e in manner, information,
training, in the acquisition of what the world has to give. Could these
men have conquered the world? Is it possible that our highest
civilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element that
we admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth? What is this London,
the most civilized city ever known? Why, a considerable part of its
population is more barbarous, more hopelessly barbarous, than any wild
race we know, because they are the barbarians of civilization, the refuse
and slag of it, if we dare say that of any humanity. More hopeless,
because the virility of savagery has measurably gone out of it. We can do
something with a degraded race of savages, if it has any stamina in it.
What can be done with those who are described as "East-Londoners"?

Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, or
is it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on calling
civilization? We are always sending out missionaries to savage or
perverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy and
reduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How would
it be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no more
peoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under
productive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this
energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our
civilization last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized,
wouldn't it be too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres,
where is accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's best
efforts, is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity that
attends our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can do
something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, which
our own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must it
always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization and
barbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed and
growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization? Does
our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of the
race? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmed
over, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs the
soul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile,
blood-full, t