The Law of Civilization And Decay: An Essay on History by Brooks Adams (1895)

PREFACE

Some years ago, when writing a sketch of the history of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, I became deeply interested in certain religious aspects of the Reformation, which seemed hardly reconcilable with the theories usually advanced to explain them . After the book had been published, I continued reading theology, and, step by step , was led back, through the schoolmen and the crusades, to the revival of the pilgrimage to Palestine, which followed upon the conversion of the Huns. As ferocious pagans, the Huns had long closed the road to Constantinople; but the change which swept over Europe after the year 1000, when Saint Stephen was crowned, was unmistakable; the West received an impulsion from the East. I thus became convinced that religious enthusiasm , which, by stimulating the pilgrimage, restored relations between the West and East, was the power which produced the accelerated social , movement finally culminating in modern centralization .

Meanwhile I thought I had discovered, not only that faith during the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries, spoke by preference through architecture , but also that in France and Syria , at least, a precise relation existed between the ecclesiastical and military systems of building, and that the one could not be understood without the other. In the commercial cities of the same epoch, on the contrary, the religious idea assumed no definite form of artistic expression, for the Gothic never flourished in Venice, Genoa, Pisa , or Florence, nor did any pure school of architecture thrive in the mercantile atmosphere. Furthermore, commerce from the outset seemed antagonistic to the imagination, for a universal decay of architecture set in throughout Europe after the great commercial expansion of the thirteenth century ; and the inference I drew from these facts was, that the economic instinct must have chosen some other medium by which to express itself. My observations led me to suppose that the coinage might be such a medium , and I ultimately concluded that if the development of a mercantile community is to be understood , it must be approached through its money.

When this stage had been reached, the Reformation began to wear a new aspect, but several years elapsed before I saw whither my studies led . Only very slowly did a sequence of cause and effect take shape in my mind, a sequence wholly unexpected in character, whose growth resembled the arrangement of the fragments of an inscription, which cannot be read until the stones have been set in a determined order. Finally, as the historical work neared an end, I perceived that the intellectual phenomena under examination, fell into a series which seemed to correspond, somewhat closely, with the laws which are supposed to regulate the movements of the material universe.

Theories can be tested only by applying them to facts, and the facts relating to successive phases of human thought constitute history; therefore, if intellectual phenomena are evolved in a regular sequence, history, like matter, must be governed by law. In support of such a conjecture, I venture to offer an hypothesis, by which to classify a few of the more interesting intellectual phases through which human society must, apparently, pass, in its oscillations between barbarism and civilization, or, what amounts to the same thing , in its movement from a condition of physical dispersion to one of concentration . The accompanying volume contains the facts which suggested the hypothesis.

The theory proposed is based upon the accepted scientific principle, that the law of force and energy is of universal application in nature, and that animal life is one of the outlets through which solar energy is dissipated.

Thought is one of the manifestations of human energy, and among the earlier and simpler phases of tłought, two stand conspicuous — Fear, and Greed . Fear, which, by stimulating the imagination, creates a belief in an invisible world, and ultimately develops a priesthood; and Greed, which dissipates energy in war and trade.

Probably the velocity of the social movement of any community, is proportionate to its energy and mass, and its centralization is proportionate to its velocity ; therefore, as human movement is accelerated, societies centralize. In the earlier stages of concentration, fear appears to be the channel through which energy finds the readiest outlet; accordingly, in primitive and scattered communities, the imagination is vivid, and the mental types produced are religious, military, artistic . As consolidation advances, fear yields to greed, and the economic organism tends to supersede the emotional and martial.

Whenever a race is so richly endowed with the energetic material, that it does not expend all its energy in the daily, struggle for life, the surplus may be stored in the shape of wealth; and this stock of stored energy may be transferred from community to community, either by conquest, or by superiority in economic competition.

However large may be the store of energy accumulated by conquest, a race must, sooner or later, reach the limit of its martial energy, when it must enter on the phase of economic competition. But, as the economic organism radically differs from the emotional and martial, the effect of economic competition has been , perhaps invariably , to dissipate the energy amassed by war.

When surplus energy has accumulated in such bulk as to preponderate over productive energy, it becomes the controlling social force. Thenceforward, capital is autocratic, and energy vents itself through those organisms best fitted to give expression to the power of capital. In this last stage of consolidation, the economic, and, perhaps, the scientific intellect is propagated, while the imagination fades, and the emotional, the martial, and the artistic types of manhood decay. As the social movement of a race is accelerated, more of its energetic material is consumed, and, ultimately, societies appear to attain a velocity at which they are unable to make good the waste. In high stages of centralization, where unrestricted economic competition prevails, this loss of energy is manifested by a gradual dissipation of capital, which, at last, ends in disiintegration .

The evidence seems to point to the conclusion, that, when a highly centralized society disintegrates, under the pressure of economic competition , it is because the energy of the race has been exhausted . Consequently, the survivors of such a race lack the power necessary for renewed concentration , and must probably remain inert, until supplied with fresh energetic material by the infusion of barbarian blood .
BROOKS ADAMS.
QUINCY.

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