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.