Nor do I simply mean that we must show loyalty to life as opposed to
death, or to health as against disease. It is more than that. The
lifeward effort of some beings clashes with the corresponding attempt
to live on the part of others, and the actualization of one impersonal
ideal of beauty, truth, or society exacts the sacrifice of one set of
human lives and favors the survival of another, so that an opposition
in ideals may mean an antagonism in the struggle of classes and masses
of men for existence. There is a combat, and we are called upon to
choose which side to encourage and support. One and the same state of
things often spells disease and death to the one party and life and
health to the other. I shall be able on this account to show that
whether civilization appears to us as a disease or not depends upon
what sort of a person we are, and to which side we are constitutionally
disposed to attach ourselves. To show this, I will first draw an
analogy on the biological plane and then I will cite the judgment of
great humanists who have sided against civilization. After that, I will
submit instances in civilization itself for your own judgment. Only
then shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a _resume_ of his
position, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at
what stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall
attempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement
towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them.
Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right
relation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual constitution
projects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then,
if ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing
which civilization has begotten after its own kind and named "trade" is
good or bad.