The etymology of the word civilisation seems to provide an easy answer. It tells us that civilisation is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society properly so called, of the relations of men to men. But is this all? Have we exhausted the natural and usual sense of the word? France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was acknowledged to be the most civilised country in Europe; yet in respect of purely civil progress France was then greatly inferior to some other European countries, Holland and England, for example. Another development, then, reveals itself--the development of individual life, of the man himself, of his faculties, sentiments, and ideas. These two notions that are comprehended in the broad notion of civilisation--that of the development of social activity and that of the development of individual activity--are intimately related to each other. Their relationship is upheld by the instinctive conviction of men; it is proved by the course of the world's history--all the great moral and intellectual advances of man have profited society, all the great social advances have profited the individual mind. So much for civilisation in general. It is now necessary to point out the essential difference between modern European and other civilisations. The characteristic of other civilisations has been unity; they seem to have emanated from a single fact, a single idea. In Egypt and India, for example, the theocratic principle was dominant; in the Greek and Phoenician republics, the democratic principle. The civilisation of modern Europe, on the contrary, is diverse, confused, stormy; all the forms and principles of social organisation theocratic, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, co-exist in it; there are infinite gradations of liberty, wealth, influence. All the various forces are in a state of constant struggle; yet all of them have a certain family resemblance, as it were, that we cannot but recognise. These diverse elements, for all their conflict, cannot any one of them extinguish any other; each has to dwell with the rest, make a compromise with the rest. The outcome, then, of this diversity and struggle is liberty; and here is the grand and true superiority of the European over the other civilisations. European civilisation, if I may say so, has entered into eternal truth; it advances in the ways of God. _II.--Feudalism_