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CIVILIZATION
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CIVILIZATION . The word " civilization " is an obvious derivative of the See also:Lat. civis, a See also:citizen, and See also:civilis, pertaining to a citizen. Etymologically speaking, then, it would be putting no undue See also:strain upon the word to interpret it as having to do with the entire See also:period of human progress since mankind attained sufficient intelligence and social unity to develop a See also:system of See also:government. But in practice " civilization " is usually interpreted in a somewhat narrower sense, as having application solely to the most See also:recent and comparatively brief period of See also:time that has elapsed since the most highly See also:developed races of men have used systems of See also:writing. This restricted usage. is probably explicable, in See also:part at least, by the fact that the word, though distinctly See also:modern in origin, is nevertheless older than the See also:interpretation of social See also:evolution that now finds universal See also:acceptance. Only very recently has it come to be understood that See also:primitive See also:societies vastly antedating the See also:historical period had attained relatively high stages of development and fixity, socially and politically. Now that this is understood, however, nothing but an arbitrary and highly inconvenient restriction of meanings can prevent us from speaking of the citizens of these See also:early societies as having attained certain stages of civilization. It will be convenient, then, in outlining the successive stages of human progress here, to include under the comprehensive See also:term " civilization " those See also:long earlier periods of " savagery " and " barbarism " as well as the more recent period of higher development to which the word " civilization " is sometimes restricted.
Adequate See also:proof that civilization as we now know it is the result of a long, slow See also:process of evolution was :put forward not
long after the See also:middle of the 19th See also:century by the Savagery students of palaeontology and of prehistoric archaeoba togY• A recognition of the fact that primitive See also:man
barbarism.
used implements of chipped See also:flint, of polished See also: To some extent it has been possible to do so, largely through the efforts of ethnologists who have studied the social conditions of existing races of savages. A recognition of the principle that, broadly speaking, progress has everywhere been achieved along the same lines and through the same sequence of changes, makes it possible to interpret the past See also:history of the civilized races of to-See also:day in the See also:light of the See also:present-day conditions of other races that are still existing under social and See also:political conditions of a more primitive type. Such races as the Maoris and the See also:American See also:Indians have furnished invaluable See also:information to the student of social evolution; and the knowledge thus gained has been extended and fortified by the ever-expanding researches of the palaeontologist and archaeologist. Thus it has become possible to present with some confidence a picture showing the successive stages of human development during the long dark period when our prehistoric ancestor was advancing along the toilsome and tortuous but on the whole always uprising path from lowest savagery to the See also:stage of relative enlightenment at which we find him at the so-called "dawnings of history." That he was for long ages a See also:savage before he attained sufficient culture to be termed, in modern phraseology, a See also:barbarian, admits of no question. Equally little in doubt is it that other long ages of barbarism preceded the final ascent to civilization. The precise period of time covered by these successive " Ages " is of course only conjectural; but something like one See also:hundred thousand years may perhaps be taken as a safe minimal estimate. At the beginning of this long period, the most advanced See also:race of men must be thought of as a promiscuous See also:company of pre-troglodytic mammals, at least partially arboreal in See also:habit, living on uncooked fruits and vegetables, and possessed of no arts and crafts whatever—nor even of the know-ledge of the rudest See also:implement. At the end of the period, there emerges into the more or less clear light of history a large-brained being, living in houses of elaborate construction, supplying himself with See also:divers luxuries through the aid of a multitude of elaborate handicrafts, associated with his See also:fellows under the sway of highly organized governments, and satisfying aesthetic needs through the practice of pictorial and See also:literary arts of a high See also:order. How was this amazing transformation brought about? If an See also:answer can be found to that query, we shall have a See also:clue to all human progress, not only during the prehistoric but also during the historic periods; for we may well believe that recent progress has not departed from the See also:scheme of development impressed on humanity during that long See also:apprenticeship. Ethnologists believe that an answer can be found. They believe that the See also:metamorphosis from beast-like savage to cultured civilian may be proximally explained (certain potentialities and attributes of the See also:species being taken for granted) as the result of accumulated changes that found their initial impulses in a See also:half-dozen or so of See also:practical inventions. Stated thus, the explanation seems absurdly See also:simple. Confessedly it supplies only a proximal, not a final, See also:analysis of the forces impelling mankind along the pathway of progress. But it has the merit of tangibility; it presents certain highly important facts of human history vividly: and it furnishes a definite and fairly satisfactory basis for marking successive stages of incipient civilization. In outlining the story of primitive man's See also:advancement, upon such a basis, we may follow the scheme of one of the most philosophical of ethnologists, See also:Lewis H. See also:Morgan, who made a provisional analysis of the prehistoric period that still remains among the most satisfactory attempts in this direction. " Morgan divides the entire See also:epoch of man's progress from bestiality to civilization into six successive periods, which he names respectively the Older, Middle and Later periods of Savagery, and the Older, Middle and Later periods of Barbarism. See also:Crucial developments. The first of these periods, when mankind was in the See also:lower status of savagery, comprises the epoch when articulate speech speech. was being developed. Our ancestors of this epoch inhabited a necessarily restricted tropical territory, and subsisted upon raw nuts and fruits. .They had no know-ledge of the uses of See also:fire. All existing races of men had advanced beyond this See also:condition before the opening of the historical period. The Middle Period of Savagery began with a knowledge of the uses of fire. This wonderful See also:discovery enabled the developing Pire race to extend its See also:habitat almost indefinitely, and to include flesh, and in particular See also:fish, in its See also:regular See also:dietary. Man could now leave the forests, and wander along the shores and See also:rivers, migrating to climates less enervating than those to which he had previously been confined. Doubtless he became an See also:expert See also:fisher, but he was as yet poorly equipped for See also:hunting, being provided, probably, with no weapon more formidable than a crude See also:hatchet and a roughly fashioned See also:spear. The primitive races of See also:Australia and See also:Polynesia had not advanced beyond this middle status of savagery when they were discovered a few generations ago. It is obvious, then, that in dealing with the further progress of nascent civilization we have to do with certain favoured portions of the race, which sought out new territories and developed new capacities while many tribes of their quondam peers remained static and hence by comparison seemed to See also:retrograde. The next See also:great epochal discovery, in virtue of which a portion of the race advanced to the Upper Status of Savagery, was that of the See also:bow and arrow,—a truly wonderful implement. Bow and The possessor of this See also:device could bring down the arrow. fleetest See also:animal and could defend himself against the most predatory. He could provide himself not only with See also:food but with materials for clothing and for See also:tent-making, and thus could migrate at will back from the seas and large rivers, and far into inhospitable but invigorating temperate and sub-See also:Arctic regions. The See also:meat See also:diet, now for the first time freely available, probably contributed, along with the stimulating See also:climate, to increase the See also:physical vigour and courage of this highest savage, thus urging him along the paths of progress. Nevertheless many tribes came thus far and no further, as See also:witness the Athapascans of the See also:Hudson's See also:Bay Territory and the Indians of the valley of the See also:Columbia. We now come to the marvellous discovery that enabled our ancestor to make such advances upon the social conditions of his forbears as to entitle him, in the estimate of his remote descendants, to be considered as putting savagery behind him and as entering upon the Lower Status of Barbarism. The discovery in question had to do with the practice of the See also:art of making pottery (see See also:CERAMICS). Hitherto man had been possessed of no permanent utensils that could withstand the See also:action of fire. He could not readily See also:boil See also:water except by some such cumbersome method as the dropping of heated stones into a wooden or skin receptacle. The effect upon his dietary of having at See also:hand earthen vessels in which meat and herbs could be boiled over a fire must have been momentous. Various meats and many vegetables become highly palatable when boiled that are almost or quite inedible when merely roasted before a fire. Bones, sinews and even hides may be made to give up a modicum of nutriment in this way; and doubtless barbaric man, before whom See also:starvation always loomed threateningly, found the crude pot an almost perennial See also:refuge. And of course its use as a cooking utensil was only one of many ways in which the newly discovered mechanism exerted a civilizing See also:influence. The next great progressive See also:movement, which carried man into the Middle Status of Barbarism, is associated with the domestication of animals in the Eastern hemisphere, Domestic animals. and with the use of See also:irrigation in cultivating the See also:soil and of See also:adobe bricks and stone in See also:architecture in the Western hemisphere. The See also:dog was probably the first animal to be domesticated, but the See also:sheep, the ox, the See also:camel and the See also:horse were doubtless added in relatively rapid See also:succession, so soon as the See also:idea that See also:captive animals could be of service had been clearly conceived. Man now became a herdsman, no longer dependent for food upon the See also:precarious See also:chase of See also:wild animals. See also:Milk, procurable at all seasons, made a highly important addition to his dietary. With the aid of camel and horse he could See also:traverse wide areas hitherto impassable, and come in contact with distant peoples. Thus See also:commerce came to See also:play an extended role in the dissemination of both commodities and ideas. In particular the nascent civilization of the Mediterranean region See also:fell See also:heir to numerous products of farther See also:Asia,—gums, spices, See also:oils, and most important of all, the cereals. The cultivation of the latter gave the See also:finishing See also:touch to a comprehensive and varied diet, while emphasizing the value of a fixed See also:abode. For the first time it now became possible for large See also:numbers of See also:people to See also:form localized communities. A natural consequence was the elaboration of political systems, which, however, proceeded along lines already suggested by the experience of earlier epochs. All this tended to establish and emphasize the idea of See also:nationality, based primarily on See also:blood-relationship; and at the same time to develop within the community itself the idea of See also:property, —that is to say, of valuable or desirable commodities which have come into the See also:possession of an individual through his enterprise or labour, and which should therefore be subject to his voluntary disposal. At an earlier stage of development, all property had been of communal, not of individual, ownership. It appears, then, that our See also:mid-period barbarian had attained—if the verbal See also:contradiction be permitted—a relatively high stage of civilization. There remained, however, one See also:master See also:craft of which he had no conception. This was the art of smelting iron. When, ultimately, his descendants learned the wonderful secrets of that art, they See also:rose in consequence to the Upper Status of Barbarism. This culminating practical invention, it will be observed, is the first of the great discoveries with which we have to do that was not primarily concerned with the question of man's food See also:supply. Iron, to be sure, has abundant uses in the same connexion, but its most See also:direct and obvious utilities have to do with weapons of See also:war and with implements calculated to promote such arts of See also:peace as See also:house-See also:building, road-making and the construction of vehicles. See also:Wood and stone could now be fashioned as never before. Houses could be built and cities walled with unexampled facility; to say nothing of the making of a multitude of See also:minor implements and utensils hitherto quite unknown, or at best rare and costly. Nor must we overlook the aesthetic influence of edged implements, with which wood and stone could readily be sculptured when placed in the hands of a race that had long been accustomed to scratch the semblance of living forms on See also:bone or See also:ivory and to See also:fashion crude images of See also:clay. In a word, man, the " See also:tool-making animal," was now for the first time provided with tools worthy of his wonderful hands and yet more wonderful See also:brain. Thus through the application of one revolutionary invention after another, the most advanced races of men had arrived, after long ages of effort, at a relatively high stage of development. A very wide range of experiences had enabled man to evolve a complex See also:body politic, based on a fairly secure social basis, and his brain had correspondingly developed into a relatively efficient and See also:stable See also:organ of thought. But as yet he had devised no means of communicating freely with other people at a distance except through the See also:medium of verbal messages; nor had he any method by which he could transmit his experiences to posterity more securely than by fugitive and fallible oral traditions. A vague symbolization of his achievements was preserved from See also:generation to generation in myth-See also:tale and epic, but he knew not how to make permanent See also:record of his history. Until he could devise a means to make such record, he must remain, in the estimate of his descendants, a barbarian, though he might be admitted to have become a highly organized and even in a broad sense a cultured being. At length, however, this last barrier was broken. Some race or races devised a method of symbolizing events and ultimately of making even abstruse ideas tangible by means of writing. graphic signs. In other words, a system of writing was developed. Man thus achieved a virtual See also:conquest over time Pottery. Iron. as he had earlier conquered space. He could now transmit the record of his deeds and his thoughts to remote posterity. Thus See also:lie stood at the portals of what later generations would term secure history. He had graduated out of barbarism, and become in the narrower sense of the word a civilized being. Henceforth, his knowledge, his poetical dreamings, his moral aspirations might be recorded in such form as to be read not merely by his contemporaries but by successive generations of remote posterity. The inspiring See also:character of such a See also:message is obvious. The validity of making this great culminating intellectual achievement the test of " civilized " existence need not be denied. But we should See also:ill comprehend the character of the message which the earlier generations of civilized beings transmit to us from the period which we term the " dawning of history " did we not See also:bear constantly in mind the long See also:series of progressive stages of " savagery " and " barbarism " that of See also:necessity preceded the final stage of " civilization " proper. The achievements of those earlier stages afforded the secure See also:foundation for the progress of the future. A multitude of minor arts, in addition to the important ones just outlined, had been developed; and for a long time civilized man was to make no other epochal addition to the See also:list of accomplishments that came to him as a heritage from his barbaric progenitor. Indeed, even to this day the list of such additions is not a long one, nor, judged in the relative See also:scale, so important as might at first thought be supposed. Whoever considers the subject carefully must admit the force of Morgan's See also:suggestion that man's achievements as a barbarian, considered in their relation to the sum of human progress, " transcend, in relative importance, all his subsequent See also:works." Without insisting on this comparison, however, let us ask what discoveries and inventions man has made within the historical period that may fairly be ranked with the half-dozen great epochal achievements that have been put forward as furnishing the keys to all the progress of the prehistoric periods. In other words, let us See also:sketch the history of progress during the ten thousand years or so that have elapsed since man learned the art of writing, adapting our sketch to the same scale which we have already applied to the unnumbered millenniums of the pre-historic period. The view of See also:world-history thus outlined will be a very different one from what might be expected by the student of See also:national history; but it will present the essentials of the . progress of civilization in a suggestive light. Without pretending to See also:fix an exact date,—which the historical records do not at present permit,—we may assume that the most advanced race of men elaborated a system of civilise- writing not less than six thousand years before the tion proper. beginning of the See also:Christian era. Holding to the terminology already suggested for the earlier periods, we may speak of man's position during the ensuing generations as that of the First or Lowest Status of civilization. If we See also:review the history of this period we shall find that it extends unbroken over a stretch of at least four or five thousand years. During the early part of this period such localized civilizations as those of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians and the See also:Hittites rose, See also:grew strong and passed beyond their See also:meridian. This suggests that we must now admit the word " civilization " to yet another See also:definition, within its larger meaning: we must speak of " a civilization," as that of See also:Egypt, of Babylonia, of See also:Assyria, and we must understand thereby a localized phase of society bearing the same relation to civilization as a whole that a See also:wave bears to the ocean or a See also:tree to the See also:forest. Such other localized civilizations as those of See also:Phoenicia, See also:Carthage, See also:Greece, See also:Rome, See also:Byzantium, the Sassanids, in due course waxed and waned, leaving a tremendous imprint on national history, but creating only minor and transitory ripples in the great ocean of civilization. Progress in the elaboration of the details of earlier methods and inventions took See also:place as a See also:matter of course. Some nation, probably the Phoenicians, gave a new impetus to the art of writing by developing a phonetic See also:alphabet; but this achievement, remarkable as it was in itself, added nothing fundamental to human capacity. Literatures had previously flourished through the use of See also:hiero-glyphic and syllabic symbols; and the Babylonian syllabics continued in See also:vogue throughout western Asia for a long time after the Phoenician alphabet had demonstrated its See also:intrinsic superiority. Similarly the art of See also:Egyptian and See also:Assyrian and See also:Greek was but the elaboration and perfection of methods that barbaric man had practised away back in the days when he was a See also:cave-dweller. The weapons of warfare of Greek and See also:Roman were the spear and the bow and arrow that their ancestors had used in the period of savagery, aided by See also:sword and See also:helmet dating from the upper period of barbarism. Greek and Roman government at their best were founded upon the system of genies that barbaric man had profoundly studied,—as witness, for example, the federal system of the barbaric See also:Iroquois Indians existing in See also:America before the coming of See also:Columbus. And if the Greeks had better literature, the See also:Romans better roads and larger cities, than their predecessors, these are but matters of detailed development, the like of which had marked the progress of the more important arts and the introduction of less important See also:ancillary ones in each antecedent period. The See also:axe of See also:steel is no new implement, but a See also:mere perfecting of the axe of chipped flint. The Iliad represents the perfecting of an art that unnumbered generations of barbarians practised before their See also:camp-fires. Thus for six or seven thousand years after man achieved civilization there was rhythmic progress in many lines, but there came no great epochal invention to See also:usher in a new Great ethnic period. Then, towards the See also:close of what inventions historians of to-day are accustomed to See also:call the middle of the ages, there appeared in rapid sequence three or four mages. tddte inventions and a great scientific discovery that, taken together, were destined to See also:change the entire aspect of See also:European civilization. The inventions were See also:gunpowder, the mariner's See also:compass, See also:paper and the See also:printing-See also:press, three of which appear to have been brought into See also:Europe by the See also:Moors, whether or not they originated in the remote See also:East. The scientific discovery which must be coupled with these inventions was the Copernican demonstration that the See also:sun and not the See also:earth is the centre of our planetary system. The generations of men that found them-selves (I) confronted with the revolutionary conception of the universe given by the Copernican theory; (2) supplied with the new means of warfare provided by gunpowder; (3) equipped with an undreamed-of See also:guide across the See also:waters of the earth; and (4) enabled to promulgate knowledge with unexampled See also:speed and cheapness through the aid of paper and printing-press—such generations of men might well be said to have entered upon a new ethnic period. The transition in their mode of thought and in their methods of practical See also:life was as great as can be supposed to have resulted, in an early generation, from the introduction of iron, or in a yet earlier from the invention of the bow and arrow. So the Europeans of about the 15th century of the Christian era may be said to have entered upon the Second or Middle Status of civilization.
The new period was destined to be a brief one. It had compassed only about four hundred years when, towards the close of the 18th century, See also: It may be doubted whether there existed in the world in the See also:year ',Soo a postal service that could compare in speed and efficiency with the See also:express service of the Romans of the time of See also:Caesar; far less was there a See also:telegraph service that could compare with that of the See also:ancient Persians. Nor was there a See also:ship sailing the seas that a Phoenician trireme might not have overhauled. But now within the lifetime of a single man the world was covered with a network of steel rails on which locomotives See also:drew gigantic vehicles, laden with passengers at an hourly speed almost equalling Caesar's best See also:journey of a day; over the See also:land and under the seas were stretched wires along which messages coursed from See also:continent to continent. literally with the speed of See also:lightning; and the waters of the earth were made to teem with gigantic craft propelled without See also:sail or See also:oar at a speed which the Phoenician See also:captain of three thousand years ago and the See also:English captain of the 18th century would alike have held incredible. There is no need to give further details here of the See also:industrial revolutions that have been achieved in this newest period of Social and civilization, since in their broader outlines at least political they are See also:familiar to every one. Nor need we dwell organiza- upon the revolution in thought whereby man has for tton. the first time been given a clear inkling as to his origin and destiny. It suffices to point out that such periods of See also:fermentation of ideas as this suggests have probably always been concomitant with those outbursts of creative See also:genius that gave the world the practical inventions upon which human progress has been conditioned. The same attitude of receptivity to new ideas is pre-requisite to one form of discovery as to the other. Nor, it may be added, can either form of idea become effective for the progress of civilization except in proportion as a large body of any given generation are prepared to receive it. Doubtless here and there a dreamer played with fire, in a literal sense, for generations before the utility of fire as a practical aid to human progress came to be recognized in practice. And—to seek an See also:illustration at the other end of the scale—we know that the advanced thinkers of Greece and Rome believed in the antiquity of the earth and in the evolution of man two thousand years before the coming of Darwin. We have but partly solved the mysteries of the progress of civilization, then, when we have pointed out that each tangible stage of progress owed its initiative to a new invention or discovery of See also:science. To go to the See also:root of the matter we must needs explain how it came about that a given generation of men was in mental See also:mood to receive the new invention or discovery. The pursuit of this question would carry us farther into the See also:realm of communal and racial psychology—to say nothing of the realm of conjecture—than comports with the purpose of this See also:article. It must suffice to point out that alertness of mind—that all mentality—is, in the last analysis, a reaction to the influences of the environment. It follows that man may subject himself to new influences and thus give his mind a new stimulus by changing his habitat. A fundamental See also:secret of progress is revealed in this fact. Man probably never would have evolved from savagery had he remained in the Tropics where he doubtless originated. But successive scientific inventions enabled him, as has been suggested, to migrate to distant latitudes, and thus more or less involuntarily to become the recipient of new creative and progressive impulses. After migrations in many directions had resulted in the development of divers races, each with certain capacities and acquirements due to its unique environment, there was opportunity for the application of the principle of environmental stimulus in an indirect way, through the mingling and physical intermixture of one race with another. Each of the great localized civilizations of antiquity appears to have owed its prominence in part at least—perhaps very largely—to such intermingling of two or more races. Each of these civilizations began to decay so soon as the nation hadremained for a considerable. number of generations in its localized environment, and had practically ceased to receive accretions from distant races at approximately the same stage of development. There is a suggestive See also:lesson for present-day civilization in that thought-compelling fact. Further See also:evidence of the application of the principle of environmental stimulus, operating through changed habitat and racial intermixture, is furnished by the virility of the colonial peoples of our own day. The receptiveness to new ideas and the rapidity of material progress of Americans, See also:South Africans and Australians are proverbial. No one doubts, probably, that one or another of these countries will give a new stimulus to the progress of civilization, through the promulgation of some great epochal discovery, in the not distant future. Again, the value of racial intermingling is shown yet nearer See also:home in the long-continued vitality of the See also:British nation, which is explicable, in some measure at least, by the fact that the See also:Celtic See also:element held aloof from the Anglo-Saxon element century after century sufficiently to maintain racial integrity, yet mingled sufficiently to give and receive the fresh stimulus of " new blood." It is interesting in this connexion to examine the See also:map of Great See also:Britain with reference to the birthplaces of the men named above as being the originators of the inventions and discoveries that made the close of the 18th century memorable as ushering in a new ethnic era. It may be added that these names suggest yet another element in the See also:causation of progress: the fact, namely, that, however necessary racial receptivity may be to the dynamitic upheaval of a new ethnic era, it is after all individual genius that applies its detonating spark. Without further elaboration of this aspect of the subject it may be useful to recapitulate the analysis of the evolution of civilization above given, See also:prior to characterizing it from another standpoint. It appears that the entire Nlne period of human progress up to the present may be periods of progros, divided into nine periods which, if of necessity more or less arbitrary, yet are not without certain See also:warrant of See also:logic. They may be defined as follows: (1) The Lower Period of Savagery, terminating with the discovery and application of the uses of fire. (2) The Middle Period of Savagery, terminating with the invention of the bow and arrow. (3) The Upper Period of Savagery, terminating with the invention of pottery. (4) The Lower Period of Barbarism, terminating with the domestication of animals. (5) The Middle Period of Barbarism, terminating with the discovery of the process of smelting iron ore. (6) The Upper Period of Barbarism, terminating with the development of a system of writing See also:meeting the requirements of literary See also:composition. (7) The First Period of Civilization (proper) terminating with the introduction of gunpowder. (8) The Second Period of Civilization, terminating with the invention of' a practical steam-engine. (9) The Upper Period of Civilization, which is still in progress, but which; as will be suggested in a moment, is probably nearing its termination.
It requires but a glance at the characteristics of these successive epochs to show the ever-increasing complexity of the inventions that delimit them and of the conditions of life that they connote. Were we to See also:attempt to characterize in a few phrases the entire story of achievement thus outlined, we might say that during the three stages of Savagery man was attempting to make himself master of the See also:geographical climates. His unconscious ideal was, to gain a foothold and the means of subsistence in every See also:zone. During the three periods of Barbarism the ideal of conquest was extended to the beasts of the See also: But while the idea of nationality has thus been accentuated, there has been a never-ending struggle within the See also:bounds of the Nation- nation itself to adjust the relations of one citizen to dity and another. The ideas that might makes right, that the memo- strong man must dominate the weak, that leadership ,See also:oMan' in the community properly belongs to the man who is 15m' physically most competent to lead—these ideas were a perfectly natural, and indeed an inevitable, outgrowth of the conditions under which man fought his way up through savagery and barbarism. Man in the first period of civilization inherited these ideas, along with the conditions of society that were their concomitants. So throughout the periods when the See also:oriental civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia and Assyria and See also:Persia were dominant, a despotic form of government was accepted as the natural order of things. It does not appear that any other form was even considered as a practicality. A See also:despot might indeed be overthrown, but only to make way for the See also:coronation of another despot. A little later the Greeks and Romans modified the conception of a See also:heaven-sent individual monarch; but they went no further than to substitute a heaven-favoured community, with specially favoured See also:groups (Patricii) within the community. With this, national See also:egoism reached its See also:climax; for each people regarded its own citizens as the only exemplars of civilization, openly See also:branding all the See also:rest of the world as "barbarians," See also:fit subjects for the exaction of See also:tribute or for the See also:imposition of the bonds of actual See also:slavery. During the middle ages there was a reaction towards See also:individualism as opposed to nationalism: but the entire system of See also:feudalism, with its clearly recognized conditions of over-lordship and of vassaldom, gave expression, no less clearly than oriental despotism and classical "demo-. cracy" had done, to the idea of individual inequality; of divergence of moral and legal status based on natural See also:inheritance. Thus this idea, a See also:reminiscence of barbarism, maintained its dominance throughout the first period of civilization. But gunpowder, marking the transition to the second period of civilization, came as a great levelling influence. With its aid the weakest See also:peasant might prove more than a match for the most powerful See also:knight. Before its assaults the See also:castle of the See also:lord ceased to be an impregnable fortress. And while gunpowder thus levelled down the See also:power of the mighty, the printing-press levelled up the intelligence, and hence the power and influence of the lowly. Meantime the mariner's compass opened up new territories beyond the seas, and in due course men of lowly origin were seen to attain to See also:wealth and power through commercial pursuits, thus tending to break in upon the established social order. In the colonial territories themselves 'all men were subjected more or less to the same perils and dependent upon their own efforts. Success and prominence in the community came not as a See also:birth-right, but as the result of demonstrated fitness. The great lesson that the interests of all members of a community are, in the last analysis, mutual could be more clearly distinguished in these small colonies than in larger and older bodies politic. Through various channels, therefore, in the successive generations of this middle period of civilization, the idea gained ground that intelligence and moral See also:worth, rather than physical prowess, should be the test of greatness; that it is See also:incumbent on the strong in the interests of the body politic to protect the weak; and that, in the long run, the best interests of the community are conservedif all its members, without exception, are given moral equality before the See also:law. This idea of equal rights and privileges for all members of the community—for each individual "the greatest amount of See also:liberty consistent with a like liberty of every other individual "—first found expression as a philosophical See also:doctrine towards the close of the 18th century; at which time also tentative efforts were made to put it into practice. It may be said therefore to represent the culminating sociological doctrine of the middle period of civilization,—the ideal towards which all the influences of the period had tended to impel the race. It will be observed, however, that this ideal of individual equality within the body politic in no direct See also:wise influences the status of the body politic itself as the centre of a localized civilization that may be regarded as in a sense antagonistic to all other similarly localized civilizations. If there were any such influence, it would rather operate in the direction of accentuating the patriotism of the member of a democratical community, as against that of the subject of a despot, through the sense of See also:personal responsibility developed in the former. The developments of the middle period of civilization cannot be considered, therefore, to have tended to decrease the spirit of nationality, with its concomitant See also:penalty of what is sometimes called provincialism. The history of this entire period, as commonly presented, is largely made up of the records of See also:international rivalries and jealousies, perennially culminating in bitterly contested See also:wars. It was only towards the close of the epoch that the desirability of See also:free commercial intercourse among nations began to 'find expression as a philosophical creed through the efforts of See also:Quesnay and his followers; and the doctrine that both parties to an international commercial transaction are gainers thereby found its first clear expression in the year r 776 in the pages of See also:Condillac and of See also:Adam Smith. But the discoveries that ushered in the third period of civilization were destined to See also:work powerfully from the outset for the breaking down of international barriers, though, of course, their effects would not be at once See also:manifest. Thus the substitution of steam power for water power, besides giving a tremendous impetus to manufacturing in See also:general, mapped out new industrial centres in regions that nature had supplied with See also:coal but not always with other raw materials. To See also:note a single result, See also:England became the manufacturing centre of the world, See also:drawing its raw materials from every corner of the globe; but in so doing it ceased to be self-supporting as regards the See also:production of food-supplies. While growing in national wealth, as a result of the new inventions, England has therefore lost immeasurably in national self-sufficiency and See also:independence; having become in large measure dependent upon other countries both for the raw materials without which her See also:industries must perish and for the foods to maintain the very life of her people. What is true of England in this regard is of course true in greater or less measure of all other countries. Everywhere, thanks to the new mechanisms that increase industrial eft ciency, there has been an increasing tendency to specialization; and since the manufacturer must often find his raw materials in one part of the world and his markets in another, this implies an ever-increasing intercommunication and interdependence between the nations. This spirit is obviously fostered by the new means of transportation by See also:locomotive and steamship, and by the electric communication that enables the Londoner, for example, to transact business in New See also:York or in Tokio with scarcely an See also:hour's delay; and that puts every one in touch at to-day's breakfast table with the happenings of the entire world. Thanks to the new mechanisms, national See also:isolation is no longer possible; globe-trotting has become a habit with thousands of individuals of many nations; and Or'ent and Occident, representing civilizations that for thousands of years were almost absolutely severed and mutually oblivious of each other, have been brought again into close touch for mutual See also:education and See also:betterment. The Western mind has learned with amazement that the aforetime Terra Incognita of the far East has nurtured a gigantic civilization having ideals in many ways far different from our own. The Eastern mind has proved itself capable, in self-See also:defence, of absorbing the essential practicalities of Western civilization within a single generation. Some of the most important problems of world-civilization of the immediate future See also:hinge upon the mutual relations of these two long-severed communities, branched at some early stage of progress to opposite hemispheres of the globe, but now brought by the new mechanisms into daily and even hourly communication. While the new conditions of the industrial world have thus tended to develop a new national outlook, there has come about, as a result of the scientific discoveries already referred Modern See also:humanism. to, a no less significant broadening of the mental and spiritual horizons. Here also the trend is away from the narrowly egoistic and towards the See also:cosmopolitan view. About the middle of the 19th century Dr See also:Pritchard declared that many people debated whether it might not be permissible for the Australian settlers to shoot the natives as food for their See also:dogs; some of the disputants arguing that savages were without the See also:pale of human brotherhood. To-day the thesis that all mankind are one brotherhood needs no defence. The most primitive of existing See also:aborigines are regarded merely as brethren who, through some defect or neglect of opportunity, have lagged behind in the race. Similarly the defective and criminal classes that make up so significant a part of the See also:population of even our highest present-day civilizations, are no longer regarded with anger or contempt, as beings who are suffering just See also:punishment for wilful transgressions, but are considered as pitiful victims of hereditary and environmental influences that they could neither choose nor See also:control. See also:Insanity is no longer thought of as demoniac possession, but as the most lamentable of diseases. The changed attitude towards savage races and defective classes affords tangible illustrations of a fundamental transformation of point of view which doubtless represents the most import-See also:ant result of the operation of new scientific knowledge in the course of the 19th century. It is a transformation that is only partially effected as yet, to be sure; but it is rapidly making headway, and when fully achieved it will represent, probably, the most See also:radical metamorphosis of mental view that has taken place in the entire course of the historical period. The essence of the new view is this: to recognize the universality and the invariability of natural law; stated otherwise, to understand that the word " supernatural " involves a contradiction of terms and has in fact no meaning. Whoever has grasped the full import of this truth is privileged to sweep mental horizons wider by far than ever opened to the view of any thinker of an earlier epoch. He is privileged to forecast, as the sure heritage of the future, a civilization freed from the last See also:ghost of superstition—an Age of See also:Reason in which mankind shall at last find refuge from the hosts of occult and invisible See also:powers, the fearsome galaxies of deities and demons, which have haunted him thus far at every stage of his long journey through savagery, barbarism and civilization. Doubtless here and there a thinker, even in the barbaric eras, may have realized that these ghosts that so influenced the everyday lives of his fellows were but See also:children of the See also:imagination. But the certainty that such is the case could not have come with the force of demonstration even to the most clear-sighted thinker until 19th-century science had investigated with penetrating See also:vision the realm of See also:molecule and See also:atom; had revealed the See also:awe-inspiring principle of the conservation of See also:energy; and had offered a comprehensible explanation of the evolution of one form of life from another, from See also:monad to man, that did not presuppose the intervention of powers more " supernatural " than those that operate about us everywhere to-day. The stupendous import of these new truths could not, of course, make itself evident to the generality of mankind in a single generation, when apposed to superstitions of a thousand generations' See also:standing. But the new knowledge has made its way more expeditiously than could have been anticipated; and its effects are seen on every See also:side, even where its agency is scarcely recognized. As a single illustration, we may note the familiar observation that the entire complexion of orthodox teaching of See also:religion has been more altered in the past fiftyyears than in two thousand years before. This of course is not entirely due to the influence of physical and biological science; no effect has a unique cause, in the complex sociological scheme. See also:Archaeology, See also:comparative See also:philology and textual See also:criticism have also contributed their See also:share; and the comparative study of religions has further tended to broaden the outlook and to make for universality, as opposed to insularity, of view. It is coming to be more and more widely recognized that all theologies are but the reflex of the more or less faulty knowledge of the times in which they originate, that the true and abiding purpose of religion should be the practical betterment of humanity—the advancement of civilization in the best sense of the word; and that this end may perhaps be best subserved by different systems of See also:theology, adapted to the varied genius of different times and divers races. Wherefore there is not the same enthusiastic See also:desire to-day that found expression a generation ago, to impose upon the cultured millions of the East a religion that seems to them See also:alien to their manner of thought, unsuited to their needs and less distinctly ethical in teaching than their own religions. Such are but a few of the illustrations that might be cited from many See also:fields to suggest that the mind of our generation is becoming receptive to a changed point of view that See also:augurs the coming of a new ethnic era. 'If one may be permitted to enter very tentatively the field of prophecy, it seems not unlikely that the great revolutionary invention which will close the third period of civilization and usher in a new era is already being evolved. It seems not-over-hazardous to predict that the See also:air-ship, in one form or another, is destined to be the mechanism that will give the new impetus to human civilization; that the next era will have as one of its practical ideals the conquest of the air; and that-this conquest will become a See also:factor in the final emergence of humanity from the insularity of nationalism to the broad view of cosmopolitanism, towards which, as we have seen, the tendencies of the present era are verging. That the See also:gap to be covered is a vastly wide one no one heed be reminded who recalls that the civilized nations of Europe, together with America and See also:Japan, are at present accustomed to spend more than three hundred million pounds each year merely that they may keep armaments in readiness to See also:fly at one another's throats should occasion arise. Formidable as these armaments now seem, however, the developments of the not very distant future will probably make them quite obsolete; and sooner or later, as science develops yet more deadly implements of destruction, the time must come when communal intelligence will See also:rebel at the suicidal folly of the international attitude that characterized, for example, the opening See also:decade of the loth century. At some time, after the first period of cosmopolitanism shall be ushered in as a tenth ethnic period, it will come to be recognized that there is a word fraught with See also:fuller meanings even than the word patriotism. That word is humanitarianism. The enlightened generation that realizes the full implications of that word will doubtless marvel that their ancestors of the third period of civilization should have risen up as nations and slaughtered one another by thousands to See also:settle a dispute about a geographical boundary. Such a See also:procedure will appear to have been quite as barbarous as the cannibalistic practices of their yet more remote ancestors, and distinctly less rational, since See also:cannibalism might sometimes See also:save its practiser from starvation, whereas warfare of the civilized type was a purely destructive agency. Equally obvious must it appear to the cosmopolite of some generation of the future that quality rather than mere numbers must determine the efficiency of ang given community. Race See also:suicide will then cease to be a bugbear; and it will no longer be considered rational to keep up the See also:census at the cost of propagating.See also:low orders of intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and criminals. On the contrary it will be thought fitting that man should become the conscious arbiter of his own racial destiny to the extent of applying whatever See also:laws of See also:heredity he knows or may acquire in the interests of his own species, as he has long applied them in the case of domesticated animals. The survival and procreation of the unfit will then cease to be a menace to the progress of civilization. It does not follow that all men will be brought to a dead level of equality of body and mind, nor that individual competition will cease; but the See also:average physical mental status of the race will be raised immeasurably through the virtual elimination of that vast company of defectives which to. day constitutes so threatening an obstacle to racial progress. There are millions of men in Europe and America to-day whose whole mental equipment—despite the fact that they have been taught to read and write—is far more closely akin to the average of the Upper Period of Barbarism than to the highest See also:standards of their own time; and these undeveloped or atavistic persons have on the average more offspring than are produced by the more highly cultured and intelligent among their See also:con-temporaries. " Race suicide " is thereby prevented, but the progress of civilization is no less surely handicapped. We may well believe that the cosmopolite of the future, aided by science, will find rational means to remedy this See also:strange illogicality. In so doing he will exercise a more consciously purposeful See also:function, and perhaps a more directly potent influence, in determining the' See also:line of human progress than he has hitherto attempted to assume, notwithstanding the almost infinitely varied character of the experiments through which he has worked his way from savagery to civilization. All these considerations tend to define yet more clearly the ultimate See also:goal towards which the progressive civilization of past and present appears to be trending. The contempla- al tion of this goal brings into view the outlines of a vastly y evolution. suggestive evolutionary See also:cycle. For it appears that the social condition of cosmopolite man, so far as the present-day view can predict it, will represent a See also:state of things, magnified to world-dimensions, that was curiously adumbrated by the social system of the earliest savage. At the very beginning of the journey through savagery, mankind, we may well believe, consisted of a limited tribe, representing no great range or variety of capacity, and an almost See also:absolute identity of interests. Thanks to this community of interests,—which was fortified by the recognition of blood-relationship among all members of the tribe, —a principle which we now define as " the greatest ultimate good to the greatest number" found practical, even if unwitting, recognition; and therein See also:lay the germs of all the moral development of the future. But obvious identity of interests could be recognized only so long as the tribe remained very small. So soon as.its numbers became large, patent diversities of See also:interest, based on individual selfishness, must appear, to obscure the larger See also:harmony. And as savage man migrated hither and thither, occupying new regions and thus developing new tribes and ultimately a diversity of " races," all idea of community of interests, as between race and race, must have been absolutely banished. It was the obvious and patent fact that each race was more or less at rivalry, in disharmony, with all the others. In the hard struggle for subsistence, the expansion of one race meant the downfall of another. So far as any principle of "greatest good " remained in evidence, it applied solely to the members of one's own community, or even to one's particular phratry or gens. Barbaric man, thanks to his conquest of animal and vegetable nature, was able to extend the See also:size of the unified community, and hence to develop through diverse and intricate channels the application of the principle of " greatest good " out of which the idea of right and wrong was elaborated. But quite as little as the savage did he think of extending the application of the principle beyond the bounds of his own race. The laws with which he gave expression to his ethical conceptions applied, of necessity, to his own people alone. The gods with which his imagination peopled the world were See also:local in habitat, devoted to the interests of his race only, and at enmity with the gods of See also:rival peoples. As between nation and nation, the only principle of See also:ethics that ever occurred to him was that might makes right. Civilized man for a long time advanced but slowly upon this view of international morality. No Egyptian or Babylonian or See also:Hebrew or Greek or Roman ever hesitated to attack a weaker nation on the ground that it would be wrong to do so. And few indeed are the instances in which even a modern nation hasjudged an international question on any other basis than that of self-interest. It was not till towards the close of the rgth century that an International Peace See also:Conference gave tangible witness that the idea of fellowship of nations was finding recognition; and in the same recent period history has recorded the first instance of a powerful nation vanquishing a weaker one without attempting to exact at least an " indemnifying " tribute. But the citizen of the future, if the auguries of the present prove true, will be able to apply principles of right and wrong without reference to national boundaries. He will understand that the interests of the entire human family are, in the last analysis, See also:common interests. The census through which he attempts to estimate "the greatest good of the greatest number" must include, not his own nation merely, but the remotest member of the human race. On this universal basis must be founded that absolute See also:standard of ethics which will determine the relations of cosmopolite man with his fellows. When this ideal is attained, mankind will again represent a single family, as it did in the day when our primeval ancestors first entered on the pathway of progress; but it will be a family whose habitat has been extended from the narrow glade of some tropical forest to the utmost habitable confines of the globe. Each member of this family will be permitted to enjoy the greatest amount of liberty consistent with the like liberty of every other member; but the interests of the few will everywhere be recognized as subservient to the interests of the many, and such recognition of mutual interests will establish the practical criterion for the interpretation of international affairs. But such an See also:extension of the altruistic principle by no means presupposes the elimination of egoistic impulses—of individual-ism. On the contrary, we must suppose that man at the highest stages of culture will be, even as was the savage, a seeker after the greatest attainable degree of comfort for the least necessary See also:expenditure of energy. The pursuit of this ideal has been from first to last the ultimate impelling force in nature urging man forward. The only change has been a change in the interpretation of the ideal, an altered estimate as to what manner of things are most worth the See also:purchase-See also:price of toil and self-denial. That the things most worth the having cannot, generally speaking, be secured without such toil and self-denial, is a lesson that begareto be inculcated while man was a savage, and that has never ceased to be reiterated generation after generation. It is the final test of progressive civilization that a given effort shall produce a larger and larger modicum of average individual comfort. That is why the great inventions that have increased man's efficiency as a worker have been the necessary prerequisites to racial progress. Stated otherwise, that is why the industrial factor is everywhere the most powerful factor in civilization; and why the economic interpretation is the most searching interpretation of history at its every stage. It is the basal fact that progress implies increased average working efficiency—a growing ratio between average effort and average achievement—that gives sure warrant for such a prognostication as has just been attempted concerning the future industrial unification of our race. The efforts of civilized man provide him, on the average, with a marvellous range of comforts, as contrasted with those that rewarded the most strenuous efforts of savage or barbarian, to whom present-day necessaries would have been undreamed-of luxuries. But the ideal ratio between effort and result has by no means been achieved; nor will it have been until the inventive brain of man has provided a civilization in which a far higher percentage of citizens will find the life-vocations to which they are best adapted by nature, and in which, therefore, the efforts of the average worker may be directed with such vigour, See also:enthusiasm and interest as can alone make for true efficiency; a civilization adjusted to such an economic See also:balance that the average man may live in reasonable comfort without See also:heart-breaking strain, and yet accumulate a sufficient surplus to ensure ease and serenity for his declining days. Such, seemingly, should be the normal goal of progressive civilization. Doubtless mankind in advancing towards that goal will See also:institute many changes that could by no possibility be Progress and efficiency. foretold; but (to summarize the views just presented) it seems a safe augury from present-day conditions and tendencies that the important lines of progress. will include (I) the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity; (2) the lessening of international jealousies and the consequent minimizing of the drain upon communal resources that attends a military regime; and (3) an ever-increasing movement towards the industrial and economic unification of the world. (H.S.Wi.) all the articles of the present edition of the Ency: Brit. are planned, makes the whole work itself in essentials the most comprehensive history of civilization in existence. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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