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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    specially fortifiable spots, where the defence can make itself strongest. These become detached and self-dependent, and lose the incentive as well as the compulsion of holding or of being bound together. In the general débdcle there sounds a cry like that in shipwreck of “ sauve qui peut.’ The small sections, into which the large states split, sink back into a con- dition of petty and miscellaneous strife and warfare. (2) As regards economics, in the early period land is gen- © erally held to some extent in common by the communities. Forests and pastures are so held longest; fields, for plowing, sowing, and reaping, are allotted annually, with a tendency to become settled in families. First to be appropriated are the plots on which the habitations are built and then the hoed vegetable patches around them; then the fields; later the meadows, and lastly the forests. Wealth at first consists in what the land immediately produces or nourishes, and at last in the land itself. People carry on their industries in families or small circles, there making most of the articles that satisfy their simple wants; and exchanges of small articles are mostly by barter, at fairs more or less periodic; for money is un- known, or scarce. In important matters, such as the purchase of land, there is great formality, rendered necessary for im- pressing the affair upon the memory of witnesses in an age of illiteracy, and because, moreover, such transactions are dis- couraged. For the land was rarely parted with by its common or private owners, but was kept for ages in communities or families. Advance is made by the introduction of money and the greater employment of writing, more frequent and regular markets, the facilitation of contractual engagements, the break- ing down of formalism, the acceleration of business dealings. The early period is one of custom, everything running in long- continued grooves, individuals finding their places fixed for ~ them, from which they can change without becoming outcasts only by entering into new family relations. It has been de- scribed as a period of status.* Before the period of quies- cence at the top is reached, the extension of the use of writing and money has changed it into a period of contracts, which con- tinues on through the next stage of the cycle. Now wealth is 8 Maine, Ancient Law, 170.