Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



complex and ideal. As each new desire or ideal 

 is evolved, it brings the creature into conflict 

 with its surroundings, then gaining its satisfac- 

 tion externalises itself in the structure of the creature, 

 and leaves the way open for the birth of a new ideal. 

 If then we would find a key to the understanding 

 of the expansion and growth of all animate creation, 

 such a key may exist in the nature of desire itself 

 and the comprehension of its real meaning. It 

 is not certain that it can be found here ; but it 

 may be. 



What then is desire in Man ? Here we come 

 back again, as suggested at the outset, to Man 

 himself. Though we see pretty clearly that desire 

 is at work in the animals, and that it is the same 

 in kind as exists in man, still, among the animals 

 it is but dim and inchoate, while in man it is deve- 

 loped and luminous ; in ourselves, too, we know it 

 immediately, while in the animals only by inference. 

 For both reasons, therefore, if we want to know 

 the nature of desire even to know its nature 

 among animals we should study it in Man. 

 What then is this desire in Man, which seems to 

 be the instigation and origin of all his growth 

 and development ? At first it seems a hydra- 

 headed senseless thing without rhyme or reason ; 

 but the more one regards it the more clearly one 

 sees that even in its lowest forms it is steadily 

 building up and liberating all the functions of 

 the human being. In its most perfect form 

 as in what we call Love it is the sum and solution 

 of human activities, that in which they converge, 



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