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He gives no countenance to the idea that the Red Indians were ever a more civilised people than at this day, or that a more civilised people had preceded them in North America.
From that small beginning has grown a system of railway communication which has brought the farthest inland regions of mighty continents within easy reach of the seaboard and of the world's great markets; which has made social and friendly intercourse possible in millions of homes which otherwise would have been almost destitute of it; which has been the means of spreading a knowledge of literature, science and religion over the face of the civilised world; and which, at the present moment, constitutes the outward and visible sign of the difference between Western civilisation and that of the Asiatic, as seen in China.
I had never yet been the victim of passion; love between men and women had always rather bored me; it is such a hot, stupid, muddling thing, ail emotion and no thought. Dull, I had always thought it; one of those impulses arranged by nature for her own purposes, but not in the least interesting to the civilised thinking being.
This proposition was received with that wild enthusiasm which occasionally bursts out in the most civilised communities. The contest between Millbank and Rigby was equally balanced, neither party was over-confident.
There was much that was strange about him, yet his mind seemed perfectly clear, and I could not help hoping that we might be the means of persuading him to return to civilised society.
The beautiful sterile emotions that art excites in us are hateful in its eyes, and so completely are people dominated by the tyranny of this dreadful social ideal that they are always coming shamelessly up to one at Private Views and other places that are open to the general public, and saying in a loud stentorian voice, 'What are you doing? whereas 'What are you thinking? is the only question that any single civilised being should ever be allowed to whisper to another.
They entered the wood full of hope, and with much of the excitement that men cannot but feel when exploring a country that has never been trodden by the foot of a civilised man since the world began. It took them, however, much longer to get through the pathless wood than they had expected.
Even while the wars of the Roses were actually raging, our country appears to have been in a happier condition than the neighbouring realms during years of profound peace. Comines was one of the most enlightened statesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest and most highly civilised parts of the Continent.
Civilised and innocuous existence has no doubt been a blessing to Algiers as well as to the entire Mediterranean, but it has not improved the picturesqueness of its aspect any more than the wild and splendid 'tiger, tiger burning bright, would be more ornamental with his claws pared, the fiery gleam of his yellow eyes quenched, and his spirit tamed, so as to render him only an exaggerated domestic cat.
In these various instances of what may be called dry-rot or local blight on the civilised world's culture the decline appears to be due not to a positive infection of a malignant sort, so much as to a failure of the active cultural ferment, which has fallen below the critical point of efficacy; perhaps through an unintended refusal of a livelihood to persons given over to cultivating the elements of civilisation; perhaps through the conventional disallowance of the pursuit of any other ends than competitive gain and competitive spending.
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