Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays

"Jefferson, who was American minister in France from 1784 to 1789, and absorbed a great many of the ideas then afloat, writes in words that seem as if they were borrowed from Rousseau: 'I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians), which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former public opinion is in the state of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of government, they have divided the nation into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate; this is a true picture of Europe.'" (From Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i, p. 255.)

"Thirty-two years ago, I lived for some time in a district in Natal, then thickly populated with natives, still conforming to the primitive customs of their race, yet honest, manly and intelligent people, with very definite ideas in regard to moral questions. After an absence of thirty years, just prior to my sailing for England, I again visited the district and was amazed to observe the change which had taken place in the people; their habits, characters and physique. Sordid poverty, dressed in mean rags or tawdry finery, suggestive of service to vice, had displaced the old dignity, born of conscious physical strength and symmetry of form, which once, though attired only in the trappings that simple art could devise from the rough products of nature, was characteristic; whilst drunkenness, dishonesty and immorality sought shelter under the meagre cloaks of the religion dispensed by the different sections of belief, established in the little iron, or wattle and daub churches, which everywhere disfigured the country side. The change was complete and deplorable, nor were the natives unconscious of their degradation, or without regret for the passing of the old days."

"One finds that the fate of Slaves among the ruder peoples is much happier than among the civilised; indeed it seems to grow worse and worse in proportion to the civilisation of the ruling folk. Strange and incredible as at first sight this seems, the following facts establish it beyond doubt. And indeed it is not difficult to explain. The chief reason is that with the increase of merely material culture, Time and Labour-force are more and more prized, and consequently always more violently and unscrupulously exploited, while on the contrary among primitive people in general a lesser value is placed on these things."

"Amongst all these Western nations there unceasingly proceeds a strife between the destitute exasperated working people and the government and wealthy, a strife which is restrained only by coercion on the part of deceived men who constitute the army; a similar strife is continually waging between the different states demanding endlessly increasing armaments, a strife which is any moment ready to plunge into the greatest catastrophes. But however dreadful this state of things may be, it does not constitute the essence of the calamity of the Western nations. Their chief and fundamental calamity is that the whole life of these nations who are unable to furnish themselves with food is entirely based on the necessity of procuring means of sustenance by violence and cunning from other nations, who like China, India, Russia and others still preserve a rational agricultural life.

"Constitutions, protective tariffs, standing armies, all this together has rendered the Western nations what they are—people who have abandoned agriculture and become unused to it, occupied in towns and factories in the production of articles for the most part unnecessary, people who with their armies are adapted only to every kind of violence and robbery. However brilliant their position may appear at first sight it is a desperate one, and they must inevitably perish if they do not change the whole structure of their life founded as it now is on deceit and the plunder and pillage of the agricultural nations."

"A hundred years ago there were 160,000 Marquesans in these [South Sea] Islands. To-day their total number does not reach 2,100." O'Brien describes the bad effects of Christianity on these "savages." For he says the so-called superstitions of these races had a great vitalising influence. Their dancing, their tattooing, their religious rites, their chanting and their warfare gave them a zest in life. But "to-day all Polynesians from Hawaii to Tahiti are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct that had its expression in most of their customs and occupations." And they are now "nothing but joyless machines" and "tired of life."

For a searching comparison between our social conditions and those of the many savage communities visited by him—and much to the general advantage of the latter—see A. R. Wallace's Malay Archipelago (1st ed. 1869), pp. 456, 7 (ed. 1894). And he ends the book by saying:

"Until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilisation—resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation—we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savages. This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilised man.