THE COURSE OF HISTORY 26 1 



Human power, glory, art and riches had over- 

 reached themselves. A purely materialistic de- 

 velopment, losing sight of the things of the spirit, 

 defying the restraints of religion, creating its own 

 gods after the conceits of its own heart: Mars, 

 Mammon, Venus, had produced the authentic 

 superman, the apex, as we are proudly told in our 

 own material days, of materialistic evolution. 

 But the day of vengeance was not far off, as it 

 must come to every nation that sinks to this de- 

 cline, no matter what may be its material triumphs 

 in war, in commerce or in art. 



And then, last scene of all, "Desolation." A. 

 solitude far other than that of primal wilder- 

 nesses, the solitude of Babylon, and Nineveh and 

 Tyre. The moon is silently looking down, half 

 veiled in clouds. Its light falls on the jutting hill 

 with its lone boulder, still resting firmly balanced 

 as when man first looked on it. Masses of carved 

 stones show where the proud palaces had once 

 stood and the white city lay, sunk in luxury, vice 

 and greed, and in all that this same pagan ma- 

 terialism taught anew in our day, as if it were 

 some unheard-of acquisition, proudly conned to- 

 day in schools and universities, practised in high 

 places and made the common argument among the 

 masses. It matters not whether we call it by the 

 name of Dagon or Astarte worship, a Monist 

 creed or a humanitarian cult, eugenism or birth 

 control, a proletarian dictatorship or an orgy of 



