Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other EssaysCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays
Carpenter, Edward
Civilization; Crime; Evolution; Science
In such new human life then--its fields, its farms, its workshops, its
cities--always the work of man perfecting and beautifying the lands,
aiding the efforts of the sun and soil, giving voice to the desire of
the mute earth--in such new communal life near to nature, so far from
any asceticism or inhospitality, we are fain to see far more humanity
and sociability than ever before: an infinite helpfulness and sympathy,
as between the children of a common mother. Mutual help and combination
will then have become spontaneous and instinctive: each man contributing
to the service of his neighbor as inevitably and naturally as the right
hand goes to help the left in the human body--and for precisely the same
reason. Every man--think of it!--will do the work which he _likes_,
which he desires to do, which is obviously before him to do, and which
he knows will be useful, without thought of wages or reward; and the
reward will come to him as inevitably and naturally as in the human body
the blood flows to the member which is exerting itself. All the endless
burden of the adjustments of labour and wages, of the war of duty and
distaste, of want and weariness, will be thrown aside--all the huge
waste of work done against the grain will be avoided; out of the endless
variety of human nature will spring a perfectly natural and infinite
variety of occupations, all mutually contributive; Society at last will
be free and the human being after long ages will have attained to
deliverance.
This is the Communism which Civilisation has always _hated_, as it hated
Christ. Yet it is inevitable; for the cosmical man, the instinctive
elemental man accepting and crowning nature, necessarily fulfils the
universal law of nature. As to External Government and Law, they will
disappear; for they are only the travesties and transitory substitutes
of Inward Government and Order. Society in its final state is neither a
Monarchy, nor an Aristocracy nor a Democracy, nor an Anarchy, and yet in
another sense it is all of these. It is an Anarchy because there is no
outward rule, but only an inward and invisible spirit of life; it is a
Democracy because it is the rule of the Mass-man, or Demos, in each unit
man; it is an Aristocracy because there are degrees and ranks of such
inward power in all men; and it is a Monarchy because all these ranks
and powers merge in a perfect unity and central control at last. And so
it appears that the outer forms of government which belong to the
Civilisation-period are only the expression in separate external symbols
of the facts of the true inner life of society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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