Biologists tell us that organisms frequently survive in the animal kingdom at the cost of qualities, which, from the human standpoint may seem eminently desirable. Thus the tape-worm is said to be the descendant of a race that once led a nobler and more independent existence. Survival is thus frequently purchased at too heavy a cost. Is it possible that by the observance of survival values alone, unchecked by æsthetic values, man has lost, or is rapidly losing, valuable qualities that once made a higher and more lasting kind of civilisation possible? The daily lives, the food and the drink of the whole population, particularly its rural elements, might be advantageously criticised from the standpoint of their body-building and health-giving qualities; also from the standpoint of their ultimate influence in moulding the mind and tempering the heart of the people. After many centuries of overemphasis of the soul’s importance, attention might be bestowed with pre-Puritan fervour upon the body and its needs. In these various ways might the scrutiny of earnest and profound reformers be profitably concentrated upon the most probable cause of the apparent decay and disease of modern institutions and systems,--that is to say, upon man himself, and upon the noble and stirring task of making him once more whole, if it is indeed his infirmity from which civilisation is suffering. In this direction alone is there any hope; in this direction alone is there any practical chance of achieving lasting success. The immense difficulties that the problem of man himself immediately presents, need not deter even the most faint-hearted from embarking upon the enterprise; for it is surely possibly even for the most craven to be induced to choose between two alternatives. And what is the alternative to the measures here proposed?--To continue tinkering at mankind’s institutions and systems, as we have been doing for the last three hundred years? To continue tampering with society’s laws and customs instead of with her units? These methods may sound more simple and more commensurate with the powers of blundering and childish fingers, but is the simpler, the easier method, always to be the more _practical_, merely because it is simple and easy, and quite irrespective of its ultimate effectiveness? Is “practical” synonymous with elementary or infantile? Is a procedure “practical” because it appeals immediately and vividly to a room full of babies? Precisely because the true causes of modern anarchy, disaffection and disunion, probably lie much deeper beneath the surface than established social and economic conditions, there is a danger that the latter will [p207] be seized upon and shattered, in the endeavour to achieve reform. The blindest can apprehend their existence, and to the blind, holding is seeing.