708 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
fessor Turner has often illustrated the Western spirit in the 
United States by the literary efforts of the people who have 
made the West. 
Possibly the general thesis can be illustrated most easily 
by taking the recent period, with which you are all familiar, 
and suggesting some of the writings, which are equally 
familiar, which will be useful to the future historian trying 
to understand the age in which we have been living. For 
the religious interests of the age he must take note of the 
encyclicals of the popes, the works on modernism, the liter¬ 
ature of the missions, and the devotional books which have 
appeared in such great numbers, including Science and 
Health; but also he must read Mark Twain’s writings, The 
Warfare of Science and Theology, Robert Elsmere, The Case 
of Richard Meynell, The Inside of the Cup, articles in the 
religious periodicals, and some of the sermons published in 
the Monday papers,—by no means an easy task. For the 
social movements he must read works on suffrage, feminism, 
the sex problem and eugenics; muck-raking articles; writings 
on the peace movement and war poems; biographies of 
working men;—these are only illustrations from a vast mass. 
To understand our complex problems of sectionalism, such 
books as Tillie, a Mennonite Maid, Letters of a Homesteader, 
The Country of the Pointed Firs, The Leopard's Spots, the 
writings of Bret Harte, Richard Malcolm Johnston, George 
Egbert Craddock, and others. By taking these few illus¬ 
trations for a few problems, I have probably succeeded in 
one point at least, and that is in bringing out the complexity 
of the subject; and this complexity is not peculiar to our 
own age, but is true of every period in history. 
This is now recognized by historians and the result is a 
realization of the necessity of a long preparation. We need 
not dwell upon such elementary requisites as the knowledge 
of languages, geography, economics, and psychology. For 
different fields of history various auxiliary branches must be 
mastered; archaeology, philology, epigraphy, paleography, 
chronology, diplomatics, genealogy, numismatics, sigillogra- 
phy, heraldry; fortunately all of these are not necessary in 
any one branch of history. But all students need to study 
bibliography and criticism or historical method; for the first 
excellent tools have been provided, especially in the last 
