Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/13



Any attempt to pass judgment on the permanent value, the ultimate rank, of the literature now being produced in this country would be premature and futile; from any such judgment appeal would be taken to posterity and, if the fallibility of contemporary opinion in the past affords any ground for prediction of future happenings reversals might confidently be looked for in many cases. In such matters we know in part and we prophesy in part; and prophecy is much the larger part. We are quite clear in our minds with regard to the merits of certain poets and prose writers and conclude, therefore, that our children's children will be of a similar mind; while, as a matter of history, the minds of grandchildren are very different from the minds of grandparents. We have good reason to believe that this poet or that novelist will be read with delight fifty years hence; but we cannot be sure; it may be that the poet or the novelist whom we regard very lightly will be held in higher esteem. The highway along which the race has journeyed is not only marked by heaps of ashes where friendly camp fires once burned, but by books which were eagerly read in one stage of the journey and quietly dropped by the way in another. For the purposes of this work, however, no attempt at the final valuation of the writing of today is necessary; it is the aim of that writing, its artistic impulse, its ethical direction, its meaning as an expression of national character and life, that are important. These various aspects of literary work, these different qualities of literary men, are, at bottom, the manifestations of that collective mind which we call American; not because it differs in quality or fiber or structure from the mind of other races, but because peculiar historical, physical and psychological influences have shaped it to definite ends