Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/268

 THE THEORY OF COLONIZATION 1

JAMES COLLIER, ESQ. Sidney, Australia

Two opposite notions of colonies are widely prevalent. Per- haps the commoner opinion is, or used to be, that colonists walk about everywhere in their shirt sleeves, get from one place to another in open boats, and, when the humor seizes them, promis- cuously fire off pistols on the streets. "There will be none of your kind out there," said an old Scotch lady to a disabled literary worker who was about to emigrate to the Antipodes. That there could be colleges or universities in such countries was incredible. A German scholar wrote to a friend in New Zealand, asking him to give an account of life in that colony; and a celebrated English philosopher suggested to his former assistant that he should contribute to a London morning journal a series of papers on Australian life. Both evidently believed that the way people lived in the British colonies under the Southern Cross was radi- cally unlike the life led by people in Europe. The thoughtful inquirer might rather swing to the opposite extreme. He might naturally assume that a colony hiving off from an old country, on being planted in a new country, would merely continue the civilization it had left behind. What else could it do? Civiliza- tion is not a thing, but a cerebral state, which the colonists carry with them in their brains. Once they have settled in their new environment and overcome the inevitable initial obstacles, it might seem, the ways of life, the institutions, the arts and literature,

1 It is of the writer of this paper that Herbert Spencer wrote (Autobiography, Vol. II, p. 308) : " It was not until after many months had passed that I suc- ceeded in finding, in the person of Mr. James Collier, a capable successor to Mr. Duncan. Educated partly at St. Andrews and partly at Edinburgh, Mr. Collier, though he had not taken his degree, possessed in full measure the qualifica- tions requisite for the compilation and tabulation of the Descriptive Sociology; and the third division of the work, dealing with the existing civilized races, pro- gressed satisfactorily in his hands." ED.

252