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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,C. F. CLAY, MANAGER.

Honfcon: FETTER LANE, E.G.: 50, WELLINGTON STREET.

j: F. A. BROCKHAUS.ti ?orb : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS,

tfotnbag anto Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

[All Rights reserved]

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DECADENCEHENRT SIDGWICK MEMORIAL

LECTURE

byTHE RIGHT HON.

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR, M.P.[DELIVERED AT NEWNHAM COLLEGE,

JANUARY 25, 1908]

CAMBRIDGEat the University Press

1908

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Cambridge:PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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DECADENCE.I MUST begin what I have to say with a

warning and an apology. I must warn youthat the present essay makes no pretence tobe an adequate treatment of some compactand limited theme ; but rather resembles thosewandering trains of thought, where we allowourselves the luxury of putting wide-rangingquestions, to which our ignorance forbids anyconfident reply. I apologise for adopting acourse which thus departs in some measurefrom familiar precedent. I admit its perils.But it is just possible that when a subject, orgroup of subjects, is of great inherent interest,even a tentative, and interrogative, treatmentof it may be worth attempting.

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6 DECADENCEMy subject, or at least my point of de-

parture, is Decadence. I do not mean thesort of decadence often attributed to certainphases of artistic or literary development, inwhich an overwrought technique, straining toexpress sentiments too subtle or too morbid,is deemed to have supplanted the direct in-spiration of an earlier and a simpler age.Whether these autumnal glories, these splen-dours touched with death, are recurring phe-nomena in the literary cycle : whether, if theybe, they are connected with other formsof decadence, may be questions well worthasking and answering. But they are not thequestions with which I am at present concerned.The decadence respecting which I wish toput questions is not literary or artistic, it ispolitical and national. It is the decadencewhich attacks, or is alleged to attack, greatcommunities and historic civilisations : which

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DECADENCE 7is to societies of men what senility is to man,and is often, like senility, the precursor andthe cause of final dissolution.

It is curious how deeply imbedded inordinary discourse are traces of the convic-tion that childhood, maturity, and old age,are stages in the corporate, as they are inthe individual, life. " A young and vigorousnation," "a decrepit and moribund civilisa-tion " phrases like these, and scores of otherscontaining the same implication, come as trip-pingly from the tongue as if they suggestedno difficulty and called for no explanation.To Macaulay (unless I am pressing his famousmetaphor too far) it seemed natural that ageshence a young country like New Zealand shouldbe flourishing, but not less natural that an oldcountry like England should have decayed.Berkeley, in a well-known stanza, tells how thedrama of civilisation has slowly travelled west-

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8 DECADENCEward to find its loftiest development, but alsoits final catastrophe, in the New World. Whileevery man who is weary, hopeless, or dis-illusioned talks as if he had caught thesevarious diseases from the decadent epoch inwhich he was born.

But why should civilisations thus wear outand great communities decay ? and what evi-dence is there that in fact they do? Thesequestions, though I cannot give to them anyconclusive answers, are of much more thana merely theoretic interest. For if currentmodes of speech take decadence more or lessfor granted, with still greater confidence dothey speak of Progress as assured. Yet ifboth are real they can hardly be studied apart,they must evidently limit and qualify eachother in actual experience, and they cannotbe isolated in speculation.

Though antiquity, Pagan and Christian,

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DECADENCEtook a different view, it seems easier, a priori,to understand Progress than Decadence. Evenif the former be limited, as presumably it is,by the limitation of human faculty, we shouldexpect the ultimate boundary to be capableof indefinite approach, and we should notexpect that any part of the road towards it,once traversed, would have to be retraced.Even in the organic world, decay and death,familiar though they be, are phenomena thatcall for scientific explanation. And Weismannhas definitely asked how it comes about thatthe higher organisms grow old and die, seeingthat old age and death are not inseparablecharacteristics of living protoplasm, and thatthe simplest organisms suffer no natural decay,perishing, when they do perish, by accident,starvation, or specific disease.

The answer he gives to his own question isthat the death of the individual is so useful to

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io DECADENCEthe race, that Natural Selection has, in all butthe very lowest species, exterminated the poten-tially immortal.

One is tempted to enquire, whether this in-genious explanation could be so modified as toapply not merely to individuals but to com-munities. Is it needful for the cause of civilisationas a whole, that the organised embodiment ofeach particular civilisation, if and when its freedevelopment is arrested, should make room foryounger and more vigorous competitors ? Andif so can we find in Natural Selection themechanism by which the principle of decayand dissolution shall be so implanted in thevery nature of human associations that a duesuccession among them shall always be main-tained ?

To this second question the answer must,I think, be in the negative. The struggle forexistence between different races and different

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DECADENCE \ isocieties has admittedly played a great part insocial development. But to extend Weismann'sidea from the organic to the social world, wouldimply a prolonged competition between groupsof communities in which decadence was the rule,and groups in which it was not ; ending in thesurvival of the first, and the destruction of thesecond. The groups whose members sufferedperiodical decadence and dissolution would bethe fittest to survive : just as, on Weismann'stheory, those species gain in competitive effici-ency whom death has .unburdened of the old.

Few will say that in the petty fragment ofhuman history which alone is open to our in-spection, there is satisfactory evidence of anysuch long drawn process. Some may even bedisposed

to ask whether there is adequateevidence of such a phenomenon as decadenceat all. And it must be acknowledged that theaffirmative answer should be given with caution.

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12 DECADENCEEvidently we must not consider a diminution ofnational power, whether relative or absolute,as constituting by itself a proof of nationaldecadence. Holland is not decadent becauseher place in the hierarchy of European Powersis less exalted than it was two hundred and fiftyyears ago. Spain was not necessarily decadentat the end of the seventeenth century becauseshe had exhausted herself in a contest far beyondher resources either in money or in men. Itwould, I think, be rash even to say that Venicewas decadent at the end of the eighteenthcentury, though the growth of other Powers,and the diversion of the great trade routes, hadshorn her of wealth and international influence.These are misfortunes which in the sphere ofsociology correspond to accident or disease inthe sphere of biology. And what we are con-cerned to know is whether in the sphere ofsociology there is also anything corresponding

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DECADENCE 13to the decay of old age a decay which may behastened by accident or disease, which must beended by accident or disease, but is certainly tobe distinguished from both.

However this question should be answeredthe cases I have cited are sufficient to shewwhere the chief difficulty of the enquiry lies.Decadence, even if it be a reality, never actsin isolation. It is always complicated with, andoften acts through, other more obvious causes.It is always therefore possible to argue thatto these causes, and not to the more subtleand elusive influences collectively described as4 decadence,' the decline and fall of greatcommunities is really due.

Yet there are historic tragedies which (asit seems to me) do most obstinately refuseto be thus simply explained. It is in vainthat historians enumerate the public calamitieswhich preceded, and no doubt contributed to,

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I4 DECADENCEthe final catastrophe. Civil dissensions, mili-tary disasters, pestilences, famines, tyrants, tax-gatherers, growing burdens, and waning wealth

the gloomy catalogue is unrolled before oureyes, yet somehow it does not in all cases whollysatisfy us : we feel that some of these diseasesare of a kind which a vigorous body politicshould easily be able to survive, that others aresecondary symptoms of some obscurer malady,and that in neither case do they supply us withthe full explanations of which we are in search.

Consider for instance the long agony andfinal destruction of Roman Imperialism in theWest, the most momentous catastrophe of whichwe have historic record. It has deeply stirred theimagination of mankind, it has been the themeof great historians, it has been much explainedby political philosophers, yet who feels thateither historians or philosophers have laid barethe inner workings of the drama ? Rome fell,

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DECADENCE 15and great was the fall of it. But why it fell, bywhat secret mines its defences were breached,and what made its garrison so faint-hearted andineffectual this is not so clear.

In order to measure adequately the difficultyof the problem let us abstract our minds fromhistorical details and compare the position of theEmpire about the middle of the second century,with its position in the middle of the third, oragain at the end of the fourth, and ask of whatforces history gives us an account, sufficient inthese periods to effect so mighty a transforma-tion. Or, still better, imagine an observerequipped with our current stock of politicalwisdom, transported to Rome in the reign ofAntoninus Pius or Marcus Aurelius, and inignorance of the event, writing letters to thenewspapers on the future destinies of the Empire.What would his forecast be ?

We might suppose him to examine, in the

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16 DECADENCEfirst place, the military position of the State, itsprobable enemies, its capacities for defence. Hewould note that only on its eastern boundarywas there an organised military Power capableof meeting Rome on anything like equal terms,and this only in the regions adjacent to theircommon frontier. For the rest he would dis-cover no civilised enemy along the southernboundary to the Atlantic or along its northernboundary from the Black Sea to the GermanOcean. Warlike tribes indeed he would findin plenty : difficult to crush within the limits oftheir native forests and morasses, formidable itmay be in a raid, but without political cohesion,military unity, or the means of military con-centration ; embarrassing therefore rather thandangerous. If reminded of Varus and his lostlegions, he would ask of what importance, inthe story of a world-power could be the lossof a few thousand men surprised at a distance

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DECADENCE 17from their base amid the entanglements ofa difficult and unknown country. Never, itwould seem, was Empire more fortunately cir-cumstanced for purposes of home defence.

But (it might be thought) the burden ofsecuring frontiers of such length, even againstmerely tribal assaults, though easy from astrictly military point of view, might provetoo heavy to be long endured. Yet themilitary forces scattered through the RomanEmpire, though apparently adequate in thedays of her greatness would, according tomodern ideas, seem hardly sufficient for pur-poses of police, let alone defence. An armycorps or less was deemed enough to preservewhat are now mighty kingdoms, from internaldisorder and external aggression. And if wecompare with this the contributions, either inthe way of money or of men, exacted from theterritories subject to Rome before the Empire

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1 8 DECADENCEcame into being, or at any period of the world'shistory since it dissolved away, the comparisonmust surely be entirely in favour of the Empire.

But burdens which seem light, if measuredby area, may be heavy if measured by abilityto pay. Yet when has ability to pay beengreater in the regions bordering the Southernand Eastern Mediterranean than under theRoman Empire? Travel round it in imagi-nation, eastward from the Atlantic coast ofMorocco till returning westward you reach thehead of the Adriatic Gulf, and you will haveskirted a region, still of immense naturalwealth, once filled with great cities, and fertilefarms, better governed during the Empire thanit has ever been governed since (at least till

Algeriabecame French and Egypt British) ;

including among its provinces what were greatstates before the Roman rule, and have beengreat states since that rule decayed, divided by

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DECADENCE . 19no international jealousies, oppressed by no fearof conquest, enterprising, cultured. Rememberthat to estimate its area of taxation and recruit-ing you must add to these regions Bulgaria,Servia, much of Austria and Bavaria, Switzer-land, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, and mostof Britain, and you have conditions favourableto military strength and economic prosperityrarely equalled in the modern world and neverin the ancient.

Our observer however might, very rightly,feel that a far-spreadirtg Empire like that ofRome, including regions profoundly differingin race, history and religion, would be liable toother dangers than those which arise from mereexternal aggression. One of the first questions,therefore, which he would be disposed to ask,is whether so heterogeneous a state was notin perpetual danger of dissolution through thedisintegrating influence of national sentiments.

2 2

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20 DECADENCEHe would learn probably, with a strong feelingof surprise, that with the single exception ofthe Jews, the constituent nations, once con-quered, were not merely content to belong tothe Empire, but could scarcely imagine them-selves doing anything else : that the Imperialsystem appealed, not merely to the materialneeds of the component populations, but also totheir imagination and their loyalty ; that Gaul,Spain, and Britain, though but recently forcedwithin the pale of civilisation, were as faithfulto the Imperial ideal as the Greek of Athens orthe Hellenised Orientals of Syria ; and thatneither historic memories, nor local patriotism,neither disputed succession, nor public calami-ties, nor administrative divisions, ever reallyshook the sentiment in favour of Imperial Unity.There might be more than one Emperor : butthere could only be one Empire. Howsoeverour observer might disapprove of the Imperial

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DECADENCE 21system he would therefore have to admit thatthe Empire, with all its shortcomings, its abso-lutism and its bureaucracy, had solved moresuccessfully than any government, before orsince, the problem of devising a scheme whichequally satisfied the sentiments of East andWest ; which respected local feelings, en-couraged local government ; in which the Celt,the Iberian, the Berber, the Egyptian, theAsiatic, the Greek, the Illyrian, the Italianwere all at home, and which, though based onconquest, was accepted by the conquered asthe natural organisation of the civilised world.

Rome had thus unique sources of strength.What sources of weakness would our observerbe likely to detect behind her imposing ex-terior ? The diminution of population is theone which has (rightly I think) most impressedhistorians : and it is difficult to resist theevidence, either of the fact, or of its disastrous

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22 DECADENCEconsequences. I hesitate indeed to acceptwithout qualification the accounts given us ofthe progressive decay of the native Italianstock from the days of the Gracchi to the dis-integration of the Empire in the West ; andwhen we read how the dearth of men wasmade good (in so far as it was made, good) bythe increasing inflow of slaves and adventurersfrom every corner of the known world, onewonders whose sons they were who, for threecenturies and more, so brilliantly led the vanof modern European culture, as it emergedfrom the darkness of the early Middle Ages.Passing by such collateral issues, however,and admitting depopulation to have beenboth real and serious, we may well askwhether it was not the result of Roman de-cadence rather than its cause, the symptomof some deep-seated social malady, not itsorigin. We are not concerned here with

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DECADENCE 23the aristocracy of Rome, nor even with thepeople of Italy. We are concerned withthe Empire. We are not concerned with apassing phase or fashion, but with a processwhich seems to have gone on with increasingrapidity, through good times as well as bad,till the final cataclysm. A local disease mighthave a local explanation, a transient one mightbe due to a chance coincidence. But what canwe say of a disease which was apparently co-extensive with Imperial civilisation in area,and which exceeded i't in duration ?

I find it hard to believe that either a selfishaversion to matrimony or a mystical admirationfor celibacy, though at certain periods the onewas common in Pagan and the other in Chris-tian circles, were more than elements in thecomplex of causes by which the result wasbrought about. Like the plagues which de-vastated Europe in the second and third

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24 DECADENCEcenturies, they must have greatly aggravatedthe evil, but they are hardly sufficient toaccount for it. Nor yet can we find an ex-planation of it in the discouragement, the senseof impending doom, by which men's spiritswere oppressed long before the Imperial powerbegan visibly to wane, for this is one of thethings which, if historically true, does itselfmost urgently require explanation.

It may be however that our wanderingpolitician would be too well grounded inMalthusian economics to regard a diminutionof population as in itself an overwhelmingcalamity. And if he were pressed to de-scribe the weak spots in the Empire of theAntonines he would be disposed, I think, tolook for them on the ethical rather than on themilitary, the economic, or the strictly politicalsides of social life. He would be inclined tosay, as in effect Mr Lecky does say, that in the

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DECADENCE 25institution of slavery, in the brutalities of thegladiatorial shows, in the gratuitous distributionof bread to the urban mobs, are to be found thecorrupting influences which first weakened andthen destroyed the vigour of the State.

I confess that I cannot easily accept thisanalysis of the facts. As regards the gladia-torial shows, even had they been universalthroughout the Empire, and had they flourishedmore rankly as its power declined, I should stillhave questioned the propriety of attributing toofar-reaching effects to such a cause. TheRomans were brutal while they were con-quering the world : its conquest enabled themto be brutal with ostentation ; but we must notmeasure the ill consequences of their barbarictastes by the depth of our own disgusts, norassume the Gothic invasions to be the naturaland fitting Nemesis of so much spectacularshedding of innocent blood.

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26 DECADENCEAs for the public distributions of corn, one

would wish to have more evidence as to itssocial effects. But even without fully acceptingthe theory of the latest Roman historian, whobelieves that, under the then prevailing con-ditions of transport, no very large city could existin Antiquity, if the supply of its food were leftto private enterprise, we cannot seriously regardthis practice, strange as it seems to us, as animportant element in the problem. Grantingfor the sake of argument that it demoralisedthe mob of Rome, it must be remembered thatRome was not the Empire, nor did the mobof Rome govern the Empire, as once it hadgoverned the Republic.

Slavery is a far more important matter.The magnitude of its effects on ancientsocieties, difficult as these are to disentangle,can hardly be exaggerated. But with whatplausibility can we find in it the cause of

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DECADENCE 27Rome's decline, seeing that it was the con-comitant also of its rise ? How can thatwhich in Antiquity was common to every state,have this exceptional and malign influence uponone? It would not in any case be easy toaccept such a theory ; but surely it becomesimpossible when we bear in mind the enormousimprovement effected under the Empire bothin the law and the practice of slavery. Greatas were its evils, they were diminishing evilsless ruinous as time went on to the characterof the master, less painful and degrading to theslave. Who can believe that this immemorialcustom could, in its decline, destroy a civilisa-tion, which, in its vigour, it had helped tocreate ?

Of course our observer would see much inthe social system he was examining which hewould rightly regard as morally detestable andpolitically pernicious. But the real question

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28 DECADENCEbefore him would not be ' are these things goodor bad?' but 'are these things getting betteror getting worse ? ' And surely in most caseshe would be

obligedto answer

'gettingbetter.'

Many things moreover would come under hisnotice fitted to move his admiration in a muchless qualified manner. Few governments havebeen more anxious to foster an alien and higherculture, than was the Roman Government tofoster Greek civilisation. In so far as Romeinherited what Alexander conquered, it carriedout the ideal which Alexander had conceived.In few periods have the rich been readier tospend of their private fortunes on public objects.There never was a community in which asso-ciations for every purpose of mutual aidor enjoyment sprang more readily into exist-ence. There never was a military monarchyless given to wars of aggression. There neverwas an age in which there was a more rapid

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DECADENCE 29advance in humanitarian ideals, or a moreanxious seeking after spiritual truth. Therewas much discussion, there was, apart frompolitics, but little intolerance. Education waswell endowed, and its professors held in highesteem. Physical culture was cared for. Lawwas becoming scientific. Research was notforgotten. What more could be reasonablyexpected ?

According to our ordinary methods ofanalysis it is not easy to say what more couldbe reasonably expected. But plainly much morewas required. In a few generations from thetime of which I am speaking the Empire lostits extraordinary power of assimilating alien andbarbaric elements. It became too feeble eitherto absorb or to expel them : and the immigrantswho in happier times might have bestowedrenewed vigour on the commonwealth, became,in the hour of its decline, a weakness and a

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30 DECADENCEperil. Poverty grew as population shrank.Municipal office, once so eagerly desired, be-came the most cruel of burdens. Associationsconnected with industry or commerce, whichbegan by freely exchanging public service forpublic privilege, found their members subjectedto ever increasing obligations, for the due per-formance of which they and their children wereliable in person and in property. Thus whileChristianity, and the other forces that made formercy, were diminishing the slavery of the slave,the needs of the Bureaucracy compelled it totrench ever more and more upon the freedomof the free. It was each man's duty (so ranthe argument) to serve the commonwealth : hecould best serve the commonwealth by devotinghimself to his calling if it were one of publicnecessity : this duty he should be requiredunder penalties to perform, and to devote ifnecessary to its performance, labour to the

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DECADENCE 31limits of endurance, fortune to the last shilling,and family to the remotest generation. Throughthis crude experiment in socialism, the civilisedworld seemed to be rapidly moving towards asystem of universal caste, imposed by no im-memorial custom, supported by no religiousscruple, but forced on an unwilling people bythe Emperor's edict and the executioner's lash.

These things have severally and collectivelybeen regarded as the causes why in the Westthe Imperial system so quickly crumbled intochaos. And so no doubt they were. But theyobviously require themselves to be explainedby causes more general and more remote ; andwhat were these ? If I answer as I feel dis-posed to answer Decadence you will pro-perly ask how the unknown becomes lessunknown merely by receiving a name. I replythat if there be indeed subtle changes in thesocial tissues of old communities which make

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32 DECADENCEthem, as time goes on, less resistant to theexternal attacks and the internal disturbancesby which all communities are threatened, overtrecognition

of the fact is a step in advance.We have not an idea of what ' life ' consists in,but if on that account we were to abstain fromusing the term, we should not be better butworse equipped for dealing with the problemsof physiology ; while on the other hand if wecould translate life into terms of matter andmotion to-morrow, we should still be obliged touse the word in order to distinguish the materialmovements which constitute life or exhibit it,from those which do not. In like manner weare ignorant of the inner character of the cellchanges which produce senescence. But shouldwe be better fitted to form a correct conceptionof the life-history of complex organisms if werefused to recognise any cause of death butaccident or disease ? I admit, of course, that

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DECADENCE 33the term ' decadence ' is less precise than ' oldage ' : as sociology deals with organisms farless definite than biology. I admit also that itexplains nothing. If its use is to be justified atall, the justification must depend not on thefact that it supplies an explanation, but on thefact that it rules out explanations which areobvious but inadequate. And this may be aservice of some importance. The facile gene-ralisations with which we so often season thestudy of dry historic fact ; the habits of politicaldiscussion which induce us to catalogue forpurposes of debate the outward signs that dis-tinguish (as we are prone to think) the standingfrom the falling state, hide the obscurer, butmore potent, forces which silently prepare thefate of empires. National character is subtleand elusive ; not to be expressed in statisticsnor measured by the rough methods whichsuffice the practical moralist or statesman. And

3

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34 DECADENCEwhen through an ancient and still powerfulstate there spreads a mood of deep discourage-ment, when the reaction against recurring illsgrows feebler,

and the ship rises less buoyantlyto each succeeding wave, when learning lan-guishes, enterprise slackens, and vigour ebbsaway, then, as I think, there is present someprocess of social degeneration, which we mustperforce recognise, and which, pending a satis-factory analysis, may conveniently be dis-tinguished by the name of 'decadence.'

I am well aware that though the space Ihave just devoted to the illustration of mytheme provided by Roman history is out of allproportion to the general plan of this address,yet the treatment of it is inadequate and perhapsunconvincing. But those who are most re-luctant to admit that decay, as distinguishedfrom misfortune, may lower the general levelof civilisation, can hardly deny that in many

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DECADENCE 35cases that level may for indefinite periods shewno tendency to rise. If decadence be unknown,is not progress exceptional ? Consider thechanging politics of the unchanging East 1 . Isit not true that there, while wars and revolutions,dynastic and religious, have shattered ancientstates and brought new ones into being, everycommunity, as soon as it has risen above thetribal and nomad condition, adopts with the rarestexceptions a form of government which, from itsvery generality in Eastern lands, we habituallycall an ' oriental despotism ' ? We may crys-tallise and re-crystallise a soluble salt as oftenas we please, the new crystals will alwaysresemble the old ones. The crystals, indeed,may be of different sizes, their component

1 The ' East' is a terra most loosely used. It does not hereinclude China and Japan and does include parts of Africa. Theobservations which follow have no reference either to the Jewsor to the commercial aristocracies of Phoenician origin.

32

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36 DECADENCEmolecules may occupy different positions withinthe crystalline structure, but the structure itselfwill be of one immutable pattern. So it is, orseems to be, with these oriental states. Theyrise, in turn, upon the ruins of their predecessors,themselves predestined to perish by a like fate.But whatever their origin or history, they arealways either autocracies or aggregations ofautocracies ; and no differences of race, ofcreed, or of language seem sufficient to varythe violent monotony of their internal history.In the eighteenth century theorists were con-tent to attribute the political servitude of theEastern world to the unscrupulous machinationsof tyrants and their tools. And such expla-nations are good as far as they go. But this,in truth, is not very far. Intrigue, assassina-tion, ruthless repression, the whole machineryof despotism supply particular explanations ofparticular incidents. They do not supply the

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DECADENCE 37general explanation of the general phenomenon.They tell you how this ruler or that obtainedabsolute power. They do not tell you whyevery ruler is absolute. Nor can I furnish theanswer. The fact remains that over large andrelatively civilised portions of the world populargovernment is profoundly unpopular, in thesense that it is no natural or spontaneous socialgrowth. Political absolutism not political free-dom is the familiar weed of the country.Despots change but despotism remains : andif through alien influences, like those exercisedby Greek cities in Asia, or by British rule inIndia, the type is modified, it may well bedoubted whether the modification could longsurvive the moment when its sustaining causewas withdrawn.Now it would almost seem as if in landswhere this political type was normal a certainlevel of culture (not of course the same in each

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38 DECADENCEcase) could not permanently be overpassed. Ifunder the excitement of religion or conquest,or else through causes more complicated andmore obscure, this limit has sometimes beenleft behind, reaction has always followed, anddecadence set in. Many people indeed, as Ihave already observed, take this as a matterof course. It seems to them the most naturalthing in the world that the glories of theEastern Khalifate should decay, and that theMoors in Morocco should lose even the memoryof the learning and the arts possessed but threecenturies ago by the Moors in Spain. To meit seems mysterious. But whether it be easyof comprehension or difficult, if only it be true,does it not furnish food for disquieting re-flexion ? If there are whole groups of nationscapable on their own initiative of a certainmeasure of civilisation, but capable apparentlyof no more, and if below them again there are

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DECADENCE 39(as I suppose) other races who seem incapableof either creating a civilisation of their own, orof preserving unaided a civilisation impressedupon them from without, by what right do weassume that no impassable limits bar the pathof Western progress ? Those limits may notyet be in sight. Surely they are not. Butdoes not a survey of history suggest thatsomewhere in the dim future they await ourapproach ?

It may be replied that the history of Rome,on which I dwelt a moment ago, shews thatarrested progress, and even decadence, maybe but the prelude to a new period of vigorousgrowth. So that even those races or nationswhich seem frozen into eternal immobility maybase upon experience their hopes of an awaken-ing spring.

I am not sure, however, that this is thetrue interpretation of the facts. There is no

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40 DECADENCEspectacle indeed in all history more impressivethan the thick darkness settling down overWestern Europe, blotting out all but a faintand distorted vision of Graeco-Roman culture,and then, as it slowly rises, unveiling the varietyand rich promise of the modern world. ButI do not think we should make this uniquephenomenon support too weighty a load oftheory. I should not infer from it that whensome wave of civilisation has apparently spentits force, we have a right to regard its with-drawing sweep as but the prelude to a newadvance. I should rather conjecture that inthis particular case we should find, among othersubtle causes of decadence, some obscure dis-harmony between the Imperial system and thetemperament of the West, undetected even bythose who suffered from it. That system,though accepted with contentment and evenwith pride, though in the days of its greatness

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DECADENCE 41it brought civilisation, commerce, and securityin its train, must surely have lacked someelements which are needed to foster amongTeutons, Celts, and Iberians the qualities,whatever these may be, on which sustainedprogress depends. It was perhaps too orientalfor the Occident, and it certainly became moreoriental as time went on. In the East it was,comparatively speaking, successful. If therewas no progress, decadence was slow ; and butfor what Western Europe did, and what itfailed to do, during the long struggle withmilitant Mahommedanism, there might still bean Empire in the East, largely Asiatic in popu-lation, Christian in religion, Greek in cultureRoman by political descent.

Had this been the course of events largeportions of mankind would doubtless have beenmuch better governed than they are. It isnot so clear that they would have been more

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42 DECADENCE' progressive.' Progress is with the West : withcommunities of the European type. And iftheir energy of development is some day tobe exhausted, who can believe that there re-mains any external source from which it canbe renewed ? Where are the untried racescompetent to construct out of the ruinedfragments of our civilisation a new and betterhabitation for the spirit of man ? They do notexist : and if the world is again to be buriedunder a barbaric flood, it will not be like thatwhich fertilised, though it first destroyed, thewestern provinces of Rome, but like that whichin Asia submerged for ever the last traces ofHellenic culture.We are thus brought back to the question

I put a few moments since. What groundsare there for supposing that we can escape thefate to which other races have had to submit ?If for periods which, measured on the historic

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DECADENCE 43scale, are of great duration, communities whichhave advanced to a certain point appear able toadvance no further; if civilisations wear out,and races become effete, why should we expectto progress indefinitely, why for us alone is thedoom of man to be reversed ?

To these questions I have no very satis-factory answers to give, nor do I believe thatour knowledge of national or social psychologyis sufficient to make a satisfactory answerpossible. Some purely tentative observationson the point may, however, furnish a fittingconclusion to an address which has been ten-tative throughout, and aims rather at suggestingtrains of thought, than at completing them.

I assume that the factors which combineto make each generation what it is at themoment of its entrance into adult life are inthe main twofold. The one produces the rawmaterial of society, the process of manufacture

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44 DECADENCEis effected by the other. The first is physio-logical inheritance, the second is the inheritancepartly of external conditions of life, partly ofbeliefs 1 , traditions, sentiments, customs, laws,and organisation all that constitute the socialsurroundings in which men grow up to maturity.

I hazard no conjecture as to the share bornerespectively by these two kinds of cause in pro-ducing their joint result. Nor are we likely toobtain satisfactory evidence on the subject till,in the interests of science, two communities ofdifferent blood and different traditions consentto exchange their children at birth by a universalprocess of reciprocal adoption. But even in theabsence of so heroic an experiment, it seems safeto say that the mobility which makes possibleeither progress or decadence, resides ratherin the causes grouped under the second headthan in the physiological material on which

1 Beliefs include knowledge.

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DECADENCE 47They have been different and unequal sincehistory began ; different and unequal they aredestined to remain through future periods ofcomparable duration.

But though the advance of each communityis thus limited by its inherited aptitudes, I donot suppose that those limits have ever beenreached by its unaided efforts. In the caseswhere a forward movement has died away, thepause must in part be due to arrested develop-ment in the variable, not to a fixed resistancein the unchanging factdr of national character.Either external conditions are unfavourable

;or

the sentiments, customs and beliefs which makesociety possible have hardened into shapes whichmake its further self-development impossible ;or through mere weariness of spirit the com-munity resigns itself to a contented, or perhapsa discontented, stagnation ; or it shatters itselfin pursuit of impossible ideals, or for other and

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48 DECADENCEobscurer reasons, flags in its endeavours, andfalls short of possible achievement.

Now I am quite unable to offer any suchgeneral analysis of the causes by which thesehindrances to progress are produced or re-moved as would furnish a reply to my question.But it may be worth noting that a social forcehas come into being, new in magnitude if notin kind, which must favourably modify suchhindrances as come under all but the last of thedivisions in which I have roughly arrangedthem. This force is the modern alliancebetween pure science and industry. That onthis we must mainly rely for the improvementof the material conditions under which societieslive is in my opinion obvious, although no onewould conjecture it from a historic survey ofpolitical controversy. Its direct moral effectsare less obvious ; indeed there are many mostexcellent people who would altogether deny

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DECADENCE 49their existence. To regard it as a force fittedto rouse and sustain the energies of nationswould seem to them absurd : for this wouldbe to rank it with those other forces which havemost deeply stirred the emotions of great com-munities, have urged them to the greatestexertions, have released them most effectuallyfrom the benumbing fetters of merely personalpreoccupations, with religion, patriotism, andpolitics. Industrial expansion under scientificinspiration, so far from deserving praise likethis, is in their view,

' at best, but a newsource of material well-being, at worst theprolific parent of physical ugliness in manyforms, machine made wares, smoky cities,polluted rivers, and desecrated landscapes,appropriately associated with materialism andgreed.

I believe this view to be utterly misleading,confounding accident with essence, transient ac-

4

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So DECADENCEcompaniments with inseparable characteristics.Should we dream of thus judging the othergreat social forces of which I have spoken ?Are we to

ignorewhat religion has done for the

world because it has been the fruitful excuse forthe narrowest bigotries and the most cruel perse-cutions ? Are we to underrate the worth ofpolitics, because politics may mean no more thanthe mindless clash of factions, or the barrenexchange of one set of tyrants or jobbers foranother? Is patriotism to be despised becauseits manifestations have been sometimes vulgar,sometimes selfish, sometimes brutal, sometimescriminal ? Estimates like these seem to meworse than useless. All great social forcesare not merely capable of perversion, they areconstantly perverted. Yet were they eliminatedfrom our social system, were each man, actingon the advice, which Voltaire gave but neverfollowed, to disinterest himself of all that goes

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DECADENCE 51on beyond the limits of his own cabbage garden,decadence I take it, would have already faradvanced.

But if the proposition I am defending maybe wrongly criticised, it is still more likely tobe wrongly praised. To some it will commenditself as a eulogy on an industrial as distin-guished from a military civilisation : as asuggestion that in the peaceful pursuit of wealththere is that which of itself may constitute avaluable social tonic. This may be true, butit is not my contention. In talking of thealliance between industry and science my em-phasis is at least as much on the word scienceas on the word industry. I am not concernednow with the proportion of the populationdevoted to productive labour, or the esteemin which they are held. It is on the effectswhich I believe are following, and are goingin yet larger measure to follow, from the

42

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52 DECADENCEintimate relation between scientific discoveryand industrial efficiency, that I most desireto insist.

Do you then, it will be asked, so highly ratethe utilitarian aspect of research as to regard itas a source, not merely of material convenience,but of spiritual elevation ? Is it seriously tobe ranked with religion and patriotism as animportant force for raising men's lives abovewhat is small, personal, and self-centred ? Doesit not rather pervert pure knowledge into anew contrivance for making money, and give afresh triumph to the 'growing materialism ofthe age ' ?

I do not myself believe that this age iseither less spiritual or more sordid than itspredecessors. I believe, indeed, precisely thereverse. But however this may be, is it notplain that if a society is to be moved by theremote speculations of isolated thinkers it can

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DECADENCE 53only be on condition that their isolation is notcomplete ? Some point of contact they musthave with the world in which they live, andif their influence is to be based on widespreadsympathy, the contact must be in a region wherethere can be, if not full mutual comprehension,at least a large measure of practical agreementand willing co-operation. Philosophy has nevertouched the mass of men except throughreligion. And, though the parallel is not com-plete, it is safe to say that science will nevertouch them unaided by its practical applications.Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes ofeducation, they may be illustrated by arrestingexperiments, by numbers and magnitudes whichstartle or fatigue the imagination ; but they willform no familiar portion of the intellectual furni-ture of ordinary men unless they be connected,however remotely, with the conduct of ordinarylife. Critics have made merry over the naive

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54 DECADENCEself-importance which represented man as thecentre and final cause of the universe, andconceived the stupendous mechanism of natureas primarily designed to satisfy his wants andminister to his entertainment. But there isanother, and an opposite, danger into which itis possible to fall. The material world, how-soever it may have gained in sublimity, has,under the touch of science, lost (so to speak) indomestic charm. Except where it affects theimmediate needs of organic life, it may seemso remote from the concerns of men that in themajority it will rouse no curiosity, while ofthose who are fascinated by its marvels, not afew will be chilled by its impersonal andindifferent immensity.

For this latter mood only religion or re-ligious philosophy can supply a cure. But forthe former, the appropriate remedy is theperpetual stimulus which the influence of

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DECADENCE 55science on the business of mankind offers totheir sluggish curiosity. And even now Ibelieve this influence to be underrated. Ifin the last hundred years the whole materialsetting of civilised life has altered, we owe itneither to politicians nor to political institutions.We owe it to the combined efforts of thosewho have advanced science and those whohave applied it. If our outlook upon theUniverse has suffered modifications in detail sogreat and so numerous that they amount col-lectively to a revolution, it is to men of sciencewe owe it, not to theologians or philosophers.Dn these indeed new and weighty responsi-bilities are being cast. They have to harmoniseand to coordinate, to prevent the new frombeing one-sided, to preserve the valuable essenceof what is old. But science is the great in-strument of social change, all the greater be-cause its object is not change but knowledge ;

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$6 DECADENCEand its silent appropriation of this dominantfunction, amid the din of political and religiousstrife, is the most vital of all the revolutionswhich have marked the development of moderncivilisation.

It may seem fanciful to find in a single recentaspect of this revolution an influence whichresembles religion or patriotism in its appealsto the higher side of ordinary charactersespecially since we are accustomed to regardthe appropriation by industry of scientific dis-coveries merely as a means of multiplying thematerial conveniences of life. But if it beremembered that this process brings vast sectionsof every industrial community into admiring re-lation with the highest intellectual achievement,and the most disinterested search for truth ;that those who live by ministering to thecommon wants of average humanity lean forsupport on those who search among the deepest

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DECADENCE 57mysteries of Nature ; that their dependence isrewarded by growing success ; that successgives in its turn an incentive to individualeffort in no wise to be measured by personalexpectation of gain ; that the energies thusaroused may affect the whole character ofthe community, spreading the beneficent con-tagion of hope and high endeavour throughchannels scarcely known, to workers 1 in fieldsthe most remote; if all this be borne in mind itmay perhaps seem not unworthy of the placeI have assigned to it.

But I do not offer this speculation, whateverbe its worth, as an answer to my originalquestion. It is but an aid to optimism, nota reply to pessimism. Such a reply can onlybe given by a sociology which has arrivedat scientific conclusions on the life-history ofdifferent types of society, and has risen above

1 See note at the end of the paper.

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58 DECADENCEthe empirical and merely interrogative point ofview which, for want of a better, I have adoptedin this address. No such sociology exists atpresent, or seems likely soon to be created.In its absence the conclusions at which Iprovisionally arrive are that we cannot regarddecadence and arrested development as lessnormal in human communities than progress ;though the point at which the energy of advanceis exhausted (if, and when it is reached) variesin different races and civilisations : that theinternal causes by which progress is encouraged,hindered, or reversed, lie to a great extentbeyond the field of ordinary political discus-sion, and are not easily expressed in currentpolitical terminology : that the influence which asuperior civilisation, whether acting by exampleor imposed by force, may have in advancingan inferior one, though often beneficent, is notlikely to be self supporting ; its withdrawal will

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DECADENCE 59be followed by decadence, unless the characterof the civilisation be in harmony both with theacquired temperament and the innate capacitiesof those who have been induced to accept it :that as regards those nations which still advancein virtue of their own inherent energies, thoughtime has brought perhaps new causes of disquiet,it has brought also new grounds of hope ; andthat whatever be the perils in front of us, thereare, so far, no symptoms either of pause or ofregression in the onward movement which formore than a thousand years has been character-istic of Western civilisation.

NOTE TO PAGE 57.This remark arises out of a train of thought suggested

by two questions which are very pertinent to the subjectof the Address.

(1) Is a due succession of men above the averagein original capacity necessary to maintain social progress ?and

(2) If so, can we discover any law according to whichsuch men are produced ?

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60 DECADENCEI entertain no doubt myself that the answer to the first

question should be in the affirmative. Democracy is an ex-cellent thing ; but, though quite consistent with progress, itis not progressiveper se. Its value is regulative not dynamic ;and if it meant (as it never does) substantial uniformity,instead of legal equality, we should become fossilised at once.Movement may be controlled or checked by the many ; itis initiated and made effective by the few. If (for thesake of illustration) we suppose mental capacity in all itsmany forms to be mensurable and commensurable, andthen imagine two societies possessing the same averagecapacity but an average made up in one case of equalunits, in the other of a majority slightly below the averageand a minority much above it, few could doubt that thesecond, not the first, would show, the greatest aptitude formovement. It might go wrong, but it would go.

The second question how is this originality (in itshigher manifestations called genius) effectively produced?is not so simple.

Excluding education in its narrowest sense which fewwould regard as having much to do with the matter theonly alternatives seem to be the following:

Original capacity may be no more than one of theordinary variations incidental to heredity. A communitymay breed a minority thus exceptionally gifted, as it breedsa minority of men over six feet six. There may be anaverage decennial output of congenital geniuses as there isan average decennial output of congenital idiots thoughthe number is likely to be smaller.

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DECADENCE 61But if this be the sole cause of the phenomenon,

why does the same race apparently produce many menof genius in one generation and few in another? Whyare years of abundance so often followed by long periodsof sterility ?

The most obvious explanation of this would seem tobe that in some periods circumstances give many openingsto genius, in some periods few. The genius is constantlyproduced ; but it is only occasionally recognised.

In this there must be some truth. A mob orator inTurkey, a religious reformer in seventeenth century Spain,a military leader in the Sandwich islands, would hardly gettheir chance. Yet the theory of opportunity can scarcelybe reckoned a complete explanation. For it leaves un-accounted for the variety of genius which has in somecountries marked epochs of vigorous national development.Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries, Florence in thefifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Holland in the latersixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are the typical examples.In such periods the opportunities of statesmen, soldiers,orators, and diplomatists, may have been specially frequent.But whence came the poets, the sculptors, the painters,the philosophers and the men of letters? What peculiaropportunities had theyfThe only explanation, if we reject the idea of a merecoincidence, seems to be, that quite apart from opportunity,the exceptional stir and fervour of national life evokes ormay evoke qualities which in ordinary times lie dormant,unknown even to their possessors. The potential Miltons

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62 DECADENCEare ' mute ' and ' inglorious ' not because they cannot finda publisher, but because they have nothing they want topublish. They lack the kind of inspiration which, on thisview, flows from social surroundings where great things,though of quite another kind, are being done and thought.

If this theory be true (and it is not without itsdifficulties) one would like to know whether these un-doubted outbursts of originality in the higher and rarerform of genius, are symptomatic of a general rise in thenumber of persons exhibiting original capacity of a moreordinary type. If so, then the conclusion would seem tobe that some kind of widespread exhilaration or excitementis required in order to enable any community to extractthe best results from the raw material transmitted to it bynatural inheritance.

Cambridge: Printed at the University Press.

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HM 111 .82 1908SMCBalfour, Arthur JamesBalfour, Earl of.Decadence.AFF-0152 (sk)

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