Decline

“ Followed through cycle after cycle of illusory progress and conscious decline, all nevertheless as full of pulsation, of the pride of life and the passion of suffering, as the human tide that beats to-day on the shores of our own senses, the history of organised mankind, in its trivially long-drawn immensity, grows to be unspeakably disenchanting. ”

“ Decadence in any particular, if so it may be called, is scarcely less marked than is the almost imperceptible decline by which man descends, or rather ascends, peacefully to another state of existence. ”

“ And how the retrogression of civilization, following a period of advance, may be so gradual as to attract no attention at the time; nay, how that decline must necessarily, by the great majority of men, be mistaken for advance, is easily seen. ”

“ And surely these indications of mankind’s advancement are as plain as are some other signs of decline.
The stirring up of the masses by insufficient education is bound to produce unrest, and until the different elements have assorted themselves into their new places in the scheme of things, how can there be tranquillity? All is out of balance, and has disturbed the machinery of the country’s life, for the time being. ”

“ Whence have arisen those obvious and undeniable and well-known symptoms of national decline, immediately after the opening of so glorious a dawn, and when the means of such lasting and universal prosperity had, by the benignity of a gracious Providence, been placed within our grasp? ”

“ If we now consider the defects of the Decline and Fall—which the progress of historic study, and still more the lapse of time, have gradually rendered visible, they will be found, as was to be expected, to consist in the author's limited conception of society, and of the multitudinous forces which mould and modify it. We are constantly reminded by the tone of remark that he sees chiefly the surface of events, and that the deeper causes which produce them have not been seen with the same clearness. ”

“ It is always complicated with, and often acts through, other more obvious causes. It is always therefore possible to argue that to these causes, and not to the more subtle and elusive influences collectively described as ’decadence,’ the decline and fall of great communities is really due. ”

“ Chronic Decline, with its attendant anæmia, may be induced by bad habits, destitution, or constitutional depravity. Sickly forms, wrecks of health, address our senses on every side. All these subjects evidently once had a capital in life, sufficient, if properly and carefully husbanded, to comfortably afford them vital stamina and length of days. ”

“ In all the interior causes, for the decline of nations, which we are endeavouring to investigate, we shall find a change of manners, and ways of thinking, constantly producing some effect in the direction towards decline. ”

“ We then learn a great deal about trades and handicrafts, and how these have been outstripped by manufactures, and undermined by shop-keeping; decline is pointed out as the result of various causes, and this result, in its turn, as the cause of a further decline, in an endless circle, which it is difficult to unravel; yet it is so clearly set forth by the vigilant citizen, that one fancies one can see the way to escape from it. The author throughout displays the clearest insight into the most minute circumstances. ”

“ If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet to you I need not say, that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. ”

“ In the period I have chosen to bring before the reader, civilization was on the decline, and progress imperceptible, but the germs of a riper growth were still existent, concealed within the spreading darkness of mediaevalism. ”

“ All these considerations, however, may and together should constitute a splendid stimulus to activity. The very danger of decline or breakdown is a spur to develop the higher powers of man in this their time. ”

“ Every completed civilization known to historians has passed through a sociological life cycle: origin, growth, expansion, maturity, violent premature dismemberment and death in the competitive survival struggle or gradual decline and eventual dissolution. ”

“ This alteration in the nature of wealth; the inventions of mankind; the alterations brought on by the facility of communicating knowledge; the systematical manner in which men pursue their interests, and other changes: give reason to hope that, in the present situation of things, those possessions may be rendered permanent, that have hitherto been found to be so evanescent and fugitive. ”

“ As some ranks of society have been described as bringing up their children not to know the existence of necessity, others, who are depressed below the natural situation of men, are bringing them up to feel the extreme pressure of want. ”

“ This is all very true, and very well said, with respect to the fact, but with respect to the cause there is one of the greatest errors into which a number of men of discernment and ability have ever fallen. ”

“ On the contrary, there are long periods during which growth in some directions is [115] going hand in hand with decay in others; losses in one kind are being compensated, or more than compensated, by gains in another; during which a language changes, but only as the bud changes into the flower, and the flower into the fruit. A time indeed arrives when the growth and gains, becoming ever fewer, cease to constitute any longer a compensation for the losses and the decay; which are ever becoming more; when the forces of disorganization and death at work are stronger than those of life and order. ”

“ In this century of progress the whole world deplores ten times a day the decadence of all things. How can we explain such confusion as this? The answer is simply that the same act may be judged as a phenomenon of progress or of decadence, according as one looks at it from the point of view of Quality or of Quantity. Set an architect and a locomotive-builder to disputing on the modern world. ”

“ On every hand—with a thrill of intensest joy, I say it!—is to be seen, if not yet commencing civilisation, then progress, progress—wide as the world—toward it: only here—at the heart—is there decadence, fatty degeneration. ”

“ So quickly does the curse of stagnation fall upon us. And in support of stagnation are always ranged the immense forces of Society, the prosperous, the well-to-do, the people who are content if to-morrow is exactly like to-day. ”

“ There are both the joy of the abundant life, the craving for new experiences, and the sense of reality, and also the disorganization of interests and motives, the stress and fatigue and monotony which prepare the mind [34] for culmination in dramatic events. There is, in a word, a deep stirring of all the forces that make for progress and expansion, and also conditions that disorganize the individual and the social life. ”

“ Is there any symptom of decadence more sure than when the moral temperature suddenly rises above normal? Watch the clinical charts of Empire. In the period of national vigor the blood is cool. But the time arrives when the period of growth has passed. ”

“ It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories; how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing, apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though it be with struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. ”

“ We will not weary our reader with the uneventful story of that recovery: the progress so painfully slow that its steps were imperceptible, and the change which gradually converted the state of fatuity to one of speculation, and finally brought the youth out of sickness and suffering, and made him—weak and delicate, of course—able to feel enjoyment in life and eager for its pleasures. ”

“ But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. ”

“ Exaggerated expectations bring their own Nemesis in the shape of proportionate depression and gloom; and the men of the new era set themselves somewhat wearily and with little elasticity of spirit to climb the toilsome steep of progress. ”

“ But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this theory of progression, which seems so natural to us amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world, it comes against an enormous fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. ”

“ It should be a crisis and turning-point in the life of humanity, a period pregnant with momentous issues, a period in which the old order and the new are contending for mastery, or in which the old is melting into the new. ”

“ The suddenness of the change is most striking, and you pass at once from all the bustling interests of life—its cares and ambitions, its pursuits of wealth and pleasure—into the stillness of a cloister. ”

“ Well, we have an unending quantity of work and wear—no very acute bothers but a continuous strain, the strain of actual work, of uneasiness, of seeing people, of uncertainty, of great expense, of doubt and fear at times, of inability to make any plans—all which is only the common lot now all over the world, except that most persons have up to this time suffered incomparably worse than we. ”

“ And finally, though it would be easy to multiply such quotations, the striking account, at the end of the second book, of the growth and the decay of our world is drawn directly from the obvious appearances of the growth and decay of the human body ”

“ The transition we are witnessing is no equable transition of growth and normal alteration; no silent, unconscious unfolding of one age into another, its natural heir and successor. Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom ”

“ The monotony of progress through this unreal, leaden world became almost unbearable. The repeated strainings and twistings they suffered in walking the slippery ridge reduced the men to weariness; their legs grew clumsy and their feet uncertain. ”

“ To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts, and the creeds of men, it seems to me, that now at least, if never at any former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness. ”

“ But with the wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly renewed and changing new conditions. ”

“ Their hills shut them about too closely. Some set of the tide of human affairs, some change of transportation or of market, cuts off the wholesome currents of life from them, and they stagnate like cut-off water and become degenerate. ”

“ In Diversion, as in many other Particulars, the upper Part of Life is distinguished from the Lower. Let the Great therefore answer for the Employment of their Time, to themselves, or to their spiritual Governors. ”

“ More or less, vague or clear, these have been the hopes, these the dreams born of the improvements which give this wonderful era its pre-eminence. They have sunk so deeply into the popular mind as radically to change the currents of thought, to recast creeds and displace the most fundamental conceptions. ”

“ In this last stage of consolidation, the economic, and, perhaps, the scientific intellect is propagated, while the imagination fades, and the emotional, the martial, and the artistic types of manhood decay. ”

“ The social phenomena which all over the civilized world appall the philanthropist and perplex the statesman, which hang with clouds the future of the most advanced races and suggest doubts of the reality and ultimate goal of what we have fondly called progress, are now explained. ”

“ They have extended the level years far into the seventies, and age, when it comes, comes swiftly and easily. The feverish hurry of our earth, the decay that begins before growth has ceased, is replaced by a ripe prolonged maturity. ”

“ Both progress and deterioration are of course purely human valuations. But according to our valuation of good and evil it may be said that during those epochs when the malicious, the predatory, the centripetal tendency in life predominates over the creative and centrifugal tendency, there is deterioration and degeneracy ”

“ The incessant growth of society, the increase of its wants, the development of its ideas, render the long continuance of such a state of affairs impossible; and it may prelude, according to the conditions of the time, either some violent outbreak of a neglected and suffering people, or some manifestation of national energy in the direction of material and intellectual progress. ”

“ You say you are chained by circumstances; you cry out for better opportunities, for a wider scope, for improved physical conditions, and perhaps you inwardly curse the fate that binds you hand and foot. ”