CHAPTER XI CRITICISM OF CIVILIZATION

ARGinŒMT

Between a lawer unUy and a higher ihere is of necessUy a stage of disiniegraiion. So does CivUh xaiion lie between the primUive communism of tke Gens, and the " finidied, free, Society." It présents the features of disease, for disease is the décomposition of that unity wherein consists the health of the body.

Civilization arises out of Barbarism under the influence of the institution of Private Property ; progress then begins, but social inequalities, injustices, wrongs begin also. Thèse ntust be denounced and fought, but wUh due récognition of the fact that this warfare and clash of interests and ideals makes possible the arrivai of the true conception of Individuality, and looks towards the re- fusion of devehped Selves into a higher social order.

In the abstract sensé, Cimlization is continuons and (îffith ebb and flow) always proceeds ; in the concrète sensé, civilizations are intérim stages between lower and higher unities.

We find ourselves to-day in the midst of a somewhat

peculiar state of sodety, whichwe call civilization, which

to the most optimistic among us does not seem

CIVILIZATION, A DISEASE î 225

Itogether désirable. Some of us, indeed, are inclined to hink that it is a Idnd of disease which the varions races >l xnan hâve to pass through. . . .^

WITH thèse words opens a small volume entitled Civilization: Us Cause and Cure, published ûrst in 1889, and now in its twelfth édition. It is net improbable that Edward Carpenter is to a large number of people Î-- known only as an exceedingly f oolish, though somewhat amusing, person, who is alleged to hâve said that Civilization is a disease.

^^ The above quotation shows what he actually ^ does say ; and since, as may hâve been already . : gathered, he is not a f oolish person, it will be ^\ well to attempt to discover what he intends by ^ this somewhat startling criticism.

The Christian Bible opens and closes with a 0 vision, in each of which hmnan beings are disif closed existing in a state of perfection and feUcity. J The intervenmg pages contain a fascinating and ' most mémorable history of struggle and agony, ,^ altemating success and failure, hope and despair. ^ It is clear that, although ail states of perfection ^ are strangdy otiose, the content of the latter (the New Jérusalem) is of a higher quaKty than that f of the former (the Garden of Eden). For example, ^ the innocence of the Garden bas become the holiness of the City.

It is represented, indeed, as if there were no necessity inhérent in the nature of things that

^ Civilization: Os Cause and Cure (Twelfth Edition), p. i.