Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



of it — that we are all criminals, and deserve a 

 good hiding ; and even that some of us are greater 

 criminals than others. Only of this real 

 criminality the actual moral and legal codes afford 

 but ineffectual tests. I may be a far worse or 

 more self-included (" idiotic " or brutal) man 

 than you, but the mere fact that I have violated 

 the laws and been clapped into prison does not 

 prove it. There may be, probably is, a real and 

 eternal difference represented by the words Right 

 and Wrong, but no statement that we can make 

 will ever quite avail to define it. One use, however, 

 of all these laws and codes in the past, imperfect 

 though they were, may have been to gradually 

 excite the consciousness in the individual of his 

 opposition to society, and so prepare the way for 

 a true reconcilement. As Paul says, " I had not 

 known sin, but by the law," and, if we had not 

 been cudgeled and bruised for centuries by this 

 rough bludgeon of social convention, we should 

 not now be so sensitive as we are to the effect of 

 our actions upon our neighbours, nor so ready for 

 a social life in the future which shall be superior 

 to law. 



Of course, the ultimate reconcilement of the 

 individual with society — of the unit Man with 

 the mass-Man — involves the subordination of the 

 desires, their subjection to the true self. And 

 this is a most important point. It is no easy lapse 

 that is here suggested, from morality into a mere 

 jungle of human passion, but a toilsome and long 

 ascent — involving for a time at any rate a deter- 



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