It is not too much to say that, without these,
any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible.
In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit.
The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race,
for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way.
Who were these Teutons? Rome knew them only vaguely as wild tribes
dwelling in the gloom of the great forest wilderness. In reality they
were but the vanguard of vast races of human beings who through ages had
been slowly populating all Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. Beyond the
Teutons were other Aryans, the Slavs. Beyond these were vague non-Aryan
races like the Huns, content to direct their careers of slaughter
against one another, and only occasionally and for a moment flaring with
red-fire beacons of ruin along the edge of the Aryan world.
Some at least of the Teutonic tribes had grown partly civilized. The
Germans along the Rhine, and the Goths along the Danube, had been from
the time of Augustus in more or less close contact with Rome.
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