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used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which
it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.
'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.
Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary
to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and
the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even be
hindrances--to a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance
and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out
of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of
war or solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting
disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For
such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as
the strong, are indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they
are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there
was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw
was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy
of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the
conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph which
began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in
security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor
and decay.
'Even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had almost died
in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to
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