ng, will not bear a moment's examination.

It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off.

It is admitted that the South Sea Islander in a state of nature is
overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning
that I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply
it are mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these
he would kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and
Christian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself,
wars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The
untitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas the private
soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of
quarrel--of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of
victory are about equal: the Chief takes all the dead, the General all
the glory. Moreover it costs more human life to supply a Christian
gentleman with food than it does a cannibal--with food alone: "board;"
if you could figure out the number of lives that his lodging, clothing,
amusements and accomplishment cost the sum would startle. Happily _he_
does not pay it. Considering human lives as having value, cannibalism is
undoubtedly the more economical system.

II.

Transplanted institutions grow but slowly; and civilization can not be
put into a ship and carried across an ocean. The history of this country
is a sequence of illustrations of these truths. It was settled by
civilized men and women from civilized countries, yet after two and a
half centuries with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it
is still imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the
science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of
England.

For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we are indebted
to England; the errors and mischiefs are of our own creation. We have
originated little, because there is little to originate, but we have
unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited and abandoned systems
of former ages and other countries--receiving them at second hand, but
making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the national
belief in their newness. Newness! Why, it is not possible to make an
experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology, or in
morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again. Fools
talk of clear and simple remedies for this and that evil afflicting