We would progress no farther."
"And this civilization," said Ransom, "can there not be too much of it? Was
it any worse for God's first men to set forth and slay twenty thousand
other men, than it is for civilization's sweat-shops to slay twenty
thousand men, women, and children each year in the making of your cigars
and the things you wear? Civilization means the uplifting of man, doesn't
it, and when it ceases to uplift when it kills, robs, and disrupts in the
name of progress; when the dollar-fight for commercial and industrial
supremacy kills more people in a day than God's first people killed in a
year; when not only people, but nations, are sparring for throat-grips, can
we call it civilization any longer? This talk may all be bally rot,
Roscoe. Ninety-nine out of every hundred people will think that it is.
There are very few these days who stoop to the thought that the human soul
is the greatest of all creations, and that it is the development of the
soul, and not of engines and flying machines and warships, that measures
progress as God meant progress to be. I am saying this because I want you
to be honest when you go up among the savages, as you call them. You may
find up there the last chapter in life, as it was largely intended that
life should be in the beginning of things.
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