546 ' BELLES-LETTRES 



There is no disguising the difficulty of any attempt to survey the 

 whole field of literature as it is disclosed before us now at the opening 

 of a new century; and there is no denying the danger of any effort 

 to declare the outlook in the actual present and the prospect in the 

 immediate future. How is it possible to project our vision? To foresee 

 whither the current is bearing us? To anticipate the rocks ahead and 

 the shallows whereon our bark may be stranded? And if it is not easy 

 to suggest the problems that are pressing for solution, it is harder 

 still to hint at an adequate answer to them. 



But one reflection is as obvious as it is helpful. The problems of 

 literature are not often merely literary; and in so far as literature is 

 an honest attempt to express life, as it always has been at the 

 moments of highest achievement, the problems of literature must 

 have an intimate relation to the problems which confront us insist- 

 ently in life. If we turn from the disputations of the schools and look 

 out on the world, we may discover forces at work in society which are 

 exerting also a potent influence upon the future of literature. 



Xow that the century in which we were born and bred is receding 

 swiftly into the past, we can perceive in the perspective more clearly 

 than ever before its larger movements and its main endeavor. We 

 are at last beginning to be able to estimate the heritage it has left 

 us and to see for ourselves what our portion is. what our possessions 

 are. and what our obligations. While it is for us to make the twentieth 

 century, no doubt, we need always to remember that it was the nine- 

 teenth century which made us; and we do not know ourselves if we 

 fail to understand the years in which we were moulded to the work 

 that lies before us. It is for us to single out the salient characteristics 

 of the nineteenth century. It is for us to seize the significance of the 

 striking advance in scientific method, for example, and of the wide- 

 spread acceptance of the scientific attitude. It is for us again TO 

 recognize the meaning of that extension of the democratic movement . 

 which is the most striking characteristic of the past sixscore years. 

 It is for us, once more, to weigh the importance of the intensifying 

 of the national spirit and of the sharpening of racial pride. And 

 finally it is for us to take account also of the growth of what must 

 be failed cosmopolitanism, that breaking down of the hostile barriers 

 keeping one people apart from the others, ignorant of them, and 

 often contemptuous. 



Here then are four legacies from the nineteenth century to the 

 twentieth : first, the scientific spirit; second, the spread of democracy ; 

 third, the assertion of nationality; and fourth, that stepping across 

 the confines of language and race for which we have no more accurate 

 name than cosmopolitanism. 



