And most of modern life seems to be a process of creating disease, then finding a remedy, which in its turn creates another disease, demanding fresh remedy, and so on. We pride ourselves, for example, on scientific sanitation; but what is scientific sanitation if not one huge palliative of evils which have arisen from herd-life enabling herd-life to be intensified, so that we shall presently need even more scientific sanitation? The true elixirs vitæ――for there be two, I think――are open-air life, and a proud pleasure in one’s work, but we have evolved a mode of existence in which it is comparatively rare to find these two conjoined. In old countries such as mine, the evils of herd-life are at present vastly more acute than in a new country such as yours. On the other hand, the further one is from hades, the faster one drives towards it, and machines are beginning to run along with America even more violently than with Europe. When our Tanks first appeared, they were described as snouting monsters creeping at their own sweet will. I confess that this is how my inflamed eye sees all our modern machines――monsters running on their own, dragging us along, and very often squashing us. We are, I believe, awakening to the dangers of this ‘Gadarening,’ of rushing down the high cliff into the sea, possessed and pursued by the devils of――machinery. But if any would see how little alarmed he really is――let him ask himself how much of his present mode of existence he is prepared to alter. Altering the modes of other people is delightful; one would have great hope of the future if we had nothing before us but that. The mediæval Irishman, indicted for burning down the cathedral at Armagh, together with the Archbishop, defended himself thus: “As for the cathedral, ’tis true I burned it; but indeed an’ I wouldn’t have, only they told me himself was inside.” We are all ready to alter our opponents, if not to burn them. But even if we were as ardent reformers as that Irishman, we could hardly force men to live in the open, or take a proud pleasure in their work, or enjoy beauty, or not concentrate themselves on making money. No amount of legislation will make us “lilies of the field” or “birds of the air,” or prevent us from worshipping false gods, or neglecting to reform ourselves. I once wrote the unpopular sentence: “Democracy at present offers the spectacle of a man running down a road followed at a more and more respectful distance by his own soul.” For democracy read rather the words modern civilisation which prides itself on redress after the event, foresees nothing and avoids less; is purely empirical if one may use so high brow a word.