Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



much to the merely negative and destructive 

 aspect of this thousand-year long lapse of human 

 evolution. I would also remind the reader that 

 though it is perfectly true that under the dissolv- 

 ing influence of civilisation empire after empire 

 has gone under and disappeared, and the current 

 of human progress time after time has only been 

 restored again by a fresh influx of savagery, yet 

 its corruptive tendency has never had a quite 

 unlimited fling ; but that all down the ages of its 

 dominance over the earth we can trace the tradi- 

 tion of a healing and redeeming power at work 

 in the human breast and an anticipation of the 

 second advent of the son of man. Certain institu- 

 tions, too, such as Art and the Family (though it 

 seems not unlikely that both of these will greatly 

 change when the special conditions of their present 

 existence have disappeared), have served to keep 

 the sacred flame alive ; the latter preserving in 

 island-miniatures, as it were, the ancient com- 

 munal humanity when the seas of individualism 

 and greed covered the general face of the earth ; 

 the former keeping up, so to speak, a navel-cord 

 of contact with Nature, and a means of utterance 

 of primal emotions else unsatisfiable in the world 

 around. 



And if it seem extravagant to suppose that Society 

 will ever emerge from the chaotic condition of 

 strife and perplexity in which we find it all down 

 the lapse of historical time, or to hope that the 

 civilisation-process which has terminated fatally 

 so invariably in the past will ever eventuate in 



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