HISTORICAL CYCLES — CRAWFORD 455 



transmits them to that other part of itself which directs action, the 

 dei3artment of operations. Thus informed, the will, the commander 

 in chief, issues orders which travel along a hundred nerves, each to its 

 destination, and at zero point the army moves forward. 



In its normal everj^day life a community might act in a similar 

 way, if there should be a centralized control and a well-developed 

 group consciousness. Some nations and city states have thus acted at 

 their maturity, when the civic body is still young and healthy and its 

 reactions quick and senses keen. It can only do so even then when it 

 has a sovereign capable of directing its actions, and history shows that 

 this combination does not often occur. 



It is plain that some modern nations have reached, in their re- 

 capitulation, an already advanced stage. It would need a biologist's 

 knowledge to give precision, however, to the analogy at this point, 

 and this unfortunately we do not possess. Perhaps modern European 

 states are passing through the stage of vertebrate or even mammalian 

 life.^' Perhaps, however, they are merely having a reptilian night- 

 mare on the road to mutual extermination, and the torch may be 

 picked up later on by some now obscure racial group on the confines 

 of western civilization. In favor of the first suggestion is the fact 

 that modern states have a brain ; in favor of the second that it is a small 

 and poor one and only used in extremities. Whichever equation we 

 adopt, this advance from multicell to vertebrate (whether reptile or 

 mammal) is of far shorter duration than that from a single cell to a 

 many-celled organism ; and the corresponding advance from city state 

 to modern nation is proportionately shorter, as it should be. May 

 we not conclude then, that there is a good case for regarding social 

 evolution as a recapitulation of organic evolution? 



Before passing on to the next point it should be noted that in social 

 as in biological evolution there is a main line or stem, with branches. 

 Some organisms have branched off and have either become extinct or 

 have remained down to the present day in their primitive state, living 

 on side b}'^ side with their more advanced cousins. Some advance to 

 a point and remain there, or go backwards. These branchings off 

 occur at every stage. Paleolithic hunters are now extinct,^^ but 

 neolithic collectors survive in the Australian aborigines, and else- 

 where; just as primitive forms of life abound in every pond. 



It has already been seen that, according to our theory, the phase or 

 life history (in Petrie's sense) of a society is equivalent to a species, 



^ Sir Arthur Keith, however (1924, p. 9) considers that "the highest stage which has 

 been yet reached by man in the evolution of human societies has hardly passed beyond 

 Nature's lowest stage — that represented by sponges." We have no room here to argue 

 the point, which moreover is not relevant to our main thesis. 



1* Unless the Esquimaux be taken to represent them ; but the Esquimaux are not 

 solitary hunters. 



