CH. XIX.] ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS. 2ia 



anity. Though they sometimes succeed in procuring temporary 

 verbal acceptance for Christian ideas, they almost always fail 

 in effecting a genesis of Christian feeling, and such civiliza- 

 tion as they are able to produce is apt to be both superficial 

 and transient. This is simply because civilization is not a 

 mere process of external acquirement, but is a process of slow 

 adaptation or breeding, which requires many generations to 

 eftect a permanent modification of character. The Fiji, whose 

 language contains no words expressive of the higher emotions 

 or the more exalted principles of action, cannot be made 

 into a Christian. You may cover him with a very little of 

 the external varnish of civilization ; you may astonish him 

 into accepting a few formulas, to him quite unintelligible, 

 concerning the relations of man to his Creator ; but, after all, 

 he remains a savage still, in feelings and in habits of thought, 

 bloodthirsty, treacherous and superstitious, with a keen 

 appetite for human flesh. Or suppose you could resuscitate 

 a mediseval baron — one of those innumerable freebooters 

 who lived entrenched in the romantic castles of the Ehine 

 and levied blackmail on every luckless wayfarer — suppose 

 you could resuscitate such a man, and were to endeavour to 

 expound to him in the simplest language a few of the most 

 self-evident modern axioms concerning political rights and 

 the interdependence of human interests : would he under- 

 stand you ? By no means. So vast would be the difference 

 in mental habit, that in all probability he could not even 

 argue with you. " Hence " — to continue with Mr. Spencer — 

 " though advanced ideas when once established act upon 

 society and aid its further advance ; yet the establishment of 

 such ideas depends on the fitness of the society for receiving 

 them. Practically, the popular character and the scciai 

 state determine what ideas shall be current ; instead of the 

 current ideas determining the social state and the character. 

 the modification of men's moral natures, caused by the 



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