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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    and of subordinate communities within a large state. This differentiation of individuals by contention has been a univer- sal precedent, on our earth, of their organisation, by which collaboration is again obtained. Collaboration is now not of equals, working every one under his own guidance, as wise as any other,—a kind of co-operation which can succeed only when all individuals become perfectly wise; it is of unequals, in which some lead and guide and others do what they are told, and some merely transmit orders. There is multiform com- plexity, as in the organisms of plants and animals. Individu- als in a state are like the cells in a living body, and in the state its members or organs are classes, orders, local communities, contractual combinations or corporations. These develop, and their relations change; and those which change for the best, subdue others and survive till still others subdue them. In short, as we have seen, a civilised state is a growing organism, ~ and the advance of civilisation is this growth. As such, a civilised state is subject to the fate of all growing organisms in plant and animal life: it is subject to decay. For everywhere growth involves a highest point or stage, which may be occupied for a shorter or longer period, but beyond which the internal principle of growth cannot carry; after which the opposite process of disintegration sets in. The civi- lisation of every state, or of every cluster of states, therefore forms a cycle, having an ascending movement, a continuance on a highest plane, a gradual descent into, lastly, a lethargic condition, from which if it be again awakened, it will arise to run a new cycle, or else it may stagger on in indefinite de- crepitude. And between all such cycles of civilisation there are resemblances, as there are resemblances between the growth and decay of all living bodies, there being common causes for the expansion and common causes for the contraction of civil- isation, and also for the passing of the former causes into the latter, though their particular manifestations may be different in different civilisations and lead to different results. This cyclical theory of civilisation has been long and widely entertained. In antiquity it was held mostly in an astronom- ical form, when it was found that after certain centuries and millenniums the sun and moon, and then all the planets, re- verted to the same positions; wherefore, as the stars were sup-