CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE /ND CURE 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 I EX
 
 CIVILISATION: ITS 
 CAUSE AND CURE 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 (NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION) 
 
 By 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ENGLAND'S IDEAL," "TOWARDS DEMOCRACY,' 
 " MY DAYS AND DREAMS," ETC. 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 First Edition, June 1889; Second Edition, December 1890 
 Third Edition, November 1893 ; Fourth Edition, July 1895 
 Fifth Edition, September 1897; Sixth Edition, October 1900 
 Seventh Edition, July 1902; Eighth Edition, March 1903 
 Ninth Edition, January 1906 ; Tenth Edition, January 1908 
 Eleventh Edition, October 1910 ; Twelfth Edition, Dec. 1912 
 Thirteenth Edition, Aug. 1914 ; Fourteenth Edition, June 1916.
 
 \\\ \ 
 101 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CIVILISATION : ITS CAUSE AND CURE, i 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM, 51 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST, 82 
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: A CRITICISM OF MORALITY,... 100 
 
 EXFOLIATION : LAMARCK versus DARWIN, 129 
 
 CUSTOM, 148 
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE, 157
 
 CIVILISATION: 
 ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for 
 civilisation, or is he past it, and mastering it ? WHITMAN. 
 
 WE find ourselves to-day in the midst of a somewhat peculiar 
 state of society, which we call Civilisation, but which even to 
 the most optimistic among us does not seem altogether desir- 
 able. Some of us, indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind 
 of disease which the various races of man have to pass through 
 as children pass through measles or whooping cough ; but if it 
 is a disease, there is this serious consideration to be made, that 
 while History tells us of many nations that have been attacked 
 by it, of many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are 
 still in the throes of it, we know of no single case in which a 
 nation has fairly recovered from and passed through it to a 
 more normal and healthy condition. In other words the 
 development of human society has never yet (that we know of) 
 passed beyond a certain definite and apparently final stage in 
 the process we call Civilisation ; at that stage it has alwayi 
 succumbed or been arrested. 
 
 A
 
 * CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 Of course it may at first sound extravagant to use the word 
 disease in connection with Civilisation at all, but a little 
 thought should show that the association is not ill-grounded. 
 To take the matter on its physical side first, I find that in 
 MullhalPs Dictionary of Statistics the number of accredited 
 doctors and surgeons in the United Kingdom is put at over 
 23,000. If the extent of the national sickness is such that we 
 require 23,000 medical men to attend to us, it must surely be 
 rather serious ! And they do not cure us. Wherever we 
 look to-day, in mansion or in slum, we see the features and hear 
 the complaints of ill-health ; the difficulty is really to find a 
 healthy person. The state of the modern civilised man in this 
 respect our coughs, colds, mufflers, dread of a waft of chill air, 
 <fec. is anything but creditable, and it seems to be the fact 
 that, notwithstanding all our libraries of medical science, our 
 knowledges, arts, and appliances of life, we are actually less 
 capable of taking care of ourselves than the animals are. 
 Indeed, talking of animals, we are as Shelley I think points 
 out fast depraving the domestic breeds. The cow, the horse, 
 the sheep, and even the confiding pussy-cat, are becoming ever 
 more and more subject to disease, and are liable to ills which 
 Mi their wilder state they knew not of. And finally the savage 
 races of the earth do not escape the baneful influence. 
 Wherever Civilisation touches them, they die like flies from 
 the small-pox, drink, and worse evils it brings along with it ; 
 and often its mere contact is sufficient to destroy whole races. 
 
 But the word Disease is applicable to our social as well as to 
 our physical condition. For as in the body disease arises 
 from the loss of the physical unity which constitutes Health, 
 and so takes the form of warfare or discord between the various 
 parts, or of the abnormal development of individual organs, or 
 the consumption of the system by predatory germs and growths ; 
 so in our modern life we find the unity gone which constitutes
 
 CIVILISATION. 
 
 true society, and in its place warfare of classes and Individuals, 
 abnormal development of some to the detriment of others, and 
 consumption of the organism by masses of social parasites. If 
 the word disease is applicable anywhere, I should say it is- 
 both In its direct and its derived sense to the civilised 
 societies of to-day. 
 
 Again, mentally, Is not our condition anything but satis 
 factory \ I am not alluding to the number and importance of 
 the lunatic asylums which cover our land, nor to the fact that 
 maladies of the brain and nervous system are now so com- 
 mon ; but to the strange sense of mental unrest which marks 
 our populations, and which amply justifies Ruskin's cutting 
 epigram : that our two objects in life are, " Whatever we 
 have to get more ; and wherever we are to go somewhere 
 else." This sense of unrest , of disease, penetrates down even 
 Into the deepest regions of man's being into his moral nature 
 disclosing itself there, as it has done in all nations notably 
 at the time of their full civilisation, as the sense of Sin. All 
 down the Christian centuries we find this strange sense of 
 inward strife and discord developed, In marked contrast to the 
 naive insouciance of the pagan and primitive world ; and, what 
 is strangest, we even find people glorying in this consciousness 
 which, while it may be the harbinger of better things to 
 come, is and can be in itself only the evidence of loss of unity 
 and therefore of ill-health, in the very centre of human life. 
 
 Of course we are aware with regard to Civilisation that the 
 word is sometimes used in a kind of ideal sense, as to indicate 
 a state of future culture towards which we are tending the 
 implied assumption being that a sufficiently long course of top 
 hats and telephones will in the end bring us to this ideal con- 
 dition ; while any little drawbacks in the process, such as we 
 have just pointed out, are explained as being merely accidental 
 and temporary. Men sometimes speak of civilising and
 
 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 ennobling influences as if the two terms were interchangeable, 
 and of course if they like to use the word Civilisation in thia 
 sense they have a right to ; but whether the actual tendencies 
 of modern life taken in the mass are ennobling (except in a 
 quite indirect way hereafter to be dwelt upon) is to say the 
 least a doubtful question. Any one who would get an idea of 
 the glorious being that is as a matter of fact being turned out 
 by the present process should read Mr. Kay Robinson's article 
 in the Nineteenth Century for May, 1883, in which he pro- 
 phesies (quite solemnly and in the name of science) that the 
 human being of the future will be a toothless, bald, toeless 
 creature with flaccid muscles and limbs almost incapable of 
 locomotion ! 
 
 Perhaps it Is safer on the whole not to use the word 
 Civilisation in such ideal sense, but to limit its use (as is done 
 to-day by all writers on primitive society) to a definite 
 historical stage through which the various nations pass, and 
 in which we actually find ourselves at the present time. 
 Though there is of course a difficulty in marking the com- 
 mencement of any period of historical evolution very definitely, 
 yet all students of this subject agree that the growth of 
 property and the ideas and institutions flowing from it did at 
 a certain point bring about such a change in the structure of 
 human society that the new stage might fairly be distinguished 
 from the earlier stages of Savagery and Barbarism by a 
 separate term. The growth of wealth, it is shown, and with 
 it the conception of private property, brought on certain very 
 definite new forms of social life ; it destroyed the ancient 
 system of society based upon the gens, that is, a society of 
 equals founded upon blood-relationship, and introduced a 
 society of classes founded upon differences of material posses- 
 sion ; it destroyed the ancient system of mother-right and 
 Inheritance through the female line, and turned the woman
 
 CIVILISATION. 
 
 Into the property of the man; it brought with it private 
 ownership of land, and so created a class of landless aliens, 
 and a whole system of rent, mortgage, interest, <fec. ; it intro- 
 duced slavery, serfdom and wage-labor, which are only 
 various forms of the dominance of one class over another ; and 
 to rivet these authorities it created the State and the police- 
 man. Every race that we know, that has become what we 
 call civilised, has passed thro' these changes ; and though the 
 details may vary and have varied a little, the main order of 
 change has been practically the same in all cases. We are 
 justified therefore in calling Civilisation a historical stage, 
 whose commencement dates roughly from the division of 
 lociety into classes founded on property, and the adoption of 
 ^lass-government. Lewis Morgan in his Ancient Society adds 
 the invention of writing and the consequent adoption of 
 written History and written Law ; Engels in his Ursprung der 
 Familic, det Privat-cigenthums und des Stoat* points out the 
 importance of the appearance of the Merchant, even in his 
 most primitive form, as a mark of the civilisation-period ; 
 while the French writers of the last century made a good 
 point in inventing the term nations policies (policemanised 
 nations) as a substitute for civilioed nations ; for perhaps there 
 is no better or more universal mark of the period we are con- 
 sidering, and of its social degradation, than the appearance of 
 the crawling phenomenon in question. [Imagine the rage of 
 any decent North American Indians if they had been told they 
 required policemen to keep them in order !] 
 
 If we take this historical definition of Civilisation, we shall 
 see that our English Civilisation began hardly more than a 
 thousand years ago, and even so the remains of the more 
 primitive society lasted long after that. In the case of 
 Rome if we reckon from the later times of the early kings 
 down to the fall of Rome we have again about a thousand
 
 6 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 years. The Jewish civilisation from David and Solomon 
 downwards lasted with breaks somewhat over a thousand 
 fears ; the Greek civilisation less ; the Egyptian considerably 
 more ; but the important points to see are, first, that the 
 process has been quite similar in character in these various 
 (and numerous other) cases, 1 quite as similar in fact as the 
 course of the same disease in various persons ; and secondly 
 that in no case, as said before, has any nation come through 
 and passed beyond this stage ; but that in most cases it has 
 succumbed soon after the main symptoms had been developed. 
 
 But it will be said, It may be true that civilisation regarded 
 as a stage of human history presents some features of disease ; 
 but is there any reason for supposing that disease in some form 
 or other was any less present in the previous stage that of 
 Barbarism 1 To which I reply, I think there is good reason. 
 Without committing ourselves to the unlikely theory that the 
 M noble savage " was an ideal human being physically or in any 
 other respect, and while certain that in many points he was 
 decidedly inferior to the civilised man, I think we must allow 
 him the superiority in some directions ; and one of these was 
 his comparative freedom from disease. Lewis Morgan, who 
 grew up among the Iroquoia Indians, and who probably knew 
 the North American natives as well as any white man has ever 
 done, says (in his Ancient Society, p. 45), " Barbarism ends 
 with the production of grand Barbarians." And though there 
 are no native races on the earth to-day who are actually in the 
 latest and most advanced stage of Barbarism 2 ; yet if we take 
 the most advanced tribes that we know of such as the said 
 Iroquois Indians of twenty or thirty years ago, some of the 
 Kaffir tribes round Lake Nyassa in Africa, now (and possibly 
 for a few years more) comparatively untouched by civilisation, 
 
 1 For proof I must refer the reader to Eugels, or to his own studies 
 of history. 
 
 1 Say like the Homeric Greek*, or the Spartan* of the Lycurgus period.
 
 CIVILISATION. 
 
 or the tribes along the river Uaupes, 30 or 40 years back, of 
 Wallace's Travels on the Amazon all tribes in what Morgan 
 would call the middle stage of Barbarism we undoubtedly in 
 each case discover a fine and (which is our point here) healthy 
 people. Captain Cook in his first Voyage says of the natives 
 of Otaheite, " We saw no critical disease during our stay upon 
 the island, and but few instances of sickness, which were 
 accidental fits of the colic ; " and, later on, of the New Zeal- 
 anders, " They enjoy perfect and uninterrupted health. In all 
 our visits to their towns, where young and old, men and 
 women, crowded about us .... we never saw a single person 
 who appeared to have any bodily complaint, nor among the 
 numbers we have seen naked did we once perceive the slight- 
 est eruption upon the skin, or any marks that an eruption had 
 left behind." These are pretty strong words. Of course 
 diseases exist among such peoples, even where they have 
 never been in contact with civilisation, but I think we may 
 say that among the higher types of savages they are rarer, and 
 nothing like so various and so prevalent as they are in our 
 modern life ; while the power of recovery from wounds (whi^h 
 are of course the most frequent form of disablement) is gen- 
 erally admitted to be something astonishing. Speaking of the 
 Kaffirs, J. G. Wood says, " Their state of health enables them 
 to survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any 
 civilised European." Mr. Frank Gates in his Diary 1 mentions 
 the case of a man who was condemned to death by the king. 
 He was hacked down with axes, and left for dead. " What 
 must have been intended for the coup de grace was a cut in 
 the back of the head, which bad chipped a large piece out of 
 the skull, and must have been meant to cut the spinal cord 
 where it joins the brain. It had however been made a little 
 higher than this, but had left such a wound as I should have 
 
 i Matabeb Land and the Victoria Falls, p. 209.
 
 8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 thought that no one could have survived . . . when I held the 
 lanthorn to investigate the wound I started back in amaze- 
 ment to see a hole at the base of the skull, perhaps two inches 
 long and an inch and a half wide, and I will not venture to 
 say how deep, but the depth too must have been an affair of 
 inches. Of course this hole penetrated into the substance of 
 the brain, and probably for some distance. I dare say a 
 mouse could have sat in it." Yet the man was not so much 
 disconcerted. Like Old King Cole, "He asked for a pipe 
 and a drink of brandy," and ultimately made a perfect re- 
 covery ! Of course it might be said that such a story only 
 proves the lowness of organisation of the brains of savages ; 
 but to the Kaffirs at any rate this would not apply ; they are 
 a quick-witted race, with large brains, and exceedingly acute 
 in argument, as Colenso found to his cost. Another point 
 which indicates superabundant health is the amazing animal 
 spirits of these native races ! The shouting, singing, dancing 
 kept up nights long among the Kaffirs are exhausting merely 
 to witness, while the graver North American Indian exhibits 
 a corresponding power of life in his eagerness for battle or his 
 stoic resistance of pain. 1 
 
 Similarly when we come to consider the social life of the 
 wilder races however rudimentary and undeveloped it may 
 be the almost universal testimony of students and travelers 
 is that within its limits it is more harmonious and compact 
 than that of the civilised nations. The members of the tribe 
 are not organically at warfare with each other ; society is not 
 divided into classes which prey upon each other ; nor it it 
 
 1 A similar physical health and power of life are also developed among 
 Europeans who have lived for long periods in more native conditions. 
 It is not to our race, which is probably superior to any in capacity, 
 but to the state in which we lire that we must ascribe our defect ia 
 this particular matter.
 
 CIVILISA TION. 
 
 consumed by parasites. There is more true social unity, less 
 of disease. Though the customs of each tribe are rigid, ab- 
 surd, and often frightfully cruel, 1 and though all outsiders 
 are liable to be regarded as enemies, yet within those limit* 
 the members live peacefully together their pursuits, their 
 work, are undertaken in common, thieving and violence are 
 rare, social feeling and community of interest are strong. " In 
 their own bands Indians are perfectly honest. In all my in- 
 tercourse with them I have heard of not over half-a-dozen 
 cases of such theft. But this wonderfully exceptional honesty 
 extends no further than to the members of his immediate 
 band. To all outside of it, the Indian is not only one of the 
 most arrant thieves in the world, but this quality or faculty is 
 held in the highest estimation." (Dodge, p. 64.) If a man 
 set out on a journey (this among the Kaffirs) " he need not 
 trouble himself about provisions, for he is sure to fall in with 
 some hut, or perhaps a village, and is equally sure of obtain- 
 ing both food and shelter." 3 "I have lived," says A. R. 
 Wallace in his Malay Archipelago (vol. II. p. 460), " with 
 communities in South America and the East, who have no 
 laws or law courts, but the public opinion of the village . . . 
 yet each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellows, 
 and any infraction of those rights rarely takes place. In such 
 a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those 
 wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and 
 poverty, master and servant, which are the product of out 
 civilisation." Indeed this community of life in the early 
 societies, this absence of division into classes, and of the con- 
 trast between rich and poor, is now admitted on all sides as 
 a marked feature of difference between the conditions of the 
 primitive and of civilised man. 8 
 
 1 See Col. Dodge's Our Wild Indians. 
 Wood's Natural History of Man. 3 See Appendix.
 
 I CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 Lastly, with regard to the mental condition of the Barbarian, 
 probably no one will be found to dispute the contention that 
 he is more easy minded and that his consciousness of Sm is less 
 developed than in his civilised brother. Our unrest is the 
 penalty we pay for our wider life. The missionary retires 
 routed from the savage in whom he can awake no sense of 
 his supreme wickedness. An American lady had a servant, 
 a negro-woman, who on one occasion asked leave of absence 
 for the next morning, saying she wished to attend the 
 Holy Communion? "I have no objection," said the mis- 
 tress, " to grant you leave ; but do you think you ought 
 to attend Communion ? You know you have never said 
 you were sorry about that goose you stole last week." 
 " Lor* missus," replied the woman, " do ye think I'd let 
 an old goose stand betwixt me and my Blessed Lord and 
 Master ? " But joking apart, and however necessary for man's 
 ultimate evolution may be the temporary development of this 
 consciousness of Sin, we cannot help seeing that the condition 
 of the mind in which it is absent is the most distinctively 
 healthy ; nor can it be concealed that some of the greatest 
 works of Art have been produced by people like the earlier 
 Greeks, in whom it was absent ; and could not possibly have 
 been produced where it was strongly developed. 
 
 Though as already said, the latest stage of Barbarism, i.e., 
 that just preceding Civilisation, is unrepresented on the earth 
 to-day, yet we have hi the Homeric and other dawn-literature 
 of the various nations indirect records of this stage ; and these 
 records assure us of a condition of man very similar to, 
 though somewhat more developed than, the condition of the 
 existing races I have mentioned above. Besides this, we have 
 in the numerous traditions of the Golden Age, 1 legends of the 
 Fall, <kc., a curious fact which suggests to us that a great 
 uumber of races in advancing towards Civilisation were con- 
 1 Se Appendix.
 
 CIVILISATION. II 
 
 scious at some point or other of having lost a primitive con- 
 dition of ease and contentment, and that they embodied this 
 consciousness, with poetical adornment and licence, in im- 
 aginative legends of the earlier Paradise. Some people in- 
 deed, seeing the universality of these stories, and the remark- 
 able fragments of wisdom embedded in them and other 
 extremely ancient myths and writings, have supposed that 
 there really was a general prehistoric Eden-garden or Atlantis ; 
 but the necessities of the case hardly seem to compel this 
 supposition. That each human soul however bears within it- 
 self some kind of reminiscence of a more harmonious and 
 perfect state of being, which it has at some time experienced, 
 seems to me a conclusion difficult to avoid ; and this by itself 
 might give rise to manifold traditions and myths. 
 
 HOWEVER all this may be, the question Immediately before us 
 having established the more healthy, though more limited, 
 condition of the pre-civilisation peoples is, why this lapse or 
 fall 1 What is the meaning of this manifold and intensified 
 manifestation of Disease physical, social, intellectual, and 
 moral f what is its place and part in the great whole of human 
 evolution t 
 
 And this involves us in a digression, which must occupy a 
 few pages, on the nature of Health. 
 
 When we come to analyse the conception of Disease, physical 
 or mental, in society or in the individual, it evidently means, 
 as already hinted once or twice, loss of unity. Health, there- 
 fore, should mean unity, and it is curious that the history of 
 the word entirely corroborates this idea. As is well known, 
 the words health, whole, holy, are from the same stock ; an<f 
 they indicate to us the fact that fax back in the past those who
 
 12 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 created this group of words had a conception of the meaning 
 of Health very different from ours, and which they embodied 
 unconsciously in the word itself and its strange relatives. 
 
 These are, for instance, and among others : heal, hallow, hale, 
 holy, whole, wholesome ; German heilig, Heiland (the Saviour) j 
 Latin salus (as in salutation, salvation) ; Greek kalos ; also 
 compare hail ! a salutation, and, less certainly connected, the 
 root hal, to breathe, as in inhale, exhale French haleine 
 Italian and French alma and ame (the soul) ; compare the 
 Latin spiritus, spirit or breath, and Sanskrit atman, breath or 
 soul. 
 
 Wholeness, holiness ..." if thine eye be single, thy whole 
 body shall be full of light." ..." thy faith hath made thee 
 whole. 11 
 
 The idea seems to be a positive one a condition of the body 
 In which it is an entirety, a unity a central force maintaining 
 that condition ; and disease being the break-up or break-down 
 of that entirety into multiplicity. 
 
 The peculiarity about our modern conception of Health is 
 that it seems to be a purely negative one. So impressed are 
 we by the myriad presence of Disease so numerous its 
 dangers, so sudden and unforetellable its attacks that we 
 have come to look upon health as the mere absence of the 
 same. As a solitary spy picks his way through a hostile camp 
 at night, sees the enemy sitting round his fires, and trembles 
 at the crackling of a twig beneath his feet so the traveled 
 thro' this world, comforter in one hand and physic-bottle in the 
 other, must pick his way, fearful lest at any time he disturb 
 the sleeping legions of death thrice blessed if by any means, 
 steering now to the right and now to the left, and thinking 
 only of his personal safety, he pass by without discovery to the 
 other side. 
 
 Health with us is a negative thing. It is a neutralisation of
 
 CIVILISATION. 13 
 
 opposing dangers. It is to be neither rheumatic nor gouty, 
 consumptive nor bilious, to be untroubled by head-ache, back- 
 ache, heart-ache or any of the " thousand natural shocks that 
 flesh is heir to." These are the realities. Health is the mere 
 negation of them. 
 
 The modern notion, and which has evidently in a very 
 subtle way penetrated the whole thought of to-day, is that the 
 essential fact of life is the existence of innumerable external 
 forces, which, by a very delicate balance and difficult to main- 
 tain, concur to produce Man who in consequence may at any 
 moment be destroyed again by the non-concurrence of those 
 forces. The older notion apparently is that the essential fact 
 of life is Man himself ; and that the external forces, so-called, 
 are in some way subsidiary to this fact that they may aid his 
 expression or manifestation, or that they may hinder it, but 
 that they can neither create nor annihilate the Man. Probably 
 both ways of looking at the subject are important ; there is a 
 man that can be destroyed, and there is a man that cannot be 
 destroyed. The old words soul and body indicate this contrast ; 
 but like all words they are subject to the defect that they are 
 an attempt to draw a line where no line can ultimately be 
 drawn ; they mark a contrast where, in fact, there is only 
 continuity for between the little mortal man who dwells here 
 and now, and the divine and universal Man who also forms a 
 part of our consciousness, is there not a perfect gradation of 
 being, and where (if anywhere) is there a gulf fixed ? Together 
 they form a unit, and each is necessary to the other : the first 
 cannot do without the second, and the second cannot get along 
 at all without the first. To use the words of Angelus Silesiua 
 (quoted by Schopenhauer), "Ich weiss das ohne mich Gott nicht 
 ein Nu kann leben." 
 
 According then to the elder conception, and perhaps 
 according to an elder experience, man to be really healthy must
 
 14 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 be a unit, an entirety his more external and momentary self 
 standing in some kind of filial relation to his more universal 
 and incorruptible part so that not only the remotest and 
 outermost regions of the body, and all the assimilative secretive 
 and other processes belonging thereto, but even the thoughts 
 and passions of the mind itself, stand in direct and clear 
 relationship to it, the final and absolute transparency of the 
 mortal creature. And thus this divinity in each creature, 
 being that which constitutes it and causes it to cohere 
 together, was conceived of as that creature's saviour, healer 
 healer of wounds of body and wounds of heart the Man within 
 the man, whom it was not only possible to know, but whom to 
 know and be united with was the alone salvation. This, I take 
 It, was the law of health and of holiness as accepted at some 
 elder time of human history, and by us seen as thro' a glass 
 darkly. 
 
 And the condition of disease, and of sin, under the same 
 view, was the reverse of this. Enfeeblement, obscuration, 
 duplicity the central radiation blocked ; lesser and insubord- 
 inate centres establishing and asserting themselves as against 
 it ; division, discord, possession by devils. 
 
 Thus in the body, the establishment of an insubordinate 
 centre a boil, a tumor, the introduction and spread of a germ 
 with innumerable progeny throughout the system, the enlarge- 
 ment out of all reason of an existing organ means disease. In 
 the mind, disease begins when any passion asserts itself as an 
 independent centre of thought and action. The condition of 
 health in the mind is loyalty to the divine Man within it. 1 
 But if loyalty to money become an independent centre of life, 
 or greed of knowledge, or of fame, or of drink ; jealousy, lust, 
 
 1 No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate this 
 no enthronement of any virtue can take its place ; for all virtue 
 enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice.
 
 CIVILISATION, 
 
 the love of approbation ; or mere following aftei any so-called 
 virtue for itself purity, humility, consistency, or what not 
 these may grow to seriously endanger the other. They are, 
 or should be, subordinates; and though over a long period 
 their insubordination may be a necessary condition of human 
 progress, yet during all such time they are at war with each 
 other and with the central Will ; the man is torn and tormented, 
 and is not happy. 
 
 And when I speak thus separately of the mind and body, it 
 must be remembered, as already said, that there is no strict 
 line between them ; but probably every affection or passion of 
 the mind has its correlative in the condition of the body 
 though this latter may or may not be easily observable. 
 Gluttony is a fever of the digestive apparatus. What is a taint 
 in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has 
 started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the 
 human system. The sexual organs may start a similar Idea. 
 Here are distinct threats, menaces made against the central 
 authority against the Man himself. For the man must rule 
 or disappear ; it is impossible to imagine a man presided over 
 by a Stomach a walking Stomach, using hands, feet, and all 
 other members merely to carry it from place to place, and serve 
 its assimilative mania. We call such an one, a Hog. [And thus 
 in the theory of Evolution we see the place of the hog, and all 
 other animals, as fore-runners or off-shoots of special faculties in 
 Man, and why the true man, and rightly, has authority over 
 all animals, and can alone give them their place in creation.] 
 
 So of the Brain, or any other organ ; for the Man is no 
 organ, resides in no organ, but is the central life ruling and 
 radiating among all organs, and assigning them their parts tc 
 play. 
 
 Disease then, in body or mind, Is from this point of view 
 the break-up of its unity, its entirety, into multiplicity. It is
 
 16 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 the abeyance of a central power, and the growth of insubordi- 
 nate centres life in each creature being conceived of as a 
 continual exercise of energy or conquest, by which external or 
 antagonistic forces (and organisms) are brought into subjec- 
 tion and compelled into the service of the creature, or are 
 thrown off as harmful to it. Thus by way of illustration, we 
 find that plants or animals, when in good health, have a re- 
 markable power of throwing off the attacks of any parasites 
 which incline to infest them ; while those that are weakly are 
 very soon eaten up by the same. A rose-tree, for instance, 
 brought indoors, will soon fall a prey to the aphis though 
 when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to no impres- 
 sion on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in 
 the fields are weakly from want of water the entire crop is 
 sometimes destroyed by the turnip fly, which then multiplies 
 enormously ; but if a shower or two of rain come before much 
 damage is done the plant will then grow vigorously, its tissues 
 become more robust and resist the attacks of the fly, which in 
 its turn dies. Late investigations seem to show that one of 
 the functions of the white corpuscles in the blood is to devour 
 disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation thus 
 absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of 
 the body and that with this object they congregate in 
 numbers toward any part of the body which is wounded or 
 diseased. Or to take an example from society, it is clear 
 enough that if our social life were really vivid and healthy, 
 such parasitic products as the idle shareholder and the police- 
 man above-mentioned would simply be impossible. The 
 material on which they prey would not exist, and they would 
 either perish or be transmuted into useful forms. It seems 
 obvious in fact that life in any organism can only be main- 
 tained by some such processes as these by which parasitic 
 or infesting organisms are either thrown off or absorbed into
 
 CIVILISATION. 17 
 
 subjection. To define the nature of the power which thus 
 works towards and creates the distinctive unity of each organism 
 may be difficult, is probably at present impossible, but that 
 some such power exists we can hardly refuse to admit. 
 Probably it is more a subject of the growth of our con- 
 sciousness, than an object of external scientific investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 In this view, Death is simply the loosening and termination 
 of the action of this power over certain regions of the 
 organism ; a process by which, when these superficial parts 
 become hardened and osseous, as in old age, or irreparably 
 damaged, as in cases of accident, the inward being sloughs 
 them off, and passes into other spheres. In the case of man 
 there may be noble and there may be ignoble death, as there 
 may be noble and ignoble life. The inward self, unable to 
 maintain authority over the forces committed to its charge, 
 declining from its high prerogative, swarmed over by parasites, 
 and fallen partially into the clutch of obscene foes, may at 
 last with shame and torment be driven forth from the temple 
 in which it ought to have been supreme. Or, having fulfilled 
 a holy and wholesome time, having radiated divine life and 
 love through all the channels of body and mind, and as a 
 perfect workman uses his tools, so having with perfect mastery 
 and nonchalance used all the materials committed to It, it may 
 quietly and peacefully lay these down, and unchanged 
 (absolutely unchanged to all but material eyes) pass on to 
 other spheres appointed. 
 
 And now a few words on the medical aspect of the subject. 
 If we accept any theory (even remotely similar to that just 
 indicated) to the effect that Health is a positive thing, and not 
 a mere negation of disease, it becomes pretty clear that no 
 mere investigation of the latter will enable us to find out what 
 the former is, or bring us nearer to it. You might as well
 
 i8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 try to create the ebb and flow of the tides by an organised 
 system of mops. 
 
 Turn your back upon the Sun and go forth Into the wilder- 
 nesses of space till you come to those limits where the rays of 
 light, faint with distance, fall dim upon the confines of eternal 
 darkness and phantoms and shadows in the half-light are the 
 product of the wavering conflict betwixt day and night 
 investigate these shadows, describe them, classify them, record 
 the changes which takes place hi them, erect in vast libraries 
 these records into a monument of human industry and 
 research ; so shall you be at the end as near to a knowledge 
 and understanding of the sun itself which all this time you 
 have left behind you, and on which you have turned your 
 back as the investigators of disease are to a knowledge and 
 understanding of what health is. The solar rays illumine the 
 outer world and give to it its unity and entirety ; so in the 
 inner world of each individual possibly is there another Sun, 
 which illumines and gives unity to the man, and whose 
 warmth and light would permeate his system. Wait upou 
 the shining forth of this inward sun, give free access and 
 welcome to its rays of love, and free passage for them into the 
 common world around you, and it may be you will get to 
 know more about health than all the books of medicine con- 
 tain, or can tell you. 
 
 Or to take the former simile : it is the central force of the 
 Moon which acting on the great ocean makes all its waters 
 one, and causes them to rise and fall in timely consent. But 
 take your moon away ; hey ! now the tide is flowing too far 
 down this estuary ! Station your thousands with mops ; but 
 it breaks through in channel and runlet ! Block it here, but 
 it overflows in a neighboring bay ! Appoint an army of 
 awabs there, but to what end 1 The infinitest care along the 
 fringe of this great sea can never do, with all imaginable dirt
 
 CIVILISATION. 
 
 and confusion, what the central power does easily, and with 
 unerring grace and providence. 
 
 And so of the great (the vast and wonderful) ocean which 
 ebbs and flows within a man take away the central guide- 
 and not 20,000 doctors, each with 20,000 books to consult 
 and 20,000 phials of different contents to administer, could 
 meet the myriad cases of disease which would ensue, or bolster 
 up into " wholeness " the being from whom the single radiant 
 unity had departed. 
 
 Probably there has never been an age, nor any country 
 (except Yankee-land ?) in which disease has been so generally 
 prevalent as in England to-day ; and certainly there has never 
 (with the same exception) been an age or country in which 
 doctors have so swarmed, or in which medical science has been 
 o powerful, in apparatus, in learning, in authority, and in 
 actual organisation and number of adherents. How reconcile 
 this contradiction if indeed a contradiction it be 1 
 
 But the fact is that medical science does not contradict 
 disease any more than laws abolish crime. Medical science 
 and doubtless for very good reasons makes a fetish of disease, 
 and dances around it. It is (as a rule) only seen where disease 
 is ; it writes enormous tomes on disease ; it induces disease in 
 animals (and even men) for the purpose of studying it ; it 
 knows, to a marvelous extent, the symptoms of disease, its 
 nature, its causes, its goings out and its comings in ; its eyes 
 are perpetually fixed on disease, till disease (for it) becomes the 
 main fact of the world and the main object of its worship. 
 Even what is so gracefully called Hygiene does not get beyond 
 this negative attitude. And the world still waits for its 
 Healer, who shall tell us diseased and suffering as we are 
 what health is, where it is to be found, whence it flows ; and 
 who having touched this wonderful power within himself shall 
 not rest till he has proclaimed and imparted it to men.
 
 20 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 No, medical science does not, in the main, contradict disease. 
 The same cause (infidelity and decay of the central life in men) 
 which creates disease and makes men liable to it, creates 
 students and a science of the subject. The Moon 1 having 
 gone from over the waters, the good people rush forth with 
 their mops ; and the untimely inundations, and the mops and 
 the mess and the pother, are all due to the same cause. 
 
 As to the lodgment of disease, it is clear that this would 
 take place easily in a disorganised system just as a seditious 
 adventurer would easily effect a landing, and would find insub- 
 ordinate materials ready at hand for his use, in a land where 
 the central government was weak. And as to the treatment of 
 a disease so introduced there are obviously two methods : one 
 is to reinforce the central power till it is sufficiently strong ol 
 itself to eject the insubordinate elements and restore order \ the 
 other is to attack the malady from outside and if possible 
 destroy it (as by doses and decoctions) independently of the 
 inner vitality, and leaving that as it was before. The first 
 method would seem the best, most durable and effective ; but 
 it is difficult and slow. It consists in the adoption of a healthy 
 life, bodily and mental, and will be spoken of later on. The 
 second may be characterised as the medical method, and is 
 valuable, or rather I should be inclined to say, will be valu- 
 able, when it has found its place, which is to be subsidiary to 
 the first. It is too often however regarded as superior in 
 importance, and in this way, though easy of application, has 
 come perhaps to be productive of more harm than good. The 
 disease may be broken down for the time being, but the roots 
 of it not being destroyed it soon springs up again in the same 
 or a new form, and the patient is as badly off as ever. 
 
 The great positive force of Health, and the power which It 
 
 1 It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the word 
 Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure.
 
 CIVILISATION. 21 
 
 has to expel disease from its neighborhood is a thing realised 
 I believe by few persons. But it has been realised on earth, 
 and will be realised again when the more squalid elements of 
 our present-day civilisation have passed away. 
 
 tB. 
 
 THE result then of our digression is to show that Health in 
 body or mind means unity, integration as opposed to dis- 
 integration. In the animals we find this physical unity exist- 
 ing to a remarkable degree. An almost unerring instinct and 
 selective power rules their actions and organisation. Thus a 
 cat before it has fallen (say before it has become a very wheezy 
 fireside pussy !) is in a sense perfect. The wonderful consent 
 of its limbs as it runs or leaps, the adaptation of its muscles, 
 the exactness and inevitableness of its instincts, physical and 
 affectional ; its senses of sight and smell, its cleanliness, nicety 
 as to food, motherly tact, the expression of its whole body 
 when enraged, or when watching for prey all these things are 
 so to speak absolute and instantaneous and fill one with 
 admiration. The creature is " whole " or in one piece : there 
 fs no mentionable conflict or division within it. 1 
 
 Similarly with the other animals, and even with the early 
 man himself. And so it would appear returning to our 
 subject that, if we accept the doctrine of Evolution, there is 
 a progression of animated beings which , though not perfect, 
 possess in the main the attribute of Health from the lowest 
 forms up to a healthy and instinctive though certainly limited 
 man. During all this stage the central law is in the ascendant, 
 
 1 And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that 
 among the animals there is anything like immunity from it since 
 diseases of a more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes oi 
 plants and animals still they seem to be rarer, and the organic 
 instinct of health greater, than in the civilised man.
 
 22 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 and the physical frame of each creature is the fairly clean 
 vehicle of its expression varying of course in complexity and 
 degree according to the point of unfoldment which has been 
 reached. And when thus in the long process of development the 
 inner Man (which has lain hidden or dormant within the 
 animal) at last appears, and the creature consequently takes on 
 the outer frame and faculties of the human being, which are 
 only as they are because of the inner man which they represent ; 
 when it has passed through stage after stage of animal life, 
 throwing out tentative types and likenesses of what is to come, 
 and going through innumerable preliminary exercises in special 
 forms and faculties, till at last it begins to be able to wear the 
 full majesty of manhood itself then it would seem that that long 
 process of development is drawing to a close, and that the 
 goal of creation must be within measurable distance. 
 
 But then, at that very moment, and when the goal is, so to 
 speak, in sight, occurs this failure of " wholeness " of which we 
 have spoken, this partial break-up of the unity of human 
 mature and man, instead of going forward any longer in the 
 same line as before, to all appearance falls. 
 
 What is the meaning of this loss of unity t What is the 
 cause and purpose of this fall and centuries-long exile from the 
 earlier Paradise 1 
 
 There can be but one answer. It is self-knowledge (which 
 involves in a sense the abandonment of self). Man has to be- 
 come conscious of his destiny to lay hold of and realise hia 
 own freedom and blessedness to transfer his consciousness 
 from the outer and mortal part of him to the inner and undy- 
 ing. 
 
 The cat cannot do this. Though perfect in Its degree, Ite 
 Interior unfoldment is yet incomplete. The human soul within 
 it has not yet come forward and declared itself; some sheath- 
 ing leaves have yet to open before the divine flower-bud can
 
 CIVILISATION. 23 
 
 be clearly seen. And when at last (speaking as a fool) the 
 cat becomes a man when the human soul within the creat- 
 ure has climbed itself forward and found expression, transform- 
 ing the outer frame in the process into that of humanity 
 (which is the meaning I suppose of the evolution theory) 
 then the creature, though perfect and radiant in the form of 
 Man, still lacks one thing. It lacks the knowledge of itself ; 
 it lacks its own identity, and the realisation of the manhood to 
 which as a fact it has attained. 
 
 In the animals consciousness has never returned upon itself. 
 It radiates easily outwards ; and the creature obeys without 
 let or hesitation, and with little if any ^/-consciousness, the 
 law of its being. And when man first appears on the earth, 
 and even up to the threshold of what we call civilisation, there 
 is much to show that he should in this respect still be classed 
 with the animals. Though vastly superior to them in attain- 
 ments, physical and mental, in power over nature, capacity of 
 progress, and adaptability, he still in these earlier stages was 
 like an animal in the unconscious instinctive nature of his 
 action; and on the other hand, though his moral and in- 
 tellectual structures were far less complete than those of the 
 modern man as was a necessary result of the absence of self- 
 knowledge he actually lived more in harmony with himself 
 and with nature, 1 than does his descendant ; his impulses, 
 
 1 As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter 
 seemingly beyond dispute ; their keenness of sense, sensitive to atmos- 
 pheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of animals, 
 etc. , have been the subject of frequent remark ; but beyond this, their 
 strong feeling of union with the universal spirit, probably only dimly 
 elf conscious, but expressing itself very markedly and clearly in their 
 customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning. The dances of the 
 Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild festival of the new 
 moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the processions through 
 theforests the chants and dull thudding of drums the t<,rture-daiices of
 
 24 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 both physical and social, were clearer and more unhesitating ; 
 and his unconsciousness of inner discord and sin a great con- 
 trast to our modern condition of everlasting strife and per- 
 plexity. 
 
 If then to this stage belongs some degree of human per- 
 fection and felicity, yet there remains a much vaster height to 
 be scaled. The human soul which has wandered darkling for 
 so many thousand of years, from its tiny spark-like germ in 
 some low form of life to its full splendor and dignity in man, 
 has yet to come to the knowledge of its wonderful heritage, has 
 yet to become finally individualised and free, to know itself 
 immortal, to resume and interpret all its past lives, and to 
 enter in triumph into the kingdom which it has won. 
 
 It has in fact to face the frightful struggle of self-conscious- 
 ness, or the disentanglement of the true self from the fleeting 
 and perishable self. The animals and man, unfallen, are 
 healthy and free from care, but unaware of what they are ; to 
 attain self-knowledge man must fall; he must become less 
 than his true self ; he must endue imperfection ; division and 
 strife must enter his nature. To realise the perfect Life, to 
 know what, how wonderful it is to understand that all 
 blessedness and freedom consists in its possession he must 
 for the moment suffer divorce from it ; the unity, the repose 
 of his nature must be broken up, crime, disease and unrest 
 must enter in, and by contrast he must attain to knowledge. 
 
 Curious that at the very dawn of the Greek and with it the 
 European civilisation we have the mystic words " Know Thy- 
 
 the young Red Indian bravos in the burning beat of the sun ; the 
 Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks ; and indeed the sacrificial 
 nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of second -sight found 
 among all primitive peoples ; all these things indicate clearly a faculty 
 which, though it had hardly become self-conscious enough to be what 
 we call religion, was yet in truth the foundation element of religion, 
 and the germ of some human powers which wait yet to be developed.
 
 CIVILISATION. 2J 
 
 self " Inscribed en the temple of the Delphic Apollo ; and that 
 first among the legends of the Semitic race stands that of 
 Adam and Eve eating of the tree of the Knowledge of good 
 and evil ! To the animal there is no such knowledge, to the 
 early man there was no such knowledge, and to the perfected 
 man of the future there will be no such knowledge. It is a 
 temporary perversion, indicating the disunion of the present- 
 day man the disunion of the outer self from the inner the 
 horrible dual self-consciousness which is the means ultimately 
 of a more perfect and conscious union than could ever have 
 been realised without it the death that is swallowed up in 
 victory. " For the first man is of the earth, earthy ; but the 
 second man is the Lord from heaven." 
 
 In order then, at this point in his Evolution, to advance any 
 farther, Man must first fall ; in order to know, he must lose. 
 In order to realise what Health is, how splendid and glorious a 
 possession, he must go through all the long negative experience 
 of Disease ; in order to know the perfect social life, to under- 
 stand what power and happiness to mankind are involved in 
 their true relation to each other, he must learn the misery and 
 suffering which come from mere individualism and greed ; and 
 In order to find his true Manhood, to discover what a wonderful 
 power it is, he must first lose it he must become a prey and a 
 slave to his own passions and desires whirled away like 
 Phaethon by the horses which he cannot control. 
 
 This moment of divorce, then, this parenthesis in human 
 progress, covers the ground of all History ; and the whole of 
 Civilisation, and all crime and disease, are only the materials of 
 its immense purpose themselves destined to pass away as they 
 arose but to leave their fruits eternal. 
 
 Accordingly we find that it has been the work of Civilisation 
 founded as we have seen on Property in every way to 
 disintegrate and corrupt man literally to corrupt to break up
 
 26 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 the unity of his nature. It begins with the abandonment of the 
 primitive life and the growth of the sense of shame (as in the 
 myth of Adam and Eve.) From this follows the disownment 
 of the sacredness of sex. Sexual acts cease to be a part of 
 religious worship; love and desire the inner and the outer 
 love hitherto undifferentiated, now become two separate things. 
 (This no doubt a necessary stage in order for the development 
 of the consciousness of love, but in itself only painful and 
 abnormal.) It culminates and comes to an end, as to-day, in a 
 complete divorce between the spiritual reality and the bodily 
 fulfilment in a vast system of commercial love, bought and 
 sold, in the brothel and in the palace. It begins with the for- 
 saking of the hardy nature-life, and it ends with a society 
 broken down and prostrate, hardly recognisable as human, 
 amid every form of luxury, poverty and disease. He who had 
 been the free child of Nature denies his sonship ; he disowns 
 the very breasts that suckled him. He deliberately turns his 
 back upon the light of the sun, and hides himself away in 
 boxes with breathing holes (which he calls houses), living ever 
 more and more in darkness and asphyxia, and only coming 
 forth perhaps once a day to blink at the bright god, or to run 
 back again at the first breath of the free wind for fear of 
 catching cold ! He muffles himself in the cast-off furs of the 
 beasts, every century swathing himself in more and more 
 layers, more and more fearfully and wonderfully fashioned, till 
 he ceases to be recognisable as the Man that was once the 
 crown of the animals, and presents a more ludicrous spectacle 
 than the monkey that sits on his own barrel organ. He ceases 
 to a great extent to use his muscles, his feet become partially 
 degenerate, his teeth wholly, his digestion so enervated that he 
 has to cook his food and make pulps of all his victuals, and his 
 whole system so obviously on the decline that at last in the 
 end of time a Kay Robinson arises and prophesies as aforesaid,
 
 CIVILISATION. 27 
 
 that lie will before long become wholly toothless, bald and toe- 
 less. 
 
 And so with this denial of Nature comes every form of 
 disease ; first delicatesse, daintiness, luxury ; then unbalance, 
 enervation, huge susceptibility to pain. With the shutting of 
 himself away from the all-healing Power, man inevitably 
 weakens his whole manhood ; the central bond is loosened, and 
 he falls a prey to his own organs. He who before was unaware 
 of the existence of these latter, now becomes only too conscious 
 of them (and this is it not the very object of the process ?) ; 
 the stomach, the liver and the spleen start out into painful dis- 
 tinctness before him, the heart loses its equable beat, the lungs 
 their continuity with the universal air, and the brain becomes 
 hot and fevered ; each organ in turn asserts itself abnormally 
 and becomes a seat of disorder, every corner and cranny of the 
 body becomes the scene and symbol of disease, and Man gazea 
 aghast at his own kingdom whose extent he had never 
 suspected before now all ablaze in wild revolt against him. 
 And then all going with this period of his development 
 sweep vast epidemic trains over the face of the earth, plagues 
 and fevers and lunacies and world-wide festering sores, followed 
 by armies, ever growing, of doctors they too with their 
 retinues of books and bottles, vaccinations and vivisections, 
 and grinning death's-heads in the rear a mad crew, knowing 
 not what they do, yet all unconsciously, doubtless, fulfilling the 
 great age-long destiny of humanity. 
 
 In all this the influence of Property is apparent enough. 
 It is evident that the growth of property through the increase 
 of man's powers of production reacts on the man in three 
 ways ; to draw him away namely, (1) from Nature, (2) from 
 his true Self, (3) from his Fellows. In the first place it draws 
 him away from Nature. That is, that as man's power over 
 materials increases he creates for himself a sphere and an
 
 28 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 environment of his own, in some sense apart and different from 
 the great elemental world of the winds and the waves, the 
 woods and the mountains, in which he has hitherto lived. 
 He creates what we call the artificial life, of houses and cities, 
 and shutting himself up in these shuts Nature out. As a 
 growing boy at a certain point, and partly in order to assert 
 his independence, wrests himself away from the tender care of 
 his mother, and even displays just for the time being a 
 spirit of opposition to her, so the growing Man finding out his 
 own powers uses them for the time even to do despite to 
 Nature, and to create himself a world in which she shall have 
 no part. In the second place the growth of property draws 
 man away from his true Self. This is clear enough. As his 
 power over materials and his possessions increases, man finds 
 the means of gratifying his senses at will. Instead of being 
 guided any longer by that continent and " whole " instinct 
 which characterises the animals, his chief motive is now to use 
 his powers to gratify this or that sense or desire. These 
 become abnormally magnified, and the man soon places his 
 main good in their satisfaction ; and abandons his true Self for 
 his organs, the whole for the parts. Property draws the man 
 outwards, stimulating the external part of his being, and for a 
 time mastering him, overpowers the central Will, and brings 
 about his disintegration and corruption. Lastly Property by 
 thus stimulating the external and selfish nature in Man, draws 
 him away from his Fellows. In the anxiety to possess things 
 for himself, in order to gratify his own bumps, he is necessarily 
 brought into conflict with his neighbor and comes to regard 
 him as an enemy. For the true Self of man consists in his 
 organic relation with the whole body of his fellows ; and 
 when the man abandons his true Self he abandons also his 
 true relation to his fellows. The mass-Man must rule in each 
 unit-man, else the unit-man will drop off and die. But when
 
 CIVILISATION. 29 
 
 the outer man tries to separate himself from the inner, the 
 unit-man from the mass-Man, then the reign of individuality 
 begins a false and impossible individuality of course, but the 
 only means of coming to the consciousness of the true in- 
 dividuality. With the advent of a Civilisation then founded 
 on Property the unity of the old tribal society is broken up. 
 The ties of blood relationship which were the foundation of the 
 jentile system and the guarantees of the old fraternity and 
 equality become dissolved in favor of powers and authorities 
 founded on mere possession. The growth of Wealth dis- 
 integrates the ancient Society ; the temptations of power, of 
 possession, <fec., which accompany it, wrench the individual 
 from his moorings; personal greed rules; "each man for 
 himself " becomes the universal motto ; the hand of every man 
 is raised against his brother ; and at last society itself becomes 
 an organisation by which the rich fatten upon the vitals of the 
 poor, the strong upon the murder of the weak. [It is in- 
 teresting in this connection to find that Lewis Morgan makes 
 the invention of a written alphabet and the growth of the 
 conception of private property the main characteristics of the 
 civilisation-period as distinguished from the periods of savagery 
 and barbarism which preceded it ; for the invention of writing 
 marks perhaps better than anything else could do the period 
 when Man becomes self-conscious when he records his own 
 doings and thoughts, and so commences History proper ; and 
 the growth of private property marks the period when he 
 begins to sunder himself from his fellows, when therefore the 
 conception of sin (or separation) first enters in, and with it all 
 the long period of moral perplexity, and the denial of that 
 community of life between himself and his fellows which is 
 really of the essence of man's being.] 
 
 And then arises the institution of Government. 
 
 Hitherto this had not existed except in a quite rudimentary
 
 30 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 form. The early communities troubled themselves little about 
 Individual ownership, and what government they had was for 
 the most part essentially democratic as being merely a choice 
 of leaders among blood-relations and social equals. But when 
 the delusion that man can exist for himself alone his outer 
 and as it were accidental self apart from the great inner and 
 cosmical self by which he is one with his fellows when this 
 delusion takes possession of him, it is not long before it finds 
 expression in some system of private property. The old 
 community of life and enjoyment passes away, and each man 
 tries to grab the utmost he can, and to retire into his own lair 
 for its consumption. Private accumulations arise ; the natural 
 flow of the bounties of life is dammed back, and artificial 
 barriers of Law have to be constructed in order to preserve the 
 unequal levels. Outrage and Fraud follow in the wake of the 
 desire of possession ; force has to be used by the possessors in 
 order to maintain the law -barriers against the non-possessors ; 
 classes are formed ; and finally the formal Government arises, 
 mainly as the expression of such force ; and preserves itself, 
 as best it can, until such time as the inequalities which it up- 
 holds become too glaring, and the pent social waters gathering 
 head burst through once more and regain their natural levels. 
 Thus Morgan in his " Ancient Society " points out over and 
 over again that the civilised state rests upon territorial and 
 property marks and qualifications, and not upon a personal 
 basis as did the ancient gens, or the tribe ; and that the 
 civilised government correspondingly takes on quite a different 
 character and function from the simple organisation of the 
 gens. He says (p. 124), "Monarchy is incompatible with 
 gentilism." Also with regard to the relation of Property to 
 Civilisation and Government he makes the following pregnant 
 remarks (p. 505) : " It is impossible to over-estimate the 
 influence of property in the civilisation of mankind. It was
 
 CIVILISATION. 31 
 
 the power that brought the Aryan and Semitic nations out ol 
 barbarism into civilisation. The growth of the idea of property 
 in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in 
 becoming its master passion. Governments and Laws are 
 Instituted with primary reference to its creation, protection 
 and enjoyment. It introduced human slavery as an instru- 
 ment in its production ; and after the experience of several 
 thousand years it caused the abolition of slavery upon the 
 discovery that a freeman was a better property-making machine." 
 And in another passage on the same subject, " The dissolution 
 of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of 
 which property is the end and aim ; because such a career 
 contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy is the 
 next higher plane. It will be a revival in a higher form of the 
 liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes." 
 
 The institution of Government is in fact the evidence in 
 social life that man has lost his inner and central control, and 
 therefore must resort to an outward one. Losing touch with 
 the inward Man who is his true guide he declines upon an 
 external law, which must always be false. If each man 
 remained in organic adhesion to the general body of his fellows 
 no serious dis-harmony could occur ; but it is when this vital' 
 unity of the body politic becomes weak that it has to be pre- 
 served by artificial means, and thus it is that with the decay of 
 the primitive and instinctive social life there springs up a form 
 of government which is no longer the democratic expression 
 of the life of the whole people ; but a kind of outside authority 
 and compulsion thrust upon them by a ruling class or caste. 
 
 Perhaps the sincerest, and often though not always the 
 earliest, form of Government is Monarchy. The sentiment of 
 human unity having been already partly but not quite lost, 
 the people choose in order to hold society together a man to 
 rule over them who has this sentiment in a high degree. He
 
 32 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 represents the true Man and therefore the people. This ie 
 often a time of extensive warfare and the formation of nations. 
 And it is interesting in this connection to note that the quite 
 early "Kings" or leaders of each nation just prior to tha 
 civilisation period were generally associated with the highest 
 religious functions, as in the case of the Roman rex, the Greek 
 basileus, the early Egyptian Kings, Moses among the Israelites, 
 the Druid leaders of the Britons, and so on. 
 
 Later, and as the central authority gets more and more 
 shadowy in each man, and the external attraction of Property 
 greater, so it does in Society. The temporal and spiritual 
 powers part company. The king who at first represented the 
 Divine Spirit or soul of society, recedes into the background, 
 and his nobles of high degree (who may be compared to the 
 nobler, more generous, qualities of the mind) begin to take 
 his place. This is the Aristocracy and the Feudal Age the 
 Timocracy of Plato ; and is marked by the appearance of large 
 private tenures of land, and the growth of slavery and 
 serfdom the slavery thus outwardly appearing in society 
 being the symbol of the inward enslavement of the man. 
 
 Then comes the Commercial Age the Oligarchy or Pluto- 
 cracy of Plato. Honor quite gives place to material wealth ; 
 the rulers rule not by personal or hereditary, but by property 
 qualifications. Parliaments and Constitutions and general 
 Palaver are the order of the day. Wage-slavery, usury, mort- 
 gages, and other abominations, indicate the advance of the 
 mortal process. In the individual man gain is the end of ex- 
 istence; industry and scientific cunning are his topmost 
 virtues. 
 
 Last of all the break-up is complete. The individual loses 
 all memory and tradition of his heavenly guide and counter- 
 part ; his nobler passions fail for want of a leader to whom to 
 dedicate themselves ; his industry and his intellect serve but
 
 CIVILISATION. 33 
 
 to minister to his little swarming desires. This is the era of 
 anarchy the democracy of Carlyle ; the rule of the rabble, 
 and mob-law ; caucuses and cackle, competition and universal 
 greed, breaking out in cancerous tyrannies and plutocracies 
 a mere chaos and confusion of society. For just as we saw 
 In the human body, when the inner and positive force of 
 Health has departed from it, that it falls a prey to parasites 
 which overspread and devour it ; so when the central inspira- 
 tion departs out of social life does it writhe with the mere 
 maggots of individual greed, and at length fall under the 
 dominion of the most monstrous egotist who has been bred 
 from its corruption. 
 
 Thus we have briefly sketched the progress of the symptoms 
 of the " disease," which, as said before, runs much (though 
 not quite) the same course in the various nations which it 
 attacks. And if this last stage were really the end of all, and 
 the true Democracy, there were indeed little left to hope for. 
 No words of Carlyle could blast that black enough. But this 
 is no true Democracy. Here in this " each for himself " is no 
 rule of the Demos in every man, nor anything resembling it. 
 Here is no solidarity such as existed in the ancient tribes and 
 primaeval society, but only disintegration and a dust-heap. 
 The true Democracy has yet to come. Here in this present 
 stage is only the final denial of all outward and class govern 
 ment, in preparation for the restoration of the inner and true 
 authority. Here in this stage the task of civilisation comes 
 to an end ; the purport and object of all these centuries is 
 fulfilled ; the bitter experience that mankind had to pass 
 through is completed ; and out of this Death and all the 
 torture and unrest which accompanies it, comes at last the 
 Resurrection. Man has sounded the depths of alienation from 
 his own divine spirit, he has drunk the dregs of the cup of 
 suffering, he has literally descended into Hell ; henceforth ha 
 

 
 34 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 turns, both in the individual and in society, and mounts de- 
 liberately and consciously back again towards the unity which 
 he has lost. 1 
 
 And the false democracy parts aside for the disclosure of 
 the true Democracy which has been formed beneath it which 
 is not an external government at all, but an inward rule the 
 rale of the mass-Man in each unit-man. For no outward 
 government can be anything but a make-shift a temporary 
 hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the grub together while the new 
 life is forming inside a device of the civilisation-period. 
 Farther than this it cannot go, since no true life can rely upon 
 an external support, and when the true life of society comes 
 all its forms will be fluid and spontaneous and volun- 
 tary. 
 
 1 There ia another point worth noting as characteristic of the civilisa- 
 tion-period. This is the abnormal development of the abstract in- 
 tellect in comparison with the physical senses on the one hand, and the 
 moral sense on the other. Such a result might be expected, seeing 
 that abstraction from reality is naturally the great engine of that false 
 individuality or apartness, which it ia the object of Civilisation to pro- 
 duce. As it is, during this period man builds himself an intellectual 
 world apart from the great actual universe around him ; the " ghosts 
 of things " are studied in books ; the student lives indoors, he cannot 
 face the open air his theories " may prove very well in lecture-rooms, 
 yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and along the landscape 
 and flowing currents ; " children are ' ' educated " afar from actual 
 life ; huge phantom-temples of philosophy and science are reared upon 
 the most slender foundations ; and in these he lives defended from 
 actual fact. For as a drop of water when it comes in contact with 
 red-hot iron wraps itself in a cloud of vapor, and is saved from de- 
 struction, so the little mind of man, lest it should touch the burning 
 truth of Nature and God and be consumed, evolves at each point of 
 contact a veil of insubstantial thought which allows it for a time tO 
 exist apart, and becomes the nurse of iU self -consciousness.
 
 CIVILISATION. 35 
 
 IV 
 
 Atn> now, by way of a glimpse into the future after this long 
 digression what is the route that man will take 1 
 
 This is a subject that I hardly dare tackle. " The morning 
 wind ever blows," says Thoreau, " the poem of creation is ua 
 interrupted but few are the ears that hear it." And how 
 can we, gulfed as we are in this present whirlpool, conceive 
 rightly the glory which awaits ust No limits that our 
 present knowledge puts need alarm us ; the impossibilities 
 will yield very easily when the time comes ; and the anato- 
 mical difficulty as to how and where the wings are to grow 
 will vanish when they are felt sprouting ! 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that the tendency will be in- 
 deed is already showing itself towards a return to nature and 
 community of human life. This is the way back to the lost 
 Eden, or rather forward to the new Eden, of which the old 
 was only a figure. Man has to undo the wrappings and the 
 mummydom of centuries, by which he has shut himself from 
 the light of the sun and lain in seeming death, preparing 
 silently his glorious resurrection for all the world like the 
 funny old chrysalis that he is. He has to emerge from houses 
 and all his other hiding places wherein so long ago ashamed (as 
 at the voice of God in the garden) he concealed himself and 
 Nature must once more become his home, as it is the home of 
 the animals and the angels. 
 
 As it is written in the old magical formula : " Man clothes 
 himself to descend, unclothes himself to ascend." Over his 
 spiritual or wind-like body he puts on a material or earthy 
 body ; over his earth-body he puts on the skins of animals and 
 other garments ; then he hides this body in a house behind 
 curtains and stone walla which become to it as secondary
 
 36 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 skins and prolongations of itself. So that between the man 
 and his true life there grows a dense and impenetrable hedge ; 
 and what with the cares and anxieties connected with his 
 earth-body and all its skins, he soon loses the knowledge 
 that he is a Man at all, his true self slumbers in a deep and 
 agelong swoon. 
 
 But the instinct of all who desire to deliver the divine im- 
 ago within them is, in something more than the literal sense, 
 towards unclothing. And the process of evolution or exfolia- 
 tion itself is nothing but a continual unclothing of Nature, by 
 which the perfect human Form which is at the root of it comes 
 nearer and nearer to its manifestion. 
 
 Thus, in order to restore the Health which he has lost, 
 man has In the future to tend in this direction. Life in- 
 doors and in houses has to become a fraction only, instead of 
 the principal part of existence as it is now. Garments 
 similarly have to be simplified. How far this process may ga 
 it is not necessary now to enquire. It is sufficiently obvious 
 that our domestic life and clothing may be at once greatly re- 
 duced in complexity, and with the greatest advantage made 
 subsidiary instead of erected into the fetishes which they are. 
 And everyone may feel assured that each gain in this direc- 
 tion is a gain in true life whether it be the head that goes 
 uncovered to the air of heaven, or the feet that press bare the 
 magnetic earth, or the elementary raiment that allows thro* 
 its meshes the light itself to reach the vital organs. The life 
 of the open air, familiarity with the winds and waves, clean 
 and pure food, the companionship of the animals the very 
 wrestling with the great Mother for his food all these things 
 will tend to restore that relationship which man has so long 
 Jisowned ; and the consequent instreaming of energy into his 
 system will carry him to perfections of health and radiance 
 of being at present unsuspected
 
 CIVILISATION. 37 
 
 Of course, it will be said that many of these things are 
 difficult to realise in our country, that an indoor life, with all 
 its concomitants, is forced upon us by the climate. But if this 
 la to some small though very small extent true, it forms no 
 reason why we should not still take advantage of every oppor- 
 tunity to push in the direction indicated. It must be remem- 
 bered, too, that our climate is greatly of our own creation. 
 If the atmosphere of many of our great towns and of the lands 
 for miles in their neighborhood is devitalised and deadly so 
 that in cold weather it grants to the poor mortal no com- 
 pensating power of resistance, but compels him at peril of his 
 life to swathe himself in great-coats and mufflers the blame is 
 none but ours. It is we who have covered the lands with a 
 pall of smoke, and are walking to our own funerals under it. 
 
 That this climate, however, at its best may not be suited to 
 the highest developments of human life is quite possible. Be- 
 cause Britain has been the scene of some of the greatest 
 episodes of Civilisation, it does not follow that she will keep the 
 lead in the period that is to follow ; and the Higher Communi- 
 ties of the future will perhaps take their rise in warmer lands, 
 where life is richer and fuller, more spontaneous and more 
 generous, than it can be here. 
 
 Another point in this connection is the food question. 
 For the restoration of the central vigor when lost or degenerate, 
 a diet consisting mainly of fruits and grains is most adapted 
 Animal food often gives for the time being a lot of nervous 
 energy and may be useful for special purposes ; but the energy 
 is of a spasmodic feverish kind ; the food has a tendency to 
 inflame the subsidiary centres, and so to diminish the central 
 control. Those who live mainly on animal food are specially 
 liable to disease and not only physically ; for their minds also 
 fall more easily a prey to desires and sorrows. In time* there- 
 fore of grief or mental trouble of any kind, aa well as in times
 
 )8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 of bodily sickness, immediate recourse should be had to the 
 more elementary diet. The body under this diet endures 
 work with less fatigue, is less susceptible to pain, and to cold ; 
 and heals its wounds with extraordinary celerity ; all of which 
 facts point in the same direction. It may be noted, too, that 
 foods of the seed kind by which I mean all manner of fruits, 
 nuts, tubers, grains, eggs, etc. (and I may include milk in its 
 various forms of butter, cheese, curds, and so forth), not only 
 contain by their nature the elements of life in their most con- 
 densed forms, but have the additional advantage that they can 
 be appropriated without injury to any living creature for 
 even the cabbage may inaudibly scream when torn up by the 
 roots and boiled, but the strawberry plant asks us to take of its 
 fruit, and paints it red expressly that we may see and devour 
 it ! Both of which considerations must convince us that this 
 kind of food is most fitted to develop the kernel of man's life. 
 
 Which all means cleanness. The unity of our nature 
 being restored, the instinct of bodily cleanness, both within 
 and without, which is such a marked characteristic of the 
 animals, will again characterise mankind only now instead 
 of a blind instinct it will be a conscious, joyous one ; dirt being 
 only disorder and obstruction. And thus the whole human 
 being, mind and body, becoming clean and radiant from its 
 inmost centre to its farthest circumference "transfigured" 
 the distinction between the words spiritual and material 
 disappears. In the words of Whitman, " objects gross and the 
 unseen soul are one." 
 
 But this return to Nature, and identification in some sort 
 with the great cosmos, does not involve a denial or deprecia- 
 tion of human life and interests. It is not uncommonly sup- 
 posed that there is some kind of antagonism between Man and 
 Nature, and that to recommend a life closer to the latter 
 means mere asceticism and eremitiam ; and unfortunately thii
 
 CIVILISATION. 39 
 
 antagonism does exist to-day, though it certainly will not exist 
 for ever. To-day it is unfortunately perfectly true that Man 
 is the only animal who, instead of adorning and beautifying, 
 makes Nature hideous by his presence. The fox and the 
 squirrel may make their homes in the wood and add to its 
 beauty in so doing ; but when Alderman Smith plants his villa 
 there, the gods pack up their trunks and depart ; they can bear 
 ft no longer. The Bushmen can hide themselves and become 
 indistinguishable on a slope of bare rock ; they twine their 
 naked little yellow bodies together, and look like a heap of dead 
 sticks ; but when the chimney-pot hat and frock-coat appears, 
 the birds fly screaming from the trees. This was the great 
 glory of the Greeks that they accepted and perfected Nature ; as 
 the Parthenon sprang out of the limestone terraces of the 
 Acropolis, carrying the natural lines of the rock by gradations 
 scarce perceptible into the finished and human beauty of frieze 
 and pediment, and as, above, it was open for the blue air of 
 heaven to descend into it for a habitation ; so throughout in 
 all their best work and life did they stand in this close relation to 
 the earth and the sky and to all instinctive and elemental things, 
 admitting no gulf between themselves and them, but only per- 
 fecting their expressiveness and beauty. And some day we shall 
 again understand this which, in the very sunrise of true Art, 
 the Greeks so well understood. Possibly some day we shall 
 again build our houses or dwelling places BO simple and 
 elemental in character that they will fit in the nooks of the 
 hills or along the banks of the streams or by the edges of the 
 woods without disturbing the harmony of the landscape or the 
 songs of the birds. Then the great temples, beautiful on every 
 height, or by the shores of the rivers and the lakes, will be the 
 storehouses of all precious and lovely things. There men, women 
 and children will come to share in the great and wonderful com- 
 mon life, the gardens around will be sacred to the unharmed
 
 40 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CUR&. 
 
 and welcome animals ; there all store and all facilities of books 
 and music and art for every one, there a meeting place for 
 social life and intercourse, there dances and games and feasts. 
 Every village, every little settlement, will have such hall or 
 halls. No need for private accumulations. Gladly will each 
 man, and more gladly still each woman, take his or her 
 treasures, except what are immediately or necessarily in use, 
 to the common centre, where their value will be increased a 
 hundred and a thousand fold by the greater number of those 
 who can enjoy them, and where far more perfectly and with 
 far less toil they can be tended than if scattered abroad in 
 private hands. At one stroke half the labor and all the 
 anxiety of domestic caretaking will be annihilated. The private 
 dwelling places, no longer costly and labyrinthine in proportion 
 to the value and number of the treasures they contain, will 
 need no longer to have doors and windows jealously closed 
 against fellow man or mother nature. The sun and 
 air will have access to them, the indwellers will have un- 
 fettered egress. Neither man nor woman will be tied in 
 slavery to the lodge which they inhabit; and in becoming 
 once more a part of nature, the human habitation will at length 
 cease to be what it is now for at least half the human race a 
 prison. 
 
 Men often ask about the new Architecture what, and of what 
 sort, it is going to be. But to such a question there can be no 
 answer till a new understanding of life has entered into 
 people's minds, and then the answer will be clear enough. 
 For as the Greek Temples and the Gothic Cathedrals were 
 built by people who themselves lived but frugally as we should 
 think, and were ready to dedicate their best work and chief 
 treasure to the gods and the common life ; and as to-day when 
 we must needs have for ourselves spacious and luxurious 
 villas, we seem to be unable to design a decent church or
 
 CIVILISA TION. 41 
 
 public building ; so it will not be till we once more find oui 
 main interest and life in the life of the community aud the 
 gods that a new spirit will inspire our architecture. Then 
 when our Temples and Common Halls are not designed to glorify 
 an individual architect or patron, but are built for the use of free 
 men and women, to front the sky and the sea and the sun, to 
 spring out of the earth, companionable with the trees and the 
 rocks, not alien in spirit from the sunlit globe itself or the depth 
 of the starry night then I say their form and structure will 
 quickly determine themselves, and men will have no difficulty in 
 making them beautiful. And similarly with the homes or 
 dwelling places of the people. Various as these may be for 
 the various wants of men, whether for a single individual or 
 for a family, or for groups of individuals or families, whether to 
 the last degree simple, or whether more or less ornate and 
 complex, still the new conception, the new needs of life, will 
 necessarily dominate them and give them form by a law 
 unfolding from within. 
 
 In such new human life then its fields, its farms, its 
 workshops, its cities always the work of man perfecting and 
 beautifying the lands, aiding the efforts of the sun and soil, 
 giving voice to the desire of the mute earth in such new 
 communal life near to nature, BO far from any asceticism or 
 inhospitality, we are fain to see far more humanity and 
 sociability than ever before : an infinite helpfulness and sym- 
 pathy, as between the children of a common mother. Mutual 
 help and combination will then have become spontaneous and 
 instinctive : each man contributing to the service of his 
 neighbor as inevitably and naturally as the right hand goes 
 to help the left in the human body and for precisely the 
 same reason. Every man think of it! will do the work 
 which he Likes, which he desires to do, which is obviously 
 before him to do, and which he knows will b useful without
 
 42 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 bhought of wages or reward ; and the reward will come to him 
 as inevitably and naturally as in the human body the blood 
 flows to the member which is exerting itself. All the endless 
 burden of the adjustments of labor and wages, of the war of 
 duty and distaste, of want and weariness, will be thrown 
 aside all the huge waste of work done against the grain will 
 be avoided ; out of the endless variety of human nature will 
 spring a perfectly natural and infinite variety of occupations, 
 all mutually contributive ; Society at last will be free and the 
 human being after long ages will have attained to deliverance. 
 
 This is the Communism which Civilisation has always hated, 
 as it hated Christ. Yet it is inevitable ; for the cosmical man, 
 the instinctive elemental man accepting and crowning nature, 
 necessarily fulfils the universal law of nature. As to External 
 Government and Law, they will disappear ; for they are only 
 the travesties and transitory substitutes of Inward Government 
 and Order. Society in its final state is neither a Monarchy, 
 nor an Aristocracy, nor a Democracy, nor an Anarchy, and yet 
 in another sense it is all of these. It is an Anarchy because 
 there is no outward rule, but only an inward and invisible 
 spirit of life ; it is a Democracy because it is the rule of the 
 Mass-man, or Demos, in each unit man ; it is an Aristocracy 
 because there are degrees and ranks of such inward power in 
 all men ; and it is a Monarchy because all these ranks and 
 powers merge in a perfect unity and central control at last. 
 And so it appears that the outer forms of government which 
 belong to the Civilisation-period are only the expression in 
 separate external symbols of the facts of the true inner life of 
 society. 
 
 And just as thus the various external forms of government 
 during the Civilisation-period find their justification and inter- 
 pretation in the ensuing period, so will it be with the 
 mechanical and other products of the present time ; they will
 
 CIVILISATION. 43 
 
 be taken up, and find their proper place and use in the time to 
 dome. They will not be refused ; but they will have to be 
 brought into subjection. Our locomotives, machinery, tele- 
 graphic and postal systems ; our houses, furniture, clothes, 
 books ; our fearful and wonderful cookery, strong drinks, teas, 
 tobaccos ; our medical and surgical appliances ; high-faluting 
 sciences and philosophies, and all other engines hitherto 
 of human bewilderment, have simply to be reduced to abject 
 subjection to the real man. All these appliances, and a 
 thousand others such as we hardly dream of, will come hi to 
 perfect his power and increase his freedom ; but they will not 
 be the objects of a mere fetish-worship as now. Man will 
 use them, instead of their using him. His real life will 
 lie in a region far beyond them. But in thus for a moment 
 denying and " mastering " the products of Civilisation, 
 will he for the first time discover their true value, and 
 reap from them an enjoyment unknown before. 
 
 The same with the moral powers. As said before, 
 the knowledge of good and evil at a certain point passes 
 away, or becomes absorbed into a higher knowledge. 
 The perception of Sin goes with a certain weakness in the 
 man. As long as there is conflict and division within 
 him, BO long does he seem to perceive conflicting and 
 opposing principles in the world without. As long as 
 the objects of the outer world excite emotions in him which 
 pass beyond his control, so long do those objects stand 
 as the signals of evil of disorder and sin. Not that the 
 objects are bad in themselves, or even the emotions which they 
 excite, but that all through this period these things serve to 
 the man as indications of hit weakness. But when the 
 central power is restored in man and all things are reduced to 
 his service, it is impossible for him to see badness in anything. 
 The bodily is no longer antagonistic to the spiritual love, but
 
 44 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 is absorbed into It. All his passions take their places perfectly 
 naturally, and become when the occasions arise the vehicles of 
 bis expression. Vices under existing conditions are vices 
 simply because of the inordinate and disturbing influence they 
 exercise, but will cease again to be vices when the man 
 regains his proper command. Thus Socrates having a clean 
 soul in a clean body could drink his boon companions under 
 the table and then go out himself to take the morning air 
 what was a blemish and defect in them being simply an added 
 power of enjoyment to himself! 
 
 The point of difference throughout (being the transference of 
 the centre of gravity of life and consciousness from the partial 
 to the universal man), is symbolized by the gradual resumption 
 of more universal conditions. That is to say that during the 
 civilisation-period, the body being systematically wrapped in 
 clothes, the head alone represents man the little finnikin, 
 intellectual, self-conscious man in centra-distinction to the 
 cosmical man represented by the entirety of the bodily organs. 
 The body has to be delivered from its swathings in order that 
 the cosmical consciousness may once more reside in the human 
 breast. We have to become " all face " again as the savage 
 said of himself. 1 
 
 Where the cosmic self is, there is no more self-consciousness. 
 The body and what is ordinarily called the self are felt to be 
 only parts of the true self, and the ordinary distinctions of 
 inner and outer, egotism and altruism, etc., lose a good deal of 
 their value. Thought no longer returns upon the local self as 
 the chief object of regard, but consciousness is continually 
 radiant from it, filling the body and overflowing upon external 
 Nature. Thus the Sun in the physical world is the allegory ol 
 
 'See Alonso di Ovalle's Account of the Kingdom of Chile in Churchill's 
 Collection of Voyages and TravtU, 1724.
 
 CIVILISATION. 45 
 
 the true self. The worshipper must adore the Sun, he must 
 saturate himself with sunlight, and take the physical Sun into 
 himself. Those who live by fire and candle-light are filled with 
 phantoms ; their thoughts are Will-o'-th'-wisp-like images 
 of themselves, and they are tormented by a horrible self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 And when the Civilisation-period has passed away, the old 
 Nature-religion perhaps greatly grown will come back. 
 This immense stream of religious life which beginning far 
 beyond the horizon of earliest history has been deflected into 
 various metaphysical and other channels of Judaism, 
 Christianity, Buddhism, and the like during the historical 
 period, will once more gather itself together to float on its 
 bosom all the arks and sacred vessels of human progress. 
 Man will once more feel his unity with his fellows, he will 
 feel his unity with the animals, with the mountains and the 
 streams, with the earth itself and the slow lapse of the 
 constellations, not as an abstract dogma of Science or Theology, 
 but as a living and ever-present fact. Ages back this has 
 been understood better than now. Our Christian ceremonial 
 is saturated with sexual and astronomical symbols ; and long 
 before Christianity existed, the sexual and astronomical were 
 the main forms of religion. That is to*say, men instinctively 
 felt and worshipped the great life coming to them through 
 Sex, the great life coming to them from the deeps of Heaven. 
 They deified both. They placed their gods their own human 
 forms hi sex, they placed them in the sky. And not only 
 so, but wherever they felt this kindred human life in the 
 animals, in the ibis, the bull, the lamb, the snake, the 
 crocodile ; hi the trees and flowers, the oak, the ash, the 
 laurel, the hyacinth ; in the streams and water-falls, on the 
 mountainsides or in the depths of the sea they placed them. 
 The whole universe was full of a life which, tho' not always
 
 46 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 friendly, was human and kindred to their own, fdt by them, 
 not reasoned about, but simply perceived. To the early man 
 the notion of his having a separate individuality could only 
 with difficulty occur ; hence he troubled himself not with the 
 suicidal questionings concerning the whence and whither 
 which now vex the modern mind. 1 For what causes these 
 questions to be asked is simply the wretched feeling of 
 isolation, actual or prospective, which man necessarily has 
 when he contemplates himself as a separate atom in this 
 immense universe the gulf which lies below seemingly ready 
 to swallow him, and the anxiety to find some mode of escape. 
 But when he feels once more that he, that he himself, is 
 absolutely mdivisibly and indestructibly a part of this great 
 whole why then there is no gulf into which he can possibly 
 fall ; when he is sensible of the fact, why then the how of its 
 realisation, tho' losing none of its interest, becomes a matter 
 for whose solution he can wait and work in faith and con- 
 tentment of mind. The Sun or Sol, visible image of his very 
 Soul, closest and most vital to him of all mortal things, 
 occupying the illimitable heaven, feeding all with its life ; the 
 Moon, emblem and nurse of his own reflective thought, the 
 conscious Man, measurer of Time, mirror of the Sun; the 
 planetary passions wandering to and fro, yet within bounds ; 
 the starry destinies ; the changes of the earth, and the seasons ; 
 the upward growth and unfoldment of all organic life; the 
 emergence of the perfect Man, towards whose birth all creation 
 groans and travails all these things will return to become 
 realities, and to be the frame or setting of his supra-mundane 
 life. The meaning of the old religions will come back to him. 
 On the high tops once more gathering he will celebrate 
 with naked dances the glory of the human form ard the great 
 
 iSa* Appendix, p. 50.
 
 CIVILISATION, 
 
 processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of the young 
 moon which now after a hundred centuries comes back laden 
 with such wondrous associations all the yearnings and the 
 dreams and the wonderment of the generations of mankind 
 the worship of Astarte and of Diana, of Isis or the Virgin 
 Mary ; once more in sacred groves will he reunite the passion 
 and the delight of human love with his deepest feelings of the 
 sanctity and beauty of Nature ; or in the open, standing un- 
 covered to the Sun, will adore the emblem of the everlasting 
 splendor which shines within. The same sense of vital 
 perfection and exaltation which can be traced in the early 
 and pre-civilisation peoples only a thousand times intensified, 
 defined, illustrated and purified will return to irradiate the 
 redeemed and delivered Man. 
 
 In suggesting thus the part which Civilisation has played in 
 history, I am aware that the word itself is difficult to define 
 is at best only one of those phantom-generalisations which the 
 mind is forced to employ ; also that the account I have given 
 of it is sadly imperfect, leaning perhaps too much to the 
 merely negative and destructive aspect of this thousand-year 
 long lapse of human evolution. I would also remind the 
 reader that though it is perfectly true that under the dis- 
 solving influence of civilisation empire after empire has gone 
 under and disappeared, and the current of human progress 
 time after time has only been restored again by a fresh influx 
 of savagery, yet its corruptive tendency has never had a quite 
 unlimited fling ; but that all down the ages of its dominance 
 over the earth we can trace the tradition of a healing and 
 redeeming power at work in the human breast and an anticipa- 
 tion of the second advent of the son of man. Certain institu- 
 tions, too, such as Art and the Family (though it seems not
 
 48 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 unlikely that both of these will greatly change when the 
 special conditions of their present existence have disappeared), 
 have served to keep the sacred flame alive; the latter pre- 
 serving in island-miniatures, as it were, the ancient communal 
 humanity when the seas of individualism and greed covered 
 the general face of the earth ; the former keeping up, so to 
 speak, a navel-cord of contact with Nature, and a means of 
 utterance of primal emotions else unsatisfiable in the world 
 around. 
 
 And if it seem extravagant to suppose that Society will ever 
 emerge from the chaotic condition of strife and perplexity in 
 which we find it all down the lapse of historical time, or to 
 hope that the civilisation-process which has terminated fatally 
 so Invariably in the past will ever eventuate in the establish- 
 ment of a higher and more perfect health-condition, we may 
 for our consolation remember that to-day there are features in 
 the problem which have never been present before. In the 
 first place, to-day Civilisation is no longer isolated, as in the 
 ancient world, in surrounding floods of savagery and barbarism, 
 but it practically covers the globe, and the outlying savagery 
 is so feeble as not possibly to be a menace to it. This may at 
 first appear a drawback, for (it will be said) if Civilisation 
 be not renovated by the influx of external Savagery its own 
 Inherent flaws will destroy society all the sooner. And there 
 would be some truth in this if it were not for the following 
 consideration: Namely, that while for the first time in His- 
 tory Civilisation is now practically continuous over the globe, 
 now also for the first time can we descry forming in continuous 
 line within its very structure the forces which are destined to 
 destroy it and to bring about the new order. While hitherto 
 isolated communisms, as suggested, have existed here and 
 there and from time to time, now for the first time in History 
 both the masses and the thinkers of all the advanced nations
 
 CIVILISATION. 49 
 
 of the world are consciously feeling their way towards the 
 establishment of a socialistic and communal life on a vast scale. 
 The present competitive society is more and more rapidly be- 
 coming a mere dead formula and husk within which the out- 
 lines of the new and human society are already discernible. 
 Simultaneously and as if to match this growth, a move towards 
 Nature and Savagery is for the first time taking place from 
 within, instead of being forced upon society from without. 
 The nature-movement begun years ago in literature and art ig 
 now among the more advanced sections of the civilised world 
 rapidly realising itself in actual life, going so far even as a 
 denial, among some, of machinery and the complex products of 
 Civilisation, and developing among others into a gospel of 
 salvation by sandals and sunbaths 1 It is in these two move- 
 ments towards a complex human Communism and towards, 
 individual freedom and Savagery in some sort balancing and 
 correcting each other, and both visibly growing up within 
 tho' utterly foreign to our present-day Civilisation, that we 
 have fair grounds I think for looking forward to its cure. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 l8EE p. 9] The following remarks by Mr. H. B. Cotterill on the natives 
 around Lake Nyassa, among whom he lived at a time, 1876-8, when 
 the region was almost unvisited, may be of interest. " In regard of 
 merely ' animal ' development and well-being, that is in the delicate 
 perfection of bodily faculties (perceptive), the African savage is as a 
 rule incomparably superior to us. One feels like a child, utterly de- 
 pendent on them, when traveling or hunting with them. It is true 
 that many may be found (especially amongst the weaker tribes that 
 have been slave-hunted or driven into barren corners) who are half- 
 starved and wizened, hat as a rule they are splendid animals. In 
 character there is a great want of that strength which in the educated 
 civilised man is secured by the roots striking out into the Past and 
 Future and in spite of their immense perceptive superiority they feel 
 and acknowledge the superior force of character in the white man. 
 
 D
 
 50 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 They are the very converse of the Stoic self -sufficient sage like children 
 in their ' admiration ' and worship of the Unknown. Hence their absolute 
 want of Conceit, though they possess self-command and dignity. 
 They are, to those they love and respect, faithful and devoted 
 their faithfulness and truthfulness are dictated by no ' categorical 
 imperative,' but by personal affection. Towards an enemy they 
 can be, without any conscientious scruples, treacherous and in- 
 humanly cruel. I should say that there is scarcely any possible idea 
 that is so foreign to the savage African mind as that of general 
 philanthropy or enemy-love." 
 
 "In endurance the African savage beats us hollow (except trained 
 athletes). On one occasion my men rowed my boat with 10 foot oars 
 against the wind in a choppy sea for 25 hours at one go, across Kuwirwe 
 Bay, about 60 miles. They never once stopped or left their seats 
 just handed round a handful of rice now and then. I was at the helm 
 all the time and had enough of it ! ... They carry 80 Ibs on their 
 heads for 10 hours through swamps and jungles. Four of my men 
 carried a sick man weighing 14 stones in a hammock for 200 miles, 
 right across the dreaded M alikata Swamp. But for sudden emergencies, 
 equalls, etc, they are nowhere." 
 
 [See p. 10] " So lovely a scene made easily credible the suggestion, 
 otherwise highly probable, that the Golden Age was no mere fancy of 
 the poets, but a reminiscence of the facts of social life in its primitive 
 organisation of village and house-communities." (J. S. Stuart-Glennie'a 
 Europe, and Asia, ch. I., Servia.) 
 
 [See p. 46] "It was only on the up-break of the primitive socialisms 
 that the passionate d<esire of, and therefore belief in, individual Im- 
 mortality arose. With an intense feeling, not of an independent 
 individual life, but of a dependent common life, there is no passionate 
 desire of, though there may be more or less of belief in, a continuance 
 after death of individual existence." (Ibid, p. 161.)
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: 
 A CRITICISM. 
 
 iravrl \6y<p Xoyos wros avriKemu. 
 
 TT is one of the difficulties which meet anyone who suggests 
 that modern science is not wholly satisfactory, that it is 
 immediately assumed that the writer is covertly defending 
 what Ingersoll calls the " rib-story," or that he wishes to restore 
 belief in the literal inspiration of the Bible. But, religious 
 controversy apart, and while admitting that Science has done a 
 great work in cleaning away the kitchen-middens of super- 
 stition and opening the path to clearer and saner views of 
 the world, it is possible and there is already a growing feeling 
 that way that her positive contributions to our comprehension 
 of the order of the universe have in late times been 
 disappointing, and that even her methods are only of limited 
 applicability. After a glorious burst of perhaps fifty years, 
 amid great acclamations and good hopes that the crafty old 
 universe was going to be caught in her careful net, Science, it 
 must be confessed, now finds herself in almost every direction 
 in the most hopeless quandaries ; and, whether the rib-story be 
 true or not, has at any rate provided no very satisfactory 
 substitute for it. And the reason of this failure is very 
 obvious. It goes with a certain defect in the human mind, 
 which, as we have pointed out (note, p. 34), necessarily belongs 
 to the Civilisation-period the tendency, namely, to separate the
 
 5 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 logical and intellectual part of man from the emotional and in- 
 stinctive, and to give it a locus standi of its own. Science has 
 failed because she has attempted to carry out the investigation 
 of nature from the intellectual side alone neglecting the other 
 constituents necessarily involved in the problem. She has 
 failed because she has attempted an impossible task ; for the 
 discovery of a permanently valid and purely intellectual 
 representation of the universe is simply impossible. Such a 
 thing does not exist. 
 
 The various theories and views of nature which we hold are 
 merely the fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of 
 human growth each set of theories and views belonging 
 organically to the moral and emotional stage which has been 
 reached, and being in some sort the expression of it ; so that 
 the attempt at any given time to set up an explanation ol 
 phenomena which shall be valid in itself and without reference to 
 the mental condition of those who set it up, necessarily ends in 
 failure ; and the present state of confusion and contradiction 
 in which modern Science finds itself is merely the result of such 
 attempt. 
 
 Of course this limitation of the validity of Science has been 
 recognised by most of those who have thought about the 
 matter ; * but it is so commonly overlooked, and latterly the 
 notion has so far gained ground that the " laws " of science are 
 immutable facts and eternal statements of verity, that it may 
 be worth while to treat the subject a little more in detail. 
 
 The method of Science is the method of all mundane 
 knowledge; it is that of limitation or actual ignorance. 
 Placed in face of the great uncontained unity of Nature we 
 can only deal with it in thought by selecting certain details 
 and isolating those (either wilfully or unconsciously) from the 
 rest. That is right enough. But hi doing so in isolating 
 auch and such details we practically beg the question we are 
 * SM not*, p. U
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM 
 
 In search of ; and, moreover, in supposing such isolation we 
 suppose what is false, and therefore vitiate our conclusion. 
 From these two radical defects of all intellectual inquiry we 
 cannot escape. The views of Science are like the views of a 
 mountain ; each is only possible as long as you limit yourself 
 to a certain stand-point. Move your position, and the view is 
 changed. 
 
 Perhaps the word "species" will illustrate our meaning as 
 well as any word ; and, in a sense, the word is typical of the 
 method of Science. I see a dog for the first time. It is a fox- 
 hound. Then I see a second fox-hound, and a third and a 
 fourth. Presently I form from these few instances a general 
 conception of " dog." But after a time I see a grey-hound and 
 a terrier and a mastiff, and my old conception is destroyed. A 
 new one has to be formed, and then a new one and a new one. 
 Now I overlook the whole race of civilised dogs and am 
 satisfied with my wisdom ; but presently I come upon some 
 wild dogs, and study the habits of the wolf and the fox. 
 Geology turns me up some links, and my conception of dog 
 melts away like a lump of ice into surrounding water. My 
 species exists no more. As long as I knew a few of the facts I 
 could talk very wise about them; or if I limited myself 
 arbitrarily, as we will say, to a study only of animals in 
 England at the present day, I could classify them ; but widen 
 the bounds of my knowledge, the area of observation, and all 
 my work has to be done over again. My species is not a valid 
 fact of Nature, but a fiction arising out of my own ignorance 
 or arbitrary isolation of the objects observed. 
 
 Or to take an instance from Astronomy. We are accustomed 
 to say that the path of the moon is an ellipse. But this is a 
 very loose statement. On enquiry we find that, owing to 
 perturbations supposed to be produced by the sun, the path 
 deviates considerably from an ellipse. In fact in strict
 
 54 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 calculations it is taken as being a certain ellipse only for an 
 instant the next instant it is supposed to be a portion of 
 another ellipse. We might then call the path an irregular 
 curve somewhat resembling an ellipse. This is a new view. 
 But on further enquiry it appears that, while the moon is going 
 round the earth, the earth itself is speeding on through space 
 about the sun in consequence of which the actual path of the 
 moon does not in the least resemble an ellipse ! Finally the 
 sun itself is in motion with regard to the fixed stars, and they 
 are in movement too. What then is the path of the moon f 
 No one knows ; we have not the faintest idea the word itself 
 ceases to have any assignable meaning. It is true that if we 
 agree to ignore the perturbations produced by the sun as in fact 
 we do ignore perturbations produced by the planets and other 
 bodies and if we agree to ignore the motion of the earth, and 
 the flight of the solar system through space, and even the 
 movement of any centre round which that may be speeding, 
 we may then say that the moon moves in an ellipse. But this 
 has obviously nothing to do with actual facts. The moon doet 
 not move in an ellipse not even " relatively to the earth " 
 and probably never has done and never will do so. It may be 
 a convenient view or fiction to say that it would do so under 
 such and such circumstances but it is still only a fiction. To 
 attempt to isolate a small portion of the phenomena from the 
 rest in a universe of which the unity is one of Science's most 
 cherished convictions, is obviously self-stultifying and useless. 
 But you say it can be proved by mathematics that the ellipse 
 would be the path under these conditions ; to which I reply 
 that the mathematical proof, though no doubt cogent to the 
 human mind (as at present constituted in most people), is 
 open to the same objection that it does not deal with actual 
 facts. It deals with a mental supposition, i.e., that there are 
 only two bodies acting on each other a case which never hag
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM 55 
 
 occurred and never can occur and then, assuming the law of 
 gravitation (which is just the thing which has to be proved), 
 it arrives at a mental formula, the ellipse. But to argue from 
 this process that the ellipse is really a thing in Nature, and 
 that the heavenly bodies do move or even tend to move in 
 ellipses, is obviously a most unwarrantable leap in the dark. 
 Finally you argue that the leap is warranted because, by 
 assuming that the moon and planets move in ellipses, you 
 can actually foretell things that happen, as for instance the 
 occurrence of eclipses ; and in reply to that I can only say 
 that Tycho Brahe" foretold eclipses almost as well by assuming 
 that the heavenly bodies moved in epicycles, and that modern 
 astronomers actually do apply the epicycle theory in their 
 mathematical formulae. The epicycles were an assumption 
 made for a certain purpose, and the ellipses are an assumption 
 made for the same purpose. In some respects the ellipse is a 
 more convenient fiction than the epicycle, but it is no less a 
 fiction. 
 
 In other words with regard to this " path of the moon " 
 (as with regard to any other phenomenon of Nature) our 
 knowledge of it must be either absolute or relative. But we 
 cannot know the absolute path ; and as to the relative, why 
 all we can say is that it does not exist (any more than species 
 exists) we cannot break up Nature so ; it is not a thing in 
 Nature but in our own minds it is a view and a fiction. 
 
 Again, let us take an example from Physics Boyle's law of 
 the compressibility of gases. This law states that, the 
 temperature remaining constant, the volume of a given 
 quantity of gas is inveisely proportional to its pressure. It is 
 a law which has been made a good deal of, and at one time 
 was thought to be true, i.e., it was thought to be a statement 
 of fact. A more extended and careful observation, however, 
 shows that it is only true under so many limitations, that, like
 
 $6 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 the ellipse in Astronomy, it must be regarded as a convenient 
 fiction and nothing more. It appears that air follows the 
 supposed law pretty well, but not by any means exactly except 
 within very narrow limits of pressure ; other gases, such as 
 carbonic acid and hydrogen, deviate from it very considerably 
 some more than others, and some in one direction and some 
 in the opposite. It was found, among other things, that the 
 nearer a gas was to its liquefying point, the greater was the 
 deviation from the supposed law, and the conclusion was 
 jumped at that the law was true for perfect gases only. This 
 idea of a perfect gas of course involved the assumption that 
 gases, as they get farther and farther removed from their 
 liquefying point, reach at last a fixed and stable condition, 
 when no further change in their qualities takes place at any 
 rate for a very long time and Boyle's law was supposed to 
 apply to this condition. Since then, however, it has been 
 discovered that there is an ultra-gaseous state of matter, and 
 on all sides it is becoming abundantly clear that the change in 
 the condition of matter from the liquid state to the ultra- 
 gaseous state is perfectly continuous through all modifications 
 of liquidity and condensation and every degree of perfection 
 and imperfection of gassiness to the utmost rarity of the 
 fourth state. At what point, then, does Boyle's law really 
 apply ? Obviously it applies exactly at only one point in this 
 long ascending scale at one metaphysical point and at 
 every other point it is incorrect. But no gas in Nature 
 remains or can be maintained just at one point in the scale of 
 its innumerable changes. Consequently all we can say is that 
 out of the innumerable different states that gases are capable 
 of, and the innumerable different laws of compressibility which 
 they therefore follow, we could theoretically find one state to 
 which would correspond the law of compressibility called 
 Boyle's law ; and that if we could preserve a gas in that state
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 57 
 
 (which we can't) Boyle's law really would be true just for that 
 case. la other words, the law is metaphysical. It has no 
 real existence. It is a convenient view or fiction, arising in 
 the first place out of ignorance, and only tenable as long as 
 further observation is limited or wilfully ignored. 
 
 This then is the Method of Science. It consists in forming 
 a law or statement by only looking at a small portion of the 
 facts ; then when the other facts come in the law or statement 
 gradually fades away again. Conrad Gessner and other early 
 zoologists began by classifying animals according to the 
 number of their horns ! Political Economy begins by classify- 
 ing social action under a law of Supply and Demand. When 
 people believed that the earth was flat they generalised the 
 facts connected with the fall of heavy bodies into a conception 
 of "up and down." These were two opposite directions in 
 space. Heavy bodies took the " downward ; " it was their 
 nature. But in time, and as fresh facts came in, it became 
 impossible to group animals any longer by their horns ; " up 
 and down " ceased to have a meaning when it was known that 
 the earth was round. Then fresh laws and statements had to 
 be formed. In the last-mentioned case it being conceived 
 that the earth was the centre of the universe the new law 
 supposed was that all heavy bodies tended to the centre of the 
 earth as such. This was all right and satisfactory for a while ; 
 but presently it appeared that the earth was not the centre of 
 the universe, and that some heavy bodies such as the 
 satellites of Jupiter did not in fact tend to the centre of the 
 earth at all. Another lump of ignorance (which had enabled 
 the old generalisation to exist) was removed, and a new 
 generalisation, that of universal gravitation, was after a time 
 formed. But it is probable that this law is only conceived of 
 as true thro' our ignorance ; nay it is certain that belief in 
 its truth presents the gravest difficulties.
 
 $8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 In fact here we come upon an important point. It IB 
 sometimes said that, granting the above arguments and the 
 partiality and defectivenees of the laws of Science, still they 
 are approximations to the truth, and as each fresh fact is intro- 
 duced the consequent modification of the old law brings us 
 nearer and nearer to a limit of rigorous exactness which we 
 shall reach at last if we only have patience enough. But is 
 this so? What kind of rigorous statement shall we reach 
 when we have got all the facts int Remembering that 
 Nature is one, and that if we try to get a rigorous statement 
 for one set of phenomena (as say the lunar theory) by isolating 
 them from the rest, we are thereby condemning ourselves 
 beforehand to a false conclusion, is it not evident that our 
 limit is at all times infinitely far off? If one knew all the 
 facts relating to a given inquiry except two or three, one 
 might reasonably suppose that one was near a limit of exact- 
 ness in one's knowledge ; but seeing that in our investigation 
 of Nature we only know two or three, so to speak, out of a 
 million, it is obvious that at any moment the fresh law arising 
 from increased experience may completely upset our former 
 calculations. There is a difference between approximating to 
 a wall and approximating to the North Star. In the one case 
 you are tending to a speedy conclusion of your labors, in th 
 other case you are only going in a certain direction. The 
 theories of Science generally belong under the second head. 
 They mark the direction which the human mind is taking at 
 ihe moment in question, but they mark no limits. At each 
 point the appearance of a limit is introduced which becomes, 
 like a mirage in the desert, an object of keen pursuit ; but the 
 limit is not really there it is only an effect of the standpoint, 
 and disappears again after a time as the observer moves. In 
 the case of gravitation there is for the moment an appearance 
 of finality in the law of the inverse square of the distance,
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 59 
 
 but this arises probably from the fact that the law is derived 
 from a limited area of observation only, namely the move- 
 ments (at great distances from each other) of some of the 
 heavenly bodies. * The Cavendish and Schehallien experiments 
 do not show more than that the law at ordinary distances on 
 the earth's surface does not vary very much from the above ; 
 while the so-called molecular forces compel us (unless we make 
 the very artificial assumption that a variety of attractions and 
 repulsions coexist in matter alongside of, and yet totally dis- 
 tinct from, the attraction of gravitation) to suppose very great 
 modifications of the law for small distances. In fact, as we 
 saw of Boyle's law before the Newtonian law is probably 
 metaphysical true under certain limited conditions and the 
 appearance of finality has been given to it by the fact that our 
 observations have been made under such or similar conditions. 
 When we extend our observation into quite other regions of 
 space, the law of the inverse square ceases to appear as even 
 an approximation to the truth as, for instance, the law of the 
 inverse fifth power has been thought to be nearer the mark 
 for small molecular distances. 
 
 And indeed the state of the great theories of Science in the 
 present day the confusion in which the Atomic theory of 
 physics finds itself, the dismal insufficiency of the Darwin 
 theory of the survival of the fittest ; the collapse in late times 
 
 1 It is not generally realised how feeble a force gravitation is. It is 
 calculated (Encycl. Brit., Art. Gravitation) that two masses, each weigh- 
 ing 415,000 tons, and placed a mile apart, would exert on each other 
 an attractive force of only one pound. If one, therefore, was as far 
 from the other as the moon is from the earth, their attraction would 
 only amount to 57^0 j|oo oooth ^ a P oun< l. This is a small force to govern 
 the movement of a body weighing 415,000 tons 1 and it is easy to see 
 that a slight variation in the law of the force might for a long period 
 pass undetected, though in the course of hundreds of centuries it might 
 become of the greatest importance
 
 60 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 of one of the fundamental theories of Astronomy, namely that 
 of the stability of the lunar and planetary orbits ; the cata- 
 clysms and convulsions which Geology seems just now to be 
 undergoing; the appalling and indeed insurmountable difficulties 
 which attach to the Undulatory theory of Light; the final 
 wreck and abandonment of the Value-theory, the foundation- 
 theory of Political Economy all these things do not seem to 
 point to very near limits of rigorous exactness ! An im- 
 pregnable theory, or one nearing the limit of impregnability, is 
 in fact as great an absurdity as an impregnable armor-plate. 
 Certainly, given the cannon-balls, you can generally find an 
 armor-plate which will be proof against them ; but given the 
 armor-plate, you can always find cannon-balls which will 
 smash it up. 
 
 The method of Science, as being a method of artificial limi- 
 tation or actual ignorance, is curiously illustrated by a con- 
 lideration of its various branches. I have taken some examples 
 from Astronomy, which is considered the most exact of the 
 physical sciences. Now does it not seem curious that Astronomy 
 the study of the heavenly bodies, which are the most distant 
 from us of all bodies, and most difficult to observe should yet 
 be the most perfect of the sciences 1 Yet the reason is obvious. 
 Astronomy is the most perfect science because we know least about 
 it because our ignorance of the actual phenomena is most 
 profound. Situated in fact as we are, on a speck in space, 
 with our observations limited to periods of time which, com- 
 pared with the stupendous flights of the stars, are merely 
 momentary and evanescent, we are in somewhat the position 
 of a mole surveying a railway track and the flight of locomo- 
 tives. And as a man seeing a very small arc of a very vast 
 circle easily mistakes it for a straight line, so we are easily 
 satisfied with cheap deductions and solutions in Astronomy, 
 which a more extended experience would cause us to reject.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 61 
 
 The man may have a long way to go along his " straight line " 
 before he discovers that it is a curve; he may have much 
 farther to go along his curve before he discovers that it is not 
 a circle; and much farther still to go before he finds out 
 whether it is an ellipse or a spiral or a parabola, or none of 
 these ; yet what curve it is will make an enormous difference 
 in his ultimate destination. So with the astronomer ; 
 and yet Astronomy is allowed to pass as an exact 
 science ! l 
 
 Well then, as in Astronomy we get an " exact science " be- 
 cause the facts and phenomena are on such a tremendous 
 scale that we only see a minute portion of them just a few 
 details so to speak and our ignorance therefore allows us to 
 
 1 As another instance of the same thing, let me quote a passage from 
 Maxwell's " Theory of Heat," p. 31 ; the italics are mine : " In our de- 
 scription of the physical properties of bodies as related to heat we hav 
 begun with solid bodies, as those which we can most easily handle, and 
 have gone on to liquids, which we can keep in open vessels, and have 
 now come to gases, which will escape from open vessels, and which are 
 generally invisible. This is the order which is most natural in our 
 first study of these different states. But as soon as we have been 
 made familiar with the most prominent features of these different 
 conditions of matter, the most scientific course of study is in the reverse 
 order, beginning with gases, on account of the greater simplicity of 
 their laws, then advancing to liquids, the more complex laws of which 
 are much more imperfectly known, and concluding with the little that 
 has been hitherto discovered about the constitution of solid bodies." 
 That is to say that Science finds it easier to work among gases which 
 are invisible and which we can know little about than among solids, 
 which we are familiar with and which we can easily handle ! This 
 seems a strange conclusion, but it will be found to represent a common 
 procedure of Science the truth probably being that the laws of gases 
 are not one whit simpler than the laws of liquids and solids, but that 
 on account of our knowing so much less about gaaes it is easier for us 
 to feign laws in their case than in *iie case of solids, and leas easy for 
 our errors to be detected.
 
 62 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 iogmatlse ; so at the other end of the scale in Chemistry and 
 Physics we get quasi-exact sciences, because the facts and 
 phenomena are on such a minute scale that we overlook all the 
 details and see only certain general effects here and there. 
 When a solution of cupric sulphate is treated with ammonia a 
 mass of flocculent green precipitate is formed. No one has the 
 faintest notion of all the various movements and combinations of 
 the molecules of these two fluids which accompany the appearance 
 of the precipitate. They are no doubt very complex. But among 
 all the changes that are taking place, one change has the advant- 
 age of being visible to the eye, and the chemist singles that out as 
 the main phenomenon. So chemistry at large consists in a few, 
 very few, facts taken at random as it were (or because they 
 happen to be of such a nature as to be observable) out of the 
 enormous mass of facts really concerned : and because of their 
 fewness the chemist is able to arrange them as he thinks in 
 some order, that is, to generalise about them. But it is certain 
 as can be that he only has to extend the number of his facts, 
 or his powers of observation, to get all his generalisations 
 upset. The same may be said of magnetism, light, heat, and 
 the other physical sciences but it Is not necessary to prove 
 in detail what is sufficiently obvious. 
 
 But now, roughly speaking, there is a third region of human 
 observation a region which does not, like Astronomy (and 
 Geology), lie so far beyond and above us that we only see a 
 very small portion of it ; nor, like Chemistry and Physics, so 
 far below us and under such minute conditions of space and 
 time that we can only catch its general effects ; but which 
 lies more on a level with man himself the so-called organic 
 world the study of man, as an individual and in society, his 
 history, his development, the study of the animals, the planta 
 even, and the laws of life the sciences of Biology, Sociology, 
 History, Psychology, and the rest. Now this region is ob-
 
 MODERN SCIENCE : A CRITICISM, 63 
 
 viously that which man knows most of. I don't say that he 
 generalises most about it but he knows the facts best. For 
 one observation that he makes of the habits and behavior of 
 the stars, or of chemical solutions for one observation in the 
 remote regions of Astronomy or Chemistry he makes thou- 
 sands and millions of the habits and behavior of his fellow- 
 men, and hundreds and thousands of those of the animals and 
 plants. Is it not curious then that in this region he is least 
 sure, least dogmatic, most doubtful whether there be a law or 
 no ? Or, rather, is it not quite in accord with our contention, 
 namely that Science, like an uninformed boy, is most definite 
 and dogmatic just where actual knowledge is least. 
 
 It will however be replied that the phenomena of living 
 beings are far more complex than the phenomena of Astronomy 
 or Physics and that is the reason why exact science makes so 
 little way with them. Though man knows many million times 
 more about the habits of his fellow-men than about the habits 
 of the stars, yet the former subject is so many million times 
 more complicated than the latter that all his additional know- 
 ledge does not avail him. This is the plea. Yet it does not 
 hold water. It is an entire assumption to say that the 
 phenomena of Astronomy are less complicated than the 
 phenomena of vitality. A moment's thought will show 
 that the phenomena of Astronomy are in reality infinitely 
 complex. Take the movement of the moon : even with our 
 present acquaintance with that subject we know that it has 
 some relation to the position and mass of the earth, including 
 its ocean tides ; also to the position and mass of the sun ; also 
 to the position and mass of every one of the planets ; also of 
 the comets, numerous and unknown as they are; also the 
 meteoric rings ; and finally of all the stars 1 The problem, as 
 everyone knows, is absolutely insoluble even for the shortest 
 period ; but when the element of Time enters in> and we coo-
 
 <?4 CIVILISATION; ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 aider that to do anything like justice to the problem in an 
 astronomical sense we should have to solve it for at least a 
 million years during which interval the earth, sun, and other 
 bodies concerned would themselves have been changing their 
 relative positions, it becomes obvious that the whole question 
 is infinitely complex and yet this is only a small fragment of 
 Astronomy. To debate, therefore, whether the infinite com- 
 plexity of the movements of the stars is greater or less than 
 the infinite complexity of the phenomena of life, is like debat- 
 ing the precedence of the three persons of the Trinity, or 
 whether the Holy Ghost was begotten or proceeding : we are 
 talking about things which we do not understand. 
 
 Nature is one ; she is not, we may guess, less profound and 
 wonderful in one department than another ; but from the fact 
 that we live under certain conditions and limitations we see 
 most deeply into that portion which is, as it were, on the same 
 level with us. In humanity we look her in the face ; there 
 our glance pierces, and we see that she is profound and wonder- 
 ful beyond all imagination ; what we learn there is the most 
 valuable that we can learn. In the regions where Science 
 rejoices to disport itself we see only the skirts of her garments, 
 so to speak, and though we measure them never so precisely, 
 we still see them and nothing more. 
 
 There is another point, however, of which much is often 
 made as a plea for the substantial accuracy of the scientific 
 laws and generalisations, namely that they enable us to predict 
 events. But this need not detain us long. J. S. Mill in his 
 " Logic " has pointed out and a little thought makes it 
 obvious that the success of a prediction does not prove the 
 truth of the theory on which it is founded. It only proves 
 the theory was good enough for that prediction. 
 
 There was a time when the sun was a god going forth in hia 
 chariot every morning, and there was a time when the earth
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 65 
 
 waa the centre of the universe, and the sun a ball of fire re- 
 volving round it. In those times men could predict with 
 certainty that the sun would rise next morning, and aould even 
 name the hour of its appearance ; but we do not therefore 
 think that their theories were true. When Adams and Leverrier 
 foretold the appearance of Neptune in a certain part of tho 
 sky, they made a brief prediction to an unknown planet from 
 the observed relations of the movements of the known planets ; 
 that does not show however that the grand generalisation of 
 these movements, called the " law of gravitation," is correct. 
 It merely shows that it did well enough for this very brief 
 step brief indeed compared with the real problems of As- 
 tronomy, for which latter it is probably quite inadequate. 
 
 Tycho Brahe, excellent astronomer as he was, kept as we 
 saw to the epicycle theory. He imagined that the moon's 
 path round the earth was a fixed combination of cycle and 
 epicycle. Kepler introduced the conception of the ellipse. 
 Later on the motion of the perigee and other deviations com- 
 pelled the abandonment of the ellipse and the supposition of 
 an endless curve, similar to an ellipse at any one point, and 
 maintaining a fixed mean distance from the earth, but never 
 returning on itself or making a definite closed figure of any 
 kind. Finally the researches of Mr. George Darwin have 
 destroyed the conception of the fixed mean distance, and intro- 
 duced that of a continually enlarging spiral. Certainly no 
 four theories could well be more distinct from each other than 
 these ; yet if an eclipse had to be calculated for next year it 
 would scarcely matter which theory was used. The truth is 
 that the actual problem is so vast that a prediction of a few 
 years in advance only touches the fringe of it so to speak ; yet 
 if the fulfilment of the prediction were taken as a proof of the 
 theory in each of these different cases, it would lead in the end 
 to the moat hopelessly contradictory results.
 
 66 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 The success of a prediction therefore only shows that the 
 theory on which it is founded has had practical value so far as 
 a working hypothesis. As working hypotheses, and as long as 
 they are kept down to brief steps which can be verified, the 
 scientific theories are very valuable indeed we could not do 
 without them ; but when they are treated as objective facts 
 when, for instance, the " law of gravitation " derived as it Is 
 from a brief study of the heavenly bodies has a universal 
 truth ascribed to it, and is made to apply to phenomena ex- 
 tending over millions of years, and to warrant un verifiable 
 prophecies about the planetary orbits, or statements about the 
 age of the earth and the duration of the solar system all one 
 can say is that those who argue so are flying off at a tangent 
 from actual facts. For as the tangent represents the direction 
 of a curve over a small arc, so these theories represent the 
 bearing of facts well enough over a small region of observation ; 
 but as following the tangent we soon lose the curve, so following 
 these theories for any distance beyond the region of actual 
 observation we speedily part company with facts. 1 
 
 To proceed with a few more words about the general 
 method of Science. Science passes from phenomena to laws, 
 from individual details which can be seen and felt to large 
 generalisations of an intangible and phantom-like character. 
 
 1 All our thoughts, theories, " laws," &c., may perhaps be said to 
 touch Nature as the tangent touches the curve at a point. They 
 give a direction and are true at that point. But make the slightest 
 move, and they all have to be reconstructed. The tangents 
 are infinite in number, but the curve is one. This may not only 
 Illustrate the relation of Nature to Science, but also of Art to the 
 materials it uses. The poet radiates thoughts : but he sets no store by 
 them. He knows his thoughts are not true in themselves, but they 
 touch the Truth. His lines are the envelope of the curve which it 
 his poem.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 67 
 
 That is to say, that for convenience of thought we classify 
 objects. How is this classification effected? It is effected 
 through the perception of identity amid difference. Among a 
 lot of objects I perceive certain attributes in common ; this 
 group of common attributes serves, so to speak, as a band to 
 tie these objects together with into a bundle convenient for 
 thought. I give a name to the band, and that serves to denote 
 any unit of the buudle by. Thus perceiving common attributes 
 among a lot of dogs as in an example already given I give 
 the name foxhound to this group of attributes, and thenceforth 
 use the name foxhound to connect these objects by in my 
 mind ; again perceiving other common attributes among othei 
 similar objects, I invent the word greyhound to denote these 
 latter by. The concept foxhound differs from the objectb 
 which it denotes, in this respect that these latter are (as we 
 say) real dogs with thousands and thousands of attributes 
 each : one of them has a broken tooth, another is nearly all 
 white, another answers to the name " Sally," and so on ; while 
 the concept is only an imaginary form in my mind, with only 
 a few attributes and no individual peculiarities a kind of tiny 
 G.C.M. arising from the contemplation of a long row of big 
 figures. 
 
 Now having created these concepts "foxhound," "grey- 
 hound," and a lot of other similar ones, I find that they in their 
 turn have a few attributes in common and thus give rise to a 
 new concept "dog." Of course this "dog" is more of an 
 abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. In fact the 
 peculiarity of this whole process is that, as sometimes stated, 
 the broader the generalisation becomes the less is its depth ; or in 
 other words and obviously, that as the number of objects 
 compared increases, the number of attributes common to them 
 all decreases. Ultimately as we saw at the beginning, when 
 a sufficient number of objects are taken in, the concept (" dog "
 
 68 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 or whatever it may be) fades away and ceases to have any 
 meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of Science and 
 indeed of all human knowledge, that in carrying out the process 
 which is peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of 
 reality for the watery region of abstractions, which abstractions 
 become ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, 
 and ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the 
 process is a quite necessary one, for only by it can the mind 
 deal with things. 
 
 To dwell for a moment over this last point : it is clear that 
 every object has relation to every other object exists in fact 
 only in virtue of such relation to other objects ; it has there- 
 fore an infinite number of attributes, the mind consequently is 
 powerless to deal with such object it cannot by any possibility 
 think it. In order to deal with it, the mind is forced to single 
 out a few of its attributes (the method of ignorance or abstraction 
 already alluded to) that is a few of its relations to other 
 objects, and to think them first. The others it will think 
 afterwards all in good time. In thus stripping or abstracting 
 the great mass of its attributes from our object, and leaving 
 only a few, which it combines into a concept, the mind 
 practically abandons the real article and takes up with a 
 shadow ; but in return for this it gets something which it can 
 handle, which is light to carry about, and which like paper- 
 money, for the time and under certain conditions does really 
 represent value. The only danger is lest it the mind 
 carried away by the extensive applicability of the partial 
 concept which it has thus formed, should credit it with an 
 actual value should project it on the background of the 
 external world and ascribe to it that reality which belongs 
 only to objects themselves, i.e., to things embodying an infinite 
 range of attributes. 
 
 The peculiar method of Science la now clear to us, and can
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 69 
 
 be abundantly illustrated from modern results. Our experience 
 consists in sensations, we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we 
 see them fall when let go, we have sensations of heat and cold, 
 light and darkness, and so forth. But these sensations are 
 more or less local and variable from man to man, and we 
 naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which 
 we can talk about and describe them exactly, and independently 
 of the peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to 
 find some common phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the 
 sensation?, of heat and cold, or of light and darkness, or some- 
 thing which explains (i.e. is always present in) the case of 
 falling bodies and to do this we adopt the method of 
 generalisation above described, '.., we observe a great number 
 of individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes 
 they have in common. So far good. But it is just here that 
 the fallacy of the ordinary scientific procedure comes in ; for, 
 forgetting that these common qualities are mere abstractions 
 from the real phenomena we credit them with a real existence, 
 and regard the actual phenomena as secondary results, " effects " 
 or what-not of these "causes." This in plain language is 
 putting the cart before the horse or rather the shadow before 
 the man. Thus finding that a vast number of variously 
 shaped and colored bodies tend to fall towards the earth, we 
 erect this common attribute of falling into an independent 
 existence which we call " attraction " or " gravitation " and 
 ultimately posit a universal gravitation acting on all bodies in 
 Nature ! or finding that a number of different substances, such 
 as water, air, wood, <fec., convey to us the sensation we call 
 sound, and that in all these cases the common element ia 
 vibration, we detach the attribute vibration, credit it with a 
 separate existence, and speak of it as the cause of sound. But 
 though we may thus think of the shadow as separate from the 
 mau, the shadow c&uuot ot separate from the man ; and tho' we
 
 70 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 may try to think of the falling or the vibration as separate 
 from the wood or the stone, such falling and vibration cannot 
 exist apart from these and other such materials, and the effort 
 to speak of it as so existing ends in mere nonsense. More 
 strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of the 
 undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, 
 the concepts thus erected into actualities are composed of 
 purely imaginary attributes of which no one has had any 
 experience an undulatory ether in the one case, a hard and 
 perfectly elastic atom in the other. The total result is of 
 course just what we see Science landing itself in pure 
 absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the 
 attribute of falling from the bodies that fall beginning that 
 is by an abstraction, which of course is also a falsity it 
 generalises and generalises this abstraction till at last it 
 reaches a perfectly generalised absurdity and thing without 
 any meaning the law of gravitation. The statement that 
 14 every particle in the universe attracts every other particle 
 with a force proportional to the mass of the attracting particle 
 and inversely proportional to the square of the distance 
 between the two " is devoid of meaning the human mind can 
 give no definite meanings to the words " mass," " attract," and 
 " force," which do not stultify each other. The law in every 
 way baffles intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared 
 that no philosophic mind would suppose that bodies could thus 
 act on one another " without the mediation of anything else by 
 and through which their action might be conveyed ; " scientific 
 men to-day are fain to see that a material mediation of this 
 kind would only make the law still more unintelligible than it 
 is, while, on the other hand, an immaterial mediation or a 
 fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some propose, would 
 imply remove the problem out of the regions of scientific 
 analysis. Again the form of the law is declared to be the
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 71 
 
 Inverse square of the distance; but this is the law by the 
 nature of space iteelf of any perfect radiation, and if true of 
 gravitation involves the conclusion that that radiation of force 
 (whatever its nature may be) takes place without loss or dissi- 
 pation of any kind. This would make gravitation absolutely 
 unique among phenomena. More than this, its propagation is 
 supposed to be instantaneous over the most enormous distances 
 of space, and to take place always unhindered and unretarded 
 whatever be the number or the nature of the bodies between ! 
 What can be more clear than that the law is simply meta. 
 physical a projection into a monstrous universality and 
 abstraction, of partially understood phenomena in a particular 
 region of observation a Brocken-shadow on the background of 
 Nature of the observer's own momentary attitude of thought f 
 Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the 
 phenomena of a vast number of colored and bright bodies, 
 Science finds that it can think about these phenomena can 
 generalise and tie them into bundles best by awuming that the 
 bodies are all in a state of vibration ; a vibration so minute 
 that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be 
 directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the 
 assumption of vibration as long as it is understood to be a mere 
 assumption for a temporary convenience of thought. But now 
 Science goes farther than this, and not only supposes a common 
 attribute to all visible bodies, but credits this common attribute 
 with a real existence independent of the visible bodies in which 
 it was supposed to inhere and makes this the cause of their 
 visibility ! Obviously now a common and universal medium is 
 required for this common and universal assumed vibration (just 
 as Newton required a medium for his universal " falling ") 
 and so, hey presto ! we have the Undulatory Ether. And 
 having got it we find that to fulfil our requirements it 
 must have a pressure of 17 million million pounds on the
 
 72 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 square inch, and yet be so rare and tenuous as not to hinder 
 the lightest breath of air ; that while it is thus rare enough to 
 surpass all our powers of direct scrutiny, its vibrations must yet 
 be capable of agitating and breaking up the solidest bodies ; 
 that it must pass freely through some dense and close 
 structures like glass, and yet be excluded by some light and 
 porous, like cork, and so on and on ! In fact we find that it IB 
 unthinkable. Against this adamantine, impalpable Ether, as 
 against this instantaneous, untrauslateable gravitation, Science 
 bangs its devoted head in vain. Having created these 
 absurdities by the method of " personification of abstractions " * 
 or the " reification of concepts," * it seriously and in all good 
 faith tries to understand them ; having dressed up its own 
 Mumbo Jumbo (which it once jeered at religion for doing) it 
 piously shuts its eyes and endeavors to believe in it. 
 
 The Atomic Theory * affords a good example of the 
 " method of ignorance." When we try to think about material 
 objects generally to generalise about them that is, to find 
 some attribute or attributes common to them, we are at first 
 puzzled. They present such an immense variety. But after 
 a time, by dint of stripping off or abstracting all such attri- 
 butes or qualities as we think we perceive in one body and not 
 in another as for example, redness, blueness, warmth, salt- 
 ness, life, intelligence, or what not we find an attribute left, 
 namely resistance to touch, which is common to all material 
 bodies. This quality in the body we call " mass," and since 
 it is only known by motion, mass and motion become cor- 
 relative attributes which we find useful to class bodies by, not 
 because they represent the various bodies particularly well, 
 but because they are found in all bodies ; just as you might 
 class people by their boots not because boots are a very 
 
 J. S. Mill. 'Stallo. 
 
 J See Stallo'a excellent Concept* of Modern Physici.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 73 
 
 valuable method of classification, but simply because every one 
 ivears boots of one kind or another. So far there is no great 
 harm done. But now having by the method of ignorance 
 thought away all the qualities of bodies, except the two cor- 
 relatives of mass and motion, we set about to explain the 
 phenomena of Nature generally by these two " thinks " that 
 are left. We credit these " thinks " (mass and motion) with 
 an independent existence and proceed to derive the rest of 
 phenomena from them. The proceeding of course is absurd, 
 and ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking of mass 
 and motion as existing in the various bodies apart from 
 color, smell, and so forth which of course is not the case 
 we combine the two attributes into one concept, the atom, 
 which we thus assume to exist in all bodies. The atom has 
 neither color, smell, warmth, taste, life or intelligence; it 
 has only mass and motion ; for it came by the method of 
 divesting our thought of everything but mass and motion. It 
 is a projection of a " think " upon the background of nature. 
 And it is an absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide 
 universe as mass and motion divested from color, smell, 
 warmth, life and intelligence. The atom is unthinkable. It ia 
 perfectly hard and it is perfectly elastic which is the same 
 as saying that it bends and it doesn't bend at the same time ; 
 it has form, and it hasn't form ; it has affinities and yet is 
 perfectly indifferent To justify to men the ways of their 
 Mumbo Jumbo has sorely exercised the votaries of the Atom. 
 One philosopher says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising 
 no force but resistance ; another says that it is a centre of 
 force, without matter ; a third suggests that it is not itself 
 matter, but only a vortex in other matter ! All agree that it 
 is not an object of sense, and there remains no conclusion but 
 that it is nonsense ! 1 
 
 Se, for instance, the last new thing in this style the Helmholti
 
 74 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 And so on in all directions. Human thought flying off" at 
 its tangents from Nature lands itself in infinite nothings afar 
 off, poor ghostly skeletons and abstractions from Nature 
 which indeed is all right, for human thought as yet can only 
 see ghosts and not realities ; but let there be no mistake, let 
 these ghosts not be mistaken for realities for they are not 
 even compatible with each other. The Atom that suits the 
 physicist doer not suit the chemist. The Ether that 4oes for 
 the vehicle of Light will not do for the vehicle of universal 
 Gravitation. 
 
 It would be hardly worth while entering into these criti- 
 cisms, were it not evident that Science in modern times, either 
 tacitly or explicitly, has been seeking, as I said at the begin- 
 ning, to enounce facts independent of Man, the observer. 
 Seeing that the ordinary statements of daily life are obviously 
 inexact and relative to the observer charged with human 
 sensation in fact Science has naturally tried to produce 
 something which should be exact and independent of human 
 sensation ; but here it has of course condemned itself before- 
 hand to failure; for no statement of isolated phenomena or 
 groups of phenomena can be exact except by the method of 
 ignorance aforesaid, and no statement obviously can be really 
 independent of human sensation. When a man says ft it 
 cold, his statement, it mupt be confessed, is deplorably human and 
 vague. It what is that 1 Is do you mean it 1 or do you 
 
 molecule as improved upon by Sir William Thomson ; it is described 
 as follows ; " A heavy mass connected by massless springs with a 
 massless enclosing shell ; or there may be several shells enclosing each 
 other connected by springs with a dense mass in the centre (far more 
 dense than the ether)." It is not, of course, seriously maintained that 
 this nonsensical creation exists but that if it did exist it would 
 account for certain unexplained phenomena in the dispersion of 
 light, 4c.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 75 
 
 mean feels, appears f Cold in what sense ! Cold to your- 
 self, or to other people, or to polar bears, or by the ther- 
 mometer? And so on. Science therefore steps in with an 
 air of authority and sets him right. It says the temperature 
 M 30 Fahrenheit, as if to settle the matter. But does this 
 really settle the matter t Temperature who knows what 
 that is t What is the scientific definition of it ! I find 
 (Clerk-Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 2.) " the temperature of a 
 body is a quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the 
 body is." This sounds very much like saying, " the color of 
 a body is a quantity which indicates how blue, red, or yellow 
 the body is." It does not bring us much farther on our way. 
 But in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the object of his 
 definition (which of course is only preliminary) by saying, 
 " By the use, therefore, of the word temperature, we fix in our 
 minds the conviction that it is possible not only to feel, but 
 to measure, how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly 
 maintains that it is possible to find an absolute standard of 
 hotness or coldness or rather of the unknown thing called 
 temperature outside of ourselves and independent of human 
 sensation. When the man said he was cold he was probably 
 just describing his own sensations, but here Science indicates 
 that it is in search of something which has an independent 
 existence of its own, and which therefore when found we can 
 measure exactly and once for all. What then is that thing 1 
 What is temperature t say, what is it ? 
 
 We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the remainder of 
 the sentence will help us. "The temperature is 30 
 Fahrenheit." " The unknown thing is thirty degrees." 
 What then is a degree ? That is the next question. When 
 the Theory of Heat went out from sensation and left it be- 
 hind, one of its first landing places was in the expansion of 
 liquids as in thermometer tubes. Here for some time was
 
 76 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 thought to be a satisfactory register of " temperature." But 
 before long it became apparent that the degree Fahrenheit, 
 Reaumur, or what-not was an entirely arbitrary thing, also 
 that it was not the same 1 thing at one end of the scale as the 
 other, and finally that the scale itself had no starting point ! 
 This was awkward, so a move was made to the air thermome- 
 ter, and there was some talk about an absolute zero and 
 absolute temperatures; it was thought that the Unknown 
 thing showed itself most clearly and simply in the expansion 
 of air and other gases, and that the " degree " might fairly be 
 measured hi terms of this expansion. But in a little time this 
 kind of thermometer chiefly because no gas turned out to be 
 "theoretically perfect" broke down, absolute zero and all, 
 and another step had to be made namely, to the dynamical 
 theory. It was announced that the Unknown thing might be 
 measured in terms of mechanical energy, and Joule at 
 Manchester proclaimed that the work done by any quantity of 
 water falling there a distance of 772 feet is capable of raising 
 that water one degree Fahrenheit. 8 Here seemed something 
 definite. To measure temperature by mass and velocity, to 
 measure a degree by the flight of a stone, or the heat in the 
 human body by the fall of a factory chimney if rather round- 
 about and elusive of the main question seemed at any rate 
 promising of exact results ! Unfortunately the difficulty waa 
 to pass from the theory to its application. The complicated 
 nature of the problem, the " imperfection " of the gases and 
 other bodies under consideration, the latent and specific heats 
 to be allowed for, the elusive nature of heat in experiment, 
 
 1 The very fact alone that the degrees on a thermometer are equal 
 space divisions shows that they must bear a varying relation to the 
 total volume of liquid as that expands from one end of the tube to the 
 other. 
 
 * A statement obviously applying from what has been already said 
 at only one point in the scale.
 
 MODERN SCIENCE : A CRITICISM. 77 
 
 and the variable value of the degree itself all render the 
 conclusions on this subject most precarious ; and the general 
 equations connecting the Fahrenheit or other temperatures 
 with a thermo-dynamic scale while they become so unwieldy 
 as to be practically useless are themselves after all only 
 approximate. 
 
 Finally, to give a last form to the mechanical theory of 
 heat, the conception of flying atoms or molecules was intro- 
 duced, and a number of neat generalisations were deduced 
 from dynamical considerations. Of course it was inevitable, 
 having once started with a mechanical theory, that one should 
 arrive at the Atom some time or other and (from what has 
 already been said) it was also inevitable that the result should 
 be unsatisfactory. It is sufficient to say that the molecular 
 theory of heat is not in accordance with facts. Such things as 
 the law of Charles and the law of Boyle, which according to it 
 should be strictly accurate and of general application, are 
 known to be true only over a most limited range. This 
 failure of the theory may be said to arise partly from its be 
 ing pursued by the statistical method ; but if, on the other 
 hand, we were to try and follow out the individual movement 
 of each molecule we should be landed in a problem far exceed 
 ing in complexity the wildest flights of Astronomy and should 
 have exchanged for the original difficulty about " temperature " 
 a difficulty far greater. 
 
 The result of all this has been that notwithstanding the 
 talk about energy and atoms, Science has sadly to confess that 
 it can still give no valid meaning to the word temperature : 
 the unknown thing is still unknown, the independent existence 
 round the corner still escapes us. By the very effort to 
 arrive at something independent of human sensation, Science 
 has, in a roundabout way, arrived at an absurdity. When the 
 man said he was cold, his statement deplorably vague as it
 
 78 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 was had some meaning : he was describing his feelings, or 
 possibly he had seen some snow or some ice on the road ; but 
 when, in the endeavor to leave out the human and to say 
 something absolute, Science declared that the temperature 
 was thirty degrees, it committed itself to a remark which 
 possibly was exact in form, but to which it has never given and 
 never can give any meaning. 1 
 
 Similarly with other generalities of Science : the " law " of 
 he Conservation of Energy, the " law " of the Survival of the 
 Fittest the more you think about them the less possible 
 is it to give any really intelligible sense to them. The 
 very word Fittest really begs the question which is under 
 consideration, and the whole Conservation law is merely 
 an attenuation of the already much attenuated "law" of 
 Gravitation. The Chemical Elements themselves are nothing 
 but the projection on the external world of concepts consisting 
 of three or four attributes each : they are not more real, but 
 very much less real than the individual objects which they are 
 supposed to account for ; and their " elementary " character is 
 merely fictional. It probably is in fact as absurd to speak of 
 pure carbon or pure gold, as of a pure monkey or a pure dog. 
 There are no such things, except as they may be arrived at by 
 arbitrary definition and the method of ignorance. 
 
 In the search for exactness then Science has been continu- 
 ally led on to discard the human and personal elements in pheno- 
 mena, in the hope of finding some residuum as it were behind 
 them which should not be personal and human but absolute 
 1 1 am not, of course, here arguing against the use of thermometers 
 or other instruments for practical purposes. This is certainly the 
 legitimate field of Science. But, as in the case of prediction before 
 mentioned, the exactness of certain practical results obtained is a very 
 different matter from the truth of the generalities which are supposed 
 to underlie these results. In using a thermometer you need not even 
 mention the word " temperature."
 
 MODERN SCIENCE : A CRITICISM. 79 
 
 and invariable. And the tendency has been (hitherto) in all 
 the sciences to get rid of such terms as blue, red, light, heavy, 
 hot, cold, concord, discord, health, vitality, right, wrong, <fec., 
 and to rely on any less human elements discoverable in each 
 case ; as for instance in Sound, to deal less and less with the 
 judgments and sensations of the ear, and to rely more and 
 more on measurements of lengths of strings, numbers of vibra- 
 tions, <&o. Each science has been (as far as possible) reduced 
 to its lowest terms. Ethics has been made a question of utility 
 and inherited experience. Political Economy has been ex- 
 hausted of all conceptions of justice between man and man, of 
 charity, affection, and the instinct of solidarity ; and has been 
 founded on its lowest discoverable factor, namely self-interest. 
 Biology has been denuded of the force of personality in plants, 
 animals, and men; the " self" here has been set aside, and the 
 attempt made to reduce the science to a question of chemical 
 and cellular affinities, protoplasm, and the laws of osmose. 
 Chemical affinities, again, and all the wonderful phenomena of 
 Physics are emptied down into a flight of atoms ; and the 
 flight of atoms (and of astronomic orbs as well) is reduced to 
 the laws of dynamics which the student sitting in his cham- 
 ber may write down on a piece of paper. Thus the idea, 
 formulated by Comte, of a great scale of sciences arising from 
 the simplest to the most complex, has tacitly underlain modern 
 scientific work. It Science has sought to " explain " each 
 stage by reference to a lower stage " blueness" by vibrations, 
 and vibrations by flying atoms the human always by the 
 sub-human. Going out from humanity dissatisfied, it has 
 wandered through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, through 
 the regions of Chemistry and Physics, into that of Mechanics. 
 " Here at last, in Mechanics, is something outside humanity, 
 something exact in itself, something substantial," it has said, 
 " Let us build again on this as on a foundation, and in time
 
 So CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 we shall find out what humanity is." This I say has been the 
 dream of Modern Science ; yet the fallacy of it is obvious. 
 We have not got outside the human, but only to the outer- 
 most verge of it. Mass and motion, which in this process are 
 taken to be real entities and the first progenitors of all pheno- 
 mena, are simply the last abstractions of sensible experience, 
 and our emptiest concepts. The material explanation of the 
 universe is simply an attempt to account for phenomena by 
 those attributes which appear to us to be common to them all 
 which is, as said before, like accounting for men by their 
 boots ; it may be possible to get an exact formula this way, 
 but its contents have little or no meaning. 
 
 The whole process of Science and the Comtian classification 
 of its branches regarded thus as an attempt to explain Man 
 by Mechanics is a huge vicious circle. It professes to start 
 with something simple, exact, and invariable, and from thia 
 point to mount step by step till it comes to Man himself ; but 
 indeed it starts with Man. It plants itself on sensations low 
 down (mass, motion, <fec.), and endeavors by means of them to 
 explain sensations high up, which reminds one of nothing so 
 much as that process vulgarly described as " climbing up a 
 ladder to comb your hair." In truth Science has never left 
 the great world, or cosmos, of Man, nor ever really found a 
 locut standi without it ; but during the last two or three cen- 
 turies it has gone in this direction, outwards, continually. 
 Leaving the central basis and facts of humanity as too vast 
 and unmanageable, and also as apparently variable from man 
 to man and therefore affording no certain consent to work 
 upon, it has wandered gradually outwards, seeking something 
 of more definite and universal application. Discarding thus 
 one by one the interior phases of sensation as the sense of per- 
 sonal relationship, the sense of justice, duty, fitness in things 
 or what-not (as too uncertain, or perhaps developed to an uu-
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM. 81 
 
 equal degree in different persons, embryonic in one and 
 matured in another), drifting past the more specialised bodily 
 senses, of color, sound, taste, smell, <kc., as for similar reasons 
 unavailable Science at last in the primitive consciousness of 
 muscular contraction and its abstraction "mass" or "matter" 
 comes to a pause. Here in this last sense, common probably 
 to man and the lowest animals, it finds its widest, most uni- 
 versal ground its farthest limit from the Centre. It haa 
 reached the outermost shell, as it were, of the great Man- 
 cosmos. Even this shell is partially human ; it is not entirely 
 osseous, and so far not entirely exact and invariable ; but 
 Science can go no farther and there, for the present, it may 
 remain ! 
 
 Some day perhaps, when all this showy vesture of scientific 
 theory (which has this peculiarity that only the learned can 
 tee it) has been quasi-completed, and Humanity is expected to 
 walk solemnly forth in its new garment for all the world to 
 admire as in Anderssen's story of the Emperor's New Clothes 
 some little child standing on a door-step will cry out : " But 
 he has got nothing on at all," and amid some confusion it will 
 be seen that the child is right. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 " I fear I have very imperfectly succeeded in expressing my strong 
 conviction that, before a rigorous logical scrutiny, the Reign of Law 
 will prove to be an unverified hypothesis, the Uniformity of Nature an 
 ambiguous expression, the certainty of our scientific inferences to a 
 great extent a delusion." (Stanley Jevons. Principles of Science, p. iz.)
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: 
 
 A FORECAST. 
 
 Once let that [the human ideal] slip oat of the thought, and science 
 is of no more use than the invocations in the Egyptian papiri. 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIKS. 
 
 IT would appear then, from the preceding paper, that in some 
 sense a mistake has been made in the method of modern 
 scientific work ; not that the vast amount of labor expended 
 in it has been altogether wasted, for in return for this there is 
 a mass of practical results and detailed observations to show ; 
 but that in attempting to solve the problem of science by the 
 intellect alone, a radical mistake has been made which could 
 only land us in absurdity, and that this mistake has for the 
 time being also vitiated the results that have been attained. 
 For in reference to this last point the divorce of the intel- 
 lectual from the emotional has caused a great portion of our 
 scientific observations to become merely pedantic and trifling ; 
 while it has turned the practical results as industrial and 
 military machinery, <fec. into engines of evil as often as into 
 engines of good. 
 
 Science in searching for a permanently valid and purely 
 intellectual representation of the universe has, as already said, 
 been searching for a thing which does not exist. The very 
 facts of Nature, as we call them, are at least half feeling. If
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 83 
 
 we try to clean the feeling out of a fact and to produce a 
 statement which shall be devoid of the human or sense 
 element, it simply amounts to cleaning the meaning out ; and 
 though our resulting statement may be exact it is nugatory 
 and of no value. We might as well try to take the clay out 
 of a brick. It must never be forgotten that the logical pro- 
 cesses important as they are cannot stand by themselves, 
 have no standing ground of their own. They presuppose 
 assumptions and are the expression of things that are un- 
 reasoning, perhaps illogical. The strictest logic is a mere 
 hooking together of links in a chain, and the last link is of no 
 use you can put no stress on it unless the first is secured 
 somewhere. The strength of the intellectual chain is no 
 greater than that of the staple from which it hangs and that 
 is a human feeling. The strength of Euclid Is no greater 
 than that of the axioms and they are feelings ; they are 
 unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, " I feel 
 like that." In fact, all the propositions of Geometry are 
 nothing but the analysis and elaborate expression, so to speak, 
 of these primary convictions and the Geometry-structure 
 stands and falls with them. There is no such thing as intel- 
 lectual truth that Is, I mean, a truth which can be stated as 
 existing apart from feeling. If, for instance, a proposition in 
 Geometry can be really shown to be based on the axioms, it is 
 true, not intellectually or absolutely, but as an expression of 
 my primary Geometrical sense ; and if my giving a few pence 
 to a crossing sweeper is based not on a mere impression of 
 duty, or an anxiety to appear charitable, or wish to escape hit 
 importunity, but on genuine regard for the man, then it is 
 true, not in any absolute signification, but just as an expres- 
 sion of what it professes to represent namely my primary 
 sense of humanity. Indeed the truest truth is that which is 
 the expression of the deepest feelirut and if there ia an absolute
 
 84 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 truth it can only be known and expressed by him who has the 
 absolute feeling or Being within himself. 
 
 This being so and the nature of the Intellectual processes 
 being, like the links in a chain, transitional it becomes 
 obvious that the intellectual results may figure as a meant 
 but never as an end in themselves. To hang any weight of 
 reliance on them in the latter sense is like the Chinese Trick 
 described by Marco Polo of throwing a rope's end up hi the 
 air and then climbing up the rope. Hence it appears that our 
 scientific theories are perfectly legitimate as long as they are 
 formed as a means towards practical applications. In that 
 sense they are transitional; they are formed not as substantial 
 truths but merely as links in a chain towards some definite 
 practical result. For this purpose we may form whatever 
 theories are convenient : if we are calculating the strength of 
 bridges, we may adopt what generalisations we like concerning 
 mechanical structure, as long as they give us actual and prac- 
 tical results j if we are predicting eclipses, we may make use 
 of any theory that will do. The theory does not matter as 
 long as it hauls the practical result after it, just as it does not 
 matter whether your cable is of iron or hemp or silk as long 
 as you can get your ship into dock with it. In this sense our 
 Modern Science is, I conceive, admirable. For practical 
 results and brief predictions it affords a quantity of useful 
 generalisations shorthand notes and conventional symbols 
 and pocket summaries of phenomena which bear about the 
 same relation to the actual world that a map does to the 
 country it is supposed to represent. It cannot be said to have 
 any resemblance to the real thing but when you understand 
 the principle on which it is formed it is exceedingly useful for 
 finding your way about. As long as Science therefore keeps 
 the practical end in view, and starting from sense seeks to 
 return to sense again, its intermediate theorising is perfectly
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 85 
 
 legitimate ; but the moment it credits its theory with a posi- 
 tive and authoritative existence, as an actual representation of 
 facts and endeavors to pass by means of it into unverifiable 
 and abstract regions, as of invisible germs or atoms, or far 
 distances of space, or the remote past or future it is simply 
 throwing its rope's end into the sky and trying to climb up ! 
 
 That "the wish is father to the thought" is in its wide 
 sense profoundly true. In the individual, feeling precedes 
 thinking as the body precedes the clothes. In history, the 
 Rousseau precedes the Voltaire. There is, I believe, a physio- 
 logical parallel ; for behind the brain and determining its 
 action stands the great sympathetic nerve the organ of the 
 emotions. In fact here the brain appears as distinctly tran- 
 sitional. It stands between the nerves of sense on the one 
 hand and the great sympathetic on the other. 
 
 Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method 
 of thinking will be revolutionised ; change the axiom or 
 primary sensation in a science, and the whole structure will 
 have to be re-created. The current Political Economy is 
 founded on the axiom of individual greed; but let a new 
 axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead 
 of unlimited grab), and the base of the science will be altered, 
 and will necessitate a new construction. 
 
 So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, <kc.) it will 
 generally be found that they differ at the base ; they go out, 
 perhaps quite unconsciously, from different axioms and hence 
 they cannot agree. Occasionally of course a strict examination 
 will show that, while agreeing at the base, one of them has 
 made a false step in deduction ; in that case his thought does 
 not represent his primary feeling, and when this is pointed out 
 he is forced to alter it. But more often it is found that the 
 difference lies deep down at a point beyond the reach of 
 reason ; and they disagree to the end. In this case neither is
 
 86 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 right and neither is wrong. They simply feel differently; 
 they are different persons. 
 
 The Thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the 
 covering, of underlying Feeling. And in the great life of 
 Man as a whole, as in the lesser life of the individual, his con- 
 tinual new birth and inward growth causes his thought-systems 
 also continually to change and be replaced by new ones. Like 
 the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they 
 give form for a time to the life within ; then they fall off and 
 are replaced. The husk prepares the bud underneath which 
 is to throw it off. The thought prepares and protects the feeling 
 underneath which growing will inevitably reject it ; and when a 
 thought has been formed it is already false, i.e., ready to fall. 
 We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question 
 of a genuine Science, truly so-called. 
 
 As there is no invariable and absolute datum on the fringe 
 of Humanity no definable flying atom on which we can found 
 our reasonings and as Modern Science, considered as an 
 actual representation of the universe, falls miserably to pieces 
 in consequence is it possible that we have made a mistake in 
 the direction in which we have sought for our datum ; and 
 may it be that we should look for that in the very Centre of 
 Humanity instead of in its remotest circumference? In that 
 direction evidently, if we could penetrate, we should expect 
 to find, not a shadowy intellectual generalisation, but the very 
 opposite of that an intense immutable feeling or state, an 
 axiomatic condition of Being. Is it possible that here, blazing 
 like a sun (if we could only see it and the sun is its allegory 
 in the physical world), there exists within us absolutely such 
 a thing the one fact in the universe of which all else are 
 shadows, to which everything has relation, and round which, 
 itself unanalysable, all thought circles and all phenomena 
 stand as indirect modes of expression I
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 87 
 
 Is It possible 1 That is the question the question which 
 each one of us has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this 
 out as a suggestion. Let us suggest that as we have got 
 nothing satisfactory by cleaning the sense-element out of 
 phenomena, we should take the opposite course and put as 
 much sense into them as we can ! 
 
 " Facts " are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this 
 and not empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge 
 that which we already have in them. Who knows whether we 
 have ever seen the blue sky 1 Who knows whether we have 
 ever seen each other 1 Is it not a commonplace to say that 
 one man sees in the common objects of Nature what another 
 is wholly unconscious of t " The primrose on the river's brim 
 a yellow primrose is to him and nothing more." To what 
 extent may the facts of Nature thus be deepened and made 
 more substantial to us and whither will this process lead us 1 
 
 Do we not want to feel more, not less, in the presence of 
 phenomena to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, 
 and the incense-laden air, aud the plants and the animals 
 nay, even with poisonous and hurtful things to have a keenei 1 
 sense of their burtfulness ? Is it not a strange kind of science, 
 that which wakes the mind to pursue the shadows of things, 
 but dulls the senses to the reality of them which causes a 
 man to try to bottle the pure atmosphere of heaven and then 
 to shut himself in a gas-reeking, ill-ventilated laboratory while 
 he analyses it ; or allows him to vivisect a dog, unconscious 
 that he is blaspheming the pure and holy relation between 
 man and the animals in doing so ? Surely the man of Science 
 (in its higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, 
 keen-scented as a hound with all senses and feelings trained 
 by constant use and a pure and healthy life in close contact 
 with Nature, and with a heart beating in sympathy with every 
 creature. Such a man would have at command, so to speak,
 
 88 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 the key-board of the universe ; but the mechanical, unhealthy, 
 indoor-living student is he not really ignorant of the faet$ 1 
 Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is. 
 
 The process of the true Science consists first in the naming 
 and denning of phenomena (i.e., the facts of human conscious- 
 ness), and secondly, in the discovery of the true relation of 
 these phenomena to each other ; and since the definitions of 
 phenomena and their relations keep varying with the stand- 
 point of the observer, the process evidently involves all experi- 
 ence, and ultimately the discovery of that last fact of experi- 
 ence to which and through which all the other facts are re- 
 lated. It is therefore an age-long process, and has to do with 
 the emotional and moral part of man as well as with the 
 logical and intellectual. It is in fact the discovery of the 
 nature of Man himself, and of the true order of his being. 
 
 Modern Science though seeking for a unity in Nature 
 fails to find it, because, from the nature of the case, any large 
 body of knowledge in which all people will agree is limited to 
 certain small regions of human experience regions in which 
 very likely no unity is discoverable. It takes the emerald, 
 and breaks it up ; treats of its color and light-refracting 
 qualities on the one hand ; of its crystalline structure and 
 hardness on the other ; of its weight and density ; and of its 
 chemical properties ; all separately, and producing long strings 
 of generalisation from each aspect of the subject. But how 
 all these qualities are conjoined together, what their relation 
 is which constitutes the emerald yea, even the smallest bit of 
 emerald dust it (wisely) does not attempt to say. It takes 
 the man and dissects him ; treats of his blood, his nerves, his 
 bones, his brain ; of his senses of sight, of touch, of hearing ; 
 but of that which binds these together into a unity, of their 
 true relation to each other in the man, it is silent. 
 
 Tet the man knows of himself that he is a unity ; he know*
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 89 
 
 that all parts of his body have relation to him, and to each 
 other ; he knows that his senses of sight and hearing and 
 touch and taste and smell are conjoined in the foous of his in- 
 dividual life, in his "I am ; " he knows that all his faculties 
 and powers, however much they may belong to different 
 planes, spiritual or material, or may come under the inquisi- 
 tion of different Sciences, have an order of their own among 
 each other that there it an ultimate Science of them even 
 though he be not yet wholly versed in it. And he knows 
 moreover that in a grain of dust, or hi an emerald, or hi an 
 orange, or in any object of Nature, the different attributes of 
 the object which the Sciences thus treat of separately are 
 only the reflexion of his different senses ; so that the problem 
 of the conjunction of different attributes in a body comes back 
 to the same problem of the union of various senses and powers 
 In himself each individual object being only a case, exter- 
 nalised as it were, and made a matter of consciousness, of the 
 general relation to each other of his own sensations and feel- 
 ings. Knowing all this I say he sees that the understand- 
 ing of Nature in general and of the laws or relations which he 
 thinks he perceives among external things, must always de- 
 pend on the relations and laws which he tacitly assumes, or 
 which he is directly conscious of, as existing between the 
 various parts of his own being ; and that the ultimate truth 
 which Science the divine Science is really in search of is a 
 moral Truth an understanding of what man is, and the dis- 
 covery of the true relation to each other of all his faculties 
 involving all experience, and an exercise of every faculty, 
 physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual, instead of one set 
 of faculties only. 
 
 Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know 
 the law of the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally ; 
 and the law of ourselves is not learnt, except subordinate^,
 
 go CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 by intellectual investigation ; it is mainly learnt by life. The 
 relation of gravity to vitality is learnt not so much by outer 
 experiment in a laboratory as by long experience within our- 
 selves from the day when as infants we cannot lift ourselves 
 above the floor, through the years of the proud strength of 
 manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our 
 disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the at-, 
 traction of the earth ; and just as the sense of weight which 
 first appears as a quite external sensation is thus at last 
 found to stand in most pregnant relation with our deepest 
 selves, so of the other senses which feed the individual life 
 the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of sound, of smell. 
 Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the tongue, be- 
 comes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which identi- 
 fies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body ; 
 the pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface 
 pleasure, and its discrimination of food more than a mere re- 
 gard for the nutrition of the ordinary corporeal functions. 
 The sense of Light, which begins in the material eye, grows 
 and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of it pervades the 
 whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination or 
 divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding 
 the sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the 
 same manner is related to and leads up to Love ; and Sound, 
 in the voices of our friends or the divine chords of music, has 
 passed away from being an external phenomenon and haa 
 established itself as the language of our most tender and 
 intimate emotions. 
 
 All the senses thus as they develop and deepen are found to 
 unite in the very focus of individual life. Slowly, and through 
 long experience, their relation to each other, their very mean- 
 ing unfolds, or will unfold ; and as this process takes place 
 the man knows himself one, a unity, of which the various
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 91 
 
 faculties are the different manifestations. Then further 
 through his less localised feelings or more glorified senses the 
 individual finds his relation to other individuals. Through 
 his loves and hatreds, through his senses of attraction, re- 
 pulsion, cohesion, solidarity, order, justice, charity, right, 
 wrong and the rest these feelings, each like the others deep- 
 ening back more and more as time goes on he gradually 
 discovers his true and abiding relationship to other individuals, 
 and to the divine society of which they all form a part and 
 go at last, if we may venture to say so, his relationship to the 
 absolute and universal. At present, since our most important 
 relation to each other is conceived of as one of rivalry and 
 Competition, we of course think of the objects of Nature as 
 being chiefly engaged in a Struggle for Existence with each 
 other ; but when we become aware of all our senses and feel- 
 ings, and of ourselves as individuals, as having relation to the 
 Absolute and universal, proceeding from it, as the branches 
 and twigs of a tree from the trunk then we shall become 
 aware of a Divine or absolute science in Nature ; we shall at 
 last understand that all objects have a permanent and indis- 
 soluble relation to each other, and shall see their true mean- 
 ing though not till then. 
 
 Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto and we 
 shall see in time that this process has been really most valuable 
 and important gone outwards from the centre towards the 
 very fringe of Humanity emptying facts as far as possible aa 
 it went of all feeling, and reducing itself at last to the most 
 shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense and non- 
 sense is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and first 
 filling up facts with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by 
 direct and the most living contact with Nature in every form, 
 learning to enter into direct personal sense-relationship with 
 every phenomenon and phase), will so gradually ascend to the
 
 9* CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE, 
 
 great central fact and feeling, and then at last and for the 
 first time become fully conscious of a vast organisation abso- 
 lutely perfect and intimately knit from its centre to its utmost 
 circumference (the true cosmos of Man the conceptions of 
 man and god combined) existing inchoate or embryonic in 
 every individual man, animal, plant, or other creature the 
 object of all life, experience, suffering, and toil the ground 
 of all sensation, and the hidden yet proper theme of all 
 thought and study ? 
 
 For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, 
 have to leave the laboratory and become one with Life ; or 
 that the great currents of human life will have to be turned 
 on into these often Augean stables of intellectual pruriency t 
 the investigation of Nature no longer a matter of the intel- 
 lect alone, but of patient listening and the quiet eye, and of love 
 and faith, and of all deep human experience, bearing not super- 
 ciliously its weight towards the interpretation of the least 
 phenomenon every " fact " thus deepened to its utmost all 
 experience (rather than experiment) courted, and filial walking 
 with Nature, rather than tearing of veils aside the life of the 
 open air, and on the land and the waters, the companionship 
 of the animals and the trees and the stars, the knowledge of 
 their habits at first hand and through Individual relationship 
 to them, the recognition of their voices and languages, and 
 listening well what they themselves have to say ; the keenest 
 education of the senses towards the physical powers and ele- 
 ments, and the acceptance of all human experience, without 
 exception till Science become a reality. 
 
 Is it possible that in some sense, instead of reducing each 
 branch of Science to its lowest terms, we shall have to read it 
 in the light of its highest factors, and " take it up " mto 
 the Science above that we shall have to take up the mechanical 
 sciences into the physical, the physical into the vital, the vital
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 93 
 
 into the social and ethical, and BO forth, before we can under- 
 stand them t Is it possible that the phenomena of Chemistry 
 only find their due place and importance in their relation to 
 living beings and processes ; that the phenomena of Vitality 
 and the laws of Biology and Zoology Evolution included 
 can only be " explained " by their dependence on self-hood 
 both in plants and animals ; that Political Economy and the 
 Social Sciences (which deal with men as individual selves) 
 must, to be understood aright, be studied in the light of those 
 great ethical principles and enthusiasms, which to a certain 
 extent override the individual self; and that, finally, Ethics 
 or the study of moral problems is only comprehensible when 
 the student has become aware of a region beyond Ethics, into 
 which questions of morality and immorality, of right and wrong, 
 do not and cannot enter t 
 
 Of this reversal of the ordinary scientific method Ruskin haa 
 given a great and signal instance in his treatment of Political 
 Economy ; it remains, perhaps, for others to follow his example 
 in the other branches of Science. 1 
 
 With regard to the absolute datum question we have seen 
 that Science has two alternatives before it either to be merely 
 intellectual and to seek for its start-point in some quite external 
 (and imaginary) thing like the Atom, or to be divine and to 
 
 1 Thus the study of Geometry would be primarily an education of the 
 eye, and the mind's eye, to the perception of geometrical forms and 
 facts, the judgment of angles, &c. and secondarily only a process of 
 deductive reasoning a body of empirical knowledge strengthened and 
 tied together by bands of logic ; the study of Natural History would 
 be primarily an affectionate intimacy with the habits of animals and 
 plants, and classification would be treated as a secondary matter and 
 as a help to the former ; Physiology would be studied in the first place 
 by the method of Health the pure body becoming gradually trans- 
 parent with all its organ* to the eye of the mind and dissection would 
 be used to corroborate and correct the results thus attained ; and BO on.
 
 94 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 seek for its absolute in the innermost recesses of humanity. 
 We have two similar alternatives in the doctrine of Evolution, 
 which looks either to one end of the scale or the other for its 
 interpretation either to the amoeba or to the man to some- 
 thing it knows next to nothing of, or to that which it knows 
 most of. Goethe, when gazing at a fan-palm at Padua, con- 
 ceived the idea of leaf metamorphosis, which he afterwards 
 ennunciated in the now accepted doctrine that all parts of a 
 plant seed-vessel, pistil, stamens, petals, sepals, stalk, &c. 
 may be regarded as modifications of a leaf or leaves. In this 
 view the distinctions between the parts are effaced, and we 
 have only one part instead of many but the question is 
 " what is that part t " It is of course arbitrary to call it a leaf, 
 for since it is continually varying it is at one time a leaf, and 
 at another a stalk, and then a petal or a sepal, and so forth. 
 What then is it t For the moment we are baffled. 
 
 So with the doctrine of Evolution as applied to the whole 
 organic kingdom up to man. Like the doctrine of leaf- 
 metamorphosis it obliterates distinctions. Geoffrey St. Hilaire 
 proposed to show the French Academy that a Cephalopod 
 could be assimilated to a Vertebrate by supposing the latter 
 bent backwards and walking on its hands and feet. There is 
 a continuous variation from the mollusc to the man all the 
 lines of distinction run and waver classes and species cease to 
 exist and Science instead of many sees only one thing. What 
 then is that one thing 1 Is it a mollusc, or is it a man, or 
 what is it 1 Are we to say that man may be looked upon as 
 a variation of a mollusc or an amoeba, or that the amoeba 
 may be looked on as a variation of manf Here are two 
 directions of thought ; which shall we choose f But the plain 
 truth is, the Intellect can give no satisfactory answer. 
 Whichever, or whatever, it chooses, the choice is quite 
 arbitrary just M much BO as the choice of the |f leaf " in the
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 95 
 
 other case. There is no answer to be given. And thus it is 
 that the appearance of the doctrine of Evolution is the signal of 
 the destruction of Science (in the ordinary acceptation of the 
 word). For Evolution is the successive obliteration of the 
 arbitrary distinctions and landmarks which by their existence 
 constitute Science, and as soon as Evolution covers the whole 
 ground of Nature inorganic and organic (as before long it 
 will do) the whole of Nature runs and wavers before the eye 
 of Science, the latter recognises that its distinctions are 
 arbitrary, and turns upon and destroys itself. This has 
 happened before, I believe ages back in the history of the 
 human race and probably will happen again. 
 
 The only conceivable answer to the question, " What is that 
 which is now a mollusc and now a man and now an inorganic 
 atom ? "* is given by man himself and his answer is, I fear, 
 not " scientific." It is " I Am." " I am that which varies." 
 And the force of his answer depends on what he means by the 
 word "I." And so also the only conceivable answer to the 
 absolute datum question is to be found in the meaning of the 
 word " I " in the deepening back of consciousness itself 
 Man is the measure of all things. If we are to use Science at 
 a minister to the most external part of man to provide him 
 with cheap boots and shoes, <fec. then we do right to seek 
 our absolute datum in his external part, and to take his/oo 
 as our first measure. We found a science on feet and pounds, 
 and it serves its purpose well enough. But if we want to find 
 a garment for his inner being or, rather, one that shall fit the 
 whole man to wear which will be a delight to him and as it 
 were a very interpretation of himself it seems obvious that 
 we must not take our measure from outside, but from his 
 very most central principle. The whole question is, whether 
 
 i Compare the Sphinx-riddle : What is that which goes on four 
 Ugs, &c.
 
 $6 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 there is any absolute datum in this direction or not. There 
 have been men through all ages of history (and from before) 
 who have declared that there is. They have perhaps been 
 conscious of it in themselves. On the other hand there have 
 been men who, starting from their feet, declared that con- 
 sciousness itself was a mere incident of the human machine 
 as the whistle of the engine and thus the matter stands. On 
 the whole, at the present day, the feet have it, and (notwith- 
 standing their variety in size and boot-induced conformation) 
 are generally accepted as the best absolute datum available. 
 
 Under the foot regime the universe is generally conceived of 
 as a medley of objects and forces, more or less orderly and 
 distinct from man, in the midst of which man is placed the pur- 
 pose and tendency of his life being " adaptation to his environ- 
 ment." To understand this we may imagine Mrs. Brown in 
 the middle of Oxford Street. 'Buses and cabs are running in 
 different directions, carts and drays are rattling on all sides of 
 her. This is her environment, and she has to adapt herself 
 to it. She has to learn the laws of the vehicles and their 
 movements, to stand on this side or on that, to run here and 
 stop there, conceivably to jump into one at a favorable 
 moment, to make use of the law of its movement, and so get 
 carried to her destination as comfortably as may be. A long 
 course of this sort of thing " adapts " Mrs. Brown considerably, 
 and she becomes more active, both in mind and body, than 
 before. That is all very well. But Mrs. Brown has a destin- 
 ation. (Indeed how would she ever have got into the middle 
 of Oxford Street at all if she had not had one ? and if she did 
 get there with no destination at all, but merely to skip about, 
 would there be any Mrs. Brown left hi a short time t) The 
 question is, " What is the destination of Man ? " 
 
 About this last question unfortunately we hear little. The 
 theory is (I hope I am not doing it injustice) that by studying
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE : A FORECAST. 97 
 
 your environment sufficiently you will find out that is, that 
 by investigating Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Ethics, <kc., 
 you will discover the destiny of man. But this seems to me 
 the same as saying that by studying the laws of cabs 
 and Ttmses sufficiently you will find out where you are 
 going to. These are ways and means. Study them 
 by all means, that is right enough ; but do not think 
 they will tell you where to go. You have to use them, not 
 they you. 
 
 In order therefore for the environment to act, there 
 must be a destination. This I suppose is expressed hi 
 the biological dictum, "organism is made by function as 
 well as environment." What then is the function of Man 1 
 And here we come back again to the meaning of the word 
 ii j 
 
 Notwithstanding then the prevalence of the foot regime, 
 and that the heathen so furiously rage together in their belief 
 in it, let us suggest that there is in man a divine consciousness 
 as well as a foot-consciousness. For as we saw that the sense 
 of taste may pass from being a mere local thing on the tip of 
 the tongue to pervading and becoming synonymous with the 
 health of the whole body ; or as the blue of the sky may be to 
 one person a mere superficial impression of color, and to 
 another the inspiration of a poem or picture, and to a third 
 as to the " god-intoxicated " Arab of the desert a living 
 presence like the ancient Dyaus or Zeus ; so may not the 
 whole of human consciousness gradually lift itself from a mere 
 local and temporary consciousness to a divine and universal ? 
 There is in every man a local consciousness connected with his 
 quite external body ; that we know. Are there not also in 
 every man the makings of a universal consciousness ? That 
 there are in us phases of consciousness which transcend the 
 
 limit of the bodily senses is a matter of daily experience ; that 
 
 G
 
 98 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 we perceive and know things which are not conveyed to us by 
 our bodily eyes or heard by our bodily ears is certain ; that 
 there rise in us waves of consciousness from those around us, 
 from the people, the race, to which we belong, is also certain ; 
 may there not then be in us the makings of a perception and 
 knowledge which shall not be relative to this body which is 
 here and now, but which shall be good for all time and every- 
 where ? Does there not exist in truth as we have already 
 hinted an inner Illumination of which what we call light in 
 the outer world is the partial expression and manifestation 
 by which we can ultimately see things as they are, beholding 
 all creation, the animals, the angels, the plants, the figures of 
 our friends and all the ranks and races of human kind, in 
 their true being and order not by any local act of perception 
 but by a cosmical intuition and presence, identifying ourselves 
 with what we see ? Does there not exist a perfected sense of 
 Hearing as of the morning-stars singing together an under- 
 standing of the words that are spoken all through the universe, 
 the hidden meaning of all things, the word which is creation 
 itself a profound and far pervading sense, of which our 
 ordinary sense of sound is only the first novitiate and initia- 
 tion? Do we not become aware of an inner sense of Health and 
 of holiness the translation and final outcome of the external 
 sense of taste which has power to determine for us absolutely 
 and without any ado, without argument and without denial, 
 what is good and appropriate to be done or suffered in every 
 case that can arise ? 
 
 And so on ; it is not necessary to say more. If there are 
 such powers in man, then there is indeed an exact science 
 possible. Short of it there is only a temporary and phantom 
 science. " Whatever is known to us by (direct) consciousness," 
 says Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, "is known to us 
 beyond possibility of question;" what is known by our local and
 
 THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST. 99 
 
 temporary consciousness is known /or the moment beyond 
 possibility of question ; what is known by our permanent and 
 universal consciousness is permanently known beyond possi- 
 bility of question,
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: 
 A CRITICISM OF MORALITY. 
 
 The State is the actually existing realised moral life. For it is the 
 unity of the universal essential Will with that of the individual, and 
 this i ' Morality." 
 
 A CRIMINAL is literally a person accused accused, and in the 
 modern sense of the word convicted, of being harmful to 
 Society. But is he there in the dock, the patch-coated brawler 
 or burglar, really harmful to Society t is he more harmful than 
 the mild old gentleman in the wig who pronounces sentence 
 upon him 1 That is the question. Certainly he has infringed 
 the law : and the law is in a sense the consolidated publio 
 opinion of Society : but if no one were to break the law, public 
 opinion would ossify, and society would die. As a matter of 
 fact Society keeps changing its opinion. How then are we to 
 know when it is right and when it is wrong ? The Outcast of 
 one age is the Hero of another. In execration they nailed 
 Roger Bacon's manuscripts out in the sun and rain, to rot 
 crucified upon planks his bones lie in an unknown and un- 
 honored grave yet to-day he is regarded as a pioneer of human 
 thought. The hated Christian holding his ill-famed love-feasts 
 in the darkness of the catacombs has climbed on to the throne 
 of S. Peter and the world. The Jew money-lender whom 
 Front-de-Boeuf could torture with impunity is become a Roths- 
 child guest of princes and instigator of commercial wars; and
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 101 
 
 Shylock is now a highly respectable Kailway Bondholder. 
 And the Accepted of one age is the Criminal of the next. All 
 the glories of Alexander do not condone in our eyes for hia 
 cruelty in crucifying the brave defenders of Tyre by thousands 
 along the sea-shore ; and if Solomon with his thousand wives 
 and concubines were to appear in London to-morrow, even our 
 most frivolous circles would be shocked, and Brigham Young 
 by contrast seem a domestic model. The judge pronounces 
 sentence on the prisoner now, but Society in its turn and in 
 the lapse of years pronounces sentence on the judge. It holds 
 in its hand a new canon, a new code of morals, and consigns 
 its former representative and the law which he administered 
 to a limbo of contempt 
 
 It seems as if Society, as it progresses from point to point, 
 forms ideals just as the individual does. At any moment 
 each person, consciously or unconsciously, has an ideal in his 
 mind toward which he is working (hence the importance of 
 literature). Similarly Society has an ideal in its mind. These 
 ideals are tangents or vanishing points of the direction in 
 which Society is moving at the time. It does not reach its 
 ideal, but it goes in that direction then, after a time, the 
 direction of its movement changes, and it has a new ideal. 
 
 When the ideal of Society is material gain or possession, as 
 it is largely to-day, the object of its special condemnation is 
 the thief not the rich thief, for he is already in possession 
 and therefore respectable, but the poor thief. There is nothing 
 to show that the poor thief is really more immoral or unsocial 
 than the respectable money-grubber ; but it is very clear that 
 the money-grubber has been floating with the great current of 
 Society, while the poor man has been swimming against it, and 
 so has been worsted. Or when, as to-day, Society rests on 
 private property in land, its counter-ideal is the poacher. If 
 you go in the company of the comity squire-archy and listen
 
 102 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 to the after-dinner talk you will soon think the poacher a com- 
 bination of all human and diabolic vices ; yet I have known a 
 good many poachers, and either have been very lucky in my 
 specimens or singularly prejudiced in their favor, for I have 
 generally found them very good fellows but with just this one 
 blemish that they invariably regard a landlord as an emissary 
 of the evil one ! The poacher is as much hi the right, pro- 
 bably, as the landlord, but he is not right for the time. He is 
 asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time 
 when for hunting purposes all land was held in common or 
 to a time in the future when such or similar rights shall be 
 restored. Csesar says of the Suevi that they tilled the ground 
 in common, and had no private lands, and there is abundant 
 evidence that all early human communities before they entered 
 on the stage of modern civilisation were communistic in char- 
 acter. Some of the Pacific Islanders to-day are in the same 
 condition. In those times private property was theft. Obvi- 
 ously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or 
 goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and 
 like the modern landlord would allow no one to till it who 
 did not pay him a tax was a criminal of the deepest dye. 
 Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and 
 have become the respectables of modern Society. And it is 
 quite probable that in like manner the criminals of to-day will 
 push to the front and become the respectables of a later age. 
 
 The ascetic and monastic ideal of early Christian and 
 mediaeval ages is now regarded as foolish, if not wicked ; and 
 poverty, which in many times and places has been held in 
 honor as the only garb of honesty, is condemned as criminal 
 and indecent. Nomadism if accompanied by poverty ia 
 criminal in modern Society. To-day the gipsy and the tramp 
 are hunted down. To have no settled habitation, or worse 
 still, no place to lay your head, are suspicious matters. We
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS 103 
 
 close even our outhouses and barns against the son of man, 
 and so to us the son of man comes not. And yet at one time 
 and in one stage of human progress the nomadic state is the 
 rule ; and the settler is then the criminal. His crops are fired 
 and his cattle driven off. What right has he to lay a limit to 
 the hunting grounds, or to spoil the wild free life of the plains 
 with his dirty agriculture ? 
 
 As to the marriage relation and its attendant moralities, the 
 forms are numerous and notorious enough. Public opinion 
 seems to have varied through all phases and ideals, and yet 
 there is no indication of finality. Modern investigations show 
 that in primitive human societies the affinities admitted or 
 barred in marriage are most various the relation of brother 
 and sister being even in cases allowed ; in the present day 
 such a bond as the last-mentioned would be considered 
 inhuman and monstrous. 1 Polyandry prevails among one 
 people or at one time, polygyny prevails among another 
 people or at another time. In Central Africa to-day the chief 
 offers you his wife as a mark of hospitality, in India the native 
 Prince keeps her hidden even from his most intimate guest. 
 Among the Japanese, public opinion holds young women 
 even of good birth singularly free in their intercourse with 
 men, till they are maivied ; at Paris they are free after. In 
 the Greek and Roman antiquity marriage seems with some 
 brilliant exceptions to have been a prosaic affair mostly a 
 matter of convenience and housekeeping the woman an 
 underling little of the ideal attaching to the relationship of 
 
 1 Yet there is no doubt that lasting and passionate love may 
 exist between two persons thus nearly related. The danger to 
 the health of the offspring from occasional in-breeding of the 
 kind appears to arise chiefly from the accentuation of infirmities 
 common to the two parents. In a state of society free from the 
 diseases of the civilisation-period, such a danger would be greatly 
 reduced.
 
 104 CIVILISATION. ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 man and wife. The romance of love went elsewhere. The 
 better class of free women or Hetairai were those who gave a 
 spiritual charm to the passion. They were an educated and 
 recognised body, and possibly in their best times exercised a 
 healthy and discriminating influence upon the male youth. 
 The respectful treatment of Theodota by Socrates, and the ad- 
 vice which he gives her concerning her lovers : to keep the 
 insolent from her door, and to rejoice greatly when the ac- 
 cepted succeed in anything honorable, indicates this. That 
 their influence was at times immense the mere name of Aspasia 
 is sufficient to show ; and if Plato in the Symposium reports 
 correctly the words of Diotima, her teaching on the subject of 
 human and divine love was prol ably of the noblest and pro- 
 foundest that hag ever been given to the world. 
 
 With the influx of the North-men over Europe came a new 
 ideal of the sexual relation, and the wife mounted more into 
 equality with her husband than before. The romance of love, 
 however, still went mainly outside marriage, and may I believe 
 be traced in two chief forms that of Chivalry, as an ideal de- 
 votion to pure Womanhood; and that of Minstrelsy, which 
 took quite a different hue, individual and sentimental the 
 lover and his mistress (she in most cases the wife of another), 
 the serenade, secret amour, <feo. both of which forms of 
 Chivalry and Minstrelsy contain in themselves something new 
 and not quite familiar to antiquity. 
 
 Finally in modern times the monogamio union has risen to 
 pre-eminence the splendid ideal of an equal and life-long 
 attachment between man and wife, fruitful of children in this 
 life, and hopeful of continuance beyond and has become the 
 great theme of romantic literature, and the climax of a thou- 
 sand novels and poems. Yet it is just here and to-day, when 
 this ideal after centuries of struggle has established itself, and 
 among the nations that are in the van of civilisation that we
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS 105 
 
 find the doctrine of perfect liberty in the marriage relationship 
 being most successfully preached, and that the communaliza- 
 tion of social life in the future seems likely to weaken the 
 family bond and to relax the obligation of the marriage tie. 
 
 If the Greek age, splendid as it was in itself and in its fruits 
 to human progress, did not hold marriage very high, it was 
 partly because the ideal passion of that period, and one which 
 more than all else inspired it, was that of comradeship, or 
 male friendship carried over into the region of love. The two 
 figures of Harmodius and Aristogitoa stand at the entrance of 
 Greek history as the type of this passion, bearing its fruit (aa 
 Plato throughout maintains is its nature) in united self-devo- 
 tion to the country's good. The heroic Theban legion, the 
 " sacred band," into which no man might enter without his 
 lover and which was said to have remained unvanquished till 
 It was annihilated at the battle of Chaeronaea proves to us 
 how publicly this passion and its place in society were recog- 
 nised ; while its universality and the depth to which it had 
 stirred the Greek mind are indicated by the fact that whole 
 treatises on love, in its spiritual aspect, exist, in which no 
 other form of the sentiment seems to be contemplated ; and by 
 the magnificent panorama of Greek statuary, which was ob- 
 viously to a large extent inspired by it In fact the most 
 remarkable Society known to history, and its greatest men, 
 can not be properly considered or understood apart from this 
 passion ; yet the modern world scarcely recognises it, or if it 
 recognises, does so chiefly to condemn it. 1 
 
 1 Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this love 
 (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate the 
 spiritual) have entered their protest as against the mere obscenity into 
 which the thing fell for instance in the days of Martial but have 
 missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is, 
 however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with 
 their disintegration.
 
 io6 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 Other instances might be quoted to show how differently 
 moral questions are regarded in one age and another as in the 
 case of Usury, Magic, Suicide, Infanticide, <kc. On the whole 
 we pride ourselves (and justly I believe) on the general advance 
 in humanity ; yet we know that to-day the merest savages can 
 only shudder at a civilisation whose public opinion allows as 
 amongst us the rich to wallow in their wealth while the poor 
 are systematically starving ; and it is certain that the vivi- 
 section of animals which on the whole is approved by our 
 educated classes (though not by the healthier sentiment of the 
 uneducated) would have been stigmatised as one of the most 
 abominable crimes by the ancient Egyptians if, that is, they 
 could have conceived such a practice possible at all. 
 
 But not only do the moral judgments of mankind thus vary 
 from age to age and from race to rae, but what is equally 
 remarkable they vary to an extraordinary degree from class 
 to class of the same society. If the landlord class regards the 
 poacher as a criminal, the poacher as already hinted looks upon 
 the landlord as a selfish ruffian who has the police on his side ; 
 if the respectable shareholder, politely and respectably sub- 
 sisting on dividends, dismisses navvies and the frequenters of 
 public-houses as disorderly persons ; the navvy in return 
 despises the shareholder as a sneaking thief. And it is not 
 easy to see, after all, which is in the right. It is useless to 
 dismiss these discrepancies by supposing that one class in the 
 nation possesses a monopoly of morality and that the other 
 classes simply rail at the virtue they cannot attain to, for this 
 is obviously not the case. It is almost a commonplace, and 
 certainly a fact that cannot be contested, that every class 
 however sinful or outcast in the eyes of others contains within 
 its ranks a large proportion of generous, noble, self-sacrificing 
 characters ; so that the public opinion of one such class, how- 
 ever different from that of others, cannot at least be invalidated
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 107 
 
 on the above ground. There are plenty of clergymen at this 
 moment who are models of pastors true shepherds of the 
 people though a large and increasing section of society persist 
 In regarding priests as a kind of wolves in sheep's clothing. It 
 is not uncommon to meet with professional thieves who are 
 generous and open-handed to the last degree, and ready to part 
 with their last penny to help a comrade in distress ; with 
 women living outside the bounds of conventional morality who 
 are strongly religious in sentiment, and who regard atheists as 
 really wicked people; with aristocrats who have as stern 
 material in them as quarry-men ; and even with bondholders 
 and drawing-room loungers who are as capable of bravery and 
 self-sacrifice as many a pitman or ironworker. Yet all these 
 classes mentioned have their codes of morality, differing in 
 greater or lesser degree from each other ; and again the question 
 forces itself upon us : Which of them all is the true and abiding 
 codet 
 
 It may be said, with regard to this variation of codes within 
 the same society, that though various codes may exist at tha 
 same time, one only is really valid, namely that which has 
 embodied itself in the law that the others have been rejected 
 because they were unworthy. But when we come to look into 
 this matter of law we see that the plea can hardly be main- 
 tained. Law represents from age to age the code of the 
 dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and 
 slowly modified, but always added to and always administered 
 by the ruling class. To-day the code of the dominant class 
 may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability and 
 if we ask why this code has to a great extent overwhelmed the 
 codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far 
 that in the main it characterises those classes who do not con- 
 form to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be : 
 Because it u the code of the classes who are in power.
 
 ro8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the 
 command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, 
 it is the standard of modern literature and the press. It is not 
 necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that 
 happens to be in the ascendant ; it is the code of the classes 
 that chiefly represent modern society ; it is the code of the 
 Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the past, 
 of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry ; it is different from 
 the Democratic code of the future of brotherhood and of 
 equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and ita 
 distinctive watchword is property. 
 
 The respectability of to-day is the respectability of property. 
 There is nothing so respectable as being well-off. The Law 
 confirms this : everything is on the side of the rich ; justice is 
 too expensive a thing for the poor man. Offences against the 
 person hardly count for so much as those against property. 
 You may beat your wife within an inch of her life and only 
 get three months ; but if you steal a rabbit, you may be 
 "sent" for years. So again gambling by thousands on 
 Change is respectable enough, but pitch and toss for half- 
 pence in the streets is low, and must be dealt with by the 
 police ; while it is a mere commonplace to say that the high- 
 class swindler is " received " in society from which a more 
 honest but patch-coated brother would infallibly be rejected. 
 As Walt Whitman has it " There is plenty of glamour about 
 the most damnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special 
 and general, of the feudal and dynastic world over there, with 
 its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so well-dressed 
 and handsome. But the people are ungrammatical, untidy, 
 and their sins gaunt and ill-bred." 
 
 Thus we see that though there are for instance in the 
 England of to-day a variety of classes, and a variety of corres- 
 ponding codes of public opinion and morality, one of these
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 109 
 
 codes, namely that of the ruling class whose watchword Is 
 property, is strongly in the ascendant. And we may fairly 
 suppose that in any nation from the time when it first becomes 
 divided into well-marked classes this is or has been the case. 
 In one age the commercial age the code of the commercial 
 or money-loving class is dominant ; in another the military 
 the code of the warrior class is dominant ; in another the 
 religious the code of the priestly class ; and so on. And 
 even before any question of division into classes arises, while 
 races are yet in a rudimentary and tribal state, the utmost 
 diversity of custom and public opinion marks the one from the 
 other. 
 
 What, then, are we to conclude from all these variations 
 (and the far greater number which \ have not mentioned) of 
 the respect or stigma attaching to the same actions, not only 
 among different societies in different ages or parts of the 
 world, but even at any one time among different classes of 
 the same society ? Must we conclude that there is no such 
 thing as a permanent moral code valid for all time ; or must 
 we still suppose that there is such a thing though society 
 has hitherto sought for it in vain t 
 
 I think it is obvious that there is no such thing as a 
 permanent moral code at any rate as applying to action*. 
 Probably the respect or stigma attaching to particular classes 
 of actions arose from the fact that these classes of actions 
 were or were thought to be beneficial or injurious to the 
 society of the time ; but it is also clear that this good or bad 
 name once created clings to the action long after the action 
 has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in 
 the one case, or injurious in the other ; and indeed long after 
 the thinkers of the race have discovered the discrepancy. 
 And so in a short time arises a great confusion in the pocvJar 
 mind between what is realty good or evil for the race and
 
 HO CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 what is reputed to be so the bolder spirits who try to 
 separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their 
 own martyrdom. It is also pretty clear that the actions 
 which are beneficial or injurious to the race must by the 
 nature of the case vary almost indefinitely with the changing 
 conditions of the life of the race what is beneficial in one age 
 or under one set of conditions being injurious in another age or 
 under other circumstances so that a permanent or ever- 
 valid code of moral action is not a thing to be expected, at any 
 rate by those who regard morality as a result of social ex- 
 perience, and as a matter of fact is not a thing that we find 
 existing. And, indeed, of those who regard morals as 
 intuitive, there are few who have thought about the matter 
 who would be inclined to say that any act in itself can be 
 either right or wrong. Though there is a superficial judg- 
 ment of this kind, yet when the matter comes to be looked 
 into, the more general consent seems to be that the rightness 
 or wrongness is in the motive. To kill (it is said) is not 
 wrong, but to do so with murderous intent is ; to take money 
 out of another person's purse is in itself neither moral nor 
 immoral all depends upon whether permission has been 
 given, or on what the relations between the two persons are ; 
 and so on. Obviously there is no mere act which under given 
 conditions may not be justified, and equally obviously there is 
 no mere act which under given conditions may not become 
 unjustifiable. To talk, therefore, about virtues and vices as 
 permanent and distinct classes of actions is illusory : there is 
 no such distinction, except so far as a superficial and transient 
 public opinion creates it. The theatre of morality is in the 
 passions, and there are (it is said) virtuous and vicious 
 passions eternally distinct from each other. 
 
 nere, then, we have abandoned the search for a permanent 
 moral code among the actions ; on the understanding that we
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. ill 
 
 are more likely to find such a thing among the passions. 
 And I think it would be generally admitted that this Is a move 
 in the right direction. There are difficulties however here, 
 and the matter is not one which renders itself up at once, 
 Though, vaguely speaking, some passions seem nobler and 
 more dignified than others, we find it very difficult, in fact 
 impossible, to draw any strict line which shall separate one 
 class, the virtuous, from the other class, the vicious. On the 
 whole we place Prudence, Generosity, Chastity, Reverence, 
 Courage, among the virtues and their opposites, as Rashness, 
 Miserliness, Incontinence, Arrogance, Timidity, among the 
 vices ; yet we do not seem able to say that Prudence is always 
 better than Rashness, Chastity than Incontinence, or Reverence 
 than Arrogance. There are situations in which the less 
 honored quality is the most in place ; and if the extreme of 
 this is undesirable, the extreme of its opposite is undesirable 
 too. Courage, it is commonly said, must not be carried over 
 into foolhardiness ; Chastity must not go so far as the monks 
 of the early Church took it ; there is a limit to the indulgence 
 of the instinct of Reverence. In fact the less dignified passions 
 are necessary sometimes as a counterbalance and set-off to the 
 more dignified, and a character devoid of them would be very 
 insipid ; just as among the members of the body, the less 
 honored have their place as well as the more honored, and 
 could not well be discarded. 
 
 Hence a number of writers, abandoning the attempt to draw 
 a fixed line between virtuous and vicious passions, have boldly 
 maintained that vices have their place as well as virtues, and 
 that the true salvation lies in the golden mean. The en-ifiKfta 
 and tr<o<f>poo-uvrj of the Greeks seems to have pointed to the idea 
 of a blend or harmonious adjustment of all the powers as the 
 perfection of character. Plutarch says (Essay on Moral 
 Virtue), "This, then, is the function of practical reason
 
 112 CIVILISATION. ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 following nature, to prevent our passions either going too 
 far or too short. . . . Thus setting bound to the emotional 
 currents, it creates in the unreasoning part of the soul moral 
 habits which are the mean between excess and deficiency." 
 
 The English word "gentleman" seems to have once con. 
 veyed a similar idea. And Emerson, among others, maintains 
 chat each vice is only the " excess or acridity of a virtue," and 
 says " the first lesson of history is the good of evil." 
 
 According to this view rightness or wrongness cannot be 
 predicated of the passions themselves, but should rather be ap- 
 plied to the use of them, and to the way they are proportioned 
 to each other and to circumstances. As, farther back, we left 
 the region of actions to look for morality in the passions that 
 lie behind action, so now we leave the region of the passions 
 to look for it in the power that lies behind the passions and 
 gives them their place. This is a farther move in the same 
 direction as before, and possibly will bring us to a more satis- 
 factory conclusion. There are still difficulties, however the 
 chief ones lying in the want of definiteness which necessarily 
 attaches to our dealings with these remoter tracts of human 
 nature ; and in our own defective knowledge of these tracts. 
 
 For these reasons, and as the subject is a complex and diffi- 
 cult one, I would ask the reader to dwell for a few minutes 
 longer on the considerations which show that it is really as 
 impossible to draw a fixed line between moral and immoral 
 passions as it is between moral and immoral actions, and which 
 therefore force us if we are to find any ground of morality at 
 1L to look for it in some further region of our nature. 
 
 Plato in his allegory of the soul in the Phsedrus though he 
 apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot 
 into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward figured 
 by fvhe white horse and the black horse respectively does not 
 recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dia-
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS, 113 
 
 missed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be 
 kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems 
 to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and 
 behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human 
 being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called 
 more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force 
 would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred 
 may be devilish at times but after all the true value of it 
 depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is 
 put. Anger though inhuman at one time is magnificent at 
 another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, 
 but it is the latest virtue on a battle-field when an important 
 position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. 
 And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, 
 cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine com- 
 panion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire 
 sway notoriously does not do : to turn your cheek, too literally, 
 to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoi) only to encourage smiting ; and 
 when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to 
 fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone 
 wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their 
 many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an 
 Impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a 
 vague, uninteresting being a picture without light and shade 
 and the conventional semi-pious classification of char- 
 acter into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept 
 and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false. 
 
 What the student of human nature rather has to do is not 
 to divide the virtues (so-called) from the vices (so-called), not 
 to separate the black horse and the white horse, but to find 
 out what is the relation of the one to the other to see the 
 character as a whole, and the mutual interdependence of its 
 different parts to find out what that power is which constt 
 
 H
 
 114 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 tutes It a unity, whose presence and control makes the man 
 and all his actions "right," and in whose absence (if it is really 
 possible for it to be entirely absent) the man and his actions 
 must be " wrong." 
 
 What we call vices, faults, defects, appear often as a kind of 
 limitation : cruelty, for instance, as a limitation of human sym- 
 pathy, prejudice as a blindness, a want of discernment ; but it 
 is just these limitations in one form or another which are 
 the necessary conditions of the appearance of a human being 
 in the world. If we are to act or live at all we must act and 
 live under limits. There must be channels along which the 
 stream is forced to run, else It will spread and lose itself aim- 
 lessly in all directions and turn no mill-wheels. One man is 
 disagreeable and unconciliatory the directions in which his 
 sympathy goes out to others are few and limited yet there 
 are situations in life (and everyone must know them) when a 
 man who is able and tattling to make himself disagreeable is 
 invaluable : when a Carlyle is worth any number of Balaams. 
 
 Sometimes again vices, <fcc., appear as a kind of raw material 
 from which the other qualities have to be formed, and without 
 which, in a sense, they could not exist. Sensuality, for in- 
 stance, underlies all art and the higher emotions. Timidity la 
 the defect of the sensitive imaginative temperament. Blunt- 
 ness, stupid candor, and want of tact are indispensable in the 
 formation of certain types of Reformers. But what would you 
 have ? Would you have a rabbit with the horns of a cow, or 
 a donkey with the disposition of a spaniel ? The reformer has 
 not to extirpate his brusqueness and aggressiveness, but to see 
 that he makes good use of these qualities ; and the man has 
 not to abolish his sensuality, but to humanise it. 
 
 And so on. Lecky, in his " History of Morals," shows how 
 In society certain defects necessarily accompany certain excel- 
 lencies of character. " Had the Irish peasants been less chaste
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 115 
 
 they would have been more prosperous," is his blunt assertion, 
 which he supports by the contention that their early marriages 
 (which render the said virtue possible) "are the most con- 
 spicuous proofs of the national improvidence, and one of the 
 most fatal obstacles to industrial prosperity." Similarly he 
 says that the gambling table fosters a moral nerve and calm- 
 ness "scarcely exhibited in equal perfection in any other 
 sphere " a fact which Bret Harte has finely illustrated in his 
 character of Mr. John Oakhurst in the "Outcasts of Poker 
 Flat ; " also that " the promotion of industrial veracity is pro- 
 bably the single form in which the growth of manufactures 
 exercises a favorable influence upon morals;" while, on the 
 other hand, " Trust in Providence, content and resignation in 
 extreme poverty and suffering, the most genuine amiability, 
 and the most sincere readiness to assist their brethren, an 
 adherence to their religious opinions which no persecutions and 
 no bribes can shake, a capacity for heroic, transcendent, and 
 prolonged self-sacrifice, may be found in some nations, in men 
 who are habitual liars and habitual cheats." Again he points 
 out that thriftiness and forethought which, in an industrial 
 civilisation like ours, are looked upon as duties "of the very 
 highest order " have at other times (when the teaching was 
 " take no thought for the morrow ") been regarded as quite the 
 reverse, and concludes with the general remark that as society 
 advances there is some loss for every gain that is made, and 
 with the special indictment against " civilisation " that it is not 
 favorable to the production of "self-sacrifice, enthusiasm, 
 reverence, or chastity." 
 
 The point of all which is that the so-called vices and defects 
 whether we regard them as limitations or whether we regard 
 them as raw materials of character, whether we regard them 
 in the individual solely or whether we regard them hi their 
 relation to society are necessary elements of human life, ele-
 
 nfi CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 menta without which the so-called virtues could not exist ; and 
 that therefore it is quite impossible to separate vices and 
 virtues into distinct classes with the latent idea involved that 
 one class may be retained and the other in course of time got 
 rid of. Defects and bad qualities will not be treated so they 
 clamor for their rights and will not be denied ; they effect a 
 lodgment in us, and we have to put up with them. Like the 
 grain of sand in the oyster, we are forced to make pearls of them. 
 
 These are the precipices and chasms which give form to the 
 mountain. Who wants a mountain sprawling indifferently out 
 on all sides, without angle or break, like the oceanic tide-wave 
 of which one cannot say whether it is a hill or a plain ? And 
 if you want to grow a lily, chastely white and filling the air 
 with its fragrance, will you not bury the bulb of it deep in the 
 dirt to begin with 1 
 
 Acknowledging, then, that it is impossible to hold permanently 
 to any line of distinction between good and bad passions, there 
 remains nothing for it but to accept both, and to make use of 
 them redeeming them, both good and bad, from their narrow- 
 ness and limitation by so doing to make use of them in the 
 service of humanity. For as dirt is only matter in the wrong 
 place, so evil hi man consists only in actions or passions which 
 are uncontrolled by the human within him, and undedicated to 
 its service. The evil consists not in the actions or passions 
 themselves, but in the fact that they are inhumanly used. The 
 most unblemished virtue erected into a barrier between one- 
 self and a suffering brother or sister the whitest marble 
 image, howsoever lovely, set up in the Holy Place of the 
 temple of Man, where the spirit alone should dwell becomes 
 blasphemy and a pollution. 
 
 Wherein exactly this human service consists is another 
 question. It may be, and, as the reader would gather, pro- 
 bably is, a matter which at the last eludes definition. But
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 1 17 
 
 though It may elude exact statement, that is no reason why 
 approximations should not be made to the statement of it ; nor 
 is its ultimate elusiveness of intellectual definition any proof 
 that it may not become a real and vital force within the man, 
 and underlying inspiration of his actions. To take the two 
 considerations in order. In the first place, as we saw from the 
 beginning, the experience of society is continually leading it to 
 classify actions into beneficial and harmful, good and bad ; and 
 thus moral codes are formed which eat their way from the 
 outside into the individual man and become part of him. 
 These codes may be looked upon as approximations in each age 
 to a statement of human service ; but, as we have seen, they 
 are by the nature of the case very imperfect ; and since the 
 very conditions of the problem are continually changing, it 
 seems obvious that a final and absolute solution of it by this 
 method is impossible. The second way in which man works 
 towards a solution is by the expansion and growth of his own 
 consciousness, and is ultimately by far the most important 
 though the two methods have doubtless continually to be cor- 
 rected by each other. In fact, as man actually forms a part of 
 society externally, so he comes to know and feel himself a part 
 of society through his inner nature. Gradually, and in the 
 lapse of ages, through the development of his sympathetic re- 
 lation with his fellows, the individual man enters into a wider 
 and wider circle of life the joys and sorrows, the experiences, 
 of his fellows become his own joys and sorrows, his own experi- 
 ences he passes into a life which is larger than his own in- 
 dividual life forces flow in upon him which determine his 
 actions, not for results which return to him directly, but 
 for results which can only return to him indirectly and 
 through others ; at last the ground of humanity, as it were, 
 reveals itself within him, the region of human equality and 
 his actions come to flow directly from the very game source
 
 ii8 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 which regulates and Inspires the whole movement of society. 
 At this point the problem is solved. The growth has taken 
 place from within ; it is not of the nature of an external com- 
 pulsion, but of an inward compunction. By actual conscious 
 ness the man has taken on an ever-enlarging life, and at last 
 the life of humanity, which has no fixed form, no ever-valid 
 code ; but is itself the true life, surpassing definition, yet in- 
 spiring all actions and passions, all codes and forms, and deter* 
 mining at last their place. 
 
 It is the gradual growth of this supreme life in each in- 
 dividual which is the great and indeed the only hope of 
 Society it is that for which Society exists : a life which so far 
 from dwarfing individuality enhances immensely its power, 
 causing the individual to move with the weight of the universe 
 behind him and exalting what were once his little peculiaritie 
 and defects into the splendid manifestations of his humanity. 
 
 To return then for a moment to the practical bearing ol 
 this on the question before us, we see that so soon as we have 
 abandoned all codes of morals there remains nothing for us but 
 to put all our qualities and defects to human use, and to redeem 
 them so by doing. Our defects are our entrances into life, 
 and the gateway of all our dealings with others. Think what 
 it is to be plain and homely. The very word suggests an 
 endearment, and a liberty of access denied to the faultlessly 
 handsome. Our very evil passions, so called, are not things 
 to be ashamed of, but things to look straight in the face and 
 to see what they are good for for a use can be found for 
 them, that \& certain. The man should see that he is worthy 
 of his passion, as the mountain should rear its crest conformable 
 to the height of the precipice which bounds it. Is it women 1 
 let him see that he is a magnanimous lover. Is it ambition 1 
 let him take care that it be a grand one. Is it laziness ? let it 
 redeem him from the folly of unrest, to become heaven-reflect-
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 119 
 
 Ing, like a lake among the hills. Is it closefistedness ? let it 
 become the nurse of a true economy. 
 
 The more complicated, pronounced, or awkward the defect is 
 the finer will be the result when it has been thoroughly worked 
 up. Love of approbation is difficult to deal with. Through 
 sloughs of duplicity, of concealment, of vanity, it leads its 
 victim. It sucks his sturdy self-life, and leaves him flattened 
 and bloodless. Yet once mastered, once fairly torn out, cud- 
 geled, and left bleeding on the road (for this probably has to 
 be done with every vice or virtue some tune or other), it will 
 rise up and follow you, carrying a magic key round its neck, 
 meek and serviceable now, instead of dangerous and demoniac 
 as before. 
 
 Deceit is difficult to deal with. In some sense it is the 
 worst fault that can be. It seems to disorganise and ul- 
 timately to destroy the character. Yet I am bold to say that 
 this defect has its uses. Severely examined perhaps it will be 
 found that no one can live a day free from it. And beyond 
 that is not " a noble dissimulation " part and parcel of the 
 very greatest characters : like Socrates, " the white soul in a 
 satyr forml" When the divine has descended among men has 
 it not always like Moses worn a veil before its face ? and what 
 is Nature herself but one long and organised system of decep- 
 tion! 
 
 Veracity has an opposite effect. It knits all the elements of 
 a man's character rendering him solid rather than fluid ; yet 
 carried out too literally and pragmatically it condenses and 
 solidifies the character overmuch, making the man woodeny 
 and angular. And even of that essential Truth (truth to the 
 inward and ideal perfection) which more than anything else 
 perhaps constitutes a man it is to be remembered that even 
 here there must be a limitation. No man can in act or exter 
 ternally be quite true to the ideal though in spirit he may
 
 120 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 be. If he is to live in this world and be mortal, it must be by 
 virtue of some partiality, some defect. 
 
 And so again since there is an analogy between the Indlvi 
 dual and Society may we not conclude that as the individual 
 has ultimately to recognise his so-called evil passions and find 
 a place and a use for them, society also has to recognise its so- 
 called criminals and discern their place and use 1 The artist 
 does not omit shadows from his canvas ; and the wise states- 
 man will not try to abolish the criminal from society lest 
 haply he be found to have abolished the driving force from hla 
 social machine. 1 
 
 From what has now been said it is quite clear that in general 
 we call a man a criminal, not because he violates any eternal code 
 of morality for there exists no such thing but because he 
 violates the ruling code of his time, and this depends largely on 
 the ideal of the time. The Spartans appear to have permitted 
 theft because they thought that thieving habits in the com- 
 munity fostered military dexterity and discouraged the 
 accumulation of private wealth. They looked upon the latter 
 as a great evil. But to-day the accumulation of private wealth 
 is our great good and the thief is looked upon as the evil. 
 When however we find, as the historians of to-day teach us, 
 that society is now probably passing through a parenthetical 
 stage of private property from a stage of communism in the 
 past to a stage of more highly developed communism in the 
 future, it becomes clear that the thief (and the poacher before- 
 mentioned) is that person who is protesting against the too- 
 exclusive domination of a passing ideal Whatever should we 
 do without him 1 He is keeping open for us, as Hinton I think 
 expresses it, the path to a regenerate society, and is more use* 
 
 1 The derivation of the word " wicked " seems uncertain. May it be 
 suggested that it is connected with ''wick" or "quick" meaning 
 alive?
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. \2\ 
 
 fuJ io that end than many a platform orator. He it is that 
 makes Care to sit upon the Crupper of Wealth, and so, in 
 course of time, causes the burden and bother of private pro- 
 perty to become so intolerable that society gladly casts it 
 down on common ground. Vast as is the machinery of Law, 
 and multifarious the ways in which it seeks to crush the thief, 
 it has signally failed, and fails ever more and more. The thief 
 will win. He will get what he wants, but (as usual in human 
 life !) in a way and in a form very different from what he ex- 
 pected. 
 
 And when we regard the thief in himself, we cannot say that 
 we find him less human than other classes of society. The 
 sentiment of large bodies of thieves is highly communistic 
 among themselves ; and if they thus represent a survival from 
 an earlier age, they might also be looked upon as the precur- 
 sors of a better age in the future. They have their pals in 
 every town, with runs and refuges always open, and are lavish 
 and generous to a degree to their own kind. And if they look 
 upon the rich as their natural enemies and fair prey, a view 
 which it might be difficult to gainsay, many of them at any 
 rate are animated by a good deal of the Robin Hood spirit, 
 and are really helpful to the poor. 
 
 I need not I think quote that famous passage from Lecky 
 in which he shows how the prostitute, through centuries of 
 suffering and ill-fame, has borne the curse and contempt of 
 Society in order that her more fortunate sister might rejoice in 
 the achievement of a pure marriage. The ideal of a monogamic 
 union has been established in a sense directly by the slur cast 
 upon the free woman. If, however, as many people think, a 
 certain latitude in sexual relations is not only admissible but 
 in the long run, and within bounds, desirable, it becomes clear 
 that the prostitute is that person who against heavy odds, and 
 at the cost of a real degradation to herself, has clung to a
 
 122 CIVILISA flON: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 tradition which, in itself good, might otherwise have perished 
 in the face of our devotion to the splendid ideal of the exclu- 
 sive marriage. There has been a time in history when the 
 prostitute (if the word can properly be used in this connection) 
 has been glorified, consecrated to the temple-service and 
 honored of men and gods (the hierodouloi of the Greeks, the 
 kodeshoth and kodeshim of the Bible, <ko.) There has also 
 been a time when she has been scouted and reviled. In the 
 future there will come a time when, as free companion, really 
 free from the curse of modern commercialism, and sacred and 
 respected once more, she will again be accepted by society and 
 take her place with the rest. 
 
 And so with other cases. On looking back into history we 
 find that almost every human impulse has at some age been 
 held in esteem and allowed full play ; thus man came to re- 
 cognise its beauty and value. But then lest it should come 
 (as it surely would) to tyrannise over the rest, it has been de- 
 throned, and so in a later age the same quality is scouted and 
 banned. Last of all it has to find its perfect human use and 
 to take its place with the rest. Up to the age of Civilisation 
 (according to writers on primitive Society) the early tribes 
 of mankind, though limited each in their habits, were 
 essentially democratical hi structure. In fact nothing 
 had occurred to make them otherwise. Each member stood 
 on a footing of equality with the rest ; individual men had 
 not in their hands an arbitrary power over others ; and 
 the tribal life and standard ruled supreme. And when, in 
 the future and on a much higher plane, the true Demo- 
 cracy comes, this equality which has so long been in abeyance 
 will be restored, not only among men but also, In a 
 sense, among all the passions and qualities of manhood : none 
 will be allowed to tyrannise over others, but all will have to 
 be subject to the supreme life of humanity. The chariot of
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 123 
 
 Man instead of two horses will have a thousand ; but they will 
 all be under control of the charioteer. Meanwhile it may not 
 be extravagant to suppose that all through the Civilisation- 
 period the so-called criminals are keeping open the possibility 
 of a return to this state of society. They are preserving, in a 
 rough and unattractive husk it may be, the precious seed of a 
 life which is to come in the future ; and are as necessary and 
 integral a part of society in the long run as the most respected 
 and most honored of its members at present. 
 
 The upshot then of it all is that " morals " as a code of 
 action have to be discarded. There exists no such code, at 
 any rate for permanent use. One age, one race, one class, one 
 family, may have a code which the users of it consider valid, 
 but only they consider it valid, and they only for a time. 
 The Decalogue may have been a rough and useful ready- 
 reckoner for the Israelites ; but to us it admits of so many ex- 
 ceptions and interpretations that it is practically worthless. 
 11 Thou shalt not steal." Exactly j but who is to decide, as 
 we saw at the outset, in what " stealing " consists ? The 
 question is too complicated to admit of an answer. And when 
 we have caught our half-starved tramp " snaking " a loaf, and 
 are ready to condemn him, lo ! Lycurgus pats him on the 
 back, and the modern philosopher tells him that he is keeping 
 open the path to a regenerate society ! If the tramp had also 
 been a philosopher he would perhaps have done the same act 
 not merely for his own benefit but for that of society, he would 
 have committed a crime in order to save mankind. 
 
 There is nothing left but Humanity. Since there Is no 
 ever-valid code of morals we must sadly confess that there is 
 no means of proving ourselves right and our neighbors wrong. 
 In fact the very act of thinking whether we are right (which 
 implies a sundering of ourselves, even in thought, from others) 
 itself introduces the element of wronguess ; and if we are ever
 
 124 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 to be " right " at all, it must be at some moment when we fail 
 to notice it when we have forgotten our apartness from 
 others and have entered into the great region of human 
 equality. Equality in that region all human defects are re- 
 deemed ; they all find their place. To love your neighbor 
 as yourself is the whole law and the prophets ; to feel that 
 you are " equal " with others, that their lives are as your life, 
 that your life is as theirs even in what trifling degree we 
 may experience such things is to enter into another life 
 which includes both sides ; it is to pass beyond the sphere of 
 moral distinctions, and to trouble oneself no more with them. 
 Between lovers there are no duties and no rights ; and in the 
 life of humanity, there is only an instinctive mutual service 
 expressing itself in whatever way may be best at the time. 
 Nothing is forbidden, there is nothing which may not serve. 
 The law of Equality is perfectly flexible, is adaptable to all 
 times and places, finds a place for all the elements of character, 
 justifies and redeems them all without exception ; and to live 
 by it is perfect freedom. Yet not a law : but rather as said, 
 a new life, transcending the individual life, working through 
 it from within, lifting the self into another sphere, beyond 
 corruption, far over the world of Sorrow. 
 
 The effort to make a distinction between acting for self and 
 acting for one's neighbor is the basis of " morals." As loug as a 
 man feels an ultimate antagonism between himself and society, 
 as long as he tries to hold his own life as a thing apart from 
 that of others, so long must the question arise whether he will 
 act for self or for those others. Hence flow a long array of 
 terms distinctions of right and wrong, duty, selfishness, self- 
 renunciation, altruism, etc. But when he discovers that there 
 is no ultimate antagonism between himself and society ; when 
 he finds that the gratification of every desire which he has or 
 can have may be rendered social, or beneficial to his fellows,
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 125 
 
 by being used at the right time and place, and on the other 
 hand that every demand made upon him by society will and 
 must gratify some portion of his nature, some desire of his 
 heart why, all the distinctions collapse again; they do not 
 hold water any more. A larger life descends upon him, which 
 includes both sides, and prompts actions in accordance with an 
 unwritten and unimagined law. Such actions will sometimes 
 be accounted " selfish " by the world ; sometimes they will be 
 be accounted " unselfish " j but they are neither, or if you 
 like both ; and he who does them concerns himself not with 
 the names that may be given to them. The law of Equality 
 includes all the moral codes, and is the stand-point which they 
 cannot reach, but which they all aim at. 
 
 Judged by this final standard then, it may doubtless fairly 
 be said since we all fall short of it that we are all criminals, 
 and deserve a good hiding ; and even that some of us are 
 greater criminals than others. Only of this real criminality 
 the actual moral and legal codes afford but ineffectual tests. I 
 may be a far worse or more self-included (" idiotic " or brutal) 
 man than you, but the mere fact that I have violated the laws 
 and been clapped into prison does not prove it. There may 
 be, probably is, a real and eternal difference represented by 
 the words Right and Wrong, but no statement that we can 
 make will ever quite avail to define it. One use, however, of 
 all these laws and codes in the past, imperfect though they 
 were, may have been to gradually excite the consciousness in 
 the individual of his opposition to society, and so prepare the 
 way for a true reconcilement. As Paul says "I had not 
 known sin, but by the law," and if we had not been cudgeled 
 and bruised for centuries by this rough bludgeon of social 
 convention we should not now be so sensitive as we are to the 
 effect of our actions upon our neighbors, nor so ready for a 
 social life in the future which shall be superior to law.
 
 126 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 Of course the ultimate reconcilement of the individual with 
 society of the unit Man with the mass-Man involves the 
 subordination of the desires, their subjection to the true self. 
 And this is a most important point. It is no easy lapse that 
 is here suggested, from morality into a mere jungle of human 
 passion ; but a toilsome and long ascent involving for a time 
 at any rate a determined self-control into ascendancy over 
 the passions ; it involves the complete mastery, one by one, of 
 them all ; and the recognition and allowance of them only 
 because they are mastered. And it is just this training and 
 subjection of the passions as of winged horses which are to 
 draw the human chariot which necessarily forms such a long 
 and painful process of human evolution. The old moral codes 
 are a part of this process ; but they go on the plan of eitin- 
 guishing some of the passions seeing that it is sometimes 
 easier to shoot a restive horse than to ride him. We however 
 do not want to be lords of dead carrion but of living powers ; 
 and every steed that we can add to our chariot makes our 
 progress through creation so much the more splendid, providing 
 Phoebus indeed hold the reins, and not the incapable Phaeton. 
 
 And by becoming thus one with the social self, the in- 
 dividual instead of being crushed is made far vaster, far grander 
 than before. The renunciation (if it must be so called) which 
 he has to accept in abandoning merely individual ends is 
 immediately compensated by the far more vivid life he now 
 enters into. For every force of his nature can now be utilised. 
 Planting himself out by contrast he stands all the firmer be- 
 cause he has a left foot as well as a right, and when he acts, 
 he acts not half-heartedly as one afraid, but, as it were, with the 
 whole weight of Humanity behind him. In abandoning his 
 exclusive individuality he becomes for the first time a real and 
 living individual ; and in accepting as his own the life of 
 others he becomes aware of a life in himself that has no limit
 
 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS. 127 
 
 and no end. That the self of any one man is capable of as 
 infinite gradation from the most petty and exclusive existence 
 to the most magnificent and inclusive seems almost a truism. 
 The one extreme is disease and death, the other is life ever- 
 lasting. When the tongue for example which is a member 
 of the body regards itself as a purely separate existence for 
 itself alone, it makes a mistake, it suffers an illusion, and 
 descends into its pettiest life. What is the consequence 1 
 Thinking that it exists apart from the other members, it selects 
 food just such as shall gratify its most local self, it endeavors 
 just to titillate its own sense of taste ; and living and acting 
 thus, ere long it ruins that very sense of taste, poisons the 
 system with improper food, and brings about disease and death. 
 Yet if healthy how does the tongue act ? Why, it does not run 
 counter to its own sense of taste, or stultify itself. It does 
 not talk about sacrificing its own inclinations for the good of 
 the body and the other members ; but it just acts as being 
 one in interest with them and they with it. For the tongue 
 it a muscle, and therefore what feeds it feeds all the other 
 muscles ; and the membrane of the tongue is a prolongation 
 of the membrane of the stomach, and that is how the tongue 
 knows what the stomach will like ; and the tongue it nerves 
 and blood, and so the tongue may act for nerves and blood all 
 over the body, and so on. Therefore the tongue may enter 
 into a wider life than that represented by the mere local sense 
 of taste, and experiences more pleasure often hi the drinking 
 of a glass of water which the whole body wants, than in the 
 daintiest sweetmeat which is for itself alone. 
 
 Exactly so man in a healthy state dees not act for himself 
 alone, practically cannot do so. Nor does he talk cant about 
 " serving his neighbors," <fec. But he simply acts for them as 
 well as for himself, because they are part and parcel of his 
 life bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh ; and in doing so
 
 128 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 he enters into a wider life, finds a more perfect pleasure, and 
 becomes more really a man than ever before. Every man 
 contains in himself the elements of all the rest of humanity. 
 They lie in the back-ground ; but they are there. In the front he 
 has his own special faculty developed his individual facade, 
 with its projects, plans and purposes : but behind sleeps the 
 Demos-life with far vaster projects and purposes. Some time 
 or other to every man must come the consciousness of this 
 vaster life. 
 
 The true Democracy, wherein this larger life will rule 
 society from within obviating the need of an external govern- 
 ment and in which all characters and qualities will b 
 recognised and have their freedom, waits (a hidden but 
 necessary result of evolution) in the constitution of human 
 nature itself. In the pre-Civilisation period these vexed 
 questions of " morals " practically did not exist ; simply be- 
 cause in that period the individual was one with his tribe and 
 moved (unconsciously) by the larger life of his tribe. And in 
 the post-Civilisation period, when the true Democracy is 
 realised, they will not exist, because then the man will know 
 himself a part of humanity at large, and will be consciously 
 moved by forces belonging to these vaster regions of his being. 
 The moral codes and questionings belong to Civilisation, they 
 are part of the forward effort, the struggle, the suffering, and the 
 temporary alienation %>m true life, which that term implies.
 
 EXFOLIATION. 
 
 "Creation's incessant unrest, exfoliation." 
 
 WHITMAH. 
 
 I THINK It may perhaps be agreed, once for all, that the human 
 mind is incapable of really defining even the smallest fact of 
 nature. The simplest thing, or event, baffles us at the last. 
 It is like trying to look at the front and back of a mirror at 
 the same time. The utmost squinting avails not. The ego 
 and the non-ego dance eluding through creation. To catch 
 them both in any mortal object and pin them there, surpasses 
 our powers. And yet they are there. Montaigne quotes 
 somewhere the words of S. Augustine : modus, quo corporibus 
 adhaerent spiritus . . . omnino mirut est, nee comprehendi ab 
 homing potest ; et hoc ipte homo est. " The manner whereby 
 spirits adhere to bodies Is altogether wonderful, and cannot be 
 conceived of by men ; and yet this is man." Man himself con- 
 tains, or rather is, the reconcilement of this and numberless- 
 other contradictions. We actually every day perform and 
 exhibit miracles which the mental part of us is utterly power- 
 less to grapple with. Yet the solution, the intelligent solution 
 and understanding of them it In us ; only it involves a higher 
 order of consciousness than we usually deal with a conscious- 
 ness possibly which includes and transcends the ego and the 
 non-ego, and so can envisage both at the same time and equally 
 
 I
 
 130 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 a fourth-dimensional consciousness to whose gaze the interiors 
 of solid bodies are exposed like mere surfaces a consciousness 
 to whose perception some usual antitheses like cause and effect, 
 matter and spirit, past and future, simply do not exist. I say 
 these higher orders of consciousness are in us waiting for their 
 evolution ; and, until they evolve, we are powerless really to 
 understand anything of the world around us. 
 
 Meanwhile, since we must have formulse and generalisations 
 to think by, we are fain to accept our local views, and look on 
 the world from this side or from that. Sometimes we are 
 idealists, sometimes we are materialists ; sometimes we believe 
 in mechanics, sometimes in human or spiritual forces. The 
 science of the last fifty years has, as pointed out in a preceding 
 paper, looked at things more from the mechanical than the 
 distinctively human side from the point of view of the non- 
 ego, rather than of the ego. Reacting from an extreme 
 tendency towards a subjective view of phenomena, which 
 characterised the older speculations, and fearing to be swayed 
 by a kind of partiality towards himself, the modern scientist 
 h&s endeavored to remove the human and conscious element 
 from his observations of Nature. And he has done valuable 
 work in this way but of course has been betrayed into a 
 corresponding narrowness. 
 
 In fact the main scientific doctrine of the day, Evolution, is 
 obviously suffering from this treatment, and the following 
 remarks are merely a few notes by way of suggestion of some 
 things which may be said on its more specially human side. 
 For since each man is a part of nature, and in that sense a part 
 also of the evolution-process, his own subjective experience 
 ought at least to throw some light on the conditions under 
 which evolution takes place, and to contribute something 
 towards an understanding of the problem. 
 
 If the question is \ What is the cause of Variation among
 
 EXFOLIATION. 131 
 
 animals ? some approximation towards an answer ought to be got 
 by each person asking himself, " Why do I vary \ " Why he 
 might say ami a different person from what I was ten years ago, 
 or when I was a boy t Why have I varied in one direction and my 
 brothers and sisters from the same nest in other directions 1 
 Though my individual consciousness only covers the small 
 ground of my own life, and does not extend back to that of my 
 father or forward to that of my son, still the intimate knowledge 
 that I have of the forces acting on me during that short period 
 may help me to an understanding of the forces that bring 
 about the modification of men and animals at large, and the 
 discovery of some laws of my own growth may reveal to me the 
 laws also of race-growth. 
 
 In answer to such a question, it would speedily appear that 
 there were two general causes determining direction of change 
 or growth in the individual, which might be conveniently 
 distinguished from each other an external and an internal. 
 In the first place the supposed person might say, " External 
 conditions forced me along these lines. My father was a town 
 artisan, but he apprenticed me to a farmer. I grew up a 
 farmer's boy, and became an agricultural type as you see. I 
 did not particularly care for farming, sometimes indeed I would 
 have been glad to be out of it ; but practically I succumbed to 
 circumstances, and here I am." But in the second place he 
 might answer thus : " My father was himself a farmer ; I was 
 early used to the craft, and should no doubt have grown up in 
 it, had I not hated it like poison. I loved music, broke away 
 from home, joined a band, got on the musical staff of a small 
 theatre, and am now a professional musician. My frame is 
 comparatively slight, and my hands are of the nervous type, as 
 you see. Of course I have some of the old agricultural stock 
 left in me, but I feel that that is dying out." The one cause 
 would be a change of external conditions, forcing the man to
 
 132 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CUKE. 
 
 accommodate himself to them ; the other would be a change of 
 Internal conditions, an inward growth, expressing itself first in 
 the form of an intense desire, and compelling the man to 
 change himself and probably also his environment in obedience 
 to it. Two such general sets of causes, I say, could be roughly 
 distinguished from each other ; and probably indeed are 
 recognised less or more distinctly by everyone as acting to 
 modify his life. Nor can the life of a man at any time be said 
 to be ruled by one of these forces alone. No man is modified 
 by external conditions alone, without any play or reaction of 
 inner needs and desires and growth from within ; nor is any 
 man transformed in obedience to an inner expansion without 
 sundry lets and hindrances from without. The two forces are 
 in constant play upon one another ; but in some ways that 
 would appear to be the more important which proceeds from 
 the Man (or creature) himself, since this is obviously vital and 
 organic to him, and therefore the most consistent and reliable 
 factor in his modification, while the external force arising from 
 various and remote causes must rather be regarded as discon- 
 tinuous and accidental. 
 
 I propose, therefore, in these few pages to consider especially 
 this inner force producing modification in man and animals to 
 try and find out of what nature it is, what is the law, and what 
 are the limits of its action premising always, as already 
 suggested, that this distinction between " inner " and " outer," 
 which is convenient and easy to handle on certain planes of 
 thought, may ultimately, and in the last resort, prove very 
 difficult or even impossible to maintain. 
 
 It ia often said by Biologists that function precedes organisa- 
 tion that is, man fights with his fellows before he makes 
 weapons to fight with ; the rudimentary animal digests food 
 (as in the case of the amoeba) before it acquires a stomach or 
 organ of digestion ; it sees or is sensitive to light before it
 
 EXPO LI A TION. 133 
 
 grows an eye ; in society letters are carried by private hands 
 before an organised postal system is created. Such facts 
 properly considered are of vital importance. They show us, 
 as it were by a sign-post, the direction of creation. They 
 show how any new thing or modification of an old thing may 
 come into being. They may be supplemented by a second 
 statement namely that desire precedes function. That is, 
 man desires to injure his fellow before he actually fights with 
 him ; he experiences the wish to communicate with distant 
 friends before ever he thinks of sending such a thing as a 
 letter ; the amoeba craves for food first, and circumvents its 
 prey afterwards. Desire, or inward change, comes first, action 
 follows, and organisation or outward structure is the result. 
 
 In man this " order of creation," if it may so be called, i.e., 
 from within outwards, is very marked. Whenever a man 
 creates anything new he pursues it ; when he builds a house 
 for instance, or composes a poem or piece of music, or designs 
 an Alpine tunnel, or whatever it may be. The order seems to 
 be : first, a feeling a dim want or desire ; then the feeling 
 becomes conscious of itself, takes shape in thought ; the 
 thought becomes more defined and issues in a distinct plan ; 
 the plan is committed to paper, models are made, <fec. ; and 
 finally the actual work is begun and completed. The process 
 appears as a movement from within outwards the earliest 
 and most authentic discernible source of the movement being 
 a feeling (though there may He something behind that). 
 Even in ordinary action the same order is manifest ; for 
 though of course every action is not preceded by desire 
 since we know that actions soon become habitual and more or 
 less unconscious still a vast number of them are immediately 
 so preceded ; and in the case of any action that is new, either 
 to the individual or to the race, its inception is generally 
 accompanied by effort so painful that it would not be exerted
 
 134 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 unless the desire were very strong. The difficulty which a 
 man experiences in learning any new art, and the records of 
 the many failures, struggles, oppositions, persecutions, <fcc., 
 which have attended every new invention or innovation of any 
 kind in human history afford plenty of evidence of this last 
 point. Certainly the effort that accompanies a new action ie 
 not always faced so much from sheer desire of the new thing 
 itself as from fear perhaps of something else as it may be 
 contended that monkeys did not take to climbing trees 
 because they loved trees, but because they feared the beasts 
 below, or that the giraffe did not stretch its neck because it 
 particularly desired to feed on leaves, as because it could not 
 get food any other way but still, even in these cases the 
 desire may be said to exist, though it is secondary being 
 founded upon another and more elementary desire the 
 desire namely of escaping pain or obtaining food. In either 
 case a desire of some kind is a precedent condition of the new 
 action. And so as we know of no case of a new action coming 
 Into play without being preceded by desire, we seem to be 
 justified in supposing that all our actions when they were first 
 initiated (in our forefathers if not in ourselves) were BO pre- 
 ceded. If this is so, then since function is always preceded 
 by desire, and organisation is preceded by function, organisa- 
 tion must necessarily be preceded by desire. And if this is 
 the order of creation in man, should we not reasonably look in 
 this direction for the key to the variation of animals and the 
 order of creation in general ? * 
 
 If a farmer's son is occasionally born who hates farming 
 and loves music, and who ultimately through the force of his 
 
 1 This does not of course preclude the action of external conditions, or 
 imply that organisation is determined by desire alone. In fact organi- 
 sation may be regarded as the expression of desire acting under con- 
 dition* as in the cases of the monkey and giraffe above.
 
 EXFOLIATION. 135 
 
 desire (driving him into oppositions and difficulties and 
 penurious struggles) transforms himself into a musician, is it 
 not also likely that occasionally an animal is born who hates 
 the customs of his tribe, and at last (also through struggles) 
 transforms himself into something else ? Even if he does not 
 nucceed (the animal) in entirely transforming himself, he 
 likely transmits the desire in some degree to his descendants, 
 and the transformation is thus carried on and completed later. 
 For everywhere among the animals there it desire, of some 
 kind or another, obviously acting ; and if in man, by our own 
 experience, desire is the precursor and first expression of 
 growth, is there any reason why it should not also be so 
 among animals t Lamarck gives the instance among others 
 of a gasteropod ; how the need or desire of touching bodies in 
 front of it as it crawled along would result in the formation of 
 tentacles. The gasteropod, he says, would keep making efforts 
 to feel with the front of its head, and the determination of 
 consciousness that way would be accompanied by a supply of 
 nervous and other fluids, which would nourish the part and 
 cause growth there the form of the growth continuing in 
 the same way to be determined by need till at last two or 
 more tentacles would appear. True, the inward determina- 
 tions of consciousness may not be so vivid and varied in 
 animals as they are in men ; but they are persistent, and by 
 the very cumulative force of habit which is so strong in animals, 
 must at length penetrate down through function into organi- 
 sation and external form. Who shall say that the lark, by the 
 mere love of soaring and singing in the face of the sun, has 
 not altered the shape of its wings, or that the forms of the 
 shark or of the gazelle are not the long-stored results of 
 character leaning always in certain directions, as much as the 
 forms of the miser or the libertine are among men t 
 
 Such modification as this is very different from the " sur-
 
 130 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB.. 
 
 vival of the fittest " of the Darwinian evolution-theory. We 
 may fairly suppose that both kinds of modification take place ; 
 but the latter is a sort of easy success won by an external 
 accident of birth a success of the kind that would readily be 
 lost again ; while the former is the uphill fight of a nature 
 that has grown inwardly and wins expression for itself in spite 
 of external obstacles an expression which therefore is likely 
 to be permanent. If the progenitors of man took to going up- 
 right on two legs instead of on all fours, merely because a few 
 of them by chance, were born with a talent for that position, 
 which enabled them to escape the fanged and pursuing beasts, 
 then when this danger was removed they might have plumped 
 down again into the old attitude ; but if the change was part 
 and parcel of a true evolution a true unfolding of a higher 
 form latent within an organic growth of the creature itself, 
 then, though the moment of the evolution of this particular 
 faculty might be determined by the fanged beasts, the fact of 
 such evolution could not be determined by them. Besides are 
 we to suppose that Man, the lord and ruler of the animals, 
 came merely by way of escape from the animals ? Do lords 
 and rulers generally come BO ? Was it fear that made him a 
 man ? Were it not likelier that in that case he would have 
 turned into a worm ? He would have escaped better perhaps 
 that way. Is it not rather probable that it was some nob- 
 ler power that worked transforming some dim desire and 
 prevision of a more perfect form, the desire itself being the 
 first consciousness of the urge of growth in that direction 
 that prompted him to push in the one direction rather than 
 the other when he had to hold his own against the tigers ? In 
 fact is it not thus to-day, when a man has to meet danger, that 
 the ideal which he has within him determines how he shall 
 meet that danger, and others like it, and so ultimately deter- 
 mines the whole attitude and carriage of his body !
 
 EXFOLIATION. 137 
 
 On the whole then, judging from man himself (and it seems 
 most cautious and scientific to derive our main evidence from 
 the being that we are best acquainted with), it certainly seems 
 to me that though the external conditions are a very 
 Important factor in Variation, the central explanation of this 
 phenomenon should be sought in an inner law of Growth a 
 law of expansion more or less common to all animate nature. 
 Partly because, as said before, the unfolding of the creature 
 from its own needs and inward nature is an organic process, 
 and likely to be persistent, while its modification by external 
 causes must be more or less fortuitous and accidental and 
 sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another ; partly 
 also because the movement from within outwards seems to be 
 most like the law of creation in general. Under this view the 
 external conditions would be considered a secondary though 
 important cause of modification ; and regarded rather as the 
 influences that give form and detail to the great primal im- 
 pulse of growth from within ; while the creature's own ingen- 
 uity and good luck would occupy the ground between the two 
 as the means whereby the external conditions in each indi- 
 vidual case would be turned to account to satisfy the inner 
 needs, or the inner life would be accommodated to the external 
 conditions. 
 
 If we take the external view of Variation which is the one 
 most favored by modern science modification or race-growth 
 appears as an unconscious or accretive process similar to the 
 formation of a coral reef. There is no line of growth native in 
 the race itself, but at any moment it is supposed to have an 
 equal tendency to vary in any direction. Surrounding con- 
 ditions act selectively ; and by a process of weeding out certain 
 types survive ; small successive modifications are thus accumu- 
 lated ; and gradually and in the lapse of ages a more pliable 
 and differentiated creature, and more adaptable to a variety of
 
 138 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 conditions, is produced in whom however mind is incidental, 
 and has played but small part in the creature's evolution, 
 This in the main is the Darwinian-evolution theory. 
 
 If we take the internal view, growth is from the first emin- 
 ently conscious. Every change begins in the mental region 
 is felt first as a desire gradually taking form into thought, 
 passes down into the bodily region, expresses itself in action 
 (more or less dependent on conditions), and finally solidifies 
 itself in organisation and structure. The process is not ac- 
 cretive but exfoliatory a continual movement from within out- 
 wards. When the desire or mental condition which at first 
 was painfully conscious, has overcome opposition and estab- 
 lished itself in altered bodily structure, it has done its work, 
 and becomes unconscious the bodily function continuing for 
 a long period to act automatically, till finally it is thrown off 
 to make room for some later development. Thus race-growth 
 or Variation is a process by which change begins in the mental 
 region, passes into the bodily region where it becomes organised, 
 and finally is thrown off like a husk. This may be called the 
 theory of Exfoliation. 
 
 To illustrate our meaning. Let us take the development of 
 an eye. In the amoeba there is a dim pervasive sensitiveness to 
 light over the whole body, but there is no eye, nothing that 
 we should call vision. Still this vague sensitiveness is of use 
 to the amoeba. The shadow of its prey falling upon the 
 creature and exciting a sensation hardly yet differentiated from 
 toxich helps to guide its movements. On this dim sensation it 
 relies to some extent; its attention is directed towards it. 
 Gradually, and in some descendant form, there comes to be a 
 point on the body on which this attention is most specially 
 concentrated. The faculty is localised ; and from that moment 
 a change is effected there, a differentiation and a special 
 structure ; everything that favors sensitiveness is encouraged
 
 EXFOLIATION. 139 
 
 at that place, everything that dulls it is removed ; and before 
 long there is a rudimentary eye. To-day we use our perfected 
 eyes, and are hardly conscious that we are doing so ; but every 
 power of vision that we have was thus won for us by some 
 lowlier creature, step by step, with effort and with concen- 
 tration. Or to take an illustration from society. To-day 
 society is ill at ease ; a dim feeling of discontent pervades all 
 ranks and ol isses. A new sense of justice, of fraternity, has 
 descended among us, which is not satisfied with mere chatter 
 of demand and supply. For a long time this new sentiment 
 or desire remains vague and unformed, but at last it resolves it- 
 self into shape ; it takes intellectual form, books are written, 
 plans formed ; then after a time definite new organisations, 
 for the distinct purpose of expressing these ideas, begin to 
 exist in the body of the old society ; and before so very long 
 the whole outer structure of society will have been reorganised 
 by them. After a few centuries the ideas for whose realisation 
 we now fight and struggle with an intense consciousness will 
 have become commonplace accepted institutions, more or less 
 effete and ready to succumb before fresh mental births taking 
 place from within. 
 
 The modern evolution theory would maintain that among 
 many amoebas and descendant forms, one would at last by 
 chance be born having the usual sensitiveness localised in a 
 particular spot, and, surviving by force of this advantage, 
 would transmit this " eye " to its posterity ; or that in the 
 progress of society, new economic conditions having arisen, 
 that people would prosper best which most effectually and 
 rapidly adapted itself to them. But though there is doubtless 
 truth in this view, yet it seems when all has been said to be 
 inadequate and even feeble ; it omits at least one half of the 
 problem. If we look at ourselves, as already pointed out, we 
 bee the two forces the inner and the outer acting and re-
 
 140 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 acting on each other. May it not be so in animals t Lamarck, 
 poorly off, blind, derided, was a true poet. "Animals vary 
 from low and primitive types chiefly by dint of wishing" and 
 the world laughed and still laughs. But it was his deep 
 sympathy even with the worms and insects (which he studied 
 till he could discern them with his mortal eyes no longer) that 
 led Lamarck to see the human nature and the human laws 
 that moved within them ; and as his outward sight grew dim 
 there arose before Him the inward vision of the true relation- 
 ship which binds together all living creatures which was 
 indeed a vision of divine things, and as different from the mere 
 mechanism-theory of the survival of the fittest as the sight of 
 the starry heavens is different from a governess's lesson on the 
 use of the globes. 
 
 On the theory of Exfoliation, which was practically Lamarck's 
 theory, there is a force at work throughout creation, ever 
 urging each type onward into new and newer forms. This 
 force appears first in consciousness in the form of desire. 
 Within each shape of life sleep wants without number, from 
 the lowest and simplest to the most complex and ideal. As 
 each new desire or ideal is evolved, it brings the creature into 
 conflict with its surroundings, then gaming its satisfaction 
 externalises itself in the structure of the creature, and leaves 
 the way open for the birth of a new ideal. If then we would 
 find a key to the understanding of the expansion and growth 
 of all animate creation, such a key may exist in the nature of 
 desire itself and the comprehension of its real meaning. It is 
 not certain that it can be found here ; but it may be. 
 
 What then is desire in Man ^ Here we come back again, as 
 suggested at the outset, to Man himself. Though we see 
 pretty clearly that desire is at work in the animals, and that 
 it is the same in kind as exists in man, still among the animals 
 it is but dim and inchoate while in man it ia developed and
 
 EXFOLIATION. 141 
 
 luminous ; in ourselves too we know it immediately, while in 
 the animals only by inference. For both reasons therefore if 
 we want to know the nature of desire even to know its 
 nature among animals we should study it in Man. What 
 then is desire what is its culmination and completion in 
 Man ? Practically it is love. Lore is the sum and the solu 
 tion of all desires in Man that in which they converge ; the 
 interpretation of them ; for which they all exist, and without 
 which they would be considered useless. The more you look 
 into this matter, the plainer it becomes. The other desires 
 the self-preservation desires hunger, thirst, the desire of 
 power exist, but when they are satisfied they empty them- 
 selves into this one ; they find their interpretation in it. The 
 other desires are nothing by themselves the most absorbing, 
 avarice, ambition, desire of knowledge, taken alone, stultify 
 themselves but love perpetuates itself : it is a flame which 
 uses all the rest as its fuel. And what is Love ? It appears 
 to us as a worship of and desire for the human form. In our 
 bodies it is a desire for the bodily human form ; in our interior 
 selves it is a perception and worship of an ideal human form, 
 it is the revelation of a Splendor dwelling in others, which 
 clouded and dimmed as it inevitably may come to be re- 
 mains after all one of the most real, perhaps the most real, of 
 the facts of existence. Desire, therefore as it exists in man 
 look at it how you will as it unfolds and its ultimate aim be- 
 comes clearer and clearer to itself, is seen to be the desire and 
 longing for the perfect human Form. May it not, must it not, 
 be the same thing in animals and all thro' creation 1 Begin- 
 ning in the most elementary and dim shapes, does it not grow 
 through all the stages of organic life clearer and more and more 
 powerful, till at last it attains to self-consciousness in humanity 
 and becomes avowedly the leading factor in our development. 
 The desire which runs through creation is one desire. Rudi-
 
 14* CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 mentary at first and hardly conscious of itself, throwing out a 
 tentacle here, a foot there, developing an eye, a claw, a nostril, 
 a wing, it seeks in innumerable shapes and with ever partial 
 success to realise the image it has dimly conceived. The 
 animal kingdom is the gymnasium, the school, the ante- 
 chamber, of humanity ; to walk thro' a zoological garden is to 
 see the inchoate types of man, perched on branches, or brows- 
 ing grass, or boring holes in the ground ; it is to witness a 
 grand rehearsal of some stupendous part, whose character we 
 do not even yet fully see or understand. From such half- 
 conscious beginnings the desire grows, its aim becomes clearer, 
 till in the higher animals the horse, the dog, the elephant, 
 the bird, and many others it becomes a marked and unmis- 
 takeable force drawing them close to man, uniting them to 
 him in a kind of acknowledged kinship, and as obviously at 
 work modifying their structure as can be. Finally in man 
 himself it becomes an absorbing power ; love becomes a con- 
 scious worship of the divine form; generation itself is the 
 means whereby, in time, the supreme object of desire is realised. 
 When at last the perfect Man appears, the key to all nature is 
 found, every creature falls into its place and finds its Inter- 
 preter, and the purpose of creation is at last made mani- 
 fest. 
 
 The Theory of Exfoliation then differs from that very speci- 
 alised form of Evolution which has been adopted by modern 
 science, in this particular among others : that it fixes the at- 
 tention on that which appears last in order of Time, as the 
 most important in order of causation, rather than on that 
 which appears first ; and recalls to us the fact that often in 
 any succession of phenomena, that which is first in order of 
 precedence and importance is the last to be externalised 
 Thus in the growth of a plant we find leaf after leaf appearing, 
 petal within petal a continual exfoliation of husks, sepals,
 
 EXFOLIATION. 143 
 
 petals, stamens and what-not ; but the object of all this 
 movement, and that which in a sense sets it all in motion, 
 namely the seed, is the very last thing of all to be manifested. 
 Or when a volcano breaks out first of all we have a 
 cracking and upheaval of superficial layers of ground, then 
 of layers below these, then ttife outflow of lava, and last 
 of all the uprush of the inner fires and forces which 
 set it all agoing. What appears first in time, or in the outer 
 world is in the case o; f >he building of a house, the making 
 of bricks ; in the case of the flower, the outermost bracts ; in 
 the case of a volcano, the stirring of the surface of the ground ; 
 and in the case of Life on the Earth, the appearance of pro- 
 toplasms and primordial cells. The bricks are not the cause 
 of the house (if indeed the word " cause " should be used here 
 at all) but rather the house or the conception of the house 
 is the cause of the bricks ; and the cells are not the origin of 
 Man, but Man is the original of the cells. The rationale of 
 sea-anemones and mud-fish and flying foxes and elephants has 
 to be looked for in man : ';<> alone underlies them. And man 
 is not a vertebrate because his ancestors were vertebrate ; but 
 the animals are vertebrate, because or in SD far as they are 
 fore-runners and offshoots of Man. 
 
 It has been frequently said that great material changes are 
 succeeded by intellectual and finally by moral revolutions 
 as the conquests of Alexander passed on into the literary 
 expansion of the Alexandrian schools and thence into the 
 establishment of Christiaaity, or as the mechanical develop- 
 ments of our own time have been followed by immense literary 
 and scientific activities, and are obviously passing over now 
 into a great social regeneration ; but a reconsideration of the 
 matter might, I take it, lead us not so much to look on the 
 later changes as caused by the earlier, as to look on the earlier 
 as the indications and first outward and visible signs of the
 
 144 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 coming of the later. When a man feels in himself the up- 
 heaval of a new moral fact he sees plainly enough that that 
 fact cannot come into the actual world all at once not 
 without first a destruction of the existing order of society 
 such a destruction as makes him feel satanic ; then an intel- 
 lectual revolution ; and lastly only, a new order embodying 
 the new impulse. When this new impulse has thoroughly 
 materialised itself, then after a time will come another 
 inward birth, and similar changes will be passed through 
 again. So it might be said that the work of each age is not to 
 build on the past, but to rise out of the past and throw it off ; 
 only of course in such matters where all forms of thought are 
 inadequate it is hard to say that one way of looking at the 
 subject is truer than another. As before, we should endeavor 
 to look at the thing from different sides. 
 
 We are obliged to use images to think by t.g. the opening 
 of a flower or the accretive growth of a coral reef and 
 possibly it would save a good deal of trouble if we did not 
 disguise by long words the truth that all our theories in 
 science and philosophy are simply metaphors of this kind 
 but the/art still lies behind and below them. 
 
 Perhaps if we are to use the word Cause at all we should do 
 well to use it in the old sense in which the final cause and the 
 efficient cause are one (the eidos of Aristotle) to use it not so 
 much to link phenomena or externals to each other as to link 
 each phenomenon in a group to the thought or feeling which 
 underlies that group. The notes in the Dead March in Saul, 
 for instance. We cannot say that one note is the cause of 
 another, but we might say that each note stands in a causal 
 subordination to the feeling which inspired the piece which 
 is the origin of the piece and the result of its performance 
 the alpha and omega of it. Similarly the ground floor in a 
 house is not the cause of the first floor, nor the first floor of
 
 EX FOLIA TION. i 45 
 
 the second floor, nor that of the roof ; but these actualities 
 and the whole house itself stand in strict relationship to a 
 mental something which ia not in the same plane with them 
 at all, nor an actuality in the same sense. 
 
 According to this view the notion that one configuration of 
 atoms or bodies determines the next configuration turns out 
 to be illusive. Both configurations are determined by a third 
 something which does not belong to quite the same order of 
 existence as the said atoms or bodies. Chance " laws " of 
 succession may doubtless be found among physical events, and 
 are valuable for practical purposes, but at any moment 
 owing to their superficiality they may fail. Thus an insect 
 observing the expansion of the petals of a chrysanthemum 
 might frame a law of their order of succession in size and 
 color, which would be valid for a time, but would fail 
 entirely when the stamens appeared. Or, to take another 
 illustration, physical science acts like a man trying to find 
 direct causal relations between the various leaves of a tree, 
 without first finding the relations of these to the branches and 
 trunk and so solving the problem indirectly. It deals only 
 with the surface of the world of Man. 
 
 In thinking about such matters, Music, as Schopenhauer 
 shows, ia wonderfully illustrative ; because in creating music 
 man recognises that he is creating a world of his own apart 
 from and not to be confused with that other world of Nature 
 (in which he does not recognise any of his handiwork). 
 Supposing a non-musical person were to examine and analyse 
 the score of a Beethoven symphony, he would be hi the same 
 position as a man examining and analysing Nature by purely 
 scientific or intellectual methods. He would discover the 
 recurrence of certain groups among the notes, he would 
 establish laws of their sequences, would make all kinds of 
 curious generalisations about them, and point out some 
 
 JK
 
 146 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 remarkable exceptions, would even very likely be able tc 
 predict a bar or two over the page ; his treatise would be very 
 learned, and from a certain point of view interesting also, but 
 how far would he be from any real understanding of his 
 subject 1 Let him change his method : let him train his ear, 
 let him hear the symphony performed, over and over, till he 
 understands its meaning and knows it by heart ; and then he 
 will know at any rate something of why each note is there, he 
 will see its fitness and feel in himself the "law" of its 
 occurrence, and possibly in some new case will be able to 
 predict several bars over the page ! The symphony is not 
 understood by examination and comparison of the notes alone, 
 but by experience of their relation to deepest feelings; and 
 Nature is not explained by laws, but by its becoming or 
 rather being felt to be the body of Man ; marvellous in- 
 terpreter and symbol of his inward being. 
 
 There is a kind of knowledge or consciousness in us as of 
 our bodily parts, or affections, or deep-seated mental beliefs 
 which forms the base of our more obvious and self-conscious 
 thought. This systemic knowledge grows even while the brain 
 sleeps. It is not by any means absolute or infallible, but it 
 affords, at any moment in man's history, the axiomatic ground 
 on which his thought-structures, scientific and other, are built. 
 Thus the axioms of Euclid are part of our present systemic 
 knowledge, and afford the ground of all our geometry structures. 
 But as the systemic consciousness grows,the ground shifts and 
 the structures reared upon it fall. All our modern science, for 
 instance, is founded on the acceptation of mechanical cause and 
 effect as a basic fact of consciousness ; but when that base gives 
 way the entire structure will cave in, and a new edifice will 
 have to be reared. Similarly, when the human form becomes 
 distinctly visible to us in the animals as an unavoidable part 
 of our consciousness this consciousness will form a new base
 
 EXFOLIATION. 147 
 
 or axiom for all our thought on the subject, and the theory of 
 evolution, as hitherto conceived by science, will be entirely 
 transformed. 
 
 Thus, although the experimental investigatory coral-reef 
 accretion method of modern science Is very valuable within its 
 range, it must not be forgotten that the human mind does not 
 progress more than temporarily by this method that its 
 progression is a matter of growth from within, and involves a 
 continual breaking away of the bases of all thought-structures ; 
 so that while this latter i.e., the progression of the systemic 
 consciousness of man is necessary and continuous, the rise 
 and fall of his thought-systems is accidental, so to speak, and 
 discontinuous. 
 
 It is then finally in Man in our own deepest and most vital 
 experience that we have to look for the key and explanation 
 of the changes that we see going on around us in external 
 Nature, as we call it ; and our understanding of the latter, and 
 of History, must ever depend from point to point on the 
 exfoliation of new facts in the individual consciousness. 
 Round the ultimate disclosure of the ideal Man, all creation 
 (hitherto groaning and travailing towards that perfect birth) 
 ranges itself, as it were like some vast flower, hi concentric 
 cycles ; rank beyond rank ; first all social life and history, then 
 the animal kingdom, then the vegetable and mineral worlds. 
 And if the outer circles have been the first in fact to show 
 themselves, it is by this last disclosure that light is ultimately 
 thrown on the whole plan ; and, as in the myth of the Eden- 
 garden, with the appearance of the perfected human form that 
 the work of creation definitely completes itself.
 
 CUSTOM. 
 
 " Whatever IB off the hinges of custom Is believed to be also off th 
 hinges of reason ; though how unreasonably, for the most part, God 
 knows." 
 
 MONTAIGNE. 
 
 EVERY human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which 
 enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant. The sacred 
 customs of its early home, how fixed and immutable they 
 appear to the child ! It surely thinks that all the world in 
 all times has proceeded on the same lines which bound its tiny 
 life. It regards a breach of these rules (some of them at least) 
 as a wild step in the dark, leading to unknown dangers. 
 
 Nevertheless its mental eyes have hardly opened ere it per- 
 ceives, not without a shock, that whereas in the family dining-- 
 room the meat always precedes the pudding, below-stairs and in 
 the cottage the pudding has a way of coming before the meat ; 
 that whereas its father puts the manure on the top of his seed- 
 potatos in spring, his neighbor invariably places his potatos 
 on top of the manure. All its confidence in the sanctity of its 
 home life and the truth of things is upset. Surely there must 
 be a right and a wrong way of eating one's dinner or of setting 
 potatos, and surely, if any one, " father " or " mother " must 
 know what is right. The elders have always said (and indeed 
 it seems only reasonable) that by this time of day everything
 
 CUSTOM. 149 
 
 has been so thoroughly worked over that the best methods of 
 ordering our life food, dress, domestic practices, social habits, 
 <kc., have long ago been determined. If so, why these 
 divergencies in the simplest and most obvious matters t 
 
 And then other things give way. The sacred seeming- 
 universal customs in which we were bred turn out to be only 
 the practices of a small and narrow class or caste ; or they 
 prove to be confined to a very limited locality, and must be left 
 behind when we set out on our travels ; or they belong to the 
 tenets of a feeble religious sect ; or they are just the products 
 of one age in history and no other. And the question forces 
 itself upon us, Are there really no natural boundaries ? has not 
 our life anywhere been founded on reason and necessity, but 
 only on arbitrary habit ? What is more important than food, 
 yet in what human matter is there more unaccountable 
 divergence of practice \ The Highlander flourishes on oatmeal, 
 which the Sheffield ironworker would rather starve than eat ; 
 the fat snail which the Roman country gentleman once so 
 prized now crawls unmolested in the Gloucestershire peasant's 
 garden ; rabbits are taboo in Germany ; frogs are unspeakable 
 in England ; sauer-kraut is detested in France ; many races 
 and gangs of people are quite certain they would die if deprived 
 of meat, others think spirits of some kind a necessity, while to 
 others again both these things are an abomination. Every 
 country district has its local practices in food, and the peasants 
 look with the greatest suspicion on any new dish, and can rarely 
 be induced to adopt it. Though it has been abundantly proved 
 that many of the British fungi are excellent eating, such is the 
 force of custom that the mushroom alone is ever publicly 
 recognised, while curiously enough it is said that in some other 
 countries where the claims of other agarics are allowed the 
 mushroom itself is not used ! Finally, I feel myself (and the 
 gentle reader probably feels the same) that I would rather die
 
 150 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 than subsist on insects, such is the deep-seated disgust we 
 experience towards this class of food. Yet it is notorious that 
 many races of respectable people adopt a diet of this sort, and 
 only lately a book has been published giving details of the 
 excellent provender of the kind that we habitually overlook- 
 tasty morsels of caterpillars and beetles, and so forth J And 
 indeed, when one comes to think of it, what can it be but 
 prejudice which causes one to eat the periwinkle and reject the 
 land-snail, or to prize the lively prawn and proscribe the 
 cheerful grasshopper ? 
 
 It is useless to say that these local and other divergencies are 
 rooted in the necessities of the localities and times in which 
 they occur. They are nothing of the kind. For the most 
 part they are mere customs, perhaps grown originally out of 
 some necessity, but now perpetuated from simple habit and 
 inherent human laziness. This can perhaps best be illustrated 
 by going below the human to the kingdom of the animals. If 
 customs are strong among men they are far stronger among 
 animals. The sheep lives on grass, the cat lives on mice and 
 .other animal food. And it is generally assumed that the 
 respective diets are the most "natural " in each case, and those 
 on which the animals in question will readiest thrive, and 
 indeed that they could not well live on any other. But nothing 
 of the kind. For cats can be bred up to live on oatmeal and milk 
 with next to no meat; and a sheep has been known to get on very 
 comfortably on a diet of port wine and mutton chops ! Dogs, 
 whose " natural " food in the wild state is of the animal kind, 
 are undoubtedly much healthier (at any rate in the domestic 
 state) when kept on farinaceous substances with little or no 
 meat, and indeed they take so kindly to a vegetable diet that 
 they sometimes become perfect nuisances in a garden eating 
 strawberries, gooseberries, peas, &c. freely off the beds when 
 they have once learned the habit. Any one in fact who baa
 
 CUSTOM. 151 
 
 kept many pets knows what an astonishing variety of food they 
 may be made to adopt, though each animal in the wild state 
 has the most intensely narrow prejudices on the subject, and 
 jrill perish rather than overstep the customs of its tribe. Thus 
 pheasants will eat fern-roots in winter when snow covers the 
 ground, but the grouse " don't eat fern-roots," and die in con- 
 sequence. A wolf of an inquiring turn of mind would probably 
 find strawberries and peas as good food as a dog does, but it 
 Is practically certain that any ordinary member of the genus 
 would perish in a garden full of the same if deprived of his 
 customary bones. 
 
 All this seems to Indicate what an immensely imjx>rtant 
 part mere custom plays in the life of men and animals. The 
 main part of the power which man acquires over the animals 
 depends upon his establishing habits in them which once 
 established they never think of violating : and the almost in- 
 superable nature of this force in animals throws back light on 
 the part it plays in human life. 
 
 Of course, I am not contending in the above remarks upon 
 food that there is no physiological difference between a dog and 
 a sheep in the matter of their digestive organs, and that the 
 one is not by the nature of its body more fitted for one kind 
 of food than the other ; but rather that we should not neglect 
 the importance of mere habit in such matters. Custom 
 changed first ; the change of physiological structure followed 
 slowly after. What happened was probably something like 
 this. Some time in the far back past a group of animals, driven 
 perhaps by necessity, took to hunting in packs in the woods ; 
 it developed a modified physical structure in consequence, and 
 special habits which in the course of time became deeply fixed 
 in the race. Another group saved its life by taking to graz 
 ing. Grass is poor food; but it was the only chance this 
 group had, and in time it got so accustomed to eating grass
 
 15* CIVILISATION; ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 that it could not imagine any other form of diet, and at first 
 would refuse even oysters when placed In its way ! Another 
 group saw an opening in trees ; it developed a long neck and 
 became the giraffe. But the fact that the giraffe lives on 
 leaves, and the sheep on grass, and the wolf on animal matter, 
 and that custom is in each so strong that at first the creature 
 will refuse any other kind of diet, does not of itself prove that 
 that diet is the best or most physiologically suitable for it. In 
 other words, it is an assumption to suppose that " adaptation 
 to environment " is the sole or even the main factor in the con- 
 stitution of well-marked varieties or genera ; for this is to 
 neglect (among other things) the force of mere use or wont, 
 which has about the same import in race-growth that 
 momentum has hi dynamics ; and causes the race, once started 
 in any direction, to maintain its line of movement and often 
 in despite of its environment even for thousands of years. 
 
 Returning to man we see him enveloped in a myriad 
 customs local customs, class customs, race customs, family 
 customs, religious customs ; customs in food, customs in cloth- 
 ing, customs in furniture, form of habitation, industrial pro- 
 duction, art, social and municipal and national life, <fcc. ; and 
 the question arises, Where is the grain of necessity which 
 underlies it all f How much hi each case is due to a real 
 fitness in nature, and how much to mere otiose habit ! The 
 first thing that meets my eye in glancing out of the window is 
 a tile on a neighboring roof. Why are tiles made S-shaped 
 in some localities and fiat in others t Surely the conditions of 
 wind and rain are much the same in all places. Perhaps far 
 back there was a reason, but now nothing remains butcustom. 
 Why do we sit on chairs instead of the floor, as the Japanese 
 do, or on cushions like the Turk t It is a custom, and perhaps 
 it suits with our other customs. The more we look into our 
 life and consider the immense variety of habit in every depart*
 
 CUSTOM. 153 
 
 ment of it even under conditions to all appearances exactly 
 similar the more are we impressed by the absence of any 
 very serious necessity in the forms we ourselves are accustomed 
 to. Each race, each class, each section of the population, each 
 unit even, vaunts its own habits of life as superior to the 
 rest, as the only true and legitimate forms ; and peoples and 
 classes will go to war with each other in assertion of their own 
 special beliefs and practices ; but the question that rather 
 presses upon the ingenuous and inquiring mind is, whether 
 any of us have got hold of much true life at all ? whether we 
 are not rather mere multitudinous varieties of caddis-worms 
 shuffled up in the cast-off skins and clothes and debris of those 
 who have gone before us, with very little vitality of our own 
 perceptible within f How many times a day do we perform an 
 action that is authentic and not a mere mechanical piece of 
 repetition 1 Indeed, if our various actions and practices were 
 authentic and flowing from the true necessity, perhaps we 
 shouldn't quarrel with each other over them so often as we do. 
 And then to come to the subject of morals. These also are 
 customs divergent to the last degree among different races, 
 at different times, or in different localities ; customs for which 
 it is often difficult to find any ground in reason or the " fitness 
 of things." Thieving is supposed to be discountenanced among 
 us, yet our present-day trade-morality sanctions it in a thou- 
 sand different forms; and the respectable usurer (who can 
 hardly be said to be other than a thief) takes a high place at 
 the table of life. To hunt the earth for game has from time 
 immemorial been considered the natural birthright and priv- 
 ilege of man, until the landlord class (whom wicked Socialists 
 now denounce !) invented the crime of poaching and hanged 
 men for it. As to marriage customs, in different times and 
 among different peoples, they have been simply innumerable. 
 And here the sense of inviolability in each case is most power-
 
 154 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 fill. The severest penalties, the most stringent public opinion, 
 biting deep down into the individual conscience, enforce the 
 various codes of various times and places ; yet they all contra- 
 dict each other. Polygamy in one country, polyandry in the 
 next ; brother and sister marriage allowed at one time, mar- 
 riage with your mother's cousin forbidden at another; prostitution 
 sacred in the temples of antiquity, trampled under foot in the 
 gutters of our great cities of to-day ; monogamy respectable in 
 one land, a mark of class-inferiority in another ; celibacy 
 scorned by some sections of people, accepted as the highest state 
 by others ; and so on. 
 
 What are we to conclude from all this ? Is it possible, once 
 we have fairly faced the immense variety of human life in 
 every department of arts, manners, and morals a variety, too, 
 existing in a vast number of cases under conditions to all in- 
 tents and purposes quite similar is it possible ever again to 
 suppose that the particular practices which we are accustomed 
 to are very much better (or, indeed, very much worse) than 
 the particular practices which others are accustomed to ? We 
 have been born, as I said at first, into a sheath of custom which 
 enfolds us with our swaddling-clothes. When we begin to 
 grow to manhood we see what sort of a thing it is which sur- 
 rounds us. It is an old husk now. It does not bear looking 
 into ; it is rotten, it is inconsistent, it is thoroughly indefen- 
 sible ; yet very likely we have to accept it. The caddis-worm 
 has grown to its tube and cannot leave it. A little spark of 
 vitality amid a heap of dead matter, all it can do is to make 
 its dwelling a little more convenient in shape for itself, or (like 
 the coral insect) to prolong its growth in the most favorable 
 direction for those that come after. The class, the caste, the 
 locality, the age in which we were born has determined our 
 form of life, and in that form very likely we must remain. But 
 a change has come over our minds. The vauntings of earlier
 
 CUSTOM. 155 
 
 days we abandon. We, at any rate, are no better than any- 
 body else, and at best, alas ! are only half alive. 
 
 If these, then, are our conclusions, is it not with justice that 
 children and early races keep so rigidly to the narrow path 
 that custom has made for them ? Have they not an instinc- 
 tive feeling that to forsake custom would be to launch out on 
 a trackless sea where life would cease to have any special pur- 
 pose or direction, and morality would be utterly gulfed 1 Cus- 
 tom for them is the line of their growth ; it is the coral-branch 
 from the end of which the next insect builds ; it Is the harden- 
 ing bark of the tree-twig which determines the direction of the 
 growing shoot. It may be merely arbitrary, this custom, but 
 that they do not know ; its appearance of finality and necessity 
 may be quite illusive ; but the illusion is necessary for life, 
 and the arbitrariness is just what makes one life different 
 from another. Till he grows to manhood, the human being, he 
 sannot do without it. 
 
 And when he grows to manhood, what then ? Why he dies, 
 and so becomes alive. The caddis-fly leaves his tube behind 
 and soars into the upper air ; the creature abandons its bar- 
 nacle existence on the rock and swims at large in the sea. For 
 it is just when we die to custom that, for the first time, we 
 rise into the true life of humanity ; it is just when we abandon 
 all prejudice of our own superiority over others, and become 
 convinced of our entire indefensibleness, that the world opens 
 out with comrade faces in all directions ; and when we perceive 
 how entirely arbitrary is the setting of our own life, that the 
 whole structure collapses on which our apartness from others 
 rests, and we pass easily and at orvce into the great ocean of 
 freedom and equality. 
 
 This is, as it were, a new departure for man, for which even 
 to-day the old world, overlaid with myriad customs now 
 brought into obvious and open conflict with each other, if
 
 156 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 evidently preparing. The period of human infancy in coming 
 to an end. Now comes the time of manhood and true 
 vitality. 
 
 Possibly this is a law of history, that when man has run 
 through every variety of custom a time comes for him to be 
 freed from it that is, he uses it indifferently according to 
 his requirements, and is no longer a slave to it; all human 
 practices find their use, and none are forbidden. At this 
 point, whenever reached, " morals " come to an end and 
 humanity takes its place that is to say, there is no longer 
 any code of action, but the one object of all action is the 
 deliverance of the human being and the establishment of 
 equality between oneself and another, the entry into a new 
 life, which new life when entered into is glad and perfect, 
 because there is no more any effort or strain in it ; but it is 
 the recognition of oneself in others, eternally. 
 
 Far as custom has carried man from man, yet when at last 
 in the ever-branching series the complete human being is 
 produced, it knows at once its kinship with all the other 
 forms. " I have passed my spirit in determination and 
 compassion round the whole earth, and found only equals and 
 lovers." More, it knows its khiship with the animals. It sees 
 that it is only habit, an illusion of difference, that divides ; and 
 it perceives after all that it is the same human creature that 
 flies in the air, and swims in the sea, or walks biped upon the 
 land.
 
 THE NEED OF A RATIONAL AND 
 HUMANE SCIENCE. 1 
 
 IN bringing before you this subject of a Rational and Humane 
 Science you will perhaps forgive me if I dwell for a few 
 moments on some points of personal history in relation to it. 
 After reading mathematics for some four years at Cambridge, 
 it happened to me for the next ten years or so to be engaged 
 in the study of the physical sciences, and in lectures on these 
 subjects. Naturally, during the earlier part of this period I 
 accepted the current methods and conclusions without any 
 question. But as time went on I became aware of a certain 
 dissatisfaction; I felt that many of the laws of Science, 
 enounced as universal truths, were of very limited application 
 only, that many of the conclusions, so strongly insisted on, 
 were of quite doubtful validity ; and at last this increasing 
 dissatisfaction culminated in a rather violent attack or criticism 
 of Modern Science which I wrote and published about the 
 year 1884. 2 
 
 Now, looking back, at this interval of time, though I admit 
 that my attack was somewhat hasty and crude in detail, I feel 
 
 i Being a reprint of an address given before the Humanitarian 
 League. 
 
 2 Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as "Modern Science a 
 Criticism," in the first edition (1889) of the present book.
 
 158 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 that in its main contention it was thoroughly justified, and I 
 do not feel the least inclined to withdraw it. 
 
 What was that main contention] It was as follows. 
 Modern Science is an attempt (and no doubt it would accept 
 this definition of itself) to survey and classify the phenomena 
 of the world in the pure dry light of the intellect, uncoloured 
 by feeling ; and so far is an effort to separate the intellectual 
 in man from the merely perceptive, the emotional, the moral, 
 and so forth. It was in this very fact that my criticism lay ; 
 for I contended that such a separation was in the long run 
 quite impossible. 
 
 But before proceeding to defend this position, let me admit 
 at once that this attempt of Modern Science to get rid of 
 human feeling and to look at everything in the dry light of 
 the intellect was in some respects a very grand one. When 
 you consider what the Old-time Science was, with its fancies 
 and prejudices, its dragons pasturing upon the sun and moon 
 in eclipses, its immolations of hundreds of human beings to 
 appease some god of pestilence or earthquake, its panics, its 
 superstitions, and its incapability of regarding anything except 
 from the point of view of that thing's influence on man's own 
 comfort and his little hopes and fears, it was indeed a grand 
 advance to try and see facts, uncoloured and for themselves 
 alone. It was an effort of Man as it were to rise above himself, 
 to which I accord the fullest credit and honour. 
 
 And yet, during the time spoken of, it kept growing on me : 
 first, that the attempt was an impossible one ; secondly, that 
 the Science so-called was not a true Science ; and thirdly, 
 that in its pretence to an intellectual exactitude which it did 
 not really possess, this Modern Science was leading to a 
 narrow-mindedness and a dogmatism as bad as the old. 
 
 There is in fact (so I think) a fallacy in the attempt. But 
 how shall I describe it ? Our relations to the world may, quite
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 159 
 
 roughly speaking, be divided into three groups those that are 
 sensuous and perceptional, those that are purely intellectual, 
 and those that are of an emotional and moral order. Take any 
 object of Nature a bird, for instance. We may look upon the 
 bird as an object of sense-perceptions its form, its colour, its 
 song, and so forth. Some people attain to extraordinary skill 
 and quickness in this department, recognising in a moment the 
 note or even the flight of a songster. Then again we may 
 look upon the bird from the intellectual side we may study it 
 in relation to its surroundings the form of its wings, the 
 length of its leg, the character of its beak, and their adaptation 
 to its habits, to its locality, to its food, and so forth. Thus 
 we may get a whole series of purely intellectual results 
 relations of the bird to the world in which it lives. This is 
 the special field of the present-day Science. But, again, we 
 may regard the bird in its emotional and moral relations to s. 
 One man at the sight of it may be affected with admiration of 
 its beauty, with tenderness towards it, or sympathy ; another 
 may be stimulated to wonder whether he can kill it, or whether 
 it is good to eat ! Modern Science is indifferent to what this 
 last set of relations may be ; it does not concern itself much 
 with the first; but it takes the middle term, the purely 
 intellectual, and seeks to abstract that from the others, to 
 study the bird, or whatever the object may be, in the one 
 aspect only. But can that really be done ? The answer is, of 
 course, No. 
 
 To show my general meaning, and why I consider the claim 
 an impossible one, let us imagine a little cell one of the 
 myriads which constitute the human body professing in the 
 same sort of way to stand outside the body and explain the 
 laws of the other cells and the body at large. It is obvious 
 that the little cell, swept along in the currents of the body 
 and swayed by its emotions, in close proximity and contact
 
 I6o CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 with some portions of the organism, and far remote from 
 others, cannot possibly pretend to any such impartial judg- 
 ment. It is obvious not only that it would not have all the 
 clues of the problem at its command, but that its own needs 
 and experiences would prejudice it frightfully in the inter- 
 pretation of such clues as it had. Yet man is such a little 
 cell in the body of Nature, or, if you like, in the body of 
 the Society of which he forms a part. 
 
 There is however one way, it seems to me, in which a cell 
 in the human body might come to an adequate understanding 
 of the body ; and that would be rather through experience 
 than through direct reasoning. It is conceivable that there 
 might be some cell in the body which through the nerves, 
 etc., was in actual touch and sympathetic relationship with 
 every other cell. Then it certainly would have the materials 
 of the required solution. Every change in other parts of the 
 body would register itself in this particular cell ; and its little 
 brain (if it had one), without exactly making any great effort, 
 would reflect sympathetically the structure of the whole body 
 would become, in faot, a mirror of it. This will perhaps give 
 you the key to my notion of what a true Science might be. 
 
 But before proceeding to that, I want to go a little more 
 in detail into the fallacy of the absolute intellectual view of 
 Science. I say, first, that a complete summary of any object 
 or process in Nature is impossible; secondly, that such 
 summary as we do make is, and must inevitably and 
 necessarily be, coloured by the underlying feeling with which 
 we approach that phase of Nature. 
 
 To take the first point. You say, Why is a complete 
 summary not possible? A watch or other machine may be 
 completely described and defined; why should not (with a 
 little more knowledge) a fir-tree, or the human eye, or the 
 solar system, be completely described and defined?
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 161 
 
 And this brings us to what may be called the Machine-view 
 of Science. It is curious (and yet I think it will presently be 
 seen that it is quite what might have been expected) that 
 during this last century or so, in which Machinery has played 
 such an important part in our daily and social life, mechanical 
 ideas have come to colour all our conceptions of Science and 
 the Universe. Modern Science holds it as a kind of ideal 
 (even though finding it at times difficult to realise) to reduce 
 everything to mechanical action, and to show each process of 
 Nature intelligible in the same sense as a Machine is intel- 
 ligible. Yet this conception, this ideal, involves a complete 
 fallacy. For the moment you come to think of it, you see 
 that no part of Nature really even resembles a machine. 
 
 What is a machine in the ordinary sense 1 It is an aggre- 
 gation of parts put together to fulfil certain definite actions 
 and no others. A sewing-machine fulfils the purpose of 
 sewing, a watch fulfils that of keeping time, and they fulfil 
 those purposes only. All their parts subserve those actions, 
 and in that sense may be completely described as far as just 
 their mechanical action is concerned the same by a thousand 
 mechanicians. But I make bold to say that no object in 
 Nature fulfils just one action, or series of actions, and no 
 others. On the contrary, every object fulfils an endless series 
 of actions. 
 
 Let us take the Human Eye. And I choose this as an 
 instance most adverse to my position, for there is no doubt 
 that the Human Eye is one of the most highly specialised 
 objects in creation. Helmholtz, as you know, is said to have 
 remarked concerning it that if an Optician had sent him an 
 instrument so defective he should have returned it with his 
 compliments. Helmholtz was a great man, and I will not do 
 him the injustice to suppose that he did not know what he 
 was saying. He knew that, regarded as a machine for 
 
 L
 
 1 62 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 focussing rays of light, the eye was decidedly defective ; but 
 then he knew well enough, doubtless, why it was defective 
 namely, because it is by no means merely such a machine, 
 but a great deal more. 
 
 The Eye, in fact, not only fulfils the action of focussiug 
 rays of light like an Opera Glass or a Telescope but it 
 might be compared to another instrument, a Photographic 
 Camera, in respect of the fact that it forms a picture of the 
 outer world which it throws on a sensitive plate at the back 
 the Retina. But then, again, it is unlike any of these 
 "machines," in the fact that it was never made by any 
 Optician, human or divine, for any one definite purpose. On 
 the contrary, as we know, it has grown, it has evolved ; it 
 has come down to us over the centuries, and over thousands 
 and thousands of centuries, from dim beginnings in the 
 lowliest organisms who first conceived the faculty of Sight, 
 continually modified, continually shapen by small increments 
 in various directions, in accordance with the myriad needs of 
 a myriad creatures, living, some of them in water, some of 
 them in air, requiring some of them to see at close quarters, 
 some at great distances, some by one kind of light, some by 
 another, and so forth. So that to-day it not only contains a 
 great range of inherited, yet latent, faculties, but it is actually, 
 in its complex structure, an epitome and partial record of its 
 own extraordinary history. 
 
 As an instance of this last point, let me remind you that 
 Sight was originally a differentiation of Touch. The light, 
 the shadows, falling on the sensitive general surface of a 
 primitive organism provoke a tactile irritation. In the course 
 of evolution this sense specialises itself at some point of the 
 surface into what we call Sight. Now, to-day, when the little 
 picture formed by the fore-part of the Human Eye falls upon 
 the Retina at the back, it falls upon a screen formed by the
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 163 
 
 myriad congregated finger-tips, so to speak, of the optic nerve 
 the rods and cones, so-called which cover like a mosaic 
 the whole ground of the Retina, and feel with their sensitive 
 points the images of the objects in the outer world. And so 
 Sight is still Touch it is the power of feeling or touching at 
 a distance as one sometimes in fact becomes aware in looking 
 at things. 
 
 But then again on and bejond all these things beyond the 
 focussing and photographing of rays, beyond the latent adapta- 
 tions to the needs of innumerable creatures, and the epito- 
 mising of ages of evolution the Human Eye has faculties 
 even more far - reaching perhaps and wonderful. It is the 
 marvellous organ of human Expression. By the dilatations 
 and contractions of the iris, by the altering [convexities of 
 the lens and the eyeball, and in a hundred other ways, it 
 manages somehow to convey intelligence of Command,, 
 Control, Power, of Pity, Love, Sympathy, and all those 
 myriad emotions which flit through the human mind an 
 endless series a perfect encyclopaedia. It is difficult even 
 to imagine the eye without this power of language. And 
 what other functions it may have it is not necessary to 
 inquire. Highly specialised though it is, it is already 
 obvious enough that to call it a Machine for focussing 
 rays of light is monstrously and ludicrously inadequate 
 even as it would be to call the Heart (the very centre of 
 emotion and life, and the symbol of human love and courage) 
 a common Pump. 
 
 Nature is an infinitude, and can at no point be circum- 
 scribed by the human intellect. Nor obviously is there any 
 sense in taking one little portion of Nature and isolating it 
 from the rest, and then describing it exhaustively as if it 
 really were so isolated. A thousand mechanicians will agree, 
 as I have said, in their description of a machine, because in
 
 164 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 fact they will agree to view the machine just in the one 
 aspect of its particular action ; but ask a thousand people to 
 describe one and the same face or, better still, get a thousand 
 portrait-painters, skilled in their art, to paint portraits of the 
 same face and you know perfectly well that all the likenesses 
 will be different. And why will they be different 1 Simply 
 because every face, however rude, has infinite sides, infinite 
 aspects, and each painter selects what he paints from his own 
 point of view. And the same is true of every object and 
 process in Nature. 
 
 Then if these things are true (you ask again) how is it that 
 scientific men do arrive at definite conclusions, and do agree 
 with each other so far as they do ? 
 
 It is, and obviously must be, by the method of isolation ; 
 by the method of selecting certain aspects of the problems 
 presented to them, and ignoring others. For since all the 
 relations of any phenomenon of Nature cannot possibly be 
 compassed, the only way must be to ignore some and concen- 
 trate attention on others ; and when there is a kind of tacit 
 agreement as to which aspects shall be passed over and which 
 considered, there is naturally an agreement in the results. 
 Thus by this method, waiving all other aspects of the 
 problem, the Eye may be described and defined as an 
 optical instrument, the Heart as a common Pump, and 
 the Solar System as a neat illustration of certain mechanical 
 laws discovered by Galileo and Newton. 
 
 On the subject of the Solar System and Astronomy I wilt 
 dwell for a few moments, as here in this great example of 
 the perfection of Modern Science we have again a case 
 apparently most adverse to my contention. The generalis- 
 ations by which Newton established the nature of the 
 planetary orbits have been a wonder to succeeding gener- 
 ations ; the positions of the planets can be foretold, eclipses
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 165 
 
 can be calculated with amazing accuracy. Yet every tyro in 
 Mathematics knows that the equations which give these 
 results can only be solved by what is called "neglecting 
 small quantities " that is, the problems cannot be solved 
 in their entirety, but by leaving out certain terms and 
 elements, which do not appear important, a solution can 
 be approached. And naturally it has been an important 
 point to show that these small quantities may be safely 
 neglected. In the case, for instance, of the orbits of the 
 planets round the sun, and of the moon round the earth, 
 it was for a long time taken as proved that the small 
 variations in the shape and position of each elliptic orbit 
 would never be accompanied by any permanent increase or 
 diminution in its size that is, that the mean distances of the 
 planets from the sun, and of the moon from the earth, would 
 always remain within certain limits. Of late years however 
 Professor George Darwin, taking up one of these poor little 
 neglected quantities in the theory of the moon, found that it 
 indicated after all very vast and very permanent, though of 
 course very slow, changes in her mean distance from the 
 earth ; so that now it appears probable that the Moon's true 
 orbit, instead of being a limited ellipse, is a continually 
 though gradually enlarging Spiral, which may some day carry 
 the Moon to a great distance from the earth. If an eclipse 
 were calculated for twenty years in advance on the Elliptic 
 theory or the Spiral theory, it would probably so slow would 
 be the divergence make no perceptible difference ; but in a 
 hundred centuries the two theories would lead to results 
 utterly different. 
 
 Thus the certitude of Astronomy as a Science arises largely 
 from the fact that our times are so brief compared with 
 Celestial periods. The proper periods of Celestial changes 
 are to be reckoned by thousands, perhaps millions, of years ;
 
 166 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 but we, ignoring that aspect of the problem, fix our observa- 
 tions ou one little point of time, and are quite satisfied with 
 the result ! 
 
 As another illustration of my meaning, consider the Fixed 
 Stars, so-called. These stars in their groups and clusters, 
 which we know so well by sight, have remained apparently 
 in the very same, or nearly the same, relative positions during 
 all the 2,000 or 3,000 years that we have any record of the 
 shapes of the Constellations. Yet now by minute telescopic 
 and spectroscopic examination we know that they are moving, 
 and have been moving all the time, in various differing 
 directions with great velocities, amounting to miles per 
 second. Nevertheless, so great are the spaces concerned, 
 so great the times, that all this long period has not sufficed 
 to bring them into any greatly changed attitude with regard 
 to each other ! What would you think of an intelligent 
 foreigner who, coming to England to study the game of 
 cricket, remained on the cricket field for a quarter of a 
 minute during which time the players would have hardly 
 changed their positions and having noted a few points, went 
 away and wrote a volume on the laws of the game? And 
 what are we to think of poor little Man who, having noted the 
 stars for a few centuries, is so sure that he understands their 
 movements, and that he is versed in all the " ordinances of 
 heaven." 
 
 Thus it would appear that every Nature-problem is so 
 enormously complex that it can only be got at by what may 
 be called the Method of Ignorance. Let us take a practical 
 Science problem like that of Vaccination. The question here, 
 put in its simplest terms, seems to be, Whether Vaccination, 
 with calf or human lymph, prevents or alleviates Smallpox ; 
 and if it does, whether it does so without engendering other 
 evils at least as great. At first sight this may appear to you
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 167 
 
 a very simple question, and easy to solve ; but the moment 
 you come to think about it, you see its extreme complexity. 
 In the first place, it is obvious that in a question like this, 
 individual cases afford no test. It is obvious that the fact that 
 A. is vaccinated and has not taken small-pox proves nothing, 
 for there is nothing to show that he would have taken it if he 
 had not been vaccinated. And when you have got people 
 vaccinated by the hundred and the thousand, you still are 
 not certain ; for these people may belong to a certain class, or 
 a certain locality, or may have certain habits and conditions 
 of life, which may account for their comparative immunity, 
 and these causes must be eliminated before any definite con- 
 clusion can be reached. Thus it is not till the great mass 
 of the population is vaccinated that we can expect reliable 
 statistics. But the introduction of a practice of this kind on 
 so great a scale necessarily takes a long period of years, and 
 meanwhile changes are taking place in the habits of the 
 people, Sanitation is being improved, customs of Diet are 
 altering, possibly (as so often happens in the history of an 
 epidemic) the disease, having run its course, is beginning 
 spontaneously to decline. And thus another series of possible 
 causes has to be discussed. 
 
 Then, supposing the question, notwithstanding all these 
 difficulties, to be so far settled in favour of the present system 
 there still arises that whole other series of difficulties with 
 regard to the possibility of the spread of other diseases by the 
 practice, and with regard to the extent of such spread, before 
 we can arrive at any finale. This series of questions is almost 
 as complex as the other ; and it includes that great element of 
 uncertainty the question what interval of time may elapse 
 between inoculation with a disease and its actual appearance. 
 For if in several cases children break out with erysipelas 
 immediately after vaccination, of course there is a certain
 
 1 68 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 presumption that vaccination has been the cause ; but if 
 the erysipelas only appears some years after, its connec- 
 tion with the operation may, though real, be impossible to 
 trace. 
 
 The matter standing thus, it seems to us almost a mystery 
 how it was that the medical authorities of the early days of 
 Jennerism were so cocksure of their conclusions until we 
 remember that in arriving at those conclusions they practically 
 ignored all these other points that I have mentioned, like 
 changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline of Small-pox, the 
 spread of other diseases, etc., and simply limited themselves 
 to one small aspect of the problem. But now, after this 
 interval of time, when the neglected facts and aspects have 
 mean while forced themselves on our attention, how remarkable 
 is the change of attitude as evidenced by the finding of the late 
 Royal Commission ! [1896.] 
 
 From all this do not understand me to deride Science for 
 I have no intention of doing that ; on the contrary, I think 
 the debt we owe to modern investigation quite incalculable ; 
 but I only wish to warn you how complex all these problems 
 are, how impossible that notion of settling even one of them 
 by a cut-and-dried intellectual formula. 
 
 But you will ask (for this is the second point I mentioned 
 some little time back) how people's emotions and feelings come 
 in to colour their scientific conclusions ? And the auswer is 
 very simply, namely, by directing their choice as to what 
 aspects of the problem they will ignore and what aspects they 
 will envisage ; by determining their point of view, in fact* 
 To return to that illustration of several portrait-painters 
 painting the same face ; just as each painter is led by his 
 feeling, his sympathies, his general temperament, to select 
 certain points in the face and to pass over others, so each 
 group of scientific men in each generation is led by its
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 169 
 
 sympathies, its idiosyncrasies, to envisage certain aspects of the 
 problems of the day and to ignore others. 
 
 The whole history of Science illustrates this. We are all 
 familiar with the way in which the predilections of religious 
 feeling in the time of Copernicus and Galileo retarded the 
 progress of astronomical Science. As long as people believed 
 that a divine drama of redemption had been enacted on this 
 earth alone, they naturally concluded that this earth was the 
 centre of the universe, and refused to look at facts which 
 contradicted their conclusion. When Galileo turned his 
 newly-made telescope on Jupiter and saw it circled by its 
 satellites, he saw in this an image of the Copernican system 
 and of the planets circling round the central Sun ; but when 
 he asked others to share his observation and his inference, 
 they would not. ' ' 0, my dear Kepler," he writes in a letter 
 to his fellow astronomer, "how I wish we could have one 
 hearty laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal 
 Professor of Philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently 
 requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass ; 
 but he pertinaciously refuses to do so. What shouts of 
 laughter we should have at this glorious folly ! " 
 
 And though we laugh at the folly of those before us, we do 
 the same things ourselves to-day. Take the science of 
 Political Economy. A revolution has taken place in ihat, 
 almost comparable to the change from the geocentric to the 
 heliocentric view in Astronomy. During the distinctively 
 commercial period of the last 100 years, the leading students 
 of social science, being themselves filled with the spirit of the 
 time, have been fain to look upon the acquisition of private 
 wealth as the one absorbing motive of human nature ; and so 
 it has come about that the economists, from Adam Smith to 
 John Stuart Mill, have founded their science on self-seeking and 
 competition, as the base of their analysis. To-day another
 
 170 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 series of economists coming to the front their minda pre- 
 occupied with the great facts of Community of life and 
 Co-operation have discovered that Society is in the main an 
 illustration of these latter principles, and have evolved a quite 
 new phase of the science. It is not that Society has changed 
 so much during this period, as that the altered point of view 
 of the students of Society has caused them simply to fix their 
 attention on a different aspect of the problem and a different 
 range of facts. 
 
 I have alluded already to the way in which the prevalent 
 use of Machinery in practical life has affected our mental 
 outlook on the world. It is curious that during this mechani- 
 cal age of the last 100 years or so, we have not only come to 
 regard Society in a mechanical light, as a concourse of separate 
 individuals bound together by a mere cash-nexus, but have 
 extended the same idea to the universe at large, which we 
 look upon as a concourse of separate atoms, associated together 
 by gravitation, or possibly by mere mutual impact. Yet it is 
 certain that both these views are false, since the individuals 
 who compose Society are not separate from each other; and 
 the theory that the universe, in its ultimate analysis, is 
 composed of a vast number of discrete atoms is simply 
 unthinkable. 
 
 When we come to a practical and modern question like 
 Medicine, the influence of the spirit in which it is approached 
 on the course of the science is very easy to see. For if the 
 science of Medicine is approached (as it perhaps mostly is 
 to-day) in a spirit of combined Fear and Self-indulgence fear 
 for one's own personal safety, combined with a kind of anxiety 
 to continue living in the indulgence of habits known to be 
 unhealthy if it is approached in this uncomfortable and 
 contradictory state of mind, it is pretty obvious that its 
 course will be similarly uncomfortable ; that it will consist for
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 171 
 
 the most part in a search for drugs which shall, without effort 
 on our part, palliate the effects of our misconduct ; in the 
 discovery, as in a kind of nightmare, that the air round us 
 is full of billions of microbes ; in a terrified study of these 
 messengers of disease, and in a frantic effort to ward them 
 off by inoculations, vaccinations, vivisections, and so forth, 
 without end. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the science is approached from quite 
 a different side from that of the love of Health, and the 
 desire to make life lovely, beautiful and pure ; if the student 
 is filled not only with this, but with a great belief in the 
 essential power of Man, and his command in creation, to 
 control not only all these little microbes whose name is 
 Legion, but through his mind all the processes of his body ; 
 then it is obvious enough that a whole series of different facts 
 will arise before his eyes and become the subject of his study 
 facts of sanitation, of the laws of cleanly life, diet, clothing 
 and so forth, methods of control, and the details and practice 
 of the influence of the mental upon the physical part of man 
 facts quite equally real with the others, equally important, 
 equally numerous perhaps and complex, but forming a totally 
 different range of science. 
 
 In conclusion, you begin to see doubtless that I do not 
 believe in a science of mere Formulas, which can be poured 
 from one brain to another like water in a pot. I believe in 
 something more organic to Humanity which shall combine 
 Sense, Intellect and Soul ; which shall include the keenest 
 training of the Senses, the exactest use of the Brain, and the 
 subordination of both of these to the finest and most generous 
 attitude of Man towards Nature. 
 
 To come to quite practical aspects, I think that Physical 
 Science, and for that matter Natural History too, ought to be 
 founded on the closest observation and actual intimacy with
 
 I7 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURB. 
 
 Nature. It is notorious that in many respects the percep- 
 tions, the Nature-intuitious, of savage races far outdo those of 
 civilised man. We have let that side go slack, and too often 
 the man of science when he comes out of his study is a mere 
 baby in the external world. I look back with a kind of shame 
 when I think that I studied the mathematical side of Astro- 
 nomy for three or four years at Cambridge and absolutely at 
 the time hardly knew one star from another in the sky. But 
 such are the methods of teaching that have been in use. They 
 ought however to be reversed, and practical acquaintance 
 with the facts should come a long way first, and then be 
 succeeded by inductive and deductive reasoning when the 
 difficulties of the subject have forced themselves on the 
 student's mind. 
 
 Then in Natural History and Botany I think that we have 
 hitherto not only neglected the perceptive side, bub also what 
 may be called the intuitive and emotional aspects. If any one 
 will attend to the subject, I believe they will perceive that 
 there are dormant in the mind the finest intuitions and 
 instincts of relationship to the various animals and plants 
 intuitions which have played a far more important part in the 
 life of barbaric races than they do to-day. 1 Primitive peoples 
 have a remarkable instinct of the medicinal and dietetic uses 
 of herbs and plants an instinct which we also find well 
 developed among animals and I believe that this kind of 
 knowledge would grow largely if, so to speak, it were given 
 a chance. The formal classification of animals and plants 
 which now forms the main part of these sciences would then 
 come in simply as an aid and an auxiliary to the more direct 
 and human study. 
 
 i Elisee Eeclus, in his remarkable paper, La Grande. Famille, points 
 out the wide-reaching Friendship, and free alliance for various purposes, 
 of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the so-called 
 " domestication " of the latter. See Humane Review, Jan., 1906.
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 173 
 
 Again, let us take the science of Physiology. At present 
 this is maiuly carried on by means of Dissection or Vivisection. 
 But both these methods are unsatisfactory. Dissection, be- 
 cause it amounts to studying the organisation of a living 
 creature by the examination of its dead carcase; and Vivi- 
 section, because it is not only open to a similar objection, but 
 because it necessarily violates the highest relation of man to 
 the animal he is studying. There is, I believe, another 
 method a method which has been known in the East for 
 centuries, though little regarded in the West which may 
 perhaps be called the method of Health. It consists in 
 rendering the body, by proper habits of life, pure and healthy, 
 till it becomes, as it were, transparent to the inner eye, and 
 then projecting the consciousness inward so as to become 
 almost as sensible of the structure and function of the various 
 internal organs, as it usually is of the outer surface of the 
 body. Of course this is a process which cannot be effectuated 
 at once, and which may need help and corroboration by 
 external methods of study, but I believe it is one which will 
 lead to considerable results. There is no doubt that many of 
 the Yogis of India attain to great skill in it. 
 
 Similarly, from what we have already said about Political 
 Economy, it is obvious that satisfactory results in that science 
 must depend immensely on the high degree of social instinct 
 and feeling with which the student approaches it, and on the 
 thoroughness of his acquaintance with the actual life of a 
 people ; and that the development of these factors is fully 
 as important a part of the science as that which consists 
 in the logical ordering and arrangement of the material 
 obtained. 
 
 I need not, I think, go any further into detail of new 
 methods in each Science. You remember what I said at the 
 beginning about the Cell studying the Body of which it formed
 
 174 CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. 
 
 a part. We may imagine, if we like, three stages in this 
 process. In the first stage the Cell regards the other cells and 
 the Body simply from the point of view of how they affect it, 
 and its comfort and safety. This might be taken to correspond 
 to the Old-time Science. In the second stage the Cell, with 
 its tiny experience of the other cells and the small part of the 
 body in which it is placed, becomes highly intellectual, and 
 professes to lay down the laws of the structure of the body 
 generally. This corresponds to the attitude of Modern Science. 
 In the third stage the Cell, growing and evolving, and coming 
 daily into closer sympathetic relationship with all parts of the 
 body, begins to find its true relation to the other cells, not to 
 use them, but to fulfil its part in the whole. Gradually draw- 
 ing all the threads together and coming more and more, so 
 to say, into a central position, it at last in its little brain 
 spontaneously and inevitably reflects the whole, and becomes 
 the mirror of it. This would answer to what we have called a 
 really rational and humane Science. 
 
 Man has to find and to feel his true relation to other 
 creatures and to the whole of which he is a part, and has to 
 use his brain to further this. Science is, as we all know, the 
 search for Unity. That is its ideal. It unites innumerable 
 phenomena under one law ; and then it unites many lawa 
 under one higher ; always seeking for the ultimate complete 
 integration. But (is it not obvious ?) Man cannot find that 
 unity of the Whole until he feels his unity with the Whole. 
 To found a Science of one-ness on the murderous Warfare and 
 insane Competition of men with each other, and on the 
 Slaughter and Vivisection of animals the search for unity on 
 the practice of disunity is an absurdity, which can only in 
 the long run reveal itself as such. 
 
 I do not know whether It seems obvious to you, but it does 
 to me, that Man will never find in theory the unity of outer
 
 A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE. 175 
 
 Nature till he reaches in practice the unity of his own. When 
 he has learnt to harmonise in himself all his powers, bodily 
 and mental, his desires, faculties, needs, and bring them into 
 perfect co-operation when he has found the true hierarchy of 
 himself then somehow I think that Nature round him will 
 reflect this order, and range itself in clear and intelligible 
 harmony about him. 
 
 But I can say no more. I have dragged you by the neck. 
 as it were, through a recondite and difficult subject ; and even 
 so I do not feel that I have by any means done justice to it. 
 But it is possible, perhaps, that I have cast the germ of an 
 idea among you, which, if you think over it at leisure, may 
 develop into something of value. 
 
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