In every individual there is some one talent that can be cultivated

more advantageously than any other; so it is with nations, every

people possesses some natural advantage for development in some

certain direction over every other people, and often the early history

of a nation, like the precocious proclivities of the child, points

toward its future; and in such arts and industries as its climate and

geographical position best enable it to develop, is discovered the

germ of national character. Seldom is the commercial spirit developed

in the interior of a continent, or the despotic spirit on the border

of the sea, or the predatory spirit in a country wholly devoid of

mountains and fastnesses. It cannot be said that one nation or race is

inherently better fitted for civilization than another; all may not be

equally fitted for exactly the same civilization, but all are alike

fitted for that civilization which, if left to itself, each will work

out.

Mankind, moreover, advances spasmodically, and in certain directions

only at a time, which is the greatest drawback to progress. As Lecky

remarks: "Special agencies, such as religious or political

institutions, geographical conditions, traditions, antipathies, and

affinities, exercise a certain retarding, accelerating, or deflecting

influence, and somewhat modify the normal progress." Perfect

development only is permanent, and that alone is perfect which

develops the whole man and the whole society equally in all its parts;

all the activities, mental, moral, and physical, must needs grow in

unison and simultaneously, and this alone is perfect and permanent

development. Should all the world become civilized there will still be

minor differences; some will advance further in one direction and some

in another, all together will form the complete whole.

Civilization as an exotic seldom flourishes. Often has the attempt

been made by a cultivated people to civilize a barbarous nation, and

as often has it failed. True, one nation may force its arts or

religion upon another, but to civilize is neither to subjugate nor

annihilate; foreigners may introduce new industries and new

philosophies, which the uncultured may do well to accept, but as

civilization is an unfolding, and not a creation, he who would advance

civilization must teach society how to grow, how to enlarge its better

self; must teach in what direction its highest interests lie.

* * * * *

Thus it appears that, while this germ of progress is innate in every

human society, certain conditions are more favorable to its

development than others,--conditions which act as stimulants or

impediments to progress. Often we see nations remain apparently

stationary, the elements of progress evenly balanced by opposing

influences, and thus they remain until by internal force, or external

pressure, their system expands or explodes, until they absorb or are

absorbed by antagonistic elements. The intrinsic force of the body

social appears to demand extrinsic prompting before it will manifest

itself. Like the grains of wheat in the hand of Belzoni's mummy, which

held life slumbering for three thousand years, and awoke to growth

when buried in the ground, so the element of human progress lies

dormant until planted in a congenial soil and surrounded by those

influences which provoke development.

This stimulant, which acts upon and unfolds the intellect, can be

administered only through the medium of the senses. Nerve force, which

precedes intellectual force, is supplied by the body; the cravings of

man's corporeal nature, therefore, must be quieted before the mind can

fix itself on higher things. The first step toward teaching a savage

is to feed him; the stomach satisfied he will listen to instruction,

not before.

Cultivation of at least the most necessary of the industrial arts

invariably precedes cultivation of the fine arts; the intellect must

be implanted in a satisfied body before it will take root and grow.

The mind must be allowed some respite from its attendance on the body,

before culture can commence; it must abandon its state of servitude,

and become master; in other words, leisure is an essential of culture.

As association is the primal condition of progress, let us see how

nature throws societies together or holds them asunder. In some

directions there are greater facilities for intercommunication

(another essential of improvement) than in other directions. Wherever

man is most in harmony with nature, there he progresses most rapidly;

wherever nature offers the greatest advantages, such as a sea that

invites to commerce, an elevated plateau lifting its occupants above

the malaria of a tropical lowland, a sheltering mountain range that

wards off inclement winds and bars out hostile neighbors, there

culture flourishes best.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE STIMULANTS.]

So that humanity, in its twofold nature, is dependent for its

development upon two distinct species of stimulants, objective and

subjective. Material causations, or those forces which minister to the

requirements of man's material nature but upon which his intellectual

progress is dependent, are configurations of surface, soil, climate,

and food. Those physical conditions which, when favorable, give to

their possessors wealth and leisure, are the inevitable precursors of

culture. Immaterial causations are those forces which act more

directly upon man's immaterial nature, as association, religion,

wealth, leisure, and government. Continuing the analysis, let us first

examine physical stimulants. Admitting readily two of M. Taine's

primordial humanity-moving forces, 'le milieu' or environment, and his

'le moment' or inherited impulse, we will pass over the third force 'la

race';--for inherent differences in race, in the present stage of

science, are purely hypothetical; it remains yet to be proved that one

nation is primarily inherently inferior or superior to another nation.

That man once created is moulded and modified by his environment,

there can be no doubt. Even a cursory survey of the globe presents

some indications favorable and unfavorable to the unfolding of the

different forms of organic being.

Great continents, for instance, appear to be congenial to the

development of animal life; islands and lesser continents to the

growth of exuberant vegetation. Thus, in the eastern hemisphere, which

is a compact oval, essentially continental, with vast areas far

removed from the influence of the ocean, flourish the elephant, the

hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the courageous lion, the fierce tiger,

the largest and lordliest of animal kind, while in the more oceanic

western hemisphere inferior types prevail. Cold and dryness

characterize the one; heat and humidity the other; in one are the

greatest deserts, in the other the greatest lakes and rivers. Warm

oceanic currents bathe the frosty shores of the northern extremities

of the continents and render them habitable; the moisture-laden

equatorial atmosphere clothes the adjacent islands and firm land in

emerald verdure. Upon the same parallel of latitude are the great

Sahara Desert of Africa, and the wilderness of luxuriant billowy

foliage of the American Isthmus. In warm, moist climates, such species

of animal life attain the fullest development as are dependent upon

the aqueous and herbous agencies. In tropical America are seen the

largest reptiles, the most gorgeous insects,--there the inhabitants of

warm marshes and sluggish waters assume gigantic proportions, while

only upon the broad inland prairies or upon elevated mountain ranges,

away from the influences of warm waters and humid atmospheres, are

found the buffalo, bear, and elk. The very complexion and temperament

of man are affected by these vegetative and umbrageous elements.

Unprotected from the perpendicular rays of the sun, the African is

black, muscular, and cheerful; under the shadow of primeval forest,

man assumes a coppery hue, lacking the endurance of the negro, and

becomes in disposition cold and melancholy.

And again, if we look for the natural causes which tend to promote or

retard association, we find in climates and continental configurations

the chief agencies. The continent of the two Americas, in its greatest

length, lies north and south, the eastern continental group extends

east and west. Primitive people naturally would spread out in those

directions which offered the least change of climate from that of the

primitive centre. Obviously, variations of climate are greater in

following a meridian than along a parallel of latitude. Thus, the

tropical man passing along a meridian is driven back by unendurable

cold, while a continent may be traversed on any parallel, elevations

excepted, with but little variation in temperature. A savage, exposed

and inexperienced, not knowing how to protect himself against severe

changes of climate, could not travel far in a northerly or southerly

direction without suffering severely from the cold or heat; hence,

other things being equal, the inhabitants of a country whose greatest

length lay east and west, would intermingle more readily than those

whose territory extended north and south.

[Sidenote: CLIMATE AND MOUNTAIN RANGES.]

That the eastern hemisphere attained a higher degree of civilization

than the western, may be partly due to the fact, that the former

presents wider spaces of uniform climate than the latter. The climatic

zones of the New World, besides being shorter, are intersected by

mountain barriers, which tend to retard the intercourse that would

otherwise naturally follow. Thus the Mexican table-land, the seat of

Aztec civilization, is a _tierra fria_ situated above the insalubrious

_tierra caliente_ of either coast and the healthful _tierra templada_

of the slopes, but below the mountain ranges which rise from this

table-land, forming a _tierra frígida_, a region of perpetual snow. To

this day, the natives of the Mexican plateau cannot live on the

sea-coast, though less than a day's journey distant.

Between the climatic zones which extend through Europe and Asia, there

are contrasts as marked and changes as sudden, but these differences

are between the different zones rather than between longitudinal

sections of the same zone. Hence, in the old world, where climatic

zones are separated by mountain ranges which make the transition from

one to the other sudden and abrupt, we see a greater diversity of race

than in America, where the natural barriers extend north and south and

intersect the climatic zones, thereby bringing the inhabitants along a

meridian in easier communication than those who live in the same

latitude but who are separated by mountains, table-lands and large

rivers. That is, if color and race are dependent on climate, America

should offer greater varieties in color and race than Europe, for

America traverses the most latitudes; but the mountain barriers of

America extend north and south, thereby forcing its people to

intermingle, if at all, in that direction, while the chief ranges of

the eastern continent extend east and west, parallel with climatic

zones, thereby forming in themselves distinctly marked lines between

peoples, forcing the African to remain under his burning sun, and the

northmen in their cooler latitudes; so that in the several climatic

zones of the old world, we see the human race distinctly marked,

Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian--white, black, and yellow--while

throughout the two Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, type and

color are singularly uniform.

* * * * *

Who can picture the mighty tide of humanity, which, while the eastern

hemisphere has been developing so high a state of culture, in America

has ebbed and flowed between barbarisms and civilizations? Through

what long and desperate struggles, continuing age after age through

the lives of nations, now advancing, now receding, have these peoples

passed? Asia, from its central position and favorable climate, would

seem naturally to encourage a redundant population and a spontaneous

civilization; the waters of the Mediterranean invite commerce and

intercommunication of nations, while the British Isles, from their

insular situation and distance from hypothetical primitive centres,

would seem necessarily to remain longer in a state of barbarism. In

the Pacific States of North America we find the densest population

north along the shores of the ocean, and south on the cordillera

table-land, from the fact that the former offers the best facilities

for food and locomotion until the latter is reached, when the interior

presents the most favorable dwelling-place for man.

Climate affects both mental and moral endowments, the temperament of

the body, and the texture of the brain; physical energy, and mental

vigor. Temperate climates are more conducive to civilization, not for

the reason given by Mr Harris, "as developing the higher qualities,

and not invigorating the baser feelings", for the Hyperborean is as

unchaste and as great a slave to passion as the sub-equatorial

man--but because a temperate climate, while it lures to exertion,

rewards the laborer.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE INFLUENCE OF FOOD.]

Next, let us consider the agency of food in human development. The

effect of food is to supply the body with caloric, which is essential

to its life, and to repair the muscular fibres which are constantly

undergoing waste in our daily activities. These two effects are

produced by two different kinds of diet; carbonized food, such as

animal flesh, fish, oils and fats, and oxidized food, which consists

chiefly of vegetables. In hot climates, obviously, less carbonized

food is required to keep up the necessary temperature of the body than

in cold climates. Hence it is, that hyperborean nations subsist on

whale's blubber, oil, and flesh, while the tropical man confines

himself almost exclusively to a vegetable diet.

It is not my purpose here to enter into the relative effects of the

different kinds of food on physiological and mental development; I

desire, however, to call attention to the comparative facility with

which carbonized and oxidized food is procured by man, and to note the

effect of this ease or difficulty in obtaining a food supply, upon his

progress. In warm, humid climates vegetation is spontaneous and

abundant; a plentiful supply of food may, therefore, be obtained with

the smallest expenditure of labor. The inhabitants of cold climates,

however, are obliged to pursue, by land and water, wild and powerful

animals, to put forth all their strength and skill in order to secure

a precarious supply of the necessary food. Then, again, besides being

more difficult to obtain, and more uncertain as to a steady supply,

the quantity of food consumed in a cold climate is much greater than

that consumed in a hot climate. Now as leisure is essential to

cultivation, and as without a surplus of food and clothing there can

be no leisure, it would seem to follow naturally that in those

countries where food and clothing are most easily obtained culture

should be the highest; since so little time and labor are necessary

to satisfy the necessities of the body, the mind would have

opportunity to expand. It would seem that a fertile soil, an exuberant

vegetation, soft skies and balmy air, a country where raiment was

scarcely essential to comfort, and where for food the favored

inhabitant had but to pluck and eat, should become the seat of a

numerous population and a high development. Is this the fact?

"Wherever snow falls," Emerson remarks, "there is usually civil

freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent, and

pampered at the cost of higher qualities; the man is sensual and

cruel;" and we may add that where wheat grows, there is civilization,

where rice is the staple, there mental vigor is relaxed.

Heat and moisture being the great vegetative stimulants, tropical

lands in proximity to the sea are covered with eternal verdure. Little

or no labor is required to sustain life; for food there is the

perpetually ripening fruit, a few hours' planting, sometimes, being

sufficient to supply a family for months; for shelter, little more

than the dense foliage is necessary, while scarcely any clothing is

required.

But although heat and moisture, the great vegetative stimulants, lie

at the root of primitive progress, these elements in superabundance

defeat their own ends, and in two ways: First, excessive heat

enervates the body and prostrates the mind, languor and inertia become

chronic, while cold is invigorating and prompts to activity. And in

tropical climates certain hours of the day are too hot for work, and

are, consequently, devoted to sleep. The day is broken into fragments;

continuous application, which alone produces important results, is

prevented, and habits of slackness and laxity become the rule of life.

Satisfied, moreover, with the provisions of nature for their support,

the people live without labor, vegetating, plant-like, through a

listless and objectless life. Secondly, vegetation, stimulated by

excessive heat and moisture, grows with such strength and rapidity as

to defy the efforts of inexperienced primitive man; nature becomes

domineering, unmanageable, and man sinks into insignificance. Indeed

the most skillful industry of armed and disciplined civilization is

unable to keep under control this redundancy of tropical vegetation.

The path cleared by the pioneer on penetrating the dense undergrowth,

closes after him like the waters of the sea behind a ship; before the

grain has time to spring up, the plowed field is covered with rank

weeds, wild flowers, and poisonous plants no less beautiful than

pernicious. I have seen the very fence-posts sprouting up and growing

into trees. So destructive is the vegetation of the Central American

lowlands, that in their triumphal march the persistent roots penetrate

the crevices of masonry, demolish strong walls, and obliterate

stupendous tumuli. The people whose climate makes carbonized food a

necessity, are obliged to call into action their bolder and stronger

faculties in order to obtain their supplies, while the vegetable-eater

may tranquilly rest on bounteous nature. The Eskimo struggles manfully

with whale, and bear, and ice, and darkness, until his capacious

stomach is well filled with heat-producing food, then he dozes

torpidly in his den while the supply lasts; the equatorial man plucks

and eats, basks in the open air, and sleeps.

[Sidenote: UNMANAGEABLENESS OF REDUNDANT NATURE.]

Here we have a medley of heterogeneous and antagonistic elements.

Leisure is essential to culture; before leisure there must be an

accumulation of wealth; the accumulation of wealth is dependent upon

the food-supply; a surplus of food can only be easily obtained in warm

climates. But labor is also essential to development, and excessive

heat is opposed to labor. Labor, moreover, in order to produce leisure

must be remunerative, and excessive cold is opposed to accumulation.

It appears, therefore, that an excess of labor and an excess of

leisure are alike detrimental to improvement. Again, heat and moisture

are essential to an abundant supply of oxidized food. But heat and

moisture, especially in tropical climates, act as a stimulant upon

other rank productions, engendering dense forests, tangled brush-wood,

and poisonous shrubs, and filling miasmatic marshes with noxious

reptiles. These enemies to human progress the weaponless savage is

unable to overcome.

It is, therefore, neither in hot and humid countries, nor in

excessively cold climates, that we are to look for a primitive

civilization; for in the latter nature lies dormant, while in the

former the redundancy of nature becomes unmanageable. It is true that

in the tropics of America and Asia are found the seats of many ancient

civilizations, but if we examine them one after the other, we shall

see, in nearly every instance, some opposite or counteracting agency.

Thus, the Aztecs, though choosing a low latitude in proximity to both

oceans, occupied an elevated table-land, in a cool, dry atmosphere,

seven or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. The river

Nile, by its periodic inundations, forced the ancient Egyptians to lay

by a store of food, which is the very first step toward wealth. The

rivers of India are, some of them, subject to like overflowings, while

the more elevated parts are dry and fertile.

Egypt was the cradle of European development. Long before the advent

of Christianity, the fertile banks of the Nile, for their pyramidal

tombs, their colossi, their obelisks and catacombs and sphinxes and

temples, were regarded by surrounding barbarians as a land of miracles

and marvels. Thence Greece derived her earliest arts and maxims. The

climate of Egypt was unchangeable, and the inundations of the Nile

offered a less uncertain water-supply than the rains of many other

districts, and thus agriculture, while offering to the laborer the

greater part of the year for leisure, was almost certain to be

remunerative. Common instincts and common efforts, uniformity of

climate and identity of interests produced a homogeneous people, and

forty centuries of such changeless coming and going could not fail to

result in improvement.

[Sidenote: MR BUCKLE'S THEORY.]

Mr Buckle, in his attempt to establish a universal theory that heat

and moisture inevitably engender civilization, and that without those

combined agencies no civilization can arise, somewhat overreaches

himself. "In America, as in Asia and Africa," he says, "all the

original civilizations were seated in hot countries; the whole of

Peru, proper, being within the southern tropic, the whole of Central

America and Mexico within the northern tropic." The fact is, that

Cuzco, the capital city of the Incas, is in the cordilleras, three

hundred miles from and eleven thousand feet above the sea. For the

latitude the climate is both cold and dry. The valley of Mexico is

warmer and moister, but cannot be called hot and humid. Palenque and

Copan approach nearer Mr Buckle's ideal than Cuzco or Mexico, being

above the tierra caliente proper, and yet in a truly hot and humid

climate.

The Hawaiian Islands,--an isolated group of lava piles, thrown up into

the trade winds on the twentieth parallel, and by these winds deluged

on one side with rain, while the other is left almost dry, with but

little alluvial soil, and that little exceedingly fertile,--at the

time of their discovery by Captain Cook appeared to have made no

inconsiderable advance toward feudalism. Systems of land tenure and

vassalage were in operation, and some works for the public weal had

been constructed. Here were the essentials for a low order of

improvement such as was found there, but which never, in all

probability, would have risen much higher.

Again, Mr Buckle declares that, "owing to the presence of physical

phenomena, the civilization of America was, of necessity, confined to

those parts where alone it was found by the discoverers of the New

World." An apparently safe postulate; but, upon any conceivable

hypothesis, there are very many places as well adapted to development

as those in which it was found. Once more: "The two great conditions

of fertility have not been united in any part of the continent north

of Mexico." When we consider what it is, namely, heat and humidity,

upon which Mr Buckle makes intellectual evolution dependent, and that

not only the Mexican plateau lacked both these essentials, in the full

meaning of the term, but that both are found in many places northward,

as for instance, in some parts of Texas and in Louisiana, a

discrepancy in his theory becomes apparent. "The peculiar

configuration of the land," he continues, "secured a very large amount

of coast, and thus gave to the southern part of North America the

character of an island." An island, yes, but, as M. Guyot terms it, an

"aerial island;" bordered on either side by sea-coast, but by such

sea-coast as formed an almost impassable barrier between the

table-land and the ocean.

"While, therefore," adds Mr Buckle, "the position of Mexico near the

equator gave it heat, the shape of the land gave it humidity; and this

being the only part of North America in which these two conditions

were united it was likewise the only part which was at all civilized.

There can be no doubt, that if the sandy plains of California and

Southern Columbia, instead of being scorched into sterility, had been

irrigated by the rivers of the east, or if the rivers of the east had

been accompanied by the heat of the west, the result of either

combination would have been that exuberance of soil, by which, as the

history of the world decisively proves, every early civilization was

preceded. But inasmuch as, of the two elements of fertility, one was

deficient in every part of America north of the twentieth parallel, it

followed that, until that line was passed, civilization could gain no

resting place; and there never has been found, and we may confidently

assert never will be found, any evidence that even a single ancient

nation, in the whole of that enormous continent, was able to make much

progress in the arts of life, or organize itself into a fixed and

permanent society." This is a broad statement embodying precipitate

deductions from false premises, and one which betrays singular

ignorance of the country and its climate. These same "sandy plains of

California" so far from being "scorched into sterility", are to-day

sending their cereals in every direction--to the east and to the

west--and are capable of feeding all Europe.

[Sidenote: WHY WERE CALIFORNIANS NOT CIVILIZED?]

I have often wondered why California was not the seat of a primitive

civilization; why, upon every converging line the race deteriorates as

this centre is approached; why, with a cool, salubrious seaboard, a

hot and healthful interior, with alternate rainy and dry seasons,

alternate seasons of labor and leisure which encourage producing and

hoarding and which are the primary incentives to accumulation and

wealth, in this hot and cool, moist and dry, and invigorating

atmosphere, with a fertile soil, a climate which in no part of the

year can be called cold or inhospitable, should be found one of the

lowest phases of humanity on the North American continent. The cause

must be sought in periods more remote, in the convulsions of nature

now stilled; in the tumults of nations whose history lies forgotten,

forever buried in the past. Theories never will solve the mystery.

Indeed, there is no reason why the foundations of the Aztec and

Maya-Quiché civilizations may not have been laid north of the

thirty-fifth parallel, although no architectural remains have been

discovered there, nor other proof of such an origin; but upon the

banks of the Gila, the Colorado, and the Rio Grande, in Chihuahua, and

on the hot dry plains of Arizona and New Mexico, far beyond the limits

of Mr Buckle's territory where "there never has been found, and we may

confidently assert never will be found" any evidence of progress, are

to-day walled towns inhabited by an industrial and agricultural

people, whose existence we can trace back for more than three

centuries, besides ruins of massive buildings of whose history nothing

is known.

Thus, that California and many other parts of North America could not

have been the seat of a primitive civilization, cannot be proved upon

the basis of any physical hypothesis; and, indeed, in our attempt to

elucidate the principles of universal progress, where the mysterious

and antagonistic activities of humanity have been fermenting all

unseen for thousands of ages, unknown and unknowable, among peoples of

whom our utmost knowledge can be only such as is derived from a

transient glimpse of a disappearing race, it is with the utmost

difficulty that satisfactory conclusions can in any instance be

reached.

It is in a temperate climate, therefore, that man attains the highest

development. On the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, where the

Mediterranean invites intercourse; in Iran and Armenia, where the

climate is cold enough to stimulate labor, but not so cold as to

require the use of all the energies of body and mind in order to

acquire a bare subsistence; warm enough to make leisure possible, but

not so warm as to enervate and prostrate the faculties; with a soil of

sufficient fertility to yield a surplus and promote the accumulation

of wealth, without producing such a redundancy of vegetation as to be

unmanageable by unskilled, primitive man--there it is that we find the

highest intellectual culture.

It sometimes happens that, in those climates which are too vigorous

for the unfolding of the tender germ, cultivation is stimulated into

greater activity than in its original seats. It sometimes happens

that, when the shell of savagism is once fairly broken, a people may

overcome a domineering vegetation, and flourish in a climate where by

no possibility could their development have originated. Even in the

frozen regions of the north, as in Scandinavia, man, by the intensity

of his nature, was enabled to surmount the difficulties of climate and

attain a fierce, rude cultivation. The regions of Northern Europe and

Northern America, notwithstanding their original opposition to man,

are to-day the most fruitful of all lands in industrial discoveries

and intellectual activities, but in the polar regions, as in the

equatorial, the highest development never can be reached.

The conditions which encourage indigenous civilization are not always

those that encourage permanent development, and vice versa. Thus,

Great Britain in her insulation, remained barbarous long after Greece

and Italy had attained a high degree of cultivation, yet when once the

seed took root, that very insulation acted as a wall of defense,

within which a mighty power germinated and with its influence

overspread the whole earth.

Thus we have seen that a combination of physical conditions is

essential to intellectual development. Without leisure, there can be

no culture, without wealth no leisure, without labor no wealth, and

without a suitable soil and climate no remunerative labor.

Now, throughout the material universe, there is no object or element

which holds its place, whether at rest or in motion, except under

fixed laws; no atom of matter nor subtle mysterious force, no breath

of air, nor cloudy vapor nor streak of light, but in existing obeys a

law. The Almighty fiat: Be fruitful and multiply, fruitful in

increase, intellectual as well as physical, was given alike to all

mankind; seeds of progress were sown broadcast throughout all the

races human; some fell on stony places, others were choked with weeds,

others found good soil. When we see a people in the full enjoyment of

all these physical essentials to progress yet in a state of savagism,

we may be sure that elements detrimental to progress have, at some

period of their history, interposed to prevent natural growth. War,

famine, pestilence, convulsions of nature, have nipped in the bud many

an incipient civilization, whose history lies deep buried in the

unrecorded past.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ASSOCIATION AN ELEMENT OF PROGRESS.]

The obvious necessity of association as a primary condition of

development leaves little to be said on that subject. To the

manifestation of this Soul of Progress a body social is requisite, as

without an individual body there can be no manifestation of an

individual soul. This body social, like the body individual, is

composed of numberless organs, each having its special functions to

perform, each acting on the others, and all under the general

government of the progressional idea. Civilization is not an

individual attribute, and though the atom, man, may be charged with

stored energy, yet progress constitutes no part of individual nature;

it is something that lies between men and not within them; it belongs

to society and not to the individual; man, the molecule of society,

isolate, is inert and forceless. The isolated man, as I have said,

never can become cultivated, never can form a language, does not

possess in its fullness the faculty of abstraction, nor can his mind

enter the realm of higher thought. All those characteristics which

distinguish mankind from animal-kind become almost inoperative.

Without association there is no speech, for speech is but the

conductor of thought between two or more individuals; without words

abstract thought cannot flow, for words, or some other form of

expression, are the channels of thought, and with the absence of words

the fountain of thought is in a measure sealed.

At the very threshold of progress social crystallization sets in;

something there is in every man that draws him to other men. In the

relationship of the sexes, this principle of human attraction reaches

its height, where the husband and wife, as it were, coalesce, like the

union of one drop of water with another, forming one globule. As

unconsciously and as positively are men constrained to band together

into societies as are particles forced to unite and form crystals. And

herein is a law as palpable and as fixed as any law in nature; a law,

which if unfulfilled, would result in the extermination of the race.

But the law of human attraction is not perfect, does not fulfill its

purpose apart from the law of human repulsion, for as we have seen,

until war and despotism and superstition and other dire evils come,

there is no progress. Solitude is insupportable, even beasts will not

live alone; and men are more dependent on each other than beasts.

Solitude carries with it a sense of inferiority and insufficiency; the

faculties are stinted, lacking completeness, whereas volume is added

to every individual faculty by union.

[Sidenote: COÖPERATION AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR.]

But association simply, is not enough; nothing materially great can be

accomplished without union and coöperation. It is only when

aggregations of families intermingle with other aggregations, each

contributing its quota of original knowledge to the other; when the

individual gives up some portion of his individual will and property

for the better protection of other rights and property; when he

entrusts society with the vindication of his rights; when he depends

upon the banded arm of the nation, and not alone upon his own arm for

redress of grievances, that progress is truly made. And with union and

coöperation comes the division of labor by which means each, in some

special department, is enabled to excel. By fixing the mind wholly

upon one thing, by constant repetition and practice, the father hands

down his art to the son, who likewise, improves it for his

descendants. It is only by doing a new thing, or by doing an old thing

better than it has ever been done before, that progress is made. Under

the régime of universal mediocrity the nation does not advance; it is

to the great men,--great in things great or small, that progress is

due; it is to the few who think, to the few who dare to face the

infinite universe of things and step, if need be, outside an old-time

boundary, that the world owes most.

Originally implanted is the germ of intelligence, at the first but

little more than brute instinct. This germ in unfolding undergoes a

double process; it throws off its own intuitions and receives in

return those of another. By an interchange of ideas, the experiences

of one are made known for the benefit of another, the inventions of

one are added to the inventions of another; without intercommunication

of ideas the intellect must lie dormant. Thus it is with individuals,

and with societies it is the same. Acquisitions are eminently

reciprocal. In society, wealth, art, literature, polity, and religion

act and react on each other; in science a fusion of antagonistic

hypotheses is sure to result in important developments. Before much

progress can be made, there must be established a commerce between

nations for the interchange of aggregated human experiences, so that

the arts and industries acquired by each may become the property of

all the rest, and thus knowledge becomes scattered by exchange, in

place of each having to work out every problem for himself. Thus

viewed, civilization is a partnership entered into for mutual

improvement; a joint stock operation, in which the product of every

brain contributes to a general fund for the benefit of all. No one can

add to his own store of knowledge without adding to the general store;

every invention, and discovery, however insignificant, is a

contribution to civilization.

In savagism, union and coöperation are imperfectly displayed. The

warriors of one tribe unite against the warriors of another; a band

will coöperate in pursuing a herd of buffalo; even one nation will

sometimes unite with another nation against a third, but such

combinations are temporary, and no sooner is the particular object

accomplished than the confederation disbands, and every man is again

his own master. The moment two or more persons unite for the

accomplishment of some purpose which shall tend permanently to

meliorate the condition of themselves and others, that moment progress

begins. The wild beasts of the forest, acting in unison, were

physically able to rise up and extirpate primitive man, but could

beasts in reality confederate and do this, such confederation of wild

beasts could become civilized.

[Sidenote: THE SAVAGE HATES CIVILIZATION.]

But why does primitive man desire to abandon his original state and

set out upon an arduous never-ending journey? Why does he wish to

change his mild paternal government, to relinquish his title to lands

as broad as his arm can defend, with all therein contained, the common

property of his people? Why does he wish to give up his wild freedom,

his native independence, and place upon his limbs the fetters of a

social and political despotism? He does not. The savage hates

civilization as he hates his deadliest foe; its choicest benefits he

hates more than the direst ills of his own unfettered life. He is

driven to it; driven to it by extraneous influences, without his

knowledge and against his will; he is driven to it by this Soul of

Progress. It is here that this progressional phenomenon again appears

outside of man and in direct opposition to the will of man; it is here

that the principle of evil again comes in and stirs men up to the

accomplishment of a higher destiny. By it Adam, the first of recorded

savages, was driven from Eden, where otherwise he would have remained

forever, and remained uncivilized. By it our ancestors were impelled

to abandon their simple state, and organize more heterogeneous complex

forms of social life. And it is a problem for each nation to work out

for itself. Millions of money are expended for merely proselyting

purposes, when if the first principles of civilization were well

understood, a more liberal manner of teaching would prevail.

Every civilization has its peculiarities, its idiosyncrasies. Two

individuals attempting the same thing differ in the performance; so

civilization evolving under incidental and extraneous causes takes an

individuality in every instance. This is why civilizations will not

coalesce; this is why the Spaniards could make the Aztecs accept their

civilization only at the point of the sword. Development engendered by

one set of phenomena will not suit the developments of other

circumstances. The government, religion, and customs of one people

will not fit another people any more than the coat of one person will

suit the form of another. Thought runs in different channels; the

happiness of one is not the happiness of another; development springs

from inherent necessity, and one species cannot be engrafted on

another.

* * * * *

Let us now examine the phenomena of government and religion in their

application to the evolution of societies, and we shall better

understand how the wheels of progress are first set in motion,--and by

religion I do not mean creed or credulity, but that natural cultus

inherent in humanity, which is a very different thing. Government is

early felt to be a need of society; the enforcement of laws which

shall bring order out of social chaos; laws which shall restrain the

vicious, protect the innocent, and punish the guilty; which shall act

as a shield to inherent budding morality. But before government, there

must arise some influence which will band men together. An early evil

to which civilization is indebted is war; the propensity of

man--unhappily not yet entirely overcome--for killing his fellow-man.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION.]

The human race has not yet attained that state of homogeneous felicity

which we sometimes imagine; upon the surface, we yet bear many of the

relics of barbarism; under cover of manners, we hide still more. War

is a barbarism which civilization only intensifies, as indeed

civilization intensifies every barbarism which it does not eradicate

or cover up. The right of every individual to act as his own avenger;

trial by combat; justice dependent upon the passion or caprice of the

judge or ruler and not upon fixed law; hereditary feuds and migratory

skirmishes; these and the like are deemed barbarous, while every

nation of the civilized world maintains a standing army, applies all

the arts and inventions of civilization to the science of killing, and

upon sufficient provocation, as a disputed boundary or a fancied

insult, no greater nor more important than that which moved our

savage ancestors to like conduct, falls to, and after a respectable

civilized butchery of fifty or a hundred thousand men, ceases

fighting, and returns, perhaps, to right and reason as a basis for the

settlement of the difficulty. War, like other evils which have proved

instruments of good, should by this time have had its day, should have

served its purpose. Standing armies, whose formation was one of the

first and most important steps in association and partition of labor,

are but the manifestation of a lingering necessity for the use of

brute force in place of moral force in the settlement of national

disputes. Surely, rational beings who retain the most irrational

practices concerning the simplest principles of social life cannot

boast of a very high order of what we are pleased to call

civilization. Morality, commerce, literature, and industry, all that

tends toward elevation of intellect, is directly opposed to the

warlike spirit. As intellectual activity increases, the taste for war

decreases, for an appeal to war in the settlement of difficulties is

an appeal from the intellectual to the physical, from reason to brute

force.

Despotism is an evil, but despotism is as essential to progress as any

good. In some form despotism is an inseparable adjunct of war. An

individual or an idea may be the despot, but without cohesion, without

a strong central power, real or imaginary, there can be no unity, and

without unity no protracted warfare. In the first stages of government

despotism is as essential as in the last it is noxious. It holds

society together when nothing else would hold it, and at a time when

its very existence depends upon its being so held. And not until a

moral inherent strength arises sufficient to burst the fetters of

despotism, is a people fit for a better or milder form of government;

for not until this inherent power is manifest is there sufficient

cohesive force in society to hold it together without being hooped by

some such band as despotism. Besides thus cementing society, war

generates many virtues, such as courage, discipline, obedience,

chivalrous bearing, noble thought; and the virtues of war, as well as

its vices, help to mould national character.

Slavery to the present day has its defenders, and from the first it

has been a preventive of a worse evil,--slaughter. Savages make slaves

of their prisoners of war, and if they do not preserve them for slaves

they kill them. The origin of the word, _servus_, from _servare_, to

preserve, denotes humane thought rather than cruelty. Discipline is

always necessary to development, and slavery is another form of savage

discipline. Then, by systems of slavery, great works were

accomplished, which, in the absence of arts and inventions, would not

have been possible without slavery. And again, in early societies

where leisure is so necessary to mental cultivation and so difficult

to obtain, slavery, by promoting leisure, aids elevation and

refinement. Slaves constitute a distinct class, devoted wholly to

labor, thereby enabling another class to live without labor, or to

labor with the intellect rather than with the hands.

Primordially, society was an aggregation of nomadic families, every

head of a family having equal rights, and every individual such power

and influence as he could acquire and maintain. In all the ordinary

avocations of savage life this was sufficient; there was room for all,

and the widest liberty was possessed by each. And in this happy state

does mankind ever remain until forced out of it. In unity and

coöperation alone can great things be accomplished; but men will not

unite until forced to it. Now in times of war--and with savages war is

the rule and not the exception--some closer union is necessary to

avoid extinction; for other things being equal, the people who are

most firmly united and most strongly ruled are sure to prevail in war.

The idea of unity in order to be effectual must be embodied in a unit;

some one must be made chief, and the others must obey, as in a band of

wild beasts that follow the one most conspicuous for its prowess and

cunning. But the military principle alone would never lay the

foundation of a strong government, for with every cessation from

hostilities there would be a corresponding relaxation of government.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT FORCED UPON MAN.]

Another necessity for government here arises, but which likewise is

not the cause of government, for government springs from force and not

from utility. These men do not want government, they do not want

culture; how then is an arm to be found sufficiently strong to bridle

their wild passions? In reason they are children, in passion men; to

restrain the strong passions of strong non-reasoning men requires a

power; whence is this power to come? It is in the earlier stage of

government that despotism assumes its most intense forms. The more

passionate, and lawless, and cruel the people, the more completely do

they submit to a passionate, lawless, and cruel prince; the more

ungovernable their nature, the more slavish are they in their

submission to government; the stronger the element to be governed, the

stronger must be the government.

The primitive man, whoever or whatever that may be, lives in harmony

with nature; that is, he lives as other animals live, drawing his

supplies immediately from the general storehouse of nature. His food

he plucks from a sheltering tree, or draws from a sparkling stream, or

captures from a prolific forest. The remnants of his capture, unfit

for food, supply his other wants; with the skin he clothes himself,

and with the bones makes implements and points his weapons. In this

there are no antagonisms, no opposing principles of good and evil;

animals are killed not with a view of extermination, but through

necessity, as animals kill animals in order to supply actual wants.

But no sooner does the leaven of progress begin to work than war is

declared between man and nature. To make room for denser populations

and increasing comforts, forests must be hewn down, their primeval

inhabitants extirpated or domesticated, and the soil laid under more

direct contribution. Union and coöperation spring up for purposes of

protection and aggression, for the accomplishment of purposes beyond

the capacity of the individual. Gradually manufactures and commerce

increase; the products of one body of laborers are exchanged for the

products of another, and thus the aggregate comforts produced are

doubled to each. Absolute power is taken from the hands of the many

and placed in the hands of one, who becomes the representative power

of all. Men are no longer dependent upon the chase for a daily supply

of food; even agriculture no longer is a necessity which each must

follow for himself, for the intellectual products of one person or

people may be exchanged for the agricultural products of another. With

these changes of occupation new institutions spring up, new ideas

originate, and new habits are formed. Human life ceases to be a purely

material existence; another element finds exercise, the other part of

man is permitted to grow. The energies of society now assume a

different shape; hitherto the daily struggle was for daily

necessities, now the accumulation of wealth constitutes the chief

incentive to labor. Wealth becomes a power and absorbs all other

powers. The possessor of unlimited wealth commands the products of

every other man's labor.

But in time, and to a certain extent, a class arises already possessed

of wealth sufficient to satisfy even the demands of avarice, and

something still better, some greater good is yet sought for.

Money-getting gives way before intellectual cravings. The self-denials

and labor necessary to the acquisition of wealth are abandoned for the

enjoyment of wealth already acquired and the acquisition of a yet

higher good. Sensual pleasure yields in a measure to intellectual

pleasure, the acquisition of money to the acquisition of learning.

Where brute intelligence is the order of the day, man requires no more

governing than brutes, but when lands are divided, and the soil

cultivated, when wealth begins to accumulate and commerce and industry

to flourish, then protection and lawful punishment become necessary.

Like the wild horse, leave him free, and he will take care of himself;

but catch him and curb him, and the wilder and stronger he is the

stronger must be the curb until he is subdued and trained, and then he

is guided by a light rein. The kind of government makes little

difference so that it be strong enough.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE SUPERNATURAL IN CIVILIZATION.]

Granted that it is absolutely essential to the first step toward

culture that society should be strongly governed, how is the first

government to be accomplished; how is one member of a passionate,

unbridled heterogeneous community to obtain dominion absolute over all

the others? Here comes in another evil to the assistance of the former

evils, all for future good,--Superstition. Never could physical force

alone compress and hold the necessary power with which to burst the

shell of savagism. The government is but a reflex of the governed. Not

until one man is physically or intellectually stronger than ten

thousand, will an independent people submit to a tyrannical

government, or a humane people submit to a cruel government, or a

people accustomed to free discussion to an intolerant priesthood.

At the outset, if man is to be governed at all, there must be no

division of governmental force. The cause for fear arising from both

the physical and the supernatural must be united in one individual. In

the absence of the moral sentiment the fear of legal and that of

spiritual punishments are identical, for the spiritual is feared only

as it works temporal or corporal evil. Freedom of thought at this

stage is incompatible with progress, for thought without experience is

dangerous, tending towards anarchy. Before men can govern themselves

they must be subjected to the sternest discipline of government, and

whether this government be just or humane or pleasant is of small

consequence so that it be only strong enough. As with polity so with

morality and religion; conjointly with despotism there must be an

arbitrary central church government, or moral anarchy is the

inevitable consequence. At the outset it is not for man to rule but to

obey; it is not for savages, who are children in intellect to think

and reason, but to believe.

And thus we see how wonderfully man is provided with the essentials of

growth. This tender germ of progress is preserved in hard shells and

prickly coverings, which, when they have served their purpose are

thrown aside as not only useless but detrimental to further

development. We know not what will come hereafter, but up to the

present time a state of bondage appears to be the normal state of

humanity; bondage, at first severe and irrational, then ever

loosening, and expanding into a broader freedom. As mankind

progresses, moral anarchy no more follows freedom of thought than does

political anarchy follow freedom of action. In Germany, in England, in

America, wherever secular power has in any measure cut loose from

ecclesiastical power and thrown religion back upon public sentiment

for support, a moral as well as an intellectual advance has always

followed. What the mild and persuasive teachings and lax discipline of

the present epoch would have been to the Christians of the fourteenth

century, the free and lax government of republican America would have

been to republican Rome. Therefore, let us learn to look charitably

upon the institutions of the past, and not forget how much we owe to

them; while we rejoice at our release from the cruelty and ignorance

of mediæval times, let us not forget the debt which civilization owes

to the rigorous teachings of both Church and State.

[Sidenote: MORALITY AND CREED.]

Christianity, by its exalted un-utilitarian morality and philanthropy,

has greatly aided civilization. Indeed so marked has been the effect

in Europe, so great the contrast between Christianity and Islamism and

the polytheistic creeds in general, that Churchmen claim civilization

as the offspring of their religion. But religion and morality must not

be confounded with civilization. All these and many other activities

act and react on each other as proximate principles in the social

organism, but they do not, any or all of them, constitute the life of

the organism. Long before morality is religion, and long after

morality religion sends the pious penitent to his knees. Religious

culture is a great assistant to moral culture as intellectual training

promotes the industrial arts, but morality is no more religion than is

industry intellect. When Christianity, as in the early settlement of

Mexico and Central America, falls into the hands of unprincipled

adventurers or blind zealots who stand up in deadly antagonism to

liberty, then Christianity is a drag upon civilization; and therefore

we may conclude that in so far as Christianity grafts on its code of

pure morality the principle of intellectual freedom, in so far is

civilization promoted by Christianity, but when Christianity engenders

persecution, civilization is retarded thereby.

Then Protestantism sets up a claim to the authorship of civilization,

points to Spain and then to England, compares Italy and Switzerland,

Catholic America and Puritan America, declares that the intellect can

never attain superiority while under the dominion of the Church of

Rome; in other words, that civilization is Protestantism. It is true

that protestation against irrational dogmas, or any other action that

tends toward the emancipation of the intellect, is a great step in

advance; but religious belief has nothing whatever to do with

intellectual culture. Religion from its very nature is beyond the

limits of reason; it is emotional rather than intellectual, an

instinct and not an acquisition. Between reason and religion lies a

domain of common ground upon which both may meet and join hands, but

beyond the boundaries of which neither may pass. The moment the

intellect attempts to penetrate the domain of the Supernatural all

intellectuality vanishes, and emotion and imagination fill its place.

There can be no real conflict between the two, for neither, by any

possibility, can pass this neutral ground. Before the mind can receive

Christianity, or Mahometanism, or any other creed, it must be ready to

accept dogmas in the analysis of which human reason is powerless.

Among the most brilliant intellects are found Protestants, Romanists,

Unitarians, Deists, and Atheists; judging from the experiences of

mankind in ages past, creeds and formulas, orthodoxy and heterodoxy,

have no inherent power to advance or retard the intellect. Some claim,

indeed, that strong doctrinal bias stifles thought, fosters

superstition, and fetters the intellect; still religious thought, in

some form, is inseparable from the human mind, and it would be very

difficult to prove that belief is more debasing than non-belief.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: DEVELOPMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL.]

Religion at first is a gross fetichism, which endows every wonder with

a concrete personality. Within every appearance is a several personal

cause, and to embody this personal cause in some material form is the

first effort of the savage mind. Hence, images are made in

representation of these imaginary supernatural powers. Man, of

necessity, must clothe these supernatural powers in the elements of

some lower form. The imagination cannot grasp an object or an idea

beyond the realms of human experience. Unheard-of combinations of

character may be made, but the constituent parts must, at some time

and in some form, have had an existence in order to be conceivable. It

is impossible for the human mind to array in forms of thought anything

wholly and absolutely new. This state is the farthest remove possible

from a recognition of those universal laws of causation toward which

every department of knowledge is now so rapidly tending. Gods are made

in the likeness of man and beast, endowed with earthly passions, and a

sensual polytheism, in which blind fate is a prominent element,

becomes the religious ideal. Religious conceptions are essentially

material; all punishments and rewards are such as effect man as a

material being; morality, the innate sense of right and wrong, lies

stifled, almost dormant.

Thrown wholly upon himself, without experience to guide him, the

savage must, of necessity, invest nature with his own qualities, for

his mind can grasp none other. But when experience dispels the nearer

illusions, objects more remote are made gods; in the sun and stars he

sees his controlling destinies; the number of his gods is lessened

until at last all merge into one God, the author of all law, the great

and only ruler of the universe. In every mythology we see this

impersonation of natural phenomena; frost and fire, earth and air and

water, in their displays of mysterious powers, are at once deified and

humanized. These embodiments of physical force are then naturally

formed into families, and their supposed descendants worshiped as

children of the gods. Thus, in the childhood of society, when

incipient thought takes up its lodgment in old men's brains, shadows

of departed heroes mingle with shadows of mysterious nature, and

admiration turns to adoration.

Next arises the desire to propitiate these unseen powers, to

accomplish which some means of communication must be opened up between

man and his deities. Now, as man in his gods reproduces himself, as

all his conceptions of supernatural power must, of necessity, be

formed on the skeleton of human power, naturally it follows that the

strongest and most cunning of the tribe, he upon whom leadership most

naturally falls, comes to be regarded as specially favored of the

gods. Powers supernatural are joined to powers temporal, and embodied

in the chieftain of the nation. A grateful posterity reveres and

propitiates departed ancestors. The earlier rulers are made gods, and

their descendants lesser divinities; the founder of a dynasty,

perhaps, the supreme god, his progeny subordinate deities. The

priesthood and kingship thus become united; religion and civil

government join forces to press mankind together, and the loose sands

of the new strata cohere into the firm rock, that shall one day bear

alone the wash of time and tide.

Hence arise divine kingship, and the divine right of kings, and with

the desire to win the favor of this divine king, arise the courtesies

of society, the first step toward polish of manners. Titles of respect

and worship are given him, some of which are subsequently applied to

the Deity, while others drop down into the common-place compliments of

every-day life.

Here then, we have as one of the first essentials of progress the

union of Church and State, of superstition and despotism, a union

still necessarily kept up in some of the more backward civilizations.

Excessive loyalty and blind faith ever march hand in hand. The very

basis of association is credulity, blind loyalty to political powers

and blind faith in sacerdotal terrors. In all mythologies at some

stage temporal and spiritual government are united, the supernatural

power being incarnated in the temporal chief; political despotism and

an awful sanguinary religion,--a government and a belief, to disobey

which was never so much as thought possible.

See how every one of these primary essentials of civilization becomes,

as man advances, a drag upon his progress; see how he now struggles to

free himself from what, at the outset, he was led by ways he knew not

to endure so patiently. Government, in early stages always strong and

despotic, whether monarchical, oligarchical, or republican, holding

mankind under the dominion of caste, placing restrictions upon

commerce and manufactures, regulating social customs, food,

dress,--how men have fought to break loose these bonds! Religion, not

that natural cultus instinctive in humanity, the bond of union as well

under its most disgusting form of fetichism, as under its latest,

loveliest form of Christianity; but those forms and dogmas of sect and

creed which stifle thought and fetter intellect,--how men have lived

lives of sacrifice and self-denial as well as died for the right to

free themselves from unwelcome belief!

[Sidenote: RELATION OF GOVERNMENT TO CIVILIZATION.]

In primeval ages, government and religion lay lightly on the human

race; ethnology, as well as history, discloses the patriarchal as the

earliest form of government, and a rude materialism as the earliest

religious ideal; these two simple elements, under the form of

monsters, became huge abortions, begotten of ignorance, that held the

intellect in abject slavery for thousands of years, and from these we,

of this generation, more than any other, are granted emancipation.

Even wealth, kind giver of grateful leisure, in the guise of avarice

becomes a hideous thing, which he who would attain the higher

intellectual life, must learn to despise.

* * * * *

Government, as we have seen, is not an essential element of collective

humanity. Civilization must first be awakened, must even have passed

the primary stages before government appears. Despotism, feudalism,

divine kingship, slavery, war, superstition, each marks certain stages

of development, and as civilization advances all tend to disappear;

and, as in the early history of nations the state antedates the

government, so the time may come in the progress of mankind when

government will be no longer necessary. Government always grows out of

necessity; the intensity of government inevitably following necessity.

The form of government is a natural selection; its several phases

always the survival of the fittest. When the federalist says to the

monarchist, or the monarchist to the federalist: My government is

better than yours, it is as if the Eskimo said to the Kaffir: My coat,

my house, my food, is better than yours.

The government is made for the man, and not the man for the

government. Government is as the prop for the growing plant; at first

the young shoot stands alone, then in its rapid advancement for a time

it requires support, after which it is able again to stand alone.

What we term the evils of government are rather its necessities, and

are, indeed, no evils at all. The heavy bit which controls the mouth

of an untamed horse is to that horse an evil, yet to the driver a

necessity which may be laid aside as the temper of the animal is

subdued. So despotism, feudalism, slavery, are evils to those under

their dominion, yet are they as necessary for the prevention of

anarchy, for the restraint of unbridled passions, as the powerful bit

to the horse, and will as surely be laid aside when no longer

required. Shallow-minded politicians talk of kingcraft, arbitrary

rule, tyrants, the down-trodden masses, the withholding of just

rights; as though the government was some independent, adverse

element, wholly foreign to the character of the people; as though one

man was stronger than ten thousand; as though, if these phases of

society were not the fittest, they would be tolerated for a moment.

The days of rigorous rule were ever the best days of France and Spain,

and so it will be until the people become stronger than the strength

of rulers. Republicanism is as unfit for stupid and unintellectual

populations, as despotism would be for the advanced ideas and liberal

institutions of Anglo-Saxon America. The subject of a liberal rule

sneeringly crying down to the subject of an absolute rule his form of

government, is like the ass crying to the tiger: Leave blood and meat;

feed on grass and thistles, the only diet fit for civilized beasts!

Our federal government is the very best for our people, when it is not

so it will speedily change; it fits the temper of American

intelligence, but before it can be planted in Japan or China the

traditions and temper of the Asiatics must change.

We of to-day are undergoing an important epoch in the history of

civilization. Feudalism, despotism, and fanaticism have had each its

day, have each accomplished its necessary purpose, and are fast fading

away. Ours is the age of democracy, of scientific investigation, and

freedom of religious thought; what these may accomplish for the

advancing intellect remains to be seen. Our ancestors loved to dwell

upon the past, now we all look toward the future.

[Sidenote: LATTER-DAY PROGRESSION.]

The sea of ice, over which our forefathers glided so serenely in their

trustful reliance, is breaking up. One after another traditions

evaporate; in their application to proximate events they fail us,

history ceases to repeat itself as in times past. Old things are

passing away, all things are becoming new; new philosophies, new

religions, new sciences; the industrial spirit springs up and

overturns time-honored customs; theories of government must be

reconstructed. Thus, says experience, republicanism, as a form of

government, can exist only in small states; but steam and electricity

step in and annihilate time and space. The Roman republic, from a lack

of cohesive energy, from failure of central vital power sufficient to

send the blood of the nation from the heart to the extremities, died a

natural death. The American republic, covering nearly twice the

territory of republican Rome in her palmiest days, is endowed with a

different species of organism; in its physiological system is found a

new series of veins and arteries, the railway, the telegraph, and the

daily press,--through which pulsates the life's blood of the nation,

millions inhaling and exhaling intelligence as one man. By means of

these inventions all the world, once every day, are brought together.

By telegraphic wires and railroad iron men are now bound as in times

past they were bound by war, despotism, and superstition. The remotest

corners of the largest republics of to-day, are brought into closer

communication than were the adjoining states of the smallest

confederations of antiquity. A united Germany, from its past history

held to be an impossibility, is, with the present facilities of

communication, an accomplished fact. England could as easily have

possessed colonies in the moon, as have held her present possessions,

three hundred years ago. Practically, San Francisco is nearer

Washington than was Philadelphia when the foundations of the Capitol

were laid. What is to prevent republics from growing, so long as

intelligence keeps pace with extension? The general of an army may now

sit before his maps, and manoeuvre half a score of armies a hundred

or a thousand miles apart, know hourly the situation of every

division, the success of every battle, order an advance or a retreat,

lay plots and make combinations, with more exactness than was once

possible in the conduct of an ordinary campaign.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: MORALS, MANNERS, AND FASHION.]

A few words about morals, manners, and fashion, will further

illustrate how man is played upon by his environment, which here takes

the shape of habit. In their bearing on civilization, these phenomena

all come under the same category; and this, without regard to the

rival theories of intuition and utility in morals. Experience teaches,

blindly at first yet daily with clearer vision, that right conduct is

beneficial, and wrong conduct detrimental; that the consequences of

sin invariably rest on the evil-doer; that for an unjust act, though

the knowledge of it be forever locked in the bosom of the offender,

punishment is sure to follow; yet there are those who question the

existence of innate moral perceptions, and call it all custom and

training. And if we look alone to primitive people for innate ideas of

morality and justice I fear we shall meet with disappointment. Some we

find who value female chastity only before marriage, others only after

marriage,--that is, after the woman and her chastity both alike become

the tangible property of somebody. Some kindly kill their aged

parents, others their female infants; the successful Apache

horse-thief is the darling of his mother, and the hero of the tribe;

often these American Arabs will remain from home half-starved for

weeks, rather than suffer the ignominy of returning empty-handed.

Good, in the mind of the savage, is when he steals wives; bad, is when

his own wives are stolen. Where it is that inherent morality in

savages first makes its appearance, and in what manner, it is often

difficult to say; the most hideous vices are everywhere practiced with

unblushing effrontery.

Take the phenomena of Shame. Go back to the childhood of our race, or

even to our own childhood, and it will be hard to discover any

inherent quality which make men ashamed of one thing more than

another. Nor can the wisest of us give any good and sufficient reason

why we should be ashamed of our body any more than of our face. The

whole man was fashioned by one Creator, and all parts equally are

perfect and alike honorable. We cover our person with drapery, and

think thereby to hide our faults from ourselves and others, as the

ostrich hides its head under a leaf, and fancies its body concealed

from the hunter. What is this quality of shame if it be not habit? A

female savage will stand unblushingly before you naked, but strip her

of her ornaments and she will manifest the same appearance of shame,

though not perhaps so great in degree, that a European woman will

manifest if stripped of her clothes. It is well known how civilized

and semi-civilized nations regard this quality of propriety. Custom,

conventional usage, dress and behavior, are influences as subtle and

as strong as any that govern us, weaving their net-work round man more

and more as he throws off allegiance to other powers; and we know but

little more of their origin and nature than we do of the origin and

nature of time and space, of life and death, of origin and end.

Every age and every society has its own standard of morality, holds up

some certain conduct or quality as a model, saying to all, Do this,

and receive the much-coveted praise of your fellows. Often what one

people deem virtue is to another vice; what to one age is religion is

to another superstition; but underlying all this are living fires,

kindled by Omnipotence, and destined to burn throughout all time. In

the Spartan and Roman republics the moral ideal was patriotism; among

mediæval Churchmen it took the form of asceticism; after the elevation

of woman the central idea was female chastity.

In this national morality, which is the cohesive force of the body

social, we find the fundamental principle of the progressional

impulse, and herein is the most hopeful feature of humanity; mankind

must progress, and progress in the right direction. There is no help

for it until God changes the universal order of things; man must

become better in spite of himself; it is the good in us that grows and

ultimately prevails.

As a race we are yet in our nonage; fearful of the freedom given us by

progress we cling tenaciously to our leading-strings; hugging our

mother, Custom, we refuse to be left alone. Liberty and high

attainments must be meted out to us as we are able to receive them,

for social retchings and vomitings inevitably follow over-feedings.

Hence it is, that we find ourselves escaped from primeval and mediæval

tyrannies only to fall under greater ones; society is none the less

inexorable in her despotisms because of the sophistry which gives her

victims fancied freedom. For do we not now set up forms and fashions,

the works of our own hands, and bow down to them as reverently as ever

our heathen ancestors did to their gods of wood and stone? Who made

us? is not the first question of our catechism, but What will people

say?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF DRESS.]

Of all tyrannies, the tyranny of fashion is the most implacable; of

all slaveries the slavery to fashion is the most abject; of all fears

the fear of our fellows is the most overwhelming; of all the

influences that surround and govern man the forms and customs which he

encounters in society are the most domineering. It is the old story,

only another turn of the wheel that grinds and sharpens and polishes

humanity,--at the first a benefit, now a drag. Forms and fashions are

essential; we cannot live without them. If we have worship,

government, commerce, or clothes, we must have forms; or if we have

them not we still must act and do after some fashion; costume, which

is but another word for custom, we must have, but is it necessary to

make the form the chief concern of our lives while we pay so little

heed to the substance? and may we not hope while rejoicing over our

past emancipations, that we shall some day be free from our present

despotisms?

Dress has ever exercised a powerful influence on morals and on

progress; but this vesture-phenomenon is a thing but imperfectly

understood. Clothes serve as a covering to the body of which we are

ashamed, and protect it against the weather, and these, we infer, are

the reasons of our being clothed. But the fact is, aboriginally,

except in extreme cases, dress is not essential to the comfort of man

until it becomes a habit, and as for shame, until told of his

nakedness, the primitive man has none. The origin of dress lies behind

all this; it is found in one of the most deep-rooted elements of our

nature, namely, in our love of approbation. Before dress is

decoration. The successful warrior, proud of his achievement, besmears

his face and body with the blood of the slain, and straightway

imitators, who also would be thought strong and brave, daub themselves

in like manner; and so painting and tattooing become fashionable, and

pigments supply the place of blood. The naked, houseless Californian

would undergo every hardship, travel a hundred miles, and fight a

round with every opposing band he met, in order to obtain cinnabar

from the New Almaden quicksilver mine. So when the hunter kills a wild

beast, and with the tail or skin decorates his body as a trophy of his

prowess, others follow his example, and soon it is a shame to that

savage who has neither paint, nor belt, nor necklace of bears' claws.

And so follow head-flattenings, and nose-piercings, and lip-cuttings,

and, later, chignons, and breast-paddings, and bustles. Some say that

jealousy prompted the first Benedicks to hide their wives' charms

from their rivals, and so originated female dress, which, from its

being so common to all aborigines, is usually regarded as the result

of innate modesty. But whatever gave us dress, dress has given much to

human progress. Beneath dress arose modesty and refinement, like the

courtesies that chivalry threw over feudalism, covering the coarse

brutality of the barons, and paving the way to real politeness.

[Sidenote: ETIQUETTE, MORALITY, LAWS.]

From the artificial grimaces of fashion have sprung many of the

natural courtesies of life; though here, too, we are sent back at once

to the beginning for the cause. From the ages of superstition and

despotism have descended the expressions of every-day politeness. Thus

we have sir, from _sieur_, _sire_, _seigneur_, signifying ruler, king,

lord, and aboriginally father. So madam, _ma dame_, my lady, formerly

applied only to women of rank. In place of throwing ourselves upon the

ground, as before a god or prince, we only partially prostrate

ourselves in bowing, and the hat which we touch to an acquaintance we

take off on entering a church in token of our humility. Again, the

captive in war is made a slave, and as such is required to do

obeisance to his master, which forms of servility are copied by the

people in addressing their superiors, and finally become the

established usage of ordinary intercourse. Our daily salutations are

but modified acts of worship, and our parting word a benediction; and

from blood, tomahawks, and senseless superstitions we turn and find

all the world of humanity, with its still strong passions and subtle

cravings, held in restraint by a force of which its victims are almost

wholly unconscious,--and this force is Fashion. In tribunals of

justice, in court and camp etiquette, everywhere these relics of

barbarism remain with us. Even we of this latter-day American

republicanism, elevate one of our fellows to the chieftainship of a

federation or state, and call him Excellency; we set a man upon the

bench and _plead_ our cause before him; we send a loafer to a

legislature, and straightway call him Honorable,--such divinity doth

hedge all semblance of power.

Self-denial and abstinence lie at the bottom of etiquette and good

manners. If you would be moral, says Kant, you must "act always so

that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for

all intelligent beings," and Goethe teaches that "there is no outward

sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep, moral foundation."

Fine manners, though but the shell of the individual, are, to society,

the best actions of the best men crystallized into a mode; not only

the best thing, but the best way of doing the best thing. Good society

is, or ought to be, the society of the good; but fashion is more than

good society, or good actions; it is more than wealth, or beauty, or

genius, and so arbitrary in its sway that, not unfrequently, the form

absorbs the substance, and a breach of decorum becomes a deadly sin.

Thus we see in every phase of development the result of a social

evolution; we see men coming and going, receiving their leaven from

the society into which by their destiny they are projected, only to

fling it back into the general fund interpenetrated with their own

quota of force. Meanwhile, this aggregation of human experiences, this

compounding of age with age, one generation heaping up knowledge upon

another; this begetting of knowledge by knowledge, the seed so

infinitesimal, the tree now so rapidly sending forth its branches,

whither does it tend? Running the eye along the line of progress, from

the beginning to the end, the measure of our knowledge seems nearly

full; resolving the matter, experience assures us that, as compared

with those who shall come after us, we are the veriest barbarians. The

end is not yet; not until infinity is spanned and eternity brought to

an end, will mankind cease to improve.

* * * * *

Out of this conglomeration of interminable relationships concordant

and antagonistic laws are ever evolving themselves. Like all other

progressional phenomena, they wait not upon man; they are

self-creative, and force themselves upon the mind age after age,

slowly but surely, as the intellect is able to receive them; laws

without law, laws unto themselves, gradually appearing as from behind

the mists of eternity. At first, man and his universe appear to be

regulated by arbitrary volitions, by a multitude of individual minds;

each governs absolutely his own actions; every phenomenon of nature is

but the expression of some single will. As these phenomena, one after

another, become stripped of their mystery, there stands revealed not a

god, but a law; seasons come and go, and never fail; sunshine follows

rain, not because a pacified deity smiles, but because the rain-clouds

have fallen and the sun cannot help shining. Proximate events first

are thus made godless, then the whole host of deities is driven

farther and farther back. Finally the actions of man himself are found

to be subject to laws. Left to his own will, he wills to do like

things under like conditions.

As to the nature of these laws, the subtle workings of which we see

manifest in every phase of society, I cannot even so much as speak. An

infinite ocean of phenomena awaits the inquirer; an ocean bottomless,

over whose surface spreads an eternity of progress, and beneath whose

glittering waves the keenest intellect can scarcely hope to penetrate

far. The universe of man and matter must be anatomized; the functions

of innumerable and complex organs studied; the exercise and influence

of every part on every other part ascertained, and events apparently

the most capricious traced to natural causes; then, when we know all,

when we know as God knoweth, shall we understand what it is, this Soul

of Progress.