of Rome to Romanize, that is to say, to civilize their Teutonic neighbours.  In the third place, they erred by not recognizing and taking account of new forces which in the way of ideas were entering into the conception of civilized life, the ideas which we mass together under the head of feudalism, the idea of nationality.  Under the influence of the one and the other the ideal of a single world State, with a uniform or rigid system of laws resting upon a sovereign will, one and indivisible, dissolved, or at least entered upon dissolution, approving itself unadapted or unadaptable to the needs of a novel and immensely more complex situation of the world.  No mere tinkering at it did or could suffice to save it; and the organization of Europe based upon it collapsed.

The Revolution of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries was in many ways the last attempt to reinstate it, and failure to do so pronounced its doom.  We cannot now look forward to the reorganization of civilized Europe on the model of the Roman Empire or of an Empire at all, and the more definitely formulated hope of salvation by the erection or re-erection of an international system of law in any real sense seems to me an unsubstantial dream—­the administration of a belated nostrum for our disease, not a panacea.  Not that way do the lessons of history point.  The Roman ideal must be transformed, must be reborn, if it is not to lead our anticipations and our actions wholly astray.  No more in the political or secular sphere than in the spiritual or ecclesiastical is ‘Romanism’ a possible guide to the reconstruction of modern European civilization.  For that far too much water (and blood) has run under the bridge.  Yet the spirit which gave it life and efficacy is immortal, and the study of the secret of its vitality and power is a necessity for us.  In the work of reconstruction we must learn from the Romans the value of System and Order, of Justice and Law, as from Greece we have ever afresh to learn the love of Freedom and Truth.

The Greeks have given us the idea of a life worth living which civilization renders possible, but does not directly produce.  This life in its essential features they rightly conceived, but its content they failed to articulate, and whether because of that or not, they failed to realize its indispensable conditions, material, economic, political, &c.  The Romans did more effectively realize this, but they lost sight of the ends in the means, securing a peace, a comfort, an ease, a leisure of which they made no particularly valuable use.  It has been said that at no time in the world’s history were civilized men so happy as under the Roman Empire.  It might be said with greater truth that at no time were civilized men so unhappy, for the happiness that was theirs was empty, mere dead-sea fruit, dust and ashes in the mouth; a very Death in Life.  Life was without savour, and they turned away from it in weariness and disgust and despair, seeking and finding in Philosophy—­the fruits of reflection upon life—­nothing better than consolation for the wounds and disillusions of life.  Thus those who gave their lives to Rome lost heart, and retreating into themselves found nothing there but solitude and emptiness.  Civilization was but the husk of a life that had fled.