Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



says A. R. Wallace in his Malay Archipelago 

 vol. ii. p. 460), " with communities in South 

 America and the East, who have no laws or law 

 courts, but the public opinion of the village . . . 

 yet each man scrupulously respects the rights of 

 his fellows, and any infraction of those rights 

 rarely takes place. In such a community all are 

 nearly equal. There are none of those wide dis- 

 tinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and 

 poverty, master and servant, which are the pro- 

 duct of our civilisation.'* Indeed this community 

 of life in the early societies, this absence of division 

 into classes, and of the contrast between rich 

 and poor, is now admitted on all sides as a marked 

 feature of difference between the conditions of 

 the primitive and of civilised man. 1 



Lastly, with regard to the mental condition of 

 the Barbarian, probably no one will be found to 

 dispute the contention that he is more easy-minded 

 and that his consciousness of Sin is less developed 

 than in his civilised brother. Our unrest is the 

 penalty we pay for our wider life. The missionary 

 retires routed from the savage in whom he can 

 awake no sense of his supreme wickedness. An 

 American lady had a servant, a negro-woman, 

 who on one occasion asked leave of absence for 

 the next morning, saying she wished to attend the 

 Holy Communion ? "I have no objection," said 

 the mistress, " to grant you leave ; but do you 

 think you ought to attend Communion ? You 

 know you have never said you were sorry about 

 1 See Appendix. 

 26 



