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The simplest country cottager, shepherd, fisherman, has as much, often a deal more, dignity than numbers of our upper classes, who, in spite of the desire to keep themselves unspotted, are still, from the nature of their existence, touched by the herd-life of modern times.
He had a sort of simple dignity, too, that we have most of us lost. The true elixirs vitæ for there be two, I think are open-air life and a proud pleasure in one's work; we have evolved a mode of existence in which it is comparatively rare to find these two conjoined. In old countries, such as Britain, the evils of herd-life are at present vastly more acute than in a new country such as America.
We pride ourselves, for example, on scientific sanitation; well, what is scientific sanitation if not one huge palliative of evils, which have arisen from herd-life, enabling herd-life to be intensified, so that we shall presently need even more scientific sanitation? The old shepherd on the South Downs had never come in contact with it, yet he was very old, very healthy, hardy, and contented.
If there is a lamentable increase of vulgarity, superficiality, and restlessness in our epoch, there is also an inspiring development of certain qualities. Those who were watching human nature before the war were pretty well aware of how, under the surface, unselfishness, ironic stoicism, and a warm humanity were growing. These are the great Town Virtues; the fine flowers of herd-life.
Not really. The same herd-life and the same sights and sounds pursue them from birth; they also are soon divested of the grace and free look which you see in country children walking to and from school or roaming the hedges.
All true enough, but the cure is not exodus, it is improvement in rural-life conditions, more co-operation, better cottages, a fuller, freer social life. What we in England now want more than anything is air for lungs and mind. We have overdone herd-life.
We were rattling into a new species of barbarism when the war came, and unless we take a pull, shall continue to rattle after it is over. The underlying cause in every country is the increase of herd-life, based on machines, money-getting, and the dread of being dull. Every one knows how fearfully strong that dread is. But to be capable of being dull is in itself a disease.
Living as we did the herd-life of boys with little or no intrusion from our elders, and they men who had been brought up in the same way as ourselves, we were debarred from any real interest in philosophy, history, art, literature and music, or any advancing notions in social life or politics. I speak of the generality, not of the few black swans among us. We were reactionaries almost to a boy.
They roll and play and chatter in conditions of amazing unrestraint and devil-may-care-dom in the midst of amazing dirt and ugliness. The younger they are, as a rule, the chubbier and prettier they are. Gradually you can see herd-life getting hold of them, the impact of ugly sights and sounds commonising the essential grace and individuality of their little features.
Whether you call yourselves Socialist or Anarchist that is, whether you long for the herd or the solitude of the forest, you mean the same thing and don't know it, that your mind has not been able to adjust itself to the speed of modern progress, and has broken down under the strain. You preach 'Fellowship, herd-life, as the cure. You believe in law and authority."
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