riod of decadence, and it was certainly a
precursor of the empire's fall. When we consider that it was
contemporaneous with great material prosperity and with the spread of
luxury and a certain loosening of the moral fiber, such as we are
experiencing in America today, we can not help feeling a little perturbed.
Yet there is another way of looking at it. A period of this sort is often
only a period of readjustment. The Roman empire as a political entity went
out of existence long ago, but Rome's influence on our art, law,
literature and government is still powerful. Her so-called "fall" was
really not a fall but a changing into something else. In fact, if we take
Bergson's view-point--which it seems to me is undoubtedly the true one,
the thing we call Rome was never anything else but a process of change. At
the time of which we speak the visible part of the change was
accelerated--that is all. In like manner each one of you as an individual
is not a fixed entity. You are changing every instant and the reality
about you is the change, not what you see with the eye or photograph with
the camera--that is merely a stage through which you pass and in which you
do not stay--not for the thousand millionth part of the smallest
recognizable instant. So our current American life and thought is not
something that stands still long enough for us to describe it. Even as we
write the description it has changed to another phase. And the phenomena
of transition just now are particularly noticeable--that is all. We may
call them decadent or we may look upon them as the beginnings of a new and
more glorious national life.

"The size and intricacy which we have to deal with," says Walter Lippmann,
"have done more than anything else, I imagine, to wreck the simple
generalizations of our ancestors."

This is quite true, and so, in place of simplicity we are introducing
complexity, very largely by selection and combination of simple elements
evolved in former times to fit earlier conditions. Whether organic
relations can be established among these elements, so that there shall one
day issue from the welter something well-rounded, something American,
fitting American conditions and leading American aspirations forward and
upward, is yet on the knees of the gods. We, the men and women of America,
and may I not say, we, the Librarians of America, can do much to direct
the issue.

DRUGS AND THE MAN[14]

[14] A Commencement address