We shall have to inquire again whether the statement be true that what we call progress is a note of civilization foreign to the atmosphere of Asia, and indeed whether progress is the only element of civilization which deserves the attention of the historian.

Such questions will be treated in their due time and place. Without anticipating, it is hoped that the life of Asia and her children will be found to provide as organic and consistent a story as the life of any other region of the globe. For the present, we must be content with the statement that we do not intend to stress the history of the East in order to depreciate the story of the West. Rather, by reference to the East we hope to make the history of the West more intelligible than it is to most people at the present day. For if there be any lesson which a wide survey of history teaches more plainly than almost anything else, it is this: that civilization, as we know it and as we trust it may in fuller measure become, is neither Oriental nor Occidental. Rather is it the product of human efforts, both East and West, correcting and stimulating each other.

Men look to the East for the dawning things, for the light of the rising sun, But they look to the West, to the crimson West, for the things which are done, are done. . .

So out of the East they have always come, the cradle that saw the birth
Of all the heart-warm hopes of man, and all the hopes of the earth.
And into the waiting West they go, with the dream-child of the East,
To find the hopes that they hoped of old are a hundredfold increased.
For here in the East men dream the dreams of the things they hope to do,
And here in the West, the crimson West, the dreams of the East come true.1

1 Douglas Mallock.

CHAPTER II

HOW THE CHANNELS OF ASIATIC HISTORY
WERE MADE

WHAT are the forces which determine the course of history? Some will stress one thing and some another. To some, history is a branch of economics, to some the consequence of climate, to others a mere matter of geography, to others the working out of purposeful will, human and divine. It will be clear, I think, that there is a combination of many forces, working competitively and coöperatively. Certainly personality plays a part. Again and again it declares, "There shall be no Alps," when Alps seem to bar advance. Again and again it cleanses a land of ills which seemed to forbid the habitation of man. Yet, whatever emphasis we place on this and other things, we may not ignore as a basis for history the geographic and the climatic conditions.

As a first step toward studying the history of Asia, it becomes necessary to make very sure that we move easily in its geography. Of course, one has to allow for certain changes which have taken place in past millenniums. The upheaval of the Himalayas, the land-gain at the head of the Persian Gulf, and the like, have done much to alter the map of Asia. Geological changes, it is true, were too early to affect human history directly, but indirectly they must have had much to do with human migrations. Especially was this the case in the centre of Asia, where gradually increasing aridity kept humanity constantly on the move. We may gain a fair idea of the general fluidity of life in Asia if in imagination we turn into water the

ves, moving enough to seek fresh pasturage and Ad horses in order to ride from place to place. presumably the most adventurous, would fare the lines of least resistance, seeking more conand bearing with them the germs of the civilizattained, to compete elsewhere in the struggle for

re able to conceive of two main types in Asia: number of tribes able to survive through sluggish ther than through activity and alertness - the whose story is of small cultural advance, though ense power of inertia. (b) The people who, carryom the germs of their old culture, were stimulated y to fresh gains, and found their way to the fair lot by Nature in rich river valleys. There for a time Joped a still higher culture, such as ease and wealth hem to attain, until loss of the fighting-edge exposed the attack of fresh waves of vigorous and desperate

as is such a sketch, and much as it leaves to be supnevertheless gives us a not untrue conception of what called the proto-history of Asia. The explorations of hael Pumpelly and others have indicated the exista great civilization in Central Asia some nine thousand

The work of Mr. Ellsworth Huntington 2 has shown he reality of the climatic changes which led men of the lization to trek to the south. We begin to touch the of history when we see these trekkings slowed up by inal opposition, and when empires begin to arise where brium has at last been reached.

the cultural pockets in Southern and Eastern Asia to which n has been made, three must be specially mentioned, h the others too have their interest and importance. have China, a land beyond the mountains and the deserts, he wonder-plain through which flows the Huang-ho and, 1 See Explorations in Turkestan. 2 See The Pulse of Asia.

whole continent except the high mountain-ranges, which will then stand out as barriers to movement. Then we have three rather well defined areas. First, there is the immense northern region, which is fairly inert. We may even think of it as icebound, except for the slow but steady migration westward into Europe and a very intermittent flow of small bodies of men, forced across the Behring Straits, to become the tribes of North and South America. In the next place, all across Central Asia we have a broad mass of waters from which rise continually bubbling springs such as keep the whole mass in movement. These springs induce currents which flow in a limited degree toward the east and the islands of the Japanese archipelago, more unrestrainedly westward over the plains of Europe, but most of all toward the south. In this direction we have a number of "pockets" which form real geographical units. In these most of the history of Asia has been made. Reckoning from the east, we have the broad spaces and river valleys of China; next the peninsula of Indo-China, affording a channel right out to the isles of the Pacific; India and Ceylon; the valley of the Euphrates; the great, dimly known peninsula of Arabia; and lastly, one of the main ways into Europe Asia Minor.

It would be premature to speak of Central Asia as the cradle of the human race, but we shall not be far wrong in regarding it as at least one of the most important centres of evolution. If it was not there that our hypothetical ancestors descended from the trees become sparser with the increasing drought and so, with the help of stick and stone, commenced their march toward civilization, we are quite sure with regard to other developments almost as significant for the future of mankind.

The climatic changes of which we have spoken, whether due to decreasing rainfall or to retreating glaciation, must have induced very extensive migrations. No doubt many would remain, and perish as conditions became more and more unfavorable. Others might stay on and be sufficiently tough to