cynicism in the people. It is necessary for the creation of citizens,
for the building up of a noble national life, that the social order
should be so organized that this sense of interdependence will be
constantly felt. It is also necessary for the preservation of the
physical health and beauty of our race that our people should live more
in the country and less in the cities. I believe it would be an
excellent thing for humanity if its civilization could be based on rural
industry mainly and not on urban industry. More and more men and women
in our modern civilization drift out of Nature, out of sweet air,
health, strength, beauty, into the cities, where in the third generation
there is a rickety population, mean in stature, vulgar or depraved in
character, with the image of the devil in mind and matter more than the
image of Deity. Those who go like it at first; but city life is like
the roll spoken of by the prophet, which was sweet in the mouth but
bitter in the belly. The first generation are intoxicated by the new
life, but in the third generation the cord is cut which connected them
with Nature, the Great Mother, and life shrivels up, sundered from the
source of life. Is there any prophet, any statesman, any leader, who
will--as Moses once led the Israelites out of the Egyptian bondage--
excite the human imagination and lead humanity back to Nature, to
sunlight, starlight, earth-breath, sweet air, beauty, gaiety, and
health? Is it impossible now to move humanity by great ideas, as
Mahomet fired his dark hosts to forgetfulness of life; or as Peter the
Hermit awakened Europe to a frenzy, so that it hurried its hot chivalry
across a continent to the Holy Land? Is not the earth mother of us all?
Are not our spirits clothed round with the substance of earth? Is it
not from Nature we draw life? Do we not perish without sunlight and
fresh air? Let us have no breath of air and in five minutes life is
extinct. Yet in the cities there is a slow poisoning of life going on
day by day. The lover of beauty may walk the streets of London or any