Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/2

2 cannot conceive of any combination of circumstances which will bring about an absolute monarchy in this country. The time is hardly likely to come when we shall set up in America an actual and avowed empire. Possibly we shall have for a time—perhaps for a long time—an empire in everything but the name. That may be the drift of things It may be a drift which nothing can stem. It may be our destiny, as some of our alleged statesmen are saying. But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the accident of war is responsible in any important sense for this drift. Let us understand clearly that if imperialism lies in store for this nation, the capture of Manila was in no sense the cause of that policy. The seed of imperialism is in that which has made it seem worth while to keep those islands.

But I do not believe we are going very far along the road toward empire. I believe that none of the forms of human government which have so far existed can reappear, for the simple reason that evolution and education render such a thing impossible. The blossom does not go back into the bud. The direction of evolution is from within outward. And while the life of the material world around us seems to go in cycles, every twelve months repeating the same phenomena of and harvest, there is no good reason for believing that the evolution of the race proceeds in cycles. It may seem to return now and then upon its path, but such is not the case. Evolution may describe a spiral through the centuries; it does not describe a circle.

In other words, I think it would be fair to say that the particular form of government under which society finds itself at any given is not the choice of the people of that time so much as it is the logical result of the conditions which exist or have prevailed. Will you not agree with me that probably no form of government was ever deliberately chosen, out of hand, by a people? I will not say that a form of government never will be consciously chosen by a people, but I think it is historically true that no form of government ever did result from deliberate choice.

Let us see whether that statement seems to agree with the facts. There have been many changes in the form of human government, but I cannot recall a single one which really marked a very wide departure from that which preceded. We have in the Bible, as you know, two accounts of the formation of the kingdom of Israel. According to one account, a kingdom arose by divine appointment—and was supposed to be a sort of miniature on the earth of the government which Jehovah was supposed to exercise in some other region. The king was the representative of Jehovah. According to the other account, the people of Israel selfishly wanted a king because other nations around them had