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“If each man remained in organic adhesion to the general body of his fellows no serious dis-harmony could occur; but it is when this vital unity of the body politic becomes weak that it has to be preserved by artificial means, and thus it is that with the decay of the primitive and instinctive social life there springs up a form of government which is no longer the democratic expression of the life of the whole people; but a kind of outside authority and compulsion thrust upon them by a ruling class or caste”.
Edward Carpenter, Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, and other essays
[Read about Edward Carpenter on the orgrad website]