Recent

impossible? His theory is plausible but not convincing. experience confirms the maxim that the more deadly the weapons, the less the slaughter; while the cost of war is one of the crucial tests in the struggle for existence, one of the means whereby the living are parted from the dying nations. It is true that the object and the character of war have changed. Conquests are no longer made by civilized nations for purposes of tribute, nor by the most progressive among them for the purpose of exploitation through unequal commercial laws. If any lapse from the path of rectitude in this respect, they have their reward; no conquest can be permanently profitable to one side which is not so to both. Moreover, war is to-day, more than ever before, a conflict not of arms but of civilizations; the more complicated its machinery, the more it depends upon the intelligence and character of the man behind the gun, and the greater is the drain upon the resources of the nation. To the ancient motto, Si vis pacem, para bellum, another must therefore be added, Si vis bellum, para pacem. That nation is best prepared for war which best develops and conserves its energies. But all these changes, far-reaching though they are, do not, as is fondly imagined, tend to the abolition of war. The cause of war is as permanent as hunger itself; since both spring from the same source, the law of decreasing returns. So long as that persists, war must remain, in the last analysis, a national business undertaking, designed to procure or preserve foreign markets, that is, the means of continued growth and prosperity. Chacun doit grandir ou mourir.1

1 Vâcher de Lapouge, Les Selections Sociales, chap. viii.

Additional References:

Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Part V, chaps. xvii, xviii, xix. Herbert Spencer, Progress, Its Law and Cause, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Vol. I. J. S. Mackenzie, Introduction to Social Philosophy, chaps. v and vi.

PART III-THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL

PROGRESS

A. THE PHYSICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FACTORS

X

INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY PHYSICAL LAWS OVER THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY AND THE CHARACTER OF INDIVIDUALS1

If we inquire what those physical agents are by which the human race is most powerfully influenced, we shall find that they may be classed under four heads, namely, climate, food, soil, and the general aspect of nature; by which last I mean those appearances which, though presented chiefly to the sight, have, through the medium of that or other senses, directed the association of ideas, and hence in different countries have given rise to different habits of national thought. To one of these four classes may be referred all the external phenomena by which man has been permanently affected. The last of these classes, or what I call the general aspect of nature, produces its principal results by exciting the imagination, and by suggesting those innumerable superstitions which are the great obstacles to advancing knowledge. And as, in the infancy of a people, the power of such superstitions is supreme, it has happened that the various aspects of nature have caused corresponding varieties in the popular character, and have imparted to the national religion peculiarities which, under certain circumstances, it is impossible to efface. The other three agents, namely, climate, food, and soil, have, so far as we are aware, had no direct influence of this sort; but they

1 From Buckle's History of Civilization in England, chap. ii, London, 1857-1861.

have, as I am about to prove, originated the most important consequences in regard to the general organization of society, and from them there have followed many of those large and conspicuous differences between nations which are often ascribed to some fundamental difference in the various races into which mankind is divided. But while such original distinctions of race are altogether hypothetical,1 the discrepancies which are caused by difference of climate, food, and soil are capable of a satisfactory explanation, and, when understood, will be found to clear up many of the difficulties which still obscure the study of history. I purpose, therefore, in the first place, to examine the laws of these three vast agents in so far as they are connected with man in his social condition; and having traced the working of those laws with as much precision as the present state of physical knowledge will allow, I shall then examine the remaining agent, namely, the general aspect of nature, and shall endeavor to point out the most important divergences to which its variations have, in different countries, naturally given rise.

Beginning, then, with climate, food, and soil, it is evident that these three physical powers are in no small degree dependent on each other that is to say, there is a very close connection between the climate of a country and the food which will ordinarily be grown in that country; while at the same time the food is itself influenced by the soil which produces it, as also by the elevation or depression of the land, by the state of the atmosphere, and, in a word, by all those conditions to the assemblage

1 I cordially subscribe to the remark of one of the greatest thinkers of our time, who says of the supposed differences of race, "Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent and natural differences" (Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Vol. I, p. 390). Ordinary writers are constantly falling into the error of assuming the existence of this difference, which may or may not exist, but which most assuredly has never been proved. Some singular instances of this will be found in Alison's History of Europe, Vol. II, p. 336; Vol. VI, p. 136; Vol. VIII, pp. 525, 526; Vol. XIII, p. 347; where the historian thinks that by a few strokes of his pen he can settle a question of the greatest difficulty, connected with some of the most intricate problems in physiology. On the supposed relation between race and temperament, see Comte, Philosophie Positive, Vol. III, p. 355.

of which the name of physical geography is, in its largest sense, commonly given.1

The union between these physical agents being thus intimate, it seems advisable to consider them not under their own separate heads but rather under the separate heads of the effects produced by their united action. In this way we shall rise at once to a more comprehensive view of the whole question; we shall avoid the confusion that would be caused by artificially separating phenomena which are in themselves inseparable; and we shall be able to see more clearly the extent of that remarkable influence which, in an early stage of society, the powers of nature exercise over the fortunes of man.

Of all the results which are produced among a people by their climate, food, and soil, the accumulation of wealth is the earliest, and in many respects the most important. For although the progress of knowledge eventually accelerates the increase of wealth, it is nevertheless certain that, in the first formation of society, the wealth must accumulate before the knowledge can begin. As long as every man is engaged in collecting the materials necessary for his own subsistence there will be neither leisure nor taste for higher pursuits; no science can possibly be created, and the utmost that can be effected will be an attempt to economize labor by the contrivance of such rude and imperfect instruments as even the most barbarous people are able to invent.

In a state of society like this the accumulation of wealth is the first great step that can be taken, because without wealth there can be no leisure, and without leisure there can be no knowledge. If what a people consume is always exactly equal to what they possess, there will be no residue, and therefore, no capital being accumulated, there will be no means by which the unemployed

1 As to the proper limits of physical geography, see Prichard on Ethnology, in Report of the British Association for 1847, p. 235. The word "climate " I always use in the narrow and popular sense. Dr. Forry and many previous writers make it nearly coincide with “physical geography”: “Climate constitutes the aggregate of all the external physical circumstances appertaining to each locality in its relation to organic nature" (Forry, Climate of the United States and its Endemic Influences, p. 127, New York, 1842).

classes may be maintained.1 But if the produce is greater than the consumption, an overplus arises, which, according to wellknown principles, increases itself, and eventually becomes a fund out of which, immediately or remotely, every one is supported who does not create the wealth upon which he lives. And now it is that the existence of an intellectual class first becomes possible, because for the first time there exists a previous accumulation, by means of which men can use what they did not produce, and are thus enabled to devote themselves to subjects for which at an earlier period the pressure of their daily wants would have left them no time.

Thus it is that of all the great social improvements the accumulation of wealth must be the first, because without it there can be neither taste nor leisure for that acquisition of knowledge on which, as I shall hereafter prove, the progress of civilization depends. Now, it is evident that among an entirely ignorant people the rapidity with which wealth is created will be solely regulated by the physical peculiarities of their country. At a later period, and when the wealth has been capitalized, other causes come into play; but until this occurs the progress can only depend on two circumstances: first, on the energy and regularity with which labor is conducted, and, secondly, on the returns made to that labor by the bounty of nature. And these two causes are themselves the result of physical antecedents. The returns made to labor are governed by the fertility of the soil, which is itself regulated partly by the admixture of its chemical components, partly by the extent to which, from rivers or from other natural causes, the soil is irrigated, and partly by the heat and humidity of the atmosphere. On the other hand, the energy and regularity with which labor is conducted will be entirely dependent on the influence of climate. This will display itself in two different ways. The first, which is a very obvious consideration, is, that if the heat is intense, men will be indisposed, and in some degree unfitted, for that active industry

1 By unemployed classes, I mean what Adam Smith calls the unproductive classes; and though both expressions are strictly speaking inaccurate, the word " unemployed" seems to convey more clearly than any other the idea in the text.