t that our conversation, when serious, can dwell upon
little else. If we step into a railway-car, or the smoking-room of
a hotel, or any other place where a dozen or two of men are gathered
together, we shall hear them talking of stocks, of investments, of
commercial paper, as if there were really nothing in this universe worth
thinking of, save only the interchange of dollars and commodities. So
constant and unremitted is our forced application, that our minds are
dwarfed for everything except the prosecution of the one universal
pursuit.

Are we now prepared for the completing of the contrast? Must we say
that, as Athens was the most leisurely and the United States is the
most hurried community known in history, so the Americans are, as a
consequence of their hurry, lacking in thoroughness of culture? Or,
since it is difficult to bring our modern culture directly into contrast
with that of an ancient community, let me state the case after a
different but equivalent fashion. Since the United States present
only an exaggerated type of the modern industrial community, since the
turmoil of incessant money-getting, which affects all modern communities
in large measure, affects us most seriously of all, shall it be
said that we are, on the whole, less highly cultivated than our
contemporaries in Western Europe? To a certain extent we must confess
that this is the case. In the higher culture--in the culture of the
whole man, according to the antique idea--we are undoubtedly behind all
other nations with which it would be fair to compare ourselves. It
will not do to decide a question like this merely by counting literary
celebrities, although even thus we should by no means get a verdict in
our favour. Since the beginning of this century, England has produced
as many great writers and thinkers as France or Germany; yet the general
status of culture in England is said--perhaps with truth--to be lower
than it is in these countries. It is said that the average Englishman is
less ready than the average German or Frenchman to sympathize with ideas
which have no obvious market-value. Yet in England there is an amount of
high culture among those not professionally scholars, which it would
be vain to seek among ourselves. The purposes of my argument, however,
require that the comparison should be made between our own country and
Western Europe in general. Compare, then, our best magazines--not solely
with regard to their intrinsic ex