e descendants, in a remote Pacific island,
became sober, steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence
of this same rule--that men in masses do not forget the main gains of
their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency
is upward.

Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most striking
manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction
of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. These
catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this
development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based
upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob--the
decline and fall of Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most
remarkable generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary
to the development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the
terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared to be a
mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall
of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical
period; the French Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic
passion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the
monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread
deterioration and decline--often, indeed, the greatest political and
moral catastrophes--so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in
the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.

Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology,
and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward
evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet.

Nor have these researches been confined to progress in man's material
condition. Far more important evidences have been found of upward
evolution in his family, social, moral, intellectual, and religious
relations. The light thrown on this subject by such men as Lubbock,
Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Draper, Max Muller, and a multitude of
others, despite mistakes, haltings, stumblings, and occasional following
of delusive paths, is among the greatest glories of the century now
ending. From all these investigators in their various fields, holding
no brief for any system sacred or secular, but seeking truth as truth,
comes the same general testimony of the evolution of higher out of
lower. The process has been indeed slow and painful, but this does not