Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/612

592 for him, take the place of laws; and he is, in a very positive and practical sense, a law to himself. The very first and strongest impulse towards progressive civilization which might be expected to manifest itself among savages who had partaken of some preparatory facilities and advantages from it would be naturally a craving for, an impatience to enjoy, more. But when these primary helps are at once accepted, and any further advances are stolidly and resolutely rejected, we are prompted to seek an explanation of the well-known fact. For it is a matter of curious observation that some instinctive impulse or fixed principle in the nature of a savage will lead him to make a ready selection between such tokens or implements of civilization as at once win his approval and those which he rejects with indifference, disdain, or aversion.

The term “civilization” and the state which it describes are, both of them, wholly arbitrary. It involves a question not only of more or less in its conditions, but of varieties in its type. There are various forms of civilization, — the Oriental and the Western, the Asiatic and the European. The rudest boors may not be without its range; and the excesses of luxury, conventionality, and ceremony in courtly circles prompt the use of the word “artificial” for the most advanced range of society. To the refined and cultivated the word “civilization” includes the conditions and surroundings and appliances of a finished elegance. To humble peasants, with rude and frugal and uncouth ways, civilization is not only possible but actual, as it may centre in their own fine feelings and good customs, independently of any lack or roughness in their surroundings. How arbitrarily the terms required for defining a state of civilization are used, may be noticed by a traveller or sojourner as he passes from a city to a rural, and then a frontier life, then to a forest camp, and then to the wild woods. He will be apt to say, at an early stage of his course, that he has got beyond the limits of civilization, and that he has fallen