Inez looked at Armstrong for a moment with a puzzled expression, but failed to find any suggestion that he was speaking lightly. And yet—what a change in attitude from the morning! She hesitated to turn the subject upon what seemed to her to be forbidden ground, yet she could not resist opposing his expressions, even though they might be uttered flippantly. Her voice contained a reproach.
“You spoke differently of men this morning.”
Armstrong turned to her quickly. “This morning?” he repeated. “Oh, but I was referring to the humanists, and to ancient ones at that. I am talking now of men in general, rather than of those rare exceptions, ancient or modern, who have succeeded in separating themselves from their commonplace contemporaries. Of course, my respect for the old-timers is supreme, because their great accomplishments were in the face of so much greater obstacles. Since then the world has had five hundred years in which to degenerate.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Inez,” Helen interrupted, complacently. “He is simply trying to start an argument, and he does not believe a word he says. He really looks upon men as infinitely superior beings in the past, present, and future, and this self-abnegation on the part of himself and his sex is only a passing conceit.”
“I refuse to be side-tracked,” Armstrong insisted. “I grant that the conversation started more in jest than in earnest, but I maintain my position, none the less. Modern civilization has brought to us a wonderful material development, but intellectual advance, instead of keeping abreast of the material, has positively retrograded.”
“You really make me feel ashamed to be living in such an abominable age,” suggested Uncle Peabody.
Inez was serious. “I am quite incompetent to carry on this discussion with you, Mr. Armstrong,” she said, disregarding the others, “and I admire, as you know, the marvellous accomplishments of these ‘old-timers,’ as you call them, wondering at their power to overcome the obstacles which we know existed. Yet I like to believe that the ages which have passed have marked an advance on all sides rather than a retrogression.”
“So should I like to,” assented Armstrong, “if I could; but look at the facts. William James has just succeeded in making philosophy popular, but Plato and Aristotle gave it to us before the birth of Christ. We enthuse over Shakespeare and Dante and Milton, but Homer and Virgil gave us the grandest of poetry two thousand years ago. The quattrocento, that period which so fires me with enthusiasm, gave us Raphael as an artist, together with Leonardo and Michelangelo as the foremost examples of humanists. Whom have we had since to equal them?”
“All this is beyond argument,” Inez admitted. “But is this the fault of the men or of the times? Conditions are so changed that the same kind of work can never be done again. The telephone, the telegraph, railroad trains, fast steamships, the daily papers—everything distracts the modern worker from devoting himself wholly and absolutely to his single purpose; but with this distraction is it not also true that the modern worker gives to the world what the world really needs most under the present conditions? In other words, would not these same great men, if set down in the twentieth century, produce work very similar to what modern great men have given and are giving us?”
“I should be sorry enough to think so,” affirmed Jack. “What a pity it would be!”