ordinary, artificially produced, resemblances which bring them
together and wall them off from the outside world. The same is true
when we compare the German who dwells where the Alpine springs of the
Danube and the Rhine interlace, with the physically different German
of the Baltic lands. The same is true of Kentishman, Cornishman, and
Yorkshireman in England.

In dealing, not with groups of human beings in simple and primitive
relations, but with highly complex, highly specialized, civilized, or
semi-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 it is curious to see how some of the
phenomena in the growth and disappearance of these complex, 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 a 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 cannot as yet
even guess what the proper answer should be. If in any such case the
centrifugal forces overcome the centripetal, the nation will of course
fly to pieces, and the reason for its failure to become a dominant
force is patent to every one. The minute that the spirit which finds
its healthy development in local self-government, and is the antidote
to the dangers of an extreme centralization, develops into mere
particularism, into inability to combine effectively for achievement
of a common end, then it is 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 with them, and her name would have become a byword of derision,
if the forces of union had not triumphed in the Civil War. So, the
growth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes a
national danger patent to all. Again, it needs but little of the
vision of a seer to foretell 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 virtues die out, if strength of character vanishes in
gracefu