of thought in matters of education and culture, and in matters touching
religion, that they have lost all sympathetic and responsive contact
with Nature, because unconsciously they have thus permitted
conventionality and unnaturalness to insulate them from it. The Celtic
peasant, who may be their tenant or neighbour, is--if still uncorrupted
by them--in direct contrast unconventional and natural. He is normally
always responsive to psychical influences--as much so as an Australian
Arunta or an American Red Man, who also, like him, are fortunate enough
to have escaped being corrupted by what we egotistically, to distinguish
ourselves from them, call 'civilization'. If our Celtic peasant has
psychical experiences, or if he sees an apparition which he calls one of
the 'good people', that is to say a fairy, it is useless to try to
persuade him that he is under a delusion: unlike his
materialistically-minded lord, he would not attempt nor even desire to
make himself believe that what he has seen he has not seen. Not only has
he the will to believe, but he has the right to believe; because his
belief is not a matter of being educated and reasoning logically, nor a
matter of faith and theology--it is a fact of his own individual
experiences, as he will tell you. Such peasant seers have frequently
argued with me to the effect that 'One does not have to be educated in
order to see fairies'.
Unlike the natural mind of the uncorrupted Celt, Arunta, or American Red
Man, which is ever open to unusual psychical impressions, the mind of
the business man in our great cities tends to be obsessed with business
affairs both during his waking and during his dream states, the
politician's with politics similarly, the society-leader's with society;
and the unwholesome excitement felt by day in the city is apt to be
heightened at night through a satisfying of the feeling which it
morbidly creates for relaxation and change of stimuli. In the slums,
humanity is divorced from Nature under even worse conditions, and
becomes wholly decadent. But in slum and in palace alike there is
continually a feverish nerve-tension induced by unrest and worry; there
is impure and smoke-impregnated air, a lack of sunshine, a substitution
of artificial objects for natural objects, and in place of solitude the
eternal din of traffic. Instead of Nature, men in cities (and
paradoxically some conventionalized men in the country) have
'civilization'--and 'culture'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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