, its character. The fact of civilisation
belongs to what is called the philosophic portion of history; it is a
vague, obscure, complex fact, very difficult, I admit, to explain and
describe, but none the less requiring explanation and description. It
is, indeed, the greatest historical fact, to which all others
contribute; it is a kind of ocean which makes the wealth of a people,
and in the bosom of which all the elements of the people's life, all the
forces of its existence, are joined in unity.

What, then, is civilisation--this grave, far-reaching precious reality
that seems the expression of the entire life of a people? It seems to me
that the first and fundamental fact conveyed by the word civilisation is
the fact of progress, of development. But what is this progress? What is
this development? Here is the greatest difficulty of all.

The etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer.
It tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the
development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to
men. But is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of
the word? France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was
acknowledged to be the most civilised country in Europe; yet in respect
of purely civil progress France was then greatly inferior to some other
European countries, Holland and England, for example. Another
development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life,
of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas.

These two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of
civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the
development of individual activity--are intimately related to each
other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of
men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great
moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the
great social advances have profited the individual mind.

So much for civilisation in general. It is now necessary to point out
the essential difference between modern European and other
civilisations. The characteristic of other civilisations has been unity;
they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. In Egypt
and India, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the
Greek and Phoenician republics, the democratic principle. The
civilisation of modern Europe, on the contrary