tworthiness lies very
deep in human nature. We may--we do--rebel against it, and speak with
rapture of an unfettered existence without material ties: but even in
material things the nomad is the least creative, the least civilized of his
kind. His existence is neither so picturesque nor so human as we imagine.
One has only to read history to see how little he has contributed to
humanity--and how little he has helped to raise the human level above the
animal. It is not for nothing that we find the home imposed upon human kind
by the necessities of human infancy. It is the helplessness of the child
that has humanized our species by creating the home which its helplessness
demanded, and though a great deal that is sentimental is said about homes,
this remains a fact. The nomadic, the homeless race gives little to the
world; it is by nature and circumstances an exploiter of resources for
which it feels no responsibility, from which it is content to take without
giving. Reading in a pamphlet of Professor Toynbee's the other day, I found
this description of the Eastern world in the 15th and 16th centuries of our
era:--"Even when the East began to recover and comparatively stable Moslem
states arose again in Turkey and Persia and Hindustan, _the nomadic taint
was in them and condemned them to sterility_.... One gets the impression
not of a government administering a country, but of _a horde of nomads
exploiting it_."[B]

[Footnote B: The italics are mine.--A.M.R.]

Even so is it with human love. These nomads of the affections give and take
so little as they pass from hand to hand that they become cheap and have
little left to give at last: nor do they really get what they would take.
Men and women claim the right to "experience," but experience of what? We
do not live by bread alone, and the physical experience is not really
all we seek. It is something, however? Yes--certainly something: but by
a paradox familiar enough in human affairs, to snatch the lesser is to
sacrifice the greater. The experimental lover, the giver whose small and
careful gift is for a time, claims in the name of "experience," of the
"fulfilment of his nature," what really belongs only to a greater giving.
Such lovers are like a rich man who sets out tramping with nothing in his
pocket. He may suffer temporary inconvenience, but is within safe distance
of his banking account. He plays with a risk he can never really know,
since knowledge and experience a