194 NA TIONA L GEO WTH A ND NA T10NA L QUA RA CTER 



through the enlarged knowledge, there is no retrogression save 

 by extinction of entire groups. Barbarism in turn persists until 

 population is so increased that personal contact between patri- 

 arch or priest and the people is necessarily replaced by arbitrary 

 conventions, which arise spontaneously in such manner as to 

 reflect both general knowledge and local conditions, so that the 

 transition is effected, or partly effected, in various ways ; in 

 Europe it was partly brought about through the passage from 

 allodialism to feudalism, which (although but a small part of 

 the entire change) involved the development of a new order of 

 law, according to Sir Henry Maine ; with the aid of a beneficent 

 cult, it Was wholly effected in the arid land of Palestine, whence 

 the leaven spread throughout much of the world in the form of 

 more altruistic law than is known to lower culture. Civilization 

 evinces no tendency toward retrogression into the lower order 

 of law, yet there is a constant tendency toward a higher order 

 marked by the limitation of hereditary monarchies, by revolu- 

 tions at first bloody but gradually growing bloodless, by the sepa- 

 ration of church and state, by the abrogation of odious laws, 

 and in many other ways ; in certain instances the form of gov- 

 ernmental organization known as military despotism seems to 

 bridge the chasm between civilization and enlightenment, much 

 as feudalism connected barbarism and civilization in Europe 

 during the last millennium. Enlightenment reveals no retrogres- 

 sion, save through senile surrender of self-reliance or hereditary 

 debility which lead some to seek the support of stronger fel- 

 lows ; certainly no nation that has once tasted intellectual free- 

 dom in its fullness ever turned back toward mental bondage. 

 Accordingly, the order of the developmental stages is definite, 

 invariable as the movement of the planet in its orbit, as the flow 

 of the river in its channel, or as the growth of the insect from 

 egg to larva, from larva to pupa, and from pupa to imago; and 

 the normal law of human progress is from savagery through bar- 

 barism to civilization, and then in due course to that enlighten- 

 ment in which the mind is released from trammels and the 

 physical being inspired b}* - the boundless possibilities of free 

 action. 



So the student of the social stages sees four great milestones 

 along the course of human development; the first marks dimly 

 the origin of man on earth as the lord over lower creation ; the 

 second, seen vaguely in many lands, marks the passage from 

 the most primitive condition to a higher stage through normal 



