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The older civilizations had formed among themselves restricted and exclusive societies, to which access was almost impossible to strangers. These sanctuaries tempted the immigrants, who offered their fairest virgins and much treasure for the privilege of admission. The indigenous aristocrats, who were mostly poor, yielded to these offers and a few Americans succeeded in forcing an entrance.
Millions of men in thousands of years are included in this holocaust of past time, eras of savagery, Assyrian civilizations, Christian butcheries, the Czar yet supreme, the Turk yet alive. And how is it at the other pole of mystery, where life rises into a heavenly vision of eternities of love to come?
I queried. "Something very much like the so-called 'weed of madness, I think," he replied slowly. "The weed of madness?" I repeated. "Yes. It is similar to the Mexican toloache and the Hindu datura, which you must have heard about." I had heard of these weird drugs, but they had always seemed to be so far away and to belong rather to the atmosphere of civilizations different from New York.
During periods of expansion civilized communities develop a dynamism which maintains their ascendancy. In subsequent periods of contraction form takes over, imposing conformity on the status quo. During their periods of expansion civilizations are dynamic. Their history records growth at home, expansion abroad, exploitation, domestic and foreign under the pressure of effective motivating forces.
Accordingly it was only the warriors who became voters. The restriction of political activity to men has also probably been emphasized by the fact that all the higher civilizations have passed through a well-defined patriarchal stage of society in which each household was represented by its oldest warrior.
To make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance. It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy. The Roman, with the civilization of the world at his back, is naturally, one might say inevitably, polite.
I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations.
If the conditions presently existing in human society affordment, skills and technical experience necessary to make significant changes, why wait? Why not proceed forthwith to live a better life? This dilemma has confronted individuals and sub-groups in various civilizations. It has been particularly in evidence during periods of decline and social disintegration.
The honest Connecticut farmer was quietly gathering from his threshing-floor the shoe-pegs, which, when intermixed with a fair proportion of oats, offered a pleasing substitute for fodder to the effete civilizations of Europe. An almost Sabbath-like stillness prevailed. Doemville was only seven miles from Hartford, and the surrounding landscape smiled with the conviction of being fully insured.
Authors lead us back along the pathway of law, of liberty or religion, and set us down in front of the great man in whose brain the principle had its rise. As the discoverer leads us from the mouth of the Nile back to the headwaters of Nyanza, so books exhibit great ideas and institutions, as they move forward, ever widening and deepening, like some Nile feeding many civilizations.
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