... civilization always depends upon the qualities of the people who are the bearers of it. All these vast accumulations of instruments and ideas, massed and welded into marvelous structures rising harmoniously in glittering majesty, rest upon living foundations—upon the men and women who create and sustain them. So long as those men and women are able to support it, the structure rises, broad-based and serene; but let the living foundations prove unequal to the task, and the mightiest civilization sags, cracks, and at last crashes down into chaotic ruin.
Civilization thus depends absolutely upon the quality of its human supporters. Mere numbers mean nothing. The most brilliant civilization the world has ever seen arose in Athens—a tiny community where the number of freemen (i.e., genuine Athenians) numbered perhaps 50,000 all told. We therefore see that, for civilization to arise at all, a superior human stock is first necessary; while to perfect, or even to maintain that civilization, the human stock must be kept superior. And these are requirements more exacting than might be imagined.
Surveying human history, we find that superior stocks are the exception rather than the rule. We have already seen how many races of men have never risen above the planes of savagery or barbarism, while relatively few races have shown the ability to create high and enduring civilizations.
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But what about the inferiors? Hitherto we have not analyzed their attitude. We have seen that they are incapable of either creating or furthering civilization, and are thus a negative hindrance to progress.
But the inferiors are not mere negative factors in civilized life; they are also positive—in an inverse, destructive sense. The inferior elements are, instinctively or consciously, the enemies of civilization.
And they are its enemies, not by chance, but because they are more or less uncivilizable. We must remember that the level of society never coincides with the levels of its human units. The social level is a sort of compromise—a balance of constituent forces. This very fact implies that the individuals must be differentially spaced. And so it is. Superior individuals stand above the social level; sometimes far above that level—whence the saying about men “ahead of their times.” But what about men “behind their times”? They have always been numerous, and, the higher the civilization, the more of them there are apt to be.
The truth is that as a civilization advances it leaves behind multitudes of human beings who have not the capacity to keep pace. The laggards, of course, vary greatly among themselves. Some are congenital savages or barbarians; men who could not fit into any civilization, and who consequently fall behind from the start. There are not “degenerates”; they are “primitives,” carried over into a social environment in which they do not belong. They must be clearly distinguished from the true degenerates: the imbecile, the feeble-minded, the neurotic, the insane—all those melancholy wasteproducts which every living species excretes but which are promptly extirpated in the state of nature, whereas in human societies they are too often preserved.
Moreover, besides primitives and degenerates, civilization by its very advance automatically condemns fresh multitudes to the ranks of the “inferior.” Just as “primitives” who would be quite at home in savage or barbarian environments are alien to any sort of civilization, so, many individuals who rub along well enough in civilization’s early phases have neither the wit nor the moral fibre to meet the sterner demands of high, complex civilizations. Most poignant of all is the lot of the “border-liners:—those who just fail to achieve a social order, which they can comprehend but in which they somehow cannot succeed.
Such are the ranks of the inferior—the vast army of the unadaptable and the incapable. Let me again emphasize that “inferior” does not necessarily mean “degenerate.” The degenerate are, of course, included, but the word “inferior” is a relative term signifying “below” or “beneath,” in this case meaning persons beneath or below the standard of civilization. The word inferior has, however, been so often employed as a synonym for degenerate that it tends to produce confusion of thought, and to avoid this I have coined a term which seems to describe collectively all those kinds of persons whom I have just discussed. This term is The Under-Man—the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives. And this term I shall henceforth employ.
Now, how does the Under-Man look at civilization? This civilization offers him few benefits and fewer hopes. It usually affords him little beyond a meagre subsistence. And, sooner or later, he instinctively senses that he is a failure; that civilization’s prizes are not for him.
But this civilization, which withholds benefits, does not hesitate to impose burdens. We have previously stated that civilization’s heaviest burdens are borne by the superior. Absolutely, this is true; relatively the Under-Man’s intrinsically lighter burdens feel heavier because of his innate incapacity. The very discipline of the social order oppresses the Under-Man; it thwarts and chastises him at every turn. To wild natures society is a torment, while the congenital caveman, placed in civilization, is always in trouble and usually in jail.
All this seems inevitable. But, in addition to these social handicaps, the Under-Man often suffers from the action of better-placed individuals who take advantage of his weakness and incapacity to exploit him and drive him down to social levels even lower than those which he would normally occupy.
Such is the Under-Man’s unhappy lot. Now, what is his attitude toward that civilization from which he has so little to hope? What but instinctive opposition and discontent? These feelings, of course, vary all the way from dull, unreasoning dislike to flaming hatred and rebellion. But, in the last analysis, they are directed not merely against imperfections in the social order, but against the social order itself. This is a point which is rarely mentioned, and still more rarely understood. Yet it is the meat of the whole matter. We must realize clearly that the basic attitude of the Under-Man is an instinctive and natural revolt against civilization. The reform of abuses may diminish the intensity of social discontent. It may also diminish the numbers of the discontented, because social abuses precipitate into the depths many persons who do not really belong there; persons who were innately capable of achieving the social order if they had had a fair chance. But, excluding all such anomalous cases, there remains a vast residue of unadaptable, depreciated humanity, essentially uncivilizable and incorrigibly hostile to civilization. Every society engenders within itself hordes of savages and barbarians, ripe for revolt and ever ready to pour forth and destroy. (...)
Hating not merely civilization but also the civilized, the Under-Man wreaks his destructive fury on individuals as well as on institutions. And the superior are always his special targets. His philosophy of life is ever a levelling “equality,” and he tries to attain it by lopping off all heads which rise conspicuously above his own. The result of this “inverse selection” may be such a decrease of superior persons that the stock is permanently impoverished and cannot produce the talent and energy needed to repair the destruction which the revolutionary cataclysm has wrought. In such cases civilization has suffered a mortal wound and declines to a permanently lower plane.
Lothrop Stoddard
The Revolt Against Civilization
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