Civilization 



CleanlineMs 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



102 



known, but who, through emigration to 

 ocean islands and separation from their 

 kinsfolk, lost the use of it and fell back into 

 the Stone Age. It is necessary for the stu- 

 dent to be alive to the importance of decline 

 in civilization. TYLOB Anthropology, ch. 1, 

 p. 19. (A., 1899.) 



505. CIVILIZATION FAILS TO TEACH 

 HUMANITY Extermination of Animals Our 

 Domestic Species Spared by Ancient Bar- 

 barians. It is sad to reflect that all our 

 domestic animals have descended to us from 

 those ancient times which we are accus- 

 tomed to regard as dark or barbarous, while 

 the effect of our modern so-called humane 

 civilization has been purely destructive to 

 animal life. Not one type do we rescue 

 from the carnage going on at an ever-in- 

 creasing rate over all the globe. To Aus- 

 tralia and America, North and South, we 

 look in vain for new domestic species, while 

 even from Africa, with its numerous fine 

 mammalian forms, and where England has 

 been the conquering colonizing power for 

 nearly a century, we take nothing. Even 

 the sterling qualities of the elephant, the 

 unique beauty of the zebra, appeal to us in 

 vain. We are only teaching the tribes of 

 that vast continent to exterminate a hun- 

 dred noble species they would not tame. 

 With grief and shame, even with dismay, we 

 call to mind that our country is now a 

 stupendous manufactory of destructive en- 

 gines, which we are rapidly placing in the 

 hands of all the savage and semi-savage 

 peoples of the earth, thus insuring the 

 speedy destruction of all the finest types in 

 the animal kingdom. HUDSON Naturalist 

 in La Plata, ch. 17, p. 233. (C. & H., 1895.) 



506. CIVILIZATION FOUNDED UPON 

 HOME Influence of a Fixed Abode. What a 

 simple fact and what a simple idea a house 

 seems to be. To one it is a possession, to 

 another wealth; to one nothing but prop- 

 erty, to another only an investment. And 

 yet with the house a new form was given to 

 the entire world's history. There have been 

 houseless peoples capable of making inroads 

 into the world's history with elementary 

 power, that have won great battles, over- 

 thrown empires and destroyed them. But 

 they were not able to accomplish anything 

 lasting until the wild riders and hunters 

 from the forest and the wilderness built for 

 themselves a hearth, or made themselves at 

 home in what they had conquered. It was 

 first with the home that the general civili- 

 zation began, with the domestic life of the 

 individual, the civilization of the individual. 

 STEIN Die Frau auf dem Gebiete der Na- 

 tipnalokonomie. A Lecture. (Translated 

 for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



507. CIVILIZATION IN NORTHERN 

 LANDS Diversity and Interest of Northern 

 Life Abundance of Tropics Favors Indo- 

 lence and Improvidence Possible Future of 

 Humanity under the Equator. During this 

 last night on the Para River a crowd of un- 



usual thoughts occupied my mind. Recol- 

 lections of English climate, scenery, and 

 modes of life came to me with a vividness I 

 had never before experienced during the 

 eleven years of my absence. Pictures of 

 startling clearness rose up of the gloomy 

 winters, the long gray twilights, murky at- 

 mosphere, elongated shadows, chilly springs, 

 and sloppy summers; of factory chimneys 

 and crowds of grimy operatives, rung to 

 work in early morning by factory bells ; of 

 union workhouses, confined rooms, artificial 

 cares, and slavish conventionalities. To live 

 again amid these dull scenes I was quitting 

 a country of perpetual summer, where my 

 life had been spent, like that of three- 

 fourths of the people, in gipsy fashion, on 

 the endless streams or in the boundless for- 

 ests. I was leaving the equator, where the 

 well-balanced forces of Nature maintained a 

 land-surface and climate that seemed to be 

 typical of mundane order and beauty, to sail 

 toward the north pole, where lay my home 

 under crepuscular skies somewhere about 

 fifty-two degrees of latitude. It was natural 

 to feel a little dismayed at the prospect of 

 so great a change; but now, after three 

 years of renewed experience of England, I 

 find how incomparably superior is civilized 

 life, where feelings, tastes, and intellect find 

 abundant nourishment, to the spiritual ste- 

 rility of half-savage existence, even tho it 

 be passed in the Garden of Eden. What has 

 struck me powerfully is the immeasurably 

 greater diversity and interest of human 

 character and social conditions in a single 

 civilized nation than in equatorial South 

 America, where three distinct races of men 

 live together. The superiority of the bleak 

 north to tropical regions, however, is only 

 in their social aspect; for I hold to the 

 opinion that, altho humanity can reach an 

 advanced state of culture only by battling 

 with the inclemencies of Nature in high lati- 

 tudes, it is under the equator alone that the 

 perfect race of the future will attain to com- 

 plete fruition of man's beautiful heritage, 

 the earth. BATES The Naturalist on the 

 River Amazon, ch. 13, p. 773. (Hum., 1880.) 



508. CIVILIZATION, IN WHAT DOES 

 IT CONSIST ? An extended knowledge of 

 the useful arts, and the possession of such a 

 settled system of law and government as en- 

 ables men to live in great political commu- 

 nities, these are the essential features of 

 what we understand by civilization. 

 ARGYLL Unity of Nature, ch. 10, p. 225. 

 (Burt.) 



509. CIVILIZATION NOT COMPLETED 

 BY MATERIAL GOOD Spiritual Advance 

 Its Goal The Body the Vehicle for the 

 Soul. If we can imagine a future time 

 when warfare and crime shall have been 

 done away with forever, when disease shall 

 have been for the most part curbed, and 

 when every human being by moderate labor 

 can secure ample food and shelter, we can 

 also see that in such a state of things the 



