110 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



and alone before it and cried to God, ever interpret the 

 crowd or express the will of the crowd, or hew out of 

 earth and heaven what the crowd wants. 



"'We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civ- 

 ilisation, we want to share the crowd life, to express 

 what people in crowds feel the great crowd sensa- 

 tions, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of 

 those who live and struggle with crowds. 



" We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the 

 main facts, the main emotions men are having to-day. 

 And the main emotion men are having to-day about our 

 modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in the 

 nature of the case its civilisation is a crowd civilisation. 

 Every other important thing for this present age to 

 know must be worked out from this one. It is the 

 main tiling with which our religion has to deal, the 

 thing our literature is about, and the thing our arts will 

 be obliged to express. Any man who makes the attempt 

 to consider or interpret anything either in art or life 

 without a true understanding of the crowd principle as 

 it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central 

 place in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in 

 the blur and bewilderment of this modern world, as 

 helpless in it, and as childish and superficial in it, as a 

 Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of his still 

 Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance." 



GERALD STANLEY LEE: Crowds, pp. 19, 32. 



" Biology never stops and never can stop in its deal- 

 ings with any animal by regarding it as just an animal 

 in an unrestrained sense. It always deals with some 

 particular kind or species of animal. The fish must be 

 treated as a fish, and the bird as a bird. Neither can be 

 disposed of by merely attending to such general at- 



