The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 11: Antepenultimata — John Shaqi
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 11: AntepenultimataBierce, Ambrose
General
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 11: Antepenultimata
Bierce, Ambrose
American essays; American literature
bad; more to be happy, and more to be miserable. And in each way to be
good or bad, their generally superior knowledge—their knowledge of more
things—enables them to commit greater excesses than the savage can. The
civilized philanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy,
the civilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And—splendid triumph of
enlightenment!—the two characters are, in civilization, frequently
combined in one person.
I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate
in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the
natural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same.
And nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times
persists in some form to-day. We make ourselves look formidable in
battle—for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel
it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious
reasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who
do not care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons
bearded men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York
who wore his beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously
persecuted till he died.
Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes
men know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and
desirable. The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy.
No one can have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as
unselfishness. We perform the most “generous” and “self-sacrificing”
acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of
least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human
happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value.
The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization is a fine and beautiful
structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is
built upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part
in all its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the
ungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their
blood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman
or European peasant is “better off” than the South Sea islander,
lolling under a palm and drunk with overeating, will not bear a
moment’s examination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better
off.
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