Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



two separate things. (This no doubt a necessary 

 stage in order for the development of the conscious- 

 ness of love y but in itself only painful and abnormal.) 

 It culminates and comes to an end, as to-day, 

 in a complete divorce between the spiritual reality 

 and the bodily fulfilment — in a vast system of 

 commercial love, bought and sold, in the brothel 

 and in the palace. It begins with the forsaking 

 of the hardy nature-life, and it ends with a society 

 broken down and prostrate, hardly recognisable 

 as human, amid every form of luxury, poverty and 

 disease. He who had been the free child of 

 Nature denies his sonship ; he disowns the very 

 breasts that suckled him. He deliberately turns 

 his back upon the light of the sun, and hides him- 

 self away in boxes with breathing holes (which 

 he calls houses), living ever more and more in dark- 

 ness and asphyxia, and only coming forth perhaps 

 once a day to blink at the bright god, or to run 

 back again at the first breath of the free wind for 

 fear of catching cold ! He muffles himself in 

 the cast-ofFfurs of the beasts, every century swathing 

 himself in more and more layers, more and more 

 fearfully and wonderfully fashioned, till he ceases 

 to be recognisable as the Man that was once the 

 crown of the animals, and presents a more ludicrous 

 spectacle than the monkey that sits on his own 

 barrel organ. He ceases to a great extent to use 

 his muscles, his feet become partially degenerate, 

 his teeth wholly, his digestion so enervated that 

 he has to cook his food and make pulps of all his 

 victuals, and his whole system so obviously on 



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