830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of war as a civilizing agency. This is, that the greater the diver- 

 sity in conditions between two warring nations, the greater is 

 their mutual benefit. Civil wars usually yield but small results 

 in this direction. Few new experiences are gained. It is but the 

 commingling of two similar fluids. Yet in a case like that of our 

 American civil war, where the existence of widely different con- 

 ditions in two opposed sections of the country is the determining 

 cause of the war, very important advantages to civilization may 

 be gained. It would have taken many years of peace to produce 

 as strong a feeling of the moral obliquity of slavery as was pro- 

 duced in four years of war. The heated minds of our people re- 

 ceived the doctrine of abolitionism as a river of new thought, 

 where before it had been but a trickling rivulet. And the overflow 

 of this new thought is gradually making itself felt in the South, 

 despite the fact that the conquerors have left them to their pre- 

 vious isolation. 



Thus it is not only the soldier's mind that is heated and recep- 

 tive ; the same condition, in a lesser degree, exists in the nation 

 for whose benefit the army is fighting. The souls of the people 

 march, if their bodies do not, with the army. They are excited, 

 hopeful, eager to participate in its booty, and ready to be influ- 

 enced by its experiences. And when the conquerors return with 

 spoils in their hands, and new thoughts, beliefs, and aspirations 

 in their minds, they mingle intimately with a people eager to 

 participate in their gains, and in a mental condition highly recep- 

 tive to their new ideas. The more diverse these from the previous 

 mental state of the people, the greater is the warping influence 

 upon the national mind, and the more decided are the new con- 

 ceptions attained. Nor in any such case does the conquering race 

 simply lift itself toward the level of the conquered. If we cause 

 oxygen and hydrogen to combine, the result is not oxygen or 

 hydrogen, but water. And, in like manner, the mingling of two 

 diverse grades of thought yields a compound that resembles 

 neither of its constituents, but is a new phase of civilization, a 

 positive step forward in progress. 



Thus the world progressed through its long ages of partial 

 civilization. The combined experiences of the members of a tribe 

 yielded a certain degree of advancement, and there stopped. Each 

 tribe differed from all others to the extent that its experiences and 

 their resulting ideas differed. During peace the tribes repelled 

 each other and remained intact, each with its special form of men- 

 tal progress. In war they overflowed each other, greatly diver- 

 sified thoughts and habits were brought into intimate contact, 

 new ideas were engendered from the mixture, new forms of civil- 

 ization arose. And as war was almost incessant, so these new 

 products of thought were constantly brought into existence. 



