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Part 21

Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure · Edward Carpenter — chapter 21 of 23 · ~525 words · public domain

"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 (1st 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 important superiority over the better class of savages. This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilised man.

"I now bid my readers--Farewell!"

FOOTNOTE:

Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870.

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