Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



and all his other hiding places wherein so long ago 

 ashamed (as at the voice of God in the garden) 

 he concealed himself — and Nature must once 

 more become his home, as it is the home of the 

 animals and the angels. 



As it is written in the old magical formula : 

 *' Man clothes himself to descend, unclothes 

 himself to ascend." Over his spiritual or wind- 

 like body he puts on a material or earthy body ; 

 over his earth-body he puts on the skins of animals 

 and other garments ; then he hides this body in 

 a house behind curtains and stone walls — which 

 become to it as secondary skins and prolongations 

 of itself. So that between the man and his true 

 life there grows a dense and impenetrable hedge ; 

 and, what with the cares and anxieties connected 

 with his earth-body and all its skins, he soon loses 

 the knowledge that he is a Man at all ; his true 

 self slumbers in a deep and agelong swoon. 



But the instinct of all who desire to deliver the 

 divine imago within them, is, in something more 

 than the literal sense, towards unclothing. And 

 the process of evolution or exfoliation itself is 

 nothing but a continual unclothing of Nature, by 

 which the perfect human Form which is at the 

 root of it comes nearer and nearer to its mani- 

 festation. 



Thus, in order to restore the Health which he has 

 lost, man has in the future to tend in this direction. 

 Life indoors and in houses has to become a fraction 

 only, instead of the principal part of existence as 

 it is now. Garments similarly have to be simplified, 



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