For Western existence the distinction lies about the year 1800–on one
side of that frontier, life in fullness and sureness of itself, formed by
growth from within, in one great, uninterrupted evolution from Gothic
childhood to Goethe [Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)] and
Napoleon; and on the other the autumnal, artificial, rootless life of our
great cities, under forms fashioned by the intellect… He who does not
understand that this outcome is obligatory and insusceptible of
modification must forgo all desire to comprehend history.
On one point all are agreed: civilizations begin, flourish, decline, and
disappear–or linger on as stagnant pools left by once life-giving streams.
What are the causes of development, and what are the causes of decay?
No student takes seriously the seventeenth-century notion that states
arose out of a “social contract” among individuals or between the people
and a ruler. Probably most states (i.e., societies politically organized) took
form through the conquest of one group by another, and the establishment
of a continuing force over the conquered by the conqueror; his decrees
were their first laws; and these, added to the customs of the people, created
a new social order. Some states of Latin America obviously began in this
way. When the masters organized the work of their subjects to take
advantage of some physical boon (like the rivers of Egypt or Asia),
economic prevision and provision constituted another basis for civilization.
A dangerous tension between rulers and ruled might raise intellectual and
emotional activity above the daily drift of primitive tribes. Further
stimulation to growth could come from any challenging change in the
surroundings,
such as external invasion or a continuing shortage of
rain–challenges that might be met by military improvements or the
construction of irrigation canals.
If we put the problem further back, and ask what determines whether a
challenge will or will not be met, the answer is that this depends upon the
presence or absence of initiative and of creative individuals with clarity of
mind and energy of will (which is almost a definition of genms), capable of
