they have placed quality above quantity; but if 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 this 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 the standards of quantitative measures 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 stranger yet. In this century of progress the whole world deplores ten times a day the decadence of all things. How can we explain such confusion as this? The answer is simply that the same act may be judged as a phenomenon of progress or of decadence, according as one looks at it from the point of view of Quality or of Quantity. Set an architect and a locomotive-builder to disputing on the modern world. The first 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 marvelous monuments which are the glory of the Middle Ages. The second 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 with spectacles of different colors can never agree on the color of the world. 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 characterizes the age we live in.

IV

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, 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 others very rich in mines and forests, at the very moment when our civilization 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 their 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 exact to say that, in contrast to American barbarism, Europe reaps the harvest of civilization; 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 civilization. The new devil has got hold of them also. 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 in 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 in the way of 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 fardistant 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 slow, 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 civilization grows toward perfection in proportion to the

rapidity with which she produces 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.

V

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 it were only to bring back this agreeable news that the historian of antiquity has made 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 worshiped, 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, and of expanding cultivated rand, and of working new mines. Art, like industry, agriculture, like literature, will be compelled to increase their product 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 which we are looking at is a marvelous 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. But it is that very method 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 which seems 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 moralities which have 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 them to set limits to their needs and desires, then these old moralities 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 tell one from 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 civilization 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 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 disregard 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 from another planet upon this earth 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 civilizations long since dead. But these are 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 money or social position, and no longer find their end in the careers themselves. And yet how many

times as he traveled across the wildernesses 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 marvelous 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 ancient civilizations and our own all the better, and that his eyes were able to pierce more deeply into the shadowy depths of human destiny. A civilization 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 civilization 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

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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 dyke to prevent

our civilization 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.

DORINDA'S JOY

'Why do you do this thing?' asked a London magistrate of a man, brought before him for wife-beating, for the fourth time.

'Ah, ye gotta biff 'em abaht,' answered the defendant, it mikes 'em love ye!'

WE, Theophilus and Jane and I, were talking about the Robinsons. The ophilus and Jane are sound in Christian doctrine; they say grace before meat, have family prayers, and hold to orthodoxy as to an handmaiden of righteousness. If I had not always known them I might be a little frightened at them, because our angles of vision differ. As it is, Jane and I always agree (or at least Jane persuades me that we do), and Theophilus and I always make allowances for each other.

The Robinsons, John and Dorinda, are warm friends of Theophilus and Jane. I know them but slightly, nevertheless I shall speak with the familiarity of a closer acquaintance. John has a good business, and is doing well, although his income does not make him rich. Dorinda is rich in her own right; her income is probably thrice John's; nevertheless John maintains the family, so that Dorinda's income is set aside. This is in accord with John's wholesome view that it behooves him to care for and support his own family.

In our discussion, Theophilus said, 'Dorinda is a woman of very fine character. She has great nobility of spirit. For instance, she would like very much to have an automobile. Living where they do, it would be a great convenience to her, and we know that she wants one in the worst way. But John says, "no"; he declares that his income does not warrant the expense, and Dorinda, like the good and dutiful wife that she is, not only submits, but does it gladly. She neither complains nor protests. Of course, she herself could maintain half a dozen automobiles if she wanted to, and yet you never hear a complaint from her because she has

none.

"The incidence of comment,' I replied, 'seems to be on John rather than on Dorinda. That she meets a difficult and disagreeable situation without wincing is doubtless creditable, and it would be unfair to her to refer to her submission as a lazy way of avoiding trouble.'

Both Theophilus and Jane agreed in unison that there was nothing lazy about Dorinda.

'But, as for John,' I continued, 'there is an expression which fits him perfectly, and which is clearly indicated in the situation: John is a hog!'

By this it was evident that I had