The myriad and
mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect,
presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web
is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence
of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the
importance, of any single strand.
Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood
phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human
family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion, and
whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. If
to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western
civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession
of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment.
We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a
consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain
elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to
a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual
impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of
men.
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