it be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no more
peoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under
productive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this
energy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would our
civilization last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized,
wouldn't it be too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres,
where is accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's best
efforts, is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity that
attends our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can do
something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, which
our own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must it
always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization and
barbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed and
growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization? Does
our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of the
race? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmed
over, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs the
soul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile,
blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian painting
of Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the consciousness of
the tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a barbaric force left in
the world that we have been daintily trying to cover and apologize for
and refine into gentle agreeableness?

These questions are too deep for these pages. Let us make the world
pleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, on
the whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work on.
And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that the