Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



in each case is due to a real fitness in nature, and 

 how much to mere otiose habit ! The first thing 

 that meets my eye in glancing out of the window 

 is a tile on a neighboring roof. Why are tiles 

 made S-shaped in some localities and flat in others ? 

 Surely the conditions of wind and rain are much 

 the same in all places. Perhaps far back there 

 was a reason, but now nothing remains but — 

 custom. Why do we sit on chairs instead of 

 on the floor, as the Japanese do, or on cushions like 

 the Turk ? It is a custom, and perhaps it suits 

 with our other customs. The more we look into 

 our life and consider the immense variety of 

 habit in every department of it — even under 

 conditions to all appearances exactly similar — 

 the more are we impressed by the absence of any 

 very serious necessity in the forms we ourselves 

 are accustomed to. Each race, each class, each 

 section of the population, each unit even, vaunts 

 its own habits of life as superior to the rest, as 

 the only true and legitimate forms ; and peoples 

 and classes will go to war with each other in asser- 

 tion of their own special beliefs and practices ; 

 but the question that rather presses upon the 

 ingenuous and inquiring mind is, whether any 

 of us have got hold of much true life at all ? — 

 whether we are not rather mere multitudinous 

 varieties of caddis-worms shuffled up in the cast- 

 off skins and clothes and debris of those who have 

 gone before us, and with very little vitality of 

 our own perceptible within ? How many times 

 a day do we perform an action that is authentic 



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