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Just in how far these fundamentals are now broken and scattered I shall not here attempt to say. But it is simply true that the Bible is no longer read, that religion has lost its hold, that the Constitution and laws are trampled upon by the rich and powerful, and are no longer held sacred by the poor and weak. Instead of Hawthorne, we read Zola and Gorky; instead of Longfellow and Bryant, Ibsen and Shaw. Among how many perfectly respectable, ay, even religious, people is the name of Nietsche not more familiar than that of Cardinal Newman! I do not know whither we are going, but I do know that we are going.

Come search the records of generations long dead for the seeds of our social system. You will find them planted deep, and long ago. They are the same seeds of class destruction that lay in darkness through the early centuries of Rome’s history, to spring to life in the sunshine of the triumphs of the Republic, and reach their perfect flower in the era of plethoric wealth that marked the apogee of the Empire—and then to fall, as full-blown blossoms will. They are the same seeds that for half a thousand years lay buried in simple England, to come to tardy life in the afterglow of Elizabeth’s triumphs, and reach their fulness in the social glory of the mid-Victorian era.