For civilization, to my idea, means a state worthy of man, implying his mental, moral and material independence of all motive forces other than those of his own nature; its aim is the most complete attainment possible of this independence; its measure the extent to which the individual determines his own fate and is able to ward off from it undesired outside influences. At the first awakening of his consciousness primitive man was aware of being exposed to unknown forces which controlled him at will and against which his will was powerless. From the very beginning, at first dimly and then more and more clearly, man has felt this to be unworthy and intolerable. The best of the species have always laboured with all their strength to liberate themselves, and the great ambition of man throughout his development has always been not submissively to accept whatever fate was accorded him, but to work out his destiny according to his needs and his own ideas.
The anguish caused by wretched dependence upon external forces is the origin of religion as of superstition, which both spring from the same root. With the anthropomorphism peculiar to the earliest stages of thought, man personified the mysterious powers which ruled his fate. He created gods for himself, and then, as far as his knowledge permitted, he sought some relation between himself and them, and tried to get at them by every means available. He imagined them like unto himself, that is, vain, capricious, greedy, easily frightened by dark threats, and then, very reasonably on this hypothesis, he importuned them with prayers, sacrifices, hymns of praise and vows, as well as magic formulæ and incantations, always with the inflexible intention of making them serve his purposes, not of serving theirs. The contrite Jewish prayer: "Thy will be done, Lord, Thy will, not mine," is a new trait in the religious thought of man. The heathen always strives to have his will done in opposition to that of the gods, and to divert them from their decisions if he dislikes them.
In a state of advanced development theological thought gave way before the scientific. Man learnt to conceive Nature's rule, not transcendentally, but intrinsically. He recognized that the forces around him, which so often crossed his purpose, are not to be influenced by prayer and sacrifice, but that it is expedient and possible to discover their character and the conditions of their activity. By dint of long-sustained efforts he has succeeded in effectively standing up to hostile Nature and in warding off her undesired interference in his destiny. If the tribulations, which formerly suddenly brought his schemes to nought and often destroyed him, are not entirely overcome, it is merely because his practice does not conform closely enough to the directions evolved by his theoretical knowledge, because he is too careless or too clumsy to make proper use of the weapons against the elements with which science has armed him.