24 
he has been taught and practised better things. By his knowledge and 
reason and manifest superiority, he can subdue the earth, make e very 
elements subserve him, and has dominion over all other creatures. An 
vet he may, and often does, sink below the very brutes, through folly, 
Lemperanceand evil lusts. He wars with his own spemes commas 
crimes so abominable that other men cannot name or thmk of them wit - 
out a shudder ; and he brings upon himself diseases and inflictions utterly 
unknown to the lower order of creatures that live instinctively under 
na ^If meTpoint to civilization as the means of undoing these lamentable 
evils in man's condition, they must be reminded that civilization (in the 
ordinarv sense) affords no effectual remedy. While it advances man in , 
it often ii the means also of their greater debasement. Our very present 
anxieties as to man's condition, have all been intensified, from the evils 
that have obtruded themselves upon us on every side, in the very midst 
of all our enlightenment and material civilization. Besides we must re- 
member that “ civilization may not only advance but may become stationary 
or even retrograde, and that moral amelioration by no means accompanies 
all material development ; that civilizations which once existed have after- 
wards disappeared ; that nations which have risen may fall. 
42 This brine's ns once more to the consideration of the dif- 
ference between “moral and material civilization. We are accus- 
tomed to the Latin poet's words 
“ Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes 
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.” 
But there is a reflex interpretation of this sentiment that runs 
in our heads, as if it meant that it is the fine arts that soften the 
manners. For instance, a writer in the Times a few weeks ago 
lamented the absence in modern Greece of ‘'the ingenuous arts 
which mollify manners and do not suffer them to be savage. And 
there is some truth in this way of putting it,— there is a humanizing 
reaction of arts and of outward refinement upon men s minds and 
manners ; but it is a reaction. The direct influence is the othe 
wav The gentle and refined soul first gives rise to the arts, and 
in fact creates them. Yet by habit we usually speak as if civiliza- 
tion only meant an artificial condition of things or an acquaintance 
more or less with the arts and conveniences of life it will be 
seen that this idea runs through the whole of Sir John Lubboc^ 
argument. It is, however, quite a mistake ; lor, of course, in t 
sense, the primitive man, however perfect, nay the very angels 
themselves, could not be regarded as “ civilized. But the woid 
“civilization” has a proper and historical sense, besides this 
merely vulgar and conventional signification. It was primarily 
* Fresh Springs of Truth , pp. 241, 242, and 243. 
