The problem of decline, however, is solved by the enervating influence of possession and power, an influence which only a select few among men can escape. And yet to every external advance there must be a corresponding advance of the interior man, else there is a fall great in proportion to the height before attained. The greater number take their ease once they have attained the object of their ambition. I need only cite the example of the posterity of those men who have grown rich by unusual exertion. Success itself generates vanity and a feeling of false security, the latter especially, inasmuch as that is expected from the whole community, from the state for instance, from others generally, which should be the fruits of one's own vigilance and one's own endeavors. It should not be forgotten that the nation is made up of individuals.[264-5]
In addition to this there is the striving after the new for the sake of novelty; a striving promotive of progress in itself, and without which the full development of the forces of civilization would probably not be possible. But if the genius of no nation is possessed of infinite capacities, it must happen, at last, that, in case the best has been attained, and the demand for novelty continues, men will go over to that which is worse. Even very great competition has here a dangerous influence, since it raises the great mass of the incompetent to the dignity of judges, and endeavors to seduce them by illicit means; in the arts, for instance, sensuousness is made to take the place of the feeling of the beautiful.[264-6]
There is, further the process of undeceiving, inseparable from the prosecution of any ideal purpose. Such ideals have always very much of human weakness in them. The great crowd of ordinary men follow, as a rule, their material interests. Only occasionally do they rise to the height of ideal things; and here we discover the brightest points in history. Later there comes uniformly a period of disenchantment and of exhaustion after the debauch is over. When all the ideals accessible to the nation have been destroyed or outlived, nothing can be done to awaken the masses from their slumber, or induce them to shake off their inactivity.
As a rule, the influences which have accelerated a nation's progress and brought it to the apogee of its social existence end in precipitating its ruin by their further action. Every direction which humanity takes has almost always something of evil in it, is limited in its very nature, and cannot stand its extremest consequences.[264-7] All earthly existence bears in itself, from the first, the germs of its decay.
However, to calm the feeling of human liberty, we may boldly assert that there never was a nation remarkable for its religiousness and morality which declined so long as it preserved these highest of all goods; but then no nation outlived their possession.
[264-1] Even in the case of individuals, that death is necessary is not susceptible of absolute demonstration; but no one doubts it, because of the experience so frequently repeated; an experience, however, which cannot be had in the same degree in the case of whole nations.
[264-2] Remarkable controversy[TN 121] between Hume and Tucker. The former had charged the latter with holding the opinion that industry and wealth must necessarily continue to advance indefinitely; and yet all things had in them the germs of decay. Tucker, on the other hand, remarked that all he wished to say was that no one could point out where progress must necessarily cease. All political bodies like all natural bodies might decay; but it is not necessary that they should. With good laws and morality they would become more vigorous with increasing age. A great deal depended here on the more general distribution of property, on the assurance that industry would meet with its reward, and on the removal of the principal defects in the English electoral system. (Four Tracts, 477 seq. Two Sermons, 30.) Most political economists are of the same opinion; thus McCulloch, Principles, II, 3. See, however, the last two sections in Ferguson, History of civil Society.
[264-3] We assume that a new nation has arisen, when, after the disappearance of an earlier and high civilization, combined with the taking up of new ethnographic elements, we perceive anew the easily recognizable symptoms of youthful immaturity.
[264-4] Expressed in the domain of religion in the words of the Savior: Matth., 25, 29. But at the same time the equally well-known expression in Luke, 12, 48, must be fulfilled. Compare H. Brocher, L'Economie monétaire, 1871, 25 ff.
[264-5] Schools of art are generally ruined by mannerism. Of the two great means of education in art, the study of nature and the study of classic models, the latter is the easier, and the former is readily neglected for it. Then there is the endeavor to flatter the master, which is most effectually done by imitating his faults; and the fact that pretending connoisseurs are most cheaply satisfied by mannerism.