Enjoying Civilization

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 45, 16 November 1940, Page 15

Enjoying Civilization

“The poor and the very young may imagine that they would be perfectly free and happy if they had plenty of money. Money would procure all necessaries and comforts without labour, and would open the doors of all beautiful places and all important persons.

“The world would be at one's feet: and this, bo it noted, is wha* the spirit dreams of in its innocence, never of lying at the world's feet of its own accord. The world is to be that of the “Arabian Nights,” all magic entertainments and easy conquests.

“But in reality the rich, unless they are more than rich arc slaves to the world, and captives of their successes and their possessions. They must keep experience and much now suffering. It spending it as the world demands, trembling at losing it or finding it insufficient, and countering the endless claims, obligations and jealousies that it brings.

-Civilisation is a physical growth, like the mechanism of animal bodies: the achievement is wonderful, but the advantage to the spirit, thereby elicted is problematic: there wil be much new experience and much enw suffering. It was poverty that first bred riches in the process of relieving natural wants and hardships.

“Civilization is something not impossible to enjoy freely and spiritually, whether we be rich or poor; but in either case freedom and spirituality will be found, only by the way, in feeling, in thought, in affection, in love of nature* and home aud one’s art or craft for its own sake.”—Mr. George Santayana, in his book “The Realm Of The Spirit.”