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, 1919.) 



" 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 ! " 

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