Decadence / Henry Sidgwick memorial lecture, 1908

by Arthur James Balfour

It may be replied that the history of Rome, on which I dwelt a moment ago, shews that arrested progress, and even decadence, may be but the prelude to a new period of vigorous growth. So that even those races or nations which seem frozen into eternal immobility may base upon experience their hopes of an awakening spring.

I am not sure, however, that this is the true interpretation of the facts. There is no spectacle indeed in all history more impressive than the thick darkness settling down over Western Europe, blotting out all but a faint and distorted vision of Graeco-Roman culture, and then, as it slowly rises, unveiling the variety and rich promise of the modern world. But I do not think we should make this unique phenomenon support too weighty a load of theory. I should not infer from it that when some wave of civilisation has apparently spent its force, we have a right to regard its withdrawing sweep as but the prelude to a new advance. I should rather conjecture that in this particular case we should find, among other subtle causes of decadence, some obscure disharmony between the Imperial system and the temperament of the West, undetected even by those who suffered from it. That system, though accepted with contentment and even with pride, though in the days of its greatness it brought civilisation, commerce, and security in its train, must surely have lacked some elements which are needed to foster among Teutons, Celts, and Iberians the qualities, whatever these may be, on which sustained progress depends. It was perhaps too oriental for the occident, and it certainly became more oriental as time went on. In the East it was, comparatively speaking, successful. If there was no progress, decadence was slow; and but for what Western Europe did, and what it failed to do, during the long struggle with militant Mahommedanism, there might still be an Empire in the East, largely Asiatic in population, Christian in religion, Greek in culture, Roman by political descent.

Had this been the course of events large portions of mankind would doubtless have been much better governed than they are. It is not so clear that they would have been more ‘progressive.’ Progress is with the West: with communities of the European type. And if their energy of development is some day to be exhausted, who can believe that there remains any external source from which it can be renewed? Where are the untried races competent to construct out of the ruined fragments of our civilisation a new and better habitation for the spirit of man? They do not exist: and if the world is again to be buried under a barbaric flood, it will not be like that which fertilised, though it first destroyed, the western provinces of Rome, but like that which in Asia submerged for ever the last traces of Hellenic culture.

We are thus brought back to the question I put a few moments since. What grounds are there for supposing that we can escape the fate to which other races have had to submit? If for periods which, measured on the historic scale, are of great duration, communities which have advanced to a certain point appear able to advance no further; if civilisations wear out, and races become effete, why should we expect to progress indefinitely, why for us alone is the doom of man to be reversed?

To these questions I have no very satisfactory answers to give, nor do I believe that our knowledge of national or social psychology is sufficient to make a satisfactory answer possible. Some purely tentative observations on the point may, however, furnish a fitting conclusion to an address which has been tentative throughout, and aims rather at suggesting trains of thought, than at completing them.

I assume that the factors which combine to make each generation what it is at the moment of its entrance into adult life are in the main twofold. The one produces the raw material of society, the process of manufacture is effected by the other. The first is physiological inheritance, the second is the inheritance partly of external conditions of life, partly of beliefs[2], traditions, sentiments, customs, laws, and organisation—all that constitute the social surroundings in which men grow up to maturity.

I hazard no conjecture as to the share borne respectively by these two kinds of cause in producing their joint result. Nor are we likely to obtain satisfactory evidence on the subject till, in the interests of science, two communities of different blood and different traditions consent to exchange their children at birth by a universal process of reciprocal adoption. But even in the absence of so heroic an experiment, it seems safe to say that the mobility which makes possible either progress or decadence, resides rather in the causes grouped under the second head than in the physiological material on which education, in the widest sense of that ambiguous term, has got to work. If, as I suppose, acquired qualities are not inherited, the only causes which could fundamentally modify the physiological character of any particular community are its intermixture with alien races through slavery, conquest, or immigration; or else new conditions which varied the relative proportion in which different sections of the population contributed to its total numbers. If, for example, the more successful members of the community had smaller families than the less successful; or if medical administration succeeded in extinguishing maladies to which persons of a particular constitution were specially liable; or if one strain in a mixed race had a larger birth rate than another—in these cases and in others like them, there would doubtless be a change in the physiological factor of national character. But such changes are not likely, I suppose, to be considerable, except, perhaps, those due to the mixture of races;—and that only in new countries whose economic opportunities tempt immigrants widely differing in culture, and in capacity for culture, from those whose citizenship they propose to share.

The flexible element in any society, that which is susceptible of progress or decadence, must therefore be looked for rather in the physical and psychical conditions affecting the life of its component units, than in their inherited constitution. This last rather supplies a limit to variations than an element which does itself vary: though from this point of view its importance is capital. I at least find it quite impossible to believe that any attempt to provide widely different races with an identical environment, political, religious, educational, what you will, can ever make them alike. They have been different and unequal since history began; different and unequal they are destined to remain through future periods of comparable duration.

But though the advance of each community is thus limited by its inherited aptitudes, I do not suppose that those limits have ever been reached by its unaided efforts. In the cases where a forward movement has died away, the pause must in part be due to arrested development in the variable, not to a fixed resistance in the unchanging factor of national character. Either external conditions are unfavourable; or the sentiments, customs and beliefs which make society possible have hardened into shapes which make its further self-development impossible; or through mere weariness of spirit the community resigns itself to a contented, or perhaps a discontented, stagnation; or it shatters itself in pursuit of impossible ideals, or for other and obscurer reasons, flags in its endeavours, and falls short of possible achievement.

Now I am quite unable to offer any such general analysis of the causes by which these hindrances to progress are produced or removed as would furnish a reply to my question. But it may be worth noting that a social force has come into being, new in magnitude if not in kind, which must favourably modify such hindrances as come under all but the last of the divisions in which I have roughly arranged them. This force is the modern alliance between pure science and industry. That on this we must mainly rely for the improvement of the material conditions under which societies live is in my opinion obvious, although no one would conjecture it from a historic survey of political controversy. Its direct moral effects are less obvious; indeed there are many most excellent people who would altogether deny their existence. To regard it as a force fitted to rouse and sustain the energies of nations would seem to them absurd: for this would be to rank it with those other forces which have most deeply stirred the emotions of great communities, have urged them to the greatest exertions, have released them most effectually from the benumbing fetters of merely personal preoccupations,—with religion, patriotism, and politics. Industrial expansion under scientific inspiration, so far from deserving praise like this, is in their view, at best, but a new source of material well-being, at worst the prolific parent of physical ugliness in many forms, machine made wares, smoky cities, polluted rivers, and desecrated landscapes,—appropriately associated with materialism and greed.