function is a good only if a
unity can still be secured embracing that variety; otherwise it would
have been better that the irrelevant function should have been developed
by independent individuals or should not have arisen at all. The
function of seeing double adds more to the variety than to the spice of
life. Whether civilisation is a blessing depends, then, on its ulterior
uses. Judged by those interests which already exist when it arises, it
is very likely a burden and oppression. The birds' instinctive economy
would not be benefited by a tax-gatherer, a recruiting-sergeant, a sect
or two of theologians, and the other usual organs of human polity.

For the Life of Reason, however, civilisation is a necessary condition.
Although animal life, within man and beyond him, has its wild beauty and
mystic justifications, yet that specific form of life which we call
rational, and which is no less natural than the rest, would never have
arisen without an expansion of human faculty, an increase in mental
scope, for which civilisation is necessary. Wealth, safety, variety of
pursuits, are all requisite if memory and purpose are to be trained
increasingly, and if a steadfast art of living is to supervene upon
instinct and dream.

[Sidenote: Sources of wealth.]

Wealth is itself expressive of reason for it arises whenever men,
instead of doing nothing or beating about casually in the world, take to
gathering fruits of nature which they may have uses for in future, or
fostering their growth, or actually contriving their appearance. Such is
man's first industrial habit, seen in grazing, agriculture, and mining.
Among nature's products are also those of man's own purposeless and
imitative activity, results of his idle ingenuity and restlessness. Some
of these, like nature's other random creations, may chance to have some
utility. They may then become conspicuous to reflection, be strengthened
by the relations which they establish in life, and be henceforth called
works of human art. They then constitute a second industrial habit and
that other sort of riches which is supplied by manufacture.

[Sidenote: Excess of it possible.]

The amount of wealth man can produce is apparently limited only by time,
invention, and the material at hand. It can very easily exceed his
capacity for enjoyment. As the habits which produce wealth were
originally spontaneous and only crystallised into reasonable processes
by mutual checks and the gra