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BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.

In the interior of the island of Borneo there has been found a certain race of wild creatures, of which kindred varieties have been discovered in the Philippine Islands, in Terra del Fuego, and in Southern Africa.  They walk usually almost erect upon two legs, and in that attitude measure about four feet in height; they are dark, wrinkled, and hairy; they construct no habitations, form no families, scarcely associate together, sleep in trees or in caves, feed on snakes and vermin, on ants and ants’ eggs, on mice, and on each other; they cannot be tamed, nor forced to any labor; and they are hunted and shot among the trees, like the great gorillas, of which they are a stunted copy.  When they are captured alive, one finds, with surprise, that their uncouth jabbering sounds like articulate language; they turn up a human face to gaze upon their captor; the females show instincts of modesty; and, in fine, these wretched beings are Men.

Men, “created in God’s image,” born immortal and capable of progress, and so differing from Socrates and Shakspeare only in degree.  It is but a sliding scale from this melancholy debasement up to the most regal condition of humanity.  A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast children with the renowned historic races of the world:  the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,—­the beautiful Greek, the strong Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the stately Spaniard, the sad Portuguese, the brilliant Frenchman, the frank Northman, the wise German, the firm Englishman, and that last-born heir of Time, the American, inventor of many new things, but himself, by his temperament, the greatest novelty of all,—­the American, with his cold, clear eye, his skin made of ice, and his veins filled with lava.

Who shall define what makes the essential difference between those lowest and these loftiest types?  Not color; for the most degraded races seem never to be the blackest, and the builders of the Pyramids were far darker than the dwellers in the Aleutian Islands.  Not unmixed purity of blood; since the Circassians, the purest type of the supreme Caucasian race, have given nothing to history but the courage of their men and the degradation of their women.  Not religion; for enlightened nations have arisen under each great historic faith, while even Christianity has its Abyssinia and Arkansas.  Not climate; for each quarter of the globe has witnessed both extremes.  We can only say that there is an inexplicable step in progress, which we call civilization; it is the development of mankind into a sufficient maturity of strength to keep the peace and organize institutions; it is the arrival of literature and art; it is the lion and the lamb beginning to lie down together, without having, as some one has said, the lamb inside of the lion.