472 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



pagation of culture. The civilised group devises means for the easier spread 

 of civilisation. 



It is thought to be equally obvious that these factors, in smoothing the way 

 for culture, at the same time shut off its generation at the source. If the 

 beginnings of change of idea-system are found in predicaments, it follows 

 without discussion that organisation and regulation, police and prohibition, 

 etc. etc., however desirable they may be for other reasons, do nevertheless 

 abolish predicaments and cut off the growth of culture at the point where 

 the growth begins. 



The growth of culture follows the same law as does the self-catalysed 

 decomposition of guncotton. It signs its own death-warrant. It gives 

 rise to circumstances which cause its own cessation. For its easier growth 

 it organises and regulates — and it chokes itself thereby. If we look at the 

 history of ancient civilisations, we find them epitomised in the history of a 

 wisp of guncotton ; at the end either spontaneous combustion or cessation 

 of change from self-suffocation. 



In reaching the conclusion that the growth of the culture of a single group 

 follows the same law as does a self-catalysed chemical reaction, I have pro- 

 ceeded without any expectation that the law would apply with mathematical 

 exactness. It does not seem likely that its mathematical exactness in this 

 connection will ever be demonstrated — for we know of no way by which 

 culture may be estimated quantitatively. All the more remarkable, then, 

 is the fact, recently pointed out,^ that the rate of growth of the population 

 of the United States, and presumably of other single groups, actually does 

 follow this law. The question of the interconnection of culture and popu- 

 lation arises at once, but it will not be discussed at this place, for it hardly 

 falls within the scope of the present paper. Yet the fact that the growth of 

 each follows the same law may be taken as inductive evidence of the probable 

 truth of the present argument. 



It is thought that the foregoing argument contains nothing novel, except 

 perhaps in its arrangement and in the conclusion to which it leads, nothing 

 in its premises which has not already been pointed out elsewhere with greater 

 richness of detail. The various considerations which it involves have been 

 expounded in many places by anthropologists, psychologists, and historians. 

 I suppose them to be so familiar that I have here contented myself merely 

 with linking them together. The argument may be summarised : 



1. Progress of civilisation or of culture comes about through changes of 

 idea-system. Rate of this change is rate of production of culture. 



2. Changes of idea-system have been accomplished by tlie ideas of 

 individuals. 



3. Individuals get bright ideas as the result of being subjected to predica- 

 ments. 



4. For a time the growth of the group provides an increase in the variety 

 of predicaments to which an individual can be subjected, and so promotes 

 change in the group's idea-system. 



5. Ultimately the growth of the group causes it to insist upon internal 

 organisation and regulation. This abolishes predicaments, reduces the 

 possibility of diverse individual reaction, and stifles the germination of 

 culture at its source. 



Now that the foregoing is written, the temptation is strong to moralise. 

 In this twentieth century it seems that we study Nature and learn her laws, 

 not apparently as the ancients did in order that we may accommodate 



* Raymond Pearl and Lowell J. Reed, " On the Rate of Growth of the 

 Population of the United States since 1790 and its Mathematical Repre- 

 sentation," Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, 6, 275. June 1920. 



