The advance of
inequality necessarily brings improvement to a halt, and as it still
persists or provokes unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental
power necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins.
These principles make intelligible the history of civilization.
In the localities where climate, soil, and physical conformation tended
least to separate men as they increased, and where, accordingly, the
first civilizations grew up, the internal resistances to progress would
naturally develop in a more regular and thorough manner than where
smaller communities, which in their separation had developed
diversities, were afterward brought together into a closer association.
It is this, it seems to me, which accounts for the general
characteristics of the earlier civilizations as compared with the later
civilizations of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, developing from
the first without the jar of conflict between different customs, laws,
religions, etc., would show a much greater uniformity. The concentrating
and conservative forces would all, so to speak, pull together.
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