Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/254

242 more intelligent. Individualistic civilisations, you confess, have had magnificent results, but have always failed, you declare, to achieve anything like permanency or success. Have socialistic civilisations achieved even the magnificent results, to say nothing of the permanency or success? Napoleon's France went to pieces in a superbly insane effort to assert itself in actual dominancy over all Europe, but at least it lived fully and intensely. Would the slow-rotting dissolution of a community bred upon panem et circenses have been better?'

'There have been no socialistic civilisations,' said Wilson.

'Oh, listen to him!' cried Randal. 'Listen to the ingenuous young man! He imagines that modern industrial socialism is unique, and hasn't occurred a hundred times in history already! He imagines that when it has satisfied the physical needs of all, it will continue to lead a strenuous intellectual life, in order to make us all into young gods and goddesses, and not into devotees of skittles and beer and tea and scandal! No, in the new civilisation of socialism, my friends, human nature will be completely changed. For we are at last about to realise the kingdom of heaven on earth, my friends, and attune the souls of the masses to the pitch of cherubim and seraphim, while all the individualising infants shall be treated