ABSTRACT
Gibbon's pertinent remarks on the cultivation of nature as a foundation of culture were made in the short essay which brought to a close the third volume of The Decline and Fall, titled 'General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West'. The chapter discusses the role of the cultivation of nature in this emerging awareness thus broadens the understanding of both the eighteenth-century comprehension of civilization and culture, and the subsequent resultant modern concept of the civilizing process. More than the detailed stadial theory itself, the basic two-stages differentiation between vagrant savages and sedentary civilizations predominated, particularly in the eighteenth century when the importance of the cultivation of land was often emphasized. There was almost nothing that human culture could not potentially attain if only it unremittingly took the proper steps on the road to civilization, a road which had to begin with the cultivation of natural resources.
