EARLY HISTORY OF MANKITTD 



153 



Iization of mankind is to be founc in the fact that we do 

 not now see civilization existing anywhere except in cer- 

 tain conditions altogether different from any we can sup- 

 pose to have existed at the commencement of our race. 

 To have civilization it is necessary that a people should be 

 numerous and closely placed ; that they should be fixed 

 in their habitations, and safe from violent external and 

 internal disturbance ; that a considerable number of them 

 should be exempt from the necessity of drudging for im- 

 mediate subsistence. Feeling themselves at ease about 

 the first necessities of their nature, including self-preser- 

 vation, and daily subjected to that intellectual excitement 

 which society produces, men begin to manifest what is 

 called civilization ; but never in rude and shelterless cir- 

 cumstances, or when widely scattered. Even men who 

 have been civilized, when, transferred to a wide wilder- 

 ness, where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the 

 first requisites of life, soon show a retrogression to barba- 

 rism ; witness the plains of Australia, as well as the back- 

 woods of Canada and the prairies of Texas. Fixity of res- 

 idence and thickening of population are perhaps the prime 

 requisites for civilization, and hence it will be found that 

 all civilizations as yet known have taken place in regions 

 physically limited. That of Egypt arose in a narrow 

 valley hemmed in by deserts on both sides. That ot 

 Greece took its rise in a small peninsula bounded on the 

 only land side by mountains. Etruria and Rome were 

 naturally limited regions. Civilizations have taken place 

 on both the eastern and western extremities of the elder 

 continent — China and Japan, on the one hand; Germany, 

 Holland, Britain, and France on the other — while the great 

 unmarked tract between contains nations decidedly less 

 advanced. Why is this but because the sea, in both 

 cases, has imposed limits to further migration, and caused 

 the population to settle and condense — the conditions 

 most necessary for social improvement.* Even the sim- 

 ple case of the Mandans affords an illustration of this 

 principle, for Mr. Catlin expressly, though without the 

 least regard to theory, attributes their improvement to 



*The problem of Chinese civilization, such as it is— so puzzling 

 when we consider that they are only, as will be presently seen, 

 the child race of mankind— is solved when we look to geographi- 

 cal position pi oducing fixity of residence and density of population 



