300 THE OCEAN RIVER 



but as the New World became settled civil authority and 

 social organization inevitably followed. Then the fresh reali- 

 zation of power, and a feeling of complete separateness and 

 independence from the older countries, brought on the colo- 

 nial revolts and the breaking of political ties. But all this was 

 only a preliminary to the process of settlement. In our own 

 time the frontier of westward-marching Europe has for some 

 time been a thing of the past. The period of western adoles- 

 cence is over; and the western child, now in full maturity, 

 has been forced to look on the parent continent of Europe 

 and re-estimate the relationship. The hard necessities of mu- 

 tual protection, mutual trade, and — not least — the mutual 

 unity of scientific investigation which is beyond and above 

 nationalism, are forcing a modern reinspection of the com- 

 munity of the Atlantic peoples. The time of separate exploi- 

 tation of human and natural resources has passed into a time 

 where the study of the common stewardship of resources 

 is forced on the peoples of the west. 



In 1909 Henry Adams, using the idea of ''phase" as ex- 

 pressed in science, tried to give this idea an interpretation 

 as a measure of historical change from one period of equilib- 

 rium or static period of society, through dynamic change, 

 into another such relatively static period. He was preoccupied 

 to discover how much the laws of scientific change in matter 

 could be applied to the affairs of men and the realm of ideas 

 that govern men's actions. He makes an interesting comparison 

 of how ideas obey the scientific laws of attraction, accelera- 

 tion, and volume. For instance, the attraction of a New 

 World in the west stimulated the imagination and thought 

 of philosophers, statesmen, and merchants; the exploration 

 and development of the resources of the west accelerated 

 intellectual activity, and awakened from inertia the minds 

 of multitudes of Europeans who otherwise might have been 

 held in the static concepts and hopeless attitudes of the 

 medieval world before the stimulus of the west was felt. 



