Towards democracy

A Mightier than Mammon 395

When the great web and framework of the old order, Law, is collapsing with its own weight—myriads and myriads of statutes, overlapping, overlying, precedents, principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind another in inextricable confusion—and yet never before in the history of the world was there such a rigid brute-pharisaical apparatus of police, military and prisons to enforce the ‘heads or tails’ of the Courts, and the cant of the ‘ superior’ classes ;

When the Millionaire appears on the scene—a new type of human being—as the Dinosaur may have appeared ages ago upon the Earth, gigantic, lumbering, fateful and dangerous; yet destined perhaps finally to break down the ancient jungle of ‘Government,’ and the barriers of the old Nationalities ; and to be a link in the evolution of the future;

When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human feeling, Marriage from Love, Education from Affection ;

When to work freely at one’s own chosen trade and to interchange freely the products with others is what almost everybody really desires—and is obviously the indicated social form of the future; and yet when nearly everyone is a wageSlave er works at work which he detests!

When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and the Sun, for the freedom of the Earth and the waters, for liberation, wildness, spontaneity, is upon folk as perhaps it never was before; and yet they are mewed up more than ever in houses, clothes, ‘business,’ and general asphyxia and futility ;

When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon