CHAP. XL.] IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. 459 



our earth's surface. I have endeavoured to convey ruy im- 

 pressions of their scenery, their vegetation, their animal 

 productions, and their human inhabitants. I have dwelt 

 at some length on the varied and interesting problems they 

 offer to the student of nature. Before bidding my readers 

 farewell, I wish to make a few observations on a subject 

 of yet higher interest and deeper importance, which the 

 contemplation of savage life has suggested, and on which 

 I believe that the civilized can learn something from the 

 savage man. 



We most of us believe that we, the higher races, have 

 progressed and are progressing. If so, there must be some 

 state of perfection, some viltimate goal, which we may 

 never reach, but to which all true progress must bring us 

 nearer. What is this ideally perfect social state towards 

 which mankind ever has been, and still is tending ? Our 

 best thinkers maintain, that it is a state of individual free- 

 dom and self-government, rendered possible by the equal 

 development and just balance of the intellectual, moral, 

 and physical parts of our nature, — a state in which we 

 shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, 

 by knowing what is right, and at the same time feeling 

 an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right, 

 that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. 

 In such a state every man would have a sufficiently 

 well-balanced intellectual organization, to understand the 



