272 Darker Shadows. [May, 
with its present speed the early part of the next century will 
see in this country more than a million of formally recog- 
nised lunatics, not to speak of the greater numbers outside 
the legal boundary of madness whose morbid whims will 
form the public opinion and the “ national conscience ” of 
the day, and who will constitute the blind followers of the 
blind. Or shall I rather say Gadarene swine inspired to 
suicide ? On this ground alone the condemnation of modern 
civilisation may be unequivocally pronounced. Whatever 
customs, laws, institutions, or tendencies lead to mental 
disease, need no further investigation. 
And what have the morals of the world become under in- 
dustrial inspiration ? We profess to be nothing if not 
ethicists. We make war, ostensibly at least against the 
“ pleasant vices,” but we enter into alliance with those that 
are profitable. We are clamorous against cruelty, and see 
it in very novel quarters, but our whole life is permeated 
with deceit and fraud. Scarcely is any article bought and 
sold what it professes to be. Scarcely is any business, pub- 
lic or private, done without some form of bribery or corrup- 
tion. And all these tricks of trade are even defended in 
high places as merely avatars of the goddess Competition, 
who dominates us in the University, on ’Change, and in the 
.Hospital. The philanthropy of the modern world is also of 
a peculiar kind. It shrinks from direct bloodshed, but it is 
willing to kill by hunger and misery. The fortunes of our 
“ self-made men,” in too many cases, cost a greater amount 
of human ruin and misery than the bloodiest laurels of 
classic or feudal warrior. The cry for cheap labour, to be 
gained, if need be, by the importation of the hostile alien, 
and even of the “ heathen Chinee,” is as merciless as the 
yell of Pagan Rome — “ The Christians to the lions ! ” 
Or, again, how does man fare intellectually under the in- 
dustrial regime ? The answer can be given briefly. All 
original work — be it in Science, in Literature, or in Art — 
demands abundant leisure. But the present system is con- 
stantly curtailing the leisure of brain-workers. The ultimate 
result cannot be doubtful. All research not aiming at direct 
profit will become rarer. We may have inventors, appliers, 
patentees in abundance, — some of them inventing, perhaps, 
new frauds ; but we shall have a dearth of discoverers. 
Lastly, I must ask how far is modern civilisation, under 
its present guiding ideas, promoting human happiness ? To 
any person of common animal sympathies the weight of 
anxiety and distress, or else of grim, hopeless apathy, 
stamped upon the very foreheads of Europeans, and 
