CIVILIZATION. This Encyclopædia is in itself a descrip tion of civilization, for it contains the story of human achievement in all its bewildering developments. It shows what men during hundreds of thousands of years have been learning about them selves, their world and the creatures which share it with them. They have reached out into remote space and studied nebulae whose light reaches them after a million years ; they have, on the other hand, dissected atoms and manipulated electrons as they might handle pebbles. In the present magnificent series of vol umes man's inventions are reviewed from the rudest chipped flint to the most delicately adjusted microscope; his creation of multiform beauties of design, colour and word, his ways of deal ing with his fellows, his co-operations and dissensions ; his ideals and lofty aspirations, his inevitable blunders and disappointments; in short, all his gropings, disheartening failures and unbelievable triumphs are recalled.
Several thousand contributors have been brought together to do each his special part in writing some thirty-five million words on what mankind has hitherto done and said. It might therefore seem at first sight superfluous, and indeed impossible, to treat civilization itself as a separate topic in a few pages. But there is danger that owing to the overwhelming mass of information given in these volumes certain important underlying considerations may be lost sight of. There are highly significant questions concerning the nature and course of human development, the obstacles which have lain in the way of advance ; the sources of success and frus tration, which could hardly be brought together in dealing with any of the special aspects of human culture. Accordingly an attempt will be made under this caption to scan civilization as a single, unique and astonishing achievement of the human species.
To begin with, it is a startling fact that civilization, which sets off man in so astounding a manner from all other animals, should only lately have begun to be understood. We are immersed in it from infancy ; we take it for granted, and are too near it to see it, except in this detail and that. Even to-day, with all our recently acquired knowledge, those who strive most valiantly in imagination to get outside civilization so that they may look upon it dispassionately and appraise it as a whole, are bewildered by its mysteries. As for the great mass of intelligent people, they still harbour many ancient illusions and misapprehensions from which they can only be weaned with great reluctance.
The object of the present article is to describe the newer ways of viewing civilization, its general nature, origin, progress, trans mission and chief developments, in the light of information which has been accumulating during the past fifty or sixty years. The study of man himself has been revealing quite as many revolution ary facts and hypotheses during the past half century as the scien tific investigation of the world in which he lives. The history of human achievement has been traced back, at least in vague outline, hundreds of thousands of years ; man's original uncivilized nature and equipment have been studied and compared with the behaviour of his nearer relatives; new conjectures have emerged in regard to the functioning of speech and the nature and origin of human reasoning; careful investigations of primitive civilizations have cast great light on more complicated ones; the tremendous im portance of childhood and its various implications in the develop ment of civilization have been elaborated.
These and many other discoveries conspire to recast our con ception of civilization, its past progress and its future possibilities.
It is instructive to note that the word civilization is by no means an old one. Boswell reports that he urged Dr. Johnson to insert the term in his dictionary in 1772, but Johnson refused. He pre ferred the older word "civility." This, like "urbanity," reflects the contempt of the townsman for the rustic or barbarian ; it is an invidious term, although in a way justified by the fact that only where cities have grown up have men developed intricate civilizations. The arduous and dispersed tasks of the hunter, shepherd and peasant folk do not afford the leisure, or at least the varied human contacts, essential to the generation of new ideas and discoveries. But modern anthropologists have pointed out that peoples without cities, such as the tribes of Polynesia and the North American Indians, are really highly "civilized," in the sense that upon sympathetic examination, they are found to have subtle languages, ingenious arts, admirably suited to their condi tions, developed institutions, social and political; religious practices and confident myths, no better and no worse substantiated than many that prevail to-day among the nations of Europe. All these betoken and presuppose a vastly long development. Among Eng lish speaking people the first to point this out clearly was E. B. Tylor, who published his famous Primitive Culture in 1871, the same year in which Darwin's Descent of Man appeared. These two books would alone have served, by different approaches, to give the word civilization a far more profound meaning than it had ever had before.