It is also conceivable that democratic institutions, by levelling competition and rewards down to the plane of the meanest attainments, have introduced a sort of craft-apathy, or eagerness-mute-stop, into the hearts of all those superior workmen who, along ordinary unrestricted and unconstrained paths, would have delighted in displaying the higher gifts that differentiate them from their fellows, and would thus have increased the sum of general happiness by their contribution of triumphant spirits and the expression of their gratified effort. It is possible, too, that life in very large cities, like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, etc., by bringing each individual man and woman too constantly into touch, in fact into daily irritating contact, with thousands of their fellows,--so that in the thoroughfares of these large cities human beings may truly be said to stand as rank as weeds,--has led to a kind of semiconscious misanthropy, which steadily depresses the _joie de vivre_, by destroying the joy that all should feel in the contemplation and society of their fellows. The struggle for room, for sheer air space, is sometimes so acute in these large cities, and in the fight [p175] for unobstructed progression each advantage is contested with so much malice and spite, that it is not extravagant to suppose that a natural and perfectly instinctive impulse to be friendly and philanthropic, may step by step, be turned to the most irreconcilable hatred and contempt of humanity. It is not even impossible for this change to occur without the person in whom it has taken place being in the least conscious of the true causes of his mental transformation. But upon convinced misanthropy of this sort it is impossible to build a happy and contented community. Hence possibly a goodly portion of the unhappiness of modern times in large cities.