Belloc: A continuum-concept writer?

(Pardon the formatting — I’m using a different computer and the buttons have mysteriously disappeared.) UPDATE.  Formatting fixed and some more information added.

I’ve been reading Hilaire Belloc’s 1902 book The Path to Rome, the story of a pilgrimage he made on foot. He made this comment after wondering why it is so satisfying to attend Mass in the morning:

And the most important cause of this feeling of satisfaction is
that you are doing what the human race has done for thousands upon
thousands upon thousands of years. This is a matter of such moment
that I am astonished people hear of it so little.

Whatever is buried right into our blood from immemorial habit that we must be certain to do if we are to be fairly happy (of course no grown man or woman can really be very happy for long–but I mean reasonably happy), and, what is more important, decent and secure of our souls.

Thus one should from time to time hunt animals, or at the very least shoot at a mark; one should always drink some kind of fermented liquor with one’s
food–and especially deeply upon great feast-days; one should go on
the water from time to time; and one should dance on occasions; and
one should sing in chorus. For all these things man has done since God
put him into a garden and his eyes first became troubled with a soul.
Similarly some teacher or ranter or other, whose name I forget, said
lately one very wise thing at least, which was that every man should
do a little work with his hands.

Oh! what good philosophy this is, and how much better it would be if
rich people, instead of raining the influence of their rank and
spending their money on leagues for this or that exceptional thing,
were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and
to the tradition of the race.

Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be compelled by force.

Reminds me of the Continuum Concept: 

the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution.

I mostly spend my time trying to apply it to raising my children, but it is nice to be reminded — even from a 1902 European — of its importance to the lives of adults, too.