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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    of imperialism were distinct both in time and character, but the intervening period of plutocracy and democracy was fairly long and prominent. In our own cycle of western civilisa- tion the first period of kingship was still longer, and the period of republicanism already entered upon gives promise of being so well established that few persons dream of the danger of a demagogic and imperialistic despotism. And yet Europe has already had two examples of it, in Cromwell and Na- poleon, like Sylla in Rome preceding Cesar (or were they like the Greek tyrants in the midway position as after-gleams of the overthrown kings and fore-tastes of the succeeding auto- crats?); and the contemporaneous civilisation in the east, until our own day, has seemed sunk in that kind of lethargy. Here, then, at least in the west, or in the westward move- ment now reaching around again to the east, we see advance. This is another kind of advance, additional to that which takes place within each cycle, being an advance between cycles, or of one civilisation following and improving upon another. The cycles of civilisation themselves move in an ascending series, the subsequent ones being greater, broader, better, and, let us hope, more lasting. This ascending movement takes place in spite of the descents of civilisation in the latter periods of the cycles, because some of the gains made in the cul- minating period of the previous cycles are retained in the following. The progression of the moments of civilisation may be likened to that of a point on the rim of a wheel rolling uphill: the point ascends to the top of the wheel and then descends, but its descent does not go so far as did its rise, and at each succeeding bottom it is not so low as it was at the preceding bottom, and at each succeeding top it is higher than it was at the preceding top. The proper comparison of suc- cessive civilisations is between their corresponding stages within their cycles. A lower cycle may have points near its top higher than points near the bottom of a higher; but that signifies nothing. This upward progression of cycles, it would seem, might go on without limit; at least the reasons determining the limit within each cycle do not operate here. But there may be other reasons, and so the question occurs, whether this series may not also reach a culmination: whether the wheel may not come to the top of the hill and pass down on