The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    who everywhere form the aristocracy of a country, had their position undermined, at the same time the new industrialism was giving wealth and consideration to the middle class of manufacturers, and increasing the demand for labourers, who also had the new and the cheaper land at their disposal, with the result, completing the earlier movements, that democracy has risen to power. It is true that in some countries political convulsions were needed to drive out the aristocrats and to confiscate and divide their lands, or at least to strip them of power; but it was only the economic changes simultaneously taking place that occasioned and fortified those political changes. Even in our country it was the opening of the western lands that led to the overthrow of our primitive aristocracy under Washington and Adams and to the establish- ment of democracy under Jefferson. This democratisation of the western world is an economic and political result almost everywhere (west of Berlin), to some extent, accomplished. Another actual result is social, consisting of the greater humanisation of the people, or up- growth of the humanitarian spirit, so characteristic of our age. The milder attitude of nature toward us has caused us to assume a milder attitude toward one another. The manners and dispositions of men have grown softer and gentler. Punishments are less cruel. War, to repeat, pace the present one raging, is less indulged in: it is not needed for existence, it interferes with wealth, it hardly gives any pleasure in itself. The fall of an old and the rise of a new class to power, that of the middling rich, has broken down old preju- dices, mixed classes up, and enhanced the appearance even be- yond the reality of democracy, by disguising plutocracy. Women are accorded a freer status. Children are given more play. Education and enlightenment are extended to the masses. Religious intolerance is almost banished. This humanitarian movement, it is true, has its roots further back than the beginning of the nineteenth century. It may be traced to the Renaissance which preceded, and to the Reformation which followed, the discovery of America. But it has come to its bloom only in our days. In his Arnoldesque essay on Social Evolution Mr. Benjamin Kidd ascribed the modern “ deepening and softening of character” to a “ fund