civilization is the social fact of the increase of wealth. But even though we take the word wealth in its widest sense, it will not include all the elements of civilization, and especially it will not include those which have their seat in man himself, such as moral and physical development. Then an accident, such as conquest, might enrich a nation, without advancing it in civilization.
Guizot makes civilization depend chiefly on political institutions. According to him, it is the perfectionment of civil life, the development of society, and of the relations of man with man. But he admits that we must also take into account individual life, the inner life of man and his development intellectually, socially, and morally. In his History, however, Guizot almost altogether disregards this element, so that we may consider his work as merely an excellent history of political progress under constitutional monarchy.
Buckle's History is the antithesis of Guizot's. Here the individual is every thing; institutions nothing, or even hinderances. The state, according to Buckle, is a resultant, not a principal. Buckle also denies that religion is a factor in working out the problem of civilization. These views, at first warmly opposed, are now more favorably received.
But since he deduced civilization neither from religion nor from political constitutions, how did he account for it? He defined it to consist in the supremacy of intellectual laws over physical laws. The history of Europe, as he read it, is simply a series of victories gained by man over Nature; whereas, the domination of Nature over man causes the irremedial decadence of Oriental nations.
We will not deny the justice and truth of this line of observation. The contest between man and the outer world, the conquests of science, the subjection of all the forces of Nature to man's will—these are truths as clear as day. And yet we do not believe that they constitute the sum total of civilization. Men are brought face to face, not alone with Nature, but also with one another. We have to adapt ourselves, not alone to physical forces, but we have also to adapt ourselves to one another; in a word, we find in civilization, in progress, a social as well as a physical element. Side by side with the conquests of humanity over the remainder of the universe, there is a progress in morals, and in the relations between man and man—between one society and another. Civilization is impossible without freedom and security, and these can exist only in virtue of social institutions.
All the theories we have been considering contain an admixture of truth and error; and they are all imperfect, being true in what they affirm, but erroneous in what they exclude from consideration. We have, therefore, to discover a formula which, while it applies equally to all these facts, and sums them up in a more general notion, shall show their intimate connection and their close association with one another.
