Mr. Guizot's and Mr. W. von Humboldt's definitions examined. Its elements. The reader will here pardon me an indispensable digression. I make use at almost every moment of a term comprising in its extensive signification a collection of ideas which it is important to define accurately: _civilization_. The greater or less degree in which this term is applicable to the social condition of various nations, is my only standard for the comparative merit of races. I also speak of a _European_ civilization, in contradistinction to others of a different character. It is the more necessary to avoid the least vagueness, as I am under the disagreeable necessity of differing from a celebrated writer, who has assumed the special task of determining the meaning and comprehensiveness of this expression. Mr. Guizot, in his _History of Civilization in Modern Europe_, makes use of a term which seems to me to give rise to a serious confusion of ideas, and lead to positive errors. He says that civilization is a _fact_. Now, either the word fact must here be understood in a sense much less strict and precise than common usage requires, a sense so indistinct--I might almost say elastic--as has never pertained to it, or what we comprehend under the term civilization cannot be expressed by the word fact. Civilization is not _a fact_; it is a _series_, a _concatenation of facts_, more or less logically united, and resulting from ideas often sufficiently diverse: ideas and facts continually reproduce each other. Civilization is a term applied to a certain state or condition in which a society exists--a condition which is of its own creation, bears its character, and, in turn, reacts upon it. This condition is of so variable a nature, that it cannot be called a fact; for a fact cannot be variable without ceasing to be a fact. In other words, there is more than one civilization: there are various kinds. Thus, a civilization may flourish under every form of government, and it does not cease to exist when civil commotions destroy or alter that form. Let it not be understood that I esteem governmental forms of little importance. Their choice is intimately connected with the prosperity of the society: if judicious, promoting and developing it; if unpractical, endangering its destruction. But I speak not here of the temporary prosperity or misery of a society. I speak of its civilization; and this is a phenomenon whose causes must be sought elsewhere, and deeper than in transient political forms. Its character, its growth, fecundity, or barrenness, depends upon elementary principles of far greater importance.