" (page 3).
Such thoughts may be noble and inspired; they are not related to
history. We know more or less about a score of civilizations that have
occupied portions of the earth during several thousand years. We know a
great deal about the western civilization which we observe and in which
we participate. Professor Morse's florid words apply to none of the
civilizations known to history. Certainly they are poles away from an
accurate characterization of our own varient of this social pattern.
We are writing this introduction in an effort to make our word pictures
of mankind and its doings correspond with the facts of social history.
With the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, it is high
time for us to exchange the clouds of fancy and the flowers of rhetoric
for the solid ground of historical reality. The word "civilization" must
generalize what has been and what is, as nearly as the past and present
can be embodied in language.
Civilization is a level or phase of culture which has been attained and
lost repeatedly in the course of social history. The epochs of
civilization have not been distributed evenly, either in time or on the
earth's surface. A combination of circumstances, political, economic,
ideological, sociological, resulted in the Egyptian, the Chinese, the
Roman civilizations. One of these was centered in North Africa, the
second in Asia, the third in eastern Europe.
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