Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men
know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable.
The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can
have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as
unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing"
acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of
least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human
happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value.

The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization, is a fine and beautiful
structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is built
upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all
its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the
ungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their
blood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman or
European peasant is "better off" than the South Sea islander, lolling
under a palm and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's
examination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off.

It is admitted that the South Sea islander in a state of nature is
overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning
that I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply it
are mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these he
would kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and
Christian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself,
wars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The
untitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas our private
soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of
quarrel--of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of
victory are about equal, for the chief takes all the dead, the general