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upon them, and are superseded by a younger type, which in turn is set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.
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