Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



descendant ; his impulses, both physical and social, 

 were clearer and more unhesitating ; and his un- 

 consciousness of inner discord and sin a great 

 contrast to our modern condition of everlasting 

 strife and perplexity. 



If then to this stage belongs some degree of 

 human perfection 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-consciousness, or the disentanglement of the 



but beyond this, their strong feeling of union with the universal 

 spirit, probably only dimly self 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 the 

 forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums, the torture-dances 

 of the young Red Indian bravos in the burning heat 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 clement of religion, and the germ of some human 

 powers which wait yet to be developed. 



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