Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



cms in character, at best an amiable weakness not 

 to be encouraged. Tolstoy, in one of his writings, 

 figures the case of a little household in days of 

 famine not really having bread enough for their 

 own wants. Then a stranger child comes to the 

 door and pleads for food. Tolstoy suggests that 

 the mother ought to take the scanty crust from 

 her own child to feed the stranger withal, or at 

 least to share the food equally between the two 

 children. But such a conclusion seems to me 

 doubtful. 



Whatever " ought " may mean in such a 

 connexion, we know pretty well that such never 

 will be the rule of human life, we may almost 

 say never can be ; perhaps we should be equally 

 justified in saying, never " ought " to be. For 

 obviously there must be preferences, selections. 

 Our affections, our affinities, our sympathies, 

 our passions, are not given us for nothing. It 

 is not for nothing that every individual person, 

 every tree, every animal has a shape^ a shape of 

 its own. If it were not so the world would be 

 infinitely, inconceivably, dull. Yet to ask that a 

 mother should in all cases treat strange children 

 exactly the same as her own, that a man from the 

 oceanic multitude should single out no special 

 or privileged friends, but should love all alike, 

 is to ask that these folk in their mental and moral 

 nature should become as jellyfish of no distinct 

 shape or satisfaction to themselves or any one 

 else. Profound and indispensable as is the Law 

 of Equality the law, namely, that there is a 



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