What the White Race May Learn from the IndianJames, George Wharton
Religion
What the White Race May Learn from the Indian
James, George Wharton
Indians of North America
position, and again I refuse to bow down before the great fetich of
our modern civilization--“scholastic education.”
There have been wonderful civilizations in the past,--Persia, Asia
Minor, Etruria, Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Moors,--and yet they are gone.
A few remnants are left to us in desert temples, sand-buried propylæ,
dug-up vases and carvings, glorious architecture, sublime marbles,
and soul-stirring literature. Where are the peoples who created these
things? Why could they not propagate their kind sufficiently well to
at least keep their races intact, and hold what they had gained? We
know they did not do it. Why? Call it moral or physical deterioration,
or both, it is an undeniable fact that physical weakness rendered
the descendants of these peoples incapable of living upon their
ancestors’ high planes, or made them an easy prey to a stronger and
more vigorous race. I am fully inclined to the belief that it was their
moral declensions that led to their physical deterioration; yet I also
firmly believe that a better and truer morality can be sustained upon a
healthy and vigorous body than upon one which is diseased and enervated.
Hence I plead, with intense earnestness, for a better physical life for
our growing boys and girls, our young men and women, and especially
for our prospective parents. Healthy progeny cannot be expected
from diseased stock. The fathers and mothers of the race must be
strengthened physically. Every child should be healthily, happily, and
cheerfully _born_, as well as _borne_. The sunshine of love should
smile down from the faces of both parents into the child’s eyes the
first moment of its life. Thus the elixir of joy enters its heart, and
joy is as essential to the proper development of a child as sunshine
is to that of a flower. This is a physical world, even though it be
only passing phenomena, and upon its recognition much of our happiness
depends. Our Christian Science friends see in physical inharmony only
an error of mortal mind, to be demonstrated over by divine mind. That
demonstration, however, produces the effect we call physical health.
This is what I long for, seek after, strive for, both for myself, my
family, my children, my race. Any and all means that can successfully
be used to promote that end I believe in and heartily commend. Let us
call it what we will, and attain it as how we may, the desirable thing
in our national and individual life to-day is health,--health of the
whole man, body, mind, soul. Because I firmly believe the Indians have
ideas that, if carried out, will aid us to attain this glorious object,
I have dared to suggest that this proud and haughty white race may sit
at their feet and learn of them.
[Illustration: DAT-SO-LA-LE, THE WASHOE BASKET WEAVER, SOME OF WHOSE
BASKETS HAVE SOLD FOR FABULOUS PRICES.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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