The wide acceptance of the territorial theory of the origin of war as an explanation of war, and the enumeration by historians of causes and results in territory or taxation, can be ascribed only to that indolence of the human mind, the subtle inertia which, as Tacitus affirms, lies in wait to mar all high endeavour--"Subit quippe etiam ipsius inertiae dulcedo, et invisa primo desidia postremo amatur." The wars of the Hebrews, if territorial in their apparent origin, reveal in their course their true origin in the heart of the race, the consciousness of the high destiny reserved for it amongst the Semitic kindred, amongst the nations of the earth. If ever there were a race which seemed destined to found a world-empire by the sword it is the Hebrew. They make war with Roman relentlessness and with more than Roman ideality, the Lord God of Hosts guiding their march or their retreat by day and by night ceaselessly. Every battle is a Lake Regillus, and for the great Twin Brethren it is Jehovah Sabaoth that nerves the right arm of his faithful. The forms of Gideon and Joshua, though on a narrower stage, have a place with those other captains of their race--Hannibal, Bar-Cochab, Khalid, Amr, Saad,[3] and Mothanna. The very spirit of war seems to shape their poetry from the first chant for the defeat of Egypt to that last song of constancy in overthrow, of unconquerable resolve and sure vengeance, a march music befitting Judas Maccabaeus and his men, beside which all other war-songs, even the "Marseillaise," appear of no account--the _Al Naharoth Babel_--"Let my sword-hand forget, if I forget thee, O Jerusalem"--passing from the mood of pity through words that are like the flash of spears to a rapture of revenge known only to the injured spirits of the great when baulked of their God-appointed fate. Yet on the shores of the Western Sea the career of this race abruptly ends, as if in Palestine they found a Capua, as the Crusaders long afterwards, Templars and Hospitallers, found in that languid air, the Syrian clime, a Capua. Thus the Hebrews missed the world-empire which the Arabs gained, but even out of their despair created another empire, the empire of thought; and the power to found this empire, whether expressed in the character of their warriors, or in that unparalleled conviction which marks the Hebrew in the remotest lands and most distant centuries, the certainty of his return, the refusal, unyielding, to believe that he has missed the great meed which, there in Palestine, there in the Capua of his race, seemed within his grasp, but attests further that it is in no lust for territory that these wars originate.