We should now clearly recognise the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilisation, and do not of themselves advance us towards the ‘perfect social state’. Our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They create and maintain in life-long labour an ever-increasing army, whose lot is the more hard to bear, by contrast with the pleasures, the comforts, and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, but which they can never hope to enjoy; and who, in this respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his tribe.
This is not a result to boast of, or to be satisfied with; and, until there is more general recognition of this failure of our civilisation – resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation – we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important superiority over the better class of savage.
This weeks green thought comes from the naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist Alfred Russell Wallace (1823 – 1913) best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection. These are the final two concluding paragraphs in the book The Malay Archipelago’ [1869] – describing his 8 year scientific exploration of those islands.
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