Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



the decline that at last in the end of time a Kay 

 Robinson arises and prophesies as aforesaid, that 

 he will before long become wholly toothless, bald 

 and toeless. 



And so with this denial of Nature comes every 

 form of disease ; first delicatesse, daintiness, 

 luxury ; then unbalance, enervation, huge suscepti- 

 bility to pain. With the shutting of himself 

 away from the all-healing Power, man inevitably 

 weakens his whole manhood ; the central bond 

 is loosened, and he falls a prey to his own organs. 

 He who before was unaware of the existence of 

 these latter, now becomes only too conscious of 

 them (and this — is it not the very object of the 

 process ? ) ; the stomach, the liver and the spleen 

 start out into painful distinctness before him, 

 the heart loses its equable beat, the lungs their 

 continuity with the universal air, and the brain 

 becomes hot and fevered ; each organ in turn 

 asserts itself abnormally and becomes a seat of 

 disorder, every corner and cranny of the body 

 becomes the scene and symbol of disease, and 

 Man gazes aghast at his own kingdom — whose 

 extent he had never suspected before — now all 

 ablaze in wild revolt against him. And then — all 

 going with this period of his development — sweep 

 vast epidemic trains over the face of the earth, 

 plagues and fevers and lunacies and world-wide 

 festering sores, followed by armies, ever growing, 

 of doctors — they too with their retinues of books 

 and bottles, vaccinations and vivisections, and 

 grinning death's-heads in the rear — a mad crew, 



48 



