dt and Van Dyck, the last of the really
great artists.
Progress is not civilization, though we generally couple the two words
together, and often confound their values. Progress has to do with what
we call the industrial arts, their development, and the consequent
increase of wealth and comfort. Civilization means, on the other hand,
among many things, the growth and perfecting of art, in the singular;
the increase of a general appreciation of art; the refinement of manners
which follows upon a widespread improvement of taste; the general
elevation of a people's thoughts above the hard conditions in which a
great people's struggles for existence, preeminence and wealth take
place.
Progress, in its right acceptation, ought also to mean some sort of
moral progress--such, for instance, as has transformed our own
English-speaking race in a thousand years or more from a stock of very
dangerous pirates to a law-abiding people--if we may fairly say as much
as that of ourselves.
Civilization has nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking
statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying
that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early
Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of
their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called
the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we
call cultivation, Alcibiades was immeasurably superior to Saint Paul,
Peter the Hermit or Abraham Lincoln, though Alcibiades had no morality
to speak of and not much conscience. Moreover, it is a fact that great
reformers of morals have often been great enemies of art and destroyers
of the beautiful. Fra Bartolommeo, who is thought by many to have
equalled Raphael in the latter's early days, became a follower of
Savonarola, burned all his wonderful drawings and studies, and shut
himself up in a monastery to lead a religious life; and though he
yielded after several years to the command of his superiors, and began
painting again, he confined himself altogether to devotional subjects as
long as he lived, and fell far behind Raphael, who was certainly not an
exemplary character, even in those days.
In Europe, and in the Latin languages, there is a distinction, and a
universally accepted one, between education and instruction. It is
something like that which I am trying to make clear between Civilization
and Progress. An 'instruct
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