Henry George

“ From first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in the social organization, so does improvement cease. That slavery in the classical world was so universal is undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions that distinguish modern civilization. In a slave-holding community the upper classes may become luxurious and polished ”

“ The earth is the tomb of dead empires, no less than of dead men. Instead of progress fitting men for greater progress, every civilization that was as vigorous and advancing in its time, as ours is now, has of itself come to a stop. ”

“ Over and over again art has declined, learning sunk, power waned and population become sparse - until the remnants of people who had built great temples and mighty cities, turned rivers and pierced mountains, cultivated the earth like a garden and introduced the utmost refinement into the minute affairs of life, were squalid barbarians who had lost even the memory of what their ancestors had done and regarded the surviving fragments of former grandeur as the work of genii or the mighty race before the Flood. ”

“ Inequality had dried up the strength and destroyed the vigour of the Roman world. Government became despotism, which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war-everywhere inequality produced decay, political, mental, moral and material. ”

“ The basis of civilization In all its details, as in its main features, the rise and growth of European civilization illustrates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward closer association and greater equality. Civilization is cooperation. Union and liberty are its factors. The great extension of association - not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities, but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges that knit each community together and link them with other though widely separated communities - the growth of international and municipal law ”

“ Repulsive views on war and slavery In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak even of war and slavery as means of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of association, can only aid progress when it prevents further war or breaks down anti-social carriers that are themselves passive war. ”

“ While its aggregate force must be the sum of the forces of its individual components, a community cannot lose vital power unless the vital powers of its components are lessened. Yet in the common analogy that likens the life power of a nation to that of an individual lurks the recognition of an obvious truth - the truth that the obstacles that finally bring progress to a halt are raised by the course of progress and that what has destroyed all previous civilizations has been the conditions produced by the growth of civilization itself. ”

“ This is the way in which custom, and religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages, grow up and are perpetuated. This is the way skill is transmitted and knowledge is stored up, and the discoveries of one time are made the common stock and stepping-stone of the next. Though this is what often offers the most serious obstacles to progress, it is this that makes progress possible. ”

“ The dog can to a certain extent connect cause and effect and may be taught some tricks; but his capacity in these respects has not been a whit increased during all the ages he has been the associate of improving man, and the dog of civilization is not a whit more accomplished or intelligent than the dog of the wandering savage. We know of no animal that uses clothes, or cooks its food, or makes itself tools or weapons, or has an articulate language. But men who do not do such things have never yet been found, or heard of, except in fable. ”

“ And among the less advanced races do we not today, whenever our attention is called to them, find men who in their conditions exhibit mental qualities as great as civilization can show? Did the invention of the railway, coming when it did, prove any greater inventive power than did the invention of the wheelbarrow when wheelbarrows were not? We of modern civilization are raised far above those who have preceded us and those of the less advanced races who are our contemporaries. ”

“ In truth, nothing could be further from explaining the facts of universal history than the theory that civilization is the result of a course of natural selection which operates to improve and elevate the powers of man. ”

“ Importance of social environment I take the explanation of the differences that distinguish communities to be this: That each society, small or great, necessarily weaves for itself a web of knowledge, beliefs, customs, language, tastes, institutions and laws. Into the web woven by each society (or rather, into these webs, for each community above the simplest is made up of minor societies that overlap and interlace each other) the individual is received at birth and continues until his death. ”

“ Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality (or justice, or freedom, for the terms here signify the same thing - the recognition of the moral law) prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles.
Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with his fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters the world, and the long period required for the maturity of his powers, necessitate the family relation ”

“ Mind is the instrument by which man advances and by which each advance is secured and made the ground for new advances. Mental power, therefore, is the motor of progress, and men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power that is expended in progression - the mental power that is devoted to the extension of knowledge, the improvement of methods and the betterment of social conditions. ”

“ What the centuries have done for us is not to increase our stature, but to build up a structure on which we may plant our feet.
The part heredity plays I do not mean to say that all men possess the same capacities, or are mentally alike, any more than I mean to say that they are physically alike. Among the countless millions that have come and gone on this earth, there probably never were two that either physically or mentally were exact counterparts. Nor yet do I mean to say that there are not as clearly marked race differences in mind as there are clearly marked race differences in body. ”

“ I speak not so much of the accounts of travellers, for the accounts given of savages by the civilized men who write books are very often just such accounts as savages might give of us could they make flying visits and then write books; I speak of those mementos of the life and thought of other times and other peoples, which, translated into our language of today, are like glimpses of our own lives and gleams of our own thought. The feeling they inspire is that of the essential similarity of men. ”

“ It is this that makes our modern civilization so much greater, so much higher, than any that has gone before. It is these that have set free the mental power that has rolled back the veil of ignorance that hid all but a small portion of the globe from man's knowledge ”

“ The differences between the people of communities in different places and at different times, which we call differences of civilization, are not differences that inhere in the individuals, but differences that inhere in the society. ”

“ Differences in civilization - their causes In any large community we may see, as between different classes and groups, differences of the same kind as those existing between communities which we speak of as differing in civilization differences of knowledge, belief, custom, taste and speech, which in their extremes among people of the same race, living in the same country, show differences almost as great as those between civilized and savage communities. ”

“ Essential similarities in human nature And reversely, suppose a number of savage infants, unknown to the mothers (for even this would be necessary to make the experiment a fair one) , could be substituted for as many children of civilization, can we suppose that growing up they would show any difference? I think no one who has mixed much with different peoples and classes will think so. The great lesson that is thus learned is that "human nature is human nature all the world over." ”

“ The theory that civilization advances by changes wrought in the nature of man fails to explain the facts, for in every case it is not the race that has been educated and hereditarily modified by the old civilization that begins the new, but a fresh race coming from a lower level. It is the barbarians of the one epoch who have been the civilized men of the next, to be in their turn succeeded by fresh barbarians. ”

“ Men tend to progress just as they come closer together. By cooperation with each other they increase the mental power that may be devoted to improvement, but just as conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of condition and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, and finally reversed. ”

“ The most fixed and petrified of all civilizations of which we know anything was that of Egypt, where even art finally assumed a conventional and inflexible form. But we know that behind this must have been a time of life and vigour - a freshly developing and expanding civilization, such as ours is now - or the arts and sciences could never have been carried to such a pitch. ”

“ Improvement becomes possible as men come together in peaceful association, and the wider and closer this association is, the greater are the possibilities of improvement. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized, so equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress. ”

“ Between the lowest savages of whom we know and the highest animals, there is an irreconcilable difference - a difference not merely of degree but of kind.
Many of the characteristics, actions and emotions of man are exhibited by the lower animals; but man, no matter how low in the scale of humanity, has never yet been found destitute of one thing of which no animal shows the slightest trace, a clearly recognizable but almost undefinable something which gives him the power of improvement. ”

“ Given the very highest mental powers that exceptional individuals have ever displayed, and what could mankind be if one generation were separated from the next by an interval of time, as are the seventeen-year locusts? One such interval would reduce mankind, not to savagery, but to a condition compared with which savagery, as we know it, would seem civilization. ”

“ There is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, as there is to the work he can do with his body; therefore the mental power that can be devoted to progress is only what is left after what is required for non-progressive purposes. ”

“ The conditions under which we fall may produce such distortions as the Flatheads produce by compressing the heads of their infants or the Chinese by binding their daughters' feet. But as Flathead babies continue to be born with naturally shaped heads and Chinese babies with naturally shaped feet, so does nature seem to revert to the normal mental type. A child no more inherits his father's knowledge than he inherits his father's glass eye or artificial leg; the child of the most ignorant parents may become a pioneer of science or a leader of thought. ”

“ Civilization has arisen at different times, in different places, and has progressed at different rates, which is not inconsistent with the theory, for it might result from the unequal balancing of impelling and resisting forces. But absolutely inconsistent with this theory is the fact that progress has nowhere been continuous, but has everywhere been brought to a standstill or has retrogressed. ”

“ And so when we erect a public building, we make a hollow in the largest corner stone and carefully seal within it some mementos of our day, looking forward to the time when our works shall be ruins and ourselves forgotten. ”