Solitude, believed Florida Scott-Maxwell, is an oasis in a world crowded with people:
Even motoring, as it once was, required an almost empty road, and what sort of climber likes a crowded mountain peak? It is undeniable that one needs the absence of others to enjoy the magic of many things. I deny that these are privilege. They are necessities that man may know himself, and that man may know nature when she is unsullied by him. So vital are these joys that I am convinced that crowds endanger our quality; with them, in them, we become unworthy of each other. And what do we live by and for but that evanescent achievement, the merit of mankind? (Quoted from The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell, New York: Knopf, 1968, p.23.)
Population reduction will raise the quality of humankind.
Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) was a writer, playwright, suffragist, and psychologist who studied with Carl Jung in Scotland and England.
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