Note 46 — Chapter IX · DEFINITION OF THE WORD “CIVILIZATION” (continued); DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETIES; OUR CIVILIZATION IS NOT SUPERIOR TO THOSE WHICH HAVE GONE BEFORE

A very few years ago there was a question of electing a churchwarden in a little obscure parish of French Brittany, that part of the old province which the true Bretons call the “Welsh,” or “foreign,” country. The church council, composed of peasants, deliberated for two days without being able to make up their minds; for the candidate before them, though rich and well esteemed as a good man and a good Christian, was a “foreigner.” The council would not move from its opinion, although the “foreigner’s” father, as well as himself, had been born in the district; it was still remembered that his grandfather, who had been dead for many years and had never known any member of the council, was an immigrant from another part of the country. The daughter of a peasant-proprietor makes a mésalliance if she marries a tailor or a miller or even a farmer, if he works for wages. It does not matter whether the husband is richer than she is; her crime is often punished, just the same, by a father’s curse. Is not this case exactly like that of the churchwarden?