Athapaskan peoples

“ In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a cause, of their backward institutions. ”

“ Despair would be justified indeed if pride and prejudice and greed permeated the masses as they do the classes, if the doctrines preached by Jingo newspapers or the conversation in certain classes of society were correct indices of the thoughts and ideals of our generation. ”

“ As to methods, we should be treated as we ourselves treat the inferior races. There would be no fighting, no killing; we—our whole social system—would break as a beam snaps, because we were worm-eaten with altruism and ethics. ”

“ That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? ”

“ Judging by what we know of the tendency of human nature in such cases, we are warranted in conjuring that the ordinary run of persons in such a community would revile the seeing and hearing individuals as "abnormal," and their possessors therefore to be pitied, and perhaps shunned. ”

“ While but recently very valuable classes of society kept aloof from all active participation in political movements, either from fastidiousness or modesty, or because they gave themselves wholly to private pursuits, they are now asking themselves: “Is not our apathy in great part to blame for the evils we are suffering? ”

“ I am no social reformer to speak of ways and means. All I can say with certainty is that I have seen them come in by hundreds, by thousands—these men of our country now fighting in every corner of the globe—resentful, suspicious, intolerant of authority. ”

“ They will commit abuse, if they can and dare, just as others have done. The reason for the excesses of the old governing classes lies in the vices and passions of human nature—cupidity, lust, vindictiveness, ambition, and vanity. ”

“ You who spend your lives and energies on the outside edge of civilisation paving a way for others’ feet—you are beglamoured by your ‘life of freedom, adventure, and romance,’ My dear sirs, that is a view that I cannot pretend even to understand, much less sympathise with. It may appear unnatural to you, but it is a fact, that I dislike the society of civilised men, and most of all that of the pioneers—the sappers and miners of civilisation—who think a white skin a warrant for anything. ”

“ The older I grow, the more I see of men and of the callings of social life, the more I, an open knave, sicken at the glossed and covert dishonesties around. I acknowledge no allegiance to society. From my birth to this hour, I have received no single favour from its customs or its laws; openly I war against it, and patiently will I meet its revenge. ”

“ In an amazing passage he says that, when we snatch up a vehement opinion in ignorance and passion, when we long to crush an adversary by sheer violence, when we are envious, when we are brutal, when "we add our voices to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage," when "we trample savagely on the fallen," then we find in our own bosom "the eternal spirit of the Populace." ”

“ We may indeed wonder not to find fewer good qualities among them; and, on the other hand, not to see the fiercer passions that utterly brutalize human nature, and agitate every corner of society, more called into action among a medley of ignorant and discordant castes, passing without adequate preparation from one extreme of government to another, and from one civil broil into another of greater confusion and misrule. ”

“ The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. ”

“ But I fear—In short, I have been told that political strife was a necessary result of human nature."
"Human nature!" cried the old boy, impetuously; "what human nature? The human nature of paupers, of slaves, of slave-holders, or the human nature of wealthy freemen? ”

“ He went on to denounce the men of learning as a class uninfluenced by the spirit of existing affairs and as enemies of the public weal, and concluded by saying, "Now or never is the time to close the mouths of these secret enemies, to place a curb upon their audacity." ”

“ But the battle is fierce and upsets the very core of humanity to such an extent that not only thoughts and opinions are permeated by an incessantly shifting confusion, but a tremor spreads from there, from which the very foundations of society fail. ”

“ But when we rule over a race of men in which civilization not only exists, but from which it is believed to have spread to others, we are bound to repay them, above all things, what we received from them. ”

“ We know how great waves of feeling spread over a town, city, or county, sweeping people off their feet, and causing them to lose their balance. Great waves of political enthusiasm, or war-spirit or prejudice for or against certain people, or groups of people, sweep over places and cause men to act in a manner which they afterward often regret when they come to themselves and consider the matter in the light of cold reason. People are swayed by demagogues or magnetic leaders who wish to capture their votes or patronage ”

“ With such bad bringing up, and an equal ignorance of principles of action, how will you make your way in the world? I have pardoned my slaves and my daughters-in-law for their want of politeness, but for you who are men I cannot let this fault pass unpunished. ”

“ The men, the women, all over this land shrill their exclamations of impatience and indignation at what is short-coming or is unbecoming in the government,—at the want of humanity, of morality,—ever on broad grounds of general justice, and not on the class-feeling which narrows the perception of English, French, German people at home. ”

“ We do not know how to qualify millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness and honour, by odious and unworthy names. ”

“ On hearing these noble sentiments fall from the lips of a person, once a slave, and in a manner most insinuating, with all the dignity of the most refined and cultivated person, and with an indignation expressive of the deepest abhorrence for the nefarious system of unmittigated, inhuman, chattelism. ”

“ They, who by no fault of their own, are in this miserable existence, the children of Christian gentlemen, should be the special proteges of the Government, of the Church and of the European people, are cast out and despised as social dregs. ”

“ In both cases there will be awakened a new sense of "right and wrong"—a new conception of "ought and ought not"—regarding one's relations to the race, society, and his fellow beings.
Let no one deceive himself or herself by the smug assumption that the race has entirely emerged from barbarism and is now on the top wave of civilization. The truth, as known to all careful and conscientious thinkers, is that we are but half civilized, if, indeed, that much. ”

“ And in the end, it has so overstimulated the energies of the population to maintain the material engagements of the state, and of society at large, that the moral condition of the people has been entirely lost sight of. ”

“ They were so strongly fixed in their pride and prejudices against social equality that they pursued their own gentle, even way, untouched by the convulsions and throes of fierce indignation around them. ”

“ Oh, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are everywhere being driven hither and thither, led into this and into that which their own better selves would not enter into, simply because they have allowed the body to assume the mastery; while they have taken the place of the weakling, the slave, and all on account of their own weakness,—weakness through ignorance, ignorance of the tremendous forces and powers within, the forces and powers of the mind and spirit. ”

“ They bark at people of courteous manners, and all the ways and customs of polite and gentle society, with fierce and futile yelpings. They bark at the swift advancement of the world from ignorance to enlightenment, from superstition to liberalism. ”

“ What I say about crowds, must be applied to all society, and he who would carefully preserve the absolute integrity of his thought, the proud independence of his opinion, and look at life, humanity and the universe as an impartial observer free from prejudice, preconceived belief and fear, must absolutely live apart from all social relations ”

“ Every day I exist, I the more fervently [102] congratulate myself upon having forsaken the deceitful splendour of a false ambition, for wherever I look around among those who belong to that undeservedly honoured section of society I was forced to leave in disgust, I observe so much of envy, inquietude, pride, folly, hatred, ignorance, ambition, and tyranny, I wonder that such things the prejudices of custom can regard with homage. ”

“ Experience has shown, that when certain moral evils exist in a community, efforts to awaken public sentiment against such practices, and combinations for the exercise of personal influence and example, have in various cases tended to rectify these evils. ”

“ Because of our actions which are reflective of the impatience and hunger of our people for a better life, it is possible that we may have hurt and offended others. We ask their forbearance. It is not our wish to hurt or prejudice anyone if we could avoid it. ”

“ They were the real oppressors—the men who spoke of themselves as 'the likes of us,' who, having lived in poverty and degradation all their lives, considered that what had been good enough for them was good enough for the children they had been the means of bringing into existence. ”

“ In an age which is impatient of any voice that will not cry, ‘Great is the god of railroads and syndicates, and greater yet are the apostles of ‘puts’ and ‘calls,’ of ‘corners’ and pools!’ we want a race of men who by their very existence shall be a standing protest against the reign of a coarse materialism and a deluge of greed and self-seeking.
“But to have such a race of men we must have among us those whose vision has been purged and unsealed to see the dignity of the scholar’s calling. ”

“ Look around you and see how lonesome you are in this wide world of ours. As far as modern civilization throws its rays, what people, what class of society is there like you? Cry out into the world your “wild and guilty fantasy” of property in man, and every echo responds with a cry of horror or contempt; every breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may come, brings you a verdict of condemnation. ”

“ Everything bears indications of some approaching struggle between the higher and lower classes, and the guilt of it, if it does come, will lie at the door of those who, by their inflammatory speeches, public and private, and by their constant and monotonous complaints, have raised among the people a universal spirit of rebellion and disaffection to everything and everybody whom Nature has ordained to rule over them. ”

“ Personal views and virtues in the political high command may spell public disaster or welfare. For once, at least, Mr. Everyman’s moral appraisal of those in high places—if only he can keep it above the plane of village gossip—has historical relevance and justification. ”

“ The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. ”

“ The social group, community, tribe or nation, which develops an unworkable scheme of morality or within which those social acts which weaken it and unfit it for survival, habitually create the sentiment of approval, while those which would strengthen and enable it to be expanded habitually create the sentiment of disapproval, will eventually be eliminated. ”

“ I have felt a strong desire to wring the neck of that many-headed nuisance called 'the people,' and proceed as if it were where the God of nations intended those incapable of governing should be and remain without protest. ”

“ The heart recoils from the very idea of such presumption, and we bow our heads to the dust in deep acknowledgment of our unworthiness, as individuals, as communities, as a nation. “What is man that Thou visitest him, or the son of man, that Thou so regardest him!” ”

“ Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. ”

“ I stand in the way of no one’s ambition. I only ask that no one stand in the way of the people’s well being and the nation’s progress. ”

“ Society's laws and customs make them what they are. They must be so, or must be content to be of the oppressed classes. There are but two great classes in civilization,—the oppressed and the oppressors, the trampled upon and the tramplers. ”

“ If men who are reputedly wise and good—if religious teachers and political leaders, those whose opinions are almost implicitly adopted, and whose examples are readily followed by the mass of the people—if such men suppress their voices on this momentous subject, and turn their eyes from its contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? ”

“ When those who have poisoned them with the illusion of universal hegemony have disappeared, when misfortune has freshened their imagination and transformed them into a community of humans, neither superior nor inferior to the rest of mankind, they will become a tolerant people, useful ... ”