Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/209

Rh sacerdotal rites and the abandonment of fetichism for monotheism become significant of intenser thought and expansion of intellect. No nation ever practised grosser immorality, or what we of the present day hold to be immorality, than Greece during the height of her intellectual refinement. Peace is no more civilization than war, virtue than vice, good than evil. All these are the incidents, not the essence, of civilization.

That which we commonly call civilization is not an adjunct or an acquirement of man; it is neither a creed nor a polity, neither science, nor philosophy, nor industry; it is rather the measure of progressional force implanted in man, the general fund of the nation's wealth, learning, and refinement, the storehouse of accumulated results, the essence of all best worth preserving from the distillations of good and the distillations of evil. It is a something between men, no less than a something within them: for neither an isolated man nor an association of brutes can by any possibility become civilized.

Further than this, civilization is not only the measure of aggregated human experiences, but it is a living working principle. It is a social transition; a moving forward rather than an end attained; a developing vitality rather than a fixed entity; it is the effort or aim at refinement rather than refinement itself; it is labor with a view to improvement, and not improvement consummated, although it may be and is the metre of such improvement. And this accords with latter-day teachings. Although in its infancy, and, moreover, unable to explain things unexplainable, the science of evolution thus far has proved that the normal condition of the human race, as well as that of physical Nature, is progressional; that the plant in a congenial soil is not more sure to grow than is humanity with favorable surroundings certain to advance. Nay, more, we speak of the progress of civilization as of something that moves on of its own accord; we may, if we will, recognize in this onward movement the same principle of life manifest in Nature and in the individual man.

To things we do not understand we give names, with which, by frequent use, we become familiar, when we fancy that we know all about the things themselves. At the first glance, civilization appears to be a simple matter: to be well clad, well housed, and well fed; to be intelligent and cultured, are better than nakedness and ignorance; therefore it is a good thing a thins; that men do well to strive for—and that is all. But once attempt to go below this placid surface, and investigate the nature of progressional phenomena, and we find ourselves launched upon an eternity of ocean, and in pursuit of the same occult Cause, which has been sought alike by philosophic and barbaric of every age and nation; we find ourselves face to face with a great mystery, to which we stand in the same relation as to other great mysteries, such as the origin of things, the principle of life, the soul-nature. When such questions are answered as, What is