| Show I 1 I 1 m is ff v ROMANES LECTURE GIVEN BY ROOSEVELT event postponed by kings death attracts a large audience at oxford lord curzon introduces the distinguished american oxford england i before an audience of distinguished men and students of oxford university theodore roosevelt on june 7 delivered the romanes lecture his bis subject being biological analogies in history the lecture had been scheduled for delivery 0 on n may 18 but of course was postponed on account of king edwards demise it was given in the sheldon lan fan theater and lord curzon as chancellor of the university presided and introduced the lecturer in seeking beeking to penetrate the causes of the mysteries that surround not 0 only aly mankind but all life both in the present and the past said mr roosevelt we see strange analogies in the phenomena of life and death of birth growth and change between those physical groups of animal life which ao 90 e designate as species Bp eclea for forma M S r facea a e e s and the highly complex arid and composite C D M P 0 s i te entitles entities which rise before our minds w when hen we speak of nations and civilizations it Is this study be h asserted that lias has given science its present day prominence and the historian of mankind must work in the scientific spirit and use the treasure louses of science to illustrate the lecturer took several instances of the development of new species and the extinction of species in the history of 0 mammalian life showing that in some cases the causes can be traced with considerable accuracy and in other cases we cannot so much as hazard a guess as to why a given change occurred analogies in human history continuing mr RoQ roosevelt sevelt said bald in part now as to all of theme prien omena in the th evolution of species there arp are if 1 not homologies homol homo ogles logies at least certain analogies in the history of human societies in the th history of the rise to prominence of the tha development and change ot at the temporary dominance and death or at transformation of the groups of varying kind w which h ich f form orm races or nations As in blob blo loey 0 gy 0 BO o in human history a new form may result from the tion of a long and hitherto very slowly changing generalized or form as for instance when a barbaric race from a variety of causes cause suddenly develops a more complex cultivation and civilization that la Is what occurred tor for instance in western europe during the centuries of the teutonic Teulon le and liter later the scan scandinavian at anavian ethnic overflows overflow front from the north all the modern countries of 0 europe are descended from the states created by these thene northern invaders when first created they could he e called new or young states in ther tl sense that part or all ot of the people composing them were descended from races that hitherto had not been civilized at all and that therefore for the first time entered on the career of civilized communities in the southern aou thern part of western europe the new states thus formed consisted in bulk ot of the inhabitants already in the land under the roman empire and it was here that the new kingdoms first took tooh 8 shape h 1 p e through a reflex action their 11 influence e nce then extended back into the cold forests from which the invaders hail had come and germany and scandinavia witnessed the rise ok ot communities with essentially the same civilization as their southern neighbors though in those communities unlike ilke the southern communities there was no a in infusion fusion of nw blood and in each wa nhe case the t new civilized nation which gradually developed was composed entirely of members of the he samo race which in the same a region had for ages lived the life of a slowly changing barbarism the same was true of tho the slavs and the Slavon same lied rinno finns of eastern europe when an infiltration of scandinavian lenders from the north and infiltration of byzantine culture from the tha south joined t to a produce the changes which have gradually out of the little slav communities of forest and the steppe formed the mighty russian el emalie n pire of today N new e w and young nations again the new form may represent merely a splitting off from a lisben highly developed and specialized no nation tion in this case the tha nation Is usually ully spoken of as sa a young and Is correctly spoken of as a new atlon but bat tile tha term should always be used with vun a clear sense bense of the difference between what Is described tit in such case and what Is described by the same term in speaking ot at a civilized nation just developed develop od from a barbarism carthage and syracuse were new cities compared rom pared with tyro tyre and corinth but the greek or phoenician race was in every sense of the word as an old in the tha new city as in the old city so nowadays victoria or manitoba Is a new community compared with england or scotland but the anc ancestral etral typo type of civilization and culture Is as old in one case as in the tha other I 1 ot of course do not mean for a moment that great changes are re not produced by the mere fact that hat ahe he old elvill zel race ta la suddenly placid placed d in surroundings where it has again to go through the work of taming the ill wilderness a work finished many centuries before in the home of the race I 1 merely mean that the ancestral anif history Is tho the same in each case cef can rightly use the phrase soa a new people in speaking of 0 canadians or or australians americans or Afrikan ders but tit we time it in an entirely different sense from that in which we use it when speaking of such communities as those founded by the lie north men an anil their descendants ants during that hat of at astonishing growth crowth saw the of the tha norse sea thieve conquer and arans transform normandy sicily and the british islands we use it in an entirely dal terent sense from that in which we use it when itchen speaking of the new states that irow grew up around warsaw kief Nov gorod and moscow as the wild savages of 0 the and the marshy forests struggled haltingly and stumblingly upward to become builders of cities and to form at stable ble governments rhe kingdoms of charlemagne and alfred were new com compared pared with the tha empire on theo thai pos BOB chorus they were also alno in every way war different their lines of ancestral descent daceno had nothing in common with those thome of the polyglot realm which paid tribute to the caesars caesara of byzantium their social problems problem and aftertime history were arru totally diff different tit this 1 not true of those hose now new unions which spring direct from oll na dilons brazil the lne the united fi states tates are all new nations compared con itrel aith alth the nations of europa 0 po but wt wl 1 nt ats Bever ever change in n detail atal e I 1 their cllelia 11 ito 0 Is 1 0 ices of tile the general laire I 1 tipe as il ahon in portugal spain and england 1718 differences between these new Amet american icAn and these old european Kurop can nations are riot not as great an a those which separate t the new nations one fro from another and the old nations one from another there are in each case very real differences between the new anti ami the old nation differences both for 1 I rood good and for evil but in mch case there la 18 the tame same ancestral ance atral history to reckon with tile a anio ame type of 0 civilization with its at benefits benefit and shortcomings and after the pioneer stages are bossed edthe the problems to bo be solved in spite of sup superficial ern differences are ara in their essence the same they are those that confront all civilized civilize peoples riot not those that c confront front peoples struggling from rom barbarism barbari stron into civilization so when we wa speak of the death ot of a tribe atrice a notion nation or a civilization the term may be used for either one or two totally different processes the analogy with what occurs in biological history being eam complete certain tribes of savages tile the T s in ania lanB n a for instance and various little littie clan C ans of american indians indiana have hat e within the last century or two completely died a out t I 1 nil all of the individuals have perished leaving no descendants and th the 6 blood hns has disappeared certain other tribes of indians indiana have as 01 tribes disappeared or are now disappearing but their blood remains being absorbed into the veins of the white intruders Intrude ra rm or of 0 the black men introduced by these white intruders so that in reality they are merely being transformed into something absolutely different from what they were A like wide diversity in fact may be covered in the statement that a civilization has died out phenomena that puzzle rn in dealing not with groups of human beings in simple and primitive relations but with highly complex highly specialized civilized or semi aerni civilized societies there Is need 0 of f great caution in drawing analogies with what ham haa occurred in the development of the animal world yet even in these cases it Is 1 curious to ser how some ome ot of the phenomena in the growth and disappearance of these corn com plex artificial groups of human beings resemble what lia ila happened in myriads ot of instances in the history of life on this planet why do great artificial empires whose citizens citizen are knit by a bond of epee speech chand and culture much more than by a bond of 0 blood show periods of extraordinary growth and again of sudden or lingering decay in some cases we can answer readily enough in other cases we cannot BJ as yet et even guess what the lh proper answer should be it if in any such case the centrifugal forces overcome the centripetal tri petal the nation will of course fly to pieces and the reason for its failure to become a dominant force Is patent to every one the minute that the spirit which finds its healthy development in local self government and in the antidote to the dangers of an extreme centralization develops into mere into inability to combine effectively for achievement of a common end then it Is hopeless to expect great results poland and certain republics or of the western w a tern hemisphere aro are the standard examples p lesof of failure of this kind and the united states would have ranked alth them and its name would have become a byword of derision it if the forces ot of union had not triumphed in the civil war so the growth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes a national danger patent to all again it needs but little of 0 the vision of a seer beer to foretell what must happen in any community it if the average woman ceases to become the mother of a family of healthy children it the tha average man loses the will and the power to work up to old age and to fight whenever the need arises if the homely commonplace virtues die out if strength of character vanishes in graceful self indulgence it if the virile qualities atrophy then the nation has lost what no material prosperity can offset but there are plenty of other phenomena en wholly or partially inexplicable it Is c easy ay to sen see why rome nome trended treaded downward when great slave tilled farms farma spread over what had once been a countryside ot of peasant proprietors when greed breed and luxury and sensuality ate like acids into the tha fab fiber of the upper classes while the mass of ill the e citizens grew to depend not upon their own exertions but upon the state for their pleasures and their very live livelihood I 1 hut but this does doea not explain why the forward forward movement stopped at different tim so far as different matters were concerned ned at one time as regards ads literature at another time as regards 9 architecture threat at another time as regards city building we cannot even guess goes why the springs ot of one kind of energy dried up while there was yet no cessation of another kind holland as an example take another and smaller ln antano nn tano tana that of holland for a period covering a little more than the th seventeenth century li holland olland like some of the atall italian an city states at nn an earlier period stood on the dangerous heights of greatness great neg besl beside e nad nations tlona so vastly her superior in territory and population ua as to make it inevitable that sooner or later the she must fall from the glorious and perilous eminence to which she had been raised by her ter own In domita ble bla soul gout iter her fall came it could not have been indefinitely postponed but it came far quicker than it needed to rome come because of shortcomings on her part to which both great britain and the tha united states would bo be wise to kiy heed iler her government was singularly ineffective the decentralization being such as often to permit the separatist the spirit of 0 tile the provinces to rob the central authority of all efficiency this was bad enough but the fatal weakness w was a eliat so BO common in rich peace loving lovan societies where men hate bate to think of war as possible and try to justify their own to face it either by high sounding moral platitudes or else by a philosophy of shortsighted short sighted materialism the dutch were very wealthy they grow grew to bellevo that they could hire others to do their fighting tor for them on land and on sea ea where they did their own fighting fig tang and fought very well they r refused e fused in time of peace to make ready fleets duets BO a et ef as either to insure the dutch against the peace being broken or else to give them the victory when war came to lie he opulent and unarmed Is if to secure acure case in the present nl at the almost certain cost coat of disaster in tile the future it lii Is therefore easy to sea why 11 holland olland luit when shedid ahe did her position among the powers but it Is far more difficult to explain why at the same little there should hould have come at least a partial loss of post I 1 lion in the world of art anil and letters some spark of divine ire fire burned itself out in the national souli out an A tho the line of great statesmen ot of great warriors warr lora by land and sea came to an end so th the line of the great dutch pointers ended the loss of preeminence pre eminence in the school followed the th I 1 I 1 loss loan 0 of preeminence pre eminence in camp and in council chamber in the little republic c of holland ia an in 11 the 9 great eat empire of 0 home it was waa not d death e le th which came but transformation both holland and italy te teach ell us u that ar races race that fall all may rise agal again danger of race suicide sul olde there are questions which we of the great civilized nation aro are ever tempted to ask at 0 the future Is in our time ot of growth dra wins wing to an end are we as a nations soon so to come under the rule or of that wat great law Is 0 of death which Is itself but part of the great ell law ot life none cantell ran tell forces that we v cila cal see and other forces that are hidden or that can but dimly be apar bended are at work all amount around us buth for or good g and f or r evil the growth in luxury in love 1 ova of oo 00 ease in taste for or vapid and frivolous excitement la is both evident ond and unhealthy the roost most ominous sign Is t the 1 e dl diminution n in the birthrate birth rate in fit tile the rat rate e of f n natural a tural increase nato nay to a larger or leaser leaser degree shared by ats a t S rr the civilized nations of central anil nd western we t ern europe of america and Austral lit U u diminution so BO great that it if it coltinuk s tor for th the e next century at the tha rate nall h hao 0 obtained b fur for the last 25 years apte ear all t te more highly civilized people will be stationary sta I 1 or else have begun to go backward arr |
