Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



and living individual ; and in accepting as his 

 own the life of others he becomes aware of a life 

 in himself that has no limit and no end. That 

 the self of any one man is capable of an infinite 

 gradation from the most petty and exclusive exis- 

 tence to the most magnificent and inclusive seems 

 almost a truism. The one extreme is disease and 

 death, the other is life everlasting. When the 

 tongue for example — which is a member of the 

 body — regards itself as a purely separate existence 

 for itself alone, it makes a mistake, it suffers an 

 illusion, and descends into its pettiest life. What 

 is the consequence ? Thinking that it exists 

 apart from the other members, it selects food just 

 such as shall gratify its most local self, it endeavours 

 just to titillate its own sense of taste ; and living 

 and acting thus, ere long it ruins that very sense 

 of taste, poisons the system with improper food, 

 and brings about disease and death. Yet, if healthy, 

 how does the tongue act ? Why, it does not 

 run counter to its own sense of taste, or stultify 

 itself. It does not talk about sacrificing its own 

 inclinations for the good of the body and the other 

 members ; but it just acts as being one in interest 

 with them and they with it. For the tongue 

 is a muscle, and therefore what feeds it feeds all 

 the other muscles ; and the membrane of the 

 tongue is a prolongation of the membrane of 

 the stomach, and that is how the tongue knows 

 what the stomach will like ; and the tongue is 

 nerves and blood, and so the tongue may act for 

 nerves and blood all over the body, and so on. 



178 



