Civil and Savage Life Compared. 



the hand of an enemy, or at the caprice of his 

 chief, or from wild beasts. But when we re- 

 member that he generally enjoys perfect health, 

 and should he escape death by violence, lives to 

 old age without suffering any of the incon- 

 veniences generally met with in civilised towns, 

 the case bears a different complexion. 



With us it is different, for although the more 

 fortunate are born to a state of luxury and 

 indulgence, the proletarian is doomed to perpetual 

 labour, sometimes in most unwholesome sur- 

 roundings, and always subject to innumerable 

 pains and penalties unknown to the savage. 



The idea that pain and suffering is the 

 unavoidable result of civilisation, and that with 

 every refinement of emotion there must be the 

 corresponding degree of physical distress, has 

 been held by many. The late Professor Huxley 

 expressed himself of this opinion. " There is 

 another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect 

 as a mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. 

 Where the cosmopoietic energy works through 

 sentient beings, their arises among its other 

 manifestations, that which we call pain and 

 suffering. This baleful product of evolution 

 increases in quantity and intensity with ad- 

 vancing grades of animal organisation, until it 

 attains its highest level in man. Further, the 

 consummation is not reached in man, the mere 

 animal ; nor in man the whole or half savage ; 

 but only in man the member of an organised 

 polity. And it is a necessary consequence of his 

 attempt to live in this way, that is, under those 

 conditions which are essential to the full develop- 



35 



