Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-03-04
NO. 81.
Reported for the Kennebec Journal
LANGUAGE A CITILIZER.

During the examination of the Richmond
Schools by County Supervisor D. H. Potter,
Tor theTeek ending Feb 2Gth, lectures were
given by Prot. d. II. Cruttenden of New
York, the well-known educator, on the "Ele-
ments of Human Power and Language a
Civlizer." The principal argument from the
latter give below:
A Chinese map has China for the center
OF the world, and occupying by far the largest
portion. leaving but few minor outskirts to
outside barbarans. We smile at the self
compacency of these Celestlals. Open one of
our own common school biographies turning
to the map of civilization. Over our own
country. and England the mother country,
few shade lines are drawn. Outside these
limits the shadows deepen to shades, and the
shades to darkness. The farthest from the
point where we live is given to the savage
and our self-complacency tells US this is all
right 1t accords with the observations of
our childhood, that the highest arch Of heaven
was over our own house, while away of as
far as the eye could reach the sky and earth
came together; and onr childish eomplacency
under the highest arch of the heavens"
The argument of this evening is intended
to disturb the selfcomplacency of those who
imagine that these maps Of civilization are in
the least degree true, for it will go to show
that the most enlightened community is mere
ly an intermxture and interfusion of human
beings in every stage of developement-those
under its influence and those suffering its ar
rest--from the savage to the most enlighten-
ed; and that this is so because every human
being begins life a savage and is developed
through the different grades of civilization,
from savage to a barbarian, from barbar-
ian to halfcivlized or civilized below
which the majority now exist, few only hav-
ing escaped into that highest state of the en-
hghtened. Because you live in so-called
enlightened community, dress exquisitely, are
+ educated, belong to a temperance society,
anti-slavcry society, figure in the government,
have the best pew in church, it does not fol-
f low that you must have reached the highest
grade OF civilization. Let us propose the
tests of your civilization, and the exponents
of its extremes taking savagism as the lowest
in the scale, its exponent must be selfishness;
and the enlightened as the highest, having for
its exponent beneyolence--of which we have
but one cxample-that of the Great Teacher,
going about doing good, and finally laying
down his life, not for his friends only, but for
his enemies, and we shall get some idea of
the necessities of the race, when we contcm-
plate the Immense distance to be traversed by
humanity in its transition from savagism-
another name for .elfishness--to the enlght-
, ed state---another name for benevolence.
Every baby is born into the world savage.
1t sleeps, hungers, wakes and demands graft
tcation with an intense yell. For the first
three weeks OF its life smile rewards ma
ternal care. After three weeks the first smile,
the result of self-gratifcation, makes its ap-
pearance--the feeblest pulsation of benev-
olence.
Now what the means by which it shall
be made to take all the succeeding steps in the
7 great scale? Visit him with kindness,
round him with the attractive and the beaut-
full RESTRAIN with strictness--not with sever-
ty, even to the niiiction OF physical pain,
and thy soul shall have joy of him.
Teaching him TO count will never raise him
from his savage state. And yet l grant, for
. sake of the argument, that adult savage
might, by 4 thorough course of training in
: mathematics, be changed to tolerably de-
cent barbarian; because these studies might
,, intensity his intuitiyes to the perception that
, within and around him exist superior beings,
but more than this for him it can never do. l
, assert this low, civilizing tendency of mathe-
MATES on the ground that although certain
Asiatic nations have for thousands of centu-
ries eclpsed the outside world in certain pure
and applied mathematics, they are no higher
in the scale of civilization.
Certain natural sciences, as astronomy, and
certain arts, as the extraction of iron from
{ the ore, and its uses in making the spear head
or the hatchet, might be sufficient to change
, the barbarian into a half civilized,-nothing
more.
If now we collect men in large conimuni-
ties, So to compel the observances OF po-
ltical and social duties, add to mathematics
the whole round of natural sciences, train
them in the arts of and of peace, and we
may lift them to the civilized grade, between
which low idea of civilization and true en-
lightenment the distance is far greater than
from savasism 10 civilization.
The term civilization names the highest
type of the human, known TO the Roman,
whence we have inherited it. Let us exam
inc his IDEAS and also the terms Savage
Barbarian Let us look through these terms
at the ideals in the minds of those who used
them. The Roman despised the cannibal and
hence called him 'savage'-the doer of dire
ful deeds A rustic with his uncombed and
uncut beard and hair, playing upon shep-
herds pipe, was simply a being with 'barbG
hortda'-a horrid beard, as an exponent of
a horrid coat, of wretched boots, and of a