So now we turn to India. This spiritual gift, that makes a man human, is still alive in Indian souls. Go on giving the world Indian examples of it. N… - Arnold J. Toynbee

On the whole the Aramaean or Syrian element, rather than the Iranian, may be regarded as the deeper influence, and, if we peer back behind the time of troubles, the Iranian element fades out and we catch a glimpse of a society in Syria, in the generation of King Solomon and his contemporary King Hiram, which was just discovering the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and had already discovered the Alphabet. Here at last we have identified the society to which the twin Islamic societies (subsequently combined in one) were affiliated, and we call it the Syriac Society.

During the deep sleep of the interval (circa A.D. 375-675) which, intervened between the break-up of the Roman Empire and the gradual emergence of our Western Society out of the chaos, a rib was taken, from the side of the older society and was fashioned into the backbone of a new creature of the same species.

Societies, not states, are 'the social atoms' with which students of history have to deal.