Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



blinkers keep a large part of the world on the 

 beaten road and out of the ditch, and that 

 folk are alv/ays to be found who, rather than 

 use their higher faculties, will rely on these 

 external guides ; but to encourage this kind of 

 salvation by blinkers seems the very reverse 

 of what ought to be done ; and one might even 

 ask whether salvation by such means is sal- 

 vation at all — whether the ditch were not 

 better 1 



Besides, what can we do ? It is not so much 

 that we are deliberately abandoning the codes 

 as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual 

 infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of 

 Darwinian philosophy, of customs and creeds of 

 races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw 

 lecturing on the futility of the Ten Command- 

 ments, and so forth, it is not difficult to see that 

 in a short while it will be impossible to rehabilitate 

 any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction 

 and a sense of awe in the public mind. If with 

 Gilbert Chesterton we should succeed in bolster- 

 ing up such a thing for a time — well, it will 

 only be for a time. 



And the question is, whether the time has not 

 really come for us to stand up — like sensible men 

 and women — and do without rules ; whether we 

 cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the 

 blinkers. The question is whether we cannot 

 realise that solid and central life which underlies 

 and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot 

 do this, our state is pitiable — having ceased to 



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