Ladies and gentlemen, you have all noticed as I have the difference between a town by daylight and a town by night; well, the daylight town belongs to the Sciences, the night-lit town to the Arts. I don’t mean that artists are night-birds, though I have heard of such a case; I mean that the Arts live on Mystery and Imagination. Have you ever thought how we should get through if we had to live in a town which never put on the filmy dark robe of night, so that hour-in, hour-out we had to stare at things garbed in the efficient overalls of Science, with their prices properly pinned on? How long would it be before we found ourselves in Coney Hatch? Well, we are in a fair way to abolish Night――Mystery and Imagination are ‘off,’ as they say, and that way sooner or later madness lies. It is time the Arts left off leaning against the wall, and took their share of the dance again. We want them to be as creative, nay, as seductive as the Sciences. We have seen Science work miracles of late; now let Art work her miracles in turn. People are inclined to smile at me when I suggest that you in America are at the commencement of a period of fine and vigorous Art. The signs, they say, are all the other way. Of course you ought to know best; all the same, I stick to my opinion with British obstinacy, and I believe I shall see it justified. V ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY A doubter of the general divinity of our civilisation is labelled ‘pedant.’ Anyone who questions modern progress is tabooed. And yet there is no doubt, I think, that we are getting feverish, rushed, complicated, and have multiplied conveniences to such an extent that we do little with them but scrape the surface of life. We were rattling into a species of barbarism when the war came, and unless we check ourselves shall continue to rattle now that it is over. The underlying cause in every country is the increase of herd-life, based on machines, money-getting, and the dread of being dull. Everyone knows how fearfully strong that dread is. But to be capable of being dull is in itself a disease.