THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



There is nothing that fuses and unifies the nations 

 like scientific knowledge, and the rational views that 

 it inculcates knowledge founded upon the uni- 

 versal nature which is in all countries the same. 

 Science puts the same tools in all hands, the same 

 views in all minds; we are no longer divided by 

 false aims, or by religions founded upon half-views 

 or false views. The local gives place to the univer- 

 sal. We come to see that all people are one, and 

 that the well-being of each is the well-being of all, 

 and vice versa. Distrust gives place to confidence; 

 jealousy gives place to fellowship. Like knowledge 

 begets like aims; the truths of nature make the 

 whole world kin. The individual and the picture- 

 esque will suffer, local color will fade, but the hu- 

 man, the democratic, the average weal, will gain. 



It must be said that literature has gained in many 

 respects in this hurrying, economic age; it has gained 

 in point and precision what it has lost in power. We 

 are more impatient of the sham, the make-believe, 

 the dilatory, the merely rhetorical and oratorical. 

 We are more impatient of the obscure, the tedious, 

 the impotent, the superfluous, the far-fetched. We 

 have a new and a sharpened sense for the real, the 

 vital, the logical. The dilatory and meandering 

 methods of even such a writer as Hawthorne tire us 

 a little now, and the make-believe of a Dickens is 

 well-nigh intolerable. We want a story to move rap- 

 idly, we want the essay full of point and suggestion; 

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