Laudator Temporis Acti

Norman Douglas (1868-1952), Experiments (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1925), p. 16:

The world is growing too narrow; congested, and crammed with unpleasantness and deified "masses"; we gasp for fresh air; more deserts, fewer men.

Id., pp. 17-18:

Industrialism has been raised to a bad eminence. We do well to take note of certain venerable strains in our being that call for a different environment; our teachers should recognise the inspirational value of self-communion in lonely places. There is in most of us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man ponder, or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow-creatures does not provide. The obscure anti-social or disruptive instinct to be alone, which haunts us chiefly in youth, should not be thwarted as it is; for solitude has a refining and tonic influence; there we wrestle with our thoughts and set them in order; there we nurture the imagination and sow the seeds of character. A person who hears nothing of that "subtle harmony" because his ears are belaboured day and night by the clash of other men's voices will never attain to any remarkable depth or insight. Now those places where the spirit loves to dwell are made to minister to the wants of an ever-increasing humanity, the nymphs are driven from the woodlands, and deserts irrigated, and everything scientifically explored and exploited.