NEW CONCEPTION OF CIVILIZATION There could be no real understanding of the fundamental char acteristics of civilization until the fact was well established and digested that could we trace back man's lineage far enough we should find it merging into that of wild animals, without artificial shelters, clothes or speech ; dependent for sustenance on the pre carious daily search for food. It requires a considerable effort of the imagination to picture the human race without these seem ing necessities of even primitive civilization. Without fire and tools men must have existed as did a wild girl discovered near Chalons, France, in 1731. She possessed a monkey-like agility which enabled her to catch birds and rabbits; these she skinned with her nails and gobbled raw, as would a dog. She delighted to suck the blood from living pigeons, and had no speech except hideous screams and howls.
This conception of man's former animal existence is gradually supplanting the older one, based upon ancient Hebrew tradition, that the first man and first woman were special creations with fully developed minds, speech and reason, which enabled them forthwith to dress the garden in which they found themselves, to name its animal denizens, and to talk with one another, and with God himself in the cool of the evening. This view is still passively accepted by an overwhelming majority of Americans and Euro peans and is at present hotly defended by a powerful group in the United States.
The former assumption was that man was by nature endowed with a mind and with reason. These distinguished him sharply from the animals, which did wondrous things it is true, but not as a result of reason. Their behaviour was guided, it was argued, by instinct. Darwin says that "the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason." But if we agree, as manifold evidence seems to force us to do, that long, long ago men behaved and lived like wild animals, are we not forced to ask if they did not live wholly according to what Darwin calls "instincts" ? And if once upon a time our ancestors lived solely by their animal equipment, did they as yet have a mind and reason? May not the human mind be something that has very gradually developed as a result of man's peculiar animal make-up and capacities? May not his reason be but another name for his slowly accumulated knowledge and beliefs and his ways of dealing with them and building upon them? In any case the discovery that our ancestors once lived like wild animals raises entirely new and difficult questions as to the nature, origin and interpretation of those powers of his known as mind and reason, which have enabled him to seek out those inventions and come upon beliefs and practices which have produced in the aggregate civilization.
In short, it seems to be more and more apparent that mind and reason were not part of man's original equipment, as are his arms and legs, his brain and tongue, but have been slowly acquired and painfully built up. They are themselves inventions—things he has come upon. Like other inventions they are part and parcel of civilization—not innate in man but dependent for their per petuation on education in the widest sense of that term. This is so novel an idea that many readers may find it difficult to grasp, but when grasped it alters one's whole estimate of human progress. We ordinarily think of civilization as made up of mechanical devices, books and pictures, enlightened religious ideas, handsome buildings, polite conduct, scientific and philo sophical knowledge, social and political institutions, ingenious methods of transportation and the rest. We think that all these things are due to man's possession of a mind, which no animal has, and as a result of the exercise of reason. In a way this is true enough, only we must reconceive mind and reason and regard them just as truly a part of the gradual elaboration of civilization as a House of Commons or a motor car, and quite as subject to im provement. At the risk of making a seemingly irrelevant philo sophical digression, which is really most essential to a modern understanding of civilization, something may be said of the newer conception of mind and its variant, reason.
The word mind was originally a verb, not a noun; it meant action, not a thing or agent. It was remembering and purposing, and taking note of—as for instance "I minded"—that is, remem bered, or paid attention to, or was concerned by. But as time went on philosophers made a noun of the good old verb. It was conceived as that incorporeal substance which was the seat of a person's consciousness, thoughts, feelings, and especially of his reasoning. The body was set over against the mind whose orders it was supposed to execute. The Scottish philosopher of common sense, Reid, says explicitly that "we do not give the name of mind to thought, reason or desire; but to that power which both perceives and wills." Even John Stuart Mill says in his Logic that "mind is the mysterious something which feels and thinks." Recently there has been a tendency to reduce the noun mind once more to a series of verbs—desiring, remembering, feeling, thinking, distinguishing, inferring, planning—and to regard the assumption of "a mysterious something" as unfounded, unneces sary and a serious embarrassment. Relieved of this embarrass ment it is possible to begin to bridge the gulf between the original behaviour of the human race and that of mankind to-day. Des cartes and all the older philosophers believed that man had always had a mind as good as theirs. They sought to tell him how to employ it in the pursuit of truth. Mind was to them a sort of divine instrument, conferred solely upon man, that could be sharpened and efficiently used by following the laws of logic; but they could not think of it as something accumulated, so to speak, through the many thousands of years since man made his first contributions to the upbuilding of civilization.
The way is now cleared for a new view of civilization which would not have been possible 5o or 6o years ago. Civilization is no longer contrasted with "rusticity," "barbarity" or "savagery," but with man's purely animal heritage. Modern men are still animals, they have to eat and sleep, protect themselves from the inclemencies of the weather, and defend themselves from attacks of their fellow creatures and other animals, and to rear a new generation, if the species is to be perpetuated. They closely resemble kindred animals in much of their physical structure, in their important organs, breathing, digestion and the circulation of their blood. All these peculiarities are hereditarily transmitted no matter how much or how little men may be civilized. On the other hand, civilization—language, religion, beliefs, morals, arts and manifestations of the human mind and reason—none of these can be shown to be handed down as biological traits. They can only be transmitted to a new generation by imitation or instruc tion.
All mankind to-day has a double heritage. The one comes to us without any effort on our part, as do the spider's peculiar char acteristics or those of birds, or of any of our fellow mammals, come to them. It is secure and tends to remain the same for thousands of years. Civilization, on the other hand, is precarious; it must be assimilated anew by each one of us for himself in such a degree as circumstances permit. It can increase in definitely but it may also fall off tremendously, as the history of man amply testifies. It is a legacy that can be lost as well as kept and increased.
To illustrate : it may be that before human beings had acquired any of this loseable thing, civilization, they would pick up a stick to strike an assailant or hurl a stone at him. They might have found themselves riding astride floating tree trunks to cross a stream. Certain persons would occur, let us say, in each gener ation who would do all these things without ever having seen them done. These acts would be classed in man's animal heritage. But should we find traces of men who chipped a flint nodule into a hatchet head, and hollowed out their log with such a hatchet, or with fire, we should have to class these acts among the arts of civilization since they presuppose so much accumulated experience and ingenuity that they could not be inborn. The art of making a rude boat might consequently be wholly lost, as surely many inventions must have lapsed, if a single generation passed with out constructing one.
It seems now an imperative fact that all civilization—the total social and traditional heritage, would fall away immediately and completely should a thoroughgoing forgetfulness, an overwhelm ing amnesia and profound oblivion overtake humanity. Only their natural equipment would be left. As Graham Wallas sug gests, those least civilized would have a possible chance of sur viving. It is only uncivilized man that might go on indefinitely. We are all by nature wild animals plus; and our taming weakens us for the ancient struggle in the forest, naked and bare-handed.