n, then, are lack of
freedom and the appearance of despotism. Everywhere is evidence of
waste of individual life. No deep conception can be found in either
the philosophy or the practice of the Egyptians or the Babylonians of
the real object of human life. And yet the few meagre products of art
and of learning handed down to European civilization from these
Oriental countries must have had a vast influence in laying the
foundations of modern civilized life.

_Economic Influences_.--In the first place, the warm climate of these
countries required but little clothing; for a few cents a year a person
could be clothed sufficiently to protect himself from the climate and
to observe the rules of modesty so far as they existed in those times.
In the second place, in hot climates less food is required than in
cold. In cold countries people need a large quantity of heavy, oily
foods, while in hot climates they need a lighter food and, indeed, less
of it. Thus we have in these fertile valleys of the Orient the
conditions which supply sustenance for millions at a very small amount
of exertion or labor. Now, it is a well-established fact that cheap
food among classes of people who have not developed {179} a high state
of civilization favors a rapid increase of population. The records
show in Babylon and Egypt, as well as in Palestine, that the population
multiplied at a very rapid rate. And this principle is enhanced by the
fact that in tropical climates, where less pressure of want and cold is
brought to bear, the conditions for successful propagation of the human
race are present. And this is one reason why the earliest
civilizations have always been found in tropical climates, and it was
not until man had more vigor of constitution and higher development of
physical and mental powers that he could undertake the mastery of
himself and nature under less favorable circumstances.

The result was that human life became cheap. The great mass of men
became so abundant as to press upon the food supply to its utmost
limit. And they who had the control of this food supply controlled the
bodies and souls of the great poverty-stricken mass who toiled for
daily bread. Here we find the picture of abject slavery of the masses.
The rulers, through the government, strengthened by the priests, who
held over the masses of the lower people in superstitious awe the
tenets of their faith, forced them into subjection. There was no value