But before we consider that, again even at the outset, there is another difficulty. Our apparently comparable figures are often not really comparable. Each country or province or town puts forth its own sets of statistics and each set may be quite comparable within itself. But when we begin critically to compare one set with another set, all sorts of fallacies appear. We have to allow, not only for varying accuracy and completeness, but for difference of method in collecting and registering the facts, and for all sorts of qualifying circumstances which may exist at one place or time, and not at other places or times with which we are seeking comparison. The word “civilisation” is of recent formation. It came from France, but even in France in a Dictionary of 1727 it cannot be found, though the verb _civiliser_ existed as far back as 1694, meaning to polish manners, to render sociable, to become urbane, one might say, as a result of becoming urban, of living as a citizen in cities. We have to recognise, of course, that the idea of civilisation is relative; that any community and any age has its own civilisation, and its own ideals of civilisation. But, that assumed, we may provisionally assert—and we shall be in general accordance with Niceforo—that, in its most comprehensive sense, the art of civilisation includes the three groups of _material_ facts, _intellectual_ facts, and _moral_ (with _political_) facts, so covering all the essential facts in our life. Material facts, which we are apt to consider the most easily measurable, include quantity and distribution of population, production of wealth, the consumption of food and luxuries, the standard of life. Intellectual facts include both the diffusion and degree of instruction and creative activity in genius. Moral facts include the prevalence of honesty, justice, pity, and self-sacrifice, the position of women and the care of children. They are the most important of all for the quality of a civilisation. Voltaire pointed out that “pity and justice are the foundations of society,” and, long previously, Pericles in Thucydides described the degradation of the Peloponnesians among whom every one thinks only of his own advantage, and every one believes that his own negligence of other things will pass unperceived. Plato in his “Republic” made justice the foundation of harmony in the outer life and the inner life, while in modern times various philosophers, like Shadworth Hodgson, have emphasised that doctrine of Plato’s. The whole art of government comes under this head and the whole treatment of human personality.