Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



there are situations in which that very Life arising 

 within him, or even his own absolute necessity, 

 will demand such actions, will compel him to 

 the performance of them ; but all the same he will 

 in his ordinary existence carry out the principle 

 which underlies these formulas, and much more 

 thoroughly, probably, than the formulas themselves 

 would demand. 



Similarly about such matters as sexual morality. 

 There are outcries against Lady-Godiva-shows 

 and living statuary — apparently because folk are 

 afraid of such things rousing the passions. No 

 doubt the things may act that way. But why, 

 we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing 

 passions which, after all, are the great driving 

 forces of human life ? Clearly it is because they 

 think the other forces which should guide these 

 passions or give them a helpful and useful direction 

 are too weak. And in this last respect they are 

 right. The guiding and inhibiting forces in our 

 present society are feeble — because they consist 

 only in a few conventional formulae, which are 

 rapidly being undermined. We are generating 

 steam in a boiler which is already cankered 

 with rust. The cure is not to cut off the 

 passions, or to be weakly afraid of them, but to 

 find a new, sound, healthy engine of general 

 morality and common-sense within which they 

 will work. And this is what in the future we 

 must try to do. 



This morality, this organic, vital, almost phy- 

 siological morality of the common life — which 



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