Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



becomes avowedly the leading factor in our develop- 

 ment ? 



The desire which runs through creation is one 

 desire. Rudimentary at first and hardly con- 

 scious of itself, throwing out a tentacle here, a 

 foot there, developing an eye, a claw, a nostril, 

 a wing, it seeks in innumerable shapes and with 

 ever partial success to realise the image it has 

 dimly conceived. The animal kingdom is the 

 gymnasium, the school, the antechamber, of human- 

 ity ; to walk through a zoological garden is to 

 see the inchoate types of man, perched on branches, 

 or browsing grass, or boring holes in the ground ; 

 it is to witness a grand rehearsal of some stupen- 

 dous part, whose character we do not even yet 

 fully see or understand. From such half-con- 

 scious beginnings the desire grows, its aim be- 

 comes clearer, till in the higher animals — the horse, 

 the dog, the elephant, the bird, and many others 

 — it becomes a marked and unmistakable force 

 drawing them close to man, uniting them to him 

 in a kind of acknowledged kinship, and as obviously 

 at work modifying their structure as can be. 

 Finally in man himself it becomes an absorbing 

 power ; love becomes a conscious worship of the 

 divine form ; generation itself is the means where- 

 by, in time, the supreme object of desire is realised. 

 When at last the perfect Man appears, the key to 

 all nature is found, every creature falls into its 

 place and finds its Interpreter, and the purpose 

 of creation is at last made manifest. 



The Theory of Exfoliation then differs from 

 198 



