such a way, but without a vestige of practical justification, do human beings crowd round an injured man, or, for that matter, round an injured bird or cat or dog. It is an evidence of the survival of an instinct for which circumstances no longer provide any reason or cause; and the too extreme indulgence of such a survival is indicative of a lack of civilisation. We cannot utterly suppress and extinguish the instincts. But it is only by limiting and modifying their reactions upon our consciousness that we are able to live as communities in anything like peace and comfort; and it is quite time that action was taken to discourage in the most vigorous manner the indulgence of the instinct to surge round and stare at, and crane necks and dig elbows and push and strain to get near, those luckless creatures who are publicly injured or afflicted. Any community, moreover, which tolerates such manifestations is clearly indictable for neglecting an obvious opportunity for enhancing its degree of civilisation.

Another instinct which no nation has properly modified is that of self-preservation. This unfortunate instinct has been most remarkably distorted by a number of arbitrary exaggerations and repressions. It has been repressed almost universally in association with war. Millions of men have been trained to place themselves in positions of the greatest danger and remain there, day after day, in circumstances of profound discomfort and hatefulness, without any physical compulsion whatever. Men have been educated to suppress this instinct should its exercise at any time become incompatible with the necessity of protecting by force the integrity of their country. The invocation of patriotism has required the paralysis of this instinct for the war period, and this paralysis has sometimes persisted after its time. We have observed and bewailed a post-war crime wave, we have witnessed the perpetration of offences by individuals who seem altogether reckless of consequences, and we have been afforded many explanations of this phenomenon. There are doubtless many causes; but when one remembers that the enduring power of all penal enactments lies in their appeal to the instinct of selfpreservation, it will readily be seen that the repression of this instinct will automatically and proportionately multiply penal offences.

In the everyday world of business, however, the instinct of self-preservation has been transmuted, by a process of overstimulation, into the instinct of grab. The present conception of civilised commerce makes it almost impossible for a man of business to refrain from grabbing. He is bound to grab in order to preserve his own existence, and thus he cannot individually be blamed for a state of affairs which is, in principle, analogous to that obtaining in any uninvaded jungle. The power to grab is

modified by protective statutes like the Companies Acts and by the existence of a mass of judgments and legal paraphernalia of singular complexity. But the propensity to grab is openly encouraged by the public rewarding of really successful grabbers, who resemble more than anything else the winners of an obstacle race in which jostling is permitted and where the obstacles are represented by trade conditions and customs, trades union regulations and, as the final water-jump, the statute and common law ! It is undeniable that many men of business do render great and unselfish service to the best interests of the State, just as it is undeniable that the interchange of commodities is the life-blood of every even partially civilised community. But we have become rather myopic in regard to some of the effects of modern commerce, and are inclined to respect the successful business man not in ratio to the service which he has rendered the commonwealth, but in ratio to the pecuniary reward which he has contrived to grab. In a really civilised State there would manifestly be no differentiation; the reward would be in direct ratio to the service to the commonwealth. But such is not now the case. I know that individuals are pleased to cavil at the very wealthy, and abuse them as profiteers and pirates with much vehemence and apparent sincerity; but there is little doubt that many such individuals are secretly envious would-be pirates themselves, and there is no doubt at all that the State-which is the lowest common multiple of the minds of its citizens-persists in exalting and elevating, and sometimes even fawning upon, prominent captains of industry and

commerce.

It is not my purpose or intention here to venture any suggestions for the taming of grab. The encouragement of grab, however, is nothing less than the putting of a premium upon the indulgence of a perverted and predatory instinct, and a process highly inimical to the advancement of civilisation. It will be argued that business is not essentially the incarnation of grab; but to me the essence of success in business has always seemed to be the judgment and ability to discern or create a public need, and then to prevent the public from gratifying that need except at the highest price that it can possibly afford to pay. And if that is not grab, then grab must ever remain indefinable. Competition does, of course, limit the ability to grab; but at the same time it intensifies the desire and reduces the restraints, so that the analogy of the jungle-where grab is the law and competition merciless-is strengthened. The law each year makes increasing efforts to circumscribe and impede grab, and to entangle new classes of grabbers, and that it does so is a most heartening indication of the desire to progress towards a more complete civilisation; but each such effort exposes for a while the vast and

viscuous field into which the legislators of the future will have to advance against the puissant hosts of grab.

It will very likely appear highly debatable to assert that we are less civilised than we might or should be. Such a claim seems to imply some criterion by which actual and potential degrees of civilisation can be accurately measured, and the existence of any such criterion is certainly dubitable. Yet surely it is not unreasonable to suggest that out of the paradoxical contemporaneity of world wars and anæsthesia, ogling crowds and motor ambulances, we may deduce and admit our criterion in just such a way as the presence of invisible and incommensurable electrons is deducible and admissible? There is no tangible and obvious measure of comparative civilisation; but it is clear that a world which has produced so many material appanages and trappings of civilisation should unquestionably have reached a far more advanced condition of instinctive modification. Our creature comforts are vastly enhanced; our mental processes are vastly more embarrassed. Physically we are comparatively at ease; mentally we are more violently strained than at any previous time. The civilisation which has given us constant hot water and luxurious limousines has brought us, in the aggregate, no contentment. Why?

The answer, which has remained demonstrably true throughout the ages, is that the power of modifying the primitive instincts has always been far outdistanced by material achievement. Through this cause great empires have fallen, leaving behind them traces of glory to be a wonder and a source of awe to children of a later day. It has ever been true to say of men: 'They know not what they do,' for the greatness of their endeavours is only surpassed by the insignificance of their net achievements. Had but old Greece waxed ever more wise, had but her influence and conception of civilisation increased from strength to strength down the centuries to the present day, what heights might we not know, what happiness and what content? The inspiring ruins of a State and the lettered wisdom of an æsthetic age alone are left to us as echoes of a glory now long since departed. We contemplate the one with our eyes, and with our lips we reverence the other, but with our hearts we remain uncomprehending. Plato is flattered, but disregarded: a great man, no doubt, but sadly out of date and quite inadequate in the twentieth century. Yet here is a passage which is at once strangely relevant and truly prophetic :

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the power and spirit of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures which pursue either at the expense of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never rest from their evils, no, nor the human race, as I believe.

Philosophers have never directly exercised power and dominion, neither have they ever effectively influenced their own generation, and cities have never rested from their evils. Nor have the rulers of the world at any time evidenced in any marked degree the power and spirit of philosophy. We may not have been ruled by any who pursued wisdom at the expense of political greatness, but we have certainly had much disastrous experience of rulers who have pursued political greatness at the expense of

wisdom.

The besetting fault of mankind has always been that it has endeavoured, with considerable success, to proscribe philosophers. The modern method is to describe them as 'cranks,' and deride them. This devastating epithet indicates that the person so labelled should not be taken seriously; and it is invariably employed by those whose exiguous intellects are rigorously fortified by prejudice against all new, and therefore potentially disagreeable, ideas. But had philosophers not been habitually disregarded we should be immeasurably more civilised. We should not only enjoy all the advantages conferred by the inventive genius of man; we should be preserved from the disadvantages and perils similarly conferred. We should realise the sum of the wisdom of the ages, not, as at present, the difference between their wisdom and their folly. We should render man's inhumanity to man a thing of the past, and regard it, in all its manifestations, as a violent and dastardly outrage. We should dethrone grab and substitute service, and translate the battle for existence into a grander and less lethal game of life.

We should, in fact, finally succeed in so modifying our primitive instincts as to make it possible for each to be a law unto himself and yet an agreeable citizen. What greater contentment, what greater measure of civilisation, can there be than this? Surely none; and the means of its accomplishment can be simply and effectively epitomised. They were indicated by the greatest and probably most persecuted Philosopher the world has ever known. He said: 'Love one another.' That is the prescription of civilisation.

REYNELL J. R. G. WREFORD.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake to return unaccepted MSS.