CHAPTER III
BIRTH AND FORTUNES OF THE ELDER JUSTIN: THE ORIGINS OF JUSTINIAN
The function of a government is to administer the
affairs of mankind in accordance with the spirit of
the age. Not from the political arena, but from the laboratory
emanates that expansion of knowledge which surely,
though fitfully, changes the aspect and methods of civilization
both in peace and war. An impulse which controls the
passions of millions may originate with some obscure investigator
who reveals a more immediate means to individual
or national advantage; and the executive of government is
called on to create legislative facilities for the utilization of
the new discovery. During the modern period such influences
have been continuous and paramount. In the course of
a single century a transformation of the world has been
achieved by fruitful research, greater than in all previously
recorded time. The Georgian era contrasts less strongly
with the times of Aristotle and Cicero than with the present
day; and the rapid progress of the nineteenth century almost
throws the age of Johnson and Gibbon into the shadow of
mediaevalism.
Far back in the prehistoric past a bridge was thrown across the chasm which separates savage from civilized life by the
