Civilization (proper) terminating with the introduction of gunpowder.
(8) The Second Period of Civilization, terminating with the invention of
a practical steam-engine. (9) The Upper Period of Civilization, which is
still in progress, but which, as will be suggested in a moment, is
probably nearing its termination.

It requires but a glance at the characteristics of these successive
epochs to show the ever-increasing complexity of the inventions that
delimit them and of the conditions of life that they connote. Were we to
attempt to characterize in a few phrases the entire story of achievement
thus outlined, we might say that during the three stages of Savagery man
was attempting to make himself master of the geographical climates. His
unconscious ideal was, to gain a foothold and the means of subsistence
in every zone. During the three periods of Barbarism the ideal of
conquest was extended to the beasts of the field, the vegetable world,
and the mineral contents of the earth's crust. During the three periods
of Civilization proper the ideal of conquest has become still more
intellectual and subtle, being now extended to such abstractions as an
analysis of speech-sounds, and to such intangibles as expanding gases
and still more elusive electric currents: in other words, to the forces
of nature, no less than to tangible substances. Hand in hand with this
growing complexity of man's relations with the external world has gone a
like increase of complexity in the social and political organizations
that characterize man's relations with his fellowmen. In savagery the
family expanded into the tribe; in barbarism the tribe developed into
the nation. The epoch of civilization proper is aptly named, because it
has been a time in which citizenship, in the narrower national
significance, has probably been developed to its apogee. Throughout this
period, in every land, the highest virtue has been considered to be
patriotism,--by which must be understood an instinctive willingness on
the part of every individual to defend even with his life the interests
of the nation into which he chances to be born, regardless of whether
the national cause in which he struggles be in any given case good or
bad, right or wrong. The communal judgment of this epoch pronounces any
man a traitor who will not uphold his own nation even in a wrong
cause--and the word "traitor" marks the utmost brand of ignominy.

Nationality and cosmopolitanism.