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(eTextbook PDF) for International Relations, Brief Edition 7th Edition instant download

The document is a promotional overview of various eTextbooks available for download, including titles on International Relations and other subjects. It highlights the contents of the 7th edition of 'International Relations' and provides links to additional resources. The textbook aims to educate students on the complexities of international affairs and includes updates on current global issues.

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For our children—Solomon and Ruth; Claire, Ava, and Carl
Brief Contents
1 The Globalization of International Relations 1

2 Realist Theories 37

3 Liberal and Social Theories 67

4 Conflict, War, and Terrorism 115

5 Trade and Finance 174

6 International Organization, Law, and Human Rights 222

7 North-South Relations 278

8 Environment and Technology 331

vi
Contents
Prefacexi Power Distribution 49
About the Authors xvii Hegemony51
To the Student xviii Alliances53
A Note on Nomenclature xix Purposes of Alliances 53
Mapxx NATO54
Other Alliances 57

1 The Globalization of Strategy58


Statecraft58
International Relations 1
Policy Perspectives Prime Minister
Globalization, International Relations, of India, Narendra Modi 59
and Daily Life 2 Rationality61
Core Principles 3 The Prisoner’s Dilemma 62
IR as a Field of Study 9
Actors and Influences 11 3 Liberal and Social Theories 67
State Actors 11
Liberal Traditions 68
Nonstate Actors 14
The Waning of War 68
Levels of Analysis 15
Kant and Peace 69
Policy Perspectives Overview16
Liberal Institutionalism 70
Globalization18
International Regimes 72
Global Geography 20
Collective Security 73
The Evolving International System 25 The Democratic Peace 75
The Cold War, 1945–1990 25
Domestic Influences 77
The Post–Cold War Era,
Bureaucracies77
1990–201529
Interest Groups 78

2
Public Opinion 79
Realist Theories 37
Policy Perspectives Prime Minister
Realism38 of Japan, Shinzo Abe 81
Power40 Legislatures82
Defining Power 40 Making Foreign Policy 83
Estimating Power 42 Models of Decision Making 84
Elements of Power 42 Individual Decision Makers 86
The International System 43 Group Psychology 89
Anarchy and Sovereignty 44 Crisis Management 90
Balance of Power 46 Social Theories 92
Great Powers and Middle Powers 47 Constructivism92

Note: Each chapter ends with a summary, key terms, and critical thinking questions.
vii
viii Contents

Postmodernism95 Chemical and Biological


Marxism96 Weapons163
Peace Studies 99 Proliferation165
Gender Theories 102 Nuclear Strategy and Arms
Control167
Why Gender Matters 102
States and Militaries 169
The Masculinity of Realism 104
Military Economics 169
Gender in War and Peace 105
Control of Military Forces 170
Women in IR 106
Difference Feminism Versus
Liberal Feminism?
Postmodern Feminism
109
111
5 Trade and Finance 174
Theories of Trade 175
Liberalism and Mercantilism 176
4 Conflict, War, Comparative Advantage 179
and Terrorism 115 Political Interference in Markets 180
The Wars of the World 116 Protectionism182
Types of War 116 Trade Regimes 185
Theories of the Causes of War 120 The World Trade Organization 185
Conflicts of Ideas 123 Bilateral and Regional Agreements 187
Nationalism123 Cartels190
Ethnic Conflict 125 Industries and Interest Groups 191
Religious Conflict 128 Enforcement of Trade Rules 193
Policy Perspectives President Economic Globalization 195
of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf 129 The World Economy, 1750 to
the Present 195
Ideological Conflict 138
Resistance to Trade 199
Conflicts of Interest 139
Globalization, Financial Markets,
Territorial Disputes 139
and the Currency System 200
Control of Governments 145
The Currency System 202
Economic Conflict 145
International Currency Exchange 202
Conventional Military Forces 147
Why Currencies Rise or Fall 206
Land Forces: Controlling Territory 149
Policy Perspectives President
Naval Forces: Controlling
of China, Xi Jinping 207
the Seas 150
Air Forces: Controlling Central Banks 209
the Skies 152 The World Bank and the IMF 210
Coordinating Forces: Logistics State Financial Positions 211
and Intelligence 153 National Accounts 211
Evolving Technologies 154 International Debt 212
Terrorism156 Multinational Business 213
Weapons of Mass Destruction 160 Multinational Corporations 213
Nuclear Weapons 160 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 215
Ballistic Missiles and Other Host and Home Government
Delivery Systems 162 Relations216
Contents ix

6 International Organization, Rural and Urban Populations


Women in Developing Countries
286
287
Law, and Human Rights 222
Migration and Refugees 288
Globalization and Integration 223 Theories of Accumulation 291
Roles of International Organizations 224 Economic Accumulation 291
The United Nations 226 The World-System 292
The UN System 227 Imperialism293
The Security Council 232 Effects of Colonialism 295
Peacekeeping Forces 235 Postcolonial Dependency 296
The Secretariat 239 Development Experiences 299
The General Assembly 240 The Newly Industrializing Countries 300
UN Programs 241 The Chinese Experience 302
Autonomous Agencies 242 India Takes Off 304
The European Union 243 Other Experiments 306
Integration Theory 244 Import Substitution and
The Vision of a United Europe 246 Export-Led Growth 307
The Treaty of Rome 247 Concentrating Capital for
Structure of the European Union 248 Manufacturing308
The Single European Act 250 Corruption309
The Maastricht Treaty 251 North-South Capital Flows 310
Monetary Union 252 Foreign Investment 310
Expanding the European Union 254 North-South Debt 312
The Lisbon Treaty 255 IMF Conditionality 314
International Law 258 The South in International
Economic Regimes 315
Sources of International Law 258
Enforcement of International Law 259 Policy Perspectives Prime Minister
of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan 316
The World Court 260
International Cases in National Courts 261 Foreign Assistance 317
Laws of Diplomacy 264 Patterns of Foreign Assistance 318
Just-War Doctrine 265 Types of Foreign Assistance 320
Human Rights 266 The Politics of Foreign Assistance 323
Individual Rights Versus Sovereignty 266 The Impact of Foreign Assistance 326
Human Rights Institutions 268
War Crimes 271 8 Environment
Policy Perspectives International and Technology 331
Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor,
Fatou Bensouda 273 Interdependence and the Environment 332
Sustainable Development 334

7 North-South Relations 278


Managing the Environment
The Atmosphere
334
335
The State of the South 279 Biodiversity340
Basic Human Needs 281 Forests and Oceans 341
World Hunger 285 Pollution343
x Contents

Policy Perspectives Prime Minister Information as a Tool of Governments 364


of Ireland, Enda Kenny 345 Information as a Tool Against
Natural Resources 347 Governments365
World Energy 348 Telecommunications and Global
Culture366
Minerals351
Water Disputes 352 Conclusion368

Population353
The Demographic Transition 354 Appendix: Jobs and Careers in
Population Policies 355 International Relations 374
Disease357 Glossary378
The Power of Information 360 Photo Credits 391
Connecting the World 361 Index392
Preface

W
e live in an increasingly interconnected world. These connections bring
great benefits to our everyday lives: the ability to communicate instan-
taneously around the world and share our cultures and beliefs; the
possibility of directly helping a person affected by an earthquake through a global
network of charities; the ability to purchase a product made from parts manufac-
tured in a dozen different countries, each using its specialized knowledge to create
a better product—these are some of the potential benefits of the interconnected
world. Yet these connections may also worsen existing problems: Terrorist net-
works use telecommunications to carry out attacks, global commerce can put
undue strain on our natural environment, and millions of people still live with
few of the global connections that are enjoyed by citizens of wealthier countries.
Despite these increasing connections and their implications for everyday life,
many students begin college misinformed about basic facts of international rela-
tions (IR), such as the extent of poverty in and levels of foreign assistance to the
developing world, and the trend toward fewer wars over the past two decades.
An introductory textbook plays a key role in students’ education about interna-
tional affairs, and we have worked hard to make the Brief Seventh Edition of
International Relations timely, accurate, visually appealing, and intellectually
engaging. We hope this textbook can help a generation develop knowledge and
critical thinking in order to find its voice and place in the changing world order.
IR is not only an important topic but also a fascinating one. The rich complexity
of international relationships—political, economic, and cultural—provides a puzzle
to try to understand. The puzzle is not only an intellectual challenge but also emo-
tionally powerful. It contains human-scale stories in which the subject’s grand
themes—war and peace, intergroup conflict and community, integration and divi-
sion, humans and their environment, poverty and development—play out.

New to the Seventh Edition


The Brief Seventh Edition of International Relations includes important revisions
throughout to keep the text current in a time of historic changes in the interna-
tional system.

Chapter 1:
• Completely updated economic and demographic data
• Updates on Middle East conflicts, including Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iranian
nuclear negotiations
xi
xii Preface

• Updates on East Asian maritime tensions


• Discussion of the Ebola health crisis in West Africa

Chapter 2:
• New Policy Perspectives box feature
• Updates on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) withdrawal
from Afghanistan
• Discussion of Russian annexation of Crimea

Chapter 3:
• Revised discussion of Women in IR
• Updates on Arab Spring transitions and violence in the Middle East
• Discussion of congressional debate over Iran nuclear deal

Chapter 4:
• Revised listing of wars of the world and updated data on military forces
worldwide
• Revised discussion of Islamic groups, including the rise of the Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
• Updated discussion of civil wars in Syria and Yemen
• New discussion of Ukrainian-Russian tensions and violence
• Revised discussion of maritime tensions in East Asia
• New discussion of Iran nuclear negotiations and the 2015 nuclear agreement

Chapter 5:
• Updated data and discussion on the continuing slow recovery from the global
economic crisis of 2008–2009
• Discussion of controversial Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific trade agreements
• Updated discussion on continued struggles to complete the Doha Round of
trade negotiations over new World Trade Organization mandates
• Updated discussions of state economic positions in the global economy,
including Russian economic struggles
• Discussion of Chinese currency devaluations
• New discussion of virtual currencies such as bitcoin
Preface xiii

Chapter 6:
• Completely updated data and discussion of current UN peacekeeping efforts
• Discussion of new UN Disabilities Treaty
• Updated discussion of International Criminal Court
• Updated discussion of the economic difficulties in Greece, including the pos-
sibility of the country’s exit from the Eurozone
• Revised discussion of Eurozone countries

Chapter 7:
• Completely updated data on progress toward the UN Millennium Develop-
ment Goals
• Discussion of European immigration crisis
• More focus on developments in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and
China)
• Updated discussion of foreign assistance based on updated data from 2014
and 2015
• Updated discussion of Chinese economic situation, including devaluations
and stock market slides
• Revised discussion of international debt, including updated data

Chapter 8:
• Updated discussion of negotiations for a comprehensive global warming
treaty
• Updates on attempts by China and the United States to move to smaller side
agreements on environmental issues
• New discussion of Ebola in West Africa
• Revised discussion on the global fight against HIV/AIDS
• Revised discussion of the global digital divide, including updated data

In each chapter, we have updated the tables and figures with the most recent
available data. This includes new data on gross domestic product (GDP), mili-
tary forces, migration and refugees, debt, remittances, foreign aid, the HIV/AIDS
epidemic, and UN peacekeeping operations, to name a few.
Finally, this Brief Seventh Edition of International Relations revises the photo
program substantially. Dozens of new photos, many of them from 2014 and
2015, draw visual attention to current events while reinforcing key concepts in
the text.
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xiv Preface

REVEL™
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way today’s students read, think, and learn
When students are engaged deeply, they learn more effectively and perform bet-
ter in their courses. This simple fact inspired the creation of REVEL: an immer-
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standing of concepts and improved performance throughout the course.
Learn more about REVEL
www.pearsonhighered.com/revel/

Structure of the Text


This text aims to present the current state of knowledge in IR in a comprehen-
sive and accessible way—to provide a map of the subject covering its various
research communities in a logical order. Common core principles—dominance,
reciprocity, and identity—unify the text by showing how theoretical models
apply across the range of topics in international security and political economy.
The overall structure of this text follows substantive topics, first in interna-
tional security and then in international political economy (IPE). Chapter 1
introduces the study of IR; explains the collective goods problem and the core
principles of dominance, reciprocity, and identity; and provides some geograph-
ical and historical context for the subject. Chapters 2 and 3 lay out the various
theoretical approaches to IR: realist theories, liberal theories, and social theories
(constructivist, postmodern, Marxist, peace studies, and gender theories). Chap-
ter 4 introduces the main sources of international conflict and the conditions and
manner in which such conflicts lead to war, terrorism, and other forms of vio-
lence. Chapter 5 introduces theoretical concepts in political economy (showing
how theories of international security translate into IPE issue areas) and dis-
cusses trade relations and the politics of international money, banking, and mul-
tinational business operations. Chapter 6 shows how international organizations
and law, especially the United Nations and the European Union, have evolved
to become major global and regional influences and how human rights have
become increasingly important. Chapter 7 addresses global North-South rela-
tions and population growth, and considers alternatives for economic develop-
ment in the context of international business, debt, and foreign aid. Chapter 8
Preface xv

shows how environmental politics, telecommunications, and cultural exchange


expand international bargaining and interdependence.

Pedagogical Elements
In a subject such as IR, in which knowledge is tentative and empirical develop-
ments can overtake theories, critical thinking is a key skill for college students to
develop. At various points in the text, conclusions are left open-ended to let stu-
dents reason their way through an issue and, in addition to the critical thinking
questions at the end of each chapter, the boxed features support deeper and
more focused critical thinking.
The Policy Perspectives feature in each chapter places students in the decision-
making perspective of a national leader. This feature bridges international relations
theory to policy problems while demonstrating the trade-offs often present in politi-
cal decision making and highlighting the interconnectedness of foreign and domes-
tic politics. The appendix, “Jobs and Careers in International Relations,” helps
students think about job possibilities in the field. These pages, devoted to careers in
nongovernmental organizations, government and diplomacy, international busi-
ness, and teaching and research, respond to the question, How will this class help
me find a job? and include books and internet sites to further pursue the issue.
Many people find information—especially abstract concepts—easier to
grasp when it is linked with pictures. Thus, the text uses color photographs
extensively to illustrate important points. Photo captions reinforce main themes
from the text and link them with the scenes pictured. Many of the photographs
in this edition were taken in 2014 and 2015.
Students use different learning styles. Students who are visual learners
should find not only the photos but also the many color graphics especially use-
ful. The use of quantitative data also encourages critical thinking. Basic data,
presented simply and appropriately at a global level, allow students to form
their own judgments and to reason through the implications of different policies
and theories. The text uses global-level data (showing the whole picture), rounds
off numbers to highlight what is important, and conveys information graphi-
cally where appropriate.

Jon C. W. Pevehouse
Joshua S. Goldstein

Supplements
Pearson is pleased to offer several resources to qualified adopters of the Brief
Seventh Edition International Relations and their students that will make teaching
and learning from this text even more effective and enjoyable. Several of the
xvi Preface

supplements for this text are available at the Instructor Resource Center (IRC),
an online hub that allows instructors to download quickly text-specific supple-
ments. Please visit the IRC welcome page at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc to
register for access.

INSTRUCTOR’S MANUAL/TEST BANK This resource includes chapter sum-


maries, learning objectives, lecture outlines, multiple-choice questions, true/
false questions, and essay questions for each chapter. Available for download
from the IRC.

PEARSON MYTEST This powerful assessment generation program includes


all of the items in the instructor’s manual/test bank. Questions and tests can be
easily created, customized, saved online, and then printed, allowing flexibility
to manage assessments anytime and anywhere. To learn more, please visit www.
mypearsontest.com or contact your Pearson representative.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATION Organized around a lecture outline, these


multimedia presentations also include photos, figures, and tables from each
chapter. Available for download from the IRC.

Acknowledgments
Many scholars, colleagues, and friends have contributed ideas that influenced
the various editions of this text. The text owes a special debt to the late Robert C.
North, who suggested many years ago that the concepts of bargaining and lev-
erage could be used to integrate IR theory across four levels of analysis. For
help with military data issues, we thank the late Randall Forsberg. For sugges-
tions, we thank our colleagues, and the students in our world politics classes.
For help with data research, we thank Tana Johnson, Felicity Vabulas, Inken
von Borzyskowski, Alex Holland, Lindsey Wagner, Monica Widmann, and
Natalia Canas. Thanks to Mark Lilleleht for his assistance on the appendix,
“Jobs and Careers in International Relations.” Finally, we appreciate the years
of support we received from our late colleague, teacher, and friend Deborah
“Misty” Gerner.
About the Authors
Jon C. W. Pevehouse is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Political
Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is an award-winning teacher
and scholar. His research interests focus on international political economy, for-
eign policy, and international organizations. He is currently the editor of the
leading professional journal in the field, International Organization. He received
his BA from the University of Kansas and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

Joshua S. Goldstein is Professor Emeritus of International Relations, American


University (Washington, DC) and Research Scholar, University of Massachusetts
Amherst. He is an award-winning scholar who has written and spoken widely
on war and society, including war’s effects on gender, economics, and psycho-
logical trauma. His book War and Gender won the International Studies Associa-
tion’s Book of the Decade award.

xvii
To the Student

T
he topics studied by scholars are like a landscape with many varied loca-
tions and terrains. This textbook is a map that can orient you to the main
topics, debates, and issue areas in international relations. Scholars use
specialized language to talk about their subjects. This text is a phrase book that
can translate such lingo and explain the terms and concepts that scholars use to
talk about international relations. However, IR is filled with many voices speak-
ing many tongues. The text translates some of those voices—of presidents and
professors, free traders and feminists—to help you sort out the contours of the
subject and the state of knowledge about its various topics. In this seventh edi-
tion, we have especially tried to streamline and clarify this complex subject to
help you not just understand but deeply understand international relations. But
ultimately, the synthesis presented in this text is the authors’ own. Both you and
your professor may disagree with many points. Thus, this textbook is only a
starting point for conversations and debates.
With a combined map and phrase book in hand, you are ready to explore a
fascinating world. The great changes in world politics in the past few years have
made the writing of this textbook an exciting project. May you enjoy your own
explorations of this realm.

J. C. W. P.
J. S. G.

xviii
A Note on Nomenclature

I
n international relations, names are politically sensitive; different actors may
call a territory or an event by different names. This text cannot resolve such
conflicts; it has adopted the following naming conventions for the sake of
consistency. The United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales)
and Northern Ireland is called Britain. Burma, renamed Myanmar by its military
government, is referred to as Burma. The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina is
generally shortened to Bosnia (with apologies to Herzegovinians). The former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is called Macedonia. The People’s Republic of
China is referred to as China. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly
called the Belgian Congo and then Zaire) is here called Democratic Congo. We
refer to Cote D’Ivoire as Ivory Coast. Elsewhere, country names follow common
usage, dropping formal designations such as “Republic of.” We refer to the Sea
of Japan, which some call the East Sea, and to the Persian Gulf, which is also
called the Arabian Gulf. The 1991 U.S.-led multinational military campaign that
retook Kuwait after Iraq’s 1990 invasion is called the Gulf War, and the U.S. war
in Iraq after 2003 is called the Iraq War. The war between Iran and Iraq in the
1980s is called the Iran-Iraq War.

xix
Map
World States and Territories
U.S.A.
BAHAMAS
CUBA
HAITI DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

PUERTO RICO
VIRGIN ISLANDS

JAMAICA BARBUDA
BELIZE ANTIGUA
MEXICO
HONDURAS ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
DOMINICA
BARBADOS
NICARAGUA MARTINIQUE
ST. VINCENT AND
NETHERLANDS ANTILLES THE GRENADINES
GUATEMALA ST. LUCIA
GRENADA
EL SALVADOR TRINIDAD
AND
COSTA RICA TOBAGO
VENEZUELA
PANAMA COLOMBIA

ARCTIC OCEAN
GREENLAND
(DANISH)

ICELAND
U.S.

CANADA T

GEORGIA
ATLANTIC OCEAN

UNITED STATES TURKEY


ARMENIA
BERMUDA
PACIFIC OCEAN SYRIA
CYPRUS
LEBANON IRA
MOROCCO TUNISIA
ISRAEL
JORDAN
WESTERN SAHARA LIBYA
ALGERIA BAHR
MEXICO EGYPT
SA
SENEGAL MAURITANIA
MALI NIGER SUDAN
NIGER CAPE VERDE CHAD
MALI CENTRAL
GAMBIA AFRICAN
BURKINA GUINEA BISSAU REP. ERITREA
FASO SURINAME GUINEA SOUTH
SIERRA LEONE SUDAN ETHIOP
FRENCH
NIGERIA COLOMBIA GUIANA LIBERIA UGANDA
CÔTE ECUADOR RWANDA KENYA
D'IVOIRE GUYANA BURUNDI

DEM. CONGO TANZANIA


CAMEROON PERU
TOGO BRAZIL ANGOLA
BENIN
GHANA
ZAMBIA
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE BOLIVIA
EQUATORIAL GUINEA GABON
PARAGUAY BOTSWANA
CHILE ATLANTIC OCEAN
CONGO NAMIBIA
PACIFIC OCEAN ZIMB
DEM. CONGO SOUTH
AFRICA SWAZILAN
LESOTHO
URUGUAY
ARGENTINA

ANGOLA

NAMIBIA

xx
Map xxi

FINLAND
NORWAY RUSSIA

SWEDEN
ESTONIA

DENMARK LATVIA
NETHERLANDS RUSSIA LITHUANIA

BELGIUM BELARUS
POLAND
GERMANY
SLOVAKIA UKRAINE
IRELAND CZECH
REPUBLIC
LUXEMBOURG LIECHTENSTEIN
BRITAIN
AUSTRIA MOLDOVA
SWITZERLAND
HUNGARY
ROMANIA
SLOVENIA
ARCTIC OCEAN FRANCE
CROATIA
SERBIA
SAN BULGARIA MACEDONIA
MARINO ITALY
ANDORRA
MONACO MONTENEGRO
SPAIN BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA
GREECE TURKEY
ALBANIA
R U S S I A PORTUGAL
MALTA
UZBEKISTAN
TURKMENISTAN

A
KAZAKHSTAN
MONGOLIA NORTH
KOREA
KYRGYZSTAN SOUTH
TAJIKISTAN KOREA JAPAN
C H I N A
AZERBAIJAN
AQ KUWAIT AFGHANISTAN BURMA
IRAN NEPAL PACIFIC OCEAN
BHUTAN (MYANMAR)
QATAR PAKISTAN
LAOS
RAIN BANGLADESH
VIETNAM
UNITED TAIWAN
AUDI ARABIA ARAB INDIA HONG KONG
AN

EMIRATES
MACAU
OM

YEMEN GUAM/MARIANAS
THAILAND PHILIPPINES

DJIBOUTI CAMBODIA PALAU


BRUNEI
PIA SRI MALAYSIA MARSHALL
LANKA ISLANDS
SOMALIA MICRONESIA
MALDIVES NAURU
SINGAPORE PAPUA
SEYCHELLES NEW GUINEA KIRIBATI

INDONESIA SOLOMON
INDIAN OCEAN ISLANDS
MALAWI TUVALU
COMOROS ISLANDS EAST TIMOR AMERICAN
SAMOA

VANUATU
MAURITIUS SAMOA

MADAGASCAR FIJI TONGA


A U ST RA L IA
MOZAMBIQUE
BABWE
ND

NEW
ZEALAND

ANTARCTICA
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Chapter 1
The Globalization
of International
Relations

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, 2010.

Learning Objectives
1.1 Describe the properties of the collective action problem and
how each core principle addresses the problem.
1.2 Evaluate whether states are still the key actors in international
relations. 1
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Exploring the Variety of Random
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which they live. It is this that makes the rich man so loath to part
with his money, so anxious to get more.
Against temptations that thus appeal to the strongest impulses
of our nature, the sanctions of law and the precepts of religion can
effect but little; and the wonder is, not that men are so self-seeking,
but that they are not much more so. That under present
circumstances men are not more grasping, more unfaithful, more
selfish than they are, proves the goodness and fruitfulness of human
nature, the ceaseless flow of the perennial fountains from which its
moral qualities are fed. All of us have mothers; most of us have
children, and so faith, and purity, and unselfishness can never be
utterly banished from the world, howsoever bad be social
adjustments.
But whatever is potent for evil may be made potent for good.
The change I have proposed would destroy the conditions that
distort impulses in themselves beneficent, and would transmute the
forces which now tend to disintegrate society into forces which
would tend to unite and purify it.
Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit of
the whole community that fund which the growth of the community
creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone. The springs
of production would be set free, and the enormous increase of
wealth would give the poorest ample comfort. Men would no more
worry about finding employment than they worry about finding air to
breathe; they need have no more care about physical necessities
than do the lilies of the field. The progress of science, the march of
invention, the diffusion of knowledge, would bring their benefits to
all.
With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the admiration
of riches would decay, and men would seek the respect and
approbation of their fellows in other modes than by the acquisition
and display of wealth. In this way there would be brought to the
management of public affairs, and the administration of common
funds, the skill, the attention, the fidelity, and integrity that can now
be secured only for private interests, and a railroad or gas works
might be operated on public account, not only more economically
and efficiently than as at present, under joint stock management,
but as economically and efficiently as would be possible under a
single ownership. The prize of the Olympian games, that called forth
the most strenuous exertions of all Greece, was but a wreath of wild
olive; for a bit of ribbon men have over and over again performed
services no money could have bought.
Shortsighted is the philosophy which counts on selfishness as
the master motive of human action. It is blind to facts of which the
world is full. It sees not the present, and reads not the past aright. If
you would move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to
their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to
sympathy. Self-interest is, as it were, a mechanical force—potent, it
is true; capable of large and wide results. But there is in human
nature what may be likened to a chemical force; which melts and
fuses and overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. “All that
a man hath will he give for his life”—that is self-interest. But in
loyalty to higher impulses men will give even life.
It is not selfishness that enriches the annals of every people with
heroes and saints. It is not selfishness that on every page of the
world’s history bursts out in sudden splendor of noble deeds or
sheds the soft radiance of benignant lives. It was not selfishness
that turned Gautama’s back to his royal home or bade the Maid of
Orleans lift the sword from the altar; that held the Three Hundred in
the Pass of Thermopylæ, or gathered into Winkelried’s bosom the
sheaf of spears; that chained Vincent de Paul to the bench of the
galley, or brought little starving children, during the Indian famine,
tottering to the relief stations with yet weaker starvelings in their
arms. Call it religion, patriotism, sympathy, the enthusiasm for
humanity, or the love of God—give it what name you will; there is
yet a force which overcomes and drives out selfishness; a force
which is the electricity of the moral universe; a force beside which all
others are weak. Everywhere that men have lived it has shown its
power, and to-day, as ever, the world is full of it. To be pitied is the
man who has never seen and never felt it. Look around! among
common men and women, amid the care and the struggle of daily
life, in the jar of the noisy street and amid the squalor where want
hides—every here and there is the darkness lighted with the
tremulous play of its lambent flames. He who has not seen it has
walked with shut eyes. He who looks may see, as says Plutarch, that
“the soul has a principle of kindness in itself, and is born to love, as
well as to perceive, think, or remember.”
And this force of forces—that now goes to waste or assumes
perverted forms—we may use for the strengthening, and building
up, and ennobling of society, if we but will, just as we now use
physical forces that once seemed but powers of destruction. All we
have to do is but to give it freedom and scope. The wrong that
produces inequality; the wrong that in the midst of abundance
tortures men with want or harries them with the fear of want; that
stunts them physically, degrades them intellectually, and distorts
them morally, is what alone prevents harmonious social
development. For “all that is from the gods is full of providence. We
are made for co-operation—like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the
rows of the upper and lower teeth.”
There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of
any better state of society than that which now exists—who imagine
that the idea that there could be a state of society in which greed
would be banished, prisons stand empty, individual interests be
subordinated to general interests, and no one seek to rob or to
oppress his neighbor, is but the dream of impracticable dreamers, for
whom these practical level-headed men, who pride themselves on
recognizing facts as they are, have a hearty contempt. But such men
—though some of them write books, and some of them occupy the
chairs of universities, and some of them stand in pulpits—do not
think.
If they were accustomed to dine in such eating houses as are to
be found in the lower quarters of London and Paris, where the
knives and forks are chained to the table, they would deem it the
natural, ineradicable disposition of man to carry off the knife and
fork with which he has eaten.
Take a company of well-bred men and women dining together.
There is no struggling for food, no attempt on the part of any one to
get more than his neighbor; no attempt to gorge or to carry off. On
the contrary, each one is anxious to help his neighbor before he
partakes himself; to offer to others the best rather than pick it out
for himself; and should any one show the slightest disposition to
prefer the gratification of his own appetite to that of the others, or in
any way to act the pig or pilferer, the swift and heavy penalty of
social contempt and ostracism would show how such conduct is
reprobated by common opinion.
All this is so common as to excite no remark, as to seem the
natural state of things. Yet it is no more natural that men should not
be greedy of food than that they should not be greedy of wealth.
They are greedy of food when they are not assured that there will
be a fair and equitable distribution which will give each enough. But
when these conditions are assured, they cease to be greedy of food.
And so in society, as at present constituted, men are greedy of
wealth because the conditions of distribution are so unjust that
instead of each being sure of enough, many are certain to be
condemned to want. It is the “devil catch the hindmost” of present
social adjustments that causes the race and scramble for wealth, in
which all considerations of justice, mercy, religion, and sentiment are
trampled under foot; in which men forget their own souls, and
struggle to the very verge of the grave for what they cannot take
beyond. But an equitable distribution of wealth, that would exempt
all from the fear of want, would destroy the greed of wealth, just as
in polite society the greed of food has been destroyed.
On the crowded steamers of the early California lines there was
often a marked difference between the manners of the steerage and
the cabin, which illustrates this principle of human nature. An
abundance of food was provided for the steerage as for the cabin,
but in the former there were no regulations which insured efficient
service, and the meals became a scramble. In the cabin, on the
contrary, where each was allotted his place and there was no fear
that every one would not get enough, there was no such scrambling
and waste as were witnessed in the steerage. The difference was
not in the character of the people, but simply in this fact. The cabin
passenger transferred to the steerage would participate in the
greedy rush, and the steerage passenger transferred to the cabin
would at once become decorous and polite. The same difference
would show itself in society in general were the present unjust
distribution of wealth replaced by a just distribution.
Consider this existing fact of a cultivated and refined society, in
which all the coarser passions are held in check, not by force, not by
law, but by common opinion and the mutual desire of pleasing. If
this is possible for a part of a community, it is possible for a whole
community. There are states of society in which every one has to go
armed—in which every one has to hold himself in readiness to
defend person and property with the strong hand. If we have
progressed beyond that, we may progress still further.
But it may be said, to banish want and the fear of want, would
be to destroy the stimulus to exertion; men would become simply
idlers, and such a happy state of general comfort and content would
be the death of progress. This is the old slaveholders’ argument,
that men can be driven to labor only with the lash. Nothing is more
untrue.
Want might be banished, but desire would remain. Man is the
unsatisfied animal. He has but begun to explore, and the universe
lies before him. Each step that he takes opens new vistas and
kindles new desires. He is the constructive animal; he builds, he
improves, he invents, and puts together, and the greater the thing
he does, the greater the thing he wants to do. He is more than an
animal. Whatever be the intelligence that breathes through nature, it
is in that likeness that man is made. The steamship, driven by her
throbbing engines through the sea, is in kind, though not in degree,
as much a creation as the whale that swims beneath. The telescope
and the microscope, what are they but added eyes, which man has
made for himself; the soft webs and fair colors in which our women
array themselves, do they not answer to the plumage that nature
gives the bird? Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is
doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere
basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.
As soon as a child can command its muscles, it will begin to
make mud pies or dress a doll; its play is but the imitation of the
work of its elders; its very destructiveness arises from the desire to
be doing something, from the satisfaction of seeing itself accomplish
something. There is no such thing as the pursuit of pleasure for the
sake of pleasure. Our very amusements amuse only as they are, or
simulate, the learning or the doing of something. The moment they
cease to appeal either to our inquisitive or to our constructive
powers, they cease to amuse. It will spoil the interest of the novel
reader to be told just how the story will end; it is only the chance
and the skill involved in the game that enable the card-player to “kill
time” by shuffling bits of pasteboard. The luxurious frivolities of
Versailles were possible to human beings only because the king
thought he was governing a kingdom and the courtiers were in
pursuit of fresh honors and new pensions. People who lead what are
called lives of fashion and pleasure must have some other object in
view, or they would die of ennui; they support it only because they
imagine that they are gaining position, making friends, or improving
the chances of their children. Shut a man up, and deny him
employment, and he must either die or go mad.
It is not labor in itself that is repugnant to man; it is not the
natural necessity for exertion which is a curse. It is only labor which
produces nothing—exertion of which he cannot see the results. To
toil day after day, and yet get but the necessaries of life, this is
indeed hard; it is like the infernal punishment of compelling a man to
pump lest he be drowned, or to trudge on a treadmill lest he be
crushed. But, released from this necessity, men would but work the
harder and the better, for then they would work as their inclinations
led them; then would they seem to be really doing something for
themselves or for others. Was Humboldt’s life an idle one? Did
Franklin find no occupation when he retired from the printing
business with enough to live on? Is Herbert Spencer a laggard? Did
Michael Angelo paint for board and clothes?
The fact is that the work which improves the condition of
mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power,
and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure
a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the
lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who
perform it for its own sake, and not that they may get more to eat
or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want was
abolished, work of this sort would be enormously increased.
I am inclined to think that the result of confiscating rent in the
manner I have proposed would be to cause the organization of labor,
wherever large capitals were used, to assume the co-operative form,
since the more equal diffusion of wealth would unite capitalist and
laborer in the same person. But whether this would be so or not is of
little moment. The hard toil of routine labor would disappear. Wages
would be too high and opportunities too great to compel any man to
stint and starve the higher qualities of his nature, and in every
avocation the brain would aid the hand. Work, even of the coarser
kinds, would become a lightsome thing, and the tendency of modern
production to subdivision would not involve monotony or the
contraction of ability in the worker; but would be relieved by short
hours, by change, by the alternation of intellectual with manual
occupations. There would result, not only the utilization of
productive forces now going to waste; not only would our present
knowledge, now so imperfectly applied, be fully used; but from the
mobility of labor and the mental activity which would be generated,
there would result advances in the methods of production that we
now cannot imagine.
For, greatest of all the enormous wastes which the present
constitution of society involves, is that of mental power. How
infinitesimal are the forces that concur to the advance of civilization,
as compared to the forces that lie latent! How few are the thinkers,
the discoverers, the inventors, the organizers, as compared with the
great mass of the people! Yet such men are born in plenty; it is the
conditions that permit so few to develop. There are among men
infinite diversities of aptitude and inclination, as there are such
infinite diversities in physical structure that among a million there
will not be two that cannot be told apart. But, both from observation
and reflection, I am inclined to think that the differences of natural
power are no greater than the differences of stature or of physical
strength. Turn to the lives of great men, and see how easily they
might never have been heard of. Had Cæsar come of a proletarian
family; had Napoleon entered the world a few years earlier; had
Columbus gone into the Church instead of going to sea; had
Shakespeare been apprenticed to a cobbler or chimney-sweep; had
Sir Isaac Newton been assigned by fate the education and the toil of
an agricultural laborer; had Dr. Adam Smith been born in the coal
hews, or Herbert Spencer forced to get his living as a factory
operative, what would their talents have availed? But there would
have been, it will be said, other Cæsars or Napoleons, Columbuses
or Shakespeares, Newtons, Smiths or Spencers. This is true. And it
shows how prolific is our human nature. As the common worker is
on need transformed into queen bee, so, when circumstances favor
his development, what might otherwise pass for a common man
rises into a hero or leader, discoverer or teacher, sage or saint. So
widely has the sower scattered the seed, so strong is the
germinative force that bids it bud and blossom. But, alas, for the
stony ground, and the birds and the tares! For one who attains his
full stature, how many are stunted and deformed.
The will within us is the ultimate fact of consciousness. Yet how
little have the best of us, in acquirements, in position, even in
character, that may be credited entirely to ourselves; how much to
the influences that have molded us. Who is there, wise, learned,
discreet, or strong, who might not, were he to trace the inner history
of his life, turn, like the Stoic Emperor, to give thanks to the gods,
that by this one and that one, and here and there, good examples
have been set him, noble thoughts have reached him, and happy
opportunities opened before him. Who is there, who, with his eyes
about him, has reached the meridian of life, who has not sometimes
echoed the thought of the pious Englishman, as the criminal passed
to the gallows, “But for the grace of God, there go I.” How little does
heredity count as compared with conditions. This one, we say, is the
result of a thousand years of European progress, and that one of a
thousand years of Chinese petrifaction; yet, placed an infant in the
heart of China, and but for the angle of the eye or the shade of the
hair, the Caucasian would grow up as those around him, using the
same speech, thinking the same thoughts, exhibiting the same
tastes. Change Lady Vere de Vere in her cradle with an infant of the
slums, and will the blood of a hundred earls give you a refined and
cultured woman?
To remove want and the fear of want, to give to all classes
leisure, and comfort, and independence, the decencies and
refinements of life, the opportunities of mental and moral
development, would be like turning water into a desert. The sterile
waste would clothe itself with verdure, and the barren places where
life seemed banned would ere long be dappled with the shade of
trees and musical with the song of birds. Talents now hidden, virtues
unsuspected, would come forth to make human life richer, fuller,
happier, nobler. For in these round men who are stuck into three-
cornered holes, and three-cornered men who are jammed into round
holes; in these men who are wasting their energies in the scramble
to be rich; in these who in factories are turned into machines, or are
chained by necessity to bench or plow; in these children who are
growing up in squalor, and vice, and ignorance, are powers of the
highest order, talents the most splendid. They need but the
opportunity to bring them forth.
Consider the possibilities of a state of society that gave that
opportunity to all. Let imagination fill out the picture; its colors grow
too bright for words to paint. Consider the moral elevation, the
intellectual activity, the social life. Consider how by a thousand
actions and interactions the members of every community are linked
together, and how in the present condition of things even the
fortunate few who stand upon the apex of the social pyramid must
suffer, though they know it not, from the want, ignorance, and
degradation that are underneath. Consider these things and then say
whether the change I propose would not be for the benefit of every
one—even the greatest land holder? Would he not be safer of the
future of his children in leaving them penniless in such a state of
society than in leaving them the largest fortune in this? Did such a
state of society anywhere exist, would he not buy entrance to it
cheaply by giving up all his possessions?
I have now traced to their source social weakness and disease. I
have shown the remedy. I have covered every point and met every
objection. But the problems that we have been considering, great as
they are, pass into problems greater yet—into the grandest problems
with which the human mind can grapple. I am about to ask the
reader who has gone with me so far, to go with me further, into still
higher fields. But I ask him to remember that in the little space
which remains of the limits to which this book must be confined, I
cannot fully treat the questions which arise. I can but suggest some
thoughts, which may, perhaps, serve as hints for further thought.
BOOK X.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

CHAPTER I.—THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS—ITS


INSUFFICIENCY.
CHAPTER II.—DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE.
CHAPTER III.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
CHAPTER IV.—HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE.
CHAPTER V.—THE CENTRAL TRUTH.

What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men.
—Milton.
CHAPTER I.
THE CURRENT THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESS
—ITS INSUFFICIENCY.
If the conclusions at which we have arrived are correct, they will
fall under a larger generalization.
Let us, therefore, recommence our inquiry from a higher
standpoint, whence we may survey a wider field.

What is the law of human progress?

This is a question which, were it not for what has gone before, I
should hesitate to review in the brief space I can now devote to it,
as it involves, directly or indirectly, some of the very highest
problems with which the human mind can engage. But it is a
question which naturally comes up. Are or are not the conclusions to
which we have come consistent with the great law under which
human development goes on?
What is that law? We must find the answer to our question; for
the current philosophy, though it clearly recognizes the existence of
such a law, gives no more satisfactory account of it than the current
political economy does of the persistence of want amid advancing
wealth.
Let us, as far as possible, keep to the firm ground of facts.
Whether man was or was not gradually developed from an animal, it
is not necessary to inquire. However intimate may be the connection
between questions which relate to man as we know him and
questions which relate to his genesis, it is only from the former upon
the latter that light can be thrown. Inference cannot proceed from
the unknown to the known. It is only from facts of which we are
cognizant that we can infer what has preceded cognizance.
However man may have originated, all we know of him is as
man—just as he is now to be found. There is no record or trace of
him in any lower condition than that in which savages are still to be
met. By whatever bridge he may have crossed the wide chasm
which now separates him from the brutes, there remain of it no
vestiges. Between the lowest savages of whom we know and the
highest animals, there is an irreconcilable difference—a difference
not merely of degree, but of kind. Many of the characteristics,
actions, and emotions of man are exhibited by the lower animals;
but man, no matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet
been found destitute of one thing of which no animal shows the
slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but almost undefinable
something, which gives him the power of improvement—which
makes him the progressive animal.
The beaver builds a dam, and the bird a nest, and the bee a cell;
but while beavers’ dams, and birds’ nests, and bees’ cells are always
constructed on the same model, the house of the man passes from
the rude hut of leaves and branches to the magnificent mansion
replete with modern conveniences. The dog can to a certain extent
connect cause and effect, and may be taught some tricks; but his
capacity in these respects has not been a whit increased during all
the ages he has been the associate of improving man, and the dog
of civilization is not a whit more accomplished or intelligent than the
dog of the wandering savage. We know of no animal that uses
clothes, that cooks its food, that makes itself tools or weapons, that
breeds other animals that it wishes to eat, or that has an articulate
language. But men who do not do such things have never yet been
found, or heard of, except in fable. That is to say, man, wherever we
know him, exhibits this power—of supplementing what nature has
done for him by what he does for himself; and, in fact, so inferior is
the physical endowment of man, that there is no part of the world,
save perhaps some of the small islands of the Pacific, where without
this faculty he could maintain an existence.
Man everywhere and at all times exhibits this faculty—
everywhere and at all times of which we have knowledge he has
made some use of it. But the degree in which this has been done
greatly varies. Between the rude canoe and the steamship; between
the boomerang and the repeating rifle; between the roughly carved
wooden idol and the breathing marble of Grecian art; between
savage knowledge and modern science; between the wild Indian and
the white settler; between the Hottentot woman and the belle of
polished society, there is an enormous difference.
The varying degrees in which this faculty is used cannot be
ascribed to differences in original capacity—the most highly
improved peoples of the present day were savages within historic
times, and we meet with the widest differences between peoples of
the same stock. Nor can they be wholly ascribed to differences in
physical environment—the cradles of learning and the arts are now
in many cases tenanted by barbarians, and within a few years great
cities rise on the hunting grounds of wild tribes. All these differences
are evidently connected with social development. Beyond perhaps
the veriest rudiments, it becomes possible for man to improve only
as he lives with his fellows. All these improvements, therefore, in
man’s powers and condition we summarize in the term civilization.
Men improve as they become civilized, or learn to co-operate in
society.
What is the law of this improvement? By what common principle
can we explain the different stages of civilization at which different
communities have arrived? In what consists essentially the progress
of civilization, so that we may say of varying social adjustments, this
favors it, and that does not; or explain why an institution or
condition which may at one time advance it may at another time
retard it?
The prevailing belief now is, that the progress of civilization is a
development or evolution, in the course of which men’s powers are
increased and his qualities improved by the operation of causes
similar to those which are relied upon as explaining the genesis of
species—viz., the survival of the fittest and the hereditary
transmission of acquired qualities.
That civilization is an evolution—that it is, in the language of
Herbert Spencer, a progress from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity—there is no
doubt; but to say this is not to explain or identify the causes which
forward or retard it. How far the sweeping generalizations of
Spencer, which seek to account for all phenomena under terms of
matter and force, may, properly understood, include all these
causes, I am unable to say; but, as scientifically expounded, the
development philosophy has either not yet definitely met this
question, or has given birth, or rather coherency, to an opinion
which does not accord with the facts.
The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very much like the
view naturally taken by the money maker of the causes of the
unequal distribution of wealth. His theory, if he has one, usually is,
that there is plenty of money to be made by those who have will and
ability, and that it is ignorance, or idleness, or extravagance, that
makes the difference between the rich and the poor. And so the
common explanation of differences of civilization is of differences in
capacity. The civilized races are the superior races, and advance in
civilization is according to this superiority—just as English victories
were, in common English opinion, due to the natural superiority of
Englishmen to frog-eating Frenchmen; and popular government,
active invention, and greater average comfort are, or were until
lately, in common American opinion, due to the greater “smartness
of the Yankee Nation.”
Now, just as the politico-economic doctrines which in the
beginning of this inquiry we met and disproved, harmonize with the
common opinion of men who see capitalists paying wages and
competition reducing wages; just as the Malthusian theory
harmonized with existing prejudices both of the rich and the poor;
so does the explanation of progress as a gradual race improvement
harmonize with the vulgar opinion which accounts by race
differences for differences in civilization. It has given coherence and
a scientific formula to opinions which already prevailed. Its
wonderful spread since the time Darwin first startled the world with
his “Origin of Species” has not been so much a conquest as an
assimilation.
The view which now dominates the world of thought is this: That
the struggle for existence, just in proportion as it becomes intense,
impels men to new efforts and inventions. That this improvement
and capacity for improvement is fixed by hereditary transmission,
and extended by the tendency of the best adapted individual, or
most improved individual, to survive and propagate among
individuals, and of the best adapted, or most improved tribe, nation,
or race to survive in the struggle between social aggregates. On this
theory the differences between man and the animals, and
differences in the relative progress of men, are now explained as
confidently, and all but as generally, as a little while ago they were
explained upon the theory of special creation and divine
interposition.
The practical outcome of this theory is in a sort of hopeful
fatalism, of which current literature is full.57 In this view, progress is
the result of forces which work slowly, steadily and remorselessly, for
the elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition, famine, and
pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern civilization,
are the impelling causes which drive man on, by eliminating poorer
types and extending the higher; and hereditary transmission is the
power by which advances are fixed, and past advances made the
footing for new advances. The individual is the result of changes
thus impressed upon and perpetuated through a long series of past
individuals, and the social organization takes its form from the
individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while this theory is, as
Herbert Spencer says58—“radical
to a degree beyond anything which current
radicalism conceives;” inasmuch as it looks for changes in the very
nature of man; it is at the same time “conservative to a degree
beyond anything conceived by current conservatism,” inasmuch as it
holds that no change can avail save these slow changes in men’s
natures. Philosophers may teach that this does not lessen the duty
of endeavoring to reform abuses, just as the theologians who taught
predestinarianism insisted on the duty of all to struggle for salvation;
but, as generally apprehended, the result is fatalism—“do what we
may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our aid or
our hindrance.” I allude to this only to illustrate what I take to be the
opinion now rapidly spreading and permeating common thought; not
that in the search for truth any regard for its effects should be
permitted to bias the mind. But this I take to be the current view of
civilization: That it is the result of forces, operating in the way
indicated, which slowly change the character, and improve and
elevate the powers of man; that the difference between civilized
man and savage is of a long race education, which has become
permanently fixed in mental organization; and that this improvement
tends to go on increasingly, to a higher and higher civilization. We
have reached such a point that progress seems to be natural with
us, and we look forward confidently to the greater achievements of
the coming race—some even holding that the progress of science
will finally give men immortality and enable them to make bodily the
tour not only of the planets, but of the fixed stars, and at length to
manufacture suns and systems for themselves.59
But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this theory of
progression, which seems so natural to us amid an advancing
civilization, looks around the world, it comes against an enormous
fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. The majority of the human race
to-day have no idea of progress; the majority of the human race to-
day look (as until a few generations ago our own ancestors looked)
upon the past as the time of human perfection. The difference
between the savage and the civilized man may be explained on the
theory that the former is as yet so imperfectly developed that his
progress is hardly apparent; but how, upon the theory that human
progress is the result of general and continuous causes, shall we
account for the civilizations that have progressed so far and then
stopped? It cannot be said of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it
may be said of the savage, that our superiority is the result of a
longer education; that we are, as it were, the grown men of nature,
while they are the children. The Hindoos and the Chinese were
civilized when we were savages. They had great cities, highly
organized and powerful governments, literatures, philosophies,
polished manners, considerable division of labor, large commerce,
and elaborate arts, when our ancestors were wandering barbarians,
living in huts and skin tents, not a whit further advanced than the
American Indians. While we have progressed from this savage state
to Nineteenth Century civilization, they have stood still. If progress
be the result of fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which impel men
forward, how shall we account for this?
One of the best popular expounders of the development
philosophy, Walter Bagehot (“Physics and Politics”), admits the force
of this objection, and endeavors in this way to explain it: That the
first thing necessary to civilize man is to tame him; to induce him to
live in association with his fellows in subordination to law; and hence
a body or “cake” of laws and customs grows up, being intensified
and extended by natural selection, the tribe or nation thus bound
together having an advantage over those who are not. That this
cake of custom and law finally becomes too thick and hard to permit
further progress, which can go on only as circumstances occur which
introduce discussion, and thus permit the freedom and mobility
necessary to improvement.
This explanation, which Mr. Bagehot offers, as he says, with
some misgivings, is I think at the expense of the general theory. But
it is not worth while speaking of that, for it, manifestly, does not
explain the facts.
The hardening tendency of which Mr. Bagehot speaks would
show itself at a very early period of development, and his
illustrations of it are nearly all drawn from savage or semi-savage
life. Whereas, these arrested civilizations had gone a long distance
before they stopped. There must have been a time when they were
very far advanced as compared with the savage state, and were yet
plastic, free, and advancing. These arrested civilizations stopped at a
point which was hardly in anything inferior and in many respects
superior to European civilization of, say, the sixteenth or at any rate
the fifteenth century. Up to that point then there must have been
discussion, the hailing of what was new, and mental activity of all
sorts. They had architects who carried the art of building, necessarily
by a series of innovations or improvements, up to a very high point;
ship-builders who in the same way, by innovation after innovation,
finally produced as good a vessel as the war ships of Henry VIII.;
inventors who stopped only on the verge of our most important
improvements, and from some of whom we can yet learn; engineers
who constructed great irrigation works and navigable canals; rival
schools of philosophy and conflicting ideas of religion. One great
religion, in many respects resembling Christianity, rose in India,
displaced the old religion, passed into China, sweeping over that
country, and was displaced again in its old seats, just as Christianity
was displaced in its first seats. There was life, and active life, and
the innovation that begets improvement, long after men had learned
to live together. And, moreover, both India and China have received
the infusion of new life in conquering races, with different customs
and modes of thought.
The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations of which we know
anything was that of Egypt, where even art finally assumed a
conventional and inflexible form. But we know that behind this must
have been a time of life and vigor—a freshly developing and
expanding civilization, such as ours is now—or the arts and sciences
could never have been carried to such a pitch. And recent
excavations have brought to light from beneath what we before
knew of Egypt an earlier Egypt still—in statues and carvings which,
instead of a hard and formal type, beam with life and expression,
which show art struggling, ardent, natural, and free, the sure
indication of an active and expanding life. So it must have been once
with all now unprogressive civilizations.
But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that the current
theory of development fails to account for. It is not merely that men
have gone so far on the path of progress and then stopped; it is that
men have gone far on the path of progress and then gone back. It is
not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the theory—it is the
universal rule. Every civilization that the world has yet seen has had
its period of vigorous growth, of arrest and stagnation; its decline
and fall. Of all the civilizations that have arisen and flourished, there
remain to-day but those that have been arrested, and our own,
which is not yet as old as were the pyramids when Abraham looked
upon them—while behind the pyramids were twenty centuries of
recorded history.
That our own civilization has a broader base, is of a more
advanced type, moves quicker and soars higher than any preceding
civilization is undoubtedly true; but in these respects it is hardly
more in advance of the Greco-Roman civilization than that was in
advance of Asiatic civilization; and if it were, that would prove
nothing as to its permanence and future advance, unless it be shown
that it is superior in those things which caused the ultimate failure of
its predecessors. The current theory does not assume this.
In truth, nothing could be further from explaining the facts of
universal history than this theory that civilization is the result of a
course of natural selection which operates to improve and elevate
the powers of man. That civilization has arisen at different times in
different places and has progressed at different rates, is not
inconsistent with this theory; for that might result from the unequal
balancing of impelling and resisting forces; but that progress
everywhere commencing, for even among the lowest tribes it is held
that there has been some progress, has nowhere been continuous,
but has everywhere been brought to a stand or retrogression, is
absolutely inconsistent. For if progress operated to fix an
improvement in man’s nature and thus to produce further progress,
though there might be occasional interruption, yet the general rule
would be that progress would be continuous—that advance would
lead to advance, and civilization develop into higher civilization.
Not merely the general rule, but the universal rule, is the reverse
of this. The earth is the tomb of the dead empires, no less than of
dead men. Instead of progress fitting men for greater progress,
every civilization that was in its own time as vigorous and advancing
as ours is now, has of itself come to a stop. Over and over again, art
has declined, learning sunk, power waned, population become
sparse, until the people who had built great temples and mighty
cities, turned rivers and pierced mountains, cultivated the earth like
a garden and introduced the utmost refinement into the minute
affairs of life, remained but in a remnant of squalid barbarians, who
had lost even the memory of what their ancestors had done, and
regarded the surviving fragments of their grandeur as the work of
genii, or of the mighty race before the flood. So true is this, that
when we think of the past, it seems like the inexorable law, from
which we can no more hope to be exempt than the young man who
“feels his life in every limb” can hope to be exempt from the
dissolution which is the common fate of all. “Even this, O Rome,
must one day be thy fate!” wept Scipio over the ruins of Carthage,
and Macaulay’s picture of the New Zealander musing upon the
broken arch of London Bridge appeals to the imagination of even
those who see cities rising in the wilderness and help to lay the
foundations of new empire. And so, when we erect a public building
we make a hollow in the largest corner stone and carefully seal
within it some mementos of our day, looking forward to the time
when our works shall be ruins and ourselves forgot.
Nor whether this alternate rise and fall of civilization, this
retrogression that always follows progression, be, or be not, the
rhythmic movement of an ascending line (and I think, though I will
not open the question, that it would be much more difficult to prove
the affirmative than is generally supposed) makes no difference; for
the current theory is in either case disproved. Civilizations have died
and made no sign, and hard-won progress has been lost to the race
forever, but, even if it be admitted that each wave of progress has
made possible a higher wave and each civilization passed the torch
to a greater civilization, the theory that civilization advances by
changes wrought in the nature of man fails to explain the facts; for
in every case it is not the race that has been educated and
hereditarily modified by the old civilization that begins the new, but
a fresh race coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of the
one epoch who have been the civilized men of the next; to be in
their turn succeeded by fresh barbarians. For it has been heretofore
always the case that men under the influences of civilization, though
at first improving, afterward degenerate. The civilized man of to-day
is vastly the superior of the uncivilized; but so in the time of its vigor
was the civilized man of every dead civilization. But there are such
things as the vices, the corruptions, the enervations of civilization,
which past a certain point have always heretofore shown
themselves. Every civilization that has been overwhelmed by
barbarians has really perished from internal decay.
This universal fact, the moment that it is recognized, disposes of
the theory that progress is by hereditary transmission. Looking over
the history of the world, the line of greatest advance does not
coincide for any length of time with any line of heredity. On any
particular line of heredity, retrogression seems always to follow
advance.
Shall we therefore say that there is a national or race life, as
there is an individual life—that every social aggregate has, as it
were, a certain amount of energy, the expenditure of which
necessitates decay? This is an old and widespread idea, that is yet
largely held, and that may be constantly seen cropping out
incongruously in the writings of the expounders of the development
philosophy. Indeed, I do not see why it may not be stated in terms
of matter and of motion so as to bring it clearly within the
generalizations of evolution. For considering its individuals as atoms,
the growth of society is “an integration of matter and concomitant
dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a
parallel transformation.”60 And thus an analogy may be drawn
between the life of a society and the life of a solar system upon the
nebular hypothesis. As the heat and light of the sun are produced by
the aggregation of atoms evolving motion, which finally ceases when
the atoms at length come to a state of equilibrium or rest, and a
state of immobility succeeds, which can be broken in again only by
the impact of external forces, which reverse the process of
evolution, integrating motion and dissipating matter in the form of
gas, again to evolve motion by its condensation; so, it may be said,
does the aggregation of individuals in a community evolve a force
which produces the light and warmth of civilization, but when this
process ceases and the individual components are brought into a
state of equilibrium, assuming their fixed places, petrifaction ensues,
and the breaking up and diffusion caused by an incursion of
barbarians is necessary to the recommencement of the process and
a new growth of civilization.
But analogies are the most dangerous modes of thought. They
may connect resemblances and yet disguise or cover up the truth.
And all such analogies are superficial. While its members are
constantly reproduced in all the fresh vigor of childhood, a
community cannot grow old, as does a man, by the decay of its
powers. While its aggregate force must be the sum of the forces of
its individual components, a community cannot lose vital power
unless the vital powers of its components are lessened.
Yet in both the common analogy which likens the life power of a
nation to that of an individual, and in the one I have supposed, lurks
the recognition of an obvious truth—the truth that the obstacles
which finally bring progress to a halt are raised by the course of
progress; that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has been
the conditions produced by the growth of civilization itself.
This is a truth which in the current philosophy is ignored; but it
is a truth most pregnant. Any valid theory of human progress must
account for it.
CHAPTER II.
DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT
DUE.
In attempting to discover the law of human progress, the first
step must be to determine the essential nature of those differences
which we describe as differences in civilization.
That the current philosophy, which attributes social progress to
changes wrought in the nature of man, does not accord with
historical facts, we have already seen. And we may also see, if we
consider them, that the differences between communities in different
stages of civilization cannot be ascribed to innate differences in the
individuals who compose these communities. That there are natural
differences is true, and that there is such a thing as hereditary
transmission of peculiarities is undoubtedly true; but the great
differences between men in different states of society cannot be
explained in this way. The influence of heredity, which it is now the
fashion to rate so highly, is as nothing compared with the influences
which mold the man after he comes into the world. What is more
ingrained in habit than language, which becomes not merely an
automatic trick of the muscles, but the medium of thought? What
persists longer, or will quicker show nationality? Yet we are not born
with a predisposition to any language. Our mother tongue is our
mother tongue only because we learned it in infancy. Although his
ancestors have thought and spoken in one language for countless
generations, a child who hears from the first nothing else, will learn
with equal facility any other tongue. And so of other national or local
or class peculiarities. They seem to be matters of education and
habit, not of transmission. Cases of white children captured by
Indians in infancy and brought up in the wigwam show this. They
become thorough Indians. And so, I believe, with children brought
up by Gypsies.
That this is not so true of the children of Indians or other
distinctly marked races brought up by whites is, I think, due to the
fact that they are never treated precisely as white children. A
gentleman who had taught a colored school once told me that he
thought the colored children, up to the age of ten or twelve, were
really brighter and learned more readily than white children, but that
after that age they seemed to get dull and careless. He thought this
proof of innate race inferiority, and so did I at the time. But I
afterward heard a highly intelligent negro gentleman (Bishop Hillery)
incidentally make a remark which to my mind seems a sufficient
explanation. He said: “Our children, when they are young, are fully
as bright as white children, and learn as readily. But as soon as they
get old enough to appreciate their status—to realize that they are
looked upon as belonging to an inferior race, and can never hope to
be anything more than cooks, waiters, or something of that sort,
they lose their ambition and cease to keep up.” And to this he might
have added, that being the children of poor, uncultivated and
unambitious parents, home influences told against them. For, I
believe it is a matter of common observation that in the primary part
of education the children of ignorant parents are quite as receptive
as the children of intelligent parents, but by and by the latter, as a
general rule, pull ahead and make the most intelligent men and
women. The reason is plain. As to the first simple things which they
learn only at school, they are on a par, but as their studies become
more complex, the child who at home is accustomed to good
English, hears intelligent conversation, has access to books, can get
questions answered, etc., has an advantage which tells.
The same thing may be seen later in life. Take a man who has
raised himself from the ranks of common labor, and just as he is
brought into contact with men of culture and men of affairs, will he
become more intelligent and polished. Take two brothers, the sons
of poor parents, brought up in the same home and in the same way.
One is put to a rude trade, and never gets beyond the necessity of
making a living by hard daily labor; the other, commencing as an
errand boy, gets a start in another direction, and becomes finally a
successful lawyer, merchant, or politician. At forty or fifty the
contrast between them will be striking, and the unreflecting will
credit it to the greater natural ability which has enabled the one to
push himself ahead. But just as striking a difference in manners and
intelligence will be manifested between two sisters, one of whom,
married to a man who has remained poor, has her life fretted with
petty cares and devoid of opportunities, and the other of whom has
married a man whose subsequent position brings her into cultured
society and opens to her opportunities which refine taste and
expand intelligence. And so deteriorations may be seen. That “evil
communications corrupt good manners” is but an expression of the
general law that human character is profoundly modified by its
conditions and surroundings.
I remember once seeing, in a Brazilian seaport, a negro man
dressed in what was an evident attempt at the height of fashion, but
without shoes and stockings. One of the sailors with whom I was in
company, and who had made some runs in the slave trade, had a
theory that a negro was not a man, but a sort of monkey, and
pointed to this as evidence in proof, contending that it was not
natural for a negro to wear shoes, and that in his wild state he
would wear no clothes at all. I afterward learned that it was not
considered “the thing” there for slaves to wear shoes, just as in
England it is not considered the thing for a faultlessly attired butler
to wear jewelry, though for that matter I have since seen white men
at liberty to dress as they pleased get themselves up as
incongruously as the Brazilian slave. But a great many of the facts
adduced as showing hereditary transmission have really no more
bearing than this of our forecastle Darwinian.
That, for instance, a large number of criminals and recipients of
public relief in New York have been shown to have descended from a
pauper three or four generations back is extensively cited as
showing hereditary transmission. But it shows nothing of the kind,
inasmuch as an adequate explanation of the facts is nearer. Paupers
will raise paupers, even if the children be not their own, just as
familiar contact with criminals will make criminals of the children of
virtuous parents. To learn to rely on charity is necessarily to lose the
self-respect and independence necessary for self-reliance when the
struggle is hard. So true is this that, as is well known, charity has
the effect of increasing the demand for charity, and it is an open
question whether public relief and private alms do not in this way do
far more harm than good. And so of the disposition of children to
show the same feelings, tastes, prejudices, or talents as their
parents. They imbibe these dispositions just as they imbibe from
their habitual associates. And the exceptions prove the rule, as
dislikes or revulsions may be excited.
And there is, I think, a subtler influence which often accounts for
what are looked upon as atavisms of character—the same influence
that makes the boy who reads dime novels want to be a pirate. I
once knew a gentleman in whose veins ran the blood of Indian
chiefs. He used to tell me traditions learned from his grandfather,
which illustrated what is difficult for a white man to comprehend—
the Indian habit of thought, the intense but patient blood thirst of
the trail, and the fortitude of the stake. From the way in which he
dwelt on these, I have no doubt that under certain circumstances,
highly educated, civilized man that he was, he would have shown
traits which would have been looked on as due to his Indian blood;
but which in reality would have been sufficiently explained by the
broodings of his imagination upon the deeds of his ancestors.61
In any large community we may see, as between different
classes and groups, differences of the same kind as those which
exist between communities which we speak of as differing in
civilization—differences of knowledge, belief, customs, tastes, and
speech, which in their extremes show among people of the same
race, living in the same country, differences almost as great as those
between civilized and savage communities. As all stages of social
development, from the stone age up, are yet to be found in
contemporaneously existing communities, so in the same country
and in the same city are to be found, side by side, groups which
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