Monday, September 18, 2023
Like Cattle in a Pen
Norman Douglas (1868-1952), Experiments (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1925), p. 22:
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Here we sit, huddled together like cattle in a pen, each one duly labelled as to his potential worth to the community, and controlled by a horde of guardians so increasingly large that the shepherds will presently outnumber the sheep. Blissful sight! What is everybody doing? A person who has tangled himself into so ignoble a knot as to think our present state of affairs a desirable, or respectable, or endurable one, who feels thoroughly at home among the malodorous crowd and bows the head to all its humiliating extortions and conventions—what shall be done to such a product of civilisation? Pitch him into the Empty Quarter! Deserts have their uses. The desert may yet make a man of him.
