ay "build
like giants and finish like jewelers;" but it will be monuments of
ruthless pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its
office of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him down.
Invention may for a while to some degree go on; but it will be the
invention of refinements in luxury, not the inventions that relieve toil
and increase power. In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court
physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden as a
secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common thought or
brighten common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innovator.
For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so
does inequality tend to render men adverse to improvement. How strong is
the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes who are kept
in ignorance by being compelled to toil for a mere existence, is too
well known to require illustration, and on the other hand the
conservatism of the classes to whom the existing social adjustment gives
special advantages is equally apparent. This tendency to resist
innovation, even though it be improvement, is observable in every
special organization--in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in
trade guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization is close.
A close corporation has always an instinctive dislike of innovation and
innovators, which is but the expression of an instinctive fear that
change may tend to throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the
common herd, and so rob it of importance and power; and it is always
disposed to guard carefully its special knowledge or skill.

It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. 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 g