of bronze and of iron. These are
the measures, from an artistic source, of the advancement of human
culture; and they certainly bear a distinct relation to all man's
other conditions at the time. A tribe which had never progressed
beyond the stone age--which had no better material for its weapons and
implements than stone--could never proceed beyond a very limited point
of civilization. Bronze or any metal which can be moulded, hammered
and sharpened of course gives a nation vast superiority over one which
uses stone only; and the value of iron and steel for the same purposes
I need not dwell upon.

To be sure, we have here several measures; and it would seem more
desirable, if we could, to obtain one single measure--one single
material or object of which we could say that the tribe that uses or
does not use that to an equal degree is certainly lower or, in the
other respects, higher than another; but I believe that there has been
no single material which has been suggested as of sufficient use and
value in this direction to serve as a criterion; but, yes! I remember
there was one and, on the whole, not a bad one. It was suggested by
Baron Liebig, the celebrated chemist, who said: "If you wish a single
material by which to judge of the amount of culture that any nation,
or, for that matter, any individual, possesses, compared to another
one, find out how much soap they use. Nothing," he said, "more than
personal cleanliness and general cleanliness differentiates the
cultured man from the savage;" and as for that purpose he probably had
in view a soap, he recognized that as the one criterion. It is not
amiss, but open, also, to serious objections; because there are tribes
who live in such conditions that they can get neither water nor soap;
and the Arabs, distinctly clean, are not by any means at the highest
pinnacle of civilization.

The Germans, therefore, as a rule, have sought some other means than
all those above mentioned. Almost all the German writers on
ethnography divide the people and nations of the world into two great
classes--the one they call the "wild peoples," the other the "cultured
peoples"--the "Natur-Voelker" and the "Kultur-Voelker." The
distinction which they draw between these two great classes is largely
psychological. Man, they say, in the condition of the "wild
people"--of the "Natur-Voelker"--is subject to nature; therefore, they
call them "nature people." The "Kultur-Voelker," on the other h