The Gospel of Simplicity by Godfrey Blount - Part 3

from Arbor Vitae, Godfrey Blount, 1899

Godfrey Blount goes on to describe his Gospel of Simplicity: A Plea for Country Life and Handicrafts (1906) “It would lead a reaction against the selfish commercialism and unspiritual philosophy of the present day, and preach in their place the charm of content, the pride of true independence, that is to say of living for other people, and not on them, and the sweet unreasonableness of Faith.

"We must do things be cause they are wanted, love things because they are alive, and believe things because they are obvious and beautiful.

"We must return in some sort to ideas and methods which the modern world considers effete and superannuated, because it cannot understand their underlying principles, or that they can be any principle at all or motive for work other than that of getting the largest and quickest return for the least immediate trouble taken.

"We must return to Simplicity, but not to innocence; to simplicity, not because we are childishly ignorant ho complicated and confused and cruel we can make our lives, but because we know it only too well, and are determined to prevent their remaining so any longer; and so we must wage war against all useless and cruel fashion (for useless fashion must always be cruel), extravagance in dress, food, and service, because it hides the light from others as well as from ourselves.  If this is asceticism, it is asceticism for the sake of our own higher comfort and humanity’s good, it is in fact supremely aesthetic – sensitively susceptible to the higher claims of Beauty which is finally but another name for Simplicity."

from Arbor Vitae, Godfrey Blount, 1899