Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/38

20 to perform their functions as perfectly at the first as at the last; the instincts of man's intellectuality urge him on in an eternal race for something better, in which perfection is never attained nor attainable; in society, we see the constant growth, the higher and yet higher development; now in this ever-onward movement are there instincts which originate and govern action in the body social as in the body individual? Is not society a bundle of organs, with an implanted Soul of Progress, which moves mankind along in a resistless predetermined march?

Nations are born and die; they appear first in a state of infancy or savagism; many die in their childhood, some grow into manhood and rule for a time the destinies of the world; finally, by sudden extinction, or a lingering decrepitude, they disappear, and others take their place. But in this ceaseless coming and going there is somewhere a mysterious agency at work, making men better, wiser, nobler, whether they will or not. This improvement is not the effect of volition; the plant does not will to unfold, nor the immature animal to grow; neither can the world of human kind cease to advance in mind and in manners. Development is the inevitable incident of being. Nations, under normal conditions, can no more help advancing than they can throw themselves into a state of non-existence; than can the individual stop his corporeal growth, or shut out from the intellect every perception of knowledge, and become a living petrification. And in whatever pertains to intellectual man this fundamental principle is apparent. It underlies all moralities, governments, and religions, all industries, arts, and commerce; it is the mainspring of every action, the consequence of every cause; it is the great central idea toward which all things converge; it is the object of all efforts, the end of all successes; it absorbs all forces, and is the combined results of innumerable agencies, good and evil.

Before the theory of Dr von Martius and his followers,