The Prescott daily news., 1910-06-07

peoples struggling from barbarsm into civilization.
 So. when we speak of the death" of a tribe. nation or a civilization. the term may be used for either one or two totally different processes. the analogy with what occurs in biological history being complete. Certain tribes of savages, the Tasmanians, for instance. and various lit- tie clans of American Indians have within the last century or two completely died out; all of the individuals have perished. leaving no descendants, and the blood has disappeared. Certain other tribes of Indians have as tribes disappeared or are now d'sappearing; but their blood remains. being absorbed into the veins of the white intruders or of the black men introduced by these white intruders; that in reality they are merely being transformed into something absolutely different from what they were.
 A like wide diversity in fact may be covered in the statement that a civiliza- ton has died out
 Phenomena That Puzzle.
 In dealing. not with groups of human beings in simple and primitive relations, but with highly complex highly special i2ed civilized, or sen-civilized societies. there is need of great caution in drawing analogies with what has occurred in the development of the animal world. Yet even in these cases 1t is curious to sef how some of the phenomena in the growth and disappearance of these com pleN, artificial groups of human beings resemble what has happened in myriads of instances in the history of life on this planet.
 Why do great artificial empires. whose citizens are knit by bond of speech and culture much more than by a bond of blood. show periods of extraordinary growth. and again of sudden or lingering decay? In some cases we can answer readily enough: In other cases we can not yet even guess what the proper answer should be. If in any such case the centrifugal forces overcome the cen tripetal, the nation will of course fly to pieces. and the reason for its failure 10 become a dominant force Is patent 10 every one. The minute that the spirit which finds its healthy development in local self government, and in the antidote to the dangers of an extreme centraliza- tion, develops into mere partiCularism. Into inability to combine effectively for achievement of a common end. then it ts hopeless to expect great results Poland and certain republics of the western hemisphere are the standard examples of failure of this kind. and the United States would have ranked wl,h them, and its name would have become byword cs derision, if the forces of union had net triumphed In the civil war. So thu growth of soft luxury after it has reached certain point becomes a national danger patent to all Again, it needs but little of the vision of seer to foretel what must happen in any community if the average woman ceases to become the mother of a family of healthy children. if the average man loses the will and the power to work up to old age and to fight whenever the need arises If the homely commonplace 14z IL vanishes fin graceful self-indulgence, if the virile qualities atrophy. then the nation has lost what no material prosperity can offset
 But there are plenty of other phenom- ena wholly or partially inexplcable. It Is easy to see why Rome trended downward when great slave-tilled farms spread over what had once been a countryside of peasant propretors, when greed and lux ury and sensuality ate like acids into the fiber of the upper classes, while the mass of the citizens grew to depend, not upon their own exertions, but upon the state for their pleasures and their very liveli- hood But this does not explain why the forward movement stopped at different times far different matters were concerned; at one time as regards litera- ture, at another time as regards architec- ture, at another time regards city building We cannot even guess why the springs of one kind of energy dried up while there was yet no cessation of an other kind.
 Holland as an Example. Take another and smaller instano.. that of Holland. For a period covering a 1 little more than the seventeenth century Holland, like some of the Italian city states at an earlier period, stood on the dangerous heights of greatness beside na- | tons vastly her superior in territory and population as to make it inevitable | that sooner or later she must fall from the l glorious and perilous eminence to which | she had been raised by her own indomita- l Sle soul LG- - Gar.e- .. cluls -@'