tailieunhanh - IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE?

IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? By STANTON COIT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published May 1917 .BARBARA WEINSTOCK LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the University of California on the Weinstock foundation. IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE? I. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION IN choosing "The Morals of Trade" as the general title. | IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE By STANTON COIT BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917 COPYRIGHT 1917 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published May 1917 BARBARA WEINSTOCK LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing on business life under the new economic order first delivered at the University of California on the Weinstock foundation. IS CIVILIZATION A DISEASE I. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION IN choosing The Morals of Trade as the general title of the Weinstock Lectureship I am informed that its founder meant the word Trade to be understood in its comprehensive sense as commensurate with our whole system of socialized wealth at least upon the present occasion I shall interpret it in this broad way. I shall furthermore ask you to consider our system of socialized wealth its practice and principles in relation to the whole of that vast artificial structure of human life which is labelled Civilization and which began to prevail some ten thousand years ago. Such a comprehensive sweep of vision is in my judgment necessary if we are to view trade in true human perspective nor can we estimate the degree of praise or blame we ought to confer upon it until we have determined the worth of civilization itself. For trade is not only bound up inextricably with the whole of our social order but as it seems to me manifests in a most acute form the universal character of civilization in general. We must therefore discover the structural principle which began to co-ordinate the lives of any group of human beings when their tribe finally passed out of barbarism. Having discovered this we shall be able to judge whether by its ever-advancing application to the life of men and its ever-increasing domination over their wills it has furthered the cause of ideal humanity or not. If we find .