population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
_malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the
better.

Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the
conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is
there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given
my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English
Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would
only try it.

The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a