Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/391

 is running out, attenuating, and ere long will be extinct.

Those gentle pessimists of such congenial culture may indeed point to other ages that excel ours, say in speculative thought, and all the five arts, but I think it is demonstrable that upon the whole, and employing long epochs for the comparison, things are growing better. Notwithstanding all the ignorance and all the woe in the world to-night, never before has there been such widespread opportunity for enlightenment, never such widespread comfort, never so much kindness, so much pity for animals, for children, and, above all, never have women been shown such consideration. It needs no very powerful imagination, peering into the shadowy background of human history, to appreciate the tremendous implications of this fact. Indeed the great feminist movement of our time, a movement which in the histories of mankind centuries hence will be given the sectional mark of the beginning of a new age, is in itself the proof of a great advance, in which the ballot will be the very least important of all the liberties to be won.

With all the complications of this vast and confusing interplay of the forces of this age, the city is inextricably bound by its awful responsibility for so much that is bad, for so much that is good, in our time. And in the cities, now as always, the struggle for liberty will go on. The old leaders will pass, and the new will pass, and pass swiftly, for they are quickly consumed in the stress and heat of the passionate and savage struggle. To them