To be sure, if this exchange of wealth and culture between the two

continents could be effected as well and easily as it can be described,

our epoch would be in very truth an epoch of fabulous felicity.

We might claim to be, in comparison with preceding generations, a

generation of supermen. Unfortunately, the difficulties are greater

than they seem at first sight to be. What they are will be seen in

the next chapter; we shall then see that it has become much easier

to produce new wealth than to employ it in the creation of a lofty

and refined civilisation; and that this is the secret torment which

afflicts Europe and America.

IV

THE LOST PARADISE OF BEAUTY

The bewildering growth in the wealth of America has affected in many

different ways the whole world. Economists are studying its effects

with much zeal. One, and not the least curious, of them, is the rise in

the value of antiques. From Etruscan ceramics to French furniture of

the eighteenth century, from Greek statues to Italian pictures of every

epoch, from Tanagra statuettes to the lace, embroideries, tapestries,

manuscripts, glass, and filigree from every part of the world, all the

artistic furniture of Europe, Asia, and Africa which has survived the

ravages of time has trebled and quadrupled its value. Few financial

speculations proved more successful in Europe than the collection about

fifty years ago of antiques.

Many instances could be quoted to prove this. Everybody, even in

America, I suppose, has heard recently of the great Paris tailor who

set to work thirty years ago to collect statues, pictures, and French

_objets d’art_ of the eighteenth century. He spent about three millions

on his collection; and he put it up for auction last year and cleared

fourteen millions! An occurrence which made less noise, because it was

on a smaller scale, but analogous to the foregoing, is the following: A

journalist, a man of taste and a great admirer of beautiful antiques,

came to Rome. Everybody called him a maniac, because, though he had

a family, he spent all his savings in buying from the small antique

dealers and in the Campo di Fiori lamps, books, stuffs, and every other

bit of antique he could lay hands on. Well, he died ten years ago, and

left his family nothing but a houseful of fine antiques. The family,

which did not share his mania, sold them, and realised a fortune, the

income of which was, and is, enough to support them in comfort. If the

journalist had been discreet and had invested his savings in shares and

bonds, probably his family would now be living in a very much humbler

way.

It is unnecessary to quote further evidence in support of so notorious

a fact. Ask any European antiquarian the reason for this appreciation,

and he will reply unhesitatingly, “America.” America for the last

thirty years has been making assaults on the antiquities-market with

all the tenacity of her untiring activity, and the might of her

new-made wealth. Some people in Europe—those who have antiques to

sell—are very glad that it should be so. Others lament, complaining

that Europe is emptying herself of her treasures in favour of the

New World. Most people, however, smile at what they consider a proof

of the incurable snobbery of the New World. Europe is very ready to

accuse America of loving antiques only because they are rare and,

therefore, dear; of fighting dollar-duels about them, only to prove

their own wealth, without any power of judging and distinguishing

between the good and the bad, though even among antiques there are

ugly as well as beautiful ones, representing comparative grades of

beauty. And this accusation too is, in its general application, unjust

and unsubstantial. Anybody who has had any extensive dealings with

the wealthy houses of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and

Chicago, knows that they contain many Americans who are competent

judges and buyers of artistic antiques. It is true that, from this

point of view, the big American houses cannot yet challenge comparison

with the big European houses. Nevertheless, numberless are the

marvellous ceramics from the Far East, numberless the magnificent

pieces of French eighteenth century furniture, numberless the pieces

of wonderful lace, glass, and antique _boiseries_ which it has been my

good fortune to see, not without an occasional pang, in America.

On the other hand, this reproach, which, couched in its usual form, is

unjust, contains a modicum of truth, which however applies to Europe

as well as to America. I have often had occasion to notice in wealthy

modern houses—in Europe as well as in America, but in America more

than in Europe—that they are adorned with many extremely beautiful old

pieces, but that these are too numerous, and too heterogeneous. You

find in a modern drawing-room material of every epoch and from all

parts of the world; from ancient Greece, and from China of the last

century, from the Italian Middle Ages and from contemporary Persia.

Consequently modern houses are too much like small museums, in which

numbers of wonderful little antiques, picked up wherever they were to

be had, are exposed to view, and in which the modern furniture and

adornments serve as the show-case in which the antiques are displayed,

instead of being, as they were in the eighteenth century, the principal

decoration, of which some beautiful antique was the appropriate

ornament and complement. This inversion of the natural order of things

would be inexplicable, were we not all of us persuaded more or less

consciously that old things must necessarily be more beautiful than

modern ones. For this reason we are willing that what we make, the

modern, shall be subordinated and serve as a tool to the antique.

In short, the antique, in Europe as in America, has acquired nowadays a

value of its own in art, merely on the score of its antiquity. I need

not dwell on the strangeness of this prejudice in favour of antiques

in an age and in countries in which, directly one leaves the field

of art behind, one finds so keen a craze for the modern. Not to be

up-to-date is at the present day the greatest reproach we can fling at

a man in Europe and in America, especially in America. Why then does

modernity in art arouse, not only in old Europe, but also, and perhaps

more, in young America, so much diffidence and mistrust? Why do we,

notwithstanding the attempts which modern artists make to emulate the

ancients or to create new things, turn to the past when we want to

possess or enjoy something really beautiful? May this contradiction

be the effort of a last surviving prejudice? For centuries, man was

educated to consider all antique things, only because they were

antique, preferable to modern ones. In many respects, we have conquered

this venerable prejudice. May our attachment to the antique in art

be the last and most persistent survival of this sentiment, itself

destined to disappear?

No. This persistent attachment to the antique in art is not prejudice;

it is the effect of the incurable artistic weakness of our epoch.

Men are following a profound and sure instinct when, in their desire

for beauty, they turn to the antique; for art is as it were the lost

Paradise of our civilisation, whose atmosphere we are always breathing,

but to which the entrance is forbidden us. It is a phenomenon of

contemporary life which usually attracts but little attention; and yet

how strange it is! The need for the adornment of life with beautiful

things—for translating quantity into quality, as I said above—has not

diminished among the wealthy classes, and could not diminish, because

it is a profoundly human need. The world’s upper classes never had so

much wealth at their disposal as now, and never had so keen a desire

to spend a considerable part of it in the purchase of beautiful things.

How many artistic masterpieces could have been paid for, and how many

painters, sculptors, and architects of genius liberally rewarded with

half the sums which have been spent in raising fourfold or sixfold

the value of the antiquities of Europe, Asia, and Africa? Indeed the

immense growth in the world’s wealth has profited the dead, not the

living, in the world of art, antiquities and not the modern arts. And

it was inevitable that this should be so. Why?

Because modern times are not adapted to be a golden age of art, for a

psychological and moral reason, which, however, is not to be sought

in the practical and commercial spirit of modern times. Many of the

fairest palaces and pictures which we admire in Italy were commissioned

by merchants who were no less practical than modern bankers. The reason

is to be sought elsewhere, and it is more profound. Modern civilisation

has conquered with its railways, telegraphs, and steam-boats, the whole

earth. In fifty years, it has succeeded in conquering continents so

vast as North America. It has created riches so fabulous, in a word,

it has achieved so much power, because it has broken through all the

limits within which the spirit of tradition confined past generations.

Escaping from these limits, it has learned to create at great speed.

Speed and the tireless spirit of innovation are the two formidable

weapons which have given our civilisation the victory in her struggle

with nature and with the other more conservative and more deliberate

civilisations. But the qualities necessary to artistic excellence are

just the two opposite qualities: the spirit of tradition and laborious

deliberateness.

We moderns, victims of the giddy pace at which we live, may be

somewhat oblivious of the fact; but it is a fact that anyone who knows

history cannot ignore. To create and foster an art really worthy of

the name,—Greek sculpture, Italian painting, the French decorative

art of the eighteenth century,—the immense sums at our disposal are

useless, and the sciences of steam and electricity of no avail. I

have already had occasion to prove this in the preceding chapters.

The nations and the generations which have created the most famous

arts and whose relics are still our delight, were poor and ignorant

compared with us. In order to create and foster art, it is necessary

to educate generations of artists to do good work and generations of

amateurs to understand and appreciate it. Neither the artists nor the

public taste can be educated without a spirit of tradition and of

æsthetic discipline, which induces the public to allow the artists

the time necessary for the perfecting of their respective arts in all

their details; which induces the artist to recognise the legitimate

requirements of the public for which he works, and to seek to satisfy

it by adapting his own work to those requirements.

Anyone can see, however, that nowadays these two conditions have

become well-nigh impossible. In the gigantic confusion of the modern

world, races, cultures, and populations are continually intermingling.

Generations follow each other with the fixed determination not to

continue what their immediate predecessor has done but to do something

different. Ancient traditions are dying out, and no new ones are being

formed or can be formed. Change is the order of the day. Sons but

rarely adopt their father’s professions, and not a few die in lands

other than those in which they were born. Modern society is agitated by

a continual process of renewal, which is the deep-seated source of her

energy and activity, but is also a reason for her artistic decadence.

In this continual mobility of bodies, wills, and ideas; in this

perpetual change of tendencies, tastes, and standards, art is losing

her bearings and, alone in this age of bold enterprises, is becoming

greedy and diffident.

Public and artists, instead of helping each other, have grown timid.

The public no longer does what it likes. It no longer has any standard

of judgment. It has become timid and diffident. It is obsessed by the

fear of mistaking a masterpiece for a deception or a deception for a

masterpiece. This uncertainty of tastes and desires in the public in

its turn bewilders the artists. When the painter, the sculptor, the

musician, and the poet try to find in the desires and inclinations

of the public the sure indication which in times past used to be the

support and guidance of artists in their creations, they find that

the public is ready to admire anything, but has no marked preference

for anything in particular. The artist is free, but his liberty is a

liberty which embarrasses and paralyses him.

Under these circumstances, the adroit artists quickly learn the art of

exploiting the uncertainties and inexperiences of the public, and win

riches and honours. The crazy and the charlatans seek to intimidate the

public by perpetrating novelties of extravagant audacity. Serious and

conscientious artists there are nowadays, of course, but everyone has

new formulæ of his own art, differing from those of everyone else, and

proclaims his to be the only true, fruitful, and admirable formulæ, at

the same time denouncing all others as freaks. By what standard are we

to judge these quarrels? Bewildered by so many different attempts and

judgments, the public ends by turning to the antique. It has a vague

idea that the past ages may have been inferior to our own in all other

respects, but in art were superior to it. It knows that a work of art

at least one century old may be more or less beautiful, but that it

is at least a serious work of art, conceived and carried out in good

faith, not for the mystification of an ingenuous public by some daring

theory of novelty.

So the Europeans are wrong in ridiculing the passion of the Americans

for ancient things. This passion has the same origin on the other side

of the Atlantic as it has on this. In art, our civilisation is destined

to remain inferior to ancient civilisations, which it has overshadowed

with its wisdom, its power, and its wealth. This is the reason for the

rapid growth in the value of the antique in art, even in the age of

modernity _à outrance_. We need feel no shame in avowing it openly.

Civilisations and epochs, like individuals, cannot have and expect

everything; and the share which has fallen to us of the good things of

the earth is so large, that we can readily console ourselves for the

loss of this particular one.

Who reasoned thus would reason wisely. Nevertheless, the fact is

of greater importance than it appears. It shows that the balance

between the ancient culture of Europe and the spirit of American

culture—that balance which might perhaps have produced the most

brilliant civilisation in history—will never be perfectly secured, at

least so long as the conditions of the world remain what they now are.

America will be able to continue her Europeanisation, and Europe her

Americanisation, as we have seen is the case. But this interchange of

influences will not have as its only result the increase of the wealth

of Europe and of the culture of America. It will give birth in the two

worlds to a discontent and an unrest which nothing will be able to

allay.

In fact, the more its upper classes come under the influence of the

culture of the Old World, the more ardent will become the admiration

and desire of America for the antique,—for that beauty which the

civilisations preceding our own created with such wealth and

perfection of forms; the more strongly will it be convinced of our

artistic inferiority, and persuaded that one of the treasures of

life we have lost irreparably, and can only enjoy in the relics of

other generations. Every picture or statue or artistic object which

crosses the ocean and enters America, every museum which a rich

Maecenas opens in the New World to the public or which a city or a

state creates, every chair founded, and every book of artistic history

printed,—everything, in fact, which brings the spirit of America into

contact with the masterpieces of ancient European art, and awakens

recognition and admiration for them, makes America at the same time

recognise how comparatively decadent is that which our times produce;

reveals to it that lost Paradise of Beauty around whose closed gates we

are now condemned to hover. This contact with the artistic achievement

of the past becomes, therefore, at the same time a gadfly of discontent

and unrest to the upper and cultured classes.

By an inverse process, the further the spirit of American progress

penetrates into Europe, the more completely does it detach the Old

World from its past, and, therefore, irritates, grieves, and disgusts

the classes which have enough culture to recognise and admire the

marvellous arts of that past. With every ten years that elapse, we

feel that our past, with all its radiant glories, has receded a

hundred years; that we are plunging into a new world, in which riches,

knowledge, and our power over nature will increase, but which will

be ugly, inharmonious, and vulgar compared with the centuries which

preceded it. Many Americans fail to understand why Europe cherishes

so many latent antipathies to America, which has never done her any

harm, directly at least. The real reason for these antipathies must be

looked for in the artistic decadence which accompanies the development

of modern civilisation. That civilisation has not been created by

America alone, but by America and Europe combined. Europe and America,

therefore, share the responsibility for this decadence. Yet it suits

the European book from time to time to see in America the symbol of the

civilisation of railways, steam, electricity, business, and industry

on a large scale; and Europeans gladly vent on America their spleen

for whatever in this civilisation, pregnant with good and with evil,

offends them and arouses regret.

In short, there is an insoluble contradiction between progress, as our

age understands the word,—between the “American” progress, as many

Europeans call it,—and art. This contradiction has as yet attracted but

little notice, in the still great confusion in which we live, in the

initial tumult of this new civilisation which is invading the earth.

It will be noticed, however, more and more strongly, as generation

succeeds generation, and in many families the primary hunger for wealth

is satiated and gives way to the desire to “translate quantity into

quality”: as American love for the historical beauties of the Old World

increases, and Europe takes further lessons in the multiplication of

her wealth. There is no escape or salvation for our civilisation from

the discontent and unrest which will arise from this contradiction. It

is a torment which will grow with the growth of wealth and culture;

which nations and classes will feel more acutely the richer and the

more cultivated they become; from which perhaps, one day, America will

suffer more severely than many European nations; which will oppress the

upper classes much more heavily than the people. The latter, indeed,

will not feel it at all, and will alone be able to live in modern

civilisation, as contented as man ever can be in this world.

History often has strange surprises in store. The civilisation of

machinery tended at its birth to appear as a death-blow to the

working classes, a godsend to the upper classes. For years and years,

socialism, generalising from the initial rubs, predicted and pretended

to prove that the great mechanical industry must enrich a small

oligarchy inordinately, and reduce to the blackest wretchedness the

great mass of the population; that a new feudalism of capitalists,

fiercer than the barons of the Middle Ages, would seize all the good

things of the world. A century passes, and we find this civilisation

giving complete satisfaction only to the workmen, because it can

content the workmen only from the double point of view of quantity

and quality. It gives them an abundance which only a small fraction

of the people enjoyed up to a century ago; and, at the same time,

bestows on them a luxury which fully satisfies their yet simple and

unsophisticated æsthetic sense. We may smile when we see in a workman’s

home mirrors and clocks which are the rudest imitations of masterpieces

of the Louis XV and Louis XVI styles, hideous reproductions from a

German factory; and coarse carpets which are poor European copies of

beautiful Turkish and Persian models, the result of the substitution of

the iron teeth of a machine for the industrious fingers of the human

hand, and of decadent aniline dyes for the brilliant and unfading

vegetable colours. The workman, however, does not know the matchless

models of which these objects are the ugly copies, and, inasmuch as

every æsthetic verdict arises out of a comparison, these reproductions

represent for him the summit of perfection, and entirely satisfy his

need for beautiful things round about him.

To the upper classes, on the other hand, this civilisation has given

immense and imposing wealth, such as no epoch had ever considered

possible; but it has deprived them of the means of enjoying it. Wealth

becomes nowadays more useless, the greater it becomes, because a

multi-millionaire cannot build himself a house, wear clothes, or buy

objects a hundred times finer and better than the possessor of only

a few millions. We no longer have artists capable of accomplishing

miracles. The men of great wealth are forced to compete with each

other for the relics of past beauty at fabulous prices, when they are

not inclined to spend all their wealth for the benefit of others.

These relics are not sufficient, however, to satisfy the desire for

beauty and art which grows in our times with the growth of wealth and

of culture. On the contrary, they only make us feel more acutely the

decadent vulgarity of everything, with but few exceptions, which our

age produces.

* * * * *

Someone will say that, after all, this torment is not a very serious

one; and that men will easily find means of consoling themselves.

No epoch, as I have already said, can have everything; and modern

civilisation bestows on the wealthy classes of our times numberless

compensations for the ugliness of the modern world. One of these should

be enough by itself to content even the most discontented: that kind of

bodily and mental ubiquity which is enjoyed, thanks to the prodigious

inventions of modern genius. Cannot the wealthy, thanks to their

riches, remove from one continent to another, travel, have dealings

and acquaintances in, and receive communications from, every part of

the world, come to know the most distant and recondite beauties of

nature and of art—in a word, live over the whole globe? A modern great

man may well feel himself almost a demigod compared with the men of

two centuries ago, so great is the sway his money gives him over the

forces of nature, so easily can he escape from the tyranny which space

and time used to exercise over men up to a century ago. May not the

intoxication of this proud sway be worth as much as the pleasure which

the works of Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Houdon gave to our

ancestors?

It is true that the pride of our knowledge and the intoxication of our

power stun us, and therefore help us to bear with greater patience

the want of more æsthetic pleasures. But this compensation, like all

compensations, is of its very nature provisional. It is not possible

utterly to destroy a need inherent in human nature. There is at the

present day a certain tendency in the world to consider art as a

superfluous frivolity, as a luxury only to be thought of in moments

of leisure. Art and such-like superfluities are contrasted with what

are called the serious occupations, the practical realities of life:

industry, commerce, inventions, business, and wealth. Those who hold

this opinion forget, however, that the sculptures of Phidias and the

paintings of Raphael appeared in the world long before the steam-engine

and the Voltaic pile. Are we, too, prepared in face of this fact

to affirm, with the most advanced champion of the American idea of

progress in my dialogue, that “history was off the track up to the

discovery of America”? That if men had had any sense, they would have

invented machinery and developed the sciences first, and then created

and developed the arts? But even if we were prepared to maintain this

paradoxical theory, another fact of common observation would be there

to prove to us that beauty is not a luxury and whim of gentlemen of

leisure, but a primary, universal, and indestructible need of our

minds, which every human creature seeks to satisfy as best it can.

Do we not see every day that the peasant and the artisan, items in

modern civilisation though they are, no sooner have a little money

than they try to procure for themselves ornaments, either for their

persons or for their homes, which may be as tawdry as you like, but

which to them seem beautiful and well worth the expenditure of some of

the little money they have? Have we not seen that one of the merits

of modern civilisation is that of satisfying the æsthetic needs of

the masses? Why should we not expect, then, to find the same need,

though in a refined and intense form, felt by those to whom superior

intelligence and energy, or the favour of fortune, has granted the

power to accumulate wealth in large quantities, those, in other words,

who have at their disposal greater means of procuring for themselves

the pleasures and good things of life?

No: the artistic impotence of modern civilisation is likely to prove,

to judge by the first effects which are now beginning to manifest

themselves, a graver phenomenon than is at present realised. The

upper classes in Europe and America will not be able to go on for an

indefinite length of time living with a consciousness that the world in

which they find themselves is ugly, coarse, and decadent in comparison

with preceding civilisations; feeling the inferiority of the present

more acutely the more they study, and at the same time extending

still further their sway over the world and accumulating new riches

to console themselves for it. This would be a state of moral want of

balance; and moral want of balance cannot continue indefinitely, just

as physical want of balance cannot continue indefinitely. Either our

civilisation will abate its aspirations to the level of the mediocrity

which it is capable of producing in art, destroying in itself the

remembrance of and regret for those ancient civilisations which created

so many beautiful things; or it will have to put itself into a position

to satisfy not only the æsthetic needs of the masses, but also those of

the more cultured and refined strata of society. The first supposition

appears improbable, or at least no man of sense will wish to consider

it possible. It would mean a relapse of the world into barbarism, the

end of all the traditions and all the studies which have been and still

are an indispensable element of intellectual and moral refinement. So

we are left with the other hypothesis, which assumes that man will make

up his mind one day to make an effort to create arts of his own, which

will survive comparison with those of the past.

Yet the task is an arduous one. As I have already said, an art is not

created or perfected without the spirit of tradition and of discipline;

and the attempt in our times to re-infuse vigour into the spirit of

tradition and of discipline, if only in the measure necessary for the

progress of art, is an enterprise, the difficulties of which everyone

can understand without a long explanation. It cannot be effected

without a profound intellectual and moral reform, which will bring

about a change in many things besides the originality and power of the

arts which are to-day languid and decadent. So the struggle between

American progress and art may well be a more important phenomenon

than is at present apparent; and may well entail transformations of

far-reaching extent.

V

BEYOND EVERY LIMIT

For century after century, our civilisation lay low in its

Mediterranean lair. It knew but a small part of Europe, Asia, and

Africa; and no pricks of curiosity impelled it to ascertain how far the

world extended over land and sea beyond the vague bounds which marked

the limit of its efforts. That small part of the world satisfied the

ambitions of our ancestors, though they certainly were not shy and

craven. Confined in that narrow corner of the earth and with only the

scanty resources which it could provide, they created literatures,

arts, philosophies, states, laws, and religions. Some of these

creations are alive to this day, and help us distant descendants to

shed a little beauty and to impose a little order on the modern world.

Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries there began a great

change in the history of our civilisation. Impelled by the wish to

reach India by way of the Atlantic, our forefathers began to explore

the earth. Gradually geographical exploration became the preoccupation

of governments, the passion of the public, and the business of a great

number of persons who made almost a vocation of these daring voyages.

And behold one fine day, one grand day, the most fortunate and daring

of the navigators who were exploring the Atlantic in every direction

discovered America. In mid-Atlantic there lay two connected continents,

stretching from one hemisphere to the other, covering many latitudes

and a great variety of clime, and much of this vast territory was still

but sparsely inhabited. It was then that our forefathers realised how

vast and rich was the earth, and how small and poor in comparison

seemed that Mediterranean world in which for so many centuries they had

lived. It was then that they began to pass beyond the limits within

which they had been so long confined, to invade and to conquer the

outside world.

The Pillars of Hercules, which had been the impassable geographical

limit of the ancient Mediterranean world, were not, however, the

only bounds which they passed; they transcended also the moral and

intellectual limits which until then had circumscribed their thoughts

and actions. All the time that the ancient Mediterranean civilisation,

turned loose into the Atlantic, was striking root and expanding in

America, an uninterrupted sequence of events and movements was taking

place in Europe, destroying ancient laws, ancient traditions, and

ancient discipline; upsetting, in other words, the bounds placed in

the past to the thought, the sentiment, and the will of Man. The most

important of these events were: the Protestant Reformation, the

philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the advances

of science, the French Revolution and its wars, the birth and the

development of the great industrial movement, and the all but universal

triumph of democratic ideas.

Little by little, while the aspect of the globe changed, a great

revolution was taking place in the spirit of the ancient Christian

civilisation in Europe, which from being dictatorial and traditionalist

became free and progressive. Religion, which for so many centuries

had been a kind of severe moral discipline, a life of prohibitions,

scruples, rules, precepts, ceremonies, and rites, changed into a kind

of free contemplation of the Deity in which the individual conscience

had full play. Everybody became his own high priest.

The ceremonial of social life, which at no time had been so

complicated, serious, and exacting, gradually became so far simplified

as no longer to encumber man in his every movement and activity. The

State, which at one time, hand-in-hand with religion, watched over the

customs and life of its citizens, accorded greater and greater liberty

to them. To-day everybody, provided he contributes to society his daily

sum of work, is free to live and think as he likes. Severe laws used

once upon a time to regulate men’s luxuries and pleasures. Every class

was forbidden to spend its money in any way other than that prescribed

by these laws. There were times of the year in which men were forbidden

to amuse themselves, and, when amusements were allowed, the laws took

care that they should not degenerate into vice. Nowadays the whole year

is one long festival and carnival for all who have money to spend; and

together with freedom in pleasure men have acquired also a freedom in

vice which would scandalise our friends the ancients, if they might

come back to life again.

Every authority is losing power. The people discuss the government and

the laws; children take the first opportunity of escaping from the

authority of their parents. The younger generation is convinced that

it knows more than the older, and values the latter’s experience at

zero. Traditions are losing their force and academics their prestige.

Everyone holds the opinion he likes in religious, artistic, political,

and moral questions; just as he is free to regulate his own conduct,

at his own risk and peril, as he pleases, with the sole obligation of

respecting the limits imposed by the laws, which are for the most part

neither numerous nor embarrassing.

What is the deep-lying cause of this duplex and contemporaneous

movement? Why has the old Christian civilisation of Europe felt

itself in the last four centuries unable any longer either to contain

itself within the ancient material limits or within the ancient ideal

limits? Why, at the same moment as it advances to the conquest of new

continents, does it destroy within itself all the ancient disciplinary

restrictions? Because in these last centuries it has gradually

discovered that the earth is much vaster and richer than it suspected;

that it contains, in old Europe, as well as in young America, treasures

in much greater abundance than it had ever pictured in its dreams;

and that it can invent tools which bring these rapidly within its

reach. Gradually, as man found that he could rob nature of her immense

treasures, there arose and spread from generation to generation through

all classes in Europe and America a craze for wealth and a mad ambition

to win the mastery over nature, such as the world had never yet seen.

To satisfy this craze and this ambition, however, it was necessary to

break many of the innumerable bonds—religious, moral, æsthetic, and

political,—which limited the energy and initiative of our forefathers.

How could so many millions of men have brought themselves to emigrate

to America, if the spirit of tradition had not been weakened in Europe,

and if everybody had continued to hold, as they did once upon a time,

that the greatest good fortune a man could have was that of being

buried in the church in which he had been baptised? Even to-day there

are those who lament the diminution, in all the Christian churches

during the last few centuries, of the number, complexity, and rigour

of the rites and ceremonies, just as others lament that the ceremonial

of social life and etiquette is dying out. But would not men who

are obliged to work, travel, and rush about as we do nowadays find

themselves embarrassed beyond the point of endurance by a religion

which made them spend too much time over rites, and by a complicated

etiquette like that which still prevails in the states of the East,

requiring a large part of the day to be spent in compliments and

ceremonies? Europeans often laugh at the architecture of New York; and

I must confess that I, too, found it distinctly bizarre. On the other

hand, could that vast city have grown and renovated itself so rapidly

in the last century, and have found accommodation for the countless

multitudes which throng to it from all the corners of the world,

if those who built it had troubled themselves to observe the rules

formulated by the great architects of the sixteenth century, in the

days when it took as much time to build a palace and a church as it now

does to construct a city?

Modern society, if compared with the societies which preceded it, may

seem in many of its aspects—and in fact it is—ugly, poor in artistic

beauty, coarse, and brutal. It may even seem atheistic and irreverent,

frivolous and superficial in matters of religion, and, in certain

respects, morally lax or downright licentious. This kind of disorder,

however, which is such a common subject of heart-burning, is only the

necessary effect of the outburst of our energy over the world and

nature on its path of conquest. A civilisation cannot produce, refine,

or perfect arts or traditions of elegance and of social life, or a

morality and a religion, if it does not adopt an attitude of reserve,

if it does not limit itself to some extent, if it does not sacrifice

its other ambitions and aspirations to this object. A civilisation like

ours, whose supreme aspiration it is to extend in the shortest possible

time and as far as it can its empire over the world; to surpass all the

limits which nature seeks to oppose to its restless ambitions and to

the multiform energy of man, must needs sacrifice beauty, refinement,

elegance, and moral delicacy to rapidity, energy, activity, and daring.

The discovery and development of new countries, the marvellous progress

of America, the discoveries of science, the perfection of machinery,

the ideas of liberty which emerge triumphant from political revolutions

and changes in customs, the weakening of the spirit of authority in

every department of social life, the abolition of so many limits which

once entangled the movements of man, are all phenomena which are

mutually and indissolubly connected.

* * * * *

“Yes,” many will say; “and they are phenomena which all go to make up

the grandeur and glory of the modern world. We have power, wealth,

knowledge, and liberty, the four blessings of which our forefathers

had little, if any, knowledge. What cause have we then to grumble? And

amongst all the blessings which modern times shower upon us, perhaps

the most precious—more precious than wealth, power, and knowledge—is

liberty. If we have no reason to regret the past, it is chiefly because

our forefathers lived, imprisoned, and in suffering, within limits

which we have overstepped. Is there any greater joy for a man than

that of being able in thought, feeling, and action to follow the inner

impulse of his own conscience, instead of making it bend to an external

will, whether it be that of the law, or that of the public, or that of

a tradition? Surely the modern world is the greatest as well as the

most fortunate which has ever existed?”

That is what many people think, and thoughts like this breed the

optimism which at the present day cheers so many minds. This

thought is, moreover, partially true; but only partially. For in

the intoxication of their triumph over nature, of the riches which

they have conquered so easily and in such abundance, men seem not to

recognise that this civilisation without limits is little by little

allowing that same unbridled energy to hurry it into excesses which

threaten to drive it back into that very state of barbarism from

which it has made so many efforts to escape. The impetus which it has

acquired, now that it has cast off so many of its ancient restraints,

is great; but the danger is precisely that this impetus may carry it

too far.

I have already said that amongst the limits abolished by modern

civilisation are those which preceding civilisations had placed on

luxury. How great a change has taken place in men’s ideas on this

subject during two centuries! Simplicity and austerity were considered

for centuries virtues proper to saints and heroes. Christianity

had gone so far as to glorify poverty in so many words. Man, by

increasing his needs, only increased the number of his masters and

tyrants; only multiplied for himself occasions for sorrow. The more

simply a man could live, the freer, stronger, and happier he was. In

short, in ancient times, up to the French Revolution, religion, law,

and tradition set limits on every side to man’s desire to possess

and to enjoy; and these limits were so numerous and so close, that

they entailed no little suffering on the generations constrained to

live within them. That is why we have upset them all. And what is

the result? That we no longer have any sure criterion by which to

distinguish reasonable consumption from insensate waste, legitimate

need from vice. We can no longer say what are the limits at which

it is reasonable and wise for the peasant, the artisan, the small

tradesman, the man of leisure, the millionaire, the multi-millionaire,

the child, the woman, the old man, respectively, to cry a halt to their

desires. All men and all classes arrogate to themselves the right to

desire, to spend, even to waste as much as they can. No one has any

clear idea of a standard by which to distinguish what he may desire

and what he ought to deny himself. A kind of universal prodigality is

becoming obligatory in every class; and modern civilisation is hurrying

towards an unbridled, gross, and oppressive orgy. There is already a

large number of men in Europe and America who eat, drink, and smoke

to excess; who over-indulge in intoxicating and stimulating drinks;

and who spend themselves in that continual whirl of diversions and

distractions which form so large a part of modern life. The number is

fated, however, to grow yet larger, rapidly and indefinitely. Is not

production increasing on every side? Is not progress for us first and

foremost the continual increase of production? And what avails it to

produce more, if the riches produced do not find consumers?

The modern world, in freeing men’s desires from all the ancient limits

and restraints, has given a vigorous impulse to human industry. In

order to satisfy the increased needs of the masses, man has invented

machinery, and has put a premium on the new countries. But precisely

because there is no longer limit or restraint to men’s desires,

industry, which in the past was the handmaiden of human needs, is now

becoming their tyrant. It is creating and multiplying our needs with a

view to their subsequent satisfaction. In order that it may never be

short of work, it is tempting men in a thousand ways to desire and to

consume more. Therefore our civilisation has made of riches not the

fitting means of satisfying reasonable and legitimate needs, but an

end in themselves. We are obliged to produce them in order to consume

them, and to consume them in order to produce them. Every moment which

a man does not spend in producing riches, he must spend in consuming

the riches produced by others; so that he can never stay still for one

instant, but must jump from occupation to amusement, and from amusement

back again to occupation. He must try to make the day as long as

possible, accustoming himself to do everything at full speed, and

cutting down the hours of sleep as much as possible. Everybody knows

that we moderns, especially in the great cities, are losing the habit

of sleeping.

We have not yet mentioned, however, the most serious drawbacks of

the present-day lack of any fixed limit to men’s desires. In the

past ages, the efforts of religion were directed to educating men to

self-introspection; to teaching them to explore their own consciences,

to render account to themselves of their own sins and vices, and to

try to amend them. One might even go so far as to say that from one

point of view Christianity was principally a melancholy meditation on

the perversity of human nature, and an effort to purify it through

meditation, suffering, and the love of God. One has only to read

the letters of Saint Catherine, or the _Divine Comedy_, or Pascal’s

_Pensées_ to realise to what an extent the moral refinement which

is the fruit of these meditations preoccupied the loftiest minds,

and, at second hand, the great ones of the earth in past centuries.

A considerable part of the energies of every generation was consumed

in this introspective effort, instead of in action; for centuries and

centuries, saints, moralists, and preachers abounded in Europe, while

men of action, fit to conquer the world and its riches, nature and her

secrets, were scarce.

This searching of the inward parts was not always soothing by any

manner of means. For the past century and a half, numerous writers and

philosophers have denounced it as one of the refinements of torture

with which religion in the past made men’s lives a burden to them.

Perhaps, however, they are wrong; for this effort, which religion

made for so many centuries to habituate man to self-introspection,

self-knowledge, and self-judgment, demands a less superficial

explanation. However great be the force of the laws and the vigilance

of public opinion, there can be no convenient order in a social system,

if man does not help by exercising some sort of surveillance over

himself, if he does not give ear to an inward voice, forbidding him to

take advantage of every opportunity of doing evil with impunity which

may offer itself. This necessity for self-restraint is particularly

urgent in connection with three duties: the duty of speaking the truth,

the duty of checking one’s own inclination to pleasure, especially in

the relations between the sexes, and the duty of not using one’s own

strength improperly at the expense of the weak. Many are the times when

we could tell a lie with impunity, or even with advantage to ourselves,

if we wished to do so; and yet it is necessary that we should speak the

truth spontaneously, in order that justice may triumph. How easy it is

for the man who has become the slave of vice to evade the eyes of his

fellows and to satisfy in secret his most perverse passions! And what

system of laws can be conceived which will be wise and perfect enough

to bar all the countless ways in which the stronger can impose upon the

weaker?

Every religion with more or less success—and none with more success

than Christianity—in centuries past helped law and public opinion

to regulate this most important part of morality. They all made a

sacred thing of an oath, which is nothing but a covenant which every

individual enters into with himself to speak the truth, even when

he could lie with impunity or with advantage to himself. They all

created a sexual morality to regulate love, marriage, and the family.

They endeavoured in various ways to awaken in the consciences of the

rich and powerful the recognition of certain duties of moderation and

charity towards the weak and the poor. Nowadays, on the contrary, men

no longer have time to examine their consciences, or to reflect on

their own vices and defects, or on their own duties and rights. The

whole atmosphere of our lives is exterior to ourselves; we are always

moving about and always busy. We have become almost incapable of

meditation and self-introspection. Our times no longer lay any store by

this education of our inner feelings. The only discipline they impose

on man is that of work. Everybody, whether of high degree or of low,

is required, under penalty of losing his daily bread or of dropping in

the social scale, to fill with exactness, precision, diligence, and

correctness, the rôle, be it little or big, which has been allotted to

him in the immense operations of our times. But, for the rest, everyone

is to-day much more free than he was in the past to adjust his line of

action to his own beliefs, and to make for himself his own standard

and his own laws.

The result is that all the scruples and internal restraints with

which religion endowed the conscience of man in the past are growing

rusty from disuse. Our civilisation, rich and splendid as it is,

threatens to be spoiled by fraud, by evil habits, and by oppression.

There is no doubt about it; not even in these days is the discipline

of work sufficient in itself to keep the State in good order. Man

is not a living machine, destined only to produce riches. When he

leaves his office and comes back into the world, the modern man there

finds a family, sons, parents, friends, persons of the other sex who

may attract him, men richer and more powerful than himself, others

weaker and poorer, political institutions and public problems; in

short, opportunities of doing good or evil, temptations dangerous but

agreeable, and duties painful but necessary. And our times not only

give him practically no moral assistance to conquer these temptations

and to perform these duties, but rather in many ways incite him to

yield to the temptations, and to exercise his cunning in evading the

duties. Fraud in particular is becoming simply second nature to our

civilisation. What is the great industrial movement of modern times

but a continual deception for cloaking the deterioration which it is

bringing about in the quality of things as the price of increasing the

quantity of them? Every day sees an increase in the number of cleverly

faked objects, which are not what they seem; and science—especially

chemistry—is the highly paid accomplice which furnishes industry with

the means of imposing this colossal deception on an inexperienced

and ingenuous public. In other words, commerce and industry, which

play so large a part in modern life, are becoming more and more a

colossal deception in which he succeeds best and makes most money who

is cleverest at lying to the public and at foisting on them goods of

inferior quality though superior in outward seeming. Now if we see

in a social system, on the one hand, a weakening of all the internal

restraints which keep a man from lying and cheating, and, on the other,

a premium put on that same lying and cheating, must we not expect to

find fraud permeating the whole system? And what will our customs be

like, what will life be like, in the days when nobody any longer feels

any remorse or scruple in cheating his neighbour, and when everybody

becomes cheat and cheated turn and turn about, cheat in matters which

he understands, cheated in those in which he has to rely on other

people?

The growing depravity of customs, furthermore, threatens us with no

less a danger. I do not wish to exaggerate the horrors of the modern

Babylons, as Catholic priests and Protestant ministers are apt to

do. Their grief at seeing the rising generation turn a deaf ear to

their wise counsels makes them take too gloomy a view of the present

state of affairs. Nevertheless, it is certain that the customs of

modern civilisation are hurrying it towards a dangerous crisis. The

internal restraints are being relaxed, and temptations and facilities

are multiplying with the growth of riches and of cities, and with

the increasing mobility of persons of both sexes, so many of whom it

prompts to leave their native village or country. Especially in the

big cities where everyone is unknown, can easily hide away, and is

watched by nobody; where money has greater power over men’s minds

because there is more of it and more of it is needed,—virtue runs

serious and continual risks. Without being aware of it, we are undoing,

little by little, Christianity’s great contribution to the chastening

of our customs, by suppressing many of the limits which Christianity

had established with such labour in the midst of the unbridled licence

of the ancient world. We are travelling, therefore, step by step

back towards paganism, with all its conveniences and all its perils.

Already, in fact, we can see cropping up here and there in the richer

and more highly civilised countries and classes that mortal sickness

which killed the ancient civilisations: sterility. One of the reasons

why all the most flourishing ancient civilisations have perished is

that at the moment of their greatest glory the population suddenly

began to dwindle; and this sterility which killed them was the effect

to a large extent of the licence of their customs. Love remains fertile

only so long as it restrains itself and limits itself. Christianity,

by subjecting men’s customs to discipline—one of the noblest of its

services to mankind—succeeded for centuries in maintaining in Europe

and America an incessant fertility, which has proved to be one of the

most potent causes of the increase of our power. But now we can see,

with the return of the world to paganism, the beginning of a new era

of sterility, especially in the big cities and in the most ancient and

most wealthy states.

Lastly, I have referred to another danger which threatens this our

social system, victim as it is of its limitless desires; I mean the

increase in the opportunities for the strong to abuse their strength.

This is certainly the least of the three evils; for thanks to the

diffusion of culture and of liberty, the weak have learned and are

able, to unite in their own defence. Some balance of justice is

obtained and will continue to be obtained by opposing force to force.

The balance, however, will be in external things rather than in men’s

convictions. For in this unbridled and limitless chase after money and

enjoyment, of which the world is the theatre, the spirit of charity is

obscured; and men’s minds become accustomed to a hardness and brutality

which may perhaps one day startle the world in a disagreeable and

terrible way.

* * * * *

It may seem to some of my readers that I take a delight in uttering

gloomy prognostications of the future of modern civilisation.

Such, however, is not my intention. Who would dare to deny that,

notwithstanding its defects, the civilisation in which we have the

good fortune to live is the most splendid and powerful on which the

sun has ever shone? But its very grandeur, which is to so large an

extent the fruit of our boldness in overthrowing most of the limits

which preceding civilisations had placed to human energy, gives birth

to a new and formidable problem which is already beginning to confront

our speed-loving civilisation, and which is itself, too, a problem of

limits, perhaps of the limit _par excellence_. And that problem may be

expressed in one question: _Quousque tandem?_ Up to what point, in our

desire to conquer the world and its treasures, to multiply riches, and

to increase our power over nature, must we and can we sacrifice beauty,

and the forms, ceremonies, and refinements of life, moral and æsthetic?

Up to what point must we and can we make legitimate use of the liberty

which the modern world has given us; and at what point does abuse of it

begin?

This is the vital problem which I have posed and tried to dissect in

the dialogue which my travels in America inspired me to write: the

problem treated in the speeches and discussions of the many characters,

European and American, who figure in that dialogue. It may seem

strange, at first sight, that a discussion of the Old World and the

New, in which the contending parties propose to prove which is superior

to the other, should end in this second problem, apparently so unlike

the first; whether it is necessary or not to place a limit on the

unbridled activity and immoderate desires of our times. Anyone who has

read the present series of essays, however, will be less likely to find

this conclusion singular and obscure. I have repeatedly said, and

tried to prove, that there is too great a tendency on both sides of the

Atlantic to find an antagonism between Europe and America. If certain

tendencies are stronger in one of the two continents, and weaker in

the other, these are differences of quantity, not of quality. America

is becoming Europeanised, and Europe Americanised. However little

reflection and cool reasoning the European may bring to his abuse

of America on the score of its excessive zeal in the production of

riches, or the American to his abuse of Europe on account of the scanty

remains of the spirit of tradition and conservatism in the Old World,

each will recognise that he is at the same time inveighing against his

own continent. In fact, Europe applies herself with no less zeal than

America to the production of greater wealth; and America is no less

anxious than Europe to enjoy the advantages which may even now accrue

to the world from the spirit of tradition.

Consequently the discussion of the question whether America is superior

to Europe or Europe to America is a futile enterprise and labour lost;

because the balance between the differences is rapidly adjusting

itself. Nevertheless, if any difference exists to-day between the two

continents, it is undoubtedly this: that all the phenomena of social

life in America are simpler and clearer, and less overlaid and obscured

by traditions, institutions, and century-old ideas and sentiments

than in Europe. For this reason, the careful observer will find in

America a much more profitable field for the study of the dangerous

tendencies and exaggerations of modern civilisation which are common

to Europe and America. Of these dangerous tendencies, the one which

has struck me most in the course of my travels in America, and has

given me most food for thought, is precisely this, which I have treated

in this my latest work and which forms, as it were, the crown to the

whole discussion of the dialogue. Modern civilisation has accomplished

miracles and marvels without number, since she left behind her the

limits, material and ideal, within which the timid generations of old

confined themselves,—since she outstepped and upset these limits on her

way to conquer the earth, riches, and liberty. Now, however, precisely

because she has crossed all the limits and no longer has any before

her, she finds herself impelled on every side, in politics, customs,

morals, art, and philosophy, to excesses which may one day prove very

dangerous. Men are beginning to have a vague presentiment of this

danger. They do not clearly see, however, the quarter from which it

threatens. They disquiet themselves without thoroughly diagnosing the

evil. And this disquietude may perhaps explain the pessimism which

afflicts a civilisation so flourishing and fortunate in many respects

as that of our own times.

For this reason, I thought that the great problem of the limits might

grow little by little, on board a transatlantic liner, out of a

discussion about America. An Italian, who has made money in America,

and who, like so many Europeans who have made their fortune thus, is

an admirer of the New World, one evening launches out into a eulogy of

young America at the expense of old Europe. He extols the civilisation

of machinery, progress, and liberty, by contrast with what remains

in Europe of the ancient civilisation whose efforts were directed

to improving the quality of things rather than augmenting their

quantity; which left the world poor while it created arts, religions,

moralities, and rights. The discussion becomes heated, complicated,

and diffuse until, under the guiding influence of an old savant who

knows Europe and America too, it concentrates on this point: Granted

that man was well-advised to exceed the ancient limits within which

preceding civilisations had confined him, to hurl himself on the world

and to conquer it; up to what point may man aspire to liberty in every

department of life, without endangering in the long run the most

precious fruits of his conquest?

The book does not pretend to solve this formidable problem. No

philosopher, no writer, no book could solve it. It can only be solved

by a radical revolution in the ideas, sentiments, and interests of the

masses. But the book which I have written purports to throw light on

some, at least, of the essential aspects of the problem. It endeavours

to make it clear to the men of our time, by harping on a principle of

great antiquity, great simplicity, and great modesty, which may be

perhaps usefully recalled to the memory of present generations, in

Europe as well as in America. That principle is, that man is a being

of limits; and that he ought, therefore, to observe in his desires a

certain mean. A civilisation must remember that it is the sum of the

efforts of a great many individuals; that these individuals may be very

numerous, but that each one is a small limited being; and that the sum

of their efforts cannot be infinite. Consequently, a civilisation must

not let its desires and wishes extend untrammelled in every direction.

It must learn to confine itself within limits.

VI

THE RIDDLE OF AMERICA

In Argentina, there are vast and luxuriant valleys, over which the

train seems to creep toward the very edge of a horizon which ever

recedes as the traveller advances. From time to time, four or five red

one-storied houses, clustered behind a station, recall to his mind

the fact that this wilderness is actually inhabited. In Brazil, so

far as the eye can see, there are ranges of mountains, shadowy even

in brilliant daylight, in the midst of which, from time to time, one

mountain stands out more distinctly than its fellows. The shadowy hills

are those still covered by the primeval forest; the others, those where

the timber has been burned off and replaced by coffee plantations; but

even here there is no trace of human life. One must travel long hours

by railroad before even catching sight of a village.

In North America, or at least in its Eastern States, there are vast

and desolate tracts. From time to time a village appears, bristling

with chimneys. Then the traveller slips on into the deserted country.

Another village appears, only in its turn to disappear. Then all at

once the train begins to rush through the midst of houses. On, on it

goes. The houses never cease to follow it. Huge edifices rise from

the midst of the little dwellings like giants from a crowd of dwarfs.

Automobiles and trolley cars move through the streets. It is a great

city; half a million, a million, two million men are crowded together

there in the shadow of a thousand chimneys, surrounded on every side by

an almost deserted country. What a strange sight are these wildernesses

to a European accustomed to live in one of the crowded countries of the

Old World where men have built their houses everywhere, from the shores

of the sea up to the highest habitable slopes of the mountains!

In observing a phenomenon so novel to his experience, the historian

of antiquity is deeply interested; and as he studies it, like so many

other Europeans in the presence of the same spectacle, he forgets his

own preoccupations. The riddle of America rises before him and the

desire of finding an answer to it turns him from his former studies.

For America is a true riddle to Europeans. During the past thirty

years, not only the United States, but even smaller American countries

like Brazil and Argentina, have impressed themselves sharply upon the

attention of Europe. The Old World has been compelled to recognise

that America has in her turn become a mighty historic force; and that

she exercises an influence on the Old World which grows continuously

greater. When one reflects that, only a century and a half ago, all

these American states were merely poverty-stricken colonies of Europe,

harshly exploited by their European masters, one cannot suppress

amazement at the rapidity with which their destiny has changed.

What power is it which has worked this miracle? On this point, it

is impossible to feel any doubt; the power is wealth. These plains

and these mountains which look so deserted are tilled, mined, worked

with intensest energy; and every year, with a generosity which seems

inexhaustible, they yield to the men who have toiled over them

prodigious quantities of cereals, tobacco, coffee, wool, gold, silver,

iron, oil—an enormous torrent of riches which pours over the entire

world. The great industrial cities of North America manufacture these

raw materials with profits so large and swiftly won that to the Old

World they seem fantastic. In these plains, in these valleys, in these

mountains, in these cities, labourers receive higher wages, merchants

and manufacturers make their fortunes faster, capitalists come into

contact with mightier interests, landlords draw higher rents from this

prosperity—all the sources of profit are more abundant than in Europe.

And these conditions have made it possible for a few of Fortune’s

favourites to pile up in the course of a single lifetime wealth whose

vastness makes the brain swim. America has, in fact, succeeded in

producing riches at a rate of speed that man has never yet attained

elsewhere in the world. She has been the principal factor in the

fabulous increase of the world’s wealth during the last fifty years.

Her riches have become one of the historic forces of our civilisation,

and one of the principal preoccupations of the European mind.

Whence come these vast riches and whither do they go? How is it that

America can grow rich so much faster than Europe? Is it thanks to far

more fortunate physical conditions, which bear no relation to the

deserts of man? Or is it in consequence of moral and intellectual

qualities which are lacking in Europeans? And what will be the ultimate

effect of this economic superiority? Riches may be the goal of an

individual’s efforts; for a nation they can only be means to conquer

the other good things of life which we call civilisation: glory,

grandeur, power, beauty, knowledge, moral refinement. Can America, and

will she, make use of her riches to rob Europe of the intellectual

and moral leadership which the latter still possesses? Or will these

riches, too swiftly won, exercise an evil influence simultaneously upon

Europe and America, by making both continents more materialistic?

* * * * *

Such is the riddle of America, which, for some time past, has been

steadily forcing itself upon the attention of Europe. To arrive at an

answer, we must know whether the influence of a too swift economic

development of the New World upon the higher activities of the mind,

upon morals, upon science, art, and religion is beneficial or the

reverse. The detractors of America—and there are many of them in

Europe—affirm without hesitation that the Americans are barbarians

laden with gold; that they think only of making money, and that,

in consequence of their riches, they lower the level of Europe’s

ancient civilisation and infect its beautiful traditions with a crass

materialism. Admirers of America, on the contrary—and of these there

are as many in Europe as there are detractors—will tell you that the

New World is giving to the Old a unique example of energy, activity,

intelligence, and daring. Let old Europe then give heed; beyond the

Atlantic, young rivals are girding themselves with new weapons to

dispute with her the superiority of which she is proud. What must one

think of these conflicting answers to the puzzle?

Let us begin with the reasoning of the detractors: “Americans are

barbarians laden with gold.” In order to simplify the discussion,

let us limit our examination to the United States, which is justly

entitled to represent contemporary America with all its qualities and

all its defects. No long sojourn within the borders of the United

States is necessary to convince a person that in the great Republic

people think only of making money. A writer partial to paradox might

well amuse himself with proving that the Americans are more idealistic

than the Europeans, or even that they are a mystical people. Anyone

who cares to find arguments to establish this thesis may well be

embarrassed by their number. For instance, would a people which

despised the higher activities of the mind have been able to create

the philosophical doctrine which is popularly known to us under the

name of “Pragmatism”? The Pragmatist affirms that all ideas capable of

rendering useful service are true. He takes utility as his standard

of the measure of truth. This theory has seemed to many writers of

the Old World a decisive proof of the practical mind of the American

people, who never forget their material interests, even in connection

with metaphysical questions. This, however, is a mistake. Pragmatism

does not propose to subordinate the ideal to practical interest. Its

purpose is to reconcile opposing doctrines by proving that all ideas,

even those which seem mutually exclusive, can help us to become wiser,

stronger, better. What service is there then in struggling to make one

idea triumph over another instead of allowing men to draw from each

idea the good which each can yield? In a word, Pragmatism, as America

has conceived it, is a mighty effort to give the right of expression in

modern civilisation to all religious and philosophical doctrines which

in the past have stained the world with their sanguinary struggles.

A beautiful doctrine this, which may lend itself to many objections;

but true or false, it proves that the people who have conceived it,

far from despising the ideal, have such respect for all ideas and all

beliefs, that they have not the courage to repel a single one. Such a

people wishes to learn all and understand all.

Another proof of this same characteristic is furnished by American

universities. Europeans have all heard descriptions of these great

American universities, Harvard and Columbia, for example. They are

true cities of learning with vast and splendid buildings, gardens,

pavilions, laboratories, museums, libraries, athletic fields for

physical exercises, pools where students can go to swim. They are

enormously rich and, at the same time, always in dire straits. How

can that be? Because no speciality or item of perfection is allowed

to be lacking. All the languages and the literatures of the world

which have reached any degree of importance, all the histories, all

the sciences,—judicial, social, moral, physical, natural,—all the

divisions of mathematics, and all the philosophies, are taught there by

hundreds of professors. Private citizens of the rich classes, bankers,

manufacturers, merchants, have in a great degree met from their private

purses the steadily growing needs of the universities.

There is the same tendency in art. That American cities are ugly, I

willingly admit. It would need much courage, no doubt, to brand this

affirmation as false, but it would also be unjust to deny that America

is making mighty efforts to beautify her cities. All the schools

of architecture in Europe, especially that of Paris, are full of

Americans hard at work. The sums which cities, states, banks, insurance

companies, universities, and railroads, have spent in beautifying their

magnificent edifices is fabulous. Not all these buildings, by any

means, are masterpieces, but there are many which are very beautiful.

America has architects of indisputable worth. In Europe, men like to

repeat that Americans buy at extravagant prices objects of ancient

art, or things that pass for such, not distinguishing those which are

beautiful and ancient from those which are inferior and counterfeit.

But those who have seen something of the houses of rich Americans know

that, although there are snobs and dupes in America, as everywhere

else, there are also people who know the meaning of art, who know how

to buy beautiful things, and who search the world over for them. You

will find in the streets of New York every variety of architecture,

just as you find in its libraries all the literatures of the world, and

in its theatres all the music, and in its houses all the decorative

arts.

“The barbarian laden with gold” is, then, a legendary personage, but it

is not at all surprising that such a conception should exist. Modern

society is organised in such fashion that it is impossible even to

conceive of a people at once rich and ignorant. Industry, business,

agriculture, demand nowadays very special technical knowledge, and

a very complete social organisation; that is to say, they imply a

scientific, political, and judicial civilisation of a reasonably high

order. Thus America is not at all uninterested in the higher activities

of the mind. It would be more just to say that as a nation, and

without regard to individual instances, she interests herself in such

activities less than in industry, in business, and in agriculture. But

is not this also the case with Europe? Who would dare affirm that the

progress of the arts and sciences and letters is at this moment the

principal concern of the governments and of the influential classes of

the Old World? We Europeans have only to listen to what people round

about us are saying. Their talk is all of bringing the cultivation of

the land to economic perfection, of opening coal and iron mines, of

harnessing waterfalls, of developing industries, of increasing exports.

Kings who rule “by the grace of God” publicly declare that nothing

interests them so much as the business of their countries!

If all this were characteristic only of American barbarism, we

should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanising herself with

disconcerting rapidity. But this economic effort of Europe in turn

presents nothing that need surprise us; like the American development,

it is only the dizzy acceleration of a vast historic movement whose

beginnings go back to the far distant day when an obscure and obstinate

Genoese set sail, and in the midst of the waters of the Atlantic

crossed the impassable boundary of the Old World. Yes, before that

day, Europe had created admirable arts and literatures, profound

philosophies, consoling religions, lofty morals, wise systems of

justice, but—she was poor. She produced little, and produced it slowly;

she had defied tradition and authority; she had fettered human energy

by a multitude of laws, precepts, and prejudices. To humble men’s

pride, she kept repeating to them that they were feeble and corrupt

creatures. She taught them to use Virgil’s beautiful figure that they

were like “a rower who painfully forces his boat against the current

of the stream. Evil be on his head if for one instant he forgets, and

ceases to struggle against the current’s force; in that moment, he is

lost; the flood sweeps away his fragile boat.”

One fine day, however, Europe discovered a vast continent in the

midst of the ocean. Then it dawned upon her that Prometheus had been

but a clumsy thief, for he had stolen only a tiny spark of fire; she

discovered mines, coal, and electricity. She created the steam-engine

and all the other machines which have been derived from it. She

succeeded in multiplying riches with a rapidity unimagined by remoter

ancestors. From that moment, man no longer contented himself with

dreaming of the Promised Land. He wished to go there. He destroyed all

the traditions, the laws, and institutions which place limitations upon

the store of human energy. He learned to work swiftly. At a single

stroke, he conquered liberty and riches, and he conceived the idea of

progress. If America seems to-day to symbolise this movement, which has

turned the world topsy-turvy, the movement was derived from Europe.

After having conceived the idea of such a revolution, could Europe

remain untouched by it?

* * * * *

It would appear then that the riddle of America is very simple. The

answer contains nothing to make us uneasy. The riches of the New World

threaten no catastrophe to the noblest traditions of our civilisation.

For New York’s wealth is only a part of the riches produced in the

same economic development in the two worlds. The ultimate development

of these mighty riches might be merely a general advance, both material

and ideal, of Europe and America. Rich and prosperous Americans might

try to assimilate the culture of Europe, and on her part Europe, in her

effort to increase her own riches, might seek to equal America. But

a historian of antiquity who returns from America cannot share this

optimism. In the lap of modern civilisation, there are twin worlds

struggling with each other for leadership. But these two worlds are

not, as people are apt to think, Europe and America. Their names are

Quality and Quantity.

The civilisations from which our own is sprung were poor indeed.

They set limits to their desires, their ambitions, their spirit of

initiative, their audacity, their originality. They brought forth

slowly and a little at a time, and suffered continuously from the

insufficiency of their material resources. They looked upon the

amassing of wealth merely as a painful necessity; but, in all things,

they sought to attain the difficult model of perfection, whether in

art, or in literature, or in the realms of morality and religion. The

aristocratic character of almost all the industries of the past, the

importance which was formerly bestowed on the decorative arts and on

all questions of personal morality, ceremonial, and form—these are

all proofs of it. It was Quality, not Quantity, which carried our

forefathers forward. All the limitations to which these civilisations

were subject, so astonishing to us to-day, were only the necessary cost

of these perfections which men once so ardently desired. We have turned

upside down the world our ancestors lived in. We have made our goal the

multiplication of riches. We have won liberty, but we have been obliged

to abandon almost all the ancient ideals of perfection, sacrificing

Quality in everything.

How many of the difficulties which torture this brilliant period

of ours so cruelly are the result of this duel between Quality and

Quantity! Look, for example, at the present crisis in the study of the

classics. Why did men formerly study Homer and Cicero with passionate

zeal? Because, in those days, the great Greek and Latin writers were

the models of that literary perfection, so greatly admired by the

influential classes, which was not merely an ornament of the mind. The

attainment of perfection often carried with it the admiration of the

public, fame, sometimes even glory and high rank. In this last century,

however, these models have lost much of their prestige, either on

account of the multitude of literatures which have come to be known and

liked, or because they have proved troublesome to a period compelled

to write too much and too quickly. Just imagine a candidate for the

presidency of the United States who should pronounce ten or fifteen

long orations daily and who should in each discourse show himself the

perfect orator according to the rules of Cicero or Quintilian! The day

when classical culture ceased to be an official school of literary

taste, on that day it was condemned to die; and scientific philology,

which we have sought to set up in its place, can only serve to bury

its corpse. No longer models for posterity, the books of the ancient

authors have become like any others, and are less interesting for the

majority of readers than the works of modern literatures.

It is the fashion nowadays to discuss the crisis which threatens all

the arts. We must, however, remember to preserve a distinction. We must

divide the arts into two categories: those which serve to amuse men by

helping them to pass the time agreeably, like music, the theatre, and,

to a certain degree, literature; and those which serve to beautify the

world, like architecture, sculpture, painting, and all the decorative

arts. It is patent that the crisis which we are considering is much

more serious among the arts embraced by the second category. No epoch

has spent so much money in beautifying the world as has our own; no

age has supported so formidable an army of architects, sculptors,

decorators, and cabinet-makers; no age has built so many cities,

palaces, monuments, bridges, plazas, and gardens. In the midst of

lavish plenty, why are we so discontented with the results obtained;

why have not Americans, in view of the enormous sums which they have

spent to beautify their cities, succeeded in building a St. Mark’s or a

Notre Dame? They have all the materials,—money, artists, the desire to

create beautiful things. What then do they lack? They lack one single

thing—time.

One day, in New York, I was praising an example of American

architecture to an American architect of great talent. “Yes, yes,” he

answered with a touch of satire, “my fellow countrymen would willingly

spend a hundred million dollars to build a church as beautiful as St.

Mark’s in Venice, but they would command me, as a condition of my

undertaking the work, to finish it within eighteen months.”

That is a significant phrase. How is it possible to beautify a world

which is incessantly in transformation, wherein nothing is stable,

and which wishes to multiply everything it possesses—buildings,

as it would furniture? To create beautiful palaces, to construct

beautiful furniture, to attain the distant ideal of perfection, time

is essential—time and wise deliberation, reasonable limitation of

the multiplicity of human demands, and a certain stability in taste.

No one could have built St. Mark’s or Notre Dame in eighteen months,

and France could not have created her famous decorative styles of the

eighteenth century if public taste had been so fickle as ours, and

if everybody at that time had wished every ten years to change his

furniture.

The crises in classical studies and in the decorative arts are,

however, still relatively slight in comparison with the general

intellectual and moral confusion into which the doctrine of Quantity

has plunged men’s minds, by substituting a standard of Quantity in

place of the traditional standard of Quality. If my phrase is obscure,

examples may possibly elucidate what I say. We all know, for instance,

that, in recent years, the citizens of the United States have waged a

bitter campaign against the trusts, the great banks, the railroads,

and insurance companies; in fact, against all the vast powers of

money. In newspaper articles, in public speeches, and in whole volumes

filled with accusations, these trusts have been charged with being

centres of corruption, instruments of a new despotism not less odious

than the political despotism of old. They are decried as scandalous

conspiracies to despoil honest men of the legitimate fruits of their

labour. The campaign has penetrated to the very heart of the nation;

but in the face of the enormous indignation of the masses, there

has been exhibited both in America and Europe the Olympian calm of

economists and men of great affairs, who have denounced this movement

of protest as a return to Mediæval ideas, and who in the face of a vast

outcry have paid enthusiastic homage to modern finance, its enormous

enterprises, and its tremendous organisation.

How can there be so vast a difference of opinion in an age so

intelligent and educated as ours? Is half the world struck blind

to-day, and is sight given to the other half alone? No, there is

neither incurable blindness, nor sight vouchsafed only to a few. The

sole reason for the confusion is that men employ different standards

in measuring the same thing, and for this reason find it impossible

to understand each other. If one accepts the quantitative standard, if

one admits that the supreme object of life is to produce an enormous

pile of riches as rapidly as possible, the economists are right.

The injustices and cruelties denounced by the adversaries of high

finance are merely negligible inconveniences in a régime of economic

liberty of which the modern world is naturally proud, for it is to

this liberty that the modern world owes most of its wealth. Yet we

must remember that the idea of leaving the wages of each individual

to be determined by the blind play of economic forces was foreign to

all the civilisations that preceded our own. They always sought to

correct the principles of business in order to keep them in accord

with the principles of charity and justice. To carry out this policy,

they did not even hesitate to limit the development of industry and

business, for example, by forbidding interest on money. Former ages

subordinated economic development to an ideal of moral perfection; they

placed Quality above Quantity. If, however, one applies this standard

of qualitative measure to the modern world, it is these detractors of

high finance who have the right on their side. Many methods employed by

modern finance, useful as they are from an economic point of view, are

for the above-mentioned reason none the less repugnant to a moral and

slightly sensitive conscience. Detractors and defenders may dispute to

the end of time. They will never understand each other, for they start

from different premises, which never can be reconciled to each other.

It is this continual confusion between quantitative and qualitative

standards which prevents the modern world from steering a true course

amid the gravest moral questions. Take, for example, the question

of progress. Is there an idea more popular to-day, or a word more

often repeated, than “progress”? And yet if to every person who

pronounces this word we were to put the question, “What do you mean by

progress?” few indeed would be able to answer with precision. There is

a thing still stranger. In this century of progress, the whole world

deplores ten times a day the decadence of all things. How can such a

contradiction be explained? The answer is simply that the same act

may be judged as a phenomenon of progress or of decadence, according

as it is viewed from the standpoint of Quality or of Quantity. Set an

architect and a locomotive builder to disputing about the modern world.

The former will maintain that the world is reverting to barbarism

because it multiplies cities, and hastily and hideously constructed

villages without being able to create a single one of those marvellous

monuments which are the glory of the Middle Ages. The latter will

reply that the world moves forward, because the population, number,

and size of the cities, the amount of cultivated land, the extension

of railroads, increase without cessation. The interlocutors will never

come to understand each other, just as two men who look at the world

through spectacles of different colours can never agree on the colour

of their environment. The riddle of America, which for some time

past has bothered Europe so much, is merely another example of this

permanent confusion of standards which characterises the age in which

we live.

* * * * *

America is neither the monstrous country where men think solely of

making money, nor the country of marvels boasted by her admirers. It

is the country where the principles of Quantity, which have become so

powerful during the last one hundred and fifty years, have achieved

their most extraordinary triumph. An active, energetic, vigorous nation

has found itself master of an enormous territory, portions of which

were very fertile and other portions very rich in mines and forests,

at the very moment when our civilisation finally invented the machine

which makes possible the exploitation of vast countries and the swift

creation of wealth: the steam-engine.

Less cumbered by old traditions than the elder nations, and with a vast

continent in front of her, America has marched along the new roads of

history with a rapidity and an energy for which there is no precedent.

Ten, fifteen, thirty times in a single century has she multiplied

her population, her cities, and all the wealth coveted by man. She

has created, in careless and prodigal profusion, a society which has

subordinated all former ideas of perfection to a new ideal; ever

building on a grander scale and ever building more swiftly. No, it is

not true that America is indifferent to the higher activities of mind,

but the effort which she spends upon the arts and sciences is, and

will long remain, subordinate to the great historic task of the United

States, the intensive cultivation of a huge continent. Intellectual

things will remain subordinate, although very many Americans of the

upper classes would wish that it were otherwise.

In just the same way, it is not accurate to say that, in contrast to

American barbarism, Europe reaps the harvest of civilisation; just as

it would be unfair to say that the Old World is done for, exhausted by

its petrifying, inevitable routine. The ancient societies of Europe

have likewise entered into the quantitative phase of civilisation. The

new demon has also got hold of them. In Europe, as well as in America,

the masses of people long for a more comfortable existence; public and

private expenses pile up with bewildering speed. Thus in the Old World

also the production of wealth must be increased, but this enterprise

is far more difficult in Europe than in America. The population of

Europe is much more dense than that of the New World; a portion of its

lands is exhausted; the great number of political subdivisions and

the multiplicity of tongues increase enormously the difficulties of

conducting business on a great scale. Traditions handed down from the

time when men toiled to produce slowly and in small quantities things

shaped toward a far-distant ideal of perfection are still strong among

its people. Europe, then, has the advantage over America in the higher

activities of the mind, but she cannot help being more timid, more

sluggish, and more limited in her economic enterprises. America and

Europe may each be judged superior or inferior to the other according

as the critic takes for his standard the criteria of Quality or of

Quantity. If a civilisation approximates perfection in proportion to

the rapidity with which she produced riches, America is the model to be

followed; if, on the contrary, perfection is expressed by the measure

of the higher activities of the spirit, Europe leads the way.

* * * * *

The riddle, then, seems solved, but the reader may object that it is

solved only by admitting that we dwell in a perpetual condition of

misunderstanding; that the modern world is a sort of Tower of Babel

where men speak a tongue which others cannot understand. If this

agreeable news were the only thing brought back by the historian of

antiquity from his two voyages to America, he might better perhaps have

spared himself the trouble! Such might well be the conclusion of this

long argument! Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the modern world

demands two contradictory things, speed and perfection. We wish to

conquer the earth and its treasures with all possible haste. To this

end, we have created tremendous machinery and have uncovered new forces

in nature. It is a huge task, no doubt, but to accomplish it we must

renounce almost all the artistic and moral perfections which used to

be at once the torment and joy and pride of our forefathers. It is a

painful necessity indeed, against which our age revolts, and from which

it seeks in vain every possible channel of escape.

Let us strip off the last shred of illusion. Deterioration must

ever continue amongst the ideals of perfection which our ancestors

worshipped, so long as population multiplies and the demands and

aspirations of all classes, as well as all expenses, public and

private, continue to increase on the scale and with the momentum with

which they are increasing at this moment. Even if this formidable

revolution should slacken a trifle, the ideal of Quantity must spread

its empire over the earth, morality and beauty must of necessity be

subordinated to the prime necessities of constructing machines ever

increasing in speed and power, of expanding cultivated land, and of

working new mines. Art, like industry, agriculture, like literature,

will be compelled to increase their production to the continuous

deterioration of their quality, and our secret discontent will grow in

proportion as our triumphs increase. Unable ourselves to decide between

Quality and Quantity, we shall never know whether the great drama of

the world at which we are looking is a marvellous epoch of progress or

a melancholy tragedy of decadence.

From this singular situation, there is only one possible way of escape;

a method which has no precedent in the world’s history. It is that

very method, however, which men will not hear spoken of. It would be

absolutely essential to create a movement of public opinion through

religious, political, or moral means, which should impose upon the

world a reasonable limit to its desires. To the age in which we live,

it seems impossible to express an idea seemingly more absurd than this.

The material situation of every one of us is to-day bound up with this

formidable movement, which drives men ceaselessly to increase the

making and spending of wealth. Think what an economic crisis there

would be if this movement were to slow down. All the moral systems

which governed the world down to the French Revolution forced upon men

the belief that they would grow more perfect as they grew simpler. When

religion and custom were not sufficient to teach men to set limits to

their needs and desires, then these old moral systems had recourse to

sumptuary laws. In direct contrast to this, the nineteenth century

affirms that man grows more perfect in proportion as he produces and

consumes. So confusing are the definitions of legitimate desires and

vices, of reasonable expenses and inordinate luxury, that in this

century it is almost impossible to differentiate between the one and

the other.

A vast revolution has been brought into being, the greatest, perhaps,

which history can show; but if the new principles which our century has

borne to the front should be developed until they insured the ultimate

and supreme triumph of Quantity, would it be possible to escape what

would amount to the demolition of the whole fabric of the glorious

civilisation bequeathed to us by the centuries; religious doctrines

and the principles upon which morality is based, as well as all the

traditions of the arts?

History knows better than do we the dusky roads of the future, and it

is idle for us to wish to see the way along them; but in spite of our

ignorance of the future, we have duties toward the past and toward

ourselves, and is it not one of these duties to call the attention of

our generation to the possibility of this catastrophe, even if our

generation likes to turn its face away from it? Very often during

my travels in America, I used to ask myself whether men of various

intellectual interests might not find in this duty something to

strengthen their conscience for the part which they must play in the

world.

If we except medicine, which aims to cure our bodily ills, those

sciences which are concerned with discoveries useful to industry,

and those arts which entertain the public, all other branches of

intellectual activity are to-day in dire confusion. Is there a pious

clergyman who has not asked himself in moments of discouragement

what good it is to preach the virtues of the Christian faith in a

century whose dynamic power springs from an exaltation of pride and

an emancipation of passion which amount almost to delirium? What

intelligent historian is there who does not now and then ask himself

why he persists in telling over again the events of the past to a

generation which no longer looks ahead, and which rushes violently on

the future, head down like a bull? What philosopher is there who, as

he pursues his transcendental preoccupation, does not feel himself

sometimes hopelessly adrift, like a being fallen upon the earth, from

another planet, in an age which no longer is passionately interested in

anything except economic reality? What artist is there who seeks not

only to make money, but to reach the perfection of his ideal, who has

not cursed a thousand times this frenzied hurly-burly in the midst of

which we live?

From time to time, it is true, there seems to be a genuine revival of

the ancient ideal; men suddenly appear who seem to interest themselves

afresh in the progress of religion, in the future of morality, in the

history of the past, in the problems of metaphysics, in the artistic

records of civilisation long since dead. These are, however, only

passing phenomena, and they are not enduring enough to give artists and

philosophers the definite consciousness of playing a well-thought-out

and useful part.

If all intellectual activities of to-day tend to become either

lucrative professions or government careers; it is because nowadays

such careers aim either at the acquisition of money or the attainment

of social position, and no longer find their end in the careers

themselves. And yet—how many times as he travelled across the territory

of the two Americas, watching all day fields of wheat and rye, or

plantations of maize or coffee, extending to the very edge of the

solitary horizon, how many times has the historian of antiquity

brooded over those fragments of marble wrought by the Greeks in such

perfection, which we admire in our museums, and pondered upon the

fragments of the great Roman system of jurisprudence preserved in the

“_Corpus juris_.” Did not the Greeks and Romans succeed in reaching

this marvellous perfection in the arts and laws because there came a

time when they were willing to cease extending the limits of their

empire over the earth and all the treasures it contains? Have we not

conquered vast deserts with our railroads just because we have been

able to renounce almost all the artistic and moral perfections which

were the glory of the ancients?

In the light of this idea, the historian felt that he had come to

understand all the better ancient civilisation and our own, and that

his eyes were able to pierce more deeply into the shadowy depths of

human destiny. A civilisation which pursues its desire for perfection

beyond a certain limit ends by exhausting its energy in the pursuit

of an object at once too narrow and impossible of attainment. On the

other hand, a civilisation which allows itself to be intoxicated by

the madness of mere size, by speed, by quantity, is destined to end

in a new type of crass and violent barbarism. But the point where

these two opposing forces of life find their most perfect equilibrium

changes continually from age to age; and any epoch approaches more or

less near this point according to the degree of activity of the two

forces struggling within it. The artist, the priest, the historian, the

philosopher, in moments of discouragement, when they feel themselves

assailed by the temptation to think only of a career or of money, may

well find new strength in the idea that each of them is working in his

different way to preserve an ideal of perfection in men’s souls—it

may be a perfection of art or of morality, of the intellect or of the

spirit. Let them remember that this ideal, limited as it may seem,

serves as a dike to prevent our civilisation from being engulfed in an

overwhelming flood of riches and from sinking in an orgy of brutality.

This task is so great and so noble that those who strive for it ought

surely to feel that they do not live in vain.