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intellectual and moral activity. a people civilising itself?

Is this civilisation? Is this

Here is another hypothesis. Suppose a people whose material existence is less easy, less agreeable, but endurable nevertheless. In compensation, their moral and intellectual wants have not been neglected; a certain amount of mental food is distributed to them; pure and elevated sentiments are cultivated among this people; their moral and religious opinions have attained a certain degree of development; but great care is taken to extinguish the principle of liberty; satisfaction is given to intellectual and moral wants, as elsewhere to material wants; to each is given his portion of truth, no one is permitted to seek it by himself. Immobility is the character of the moral life; this is the state into which the greater part of the populations of Asia have fallen, where theocratical dominion holds back humanity: this is the condition of the Hindoos, for example. I ask the same question as about the preceding people: is this a people civilising itself?

I will now completely change the nature of the hypothesis. Imagine a people among whom there is a great display of some individual liberties, but among whom disorder and inequality are excessive: strength and chance have the dominion; every one, if he is not strong, is oppressed, suffers, and perishes; violence is the ruling character of the social state. Everybody is aware that Europe has passed through this state. Is it a civilised state? It may doubtless contain the principles of civilisation which will develop themselves by degrees, but the acting principle of such a society is not, unquestionably, what the judgment of men calls civilisation.

I take a fourth and last hypothesis. The liberty of each individual is very great, inequality between them is rare, or, at least, very transient. Every one does nearly what he likes, and in power differs little from his neighbour; but there are very few general interests, very few public ideas, in a word, very little sociability: the faculties and existence of each individual come forth and flow on in isolation, without one influencing the other, and without leaving any trace behind; successive generations leave society at the same point at which they found it. This is the condition of savage tribes; liberty and equality exist, and yet, most certainly, civilisation does

not.

I could multiply these hypotheses; but I think I have brought forward sufficient to elucidate the popular and natural meaning of the word civilisation.

It is clear that none of the conditions I have just sketched

answers, according to the natural and right understanding of men, to this term. Why not? It appears to me that the first fact which is comprehended in the word civilisation is the fact of progress, of development; it immediately gives the idea of a people, going on, not to change its place, but to change its condition; of a people whose condition becomes extended and ameliorated. The idea of progression, of development, seems to me to be the fundamental idea contained in the word civilisation.

What is this progression? What is this development? Here lies the greatest difficulty we have to encounter.

The etymology of the word seems to answer in a clear and satisfactory manner, it tells us that it means the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men among themselves...Such is in fact the first idea that offers itself to the minds of men, when they utter the word civilisation: they directly think of the extension, the greatest activity, and the best organisation of all social relations; on one hand an increasing production of means of power and prosperity in society; on the other, a more equal distribution, among individuals, of the power and prosperity produced... Is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and common meaning of the word civilisation? Does it contain nothing more? This is almost as if we asked: is the human species after all merely an ant-hill, a society where it is merely a question of order and prosperity, where the greater the amount of work done, and the more equitable the division of the fruits of that work, the more the aim is attained, and the progress accomplished?

The instinct of men repels so limited a definition of human destiny. It appears, at the first view, that the word civilisation comprehends something more extended, more complex, superior to the mere perfection of social relations, of social power, and prosperity. Facts, public opinion, the generally received meaning of the term, agree with this instinct. Take Rome in the prosperous time of the republic, after the second Punic war, at the moment of her greatest power, when she was marching to the conquest of the world, when her social state was evidently progressing. Then take Rome under Augustus, at the time when her fall commenced, at least when the progressive movement of society was arrested, when evil principles were on the point of prevailing. Yet there is no one who does not think and does not say that the Rome of Augustus was more civilised than the Rome of Fabricius or of Cincinnatus.

Let us go elsewhere; let us take the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: it is evident, in a social point of view, that as to the amount and distribution of prosperity among individuals, the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was inferior to some other countries of Europe, to Holland, and to England, for example... I think that in Holland and in England social activity was greater, was increasing more rapidly, and distributing its fruits better than in France. Yet, consult the judgment of men ; that will tell you that France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most civilised country of Europe. Europe has not hesitated in answering this question. We find traces of this public opinion respecting France in all the monuments of European literature.

We could point out many other states where prosperity is greater, increases more rapidly, and is better divided among individuals than elsewhere, and yet where, by spontaneous instinct, in the judgment of men, the civilisation is considered inferior to that of other countries whose purely social relations are not so well regulated... What is to be said? What do these countries possess, what gives them this privileged right to the name of civilised, which compensates so largely, in the opinion of men, for what they want in other respects ?

Another development, besides that of social life, is in them strikingly manifested; the development of individual life, of internal life, the development of man himself, of his faculties, of his sentiments, of his ideas. If society is more imperfect than elsewhere, humanity appears with more grandeur and power... There remain many social conquests to make, but immense intellectual and moral conquests are accomplished; many men stand in need of many benefits and many rights; but many great men live and shine before the world. Literature, science, and the arts display all their splendor. Wherever mankind sees these great types, these glorified images of human nature shining, wherever he sees this treasury of sublime enjoyments progressing, then he recognises it as, and calls it, civilisation.

Two facts, then, are comprised in this great fact: it subsists on two conditions, and shows itself by two symptoms; the development of social activity, and of individual activity, the progress of society, and the progress of humanity. Wherever the external condition is extended, vivified, and ameliorated, wherever the internal nature of man displays itself with brilliancy and grandeur; by these two signs, and often in spite of

the profound imperfection of the social state, mankind applauds and proclaims civilisation.

Guizot.

MUSEUM OF NORTHERN ANTIQUITIES, COPENHAGEN. THERE is perhaps no study more profoundly interesting than the early history of a country, illustrated by antiquities, handed down from remote ages long before events were recorded in written languages. There is something peculiarly attractive in those simple memorials which connect the present with the distant past, even when they are brought before us in isolated examples; but when we find hundreds of them collected together, arranged and classified by the learned archæologist in such a manner that we can with certainty trace, link by link, the chain which attaches our own generation with races that existed a thousand years before the birth of Christ, a fountain of instruction and pleasure is opened to us of the most agreeable kind.

All European countries possess more or less of these valuable materials for throwing light on the character and habits of their early inhabitants; but to this, one of the smallest kingdoms amongst them, is due the glory of having taken the initiative of collecting, writing, and disentangling, the numerous shreds of antiquity, and of weaving them into a connected fabric, on which is stamped the the records of primæval history. The antiquities fill ten or twelve rooms of the Christiansborg palace, and are arranged under five heads. The first, which consists of implements and weapons of stone or flint, commences at a date conjectured to be at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and terminates five hundred years anterior to that event. This is denominated the "stone age"...The second ranges from five hundred years before, to about five hundred after the Christian era; and from the circumstance of weapons and other articles of bronze having been generally used during that period, it is called the "bronze age"... The third, beginning in the sixth, terminates in the tenth century, and is named the "iron age," from that metal having then been in use... The fourth consists of relics, principally of Christianity, between the tenth and thirteenth centuries; and the fifth extends from the latter date to the reformation.

The contents of the three first divisions have been dug out of the earth, or discovered in ancient tombs of the country. They belong exclusively to the pagan times, and are by far the most interesting portion of the collection.

The first room we entered contained a great variety of objects belonging to the earliest period, consisting of arrow, hammer, and spear-heads, axes, knives, chisels, gouges, and fish-hooks of flint or stone, neatly executed, and in some instances displaying considerable taste and skill; the more remarkable from the fact of their having necessarily been made with tools of the same material.

The nature of these implements and the substance of which they are composed, at once indicate a people in a savage state, who obtained their subsistence by hunting and fishing; many of the articles bearing the strongest resemblance to those used up to the present day by the rudest of the South Sea Islanders.

Some of the axes have evidently been repaired, for we find them with the cutting edge ground at a different angle from the original surface. They are of various sizes, wedge-shaped, and were probably used as much in war as for other purposes. They must have been attached to wooden handles, in a similar way to that adopted in the New Zealand axes, examples of which hang in the Museum ... These hatchets could scarcely have been adapted to felling large trees, which were doubtless brought down by means of fire applied to the lower part of their trunks, a very common usage amongst savage nations, but they were of great service in splitting wood, and hollowing out the rude canoes used for fishing.

The most important memorials of the stone age are the graves, called Cromlechs, and Giants' Chambers. The former vary much in size and shape, the long cromlechs being generally from sixty to a hundred, but sometimes reaching even four hundred feet in length, by from sixteen to forty feet in breadth, while the circular cromlechs are much smaller. All, however, have the same character, as they appear to have had the same destination... Each cromlech consists of several large flat stones arranged edgewise on a mound of earth, and capped by a huge fragment of rock, often from thirty to forty feet in circumference, thus forming a sepulchral chamber, wherein the bodies of the dead were placed, mostly in a sitting posture, with their backs to the wall.

The giants' chamber differs from the cromlech in being somewhat larger, in having a long passage of stone leading to the interior, and from the whole being covered with a mound of earth forming a tumulus. Some of these tumuli also contain two chambers with separate entrances.

Skeletons of unburnt bodies, implements of stone and flint, amber beads, various ornaments, and earthenware vases, have

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