Civilisation advances by the striving and by the strife of individuals and combinations of men both within a state and between different states (tribes, cities, or countries), and leads up to success in the attainment by some of a high position of wealth and enlightenment. The greater the height to which the attainment has proceeded, the more difficult does it become to keep what is attained and to carry the process further, and for the latter object the inducement wanes. Then comes a time when the motive and the deterrent forces approach equality; whereupon, strife and striving being no more desired by the leaders, there sets in a period of peace and enjoyment. This, through excessive leisure and dissipation, brings on degeneration of the leaders, giving opportunity to those who were left behind to seek to pull them down, introducing a new kind of contention, in which the lower peoples or orders... are the aggressors, and which must bring about disintegration, until out of the turmoil the best elements again obtain the leadership.

Because of the need at first of contention, the virtues most dwelt upon... were the masculine virtues of fortitude, temperance, wisdom, and justice. But with the advent of the long peace and the coming into prominence of women, taking the place of stern virtues another set of mild ones come to the fore.... There is a general softening of morals as well as a smoothing of manners, - indeed a feminisation of them.

The distinction between the sexes tends to break down; for women, being made by men independent of men in particular, seem to be independent of men in general, and they come to make the mistake of thinking they are so and hence are equal to men; to which they are helped by the fact that many weak men are in a similar position of sham independence. This breaking down of old relations goes on with little hindrance during the long period of peace.

Soft living and want of hard work weakens the constitution and not only makes people more sensitive to pain but also less able to and willing to undergo it.

At first [morality] is instinctive, exercising a blind impulse for self-preservation and for race-preservation, the natural need for food and for love. Love brings several persons into close relationship with one another, and thereby primitive man learns the benefit of communion, and from the immediate family he extends fellowship to those whose progenitors were similarly bound together and who now live in the same neighborhood and join in the chase, - to the clan or gens, then to the tribe, and still later to the larger combinations of city and nation. Between these bodies, especially between the large cities and states, competition was so keen that each was exposed to great danger, and lived on perpetual guard, like animals. Hence there was extreme need, which most men are intelligent enough to perceive, for all the individuals in them to herd together in the closest union, and every one demanded from every other more attention to the whole than to himself. So necessary and universal was this collectivism, that it was taken for granted. Later, when the need for it begins to break down, and it has to be cultivated, it is called patriotism, though by now it covers rather the occupants of a territory than the descendants of a common father. When, further, one successful state has absorbed all the others within its reach, or adjoining states with natural boundaries have learnt the wisdom of peacefulness, then the teaching of patriotism sinks before that of cosmopolitanism, or of humanitarianism in general Every one is now allowed to pay more attention to his own interests, and allows every one else to do the same. There comes on an age of individualism, with the motto of "everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost."

By now the old intuitive morality has given way before a rationalising science of ethics, which, rejecting the old stand-bys as too rough, experiments with all sorts of new theories, and even with many which experience has long ago disproved.

Wherefore, with the breaking down of competition, there is less striving within each state as well as between states, until at last, with the diminution of production, especially if accompanied by exhaustion of the sources, a new period of hard times sets in, which generates strife again, but finds the more civilised peoples mostly unfit for it, and most likely to give way before the less civilised.

...with the coming on of hard times again, these doctrinaires, who have been unable to ward off the accumulating evils, and perhaps have mistakenly or dishonestly assisted their advent, are discredited: science and learning recede ; and now it may even happen that by men of deep emotional nature (the prophetic type) a new religion is introduced, which turns its back on the world, gives up the task of civilisation, and exalts the lower classes; and this - or in its default the old religion, revived and readjusted - soon degenerating into superstition, provides the basic ideas and customs for the last period at the bottom of the cycle, which shades insensibly into the beginning of a new one.

"pestilence and famine and wars and earthquakes must be regarded as a remedy, as though to prune the insolence of the human race." -Tertullian

These prunings did come to the provinces, which were too drained of their resources to be able to meet them or to recuperate from them when they passed over. The evil days did come to all, bringing wars which the people now coupled with famine and pestilence as intolerable scourges, no longer seeking occasion for fighting as their ancestors had done, but shuddering when it was forced upon them; for they stood on the defensive, with no glory or booty to gain, and their ease and comfort were at stake.

At Carthage, in Africa, while it was being taken by the Vandals, the Christian Romans were luxuriating in the theatres. We are dying, Salvianus remarked bitterly, but we laugh: hence everywhere tears follow our laughter. At Rome the utter idleness and vacancy of life, given up wholly to the chase after pleasure, is well depicted in the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus.... The delicacy and effeminacy of the city-bred men showed itself exteriorly in the use of fine raiment and ointments, in the shaving of the face and even the depilation of the whole body. At Carthage things were even worse. There and throughout Roman Africa, people were said to have all the vices in a superior degree. Many men became women in face, walk, and dress; and what Clement of Alexandria called "preposterous Venus" was practised openly. As for the women, matrons could not by their dress be distinguished from courtesans. Amou?; other things revived to-day, they dyed their hair yellow. In general, "luxury has deranged everything," a Christian Father complained : "men play the part of women, and women that of men, contrary to nature; women are at once wives and husbands; and their promiscuous lechery is a public institution."

the Roman soldiers under Gratian, at the end of the fourth century, discarded their cuirasses and helmets; and the heavy weapons of their ancestors, the short sword and the stout pilum, says Gibbon, "insensibly dropped from their feeble hands." At the same time the barbarians were increasing the weight of their armour, and even ordering it from the work-shops of the empire.

The Roman empire fell before the Germans in the north and the Saracens in the south, primarily because from being stronger than they it had become weaker, while its greater wealth and more favourable situation attracted them. It became weaker than they partly because the quality of its population had declined, while theirs was improving, and partly because the number of its population had decreased, while theirs was increasing. In one word, its breed was degenerating, while theirs was advancing.

to the only men who might have saved it, if such there were, it was not worth saving, and those men and women who benefited by it were incapable of saving it. Then all the Romans practically became equal again in subjection and poverty, and the natural inequality of the sexes re-appeared in a reign of violence.

Hard times, then, are ahead.... The struggle for existence will again become sharp and bitter, and there will again be wars and rumours of wars. Our women may weep at the prospect. Also our Mr. Doves and our Mr. Loves may tremble at it. But woe to that people which has not men that will stand up and fight without flinching. Those countries where the moral decay shall have gone deepest, where the proved stock shall have died out and given way to poor stock, where the greatest effeminisation of men shall have taken place (for the masculinisation of women will be no compensation), where the strong and the wise and the shrewd shall gain no more of wealth, power, and influence than the weak, silly, and incompetent, all being equal, - those will go to the wall. And when this fate shall have overtaken most of our western white men's countries, our cycle of civilisation will be completed.

First of all, we must not delude ourselves with the notion of the new era of peace. We should remember that it was the false prophets who cried "Peace, peace," where there was no peace. This is an often repeated cry raised by sloth and luxuriousness. Today it is a popular craze, fomented by women and plutocrats.... Our Saracens are indeed whetting their bayonets beyond the sea of the setting sun. We, lapped in luxury, may seek peace, but it is not permitted us to have everything we want, and there shall be no peace, because others will not allow it. So far as can be seen ahead, for centuries yet, there will always be fighting nations. Abundant incentives will soon be coming to them, and pretexts will not be lacking. Then woe to those countries which are not prepared.

War being still not only a possibility but a probability, and war on the most tremendous scale, and, when once started upon in earnest, in the most ferocious manner... it is most necessary for every nation that would remain one among the nations of the world, to see to it that there be no failure of its virility, and that the control of its affairs slip not out of the hands of its mentally and physically strong men. Hence especially two things with which we are now threatened we need with all our might to shun: socialism and feminism
The Climax of Civilization