It has seemed to me necessary at this point in my argument to call
attention to the introduction into social life in the fifteenth century
of a new working principle which has been in direct antagonism to the
basic idea of civilization, because it must be borne in mind that
during the last four centuries the history of Europe and the New World
furnishes illustrations of two conflicting processes of social
integration. Not everything that has happened since the New World was
discovered can be set down to the credit of that process which is still
ascendant in Prussia. Instances, therefore, from modern history which
go against my account of civilization have no weight against my
contention and cannot be raised against me; modern instances must not
only be shown to be facts, but to be vital outputs of the same
principle that animates the old order. To account every co-ordination
of modern social life as an instance of civilization is as if any one
should cite the turbine engine and its achievements and set these down
to the credit of the piston engine. But the idea of the one is wholly
new and not a further evolution of the old. Or it is as if one should
assign the glory of the motor-car to the inventor of the bicycle, or of
the bicycle to the originator of the horse-cart; or as if one should
point to an aeroplane as an illustration of a further stage in the
evolution of the motor-car. It is a fact that the aeroplane came after,
but not a fact that it came _from_, the motor-car. If, as I believe,
the new order which began to manifest itself in the fifteenth century
stands to civilization as the aeroplane to the motorcar, and as the
motor-car to the bicycle and the horse-cart, or as the turbine to the
piston engine, then I am right in claiming that we ought not to call it
civilization. If we do, we should be acting like any one who insisted
upon calling an airship a horse-cart. There might be reasons for so
doing: and there may be reasons for calling things civilization which
are something quite different. For instance, I can conceive that the
new order might be more easily insinuated into general acceptance if
those whose interests are all vested in the old are not informed that
it is new. But tonight I am treating not of words, but of things; and
if it will hasten the triumph of the new order to pretend that it is
civilization, let us by all means do so--just as we call six o'clock
seven in order to gain an extra hour of sunlight during the waking day.
I know that to many the idea will appear grotesquely naive, that an
institution as old as civilization and so wide-spreading should come to
an end and be superseded by something else, and that this change should
be taking place under our very eyes. But, happily for me, the
world-conflict which is now devastating Europe has begun to undermine
in the soul of many the fetish-worship of civilization. And to assist
further in breaking the spell which civilization may have cast over the
imagination of most of my audience, I would remind you that
civilization is, after all, a mere mushroom growth, and that what has
sprung up only overnight cannot have taken deep root (as if it were a
thing practically eternal), and could not be very difficult to replace
by something more deliberately thought out--by something learned
through ten thousand years of the tragic effects experienced by
thousands of millions of human beings. Civilization, I say, is a mere
mushroom growth, as compared with the whole life-period of man's
existence on earth. It is only ten thousand years old; while, by the
most modest and cautious calculation, man has existed one hundred
thousand years; and during the ninety thousand which preceded the last
ten, he made gigantic progress towards self-knowledge and
self-reverence. Let us, therefore, not be browbeaten by civilization on
account of its antiquity.