ing masses on the activity and forethought
of the individual, which operates in the division of society into
classes, and the promotion of a wholesome division of labor. A partial
consequence of this insecurity of resources is the instability of
natural races. A nomadic strain runs through them all, rendering easier
to them the utter incompleteness of their unstable political and
economical institutions, even when an indolent agriculture seems to tie
them to the soil. Thus it often comes about that, in spite of abundantly
provided and well-tended means of culture, their life is desultory,
wasteful of power, unfruitful. This life has no inward consistency, no
secure growth; it is not the life in which the germs of civilization
first grew up to the grandeur in which we frequently find them at the
beginnings of what we call history. It is full rather of fallings-away
from civilization and dim memories from civilized spheres which in many
cases must have existed long before the commencement of history as we
have it.

By the word "civilization" or "culture" we denote usually the sum of all
the acquirements at a given time of the human intelligence. When we
speak of stages, of higher and lower, of semi-civilization, of civilized
and "natural" races, we apply to the various civilizations of the earth
a standard which we take from the degree that we have ourselves
attained. Civilization means _our_ civilization.

The confinement, in space as in time, which isolates huts, villages,
races, no less than successive generations, involves the negation of
culture; in its opposite, the intercourse of contemporaries and the
interdependence of ancestors and successors, lies the possibility of
development. The union of contemporaries secures the retention of
culture, the linking of generations its unfolding. The development of
civilization is a process of hoarding. The hoards grow of themselves so
soon as a retaining power watches over them. In all domains of human
creation and operation we shall see the basis of all higher development
in intercourse. Only through co-operation and mutual help, whether
between contemporaries, whether from one generation to another, has
mankind succeeded in climbing to the stage of civilization on which its
highest members now stand. On the nature and extent of this intercourse
the growth depends. Thus the numerous small assemblages of equal
importance, formed by the family stocks, in which the individual