CIVILISATION : 



ITS CAUSE AND CURE 



The friendly and flowing savage, who is he ? Is he waiting 

 for civilisation, or is he past it, and mastering it ? — Whitman. 



"TTTTE find ourselves to-day in the midst of a 

 \X/ somewhat peculiar state of society, which 

 W we call Civilisation, but which even to 

 the most optimistic among us does not seem al- 

 together desirable. Some of us, indeed, are 

 inclined to think that it is a kind of disease which 

 the various races of man have to pass through — 

 as children pass through measles or whooping 

 cough ; but if it is a disease, there is this serious 

 consideration to be made, that while History tells 

 us of many nations that have been attacked by it, 

 of many that have succumbed to it, and of some 

 that are still in the throes of it, we know of no 

 single case in which a nation has fairly recovered 

 from and passed through it to a more normal 

 and healthy condition. In other words the 

 development of human society has never yet 

 (that we know of) passed beyond a certain definite 



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