River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1895-12-26
CIVILIZATION A FAILURE.
Dr. Petrie's Sensation Before the British
Scientists.


The most important address made at
the recent session of the British Asso-
citation of Scientists was that of Prof.
w. NJ. Flinders Petrie, ID. C. L., LII. d.,
Edwards professor of Egyptology ar
University college, London. DIR. Petrie
is one of the most celebrated of British
anthropologists. His address was on
Race and Civilization" and in the
course of it he said:
'The foremost principle which should
be always in view is that the civiliza-
tion of any race is not system which
can be changed at will. Every civiIizs,-
ton is the growing product of a very
complex set of conditions, depending on
race and character. on climate, on trade
and every minutia of the circumstances.
To attempt to alter such a system apart
from it's conditions is impossible. No
charge is legitimate or beneficial to the
real character of people except what
flows from conviction and the natural
growth of the mind. And if the imposi-
lion of foreign system is injurious how
miserable is the forcing of syste N
such as ours, which is the most complex,
unnatural and artificial that has been
known, a system developed in cold
country amid one of the hardest, least
sympathetic and most self-denying and
calculating of gil people of the world.
The result is death; we make dead
house and call it civilization. Scarcely
a single race can bear the contact and
the burden. And then we talk COM
placently about the mysterious decay of
sayages before white men.
LET us now turn to our attempts on u
higher race. the degenerated and Arab
anized descendants of great people,
tine Egyptians. Here there is much
ability to work on and also good
standard of comfort and morality, CON
formable to our notions. Yet the plant
ing of another civilization is scarcely 10
be borne by them. The Europeanized
Egyptian is in most cases the mere blot
ting-paper of civilization, absorbing
what is most superficial and undesir-
able. Yet some viii say: Why not
plant all we can? What can be the
harm of raising the intellect in some
cases, if we cannot do it in all? The
harm is that you manufacture idiots.
Some of the peasantry are taught 70
read and write, and the result of this
burden which their fathers bore not is
that they become fools. | cannot say
this too plainly; an Egyptian who has
had reading and writing thrust on him
is, in every case that | have met, half
witted, silly or incapable of taking care
a inf l.. 1. 4.
have been undermined and crippled by
the forcing of education.
Our bigoted belief in reading and
writing is not in the least justified when
we look at the mass of mankind. The
exquisite art and noble architecture of
Mykenae, the undying song of Homer,
the extensive trade of the bronze nge,
all belonged to people who never read
or wrote. The great essentials of a
valuable character-moderati Just
ice, sympathy, politeness and consid-
Grafton, quick observation, shrewdness,
ability to plan and prearrange, keen
sense of the uses and properties of
things-all these are the qualities on
which value my Egyptian friends, and
such qualities are what should he
evolved by any education worth the
name. The greatest educational inf u
ence, however, is example. This is
obvious when we see how rapidly the
curses of our civilization spread among
those unhappily subjected to it.
''The contact of Europeans with lower
races is almost always detriment, and
it is the seyerest reflection on ourselves
that such should be the case."-N. Y.
World.