Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/208

196 condition, the first fashioning of a tool, the first attempt ta cover nakedness and wall out the wind, if this endeavor springs from intellect and not from instinct, is the first step to civilization. Hence the modern savage is not the prehistoric or primitive man; nor is it among the barbarous nations of to-day that we must look for the rudest barbarism; if proof be wanting, there are the unground edges of the stone implements of Denmark, which denote an order of art lower than that indicated by any relic of the Stone age in America.

Often is the question asked. What is civilization? and the answer comes, The act of civilizing; the state of being civilized. What is the act of civilizing? To reclaim from a savage or barbarous state; to educate; to refine. What is a savage or barbarous state? A wild, uncultivated state; a state of Nature. Thus far the dictionaries. The term civilization, then, popularly implies both the transition from a natural to an artificial state, and the artificial condition attained. The derivation of the word civilization, from civis, citizen, civitas, city, and originally from coetus, union, seems to indicate that culture which in feudal times distinguished the occupants of cities from the ill-mannered boors of the country. The word savage, on the other hand, from silva, a wood, points to man primeval, silvestres homines, men of the forest, not necessarily ferocious or brutal, but children of Nature. From these simple beginnings both words have gradually acquired a broader significance, until by one is understood a state of comfort, intelligence, and refinement, and by the other humanity wild and beastly.

Guizot defines civilization as "an improved condition of man resulting from the establishment of social order in place of the individual independence and lawlessness of the savage or barbarous life;" Buckle as "the triumph of mind over external agents;" Virey as "the development more or less absolute of the moral and intellectual faculties of man united in society;" Burke as the exponent of two principles, "the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." "Whatever be the characteristics of a gentleman and the spirit of religion." "Whatever be the characteristics of what we call savage life," says John Stuart Mill, "the contrary of these, or the qualities which society puts on as it throws off these, constitute civilization;" and, remarks Emerson, "a nation that has no clothing, no iron, no alphabet, no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, we call barbarous."

Men talk of civilization, and call it liberty, religion, government, morality. Now, liberty is no more a sign of civilization than tyranny; for the lowest savages are the least governed of all people. Civilized liberty, it is true, marks a more advanced stage than savage liberty, but between these two extremes of liberty there is a necessary age of tyranny, no less significant of an advance on primitive liberty than is constitutional liberty an advance on tyranny. Nor is religion civilization, except in so far as the form and machinery of