You work out your
answers as if he were a sum in rule-of-three: 'If man in so many
thousands of years has done so much in such a direction at this or
that rate of speed, what will he be doing--?' and so on. You forget
he is swayed by impulses that can enter into no calculation--drawn
hither and thither by powers that can never be represented in your
algebra. In one generation Christianity reduced Plato's republic to
an absurdity. The printing-press has upset the unanswerable
conclusions of Machiavelli."
"I disagree with you," said the Minor Poet.
"The fact does not convince me of my error," retorted the
Philosopher.
"Christianity," continued the Minor Poet, "gave merely an added
force to impulses the germs of which were present in the infant
race. The printing-press, teaching us to think in communities, has
nonplussed to a certain extent the aims of the individual as opposed
to those of humanity. Without prejudice, without sentiment, cast
your eye back over the panorama of the human race. What is the
picture that presents itself? Scattered here and there over the
wild, voiceless desert, first the holes and caves, next the rude-
built huts, the wigwams, the lake dwellings of primitive man.
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