MARGINAL. COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
934 has closed in what must, I suppose, be called an atmosphere of excessive civilization. For we have recently been informed by, eminent biological authorities that primitive man, when free from the influence of civilization, is by nature quite non-aggressive, Were the other primitive animals, one wonders, as non-. aggressive as man ? Did primitive lions and tigers eat grass and lie down with primitive lambs, primitive bulls use their horns only for digging up roots, primitive wolves feed on honey and never raven after their, prey ? Has civilization also laid its cruel hand on these innocent and genial barbarians, and made them as we see them today ? Or was man the only non-aggressive being in that primi- tive world to which once all our ancestors belonged ?
. Let us attempt to picture their charming and amiable life. First, they must have been (to borrow the title of a recent work) men without art. They cannot even have scratched pictures on rocks, or sung songs, or piped through straws, or told one another stories. For art, as we know, sets artists by the ears, stirring up strife of the hottest acrimony. I cannot but believe that the moment in which primitive men composed, for example, their first poems, was also a moment when flints were sharpened and flung with violence by the poets one at another, and between those critics who differed among themselves as to the poems' merits • and the various styles in which poetry should never be written.
Such words of recrimination and distaste as our primi- tive ancestors could muster were, I cannot but think, exchanged, together with the flints, and all was happy uproar for several weeks, delighting those who gathered to look on at the combat. In that hour of creative genius and its attendant pains civilization began, however primitive and peaceful life had until then been, and it has raged with the fiercest ardour ever since. With what rejoicing odium have civilized men always leapt into any fray they see, taking eager and frantic sides in speculations as to the nature and government of the universe and their own problematical careers after their decease ; in contemporary politics ; even in politics centuries dead (for I know those who will rake the ashes of long-extinguished strifes into flame, and declare themselves to be Cavaliers, Roundheads, Tories, Whigs, Yorkists, Lancastrians, Non-jurors, Orangemen; and what not) ; in disputes concerning the merits cf rival authors, film-actors, cricketers, nations, creeds, churches and the colours of shirts.
There is no indication of abatement in.this civilization, which wears so delusive an air of primitive, ingenuous and untutored simplicity. Every sign, indeed, points to its increase in the coming- year, which is opening on every European front in the most civilized manner imaginable. In this country, besides the perennial battles between literary persons, generals, politicians, and those who practise different methods of pronouncing the English language, sharp differences of opinion obtain at the moment between those who wish to inquire of the British people their views on disarmament and other international procedure, and those who, somewhat vehemently, stigmatize such inquiries as a b—y ballot. Also between those who believe the capital punishment of murderesses to be a worse outrage than that of murderers, those who disapprove of both equally, and those who disapprove of neither. (All I can contribute to this discussion is the information that no nice woman likes to think of a man being hanged.) Yes, civilization is certainly, at the opening of this year of grace, a most flourishing weed.
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