virtue. After

his death, the Socratic schools appeared, but his ideals were more successfully followed by Plato

and Aristotle. Plato founded the Academy in 386 B.C. that became the intellectual center of the

west for nine centuries. In his theory of knowledge (epistemology), Plato drew a distinction

between certain knowledge and uncertain opinion – between reality and appearance. In his theory

of ideas (ontology), Plato writes that “whenever a number of individuals have a common name,

they have also a common idea or form. For instance, though there are many beds, there is only

one idea or form of a bed….so the various particular beds are unreal, being only copies of the idea,

which is the one real bed, and is made by God.” In his ethics, Plato views that soul is pure but

becomes deformed through association with the body, which is the distinction between mind and

matter. His political philosophy appears mainly in the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws. In

his Republic, he pursues four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. In division of

labor, artisans produce goods, and the guardians provide national security. He considers that the

best city-state is aristocracy ruled by the philosopher-king, where guardians live together in the

community of property and of families with equal education between men and women. But in his

Laws, he views that the best regime is that in which the god rules: the gods is the measures of all

things in the highest degree far more than human being. The nearest imitation of divine rule is the

rule of laws, but since the rule depends on human being making and enforcing laws of the regime,

the regime needs wise legislators and moderate administrators.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) spent twenty years under Plato, and left the Academy after his death

to be a tutor of Alexander. He returned to Athens in 335 B.C. and established his own school, the

Lyceum. His Metaphysics deals with the province of ontology: substance, causality, the nature

of being, and the existence of God. Men desire to know the explanation of the things they saw,

and so philosophy arose out of the desire of understanding, and “not on account of any utility that

knowledge might possess.” He developed the theory of universals against the theory of ideas:

since the universal is common in generalization, it cannot exist by itself, but only in particular

things. If they are not universal, they will not be objects of scientific knowledge. His Nicomachean

Ethics discusses on happiness, virtue, justice, incontinence, friendship, pleasure, and others. It is

widely considered “one of the most important historical philosophical works, and had an important

impact upon the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy.”

In his Politics, Aristotle views that the end of politics is justice or the common advantage in terms

of equal shares for equals. The best regime is one ruled by the best man rather than the best laws.

Ruled by several persons of all qualified good men, aristocracy would be a better regime for cities

than kingship ruled by a single person. In his Organon of six works on logic, Aristotle is chiefly

concerned with the form of proof, and he assumes that the conclusion of a scientific proof gives

certain knowledge concerning reality, such as in the doctrine of the syllogism. In the Physics, he

established general principles of change, dealing with a broad field that included subjects on the

philosophy of mind, sensory experience, memory, anatomy, and biology. On the Heavens contains

his astronomical theory and his ideas on the concrete working of the terrestrial world. In addition,

in his On the Universe, Aristotle taught “that the planets and stars were on concentric crystalline

spheres centered on the earth. Each planet, the sun and the moon were in their own sphere, and

stars were placed on the largest sphere surrounding all of the rest.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_philosophy



About the time of Alexander, four schools of philosophy were founded: the Cynics and

Sceptics, and the Stoics and Epicureans. In the third century after Christ, Neoplatonism became

more influential. Cynicism was led by Antisthenes, who adopted and developed the ethical side

of Socrates’ teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue. He was followed

by Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes. Skepticism was first claimed by Pyrrho of Elis, who

followed Alexander’s army to India, where he learned skeptic thought. He believes that human

beings know nothing about the real nature of things. In 269 B.C. the Academy transformed Plato’s

rejection of sense knowledge into a skepticism. The unreliable sense-perception denies reason’s

claims to the real nature of things, which idea was further developed by David Hume and

Immanuel Kant after two millenniums. Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus around 307 B.C.,

who considers happiness as the goal of life which is achieved by pursuing pleasure not for physical

desire but for peace of mind. He taught in his garden for thirty-six years, and emphasized

friendship as an important ingredient of happiness. Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium, who

taught his philosophy in Athens from about 300 B.C. “Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics,

Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of Virtue in

accordance with Nature.” The Stoics recognized the necessity of religion as a basis for morality.

Lucretius wrote On the Nature of the Universe viewing that “the real wealth of man is to live

simply with a mind of peace.” Marcus Cicero, in his On the Commonwealth, suggests three

branches of the state. Seneca the Younger suggests that we need to raise ourselves above the crowd

and retire to more tranquil heaven. Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in Greek, reflecting the

ideal of Stoic life of tranquility, and with “the virtues of wisdom, justice, fortitude, and moder-

ation.” On the last page of Meditations, he writes that “Cast away opinion: thou art saved. Who

then hinders thee from casting it away? When thou art troubled about anything, thou hast forgotten

this, that all things happen according to the universal nature; and forgotten this”3

Neoplatonism was founded by Plotinus, whose interpretation of Plato was so distinct from

those of his predecessors. It is a metaphysical and epistemological philosophy - a form of idealistic

monism, and combining of polytheism. Plotinus wrote fifty-four treatises in Enneads, which ideas

were chiefly based on Plato’s theory. He tried to close the gap between philosophy and religion.

His metaphysics is in three basic principles: the One, Intellect, and Soul. The One is such a

principle as the idea of good in Plato’s Republic; Intellect is the principle of essence; and Soul is

the principle of desire for objects. Finally, early Christian philosophy had faced dualism existing

between pope and emperor, clergy and laity, the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdoms.

Among the Christian fathers, Ambrose and Augustine contributed to the separation of clergy and

laity. The Church government developed slowly during the first three centuries, but rapidly after

the conversion of Constantine, owing to that “Christianity had an advantage from the inflexibility

and intolerance derived from the Jews; the doctrine of a future life in the West was taught by the

Orphics and thence adopted by Greek philosophers, but the doctrine of immortality less influential;

Miracles played a very large part in Christian propaganda; the moral of Christians were very

superior to those of average pagans; and the union and discipline of the Christian republic with

more political influence.” Ambrose was inferior to Jerome as a scholar, and to Augustine as a

philosopher, but as a statesman, he skillfully consolidated the power of the Church. Augustine

tried to prove the existence of God which is the mind’s apprehension of necessary and changeless

truth. “The order and unity of Nature proclaims the unity of the Creator, just as the goodness of

creatures, their positive reality, reveals the goodness of God and the order and stability of the

universe manifest the wisdom of God.” Boethius wrote On the Consolation of Philosophy: the

present life has its material consolations, which cannot provide true happiness; and virtue has true

power and good men become divine, while vice fails and evil men turn into animals.



Economic Thought: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey imply that wealth is obtained by “gifts, theft,

prizes for winning competitions, plunder received in war, and tribute paid by defeated cities to

their conquerors.” In his Works and Days, Hesiod (lived around 700 B.C.) views that ideal society

is in agricultural self-sufficiency, which is achieved by hard work, honesty, and peace. In

Mesopotamia, Sumerians had kept the records of production for a three-year period during 2200-

2100 B.C. The Code of Hammurabi shows that Babylonians used a tenant-farming system. Egypt

hired economic advisors like Joseph (1915-1805 B.C.) who kept records of annual production and

administered the storage of surplus grain to manage future famines. The Hebrew Scriptures writes

about private property, gold and silver as money, interest on loans, human labor, slavery, tithe and

Sabbath, Sabbatical and Jubilee years. Plato (427-347 B.C.) views that the division of labor is

based on natural endowment that gives specialization to guardians and artisans; that guardians

should have a community of property and of family, which provide communal unity and social

harmony. He introduces the origin of retail trade in his Republic, and gold and silver as the money

in his Laws. He denies interest from loans and views that shop-keepers and merchants are at the

best a necessary evil. In his Oeconomicus, Xenophon (430-355 B.C.) views that education makes

farm workers produce surplus and an estate manager increase assets. He was interested more in

specialization of crafts than in division of labor. His On the Means of Improving the Revenue

introduces not only part of public finance but a policy proposal for economic development.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) introduces household management and the art of making money. He

views that goods have two values of use and exchange; that slavery and mastery is based on the

inferior and the superior in body and in soul; that interest from loans is contrary to nature; and

monopoly can be used to raise funds when budget is short. Opposing communal property and

restriction of private property, he views that justice in exchange is based on reciprocity, which is

suitable neither to distributive nor to corrective justice.

In the Hellenistic world, Diogenes (412-323 B.C.) and the Cynics view that love of money

causes evil, and seeks freedom from worldly goods. Zeno (335-263 B.C.) and the Stoics disdain

worldly goods but approve buying and caring of personal property that might help a man to be

virtuous. Epicurus (341-271 B.C.) considers that economic problems are resolved by reducing the

demand for goods rather than by increasing their supply: pragmatic adjustment. The Romans

negligibly contributed to economic thought, but some developments appeared in the areas of the

philosophers, the agricultural writers, and the jurist as an echo of Greece. The philosophers

primarily emphasized the right use of wealth based on the ethical standards of Stoicism, but they

did not provide any economic doctrine. The agricultural writers deal with practical and technical

principles on farming and estate management rather than economic thought. The jurists analyzed

facts and produced principles which were not only normative based on natural law but also

explanatory based on the reality of various cases. The New Testaments reflects the change of

Hebrew society from the inherited traditions of the tribal community ruled by justice to new values

of more complex society based on love of all humanity. Regarding economic thought, it concerns

about money, necessities, wealth, and labor. Particularly about wealth, it is said that “Blessed are

you who are poor” and that “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom

of God!” As time passed, the Christians accommodated their earthly lives with the rich and the

poor. Hence, it is believed that wealth is a gift of God to promote human welfare: if the wealth is

denounced, how can we practice the virtues of liberality and charity. Ambrose (339-97) views

that wealth is a gift of God but considers private property responsible for various evils. Augustine

(354-430) considers that private property is a creation of the state, of human right rather than of

divine right. It is believed that most economic activities pursue private gain but may turn out to

be beneficial to society, which is desirable by Christianity.



In the Roman state, human capital as of labor input, is based on the level of education and

training: learning from family, apprenticeship, and formal education. The Roman army required

the skills of literacy and numeracy as well as on craft, engineering, and medical expertise. Cities

facilitated education and exchange of information and ideas by transmitting knowledge and

productive skills, because denser populations generate more interactions. The Romans created the

largest slave society in history. The number of slaves in Roman Italy was 15 to 25 percent of the

entire population. The massive inflow of slaves into Rome from the conquered lands had created

serious problems in economy and society. The slave labor replace many paid positions in farming,

mining, manufacturing, trading, end even in house-keeping so that the similar number of free

workers lost their jobs, adding the number of urban proletariat. In addition, the workers faced

increasing competition as the population grew in the first two centuries B.C. Roman farming was

sophisticated and productive with seed selection, effective tillage, hoeing and harrowing to destroy

weeds, crop rotations, and so on. The agriculture was intensified upon the existence of prosperous

urban mass markets for farm produce, which integrated by vigorous trade networks. The most

intensive irrigation was reserved for market gardening; and irrigated meadows were productive

and lucrative. In the food processing industry, the preservation of fish by salting or smoking, and

the production of fish sauce were popular, and the trade of wine and olive oil reached widely. In

manufacturing, “integration was not necessarily the preferred response to economic growth and

expanding occupational specialization in pre-industrial societies.” Moreover, manufacturers had

little incentive to create integrated businesses because the costs of integration were relatively high,

and transaction costs were mitigated in some industries by labor market conditions. Since

unemployment was often endemic among much of the rural and urban populace, the transaction

costs were correspondingly low; which reduced incentive to integrate businesses.

In distribution under the Roman Empire, a group of state contractors provided needed services.

Most of them were wealthy landowners, who developed a complex web linking credit and land in

Italy to the political exploitation. More people in the conquered provinces were admitted to a

share of privileges and benefits afforded by imperial rule: the empire was like a network of rent-

seeking elites. When the frequency of disruptive warfare declined, Rome moved to a matured

natural state. “As the consumption of rent settled into a more stable pattern, markets may even

have been able marginally to optimize the utilization of resources.” In transportation, maritime

shipping lanes were favored but sailing in the Mediterranean was difficult. The Roman roads had

both military and economic purposes, allowing an imperial power to exploit the resources of its

provinces, but secondary economic activity naturally followed. Roman money owed much to the

Greek model. The imperial expansion increased monetization: more Roman coins were needed

with more lands and people. The Roman army stimulated monetization with the wider practice of

monetary exchange; urbanization stimulated monetization with the development of markets in

cities and towns; and the commercialization of agriculture and the expansion of villa economies

became another stimulus of monetization. Lending and borrowing in Roman society took place

at all social levels, and for a wide range of purposes. A significant part of the imperial elite

including wealthy provincials were lenders and debt claims, rather than money, which constituted

the monetary part of the property of the wealthy. The development of Roman law backed up an

increasing range of monetary transactions and banking operations. In general, the Roman state

provided fiscal and transport infrastructures that made exchange easier; its tax-demands stimulated

market activity; and its political authority assured a significant level of economic integration. The

economies of the post-Roman western Mediterranean were persistent in traditions of production

and distribution, without the significant development of new patters of interregional exchange;

while the economies of the eastern system followed a different trajectory.



Other Intellectual Developments: Let’s shortly sum up other intellectual developments for

both Greek and Roman civilizations. For ancient Greece, in history, Herodotus wrote the History

of the Persian Wars that was the real history in western civilization. Thucydides wrote the History

of the Peloponnesian War that gave him a great reputation. Xenophon wrote the Hellenica (Greek

history) that became a major primary source for events in Greece. In literature, Aesop wrote the

Aesop’s Fables; Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians including Sophocles

and Euripides; and Aristophanes wrote Greek comedies, delivering instructive messages. In

education, Athenians believed that competition provides better education: the secondary school,

enrolling from fourteen years old, taught natural science, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and

meteorology. It is believed that rhetoric has the power to shape communities with great impact

on civic life: Demosdenes was a rhetorician who was successful in persuading the Athenians

against Macedon. In science and literature of the Hellenistic world, Aristarchus of Samos wrote

The Dimensions and Distances of Sun and Mood, and Ptolemy wrote the Almagest on mathematics,

Geography on geography, and Apotelesmatika on astrology. The Almagest is the critical source

of information on ancient astrology and with most influential scientific text of all time through the

Middle Ages and until Copernicus. In mathematics, Pythagoras wrote The Elements which

became the standard textbook for geometry used up to present times. Archimedes devoted his

entire life to research and experiment; calculated the value of Phi, invented screw to pump water

out of mines and discovered specific gravity. In medicine, Hippocrates marks the beginning of

western medicine. Herophilus was the father of scientific anatomy in Alexandria; and Erasistratus

became the court physician of Seleucid I of Syria. In Hellenic literature, Theocritus was a poet of

Alexandria; Apollonius of Rhodes wrote Argonautica which is only Greek epic between Homer

and the later Roman Empire. Menander wrote seven plays found in Egypt.

In Roman civilization, major extant historians of the time include Julius Caesar writing The

Gallic Wars; Livy writing 142 books such as The History of Early Rome and The Second Punic

War; Sallust The Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War; Tacitus the Histories and Annals;

Suetonius The Twelve Caesars; Plutarch with the Plutarch’s Lives; Procopius the History of Wars

and the Secrete History. In Latin literature: comedies were written by Plautus and Terence; Cato

the Elder wrote a treatise On Agriculture; Gaius Lucilius wrote 30 books of Satires; Cicero wrote

most historical and philosophical works in all of classical antiquity; Vigil wrote epic poems such

as The Geortics and The Aeneid taking ten years respectively; Horace was the leading lyric poet

during the time of August; he wrote two books of Satires; Tibullus published numerous books of

love elegies such as Armores and Metamorphoses; Seneca wrote the Natural Questions, and his

nephew wrote the Pharsalia; Petronius published Satyricon as a collection of satires; Quintilian

was a rhetorician who wrote the Institute of Oratory; Gellius published the Attic Nights viewing

the insight of the nature of society. In Roman science and technology: Pliny published the Natural

History that became a model for all other encyclopedias. In medicine, Dioscorides wrote five

volumes On Medical Matters, which was the first authoritative text on botany and pharmacology.

Greek medicine reached the peak in Galen, who wrote On the Natural Faculties. Roman

technology is the engineering practice supporting Roman civilization and making the expansion

of Roman commerce and Roman military possible for nearly a thousand years. The Romans

achieved high levels of technology in large part because they borrowed and absorbed the culture

of the pre-existing peoples. The Roman education system was based on the Greek system,

however, the system gradually found its final form. With the Greek system there were three levels

of education: primary school, grammar school, and secondary school. Since the Romanization is

based on the militarization, it is significant to evaluate the development of the Romany military in

terms of its mission, objectives, strategies, and campaigns with the change of structure.



2. CONCLUSION

Ancient civilization started from the river valley between Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile River, the

Indus, and the Yellow; where the natural endowment was rich for agriculture, and the population

was dense and their aspiration was progressive. The civilization firstly began from the valleys of

the lower Tigris and Euphrates. Since irrigation was vital to agriculture, the diffusion of

civilization was “leap-frog movement, jumping across comparatively greater distances from one

irrigable river valley to the next.” With sporadic contacts, Sumerian skills were imported by Egypt

and India, which expedited the progress of their civilization. It was also transplanted to Asia

Minor and Minoan Crete, which spread to islands and coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black

Seas through trade. In the Middle East, the Assyrians rose and ruled until 605 B.C., and the

Persians began to rule by 539 B.C. Meanwhile, the Greeks developed their own civilization, and

competed with the Persians. They fought the Persian Wars, but both sides remained intact. In the

fourth century, Alexander of Macedonia conquered Greece, Asia Minor, Persia, Syria, and Egypt;

but the Hellenistic world was divided into four kingdoms after his death, which remained until the

Roman conquest. The Roman Empire made the frontiers be the Rhine-Danube line to the north

and Central Asia to the east, which covered most lands of civilized Europe. They used its army

as a tool of Romanization, but over-expanded army could not be sustainable. The positions of

civil and military services were gradually filled by Germans, so that the empire finally fell to the

hands of the German people, while the Eastern Roman Empire remained at Constantinople since

Constantine. Finally, the Franks rose and became powerful: the Merovingian dynasty provided

the foundation for Pepin III to open the Carolingian dynasty in 751, succeeded by Charlemagne.

Meanwhile, in the east, Byzantium competed with Persia. Owing to the rise of Islam, the Arabs

conquered Syria, Egypt, Persia, North Africa, and most of Spain; and isolated the Byzantine.

The rise and fall of the state can be explained by three ways: political-military, economic, and

socio-cultural perspectives. First, from a political-military perspective, in the beginning, peoples

establish a village as an agricultural community. Producing agricultural surplus, they desire to

exchange their surplus with other villages for other goods they need. Several villages or tribes

unite and create a confederated form of kingdom by the leadership of tribes for peace. This

structure is gradually merged into the hands of the most powerful tribal head, who consolidates

political and military power and establishes a solid political regime. As the state develops its

economy and mobilizes their peoples and resources, the rising power conquers neighboring states

and establishes the strongest state dominating the entire region or world. But the rising civilization

begins to decline and finally fell into the other civilization because of political-military failure.

For example, Greek city-states developed a new military system of hoplites advancing into battle

as a unit forming a phalanx in tight order. The rising military power of their city-states conquered

the coastlands of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, which expedited migration of Greeks into the

conquered lands or colonies. The confederation of Greek city-states was so powerful that they

could defend themselves from the Persian invasions. However, the Peloponnesian War broke out

between Sparta and Athens, which lasted for twenty-seven years during 431 to 404 B.C. The war

killed one-half of the Athenians and deactivated people, lands, and other resources; so that the

weakened Greek states could be easily conquered by Philip II of Macedonia in 338 B.C. The civil

war between two rival city-states destroyed Greek civilization. The rising power is generally

healthy in politics and economy with a strong army. The rising sprit of the state encourages the

political leader to widen political domain by conquering more lands, so that the state build up

armed forces to challenge other powers, and finally war breaks out. Whether the state wins or not,

it has to pay for the cost of war, which results in the decline and fall of the state.



Second, from an economic perspective, the Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C.; and the

senators were appointed by the king from the beginning, but the plebians assembly came into

being by 471 B.C. with the representatives of thirty-five tribes. The Romans conquered the Italian

peninsula, the Mediterranean, Africa, Greece, Macedonia, and made the Rhine-Danube line be the

northern frontier. But the Roman conquest brought serious economic problems: low prices of

imported grain ruined Italian agriculture, and influx of slaves lowered the wage, that replaced rural

peasants and urban workers. Farm soldiers returned home but sold their lands and left the farms

to be urban proletariat, which continuously reduced the recruiting basis of Roman soldiers. Wars

and additional territories gave good opportunities for the senators and businessmen, which allowed

the small number of rich families to form a governing oligarchy; that induced civil wars between

them. Augustus as the winner established an empire, restructured the army, and revived the

economy. Nevertheless, in the third century, civil wars, foreign invasions, natural catastrophe,

plague and the decline of population brought an economic collapse of the empire. While the

gravity of the economy shifted from Rome to newly urbanized cities in provinces, their military

and civil services were gradually filled by Germans. The Romanization meant militarization, and

the over-expansion of the Roman army brought barbarization, so the Germans finally absorbed

higher civilization of Greece and Rome. As a result, economic life of the late Roman Empire was

impoverished, and the number of city bourgeoisie constantly decreased because of heavy taxes

and confiscation of properties so that they finally disappeared. The recovery was impossible since

there was no self-adjustment function with checks-and-balances in the system. The rise of military

power constructed the Roman Empire, but its over-expansion caused the decline of its economy

and the fall of the empire. History teaches us that the military expansion caused the economic

decline, which resulted in the collapse of the political regime like the Roman Empire.

Third, from the socio-cultural perspective, the rising state has no dominant ruling class since

the existing regime was destroyed by the new political order. (a) As soon as the new regime is

consolidated, the ruling class establishes its foundation and maximizes their political-economic

interests by monopolization without competition within the system. The Greeks had been ruled

by the landed aristocracy. But as the economy was expanded, manufacturers and merchants

became rich and formed a new social class. The landed aristocracy with political power engaged

with rich merchants and manufacturers having economic power through marriages or alliances,

which created a political-economic complex. The complex formed the upper class of oligarchs,

which widened the gap between the rich and the poor, which divided Athenian society, and ignited

the class war. As the number of the poor rose, the Athenian Assembly was captured by the poor,

imposed heavy taxes on property and income of the rich, and called for the abolition of debts and

redistribution of lands. The divided society with class war expedited the collapse of the state. (b)

Educated intellectuals are influential to the rise and fall of the political regime in some ways. They

can provide productive policies for the ruler and develop new technology for agriculture and

industry, but can be a center of resistance against the ruling class. Since culture is the patterns of

thinking and behavior, it is not immediately influential to the rise and fall of the regime. Similarly,

the changes of politics and economy cannot affect culture in the short run. The Plato’s Academy

remained for nine centuries as a center of Greek culture without political support. (c) Religion is

more influential than culture to the rise and fall of the political regime. It is believed that the rise

of Christianity contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but the rise of Islam helped

the expansion of the Arab Empire. Christianity preaches love of peace and all humanity, which

are against war killing people. But Islam encouraged fighting spirit to expand Islam faith against

other religions. The Arab troops, enduring more hardship, gave three choices to conquered people:

Islam faith, tribute, or the sword. Now let’s move to apply the strategic model.



A Strategic Planning Model: Presently, American universities largely offer the course of

Strategic Planning to graduate students pursuing a MBA degree. They intend to teach how to

manage strategic goals of private or public organizations, either to expand, sustain, or downsize it

goals and objectives in the long run. The strategic planning consists of three steps. The first step

is the evaluation of current status of the organization to find out opportunities and threats from the

external environment, and strengths and weaknesses from the internal factors of the organization.

The degree of importance is evaluated quantitatively by setting weighted criteria for each category.

If we put the external factors to the vertical axis, and the internal factors to the horizontal axis, we

get a TOWS matrix as appeared in the Figure V-3-1 below. Then, we obtain four strategies: SO

Strategies guide us how to use strengths to take opportunities; ST Strategies how to use strengths

to avoid threats; WO Strategies how to use opportunities to overcome weaknesses; and WT

Strategies how to minimize weaknesses to avoid threats. The second step is the strategic planning

that is rewriting mission, objectives, strategies, and policies according to the chosen direction:

growth, stability, or retrenchment. Mission is the reason for existence; objectives are what result

to accomplish by when; strategies are the plan to achieve the mission and objectives; and policies

is the broad guidelines for decision-making. The third step is implementation of the strategic plan

that is putting strategies into actions. According to the given direction, either growth or stability

or entrenchment, programs provide target activities to accomplish the new strategic plan; then the

budget process begins; and corresponding procedures should be developed including definite

timeline of each action. Implementation is a kind of adjustment to the changed objectives in terms

of the organizational structure, human resources, finance, technical supports, marketing, inventory,

command and control, and so forth. Finally, we have to evaluate the performance with corrective

actions if necessary. The earlier the better to minimize the cost of errors.

Table V-3-1. A Strategic Model: Alternative Strategies (TOWS)4

Internal Factors

External Factors

Internal Strengths (S)

Internal Weaknesses (W)

External Opportunities (O)

SO STRATEGIES

Use Strengths

To Take Opportunities

WO STRATEGIES

Use Opportunities

To Overcome Weaknesses

External Threats (T)

ST STRATEGIES

Use Strengths

To Avoid Threats

WT STRATEGIES

Minimize Weaknesses

To Avoid Threats

Toynbee wrote first six volumes in his Study of History in order to explain the cycle - geneses,

growths, breakdowns, and disintegrations of civilizations; for which he uses numerous historical

cases of civilizations. I thought that it would be much easier if we use a strategic model to analyze

the cycle of history by a certain format with appropriate variables. The time span of corporate

strategic planning is usually less than a decade, but in history we consider centuries; the former is

futuristic but the latter is backward; though that would not be a problem. The essential point here

is how to define the strategic factors from geneses to disintegration of civilizations.



In application of the strategic model, what are the external factors deciding opportunities for

and threats to a civilization, created by international relations or other civilizations? What are the

internal factors deciding strengths and weaknesses existing within a civilization or a nation-state?

Since the size of the organization is a nation state or a civilization, we have to consider both

external and internal factors in a macro-scale with broad categories such as politics and defense,

economy and finance, science and technology, and society and culture and religion. The strategic

elements in each category affecting civilization are provisionally as selected in Table V-3-2 below.

Politics and national security include the breakdown of the authority of the nation-state; military

capabilities including strategic weapons; formation of the national security alliance; the expansion

of a nation’s territory, and creative spirit of dominant minority. Economy and finance include

GDP growth and trends; foreign trade and investment; food and energy reserves; unemployment

and Inflation; and foreign exchange rates and foreign debts. Science and technology include both

private and government spending for research and development; the level of information

technology; transportation and communications; and new technology and productivity growth.

Society and culture and religion include health and disease control; birth rates and life expectancy;

cohesiveness of society; popular culture; and Medicare coverage. We can add more elements to

each category, if they stimulate more interactions between domestic and foreign environments.

Moreover, since interactions between internal and external factors could be either positive or

negative, it is necessary to define the direction of their impact on the existing civilization.

Table V-3-2. Selected Elements by Strategic Category affecting Civilization

Strategic Category

Selected Elements to be Considered

Politics and Defense

Breakdown of the authority of the nation-state;

Military capabilities including strategic weapons

Formation of a national security alliance;

The expansion of a nation’s territory

Creative spirit of the dominant minority

Economy and Finance

Economic growth and GDP trends;

Foreign trade and investment;

Unemployment and Inflation;

Foreign exchange rates and foreign debts;

Reserves of food, energy, and strategic materials

Science and Technology

R&D Spending private and public;

The level of information technology;

Transportation and communications;

New technology and productivity growth

Society, Culture, Religion

Health and disease control;

Birth rates and life expectancy;

Cohesiveness of society;

Popular culture; Medicare coverage



As an example of strategic planning, let’s take the case of the Hellenic world around 200 B.C.

before it disintegrated into the Roman state. As shown in Table V-3-3 below, we hypothetically

evaluated strengths and weaknesses of the Hellenic world (internal factors); and opportunities and

threats of the Roman state (external factors) with weighted measurements though skipped here.

Now, it become possible to arrange four strategies for the Hellenic states to take in order for their

survival, as appeared in Table V-3-4 below. For example, (i) SO Strategies: The Hellenic states

should use their economic sustainability in order to utilize slave problems of the Roman Republic.

(ii) ST Strategies: The Hellenic states should use their economic sustainability in order to avoid

the Roman expansion. (iii) WO Strategy: The Hellenic states should use the Roman problems in

order to overcome the wars between themselves. (iv) WT Strategies: The Hellenic states should

minimize the wars between themselves in order to avoid the Roman expansion. Therefore, if the

Hellenic states take those strategies seriously and aggressively, they would rise up or at least be

sustainable; but if they fail to take those strategies, they would breakdown and finally disintegrate.

In this regard, we can explain history why a civilization or a nation state declined and fell, or why

it could have been successful if they followed the strategic direction given by this strategic analysis.

Thus, the strategic planning model is useful to explain the cycle of historical development.

Table V-3.-3. Hypothetical Evaluation of Current Status of the Hellenic World

Strategic Division

Internal World

(Hellenic States)

External World

(Mainly Roman State)

Politics & Defense

Wars between Hellenic states

Egypt and Syria sustainable

Consolidation of Roman Republic

Continuous wars for expansion

Economy & Finance

Economic decline by continuous wars

Benefits of grain production

Economic Expansion

Inflow of slaves - problem

Science & Technology

No scientific advancement

No scientific advancement

Society & Culture

Lack of social cohesiveness

The rising momentum of spirit

Table V-3-4. Hypothetical Alternative Strategies for the Hellenic World

Internal Factors

External Factors

Internal Strengths (S)

Egypt and Syria sustainable

Benefits of grain production

Internal Weaknesses (W)

Wars between Hellenic states

Economic decline

External Opportunities (O)

Continuous Roman wars

Roman slavery problem

SO STRATEGIES

Use econ sustainability

In Roman slavery problems

WO STRATEGIES

Use Roman problems

To overcome Hellenic wars

External Threats (T)

Roman consolidation

Roman economic expansion

ST STRATEGIES

Use econ sustainability

Against Roman expansion

WT STRATEGIES

Minimize Hellenic wars

To avoid Roman expansion



Interactions between Politics and Economy: Paul Kennedy published The Rise and Fall of

the Great Power in 1987. It deals with relations between economic change and military conflict

from 1500 to 2000. It is argued that “so far as the international system is concerned, wealth and

power, or economic strength and military strength, are always relative and should be seen as

such….Given the anarchic and competitive nature of rivalries between nations, the history of

international affairs over the past five centuries has all too frequently been a history of warfare, or

at least of preparation for warfare.” “The new territorial order established at the end of each war

thus reflects the redistribution of power which has been taking place within the international

system. The coming of peace, however, does not stop this process of continual change; and the

differentiated pace of economic growth among the Great Powers ensures that they will go on,

rising and falling, relative to each other.” Recognizing two separate but interacting levels of

economic production and strategic power, Kennedy views the pattern of world politics as follows.

(i) There will be a shift, both in shares of total world product and total military spending, from the

five largest concentrations of strength to many more nations; but that will be a gradual process.

(ii) The global productive balance between these five have already begun to tilt in certain

directions: away from Russia and the United States, away from the EEC, to Japan and China. (iii)

In military terms, there still exist a bipolar world, in that only the United States and the USSR

have the capacity to ensure each other’s destruction – and the destruction of any other country.

Nevertheless, that bipolarity may be being slowly eroded, both at the nuclear level and at the

conventional level. Kennedy gives us the same question as economists and strategists and political

leaders exercised from ancient time onward. A victorious nation overextends itself geographically

and strategically, so that it devotes a large proportion of its total income to defense, leaving less

for productive investment. As a result, economic output declines, while military industries are

expanded, which is the beginning sign of breakdowns of civilization.

In this regard, let’s review the three wars in the Hellenic world. (a) The Peloponnesian War

(431-404 B.C.): Being anxious to control Egyptian grain, in 459 B.C. Pericles sent a great fleet to

expel the Persians from Egypt, which expedition failed. Thereafter, “Pericles adopted the policy

of Themistocles – to win the world by commerce rather than by war.” Throughout the fifth century,

Egypt and Cyprus continued under Persian rule; Rhodes remained free; and the Greek cities of

Asia preserved their independence, while Sicily continued to grow in wealth and culture. By the

beginning of the fifth century B.C., Carthage had become the commercial center of the West

Mediterranean region. “The city had conquered most of the old Phoenician colonies, subjugated

the Libyan tribes, and taken control of the entire North African coast from modern Morocco to the

borders of Egypt.” As discussed previously, the Peloponnesian War broke out because of conflict

of interests between Athens and Sparta: the funds contributed to Athens for defense against Persia

were being used for the benefits of Athens. During the war, the Greek Assembly declared war

against Syracuse in 415 B.C. and landed in Sicily with 100 ships and 5,000 men led by Alcibiades,

but all were killed and captured. In 409 B.C., the Carthaginians led by Hannibal Mago invaded

Sicily, and in 405 B.C., Dionysius made peace with and ceded to them all southern Sicily, though

expelled the invaders from Sicily after regaining power later. In the Peloponnesian War, Greek

cities fought each other for hegemony but lost most of their wealth and half of their lives, and all

of Greece were finally conquered by Philip II of Macedonia in 338 B.C. The Athenians and

Carthaginians were greedy for grain supply from Egypt and Sicily: Athens sent two expeditions

to Egypt and to Sicily but both failed with great losses. Pericles knew that trade was better than

war, but his successors could not stop the war. The Greek civilization was broken down because

of civil wars between city-states, which had no tower to command, control, and coordination for

the differences between them. Their politics and the war ruined the economy.



(b) The Second Punic War (218-201): In the first war, the Carthaginian fought against Rome

for Sicily but lost the war in 241 B.C. The Second Punic War began in 218 B.C., when Hannibal

Barca invaded southern Spain, mobilized his troop and passed Pyrenees within weeks. He crossed

Alps with 40,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, and elephants; being reinforced by a Gallic army of

foot and horses. He established diplomatic contact with the Gallic tribes uprising in northern Italy,

and joined them as allies against their common enemy. At the battle of the Trebia, “the Romans

suffered heavy losses with only 20,000 men out of 40,000 able to retreat to safety. They left

Cisalpine Gaul in the aftermath. Having secured his position in northern Italy by this victory,

Hannibal quartered his troops for the winter amongst the Gauls. The latter joined his army in large

numbers, bringing it up to 60,000 men; however, their enthusiasm was somewhat reduced due to

the Carthaginians living on their land.” After the Punic victory of the Battle of Cannae, several

south Italian allies immediately went over to Hannibal. In Iberia, the Scipio brothers fought two

battles against the Carthaginian armies, but were defeated. “The climax of Carthaginian expansion

was reached when the biggest Greek city in Italy, Tarentum, switched sides in 212 B.C. The Battle

of Tarentum was a carefully planned coup by Hannibal and members of the city's democratic

faction.” Finally the Roman armies landed on Carthage, where the battle of Zama was decisive in

202. “Unlike most battles of the Second Punic War, the Romans had superiority in cavalry and the

Carthaginians had superiority in infantry. The Roman army was generally better armed and trained

than the Carthaginians.” Hannibal lost the war. As a result, Carthage lost Spain forever, and Rome

firmly established her power there over large areas. Rome imposed a war indemnity, limited the

Carthaginian navy to ten ships and forbade Carthage from raising an army without Roman

permission. After fifty years later, Rome destroyed Carthage to the ground. Thus, Hannibal started

the war and fought fifteen years in the Italian peninsula, but resulted in pain and losses.

(c) The Macedonian Wars: “Traditionally, the Macedonian Wars include the four wars with

Macedonia, in addition to one war with the Seleucid Empire, and a final minor war with the

Achaean League. The most significant war was that fought with the Seleucid Empire (192-188

B.C.), while the most significant war with Macedonia was the second (200-196 B.C.), and both of

these wars effectively marked the end of these empires as major world powers, even though neither

of them led immediately to overt Roman domination. Four separate wars were fought against the

weaker power, Macedonia, due to its geographic proximity to Rome, though the last two of these

wars were against haphazard insurrections rather than powerful armies. Roman influence

gradually dissolved Macedonian independence and digested it into what was becoming a leading

global empire. The outcome of the war with the now-denigrating Seleucid Empire was ultimately

fatal to it as well, though the growing influence of Parthia and Pontus prevented any additional

conflicts between it and Rome.” When Philip V of Macedon made an alliance with Hannibal

against Rome in 214, he hoped that all Greece would united behind him to slay the growing young

giant of the west. After the first war, Rome gave Philip an ultimatum that he must cease in his

campaigns against Rome’s Greek allies, but his continuous antagonism caused the second war and

ended with a peace, and the Roman armies withdrew from the scene. As Egypt and Macedonia

now weakened, the Seleucid Empire became increasingly aggressive and successful in its attempts

to conquer the entire Greek world. Hannibal became a chief military advisor to the Seleucid, and

“two were believed to be planning for an outright conquest not just of Greece, but of Rome also.”

Fearing the worst, the Romans began a major mobilization, all but pulling out of recently pacified

Spain and Gaul. The Romans decisively won the Battle of Magnesia, which marked the beginning

of the end of the empire. Both Philip V of Macedonia and the Seleucid of Syria had an ambition

to conquer the Greco-Roman world, but both lost the war. Their political ambitions brought the

war against Rome, but resulted in the fall of their dynasty with slavery of the people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taranto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarentum_(212_BC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarentum_(212_BC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seleucid_Empire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaean_League



Relations between Theory and Practice: My question here lies in whether political theories

had affected political practices or vice versa, and whether economic theories had affected

economic practices or vice versa in ancient times from the beginning to the rise of Islam. First of

all, correlations between theory and practice should be statistically measured by the correlation

matrix between representing variables of theory and practice. However, it is not possible to obtain

any kind of empirically related data between theory and practice for the ancient period. Second,

as we have investigated, Athens and later Rome were the center of education where the young

elites of the time learned political philosophy, and became politicians of the time. Therefore, there

must be a certain kind of influence of political philosophers in political reality. Third, there were

no established economic theories in this period, but some treatises wrote about agriculture and

home management pursuing efficiency in economic activities. Therefore, our discussions have

two categories: politics and economics with limited scopes respectively.

(a) Politics and Political Philosophy: (i) Rejecting the tradition in religion, Socrates founded

morality in the individual conscience rather than in social good, refused to support the oligarchic

faction of Athens by praising Sparta, and crashed with the current course of Athenian politics and

society, so was removed from Athenian life. Plato dreamed a communistic and naturalistic utopia

of men with the guardian or ruling class without property and without wives. “Until philosophers

are king, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy….cities

will never cease from ill, nor the human race.” Later, he portrayed the second-best state with the

rule of law since no superior people exist. He felt that communism is not democratic but

aristocratic; and monarchy has advantages over democracy. His Republic was more idealistic than

his Laws because he recognized the learned to be corrupt in society so that violators should be

ruled by laws. (ii) Aristotle was against common property ownership because “What is common

to many is taken least care of; for all men have greater regard for what is his own than for what

they possess in common with others….It is plain, then, that those states are best instituted wherein

the middle classes are a larger and more formidable part than either the rich or the poor.” Since

the highest virtue is intelligence, “the pre-eminent duty of the state is not to train the citizens to

military excellence, but to educate them for the right use of peace.” He taught Alexander the Great,

who might be influenced by his philosophical vision.

(iii) Stoicism brought together all the elements of Greek thought to create a system of morals

acceptable to the intellectual and ruling classes of the Roman state. Cicero used philosophy for his

political goal: he translated Greeks into Latin to make Roman readers accessible to writings.

Seneca the Stoic taught Nero and became his advisor, who insists that “the original Greek Stoics

justified a life of withdrawal from political engagement on the grounds that no extant city satisfies

the Stoic standards of a true political community.” In the beginning, the Greeks felt themselves

more civilized but politically less powerful, but it is believed that political decline affected Greek

thought and art to decline. Unlike other emperors, Marcus Aurelius was a philosophy king, whose

political thought might influence his reign. (iv) Church-State Relations: “Early Christian political

philosophy is not a unified, theoretical, and coherent system, but is embedded in a range of

Christian works of apology, theology, and exegesis. Literate Christians from the apologists to

Augustine were subject to a range of political and social pressures, and their political thinking was

often contingent and incidental….Between Constantine's reign and that of Theodosius at the close

of the fourth century, emperors veered from the pious to the heretical, with a single pagan inter-

ruption.” The main issue in around 400 was to establish relationship between the Church and the

state, in terms of dualism existing between pope and emperor, clergy and laity, the heavenly

kingdom and the earthly kingdoms, and the spirit and the flesh of Neoplatonism. St. Ambrose of

Milan greatly contributed to the separation of Church from the Roman state.



(b) Economic Theory and Practice: Chapter II discussed economic practices and Chapter IV

did economic theories in the Greco-Roman civilization. It is not simple to prove the interactive

relations between theories and practices of the ancient economy. (i) On Agriculture: In his treatise

On Duties, Cicero declared that "of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better

than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man.

When one of his clients was derided in court for preferring a rural lifestyle, Cicero defended

country life as the teacher of economy, of industry, and of justice." Hand books on farm practice

were written by Cato, Columella, Varro and Palladius. In his treatise On Farming, “Cato wrote

that the best farm was a vineyard, followed by an irrigated garden, willow plantation, olive orchard,

meadow, grain land, forest trees, vineyard trained on trees, and lastly acorn woodlands. Though

Rome relied on resources from its any provinces acquired through conquest and warfare, wealthy

Romans developed the land in Italy to produce a variety of crops. ‘The people living in the city of

Rome constituted a huge market for the purchase of food produced on Italian farms.’ Land

ownership was a dominant factor in distinguishing the aristocracy from the common person, and

the more land a Roman owned, the more important he would be in the city. Soldiers were often

rewarded with land from the commander they served. Though farms depended on slave labor, free

men and citizens were hired at farms to oversee the slaves and ensure that the farms ran smoothly.”

(ii) “There was much commerce between the provinces of the empire, and all regions of the

empire were largely economically interdependent. Some provinces specialized in the production

of grain, others in wine and others in olive oil, depending on the soil type. Columella writes in

his Res Rustica, Soil that is heavy, chalky, and wet is not unsuited to the growing for winter wheat

and spelt. Barley tolerates no place except one that is loose and dry….The Romans improved crop

growing by watering growing plants using aqueducts and there is an increasing amount of

evidence that some parts of the industry were mechanized.” (iii) Xenophon wrote more broadly

in his Oeconomicus on agriculture in Attica in the fourth century B.C., and estate management in

classical Athens. According to him, profit is the chief goal of estate management by producing a

surplus in raising a variety of fruits and crops. He discusses the sexual division of labor, but views

that there is no natural hierarchy among human beings according to gender, race, or class. Aristotle

writes on economics: “The householder has four roles in relation to wealth. He ought to be able

to acquire it, and to guard it; otherwise there is no advantage in acquiring it, but it is a case of

drawing water with a sieve, or the proverbial jar with a hole in it. Further he ought to be able to

order his possessions aright and make a proper use of them; for it is for these purposes that we

require wealth….masters ought to rise earlier than their slaves and retire to rest later, and a house

should never be left unguarded any more than a city.” Aristotle warns that expenditure must not

exceed the income, particularly in individual economy. The gap between theory and practice in

economy seems to be much less than that in politics in ancient times.

Photo V-Ap-1. A Study of History: 12 vol. set. written by Arnold J. Toynbee during 1934-1961 Source: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/410ozOwPXIL._SY202_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome_and_wine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/410ozOwPXIL._SY202_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg



APPENDIX: A Study of History by Arnold J. Toynbee, Volumes I-VI

This is a summary of A Study of History (first 6 volumes) written by Arnold J. Toynbee. According

to him, our Western civilization is affiliated to a predecessor: the Roman Empire incorporated the

whole Hellenic society in a single political community, while the Hellenic society had been

divided between Greek city-states as well as the rich and the poor within the city before the fall to

the Macedonians and before the rise of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was a universal

state, created by the dominant minority, which civilization is the final stage of the old society. The

fall of the Roman Empire was followed by “a kind of interregnum between the disappearance of

the Hellenic and the emergence of the Western society.” This interregnum is filled with the

activities of two institutions: “the Christian Church, established within and surviving the Roman

Empire, and a number of ephemeral successor states arising on the former territory of the Empire

out of the so-called Völkerwanderung of the Barbarians from the no-man’s-land beyond the

imperial frontiers.” Toynbee developed his concept of an internal and an external proletariats for

the opposition groups within and outside the frontiers of a civilization. First, “The Catholic

Church in its first phase conformed to the pattern of the Roman political universe by incorporating

into itself the whole of the internal proletariat.” However, it was able to go on living and growing

with the germ of creative power when the Empire perished. Second, the Völkerwanderung was

the external proletariat threatening the Roman society: the Germanic tribes flew into the Roman

frontiers, fought for Rome as mercenary soldiers or civil service providers, and gradually occupied

major seats of the government. Their power finally destroyed the Western Roman Empire. With

the fall of Rome, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths were overthrown by counter-attacks of the

Eastern Empire; and the Visigoths was also terminated by the Arabs. The Völkerwanderung of the

barbarians was the external proletariat of the Roman Empire, contributing to its collapse.

Toynbee has identified twenty-one societies of the species to which our Western Society

belongs and have classified them provisionally according to the criteria which he established. It

includes the Orthodox Christian society; the Iranic and Arabic societies and the Syriac society; the

Indic society; the Sinic society; the Minoan society; the Sumeric society; the Hittite and Babylonic

societies; the Egyptian society; and the Andean, Yucatec, Mexic and Mayan societies. (i) “These

societies have no common characteristic beyond the fact that all of them are intelligible fields of

study, and this characteristic is so general and vague that it can be turned to no practical account.”5

(ii) The number of known civilization is small, while that of known primitive societies is vastly

greater. “The primitive societies, in their legions, are relatively short-lived, are restricted to

relatively narrow geographical areas, and embrace a relatively small number of human being either

at any given moment or from first to last throughout their histories.” (iii) The unity of civilization

is a misconception, because of that the first, “the cultural map remains today substantially what it

was before our Western Society ever started on its career of economic and political conquest;” the

second, “the dogma of the unity of civilization requires the historian to ignore the difference…

which distinguishes the continuity between the two successive chapters in the history of a single

civilization;” and the third, “they ignore the histories, or the chapters in the histories, of civili-

zations that do not happen to fit into the frame within which they have confined their picture.”6

(iv) The twenty-one societies above should be regarded as philosophically equivalent, and each

historical fact is intrinsically unique without repeating by itself, therefore, incomparable in some

respects. (v) There are three different methods of viewing and presenting the objects of our thought

or the phenomena of human life. “The first is the ascertainment and recording of facts; the second

is the elucidation, through a comparative study of the facts ascertained, of general laws; the third

is the artistic re-creation of the facts in the form of fiction.”7 History belongs to the first.



The Geneses of Civilizations: Approaching the problem why and how societies in process

of civilization have come into existence, Toynbee realizes that our list of twenty-one societies of

this kind falls into two groups. Fifteen of our societies are affiliated to predecessors of the same

species, and six of them have emerged direct from primitive societies. The unrelated civilizations

have emerged through mutations of primitive societies, but the related civilizations through

secessions from pre-existent civilizations. The primitive societies have their characteristic institu-

tions: “the religion of the annual agricultural cycle; totemism and exogamy; tabus, initiations, and

age-classes; segregations of the sexes, at certain states of life, in separate communal establishment,”

but not with the division of labor. An essential difference between the two groups is “the direction

taken by mimesis or imitation.” In the primitive society, mimesis is directed towards the older

generation and dead ancestors who stand at the back of the living elders. In the civilized society,

mimesis is directed towards creative personalities who lead the followers, because they are

pioneers; and such societies are dynamic in motion towards a course of change and growth. The

primitive societies seem to be in a static condition, but they were moving more dynamically than

any other civilized society has moved; which makes them (sleeping or awakened) climb up the

face of the cliff vigorously. Thus, “even if we could estimate each climber’s strength and skill

and nerve, we could not judge whether any of them have any prospect of gaining the ledge above,

which is the goal of their present endeavors.”8 Starting with the mutation of primitive societies

into civilizations, we found that this consists in “a transition from a static condition to a dynamic

activity; and we shall find that the same formula holds good for the emergence of civilization

through the secessions of internal proletariats from the dominant minorities of pre-existent

civilizations” which have lost their creative power. Therefore, a new civilization is generated

“through the transition of society from a static condition to a dynamic activity, just as it is in the

mutation, which produce a civilization out of a primitive society.”

Race is “a term used to denote the possession of some distinctive and inheritable quality in

particular groups of human beings.” The racial theorists insist on that a superior race has been the

cause and author of the transition from static to dynamic. However, in the long run, their blood

was diluted, their race enfeebled, and their power of glory declined, so that it is justified to dismiss

the race theory. The environment theory is in the diverse climate and geographical (topographical

and hydrographical) conditions in which different societies live. The human body and character

vary in accordance with the nature of the country; and conditions of geological and geographical

nature are important for the population, agriculture, industry, and commerce. Unlike the race

theory, it is true that environment is the positive factor in the geneses of civilizations such as in

North America. Nevertheless, in any case, neither race nor environment, can offer “any clue as to

why this great transition in human history occurred not only in particular places but at particular

dates.” Further surveys established decisively the truth “that ease is inimical to civilization. The

results of our investigation up to this point appear to warrant the proposition that, the greater the

ease of the environment, the weaker the stimulus towards civilization which that environment

administers to Man.”9 In other words, the easy natural environment that was beneficial for human

living could not contribute to stimulating the civilization to grow stronger. Hence, Toynbee sets

the inverse proposition that the stimulus towards civilization grows stronger in proportion as the

environment grows more difficult. “Let us begin by sorting out our illustrations into two groups

in which the points of comparison relate to the physical environment and to the human environ-

ment respectively; and let us first consider the physical group. It subdivides itself into two

categories: comparison between the respective stimulating effects of physical environments which

present different degrees of difficulty; and comparisons between the respective stimulating effects

of old ground and new ground, apart from the intrinsic nature of the terrain.”



(a) The Stimulus of Hard Countries: (i) In the case of the Yellow and the Yangtse rivers, the

Yellow river was not navigable at any season; “in the winter it was either frozen or choked with

floating ice, and the melting of this ice every spring produced devastating floods which repeatedly

changed the river’s course by carving out new channels, while the old channels turned into jungle-

covered swamps.” Despite some three or four thousand years of human efforts, the devastating

action of the floods has not been eliminated. The Yangtse has always been navigable, and its floods

are less frequent that those of the Yellow; and the winters are less severe. Nevertheless, the Sinic

civilization was born on the banks of the Yellow, not the Yangtse. (ii) In Boeotia, the soil was

rich for farming; but in Attica, soil has washed away, leaving a country of skin and bones. When

the pastures of Attica dried up and her farmlands wasted away, her people turned from farming

and pasturing to olive-cultivation and the exploitation of the subsoil. Their gracious tree not only

keeps alive but flourishes on the bare rock. To make a living from his olive-groves, the Athenian

exchanged Attic oil for Scythian grain. They packed it in jars and shipped it overseas, developed

the Attic potteries and the merchant-marine, with the silver-mines for exchanges. Their economic

activities required protection that created a navy. 10 (iii) The Philistines were maritime

communities in the south-western Levant, but they buried the ancestral seafaring tradition, by

engaging in the sowing-corn in the furrows of the broad farmlands. Turning their back on the sea,

they took up arms to conquer the neighboring lands, but met better fighters of Israel and Judah.

Meantime, the Phoenicians, who were a remnant of the Canaanites, were able to survive because

their home along the middle section of the Syrian coast were not sufficiently inviting to attract the

invaders. The Phoenicians communicated with the outer world by water, coastwise; and of their

three leading cities - Tyre, Aradus, and Sidon. They became prosperous throughout the Mediter-

ranean Sea, and invented an alphabetic system of writing and discovered the Atlantic Ocean.

(b) The Stimulus of New Ground: Let’s move to a different angle comparing the respective

stimulating effects of old ground and new ground apart from intrinsic nature of the terrain. The

Babylonian civilization, originated from the Sumerians and Akkadians, reached a higher level in

Assyria. The Iranians took Syria; the Arabs conquered Syria being replaced by the Abbasid; then,

Syria was conquered by the Seljuk Turks, and later by Crusaders. The Orthodox Christian Church

had been successfully raised in three areas: Central and North-Eastern Anatolia, the interior of the

Balkan Peninsula, and Russia. The Minoan civilization spread to the Ionic islands. This survey of

the relative fertility of old ground and new ground has given a certain empirical support for the

doctrine “that the ordeal of breaking new ground has an intrinsic stimulation effect.” In migration

overseas, the west of the Mediterranean had been colonized by maritime powers: Carthage by

Phoenicians, and Syracuse by Greece. The Etruscans colonized the interior across the Apennines

and across the Po. The migration of Angles and Jutes across the North Sea to Britain in the course

of the post-Hellenic Völkerwanderung; the Britons also migrated across the Channel to Gaul; the

Irish Scotts migrated to the corner of North Britain. The Scandinavians migrated from Norway to

the Shetlands, Orkneys, Ireland, and Iceland; Denmark across the North Sea to England; and

Sweden across the Baltic to Russia. (i) A distinctive phenomenon of transmarine migration is the

intermingling and interbreeding of diverse racial strains: the unusually rapid disintegration of the

kin-group which is the basis of social organization in a primitive society. (ii) The other is the

atrophy of a primitive institution: “in long-imprisoned and suddenly liberated souls, there emerges

a rudimentary social consciousness which reveals itself in two closely connected forms: an

awareness of strong individual personalities and that of momentous public events.” (iii) In new

communities of migration, a political development is observed: our Western civilization such as

in England created first the King’s Peace and thereafter Parliamentary Government, while on the

Continent, its political development was retarded by the survival of the kin-group.



(c) The Stimulus of Blows: We investigate here the effect of sudden blows from the external

human environment: whether the greater challenge holds the greater stimulus. There are examples

that the heavier blow brought the stronger stimulus in the course of wars between Rome and the

rival Great Powers of the Hellenic World. (i) The first Punic War in 264 B.C. caused Rome to fight

three rounds with Carthage, and four rounds with Macedonia that supported Carthage; which

ended with simultaneous destruction of Carthage and annexation of Macedonia. Hamilcar Barca

conquered Spain that was far greater than lost Sicily in the first war, and his son Hannibal stroke

at the heart of the Roman power in Italy. Under the stimulus of this appalling situation, the Romans

destroyed them utterly to protect themselves in the long run. (ii) The role of France and Germany

in history could be a similar example. In 1807, the French armies destroyed both the Prussian and

Russian armies, which was a great stimulus to Prussia and its Russian ally. “In fact, this new found

energy transformed the Prussian State into a chosen vessel for holding the new wine of German

Nationalism; and simultaneously it performed the miracle of conjuring this strong German wine

out of a watery cosmopolitanism.”11 The role of France and Germany are reversed by Bismarck

in 1871 when Wilhelm II founded the federal republic. During the War of 1914-18, the Germans

challenged but was finally defeated by the Allied and Associated Powers. (iii) Attica suffered

more from the Persian invasion during 480-479 B.C. than France during the World War I. “The

whole population of Attica – men, women, and children – had to evacuate the country and cross

the sea to the Peloponnese as refugees; and it was in this situation that the Athenian fleet fought

and won the Battle of Salamis, within sight of the victors’ abandoned fields and ruined homes and

altars.” However, a half century later, “Periclean Athens displayed a vitality far superior to that of

post-war France.” (iv) On the field of religion, Christianity was suppressed when the Apostles

were looking towards Heavens. Within three centuries after Jesus was crucified, the Roman state

itself capitulated to the Church which the Apostle had founded.

(d) The Stimulus of Pressures: Let’s examine the cases of the impact coming differently from

a continuous external pressure, played by marches and interiors. (i) In the Egyptian world: Around

3400 B.C., two separate kingdoms were established in the north and the south; and around 3200

B.C., King Menes of the south unified the country, became the first king of the first dynasty. The

difference between dynamic Egypt and static Nubia appeared in the Egyptian civilization. Nubia

was not only politically annexed but was also culturally assimilated by the universal state of Egypt.

“From the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. onwards, the pressures from North-Western

Africa and from South-Western Asia outweighed the pressures from other quarters; and

accordingly, the stimulus driven from the external pressures was greatest by the Northern Marches

in Delta. (ii) The Orthodox Christian Civilization first took root at the upper basin of the River

Dnieper. The center of gravity of Christianity was transferred, in the course of the twelve century,

to the upper basin of the Volga by the Russian frontiersmen. Thereafter, the vitality shifted again

from the Upper Volga to the Lower Dnieper, when the light pressure from the forest peoples was

outweighed by a crushing pressure from the Nomad of the Eurasian Steppe. The Cossacks in this

region formed semi-military communities, conducted warfare against the Eurasian Nomads, and

overwhelmed them with superior resources. In the eighteenth century, the Cossacks occupied

effective buffer zones in Russia, and led anti-imperial wars and revolutions to abolish slavery and

bureaucracy and to maintain independence. (iii) The Western world experienced pressures not

only from the eastern frontier but also from its western frontier: “the pressure of the so-called

Celtic Fringe in the British Isles and Brittany; the pressure of the Scandinavian Vikings in the

British Isles and along the Atlantic coast of Continental Europe; and the pressure of the Syrian

Civilization represented by the early Muslim conquerors in the Iberian Peninsula.” Magyars also

invaded modern Hungary, routed Bulgaria, and raided provinces of France and Germany.



(e) The Stimulus of Penalizations: (i) “When a living organism is penalized, by comparison

with other members of its species, through losing the use of a particular organ or faculty, it is apt

to respond to this challenge by specializing in the use of some other organ or faculty.” Similarly,

the penalization of poverty gives the scholar a perpetual stimulus which the commoner lacks

except in the rare cases. (ii) Migration: “An aptitude for rising in the social scale may also be

observed among immigrants who have been impelled by the stimulus of poverty or persecution at

home to seek their fortunes in a foreign country.” (iii) Slavery: From the First Punic War to the

Augustan Peace, the Romans recorded the history of the vast concourse of immigrants from all

the countries round the Mediterranean. These slave-immigrants began their life almost beyond

imagination, with the loss of their homes, families, properties, and their human dignities. (iv)

Caste: The same stimulus of penalization - administered by poverty, class-inferiority, and slavery

- is administered by racial discrimination in a state of society, in which two or more races live

intermingled without merging into one. The Hindu society maintains the caste system. (v)

Religious discrimination: “When the rising religion of the internal proletariat of the Hellenic

World in its universal state was persecuted by the dominant minority, the Roman Imperial

authorities were able to suppress the public practice of Christianity, but they failed to suppress

Christianity itself: they merely drove it underground.”12 The English Puritans and Christians of

the Ottoman Empire were the victims of religious discrimination. (vi) The Jews: The assimilation-

ists argue that “there is no reason why a Jewish citizen of any of the enlightened countries should

fail to be completely satisfied and satisfactory member of society just because he happens to go to

synagogue on Saturday instead of going to church on Sunday.” On the other hand, the Zionists

consistently remain in their view that “It is an essential part of the Jew’s individuality that he is a

member of the living Jewish community and an heir to the ancient Jewish tradition.”

(f) The Golden Mean: Our survey on five types of stimulus examined the hypothesis that “the

greater the challenge, the greater the stimulus.” The survey result approves the hypothesis in all

five fields, and suggests the validity of the law. (i) The Law of Compensation: We do not know

whether we can increase the stimulus infinitely if we increase challenge indefinitely. Can we reach

a point beyond which an increase in severity brings in diminishing returns? Since an excessive

challenge may cause waste of resources, it is necessary to find the mean between shortage and

surplus of challenge, physically or mentally, in order to generate an optimum stimulus for the

civilization to move forward. (ii) Comparison in three terms: It was Iceland, that the abortive

Scandinavian civilization achieved its greatest triumphs both in literature and politics. “The

achievement was a response to a twofold stimulus: the stimulus of overseas migration and the

stimulus of a bleaker and barrener country than that which these Scandinavian seafarers had left

behind. Suppose the Norsemen had travelled five hundred miles on and settled in a country as

much bleaker than Iceland as Iceland is bleaker than Norway.” The Greenland settlement proved

a failure. (iii) Two Abortive Civilization: There are the conflict between the Roman Church, as

and the abortive Far Western Christendom of the Celtic Fringe, and the conflict between our

Western Society in its early stages and the Far Northern or Scandinavian Society of the Vikings.

In both conflicts, “the antagonist was a barbarian rearguard which had always remained beyond

the range of Roman rule and had held itself in reserve at the time when the Teutonic vanguard was

plunging its sword into the dying body of the Hellenic Society – to destroy and, and it turned out,

to be destroyed.”13 (iv) The Impact of Islam on the Christendom: “The scholars of Muslim Spain

contributed to the philosophical edifice erected by the medieval Western Christian schoolmen, and

some of the works of the Hellenic philosopher Aristotle first reached the Western Christian World

through Arabic translation.” Moreover, many oriental influences on Western culture infiltrated

through the Crusaders’ principalities in Syria really came from Muslim Iberia.



The Growths of Civilizations: (a) The Arrested Civilizations: They have kept alive but

failed to grow, that compels us to study the problem of growth. (i) The Polynesians, the Esquimaux,

and the Nomads remained in perilous immobility. “The Nomads, like the Esquimaux, have

become the perpetual prisoners of an animal climatic and vegetational cycle; and in acquiring the

initiative on the Steppe they have forfeited the initiative in the world at large.” They have not

passed across the stage of the histories of civilization without making their mark despite occasional

eruptions pushing off and pulling out of the Steppe. (ii) The Osmanlis: “On the Steppe, the

composite society constituted by the Nomads and their non-human flocks is the most suitable

instrument that can be devised for dealing with that kind of physical environment.” When the

Nomad established the empires, their shepherds became a non-productive ruling class that

exploited a productive population, so that the Nomad conquerors have generally suffered from “a

rapid decadence and a premature extinction.” The dominion of the Avars over the Slavs lasted

less than fifty years; and the dominant period of the Mongol over Iran and Iraq and of Hyksos in

Egypt were relatively short. By these standards, the Ottomans remained uniquely longer in power.

(iii) The Spartans were the Dorian barbarians, who had invaded Greece in the post-Minoan

Völkerwanderung. Like the Ottomans, they enslaved the conquered natives and disregarded the

birth and heredity: the numerical ratio of human watch-dogs to human cattle in Laconia appears

to have been as much in that in the Ottoman Empire.14 “The leading features in the Spartan system

were the same as in the Ottoman – supervision, selection, specialization and the competitive spirit.”

(iv) General Characteristics: “the Eskimos, Nomads, Osmanlis and Spartiates achieve what they

achieve by discarding as far as possible the infinite variety of human nature and assuming an

inflexible animal nature instead. Thereby they have set their feet on the path of retrogression.

Biologists tell us that animal species which have adapted themselves too nicely to highly

specialized environment are at a dead end and have no future in the evolutionary process.”

(b) The Nature of the Growths of Civilizations: The growth of civilizations create problems.

The real optimum challenge for growth is “one which not only stimulates the challenged party to

achieve a single successful response but also stimulates him to acquire momentum that carries him

a step further: from achievement to a fresh struggle, from the solution of one problem to the

presentation of another, from Yin to Yang again.” The Greek expansion came with the progressive

conquest of the external environment in the form of geographical expansion and of technological

improvements. First, the Hellenic expansion of territories was threatened by the Persians from the

east and the Carthaginians from the west. The geographical expansion encourages militarism,

which is the common cause of the breakdowns of civilizations. Second, the technical advance is

related to the progress of civilization, either positively or negatively. In Attica, Solon led the way

from a regime of mixed farming to that of specialized agriculture for exports; “this technical

advance was followed by an outburst of energy and growth in every sphere of Greek life. The next

stage of technical advance was an increase in the scale of operations through mass-production on

farmlands based on slave labor. As a result, the colonial Hellenic communities in Sicily began to

expand market for their wine and olive oil among the neighboring barbarians, which caused the

wars, destroying themselves.15 The technical advance was offset by grave social conflicts, because

new slave-plantation created a parasitic proletariats in the cities. Finally, the growth is the action

tending “to shift from the field of an external environment, physical or human, to the for interieur

of the growing personality or civilization.” The civilization continues to grow: “it has to reckon

less and less with challenges delivered by external forces and demanding responses on an outer

battlefield, and more and more with challenges that are presented by itself to itself in an inner

arena. Growth means that the growing personality or civilization tends to become its own environ-

ment….In other words, the criterion of growth is progress towards self-determination.”16



(c) An Analysis of Growth: (i) Society and Individual: If the criterion of growth is self-

determination, it must be through the inward development of personality that individual human

beings are able to perform those creative acts, in their outward fields of action, that cause the

growths of human societies; and so we find that this enhancement of the individual’s mastery over

the Macrocosm is the consequence of a corresponding achievement in the Microcosm – of a

progress in self-articulation or self-determination within.”17 The growths of civilizations are the

work of creative individuals or creative minorities; which implies that the uncreative majority will

be left behind unless the pioneers can contrive come means of carrying this sluggish rear-guard

along with them in their eager advance. “The problem of bringing the uncreative rank and file into

line with the creative pioneers cannot be solved in practice, on the social scale, without bringing

into play the faculty of sheer mimesis.” In the primitive societies, mimesis is directed towards the

older generation of the living members and towards the dead; while in the civilized societies, it is

directed towards the creative personalities who have broken new ground. In order to draw the

inert majority along in the active minority’s train, “the ideal method of direct individual inspiration

has always had to be reinforced by the practical method of wholesale social drill – a habitual

exercise of primitive mankind, which can be made to serve the cause of social progress when new

leaders take command and issue new marching orders.” (ii) Withdrawal and Return of Individuals:

“The withdrawal makes it possible for the personality to realize powers within himself which

might have remained dormant if he had not been released for the time being from his social toils

and trammels.” Moses ascends the mountain in order to commune with Yahweh at His call, while

the rest of the Israelites are charged to keep their distance. Yet His purpose in calling Moses up

is to send him down again as the bearer of a new law, which Moses is to communicate to the rest

of the people. Moses’ return is equally strong in the account of the prophetic experience and the

prophetic mission. (iii) Withdrawal and Return of Creative Minorities: In his history, there are

so many cases of withdrawal and return by creative minorities in order to realize their powers.

(d) Differentiation through Growth: “Growth is achieved when an individual or a minority

or a whole society replies to a challenge by a response which not only answers that challenge but

also exposes the respondent to a fresh challenge which demands a further response on his part.

And the process of growth continues, in any given case, so long as this recurrent movement of

disturbance and restoration and overbalance and renewed disturbance of equilibrium is maintain-

ed.”18 Therefore, each successive challenge produces differentiation within the society as well as

between societies: the longer the series of challenges, the more sharply will this differentiation be

produced. In the limits of any particular civilization in space or time, “a survey of the artistic styles

that have prevailed in Egypt brings out the fact that the art of the Pre-Dynastic Age is not yet

characteristically Egyptiac, whereas the Coptic art has discarded the characteristically Egyptiac

traits; and on this evidence we can establish the time-span of the Egyptian civilization.” We have

compared our civilization to rock-climbers; and on the showing of this smile the several climbers,

though they are certainly separate individuals, are also all representatives of a single species and

are all engaged upon an identical enterprise. “They are all attempting to scale the face of the same

cliff from the same starting-place on the ledge below towards the same goal on the ledge above.

The underlying unity is apparent here; and it appears again if we vary our simile and think of the

growths of civilizations in terms of the Parable of the Sower. The seeds which the sower sows are

separate seeds; and every grain has its own different destiny. Some fall by the wayside and some

fall upon stony places and some fall among thorns. It is only a residue that falls into good ground

and brings forth fruit. Yet the seeds are all of one kind, and they are all sown by one sower in the

hope of obtaining one harvest. And the seeds that are devoured by the fowls or scorched by the

sun or chocked by the thorns are serving the sower’s purpose.”19



The Breakdowns of Civilizations: (a) The Nature of the Problem: In the geneses of

civilizations, we have dealt with the existence of twenty-six civilizations including five arrested

ones with ignoring the abortive civilizations. Among twenty-six, no less than sixteen are now

dead and buried. “The ten survivors are our own Western Society, the main body of Orthodox

Christendom in the Near East, its offshoot in Russia, the Islamic Society, the Hindu Society, the

main body of the Far Eastern Society in China, its offshoot in Japan, and the three arrested

civilizations of the Polynesians, the Eskimos, and the Nomads.” However, the Polynesians and

the Nomads belong to the arrested civilizations; and seven of the eight others are all, in different

degrees, under threat of either annihilation or assimilation by our own civilization of the West.

“Moreover, no less than six out of these seven (the exception being the Eskimo civilization, whose

growth was arrested in infancy) bear marks of having already broken down and gone into

disintegration.” The stage of a universal state is not the first stage in disintegration any more than

it is the last; “it is followed by an interregnum, and preceded by what we have called a time of

trouble, which seems usually to occupy several centuries…The nature of these breakdowns of

civilizations are failures in an audacious attempt to ascend from the level of a primitive humanity

to the height of some superhuman kind of living.”20 This nature is in non-material terms as “a loss

of creative power in the souls of creative individuals or minorities, a loss which divests them of

their magic power to influence the souls of the uncreative masses. Where there is no creation,

there is no mimesis.” When a creative minority degenerates into a dominant minority attempting

to retain by force a position that it has ceased to merit, there must be both internal and external

proletariats. Hence, the nature of the breakdowns can be summed up in three points: “a failure of

creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority,

and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.”21

(b) Deterministic Solutions: (i) The senescence of the universe: Cyprian, bishop of Carthage

in the third century, wrote that “You ought to be aware that the age is now senile. It has not now

the stamina that used to make it upstanding, nor the vigor and robustness that used to make it

strong….this loss of strength and loss of stature must end, at last, in annihilation.”22 Accordingly,

the universe is like a clock which is running down; likewise, the breakdowns of civilizations are

unmistakable senescence. The destiny of civilizations is bound up with the destiny of our physical

universe, so that the final cosmic catastrophe is inevitable. (ii) The laws of biology is the view that

every civilization passes through the same succession of ages as an individual human being; and

the time span of a generation is validly related to all civilizations. But this theory is dismissed

because civilizations are entities of a kind that is not subject to the laws of biology. Instead, there

is another theory, which suggests that “the biological quality of individuals whose mutual relations

constitute a civilization mysteriously decline after a certain or uncertain number of generations; in

fact, that the experience of civilization is in the long run essentially and irremediably dysgenic.”23

(iii) Rejecting the hypothesis that a racial degeneration is the cause of a social breakdown and

decline, Toynbee introduces the theory of the loss of creative power: “the fresh access of creative

power which the new-born civilization displays in the course of its growth is the gift of this new

blood from the pure source of a primitive barbarian race; and it is then inferred that, conversely,

the loss of creative power in the life of the antecedent civilization must have been due to some

kind of racial anaemia or pyaemia which nothing but a fresh infusion of healthy blood could

cure.”24 (iv) The theory of cycles: This hypothesis assumes that civilizations succeed one another,

by the law of their nature which is the common law of the Cosmos, in a perpetually recurrent cycle

of alternating birth and death, with the harmony of two diverse movements, which is not recurrent

but progressive. “The dead civilization are not dead in the course of nature, and therefore our

living civilization is not doomed inexorably in advance to join the majority of its species.”



(c) Loss of Command over the Environment: The breakdowns of civilizations can be caused

by some loss of command over the environment: the physical and the human. (i) The Physical

Environment: When a civilization is in decline, “it sometimes happens that a particular technique,

which has been both feasible for and profitable to its civilization in the growth-stage, now begins

to encounter social obstacles and to yield diminishing economic returns; and if, in the end, the

technique in question becomes positively and patently un-remunerative, it is sometimes deliber-

ately abandoned even before it has become socially impossible to practice. It would obviously be

a complete inversion of the true order of cause and effect in such a case to suggest that the

abandonment of the technique was neither an act of economic policy nor a confession of social

bankruptcy, but was a consequence of a loss of technical command, and that this hypothetical loss

of command, in its turn, was the cause of the long antecedent breakdown of the civilization.” (ii)

The Human Environment: “The Hellenic Society, embodied in a Roman Empire which was at its

zenith in the Age of the Antonines, is represented as having been overthrown by a simultaneous

assault from two alien enemies attacking on two different fronts: “the North European barbarians

issuing out of the no-man’s-land beyond the Imperial frontiers along the Rhine and the Danube,

and the Christian Church emerging from the subjugated but never assimilated Oriental provinces.”

In this case, it was a triumph of Barbarism and Religion. Nevertheless, in some other cases, “an

incipient barbarian successor-state transformed itself directly into one of these new-fangled

national states on a Western model.” The breakdowns of their civilizations had actually occurred

before the incorporation and assimilation process started. The assaulted party still in growth at

the time when the alien assault upon it was made; “but we can cite at least as many cases in which

an alien assault has given a temporary stimulus to a society after this society has already broken

down through its own mishandling of itself.”25 Therefore, it confirms that a loss of command over

the human environment is not the cause of the breakdowns of civilizations.

(d) Failure of Self-Determination: So far our survey has obtained negative conclusions in

our inquiry into the cause of the breakdowns of civilizations. (i) The Mechanicalness of Mimesis:

The growth is the work of creative personalities and creative minorities, so that the leader’s task

is to make his fellows this followers by enlisting the primitive and universal faculty of mimesis.

Since mimesis is a kind of drill, it is a kind of mechanization of human life and movement. Though

machinery be designed to be the slave of man, it is also possible for man to become the salve of

his machines. Mechanism will have greater opportunity or capacity for creativity than an organism,

and will have more time and opportunity to discover the secret of the Universe. However, the

mimesis-action is not self-determined but is so crystalized in habit or custom that a loss of

harmony between the parts, and a corresponding loss of self-determination is the ultimate criterion

of breakdown. (ii) The Inter-actability of Institutions: a) New Wine in Old Bottles: “One source

of disharmony between the institutions of which a society is composed is the introduction into life

of the society of new social forces – aptitudes or emotions of ideas – which the existing set of

institutions was not originally designed to carry.” In order to save the civilization from breaking

down, there must be a constant remodeling or readjustment of the most anachronistic institutions,

according to assumption, at least to the minimum extent that is necessary. However, the new

steam-pressure or busting of the old bottles cannot stand the fermentation of new wine, causing

the revolutions. b) The Impact of Industrialism upon Slavery: The institution of slavery has been

recognized to be intrinsically evil by a consensus of all man in all times and places. In the struggle

against slavery, the two master-forces of Industrialism and Democracy were ranged on opposite

sides, whereas the movement to banish war has had to contend with both forces simultaneously.

c) Democracy and Industrialism have created continuous conflicts in history since its fundamental

problem cannot be resolved because of differences between politics and economy.



(iii) The Nemesis of Creativity: It is not uncommon that the creative responses to successive

challenges in the history of a given society are achieved by one or the same minority or individual.

The party that had distinguished itself in dealing with one challenge is apt to fail in attempting to

deal with the next. This inconsistency of human fortune is one of the dominant motifs of the Attic

drama in terms of “the reversal of roles. a) Idolization of an Ephemeral Self: The Israel people

discovered the One True God who had revealed Israel itself to be God’s Chosen People. This

half-truth inveigled them into the fatal error of looking upon a momentary spiritual eminence: they

rejected the coming of Jesus of Nazareth. “If Israel succumbed to the nemesis of creativity by

idolizing itself as the Chosen People, Athens succumbed the same nemesis by idolizing herself as

the Education of Hellas.” We can see that the superior fertility of the new ground is not entirely

to be accounted for by the stimulus of the ordeal of breaking virgin soil. The tendency of creative

minority to degenerate into a dominant minority is a prominent symptom of social breakdown and

disintegration. b) Idolization of an Ephemeral Institution: The Greek city-states were confined to

the coast of the Mediterranean basin, but was suddenly expanded from the Dardanelles to India

and from Olympus and the Apennines to the Danube and the Rhine, without creating law and order

between states and with no spiritual cohesiveness. Alexander’s premature death left the world at

the mercy of his successors. The Roman state provided the structural principles with incompatible

idolization. Idolization of political sovereignty incarnated in a human being is an aberration. c)

Idolization of an Ephemeral Technique: In military history, the new military technique, such as

from the Macedonian phalanx to the Roman legion, has been the key factor to win the battles.

While the Macedonians carried to integrate light infantryman, the Romans invented a new type of

formation and a new type of armament with the horse-archer. The Roman legionaries had rested

on their oars until they were overtaken by the Gothic heavy cavalry a century later.26

(iv) Suicidalness of Militarism: The aberration of resting on one’s oars is the passive way of

succumbing to the nemesis of creativity. The militarist is so confident of his own ability to look

after himself in that social system, in which all disputes are settled by physical power, and not by

process of law or conciliation. “We may think of the Aztecs and the Incas, each remorselessly

warring down their weaker neighbors in their own respective worlds, until they are overtaken by

Spanish conquerors who fall upon them from another world and strike them down with weapons

for which theirs are no match.” The Assyrians established a professional standing army, however,

the military solution was no more successful in allaying the domestic troubles after the decisive

losses in battles. (v) The Intoxication of Victory: The Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.) and the

Third Macedonian War (171-168 B.C.) demoralized the Roman society because of two reasons:

there was no power now left in the world that could challenge their own supremacy; and the

Romans became prosperous by transferring the wealth from the Hellenistic world to Rome. In

this moral aberration, the hard-won Roman triumphs were followed by a series of humiliating

Roman reverses for a century at the hand of antagonists who were utterly outmatched by Rome in

military strength. The mobilization of the Italian peasantry and the subjugation of the barbarians

and the Orientals caused major problems which were described in Chapter III. In case of the Holy

See, Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII in Rome in 1073, and laid the foundation of the papal

Christian Republic based on a combination of ecclesiastical centralism and uniformity with

political diversity and devolution, by obtaining the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal.

Gregory VII fought the Empire with the object to remove an Imperial obstacle for a reform of the

Church - the purification of the clergy from the two moral plagues of sexual incontinence and

financial corruption; which was different from some later popes who fought the Empire in order

to destroy its secular authority. The intoxication of victory in papacy appeared when the papal

schism driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement during 1378-1418.



The Disintegrations of Civilizations: (a) The Nature of Disintegration: In the passing from

the breakdowns of civilizations to their disintegrations, “the breakdown of a civilization is not

necessarily followed by a disintegration that runs out straight into dissolution.” In the ancient

Egyptian Society, the progress of disintegration followed its normal course shifting from a time

of troubles into a universal state and an interregnum. At this point, its society refused to pass away

and proceeded to double its life-span with its reaction against the Hyksos invaders. But the life of

the society during the second half of its existence was a kind of life-in-death: it survived but

became petrified. In ancient China’s society, a corresponding similarity was observed. This is

their ways of spiritual petrifaction or fossilization towards the disintegration of civilization. It is

suggested that “the criterion of growth lies rather in a progressive change of emphasis and shifting

of the scene of action out of one field into another field, in which the action of challenge-and-

response may find an alternative arena. In this other field, challenges do not impinge from outside

but arise from within, and victorious responses do not take the form of surmounting external

obstacles or of overcoming an external adversary, but manifest themselves in an inward self-

articulation or self-determination.” Therefore, “the ultimate criterion or the fundamental cause of

the breakdowns of civilizations is an outbreak of internal discord through which they forfeit their

faculty for self-determination.” In this regard, our criterion for the process of disintegration has

to be sought in an outbreak of internal division and discord of a society. “The social schisms in

which this discord partially reveals itself rend the broken-down society in two different dimensions

simultaneously. There are vertical schisms between geographically segregated communities, and

horizontal schisms between geographically inter-mingled by socially segregated classes.”27 In the

former, interstate warfare is merely an abuse of potential instrument of self-destruction; while in

the latter, the three institutions - the Roman Empire, the barbarian war-bands, and the Christian

Church – shows relations between the Hellenic Society and the Roman Empire.

Coming across the horizontal schisms of society at the moment of breakdowns, “We found

ourselves led back to the Christian Church and a number of barbarian war-bands which had come

into collision with the Church in Western Europe inside the northern frontiers of the Roman

Empire; and we observed that each of these two institutions – the war-bands and the Church – had

been created by a social group which was not, itself, an articulation of our won Western body

social and which could only be described in terms of another society, antecedent to ours, the

Hellenic Civilization. We describe the creators of the Christian Church as the internal proletariat,

and the creators of the barbarian war-bands as the external proletariat, of the Hellenic Society.”

We further found that “these secessions had been provoked by an antecedent change in the

character of the ruling element in the Hellenic body social. A creative minority which had once

evoked a voluntary allegiance from the uncreative mass, in virtue of the gift of charm which is the

privilege of creativity, had now given the place to a dominant minority destitute of charm because

it was uncreative. This dominant minority had retained its privileged position by force, and the

secessions which had ultimately resulted in the creation of the war-bands and the Christian Church

had been reactions to the tyranny. Yet this defeat of its own intentions – through the disruption of

a society which it was attempting, by perverse methods, to hold together – is not the only

achievement of the dominant minority that came to our notice. It has also left a monument of

itself in the shape of the Roman Empire; and the empire not only took shape earlier than either the

Church or the war-bands; its mighty presence in the world in which these proletarian institutions

grew up was a factor in the growth of both of them which cannot be left out of account. This

universal state in which the Hellenic dominant minority encased itself was like the carapace of a

giant tortoise; and, which the Church was reared under its shadow, the barbarians trained their

war-bands by sharpening their claws on the tortoise-shell’s outer face.”28



In horizontal schisms, there are three factions – dominant minority, internal proletariat, and

external proletariat, when a broken-down society splits. We shall discover a complementary aspect

of disintegration in the increasing distraction of the soul in a sense turning from Macrocosm to

Microcosm. This may lead us to the paradoxical discovery that the process of disintegration works

out to a recurrence of birth or palingenesia. The qualitative change that disintegration brings is

exactly opposite in character to that which is the outcome of growth. In the process of growth, the

several growing civilizations become increasingly differentiated from one another. “We shall find

that the process of disintegration tends to conform in all cases to a standard pattern – horizontal

schism splitting the society into the three fractions described above; and the creation, by each of

these three fractions, of a characteristic institution: universal state, universal church, and barbarian

war-bands.” According to Marxists, the class war is bound to issue in a victorious proletarian

revolution; “but this bloody culmination of the struggle will also be the end of it; for the victory

of the proletariat will be decisive and definitive and the Dictatorship or the Proletariat, but which

the fruits of the victory are to be harvested during the post-revolution period, is not be a permanent

institution. A time is to come when a new society which has been classless from birth will be old

enough and strong enough to dispense with the dictatorship. Indeed, in its final and permanent

acme of well-being the New Society of the Marxian Millennium will be able to cast away not only

the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but also every other institutional crutch, including the state itself.”

The schism itself is the product of two negative movements, each of which is inspired by an evil

passion. “First, the dominant minority attempts to hold by force the privileged position which it

has ceased to merit. Then the proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, violence

with violence. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation: the universal state, the

universal church and the barbarian war-bands.”29 When we grasp the movement as a whole, we

find that it is not only a schism but also schism-and-palingenesia - withdrawal and return.

(b) Schism in the Body Social: (i) The Dominant Minority is the core members of the current

universal state, but they are apt to depart from the characteristic type of the closed organization,

either passively or actively. “In the dominant minority in the Hellenic Society in disintegration,

the nearest approach to the Avar or the Hyksos is to be seen in the Roman knighted man of business

who fleeced the conquered populations in the second and the last century B.C., by farming the

collection, or financing the payment, of their taxes.” The philosophers were less closely woven

into the material texture of the disintegrating society. (ii) Internal Proletariats: The breakdown of

the Hellenic Society is described as follows: “In every country, there were struggles between the

leaders of the Proletariat and the reactionaries in their efforts to procure the intervention of the

Athenians and the Lacedaemonians respectively. In peace time, they would have had neither the

opportunity nor the desire to call in the foreigner; but now there was the War; and it was easy for

any revolutionary spirits in either camp to procure an alliance entailing the discomfiture of their

opponents and a corresponding reinforcement of their own faction.” The internal proletariat was

recruited from the free citizens, the aristocrats, and even foreign bodies. (iii) External Proletariats

are not only morally alienated but is also physically divided from the dominant minority by a

frontier; which has no hard and fast boundaries except on fronts colliding with another civilization

of its own species, since it is the Primitive World. Hence, some part of external proletariat is likely

to be beyond the effective range of the dominant minority’s military action, while the broken-

down civilization radiates force instead of attracting mimesis. In these circumstances, the nearer

members of the external proletariat are likely to be conquered and added to the internal proletariat,

but a point will be reached where the dominant minority’s qualitative superiority in military power

is counterbalanced by the length of its communications.30 Moreover, we have to consider the play

of alien social forces as part of three factors in the process of disintegrations.



(c) Schism in the Soul: (i) Alternative ways of behavior and feeling: “Schism in the souls of

the human members of a disintegrating civilization displays itself in a variety of shapes because it

arises in every one of the various ways of behavior, feeling, and life which we have found to be

characteristic of civilizations.” (ii) There are two ways of personal behavior: one is the passive

attempt consisting in an abandon in which the Soul lets itself go – living according the Nature;

and the other is the active attempt is an effort at self-control in which the Soul takes itself in hand

and seeks to discipline its natural passions “in the opposite belief that nature is the bane of

creativity and not its source and that to gain the mastery over nature is the only way of recovering

the lost creative faculty.” (iii) There are two ways of social behavior: the passive attempt to break

this social deadlock takes the form of truancy allowing oneself to believe the reality; and an

alternative way is a martyrdom – death for the vindication of an ideal. (iv) The sense of drift and

the sense of the loss: “The sense of drift is the passive way of feeling the loss of the élan of growth,

and one of the most painful of the tribulations that afflict the souls of men and women who are

called upon to live their lives in an age of social disintegration; and this pain is perhaps a

punishment for the sin of idolatry committed through worshipping the creature instead of the

Creator.” (v) The Sense of promiscuity is “a passive substitute for that sense of style which

develops pari passu with the growth of a civilization. This state of mind takes practical effect in

an act of self-surrender to the melting-pot; and in the process of social disintegration an identical

mood manifests itself in every province of social life: in religion and literature and language and

art, as well as in the wider and vaguer sphere of manners madness and customs.” (vi) The sense

of unity: the ultimate reality of disintegration is nothing but a chaos; but “the potent in the external

world which gives the first intimation of a unity which is spiritual and ultimate is the unification

of a society into a universal state; which may lead on to fortune upon a tide of desire.

(d) The Relation between Disintegrating Societies and Individuals: (i) The creative genius

as a savior: “the creative minority, out of which the creative individuals had emerged in the growth

stage, has ceased to be creative and has sunk into being merely dominant, but the secession of the

proletariat, which is the essential feature of disintegration, has itself been achieved under the

leadership of creative personalities for whose activity there is now no scope of except in the

organization of opposition to the incubus of the uncreative power that be. Thus the change from

growth to disintegration is not accompanied by any extinction of the creative spark. Creative

personalities continue to arise and to take the lead in virtue of their creative power, but they now

find themselves compelled to do their old work from a new locus standi,” playing a part of savor.

(ii) The would-be savior of a disintegrating society is “necessarily a savor with a sword, but the

sword may be either drawn or sheathed. He may be laying about him with his naked weapon or

he may be sitting in state with his blade out of sight in its scabbard as a victor who has put all his

enemies under his feet.” For the savor with the time machines, “The difference between archaism

and futurism might be expected to be as plain as the difference between yesterday and tomorrow,

but it is often difficult to decide in which category a given movement or a given savior should be

placed, since it is in the nature of archaism to defeat itself by breaking down into futurism in

pursuing its delusion that there can be an as you were in history.” (iii) The philosopher masked

by a king: “There is no hope of a cessation of evils for the state of Hellas….except through a

personal union between political power and philosophy….The union may be achieved in either of

two ways. Either the philosophers must become kings in our state or else the people who are now

called kings and potentates must take – genuinely and thoroughly – to philosophy.” (iv) The God

incarnate in a man: Jesus is breaking right away from the conventional line of action taken by the

other would-be saviors whose conduct we have studied. What inspires him to take this tremendous

new departure? Jesus was a man who believed himself to be the Son of God.



(e) The Rhythm of Disintegration: “In a growing civilization, a challenge meets with a

successful response which proceeds to generate another and a different challenge which meets

with another successful response. There is no term to this process of growth unless and until a

challenge arises which the civilization in question fails to meet - a tragic event which means a

cessation of growth and what we have called a breakdown. Here the correlative rhythm begins….

A second conclusive effort is made to meet it, and, if this succeeds, growth will of course be

resumed. But we will assume that, after a partial and temporary success, this response likewise

fails. There will then be a further relapse, and perhaps, after an interval, a further attempt at a

response which will in time achieve a temporary and partial success in meeting what is still the

same inexorable challenge. This again will be followed by a further failure, which may or may

not approve final and involve the dissolution of the society. In military language the rhythm may

be expressed as rout-rally-rout-rally….it is at once apparent that the time of troubles following a

breakdown is a rout; the establishment of the universal state, a rally; and the interregnum which

follows the break-up of the universal state, the final rout. But we have already noticed in the

history of one universal state, the Hellenic, a relapse into anarchy following the death of Marcus

Aurelius in A.D. 180 and a recovery under Diocletian. There might prove to be more than one

relapse and recovery in the history of any particular universal state. Indeed the number of such

relapses and recoveries might be found to depend on the power of the lens that we applied to the

object under examination.”31 This part seems to be written at the time of the outbreak of another

general war - the World War II: “there is no known law of historical determinism that compels us

to leap out of the intolerable frying-pan of our time of troubles into the slow and steady fire of a

universal state where we shall in due course be reduced to dust and ashes. At the same time, such

precedents from the histories of other civilizations and from the life-course of nature are bound to

appear formidable in the sinister light of our present situation.”32

(f) The Standardization through Disintegration: In previous discussions, “We have seen

dominant minorities uniformly working out philosophies and producing universal states; internal

proletariats uniformly discovering higher religions which aim at embodying themselves in

universal churches; and external proletariats uniformly mustering war-bands which find vent in

heroic ages. The uniformity with which these several institutions are generated is indeed so far-

reaching that we are able to present this aspect of the disintegration-process in the tabular form in

which it is displayed at the conclusion of this chapter. Even more remarkable is the uniformity of

ways of behavior, feeling and life that is revealed by the study of schism in the Soul. This contrast

between the diversity of growth and the uniformity of disintegration is what we might have

expected from the consideration of simple analogies, such as the parable of Penelope’s web.” The

work of the Spirit of the Earth is the temporal history of man: in all this welter of life and tempest

of action, we can hear the beat of an elemental rhythm whose variations we have learnt to know

as challenge-and-response, withdrawal-and-return, rout-and-rally, apparentation-and-affiliation,

schism-and-palingenesia. “This elemental rhythm is the alternating beat of Yin and Yang; and in

listening to it we have recognize that, though strophe may be answered by antistrophe, victory by

defeat, creation by destruction, birth by death, the movement that this rhythm beats our is neither

the fluctuation of an indecisive battle nor the cycle of a treadmill. The perpetual turning of a wheel

is not a vain repetition if, at each revolution, it is carrying the vehicle that much nearer to its goal;

and, if palingenesia signifies the firth of something new and not just the rebirth of something that

has lived and died before, then the Wheel of Existence is not just a devilish engine for inflicting

everlasting torment on a damned Ixion. On this showing the music that the rhythm of Yin and Yan

beats out is the song of creation; and we shall not be misled into fancying ourselves mistaken

because….we can catch the note of creation alternating with the note of destruction.”33



Notes

1 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume I (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1934), 1. 2 Ibid., 40. 3 Meditations, accessed 6 December 2014, http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.12.twelve.html. 4 Thomas L. Wheelen, J. David Hunger, Alan N. Hoffman, and Charles E. Bamford, Strategic Management

and Business Policy, 14th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2015), 164. 5 Ibid., 147. 6 Ibid., 151, 153, and 154. 7 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI (Oxford, UK: Oxford University

Press, 1974), 43. 8 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume I, 193. 9 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume II (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1934), 31. 10 Ibid., 30-40. 11 Ibid., 105-6. 12 Ibid., 209. 13 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, 154. 14 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume III (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1934), 51. 15 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, 195-6. 16 Ibid., 208. 17 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume III, 233. 18 Ibid., 377. 19 Ibid., 390. 20 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, 244-5. 21 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume IV (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1939), 6. 22 Ibid., 8. 23 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, 248. 24 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume IV, 16. 25 Ibid., 119. The normal effect of blows or pressures from outside is stimulating and not destructive. 26 Ibid., 323-65. 27 Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Volume V (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1939), 17. 28 D. C. Somervell, ed. A Study of History, Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, 366. 29 Ibid., 369. 30 Ibid., 406. 31 Ibid., 548. 32 Ibid., 553. 33 Ibid., 556-7.

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