Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists,
not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because
they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.
Thus, many embrace Christian Science solely because they are quite
sick of heathen science; they are so tired of believing that
everything is matter that they will even take refuge in the revolting
fable that everything is mind. Man ought to march somewhere.
But modern man (in his sick reaction) is ready to march nowhere--
so long as it is the Other End of Nowhere.
The case of building houses is a strong instance of this.
Early in the nineteenth century our civilization chose to abandon
the Greek and medieval idea of a town, with walls, limited and defined,
with a temple for faith and a market-place for politics;
and it chose to let the city grow like a jungle with blind cruelty
and bestial unconsciousness; so that London and Liverpool are
the great cities we now see. Well, people have reacted against that;
they have grown tired of living in a city which is as dark
and barbaric as a forest only not as beautiful, and there has
been an exodus into the country of those who could afford it,
and some I could name who can't. Now, as soon as this quite
rational recoil occurred, it flew at once to the opposite extreme.
People went about with beaming faces, boasting that they
were twenty-three miles from a station.
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