nd then
come upon facts that will not exactly fit into them. In such an event
it is best not to try to squeeze or distort the unruly facts, but to
look and see if our rules will not bear some little qualification. The
faculty for generalizing is a good servant but a bad master. If we
observe this caution we shall find Mr. Morgan's work to be of great
value. It will be observed that, with one exception, his restrictions
leave the area of civilization as wide as that which we are accustomed
to assign to it in our ordinary speaking and thinking. That exception is
the case of Mexico, Central America, and Peru. We have so long been
accustomed to gorgeous accounts of the civilization of these countries
at the time of their discovery by the Spaniards that it may at first
shock our preconceived notions to see them set down as in the "middle
status of barbarism," one stage higher than Mohawks, and one stage lower
than the warriors of the Iliad. This does indeed mark a change since Dr.
Draper expressed the opinion that the Mexicans and Peruvians were
morally and intellectually superior to the Europeans of the sixteenth
century.[30] The reaction from the state of opinion in which such an
extravagant remark was even possible has been attended with some
controversy; but on the whole Mr. Morgan's main position has been
steadily and rapidly gaining ground, and it is becoming more and more
clear that if we are to use language correctly when we speak of the
civilizations of Mexico and Peru we really mean civilizations of an
extremely archaic type, considerably more archaic than that of Egypt in
the time of the Pharaohs. A "civilization" like that of the Aztecs,
without domestic animals or iron tools, with trade still in the
primitive stage of barter, with human sacrifices, and with cannibalism,
has certainly some of the most vivid features of barbarism. Along with
these primitive features, however, there seem to have been--after making
all due allowances--some features of luxury and splendour such as we are
wont to associate with civilization. The Aztecs, moreover, though
doubtless a full ethnical period behind the ancient Egyptians in general
advancement, had worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, and had
begun to put it to some literary use. It would seem that a people may in
certain special points reach a level of attainment higher than the level
which they occupy in other points. The Cave men of the Glacial period
were ignorant