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
Fictitious bonds-the bonds of ¡wealth and law-

Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
Hence all obedience bows to these alone,

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.

istic of barbarians; and to be able to subdue or suspend the influence of food and climate is one of the characteristics of civilization. Civilization, regarded from a mere materialistic point of view, cannot, therefore, demoralize the man. To widen the gulf between the condition of man and brute must of necessity refine and ennoble human nature.

But we may take much higher ground than this; for as Crombie says in his Natural Theology," man, in his earliest and rudest state of existence, thinks of nothing but providing for the necessities of his corporal nature. Of his mental constitution he is profoundly ignorant. He entertains no apprehension of any existence which is not visible or tangible. He is a materialist. As his experience, however, extends, he becomes more and more acquainted with the qualities and properties of physical objects. As he advances in knowledge, his curiosity is proportionably excited; and acquiring in the advancement of society more leisure for reflection, he begins to look inward into his own mind, and mark with attention what passes there. When he becomes acquainted with its various faculties, and what they are capable of accomplishing, observing also the subserviency of the body to the government of the will, he perceives that his mental powers are so unlike to the qualities and properties of gross matter, that they must belong to something of a more refined character than brute material substance. Immaterialism, then, is not the doctrine of a rude and uncultivated mind. If, then, civilization has this refining, spiritualizing influence, it cannot demoralize human nature.

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It is, again, worthy of profound study that while the barbarian, as a materialist in thought and intent, fails to enjoy a mere sensuous and animal life in the full sense of the word enjoyment, civilization, by leading to the cultivation and development of man's intellectual and moral nature, tends to a more regular production, and more general diffusion of material good; and the amelioration of the material well-being of man reacts upon his moral and intellectual condition. Guizot, in his work on European Civilization, " remarks, "Whenever a great development of riches and power becomes apparent in a country, this new fact excites opposition and hostility. The adversaries of change contend that this progress of the social state does not ameliorate, does not equally regenerate the moral state, the intellectual nature of man; that it is a false and deceptive progress detrimental to morality, to the perfection of human nature. The friends of social development repel the attack with energy. They maintain, on the contrary, that the progress of society necessarily advances the progress of morality-that the intellectual life is always most purified and ameliorated when the external condition enjoys the greatest prosperity. Reverse the hypothesis. Suppose the moral development in a progressive state. What do they, who labour to advance it, generally promise? They promise the amelioration of society, the more equal division of property. What, I ask, do these promises infer? They infer, that in

the spontaneous and innate conviction of men, the two elements of civilization-the development of the social and moral existence-are intimately connected, and that mankind expect that the one should succeed as the necessary consequence of the other."

On such grounds Guizot contends that neither of its two elements is sufficient to constitute civilization; for, "if the development of the social state, or of the individual man, were manifested alone, would civilization exist? Would mankind recognise it? Or have the two facts such an intimate and necessary connection, that, if they are not exhibited simultaneously, they are nevertheless inseparable, and that, sooner or later, they produce each other. All that we are told of the force of example, of custom, and of splendid models, is founded solely on this conviction, that an external fact which is well directed, reasonable, and just, will sooner or later, more or less completely, produce an intellectual fact of the same nature: that when the world is better and more equitably governed, man is himself rendered more just; that the mind is regenerated by external circumstances, as external circumstances are by the mind; that the two elements of civilization are strictly connected; that for ages, obstacles of all kinds may intervene ; that they may be compelled to undergo a thousand transformations before they are again brought together; but that, sooner or later, they become reunited, is the law of their nature, the general fact of history, the instinctive belief of mankind."

On this philosophically correct and comprehensive view we should not regard the age of Pericles, when Athens was in its glory-or of Xerxes, when Persia overflowed with luxurious wealth-or the age of Leo X., when papal Italy was in the plenitude of luxury and power-or the age of Louis XIV., when France was passing through its most brilliant epoch-as an age of civilization. For while there existed a certain amount of intellectual development, and a considerable amount of material prosperity, personal liberty was unknown, and the social state of the masses was but little removed from the condition of the brute creation. To have and to know the legitimate uses of freedom, to live in a world of intellect as well as in a world of sensuous gratification, to be in a state of harmony within the worlds of thought, feeling, and sense-such alone is "what the common sense of mankind would denominate civilization."

To say, then, that civilization demoralizes man, is the same thing as holding that progression is retrogression, that development is a collapse, that refinement brutalizes, that life is death.

Much has been said by poets and sentimental philosophers in praise of the barbaric love of freedom. It became the fashion in the eighteenth century to extol the state of the savage, and to deplore the taming influence of civilization. We may, however, admit that the spirit of independence exists in the ruder states of society, and yet deny that civilization entails its loss. If the progress of society extinguishes it in one, it tends to revive and develop it in many, directions. In the history of early monarchies

we see that man acquired some of the arts of civilization only to subjugate man; and thus the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, after rising to some eminence in civilization, paid the penalty of ambition by themselves declining into renewed barbarism. But in the history of the last three centuries we see an element of civilization which was totally wanting in earlier periods. From the time of the Teutonic invasions of the Roman empire a spirit of individual independence was infused into European society, a sentiment unknown to antiquity, and still unknown to Asiatic nations, and hence that creation of modern civilization-a middle class. It had no existence in any period of the world's history prior to the German Reformation. It has ever since been growing with the growth of civilization. It is now at once the cause and effect of human progress. It excites that species of independence which ancient civilization destroyed. The barbarian love of liberty grows in the middle class of European society without its licence. It combines in itself independence and submission, liberty and order, freedom and restraint. The barbaric spirit is more picturesque, and at a distance more fascinating; but what is lost of the picturesque is more than counterbalanced by the substantial advantages growing out of the freedom of which the British middle class has ever been the watchful guardians and indomitable champions.

With the progress of society, the number increases of those who can command a greater extent of leisure and a larger amount of the comforts and luxuries of life; and out of this there arises certain accompaniments of civilization which demoralize man physically and morally. But those are defects, not natural results. They are excrescences, and not the legitimate growth of civilization. Habits of ease induce an incapacity of exertion; but if we compare the life of the barbarian with the life of the civilized man, we should find that there are less demoralizing influences at work in the latter than in the former state. If the savage is inured to toil and danger, which develop muscular humanity, it is at the expense of the nobler faculties of man. It is at the spur of hunger that the savage becomes bold and enterprising; while the greater part of his life is spent in the most degrading indolence. In a more advanced stage, the great mass of the people are trained to habits of incessant industry. If some of the employments of civilization are sedentary, and confine men to an enervating, in-door life, others are of a more active nature. For strength of muscle, and power of enduring fatigue, our miners and railway makers, our masons and blacksmiths, our peasantry and sailors, will vie with the noblest specimens of the American Indian and the New Zealander; while in intelligence and every moral quality no savage will bear comparison with them.

Much, again, has been said on the enervating influences of civilization through luxury. The abstemious savage, his hardihood, intrepidity, contempt of danger, are often held up in disparagement of the well-fed, pampered, effeminate, and pusillanimous citizen of civilization. Undoubtedly the history of both ancient and modern