(all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the
eternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of
Birmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon....

* * * * *

When a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless,
speechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to be
this trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate England, and when, thrust up
out of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at that
vast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the
poor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where--he naturally
thinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks
to those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and when
he finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the same
question over and over that we in America are asking too, "Where are we
going?" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great
broadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered as
New York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here,
as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, "WHERE
ARE WE GOING?"

* * * * *

The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern
times is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society--our present
machine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will make
them want to live.

If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being
his building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a
book--an exultant book about common people. He would focus and express
democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will
ever do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation
before men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make
it a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people who
have something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobody
knows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kinds
of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some
kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other
kinds are for.

We are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, and
some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this
vision is; but it is going to take