or other, I doubt not: and it may be of some service to those who
think themselves the only loyal subjects of progress to hear of our
existence, since their not hearing of it would not make an end of
it: it may set them a-thinking not unprofitably to hear of burdens
that they do not help to bear, but which are nevertheless real and
weighty enough to some of their fellow-men, who are helping, even as
they are, to form the civilisation that is to be.

The danger that the present course of civilisation will destroy the
beauty of life--these are hard words, and I wish I could mend them,
but I cannot, while I speak what I believe to be the truth.

That the beauty of life is a thing of no moment, I suppose few
people would venture to assert, and yet most civilised people act as
if it were of none, and in so doing are wronging both themselves and
those that are to come after them; for that beauty, which is what is
meant by ART, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no
mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they
choose, but a positive necessity of life, if we are to live as
nature meant us to; that is, unless we are content to be less than
men.

Now I ask you, as I have been asking myself this long while, what
proportion of the population in civilised countries has any share at
all in that necessity of life?

I say that the answer which must be made to that question justifies
my fear that modern civilisation is on the road to trample out all
the beauty of life, and to make us less than men.