All this is so common as to excite no remark, as to seem the natural

state of things. Yet it is no more natural that men should not be

greedy of food than that they should not be greedy of wealth. They

_are_ greedy of food when they are not assured that there will be a

fair and equitable distribution which will give each enough. But when

these conditions are assured, they cease to be greedy of food. And so

in society, as at present constituted, men are greedy of wealth because

the conditions of distribution are so unjust that instead of each

being sure of enough, many are certain to be condemned to want. It

is the “devil catch the hindmost” of present social adjustments that

causes the race and scramble for wealth, in which all considerations

of justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are trampled under foot; in

which men forget their own souls, and struggle to the very verge of the

grave for what they cannot take beyond. But an equitable distribution

of wealth, that would exempt all from the fear of want, would destroy

the greed of wealth, just as in polite society the greed of food has

been destroyed.

On the crowded steamers of the early California lines there was often

a marked difference between the manners of the steerage and the cabin,

which illustrates this principle of human nature. An abundance of food

was provided for the steerage as for the cabin, but in the former

there were no regulations which insured efficient service, and the

meals became a scramble. In the cabin, on the contrary, where each was

allotted his place and there was no fear that every one would not get

enough, there was no such scrambling and waste as were witnessed in the

steerage. The difference was not in the character of the people, but

simply in this fact. The cabin passenger transferred to the steerage

would participate in the greedy rush, and the steerage passenger

transferred to the cabin would at once become decorous and polite.

The same difference would show itself in society in general were the

present unjust distribution of wealth replaced by a just distribution.

Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and refined society, in

which all the coarser passions are held in check, not by force, not

by law, but by common opinion and the mutual desire of pleasing. If

this is possible for a part of a community, it is possible for a whole

community. There are states of society in which every one has to go

armed—in which every one has to hold himself in readiness to defend

person and property with the strong hand. If we have progressed beyond

that, we may progress still further.

But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of want, would be to

destroy the stimulus to exertion; men would become simply idlers, and

such a happy state of general comfort and content would be the death

of progress. This is the old slaveholders’ argument, that men can be

driven to labor only with the lash. Nothing is more untrue.

Want might be banished, but desire would remain. Man is the unsatisfied

animal. He has but begun to explore, and the universe lies before him.

Each step that he takes opens new vistas and kindles new desires. He is

the constructive animal; he builds, he improves, he invents, and puts

together, and the greater the thing he does, the greater the thing he

wants to do. He is more than an animal. Whatever be the intelligence

that breathes through nature, it is in that likeness that man is made.

The steamship, driven by her throbbing engines through the sea, is in

kind, though not in degree, as much a creation as the whale that swims

beneath. The telescope and the microscope, what are they but added

eyes, which man has made for himself; the soft webs and fair colors in

which our women array themselves, do they not answer to the plumage

that nature gives the bird? Man must be doing something, or fancy that

he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere

basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.

As soon as a child can command its muscles, it will begin to make mud

pies or dress a doll; its play is but the imitation of the work of its

elders; its very destructiveness arises from the desire to be doing

something, from the satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish something.

There is no such thing as the pursuit of pleasure for the sake of

pleasure. Our very amusements amuse only as they are, or simulate, the

learning or the doing of something. The moment they cease to appeal

either to our inquisitive or to our constructive powers, they cease to

amuse. It will spoil the interest of the novel reader to be told just

how the story will end; it is only the chance and the skill involved in

the game that enable the card-player to “kill time” by shuffling bits

of pasteboard. The luxurious frivolities of Versailles were possible to

human beings only because the king thought he was governing a kingdom

and the courtiers were in pursuit of fresh honors and new pensions.

People who lead what are called lives of fashion and pleasure must have

some other object in view, or they would die of _ennui_; they support

it only because they imagine that they are gaining position, making

friends, or improving the chances of their children. Shut a man up, and

deny him employment, and he must either die or go mad.

It is not labor in itself that is repugnant to man; it is not the

natural necessity for exertion which is a curse. It is only labor which

produces nothing—exertion of which he cannot see the results. To toil

day after day, and yet get but the necessaries of life, this is indeed

hard; it is like the infernal punishment of compelling a man to pump

lest he be drowned, or to trudge on a treadmill lest he be crushed.

But, released from this necessity, men would but work the harder and

the better, for then they would work as their inclinations led them;

then would they seem to be really doing something for themselves or

for others. Was Humboldt’s life an idle one? Did Franklin find no

occupation when he retired from the printing business with enough to

live on? Is Herbert Spencer a laggard? Did Michael Angelo paint for

board and clothes?

The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind,

the work which extends knowledge and increases power, and enriches

literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is

not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a

master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it

for its own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or

wear, or display. In a state of society where want was abolished, work

of this sort would be enormously increased.

I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating rent in the

manner I have proposed would be to cause the organization of labor,

wherever large capitals were used, to assume the co-operative form,

since the more equal diffusion of wealth would unite capitalist and

laborer in the same person. But whether this would be so or not is of

little moment. The hard toil of routine labor would disappear. Wages

would be too high and opportunities too great to compel any man to

stint and starve the higher qualities of his nature, and in every

avocation the brain would aid the hand. Work, even of the coarser

kinds, would become a lightsome thing, and the tendency of modern

production to subdivision would not involve monotony or the contraction

of ability in the worker; but would be relieved by short hours, by

change, by the alternation of intellectual with manual occupations.

There would result, not only the utilization of productive forces

now going to waste; not only would our present knowledge, now so

imperfectly applied, be fully used; but from the mobility of labor

and the mental activity which would be generated, there would result

advances in the methods of production that we now cannot imagine.

For, greatest of all the enormous wastes which the present constitution

of society involves, is that of mental power. How infinitesimal are the

forces that concur to the advance of civilization, as compared to the

forces that lie latent! How few are the thinkers, the discoverers,

the inventors, the organizers, as compared with the great mass of the

people! Yet such men are born in plenty; it is the conditions that

permit so few to develop. There are among men infinite diversities of

aptitude and inclination, as there are such infinite diversities in

physical structure that among a million there will not be two that

cannot be told apart. But, both from observation and reflection, I

am inclined to think that the differences of natural power are no

greater than the differences of stature or of physical strength. Turn

to the lives of great men, and see how easily they might never have

been heard of. Had Cæsar come of a proletarian family; had Napoleon

entered the world a few years earlier; had Columbus gone into the

Church instead of going to sea; had Shakespeare been apprenticed to a

cobbler or chimney-sweep; had Sir Isaac Newton been assigned by fate

the education and the toil of an agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam

Smith been born in the coal hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get his

living as a factory operative, what would their talents have availed?

But there would have been, it will be said, other Cæsars or Napoleons,

Columbuses or Shakespeares, Newtons, Smiths or Spencers. This is true.

And it shows how prolific is our human nature. As the common worker is

on need transformed into queen bee, so, when circumstances favor his

development, what might otherwise pass for a common man rises into a

hero or leader, discoverer or teacher, sage or saint. So widely has the

sower scattered the seed, so strong is the germinative force that bids

it bud and blossom. But, alas, for the stony ground, and the birds and

the tares! For one who attains his full stature, how many are stunted

and deformed.

The will within us is the ultimate fact of consciousness. Yet how

little have the best of us, in acquirements, in position, even in

character, that may be credited entirely to ourselves; how much to the

influences that have molded us. Who is there, wise, learned, discreet,

or strong, who might not, were he to trace the inner history of his

life, turn, like the Stoic Emperor, to give thanks to the gods, that by

this one and that one, and here and there, good examples have been set

him, noble thoughts have reached him, and happy opportunities opened

before him. Who is there, who, with his eyes about him, has reached

the meridian of life, who has not sometimes echoed the thought of the

pious Englishman, as the criminal passed to the gallows, “But for the

grace of God, there go I.” How little does heredity count as compared

with conditions. This one, we say, is the result of a thousand years

of European progress, and that one of a thousand years of Chinese

petrifaction; yet, placed an infant in the heart of China, and but for

the angle of the eye or the shade of the hair, the Caucasian would

grow up as those around him, using the same speech, thinking the same

thoughts, exhibiting the same tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her

cradle with an infant of the slums, and will the blood of a hundred

earls give you a refined and cultured woman?

To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all classes leisure,

and comfort, and independence, the decencies and refinements of life,

the opportunities of mental and moral development, would be like

turning water into a desert. The sterile waste would clothe itself

with verdure, and the barren places where life seemed banned would ere

long be dappled with the shade of trees and musical with the song of

birds. Talents now hidden, virtues unsuspected, would come forth to

make human life richer, fuller, happier, nobler. For in these round men

who are stuck into three-cornered holes, and three-cornered men who are

jammed into round holes; in these men who are wasting their energies

in the scramble to be rich; in these who in factories are turned into

machines, or are chained by necessity to bench or plow; in these

children who are growing up in squalor, and vice, and ignorance, are

powers of the highest order, talents the most splendid. They need but

the opportunity to bring them forth.

Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave that

opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the picture; its colors

grow too bright for words to paint. Consider the moral elevation, the

intellectual activity, the social life. Consider how by a thousand

actions and interactions the members of every community are linked

together, and how in the present condition of things even the fortunate

few who stand upon the apex of the social pyramid must suffer, though

they know it not, from the want, ignorance, and degradation that are

underneath. Consider these things and then say whether the change I

propose would not be for the benefit of every one—even the greatest

land holder? Would he not be safer of the future of his children in

leaving them penniless in such a state of society than in leaving them

the largest fortune in this? Did such a state of society anywhere

exist, would he not buy entrance to it cheaply by giving up all his

possessions?

I have now traced to their source social weakness and disease. I have

shown the remedy. I have covered every point and met every objection.

But the problems that we have been considering, great as they are, pass

into problems greater yet—into the grandest problems with which the

human mind can grapple. I am about to ask the reader who has gone with

me so far, to go with me further, into still higher fields. But I ask

him to remember that in the little space which remains of the limits to

which this book must be confined, I cannot fully treat the questions

which arise. I can but suggest some thoughts, which may, perhaps, serve

as hints for further thought.

BOOK X.

THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

CHAPTER I.—THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS—ITS INSUFFICIENCY.

CHAPTER II.—DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE.

CHAPTER III.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

CHAPTER IV.—HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE.

CHAPTER V.—THE CENTRAL TRUTH.

What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence

And justify the ways of God to men.

—_Milton._

CHAPTER I.

THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS—ITS INSUFFICIENCY.

If the conclusions at which we have arrived are correct, they will fall

under a larger generalization.

Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a higher standpoint,

whence we may survey a wider field.

_What is the law of human progress?_

This is a question which, were it not for what has gone before, I

should hesitate to review in the brief space I can now devote to it, as

it involves, directly or indirectly, some of the very highest problems

with which the human mind can engage. But it is a question which

naturally comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to which we have

come consistent with the great law under which human development goes

on?

What is that law? We must find the answer to our question; for the

current philosophy, though it clearly recognizes the existence of

such a law, gives no more satisfactory account of it than the current

political economy does of the persistence of want amid advancing wealth.

Let us, as far as possible, keep to the firm ground of facts. Whether

man was or was not gradually developed from an animal, it is not

necessary to inquire. However intimate may be the connection between

questions which relate to man as we know him and questions which relate

to his genesis, it is only from the former upon the latter that light

can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed from the unknown to the known.

It is only from facts of which we are cognizant that we can infer what

has preceded cognizance.

However man may have originated, all we know of him is as man—just as

he is now to be found. There is no record or trace of him in any lower

condition than that in which savages are still to be met. By whatever

bridge he may have crossed the wide chasm which now separates him from

the brutes, there remain of it no vestiges. Between the lowest savages

of whom we know and the highest animals, there is an irreconcilable

difference—a difference not merely of degree, but of kind. Many of the

characteristics, actions, and emotions of man are exhibited by the

lower animals; but man, no matter how low in the scale of humanity, has

never yet been found destitute of one thing of which no animal shows

the slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but almost undefinable

something, which gives him the power of improvement—which makes him the

progressive animal.

The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the bee a cell; but

while beavers’ dams, and birds’ nests, and bees’ cells are always

constructed on the same model, the house of the man passes from the

rude hut of leaves and branches to the magnificent mansion replete with

modern conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent connect cause

and effect, and may be taught some tricks; but his capacity in these

respects has not been a whit increased during all the ages he has been

the associate of improving man, and the dog of civilization is not a

whit more accomplished or intelligent than the dog of the wandering

savage. We know of no animal that uses clothes, that cooks its food,

that makes itself tools or weapons, that breeds other animals that it

wishes to eat, or that has an articulate language. But men who do not

do such things have never yet been found, or heard of, except in fable.

That is to say, man, wherever we know him, exhibits this power—of

supplementing what nature has done for him by what he does for himself;

and, in fact, so inferior is the physical endowment of man, that there

is no part of the world, save perhaps some of the small islands of the

Pacific, where without this faculty he could maintain an existence.

Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty—everywhere and at

all times of which we have knowledge he has made some use of it. But

the degree in which this has been done greatly varies. Between the rude

canoe and the steamship; between the boomerang and the repeating rifle;

between the roughly carved wooden idol and the breathing marble of

Grecian art; between savage knowledge and modern science; between the

wild Indian and the white settler; between the Hottentot woman and the

belle of polished society, there is an enormous difference.

The varying degrees in which this faculty is used cannot be ascribed to

differences in original capacity—the most highly improved peoples of

the present day were savages within historic times, and we meet with

the widest differences between peoples of the same stock. Nor can they

be wholly ascribed to differences in physical environment—the cradles

of learning and the arts are now in many cases tenanted by barbarians,

and within a few years great cities rise on the hunting grounds of

wild tribes. All these differences are evidently connected with social

development. Beyond perhaps the veriest rudiments, it becomes possible

for man to improve only as he lives with his fellows. All these

improvements, therefore, in man’s powers and condition we summarize in

the term civilization. Men improve as they become civilized, or learn

to co-operate in society.

What is the law of this improvement? By what common principle can

we explain the different stages of civilization at which different

communities have arrived? In what consists essentially the progress

of civilization, so that we may say of varying social adjustments,

this favors it, and that does not; or explain why an institution or

condition which may at one time advance it may at another time retard

it?

The prevailing belief now is, that the progress of civilization is

a development or evolution, in the course of which men’s powers are

increased and his qualities improved by the operation of causes

similar to those which are relied upon as explaining the genesis

of species—viz., the survival of the fittest and the hereditary

transmission of acquired qualities.

That civilization is an evolution—that it is, in the language of

Herbert Spencer, a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity

to a definite, coherent heterogeneity—there is no doubt; but to say

this is not to explain or identify the causes which forward or retard

it. How far the sweeping generalizations of Spencer, which seek to

account for all phenomena under terms of matter and force, may,

properly understood, include all these causes, I am unable to say; but,

as scientifically expounded, the development philosophy has either

not yet definitely met this question, or has given birth, or rather

coherency, to an opinion which does not accord with the facts.

The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very much like the

view naturally taken by the money maker of the causes of the unequal

distribution of wealth. His theory, if he has one, usually is, that

there is plenty of money to be made by those who have will and ability,

and that it is ignorance, or idleness, or extravagance, that makes the

difference between the rich and the poor. And so the common explanation

of differences of civilization is of differences in capacity. The

civilized races are the superior races, and advance in civilization

is according to this superiority—just as English victories were, in

common English opinion, due to the natural superiority of Englishmen to

frog-eating Frenchmen; and popular government, active invention, and

greater average comfort are, or were until lately, in common American

opinion, due to the greater “smartness of the Yankee Nation.”

Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in the beginning of

this inquiry we met and disproved, harmonize with the common opinion of

men who see capitalists paying wages and competition reducing wages;

just as the Malthusian theory harmonized with existing prejudices

both of the rich and the poor; so does the explanation of progress as

a gradual race improvement harmonize with the vulgar opinion which

accounts by race differences for differences in civilization. It has

given coherence and a scientific formula to opinions which already

prevailed. Its wonderful spread since the time Darwin first startled

the world with his “Origin of Species” has not been so much a conquest

as an assimilation.

The view which now dominates the world of thought is this: That the

struggle for existence, just in proportion as it becomes intense,

impels men to new efforts and inventions. That this improvement and

capacity for improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission, and

extended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, or most

improved individual, to survive and propagate among individuals, and of

the best adapted, or most improved tribe, nation, or race to survive in

the struggle between social aggregates. On this theory the differences

between man and the animals, and differences in the relative progress

of men, are now explained as confidently, and all but as generally,

as a little while ago they were explained upon the theory of special

creation and divine interposition.

The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of hopeful fatalism,

of which current literature is full.[57] In this view, progress is the

result of forces which work slowly, steadily and remorselessly, for

the elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and

pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern civilization,

are the impelling causes which drive man on, by eliminating poorer

types and extending the higher; and hereditary transmission is

the power by which advances are fixed, and past advances made the

footing for new advances. The individual is the result of changes

thus impressed upon and perpetuated through a long series of past

individuals, and the social organization takes its form from the

individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while this theory is, as

Herbert Spencer says[58]—“radical to a degree beyond anything which

current radicalism conceives;” inasmuch as it looks for changes in

the very nature of man; it is at the same time “conservative to a

degree beyond anything conceived by current conservatism,” inasmuch

as it holds that no change can avail save these slow changes in

men’s natures. Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen the

duty of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the theologians who

taught predestinarianism insisted on the duty of all to struggle for

salvation; but, as generally apprehended, the result is fatalism—“do

what we may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our

aid or our hindrance.” I allude to this only to illustrate what I

take to be the opinion now rapidly spreading and permeating common

thought; not that in the search for truth any regard for its effects

should be permitted to bias the mind. But this I take to be the current

view of civilization: That it is the result of forces, operating in

the way indicated, which slowly change the character, and improve and

elevate the powers of man; that the difference between civilized man

and savage is of a long race education, which has become permanently

fixed in mental organization; and that this improvement tends to go on

increasingly, to a higher and higher civilization. We have reached such

a point that progress seems to be natural with us, and we look forward

confidently to the greater achievements of the coming race—some even

holding that the progress of science will finally give men immortality

and enable them to make bodily the tour not only of the planets, but

of the fixed stars, and at length to manufacture suns and systems for

themselves.[59]

But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this theory

of progression, which seems so natural to us amid an advancing

civilization, looks around the world, it comes against an enormous

fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. The majority of the human race

to-day have no idea of progress; the majority of the human race to-day

look (as until a few generations ago our own ancestors looked) upon

the past as the time of human perfection. The difference between the

savage and the civilized man may be explained on the theory that the

former is as yet so imperfectly developed that his progress is hardly

apparent; but how, upon the theory that human progress is the result of

general and continuous causes, shall we account for the civilizations

that have progressed so far and then stopped? It cannot be said of

the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said of the savage, that

our superiority is the result of a longer education; that we are, as

it were, the grown men of nature, while they are the children. The

Hindoos and the Chinese were civilized when we were savages. They had

great cities, highly organized and powerful governments, literatures,

philosophies, polished manners, considerable division of labor, large

commerce, and elaborate arts, when our ancestors were wandering

barbarians, living in huts and skin tents, not a whit further advanced

than the American Indians. While we have progressed from this savage

state to Nineteenth Century civilization, they have stood still. If

progress be the result of fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which

impel men forward, how shall we account for this?

One of the best popular expounders of the development philosophy,

Walter Bagehot (“Physics and Politics”), admits the force of this

objection, and endeavors in this way to explain it: That the first

thing necessary to civilize man is to tame him; to induce him to live

in association with his fellows in subordination to law; and hence a

body or “cake” of laws and customs grows up, being intensified and

extended by natural selection, the tribe or nation thus bound together

having an advantage over those who are not. That this cake of custom

and law finally becomes too thick and hard to permit further progress,

which can go on only as circumstances occur which introduce discussion,

and thus permit the freedom and mobility necessary to improvement.

This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he says, with some

misgivings, is I think at the expense of the general theory. But it is

not worth while speaking of that, for it, manifestly, does not explain

the facts.

The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks would show itself

at a very early period of development, and his illustrations of

it are nearly all drawn from savage or semi-savage life. Whereas,

these arrested civilizations had gone a long distance before they

stopped. There must have been a time when they were very far advanced

as compared with the savage state, and were yet plastic, free, and

advancing. These arrested civilizations stopped at a point which was

hardly in anything inferior and in many respects superior to European

civilization of, say, the sixteenth or at any rate the fifteenth

century. Up to that point then there must have been discussion, the

hailing of what was new, and mental activity of all sorts. They had

architects who carried the art of building, necessarily by a series of

innovations or improvements, up to a very high point; ship-builders who

in the same way, by innovation after innovation, finally produced as

good a vessel as the war ships of Henry VIII.; inventors who stopped

only on the verge of our most important improvements, and from some

of whom we can yet learn; engineers who constructed great irrigation

works and navigable canals; rival schools of philosophy and conflicting

ideas of religion. One great religion, in many respects resembling

Christianity, rose in India, displaced the old religion, passed into

China, sweeping over that country, and was displaced again in its old

seats, just as Christianity was displaced in its first seats. There was

life, and active life, and the innovation that begets improvement, long

after men had learned to live together. And, moreover, both India and

China have received the infusion of new life in conquering races, with

different customs and modes of thought.

The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations of which we

know anything was that of Egypt, where even art finally assumed a

conventional and inflexible form. But we know that behind this must

have been a time of life and vigor—a freshly developing and expanding

civilization, such as ours is now—or the arts and sciences could never

have been carried to such a pitch. And recent excavations have brought

to light from beneath what we before knew of Egypt an earlier Egypt

still—in statues and carvings which, instead of a hard and formal type,

beam with life and expression, which show art struggling, ardent,

natural, and free, the sure indication of an active and expanding life.

So it must have been once with all now unprogressive civilizations.

But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that the current

theory of development fails to account for. It is not merely that men

have gone so far on the path of progress and then stopped; it is that

men have gone far on the path of progress and then gone back. It is

not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the theory—_it is the

universal rule_. Every civilization that the world has yet seen has had

its period of vigorous growth, of arrest and stagnation; its decline

and fall. Of all the civilizations that have arisen and flourished,

there remain to-day but those that have been arrested, and our own,

which is not yet as old as were the pyramids when Abraham looked upon

them—while behind the pyramids were twenty centuries of recorded

history.

That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a more advanced

type, moves quicker and soars higher than any preceding civilization is

undoubtedly true; but in these respects it is hardly more in advance

of the Greco-Roman civilization than that was in advance of Asiatic

civilization; and if it were, that would prove nothing as to its

permanence and future advance, unless it be shown that it is superior

in those things which caused the ultimate failure of its predecessors.

The current theory does not assume this.

In truth, nothing could be further from explaining the facts of

universal history than this theory that civilization is the result

of a course of natural selection which operates to improve and

elevate the powers of man. That civilization has arisen at different

times in different places and has progressed at different rates, is

not inconsistent with this theory; for that might result from the

unequal balancing of impelling and resisting forces; but that progress

everywhere commencing, for even among the lowest tribes it is held

that there has been some progress, has nowhere been continuous,

but has everywhere been brought to a stand or retrogression, _is_

absolutely inconsistent. For if progress operated to fix an improvement

in man’s nature and thus to produce further progress, though there

might be occasional interruption, yet the general rule would be that

progress would be continuous—that advance would lead to advance, and

civilization develop into higher civilization.

Not merely the general rule, but _the universal rule_, is the reverse

of this. The earth is the tomb of the dead empires, no less than of

dead men. Instead of progress fitting men for greater progress, every

civilization that was in its own time as vigorous and advancing as

ours is now, has of itself come to a stop. Over and over again, art

has declined, learning sunk, power waned, population become sparse,

until the people who had built great temples and mighty cities, turned

rivers and pierced mountains, cultivated the earth like a garden and

introduced the utmost refinement into the minute affairs of life,

remained but in a remnant of squalid barbarians, who had lost even the

memory of what their ancestors had done, and regarded the surviving

fragments of their grandeur as the work of genii, or of the mighty race

before the flood. So true is this, that when we think of the past, it

seems like the inexorable law, from which we can no more hope to be

exempt than the young man who “feels his life in every limb” can hope

to be exempt from the dissolution which is the common fate of all.

“Even this, O Rome, must one day be thy fate!” wept Scipio over the

ruins of Carthage, and Macaulay’s picture of the New Zealander musing

upon the broken arch of London Bridge appeals to the imagination of

even those who see cities rising in the wilderness and help to lay the

foundations of new empire. And so, when we erect a public building we

make a hollow in the largest corner stone and carefully seal within it

some mementos of our day, looking forward to the time when our works

shall be ruins and ourselves forgot.

Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civilization, this

retrogression that always follows progression, be, or be not, the

rhythmic movement of an ascending line (and I think, though I will

not open the question, that it would be much more difficult to prove

the affirmative than is generally supposed) makes no difference; for

the current theory is in either case disproved. Civilizations have

died and made no sign, and hard-won progress has been lost to the race

forever, but, even if it be admitted that each wave of progress has

made possible a higher wave and each civilization passed the torch

to a greater civilization, the theory that civilization advances by

changes wrought in the nature of man fails to explain the facts; for in

every case it is not the race that has been educated and hereditarily

modified by the old civilization that begins the new, but a fresh

race coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of the one epoch

who have been the civilized men of the next; to be in their turn

succeeded by fresh barbarians. For it has been heretofore always the

case that men under the influences of civilization, though at first

improving, afterward degenerate. The civilized man of to-day is vastly

the superior of the uncivilized; but so in the time of its vigor was

the civilized man of every dead civilization. But there are such

things as the vices, the corruptions, the enervations of civilization,

which past a certain point have always heretofore shown themselves.

Every civilization that has been overwhelmed by barbarians has really

perished from internal decay.

This universal fact, the moment that it is recognized, disposes of the

theory that progress is by hereditary transmission. Looking over the

history of the world, the line of greatest advance does not coincide

for any length of time with any line of heredity. On any particular

line of heredity, retrogression seems always to follow advance.

Shall we therefore say that there is a national or race life, as there

is an individual life—that every social aggregate has, as it were, a

certain amount of energy, the expenditure of which necessitates decay?

This is an old and widespread idea, that is yet largely held, and that

may be constantly seen cropping out incongruously in the writings of

the expounders of the development philosophy. Indeed, I do not see why

it may not be stated in terms of matter and of motion so as to bring

it clearly within the generalizations of evolution. For considering

its individuals as atoms, the growth of society is “an integration of

matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter

passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite,

coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes

a parallel transformation.”[60] And thus an analogy may be drawn

between the life of a society and the life of a solar system upon the

nebular hypothesis. As the heat and light of the sun are produced by

the aggregation of atoms evolving motion, which finally ceases when the

atoms at length come to a state of equilibrium or rest, and a state of

immobility succeeds, which can be broken in again only by the impact of

external forces, which reverse the process of evolution, integrating

motion and dissipating matter in the form of gas, again to evolve

motion by its condensation; so, it may be said, does the aggregation of

individuals in a community evolve a force which produces the light and

warmth of civilization, but when this process ceases and the individual

components are brought into a state of equilibrium, assuming their

fixed places, petrifaction ensues, and the breaking up and diffusion

caused by an incursion of barbarians is necessary to the recommencement

of the process and a new growth of civilization.

But analogies are the most dangerous modes of thought. They may connect

resemblances and yet disguise or cover up the truth. And all such

analogies are superficial. While its members are constantly reproduced

in all the fresh vigor of childhood, a community cannot grow old, as

does a man, by the decay of its powers. While its aggregate force must

be the sum of the forces of its individual components, a community

cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of its components are

lessened.

Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life power of a nation

to that of an individual, and in the one I have supposed, lurks the

recognition of an obvious truth—the truth that the obstacles which

finally bring progress to a halt are raised by the course of progress;

that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has been the

conditions produced by the growth of civilization itself.

This is a truth which in the current philosophy is ignored; but it is

a truth most pregnant. Any valid theory of human progress must account

for it.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] In semi-scientific or popularized form this may perhaps be seen

in best, because frankest, expression in “The Martyrdom of Man,” by

Winwood Reade, a writer of singular vividness and power. This book is

in reality a history of progress, or, rather, a monograph upon its

causes and methods, and will well repay perusal for its vivid pictures,

whatever may be thought of the capacity of the author for philosophic

generalization. The connection between subject and title may be seen

by the conclusion: “I give to universal history a strange but true

title—_The Martyrdom of Man_. In each generation the human race has

been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our own

prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore

unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to

come?”

[58] “The Study of Sociology”—Conclusion.

[59] Winwood Reade, “The Martyrdom of Man.”

[60] Herbert Spencer’s definition of Evolution, “First Principles,” p.

396.

CHAPTER II.

DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE.

In attempting to discover the law of human progress, the first step

must be to determine the essential nature of those differences which we

describe as differences in civilization.

That the current philosophy, which attributes social progress to

changes wrought in the nature of man, does not accord with historical

facts, we have already seen. And we may also see, if we consider

them, that the differences between communities in different stages

of civilization cannot be ascribed to innate differences in the

individuals who compose these communities. That there are natural

differences is true, and that there is such a thing as hereditary

transmission of peculiarities is undoubtedly true; but the great

differences between men in different states of society cannot be

explained in this way. The influence of heredity, which it is now

the fashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared with the

influences which mold the man after he comes into the world. What

is more ingrained in habit than language, which becomes not merely

an automatic trick of the muscles, but the medium of thought? What

persists longer, or will quicker show nationality? Yet we are not born

with a predisposition to any language. Our mother tongue is our mother

tongue only because we learned it in infancy. Although his ancestors

have thought and spoken in one language for countless generations, a

child who hears from the first nothing else, will learn with equal

facility any other tongue. And so of other national or local or class

peculiarities. They seem to be matters of education and habit, not of

transmission. Cases of white children captured by Indians in infancy

and brought up in the wigwam show this. They become thorough Indians.

And so, I believe, with children brought up by Gypsies.

That this is not so true of the children of Indians or other distinctly

marked races brought up by whites is, I think, due to the fact that

they are never treated precisely as white children. A gentleman who

had taught a colored school once told me that he thought the colored

children, up to the age of ten or twelve, were really brighter and

learned more readily than white children, but that after that age

they seemed to get dull and careless. He thought this proof of innate

race inferiority, and so did I at the time. But I afterward heard a

highly intelligent negro gentleman (Bishop Hillery) incidentally make a

remark which to my mind seems a sufficient explanation. He said: “Our

children, when they are young, are fully as bright as white children,

and learn as readily. But as soon as they get old enough to appreciate

their status—to realize that they are looked upon as belonging to an

inferior race, and can never hope to be anything more than cooks,

waiters, or something of that sort, they lose their ambition and cease

to keep up.” And to this he might have added, that being the children

of poor, uncultivated and unambitious parents, home influences told

against them. For, I believe it is a matter of common observation that

in the primary part of education the children of ignorant parents are

quite as receptive as the children of intelligent parents, but by

and by the latter, as a general rule, pull ahead and make the most

intelligent men and women. The reason is plain. As to the first simple

things which they learn only at school, they are on a par, but as their

studies become more complex, the child who at home is accustomed to

good English, hears intelligent conversation, has access to books, can

get questions answered, etc., has an advantage which tells.

The same thing may be seen later in life. Take a man who has raised

himself from the ranks of common labor, and just as he is brought

into contact with men of culture and men of affairs, will he become

more intelligent and polished. Take two brothers, the sons of poor

parents, brought up in the same home and in the same way. One is put to

a rude trade, and never gets beyond the necessity of making a living

by hard daily labor; the other, commencing as an errand boy, gets a

start in another direction, and becomes finally a successful lawyer,

merchant, or politician. At forty or fifty the contrast between them

will be striking, and the unreflecting will credit it to the greater

natural ability which has enabled the one to push himself ahead. But

just as striking a difference in manners and intelligence will be

manifested between two sisters, one of whom, married to a man who

has remained poor, has her life fretted with petty cares and devoid

of opportunities, and the other of whom has married a man whose

subsequent position brings her into cultured society and opens to

her opportunities which refine taste and expand intelligence. And so

deteriorations may be seen. That “evil communications corrupt good

manners” is but an expression of the general law that human character

is profoundly modified by its conditions and surroundings.

I remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a negro man dressed

in what was an evident attempt at the height of fashion, but without

shoes and stockings. One of the sailors with whom I was in company,

and who had made some runs in the slave trade, had a theory that a

negro was not a man, but a sort of monkey, and pointed to this as

evidence in proof, contending that it was not natural for a negro to

wear shoes, and that in his wild state he would wear no clothes at

all. I afterward learned that it was not considered “the thing” there

for slaves to wear shoes, just as in England it is not considered the

thing for a faultlessly attired butler to wear jewelry, though for that

matter I have since seen white men at liberty to dress as they pleased

get themselves up as incongruously as the Brazilian slave. But a great

many of the facts adduced as showing hereditary transmission have

really no more bearing than this of our forecastle Darwinian.

That, for instance, a large number of criminals and recipients of

public relief in New York have been shown to have descended from

a pauper three or four generations back is extensively cited as

showing hereditary transmission. But it shows nothing of the kind,

inasmuch as an adequate explanation of the facts is nearer. Paupers

will raise paupers, even if the children be not their own, just as

familiar contact with criminals will make criminals of the children of

virtuous parents. To learn to rely on charity is necessarily to lose

the self-respect and independence necessary for self-reliance when

the struggle is hard. So true is this that, as is well known, charity

has the effect of increasing the demand for charity, and it is an

open question whether public relief and private alms do not in this

way do far more harm than good. And so of the disposition of children

to show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, or talents as their

parents. They imbibe these dispositions just as they imbibe from their

habitual associates. And the exceptions prove the rule, as dislikes or

revulsions may be excited.

And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often accounts for

what are looked upon as atavisms of character—the same influence that

makes the boy who reads dime novels want to be a pirate. I once knew a

gentleman in whose veins ran the blood of Indian chiefs. He used to

tell me traditions learned from his grandfather, which illustrated what

is difficult for a white man to comprehend—the Indian habit of thought,

the intense but patient blood thirst of the trail, and the fortitude

of the stake. From the way in which he dwelt on these, I have no doubt

that under certain circumstances, highly educated, civilized man

that he was, he would have shown traits which would have been looked

on as due to his Indian blood; but which in reality would have been

sufficiently explained by the broodings of his imagination upon the

deeds of his ancestors.[61]

In any large community we may see, as between different classes and

groups, differences of the same kind as those which exist between

communities which we speak of as differing in civilization—differences

of knowledge, belief, customs, tastes, and speech, which in their

extremes show among people of the same race, living in the same

country, differences almost as great as those between civilized and

savage communities. As all stages of social development, from the stone

age up, are yet to be found in contemporaneously existing communities,

so in the same country and in the same city are to be found, side by

side, groups which show similar diversities. In such countries as

England and Germany, children of the same race, born and reared in the

same place, will grow up, speaking the language differently, holding

different beliefs, following different customs, and showing different

tastes; and even in such a country as the United States differences

of the same kind, though not of the same degree, may be seen between

different circles or groups.

But these differences are certainly not innate. No baby is born a

Methodist or Catholic, to drop its h’s or to sound them. All these

differences which distinguish different groups or circles are derived

from association in these circles.

The Janissaries were made up of youths torn from Christian parents

at an early age, but they were none the less fanatical Moslems and

none the less exhibited all the Turkish traits; the Jesuits and other

orders show distinct character, but it is certainly not perpetuated

by hereditary transmissions; and even such associations as schools

or regiments, where the components remain but a short time and are

constantly changing, exhibit general characteristics, which are the

result of mental impressions perpetuated by association.

Now, it is this body of traditions, beliefs, customs, laws, habits, and

associations, which arise in every community and which surround every

individual—this “super-organic environment,” as Herbert Spencer calls

it, that, as I take it, is the great element in determining national

character. It is this, rather than hereditary transmission, which makes

the Englishman differ from the Frenchman, the German from the Italian,

the American from the Chinaman, and the civilized man from the savage

man. It is in this way that national traits are preserved, extended, or

altered.

Within certain limits, or, if you choose, without limits in itself,

hereditary transmission may develop or alter qualities, but this is

much more true of the physical than of the mental part of a man,

and much more true of animals than it is even of the physical part

of man. Deductions from the breeding of pigeons or cattle will not

apply to man, and the reason is clear. The life of man, even in his

rudest state, is infinitely more complex. He is constantly acted

on by an infinitely greater number of influences, amid which the

relative influence of heredity becomes less and less. A race of men

with no greater mental activity than the animals—men who only ate,

drank, slept, and propagated—might, I doubt not, by careful treatment

and selection in breeding, be made, in course of time, to exhibit as

great diversities in bodily shape and character as similar means have

produced in the domestic animals. But there are no such men; and in

men as they are, mental influences, acting through the mind upon the

body, would constantly interrupt the process. You cannot fatten a man

whose mind is on the strain by cooping him up and feeding him as you

would fatten a pig. In all probability men have been upon the earth

longer than many species of animals. They have been separated from

each other under differences of climate that produce the most marked

differences in animals, and yet the physical differences between the

different races of men are hardly greater than the difference between

white horses and black horses—they are certainly nothing like as

great as between dogs of the same sub-species, as, for instance, the

different varieties of the terrier or spaniel. And even these physical

differences between races of men, it is held by those who account for

them by natural selection and hereditary transmission, were brought out

when man was much nearer the animal—that is to say, when he had less

mind.

And if this be true of the physical constitution of man, in how much

higher degree is it true of his mental constitution? All our physical

parts we bring with us into the world; but the mind develops afterward.

There is a stage in the growth of every organism in which it cannot be

told, except by the environment, whether the animal that is to be will

be fish or reptile, monkey or man. And so with the new-born infant;

whether the mind that is yet to awake to consciousness and power is to

be English or German, American or Chinese—the mind of a civilized man

or the mind of a savage—depends entirely on the social environment in

which it is placed.

Take a number of infants born of the most highly civilized parents

and transport them to an uninhabited country. Suppose them in some

miraculous way to be sustained until they come of age to take care of

themselves, and what would you have? More helpless savages than any we

know of. They would have fire to discover; the rudest tools and weapons

to invent; language to construct. They would, in short, have to stumble

their way to the simplest knowledge which the lowest races now possess,

just as a child learns to walk. That they would in time do all these

things I have not the slightest doubt, for all these possibilities are

latent in the human mind just as the power of walking is latent in

the human frame, but I do not believe they would do them any better

or worse, any slower or quicker, than the children of barbarian

parents placed in the same conditions. Given the very highest mental

powers that exceptional individuals have ever displayed, and what

could mankind be if one generation were separated from the next by an

interval of time, as are the seventeen-year locusts? One such interval

would reduce mankind, not to savagery, but to a condition compared with

which savagery, as we know it, would seem civilization.

And, reversely, suppose a number of savage infants could, unknown to

the mothers, for even this would be necessary to make the experiment a

fair one, be substituted for as many children of civilization, can we

suppose that growing up they would show any difference? I think no one

who has mixed much with different peoples and classes will think so.

The great lesson that is thus learned is that “human nature is human

nature all the world over.” And this lesson, too, may be learned in

the library. I speak not so much of the accounts of travelers, for the

accounts given of savages by the civilized men who write books are very

often just such accounts as savages would give of us did they make

flying visits and then write books; but of those mementos of the life

and thoughts of other times and other peoples, which, translated into

our language of to-day, are like glimpses of our own lives and gleams

of our own thought. The feeling they inspire is that of the essential

similarity of men. “This,” says Emanuel Deutsch—“this is the end of all

investigation into history or art. _They were even as we are._”

There is a people to be found in all parts of the world who well

illustrate what peculiarities are due to hereditary transmission and

what to transmission by association. The Jews have maintained the

purity of their blood more scrupulously and for a far longer time than

any of the European races, yet I am inclined to think that the only

characteristic that can be attributed to this is that of physiognomy,

and this is in reality far less marked than is conventionally supposed,

as any one who will take the trouble may see on observation. Although

they have constantly married among themselves, the Jews have everywhere

been modified by their surroundings—the English, Russian, Polish,

German, and Oriental Jews differing from each other in many respects

as much as do the other people of those countries. Yet they have much

in common, and have everywhere preserved their individuality. The

reason is clear. It is the Hebrew religion—and certainly religion is

not transmitted by generation, but by association—which has everywhere

preserved the distinctiveness of the Hebrew race. This religion, which

children derive, not as they derive their physical characteristics, but

by precept and association, is not merely exclusive in its teachings,

but has, by engendering suspicion and dislike, produced a powerful

outside pressure which, even more than its precepts, has everywhere

constituted of the Jews a community within a community. Thus has been

built up and maintained a certain peculiar environment which gives a

distinctive character. Jewish intermarriage has been the effect, not

the cause of this. What persecution which stopped short of taking

Jewish children from their parents and bringing them up outside of this

peculiar environment could not accomplish, will be accomplished by the

lessening intensity of religious belief, as is already evident in the

United States, where the distinction between Jew and Gentile is fast

disappearing.

And it seems to me that the influence of this social net or environment

will explain what is so often taken as proof of race differences—the

difficulty which less civilized races show in receiving higher

civilization, and the manner in which some of them melt away before it.

Just as one social environment persists, so does it render it difficult

or impossible for those subject to it to accept another.

The Chinese character is fixed if that of any people is. Yet the

Chinese in California acquire American modes of working, trading,

the use of machinery, etc., with such facility as to prove that they

have no lack of flexibility, or natural capacity. That they do not

change in other respects is due to the Chinese environment that still

persists and still surrounds them. Coming from China, they look forward

to return to China, and live while here in a little China of their

own, just as the Englishmen in India maintain a little England. It is

not merely that we naturally seek association with those who share

our peculiarities, and that thus language, religion and custom tend

to persist where individuals are not absolutely isolated; but that

these differences provoke an external pressure, which compels such

association.

These obvious principles fully account for all the phenomena which

are seen in the meeting of one stage or body of culture with another,

without resort to the theory of ingrained differences. For instance,

as comparative philology has shown, the Hindoo is of the same race as

his English conqueror, and individual instances have abundantly shown

that if he could be placed completely and exclusively in the English

environment (which, as before stated, could be thoroughly done only by

placing infants in English families in such a way that neither they,

as they grow up, nor those around them, would be conscious of any

distinction) one generation would be all required to thoroughly implant

European civilization. But the progress of English ideas and habits in

India must be necessarily very slow, because they meet there the web of

ideas and habits constantly perpetuated through an immense population,

and interlaced with every act of life.

Mr. Bagehot (“Physics and Politics”) endeavors to explain the reason

why barbarians waste away before our civilization, while they did

not before that of the ancients, by assuming that the progress of

civilization has given us tougher physical constitutions. After

alluding to the fact that there is no lament in any classical writer

for the barbarians, but that everywhere the barbarian endured the

contact with the Roman and the Roman allied himself to the barbarian,

he says (pp. 47-8):

“Savages in the first year of the Christian era were pretty much what

they were in the eighteen hundredth; and if they stood the contact of

ancient civilized men and cannot stand ours, it follows that our race

is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, and do

bear, the seeds of greater diseases than the ancients carried with

them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a meter to gauge

the vigor of the constitution to whose contact he is exposed.”

Mr. Bagehot does not attempt to explain how it is that eighteen

hundred years ago civilization did not give the like relative advantage

over barbarism that it does now. But there is no use of talking

about that, or of the lack of proof that the human constitution has

been a whit improved. To any one who has seen how the contact of our

civilization affects the inferior races, a much readier though less

flattering explanation will occur.

It is not because our constitutions are naturally tougher than those

of the savage, that diseases which are comparatively innocuous to us

are certain death to him. It is that we know and have the means of

treating those diseases, while he is destitute both of knowledge and

means. The same diseases with which the scum of civilization that

floats in its advance inoculates the savage would prove as destructive

to civilized men, if they knew no better than to let them run, as he

in his ignorance has to let them run; and as a matter of fact they

were as destructive, until we found out how to treat them. And not

merely this, but the effect of the impingement of civilization upon

barbarism is to weaken the power of the savage without bringing him

into the conditions that give power to the civilized man. While his

habits and customs still tend to persist, and do persist as far as they

can, the conditions to which they were adapted are forcibly changed.

He is a hunter in a land stripped of game; a warrior deprived of his

arms and called on to plead in legal technicalities. He is not merely

placed between cultures, but, as Mr. Bagehot says of the European

half-breeds in India, he is placed between moralities, and learns the

vices of civilization without its virtues. He loses his accustomed

means of subsistence, he loses self-respect, he loses morality; he

deteriorates and dies away. The miserable creatures who may be seen

hanging around frontier towns or railroad stations, ready to beg, or

steal, or solicit a viler commerce, are not fair representatives of the

Indian before the white man had encroached upon his hunting grounds.

They have lost the strength and virtues of their former state, without

gaining those of a higher. In fact, civilization, as it pushes the red

man, shows no virtues. To the Anglo-Saxon of the frontier, as a rule,

the aborigine has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.

He is impoverished, misunderstood, cheated, and abused. He dies

out, as, under similar conditions, we should die out. He disappears

before civilization as the Romanized Britons disappeared before Saxon

barbarism.

The true reason why there is no lament in any classic writer for the

barbarian, but that the Roman civilization assimilated instead of

destroying, is, I take it, to be found not only in the fact that the

ancient civilization was much nearer akin to the barbarians which

it met, but in the more important fact that it was not extended as

ours has been. It was carried forward, not by an advancing line of

colonists, but by conquest which merely reduced the new province to

general subjection, leaving the social, and generally the political

organization of the people to a great degree unimpaired, so that,

without shattering or deterioration, the process of assimilation went

on. In a somewhat similar way the civilization of Japan seems to be now

assimilating itself to European civilization.

In America the Anglo-Saxon has exterminated, instead of civilizing,

the Indian, simply because he has not brought the Indian into his

environment, nor yet has the contact been in such a way as to induce

or permit the Indian web of habitual thought and custom to be changed

rapidly enough to meet the new conditions into which he has been

brought by the proximity of new and powerful neighbors. That there is

no innate impediment to the reception of our civilization by these

uncivilized races has been shown over and over again in individual

cases. And it has likewise been shown, so far as the experiments have

been permitted to go, by the Jesuits in Paraguay, the Franciscans in

California, and the Protestant missionaries on some of the Pacific

islands.

The assumption of physical improvement in the race within any time

of which we have knowledge is utterly without warrant, and within

the time of which Mr. Bagehot speaks, it is absolutely disproved. We

know from classic statues, from the burdens carried and the marches

made by ancient soldiers, from the records of runners and the feats

of gymnasts, that neither in proportions nor strength has the race

improved within two thousand years. But the assumption of mental

improvement, which is even more confidently and generally made, is

still more preposterous. As poets, artists, architects, philosophers,

rhetoricians, statesmen, or soldiers, can modern civilization show

individuals of greater mental power than can the ancient? There is no

use in recalling names—every schoolboy knows them. For our models and

personifications of mental power we go back to the ancients, and if

we can for a moment imagine the possibility of what is held by that

oldest and most widespread of all beliefs—that belief which Lessing

declared on this account the most probably true, though he accepted it

on metaphysical grounds—and suppose Homer or Virgil, Demosthenes or

Cicero, Alexander, Hannibal or Cæsar, Plato or Lucretius, Euclid or

Aristotle, as re-entering this life again in the Nineteenth Century,

can we suppose that they would show any inferiority to the men of

to-day? Or if we take any period since the classic age, even the

darkest, or any previous period of which we know anything, shall we

not find men who in the conditions and degree of knowledge of their

times showed mental power of as high an order as men show now? And

among the less advanced races do we not to-day, whenever our attention

is called to them, find men who in their conditions exhibit mental

qualities as great as civilization can show? Did the invention of the

railroad, coming when it did, prove any greater inventive power than

did the invention of the wheelbarrow when wheelbarrows were not? We of

modern civilization are raised far above those who have preceded us

and those of the less advanced races who are our contemporaries. But

it is because we stand on a pyramid, not that we are taller. What the

centuries have done for us is not to increase our stature, but to build

up a structure on which we may plant our feet.

Let me repeat: I do not mean to say that all men possess the same

capacities, or are mentally alike, any more than I mean to say that

they are physically alike. Among all the countless millions who have

come and gone on this earth, there were probably never two who either

physically or mentally were exact counterparts. Nor yet do I mean to

say that there are not as clearly marked race differences in mind as

there are clearly marked race differences in body. I do not deny the

influence of heredity in transmitting peculiarities of mind in the

same way, and possibly to the same degree, as bodily peculiarities

are transmitted. But nevertheless, there is, it seems to me, a common

standard and natural symmetry of mind, as there is of body, toward

which all deviations tend to return. The conditions under which we fall

may produce such distortions as the Flatheads produce by compressing

the heads of their infants or the Chinese by binding their daughters’

feet. But as Flathead babies continue to be born with naturally shaped

heads and Chinese babies with naturally shaped feet, so does nature

seem to revert to the normal mental type. A child no more inherits

his father’s knowledge than he inherits his father’s glass eye or

artificial leg; the child of the most ignorant parents may become a

pioneer of science or a leader of thought.

But this is the great fact with which we are concerned: That the

differences between the people of communities in different places

and at different times, which we call differences of civilization,

are not differences which inhere in the individuals, but differences

which inhere in the society; that they are not, as Herbert Spencer

holds, differences resulting from differences in the units; but that

they are differences resulting from the conditions under which these

units are brought in the society. In short, I take the explanation

of the differences which distinguish communities to be this: That

each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of

knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions, and laws.

Into this web, woven by each society, or rather, into these webs,

for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies,

which overlap and interlace each other, the individual is received at

birth and continues until his death. This is the matrix in which mind

unfolds and from which it takes its stamp. This is the way in which

customs, and religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages,

grow up and are perpetuated. This is the way that skill is transmitted

and knowledge is stored up, and the discoveries of one time made the

common stock and stepping stone of the next. Though it is this that

often offers the most serious obstacles to progress, it is this that

makes progress possible. It is this that enables any schoolboy in our

time to learn in a few hours more of the universe than Ptolemy knew;

that places the most humdrum scientist far above the level reached by

the giant mind of Aristotle. This is to the race what memory is to the

individual. Our wonderful arts, our far-reaching science, our marvelous

inventions—they have come through this.

Human progress goes on as the advances made by one generation are in

this way secured as the common property of the next, and made the

starting point for new advances.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] Wordsworth, in his “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,” has in

highly poetical form alluded to this influence:

Armor rusting in his halls

On the blood of Clifford calls:

“Quell the Scot,” exclaims the lance;

“Bear me to the heart of France,”

Is the longing of the shield.

CHAPTER III.

THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

What, then, is the law of human progress—the law under which

civilization advances?

It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by vague generalities

or superficial analogies, why, though mankind started presumably with

the same capacities and at the same time, there now exist such wide

differences in social development. It must account for the arrested

civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed civilizations; for the

general facts as to the rise of civilization, and for the petrifying

or enervating force which the progress of civilization has heretofore

always evolved. It must account for retrogression as well as for

progression; for the differences in general character between Asiatic

and European civilizations; for the difference between classical and

modern civilizations; for the different rates at which progress goes

on; and for those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are

so marked as minor phenomena. And, thus, it must show us what are the

essential conditions of progress, and what social adjustments advance

and what retard it.

It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but to look and

we may see it. I do not pretend to give it scientific precision, but

merely to point it out.

The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in human nature—the

desire to gratify the wants of the animal nature, the wants of the

intellectual nature, and the wants of the sympathetic nature; the

desire to be, to know, and to do—desires that short of infinity can

never be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on.

Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by which each advance

is secured and made the vantage ground for new advances. Though he may

not by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by taking

thought extend his knowledge of the universe and his power over it,

in what, so far as we can see, is an infinite degree. The narrow span

of human life allows the individual to go but a short distance, but

though each generation may do but little, yet generations, succeeding

to the gain of their predecessors, may gradually elevate the status of

mankind, as coral polyps, building one generation upon the work of the

other, gradually elevate themselves from the bottom of the sea.

Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and men tend to

advance in proportion to the mental power expended in progression—the

mental power which is devoted to the extension of knowledge, the

improvement of methods, and the betterment of social conditions.

Now mental power is a fixed quantity—that is to say, there is a limit

to the work a man can do with his mind, as there is to the work

he can do with his body; therefore, the mental power which can be

devoted to progress is only what is left after what is required for

non-progressive purposes.

These non-progressive purposes in which mental power is consumed may be

classified as maintenance and conflict. By maintenance I mean, not only

the support of existence, but the keeping up of the social condition

and the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I mean not

merely warfare and preparation for warfare, but all expenditure of

mental power in seeking the gratification of desire at the expense of

others, and in resistance to such aggression.

To compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not

depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted

to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force

required for bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among

themselves, or in pulling in different directions.

Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man are required to

maintain existence, and mental power is set free for higher uses only

by the association of men in communities, which permits the division

of labor and all the economies which come with the co-operation of

increased numbers, association is the first essential of progress.

Improvement becomes possible as men come together in peaceful

association, and the wider and closer the association, the greater

the possibilities of improvement. And as the wasteful expenditure of

mental power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which

accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized,

equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress.

Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees

mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice,

or freedom—for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition

of the moral law—prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless

struggles.

Here is the law of progress, which will explain all diversities, all

advances, all halts, and retrogressions. Men tend to progress just as

they come closer together, and by co-operation with each other increase

the mental power that may be devoted to improvement, but just as

conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of condition

and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, and

finally reversed.

Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that social

development will go on faster or slower, will stop or turn back,

according to the resistances it meets. In a general way these

obstacles to improvement may, in relation to the society itself, be

classed as external and internal—the first operating with greater

force in the earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming more

important in the later stages.

Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be caught and tamed

in order to induce him to live with his fellows. The utter helplessness

with which he enters the world, and the long period required for the

maturity of his powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as

we may observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, among the

ruder than among the more cultivated peoples. The first societies

are families, expanding into tribes, still holding a mutual blood

relationship, and even when they have become great nations claiming a

common descent.

Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such diversified

surface and climate as this, and it is evident that, even with

equal capacity, and an equal start, social development must be very

different. The first limit or resistance to association will come

from the conditions of physical nature, and as these greatly vary

with locality, corresponding differences in social progress must show

themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the closeness with which

men, as they increase, can keep together, will, in the rude state

of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must be principally

upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon

climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and

warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard;

where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man’s

puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea

separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement

which it evolves, can at first go but a little way. But on the rich

plains of warm climates, where human existence can be maintained with

a smaller expenditure of force, and from a much smaller area, men

can keep closer together, and the mental power which can at first be

devoted to improvement is much greater. Hence civilization naturally

first arises in the great valleys and table lands where we find its

earliest monuments.

But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely thus directly

produce diversities in social development, but, by producing

diversities in social development, bring out in man himself an

obstacle, or rather an active counterforce, to improvement. As

families and tribes are separated from each other, the social feeling

ceases to operate between them, and differences arise in language,

custom, tradition, religion—in short, in the whole social web which

each community, however small or large, constantly spins. With these

differences, prejudices grow, animosities spring up, contact easily

produces quarrels, aggression begets aggression, and wrong kindles

revenge.[62] And so between these separate social aggregates arises the

feeling of Ishmael and the spirit of Cain, warfare becomes the chronic

and seemingly natural relation of societies to each other, and the

powers of men are expended in attack or defense, in mutual slaughter

and mutual destruction of wealth, or in warlike preparations. How

long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs and the standing

armies of the civilized world to-day bear witness; how difficult it is

to get over the idea that it is not theft to steal from a foreigner,

the difficulty in procuring an international copyright act will show.

Can we wonder at the perpetual hostilities of tribes and clans? Can we

wonder that when each community was isolated from the others—when each,

uninfluenced by the others, was spinning its separate web of social

environment, which no individual can escape, that war should have been

the rule and peace the exception? “They were even as we are.”

Now, warfare is the negation of association. The separation of men into

diverse tribes, by increasing warfare, thus checks improvement; while

in the localities where a large increase in numbers is possible without

much separation, civilization gains the advantage of exemption from

tribal war, even when the community as a whole is carrying on warfare

beyond its borders. Thus, where the resistance of nature to the close

association of men is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely

at first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where civilization

first begins, it may rise to a great height while scattered tribes are

yet barbarous. And thus, when small, separated communities exist in a

state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their

civilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or nation that

unites these smaller communities into a larger one, in which internal

peace is preserved. Where this power of peaceable association is broken

up, either by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance

ceases and retrogression begins.

But it is not conquest alone that has operated to promote association,

and, by liberating mental power from the necessities of warfare,

to promote civilization. If the diversities of climate, soil, and

configuration of the earth’s surface operate at first to separate

mankind, they also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce, which

is in itself a form of association or co-operation, operates to promote

civilization, not only directly, but by building up interests which are

opposed to warfare, and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile

mother of prejudices and animosities.

And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed and the animosities

it has aroused have often sundered men and produced warfare, yet it

has at other times been the means of promoting association. A common

worship has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and furnished

the basis of union, while it is from the triumph of Christianity over

the barbarians of Europe that modern civilization springs. Had not the

Christian Church existed when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe,

destitute of any bond of association, might have fallen to a condition

not much above that of the North American Indians or only received

civilization with an Asiatic impress from the conquering scimitars

of the invading hordes which had been welded into a mighty power by

a religion which, springing up in the deserts of Arabia, had united

tribes separated from time immemorial, and, thence issuing, brought

into the association of a common faith a great part of the human race.

Looking over what we know of the history of the world, we thus see

civilization everywhere springing up where men are brought into

association, and everywhere disappearing as this association is broken

up. Thus the Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests

which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the incursions of the

northern nations that broke society again into disconnected fragments;

and the progress that now goes on in our modern civilization began as

the feudal system again began to associate men in larger communities,

and the spiritual supremacy of Rome to bring these communities into a

common relation, as her legions had done before. As the feudal bonds

grew into national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amelioration

of manners, brought forth the knowledge that during the dark days she

had hidden, bound the threads of peaceful union in her all-pervading

organization, and taught association in her religious orders, a greater

progress became possible, which, as men have been brought into closer

and closer association and co-operation, has gone on with greater and

greater force.

But we shall never understand the course of civilization, and the

varied phenomena which its history presents, without a consideration

of what I may term the internal resistances, or counter forces, which

arise in the heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain

how a civilization once fairly started should either come of itself to

a halt or be destroyed by barbarians.

The mental power, which is the motor of social progress, is set free by

association, which is, what, perhaps, it may be more properly called,

an integration. Society in this process becomes more complex; its

individuals more dependent upon each other. Occupations and functions

are specialized. Instead of wandering, population becomes fixed.

Instead of each man attempting to supply all of his wants, the various

trades and industries are separated—one man acquires skill in one

thing, and another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge, the body

of which constantly tends to become vaster than one man can grasp,

and is separated into different parts, which different individuals

acquire and pursue. So, too, the performance of religious ceremonies

tends to pass into the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that

purpose, and the preservation of order, the administration of justice,

the assignment of public duties and the distribution of awards, the

conduct of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organized

government. In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer

has defined evolution, the development of society is, in relation to

its component individuals, the passing from an indefinite, incoherent

homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the

stage of social development, the more society resembles one of those

lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from

which a part may be cut and yet live. The higher the stage of social

development, the more society resembles those higher organisms in

which functions and powers are specialized, and each member is vitally

dependent on the others.

Now, this process of integration, of the specialization of functions

and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by virtue of what is probably

one of the deepest laws of human nature, accompanied by a constant

liability to inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the necessary

result of social growth, but that it is the constant tendency of social

growth if unaccompanied by changes in social adjustments, which, in

the new conditions that growth produces, will secure equality. I

mean, so to speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political

institutions, which each society weaves for itself, is constantly

tending to become too tight as the society develops. I mean, so to

speak, that man, as he advances, threads a labyrinth, in which, if he

keeps straight ahead, he will infallibly lose his way, and through

which reason and justice can alone keep him continuously in an

ascending path.

For, while the integration which accompanies growth tends in itself to

set free mental power to work improvement, there is, both with increase

of numbers and with increase in complexity of the social organization,

a counter tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality,

which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, brings improvement to

a halt.

To trace to its highest expression the law which thus operates to

evolve with progress the force which stops progress, would be, it seems

to me, to go far to the solution of a problem deeper than that of the

genesis of the material universe—the problem of the genesis of evil.

Let me content myself with pointing out the manner in which, as society

develops, there arise tendencies which check development.

There are two qualities of human nature which it will be well, however,

to first call to mind. The one is the power of habit—the tendency to

continue to do things in the same way; the other is the possibility

of mental and moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social

development is to continue habits, customs, laws and methods, long

after they have lost their original usefulness, and the effect of the

other is to permit the growth of institutions and modes of thought from

which the normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt.

Now the growth and development of society not merely tend to make

each more and more dependent upon all, and to lessen the influence

of individuals, even over their own conditions, as compared with the

influence of society; but the effect of association or integration is

to give rise to a collective power which is distinguishable from the

sum of individual powers. Analogies, or, perhaps, rather illustrations

of the same law, may be found in all directions. As animal organisms

increase in complexity, there arise, above the life and power of the

parts, a life and power of the integrated whole; above the capability

of involuntary movements, the capability of voluntary movements. The

actions and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often been observed,

different from those which, under the same circumstances, would be

called forth in individuals. The fighting qualities of a regiment may

be very different from those of the individual soldiers. But there is

no need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature and rise

of rent, we traced the very thing to which I allude. Where population

is sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate together, the

value of land appears and rises—a clearly distinguishable thing from

the values produced by individual effort; a value which springs

from association, which increases as association grows greater, and

disappears as association is broken up. And the same thing is true of

power in other forms than those generally expressed in terms of wealth.

Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue previous social

adjustments tends to lodge this collective power, as it arises, in the

hands of a portion of the community; and this unequal distribution

of the wealth and power gained as society advances tends to produce

greater inequality, since aggression grows by what it feeds on, and the

idea of justice is blurred by the habitual toleration of injustice.

In this way the patriarchal organization of society can easily grow

into hereditary monarchy, in which the king is as a god on earth, and

the masses of the people mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that

the father should be the directing head of the family, and that at his

death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member of the

little community, should succeed to the headship. But to continue this

arrangement as the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular

line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to increase,

as the common stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the

community grows. The head of the family passes into the hereditary

king, who comes to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others

as a being of superior rights. With the growth of the collective power

as compared with the power of the individual, his power to reward and

to punish increases, and so increase the inducements to flatter and to

fear him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation

grovels at the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil for

fifty years to prepare a tomb for one of their own mortal kind.

So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one of their

number, whom they follow as their bravest and most wary. But when large

bodies come to act together, personal selection becomes more difficult,

a blinder obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and from the

very necessities of warfare when conducted on a large scale absolute

power arises.

And so of the specialization of function. There is a manifest gain in

productive power when social growth has gone so far that instead of

every producer being summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a

regular military force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends

to the concentration of power in the hands of the military class or

their chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the administration

of justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably,

the observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into

the hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their

function and extend their power.

But the great cause of inequality is in the natural monopoly which

is given by the possession of land. The first perceptions of men

seem always to be that land is common property; but the rude devices

by which this is at first recognized—such as annual partitions

or cultivation in common—are consistent with only a low stage of

development. The idea of property, which naturally arises with

reference to things of human production, is easily transferred to

land, and an institution which when population is sparse merely

secures to the improver and user the due reward of his labor, finally,

as population becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the

producer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropriation of rent

for public purposes, which is the only way in which, with anything like

a high development, land can be readily retained as common property,

becomes, when political and religious power passes into the hands of

a class, the ownership of the land by that class, and the rest of the

community become merely tenants. And wars and conquests, which tend to

the concentration of political power and to the institution of slavery,

naturally result, where social growth has given land a value, in the

appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who concentrate power in

their hands, will likewise soon concentrate ownership of the land. To

them will fall large partitions of conquered land, which the former

inhabitants will till as tenants or serfs, and the public domain, or

common lands, which in the natural course of social growth are left

for awhile in every country, and in which state the primitive system

of village culture leaves pasture and woodland, are readily acquired,

as we see by modern instances. And inequality once established, the

ownership of land tends to concentrate as development goes on.

I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact that as a social

development goes on, inequality tends to establish itself, and not to

point out the particular sequence, which must necessarily vary with

different conditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the

phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The unequal distribution

of the power and wealth gained by the integration of men in society

tends to check, and finally to counterbalance, the force by which

improvements are made and society advances. On the one side, the

masses of the community are compelled to expend their mental powers

in merely maintaining existence. On the other side, mental power is

expended in keeping up and intensifying the system of inequality, in

ostentation, luxury, and warfare. A community divided into a class

that rules and a class that is ruled—into the very rich and the very

poor, may “build like giants and finish like jewelers;” but it will be

monuments of ruthless pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned

from its office of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him

down. Invention may for awhile to some degree go on; but it will be the

invention of refinements in luxury, not the inventions that relieve

toil and increase power. In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of

court physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden

as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common thought or

brighten common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innovator.

For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so

does inequality tend to render men adverse to improvement. How strong

is the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes who are

kept in ignorance by being compelled to toil for a mere existence,

is too well known to require illustration, and on the other hand the

conservatism of the classes to whom the existing social adjustment

gives special advantages is equally apparent. This tendency to resist

innovation, even though it be improvement, is observable in every

special organization—in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in

trade guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization is close.

A close corporation has always an instinctive dislike of innovation and

innovators, which is but the expression of an instinctive fear that

change may tend to throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the

common herd, and so rob it of importance and power; and it is always

disposed to guard carefully its special knowledge or skill.

It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. The advance of

inequality necessarily brings improvement to a halt, and as it still

persists or provokes unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental

power necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins.

These principles make intelligible the history of civilization.

In the localities where climate, soil, and physical conformation tended

least to separate men as they increased, and where, accordingly,

the first civilizations grew up, the internal resistances to

progress would naturally develop in a more regular and thorough

manner than where smaller communities, which in their separation

had developed diversities, were afterward brought together into a

closer association. It is this, it seems to me, which accounts for

the general characteristics of the earlier civilizations as compared

with the later civilizations of Europe. Such homogeneous communities,

developing from the first without the jar of conflict between different

customs, laws, religions, etc., would show a much greater uniformity.

The concentrating and conservative forces would all, so to speak, pull

together. Rival chieftains would not counterbalance each other, nor

diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly influence in check.

Political and religious power, wealth and knowledge, would thus tend

to concentrate in the same centers. The same causes which tended to

produce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would tend to produce

the hereditary artisan and laborer, and to separate society into

castes. The power which association sets free for progress would thus

be wasted, and barriers to further progress be gradually raised. The

surplus energies of the masses would be devoted to the construction

of temples, palaces, and pyramids; to ministering to the pride and

pampering the luxury of their rulers; and should any disposition to

improvement arise among the classes of leisure it would at once be

checked by the dread of innovation. Society developing in this way must

at length stop in a conservatism which permits no further progress.

How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when once reached,

will continue, seems to depend upon external causes, for the iron bonds

of the social environment which grows up repress disintegrating forces

as well as improvement. Such a community can be most easily conquered,

for the masses of the people are trained to a passive acquiescence in

a life of hopeless labor. If the conquerors merely take the place of

the ruling class, as the Hyksos did in Egypt and the Tartars in China,

everything will go on as before. If they ravage and destroy, the glory

of palace and temple remains but in ruins, population becomes sparse,

and knowledge and art are lost.

European civilization differs in character from civilizations of

the Egyptian type because it springs not from the association of a

homogeneous people developing from the beginning, or at least for

a long time, under the same conditions, but from the association

of peoples who in separation had acquired distinctive social

characteristics, and whose smaller organizations longer prevented

the concentration of power and wealth in one center. The physical

conformation of the Grecian peninsula is such as to separate the people

at first into a number of small communities. As those petty republics

and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their energies in warfare, and the

peaceable co-operation of commerce extended, the light of civilization

blazed up. But the principle of association was never strong enough

to save Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an end to

by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which had been combated with

various devices by Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and

Grecian valor, art, and literature became things of the past. And so in

the rise and extension, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization,

may be seen the working of these two principles of association and

equality, from the combination of which springs progress.

Springing from the association of the independent husbandmen and

free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength from conquests

which brought hostile nations into common relations, the Roman power

hushed the world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking

real progress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization

extended. The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the homogeneous

civilizations where the strong bonds of custom and superstition that

held the people in subjection probably also protected them, or at any

rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled; it rotted, declined and

fell. Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the

legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the

heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had dried up the

strength and destroyed the vigor of the Roman world. Government became

despotism, which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became

servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature

sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became

waste without the ravages of war—everywhere inequality produced decay,

political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed

Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the necessary

product of the system which had substituted slaves and colonii for the

independent husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates

of senatorial families.

Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with

the growth of association. Two great causes contributed to this—the

splitting up of concentrated power into innumerable little centers by

the influx of the Northern nations, and the influence of Christianity.

Without the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow decay

of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were closely married and

loss of external power brought no relief of internal tyranny. And but

for the other there would have been barbarism, without principle of

association or amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords who

everywhere grasped local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian

cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were founded,

village communities took root, and serfs acquired rights in the soil

they tilled. The leaven of Teutonic ideas of equality worked through

the disorganized and disjointed fabric of society. And although society

was split up into an innumerable number of separated fragments, yet

the idea of closer association was always present—it existed in the

recollections of a universal empire; it existed in the claims of a

universal church.

Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in percolating

through a rotting civilization; though pagan gods were taken into her

pantheon, and pagan forms into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her

creed; yet her essential idea of the equality of men was never wholly

destroyed. And two things happened of the utmost moment to incipient

civilization—the establishment of the papacy and the celibacy of the

clergy. The first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in

the same lines as the temporal power; and the latter prevented the

establishment of a priestly caste, during a time when all power tended

to hereditary form.

In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce of God;

in her monastic orders; in her councils which united nations, and

her edicts which ran without regard to political boundaries; in the

low-born hands in which she placed a sign before which the proudest

knelt; in her bishops who by consecration became the peers of the

greatest nobles; in her “Servant of Servants,” for so his official

title ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed

the right to arbitrate between nations, and whose stirrup was held

by kings; the Church, in spite of everything, was yet a promoter of

association, a witness for the natural equality of men; and by the

Church herself was nurtured a spirit that, when her early work of

association and emancipation was well-nigh done—when the ties she had

knit had become strong, and the learning she had preserved had been

given to the world—broke the chains with which she would have fettered

the human mind, and in a great part of Europe rent her organization.

The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast and complex

a subject to be thrown into proper perspective and relation in a

few paragraphs; but in all its details, as in its main features, it

illustrates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends

toward closer association and greater equality. Civilization is

co-operation. Union and liberty are its factors. The great extension of

association—not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities,

but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges which

knit each community together and link them with other though widely

separated communities; the growth of international and municipal law;

the advances in security of property and of person, in individual

liberty, and towards democratic government—advances, in short, towards

the recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit

of happiness—it is these that make our modern civilization so much

greater, so much higher, than any that has gone before. It is these

that have set free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of

ignorance which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men’s

knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling spheres and

bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of water; which has opened

to us the antechamber of nature’s mysteries and read the secrets of a

long-buried past; which has harnessed in our service physical forces

beside which man’s efforts are puny; and increased productive power by

a thousand great inventions.

In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current

literature, it is the fashion to speak even of war and slavery as means

of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of association,

can aid progress only when it prevents further war or breaks down

anti-social barriers which are themselves passive war.

As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided in

establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality, is, from

the very rudest state in which man can be imagined, the stimulus and

condition of progress. Auguste Comte’s idea that the institution of

slavery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia’s humorous notion

of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that

a propensity that has never been found developed in man save as the

result of the most unnatural conditions—the direst want or the most

brutalizing superstitions[63]—is an original impulse, and that he, even

in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has natural appetites

which the nobler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery

began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for improvement.

Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. Whether the

community consist of a single master and a single slave, or of

thousands of masters and millions of slaves, slavery necessarily

involves a waste of human power; for not only is slave labor less

productive than free labor, but the power of masters is likewise

wasted in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away

from directions in which real improvement lies. From first to last,

slavery, like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has

hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an

important part in the social organization does improvement cease. That

in the classical world slavery was so universal, is undoubtedly the

reason why the mental activity which so polished literature and refined

art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions which

distinguish modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were an

inventive people. In a slave-holding community the upper classes may

become luxurious and polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades

the laborer and robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit

of invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries

even when made. To freedom alone is given the spell of power which

summons the genii in whose keeping are the treasures of earth and the

viewless forces of the air.

The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social

adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of

right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect

liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other,

must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing

civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social

science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple

truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by

One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified—the simple truths

which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of

superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to

formulate the spiritual yearnings of man.

FOOTNOTES: