Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/348

334 incorporates all that is best in each, and subordinates them to the highest; and thus the whole character becomes broader and more universal in its sympathies, as well as higher. This is the true type of culture—for culture is naught else than a natural evolution assisted by art. True culture does not educate us out of sympathy with childhood and youth, nor above sympathy with the lower classes of society; it does not simply raise us pygmies on a platform above the heads of our fellow-men, but without increasing our stature. If our culture does so, it is a false culture. The true cultured man stands on the same common level with other men, only his higher parts rise higher. But see the necessity which this law lays upon us of never-ceasing culture! Beautiful, joyous childhood cannot last, must decline. If we do not cultivate the higher imaginative and æsthetic faculties, our nature inevitably deteriorates from that time. Glorious youth and young manhood must decline, and with it our whole nature must deteriorate if we do not cultivate reflective and productive thought. Lofty intellectual power must also decline. Alas! how sad to see in old age the whole character deteriorate for want of moral and religious culture, which alone insures immortal progress!

The same law holds equally in the development of the organic kingdom. When the class of fishes declined in power, it did not perish, but became subordinate to the incoming higher dominant class of reptiles, which, in its turn, sought safety in subordination to the still higher incoming class of mammals, and this in its turn to the highest dominant class, man; and thus the whole organic kingdom becomes not only higher, but also broader, more complex, more diverse.

So, also, in society. When any dominant idea, principle, or social force of any kind, characteristic of any phase of civilization, declines, it does not perish, but becomes incorporated into the next higher phase of civilization as a subordinate force or principle. Thus each age incorporates what is best in the previous age, and modern society is the resultant of all the social forces which have acted from the beginning—is the heir of all the ages; and the social organism has thus become not only higher, but broader, stronger, and more complex. And here, again, the same necessity is laid upon us, of continuous progress or else of decline. No mere phase of civilization can last, no social force can continue in its pristine power. That nation which refuses to accept the incoming principle is left behind and inevitably decays.

Observe again: the speediness of the rise, culmination, and decline—the short-livedness—of any phase of civilization is in proportion to the limited character of the principles involved—the partialness of the embodiment of all the principles of our humanity. As society becomes more complex, its cycles become longer, until it reaches continuous, steady progress—immortality—only in the complete embodiment of an ideal humanity. Such we believe is the ideal of a Christian civilization.