The important fact is not that the new fancy might possibly
be true--who shall know that?--but that it has entered the heart of a
leading American to conceive and to cherish it. The genteel tradition
cannot be dislodged by these insurrections; there are circles to which
it is still congenial, and where it will be preserved. But it has been
challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been
discovered. No one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it. No
one need be afraid, for instance, that his fate is sealed because some
young prig may call him a dualist; the pint would call the quart a
dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. We need not be
afraid of being less profound, for being direct and sincere. The
intellectual world may be traversed in many directions; the whole has
not been surveyed; there is a great career in it open to talent. That
is a sort of knell, that tolls the passing of the genteel tradition.
Something else is now in the field; something else can appeal to the
imagination, and be a thousand times more idealistic than academic
idealism, which is often simply a way of white-washing and adoring
things as they are. The illegitimate monopoly which the genteel
tradition had established over what ought to be assumed and what ought
to be hoped for has been broken down by the first-born of the family,
by the genius of the race.
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