was inevitable, and a rather extreme measure on
Eve's part, no one will deny that it afforded relief on the main point.
It seems to be the universal instinct of all Eve's sons and daughters
that have followed since, that an expressive world is better than a dull
one. An expressive world is a world in which all the men and women are
getting themselves expressed, either in their experiences or in their
arts--that is, in other people's experiences.

The play, the picture, and the poem and the novel and the symphony have
all been the outgrowth of Eve's infinity. She could not contain herself.
She either had more experience than she could express, or she had more
to express than she could possibly put into experience.

One of the worst things that we know about the Japanese is that they
have no imperative mood in the language. To be able to say of a nation
that it has been able to live for thousands of years without feeling the
need of an imperative, is one of the most terrible and sweeping
accusations that has ever been made against a people on the earth.
Swearing may not be respectable, but it is a great deal more respectable
than never wanting to. Either a man is dead in this world, or he is out
looking for words on it. There is a great place left over in him, and as
long as that place is left over, it is one of the practical purposes of
books to make it of some use to him. Whether the place is a good one or
a bad one, something must be done with it, and books must do it.

If there were wordlessness for five hundred years, man would seek vast
inarticulate words for himself. Cathedrals would rise from the ground
undreamed as yet to say we worshipped. Music would be the daily
necessity of the humblest life. Orchestras all around the world would be
created,--would float language around the dumbness in it. Composers
would become the greatest, the most practical men in all the nations.
Viaducts would stretch their mountains of stone across the valleys to
find a word that said we were strong. Out of the stones of the hills,
the mists of rivers, out of electricity, even out of silence itself, we
would force expression. From the time a baby first moves his limbs to
when--an old man--he struggles for his last breath, the one imperious
divine necessity of life is expression. Hence the artist now and for
ever--the ruler of history--whoever makes it. And if he cannot make it,
he makes the makers of it. The artist is the man who, fa