Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



leaps, the adaptation of its muscles, the exactness 

 and inevitableness of its instincts, physical and 

 afFectional ; its senses of sight and smell, its clean- 

 liness, 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 

 is no mentionable conflict or division within it.^ 



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, 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 



' 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 of plants and animals — still they seem to be rarer, 

 and the organic instinct of health greater, than in the civilised man. 



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