be impossible under the new needs. The
old-fashioned university, secure in its omniscience, merely taught; the
university of the coming time will, as its larger function, criticize
and learn. It will be organized for research--for the criticism, that
is, of thought and nature. And a subtler and a greater task before those
who will presently swear allegiance to the New Republic is to aid and
stimulate that process of sound adult mental activity which is the
cardinal element in human life. After all, in spite of the pretentious
impostors who trade upon the claim, literature, contemporary literature,
is the breath of civilized life, and those who sincerely think and write
the salt of the social body. To mumble over the past, to live on the
classics, however splendid, is senility. The New Republic, therefore,
will sustain its authors. In the past the author lived within the limits
of his patron's susceptibility, and led the world, so far as he did
lead it, from that cage. In the present he lives within the limits of a
particularly distressful and ill-managed market. He must please and
interest the public before he may reason with it, and even to reach the
public ear involves other assiduities than writing. To write one's best
is surely sufficient work for a man, but unless the author is prepared
to add to his literary toil the correspondence and alert activity of a
business man, he may find that no measure of acceptance will save him
from a mysterious poverty. Publishing has become a trade, differing only
from the trade in pork or butter in the tradesman's careless
book-keeping and his professed indifference to the quality of his goods.
But unless the whole mass of argument in these Anticipations is false,
publishing is as much, or even more, of a public concern than education,
and as little to be properly discharged by private men working for
profit. On the other hand, it is not to be undertaken by a government of
the grey, for a confusion cannot undertake to clarify itself; it is an
activity in which the New Republic will necessarily engage.

The men of the New Republic will be intelligently critical men, and they
will have the courage of their critical conclusions. For the sake of the
English tongue, for the sake of the English peoples, they will set
themselves to put temptingly within the reach of all readers of the
tongue, and all possible readers of the tongue, an abundance of living
literature. They will endeavour to