Peoples were gradually closing in from all directions on the central provinces of northern Europe, and here apparently they met. We find here a mixture of head-forms, of culture; mixture or modifications of styles of ceramic ornament, of burial customs--all suggesting a mingling of peoples of a variety of cultures. Here at or toward the end of the Neolithic period was the "melting-pot" for the fusion of these peoples and their cultures. There was conflict of customs and ideas, of _ways_ of life. There was probably much incompatibility, many broken heads. The pacific people of the banded pottery seem largely to have withdrawn, or been driven out, before the infiltration or invasions of northern folk. It was hardly a comfortable place for conservative pacificists. There were doubtless battles in many regions--perhaps now and here we might speak of wars. In some places there may have been extermination of the fighting men. But in most parts there was large fusion, and out of this mixture of cultures, ideas, thoughts, and habits of life came the culture of the beginning of the Bronze Age. The great characteristic of Neolithic culture seems to be a rude, often barbarous, sometimes ugly but generally healthy, always hardy and vigorous growth--it grew "like a weed"--the manifestation of an intense vitality. Because it was healthy it was essentially and generally fairly sane, matter-of-fact, whole, and balanced. The Neoliths were certainly no "reversed cripples," in whom one or two of the less essential powers had outgrown and dwarfed the man. It was an adaptable stock giving rise to many marked and vigorous varieties, from whose intercrossing something great and good could hardly fail to arise. Green refuses to write a "trumpet-and-drum history of England." "Happy the people--here we cannot say nation--that has no annals." Here is surely a certain amount of truth which we may be in danger of forgetting. In plants, and often in men, a long period of silent unnoticeable growth usually precedes the brief season of flowers and fruit. Is this the rule in racial, or internal, development? Is it true, as some historians tell us, that a dormant period of national history best repays investigation, and that dormant peoples will bear watching? Is the dormant nation often storing up nutriment, strength, vitality, just as the plant is doing in its ugly underground roots and stem? Are fallow periods necessary to its fertility and apparently dormant times essential to its life and growth? Must periods of energetic action and effort be followed by times of exhaustion and rest, as in the history of the strong athlete rejoicing to run a race? Is China awakening from just such a dormant period? What of India, still the home of philosophy? Because a nation, after bearing a marvellous harvest of culture, thought, art, or religion, seems barren and exhausted, does this discourage or arouse the hope that it will some day produce an equal or greater fruitage?