[2. WORLD EMPIRES.]
Even in the midst of the spiritual forces dominating the heroic age there are phenomena that foreshadow a development transcending the limits of this period. Of these phenomena, none is more prominent than the striving for world dominion. The first battles of early political organizations, and the victories over conquered peoples, led to an enhanced consciousness of power on the part of the individual State. This consciousness found expression, first in strife between neighbouring dominions, and later, as soon as one of these had gained the supremacy, in the establishment of an empire including many separate States. Such an impulse to transcend the limits of the single State is so natural and so directly prefigured in the motives to individual action that we come upon it wherever any historically active political organizations have arisen. In the realms of western Asia, such attempts are to be found from the time of the Sumerian and Accadian States down to the struggle of Babylon and Assyria for the rulership of the world. Egypt had a succession of dynasties which at first glance might seem to simulate a unified history, but which in reality represents the transference of supreme power from one State or city to another, and along with this the growing ambition for a single all-embracing dominion. The same phenomenon appears in the struggle of the Greek and Latin tribes for hegemony, and also in the foundation of the great Persian kingdom of the Achæmenidæ; the latter gave way to the world empire of Alexander, which, though of short duration, was never again equalled in magnitude; succeeding it, came the world empire of the Romans, the last that could properly lay claim to the name.
It is in Egypt, on the one hand, and in the succession of West-Asiatic kingdoms, on the other, that the first stages of this development of a world kingdom out of the dominance of one powerful State over a number of vassal States are clearly exhibited. The struggle for supremacy, in which vassal might elevate himself to the position of ruler and lord be reduced to vassal, and in which newly immigrant peoples often took a decisive part, immeasurably enhanced the striving to extend the sphere of dominion. This development reached its culmination when the supreme ruler of a power that dominated a very considerable number of vassal States expressly asserted the claim of being ruler of the world. The fact that such a claim was made wherever a supremacy of this sort came into existence under conditions of relatively limited intercourse, testifies to the immanent necessity of the development. Wherever the domain of such an empire approximated the limits of the known world, the universal State was conceived as including also the rest of the inhabited earth. This conception came to expression in the title which the ruler regularly assumed. He laid claim to being the king of kings, the overlord of the world, the ruler of the 'four quarters of the earth.' Through a reversal of that process of transference by which the characteristics of the terrestrial State were carried over, in deity cult, to the divine State, the ruler of the terrestrial State now himself became a god. This accounts for the surprising uniformity with which the idea of a god-monarch arose wherever that of a world monarch was developed. In the pre-Babylonian realms of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, the ruler erected his own image, as an object of worship, in the temple; in the land of the Pharaohs, the heads of the sphinxes placed in front of the temples bore the features of the monarch. Even Alexander the Great commanded that the Egyptian priests greet him as a son of the god Amon Re; after acquiring the authority of the great Persian kings, he demanded from those about him the external signs of divine adoration. Similarly, the Roman emperors of the period from Diocletian down to Constantine. In spite of their inclination toward republican offices and customs, which by their very nature militated against such ceremonial, these emperors accepted the idea that the world ruler should be worshipped in cult. As the god-idea gained increasing power, however, deity cult itself presented a counteracting influence to the fusion of the ideas of world ruler and deity. A rivalry arose between god and ruler. The king whose omnipotence led to his deification repelled the ruler of heaven, and the ruler of heaven and earth, on his part, refused to tolerate any rival of earthly origin. This led to a temporary compromise in which the ruler, though not himself regarded as a deity, was nevertheless held to be the son of a god, as well as the agent who executed the divine will. Or, after the pattern of hero myths, and in remote resemblance to ancestor cult, the ruler was believed to enter into the heaven of gods upon his death, so that it came to be only the deceased ruler who received divine adoration. The later rulers of Babylon, for example, called themselves the sons of Marduk, who was the chief god of Babylonia, and the features of this deity were given to the image of Hammurabi. The Roman emperors, on the other hand, from the time of Augustus on, were accorded divine reverence after death. When the king, realizing the exalted character of divine majesty, finally came to feel himself entirely human, these practices vanished. The emperor now became either the mere representative of the deity or one who was divinely favoured above other men. Hence the development terminates in a formula of royalty which has even yet not disappeared—the formula, "by the grace of God."
The development which we have described progressed continuously from beginnings that were almost contemporary with those of States until it eventuated in the world State. What, we must now ask, were its motivating forces? We cannot ascribe it to a craving for power which overmasters the ruler of the single State as soon as he has successfully conquered a foreign territory and a foreign people. Doubtless this factor was operative, yet it was obviously an effect rather than a cause, although an effect which, in the reciprocal relations of impulses, itself forthwith became a cause. But the immediate and decisive factors that led to the idea of establishing a world State, are to be found only partly in the motives underlying the extension of the single State into a world State, and in the results connected with the attainment of this ambition. These motives and results were, in the first instance, of an external nature. They consisted in the fact that the world State enjoyed increased means of subsistence and power by reason of the tribute which it received from subjugated provinces or from vassal States. Tributes of grain and cattle, of precious stones and metals, and especially of valuable human material, were placed at the command of the Pharaoh, or of the Babylonian or Persian monarch, for the building of his canals, his temples, and his palaces, for military services, and for an officialdom more directly subject to his will than were free-born natives. Everything which the single State required for its maintenance was demanded in a heightened degree by the world empire. Thus, it was the concentration of the means of subsistence and power that led to the displacement of the single State by the world empire, just as it was the same influence, on a smaller scale, that gave to the State its ascendancy over the earlier tribal organization. In extending its authority over wider and wider territory, the world empire itself finally perished as a result of the increasing difficulty in unifying its forces. It either broke up into separate States or a similar process of expansion started anew within the same boundaries, beginning now with one of the erstwhile vassal States and now with a new tribe that migrated into the territory. The first of these changes is illustrated by the Babylonian-Assyrian empires; the other, by the catastrophes suffered almost contemporaneously by the realm of the Pharaohs, through the influx of the Hyksos, and by Babylon, at the hands of the conquering hordes of the Hittites. The same phenomena recur in the partition of the empire of Alexander the Great and in the downfall of the Roman world empire. Unless world empires degenerate into a mere semblance of universal dominion, as did the Holy Roman Empire, they obviously become the more short-lived in proportion as history comes to move the more rapidly. Hence the Napoleonic attempt to revive the old idea in a new form became a mere episode. The single State finally triumphed over the world empire, and everything goes to show that the idea of an all-embracing world empire is little likely to recur unless the continuity of history is to be seriously interrupted.
It thus appears that the idea of establishing a world empire is not to be accounted for solely in terms of a constant striving to augment the means of power. Such endeavour prevails now, no less than formerly, in every State that has in any way attained to an independent development of its power. At the present time, however, none but at most an occasional Utopian dreamer adheres to the idea of creating an all-inclusive world State. Even where this occurs the idea is completely antithetical to that of earlier times. The ideal which is at present proposed for the distant future involves, not the extension of any single State into a world State, but rather the dissolution of existing States and the establishment of a society of universal peace among nations, such as would render entirely superfluous any instruments of power on the part of the State itself. But we have further evidence that the impulse to increase the means of power could not have been the only, nor even the decisive, factor in the development of the idea of a world empire. This evidence is to be found in the fact that, while a world empire never existed except as an idea, the age in which this idea dominated history regarded the world empire as a reality. Hence there must have been other motives, of an ideal nature, to bridge over the chasm between idea and reality in such wise as to identify the former with the latter. Though it is possible to urge, in explanation, that the knowledge of the real world was at that time limited, this does not solve the problem. Even though the Babylonian king might have felt satisfied to call himself the ruler over the four quarters of the earth because practically all countries of which he had knowledge in the four directions of the wind paid tribute to him, this of itself is not adequate to account for the fact that he regarded the universality as absolute and not relative. Over and above the fact of a limitation of knowledge, there was requisite particularly the idea of the unity of the world, and the application of this idea to the reality given in perception. This idea of unity is similar to that of the absolute unity of the world-order whose centre is the earth, an idea that dominated the astronomical conceptions of antiquity. Both ideas, that of a world empire embracing the whole of mankind and that of a universe whose centre is the earth and whose boundary is the crystal sphere of the heaven of fixed stars, sprang from the same mythological world-view that also found expression in the conception of a divine State projected from earth into heaven. To these gods, with a supreme deity at their head, belonged the rulership of the world. Whenever a change in the city that formed the centre of the terrestrial world empire resulted in a new supreme deity, the conditions of the earthly kingdom were all the more faithfully mirrored in the divine kingdom, for the other gods became, as it were, the vassals of this supreme deity. This mythological picture, projected from the earth to heaven, was necessarily reflected back again to earth. Herein lies the deeper significance of the idea that the ruler of the world empire is himself a god, or, at the least, a person of divine lineage and the representative of the supreme guardian deity of the kingdom. It is precisely because of this connection with mythological conceptions that world empires were but transitory. The period of their zenith and, more particularly, the period in which they possessed a fair degree of stability, coincided absolutely with the time at which deity myth was at its height. In the age of a waning deity belief, it was only the influence of numerous elements of secular culture, combined with a high degree of adaptability to the conditions of individual States, such as the Roman mind acquired under the conjunction of unusual circumstances, that enabled the idea of a world empire to be again carried into realization, within the limits which we have set to the term. Proof of the inner connection between the idea of a world empire and a mythological conception of the world, is to be found even in the case of Diocletian, the last powerful representative of the idea of a world kingdom. Diocletian not only invested the Roman emperor with the attributes of the Oriental world ruler of ancient times, but also claimed for himself the worship due to an earthly Jupiter.
[3. WORLD CULTURE.]
Inasmuch as the world empire belongs essentially to the age of deity cults, it is not so much a realization of the idea of humanity as a preparation for it, presaging a development beyond that of the single State. That this is the case manifests itself even in the temporal sequence of the phenomena. For it is at most anticipatory elements of the idea of humanity that are embodied in the world empire. With the disintegration of world empires, however, partly as their after-effect and partly as the result of their dissolution, we find phenomena of a new sort—those comprehended under the term world culture. In so far as the rise of world empire involves factors that lead to world culture, these affect primarily the material aspect of the life of peoples—world intercourse, the resulting multiplication of needs on the part of peoples, and the exchange of the means for the satisfaction of these needs. The spiritual phases of culture, which outlast these external and material phases, make their appearance more particularly at the time when the world empire is approaching its end. Since, however, it is these spiritual phases that are of predominant significance, world culture as a whole is to be regarded as an after-effect of world empire rather than as a direct result toward which the latter has contributed. The reason for this is not far to seek. It lies in the one-sided striving for the acquisition of external means of power, and in the consequent despotic pressure which the world empire, particularly in ancient times, brought to bear upon its separate members. It is also connected, however, with the fact that the dissolution of world empires usually brings in its wake migrations and a shifting of peoples. Even within the culture of the ancient Orient, the spread of the elements of myth and saga, as well as of the products of art and science, came especially with the destruction of earlier world empires and the reconstruction of others. The empire of Alexander the Great led to what was perhaps the greatest epoch of world culture in the history of civilization, yet the latter was conditioned, not so much directly by this empire, as by its disintegration at the time of the Diadochi. Similarly, the downfall of the last world empire that may properly lay claim to the name—the Græco-Roman kingdom—likewise resulted in a great cultural movement, due in part to the shifting of peoples which took place at this time, though more especially to the spread of Christianity. Here, again, the fact that the world empire was preparatory to world culture is substantiated. For the dying world empire employed even the last powers over which, in its final agony, it still had control, to pave the way for the world religion that was taking its rise.