that makes a man outwit his enemy, and it is imagination
that makes him spare his enemy. It is precisely because this picturing
of the other man's point of view is in the main a thing in which
Christians and Europeans specialise that Christians and Europeans, with
all their faults, have carried to such perfection both the arts of peace
and war.

They alone have invented machine-guns, and they alone have invented
ambulances; they have invented ambulances (strange as it may sound) for
the same reason for which they have invented machine-guns. Both involve
a vivid calculation of remote events. It is precisely because the East,
with all its wisdom, is cruel, that the East, with all its wisdom, is
weak. And it is precisely because savages are pitiless that they are
still--merely savages. If they could imagine their enemy's sufferings
they could also imagine his tactics. If Zulus did not cut off the
Englishman's head they might really borrow it. For if you do not
understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him,
very probably you will not.

When I was about seven years old I used to think that the chief modern
danger was a danger of over-civilisation. I am inclined to think now
that the chief modern danger is that of a slow return towards barbarism,
just such a return towards barbarism as is indicated in the suggestions
of barbaric retaliation of which I have just spoken. Civilisation in the
best sense merely means the full authority of the human spirit over all
externals. Barbarism means the worship of those externals in their crude
and unconquered state. Barbarism means the worship of Nature; and in
recent poetry, science, and philosophy there has been too much of the
worship of Nature. Wherever men begin to talk much and with great
solemnity about the forces outside man, the note of it is barbaric.
When men talk much about heredity and environment they are almost
barbarians. The modern men of science are many of them almost
barbarians. Mr. Blatchford is in great danger of becoming a barbarian.
For barbarians (especially the truly squalid and unhappy barbarians) are
always talking about these scientific subjects from morning till night.
That is why they remain squalid and unhappy; that is why they remain
barbarians. Hottentots are always talking about heredity, like Mr.
Blatchford. Sandwich Islanders are always talking about environment,
like Mr. Suthers. Savages--those that are truly stunted or
deprav