---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 6
number: 11
published: 1903-09
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Was Civilization Cradled in America?", *Improvement Era* 6, no. 11 (September 1903): 835.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0611unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0611unse
start_page: 835
end_page: 835
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1903-09)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0611unse
  publication_year: 1903
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1903, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Was Civilization Cradled in America?

<!-- page:835 -->

SHOW THYSELF A MAN.                               833


          It is a great and Godlike thing to do!

          Tis a great thing, I think, to be a man.
          Man fells the forests, plows and tills the fields,
          And heaps the granaries that feed the world.
          At his behest, swift Commerce spreads her wings,
          And tires the sinewy sea-bird as she flies,
          Fanning the solitudes from clime to clime.
          Smoke-crested cities rise beneath his hand,
           And roar through the ages with a dm of trade.
           Steam is the fleet-winged herald of his will.
           Joining the angel of the apocalypse, -
           'Mid sound and smoke and wond'rous circumstance,
           And with one foot upon the conquered sea
           And one upon the subject land, proclaims
           That space shall be no more.      The lightnings veil
             Their fiery forms to wait upon his thought,
             And give it wings, as unseen spirits pause
             To bear to God the burden of his prayer.
           God crowns him with the gift of eloquence,
           And puts a harp into his tuneful hands,
           And makes him both his prophet and his priest.
             'Twas in his form the great Immanuel
             Revealed himself; the Apostolic Twelve,
             Like those who since have ministered the word,
                                                             "
             Were men.    'Tis a great thing to be a man.'


     There is none of us who can say these estimates of manhood
are overdrawn.    They set forth the true standard; but how sadly
deficient many are when measured by it!           False ideals, low or in-
different aims, and unnatural or perverted appetites, have lowered
them so far beneath their prototype that in some cases the relation-
ship is mere parody. Instead of being, as Hamlet says, the paragon of
animals, the highest of God's creations, we too often find him sunk
below the level of the beasts themselves. "Freedom and reason,"
the poet says, are what "make us men;" but with will dethroned,
and reason   —as too often evidenced by conduct—sadly              crippled,

man is really and truly lower than the beast; for he has not            the
God-given instincts to guide him to the fulfilment of the purposes
of his creation.
     Ruskin speaks figuratively of the Nebuchadnezzar curse that