Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



unhonoured grave — yet to-day he is regarded as 

 a pioneer of human thought. The hated Chris- 

 tian holding his ill-famed love-feasts in the darkness 

 of the catacombs has climbed up to the throne 

 of S. Peter and the world. The Jew money- 

 lender whom Front-de-Bceuf could torture with 

 impunity is become a Rothschild — guest of 

 princes and instigator of commercial wars ; and 

 Shylock is now a highly respectable Railway 

 Bondholder. And the Accepted of one age is 

 the Criminal of the next. All the glories of Alex- 

 ander do not condone in our eyes for his cruelty 

 in crucifying the brave defenders of Tyre by 

 thousands along the sea-shore ; and if Solomon 

 with his thousand wives and concubines were 

 to appear in London to-morrow, even our most 

 frivolous circles would be shocked, and Brigham 

 Young by contrast seem a domestic model. The 

 judge pronounces sentence on the prisoner now, 

 but Society in its turn and in the lapse of years 

 pronounces sentence on the judge. It holds 

 in its hand a new canon, a new code of morals, 

 and consigns its former representative and the 

 law which he administered to a limbo of con- 

 tempt. 



It seems as if Society, as it progresses from point 

 to point, forms ideals — just as the individual does. 

 At any moment each person, consciously or un- 

 consciously, has an ideal in his mind toward which 

 he is working (hence the importance of literature). 

 Similarly Society has an ideal in its mind. These 

 ideals are tangents or vanishing points of the direc- 



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