The nineteenth-century superstition that life proceeds after an inevitable system of progressive evolution, so defiant of history, so responsible in great degree for the many delusions that made the [First World] war not only possible but inevitable, finds few now to do it honour. The soul is not forever engaged in the graceful industry of building for itself ever more stately mansions; it is quite as frequently employed in defiling and destroying those already built, and in substituting the hovel for the palace.
6 February 2017
Substituting the Hovel for the Palace
Ralph Adams Cram, Walled Towns (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1919), p. 20:
