Philosophy. DOES CIVILIZATION NECESSITATE DEMORALIZATION? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I. CIVILIZATION is one of those great, sounding words with which men deceive themselves, and seek to deceive others. It does not denote any free and legitimate birth of human nature. It is not a process of regeneration, but of degeneration. Manliness is not cultured by civilization. Independence and personality are set at a sad discount in society, which too often stamps the exhibitions of human selfhood with the vile and tricky names of eccentricity, insanity, and crime. Law surrounds man with a whole circle of artificialities. Society imprisons the soul of man in a dungeon of etiquette. Civilization is a round of formalities; hypocrisies are rife in it, and it constantly tends to make men "whited sepulchres." The natural man is noble, even in his ruin. There beat in his bosom the heroisms of life. Even his hatreds, violent though they are, are virile without being virulent. It is only when the superior cunning of civilization encompasses men in their original state that they become depraved, and outdo in cunning their civilized and evil-minded foes. It is a most philosophical, but also a most melancholy confession which Shakspere makes of himself, when he says,— "My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." The greatest and the noblest minds are not free from this infirmity. They are encircled in a net of fallacy, and they cannot "cut the Gordian knot" which holds them in its toils. Civilization surrounds them, and they fancy or feel that in every day life " whatever is, is right." When they look on far distant lands, they look with jaundiced eyes; or when they receive reports of other outlying districts of population, they receive them from parties who have little sympathy with the ways of the lives led there, and less knowledge of its inner amenities. They see the outer husk and rind, but cannot taste the sweetness of the kernel. They misunderstand, and therefore they misreport. They define civilization according to their wishes, not in consistency with facts; they form an ideal, and they call that ideal real; they close their eyes to the facts which show their errors. The notable French statesman-littérateur, sensible of the impo licy of definition in a case of this sort, condescends to a kind of rhetorical trick to get out of the difficulty, by saying, "In studying, as a fact, the meaning of the word Civilization-in investigating all the ideas comprised within it, according to the common sense of mankind-we shall make greater progress in gaining a knowledge of the fact itself, than if we endeavoured to form for ourselves a scientific definition, although it might appear at first more clear and precise." But almost immediately he goes on to say, "Progress and development appear to me the fundamental ideas contained in the word Civilization. What is this progress? what this development? Here stands the great difficulty. The etymology of the word seems to afford a clear and satisfactory solution; it says that it is the perfection of the civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men among themselves."+ Notice here how artfully definition is disavowed, yet given; so that, when it suits the orator, he may proceed upon the definition, and when that becomes untenable, he may retreat into the obscurity of the indefinite, and so play at bo-peep with the question at his pleasure. The analyst of Christian Civilization," Professor L. R. De Vericour, of Cork, is equally indefinite, and writes a history in which the word Civilization continually occurs, but is never once defined or explained. 66 In John Stuart Mill says, "The word 'Civilization, like many other terms of the philosophy of human nature, is a word of double meaning. It sometimes stands for human improvement in general, and sometimes for certain kinds of improvement in particular." this definition, as well as in Guizot's explanation and Vericour's assumption, we have a clear case of fallacy, in so far as "a fallacy. is any unsound mode of arguing which appears to demand our conviction, and to be decisive of the question in hand when in fairness it is not." If civilization means improvement, debate is at an end; for demoralization is not improvement, and improvement, i. e., civilization, cannot necessitate corruption or growing worse, i. e., demoralization. This cannot be the signification the word possesses, then, or the fact stated by the greatest of living logicians, and exemplified in the present debate, could never have been possible, viz." that the question has been seriously propounded whether civilization is, on the whole, a good or an evil." The only form in which this question can arise must depend upon the definition given of this the main term. Upon the meaning of demoralization we are all agreed; only on this vague term Civilization we are at issue. Civilization, etymologically considered, with all deference to Guizot, means, and can only mean, the aggregation and congregation of men into communities in which city life predominates. We contend that civilization, i. e., the social condition p. 27. * Guizot's "General History of Civilization," Chambers' (translated) edition, + Ibid. p. 29. Whately's "gic," book iii. 66 which necessitates city life, necessitates also demoralization. That this is the right signification of the term is proved by the use among men of such phrases as the "vices of civilization," the "crimes of civilization," &c. The vices of improvement, the crimes of improvement, &c., are certainly phrases sufficiently absurd. God made the country, and man made the town;" or, in other words, God arranged social society, and man brought into existence civil society. No two forms of being can be more alien in reality than the social and the civic. Love governs in the one, law in the other. Who would take London, Paris, Vienna, or New York, as types of sociality? Is it not in those great marts of masses, alone, that we look for the full development of the civic truth"One half of the world does not know how the other lives"? It is impossible, of course, for us to join argumentative issue with the supporters of the opposing view, until we have their definitions before us, and the facts or reasonings upon which they found supplied. So far, however, as we can at present see the state of the question, we cannot hesitate to maintain that civilization, i. e., the aggregation of men in civic crowds, necessitates demoralization, that is, the lessening of the activity of the moral capacities and inclinations of men. Civilization, i. e., the massing together of men in civil communities, intensifies selfishness. This is one of the worst characteristics of man. In his natural condition he has indeed little love to spare for those of his own or of any kind; for the preservation of his own life impresses itself upon him as his first duty. But in civic life"Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law." Law is the concentrated essence of human selfishness. It is worse -it is the concentrated essence of the selfishness of the powerful and the wealthy actively energetic against the weak and the poor. Every one of its provisions is made to protect the rich in his grandeur, magnificence, and pride, and to abase and debase the poverty-stricken. Even the charity of the so-called civilized nations is selfishness disguised. They fling morsel to the poor for the sake of being able to keep the remainder safe, and to have an excuse for punishing vagrancy,-the crime of the dangerous classes. These laws are framed upon a mischievous application of Holy Writ, viz., "Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."* Hence come the laws of primogeniture, the severe penal enactments preservative of property, the harsh procedures of criminal law against the poor, and its leniency towards the moneyed man. Scripture says, Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry;" + but by the institution of the Poor Law, the claim of the poor upon the rich is lowered to a minimum, 66 and the mercy of the law towards the hungry is denied. So truly do Goldsmith's utterances speak,— "As Nature's ties decay, As duty, love, and honour fail to sway And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown." Civilization concentrates wickedness. In the ruder states of human life men live apart. If they cannot combine themselves into strength for good, they cannot assemble their forces for evil. Sin and crime cannot enter into huge and complicated leagues. The vices of great cities, the crimes of great cities, cannot exist among them. Neither could the gilded juggles of the stockbroker, nor the deceptive activity of the schemer, exist in the lands― "Where wild in woods the noble savage ran." Is not deception legalized as the customs of trade? Do not men ply all the arts of sophistry and deception to wile others to ruin unchecked, so long as they adhere to the sanctified hypocrisies of commerce? Is not "the social evil" an institution of civilization? Are not the criminal classes so forcefully represented in civilization as to have become "professionals"? Co-operation is as frequently employed for notoriously bad purposes as for good ones, and is far more jealously held and practised amongst evil-doers than the well-disposed. Concert in crime is much more common than civil alliance for the improvement and benefit of those who need the helping hands of their neighbours. In small societies neighbourhood implies supervision. Everybody knows everybody, and keeps a good look-out upon his practices. In large communities this effective and natural surveillance is taken away, and the man who is honoured throughout a nation as one engaged in the diffusion of useful knowledge, and the friend and well-wisher of every scheme for the amelioration of human woe, may derive a princely revenue from the manufacture and sale of some trashy pills which tempt the labouring classes to waste their money and their health; or may be the purveyor of the deadliest banes of human life-the intoxicants by which men are so often incited to transgress all laws, whether human or divine. It has even been asserted that holy dignitaries and associations for philanthropic purposes have not scrupled to hold property and derive revenue from it, though knowingly let for carrying on the vilest trade in the whole catalogue of human depravities; and we know there is a so-called civilized land where man holds property in man, and is protected by law in doing so. Civilization weakens personal independence. All men become so linked together that one cannot resist the banded forces of society. We betake ourselves to associations, which are, in fact, only confessions of our weakness, and our unwillingness to do our individual duties. It is an individual life man has to lead and to account for, and no reference to the ledger of a movement, church, scheme, or institution will suffice for the Judge of demoralization. On all these accounts we think we have proven that Civilization necessitates Demoralization. PHILOMATH. NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-I. We know of few terms so vague as barbarism and civilization. The lowest state of barbarism can be easily defined; but where it may be said to cease, and civilization to commence, is not so easy. But the words are vague, because our ideas of the states represented are confused. We cannot describe Europe as civilized, with Russians and Turks as members of the European family. We cannot describe Asia as barbarous, with Chinese and Hindoo civilization characterizing so many hundred millions of its population. If with ancient Greeks and modern Chinese we were to style all strangers and foreigners "barbarians," it is obvious that the word civilized would not denote an idea the contrary to barbarian. If the Greeks misapplied the term to the Egyptian and Asiatic nations, from whom they acquired their knowledge of the arts and sciences, and refinement in general, it is clear that in applying the term civilization to some, or even most European nations, we misuse the word. If the power to construct brick houses in place of huts of reeds, straw, and bamboo-or the dwelling in stone and marble mansions instead of mud, log, or snow huts, or in caverns, trees, and subterranean burrows, constitute a main ingredient in civilization; then cities like Constantinople and Damascus entitle the Turks, and St. Petersburg and Moscow the Russians, to a high degree of civilization. But plate glass, and gas-jets glittering in crowded streets are results rather than elements of civilization. Gibbon observes that "the different characters which mark the civilized nations of the globe may be ascribed to the use and the abuse of reason, which so variously shapes and so artificially composes the manners and opinions of an European or a Chinese. But the operation of instinct is more pure and simple than that of reason. It is much easier to ascertain the appetites of a quadruped than the speculations of a philosopher; and the savage tribes of mankind, as they approach nearer to the condition of animals, preserve a stronger resemblance to themselves and to each other. The uniform stability of their manners is the natural consequence of the imperfection of their faculties. Reduced to a similar situation, their wants, their desires, their enjoyments, still continue the same; and the influence of food or climate, which, in a more improved state of society, is suspended or subdued by so many moral causes, most powerfully contributes to form and to maintain the national character of barbarians."* In the opinion of the historian of the "Decline and Fall," approximation to the condition of brute animals is, therefore, the character"Decline and Fall," iv., p. 333. |