The decay of civilizations The decay and fall of civilizations, including not only the historic examples of the Graeco-Roman and Islamic civilizations, but also those of prehistoric times, which have been shown to have preceded them, offers to the sociologist a very special and definite problem so sharply indeed that its existence appears to challenge any claim we dare make to understand the nature and workings of human society. To be used properly the term civilization must be applied not merely to those societies the institutions of which we see reason to admire, but to designate the aggregate of all the social adaptations appropriate to the permanent existence of a dense population. In general form these adaptations have a universal character. In all societies which we call civilized, the personal understandings, which a man can form with a small circle of immediate acquaintances, are supplemented by a vastly more numerous system of conventional understandings, which establishes his customary relations, his rights and his obligations, with regard to the entire society of which he is a member. He is thus free to devote himself to productive labour even of a highly specialized character, with confidence that the production of his primary necessities, the protection of his possessions from violence, and even the satisfaction of his moral and intellectual needs, will be undertaken by the labours of others, who make of such tasks their special occupations. The specialization of occupations, involving the customary acceptance of a conventional standard of exchange, the maintenance of public order, and the national organization of military preparations, are thus the universal characteristics of the civilized in contradistinction to the uncivilized societies of mankind. It is a matter of experience, which no one thinks of denying, that such an organization does in fact enable a given area to support a much larger population, and that at a higher level of material and intellectual well-being, than the uncivilized peoples who could alternatively occupy the same territory. Such a civilized society, once organized and established, how is it possible to imagine that it should fail in competition with its uncivilized neighbours? The latter occupy their territory more sparsely, they lack moreover the organized central government which could mobilize to advantage their scanty numbers. On the contrary, our experience of uncivilized populations shows them to be divided by hereditary enmities and petty jealousies, which should make their union, even upon a question of the simplest national interest, almost an impossibility. Industrial organization gives to civilized peoples, in antiquity as well as in our own times, the advantage of superior weapons; while the habits of co-operative labour enable them to adopt a more regular, co-ordinated, and effective system of military tactics. Above all, the superior knowledge which a civilized people can, and does indeed, continually accumulate, should enable them to act generally with superior information, with a surer foresight of the consequences of their collective action, and with the capacity to profit by experience, and to improve their methods if their first attempts should prove to be unfortunate. Bearing in mind the unquestionable advantages of superior knowledge, of co-ordinated efforts and of industrial skill, should we not confidently anticipate, if we were ignorant of the actual history of our planet, that the history of civilization would consist of an unbroken series of triumphs; and that once the germ of an organized society had made its appearance, in Babylonia, perhaps, or in Egypt, it would be only a question of time for every country in the world to be in turn absorbed and organized by the Babylonian, or Egyptian, civilization? The indications which we possess of the earlier civilizations, as well as the plain narrative of the historic period, differ remarkably from the rational anticipation deduced above. We see, indeed, a certain tenuous continuity in many elements of traditional civilization which are handed on from one social group to another, as these in turn become civilized. But this circumstance seldom even obscures the contrasts between the social groups, involving differences between the territory, language, religion, and race, associated with the highest civilization at different epochs. These contrasts are obviously associated, in the case of each great change, with the violent irruption of some new people of uncivilized origin. The experiment of becoming civilized has, in fact, been performed repeatedly, by peoples of very different races, nearly always, perhaps, with some aid from the traditional ideas of peoples previously civilized, but developing their national and industrial organizations by their own progressive powers; and in all cases without exception, if we set aside the incomplete experiment of our own civilization, after a period of glory and domination accompanied by notable contributions to the sciences and the arts, they have failed, not only to maintain their national superiority, but even to establish a permanent mediocrity among the nations of the globe, and in many cases have left no other record of their existence than that which we owe to the labours of archaeologists. Before considering those causes which I propose to assign both to the phenomenon in general, and to its more salient characteristics, in the course of the succeeding chapters on Man, it is as well to give some attention to the preliminary question: Of what sort should be an explanation which we should regard as adequate? It is easy to find among the peoples of antiquity institutions disagreeable enough to our modern feelings, it is easy to criticize their educational ideas, or the forms of government which they have successively adopted; above all it is easy to find fault with their ignorance of economic law, and to ascribe to their mistakes in this domain the same civil and political misfortunes, which we anticipate equally from the parallel errors of our political opponents ! Such arguments are not only inconclusive from our ignorance of the laws of causation upon which they rely, they are also demonstrably insufficient to meet the requirements of our special problem. For, in the first place, our knowledge of the earlier stages of the history of great peoples shows us customs no less repulsive, manners no less licentious, a neglect of education at least equally pronounced, and ignorance of economic law as absolute as any which can be ascribed to their civilized successors. In the second place, moreover, in a period of national decay it would be unreasonable to expect that any aspect of national life, political, religious, intellectual, or economic, should remain in a healthy and flourishing condition, or that the misfortunes of the times will escape the complaints of observant contemporaries. That the condition of agriculture, for example, was unsatisfactory in the later Roman empire, though a legitimate inference from the state of that society, fails to constitute in any useful sense an explanation of its progressive decay. Peoples in the prime of their powers appear to find no difficulty in making good use of very inferior natural resources, and adapt their national organization with complete success to much more violent changes than those which can be adduced to explain the misfortunes of the later stages of their civilization. A physician observing a number of patients to sicken and die in similar though not identical conditions, and with similar though not identical symptoms, would surely make an initial error if he did not seek for a single common cause of the disorder. The complexity of the symptoms, and of the disturbances of the various organs of the body, should not lead him to assume that the original cause, or the appropriate remedial measures, must be equally complex. Is this not because the physician assumes that the workings of the body, though immensely complex, are self-regulatory and capable of a normal corrective response to all ordinary disturbances; while only a small number of disturbances of an exceptional kind meet with no effective response and cause severe illness? It is impossible to doubt that we have equally a right to expect self-regulatory power in human societies. If not, we should be led to predict that such societies should break down under the influence of any of the innumerable accidents to which they are exposed. Uncivilized societies of various kinds have adapted themselves to every climate, from the Arctic, to the forests and deserts of the Tropics. They share the territories of the most savage or poisonous animals, and often long withstand without disruption the assaults of most implacable human enemies. Social progress has not been arrested by the introduction of new weapons, of alcohol, or of opium, or even of infanticide; yet these introductions might each of them seem to threaten the existence of the race. That civilized men, possessed of more effective appliances, with access to more knowledge, and organized for the most detailed co-operation, should prove themselves incapable of effective response to any disturbance of their social organization, surely demands some very special explanation. https://archive.org/stream/geneticaltheoryo031631mbp/geneticaltheoryo031631mbp_djvu.txt

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