the best languages; and of the difficulties the best writers must experience in using them as a means of communication. I have in the meantime to beg the reader to interpret my words as candidly and as charitably as possible.

The definition of Civilization is perfectly new; and the rigorous restriction of Religion within those higher limits which I maintain to be proper to it, is not, to the best of my knowledge, merely an unconscious revival of a dormant recollection from previous reading, but the result of independent thought on the imperative necessity, if Civilization is to progress, of the most absolute freedom for individuals in their relations to the future, and the superhuman worlds. In everything else that is touched on, my object has naturally been to show how my theory of Civilization harmonizes with generally received opinions as to human good and human progress; not to give decisions on disputed questions. Purposely, I have advanced conclusions only against what appeared to be plainly discivilizing. Where opposed, on marriage, to certain of the political economists, the difference lies, I suspect, chiefly in the estimate of the result to which certain means will lead; assuredly not in the appreciation of ends to be attained. And, then, I make little doubt that the feeling of the public generally will be rather with me in opinions, which do nothing but require due accord with direct tendencies and fundamental laws of human nature.

In the following chapter, I shall endeavour at once to illustrate my theory of civilization, and to throw some light on the relative standing of extreme Occidentals and extreme Orientals,—of the Anglo-Saxons and the Chinese. But I cannot, I regret to find, give that systematic view of the relative position of the two peoples, in point of civilization, which was originally contemplated; and must beg the reader to get what amount of clear insight he can, from the unconnected illustrations and applications of the theory that will here follow.

CHAPTER III.

MISCELLANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CHRISTIAN AND CONFUCIAN CIVILIZATIONS.

WHENEVER anything is mentioned, or proposed, as an act of the civilized, or of the civilizing process-as a state of, or advance in Civilization-the first question to be asked by the testor is: Does it serve man in his struggle with the world around him? Does it tend to any "useful" purpose? Does it immediately or mediately help to avert pain of any kind, or subserve the more perfect satisfaction of the nutritional appetite, the love of the sexes, or parental affection? This being answered in the affirmative, the next question is: Does the thing (act, method or instrument) involve a reduction of physical labour by the introduction of mental agencies; or, there being no reduction of physical labour of any description, does it involve the substitution of moral for merely intellectual agencies?

Clocks which, at the period of striking, send out figures, cocks to crow, &c. &c., are, in their distinctive peculiarities, not useful;-do not, in so far, reduce man's physical labour in his struggle with the world around him. We could now make such instruments much better than they were made in the Middle Ages; but our more advanced Civilization justly rejects them as toys. They may slightly promote Cultivation, as I have shewn pictures to do, which excite innocent amusement, but any help they may give in this way is in no proportion to the labour expended on them. Punch and Judy do vastly more; and their invention is, therefore, in no

respect an instance of the civilizing process. On the other hand, every discovery of a means for making the dial of a clock more distinctly visible, or its bell more distinctly audible, is an act of the civilizing process; as it helps to save time and labour spent in ascertaining what o'clock it is. Hence our really progressive state speedily avails itself of such discoveries.

Machines have frequently been invented, the intention of which was unmistakeably (as in the case of machines for agricultural purposes) to aid man in his struggle with nature; which on being tried were found to perform well the particular act they were meant to perform; and which were nevertheless not adopted. The explanation is that, in such cases, there was no real reduction of physical agency; that the total amount of labour spent in the formation, repair and manipulation of such machines, was greater than would have been required to do an equal amount of work with the bare hands, or with the formerly used, less complicated instruments.

When two machines effect the purpose for which they are used equally well, civilization gives up the more complicated, and retains that which embodies the smallest quantity of physical agency. Every part of a machine implies the use of a long succession of physical agencies, from the procuring of the raw material to its final adaptation. Hence the gradual simplification of machinery, in proportion to the multiplication of discoveries and inventions, is the result of the substitution of intellectual for physical agencies.

The inventor, in the ordinary sense of the word, and the philosophic genius play different parts as Civilizers. The inventor changes the forms of matter and makes new arrangements of it, in order to construct useful instruments or machines. The philosophic genius simply looks around on things as they are, and, where no useful connection ever occurred to others, perceives a certainty of hitherto undreamt-of combinations productive of grand results. It is to him chiefly

that we owe the methods, as distinguished from the instruments, of civilization. Columbus did not make our globe, nor invent ships; but he saw that ships might be employed on the globe, to get east by going west. As a Civilizer of warfare, the inventor constructs some better description of gun; the philosophic genius takes men and things as they are, but designs some new combination and cooperation of them, and becomes a great strategist.

Those men who are famed for having ascertained, either by experiment or observation, properties in natural bodies or harmonies in nature, aided civilization by furnishing additional means for the civilizing process. If they, besides working purely as discoverers, pointed out uses that could be made of the properties and harmonies they discovered, then they were in so far direct Civilizers. Newton when he discovered gravitation, and Copernicus when he decided that the earth revolved round the sun, not the sun round the earth, furnished additional means for increasing civilization; those who were guided by the laws of gravitation and astronomy in introducing new operations into practical mechanics and navigation were direct Civilizers. Franklin, when he ascertained the identity between electricity and lightning, prepared the way of the civilizing process; the inventor of the electric telegraph is, as a reducer of physical agency by the saving of time, one of the most extensively operating Civilizers that ever existed. Harmonies are discovered in the world of human life and thought, as well as in inanimate nature; sociology is the result of such discoveries; and Compte is a Civilizer chiefly as the establisher of that science.

The history of nations shows us that a great trade, a flourishing internal condition, and much external military power are among the most frequent of national coincidences. At this moment the two greatest trading nations are England and America; and there exists none internally more flourishing and externally more powerful in war. On the other hand, the English have been ridiculed as "shopkeepers," by

a great external warrior, Napoleon I.; and the Americans have been censured as mere "dollar-hunters" by our most eminent writer on political economy,- a subject intimately connected with trade. Further, the proposition that "trade is debasing" is among those which are most widely accepted. Again, for a long course of years, we kept congratulating ourselves on the blessings of the peace we were enjoying, and on the "consequent progress of civilization." Now, our poetlaureate, our national bard, writes a long "poem," apparently for the purpose of denouncing vulgarizing, debasing peace, and of glorifying, ennobling and elevating war. One is somehow made to feel, on reading the last verses, as if it was rather a vulgar and debased trait, that one has no desire whatever to rush out into the street, and hit the first man one meets a knock on the head, in order to have with him a mutually ennobling and improving set-to.

The reader will observe that in the above paragraph there are stated a number of apparently discrepant facts and conflicting notions. Do our conclusions as to civilization remove the appearance of discrepancy and help us to detect the false

notions?

Commerce is a portion of the struggle that is mainly maintained for the object of satisfying the nutritional appetite and the aversion to pain. Trade, in so far as it subserves its main object, has nothing debasing about it. It is on the contrary an indispensable requisite of civilization. If the whole of a man's attention is devoted so completely to one occupation as to exclude all general cultivation, the life of that man becomes anti-civilizing. It might be right to say of a man who pursued trade in that fashion, that his manner of life was debasing; but not that trade is debasing. Of course, by trade, I mean commerce in nourishing, sheltering, protecting and curing substances and instruments; and not such traffic as panders directly to vice; which is not what is referred to, when it is said that "trade is debasing." Lying, in any shape, whether by words or looks, or even by deceptive