Let us take another hypothesis. Here is a people whose material existence is less agreeable, less comfortable, yet supportable. But in return, its moral and intellectual wants have not been neglected; a certain extent of pasture has been afforded them; elevated and pure sentiments are cultivated amongst this people; systems of religion and morality have attained a certain degree of development; but great care is taken to strangle the principle of liberty. Here the intellectual and moral wants, as before the physical wants, are satisfied: to each individual is meted out a portion of truth, but he is not permitted to seek it freely of himself alone. The characteristic of the moral life is immobility; it is the state into which the major part of the Asiatic populations has fallen, where theocratic dominations repress elasticity; it is the state of the Hindoos, for example. I ask the same question as before--Is this a people advancing in civilisation? I change altogether the nature of the hypothesis. Here is a people amongst whom is a great development of certain individual liberties, but where disorder and inequality are excessive; the empire of force and chance: he who is not strong is oppressed, suffers, and perishes. Violence is the characteristic of the social state. Every person knows that Europe has passed through this state. Is it a civilised condition? It may doubtless contain the principles of civilisation, which will be successively developed; but the predominant fact in such a society is most assuredly not that which the common sense of mankind calls civilisation. {29} I take a fourth and last hypothesis. The liberty of each individual is very great, inequality is rare, or at least temporary. Each does almost what he pleases, and differs little in power with his neighbour; but there are very few general interests, public ideas or sentiments, very little society; in a word, the faculties and career of individuals are deployed, and run in isolation, without mutual action, and without leaving any marks behind: successive generations leave society at the same point at which it has come to them. This is the state of savage tribes: liberty and equality are there, and yet as certainly is not civilisation. I could multiply these hypotheses, but I think we have enough to prove what is the popular and natural meaning of the word civilisation. It is clear that none of the conditions which I have glanced at answers, according to the common sense of mankind, to this term. Why? It appears to me that the first fact comprised in the word _civilisation_ (and this is deducible from the different examples I have brought forward), is that of progress, of development; its application is identical with the idea of a people on the move, not for a change of locality, but of condition; of a people whose state is in the process of expansion and amelioration. Progress and development appear to me the fundamental ideas contained in the word civilisation.