VML-10/16/01

[Guest guest]

So there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that civilization

existed fourteen hundred years before Christ. It is not settled

whether civilization has always come from lower to higher. The same

arguments and proofs that have been brought forward to prove this

proposition can also be used to demonstrate that the savage is only a

degraded civilized man. The people of China, for instance, can never

believe that civilization sprang from a savage state, because the

contrary is within their experience. But when you talk of the

experience of America, what you mean is the perpetuity and the growth

of your own race.