Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



very converse of the Stoic self-sufficient sage like children in 

 their ' admiration ' and worship of the Unknown. Hence their 

 absolute want of Conceit, though they possess self-command and 

 dignity. They are, to those they love and respect, faithful and 

 devoted their faithfulness and truthfulness are dictated by no 

 'categorical imperative,' but by personal affection. Towards an 

 enemy they can be, without any conscientious scruples, treacherous 

 and inhumanly cruel. I should say that there is scarcely any 

 possible idea that is so foreign to the savage African mind as that 

 of general philanthropy or enemy-love." 



" In endurance the African savage beats us hollow (except 

 trained athletes). On one occasion my men rowed my boat with 

 10 foot oars against the wind in a choppy sea for 25 hours at one 

 go, across Kuwirwe Bay, about 60 miles. They never once stopped 

 or left their seats just handed round a handful of rice now and 

 then. I was at the helm all the time and had enough of it ! . . . 

 They carry 80 Ibs. on their heads for 10 hours through swamps 

 and jungles. Four of my men carried a sick man weighing 14 

 stones in a hammock for 200 miles, right across the dreaded Mali- 

 kata Swamp. But for sudden emergencies, squalls, etc., they are 

 nowhere." 



(See p. 27) " So lovely a scene made easily credible the sugges- 

 tion, otherwise highly probable, that the Golden Age was no mere 

 fancy of the poets, but a reminiscence of the facts of social life 

 in its primitive organisation of village and house-communities." 

 (J. S. Stuart-Glennie's Europe and Asia, ch. i. Servia.) 



(See p. 72) " It was only on the up-break of the primitive 

 socialisms that the passionate desire of, and therefore belief in, 

 individual Immortality arose. With an intense feeling, not of 

 an independent individual life, but of a dependent common life, 

 there is no passionate desire of, though there may be more or less 

 of belief in, a continuance after death of individual existence." 

 (Ibid, p. 1 6 1.) 



Following is an extract from a letter from my friend Havelock 

 Ellis, which he kindly allows me to reprint. The passage is 



77 



