Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/14

viii and given it a distinctive view of life. It cannot be said too often that behind all diversities of occupation and taste there is one race or national mind; and that religion, politics, art and trade are different forms of expression of a life which is essentially unified. We are as definitely American in our art as in our business, in our religion, as in our recreation. As a man puts himself at one moment with all the force of his nature into some unselfish devotion and at another into some project for bettering his fortunes and at another into some form of amusement or exercise, so a nation applies itself at one time to its public affairs, at another to its love of art and at another to its trade and commerce; these activities, in their entirety, constituting an expression, not of isolated groups of workers but of a collective people organized into a nation.

The literature of a period is significant, therefore, not only of the talent or genius of individual men and women, but of the mind of a whole people. Character, temperament, racial or national quality of thought, artistic tastes and standards, are clearly revealed in it; but, above all, its ideals are disclosed with an unconscious fullness and clearness of revelation possible in no other form of expression.

For in its books a race, a nation, a generation utters its deepest thought, expresses its hidden feeling, confesses its highest ideals. In its books a generation lays bare its heart and holds back nothing which is essential to a complete confession of the things for which it cares most deeply. Men of genius always build better than they know because they conform, unconsciously, to certain great laws written in their natures. Goethe said that his books constituted one great confession. In his happiest hours of creative work the unconscious part of his nature worked with and through his consciousness and betrayed the manner of man he was. In such moments, when thought, experience, divination and character are fused and blended by the imagination in the most sincere and exalted expression, a man can keep nothing back. All disguises are laid aside, all hypocrisies forgotten, all conventions and restraints put away, and