SCIENCE. 



177 



to suppose that this contrast was widest and most abso- 

 lute when Man made his first appearance in the world. 

 It would be to assume that, for a most special and most 

 exceptional result, there was no special or exceptional 

 cause. It Man was, indeed, born with an innate pro- 

 pensity to maltreat his women, to murder his children, 

 to kill and eat his fellow, to turn the physical functions 

 of his nature into uses which are destructive to his race, 

 then, indeed, it would be literally true that 



" Dragons of the prime, 

 That tare each otner in their slime, 

 Were mellow music matched with him." 



It would be true, because there were no Dragons of 

 the prime, even as there are no reptiles of the present age 

 — there is no creature, however terrible or loathsome its 

 aspect may be to us, among all the myriads of created 

 things — which does not pass through all the stages of its 

 development with perfect accuracy to the end, or which, 

 having reached that end, fails to exhibit a corresponding 

 harmony between its propensities and its powers, or be- 

 tween both of these and the functions it has to perform 

 in the economy of Creation. So absolute and so perfect 

 is this harmony, that men have dreamed that somehow it 

 is self-caused, the need and the requirement of a given 

 function producing its appropriate organ, and the organ 

 again reacting on the requirement and the need. What- 

 ever may be the confusion of thought involved in this 

 idea, it is at least an emphatic testimony to the fact of an 

 order and an adjustment of the most pertect kind pre- 

 vailing in the work of what is called Evolution, and sug- 

 gesting some cause which is of necessary and universal 

 operation. The nearer, theretore, we may suppase the 

 origin of Man may have been to the origin of the brutes, 

 the nearer also would his condition have been to the ful- 

 fillment of a law which is of universal application among 

 them. Under the fulfillment of that law the higher gifts 

 and powers with which Man is endowed would have run 

 smoothly their appointed course, would have unfolded as 

 a bud unfolds to flower, — as a flower ripens into fruit, — 

 and would have presented results- absolutely different 

 from those which are actually presented either by the 

 savage or by what is called the civilized condition of 

 Mankind. 



And here it may be well to define, as clearly as we can, 

 what we mean by civilization, because the word is very 

 loosely used, and because the conceptions it involves are 

 necessanlv complex. Usually it is associated in our 

 minds with all that is highest in the social, moral, and 

 political condition of the Christian nations as repre- 

 sented in our own country and in our own time. Thus, 

 for example, respect for human life, and tenderness to- 

 wards every form of human suffering, is one of the most 

 marked features of the best modern culture. But 

 we know that this sentiment, and many others which are 

 related to it, were comparatively feeble in the case of 

 other societies which, nevertheless, we acknowledge to 

 have been very highly civilized. We must, therelore, 

 attach some more definite and restricted meaning to the 

 word, and we must agree to understand by civilization 

 only those characteristic conditions which have been 

 common to all peoples whom we have been accustomed 

 to recognize as among the governing nations of the 

 world. And when we come to consider what these char- 

 acteristics are, we find that though complex, they are 

 yet capable of being brought within a tolerably clear and 

 simple definition. The Latin word civis, from which our 

 word civilization comes, still represents the fundamental 

 conception which is involved. The citizen of an imperial 

 City, — the subject of an imperial Ruler,— the mem- 

 ber of a great State, — this was the condition which con- 

 stituted the Roman idea of the rank and status of civili- 

 zation. No doubt many things are involved in this con- 

 dition, and many other things have come to be associated 

 with it. But the essential elements of the civilized I 



condition, as thus defined or understood, can readily be 

 separated from others which are not essential. An ex- 

 tended knowledge of the useful arts, and the possession 

 of such a settled system of law and government as enables 

 men to live in great political communities, these are the 

 essential features of what we understand by civilization. 

 Other characteristics may co-exist with these, but noth- 

 ing more is necessarily involved in a proper understand- 

 ing, or even in the usual application of the word. In 

 particular, we cannnot affirm that a civilized condition 

 involves necessarily any of the higher moral elements of 

 character. It is true, indeed, that no great State, nor 

 even any great City, can have been founded and built up 

 without courage and patriotism. Accordingly these were 

 perhaps the most esteemed virtues of antiquity. But 

 these are by no means confined to civilized men, and are, 

 indeed, often conspicuous in the savage and in the bar- 

 barian. Courage, in at least its lower forms, is one of 

 the commonest of all qualities ; and patriotism, under 

 the like limitation, may almost be said to be an universal 

 passion. It is in itself simply a natural consequence of 

 the social instinct; common to Man and to many of the 

 lower animals — that instinct which leads us to identify 

 our own passions and our own sympathies with any 

 brotherhood to which we may belong, — whatever the as- 

 sociating tie of that brotherhood may be, — whether it be 

 morally good, bad, or indifferent. Like every other in- 

 stinct, it rises on its moral character in proportion as it is 

 guided by reason and by conscience, and in proportion 

 as, through these, it becomes identified with duty and 

 with self-devo'ion. But the idea of civilization is in it- 

 self separate from the idea of virtue. Men of great re- 

 finement of manners may be, and often are, exceedingly 

 corrupt. And what is true of individuals is true of com- 

 munities. The highest civilizations of the heathen world 

 were marked by a very low code of morals, and by a 

 practice even lower than their code. But the intellect 

 was thoroughly cultivated. Knowledge of the useful 

 arts, taste in the fine arts, and elaborate systems both of 

 civil polity and of military organization, combined to 

 make, first Greek, and then Roman, civilization, in such 

 matters the basis of our own. 



It is, therefore, only necessary to consider tor a mo- 

 ment these essential characteristics of what we mean by 

 civilization, to see that it is a conception altogether in- 

 congruous with any possible idea we can form of the 

 condition of our first parents, or, indeed, ol their offspring 

 for many generations. An extended knowledge of the 

 useful arts is of necessity the result of accumulation. 

 Highly organized systems of polity were both needless 

 and impossible before settled and populous communities 

 had arisen. Government was a simple matter when the 

 " world's gray fathers " exercised over their own children 

 the first and the most indisputable of all authorities. 



It is unfortunate that the two words which are habit- 

 ually used to indicate the condition opposite to that of 

 civilization are words both of which have come to mean 

 a great deal more than mere ignorance of the useful arts, 

 or a merely rudimentary state of law and government. 

 Those two words are barbarism and savagery. Each of 

 these has come to be associated with the idea of special 

 vices of character and of habit, such as cruelty and feroc- 

 ity. But "barbarian," in the classical language from 

 which it came to us, had no such meaning. It was ap- 

 plied indiscriminately by the Greeks to all nations, and 

 to all conditions of society other than their own, and did 

 not necessarily imply any fault or failure other than that 

 of not belonging to the race, and not partaking of the 

 culture which was then, in many respects at least, the 

 highest in the world. St. Paul refers to all men who 

 spoke in any tongue unknown to the Christian commu- 

 nities as men who were "to them barbarians." But he 

 did not associate this term with any moral faults, such 

 as violence or ferocity ; on the contrary, in his narrative 

 1 of his shipwreck on the coast of Malta, he calls the 



