The Green Forest tribune., 1910-06-10
ROOSEVELT GIVES
  ROMANES LECTURE M
Former President of United States at Oxford
LORD CURzON IN THE CHAIR
SheIdonian Theater Crowded With Distinguished People When Amer lean Talks on Pathological An aIogies in History"

aIogies in History"
 Oxford, England-The Romanes lecture by Theodore Roosevelt, which vas to have been delivered on May IS, lut which was postponed on account If the death of King Edward, was given on June by the distinguished American The Sheldonian theater
 was filled to its capacity by notable persons and Oxford students and the lecture, which was on Biological Analogies in History" was well re- ceived. Lord Curzon, chancellor of the university, presided.
 In seeking to penetrate the causes of the mysteries that surround not only mankind but all life, both in the present and the past, said MT. Roose- welt, we see strange analogies in the phenomena of life and death, of birth growth and change, between those physical groups of animal life which we designate as species, forms, races and the highly complex and composite entities which rise before our minds when we speak of nations and civil lizations. It is this study, he assert ed, that has given science its present day prominence, and the historian of mankind must work in the scientific spirit and use the treasure-houses of science.
 To illustrate, the lecturer took sev- eral instances of the development of new species and the extinction of spe- cies in the history of mammalian life, S showing that in some cases the causes can be traced with considerable accu- racy, and in other cases we cannot so much as hazard guess as to why a given change occurred
 AnaIogies in Human History. R Continuing, MT. Roosevelt said in part:
 Now, as to all of these phenomena In the Revolution of species, there are, if not 4homologies, at least certain analogies, in Hthe history of human societies, In the &history of the rise to prominence, of the development and change, of the tenn # porary dominance, and death or trans 4 Formation, of the groups of varying kind (which form races or nations.
 As in biology, in human history, a
  8tion of a long-existing and hitherto very <slowly- changing generalized non- &specialiZed form; as, for instance, when Va barbaric race from a variety of causes #suddenly develops a more complex culti- Ssvation and civilization. That is what oc- #curred, for instance. in western Europe %during the centuries of the Teutonic and Eater the Scandinavian ethnic overhows
 from the north. All the modern countries &of western Europe are descended from the Mstates created by these northern invaders &When first created they could be called :R'neW or young states in the sense
 That part or all of the people composing
 hem were descended from races that
 Aftherto had not been civilized at all. and fthat therefore for the first time entered Ion the career of civilized communities In the southern part of western Europe
 the new states thus formed consisted in
 bulk of the inhabitants already in the land under the Roman empire; and 1t was There that the new kingdoms first took \ Shape. Through a reflex action their sinf1uence then extended back into the cold Forests from which the invaders had come, { and Germany and Scandinavia witnessed
 the rise of communities with essentially s8the same civilization as their southern aneighbors; though in those communities
 unlike the southern communities. there .Swas no infusion of new blood, and in each @case the new civilized nation which gradu-
 ally developed was composed entirely of
 members of the same race which in the Hsame region had for ages lived the life of
 e slowly changing barbarism The same s6Eas true of the Slavs and the Slavonzed aFinns of eastern Europe, when an infil- tration of Scandinavian leaders from the
 north and infltration of Byzantine Xeulture from the south joined to produce the changes which have gradually out of
 rhe little Slav communities of the forest Hand the steppe, formed the mighty Russian empire of today.
 3 "NeW" and "Young" Nations iM Again, the new form may represent Smerely splitting off from a long-estab-
 hshed, highly developed and specialized
 nation. In this case the nation is usually
 epoken of as a young" and is correctly 4Apoken of as a new" nation; but the Skerm should always be used with clear 81ense of the difference between what is
 qescribed in such case and what is de- gAcrloed by the same term in speaking of ss4 civilized nation just developed from a 'Sparparlsm. Carthage and Syracuse were
 4eW cities compared with Tyre and Cor z lnth; but the Greek or Phoencan race was 9m every sense of the word as old In the new city as in the old city. So, nowadays, RN1ctorla or, Manitoba is a new community |eompared with England or Scotland but .fhe ancestral type of civilization and cuI ;1sure IS as old in one case as in the other VI or course do not mean for a moment <<@t <@at great changes are not produced by #pe mere fact that the old civilized race N suddenly placed In surroundings where 5& mas again to go through the work of a#nllhg the wilderness, work finished SRany centuries before in the original 14oine or the race; I merely mean that 4Re ancestral history is the same in each
 Hse' We can rightly use the phrase "a
 people, in speaking of Canadians
 3 Australians, Americans or Afrikanders. 22ut we use 1t in an entirely different
 hse rom that in which we use it when 8Reaking oe such communities as those
 9ounaed by the northmen and their de-
 fehoants Curing that period of astonisn- 'Ang growth which saw the descendants of