SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 197 



sacerdotal rites and the abandonment of fetichism for monotlieism 

 become significant of intenser thought and expansion of intellect. 

 No nation ever practised grosser immorality, or what we of the pres- 

 ent day hold to be immorality, than Greece during the height of her 

 intellectual refinement. Peace is no more civilization than war, virtue 

 than vice, good than evil. All these are the incidents, not the essence, 

 of civilization. 



That wliich we commonly call civilization is not an adjunct or an 

 acquirement of man; it is neither a creed nor a polity, neither science, 

 nor philosophy, nor industry ; it is rather the measure of progressional 

 force implanted in man, the general fund of the nation's wealth, learn- 

 ing, and refinement, the storehouse of accumulated results, the essence 

 of all best worth preserving from the distillations of good and the dis- 

 tillations of evil. It is a something between men, no less than a some- 

 thin 0; within them : for neither an isolated man nor an association of 

 brutes can by any possibility become civilized. 



Further than this, civilization is not only the measure of aggre- 

 gated human experiences, but it is a living working principle. It is 

 a social transition ; a moving forward rather than an end attained ; 

 a developing vitality rather than a fixed entity ; it is the efl:brt or aim 

 at refinement rather than refinement itself; it is labor with a view to 

 improvement, and not improvement consummated, although it may be 

 and is the metre of such improvement. And this accords Avith latter- 

 day teachings. Although in its infancy, and, moreover, unable to ex- 

 plain things unexplainable, the science of evolution thus far has proved 

 that the normal condition of the human race, as well as that x)f physi- 

 cal Nature, is progressional ; that the plant in a congenial soil is not 

 more sure to grow than is humanity with favorable surroundings cer- 

 tain to advance. Nay, more, we speak of the progress of civilization 

 as of something that moves on of its own accord ; we may, if we will, 

 recognize in this onward movement the same principle of life mani- 

 fest in Nature and in the individual man. 



To things we do not understand we give names, with which, by 

 frequent use, we become familiar, when we fancy that we know all 

 about the things themselves. At the first glance, civilization appears 

 to be a simple matter : to be well clad, well housed, and well fed ; to 

 be intelligent and cultured, are better than nakedness and ignorance ; 

 therefore it is a good thino; a thins; that men do well to strive for 

 and that is all. But once attempt to go below this placid surface, 

 and investigate the nature of progressional phenomena, and we find 

 ourselves launched upon an eternity of ocean, and in pursuit of the 

 same occult Cause, which has been sought alike by philosophic and 

 barbaric of every age and nation ; we find ourselves face to face with 

 a great mystery, to which we stand in the same relation as to other 

 great mysteries, such as the oi'igin of things, the principle of life, the 

 soul-nature. When such questions are answered as, What is attrac- 



