It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body ...of inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked.... Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewis...e extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abund...ance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the face of the modern crisis, both poets turn their eyes to the past and actualize history: every epoch is this epoch. But Eli...ot actually desires to return and reinstall Christ; Pound uses the past as another form of the future. Having lost the center of his world, he throws himself into every adventure. Unlike Eliot, he is a reactionary, not a conservative. In fact, Pound has never ceased to be a North American and he is the legitimate descendent of Whitman, this is, he is a son of utopia.... Pound's erudition is a banquet after an expedition of conquest; Eliot's, the search for a standard that will give meaning to history, stability to movement. Pound accumulates quotations with the heroic air of one who robs graves; Eliot orders them as if he were hauling in the relics of a shipwreck. Pound's work is a journey that perhaps leads us nowhere; Eliot's, a search for the ancestral home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an... inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our lang...uage is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be "revolutionary" but not transformative.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the... advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost--for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it ...: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »