Fourth, and finally, those who divide human culture according to the food supply consider that the highest stage is reached through commerce. Commerce brings to all the great centers of human life the food essential to their sustenance. It would be absolutely impossible - obviously so - to have a city like Philadelphia in existence for a month without constant and ceaseless commerce brought here the food for its inhabitants. It is quite likely that, were Philadelphia shut off at once from all connection with the world, within ten days there would be an absolute famine here - so closely do we depend upon our commercial supplies for our subsistence. These 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 hatchet and the stone spade. This is very much like the lowest condition of the "wild people" to whom I referred.

Above that he would place the condition of barbarism. In the stage of developed barbarism he would place such inventions as, for instance, pottery, the art of weaving (which is a very primitive art) and the taming of a certain number of domestic animals, some for food, some for amusement and hunting, and also the beginnings of the development of agriculture. A type of such a nation of barbarism would be the Indians who used to live here - the Algonkian - the Delaware Indians. When the first Europeans came to the shores of the Delaware River they did not find absolutely rude savages. The Delaware Indians had moderately stationary villages surrounded by pickets, the houses being built of strong timber; they had large fields of maize, pumpkins, squashes and beans, which they cultivated diligently during the summer and stored the food for their winter's supply. They depended largely, to be sure, upon hunting and fishing also; but along with that they had these simple arts: From the rushes which grew below Philadelphia, in a place called the "Neck," they used to weave mats for protecting the floors and also for building the sides of their summer houses and for sleeping upon. They had a method of tanning and dressing buckskin and using it for the purposes of clothing.

They were by no means naked savages; they were clothed, and tolerably well clothed; they could make pottery, and the pottery was decorated sometimes with interesting designs, of which we have specimens in our cabinets. Therefore, we find among the old Delaware Indians who formerly lived on the site of Philadelphia a fair specimen of a nation in a barbarous stage, decidedly superior to the Australian natives of to-day or the Indians of the Terra del Fuego or the northern part of British America, who are in the state of complete savagery.

Above that is the period of semi-civilization, a stage marked by the discovery of the method of building stone walls. No Algonkian or Iroquois Indian ever built a stone wall in his life; there is no record of any and no signs of any throughout the United States east of the Mississippi; there was never a stone wall built by a native tribe that really amounted to anything more than a stone pile; but we do find that in the southwest, among the cliff dwellers, and in various parts of Central America and South America, the stone wall was not only known, but it was constructed with a great deal of durability and skill. Also, some knowledge of metals was found among most of the semi-civilized people. The Mexicans and the Peruvians were in a state of semi-civilization when they were discovered by the whites the first time. They, built many extensive temples and houses, erected frequently upon pyramids, the pyramids themselves being supported by stone walls. They knew the dressing of stone; they were distinctly agricultural and depended more on that than anything else for their food supply. They had developed a system of mnemonic records which, in the Yucatan culture, might be called picture writing, but was not phonetic writing in our true sense of the term.

The also knew something about weighing and measuring. They had definite laws, laws which were carried out by properly appointed individuals. Their towns and cities would often number thousands of inhabitants; they had roads connecting them, which roads were kept in good condition; they had a regular army made up of men selected and trained for that purpose. In all these respects we see nations who were semi-civilized, but they were not yet civilized. We could call a nation civilized that had a distinct system of phonetic writing and used it; but not all nations having this are civilized. It is only when it is used freely and for purposes of business that we can call them civilized.