WAR AS A FACTOR IN CIVILIZATION. 833 



of a conflagration. It is a whole, healthy, and complete develop- 

 ment, a method full of infinite possibilities. Yet it has its ap- 

 parent drawbacks. The minds of people working peacefully at 

 home are not in the recipient state of that of the soldier, who has 

 broken the chains of law and habit and grown singularly porous 

 to the reception of new ideas. Local prejudices dwell at home 

 with localized people. Knowledge has to fight its way through a 

 thick crust of self-satisfied home partisanship. Men must come 

 into contact with each other if conservatism is to be eliminated. 

 They are fortunately coming more and more into peaceful con- 

 tact with each other. Modern facilities are rendering habits of 

 travel more general. There is as much peaceful movement now 

 as there was warlike movement of old. The stay-at-home society 

 is yearly losing membership. 



And this process is wonderfully aided by another instrumental- 

 ity. Men's bodies on longer need to touch for their ideas to come 

 into contact. Ideas themselves are on their travels. The whole 

 world, in a contracted sense, lies before every man at his breakfast 

 table. The newspaper, aided by the telegraph, is a most powerful 

 civilizing agent. In books not only the thought of the existing 

 world, but a condensed epitome of the thought of all the past, is 

 placed before the reading public. The library is the great granary 

 of ideas. The press is the brain of the world, the grand receptacle 

 of its thoughts. 



Thus, in a wider sense than ever before, we travel and learn. 

 Our souls travel while our bodies are at rest. The whole world 

 is harvesting all the experiences and ideas gained by any portion 

 of mankind. It is not the destructive harvesting of war, but the 

 careful harvesting of peace. And prejudice the mental isolation 

 which has succeeded to national isolation is breaking down be- 

 fore it. We are growing more and more receptive. The world's 

 mind is becoming strikingly porous to new thought. We are cut- 

 ting loose from fixity of belief, rigidity of custom, and devotion to 

 authority, and growing mentally flexible, inquiring, and rebellious 

 against bigotry. The reign of faith is giving way to the reign of 

 reason. 



And in this modern mode of development ethical evolution 

 comes actively into play. Human progress has its three phases 

 the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. The last, the high- 

 est of all, was but imperfectly provided for in the old civilizing 

 agencies. War has a brutalizing tendency. Only in peaceful de- 

 velopment can moral progress fully display itself. As the highest 

 moral advancement of mankind has seemed to keep pace, perhaps 

 necessarily, with the highest intellectual development, it was un- 

 doubtedly to some extent favored by war. Certainly, in the war- 

 ring nations of Europe morality has reached a far higher stage 



