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Noble Savage Quotes

Browse 3 quotes about Noble Savage.

Noble Savage Quotes

“One does not have to believe in Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ to believe that man’s fall from grace came with city dwelling; it is common sense. Some cities might be prosperous and secure, with good land and a strong ruler; but they would be the exceptions. Most cities would be little more than large groups of human beings living together for convenience, like rats in a sewer. The consequence is obvious. Man ceases to be an instinctive, simple creature. Whether he likes it or not, he has to become more calculating to survive. He also has to become, in a very special sense, more aggressive—not simply towards other men but towards the world. Before this time, there had only been small Neolithic communities, whose size was limited by their ability to produce food. If the population increased too fast, the weaker ones starved. It encouraged a passive, peaceful attitude towards life and nature. Big cities were more prosperous because men had pooled their resources, and because certain men could afford to become ‘specialists’—in metalwork, weaving, writing and so on. And there were many ways to keep yourself alive: labouring, trading or preying on other men. Unlike the Neolithic community, this was a world where enterprise counted for everything. It would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘rat race’ began in 4000 B.C.”

“The first human used two principles, the simplest possible system, because abstract thinking did not belong to his strengths. We could even say that they did not need it. Their spirit lived in the spiritual world, while their body was doing whatever they wanted, or whatever they had been forced to do when cold and hungry… He was allowed to be doing the things that he wanted, for his will was the Great Will, the Will of God. Although, like the others, I am not allowed to lift the pall that covers the Tradition of the First, we can be sure that it contains the basic rules of sexual life which, from the perspective of our comfortable workrooms, appears to be the basic laws of sexual magic. And this magic that is infinitely simple and infinitely powerful, produced an immense miracle—that we’re here.”