266 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



smattering of knowledge and becomes a genuine 

 path towards wisdom, the drift will be stayed. 

 Certainly in the natural human mind there is a 

 love for the soil and a sympathy with the simple 

 joys and primitive vigours of rural life ; and 

 when education leads to a real wisdom, there is a 

 renewal of the joy in the everlasting pageant of 

 the earth. But between Alpha and Omega, 

 between the simple natural sagacity of the child of 

 Nature and the wisdom which sends the human 

 mind back to the primal sanities of life, there 

 are many stages of ' education ' which are 

 marked by a disgust with the dullness, the austere 

 majesty of the earth. That majesty rebukes 

 the impertinences of our little human knowledge. 

 It sends us huddling into cities to lend one 

 another countenance, to seek stimulants and 

 anodynes. 



So there is, apart from the especial land 

 problem in England, the general land problem 

 in the civilized world arising from discontent 

 with rural life. But it is reassuring to think, as 

 with reason we may think, that this disease of 

 civilization has less reason to exist in England — 

 putting political considerations aside for the 



