They
conquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic;
they seized the Imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in
Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of
Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless
against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was
impotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneath
the hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction across
Poland and Hungary; they overthrew with ease any force from western
Europe that dared encounter them. Yet they had no root of permanence;
their work was mere evil while it lasted, and it did not last long;
and when they vanished they left hardly a trace behind them. So the
extraordinary Phoenician civilization was almost purely a mercantile,
a business civilization, and though it left an impress on the life
that came after, this impress was faint indeed compared to that left,
for instance, by the Greeks with their many-sided development. Yet the
Greek civilization itself fell, because this many-sided development
became too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character,
at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to govern
both themselves and others.
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