Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 24 October 1859 | Page 4

bear upon it What do you think of your red savage, who, making

no _pro-vision_ for even his animal needs, but merely supplying them
for the moment as he can, and living in squalor, filth, and extreme
discomfort, yet daubs himself with grease and paint, and decorates his
head with feathers, his neck with bear's claws, and his feat with
gaudily-stained porcupine's quills? What of your black barbarian,
whose daily life is a succession of unspeakable abominations, and who
embellishes it by blackening his teeth, tattooing his skin, and wearing a
huge ring in the gristle of his nose? Either of them will give up his
daily food, and run the risk of starvation, for a glass bead or a brass
button. This desire for ornament is plainly, then, no fruit of individual
development, no sign of social progress; it has no relations whatever
with them, but is merely a manifestation of that vanity, that lust of the
eye and pride of life, which we are taught to believe inherent in all
human nature, and which the savage exhibits according to his
savageness, the civilized man according to his civilization.
_Grey._ You're a sturdy fellow, Tomes, but not strong enough to draw
that conclusion from those premises, and make it stay drawn. The
savage does order his life in the preposterous manner which you have
described; but he does it because he is a savage. He has not the wants
of the civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them
before he seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of
civilization, his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal;
your head will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go
up feet foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body
must needs ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according
to your notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not
positive, but relative. If, with your present habits, you could be
transported back only one hundred years to the best house in
London,--a house provided with all that a princely revenue could then
command,--you would find it, with all its splendor, very uncomfortable
in many respects. The luxuries of one generation become the comforts
of the next, the necessaries of life to the next; and what is comfort for
any individual at any period depends on the manner in which he has
been brought up. So, too, the savage decorates himself after his own
savage tastes. His smoky wigwam or his filthy mud hut is no stronger
evidence of his barbarous condition than his party-colored face, or the

hoop of metal in his nose. Call this desire to enjoy the beauty of the
world and to be a part of it the lust of the eye, or whatever name you
please, you will find, that, with exceedingly rare exceptions, it is
universal in the race, and that its gratification, although it may have an
indirectly injurious effect on some individuals tends to harmonize and
humanize mankind, to lift them above debasing pleasures, and to foster
the finer social feelings by promoting the higher social enjoyments.
_Tomes._ Yes; it makes Mrs. A. snub Mrs. B. because the B.-bonnet is
within a hair's breadth's less danger of falling down her back, or is
decorated with lace made by a poor bonnetless girl in one town of
Europe, at a time when fashion has declared that it should bloom with
flowers made by a poor shoeless girl in another: it instigates Mrs. C. to
make a friendly call on Mrs. D. for the purpose of exulting over the
inferior style in which her house is furnished: it tempts F. to overreach
his business friend, or to embezzle his employer's money, that he may
live in a house with a brown-stone front and give great dinners twice a
month: and it sustains G. in his own eyes as he sits at F.'s table
stimulating digestion by inward sneers at the vulgar fashion of the new
man's plate or the awkwardness of his attendants: and perhaps, worse
than all, it tempts H. to exhibit his pictures, and Mrs. I. to exhibit
herself, "for the benefit of our charitable institutions," in order that the
one may read fulsome eulogies of his munificence and his taste, and the
other see a critical catalogue of the beauties of her person and her
costume in all the daily papers. Such are the social benefits of what you
call the desire to be a part of the world's beauty.
_Grey._ Far from it! They have no relation to each other. You mistake
the occasion for the cause, the means for the motive. Your alphabet is
in fault. Such a set of vain, frivolous, dishonest,