of pottery, and thus had not risen above the upper status
of savagery; but their artistic talent, upon which we have remarked, was
not such as we are wont to associate with savagery. Other instances will
occur to us in the proper place.

[Footnote 30: See his _Intellectual Development of Europe_, New
York, 1863, pp. 448, 464.]

[Sidenote: Loose use of the words "savagery" and "civilization".]

The difficulty which people usually find in realizing the true position
of the ancient Mexican culture arises partly from the misconceptions
which have until recently distorted the facts, and partly from the loose
employment of terms above noticed. It is quite correct to speak of the
Australian blackfellows as "savages," but nothing is more common than to
hear the same epithet employed to characterize Shawnees and Mohawks;
and to call those Indians "savages" is quite misleading. So on the other
hand the term "civilization" is often so loosely used as to cover a
large territory belonging to "barbarism." One does not look for
scientific precision in newspapers, but they are apt to reflect popular
habits of thought quite faithfully, and for that reason it is proper
here to quote from one. In a newspaper account of Mr. Cushing's recent
discoveries of buried towns, works of irrigation, etc., in Arizona, we
are first told that these are the remains of a "splendid prehistoric
civilization," and the next moment we are told, in entire
unconsciousness of the contradiction, that the people who constructed
these works had only stone tools. Now to call a people "civilized" who
have only stone tools is utterly misleading. Nothing but confusion of
ideas and darkening of counsel can come from such a misuse of words.
Such a people may be in a high degree interesting and entitled to credit
for what they have achieved, but the grade of culture which they have
reached is not "civilization."

[Sidenote: Value and importance of the term "barbarism."]

With "savagery" thus encroaching upon its area of meaning on the one
side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism,"
as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight.
If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further
advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them
"savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable,
indeed, in the history of human progress. There is no other word