II

The growth of the scientific spirit is not more evident in the

nineteenth century than the spread of the democratic movement. Democracy

in its inner essence means not only the slow broadening down of

government until it rests upon the assured foundation of the people as a

whole, it signifies also the final disappearance of the feudal

organization, of the system of caste, of the privileges which are not

founded on justice, of the belief in any superiority conferred by the

accident of birth. It starts with the assertion of the equality of all

men before the law; and it ends with the right of every man to do his

own thinking. Accepting the dignity of human nature, the democratic

spirit, in its finer manifestations, is free from intolerance and rich

in sympathy, rejoicing to learn how the other half lives. It is

increasingly interested in human personality, in spite of the fact that

humanity no longer bulks as big in the universe as it did before

scientific discovery shattered the ancient assumption that the world had

been made for man alone.

Perhaps, indeed, it is the perception of our own insignificance which is

making us cling together more closely and seek to understand each other

at least, even if we must ever fail to grasp the full import of the

cosmic scheme. Whatever the reason, there is no gainsaying the growth of

fellow-feeling and of a curiosity founded on friendly interest,--both of

which are revealed far more abundantly in our later literatures than in

the earlier classics. In the austere masterpieces of the Greek drama,

for example, we may discover a lack of this warmth of sympathy; and we

can not but suspect a certain aloofness, which is akin to callousness.

The cultivated citizens of Athens were supported by slave-labor; but

their great dramatic poets cast little light on the life of the slaves

or on the sad conditions of their servitude. Something of this narrow

chilliness is to be detected also in the literature of the court of

Louis XIV; Corneille and Racine prefer to ignore not only the peasant

but also the burgher; and it is partly because Molière's outlook on life

is broader that the master of comedy appears to us now so much greater

than his tragic contemporaries. Even of late the Latin races have seemed

perhaps a little less susceptible to this appeal than the Teutonic or

the Slavonic, and the impassive contempt of Flaubert and of Maupassant

toward the creatures of their imaginative observation is more

characteristic of the French attitude than the genial compassion of

Daudet. In Hawthorne and in George Eliot there is no aristocratic

remoteness; and Turgenieff and Tolstoi are innocent of haughty

condescension. Everywhere now in the new century can we perceive the

working of the democratic spirit, making literature more clear-sighted,

more tolerant, more pitying.

In his uplifting discussion of democracy, Lowell sought to encourage the

timid souls who dreaded the danger that it might "reduce all mankind to

a dead level of mediocrity" and that it might "lessen the respect due to

eminence whether in station, virtue, or genius;" and he explained that,

in fact, democracy meant a career open to talent, an opportunity equal

to all, and therefore in reality a larger likelihood that genius would

be set free. Here in America we have discovered by more than a century

of experience that democracy levels up and not down; and that it is not

jealous of a commanding personality even in public life, revealing a

swift shrewdness of its own in gaging character, and showing both

respect and regard for the independent leaders strong enough to

withstand what may seem at the moment to be the popular will.

Nor is democracy hostile to original genius, or slow to recognize it.

The people as a whole may throw careless and liberal rewards to the

jesters and to the sycophants who are seeking its favor, as their

forerunners sought to gain the ear of the monarch of old, but the

authors of substantial popularity are never those who abase themselves

or who scheme to cajole. At the beginning of the twentieth century there

were only two writers whose new books appeared simultaneously in half a

dozen different tongues; and what man has ever been so foolish as to

call Ibsen and Tolstoi flatterers of humanity? The sturdy independence

of these masters, their sincerity, their obstinate reiteration each of

his own message,--these are main reasons for the esteem in which they

are held. And in our own language, the two writers of widest renown are

Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, known wherever English is spoken, in

every remote corner of the seven seas, one an American of the Americans

and the other the spokesman of the British Empire. They are not only

conscientious craftsmen, each in his own way, but moralists also and

even preachers; and they go forward in the path they have marked out,

each for himself, with no swervings aside to curry favor or to avoid

unpopularity.

The fear has been exprest freely that the position of literature is made

more precarious by the recent immense increase in the reading public,

deficient in standards of taste and anxious to be amused. It is in the

hope of hitting the fancy of this motley body that there is now a

tumultuous multiplication of books of every degree of merit; and amid

all this din there must be redoubled difficulty of choice. Yet the

selection gets itself made somehow, and not unsatisfactorily. Unworthy

books may have vogue for a while, and even adulation; but their fame is

fleeting. The books which the last generation transmitted to us were,

after all, the books best worth our consideration; and we may be

confident that the books we shall pass along to the next generation will

be as wisely selected. Out of the wasteful overproduction only those

works emerge which have in them something that the world will not

willingly let die.

Those books that survive are always chosen from out the books that have

been popular, and never from those that failed to catch the ear of their

contemporaries. The poet who scorns the men of his own time and who

retires into an ivory tower to inlay rimes for the sole enjoyment of his

fellow mandarins, the poet who writes for posterity, will wait in vain

for his audience. Never has posterity reversed the unfavorable verdict

of an artist's own century. As Cicero said--and Cicero was both an

aristocrat and an artist in letters,--"given time and opportunity, the

recognition of the many is as necessary a test of excellence in an

artist as that of the few." Verse, however exquisite, is almost

valueless if its appeal is merely technical or merely academic, if it

pleases only the sophisticated palate of the dilettant, if it fails to

touch the heart of the plain people. That which vauntingly styles itself

the _écriture artiste_ must reap its reward promptly in praise from the

_précieuses ridicules_ of the hour. It may please those who pretend to

culture without possessing even education; but this aristocratic

affectation has no roots and it is doomed to wither swiftly, as one fad

is ever fading away before another, as Asianism, euphuism, and Gongorism

have withered in the past.

Fictitious reputations may be inflated for a little space; but all the

while the public is slowly making up its mind; and the judgment of the

main body is as trustworthy as it is enduring. 'Robinson Crusoe' and

'Pilgrim's Progress' hold their own generation after generation, altho

the cultivated class did not discover their merits until long after the

plain people had taken them to heart. Cervantes and Shakspere were

widely popular from the start; and appreciative criticism limped lamely

after the approval of the mob. Whatever blunders in belauding, the plain

people may make now and again, in time they come unfailingly to a hearty

appreciation of work that is honest, genuine, and broad in its appeal;

and when once they have laid hold of the real thing they hold fast with

abiding loyalty.