THE starting-point of this book was a search for fields of historical study which would be intelligible in themselves within their own limits of space and time, without reference to extraneous historical events. The search for these self-contained units led us to find them in Societies of the species we called Civilizations, and so far we have been working on the assumption that a comparative study of the geneses, growths, breakdowns, and disintegrations of the twenty-one Civilizations that we have succeeded in identifying would comprehend everything of any significance in the history of Mankind since the time when the first Civilizations emerged from the Primitive Societies. Yet from time to time we have stumbled upon indications that this, our first, master-key might not serve to unlock all the doors through which we have to pass to reach our mental journey’s end.
Near the outset, in the act of identifying as many Civilizations as were known to have existed, we found that certain of them were related to one another in a manner which we called ‘apparentation-and-affiliation’, and we found also that the evidences of this relationship were certain characteristic social products of a Dominant Minority, an Internal Proletariat, and an External Proletariat, into which the ‘apparented’ Society split up in the course of its disintegration. It appeared that dominant minorities produced philosophies which sometimes gave inspirations to universal states, that internal proletariats produced higher religions which sought to embody themselves in universal churches, and that external proletariats produced heroic ages which were the tragedies of barbarian war-bands. In the aggregate these experiences and institutions manifestly constitute a link between an ‘apparented’ and an ‘affiliated’ Civilization.
Moreover, this link in the time-dimension between two non-contemporary Civilizations is not the only kind of relation between Civilizations that a comparative study of universal states, universal churches, and heroic ages brings to light. These fractions, into which Civilizations, after breakdown, disintegrate, acquire a liberty to enter into social and cultural combinations with alien elements derived from other contemporary Civilizations. Some universal states have been the handiwork of alien empire-builders; some higher religions have been animated by alien inspirations, and some barbarian war-bands have imbibed a tincture of alien culture.
Universal states, universal churches, and heroic ages thus link together contemporary, as well as non-contemporary, Civilizations, and this raises the question whether we have been justified in treating them as mere by-products of the disintegration of some single Civilization. Ought we not now to try to study them on their own merits? Until we have examined the claims of institutions of each of these three kinds to be intelligible fields of study in themselves, and have also considered the alternative possibility that they might be parts of some larger whole embracing them and the Civilizations alike, we cannot be sure that we have brought within our purview the whole of human history above the primitive level. Thus further inquiry was the task that we set ourselves at the end of Part V of this Study, and we shall now try to acquit ourselves of it in Parts VI, VII, and VIII.
For the present, then, we are concerned with the universal states, and we may begin by asking whether they are ends in themselves or means towards something beyond them. Our best approach to this question may be to remind ourselves of certain salient features of universal states that we have already ascertained. In the first place, they arise after, and not before, the breakdowns of the civilizations to whose bodies social they bring political unity. They are not summers but ‘Indian summers’, masking autumn and presaging winter. In the second place, they are the products of dominant minorities; that is, of once creative minorities that have lost their creative power. This negativeness is the hallmark of their authorship and also the essential condition of their establishment and maintenance. This, however, is not the whole picture; for besides being accompaniments of social breakdown and products of dominant minorities, universal states display a third salient feature: they are the expressions of a rally—and a particularly notable one—in a process of disintegration that works itself out in successive pulsations of lapse-and-rally followed by relapse; and it is this last feature that strikes the imagination and evokes the gratitude of the generation that lives to see the successful establishment of a universal state set a term at last to a Time of Troubles that had previously been gathering momentum from successive failures of the repeated attempts to stem it.
Taken together, these features present a picture of universal states that, at first sight, looks ambiguous. They are symptoms of social disintegration, yet at the same time they are attempts to check this disintegration and defy it. The tenacity with which universal states, when once established, cling to life is one of their most conspicuous features, but it should not be mistaken for true vitality. It is rather the obstinate longevity of the old who refuse to die. In fact, universal states show a strong tendency to behave as if they were ends in themselves, whereas in truth they represent a phase in a process of social disintegration and, if they have any significance beyond that, can only have it in virtue of being a means to some end that is outside and beyond them.