Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



all art and the higher emotions. Timidity is 

 the defect of the sensitive imaginative tempera- 

 ment. Bluntness, stupid candor, and want of 

 tact are indispensable in the formation of certain 

 types of Reformers. But what would you have ? 

 Would you have a rabbit with the horns of a cow, 

 or a donkey with the disposition of a spaniel ? 

 The reformer has not to extirpate his brusqueness 

 and aggressiveness, but to see that he makes good 

 use of these qualities ; and the man has not to 

 abolish his sensuality, but to humanise it. 



And so on. Lecky, in his " History of Morals/* 

 shows how in society certain defects necessarily 

 accompany certain excellences of character. 

 " Had the Irish peasants been less chaste they 

 would have been more prosperous," in his blunt 

 assertion, which he supports by the contention 

 that their early marriages (which render the said 

 virtue possible) " are the most conspicuous proofs 

 of the national improvidence, and one of the most 

 fatal obstacles to industrial prosperity." Similarly 

 he says that the gambling table fosters a moral 

 nerve and calmness " scarcely exhibited in equal 

 perfection in any other sphere " a fact which 

 Bret Harte has finely illustrated in his character 

 of Mr. John Oakhurst in the " Outcasts of Poker 

 Flat ; " also that " the promotion of industrial 

 veracity is probably the single form in which the 

 growth of manufactures exercises a favorable 

 influence upon morals ; " while, on the other hand, 

 ' Trust in Providence, content and resignation in 

 extreme poverty and suffering, the most genuine 



162 



