No solution of the problems presented by history will be
complete until the knowledge of man is perfect; but we cannot approach
the threshold of understanding without realizing that our national
achievement has been the outcome of singular powers of assimilation, of
adaptation to changing circumstances, and of elasticity of system.
Change has been, and is, the breath of our existence and the condition
of our growth.
Change began with the Creation, and ages of momentous development are
shrouded from our eyes. The land and the people are the two foundations
of English history; but before history began, the land had received the
insular configuration which has largely determined its fortune; and the
various peoples, who were to mould and be moulded by the land, had
differentiated from the other races of the world. Several of these
peoples had occupied the land before its conquest by the Anglo-Saxons,
some before it was even Britain. Whether neolithic man superseded
palaeolithic man in these islands by invasion or by domestic evolution,
we do not know; but centuries before the Christian era the Britons
overran the country and superimposed themselves upon its swarthy, squat
inhabitants. They mounted comparatively high in the scale of
civilization; they tilled the soil, worked mines, cultivated various
forms of art, and even built towns. But their loose tribal organization
left them at the mercy of the Romans; and though Julius Caesar's two
raids in 55 B.
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