" The circle was undoubtedly known to the early civilizations, its simplicity specially recommending it as an object for study.

His account of the first dawnings of culture, and of the ruder Oriental civilizations, is marked by genuine insight.

Apart from conquest their most important function has been to keep up communications in central Asia, and to transport religions and civilizations from one region to another.

Palestinian states on the other, and that they could scarcely have escaped the all-pervading Babylonian influences of 2000-1400 B.C. It is now becoming clearer every day, especially since the discovery of the laws of Khammurabi, that, if we are to think sanely about Hebrew history before as well as after the exile, we can only think of Israel as part of the great complex of Semitic and especially Canaanite humanity that lived its life in western Asia between 2060 and 600 B.C.; and that while the Hebrew race maintained by the aid of prophetism its own individual and exalted place, it was not less susceptible then, than it has been since, to the moulding influences of great adjacent civilizations and ideas.

The realization of the fact that the value to France of her colonies was mainly commercial, led at length to the abandonment of the attempt to impose on a great number of diverse peoples—some possessing (as in Indo-China and parts of West Africa) ancient and highly complex civilizations—French laws, habits of mind, tastes and manners.