In the introduction to The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind I told the following story when discussing the various uses and misuses of “civilization”: My favorite story about Oxford involves an irredeemably judgmental use of the word. The time is World War I and militant ladies are roaming the streets of Oxford giving out white feathers of cowardice to young men of fighting age who are not at the front. (Yes, they did that.) They invade a college quad where a young don in cap and gown is walking across the lawn reading Virgil. Thrusting the white feathers at him one of the ladies demands: “Young man, why are you not out there fighting for civilization?” Without hesitation and with devastatingly correct grammar he replies: “Madam, I am the civilization for which they are out there fighting.”1
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