2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cise, than the civilized man, is inconsistent with facts. Civilization 

 has its vices as well as its virtues, savagism has its advantages as 

 well as its demerits. 



The evils of savagism are not so great as we imagine ; its pleasures 

 more than we are apt to think. As we become more and more re- 

 moved from evils, their magnitude enlarges ; the fear of suffering 

 increases as suffering is less experienced and witnessed. If savagism 

 holds human life in light esteem, civilization makes death more hide- 

 ous than it really is ; if savagism is more cruel, it is less sensitive. 

 Combatants accustomed to frequent encounter think lightly of wounds, 

 and those whose life is oftenest imperilled think least of losing it. In- 

 difference to pain is not necessarily the result of cruelty; it may arise 

 as well from the most exalted sentiment as from the basest. 



Civilization not only engenders new vices, but proves the destroyer 

 of many virtues. Among the wealthier classes energy gives way to en- 

 joyment, luxury saps the foundation of labor, progress becomes para- 

 lyzed, and, with now and then a noble exception, but few earnest 

 workers in the paths of literature, science, or any of the dej^artments 

 which tend to the improvement of mankind, are to be found among 

 the powerful and the affluent, while the middle classes are absorbed in 

 money-getting, unconsciously thereby, it is true, working toward the 

 ends of civilization. 



That civilization is expedient, that it is a good, that it is better 

 than savagism, we who profess to be civilized entertain no doubt. 

 Those who believe otherwise must be ready to deny that health is bet- 

 ter than disease, truth than superstition, intellectual power than stupid 

 ignorance ; but whether the miseries and vices of savagism, or those 

 of civilization, are the greater, is another question. The tendency of 

 civilization is, on the whole, to purify the morals, to give equal rights 

 to man, to distribute more equally among men the benefits of this 

 world, to meliorate wholesale misery and degradation, offer a higher 

 aim and the means of accomplishing a nobler destiny, to increase the 

 power of the mind and give it dominion over the forces of Nature, to 

 place the material in subservience to the mental, to elevate the indi- 

 vidual and regulate society. True, it may be urged that this heaping 

 up of intellectual fruits tends toward monopoly, toward making the 

 rich richer and the poor poorer, but I still hold that the benefits of 

 civilization are for the most part evenly distributed ; that wealth be- 

 yond one's necessity is generally a curse to the possessor greater than 

 the extreme of poverty, and that the true blessings of culture and 

 refinement, like air and sunshine, are free to all. 



Civilization, it is said, multiplies wants, but then they are ennobling 

 wants, better called aspirations, and many of these civilization satisfies. 



If civilization breeds new vices, old ones are extinguished by it. 

 Decency and decorum hide the hideousness of vice, drive it into dark 

 corners, and thereby raise the tone of morals and weaken vice. Thus 



