Complete Essays | Page 8

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neglected territory. This is our main business. How would it be if this
business were really accomplished, and there were no more peoples to
teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring under productive
cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth this energy, a
survival of the original force in man, how long would our civilization
last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized, wouldn't it be
too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres, where is
accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's best efforts,
is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity that attends

our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can do
something for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York,
which our own hands have made?
If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must it
always go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization and
barbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed and
growing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization?
Does our process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina
of the race? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature
warmed over, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that
stirs the soul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this
virile, blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian
painting of Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the
consciousness of the tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a
barbaric force left in the world that we have been daintily trying to
cover and apologize for and refine into gentle agreeableness?
These questions are too deep for these pages. Let us make the world
pleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, on
the whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work
on. And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that the
inhabitants, two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do.

SOCIAL SCREAMING
Of all the contrivances for amusement in this agreeable world the
"Reception" is the most ingenious, and would probably most excite the
wonder of an angel sent down to inspect our social life. If he should
pause at the entrance of the house where one is in progress, he would
be puzzled. The noise that would greet his ears is different from the
deep continuous roar in the streets, it is unlike the hum of millions of
seventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the spring
conventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not
compare it to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really
subdued and infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but
when he caught sight of the company he would be compelled to
recognize it as the noise of our highest civilization. It may not be
perfect, for there are limits to human powers of endurance, but it is the
best we can do. It is not a chance affair. Here are selected, picked out

by special invitation, the best that society can show, the most intelligent,
the most accomplished, the most beautiful, the best dressed persons in
the community--all receptions have this character. The angel would
notice this at once, and he would be astonished at the number of such
persons, for the rooms would be so crowded that he would see the
hopelessness of attempting to edge or wedge his way through the
throng without tearing off his wings. An angel, in short, would stand no
chance in one of these brilliant assemblies on account of his wings, and
he probably could not be heard, on account of the low, heavenly pitch
of his voice. His inference would be that these people had been selected
to come together by reason of their superior power of screaming. He
would be wrong.
--They are selected on account of their intelligence, agreeableness, and
power of entertaining each other. They come together, not for exercise,
but pleasure, and the more they crowd and jam and struggle, and the
louder they scream, the greater the pleasure. It is a kind of contest, full
of good-humor and excitement. The one that has the shrillest voice and
can scream the loudest is most successful. It would seem at first that
they are under a singular hallucination, imagining that the more noise
there is in the room the better each one can be heard, and so each one
continues to raise his or her voice in order to drown the other voices.
The secret of the game is to pitch the voice one or two octaves above
the