{9} stationary or even
a deteriorating life. A strong tribe, through internal development and
the domination of other groups, finally becomes a great nation in an
advanced state of civilization. It passes through the course of
infancy, youth, maturity, old age, and death. But the products of its
civilization are handed on to other nations. Another rises and, when
about to enter an advanced state of progress, perishes on account of
internal maladies. It is overshadowed with despotism, oppressed by
priestcraft, or lacking industrial vitality to such a degree that it is
forced to surrender the beginnings of civilization to other nations and
other lives.

The dominance of a group is dependent in part on the natural or
inherent qualities of mind and body of its members, which give it power
to achieve by adapting itself to conditions of nature and in mastering
and utilizing natural resources. Thus the tribe that makes new devices
for procuring food or new weapons for defense, or learns how to sow
seeds and till the soil, adds to its means of survival and progress and
thus forges ahead of those tribes lacking in these means. Also the
social heritage or the inheritance of all of the products of industry
and arts of life which are passed on from generation to generation, is
essential to the rapid development of civilization.

_Civilization Is Expressed in a Variety of Ways_.--Different ideals and
the adaptation to different environment cause different types of life.
The ideals of the Persian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Teuton varied.
Still greater is the contrast between these and the Chinese and the
Egyptian ideals. China boasts of an ancient civilization that had its
origin long before the faint beginnings of Western nations, and the
Chinese are firm believers in their own culture and superior
advancement. The silent grandeur of the pyramids and temples of the
Nile valley bespeak a civilization of great maturity, that did much for
the world in general, but little for the Egyptian people. Yet these
types of civilization are far different from that of Western nations.
Their ideas of culture are in great contrast to our own. But even the
Western nations are not uniform in {10} ideals of civil life nor in
their practice of social order. They are not identical in religious
life, and their ideals of art and social progress vary.

Moreover, the racial type varies somewhat and with it the national life
and thought.