Page:Gandhi - The Wheel of fortune.djvu/12

ix of the Industrial System. Is this present modern civilisation so very desirable that we should wish it to continue in perpetuity? Every civilisation in the History of Man has reached a certain point after which there has been one possibility only for it and that was absolute relapse into semi-darkness in order to give place to a new and higher civilisation. The common starting point of all the civilisations is a kind of night-time. In order that the Babylonian (or Despotic) Civilisation might give way to the Roman (or Heroic), and the Roman give way to the Modern (or Intellectual) Civilisation, it was necessary for each in turn to sink completely into this common night-time. Without this entire destruction of the ancient structure, there would have been only a patchwork of the old, and not a harmonious building of the New. As Christ said: "Ye cannot put bad wine into new bottles." The debris of the Past has to be cleared away in order to make way for the Structure of the Future. Now with regard to Modern Civilisation, all the signs of the times show that it has failed