John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[90] ruins are rebuilt. This impulse is everywhere in new and more vigorous life, in all countries of Europe-even in England.

... European civilization is at a most important crisis. It has attained its maturity and the process of decay has begun. At the same time the germs of better things, or a new social order, are appearing. Has civilized Europe vitality enough to develop the new forms before it is crushed in the downfall of the old? Is there intelligence, love of justice, and love of man enough in these nations to anticipate and obviate the decay? This is the question. The antique civilization also reached its climax and then perished. It is for us to take a lesson from its fate. It perished because it was based on slavery. Other causes were concerned in its destruction, but this was the primary one. The basis of the social structure is industry. If there is wrong in the relations of industry-that is, of property and labor — the time will arrive when they must be reformed, or the whole structure will go to pieces. For a time slavery served a useful purpose in Greece and Rome, but at last society reached a period when slavery must be put away and labor recognized in a more just manner. This necessity was not understood; the men of the time were not equal to it, and nations great in philosophy, art, poetry, and war were swept away by progress. The same necessity is at hand now. Under the existing system of labor, modern society has reached the utmost development which that system will allow. New methods of industry must be established, as much superior to the wages system as that is superior to slavery, or else the doom will be pronounced and executed....

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the civilization of modern times is fortified against an overthrow as that of the antique world was not; the railroads, the steamships, the manufactories, the wealth more abundant and more generally divided, which exists now, are so many substantial guarantees that society is to go forward to higher forms without the sad necessity of beginning the circle anew with barbarism and ignorance for its elements. Nor is the reform now to be achieved so difficult as that for the lack of which the Old World