The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 2, Civilized Nations: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 2Bancroft, Hubert Howe
History
The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 2, Civilized Nations: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 2
Bancroft, Hubert Howe
Indians -- Bibliography; Indians of Central America; Indians of Mexico; Indians of North America -- Pacific Coast of North America
Were man only an animal, this denaturalization and more, would be
true. The tamed brute gives up all the benefits of savagism for few of
the blessings of civilization; in a cultured state, as compared to a
state of wild freedom, its ills are numberless, its advantages
infinitesimal. But human nature is twofold, objective and subjective,
the former typical of the savage state, the latter of the civilized.
Man is not wholly animal; and by cultivating the mind, that is, by
civilizing himself, he is no more denaturalized than by cultivating
the body, and thereby acquiring greater physical perfection. We cannot
escape our nature; we cannot re-create ourselves; we can only submit
ourselves to be polished and improved by the eternal spirit of
progress. The moral and the intellectual are as much constituents of
human nature as the physical; civilization, therefore, is as much the
natural state of man as savagism.
Another more plausible and partially correct assertion is, that by the
development of the subjective part of our nature, objective humanity
becomes degenerated. The intellectual cannot be wrought up to the
highest state of cultivation except at the expense of the physical,
nor the physical fully developed without limiting the mental. The
efforts of the mind draw from the energies of the body; the highest
and healthiest vigor of the body can only be attained when the mind is
at rest, or in a state of careless activity. In answer to which I
should say that beyond a certain point, it is true; one would hardly
train successfully for a prize fight and the tripos at the same time;
but that the non-intellectual savage, as a race, is physically
superior, capable of enduring greater fatigue, or more skillful in
muscular exercise than the civilized man is inconsistent with facts.
Civilization has its vices as well as its virtues, savagism has its
advantages as well as its demerits.
The evils of savagism are not so great as we imagine; its pleasures
more than we are apt to think. As we become more and more removed from
evils their magnitude enlarges; the fear of suffering increases as
suffering is less experienced and witnessed. If savagism holds human
life in light esteem, civilization makes death more hideous than it
really is; if savagism is more cruel, it is less sensitive. Combatants
accustomed to frequent encounter think lightly of wounds, and those
whose life is oftenest imperiled think least of losing it.
Indifference to pain is not necessarily the result of cruelty; it may
arise as well from the most exalted sentiment as from the basest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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