Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



laws of my own growth may reveal to me the laws 

 of race-growth. 



In answer to such a question, it would speedily 

 appear that there were two general causes deter- 

 mining direction of change or growth in the 

 individual, which might be conveniently dis- 

 tinguished from each other — an external and an 

 internal. In the first place the supposed person 

 might say, " External conditions forced me along 

 these lines. My father was a town artisan, but 

 he apprenticed me to a farmer. I grew up a far- 

 mer's boy, and became an agricultural type as you 

 see. I did not particularly care for farming, 

 sometimes indeed I would have been glad to be 

 out of it ; but practically I succumbed to cir- 

 cumstances, and here I am." But in the second 

 place he might answer thus : — " My father was 

 himself a farmer ; I was early used to the craft, 

 and should no doubt have grown up in it, had 

 I not hated it like poison. I loved music, broke 

 away from home, joined a band, got on the musical 

 staff of a small theatre, and am now a professional 

 musician. My frame is comparatively slight, and 

 my hands are of the nervous type, as you see. Of 

 course, I have some of the old agricultural stock 

 left in me, but I feel that that is dying out." 

 The one cause would be a change of external 

 conditions, forcing the man to accommodate him- 

 self to them ; the other would be a change of 

 internal conditions, an inward growth, expressing 

 itself first in the form of an intense desire, and 

 compelling the man to change himself and pro- 



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