Such thoughts may be noble and inspired; they are not related to history.  We know more or less about a score of civilizations that have occupied portions of the earth during several thousand years.  We know a great deal about the western civilization which we observe and in which we participate.  Professor Morse’s florid words apply to none of the civilizations known to history.  Certainly they are poles away from an accurate characterization of our own varient of this social pattern.

We are writing this introduction in an effort to make our word pictures of mankind and its doings correspond with the facts of social history.  With the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, it is high time for us to exchange the clouds of fancy and the flowers of rhetoric for the solid ground of historical reality.  The word “civilization” must generalize what has been and what is, as nearly as the past and present can be embodied in language.

Civilization is a level or phase of culture which has been attained and lost repeatedly in the course of social history.  The epochs of civilization have not been distributed evenly, either in time or on the earth’s surface.  A combination of circumstances, political, economic, ideological, sociological, resulted in the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Roman civilizations.  One of these was centered in North Africa, the second in Asia, the third in eastern Europe.  All three spilled over into adjacent continents.

No two civilizations are exactly alike at any stage of their development.  Each civilization is at least a partial experiment, a process or sequence of causal relationships, altered sequentially in the course of its life cycle.

These thoughts about culture and civilization should be supplemented by noting the relationship between civilizations and empires.  An empire is a center of wealth and power associated with its economic and political dependencies.  A civilization is a cluster or a succession of empires and/or former empires, co-ordinated and directed by one of their number which has established its leadership in the course of survival struggle.

The total body of historical evidence bearing on human experiments with civilization is extensive and impressive.  It covers a large portion of the Earth’s land surface, includes parts of Asia, Africa and Europe and extends sketchily to the Americas.  In time it covers many thousands of years.

Experiments with civilization have been conducted in highly selective surroundings possessing the volume and range of natural resources and the isolation and remoteness necessary to build and maintain a high level of culture over substantial periods of time.  In these special areas it was possible to provide for subsistence, produce an economic surplus large enough to permit experimentation and ensure protection against human and other predators.  Egypt and the Fertile Crescent were surrounded by deserts and high