THE NEMESIS OF CULTUKE 9 



Two thousand five hundred years ago, the value of 

 -civilization was as apparent as it is now ; then, as 

 now, it was obvious that only in the garden of an 

 orderly polity can the finest fruits humanity is capable 

 of bearing be produced. But it had also become 

 evident that the blessings of culture were not un- 

 mixed. The garden was apt to turn into a hothouse. 

 The stimulation of the senses, the pampering of the 

 emotions, endlessly multiplied the sources of pleasure. 

 The constant widening of the intellectual field 

 indefinitely extended the range of that especially 

 human faculty of looking before and after, which adds 

 to the fleeting present those old and new worlds of the 

 past and the future, wherein men dwell the more the 

 higher their culture. But that very sharpening of the 

 sense and that subtle refinement of emotion, which 

 brought such a wealth of pleasures, were fatally at- 

 tended by a proportional enlargement of the capacity 

 for suffering ; and the divine faculty of imagination, 

 while it created new heavens and new earths, provided 

 them with the corresponding hells of futile regret 

 for the past and morbid anxiety for the future. ( 3 ) 

 Finally, the inevitable penalty of over-stimulation, 

 exhaustion, opened the gates of civilization to its 

 great enemy, ennui ; the stale and flat weariness 

 when man delights not, nor woman neither ; when all 

 things are vanity and vexation ; and life seems not 

 worth living except to escape the bore of dying. 



Even purely intellectual progress brings about 

 its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and 

 ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand 



