Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



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 conscious- 

 ness, 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 Silesius 

 (quoted by Schopenhauer), " Ich weiss dass 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 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 crea- 

 ture's saviour, healer — healer of wounds of body 

 and wounds of heart — the Man within the man, 



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