civilized process, is the most civilized; the man who employs a smaller number, is less civilized.

We call semi-barbarous those peoples which know and employ few of those instruments and methods; those who employ fewer still, we call barbarous; those who employ fewest, savage.

The most savage savages, that explorers have discovered, practically employ some of the instruments and methods in material, physical, intellectual and even in moral civilization.

The terms savage, barbarous, semi-barbarous and civilized are, and may be, usefully employed, as roughly indicating different degrees of aggregation of the civilized processes,different "stages" of civilization. But, as there exist in nature no real lines of demarcation between any different degrees of the aggregation, the terms are arbitrary. At present they are not only arbitrary, but vague; and they must always remain vague; unless some one should consider it worth the trouble to fix on, describe, and assign to each such term, a certain aggregation of the civilized processes in each of the four kinds of civilization, material, physical, intellectual and moral; in which case the terms would have a technical precision. Until that is (if ever) done, the reader must bear in mind that in no work on man, (the present essay included,) have the terms civilized, barbarous and savage (semi-civilized, &c.) any precise meaning, as used in relation to each other. Without offending against established usage, we may say of the most savage savages, that they are the "least civilized " people known. It would not be in accordance with the established usage of the English, French or Chinese languages to say of the civilized peoples of the extreme Occident and extreme Orient, that they are the "least barbarous" known; for we are all of us, Anglo-Saxons, French and Chinese, still in the bonds of those truly barbarous and barbarizing or discivilizing habits, over-estimation, and its expression, over-boasting. But when we reflect how very far we are practically from the highest point of mental civilization, i. e. the uni

versal predominance of the moral kind; and that the progress of the industrial sciences and arts, in the struggle with inanimate nature, points to probable future achievements to which our past victories in material civilization will appear childishness; then we begin to perceive that we are, at best, but the "least barbarous " of the nations of the world; and that future ages will find it a mental impossibility, to regard us in any other light.

If a man has little time to spend in a country, and wishes to arrive, as speedily as possible, at some opinion of the degree of civilization, material and mental, possessed by the people inhabiting it, I know at present of no better method than the following. Let him note the extent and quality of their artificial means of communication, and the size and value of their private (unfortified) dwellings. Good roads, railways, carriages, hotels, canals, passenger vessels, and postal establishments, together with large expensive private dwellings (observe that fortresses, such as the baronial castles of the middle ages, are excepted), are not themselves civilization. But these particular, palpable and visible things imply civilization, more perhaps than any other things, equally easily detected and examined during the course of a short residence they are the most palpable and striking expression of material and mental civilization in any country.

What of the churches, temples and monasteries? These result from human faculties altogether distinct from the intellectual and moral, whose operation I have shown to constitute civilization. Religious buildings are the product of the religious faculties or feelings.

CHAPTER II.

RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE reader will understand that there is not the least pretension in these chapters to propound, or even to give support to any particular psychical system. My wish is to establish a theory of civilization, based on a comprehensive but plain definition. That definition, however, though new in itself, has been adopted, only because it is held to accord with the hitherto generally received notions on the subject. And as my object is essentially practical, I am striving, while elucidating the real method of human progress, to make what I say perfectly comprehensible to those even, who have not had the advantage of much education. Hence a fulness of illustration, which would be totally misplaced in a treatise addressed exclusively to people accustomed to definite thinking and accurate expression; and hence it is that in enumerating, in the preceding chapter, those groups of human faculties, which are unavoidably brought into play in man's dealings with man, I have adhered to the most obvious and most widely accepted classification, without myself attempting to prove its greater accuracy. In now touching on man's religious faculties,-on the faculties which operate in man's dealings with the superhuman world,-I shall, in the same spirit, avoid anything like elaborate investigation. My wish is merely to indicate clearly the actual difference which exists between Religion and Civilization; believing as I do that every disregard of that difference in practical life, tends to debase the former, and to retard the progress of the latter.

The religious faculties of man consist of an inherent

craving for something to venerate and a longing for a better and enduring existence for a happy immortality.

These faculties or tendencies of his nature cause him to wish for, and believe in, the existence of (Beings, or) a Being, (Gods, or) a God, worthy of his veneration, and able to give him the longed-for immortality. His belief in the existence of this Being, God, and in his own immortality, is further strengthened by the spontaneous exercise of his reasoning powers or intellectual faculties on the phenomena of the animate and inanimate world around him. Man's belief in this God, the giver of a blessed immortality; the veneration of Him; and prayer to Him for present and future happiness, constitute the whole of Religion as distinguished from Civilization. By the whole of religion is meant, the essence or basis of all religious systems and forms-Religion as distinguished from a religion.

Wherever there is addressed to a supernatural being, heartfelt adoration or praise, which is the expression of the first faculty, and earnest prayer, which is the expression of the second, there is Religion. It has been, and is still, found in Fetichism, Polytheism, Buddhism and Mahommedanism, as well as in all the numerous sects of Christianity.

Nearly all, if not all, religious systems (i.e. all religions, as distinguished from essential religion) have comprised a Morality or a system of doctrines regarding man's rightful dealings with man; and they have usually employed the religious faculties to enforce that morality. This is preeminently the case with Christianity.

The Founder of Christianity answered on two separate occasions the question, proceeding from man's longing for immortality: What shall I do to inherit eternal life? The circumstances are narrated by the first three Evangelists.

In the one case, Christ's answer was given to a believing inquirer, one who, in doubt himself, wished for information; and toward whom He is stated to have felt lovingly.*

* Matthew xix. 16-19; Mark x. 17-22; Luke xviii. 18-23.

In

the other case the answer was given to a critical inquirer,one who believed that he himself knew the proper answer to his question, but wished to test the knowledge of Christ; who is stated to have spoken approvingly of him.*

Generalizing and condensing from the six passages in the three Evangelists, we find the answer to be comprised in two separate commands:

1. Reveret God.

2. Love your neighbour as yourself.

That the words, revere and love, must be taken in their strongest, or most intense, signification is plainly expressed. And when Christ was asked, what "neighbour" meant, he had recourse, as was his custom when enforcing his doctrines or commands, to an extreme type. He pictured a solitary, destitute and wounded traveller-a sufferer sinking in his human struggle with inanimate and animate nature-and said: "Look around you, wherever you see such a man, he is your neighbour."

When I first adopted my definition of Civilization, it was as an hypothesis the truth of which was yet to be established —it was at first but a rough, and somewhat uncertain generalization from all those facts, on my mind at the moment, which are usually regarded as parts of civilization. I had then no idea that the gradual elaboration of the definition into a consistent theory, would lead to a complete explanation

* Matthew xxii. 34-40; Mark xii. 28-34; Luke x. 25-37.

I here avoid the word "love," that used in our English translation, because liable from its various, and essentially different, acceptations to produce confusion. The love of sweethearts springs in considerable degree from desire. The "love" we bear to relatives and intimate friends is the affection produced by long and pleasant association; and which we entertain in a lesser degree to the localities and houses where we have lived pleasantly, to ships, guns, &c. &c. The "love" or philanthropy which a man of experience may entertain to humanity generally, is largely mingled with pity. The love, composed of respect and gratitude, which a less gifted son may entertain for a kind, but grave and strict father, whom he feels to be intellectually and morally his superior, most nearly approaches that reverence or veneration which is meant by "love" to God.