ilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of
the natural man I can name you a dozen of the unnatural which are
essentially the same. And nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors
in historic times survives in some form today. We make ourselves look
formidable in battle--for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their
faces. We feel it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the
most ingenious reasons for it and actually despising and persecuting
those who do not care to conform. Within the memory of living persons
bearded men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York
who wore his beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously
persecuted till he died. We bury our dead instead of burning them, yet
every cemetery is set thick with urns. As there are no ashes for the
urns we do not trouble ourselves to make them hollow, and we say
their use is "emblematic." When, following the bent of our ancestral
instincts, we go on, age after age, in the performance of some senseless
act which once had a use and meaning we excuse ourselves by calling
it symbolism. Our "symbols" are merely survivals. We have theology and
patriotism. We have all the savage's superstition. We propitiate and
ingratiate by means of gifts. We shake hands. All these and hundreds
of others of our practices are distinctly, in their nature and by their
origin, savage.

Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men
know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable.
The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one
can have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as
unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing"
acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of
least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human
happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value.

The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization is a fine and beautiful
structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral. But it is built
upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all
its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the generous
tropics, for there the people will not contribute their blood and bones.
The proposition that the average American workingman or European peasant
is "better off" than the South Sea Islander, lolling under a palm and
drunk with over-eati