ors fared much better, they, too, were
confined to their own group. The shepherd class must remain a shepherd
class forever; they could never rise superior to their own
surroundings. So, too, in Babylon and India. There was, indeed, a
slight variation from the caste system in Egypt and in Babylon, but in
India it settled down from the earliest times, and the people and their
customs were crystallized; they were bound by the chain of fate in the
caste system forever. We shall see, then, that the relation of the
population to the soil and the binding influences of early custom
tended to develop despotism in Oriental civilization.

The result of all this was that there was no freedom or liberty of the
individual anywhere. With caste and despotism and degradation men
moved forward in political and religious life as on a plane which
inclined so slightly that, except as we look over its surface through
the passing centuries, little change can be observed. The king was a
god; the government possessed supernatural power; its authority was not
to be questioned. The rule of the army was final. The cruelty of
kings and the oppression of government were customary, and thus crushed
and oppressed, the ordinary individual had no opportunity to arise and
walk in the dignity of his manhood. The government, if traced to its
source at all, was of divine origin, and though those who ruled might
stop to consider for an instant their own despotic actions, and in
special cases yield {178} in clemency to their subjects, from the
subject's standpoint there could be nothing but to yield to the
despotism of kings and the unrelenting rule of government.

We shall find, then, that with all of the efforts put forth the greater
part was wasted. Millions of people were born, lived, and died,
leaving scarcely a mark of their existence. No wonder that, as the
great kings of Egypt saw the wasting elements of time, the waste of
labor in its dreary rounds, having employed the millions in building
the mighty temples dedicated to the worship of the gods; or having
built great canals and aqueducts to develop irrigation that greater
food supply might be assured, thus observing the majesty of their
condition in relation to other human beings, they should have employed
these millions of serfs in building their own tombs and monuments to
remain the only lasting vestige of the civilization long since passed
away. Everywhere in the Oriental civilizatio