All free and
daring souls have before them a well-nigh limitless opening for
endeavor of any kind.
Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop
only a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavor
has been limited in kind as well as in locality. There have, of
course, been great movements, but they were of practically only one
form of activity; and although usually this set in motion other kinds
of activities, such was not always the case. The great religious
movements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type. But they
are not the only ones. Such peoples as the Mongols and the
Phoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have represented
movements in which one element, military or commercial, so
overshadowed all other elements that the movement died out chiefly
because it was one-sided. The extraordinary outburst of activity among
the Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a military
movement, without even any great administrative side; and it was
therefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction. The individual
prowess and hardihood of the Mongols, and the perfection of their
military organization, rendered their armies incomparably superior to
those of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day.
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