the known—the development of man in the prehistoric period from his development within historic times. Nothing is more evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from which they have been banished. Out of very many examples showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical. The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that they apparently gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves; the barbarian tribes who, ages ago, took refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of Holland, have developed one of the world's leading centers of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud-banks of Venetia, developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders of human history; the Puritans, driven from the civilization of great Britain to the unfavorable climate*, soil, and circumstances of early New England; the Huguenots, driven from France, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such growth; the Irish peasantry driven in vast numbers from their own island to other parts of the world, on the whole less fitted to them—all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once enlightened, when driven to unfavorable climates and brought under the most depressing circumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various penal colonies from whose descendants has been developed a high civilization; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober, steady citizens; thousands of examples show the prevalence of this same rule—the rule that men in masses do not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that 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 in 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
