Politics & Power Quote by Kelly Millar

Millar’s line refuses the comforting myth that “civilization” is some natural trait that blooms automatically inside a chosen people. By rejecting “spontaneous generation,” he’s targeting a classic nationalist fantasy: the idea that greatness is self-made, pure, and permanent. Instead, he offers a harsher, more contingent picture. Civilization is a torch - not a birthright, not a gene, not a divine stamp - and torches can be carried forward, dropped, stolen, relit, or deliberately extinguished.

The intent is corrective and political. Millar is writing against racial essentialism, the kind that turns cultural achievement into evidence of biological hierarchy. Notice the phrasing “with any race or nation known to history”: it preempts exceptions, closing the loophole of “but this one people…” That’s not just historical humility; it’s an argument about responsibility. If civilization is inherited labor, then every generation’s job is maintenance, transmission, and stewardship. You don’t get to preen over past triumphs; you have to keep the flame alive.

The subtext also nudges at empire and appropriation. “Handed down from race to race” can sound generous, but history’s handoffs are rarely polite. Knowledge moves through trade, translation, migration, conquest, and cultural borrowing. By framing civilization as portable rather than rooted, Millar quietly normalizes cross-pollination - and punctures the anxiety that influence equals contamination. The torch metaphor flatters continuity while admitting fragility: progress is real, but never guaranteed.