we discover for the first time, traces of that burning doubt whether everything that is, must of necessity always remain so. This doubt never seems to have entered into the minds of the burden-bearing Egyptians, whom we see represented in such long, silent, dreary processions on the walls of ancient tombs and temples. Neither has it touched with its poisoned tip the two hundred millions of India, who in silent acquiescence bear the yoke of the English, as for centuries, they bore that of Caste. But the followers of Spartacus were neither radicals nor pessimists, according to our ideas. They attacked the goad, not him who wielded it. Their anger was not directed against the regulation of the world, but only against their position in it. Did they recognize the fact that reason refuses to sanction the degradation of men with will and judgment into mere property, like cattle and inanimate things? By no means. They accepted the institution of slavery without question, only they did not want to be slaves themselves. Their ideal was not the abolition of an unreasonable form of social life, but simply an exchange of roles. These insurgents would have been easily pacified. A victory would have transformed their despair into contentment, and converted the rebels into model pillars of society.
The uprisings of the Middle Ages possess a deeper mental significance. The iconoclastic movements, the Crusades, the fanaticism of the Albigenses and Waldenses, reveal a condition of deep mental uneasiness. The magic fascination of that mysterious land beneath the rising sun, would not have been felt by an uncultivated nature, unless it had already been experiencing an incoherent longing for change from its surroundings. The hundreds of thousands who flocked to Palestine from Europe, were not following so much the banner of the
