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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    the other side, every descent of the point on the rim then being greater than its preceding rise. To this question history can give-no answer. All we know historically is that hitherto there have been revolutions of civilisation and that the cycles in which it moves have themselves moved upward. Only in- ference from other known facts can influence belief with re- gard to this movement in the future. The comparison of civilisations, either at particular moments or as wholes, must embrace two aspects — the physical and the moral. The physical or material aspect measures advance by the increase of man’s power over nature and his acquisition of comfort; the moral measures it by his command over himself and his distribution of comfort. In each cycle what has been treated as the level at the top is the level of highest material prosperity. The religious zenith we have seen to be situated at the opposite side of the periphery. This indicates that the moral culmination need not coincide with the physical. Yet there are indications that it does. In the literal sense of mor- ality as the observance of customs, this exists in the highest degree at the beginning of each cycle. In the ascending pe- riod, too, as has been noted, the masculine virtues are most needed, and attain their highest development. But in the sense of ethics, or a rationalisation of right conduct, the high- est teaching is reached at the top of the cycle, where prosperity renders it easy to theorise sagely. Then, too, the feminine virtues are added to the masculine, and for a time they all hold sway together. At last, in the declining period, the mascu- line virtues give way first, and their loss undermines the rest. But in this period there is more occasion for the application of the highest precepts, and this is now achieved, exceptionally at least, when, under pressure of ever-increasing hard times, peo- ple learn to help one another and to endure. It would be a poor civilisation that did not end with a better religion than it began with. As for the progression of cycles, in both these aspects there can be no doubt about the superiority of our European and American civilisation over the Greek and the Roman; and there is every appearance that the Greek and the Roman were superior to the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian; and that these were superior to what preceded them, there can again be