Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



are false, since the individuals who compose 

 Society are not separate from each other ; and 

 the theory that the universe, in its ultimate analysis, 

 is composed of a vast number of discrete atoms 

 is simply unthinkable. 



When we come to a practical and modern ques- 

 tion like Medicine, the influence of the spirit in 

 which it is approached on the course of the science 

 is very easy to see. For if the science of Medicine 

 is approached (as it perhaps mostly is to-day) 

 in a spirit of combined Fear and Self-indulgence 

 — fear for one's own personal safety, combined 

 with a kind of anxiety to continue living in the 

 indulgence of habits known to be unhealthy — 

 if it is approached in this uncomfortable and 

 contradictory state of mind, it is pretty obvious 

 that its course will be similarly uncomfortable : 

 that it will consist for the most part in a search for 

 drugs which shall, without effort on our part, 

 palliate the effects of our misconduct ; in the 

 discovery, as in a kind of nightmare, that the air 

 round us is full of billions of microbes ; in a terri- 

 fied study of these messengers of disease, and in 

 a frantic effort to ward them off by inoculations, 

 vaccinations, vivisections, and so forth, without 

 end. 



If, on the other hand, the science is approached 

 from quite a different side — from that of the 

 love of Health, and the desire to make life lovely, 

 beautiful and clean ; if the student is filled not 

 only with this, but with a great belief in the essential 

 power of Man, and his command in creation, to 



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