Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



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 prophesies (quite solemnly 

 and in the name of science) that the human being 

 of the future will be a toothless, bald, toeless crea- 

 ture with flaccid muscles and limbs almost in- 

 capable of locomotion 1 



Perhaps it is safer on the whole not to use the 

 v/ord 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 commence- 

 ment 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 possession ; it destroyed 

 the ancient system of mother-right and inheritance 



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