Description

The word civilization is of somewhat indefinite meaning...

Civilization is the result of previous progress. Progress is a movement; it is, so to speak, dynamical. Civilization is a state, it is static. It is not the work of the present moment; it is rather that which the present inherits from the past, in the way of science, art, discovery, wealth, customs. In a society which is in process of civilization, each generation finds a certain store of the elements of civilization at hand. The scientific researches of the past have not to be commenced anew; its discoveries and industrial processes we have but to learn and to perpetuate. Agriculture has made progress, cities have been built, roads constructed, and society organized. Finally, we have language ready formed, and race instincts, and moral and intellectual qualities, more or less developed. So that we may regard civilization as the sum of human enjoyment at a given moment, which is at hand without the necessity of going in search of it. Or, in philosophical language, we say that civilization is an accumulation of force in the race, or for the race.