THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



clined to envy the savage, who has advanced so 

 short a distance above the level of other animals, 

 because he finds his food with little labor, needs 

 no clothes, and has no worries. 



The savage, moreover, feels pain much less than 

 we do, and scarcely knows what it is to be melan- 

 choly. The abhorrence of the civilized world for 

 slavery was the inevitable outcome of civilized 

 modes of thought; but the slaves as many sur- 

 vivors from that period have admitted were not 

 more unhappy than the free negroes of to-day, 

 who have votes and have to earn their own living. 

 Thus always we see that even human beings are 

 adapted to their environment; and that it is fool- 

 ish to invest low creatures with our own civilized 

 sensations. These we have acquired as the means 

 whereby we rise on our higher plane. 



Thus, to anyone who is impartially observant, 

 the conscious sufferings of human beings do not 

 constitute a stumbling-block to religious belief. 



In the East and the West, as well as here at 

 home in England, I have studied men as I have 

 watched the beasts and birds, trying to discover 

 from their conduct the solution of this great prob- 

 lem ; and year by year the conviction grew upon 

 me that a human being who is fortunate or un- 

 fortunate unconsciously and automatically adapts 

 himself to the level of his good or bad fortune, 

 [105] 



