Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/53

Rh to his civilized companion. In other words, his knowledge differs from ours in kind rather than in breadth or depth. His children are carefully and laboriously trained in the arts of war and the chase, and above all in the complex ceremonial of the manners of the tribe, and few among us can excel in memory the priests of old Samoa, who could sing of the ancestors of Malietoa, missing never a name among the hundreds back to the far-off God Savea whence this kingly race came down.

One may display as much intelligence in tracking a kangaroo through the Australian bush as in solving a problem in algebra, and among ourselves it is often a matter of surprise to discover that men laboring in our factories are often as gifted as are the leaders of abstract thought within our universities. In fact the more we know of any class or race of men the deeper our sympathy, the less our antagonism, and the higher our respect for their endeavors. When we say we "can not understand" the Japanese we signify that we have not taken the trouble to study their tradition.

It is a common belief that the savage is more cruel than we, and indeed we commonly think of him as enraged and of ourselves in passive mood. Child-like he surely is, and his cruelties when incensed are as inexcusable as the destruction of Louvain or the firing of Sepoys from the guns, but are they more shocking than the lynching or burning of negroes at the stake, events so common in America that even the sensational newspapers regard them as subjects of minor interest.

Clearly, despite our mighty institutions of freedom, efficient systems of public education and the devotion of thousands of our leaders to ideals of highest culture, there remain savages among us. Mere centuries of civilization combat the æons of the brute. Within each and every one of us, suppressed perhaps but always seeking to stalk forth, there lurk the dark lusts of the animal, the haunting spirit of our gorilla ancestry. The foundations of our whole temple of culture are sunken deep in the mire of barbarism. It is this fundamental fact which deceives us into the impression that a few decades of contact with men of our own race will suffice to civilize the savage. True they soon learn to simulate the manners and customs of their masters, but the imitation is a hollow counterfeit, no more indicative of enlightenment than is the good behavior of caged convicts a guaranty of high mindedness. To achieve civilization a race must conquer itself, each individual must master the savage within him. Cultured man has never yet civilized a primitive race. Under our domination the savage dies, or becomes a parasite or peon.