We Most Of Us Believe That We, The Higher Races Have Progressed
And Are Progressing.
If so, there must be some state of
perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, but to
which all true progress must bring nearer.
What is this ideally
perfect social state towards which mankind ever has been, and
still is tending? Our best thinkers maintain, that it is a state
of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible by
the equal development and just balance of the intellectual,
moral, and physical parts of our nature, - a state in which we
shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by
knowing what is right, and at the same time feeling an
irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right., that all
laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. In such a state
every man would have a sufficiently well-balanced intellectual
organization, to understand the moral law in all its details, and
would require no other motive but the free impulses of his own
nature to obey that law.
Now it is very remarkable, that among people in a very low stage
of civilization, we find some approach to such a perfect social
state. I have lived with communities of savages in South America
and in the East, who have no laws or law courts but the public
opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupulously
respects the rights of his fellow, and any infraction of those
rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community, all are
nearly equal. There are cone of those wide distinctions, of
education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant,
which are the product of our civilization; there is none of that
wide-spread division of labour, which, while it increases wealth,
products also conflicting interests; there is not that severe
competition and struggle for existence, or for wealth, which the
dense population of civilized countries inevitably creates. All
incitements to great crimes are thus wanting, and petty ones are
repressed, partly by the influence of public opinion, but chiefly
by that natural sense of justice and of his neighbour's right,
which seems to be, in some degree, inherent in every race of man.
Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage state
in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in
morals. It is true that among those classes who have no wants
that cannot be easily supplied, and among whom public opinion has
great influence; the rights of others are fully respected. It is
true, also, that we have vastly extended the sphere of those
rights, and include within them all the brotherhood of man. But
it is not too much to say, that the mass of our populations have
not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in
many cases sunk below it. A deficient morality is the great blot
of modern civilization, and the greatest hindrance to true
progress.
During the last century, and especially in the last thirty years,
our intellectual and material advancement has been too quickly
achieved for us to reap the full benefit of it.
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