Even if that should be so, even if there should be a solution of continuity in the course of civilisation, even then, as again Jules de Gaultier also held, we need not despair, for life is a fountain of everlasting exhilaration. No creature on the earth has so tortured himself as Man, and none has raised a more exultant Alleluia. It would still be possible to erect places of refuge, cloisters wherein life would yet be full of joy for men and women determined by their vocation to care only for beauty and knowledge, and so to hand on to a future race the living torch of civilisation. When we read Palladius, when we read Rabelais, we realise how vast a field lies open for human activity between the Thebaid on one side and Thelema on the other. Out of such ashes a new world might well arise. Sunset is the promise of dawn. THE END Footnote 113: Alfred Niceforo, _Les Indices Numériques de la Civilisation et du Progrès_. Paris, 1921. Footnote 114: Professor Bury, in his admirable history of the idea of progress (J. B. Bury, _The Idea of Progress_, 1920), never defines the meaning of “progress.” As regards the meaning of “civilisation” see essay on “Civilisation,” Havelock Ellis, _The Philosophy of Conflict_ (1919), pp. 14-22. Footnote 115: Quetelet, _Physique Sociale_. (1869.) Footnote 116: See e.g., Maurice Parmelee’s _Criminology_, the sanest and most comprehensive manual on the subject we have in English. Footnote 117: Élie Faure, with his usual incisive insight, has set out the real characters of the “Greek Spirit” (“Reflexions sur le Génie Grec,” _Monde Nouveau_, December, 1922). Footnote 118: This tendency, on which Herbert Spencer long ago insisted, is in its larger aspects quite clear. E. C. Pell (_The Law of Births and Deaths_, 1921) has argued that it holds good of civilised man to-day, and that our decreasing birth rate with civilisation is quite independent of any effort on Man’s part to attain that evolutionary end. Footnote 119: Professor McDougall refers to the high birth-rate of the lower stratum as more “normal.” If that were so, civilisation would certainly be doomed. All high evolution _normally_ involves a low birth-rate. Strange how difficult it is even for those most concerned with these questions to see the facts simply and clearly! Footnote 120: A. M. Carr-Saunders, _The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution_ (1922), pp. 457, 472. Footnote 121: