A society that is at rest is not necessarily the ultimate desideratum. A society that is not at rest cannot therefore be necessarily bad. On the contrary, social unrest has been characteristic of all the greatest and most fertile moments in history. What could have been more unrestful than the period that witnessed the spread of the Roman power, or the period of the Renaissance? To call the present period simply one of social unrest therefore does not even give us an inkling of the true and alarming symptom of the trouble--the settled despondency that is invading all hearts. By the phrase “social unrest,” we might, for instance, be led to suspect that the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble were the primary and general symptoms. What are the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble? Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe. Suppose we accept the secondary as the primary symptoms, how can we then account for the deep pessimism and gloom of the cultivated--not merely those among the cultivated who fear they may lose by [p156] Labour’s attitude, but those who are disinterested enough to fear nothing except the incurable canker at their hearts? Can they truly be said to share Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe? Labour’s dissatisfaction, therefore, cannot possibly be a primary symptom. It is only the proletariat’s adaptation to the primary symptom; just as hedonism, neurasthenia, lunacy and frenzied interest in new-fangled creeds and movements, may be the cultivated man’s adaptation to the primary symptoms. To call the present state of affairs simply social unrest is to magnify unduly a secondary and particular, into the importance of a primary and general, symptom. Whatever the subsequent adaptation to it may be, the true primary symptom must be common to both classes, the labouring and the employing classes, and that true primary symptom, it is here suggested, is the mood of unaffected hopelessness that characterises all modern men. And since, as a primary symptom, it is common to all men, it must have a common cause. Doubtless a good deal of it may be easily accounted for in the manner outlined at the opening of Chapter I. As everyone knows, physical and spiritual weariness do not need to last very long in order to induce the most stubborn dejection; and since there can be no doubt that, as the result of life’s present unprecedented complexity and breakneck speed, modern men of all classes are suffering from physical and particularly nervous exhaustion, we might reasonably [p157] expect to find depression as one of its accompanying features.