It is
vain, therefore, to look in the future for some paraphrase of the past.
Yet if society be, as 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.
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