FICTITIOUS CIVILISATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 8, 13 June 1884, Page 25

FICTITIOUS CIVILISATION.

(Prom the Nation.) What is ciTilisation 1 is almost as difficult a question to answer as what is the English religion ? Civilsation is rather an idea tban. a condition, for in no conntry are all classes perfectly civilised. Assuming that the root of the word civilisation is cm*, we must allow that the concourse of citizens tends no more to civilisation than to religion. It tends mainly to an increase of selfishness. In villages we "find much of that primitive unselfishness which makes human nature, even its sufferings, to seem lovely ; but wherever men congregate in vast masses the poetry of human nature seems stifled. True, there is especially among the poor — the same exquisite unselfishness ia large towns as there is in the most simple country villages ; but civilisation has nothing to do with it. The idea of civilisation is the using of modern appliances for the increasing of the personal enjoyments of the rich. The fact of civilisation is precisely the same as the idea ; srace no one associates civilisation with worldly misery. Civilisation means silver spoons and forks ; the total impossibility of dining without a napkin : the preference for dining a la Russe to plunging a three-pronged fork into a cauldron for the extraction of the homeliest edibles, pins such ornate forms of luxury as are suggested by powdered flunkeys, cr by silver stair-rods to Brussels carpets on a grand staircase. There is also a civilisation in modes of warfare ; such, for example, as uot firing on a field-hospital where a hundred victims of brutal ambition lie in agony, or in not slaughtering women and children in captured towns after you have killed the props of their lives. Manners, too, are assumed to be civilised when they veil utter heartlessneES by politeness, or courteously refused justice or charity. A brougham-and-pair is civilisation ; so is ten thousand a year. A diamond ornament is only so far civilisation as it is bought on the hypothesis of being paid for. Yet to this rule there is evidently one exception ; for if a diamond ring be worn by a prince who has a right to it (say, for example, the Koh-i-Noor), then it becomes Western "%[- "lisation to take it from him. Property is civilisation, if you have Required it legally—that is, if you have robbed others without breaking the criminal law ; but if a man dying of hunger (in a bigblycivilised country) steals the price of a day's existence from a rich man, that is not civilisation but " six months." It would be difficult I to define the morality of civilisation. It has none. Civilisation is

onlyo nly the art of supreme selfishness, made respectable by success and bygoingtochurcn. Setting sarcasm aside, it isjeally difficult to answer the question : what do we mean by civilisation in this nineteenth century 1 Our English neighbours, for example affect to be more civilized than are the Russians, the Afghans, or the Zulus ; and, so far as a free Press or a popular franchise is concerned, the claim must be admitted without dispute. Yet in the fact that '• there is more poverty and less religion in England than there is in. any civilised country " (this statement has just been made by an Anglican bishop) we fail, to detect the two first fruits of civilisation, which are the worldly peace and the religious faith of the multitude. Every week people die of starvation ; every week barbarous crimes are reported ; and these crimes are not the offspring of some fanatical enthusiasm, but of the lowest state of modern obliquity. No one blames a Government, or a religion, or a society for the excesses of its lunatics or its black % sheep ; but the public records show that the grossness of English morals is a permeating principle or disposition. Now, civilisation if it meant anything more than selfishness in the higher and educated classes of society ought to make them set an example of such lofty natural virtues as would shame their inferiors out of all grossness. One of two reasons must be accepted for the grossness : either the exampleof the higher orders must be worthless, or the lower orders see nothing o". the higher orders. Yet civilisation, if it have any real meaning, must mean the sympathy of all classes with one another; it must mean that all classes are so combined in generous fellowship that it would be totally impossible for one class to suffer \rithoutall classes rrshing to the rescue. This is at least the Catholic principle. And since it is difficult to conceive of any really refined society in which religion was not the basis of all refinement we must conclude that religion has little meaning in England beyond the speculative or rationalistic mood. Individual excellences will not create a national conscience. The whole temper of the upper classes must do that. And the temper of the upper classes is in the direction of selfishness ; which is, the exact opposite of Christian civilisation. Politically, the selfishness of English Governments has been the bane both of their own country and of their conquered countries. At this day millions suffer from that selfishness. And, religiously, for the last thrca centuries — down to " Catholic "Emancipation," which was won chiefly by Irish efforts,lrish champions-the history of England wasaristo..yof persecation, of sectarian narrowness and egotism. So that, socially, it is no wonder that even the most modern •' civilisation ' ' is marred both by selfishness and by irreligion. Yet selfishness is irreligion ;it is its essence, its spirit ; it is the fount of all injuries, all cruelties, as well as of grossness or immorality. This is true of whole peoples as of individuals. Nor can England ever become civilised — except in the silver fork sense— until she learns to do for others what site is always trying to no for herself, or at least recognises the equal c J| ims . of all nations. The Anglican bishop whom we have quoted as affirming that " there is more poverty and less religion in Scotland than there is in any civilised country," might have added, " there is more poverty because there is more selfishness, " and there is less religion because there is more bigotry." In Ireland we have sufficiently suffered from both the selfishness and the bigotry ; and the war of barbarism which has been waged on our civilisation might have befitted Nero, or Attila, or Alaric. The English classes which haTe been in power have mo.de the whole of their civilisation to consist in plundering other countries for their own benefit.- They have mistaken conquest for glory, and annexation for fellowship, and persecution for Christian evangelism. The lower orders take their cue from the example of the higher orders, and, seeing selfishness and bigotry to be monumented as civilisation, they naturally adopt the standard of their superiors. But in England there are the " humbler " orders as well as the " lower " orders ; and these two classes must be carefully distinguished. It must be said of the humbler orders that they possess most of the refinement as well as the traditional religious sentiment which belong to the best types of Englishmen. But the lower orders — so distinct from the humbler orders — are unapproachable by any class of society, because the civilisation which is fashionable has neither the will nor the power to improve them by sympathy or by example. —