Chapter IV: Outline of My Argument

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 _résumé_ 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.