Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/247

Rh and commerce make it necessary for them to approach one another, not with a dirk or spear, but with the hand and look of welcome and friendship. Thus manners become more gentle, and feelings more sympathetic. There is a better recognition of rights and obligations. With a better recognition of rights and obligations pass away the slavery, deceit, vice, crime, and other evils that war engenders.

Like the deductions from the ruin of war, these deductions from the recuperation of peace have the sanction of historians that never heard of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy. "It is with human activity as with the fecundity of the earth" says Guizot. "With the least glimpse of order and peace, man takes hope, and with hope goes to work. It was thus with the towns" he adds, alluding to the diminution of anarchy that came with the establishment of feudalism. The moment that feudalism was a little fixed, new wants sprang up among the fief-holders, a certain taste for progress and amelioration; to supply this want, a little commerce and industry appeared in the towns of their domain; riches and population returned to them; slowly, it is true, but still they returned." Robertson makes a similar contribution to the pacific origin of civilization. "Commerce" he says in his famous view of Europe before the reign of Charles V, "tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinctions and animosity between nations. It softens and polishes the manners of men. It unites them by one of the strongest of all ties, the desire of supplying their mutual wants. It disposes them to peace by establishing in every state an order of citizens bound by their interests to be guardians of public tranquillitytranquility [sic]. As soon as the commercial spirit acquires vigor and begins to gain an ascendant in any society, we discover a new genius in its policy, its wars, its alliances, and its negotiations. . . . In proportion as commerce made its way into the different countries of Europe, they successively turned their attention to those objects and adopted those manners which occupy and distinguish polished nations."

An appeal to the facts of history that led Guizot and Robertson, as well as other writers ignorant of Mr, Spencer's social philosophy, to these important inductions does not impair their validity; it only strengthens them and makes them the more impregnable. Wherever peace can find a refuge from the violence and uncertainty of war, industry and commerce take root and work their miracles.!No matter whether it find protection on the slopes or in the valleys of mountains, among the sand dunes or in the marshes of the sea, behind the walls of a city or away from the path of marauding invaders, the result is the same—civilization. Had not the Dutch been able to escape from the anarchy beyond the borders of their barren and