THE PROCESS OF EVOCATION 129

historical order, how are we to explain a correlation which is apparently
an historical reality and yet does not appear to serve any useful purpose
in itself and is certainly not deliberately intended ? The explanation is
perhaps to be found in the consideration that the living party to the
encounter is apt to be still in process of growth during the time when it is
making its successive renaissances of divers elements drawn from a dead
antecedent society's past life, whereas, ex hypothesi, the dead society
whose experiences and achievements are thus being laid under contri-
bution one after another will have passed through all the successive
stages of a disintegration into which it will have fallen as a result of
having had its growth cut short by a breakdown. If we may assume that,
in the living society's memory, the traditions of the archaic stage of the
dead antecedent society's growth will have left no abiding impression,
then, of all the phases of the dead society's history that the living society
does still recollect, the last phase of its disintegration, in which it will
have entered into *a second childhood', will be the phase which will
display the closest affinity with the infantile first phase of the living
society's growth, whereas the adult last phase of the dead society's
growth, in which it was standing at its zenith on the eve of its break-
down, will be the last phase of its history to become intelligible to its
living successor, though it will be the oldest phase of the dead civiliza-
tion's history that is still within the living society's ken. The living
society will not begin to become capable of understanding or appreciat-
ing this adult phase of its dead predecessor's history until, in the course
of its own growth, it has passed out of childhood through adolescence
into a corresponding state of spiritual maturity; and, whatever may be
the potential fruitfulness of some other individual's or society's recorded
experience, this experience cannot become of any practical use to us
unless we have learnt to understand its significance and appreciate its
value. ,

Even a talent that we have inherited as our birthright will remain
barren so long as we ourselves remain incapable of turning it to account.
Just as the potential agricultural wealth of North America was inacces-
sible to native hunting peoples who lacked the iron axes needed for
rutting down the forests,1 or as the potential agricultural wealth of the
;lay soils of Britain was inaccessible to husbandmen who had not yet
nastered the technique of deep ploughing,2 so the spiritual experience
>f social maturity is inaccessible to a society that is still spiritually
uvenile. And, since a treasure, so long as it remains inaccessible, is for
>ractical purposes non-existent, it is not, after all, surprising that a
iving civilization which is still in its own childhood should neglect the
nature achievements of a dead predecessor's manhood, and should
tart its course of successive renaissances by exploiting the senile pro-
ucts of a subsequent 'second childhood* which even a child can already
omprehend and, in consequence, already utilize. The growing civiliza-
on will have to be increased in wisdom and stature3 to an altitude of
pproximate parity with its dead predecessor's altitude at its zenith
efore it can profitably bring out of its mental storehouse those choice

i See II. ii. 278-8. * See VIII. viii. 38-39. 3 Luke ii. 53.

B 2915.IX F