Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/599

 finally been recognized, at least; and yet we look on in the most selfish indifference at the misery and sufferings of thousands who are born, languish, and die without any purpose. Suppose our attempts and aims were analyzed by an acute, merciless reason, where would it find us at the end of the nineteenth century? In the stage of formulas and definitions,—in the age of phrases. Many of us are acquainted well enough with the achievements of the human mind, but for a thousand reasons emanating from pure egotism, we ignore them, for fear of stirring up prejudices. Or is it possible to speak of progress when it is still necessary to employ errors of various kinds, not in order to save,—for an error can never save,— but to enslave mankind?”

“Stop your moralizing lecture!” was shouted at once from the tables of the theologians, the philosophers, and the government officers.

“No, no! Go on!” implored the artists, writers, lawyers, and physicians.

“I suppose,” my friend continued, “that every one of us will concede that the human brain has always been made of the same material, that ages ago it was composed of the same parts, that its actions were governed by the same laws, that its surface was composed of the same convolutions, and that ages ago even there was deposited in these convolutions that wonderful gray matter, surrounded with white matter and composed of nerve-cells, which modern physiologists designate as the seat of thought, reason, judgment, and talent. The chief organ of thinking and of talent is, therefore, the same. But what are its functions? Why do they differ so substantially from the working of that same organ in the past? Why is it that there do not arise in the brains of our age thoughts like those that originated in the brains of Homer, Sophocles, Æschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Milton, Petrarch, Tasso, Calderon, Molière, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others? Where are the brains which gave birth to the wonderful works which have been left to us by Michael Angelo, Rafael Sanzio, Rubens, Titian, Murillo, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Guido Reni, Leonardo da Vinci, Hogarth, Salvator Rosa, Correggio,