A TA VISM AND CRIME 



more obstacles to overcome or to be avoided; so 

 much the greater is the need of continued effort to ad- 

 vance ; so much the greater must be the stimulus to 

 call forth the strength and the abilities of the way- 

 farer. Experience has shown that where exertion is 

 not compulsory little effort will be made. In the 

 South Sea Islands, where the climate is a perpetual 

 summer, where clothes are worn for ornament only, 

 not for warmth, where the bread-fruit tree grows 

 wild, and nature provides all other food needed for 

 sustenance and pleasure without effort to him who 

 wants it, the natives spend their days in a half-dreamy 

 state of indolence dance, swim and play their lives 

 away like children, diversified only by fighting with 

 the neighboring tribes like themselves. Often they 

 have acquired cannibalism, not from a scarcity of 

 other animal food nor as a religious custom, but simply 

 from their delight in such delicious dainties. Hav- 

 ing had no incentive to exert themselves, they have 

 never done so, and have therefore remained without 

 improvement savages in an earthly paradise. 



The stimulus to labor or to advance affects but 

 lightly those who in our midst inherit undue selfish- 

 ness, or those who being born to better things have 

 drifted into vicious habits : many of them acting 

 upon the maxim, " Let him get who has the might, 

 and let him keep who can/' need the repressing hand 

 361 



