Quotes from James Henry Breasted

There is no force in the life of ancient man, the influence of which so pervades all his activities as does that of the religious faculty. Its fancies explain for him the world about him, its fears are his hourly master, its hopes his constant Mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward usages are to a large extent the education and the motive toward the gradual evolution of art, literature and science.

The world was already growing old, and everywhere men were fondly dwelling on her faraway youth.

These two unions [of Egypt], the earliest great national organizations of men in history, brought before the minds of men an imposing fabric of the state which at length made a profound impression on religion. The forms of the state began to pass over into the world of the gods, and an important god would be called a king.

It is this conception of the unity of the human career which is perhaps the greatest achievement of historical study, since it gained a place analogous to that of natural science.

In any case, in so far as our knowledge of the universe carries us, the advent of civilization for the first time on our globe represents the highest ascent of the life processes to which evolution had anywhere attained.

This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old.

To the present writer a careful study of the facts now available seems to leave no doubt that civilization was born at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean.