Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/37

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SEMITIC LITERATURES
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the many admixtures of foreign blood due to the practice of polygamy which has always been more or less indigenous in the East. But the history of the Semites covers so wide a period of time and traverses so extensive a part of the earth's surface, that it is impossible to find the psychologic unity of the whole race. From the oldest specimen of Babylonian Literature inscribed upon a stele of King Gudaca (which is dated at about 4000 b.c.),to the productions of modern Arabic writers in Cairo or of Hebrew literati in American ghettos, is a long hail. From Southern Mesopotamia into Western Asia, Northern Africa, Europe, and the cities of the American continent, the geographical distribution of Semitic peoples almost comes around a full circle. In their march through the world they have come in contact with many civilizations and peoples alien to them in race and in ideals. In many cases they were able to impress their own individuality upon these aliens, either by actual conquest or by the more durable influence of an imposing culture. The Babylonians, forced by their movement westward into the proximity of Egypt and the ancient civilizations of Crete and Asia Minor, knew how to impose their script and many of their religious ideas upon the whole of the nearer East which they conquered. In the early Middle Ages the Arabs did the same, carrying Asia into Europe, making the Mediterranean a propagator of Semitism, and by the force of their religious enthusiasm compelling the physical and mental submission of other races, Indians, Iranians, Egyptians, Berbers, and Goths. ^Alone among the important Semitic races, the Jews built up no great world-power; preferring to exist by the inner force of a long martyrdom and to exercise a spiritual influence by their presence everywhere as a theocratic people, and by giving to the world the two daughter faiths, Christianity and Islam. And they are the only Semitic people that have survived with a live and active conscience from the earliest times down to the present day!