THE GROWTH OF WANTS.
In an essay on " Civilization considered as a Science " an English writer, Mr. George Harris, has remarked : "Whatever produces want or occasions the perception of it has a tendency to promote civilization." What savage nations have lacked to impel them toward culture is not power, but stimulus. This is in a measure proved by the ability shown by many of them to receive as good an education as the whites, and also by their indifference to many of the pleasures and luxuries which they can now obtain by labor, but which they do not seek. Instances are fre quent where children of the lower races have been educated, but returned to savagery when grown to adult years. An English traveller was astounded to see a half-naked Australian guide pick up and read one of his Latin books. On inquiry, he found the native had been trained in England for a missionary, but when he returned to his native land the attractions of the wild life were too powerful for him. The anthropologist Waitz has
maintained that there is reason in this—that neither the sum nor the intensity of the joys of civilized life equals those of the savage condition, and its pains are more numerous.
The wants which educate must extend beyond the mere satisfaction of the appetites. Man must seek beauty and love variety ; he must be touched by the sacred fire of glory, and be goaded to heroic action by the spur of ambition ; the taste for adventure and the thirst of knowledge must be in his breast in order to drive him for vard in of progress. The desire of power, the greed of gold, the love of ostentation, and the noble passion for doing good, all in their several ways call forth his ener gies and act as stimuli to his efforts.