The ancient Empire of China, which had persisted for over two thousand years, was overthrown by the innovating ardour of men who owed their education to the West. Japan, which had been fiercely conservative and isolationist, opened its ports to Western trade and its minds (more or less) to Western ideas. There was every reason to expect that this process would continue until all the world was culturally unified, and the ideas of Jefferson and Macaulay could be preached without contradiction not only in India but in the plateaus of Tibet and the darkest recesses of African forests. This would no doubt have happened if Europe had not spent its warlike efficiency upon what was, essentially, civil war. By offering the world this spectacle of folly, Europe lost prestige, and other continents were emboldened to assert their cultural independence.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954, chapter 8: Ethical Controversy , n.8
More info.： https://russell-j.com/cool/47T-2_0508.htm
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Based on this passage from Russell, I provided several instructions and had ChatGPT's generative AI function create the two image illustrations attached below (which, due to composition, may appear as a single image).
Additionally, the phrase 'a war that was essentially nothing more than a civil war (within Europe)' refers to World War I.
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