_Economic Influences_.--In the first place, the warm climate of these countries required but little clothing; for a few cents a year a person could be clothed sufficiently to protect himself from the climate and to observe the rules of modesty so far as they existed in those times. In the second place, in hot climates less food is required than in cold. In cold countries people need a large quantity of heavy, oily foods, while in hot climates they need a lighter food and, indeed, less of it. Thus we have in these fertile valleys of the Orient the conditions which supply sustenance for millions at a very small amount of exertion or labor. Now, it is a well-established fact that cheap food among classes of people who have not developed {179} a high state of civilization favors a rapid increase of population. The records show in Babylon and Egypt, as well as in Palestine, that the population multiplied at a very rapid rate. And this principle is enhanced by the fact that in tropical climates, where less pressure of want and cold is brought to bear, the conditions for successful propagation of the human race are present. And this is one reason why the earliest civilizations have always been found in tropical climates, and it was not until man had more vigor of constitution and higher development of physical and mental powers that he could undertake the mastery of himself and nature under less favorable circumstances. The result was that human life became cheap. The great mass of men became so abundant as to press upon the food supply to its utmost limit. And they who had the control of this food supply controlled the bodies and souls of the great poverty-stricken mass who toiled for daily bread. Here we find the picture of abject slavery of the masses. The rulers, through the government, strengthened by the priests, who held over the masses of the lower people in superstitious awe the tenets of their faith, forced them into subjection. There was no value placed upon a human life; why, then, should there be upon the masses of individuals?