We can never cut ourselves off from antiquity unless we intend to revert to barbarism. The barbarian and the creature of exclusively modern civilization both live without history.
—Jacob Burckhardt

A civilization is a complex system of customs, practices, and beliefs that binds a society or a family of societies together over long periods of time. To survive, a civilization needs to have the means to defend itself, usually military and diplomatic, from external threats. It needs systems of internal order, usually defined by customs, laws, and magistrates. Above all it needs moral and spiritual resources that generate loyalty to recognized authorities and allow individuals to actualize their full potential as human beings. The spiritual resources of a civilization provide those who share them with an identity that transcends the identity belonging to individual peoples united merely by common descent (the premodern meaning of  “nation,” natio in Latin). They produce a common culture that may last many centuries and even outlive the collapse of civilizational order.

All this is rather abstract. We can better understand what a civilization is by grasping what it does. Consider, then, what it means when we say that someone is civilized. To be civilized, in essence, is to act in ways that make us and those around us better and happier. This is not as straightforward as it may sound. Civilized behavior is more than a matter of having good intentions. It has to be learned, and learning to be