332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



continuous, and it is therefore necessary that all nations should in turn 

 relieve each other, according to their resources, in this attentive sen- 

 tinelship of the outposts of the arctic world. 



-- 



SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION.^ 



By HUBERT H. B NCEOFT, 



rr^HE obvious necessity of association as a primary condition of de- 

 -JL velopraent leaves little to be said on tliat subject. To the mani- 

 festation of this soul of progress a body social is requisite, as, without 

 an individual body, there can be no manifestation of an individual soul. 

 This body social, like the body individual, is composed of numberless 

 organs, each having its special functions to j^erform, each acting on 

 the others, and all under the general government of the progressional 

 idea. Civilization is not an individual attribute, and, though the 

 atom, man, may be charged with stored energy, yet progress consti- 

 tutes no part of individual nature; it is something that lies between 

 men and not within them ; it belongs to society and not to the indi- 

 vidual; man, the molecule of society, isolate, is inert and forceless. 

 The isolated man, as I have said, never can become cultivated, never 

 can form a language, does not possess in its fullness the faculty of 

 abstraction, nor can his mind enter the realm of higher thought. All 

 those characteristics which distinguish mankind from animal-kind 

 become almost inoperative. Without association, there is no speech, 

 for speech is but the conductor of thought between two or more indi- 

 viduals ; without words abstract thought cannot flow, for words, or 

 some other form of expression, are the channels of thought, and with 

 the absence of words the fountain of thought is, in a measure, sealed. 



At the very threshold of progress social crystallization sets in ; 

 something there is in every man that draws him to other men. In the 

 relationship of the sexes, this principle of human attraction reaches its 

 height, where the husband and wife, as it were, coalesce, like the union 

 of one drop of water with another, forming one globule. As uncon- 

 sciously and as positively are men constrained to band together into 

 societies as are particles forced to unite and form crystals. And herein 

 is a law as palpable and as fixed as any law in Nature ; a law which, 

 if unfulfilled, would result in the extermination of the race. But the 

 law of human attraction is not perfect, does not fulfill its purpose apart 

 from the law of human repulsion, for, as we have seen, until war, and 

 despotism, and superstition, and other dire evils come, there is no 

 progress. Solitude is insupportable even beasts will not live alone ; 

 and men are more dependent on each other than beasts. Solitude 



> From vol. ii., "Native Races of the Pacific States. 



