ast, winding through the ages and stretching away toward an
unknown future, is a subject of perennial interest and worthy of
profound thought. No other great subject so invites the attention of
the mind of man. It is a very long trail, rough and unblazed,
wandering over the continents of the earth. Those who have travelled
it came in contact with the mysteries of an unknown world. They faced
the terrors of the shifting forms of the earth, of volcanoes,
earthquakes, floods, storms, and ice fields. They witnessed the
extinction of forests and animal groups, and the changing forms of
lakes, rivers, and mountains, and, indeed, the boundaries of oceans.

It is the trail of human events and human endeavor on which man
developed his physical powers, enlarged his brain capacity, developed
and enriched his mind, and became efficient through art and industry.
Through inventions and discovery he turned the forces of nature to his
use, making them serve his will. In association with his fellows, man
learned that mutual aid and co-operation were necessary to the survival
of the race. To learn this caused him more trouble than all the
terrors and mysteries of the natural world around him. Connected with
the trail is a long chain of causes and effects, trial and error,
success and failure, out of which has come the advancement of the race.
The accumulated results of life on the trail are called _civilization_.

_Civilization May Be Defined_.--To know what civilization is by study
and observation is better than to rely upon a formal {4} definition.
For, indeed, the word is used in so many different ways that it admits
of a loose interpretation. For instance, it may be used in a narrow
sense to indicate the character and quality of the civil relations.
Those tribes or nations having a well-developed social order, with
government, laws, and other fixed social customs, are said to be
civilized, while those peoples without these characters are assumed to
be uncivilized. It may also be considered in a somewhat different
sense, when the arts, industries, sciences, and habits of life are
stimulated--civilization being determined by the degree in which these
are developed. Whichever view is accepted, it involves a contrast of
present ideals with past ideals, of an undeveloped with a developed
state of human progress.

But whatever notion we have of civilization, it is difficult to draw a
fixed line between civilized and uncivilize