out of touch with the
established order. They are also more hopelessly negative and
destructive in their ideals, as seen from the standpoint of the
established order." THORSTEIN VEBLEN in "The Theory of Business
Enterprise." Page 338.

To label a truth a truism is too often regarded as equivalent to placing
it in the category of the negligible. It is precisely the salient
obviousness, which makes a truth a truism, that places it in the direst
peril of oblivion in the stress of modern life. Such a truth was well
stated by Enrico Ferri, the Italian criminologist, in a recent lecture
before the students of the University of Naples:

"Without an ideal, neither an individual nor a collectivity can live,
without it humanity is dead or dying. For it is the fire of an ideal
which renders the life of each one of us possible, useful and fertile.
And only by its help can each one of us, in the longer or shorter course
of his or her existence, leave behind traces for the benefit of
fellow-beings."

Platitude though this may be, our greatest poets have not hesitated to
use their highest powers to impress it upon us. Robert Browning put this
truth into the mouth of Andrea del Sarto in one of the strongest lines
in all English verse,

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp."

Mr. George S. Street, in a very interesting paper in Putnam's Monthly
for November (1906), points out that the most significant contrast
between our time and Early Victorian days is a decrease in idealism.
"The most characteristic note," he tells us, "in the mental attitude of
the forties and fifties in England, and that in which they contrast most
sharply with our own times, was confidence.... In party politics this
confidence was almost without limit. There was a section of Conservatism
which really believed in things as they were, and thought it undesirable
to attempt any change for the better.... It was simply--I speak of a
section, not the party as a whole--the articulate emotion of privileged
and contented people and their parasites, and its denomination as
'stupid' was an accurate description, though hardly the brilliant
epigram for which, in our poverty of political wit, it has been taken.
On the other hand, there was a confident Liberalism which inspired a
whole party. Some wished to go faster, some slower, but all believed
sincerely in a broad scheme of domestic policy. They were to reform this
and that at ho