Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



suffering, he has literally descended into Hell ; 

 henceforth he turns, both in the individual and in 

 society, and mounts deliberately and consciously 

 back again towards the unity which he has lost.'' 

 And the false democracy parts aside for the dis- 

 closure of the true Democracy which has been 

 formed beneath it — which is not an external govern- 

 ment at all, but an inward rule — the rule of the 

 mass-Man in each unit-man. For no outward 

 government can be anything but a make-shift — 

 a temporary hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the grub 

 together while the new life is forming inside — a 

 device of the civilisation-period. Farther than 

 this it cannot go, since no true life can rely upon 



I There is another point worth noting as characteristic of the 

 civilisation-period. This is the abnormal development of the 

 abstract intellect in comparison with the physical senses on the one 

 hand, and the moral sense on the other. Such a result might be 

 expected, seeing that abstraction from reality is naturally the great 

 engine of that false individuality or apartness, which it is the object 

 of Civilisation to produce. As it is, during this period man builds 

 himself an intellectual world apart from the great actual universe 

 around him ; the " ghosts of things " are studied in books ; the 

 student lives indoors, he cannot face the open air — his theories 

 " may prove very well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under 

 the spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents " ; 

 children are " educated " afar from actual life ; huge phantom- 

 temples of philosophy and science are reared upon the most slender 

 foundations ; and in these he lives defended from actual fact. 

 For as a drop of water, when it comes in contact with red-hot 

 iron, wraps itself in a cloud of vapor and is saved from destruction, 

 so the little mind of man, lest it should touch the burning truth 

 of Nature and God and be consumed, evolves at each point of 

 contact a veil of insubstantial thought which allows it for a time 

 to exist apart, and becomes the nurse of its self-consciousness. 



57 



