In all countries æsthetic theorists and critics repeat the phrase that the forms hitherto employed by art are henceforth effete and useless, and that it is preparing something perfectly new, absolutely different from all that is yet known. Richard Wagner first spoke of the "art work of the future," and hundreds of incapable imitators lisp the term after him. Some among them go so far as to try to impose upon themselves and the world that some inexpressive banality, or some pretentious inanity which they have patched up, is this art work of the future. But all these talks about sunrise, the dawn, new land, etc., are only the twaddle of degenerates incapable of thought. The idea that tomorrow morning at half-past seven o'clock a monstrous, unsuspected event will suddenly take place; that on Thursday next a complete revolution will be accomplished at a single blow, that a revelation, a redemption, the advent of a new age, is imminent, - this is frequently observed among the insane; it is a mystic delirium. Reality knows not these sudden changes. Even the great Revolution in France, although it was directly the work of a few ill-regulated minds like Marat and Robespierre, did not penetrate far into the depths, as has been shown by H. Taine and proved by the ulterior progress of history; it changed the outer more than the inner relations of the French social organism. All development is carried on slowly; the day after is the continuation of the day before; every new phenomenon is the outcome of a more ancient one, and preserves a family resemblance to it. "One would say," observes Renan with quiet irony, "that the young have neither read the history of philosophy nor Ecclesiastes, 'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.'" The art and poetry of to-morrow, in all essential points, will be the art and poetry of to-day and yesterday, and the spasmodic seeking for new forms is nothing more than hysterical vanity, the freaks of strolling players and charlatanism. Its sole result has hitherto been childish declamation, with colored lights and changing perfumes as accompaniments, and atavistic games of shadows and pantomimes, nor will it produce anything more serious in the future.

New forms! Are not the ancient forms flexible and ductile enough to lend expression to every sentiment and every thought?

Has a true poet ever found any difficulty in pouring into known and standard forms that which surged within him and demanded an issue? Has form, for that matter, the dividing, predetermining, and delimitating importance which dreamers and simpletons attribute to it? The forms of lyric poetry extend from the birthday rhyming of the "popular poet of the occasion," who works to order and publishes his address in the paper, to Schiller's Lay of the Bell; dramatic form includes at the same time the Geschundener Raubritter ("The Highwayman Fleeced"), acted some time ago at Berlin, and Goethe's Faust; the epic form embraces Kortum's Jobsiade and Dante's Divina Commedia, Heinz Tovote's Im Liebesrauche and Thackeray's Vanity Fair. And yet there are bleatings for "new forms"? If such there be, they will give no talent to the incapable, and those who have talent know how to create something even within the limits of old forms. The most important thing is the having something to say. Whether it be said under a lyric, dramatic, or epic form is of no essential consequence, and the author will not easily feel the necessity of leaving these forms in order to invent some dazzling novelty in which to clothe his ideas. The history of art and poetry teaches us, moreover, that new forms have not been found for three thousand years. The old ones have been given by the nature of human thought itself. They would only be able to change if the form of our thought itself became changed. There is, of course, evolution, but it only affects externals, not our inmost being. The painter, for example, discovers the picture on the easel after the picture on the wall; sculpture, after the free figure, discovers high relief, and still later low relief, which already intrenches in a way not free from objection on the domain of the painter; the drama renounces its supernatural character, and learns to unfold itself in a more compact and condensed exposition; the epos abandons rhythmic language, and makes use of prose, etc. In these questions of detail evolution will continue to operate, but there will be no modification in the fundamental lines of the different modes of expression for human emotion.

Additional References:

Lester F. Ward, Outlines of Sociology, Part II. Lester F. Ward, Dynamic Sociology, chap. x. Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay. D. G. Ritchie, Darwinism and Politics A. G. Warner, American Charities, Part I, chap. v. Vâcher de Lapouge, Les Sélections Sociales, chaps. viii-xv. T. R. Malthus, Principle of Population. H. Bosanquet, The Standard of Life. W. H. Mallock, Aristocracy and Evolution. T. V. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class. W. S. Jevons, Methods of Social Reform. Jane Addams and others, Philanthropy and Social Progress. E. Demolins, Anglo-Saxon Superiority. Thomas H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics. Georg Simmel, Ueber Sociale Differencierung. Émile Durkheim, De la Division du Travail Social. Achille Loria, The Economic Foundations of Society. Achille Loria, Problèmes Sociaux Contemporains, chap. vi.

[In one sense the entire literature of economics and social science might be included in these Additional References. The purpose has been, however, to include only such works as have brought out, in a significant manner, the direct relation of certain economic and social facts to the general progress of society. Even within this narrow field the compiler has selected his references sparingly in order to avoid confusing the reader. — ED.]

D. THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL FACTORS

XXXI

TALK1

We may rail at "mere talk" as much as we please, but the probability is that the affairs of nations and of men will be more and more regulated by talk. The amount of talk which is now expended on all subjects of human interest-and in "talk" I include contributions to periodical literature-is something of which a previous age has had the smallest conception. Of course it varies infinitely in quality. A very large proportion of it does no good beyond relieving the feelings of the talker. Political philosophers maintain, and with good reason, that one of its greatest uses is keeping down discontent under popular government. It is undoubtedly true that it is an immense relief to a man with a grievance to express his feelings about it in words, even if he knows that his words will have no immediate effect. Self-love is apt to prevent most men from thinking that anything they say with passion or earnestness will utterly and finally fail. But still it is safe to suppose that one half of the talk of the world on subjects of general interest is waste. But the other half certainly tells. We know this from the change in ideas from generation to generation. We see that opinions which at one time everybody held became absurd in the course of half a century,

opinions about religion and morals and manners and government. Nearly every man of my age can recall old opinions of his own, on subjects of general interest, which he once thought highly respectable, and which he is now almost ashamed of having ever held. He does not remember when he changed them, or

1 From Problems of Modern Democracy, by Edward Lawrence Godkin, pp. 221-224 (copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons).

why, but somehow they have passed away from him. In communities these changes are often very striking. The transformation, for instance, of the England of Cromwell into the England of Queen Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather into the New England of Theodore Parker and Emerson, was very extraordinary, but it would be very difficult to say in detail what brought it about, or when it began. Lecky has some curious observations, in his History of Rationalism, on these silent changes in new beliefs apropos of the disappearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobody could say what had swept it away, but it appeared that in a certain year people were ready to burn old women as witches, and a few years later were ready to laugh at or pity any one who thought old women could be witches. "At one period," says he, "we find every one disposed to believe in witches; at a later period we find this predisposition has silently passed away." The belief in witchcraft may perhaps be considered a somewhat violent illustration, like the change in public opinion about slavery in this country. But there can be no doubt that it is talk-somebody's, anybody's, everybody's talk - by which these changes are wrought, by which each generation comes to feel and think differently from its predecessor. No one ever talks freely about anything without contributing something, let it be ever so little, to the unseen forces which carry the race on to its final destiny. Even if he does not make a positive impression, he counteracts or modifies some other impression, or sets in motion some train of ideas in some one else, which helps to change the face of the world. So I shall, in disregard of the great laudation of silence which filled the earth in the days of Carlyle, say that one of the functions of an educated man is to talk, and, of course, he should try to talk wisely.