Development of Modern Civilization

81:5.1Bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion and cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion are not nec­es­sar­ily cor­re­lated; or­ganic evo­lu­tion in any age may pro­ceed un­hin­dered in the very midst of cul­tural deca­dence. But when lengthy pe­ri­ods of hu­man his­tory are sur­veyed, it will be ob­served that even­tu­ally evo­lu­tion and cul­ture be­come re­lated as cause and ef­fect. Evo­lu­tion may ad­vance in the ab­sence of cul­ture, but cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion does not flour­ish with­out an ad­e­quate back­ground of an­te­ced­ent racial pro­gres­sion. Adam and Eve in­tro­duced no art of civ­i­liza­tion for­eign to the prog­ress of hu­man so­ci­ety, but the Adamic blood did aug­ment the in­her­ent abil­ity of the races and did ac­cel­er­ate the pace of eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment and in­dus­trial pro­gres­sion. Adam’s be­stowal im­proved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly has­ten­ing the pro­cesses of nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion.

81:5.2Through agri­cul­ture, an­i­mal do­mes­ti­ca­tion, and im­proved ar­chi­tec­ture, man­kind grad­u­ally es­caped the worst of the in­ces­sant strug­gle to live and be­gan to cast about to find where­with to sweeten the pro­cess of liv­ing; and this was the be­gin­ning of the striv­ing for higher and ever higher stan­dards of ma­te­rial com­fort. Through man­u­fac­ture and in­dus­try man is grad­u­ally aug­ment­ing the plea­sure con­tent of mor­tal life.

81:5.3But cul­tural so­ci­ety is no great and benef­i­cent club of in­her­ited priv­i­lege into which all men are born with free mem­ber­ship and en­tire equal­ity. Rather is it an ex­alted and ever-ad­vanc­ing guild of earth work­ers, ad­mit­ting to its ranks only the no­bil­ity of those toil­ers who strive to make the world a bet­ter place in which their chil­dren and their chil­dren’s chil­dren may live and ad­vance in sub­se­quent ages. And this guild of civ­i­liza­tion ex­acts costly ad­mis­sion fees, im­poses strict and rig­or­ous dis­ci­plines, vis­its heavy penal­ties on all dis­senters and non­con­formists, while it con­fers few per­sonal li­censes or priv­i­leges ex­cept those of en­hanced se­cu­rity against com­mon dan­gers and racial per­ils.

81:5.4So­cial as­so­ci­a­tion is a form of sur­vival in­sur­ance which hu­man be­ings have learned is prof­itable; there­fore are most in­di­vid­u­als will­ing to pay those pre­mi­ums of self-sac­ri­fice and per­sonal-lib­erty cur­tail­ment which so­ci­ety ex­acts from its mem­bers in re­turn for this en­hanced group pro­tec­tion. In short, the pres­ent-day so­cial mech­a­nism is a trial-and-er­ror in­sur­ance plan de­signed to af­ford some de­gree of as­sur­ance and pro­tec­tion against a re­turn to the ter­ri­ble and an­ti­so­cial con­di­tions which char­ac­ter­ized the early ex­pe­ri­ences of the hu­man race.

81:5.5So­ci­ety thus be­comes a co-op­er­a­tive scheme for se­cur­ing civil free­dom through in­sti­tu­tions, eco­nomic free­dom through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion, so­cial lib­erty through cul­ture, and free­dom from vi­o­lence through po­lice reg­u­la­tion.

81:5.6Might does not make right, but it does en­force the com­monly rec­og­nized rights of each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The prime mis­sion of gov­ern­ment is the def­i­ni­tion of the right, the just and fair reg­u­la­tion of class dif­fer­ences, and the en­force­ment of equal­ity of op­por­tu­nity un­der the rules of law. Ev­ery hu­man right is as­so­ci­ated with a so­cial duty; group priv­i­lege is an in­sur­ance mech­a­nism which un­fail­ingly de­mands the full pay­ment of the ex­act­ing pre­mi­ums of group ser­vice. And group rights, as well as those of the in­di­vid­ual, must be pro­tected, in­clud­ing the reg­u­la­tion of the sex propen­sity.

81:5.7Lib­erty sub­ject to group reg­u­la­tion is the le­git­i­mate goal of so­cial evo­lu­tion. Lib­erty with­out re­stric­tions is the vain and fan­ci­ful dream of un­sta­ble and flighty hu­man minds.