There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and
though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the
community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should
fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be
disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in
the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning
and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all
classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that
many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the
duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this
discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.
Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have
mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should
be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole
number of persons who pay income-tax on L5000 a year and upwards is
only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided
up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The
wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our
history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from
the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family
average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If
we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the
civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of
population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
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