demonstrated mental productivity of some sort, and have elaborated
principles of civilization and social life more or less rational;
nations, in short, representing not only zoologic, but also spiritual
types.[2]

[2] "The primitive peoples that change with their environment,
constantly adapting themselves to their habitat and to
external nature, have no history.... Only those nations and
states belong to history which display self-conscious action;
which evince an inner spiritual life by diversified
manifestations; and combine into an organic whole what they
receive from without, and what they themselves originate."
(Introduction to Weber's _Allgemeine Weltgeschichte_, i,
pp. 16-18.)

Chronologically considered, these latter nations, of a higher type,
are usually divided into three groups: 1, the most ancient civilized
peoples of the Orient, such as the Chinese, the Hindoos, the
Egyptians, the Chaldeans; 2, the ancient or classic peoples of the
Occident, the Greeks and the Romans; and 3, the modern peoples, the
civilized nations of Europe and America of the present day. The most
ancient peoples of the Orient, standing "at the threshold of history,"
were the first heralds of a religious consciousness and of moral
principles. In hoary antiquity, when most of the representatives of
the human kind were nothing more than a peculiar variety of the class
mammalia, the peoples called the most ancient brought forth recognized
forms of social life and a variety of theories of living of fairly
far-reaching effect. All these culture-bearers of the Orient soon
disappeared from the surface of history. Some (the Chaldeans,
Phoenicians, and Egyptians) were washed away by the flood of time, and