Appendix 



life founded as it now is on deceit and the plunder and 

 pillage of the agricultural nations." 



From O'Brien's White Shadows in the South Seas. (New 

 York, 1 91 9.) 



" A hundred years ago there were 160,000 Marquesans 

 in these [South Sea] Islands. To-day their total number 

 does not reach 2,100." O'Brien describes the bad effects 

 of Christianity on these "savages." For he says the so- 

 called superstitions of these races had a great vitalising 

 influence. Their dancing, their tattooing, their religious 

 rites, their chanting and their warfare gave them a zest in 

 life. But " to-day all Polynesians from Hawaii to Tahiti 

 are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct 

 that had its expression in most of their customs and 

 occupations." And they are now " nothing but joyless 

 machines " and " tired of life." 



Failure of Our Civilisation 



For a searching comparison between our social conditions 

 and those of the many savage communities visited by him 

 — and much to the general advantage of the latter — see 

 A. R. Wallace's Malay Archipelago (ist ed. 1869), pp. 

 456, 7 (ed. 1894). And he ends the book by saying : 



" Until there is a more general recognition of this failure 

 of our civilisation — resulting mainly from our neglect to 

 train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings 

 and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a 

 larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, 

 and our whole social organisation — we shall never, as 

 regards the whole community, attain to any real or import- 

 ant superiority over the better class of savages. This is 

 the lesson I have been taught by my observations of un- 

 civilised man. 



" I now bid my readers — Farewell ! " 

 299 



