that northern races are spirited, southern races civilized, but the Greeks alone are both spirited and
civilized. Plato and Aristotle thought it wrong to make slaves of Greeks, but not of barbarians.
Alexander, who was not quite a Greek, tried to break down this attitude of superiority. He himself
married two barbarian princesses, and he compelled his leading Macedonians to marry Persian
women of noble birth. His innumerable Greek cities, one would suppose, must have contained
many more male than female colonists, and their men must therefore have followed his example
in intermarrying with the women of the locality. The result of this policy was to bring into the
minds of thoughtful men the conception of mankind as a whole; the old loyalty to the City State
and (in a lesser degree) to the Greek race seemed no longer adequate. In philosophy, this
cosmopolitan point of view begins with the Stoics, but in practice it begins earlier, with
Alexander. It had the result that the interaction of Greek and barbarian was reciprocal: The
barbarians learnt something of Greek science, while the Greeks learnt much of barbarian
superstition. Greek civilization, in covering a wider area, became less purely Greek.
Greek civilization was essentially urban. There were, of course, many Greeks engaged in
agriculture, but they contributed little to what was distinctive in Hellenic culture. From the
Milesian school onwards, the Greeks who were eminent in science and philosophy and literature
were associated with rich commercial cities, often surrounded by barbarian populations. This type
of civilization was inaugurated, not by the Greeks, but by the Phoenicians; Tyre and Sidon and
Carthage depended on slaves for manual labour at home, and on hired mercenaries in the conduct
of their wars. They did not depend, as modern capital cities do, upon large rural populations of the
same blood and with equal political rights. The nearest modern analogue is to be seen in the Far
East during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Singapore and Hong Kong, Shanghai and the
other treaty ports of China, were little European islands, where the white men formed a
commercial aristocracy living on coolie labour. In North America, north of the Mason-Dixon line,
since such labour was not available, white men were compelled to practise agriculture. For this
reason, the hold of the white man on North America is secure, while his hold on the Far East has
already been greatly diminished, and may easily cease altogether. Much of his type of culture,
especially