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CHAPTER XVIII.

I. A DEFINITION OF CIVILIZATION.

An Address by W. T. Harris before the Graduates at the Commencement Exercises of the Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pa., March 2, 1899.

It is universally admitted that among the people at present living on the globe the Indians are the proudest and bravest. They prefer their tribal freedom to life. They possessed this characteristic when first discovered by Europeans coming to this country as discoverers and emigrants. It seems a strange thing that a proud people having so much self-respect should not take on a higher civilization if they came in contact with it. In fact, it would seem as if there must be something wrong with a civilization that claimed itself to be of a higher order if it failed to convert a lower civilization and incorporate it into its own. And yet in the face of this likelihood it must be admitted that the policy that has prevailed in America has been extermination toward the Indian at the hands of the white man instead of civilization.

The hasty conclusion from this fact would be that the white man is all wrong and that the justice is all on the side of the Indian. What right, it is asked, has one nation to impose its forms on another by force, on the ground that it is a higher form of civilization? What infallible criterion have we, asks another, by which we may be entitled to conclude that we have a higher civilization than the neighboring nations? Why is not the Indian civilization as good as ours? Why is not the Chinese civilization or the civilization of the Philippine Islands as good as the civilization that calls itself the United States, or Great Britain, or France, or Germany? This is a serious question and needs to be understood if one is going to sit in judgment upon national conduct.

I ask you, therefore, to consider with me the answer which can be made to the question, What is it that makes one civilization higher than another? What is a high civilization and what is the highest civilization?

I offer a definition for civilization. It is this: A people is civilized when it has formed institutions for itself which enable each individual to profit by the industry of all his fellowcitizens; when it enables each individual to profit by the experience and wisdom, the observations and the thoughts of his fellow-citizens; when it encourages each individual into a rational self-activity by which he contributes, either through his industry or through his observation and his thoughts, to the benefit of the people with whom he lives.

This definition of civilization can be put in another form which shows its significance. Civilization enables man to conquer nature and make it his servant; to command the services of heat, light, electricity, and of all the inorganic elements; to command also the plant world or vegetation for his uses; to command also the animal life for the same service; in short, to command the services of nature for food, clothing, and shelter. Besides this control over nature, civilization should give man access to the history of his race; access to his literature; access to its scientific discoveries; access to its various inventions; and, above all, access to its moral and religious ideals. Civilization, in short, should give man command of the earth and likewise command of the experience of the entire race. In the light of this definition we may approach the civilizations as they actually exist and inquire how far they have realized the ideal, how high they have climbed on the ladder

of civilization. At once we see how low the tribal civilization is as compared with the civilization of Great Britain, or France, or Germany. There is no tribal civilization on the face of the earth, and never was one, which could compare with these nations in its knowledge of the uses of mineral substances, chemical substances, and the natural forces such as heat, light, electricity, gravitation, etc. No tribe can possibly command the complete resources of the world as regards its vegetable and its animal life, the products of agriculture and the mines. The reason for this is that the tribe is too small, and the tribe from the very nature of its constitution can not cooperate with other tribes nor receive their help. It stops at a view of nature which is a mere superstition. The tribe can climb only a little way up the ladder which leads to the control and command of all the substances and forces of nature. Consequently the tribe can not participate to any great degree either in the productive industry of the whole world or in its intellectual investigations and discoveries.

Other forms of civilization above the tribe take rank as higher or lower, according to the degree in which they realize this ideal of conquest over nature and complete intercommunication with the rest of the world. No nation that lacks a great commerce can be so high in civilization as Great Britain or France. No nation that lacks railroad communication can be so high in civilization as the United States. No nation that lacks steam engines to perform its drudgery can be so high as the nation which has these things.

Again, a nation that has no printing presses and that can not buy or read the books of the world can not be said to have a high civilization. And on this scale the nation that has the most printing, that makes the most books, and that reads the great books of the world is higher than the other nations. The ideal in this respect is that civilization should make it possible for each man to know the experience of all the past through science and literature, and that he should be able to see, through the columns of a morning newspaper, the history as it is making, day by day, in all the lands of the world.

race.

Again, there is another criterion-a very important one. A nation may be very far advanced in its ability to control nature and to command access to the wisdom of the But it may do this only for some classes of its citizens and not for all. Such a nation is not so highly advanced in its civilization as one that allows each of its citizens to participate in the product of the whole. The nation that gives schools to the humblest classes of its people as well as to its highest classes, and the nation which allows the humblest people to govern themselves under just laws is a higher nation than one which separates the ruling class into a government apart from and above the mass of the people.

The highest ideal of a civilization is that of a civilization which is engaged constantly in elevating lower classes of people into participation of all that is good and reasonable, and perpetually increasing at the same time their self-activity.

Another consideration must be mentioned, namely, that with the increase of individual self-activity along the lines of science and productive industry there is an increase of creature comforts to each and every inhabitant, as well as increase of his ability to enjoy spiritual intercommunication by means of books, magazines, and newspapers.

I am aware that many persons think that an industrial civilization devoted to moneygetting and the accumulation of capital is a spurious civilization, and that it is a lower stage of human society than the tribal stage and the village community. This is the res son why I am explicit on this point of the importance of a man's conquest of nature. For without this machinery for the creation of wealth and without the combination of individual savings into vast masses of capital there would not exist as there does now a bond of commerce extending around the world and uniting all peoples. For this material bond must exist before the spiritual interaction can exist which makes each nation participant in the experience of all others.

When we look at the accumulation of wealth and the combinations of capital we must see how essential they are to the conquest of nature. The inventions of any one people are converted by means of commerce into an active help to all other peoples. The ships

of the commercial marine of Great Britain help to cheapen the cost of the productions of all nations to each consumer.

The capitalist who invests $10,000,000 in tenement houses in any city helps all of the citizens of that place to obtain better dwellings at cheaper rents. The capitalists who build railroads lower the prices of freight, and in doing this add something to the wealth of the distant producer as well as cheapen the cost to the consumer.

If you study political economy you will be able to see the progress of nations in this particular phase-the material phase of civilization. You will see nations which earn for each man, woman, and child only 3 cents a day on an average. You will find nations that earn 30 cents. The people of France earn over 40 cents for each inhabitant, and the people of Great Britain almost or quite 50 cents. The products of the United States average for each inhabitant about 52 cents per day. You have to go back only twenty-five years to find the United States product about 40 cents a day for each inhabitant. In 1850, this was less than 30 cents; and in the year 1800, before steamboats and railroads and power looms, there is no doubt that the product of the United States amounted to less than 10 cents per day for each man, woman, and child.

The amount of money earned on an average to each inhabitant of a State measures its rank of civilization so far as the conquest of nature is concerned. A nation that does not use machinery and steam engines can not afford for all its people a full participation in the world's market. A nation, like the English, that commands the most machinery will command the most comfort for its people. Thirty families out of a hundred in Great Britain report an income of $1,000 and upward, while only three families in Italy out of each hundred report the same amount of income.

Side by side with the conquest of nature as we have seen develop the two classes of knowledge, the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of man. The mining for silver and iron and the other metals is not the only kind of mining. Civilized man is mining continually into the history of peoples, excavating buried cities and exploring their monuments and the remains of their literature and trying to discover what motives governed the civilizations of the Nile Valley and the Euphrates; and learn what was the nature of the institutions with which the people of the past governed themselves. This spiritual method of mining brings up to light human life as it was in the past, and more and more every day we come to understand how civilization has been evolved out of savagery. We can understand better and better what is our real status in our progressive development toward the ideal of civilization. And we can understand better and better our shortcomings. We can see the idea far above us and beyond us.

If we can not come into contact with lower civilizations without bringing extermination to them we are still far from the goal. It must be our great object to improve our institutions until we can bring blessings to lower peoples and set them on a road to rapid progress. We must take in hand their education. We must emancipate them from tribal forms and usages and train them into productive industry. We must take them out of the form of civilization that rests on tradition and mere external authority and substitute for it a civilization of the printed page which governs by public opinion and by insight rather than mere authority. Such a civilization we have a right to enforce on this earth. We have a right to work for the enlightenment of all peoples and to give our aid to lift them into local self-government. But local self-government can not exist where there is no basis of productive industry nor book learning.

Here we have the answer to our question. What is the right one civilization has to substitute itself in the place of another orm of civilization already existing?

Major Pratt has in this Carlisle Industrial School invented a method by which the European civilization may be brought near to the Indian tribes without exterminating their brave people. He teaches the necessity of setting aside tribal life, and the adoption of a life based upon productive industry. As soon as the Indian learns the arts and trades of civilized life he can make his living in the same way that the white man does. He can live a larger life than the tribal life, because he is able through productive industry to obtain

the means by which he may enter into the consciousness of the highest civilization through the book and the daily newspaper. In this school the pupil learns reading, writing, and arithmetic-those simple tools of thought which enable the individual to learn what the human race is doing and has already done. The Indian may from day to day and year to year learn the wisdom of the race stored up for all who can read and understand the printed page. By his trade he may furnish himself food, clothing, and shelter, and he may buy books for himself, books written by the wisest of the race. This school teaches him a tradeit may be how to make shoes or harnesses, it may be how to make bread or to cook other food, it may be the trade of a carpenter, the trade of the blacksmith. He learns here the foundation of the simple trades, and he learns how to make machinery and how to direct and control it.

More than all this, he learns the political and social ideas which are most important for him, coming as he does from a tribe and with tribal ideas. He learns how to value the white man's civilization and how to prefer it to his own, dear as his own has become to him because of early association. All of the Indian's pride and self-respect, all of his bravery and individuality, may be preserved by the blessings of this school and other schools founded on its methods.

We are learning each year some new lesson regarding the capacities of the Indian for entering into the white man's civilization. On my previous visit to this school I heard the band perform a piece of Beethoven's, not only with accurate technique but with the feeling and spirit in which the piece had been written. It is astonishing to know that an individual brought up in a tribal civilization can find expression for himself in the highest musical form of art which Germany has furnished to the world. For German music with its double counterpoint can express as nothing else is able to do the deepest feelings of the heart.

I have called our civilization the white man's civilization. We have read with great interest the new and higher definition of "The white man's burden," as stated by the greatest of living poets. The white man proves his civilization to be superior to other civilizations just by this very influence which he exercises over the peoples that have lower forms of civilization- forms that do not permit them to conquer nature and make the elements into ministers of his power; forms of civilization which do not sum up for each individual the ideas of all mankind through all ages, but rather which limit him exclusively to the experience of his own tribe, and which fail to give him an understanding even of that. The graduates of this school will as citizens of this nation take up the white man's burden.

I will ask the graduating class to come upon the platform and receive their diplomas. Members of the graduating class, allow me to congratulate you on the completion of your course in this institution. These diplomas will testify to your graduation. But your after lives will testify in a much more effective way to the reality of this fact, for if you are true to the instructions received here your lives will be a continuous progress up the ladder of civilization. You will more and more learn to direct and control matter and force, and you will more and more learn to master the deepest ideas which the thinkers and investigators of the world have left for us preserved in printed words. Through the literature, the music, the paintings, and sculptures of the world you will learn to understand the motives that have governed the lives of men-not only of white men in America, but of men of all colors in Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea. And above all let me urge upon you to study the motives of the people of Rome, those people who spoke Latin. For from them our civilization has received its forms of law by which it executes justice in the world and makes each person reap the fruit of his own deeds.

It must surprise you at first when you find that the civilization of the world is a derivative one, and not one invented by a particular nation. The highest civilization is a compound product coming from all the peoples that have lived and worked on this planet. Each nation has made some contribution to civilization, but the contributions are not all of equal value. What we get from Rome is of a very high order of value because it enables us to live with more individual freedom than under any other form of government. It enables us to allot our lands in severalty and for each head of a family to have a house or a farm for himself

and direct his own business affairs. This independence of each citizen from another is balanced by a deep sense of the solidarity of the whole, for in his political life in the state each individual devotes his property and his life for the safety of the whole. This lesson of independence within the family, and by means of private property on the one hand and of division of property and life for the safety of the whole has been taught us by Rome, and I commend to all scholarly Indian pupils at this institution a careful study of that source of our civilization.

I hope that you will all remember Major Pratt's doctrine as to the necessity of leaving tribal life and adopting a civilization founded on productive industry. But you must continue your studies in this line so that you will be ready to solve one after the other the problems which arise on your life journey. You must become the teachers of the doctrine which you have learned. You will find surprising results in studying the influence of the association of your race upon the white race. As I was looking yesterday at the military maneuvers of your highest classes I could not but think of the fact that the Indian's fight has been a skirmish fight, and not a method of fighting by phalanx or legion—that is to say, the massing of troops into solid bodies by careful discipline-and yet the white colonist in America learned from the Indian how to fight by skirmish lines. It has been suggested that the immense extension of skirmishing which developed here in the so-called French and Indian war was carried back to Europe both by the French and by the English, and under the masterly mind of Napoleon, who combined it with the method of concentrating an artillery fire upon a certain point, it became a new method of handling armies. Fighting a battle in column succeeded to the old tactics of fighting by lines. I think that you will be able to learn many particulars in which the white people of civilization have profited by the life of the Indian.

I must close my remarks to you by repeating for you the definition of civilization, a definition by which you can rightly measure and criticise the forms of civilization in which you have been trained yourselves and likewise those forms which are offered to you as substitutes--inquiring whether a civilization offers to those who embrace it the ability to know nature and the ability to apply it by labor-saving inventions so as to decrease human drudgery and at the same time increase the production of food, clothing, and shelter. You must inquire still more earnestly what means it gives to those who embrace it to enter into a possession of the experience of the race, to understand the evolution of human institu tions-the family, civil society, the state, the church-and see the continuous growth of an ability on the part of each individual to participate in the fruits of all human living. And above all learn to apply the highest and the deepest of the principles of civilization, namely, the principle that makes it the highest honor of each individual to sacrifice his individual life for the lifting up of the downtrodden, the giving of light to those who sit in darkness, and the increase of self-activity and directive power on the part of each, using the means and opportunities with which each one is endowed to extend these high privileges to all.

II. ART EDUCATION THE TRUE INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.a

We have heard much said on the subject of industrial training in recent years. It would seem that there is no educational subject that occupies the mind of the public more extensively at the present time. There is, however, not an entire agreement among its agitators as to the exact nature of the education demanded for industry. It is the object of my paper to assist in clearing up this question of the best form of training for profitable work in the industries.

One will concede at the start that tool work is valuable as industrial training, and that especially the course of study and work in the manual-training school is valuable because

a A paper read by W. T. Harris before the Department of Art Education, National Educational Association, Nashville, Tenn., July, 1889.

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