If the Early period is characterized by the birth of the City out of the country, and the Late by the battle between city and country, the period of Civilization is that of the victory of city over country, whereby it frees itself from the grip of the ground, but to its own ultimate ruin. Rootless, dead to the cosmic, irrevocably committed to stone and to intellectualism, it develops a form-language that reproduces every trait of its essence--not the language of a becoming and growth, but that of a becomeness and completion, capable of alteration certainly, but not of evolution. Not now Destiny, but Causality, not now living Direction, but Extension, rules. It follows from this that whereas every form-language of a Culture, together with the history of its evolution, adheres to the original spot, civilized forms are at home anywhere and capable, therefore, of unlimited extension as soon as they appear. It is quite true that the Hanse Towns in their north-Russian staples built Gothically, and the Spaniards in South America in the Baroque style, but that even the smallest chapter of Gothic style-_history_ should _evolve_ outside the limits of West Europe was impossible, as impossible as that Attic or English drama, or the art of fugue, or the Lutheran or the Orphic religion should be propagated, or even inwardly assimilated, by men of alien Cultures. But the essence of Alexandrinism and of our Romanticism is something which belongs to all urban men without distinction. Romanticism marks the beginning of that which Goethe, with his wide vision, called world-literature--the literature of the leading world-_city_, against which a provincial literature, native to the soil but negligible, struggles everywhere with difficulty to maintain itself. The state of Venice, or that of Frederick the Great, or the English Parliament (as an effective reality), cannot be reproduced, but “modern constitutions” can be “introduced” into any African or Asiatic state as Classical Poleis could be set up amongst Numidians and ancient Britons. In Egypt the writing that came into common use was not the hieroglyphic, but the letter-script, which was without doubt a technical discovery of the Civilization Age.[160] And so in general--it is not true Culture-languages like the Greek of Sophocles or the German of Luther, but world-languages like the Greek Koine and Arabic and Babylonian and English, the outcome of daily practical usage in a world-city, which are capable of being acquired by anybody and everybody. Consequently, in all Civilizations the “modern” cities assume a more and more uniform type. Go where we may, there are Berlin, London, and New York for us, just as the Roman traveller would find his columnar architecture, his fora with their statuary, and his temples in Palmyra or Trier or Timgad or the Hellenistic cities that extended out to the Indus and the Aral. But that which was thus disseminated was no longer a style, but a taste, not genuine custom but mannerism, not national costume but the fashion. This, of course, makes it possible for remote peoples not only to accept the “permanent” gains of a Civilization, but even to re-radiate them in an independent form. Such regions of “moonlight” civilization are south China and especially Japan (which were first Sinized at the close of the Han period, about A.D. 220); Java as a relay of the Brahman Civilization; and Carthage, which obtained its forms from Babylon.

All these are forms of a waking-consciousness now acute to excess, mitigated or limited by no cosmic force, purely intellectual and extensive, but on that very account capable of so powerful an output that their last flickering rays reach out and superpose effects over almost the whole earth. Fragments of the forms of Chinese Civilization are probably to be found in Scandinavian wood-architecture, Babylonian measures probably in the South Seas, Classical coins in South Africa, Egyptian and Indian influences probably in the land of the Incas.

But while this process of extension was overpassing all frontiers, the development of inner form of the Civilization was fulfilling itself with impressive consistency. Three stages are clearly to be distinguished--the release from the Culture, the production of the thoroughbred Civilization-form, and the final hardening. For us this development has now set in, and, as I see it, it is Germany that is destined, as the last nation of the West, to crown the mighty edifice. In this stage all questions of the life--the Apollinian, Magian, or Faustian life--have been thought upon to the limit, and brought to a final clear condition of knowledge and not-knowledge. For or about ideas men fight no more. The last idea--that of the Civilization itself--is formulated in outline, and technics and economics are, as _problems_, enunciated and prepared for handling. But this is only the beginning of a vast task; the postulates have to be unfolded and these forms applied to the whole existence of the earth. Only when this has been accomplished and the Civilization has become definitely established not only in shape, but in mass, does the hardening of the form set in. Style, in the Cultures, has been the _rhythm of the process of self-implementing_. But the Civilized style (if we may use the word at all) arises as the _expression of the state of completeness_. It attains--in Egypt and China especially--to a splendid perfection, and imparts this perfection to all the utterances of a life that is now inwardly unalterable, to its ceremonial and mien as to the superfine and studied forms of its art-practice. Of history, in the sense of an urge towards a form-ideal, there can now be no question, but there is an unfailing and easy superficial adaptiveness which again and again manages to coax fresh little art-problems and solutions out of the now basically stable language. Of this kind is the whole “history” of Chinese-Japanese painting (as we know it) and of Indian architecture. And just as the real history of the Gothic style differs from this pseudo-history, so the Knight of the Crusades differs from the Chinese Mandarin--_the becoming state from the finished_. The one _is_ history; the other has long ago overcome history. “Long ago,” I say; for the history of these Civilizations is merely apparent, like their great cities, which constantly change in face, but never become other than what they are. In these cities there is no Soul. They are land in petrified form.

What is it that perishes here? And what that survives? It is a mere incident that German peoples, under pressure from the Huns, take possession of the Roman landscape and so prevent the Classical from prolonging itself in a “Chinese” end-state. The movement of the “Sea-peoples” (similar to the Germanic, even down to the details) which set in against the Egyptian Civilization from 1400 B.C. succeeded only as regards the Cretan island-realm--their mighty expeditions against the Libyan and Phœnician coasts, with the accompaniment of Viking fleets, failed, as those of the Huns failed against China. And thus the Classical is our one example of a Civilization broken off in the moment of full splendour. Yet the Germans only destroyed the upper layer of the forms and replaced it by the life of their own pre-Culture. The “eternal” layer was never reached. It remains, hidden and completely shrouded by a new form-language, in the underground of the whole following history, and to this day in southern France, southern Italy, and northern Spain tangible relics of it endure. In these countries the popular Catholicism is tinged from beneath with a Late Classical colouring, that sets it off quite distinctly from the Church Catholicism of the West-European layer above it. South Italian Church-festivals disclose Classical (and even pre-Classical) cults, and generally in this field there are to be found deities (saints) in whose worship the Classical constitution is visible behind the Catholic names.

Here, however, another element comes into the picture, an element with a significance of its own. We stand before the problem of Race.