s I assume it to be, an organism operating on
mechanical principles, we may perhaps, by pondering upon history, learn
enough of those principles to enable us to view, more intelligently than
we otherwise should, the social phenomena about us. What we call
civilization is, I suspect, only, in proportion to its perfection, a
more or less thorough social centralization, while centralization, very
clearly, is an effect of applied science. Civilization is accordingly
nearly synonymous with centralization, and is caused by mechanical
discoveries, which are applications of scientific knowledge, like the
discovery of how to kindle fire, how to build and sail ships, how to
smelt metals, how to prepare explosives, how to make paper and print
books, and the like. And we perceive on a little consideration that from
the first great and fundamental discovery of how to kindle fire, every
advance in applied science has accelerated social movement, until the
discovery of steam and electricity in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries quickened movement as movement had never been quickened
before. And this quickening has caused the rise of those vast cities,
which are at once our pride and our terror.

Social consolidation is, however, not a simple problem, for social
consolidation implies an equivalent capacity for administration. I take
it to be an axiom, that perfection in administration must be
commensurate to the bulk and momentum of the mass to be administered,
otherwise the centrifugal will overcome the centripetal force, and the
mass will disintegrate. In other words, civilization would dissolve. It
is in dealing with administration, as I apprehend, that civilizations
have usually, though not always, broken down, for it has been on
administrative difficulties that revolutions have for the most part
supervened. Advances in administration seem to presuppose the evolution
of new governing classes, since, apparently, no established type of mind
can adapt itself to changes in environment, even in slow-moving
civilizations, as fast as environments change. Thus a moment arrives
when the minds of any given dominant type fail to meet the demands made
upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in turn is set
aside by another still younger, until the limit of the administrative
genius of that particular race has been reached. Then disintegration
sets in, the social momentum is gradually relaxed, and society sinks
back to a leve