the possibilities of the day, and how, being most closely affected by
the particular, it should coldly turn its back upon all that is general.
And it is easy, too, to understand the reaction of this intellectual
timorousness upon the minds of ordinary readers, who have too little
natural force and too little cultivation to be able to resist the
narrowing and deadly effect of the daily iteration of short-sighted
commonplaces.


Far the most penetrating of all the influences that are impairing the
moral and intellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to be
mentioned. The first of these is the immense increase of material
prosperity, and the second is the immense decline in sincerity of
spiritual interest. The evil wrought by the one fills up the measure of
the evil wrought by the other. We have been, in spite of momentary
declensions, on a flood tide of high profits and a roaring trade, and
there is nothing like a roaring trade for engendering latitudinarians.
The effect of many possessions, especially if they be newly acquired, in
slackening moral vigour, is a proverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened
by any tradition of public duty such as lingers among the English
nobles, nor as yet by any common custom of devotion to public causes,
such as seems to live and grow in the United States. Under such
conditions, with new wealth come luxury and love of ease and that fatal
readiness to believe that God has placed us in the best of possible
worlds, which so lowers men's aims and unstrings their firmness of
purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and the weakening of high
interests leaves more undisputed room for pleasure. Management and
compromise appear among the permitted arts, because they tend to
comfort, and comfort is the end of ends, comprehending all ends. Not
truth is the standard, but the politic and the reputable. Are we to