Speaking of this material aspect of our epoch and how it is likely to be
regarded in the future, when the paradise of ideal living is regained, a
modern writer says: "Will not the intense preoccupation of material
production, the hurry and strain of our cities, the draining of life into
one channel, at the expense of breadth, richness, and beauty, appear as
mad as the Crusades, and perhaps of a lower type of madness? Could
anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the
aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?" Why is it that the poems
that have lived for centuries, and the masterpieces of the world's great
painters and sculptors are not being equaled in the dawn of the twentieth
century? The answer lies in the widespread devotion to realism instead of
idealism. The immortals have joined the mortals in search for the Fleece
of Gold. And Wordsworth's oft-quoted lines were never more applicable to
us than now:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.

All the capital in the universe does not stand for success unless there is
set over against it the wealth of soul which Marcus Aurelius, that great
apostle of plain living and high thinking, ever set forth as an antidote
to the treadmill grind of commercial life. Shakespeare struck the keynote
of this lofty conception of life, and pronounced a never-dying eulogy upon
the supreme dignity of character when he said:

"Who steals my purse steals trash; ...
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."