It has in it an element that, if it exists in the
patriarchal constitution, exists there only in a different form,
and the transformation marks the passage from the economical
order to the political, from the barbaric to the civil
constitution of society, or from barbarism to civilization.
The word civilization stands opposed to barbarism, and is derived
from civitas--city or state. The Greeks and Romans call all
tribes and nations in which authority is vested in the chief, as
distinguished from the state, barbarians. The origin of the word
barbarian, barbarus, or ........, is unknown, and its primary
sense can be only conjectured. Webster regards its primary sense
as foreign, wild, fierce; but this could not have been its
original sense; for the Greeks and Romans never termed all
foreigners barbarians, and they applied the term to nations that
had no inconsiderable culture and refinement of manners, and that
had made respectable progress in art and sciences--the Indians,
Persians, Medians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. They applied the
term evidently in a political, not an ethical or an aesthetical
sense, and as it would seem to designate a social order in which
the state was not developed, and in which the nation was personal,
not territorial, and authority was held as a private right, not
as a public trust, or in which the domain vests in the chief or
tribe, and not in the state; for they never term any others
barbarians.
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