terror his little lad clung to him, while rigid and still on the ground lay a girlish woman figure just frozen to death. All about were the pathless snow fields with the ominous depth of the forest behind. It is only a common tragedy; yet only a modern artist could have wrung our heart-strings with that human appeal.

And art is learning to transfigure the humblest life with the divine significance that dwells at the heart of humanity, and is greater than the awe of a traditional religion or the splendor of an old mythology. Literature is flooded with the surging sea of common life; its old limits are swamped, and it is at once distorted and ennobled by the impulsion of new forces. The novel of real life, often sordid and bare, at times majestic and transfigured, replaces the romance of heroes and the epic of kings.

The struggle is but the birth-throes of a new ideal, an ideal of common humanity. It is not enough for us that here and there a rare saint or hero attains, it is not enough that the work of civilization is accomplished in a few individuals. To stand upon the backs of a dumb multitude, or furnish our own shoulders for the feet of arrogant heroes, are conceptions equally repulsive and unendurable to us. We demand life for ourselves, and we demand it for every human being. Our entire society is being transformed by the desire to give every man and woman, together with ourselves, all opportunity and help in striving for life, happiness, culture, intelligence, helpfulness-all ends of life that are worth seeking.

There is something thrilling in the unquestioning faith and enthusiasm with which the world is turning toward this ideal. A breath fresh and strong, like that which blows through the sagas of the Norseland, and gives their endless

attractiveness to its Thors and Odins, is felt in the new impetus of modern life. It is perhaps because we are unconscious of the implications of our ideal that we can champion it so unquestioningly. No moral effort of history, not even the Christianization of Europe, or the conversion of Asia to Buddhism, involved the difficulties and perils which are in the path of this supreme attempt of modern life. As children, if young enough, will try any task, so we with the enthusiasm of youth challenge the universe with our supreme ideal. And it is well that it is so, for a full consciousness of the significance and the difficulty of the task we have set before us might paralyze our effort and unnerve our hands. To carry every man and woman, not as dependents, but through the free and co-operative activity of each with all, on toward all the ends of life that are worth seeking, is inconceivably and appallingly difficult.

Yet some measure of intelligent appreciation of the magnitude and meaning of our undertaking is necessary to successful action. An understanding of the immense difference between modern civilization and those epochs which have preceded it, is indispensible to even a partial achievement of our aim.

In America the new ideal is more frankly taken as the object of civilization than anywhere else in the world, yet it is as well throughout Europe the creative force modifying all expressions of life. England stands to-day on the threshold of a new epoch. Her imperialism has pushed AngloSaxon speech and institutions all over the globe, and veloped a pride of race and nation unequaled since Rome. But within herself is the ferment of a new life-if not the dissolution of the empire, at least the reorganization of all her institutions and activities. The English character is con

servative and tenacious of old forms; yet even it is incapable of resisting the forces of the new life. Since 1870 England has seen the most astounding developments in the education of her people. Before that time there was practically no distinctively state education in England; since then board schools have been established all over the land, and successive Parliaments have given increased grants for popular education. The result is the creation of a great democracy, growing increasingly discontented under the admirable oligarchic rule which satisfied its predecessors. Parallel with the educational movement has been the growth of ethical and industrial socialism, and the permeation over wider areas of the popular life of the new human ideal.

Germany is suffering from the natural reaction against the splendid patriotism of the seventies. National unity being accomplished, the evils of imperialism become evident, and the deadly sameness of institutions reacting toward mediævalism chills the enthusiasm which local patriotism and the competition between small, rival states produced. But the spirit of social democracy, hard and materialistic as it is in some aspects, steadily gains ground in Germany, and tends to supplant the cold arrogance of ritualistic religion and the pessimism that accompanies selfish industrialism with some measure of enthusiasm for humanity.

The trail of the serpent of cynical unbelief is over a part of French literature, Paris contains much that is degenerate, the alternate artificial effervescence and pale sombreness of decadence is present in much French art; and the result of thirty years' devotion to militarism by an impulsive people shows sadly in the insanity that supposes an "honor of the army," or of the people, can exist which is not based upon justice and truth. Yet the higher meaning of the French

revolution is not forgotten; and under the hard military bureaucracy, and in spite of the extravagant reactions of anarchy, the new humanity slumbers in France and will waken one day, here and there are echoes of its dreams. In the splendid protest of the "intellectuals" against the pitiless dominance of the mob, France has proved that her culture is not all decadence, and that she will have her place in the world of to-morrow.

Spain is sunk under the corruption of her institutions; Italy starves beneath her unwarranted military equipment; Austria is torn by race dissensions; and Russia pushes her hard imperialism remorselessly onward. But in Tolstoi and Ada Negri, in Dostoievsky and Sienkiewicz, in Carducci and in the songs of the Bohemian peasants are there not prophecies for to-morrow?

The end of a century does mean a change in human affairs, only because men so regard it; and everywhere are prophecies that the twentieth century will differ profoundly from the nineteenth. The proposal for a peace congress, with universal disarmament as its aim, made by the one absolute despot in Europe, is no accident of selfish diplomacy. Politically nationalistic, Europe is industrially cosmopolitan. Each nation is bound intimately with others through the exchange of industrial and artistic products. Russia attempted at one time to isolate herself from the rest of Europe, and develop without foreign capital and stimulus, and she has learned from sad experience how disastrous is such an attempt. It is not the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian understanding which holds Europe together, but mutual industrial dependence. The pressure of common interests is a tremendous support to the new dream of the spirit in the work of civilization.

The difficulty in carrying out the new ideal is vastly increased by the complication of modern life. This is true even of the most superficial aspects of our civilization. The mechanical invention and discovery which furnishes the theme for every cheap eulogy of our epoch, changes in all aspects the conditions of our problem. The possibility which earlier periods possessed of working out a solution for a small fragment of humanity, isolated from the rest of mankind, has utterly passed away. In the merest mechanical fashion the world has been closely unified, and the surface unity finds a deeper corollary in the spiritual life. The entire change in international principles and relations since the eighteenth century, and the dawn of an era of greater peace, accentuate the acuteness of the industrial problem.

The movement from the country to the city, which is steadily going on all over the world, is a cause and a result of the increasing tension in the struggle for existence. Vast masses of human beings are heaped together in great cities. In one aspect such a collection of humanity as is London, seems to be an immense vortex, in which innumerable lives are ceaselessly drawn down. Up and down the great thoroughfares surges the endless stream of men and women, each seeming to be merely a member of some vast organism, yet being an individual, with his own circle of life, and his own hopes and fears-like the vortex rings in the ether which some physicists have supposed to be the ultimate constituents of matter. The smoke from a thousand factories and a million chimneys hangs like a sombre pall over the immense monster. Day and night the ceaseless hum of the city goes on. It is not the roll of the myriad omnibuses on the thoroughfares; it is not the harsh rattle of the underground trains; it is not the murmur of the million voices, harshly or U-Orations. Vol. 25