PROGRESS AND STAGNATION.
TORD DERBY, in his speech at the Liverpool School of Science, was not, in our opinion, as happy as usual in his diagnosis of the conditions under which mankind are moving forward in their conquest of the world of matter. "The general experience of the world hitherto," said Lord Derby, "has been that brilliant but brief epochs of advance have been followed by long intervals of stagnation, and some- times even of retrogression." Retrogression, he went on to say, is not likely, but " stagnation is quite possible." To this view we must oppose a direct negative. We do not believe there is any likelihood of stagnation either in the abstract, or as regards the practical application of knowledge to the arts and industries of life. Lord Derby's conclusion is based upon a false analogy. We admit that in the past there have been recurring periods of stagnation and activity, but we deny that this must be expected to be the rule of the future. And for this very good reason,—the conditions are entirely different.
If we look at the history of the world, we shall see that till the beginning of the eighteenth century, the secret of progress, by which knowledge is not merely kept alive, but made to ger- minate, never belonged to more than a strictly limited number of people. The Egyptians and the Phoenicians possessed it once, but it soon died out in them,—the soil being, as it were, exhausted by the enormous crop at first produced. The seeds of progress planted in the Far East proved also incapable of de- velopment. When, however, they were transplanted to Greece, they became at once vitalised, and spread thence throughout Southern Europe and Western Asia, gathering vigour in the process. Though the Hebrews gave the civilised world its re- ligion, it was from Greece alone that material progress came. Rome learnt the lesson of civilisation from Hellas, and when the barbarians and internal corruption had destroyed the Roman power, the Greek spirit—made living again by that strangest of human movements which we call the Renais- sance—once more awakened men's minds to the sense that it was their business to make themselves truly masters of the earth on which they are placed. But throughout these stages of advance the communities in which the seed of progress were grown were small in size. The Greeks, who thought and studied, were a microscopic people, and the true Romans—that is, those capable of culture—were hardly more numerous. Again, even after Italy had spread the new learning to France, Spain, Germany, and England, only a comparatively few people were in the pos- session of the fruits of knowledge. Not until the end of the seventeenth century, when we may estimate that there were something like ten million educated persons in existence, had the area of cultivation become large enough to prevent recurrent periods of stagnation. Up till then, there had only been, as it were, a single acre fit for tillage, and, naturally enough, it could not be made to produce a good yield every generation. Now, however, it is possible to have something like a rotation of crops, and this provides an effective preservative against periods of stagnation. Instead of ten millions of educated persons, we have, including America, nearly a hundred millions possessed of the machinery of thought, and these one hundred millions are scattered over the whole face of the globe—in America, Africa, and Australia, as well as in Europe—and under a thousand different conditions, social, political, and climatic. But the result of having ten or twelve separate types of civili- sation, all belonging to the races which feel the impulse towards progress, is greatly to stimulate the aggregate intellect of mankind. For instance, while the inventiveness or the scientific imagination of the people of England may be getting exhausted for a time, the processes of thought are being quickened across the Atlantic. But when a discovery is made in America, it is immediately transplanted to England ; and since transplantation, in the region of ideas as of fruits, stimulates and strengthens, the result is a fresh advance in the country which seemed temporarily asleep. Take the following example. England produced Darwin, and Germany, though at that moment not specially conspicuous for scientific discoveries, at once showed herself receptive to his ideas. There they fructified in pro- fusion, and as a result we are now importing German scientific teachings, and are thereby producing a fresh crop in England. The conditions of modern civilisation, in fact, render stagnation most improbable. It may happen, no doubt, that occasionally the world will be for many years without a Joule or a Darwin ; but this is not stagnation. All along the line there will con- tinue to be material progress, and progress at an increasing ratio. That the more a human being knows, the more he adds to his knowledge, is only natural. As "creation widens in man's view," he discovers new subjects for thought and investigation. The discovery of the law of gravity, and of the mechanical equivalent of heat, and of the electric currents have opened long vistas of potential knowledge to the inquirer of the future. While man was ignorant of the world
in which he lives, he thought it a circumscribed prison, the four walls of which were almost within his touch. Now he knows that if a prison, it is practically a limitless one, and that there are an infinite series of secret chambers only waiting his exploration, and out of which his domain may be indefinitely increased.
It must not be supposed, however, tb at because we do not think it possible that a period of stagnation can be produced by in- ternal causes, we therefore consider our European civilisation beyond all risks of destruction. On the contrary, we hold it to be quite within the bounds of possibility that it may perish, just as the Roman world did, in a flood of militant barbarism. We have not the slightest desire to declare that our civilisa- tion will be destroyed from outside, but we differ entirely from the notion that it cannot be. We hold with Lord Wolseley, who has seen the Chinese and seen them at war, that the Mongolian race is quite capable, under certain easily con- ceivable circumstances, of overrunning Continental Europe, of stamping out our progressive civilisation, and of estab- lishing their own cast-iron, immovable polity in its stead. That they will actually do this is, we grant, unlikely enough ; but it is absurd to speak as if it would be impossible for them to do so. It is not difficult to demonstrate the existence of this possibility. The population of China is at least 300 millions. This was the computation of the Marquis Tseng, though the French authorities say 381 millions, and Professor Legge, the Professor of Chinese in the University of Oxford, declares that 400 millions is nearer the true number. But the former one provides an utterly inexhaustible reservoir of fighting men who can learn to use weapons of precision as well as Europeans, who are as industrious and as ingenious as beavers, who are perfectly obedient to orders, who are quite fearless as regards death, not merely when in a condition of mental exaltation, but habitually, and who would not mutiny, no matter what their hardships, unless prevented from gambling. If, as Lord Wolseley says, this population ever awakes, produces Generals, and determines not to let itself be excluded from all the best places of the earth, it will be impossible to withstand it. The Chinese would not, of course, overrun Europe like Napo- leon, but their silent, steady pressure would be quite irresistible. Inch by inch they would appropriate the Western civilised world. Even now, when the Chinese are for all practical purposes dormant, it is difficult for the Russians to prevent them filling up the provinces of the Amoor. What, then, would be the result, if they once adopted a forward policy ? Their advance would be like that of the Lemmings in Norway, except that they would know how to take ship, and so would find the sea no obstacle. If Russia, necessarily the first victim, were con- quered, and the Chinese, wearing some horrible veneer of civilisation, were to establish themselves in Poland, the rest of Continental Europe would soon succumb, and we should then see Lord Wolseley's Battle of Armageddon between the Anglo-Saxon and the Mongolian realised. If the English were beaten, civilisation as we know it must die out, for progress is the one thing of which the Chinaman is incapable. No doubt this moral eclipse would not last for ever, for Providence does not intend mankind either to perish, as Count Tolstoi desires to see them perish, or to sink back into permanent barbarism. At last the climatic conditions of the West would modify the Chinese race, and then some few germs of civilisation, " spared by some chance when all beside was spoiled," would begin to be cultivated and to bear fruit again, and little by little, and after a series of painful efforts, the social structure would be raised once more from the ground. Into this dim future it is not, however, worth while to peer, especially as we may hope that even if the Battle of Armageddon has to be fought between us and the Chinese, it may be the English-speaking peoples who will win. If they do, the destruction of the rest of Europe will not be an irre- parable loss, for Providence seems already to have decreed that civilisation in the twenty-first century shall practically be Anglo-Saxon.
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