“When you begin low down in the scale of Creation, you find creatures without any specialised organs. The simplest living things are just spots of protoplasm, mere aggregations of cells, each of which performs functions common to them all. Then, step by step as you rise in the scale, specialisation sets in: the cells become differentiated from one another; and each performs a function of its own. You get the cells of the nerves receiving and transmitting sensation; you get cells engaged in nutrition processes; there are other cells devoted to producing motion. And with this specialisation you get the dawn of something which apparently did not exist before: the structure as a whole acquires a personality of its own, distinct from the individualities of the cells which go to build it up. “But the inverse process is also possible. When the body as a whole suffers death, you still have a certain period during which the cells have an existence. Hair grows after death, for example. “Now if you look at the trend of civilisation, you will see that we are passing into a stage of specialisation. In the Middle Ages, a man might be a celebrated artist and yet be in the forefront of the science of his day--like Leonardo da Vinci; but in our time you seldom find a man who is first-class in more than one line. In the national body, each individual citizen is a specialised cell; and if he diverged from his normal functions he would disorganise the machine, just as a cancer cell disorganises the body in which it grows. “But this civilisation of ours has come to the edge of its grave. It is going to die. There is no help for it. What I fear is that in its death-throe it may destroy even the hope of a newer and perhaps better civilisation in the future. It is going to starve to death; and a starving organism is desperate. So long as it retains its present organised and coherent life, it will be a danger to us; and for our own safety--I mean the safety of the future generations--we must disorganise it as soon as possible. We must throw it back at a step, if we can, to the old unspecialised conditions; for then it will lose its most formidable powers and break up of itself. Did you ever read Hobbes? He thought of the State as a great Leviathan, an artificial man of greater strength and stature than the natural man, for whose protection and defence it was contrived; and the soul of this artificial creature he found in sovereignty. How can we bring about the _débâcle_ of this huge organism? That is the problem I have been facing this afternoon.