Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



and under whose control alone the human being 

 can safely move. In fact, if the fiercer and so- 

 called more earthly passions were removed, half 

 the driving force would be gone from the chariot 

 of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at 

 times but, after all, the true value of it depends 

 on what you hate, on the use to which the passion 

 is put. Anger, though inhuman at one . time, is 

 magnificent at another. Obstinacy may be out 

 of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest 

 virtue on a battle-field, when an important position 

 has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. 

 And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its 

 aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated 

 from its divine companion, Love. To let the 

 more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously 

 does not do : to turn your cheek, too literally, 

 to the smiter, is (face Tolstoi) only to encourage 

 smiting ; and when society becomes so altruistic 

 that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle, we 

 feel sure that something has gone wrong. The 

 white-washed heroes of our biographies, with their 

 many virtues and no faults, do not please us. We 

 have an impression that the man without faults 

 is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being 

 a picture without light and shade and the con- 

 ventional semi-pious classification of character 

 into good and bad qualities (as if the good might 

 be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both 

 inadequate and false. 



What the student of human nature rather has 

 to do is not to divide the virtues (so-called) from, 



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