DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION” (_continued_); DIFFERENT
CHARACTERISTICS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETIES; OUR CIVILIZATION IS NOT SUPERIOR
TO THOSE WHICH HAVE GONE BEFORE
When a nation, belonging to either the male or female series, has the
civilizing instinct so strongly that it can impose its laws on vast
multitudes of men; when it is so fortunate as to be able to satisfy
their inner needs, and appeal to their hearts as well as their heads;
from this moment a culture is brought into being. This general appeal is
the essential note of the civilizing instinct, and its greatest glory.
This alone makes it a living and active force. The interests of
individuals only flourish in isolation; and social life always tends, to
some extent, to mutilate them. For a system of ideas to be really
fruitful and convincing, it must suit the particular ways of thought and
feeling current among the people to whom it is offered.
When some special point of view is accepted by the mass of a people as
the basis of their legislation, it is really because it fulfils, in the
main, their most cherished desires. The male nations look principally
for material well-being, the female nations are more taken up with the
needs of the imagination; but, I repeat, as soon as the multitudes enrol
themselves under a banner, or—to speak more exactly—as soon as a
particular form of administration is accepted, a civilization is born.
Another invariable mark of civilization is the need that is felt for
stability. This follows immediately from what I have said above; for the
moment that men have admitted, as a community, that some special
principle is to govern and unite them, and have consented to make
individual sacrifices to bring this about, their first impulse is to
respect the governing principle—as much for what it brings as for what
it demands—and to declare it unshakable. The purer a race keeps its
blood, the less will its social foundations be liable to attack; for the
general way of thought will remain the same. Yet the desire for
stability cannot be entirely satisfied for long. The admixture of blood
will be followed by some modifications in the fundamental ideas of the
people, and these again by an itch for change in the building itself.
Such change will sometimes mean real progress, especially in the dawn of
a civilization, when the governing principle is usually rigid and
absolute, owing to the exclusive predominance of some single race.
Later, the tinkering will become incessant, as the mass is more
heterogeneous and loses its singleness of aim; and the community will
not always be able to congratulate itself on the result. So long,
however, as it remains under the guidance of the original impulse, it
will not cease, while holding fast to the idea of bettering its
condition, to follow a chimera of stability. Fickle, unstable, changing
every hour, it yet thinks itself eternal, and marches on, as towards
some goal in Paradise. It clings to the doctrine (even while continually
denying it in practice) that one of the chief marks of civilization is
to borrow a part of God’s immutability for the profit of man. When the
likeness obviously does not exist, it takes courage, and consoles itself
by the conviction that soon, at any rate, it will attain to the Divine
attribute.
By the side of stability, and the co-operation of individual interests,
which touch each other without being destroyed, we must put a third and
a fourth characteristic of civilization, sociability, and the hatred of
violence—in other words the demand that the head, and not the fists,
shall be used for self-defence.
These last two features are the source of all mental improvement, and so
of all material progress; it is to these especially that we look for the
evidence as to whether a society is advanced or not.[41]
I think I may now sum up my view of civilization by defining it as _a
state of relative stability, where the mass of men try to satisfy their
wants by peaceful means, and are refined in their conduct and
intelligence_.
In this formula are comprised all the peoples whom I have mentioned up
to now as being civilized, whether they belong to one or the other
class. Assuming that the conditions are fulfilled, we must now inquire
whether all civilizations are equal. I think not. The social needs of
the chief peoples are not felt with the same intensity or directed
towards the same objects; thus their conduct and intelligence will show
great differences in kind, as well as in degree. What are the material
needs of the Hindu? Rice and butter for his food, and a linen cloth for
his raiment. We may certainly be tempted to ascribe this simplicity to
conditions of climate. But the Tibetans live in a very severe climate,
and are yet most remarkable for their abstinence. The main interest of
both these peoples is in their religious and philosophical development,
in providing for the very insistent demands of the mind and the spirit.
Thus there is no balance kept between the male and female principles.
The scale is too heavily weighted on the intellectual side, the
consequence being that almost all the work done under this civilization
is exclusively devoted to the one end, to the detriment of the other.
Huge monuments, mountains of stone, are chiselled and set up, at a cost
of toil and effort that staggers the imagination. Colossal buildings
cover the ground—and with what object? to honour the gods. Nothing is
made for man—except perhaps the tombs. By the side of the marvels
produced by the sculptor, literature, with no less vigour, creates her
masterpieces. The theology, the metaphysics, are as varied as they are
subtle and ingenious, and man’s thought goes down, without flinching,
into the immeasurable abyss. In lyric poetry feminine civilization is
the pride of humanity.
But when I pass from the kingdom of ideals and visions to that of the
useful inventions, and the theoretical sciences on which they rest, I
fall at once from the heights into the depths, and the brilliant day
gives place to night. Useful discoveries are rare; the few that appear
are petty and sterile; the power of observation practically does not
exist. While the Chinese were continually inventing, the Hindus
conceived a few ideas, which they did not take the trouble to work out.
Again the Greeks had, as we know from their literature, many scientific
notions that were unworthy of them; while the Romans, after passing the
culminating-point in their history, could not advance very far, although
they did more than the Greeks; for the mixture of Asiatic blood, that
absorbed them with startling rapidity, denied them the qualities which
are indispensable for a patient investigation of nature. Yet their
administrative genius, their legislation, and the useful buildings that
were set up throughout the Empire are a sufficient witness to the
positive nature of their social ideas at a certain period; they prove
that if Southern Europe had not been so quickly covered by the continual
stream of colonists from Asia and Africa, positive science would have
won the day, and the Germanic pioneers would, in consequence, have lost
a few of their laurels.
The conquerors of the fifth century brought into Europe a spirit of the
same order as that of the Chinese, but with very different powers. It
was equipped, to a far greater extent, with the feminine qualities, and
united the two motive-forces far more harmoniously. Wherever this branch
of the human family was dominant, the utilitarian tendencies, though in
a nobler form, are unmistakable. In England, North America, Holland, and
Hanover, they override the other instincts of the people. It is the same
in Belgium, and also in the north of France, where there is always a
wonderfully quick comprehension of anything with a practical bearing. As
we go further south these tendencies become weaker. This is not due to
the fiercer action of the sun, for the Catalans and the Piedmontese
certainly live in a hotter climate than the men of Provence or
Bas-Languedoc; the sole cause is the influence of blood.
The female or feminized races occupy the greater part of the globe, and,
in particular, the greater part of Europe. With the exception of the
Teutonic group and some of the Slavs, all the races in our part of the
world have the material instincts only in a slight degree; they have
already played their parts in former ages and cannot begin again. The
masses, in their infinite gradations from Gaul to Celtiberian, from
Celtiberian to the nameless mixture of Italians and other Latin races,
form a descending scale, so far as the chief powers (though not all the
powers) of the male principle are concerned.
Our civilization has been created by the mingling of the Germanic tribes
with the races of the ancient world, the union, that is to say, of
pre-eminently male groups with races and fragments of races clinging to
the decayed remnants of the ancient ideas. The richness, variety, and
fertility of invention for which we honour our modern societies, are the
natural, and more or less successful, result of the maimed and disparate
elements which our Germanic ancestors instinctively knew how to use,
temper, and disguise.
Our own kind of culture has two general marks, wherever it is found; it
has been touched, however superficially, by the Germanic element, and it
is Christian. This second characteristic (to repeat what I have said
already) is more marked than the other, and leaps first to the eye,
because it is an outward feature of our modern State, a sort of varnish
on its surface; but it is not absolutely essential, as many nations are
Christian—and still more might become Christian—without forming a part
of our circle of civilization. The first characteristic is, on the
contrary, positive and decisive. Where the Germanic element has never
penetrated, our special kind of civilization does not exist.
This naturally brings me to the question whether we can call our
European societies entirely civilized; whether the ideas and actions
that appear on the surface have the roots of their being deep down in
the mass of the people, and therefore whether their effects correspond
with the instincts of the greatest number. This leads to a further
question: do the lower strata of our populations think and act in
accordance with what we call European civilization?
Many have admired, and with good reason, the extraordinary unity of
ideas and views that guided the whole body of citizens in the Greek
states of the best period. The conclusions on every essential point were
often hostile to each other; but they all derived from the same source.
In politics, some wanted more or less democracy, some more or less
oligarchy. In religion, some chose to worship the Eleusinian Demeter,
others Athene Parthenos. As a matter of literary taste, Æschylus might
be preferred to Sophocles, Alcæus to Pindar. But, at bottom, the ideas
discussed were all such as we might call national; the disputes turned
merely on points of proportion. The same was the case at Rome, before
the Punic Wars; the civilization of the country was uniform and
unquestioned. It reached the slave through the master; all shared in it
to a different extent, but none shared in any other.
From the time of the Punic Wars among the Romans, and from that of
Pericles, and especially of Philip, among the Greeks, this uniformity
tended more and more to break down. The mixture of nations brought with
it a mixture of civilizations. The result was a very complex and learned
society, with a culture far more refined than before. But it had one
striking disadvantage; both in Italy and in Hellas, it existed merely
for the upper classes, the lower strata being left quite ignorant of its
nature, its merits, and its aims. Roman civilization after the great
Asiatic wars was, no doubt, a powerful manifestation of human genius;
but it really embraced none but the Greek rhetoricians who supplied its
philosophical basis, the Syrian lawyers who built up for it an atheistic
legal system, the rich men who were engaged in public administration or
money-making, and finally the leisured voluptuaries who did nothing at
all. By the masses it was, at all times, merely tolerated. The peoples
of Europe understood nothing of its Asiatic and African elements, those
of Egypt had no better idea of what it brought them from Gaul and Spain,
those of Numidia had no appreciation of what came to them from the rest
of the world. Thus, below what we might call the social classes, lived
innumerable multitudes who had a different civilization from that of the
official world, or were not civilized at all. Only the minority of the
Roman people held the secret, and attached any importance to it. We have
here the example of a civilization that is accepted and dominant, no
longer through the convictions of the peoples who live under it, but by
their exhaustion, their weakness, and their indifference.
In China we find the exact contrary. The territory is of course immense,
but from one end to the other there is the same spirit among the native
Chinese—I leave the rest out of account—and the same grasp of their
civilization. Whatever its principles may be, whether we approve of its
aims or not, we must admit that the part played by the masses in their
civilization shows how well they understand it. The reason is not that
the country is free in our sense, that a democratic feeling of rivalry
impels all to do their best in order to secure a position guaranteed
them by law. Not at all; I am not trying to paint an ideal picture.
Peasants and middle classes alike have little hope, in the Middle
Kingdom at any rate, of rising by sheer force of merit. In this part of
the Empire, in spite of the official promises with regard to the system
of examinations by which the public services are filled, no one doubts
that the places are all reserved for members of the official families,
and that the decision of the professors is often affected more by money
than by scholarship;[42] but though shipwrecked ambitions may bewail the
evils of the system, they do not imagine that there could be a better
one, and the existing state of things is the object of unshakable
admiration to the whole people.
Education in China is remarkably general and widespread; it extends to
classes considerably below those which, in France, might conceivably
feel the want of it. The cheapness of books,[43] the number and the low
fees of the schools, bring a certain measure of education within the
reach of everybody. The aims and spirit of the laws are generally well
understood, and the government is proud of having made legal knowledge
accessible to all. There is a strong instinct of repulsion against
radical changes in the Government. A very trustworthy critic on this
point, Mr. John F. Davis, the British Commissioner in China, who has not
only lived in Canton but has studied its affairs with the closest
application, says that the Chinese are a people whose history does not
show a single attempt at a social revolution, or any alteration in the
outward forms of power. In his opinion, they are best described as “a
nation of steady conservatives.”
The contrast is very striking, when we turn to the civilization of the
Roman world, where changes of government followed each other with
startling rapidity right up to the coming of the northern peoples.
Everywhere in this great society, and at every time, we can find
populations so detached from the existing order as to be ready for the
wildest experiments. Nothing was left untried in this long period, no
principle respected. Property, religion, the family were all called in
question, and many, both in the North and South, were inclined to put
the novel theories into practice. Absolutely nothing in the Græco-Roman
world rested on a solid foundation, not even the unity of the Empire, so
necessary one would think for the general safety. Further, it was not
only the armies, with their hosts of improvised Cæsars, who were
continually battering at this Palladium of society; the emperors
themselves, beginning with Diocletian, had so little belief in the
monarchy, that they established of their own accord a division of power.
At last there were four rulers at once. Not a single institution, not a
single principle, was fixed, in this unhappy society, which had no
better reason for continuing to exist than the physical impossibility of
deciding on which rock it should founder; until the moment came when it
was crushed in the vigorous arms of the North, and forced at last to
become something definite.
Thus we find a complete opposition between these two great societies,
the Celestial and the Roman Empires. To the civilization of Eastern Asia
I will add that of the Brahmans, which is also of extraordinary strength
and universality. If in China every one, or nearly every one, has
reached a certain level of knowledge, the same is the case among the
Hindus. Each man, according to his caste, shares in a spirit that has
lasted for ages, and knows exactly what he ought to learn, think, and
believe. Among the Buddhists of Tibet and other parts of Upper Asia,
nothing is rarer than a peasant who cannot read. Every one has similar
convictions on the important matters of life.
Do we find the same uniformity among Europeans? The question is not
worth asking. The Græco-Roman civilization has no definitely marked
colour, either throughout the nations as a whole, or even within the
same people. I need not speak of Russia or most of the Austrian States;
the proof would be too easy. But consider Germany or Italy (especially
South Italy); Spain shows a similar picture, though in fainter lines;
France is in the same position as Spain.
Take the case of France. I will not confine myself to the fact, which
always strikes the most superficial observer, that between Paris and the
rest of France there is an impassable gulf, and that at the very gates
of the capital a new nation begins, which is quite different from that
living within the walls. On this point there is no room for doubt, and
those who base their conclusions, as to the unity of ideas and the
fusion of blood, on the formal unity of our Government, are under a
great illusion.
Not a single social law or root-principle of civilization is understood
in the same way in all our departments. I do not refer merely to the
peoples of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Limousin, Gascony, and Provence;
every one knows how little one is like the other, and how they vary in
their opinions. The important point is that, while in China, Tibet, and
India the ideas essential to the maintenance of civilization are
familiar to all classes, this is not at all the case among ourselves.
The most elementary and accessible facts are sealed mysteries to most of
our rural populations, who are absolutely indifferent to them; for
usually they can neither read nor write, and have no wish to learn. They
cannot see the use of such knowledge, nor the possibility of applying
it. In such a matter, I put no trust in the promises of the law, or the
fine show made by institutions, but rather in what I have seen for
myself, and in the reports of careful observers. Different governments
have made the most praiseworthy attempts to raise the peasants from
their ignorance; not only are the children given every opportunity for
being educated in their villages, but even adults, who are made
conscripts at twenty, find in the regimental schools an excellent system
of instruction in the most necessary subjects. Yet, in spite of these
provisions, and the fatherly anxiety of the Government, in spite of the
_compelle intrare_[44] which it is continually dinning into the ears of
its agents, the agricultural classes learn nothing whatever. Like all
those who have lived in the provinces, I have seen how parents never
send their children to school without obvious reluctance, how they
regard the hours spent there as a mere waste of time, how they withdraw
them at once on the slightest pretext and never allow the compulsory
number of years to be extended. Once he leaves school, the young man’s
first duty is to forget what he has learnt. This is, to a certain
extent, a point of honour with him; and his example is followed by the
discharged soldiers, who, in many parts of France, are not only ashamed
of having learnt to read and write, but even affect to forget their own
language, and often succeed in doing so. Hence I could more easily
approve all the generous efforts that have been so fruitlessly made to
educate our rural populations, if I were not convinced that the
knowledge put before them is quite unsuitable, and that at the root of
their apparent indifference there is a feeling of invincible hostility
to our civilization. One proof lies in their attitude of passive
resistance; but the spectre of another and more convincing argument
appears before me, as soon as I see any instance of this obstinacy being
overcome, under apparently favourable circumstances. In some respects
the attempts at education are succeeding better than before. In our
eastern departments and the great manufacturing towns there are many
workmen who learn of their own accord to read and write. They live in a
circle where such knowledge is obviously useful. But as soon as they
have a sufficient grasp of the rudiments, how do they use them?
Generally as a means of acquiring ideas and feelings which are now no
longer instinctively, but actively, opposed to the social order. The
only exception is to be found in the agricultural and even the
industrial population of the North-west, where knowledge up to an
elementary point is far more widespread than in any other part, and
where it is not only retained after the school time is over, but is
usually made to serve a good end. As these populations have much more
affinity than the others to the Germanic race, I am not surprised at the
result. We see the same phenomenon in Belgium and the Netherlands.
If we go on to consider the fundamental beliefs and opinions of the
people, the difference becomes still more marked. With regard to the
beliefs we have to congratulate the Christian religion on not being
exclusive or making its dogmas too narrow. If it had, it would have
struck some very dangerous shoals. The bishops and the clergy have to
struggle, as they have done for these five, ten, fifteen centuries,
against the stream of hereditary tendencies and prejudices, which are
the more formidable as they are hardly even admitted, and so can neither
be fought nor conquered. There is no enlightened priest who does not
know, after his mission-work in the villages, the deep cunning with
which even the religious peasant will continue to cherish, in his inmost
heart, some traditional idea that comes to the surface only at rare
moments, in spite of himself. His complete confidence in his parish
priest just stops short of what we might call his secret religion. Does
he mention it to him? he denies it, will admit no discussion, and will
not budge an inch from his convictions. This is the reason of the
taciturnity that, in every province, is the main attitude of the peasant
in face of the middle classes; it raises too an insuperable barrier
between him and even the most popular landowners in his canton. With
this view of civilization on the part of the majority of the people who
are supposed to be most deeply attached to it, I can well believe that
an approximate estimate of ten millions within our circle of culture,
and twenty-six millions outside it, would be, if anything, an
under-statement.
If our rural populations were merely brutal and ignorant, we might not
take much notice of this cleavage, but console ourselves with the
delusive hope of gradually winning them over, and absorbing them in the
multitudes that are already civilized. But these peasants are like
certain savage tribes: at first sight they seem brutish and unthinking,
for they are outwardly self-effacing and humble. But if one digs even a
little beneath the surface, into their real life, one finds that their
isolation is voluntary, and comes from no feeling of weakness. Their
likes and dislikes are not a matter of chance; everything obeys a
logical sequence of definite ideas. When I spoke just now of religion, I
might also have pointed out how very far removed our moral doctrines are
from those of the peasants,[45] what a different sense they give to the
word _delicacy_, how obstinately they cling to their custom of regarding
every one who is not of peasant stock in the same way as the men of
remote antiquity viewed the foreigner. It is true they do not murder
him, thanks to the strange and mysterious terror inspired by laws they
have not themselves made; but they do not conceal their hatred and
distrust of him, and they take great pleasure in annoying him, if they
can do it without risk. Does this mean that they are ill-natured? No,
not among themselves—we may continually see them doing each other little
kindnesses. They simply look on themselves as a race apart, a race (if
we may believe them) which is weak and oppressed, and obliged to deal
crookedly, but which also keeps its stiff-necked and contemptuous pride.
In some of our provinces the workman thinks himself of far better blood
and older stock than his former master. Family pride, in some of the
peasants, is at least equal to that of the nobility of the Middle
Ages.[46]
We cannot doubt it; the lower strata of the French people have very
little in common with the surface. They form an abyss over which
civilization is suspended, and the deep stagnant waters, sleeping at the
bottom of the gulf, will one day show their power of dissolving all that
comes in their way. The most tragic crises of her history have deluged
the country with blood, without the agricultural population playing any
part except that which was forced on it. Where its immediate interests
were not engaged, it let the storms pass by without troubling itself in
the least. Those who are astonished and scandalized by such callousness
say that the peasant is essentially immoral—which is both unjust and
untrue. The peasants look on us almost in the light of enemies. They
understand nothing of our civilization, they share in it unwillingly,
and think themselves justified in profiting, as far as they can, by its
misfortunes. If we put aside this antagonism, which is sometimes active
but generally inert, we need not hesitate to allow them some high moral
qualities, however strangely these may, at times, be manifested.
I may apply to the whole of Europe what I have just said of France, and
conclude that modern civilization includes far more than it absorbs; in
this it resembles the Roman Empire. Hence one cannot be confident that
our state of society will last; and I see a clear proof of this in the
smallness of its hold even over the classes raised a little above the
country population. Our civilization may be compared to the temporary
islands thrown up in the sea by submarine volcanoes. Exposed as they are
to the destructive action of the currents, and robbed of the forces that
first kept them in position, they will one day break up, and their
fragments will be hurled into the gulf of the all-conquering waves. It
is a sad end, and one which many noble races before ourselves have had
to meet. The blow cannot be turned aside; it is inevitable. The wise man
may see it coming, but can do nothing more. The most consummate
statesmanship is not able for one moment to counteract the immutable
laws of the world.
But though thus unknown, despised, or hated by the majority of those who
live under its shadow, our civilization is yet one of the most glorious
monuments ever erected by the genius of man. It is certainly not
distinguished by its power of invention; but putting this aside, we may
say that it has greatly developed the capacity for understanding, and so
for conquest. To mistake nothing is to take everything. If it has not
founded the “exact sciences,” it has at least made them exact, and freed
them from errors to which, curiously enough, they were more liable than
any other branch of knowledge. Thanks to its discoveries, it knows the
material world better than all the societies which have gone before. It
has guessed some of its chief laws, it can describe and explain them,
and borrow from them a marvellous strength that passes a hundredfold the
strength of a man. Little by little, by a skilful use of induction, it
has reconstructed large periods of history of which the ancients never
suspected the existence. The further we are from primitive times, the
more clearly can we see them, and penetrate their mysteries. This is a
great point of superiority, and one which we must, in fairness, allow to
our civilization.
But when we have admitted this, should we be right in concluding, as is
usually done, without reflexion, that it is superior to all the
civilizations that have ever existed, and to all those that exist at the
present day? Yes and no. Yes, because the extreme diversity of its
elements allows it to rest on a powerful basis of comparison and
analysis, and so to assimilate at once almost anything; yes, because
this power of choice is favourable to its development in many different
directions; yes again, because, thanks to the impulse of the Germanic
element (which is too materialistic to be a destructive force) it has
made itself a morality, the wise prescriptions of which were generally
unknown before. If, however, we carry this idea of its greatness so far
as to regard it as having an absolute and unqualified superiority, then
I say no, the simple fact being that it excels in practically nothing
whatever.
In politics, we see it in bondage to the continual change brought about
by the different requirements of the races which it includes. In
England, Holland, Naples, and Russia, its principles are still fairly
stable, because the populations are more homogeneous, or at any rate
form groups of the same kind, with similar instincts. But everywhere
else, especially in France, Central Italy, and Germany—where variations
of race are infinite—theories of government can never rise to the rank
of accepted truths, and political science is a matter of continual
experiment. As our civilization is unable to have any sure confidence in
itself, it is without the stability that is one of the most important
qualities mentioned in my definition. This weakness is to be found
neither in the Buddhist and Brahman societies, nor in the Celestial
Empire; and these civilizations have in this respect an advantage over
ours. The whole people is at one in its political beliefs. When there is
a wise government, and the ancient institutions are bearing good fruit,
every one is glad. When they are in clumsy hands, and injure the
commonwealth, they are pitied by the citizens as a man pities himself;
but they never cease to be respected. There is sometimes a desire to
purify them, but never to sweep them away or replace them by others. It
does not need very keen eyes to see here a guarantee of long life which
our civilization is very far from possessing.
In art, our inferiority to India, as well as to Egypt, Greece, and
America, is very marked. Neither in sublimity nor beauty have we
anything to compare with the masterpieces of antiquity. When our day has
drawn to its close, and the ruins of our towns and monuments cover the
face of the land, the traveller will discover nothing, in the forests
and marshes that will skirt the Thames, the Seine, and the Rhine, to
rival the gorgeous ruins of Philæ, Nineveh, Athens, Salsette, and the
valley of Tenochtitlan. If future ages have something to learn from us
in the way of positive science, this is not the case with poetry, as is
clearly proved by the despairing admiration that we so justly feel for
the intellectual wonders of foreign civilizations.
So far as the refinement of manners is concerned, we have obviously
changed for the worse. This is shown by our own past history; there were
periods when luxury, elegance, and sumptuousness were understood far
better and practised on a far more lavish scale than to-day. Pleasure
was certainly confined to a smaller number. Comparatively few were in
what we should call a state of _well-being_. On the other hand, if we
admit (as we must) that refinement of manners elevates the minds of the
multitudes who look on, as well as ennobling the life of a few favoured
individuals, that it spreads a varnish of beauty and grandeur over the
whole country, and that these become the common inheritance of all—then
our civilization, which is essentially petty on its external side,
cannot be compared to its rivals.
I may add, finally, that the active element distinguishing any
civilization is identical with the most striking quality, whatever it
may be, of the dominant race. The civilization is modified and
transformed according to the changes undergone by this race, and when
the race itself has disappeared, carries on for some time the impulse
originally received from it. Thus the kind of order kept in any society
is the best index to the special capacities of the people and to the
stage of progress to which they have attained: it is the clearest mirror
in which their individuality can be reflected.
I see that the long digression, into which I have strayed, has carried
me further than I expected. I do not regret it, for it has enabled me to
vent certain ideas that the reader might well keep in mind. But it is
now time to return to the main course of my argument, the chain of which
is still far from being complete.
I established first that the life or death of societies was the result
of internal causes. I have said what these causes are, and described
their essential nature, in order that they may be more easily
recognized. I have shown that they are generally referred to a wrong
source; and in looking for some sign that could always distinguish them,
and indicate their presence, I found it in the capacity to create a
civilization. As it seemed impossible to discover a clear conception of
this term, it was necessary to define it, as I have done. My next step
must be to study the natural and unvarying phenomenon which I have
identified as the latent cause of the life and death of societies. This,
as I have said, consists in the relative worth of the different races.
Logic requires me to make clear at once what I understand by the word
_race_. This will be the subject of the following chapter.