in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age, till it
reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and
unwearied, and which still remains as definite and as firm as ever it was.
Its bond is a common civilization; and, though there are other
civilizations in the world, as there are other societies, yet this
civilization, together with the society which is its creation and its
home, is so distinctive and luminous in its character, so imperial in its
extent, so imposing in its duration, and so utterly without rival upon the
face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to itself the
title of "Human Society," and its civilization the abstract term
"Civilization."

There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind which are not, perhaps
never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are outlying
portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary, and
unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of
which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole.
I am not denying of course the civilization of the Chinese, for instance,
though it be not our civilization; but it is a huge, stationary,
unattractive, morose civilization. Nor do I deny a civilization to the
Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the Saracens, nor (in a
certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these races has its own
civilization, as separate from one another as from ours. I do not see how
they can be all brought under one idea. Each stands by itself, as if the
other were not; each is local; many of them are temporary; none of them
will bear a comparison with the Society and the Civilization which I have
described as alone having a claim to those names, and on which I am going
to dwell.

Gentlemen, let me here observe that I am not entering upon the question of
races, or upon their history. I have nothing to do with ethnology. I take
things as I find them on the surface of history, and am but classing
phenomena. Looking, then, at the countries which surround the
Mediterranean Sea as a whole, I see them to be, from time immemorial, the
seat of an association of intellect and mind, such as to deserve to be
called the Intellect and the Mind of the Human Kind. Starting as it does
and advancing from certain centres, till their respective influences
intersect and conflict, and then at length intermingle and combine, a
common Thought has been gen