It may
therefore easily come about that the thoughts of men, tested by the
principles that seem to rule their conduct, may be belated, or
irrelevant, or premonitory; for the living organism has many strata,
on any of which, at a given moment, activities may exist perfect
enough to involve consciousness, yet too weak and isolated to control
the organs of outer expression; so that (to speak geologically) our
practice may be historic, our manners glacial, and our religion
palaeozoic. The ideals of the nineteenth century may be said to have
been all belated; the age still yearned with Rousseau or speculated
with Kant, while it moved with Darwin, Bismarck, and Nietzsche: and
to-day, in the half-educated classes, among the religious or
revolutionary sects, we may observe quite modern methods of work
allied with a somewhat antiquated mentality. The whole nineteenth
century might well cry with Faust: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my
bosom!" The revolutions it witnessed filled it with horror and made it
fall in love romantically with the past and dote on ruins, because
they were ruins; and the best learning and fiction of the time were
historical, inspired by an unprecedented effort to understand remote
forms of life and feeling, to appreciate exotic arts and religions,
and to rethink the blameless thoughts of savages and criminals.
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