Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/347

Rh the cerebral functions. Or, in the development of the mind, there rise, culminate, and decline, first in childhood, the perceptive faculties and the memory; then in youth and young manhood, the imaginative and æsthetic faculties; then in full manhood, or even beyond, the faculty of productive thought; and, finally, only late in life, and if the life has been noble, the moral and religious nature: the first, gathering and storing the materials for intellectual growth; the second, warming, vivifying, vitalizing, the materials thus gathered; the third, using them in constructive mason-work—in building the temple of science and philosophy; the last beautifying and ennobling that temple and dedicating it to holy purposes, thus connecting the evolution of the spirit in this life with that which, as we hope, continues in another. Similarly, in the development of that greater organism, viz., the organic kingdom, we have the rise, culmination, and decline of successively higher and higher classes of organisms: first of mollusca, then of fishes, then of amphibia, then of reptiles, then of mammals, and, finally, of man. And here, too, in the last step we find again the lower or animal evolution connected with and continued by a higher, viz., the social evolution.

So is it also in society. Here, too, we find progress is accomplished by a successive rise, culmination, and decline, of higher and higher dominant ideas or principles, determining different phases of civilization. The law may be traced not only in the general civilization of successive epochs, but even in the component parts or principles of civilization. It is not only cycle beyond and above cycle, but also cycle within cycle. Thus we have successively culminating and declining Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and now rising but not yet culminating, modern civilization, confessed by higher and higher forms. In natural religion we have everywhere first fetichism, then polytheism, and then monotheism. In the direct line of modern religious organization we have the Jewish and the Christian form. In the Christian Church we have the primitive or apostolic form, the Roman form, the Protestant forms, and we yet hope for a still higher and more rational form in the future.

But, observe: in all development, when a dominant function, faculty, principle, etc., declines, it does not perish, but only becomes subordinate to the next rising and higher dominant function or principle, and thus the whole organism becomes not only higher but also more complex. Thus, when the perceptive faculties and memory decline in early manhood, they do not perish, but only become subordinate to the higher dominant imaginative and æsthetic faculties characteristic of that age. Again, when these latter decline they do not perish, but only in their turn become subordinate to the still higher faculty of productive thought, which in its turn, and with it the whole character, becomes subordinate to the moral and religious nature. Thus the perfect man does not forget utterly the things of childhood and youth and early manhood, but