The result of all this was that there was no freedom or liberty of the individual anywhere. With caste and despotism and degradation men moved forward in political and religious life as on a plane which inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its source at all, was of divine origin, and though those who ruled might stop to consider for an instant their own despotic actions, and in special cases yield {178} in clemency to their subjects, from the subject's standpoint there could be nothing but to yield to the despotism of kings and the unrelenting rule of government. We shall find, then, that with all of the efforts put forth the greater part was wasted. Millions of people were born, lived, and died, leaving scarcely a mark of their existence. No wonder that, as the great kings of Egypt saw the wasting elements of time, the waste of labor in its dreary rounds, having employed the millions in building the mighty temples dedicated to the worship of the gods; or having built great canals and aqueducts to develop irrigation that greater food supply might be assured, thus observing the majesty of their condition in relation to other human beings, they should have employed these millions of serfs in building their own tombs and monuments to remain the only lasting vestige of the civilization long since passed away. Everywhere in the Oriental civilization, then, are lack of freedom and the appearance of despotism. Everywhere is evidence of waste of individual life. No deep conception can be found in either the philosophy or the practice of the Egyptians or the Babylonians of the real object of human life. And yet the few meagre products of art and of learning handed down to European civilization from these Oriental countries must have had a vast influence in laying the foundations of modern civilized life.