SPONTANEOUS DEGRADATION OF CULTURE 469 



of the length of the shadow which they cast through the times that come 

 after them. 



These considerations are well understood and have been discussed broadly 

 and in detail in a wide variety of places. They may be summarised in the 

 propositions — that progress of civilisation or of culture comes about through 

 changes of idea-system ; indeed it is nothing other than change of idea-system 

 — and that changes of idea-system have been accomplished by the ideas of 

 individuals. It would follow that progress of culture is due ultimately 

 to the causes which have provoked individuals to have the ideas which have 

 altered the idea-system. 



Psychologists need only enumerate instances to make it clear that fruitful 

 and important ideas come to an individual as the result of his being subjected 

 to a crisis of one kind or another, to an unusual circumstance which provokes 

 an unusual reaction. Such crises are provided by war, as Teggart has pointed 

 out in his Processes of History ; they give rise often to deeply religious reactions, 

 as the " Varieties of Religious Experience " make manifest ; they are found 

 in falling in love, in bodily infirmity, in the effect of alcohol, in fear, in anger, 

 and in the presence of death. They undoubtedly occur with greatest fre- 

 quency when the medium in which the individual finds himself provides the 

 greatest possibility of predicament. Stevenson says that " every young 

 man becomes something of a poet when he falls in love," and we may be 

 confident that there would be more lyric poetry of permanent value in the 

 world if more of us loved harder or were not so soon done with it. The fable 

 of the Garden of Eden has more than a metaphysical significance, for the 

 discovery of sin was coincident with the beginning of intellectual activity. 

 The most fertile period in the cultural development of modern Europe was 

 a period of petty princes with petty quarrels, of small independent cities, 

 of vice, disease, brigandage, pride, pomp, and superstition, a time when 

 often men dared scarcely to call their names their own. We read the auto- 

 biography of Cellini and wonder almost that such a man did not produce 

 a second and greater Perseus. 



While the Great War has apparently accomplished but little in deter- 

 mining the destiny of Europe, it has done much for the future culture of the 

 peoples which were concerned with it. This is especially the case with the 

 Allies. The French will benefit most, next perhaps the Americans. The 

 sensitive and highly reactive Frenchman met many predicaments, those of 

 a kind which are always provided by war — and with this kind he is familiar — 

 but those of other kinds also, those furnished by the American in his midst, 

 by the Canadian, the Australian, the New Zealander, people strange to the 

 ways of the Boulevard des Capucines, foreign alike to the frankness and the 

 gall of his sunny land. More than a few Americans heard the honest, full, 

 man's laugh of Rabelais ; they drank of Chateauneuf from the garden of the 

 Popes; they learned to know the pertness of the coquelicot of Picardy. " But 

 what good came of it at last ? " The question carries its own answer if it 

 is worth debating. The already tremendously increased output of science, 

 invention, art, literature, and philosophy in France and America is evidence 

 that the Allies really won the war. 



When the group has attained a condition of inward complexity sufficient 

 to provide a wide variety of predicament to the individuals which constitute 

 it, adequate to stimulate them to frequent, diverse, and unusual reaction, 

 then the culture of the group grows rapidly for a time. This growth is self- 

 accelerated, for it gives rise to new predicaments and the predicaments give 

 rise to new growth of culture. 



Chinese culture took its rise in the mountain passes toward Thibet, 

 where the practical military advantages to be gained by occupation were 

 repeatedly contested by warring tribes. Diverse traditions and ideas came 

 into conflict. The warring individual, confronted with strange situations 



