the Heart Approaches What It Yearns

The collapse of Rome was not so much due to invasion, immigration, or political upheaval as it was due to a slow, gradual change of philosophy on the part of its citizenry. This change was incomplete; Europe and the West still have reminders of its pagan past. Paganism was slowly replaced by a modified pantheism disguised as a spiritual Messiah myth; in terms recognizable both to the (Hellenized Semitic) Greek-taught Aramaic-speaking peoples who believed in one god of the Eastern provinces, and to their counterparts of the West, this idea had God the Father, Christ the offspring, the Word, the Spirit, and various sanctified, almost deified saints to whom they could pray.

The weak nations are always conquered from outside by the strong nations; the strong empires are conquered from within, by the people they attempted to conquer and assimilate; this always happens and always will. This is the balance of political nature.