he ruts that they cannot be
twisted out.

As it is impossible for any person living in a given state of society
to keep himself exempt from its influences, detrimental as well as
beneficial, we find that even those who strive to make a literary
occupation subservient to purposes of culture are not, save in rare
cases, spared by the general turmoil. Those who have at once the
ability, the taste, and the wealth needful for training themselves to
the accomplishment of some many-sided and permanent work are of course
very few. Nor have our universities yet provided themselves with the
means for securing to literary talent the leisure which is essential
to complete mental development, or to a high order of productiveness.
Although in most industrial enterprises we know how to work together so
successfully, in literature we have as yet no co-operation. We have not
only no Paris, but we have not even a Tubingen, a Leipsic, or a Jena, or
anything corresponding to the fellowships in the English universities.
Our literary workers have no choice but to fall into the ranks, and
make merchandise of their half-formed ideas. They must work without
co-operation, they must write in a hurry, and they must write for those
who have no leisure for aught but hasty and superficial reading.

Bursting boilers and custom-house frauds may have at first sight nothing
to do with each other or with my subject. It is indisputable, however,
that the horrible massacres perpetrated every few weeks or mouths by our
common carriers, and the disgraceful peculation in which we allow
our public servants to indulge with hardly ever an effective word of
protest, are alike to be ascribed to the same causes which interfere
with our higher culture. It is by no means a mere accidental coincidence
that for every dollar stolen by government officials in Prussia, at
least fifty or a hundred are stolen in the United States. This does not
show that the Germans are our superiors in average honesty, but it
shows that they are our superiors in thoroughness. It is with them an
imperative demand that any official whatever shall be qualified for his
post; a principle of public economy which in our country is not simply
ignored in practice, but often openly laughed at. But in a country where
high intelligence and thorough training are imperatively demanded, it
follows of necessity that these qualifications must insure for their
possessors a permanent career in which the temp