Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



whose birth all creation groans and travails all 

 these things will return to become realities, and 

 to be the frame or setting of his supra-mundane 

 life. The meaning of the old religions will come 

 back to him. On the high tops once more gathering 

 he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of 

 the human form and the great processions of the stars, 

 or greet the bright horn of the young moon which 

 now after a hundred centuries comes back laden 

 with such wondrous associations all the yearnings 

 and the dreams and the wonderment of the genera- 

 tions of mankind the worship of Astarte and of 

 Diana, of Isis or the Virgin Mary ; once more in 

 sacred groves will he reunite the passion and the 

 delight of human love with his deepest feelings of 

 the sanctity and beauty of Nature ; or in the open, 

 standing uncovered to the Sun, will adore the 

 emblem of the everlasting splendour which shines 

 within. The same sense of vital perfection and 

 exaltation which can be traced in the early and 

 pre-civilisation peoples only a thousand times 

 intensified, defined, illustrated and purified will 

 return to irradiate the redeemed and delivered 

 Man. 



In suggesting thus the part which Civilisation 

 has played in history, I am aware that the word 

 itself is difficult to define is at best only one of 

 those phantom-generalisations which the mind is 

 forced to employ ; also that the account I have 

 given of it is sadly imperfect, leaning perhaps too 



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