Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Le Bon Gustave
Title : The World Unbalanced
Year : 1924

Link download : Le_Bon_Gustave_-_The_World_Unbalanced.zip

Modern civilisations present themselves to us under two aspects which are so dissimilar, so contradictory, that if viewed from a distant planet they would seem to belong to two totally different worlds. One of these aspects is the realm of science and its applications. Its structures radiate the brilliant illuminations of harmony and pure truth. The other is the dark domain of political and social life. Its shaky edifices remain enveloped in illusions, errors, and hatreds, and furious struggles frequently lay them low. This striking contrast between the different domains of the great civilisations is due to the fact that their structural elements do not obey the same laws, and have no common measure. Social life is governed by needs, sentiments, and instincts bequeathed to us by heredity, which through whole strata of evolution represented the only guides of conduct. In this domain, progressive evolution remains feeble. The feelings of ambition, jealousy, ferocity, and hatred, which animated our first ancestors, remain unchanged. During vast periods, whose tedious length is revealed by science, man was but slightly differentiated from that animal world which it was destined some day to transcend so enormously in intellect. Having remained the equals of animals in the domain of organic life, we are not much beyond them in the domain of sentiment. It is only \n the cycle of intelligence that our superiority has become immense. It is owing to this that the continents have been joined and that thought is transmitted from hemisphere to hemisphere with the speed of light. But the intellect which, in the recesses of our laboratories, arrives at so many discoveries has hitherto exercised but a feeble influence upon social life. It remains under the dominance of impulses which are not governed by reason. The sentiments and the rages of the earliest ages have kept their hold on the souls of the nations, and determine their actions. We cannot understand events unless we take account of the profound differences which separate mystic and emotional impulses from rational considerations. They explain why individuals of superior intelligence have at all times accepted the most infantile beliefs such as the worship of the Serpent or of Moloch. Millions of human beings are still dominated by the imaginings of illustrious hallucinated founders of religious and political faiths. Even in our days, communistic chimeras have had the power to ruin a gigantic empire and to threaten other countries. It is also because intellectual development has little influence on the sentiments that we saw in the last war men of high culture set fire to cathedrals, massacre the old people and ravage provinces for the sole lust of destruction. ...