supplies are not drawn from any one locality; were we to draw a radius
of five hundred miles around our great city of a million inhabitants,
we should still find that the greater part of our food supply comes
from a wider distance from us than that; and there is no one of us
that will go to his table this evening but will see upon that table
food products drawn from every quarter of the world. Thus it is that
commerce enables man to reach an indefinite degree of consolidation;
and it is through consolidation--through the more and more intimate
relationship, and the closer and closer juxtaposition of man--that his
real benefit and progress may be derived.

These, therefore, are the four stages of culture, as depending upon
food supply: the hunting and fishing stage, the nomadic or pastoral,
the agricultural and the commercial. These have been generally adopted
by English writers, and they are so adopted to-day; and you will
probably find them in many of the text books.

The American writers have, in many instances, followed the principles
laid down and defined most clearly by Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, a
distinguished ethnologist of the last generation. He divides (or
accepted the division and largely defined it) the progress of man into
a series of stages: beginning at the lowest point with savagery; then
barbarism, semi-civilization, civilization, and fifth, enlightenment.

I may briefly refer to what he would include in these and the main
criteria which he gives for each of them. He would place the savage
condition as being that of the lowest tribes known to us. They have
little or no agriculture; their commerce is very inchoate and rude:
they have no knowledge of the metals as such; their best weapon is the
bow and arrow, or the throwing stick; and their best tool is the stone