Besides these,
we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various
penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a
better morality; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty,
whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober,
steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence of
this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains
of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations,
their tendency is upward.
Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most
striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and
destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly
vitiated. These catastrophes are seen more and more to be but
steps in, this development. The crumbling away of the great
ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the
despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the decline and fall of
Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable
generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary to the
development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the
terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared
to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in,
with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the
centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the French
Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion,
but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the
monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even
widespread deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the
greatest political and moral catastrophes--so far from leading
to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise humanity to
higher planes.
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