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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: general principle, common to the vegetable and animal worlds as
well as to the world of history, that all created things are fated
to decay - a principle which, though expressed in the terms of a
mere metaphysical abstraction, is yet perhaps in its essence
scientific. For we too must hold that a continuous redistribution
of matter and motion is the inevitable result of the nominal
persistence of Force, and that perfect equilibrium is as impossible
in politics as it certainly is in physics.
The secondary causes which mar the perfection of the Platonic 'city
of the sun' are to be found in the intellectual decay of the race
consequent on injudicious marriages and in the Philistine elevation
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