156 



EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, by fear of 

 their more numerous enemies, to settle in a permanent 

 village, so fortified as to ensure their preservation. " By 

 this means," says he, " they have advanced further in the 

 arts of manufacture, and have supplied their lodges more 

 abundantly with the comforts, and even luxuries, of life 

 than any Indian nation I know of. The consequence of 

 this," he adds, " is that the tribe have taken many steps 

 ahead of other tribes in manners and refinements." These 

 conditions can only be regarded as natural laws affecting 

 civilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them 

 into account, to predict of any newly settled country its 

 social destiny. An island like Van Dieman's land might 

 fairly be expected to go on more rapidly to good manners 

 and sound institutions than a wide region like Australia. 

 The United States might be expected to make no great 

 way in civilization till they be fully peopled to the Pa- 

 cific ; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, 

 when that even has occurred, the greatest civilizations of 

 that vast territory will be found in the peninsula of Cali- 

 fornia and the narrow stripe of country beyond the Rocky 

 Mountains. This, however, is a digression. To return : 

 it is also necessary for a civilization that at least a portion 

 of the community should be placed above mean and en- 

 grossing toils. Man's mind becomes subdued, like the 

 dyer's hand, to that it works in. In rude and difficult 

 circumstances we unavoidably become rude, because then 

 only the inferior and harsher faculties of our nature are 

 called into existence. When, on the contrary, there is 

 leisure and abundance, the self-seeking and self-preserv- 

 ing instincts are allowed to rest, the gentler and more 

 generous sentiments are evoked, and man becomes that 

 courteous and chivalric being which he is found to be 

 among the upper classes of almost all civilized countries. 

 These, then, may be said to be the chief natural laws 

 concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization. If 

 I am right in so considering them, it will of course be 

 readily admitted that the earliest families of the human 

 race, although they might be simple and innocent, could 

 not have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing 

 that the conditions necessary for that state could not have 

 then existed. Let us only for a moment consider some 

 of the things requisite for their being civilized, namely, a 

 set of elegant homes ready furnished for their reception, 



