The same is true of the religious and moral institutions, whose special function it is to give us a sound and stable basis of conduct. Churches, creeds, standards, _mores_, every form of established righteousness, have been shaken and discredited by their apparent unsuitability, so that a large part of mankind, tacitly if not openly, treat all such institutions as obsolete, and tend to the view that you may do anything you like unless you encounter something strong enough to prevent it. However one may trust in the power of human nature as a whole to weather such a storm, it would be a foolish optimism to doubt that large numbers will be lost in it. In fact we see on every hand individuals, associations, schools of literature, art, and philosophy, even mighty nations, struggling with one another, and with their own thoughts in the endeavor to work a moral whole out of this confusion. The principle of moral disintegration through abrupt change is the same that acts so destructively in the contact of savage and civilized life. Irrespective of any intentional aggression, and in spite, sometimes, of a sincere aim to do good, the mere contact of civilization with the social system of more primitive peoples is, generally speaking, destructive of the latter, and of the character of the individuals involved in it. The white man, whether he be soldier, settler, or missionary, brings with him overwhelming evidences of superiority, in power, knowledge, and resources. He may mean well, but he always wants his own way, and that way is inevitably that of the traditions, ideals, and organization of the white race. As the savage comes to feel this superiority his own institutions are degraded in his eyes, and himself, also, as inseparable from these institutions. Confused, displaced, helpless, thrown back upon mere impulses without the dignity and discipline of a corporate life, he falls into degeneration. “It is really the great tragedy of civilization,” says Professor Stunner, “that the contact of lower and higher is disastrous to the former, no matter what may be the point of contact, or how little the civilized may desire to do harm.”[44] Unbiassed observers are for the most part, I think, of this opinion. Thus Spencer and Gillen, speaking of the tribes of Central Australia, say that the white man “introduces a disturbing element into the environment of the native, and from that moment degeneration sets in.”[45] Old morals are lost and no new ones gained. Dudley Kidd says of the Negroes of South Africa: “We have undermined the clan system right and left, and have riddled its defenses through and through with the explosive shells of civilization; we have removed nearly all the old restraints which curbed the people, and have disintegrated their religion, and so rendered it, comparatively speaking, useless.... With the clan system have gone, or are going, some of the best traits in Kafir character.[46]... If we would but leave them alone they could