general strength which is
capable of being used in conquering a thousand difficulties, and is an
abiding source of happiness, because those who possess it always feel
that they can use it."

If we omit the higher but disputed topics of morals and religion, we
shall find, I think, that the plainer and agreed--on superiorities of
the Englishmen are these: first, that they have a greater command over
the powers of nature upon the whole. Though they may fall short of
individual Australians in certain feats of petty skill, though they may
not throw the boomerang as well, or light a fire with earthsticks as
well, yet on the whole twenty Englishmen with their implements and
skill can change the material world immeasurably more than twenty
Australians and their machines. Secondly, that this power is not
external only; it is also internal. The English not only possess better
machines for moving nature, but are themselves better machines. Mr.
Babbage taught us years ago that one great use of machinery was not to
augment the force of man, but to register and regulate the power of
man; and this in a thousand ways civilised man can do, and is ready to
do, better and more precisely than the barbarian. Thirdly, | civilised
man not only has greater powers over nature, but knows better how to
use them, and by better I here mean better for the health and comfort
of his present body and mind. He can lay up for old age, which a savage
having no durable means of sustenance cannot; he is ready to lay up
because he can distinctly foresee the future, which the vague--minded
savage cannot; he is mainly desirous of gentle, continuous pleasure, I
whereas the barbarian likes wild excitement, and longs for stupefying
repletion. Much, if not all, of these three ways may be summed up in
Mr. Spencer's phrase, that progress is an increase of adaptation of man
to his environment, that is, of his internal powers and wishes to his
external lot and life. Something of it too is expressed in the old
pagan idea 'mens sana in corpore sano.' And I think this sort of
progress may be fairly investigated quite separately, as it is progress
in a sort of good everyone worth reckoning with admits and I agrees in.
No doubt there will remain people like the aged savage, who in his old
age went back to his savage tribe and said that he had 'tried
civilisation for forty years, and it was not worth the trouble.' But we
need not take account of the mistaken ideas of unfit