EDITOR'S TABLE. 



123 



gdifcor's gaMe. 



ARE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

 CIVILIZED? 



TO most persons such a question 

 will seem very absurd. Of 

 course, the American people are civ- 

 ilized. They are probably the most 

 civilized on the face of the earth, not 

 in a material sense merely but in an 

 immaterial sense. Where is there 

 more anxious discussion of ways and 

 means to elevate the condition of 

 the poor both morally and physic- 

 ally, and to alleviate the sufferings 

 of the unfortunate ? Where is there 

 so much money given to promote 

 the work of charity and education ? 

 But the sympathies of the American 

 people are not confined to their own 

 borders. When there is a great ca- 

 lamity abroad, like an Irish or Rus- 

 sian famine, or an Indian plague, no 

 purse is opened more quickly or 

 widely than theirs; and as to work 

 in the missionary field, have they 

 not contributed countless sums to 

 carry it on ? 



But these statements batray an in- 

 exact knowledge of the essence of 

 civilization. They show how the 

 mind is taken with the ostentatious 

 and dazzling, which may possess a 

 meaning quite different from that 

 attached to them, and how it fails to 

 grasp the more significant but hard- 

 ly less obvious phenomena of Ameri- 

 can social and political life. Charity 

 does not necessarily mean a high 

 civilization, for it may be born of 

 vanity, a conspicuous trait of the 

 barbarian, and be so shortsighted 

 as to be utterly destructive of the 

 best interests of the race. Nor does 

 education in the popular sense — that 

 is, the acquisition of facts and the 

 sharpening of the intellect — mean 

 civilization proper, for, as Mr. Mor- 



ley pointed out in his recent lecture 

 on Machiavelli, rare scholarship and 

 a high degree of aesthetic taste, such 

 as those of the Medici and their asso- 

 ciates, may be coupled with unspeak- 

 able baseness. The truly civilized 

 man does not refrain simply from 

 conduct that is clearly wrong, such 

 as robbery and murder, but he re- 

 frains from conduct that tends in in- 

 direct and obscure ways to injure his 

 fellows, depriving them in the long 

 run of their lives and their property. 

 His sympathies are lively in the high- 

 est degree. But they are rational. 

 While they respond to immediate 

 suffering, they respond more quickly 

 to the greater remote suffering that 

 unwise philanthropy always inflicts. 

 While, finally, he is resentful of in- 

 vasions of his own rights, he is in- 

 variably considerate and jealous of 

 the rights of others. 



When judged by this standard, 

 one that a few persons in every com- 

 munity have already reached, the 

 American people can hardly be said 

 to have attained civilization. In fact, 

 they are, in many respects, still on 

 the level of barbarians, deficient in 

 self-control, oblivious to the rights 

 and feelings of others, incapable of 

 grasping the less obvious but more 

 important results of a given line of 

 conduct, and even given over to ac- 

 tual lawlessness and crime. They 

 may shudder at Armenian massacres, 

 and feel that the Turk deserves the 

 solicitude of the hangman. They 

 may denounce with a Carlylean 

 wealth of epithet the Spanish cruel- 

 ties in Cuba, which are, in reality, 

 nothing more than the inevitable ac- 

 companiment of war, and clamor for 

 an intervention that will put an end 

 to them in the interest of humanity. 



