thousand years hence we should probably be amazed at our present
futility and grossness. Our ancestors in the Middle Ages could do
certain great things, as we, too, can do certain great things; but in
general access to the Universal Storehouse which is God we have made
progress in ways unknown to them, as our children will make such
progress after us.

But we have made only the progress we have made. We have its advantages,
but there are advantages to which we have not yet attained. We might
liken ourselves to people who have reached the fourth or fifth step of a
stairway in which there are twenty or thirty. We have climbed to a
certain height, but we are far from having reached the plane to which we
are ascending.



VII


It is worth noting this for the reason that we are so likely to think of
ourselves as the climax to which the ages have worked up, and after
which there is no beyond. We are the final word, or as the French
express it, the last cry, _le dernier cri_. All that can be felt we have
felt, all that can be known we have experienced. For the most part this
stand is taken by the intellectuals in all modern countries. In us of
to-day, of this very hour, the wave of Eternity has broken, throwing
nothing at our feet but froth. The literature of the past ten years is
soaked in the pessimism of those who regret that this should be all that
the travail of Time could produce for us.