Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



intense immutable feeling or state, an axiomatic 

 condition of Being. Is it possible that here, 

 blazing like a sun (if we could only see it — and 

 the sun is its allegory in the physical world), 

 there exists within us absolutely such a thing 

 — the one fact in the universe, of which all else 

 are shadows, to which everything has relation, 

 and round which, itself unanalysable, all thought 

 circles and all phenomena stand as indirect modes 

 of expression ? 



Is it possible ? That is the question — the 

 question wh'ch each one of us has to solve. At 

 any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. 

 Let us suggest that as we have got nothing satis- 

 factory by cleaning the sense-element out of 

 phenomena, we should take the opposite course 

 and put as much sense into them as we can 1 



" Facts " are, at least, half feelings. Let us 

 acknov/ledge this and not empty the feeling out 

 of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we 

 already have in them. Who knows whether 

 we have ever seen the blue sky ? Who knows 

 whether we have ever seen each other } Is it 

 not a commonplace to say that one man sees in 

 the common objects of Nature what another is 

 wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on 

 the river's brim a yellow primrose is to him — and 

 nothing more.' To what extent may the facts 

 of Nature thus be deepened and made more 

 substantial to us — and whither will this process 

 lead us .'' 



Do wc not want to feel more^ not less, in the 

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