Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/43

Rh this death of individuality that is the real cause of the fall of the empire.

The fall of the empire is sometimes so sudden and so complete, and the spirit of individuality before its departure is so small and dwarfed, that no spirit is left to transmit the history of the imperial achievements. When a couple of centuries after the fall of the mighty Assyrian empire Xenophon passed the ruins of the once Nineveh the great, the capital of Assyria, the terror of nations, he was unable even to find out its name. Assyria was wiped out from the memory of man as if it had never existed. If it were not for Greek accounts, what would have been left of the great Persian empire, but a few ruins and inscriptions on the rock of Behistan? If it were not for modern excavations the very name of Assyria would have been like a dream of the past, long gone and forgotten. What would have been left of the Carthaginian empire, if not for the Greek and Roman historians? Those empires passed away at one single blow, and with the sudden collapse vanished all the glory of imperial power. But long before that fall the real glory had departed,—the glory of the individual. Empires may often look grand and magnificent, but they are built with poor material,—with small men and petty minds. Military aggregates or societies, held together by the sword are doomed to dissolution at the moment of their birth. The destruction is not due so much to luxury and effeminacy, as is usually assumed, but to the dwarfing and suppression of the spirit of the free, living individuality which alone constitutes the active nucleus of social life.

With the growth of the social aggregate, social structure and functions become varied, differentiated, and rigid; social pressure increases, while individuality and originality are ever on the decrease, sinking to a uniform level of dead mediocrity and commonplace. There is limitation of the field of consciousness, limitation of voluntary activity, monotony, routine, and inhibitions, all growing with the increase of mass, structure, and social pressure on individual units. With the progressive intensification of these conditions the personal, critical consciousness gets more and more dissociated from the impersonal, automatic, reflex subconscious, and becomes subject to all sorts of absurd suggestions. If now some brilliant object fixes the involuntary attention of the subconscious mind of the social aggregate, the mental energy of the constituent units, becoming polarized, turning in one direction, develops a momentum, uncontrollable and overwhelming in its disastrous effects,—the subconscious self becomes the