Seventy Years Among Savages

It may be doubted whether of late years Europe has been pleasanter as a residential district than Cathay; but, letting that pass, must we not admit that a real culture implies something more than material and mental opulence? “Civilization,” as a French writer has lately said, “is not in this terrible trumpery: if it is not in the heart of man, then it exists nowhere.”[46] It is easy to frame “ethnical periods,” as is done in Morgan’s Ancient Society, in which are postulated the three phases—Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization—the last-named commencing with the invention of a Phonetic Alphabet; but such a definition, when put to practical test, seems a somewhat fanciful one. The brute who tortures or butchers a sentient fellow-being remains a brute, whether a Phonetic Alphabet has been invented or not. He has not learnt the ABC of civilization. What is needed, for the measurement of human progress, is a standard of ethical, not ethnical refinement.

That mankind has already advanced so far is a sign, not that it has now reached its zenith, but that it has yet further to advance; and this advance will be delayed, not promoted, by the refusal to recognize that the physical and mental sciences have far outrun the moral—that, despite our multifarious discoveries and accomplishments, we are still barbarians at heart.

In this sense, then, we are savages; and the knowledge of that fact is the first step toward civilization. There is a line which pious zoophilists are fond of quoting to sportsmen or other thoughtless persons who ill-use their humbler fellow-creatures:

The reminder is wholesome, for kinship is too apt to be forgotten; but I would venture to interpret that significant verse in a much more literal sense; for it must be confessed that many a human being, if judged by his actions, is not only related to the brute, but is himself the brute. The old Greek maxim, “Know thyself,” is the starting-point of all reformation.

Through this knowledge, and only through it, can come the patience which forgives because it fully understands: “Comprendre c’est pardonner” is assuredly one of the world’s greatest sayings.

There is no need to search for extenuating circumstances, because, as Ernest Crosby has remarked: “Is not the fact of being born a man or a woman an all-sufficient extenuating circumstance?” All is explained, when once we are content to look upon our fellow-beings, and upon ourselves, as what we verily are—a race of rough but not unkindly barbarians, emerging with infinite slowness to a more humanized condition, and to recognize that if mankind, even as it is, has been evolved from a still more savage ancestry, that fact is in itself a proof that progress is not wholly chimerical.

Considered from the point of view of personal happiness and peace of mind, the question is the same. To what sort of comfort can a person of sensibility hope to attain, in sight of the immense sum of wretchedness and suffering that is everywhere visible, and audible, around us? I know not a few humanitarians whose lives are permanently saddened by the thought of the awful destitution that afflicts large masses of mankind, and of the not less awful cruelties inflicted on the lower animals in the name of sport and science and fashion. How can sensitive and sympathetic minds forget the loss of other persons’ happiness in the culture of their own, especially if they have realized that not a little of their well-being is derived from the toil of their fellows?

Here, again, some measure of consolation may be found, if we look at the problem in a less sanguine and therefore less exacting spirit. People often indignantly ask, with reference to some cruel action or custom, whether we are living “in an age of civilization or of savagery,” the implication being that in an era of the highest and noblest civilization, such as ours is assumed to be, some unaccountably barbarous persons are stooping to an unworthy practice. Is it not wiser, and more conducive to one’s personal peace of mind, to reverse this assumption, and to start with the frank avowal that the present age, in spite of its vast mechanical cleverness, is, from an ethical point of view, one of positive barbarism, not so savage, of course, as some that have preceded it, but still undeniably savage as compared with what we foresee of a civilized future?

Viewed in this more modest light, many usages which, if prevalent in a civilized country, might well make one despair of humankind, are seen to be, like the crimes of children, symptoms of the thoughtless infancy of our race. We are not civilized folk who have degenerated into monsters, but untamed savages who, on the whole, make a rather creditable display, and may in future centuries become civilized.

For example, when one meets a number of “sportsmen” going forth, with horses and with hounds, to do to death with every circumstance of barbarity some wretched little animal whom they have actually bred, or “preserved,” or imported for the purpose, such a sight—if one regards them as rational and civilized beings—might well spoil one’s happiness for a fortnight. But if we take a lower stand, and see in them nothing more than fine strapping barbarians, engaged in one of the national recreations of those “dark ages” in which we live, the outlook becomes immediately a more cheerful one; and instead of being surprised that ladies and gentlemen in the twentieth century should desire to “break up” a fox, we are able to recognize the moderation and civility with which in other respects they conduct themselves.

One advantage, at least, can be drawn by humanitarians from the present state of affairs—a more accurate apprehension of the obstacles by which their hopes are beset. Much has been said and written about the causes of the war; and it is inevitable that the immediate causes (for they alone are discussed) should be thoroughly investigated. But the deeper underlying causes of the recent war, and of every war, are not those upon which diplomatists and politicians and journalists and historians are intent: they must be sought in that callous and selfish habit of mind—common to all races, and as such accepted without thought, and transmitted from one generation to another—which exhibits itself not in war only, but in numerous other forms of barbarity observed in so-called civilized life.

No League of Nations, or of individuals, can avail, without a change of heart. Reformers of all classes must recognize that it is useless to preach peace by itself, or socialism by itself, or anti-vivisection by itself, or vegetarianism by itself, or kindness to animals by itself. The cause of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the same—the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow-being is in fact doing injury to himself. The prospects of a happier society are wrapped up in this despised and neglected truth, the very statement of which, at the present time, must (I well know) appear ridiculous to the accepted instructors of the people.

The one and only talisman is Love. Active work has to be done, but if it is to attain its end, it is in the spirit of love that it must be undertaken. Perhaps the most significant symptom of the brutishness aroused by the war-fever was the blank inability which many Christians showed not only to practise such injunctions as “Love your enemies,” but even to understand them.[47] Had it not been that humour, like humaneness, was sunk fathoms deep in an ocean of stupidity, one would have been tempted to quote Ernest Crosby’s delightful lines on “Love the Oppressors”:

In these days, when the voice of hatred and malevolence is so dominant, it is a joy to turn to the pages of writers who proclaim a wiser faith. “This is a gray world,” says Howard Moore. “There is enough sorrow in it, even though we cease to scourge each other—the sorrow of floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each other, and be patient and forgiving.” Nor is it only the human that claims our sympathy; for does not Pierre Loti, in his Book of Pity and Death, imagine even his stray Chinese cat, whom he had befriended on shipboard, addressing him in similar words: “In this autumn day, so sad to the heart of cats, since we are here together, both isolated beings ... suppose we give, one to the other, a little of that kindness which softens trouble, which resembles the immaterial and defies death, which is called affection, and which expresses itself from time to time by a caress.”

Has not this distracted world had enough, and more than enough, of jealousies and denunciations? Is it not time that we tried, in their stead, the effect, say, of a bombardment of blessings? If there are light-waves, heat-waves, sound-waves, may there not also be love-waves? How if we sent out a daily succession of these to earth’s uttermost parts? A benediction is as easily uttered as a curse; and it needs no priest to pronounce it. At least it is pleasant to think (and men put faith in creeds that are much less believable) that gentle thoughts, the “wireless” of the heart, may penetrate and be picked up in regions that are beyond our ken, and so create a more favourable atmosphere for gentle deeds. “Why did none of them tell me,” asks Crosby, “that my soul was a loving-machine?” It is strange, certainly, that we take so much more pains to kindle the fires of hate than the fires of love.

“Boundless compassion for all living beings,” says Schopenhauer, “is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man’s rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.”[48] Incidentally it may be observed that, as Schopenhauer points out, the difficulties of what is called the sex question would in large measure be solved, if this rule of “injure no one” were more fully believed and acted on.

The lesson of the past six years is this. It is useless to hope that warfare, which is but one of many savage survivals, can be abolished, until the mind of man is humanized in other respects also—until all savage survivals are at least seen in their true light. As long as man kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed, or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshed—all wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow-beings. Only when the great sense of the universal kinship has been realized among us, will love cast out hatred, and will it become impossible for the world to witness anew the senseless horrors that disgrace Europe to-day.

Humanitarians, then, must expect little, but claim much; must know that they will see no present fruits of their labours, but that their labours are nevertheless of far-reaching importance. Let those who have been horrified by the spectacle of an atrocious war resolve to support the peace movement more strongly than ever; but let them also support the still wider and deeper humanitarian movement of which pacifism is but a part, inasmuch as all humane causes, though seemingly separate, are ultimately and essentially one.

POSTSCRIPT

INDEX

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, V, W, Z

Adams, Francis, 83-85

Adams, George, 87
Adams, Maurice, 76, 77
Adventurer, the, 28, 29
Anderson, Martin (“Cynicus”), 204
Anderson, Sir Robert, 143, 144
Animals, kinship with man, 13, 14, 128, 130, 131;
deaths of, 130, 234;
“dumb,” 129;
rights of, 125-128, 132
Anthropocentric superstition, 13, 127, 128, 131
Arnold, Matthew, 45, 52, 234
Aveling, Edward, 80, 81, 95

Barlas, John, 85-87;
quoted, 233
Beagler Boy, the, 175, 176
Bell, Ernest, 124, 125, 211
Besant, Sir Walter, 115, 116
Big Game Hunting, 155, 156
“Blooding,” 13, 155
Blood-Sport, 12, 13, 151, 162, 171, 243
Bourchier, J. D., 57, 58
Bradshaw, Henry, 37-39
Browning, Oscar, 58, 59
Browning, Robert, 94
Brutalitarian, The, 174
Buchanan, Robert, 113, 202, 203
Buckland, James, 167

“Canonization of the Ogre,” 70, 71
Carpenter, Captain Alfred, R.N., 165, 210
Carpenter, Edward, 45, 61, 73, 75, 76, 87-89, 109, 110, 205, 206, 210
Carpenter, Dr. P. H., 62, 68
Catullus, quoted, 235
Champion, H. H., 61, 79, 86
Chesterton, G. K., 127, 128, 174, 178;
quoted, 135
Ching Ping, Chinese Mission to Eton, 176
Christmas cruelties, 215
Coit, Dr. Stanton, 70, 71
Colam, John, 149, 161, 162
Comprendre c’est pardonner, 241
Conda, Anna, her appeal to the Zoological Society, 165
Cornish, F. Warre, 19, 36
Cory, William, see Johnson
Coulson, Colonel W. L. B., 124, 158, 159
Crane, Walter, 204, 216
Crosby, Ernest, 205, 206, 241, 244, 245

Darrow, Clarence, 206, 207
Day, Rev. Russell, 23, 24
de Quincey, Miss E., 118, 119
De Quincey, Thomas, 118-120;
quoted, 136
Deuchar, N. Douglas, 211;
quoted, 100
Dixie, Lady Florence, 159, 160
Dobell, Bertram, 102, 110, 111
Durnford, Rev. F. E., 23

Edwards, J. Passmore, 142, 209
Eton College, 16-35, 50-66
Eton Hare-hunt, 27, 56, 154, 155, 160, 175

Fabian Society, 81, 82
Feather and Fur Trades, 12, 148, 167, 168, 172
Fighting, fallacies about, 223-225, 228, 229
Flagellomania, 145, 146, 166
Flesh-eating, 9, 67-69, 148
Flogging, at Eton, 22, 23;
in Royal Navy, 138;
judicial, 135-137, 144-146
Foote, G. W., 94, 95, 98, 102, 208
Foxology, the, pronounced by an Archbishop, 171
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., 93, 94, 96, 97

Game Laws, 156, 157, 202
Garrotting, not suppressed by the lash, 136, 137
George, Henry, 58, 61
Goodford, Dr. C. O., 28, 54
Greenwood, Sir George, 153, 176, 210

“Hag-traps,” 32
Hardy, Thomas, 203, 204;
quoted, 233
Harrison, Frederic, 128, 129
Hatred, carnival of, 220-222, 227, 230
Hopwood, C. H., 140
Hornby, Dr. J. J., 19, 20, 50, 56, 58-60;
on Shelley, 92
Hudibras, quoted, 13, 137
Hudson, W. H., 116-118, 210;
quoted, 66
Hughes, Rev. H. Price, 208, 212
Humane Review, The, 211
Humanitarian League, established, 121-123;
closed, 211
Hyndman, H. M., 30, 79, 108 (note)

Inge, Very Rev. W. R., 70 (note), 214, 215
Ingram, John Kells, 111, 112

Japp, A. H., 118
Jefferies, Richard, 115, 116, 130
Johnson (Cory), William, 24, 25, 92;
quoted, 232
Joynes, Rev. J. L., 105, 106
Joynes, J. L, jun., 58
Jupp, W. J., 76

Kennedy, Admiral Sir W., 138
Kennedy, Dr. Benjamin, 43, 44
Kennedy, W. S., 115
Kropotkin, Prince, 183, 184

Latin Verses at Eton, 26, 27
Lester, H. F., 148
Linton, W. J., 111
Loti, Pierre, quoted, 244, 245
Lowell, J. R., 52;
quoted, 180
Lucretius, quoted, 91, 232
Lyttelton, Dr. Edward, 23 (note), 63, 66, 176

Macaulay, G. C., 20 (note), 28, 29, 42
Macdonald, J. F., his dream, 226
Macdonald, John, 151
Maitland, Edward, 122-124
Marx, Eleanor, 81, 90
Massey, Gerald, 111
Maurice, Rev. F. D., 44, 45, 47
Melville, Herman, 69, 110, 112
Meredith, George, 102, 107-110, 203;
quoted, 65
Miller, Joaquin, 112
Missionary zeal, at Eton, 55, 176;
at Cambridge, 48
Monck, W. H. S. (“Lex”), 140, 141
Moore, George, on Humanitarianism, 184
Moore, J. Howard, 130, 132-134, 200;
quoted, 64 (note), 244
Morris, William, 52, 61, 79, 80
Morrison, Dr. W. D., 140
Moultrie, John, 17, 18
Mountain scenery, desecration of, 185-199
“Murderous Millinery,” 166

Names, importance of, 129, 166, 239, 240
Newman, Francis W., 63, 68, 116, 123, 201
Noel, Hon. Roden, 113

Okes, Dr., Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, 36, 37, 41
Olivier, Sir Sydney, 81, 210
“Ouida,” 207

Parke, Ernest, 152
Paul, C. Kegan, 18, 68, 92
Paul, Herbert W., 28, 30
Peabody, Philip G., 214
Pig-killing, 78

Reclus, Elisée, 204, 205
Religion, its attitude towards Humaneness, 212-216
Renton, Chief Justice, his error in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 137
Ricketson, Daniel, 114
Ricketson, Walton, 118
Riley, W. Harrison, 61, 62, 190
Ritchie, D. G., 70, 125, 126
Rossetti, W. M., 83, 95, 96, 99, 102
Ruskin, John, 52, 61, 62, 190, 191;
on Tennyson, 62

Sanborn, F. B., 114
Savages, in what sense, 8-10
Schopenhauer, quoted, 122, 245
Selous, Edmund, 164
Selous, F. C., on the Eton Hare-hunt, 155
Selwyn, Dr. E. C., 28-30, 43, 154
Selwyn, Dr. G. A., Bishop of Lichfield, 30, 33-35, 185, 186
Sharp, William, 102, 103
Shaw, G. Bernard, 61, 75, 80, 82, 83, 88, 93, 95, 98, 109, 113, 151, 166, 174, 210
Shelley, Lady, 92, 93
Shelley, P. B., 90-93, 99, 100
Shelley Society, 91, 93-98
Shilleto, R., 39, 43
Shuckburgh, E. S., 57
Simplification of Life, 73, 75-78
Slaughter-house barbarities, 9, 148-150
Smith, Professor Goldwin, 210
Snake-Feeding in Zoological Gardens, 164, 165
Socialism, 61, 73, 79, 80;
Dr. Warre on, 65
Solomon, on the rod, Butlerized, 137
Spencer, Herbert, 202
Stag-hunting, 152-154, 170
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 70, 91
Stewart, Hon. FitzRoy, 160, 161
“Stiggins,” 25, 26
Stillman, W. J., 209
Stratton, Rev. J., 124, 157, 158
“Swage,” 21
Swinburne, A. C., 102-107
Symonds, J. A., 112, 113

Tait, Professor Lawson, 144, 145
Tallack, William, 142, 143
Telemachus, the Martyr, 213
Thompson, Dr., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 41
Thomson, James (“B.V.”), 101-104, 237
Thoreau, H. D., 73, 76, 78, 114, 115, 118, 122;
quoted, 77
Tolstoy, Count, 79, 204, 205
Tovey, D. C., 57
Trine, R. W., 209, 210

Vaughan, Mgr. J. S., 126
Vegetarianism, at Eton, 62-64, 68
Veresaeff, V., his Confessions of a Physician, 147
Vivisection, 12, 127, 146-148

Wallace, Alfred R., 202
Warre, Dr. E., Headmaster of Eton, 59, 60, 65, 97, 154
Watts, G. F., 204
Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 102, 104-106, 108, 129
Welldon, Rt. Rev. J. E. C., 28-30
West, William, his portrait of Shelley, 99, 100
Wilde, Oscar, 86, 181, 182
Williams, Howard, 63, 122, 124, 146

Zoological Gardens, 163, 164;
piety at the Reptile House, 165

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