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The critical canon that the more a people has been interfered with, the more difficult it becomes to generalise the laws of its progress and to analyse the separate forces of its civilisation, is one the validity of which is now generally recognised by those who pretend to a scientific treatment of all history: and while we have seen that Aristotle anticipated it in a general formula, to Polybius belongs the honour of being the first to apply it explicitly in the sphere of history.
It is a pathetic acknowledgment of his poor judgment, if he lets the world suspect that his choice was wrong. There are some souls that hie them faraway from civilisation, to convents, monasteries, and western plains, that they may keep away from temptation. In the same fashion, woman tries to isolate her lord and master. If he meets women at all, they are those invisibly labeled "not dangerous."
But one would wish that the educators of the rising generation of women should, basing themselves upon these foundations, point out to every girl how great is woman's debt to civilisation; in other words, how much is under civilisation done for woman by man.
I said that I used to have a very bleeding of the heart for the half-clothed and quarter-fed hangers-on to civilisation; I think far less of them now than of another class in appearance much better off.
Young Corey laughed. "It wasn't exactly cumbered with them." "No?" "To tell the truth, I don't suppose they ever buy books. The young ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating library." "Had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?" "Yes, in certain ways to a certain degree." "It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," said the elder musingly.
Christianity has a message to which men become always more willing to respond as they rise in the scale of civilisation; it has proved its power to enter into the lives of various nations, and to adapt itself to their circumstances and guide their aspirations without humiliating them.
But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile.
Nomadic habits, whether over wide plains, or through the dense forests of the tropics, or along the shores of the sea, have in every case been highly detrimental. Whilst observing the barbarous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, it struck me that the possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of many families under a chief, were the indispensable requisites for civilisation.
The employment of force for the maintenance of right is the foundation of all civilised human life, for it is the fundamental function of the State, and apart from the State there is no civilisation, no life worth living. The first business of the State is to protect the community against violent interference from outside.
This can always be done with a man in love who has slight foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occult reason civilisation has elected to treat the strange and great passion as if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose dominion over him proper social training prevents any man from admitting openly.
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