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
big city and may look into ten thousand faces and see none that is
lovely. Is not the return of man to a natural life on the earth a great
enough idea to inspire humanity? Is not the idea of a civilization amid
the green trees and fields under the smokeless sky alluring? Yes, but
men say there is no intellectual life working on the land.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88