Civilization Through the Ages

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Preface There is no subject which concerns civilized man more vitally than civilization, and yet, there is none about which his ignorance is more profound, and his talk more vague and incoherent. In this age of amazing intellectual ferment every science has been marching apace except sociology, especially that branch of it which deals with civilized man. It is much in the same state now as it was in the time of Comte, who may be said to have created it. We have as yet no common standard of civilization. In this respect, we have not advanced much further than the ancients who lumped together all foreigners as barbarians. The educated Western world of the present day "practically settles a standard by simply placing its own nations at one end of the social series, and savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind between these limits as they correspond more closely to savage or to cultured life (of the West).". But the arbitrary character of such a standard puzzles the Oriental. A Japanese diplomatist is reported to have said addressing a European audience:

"For two thousand years we kept peace with the rest of the world, and were known to it by the marvels of our delicate ethereal art, and the finely wrought productions of our ingenious handicrafts, and we were accounted barbarians. But from the day on which we made war on other nations and killed many thousands of our adversaries, you at once admit our claim to rank among civilized nations."

The capricious standard set up by the "educated Western world" does not meet with universal acceptance even in the West. The position that Western civilization is the most perfect the world has yet seen is assailed even there. The chorus in laudation of its numberless inventive feats, and industrial miracles, even those which, like the military aeroplanes, are intended for the practice of barbarity, and of its supposed beneficent work among the benighted peoples of Africa and the East is, now and then, rudely broken by the discordant outbursts of a dissentient minority. "Even the best of modern civilizations," says Huxley, "appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human. family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the winning of a greater dominion over nature which is its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and the intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral degradation amongst the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole affair away as a desirable consummation."

Dr. A. R. Wallace Ginds, that the result of the European mission in Africa so far "has been the sale of vast quantities of rum and gunpowder, much bloodshed owing to the objection of the natives to the seizure of their lands and cattle; great demoralisation of black and white, and the condemnation of the conquered tribes to a modified form of slavery."

**Contents and Sample