Proenvironment in the Evolution of Man 651 



At no periods in history has this been more fully illustrated 

 than during the opulent centuries of Greek and Roman civili- 

 zation. In the earlier centuries of the national life encour- 

 agement of thrifty virtues, culture of the land, respect for 

 the paterfamilias, for the family, and for the country's welfare, 

 prevailed. Thus were built up, from many hardy natural 

 stimuli, proenvironal responses that caused each Roman of 

 the Republic to look on the nation's future with determined 

 and hopeful eyes. But when the period of incoming wealth 

 came, with its opulent luxury, its licensed graft, its bribing 

 of office-holders, its worship of debauching vices, these all 

 became degrading stimuli that were compounded into groups 

 of resultant degrading responses, which in turn combined into 

 one great degradation response affecting the individual, and 

 through him the nation. The time was when Greece first, 

 Rome next, proenvironed heroic efforts in frugal spirit, and 

 then prevailed; the time came when they successfully pro- 

 environed luxurious degrading ease and vice. Then their 

 defeat, conquest, and disruption came. 



It has been said by some eminent authorities, and so far 

 truly, that Greece, Rome, India, Spain, became prostrate 

 and conquered nations because the flower of their manhood 

 was successively decimated in foreign wars. But the funda- 

 mental cause of these wars was the lust of aggression, the 

 desire for slaves, for riches, for wide empire, for empty power. 

 Rome and Italy today support in benign peace a greatly larger 

 population than at any time in past history. But this is be- 

 cause the nation has slowly, even if only slightly, learned 

 that the arts of peace bring surer and more lasting satisfaction 

 than do the destructive arts of war. When the nations rec- 

 ognize this as an international law, human evolution will 

 make gigantic strides. 



Never more truly than today are environal stimuli acting 

 to build up proenvironal responses that for men and for na- 

 tions will either cause evolution, or stagnation, or devolution. 

 All national histories are but the human a])plications, in accur- 

 ate scientific manner, of the more extended biological laws. 



