196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fortlcss condition, the first fashioning of a tool, the first attempt ta 

 cover nakedness and wall out the wind, if this endeavor springs from 

 intellect and not from instinct, is the first step to civilization. Hence 

 the modern savage is not the j^rehistoric or primitive man ; nor is it 

 among the barbarous nations of to-day that we must look for the 

 rudest barbarism ; if proof be wanting, there are the unground edges 

 of the stone implements of Denmark, which denote an order of art 

 lower than that indicated by any relic of the Stone age in America. 



Often is the question asked. What is civilization ? and the answer 

 comes, The act of civilizing ; the state of being civilized. What is 

 the act of civilizing ? To reclaim from a savage or barbarous state; 

 to educate ; to refine. What is a savage or barbarous state? A wild, 

 i;ncultivated state ; a state of Xature. Thus far the dictionaries. The 

 term civilization, then, popularly implies both the transition from a 

 natural to an artificial state, and the artificial condition attained. The 

 derivation of the word civilization, from e/y/s, citizen, civitas, city, 

 and originally from coetus, union, seems to indicate that culture which 

 in feudal times distinguished the occupants of cities from the ill-man- 

 nered boors of the country. The word savage, on the other hand, from 

 silva, a wood, points to man primeval, silvestres homines, men of the 

 forest, not necessarily ferocious or brutal, but children of Nature. 

 From these simple beginnings both words have gradually acquired a 

 broader significance, until by one is understood a state of comfort, 

 intelligence, and refinement, and by the other humanity wild and 

 beastly. 



Guizot defines civilization as " an improved condition of man re- 

 sulting from the establishment of social order in j^lace of the individual 

 independence and lawlessness of the savage or barbarous life ; " Buckle 

 as " the triumph of mind over external agents ; " Virey as " the de- 

 velopment more or less absolute of the moral and intellectual facul- 

 ties of man united in society ; " Burke as the exponent of two princi- 

 ples, "the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." " What- 

 ever be the characteristics of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." 

 " Whatever be the characteristics of what we call savage life," says 

 John Stuart Mill, " the contrary of these, or the qualities which so- 

 ciety puts on as it throws off these, constitute civilization;" and, re- 

 marks Emerson, " a nation that has no clothing, no iron, no alphabet, 

 no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call barbarous." 



Men talk of civilization, and call it liberty, religion, government, 

 morality. Xow, liberty is no more a sign of civilization than tyran- 

 ny ; for the lowest savages are the least governed of all people. Civ- 

 ilized liberty, it is true, marks a more advanced stage than savage 

 liberty, but between these two extremes of liberty there is a neces- 

 sary age of tyranny, no less significant of an advance on primitive 

 liberty than is constitutional liberty an advance on tyranny. Nor is 

 religion civilization, except in so far as the form and machinery of 



