596 The Kaces of Man 



iting the fai-thest isles of the Pacific, are no doubt doomed to 

 an early extinction. But the more numerous Malay race 

 seems well adapted to survive as the cultivator of the soil, 

 even when its countiy and government have passed into the 

 hands of Europeans. If the tide of colonization should be 

 turned to New Guinea, there can be little doubt of the early 

 extinction of the Papuan race. A warlike and energetic peo- 

 ple, who will not submit to national slavery or to domestic 

 servitude, must disappear before the white man as surely as 

 do the wolf and the tiger. 



I have now concluded my task. I have given, in more or 

 less detail, a sketch of my eight years' wanderings among 

 the largest and the most luxuriant islands which adorn our 

 earth's surface. I have endeavored to convey my impres- 

 sions of their scenery, their vegetation, their animal produc- 

 tions, and their human inhabitants. I have dwelt at some 

 length on the varied and interesting problems they offer to 

 the student of nature. Before bidding my readers farewell, 

 I wish to make a few observations on a subject of yet higher 

 interest and deeper importance, which the contemplation of 

 savage life has suggested, and on which I believe that the 

 civilized can learn something from the savage man. 



We most of us believe that we, the higher races, have pro- 

 gressed and are progressing. If so, there must be some state 

 of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, 

 but to which all true progress must bring us nearer. What 

 is this ideally perfect social state toward which mankind 

 ever has been, and still is tending ? Our best thinkers main- 

 tain that it is a state of individual freedom and self-govern- 

 ment, rendered possible by the equal development and just 

 balance of the intellectual, moral, and physical parts of our 

 nature, — a state in which we shall each be so pei'fectly fitted 

 for a social existence, by knowing what is right, and at the 

 same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know 

 to be right, that all laws and all punishments shall be un- 

 necessary. In such a state every man would have a suffi- 

 ciently well balanced intellectual organization to understand 

 the moral law in all its details, and would require no other mo- 

 tive but the free impulses of his own nature to obey that law. 



