not only from the personal, but from the collective standpoint.
Suppose all men followed your example, what would happen? Why, cities
would soon become the mere refuse-heaps of the unfit. The drudges
would remain, the captains of industry would be gone. There would be
no leaven of higher intelligence left, no standard of manners, nothing
that could set the rhythm of life. This is too much the case already.
The merchant, the writer, the man of wealth and culture, live as far as
they can from the struggling crowd. You would extend the process, and
make it possible for the clerk as well as the merchant. If your new
gospel of a return to Nature succeeds, we shall soon see the universal
exodus of the best intellectual and physical units of the community.
But you forget that some millions will remain behind, who cannot flee.
Have you no obligations to these?

'Besides this, you do not seem to perceive that the ultimate drift of
the new gospel is toward anarchy. The return to nature is practically
a return to barbarism. You would have all men content so long as they
grew enough potatoes for their daily needs. You would have England
return to the conditions of the Saxon heptarchy. Each man would squat
upon his clearing in the forest, ignobly independent, brutally content.
There would be no longer that struggle for life which develops
capacity, that urging onward of the flood of life which cuts for itself
new channels, that passion for betterment which means progress. You
save yourself from the collisions of life; but it is in such collisions
that the finest fires are struck out of the heart of humanity. Again,
I say, any course of action must be judged by its collective effect
before it can be rightly understood. It is not the individual that
counts, but the race. A good for the individual is not permissible
unless it is a good also for the race. I do not admit that your new
way of life is an entire good for you, for I believe you must in time