[Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Superscript is indicated by this format: ^{superscript}.] THE LAW OF CIVILIZATION AND DECAY An Essay on History BY BROOKS ADAMS New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1897 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1896, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped September, 1896. Reprinted February, September, 1897. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. PREFACE In offering to the public a second edition of _The Law of Civilization and Decay_ I take the opportunity to say emphatically that such value as the essay may have lies in its freedom from any preconceived bias. All theories contained in the book, whether religious or economic, are the effect, and not the cause, of the way in which the facts unfolded themselves. I have been passive. The value of history lies not in the multitude of facts collected, but in their relation to each other, and in this respect an author can have no larger responsibility than any other scientific observer. If the sequence of events seems to indicate the existence of a law governing social development, such a law may be suggested, but to approve or disapprove of it would be as futile as to discuss the moral bearings of gravitation. Some years ago, when writing a sketch of the history of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, I became deeply interested in certain religious aspects of the Reformation, which seemed hardly reconcilable with the theories usually advanced to explain them. After the book had been published, I continued reading theology, and, step by step, was led back, through the schoolmen and the crusades, to the revival of the pilgrimage to Palestine, which followed upon the conversion of the Huns. As ferocious pagans, the Huns had long closed the road to Constantinople; but the change which swept over Europe after the year 1000, when Saint Stephen was crowned, was unmistakable; the West received an impulsion from the East. I thus became convinced that religious enthusiasm, which, by stimulating the pilgrimage, restored communication between the Bosphorus and the Rhine, was the power which produced the accelerated movement culminating in modern centralization.