Page:Epochs of Civilization.djvu/6

 PREFACE.

There is no subject which cancerns civilized man more vitally than civilization, and yet, there is none abouL which his ignorance is more profound, and his talk more vague and incoherent, in this age of amazing intellectual ferment every science has been marching apace except sociology, especially that branch of it which deals with civilized man. It's much in the same state now as it was in the time of Comte who may be said to have created it. We have as yet no common standard of civilization, in this respect, we have not advanced much further than the ancients who lumped together all foreigners as barbarians. The educated Western world of the present day "practically settles a standard by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series, and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between these limits as they correspond more closely to savage or to