_Why Did the Civilization of America Fail?_--There is a popular theory that the normal advancement of the Indian races of America was arrested or destroyed by the coming of the Europeans. Undoubtedly the contact of the higher civilization with the latter had much to do with the hastening of the decay of the former. The civilizations were so widely apart that it was not easy for the primitive or retarded race to adopt the civilization of the more advanced. But when it is assumed that if the Europeans had never come to the American continent, native tribes and races would eventually, of their own initiative, develop a high state of civilization, such an assumption is not well founded, because at the time of the coming of the Europeans there was no great show of progress. It seems as if no branch of the race could go forward very far without being destroyed by more warlike tribes. Or, if let alone, they seemed to develop a stationary civilization, reaching their limit, beyond which they could not go. As the races of Europe by specialization along certain lines became inadaptable to new conditions and passed away to give place to others, so it appears that this was characteristic of the civilization of America. Evidently the prehistoric Peruvians, Mexicans, Pueblos, and Mound-Builders had elements of civilization greater than the living warring Indian tribes which came in contact with the early European settlers in America. It may not be wise to enter a plea that all tribes and races have their infancy, youth, age, and decay, with extinction as their final lot, but it has been repeated so often in the history of the human race that one may assume it to be almost, if not quite, universal. The momentum of racial power gained by biological heredity and social achievement, reaches its limit when it can no longer adapt itself to new conditions, with the final end and inevitable result of extinction. The Nordic race, with all of its vigor and persistency, has {201} had a long and continuous life on account of its roving disposition and its perpetual contact with new conditions of its own choice. It has always had power to overcome, and its vigor has kept it exploiting and inventing and borrowing of others the elements of civilization, which have continually forced it forward. When it, too, reaches a state when it cannot adapt itself to new conditions, perhaps it will give way to some other branch of the human race, which, gathering new strength or new vigor from sources not available to the Nordic, will be able to overpower it; but the development of science and art with the power over nature, is greater in this race than in any other, and the maladies which destroy racial life are less marked than in other races. It would seem, then, that it still has great power of continuance and through science can adapt itself to nature and live on.