The contrary is the case in the modern world. The quantity of the things which modern industry, thanks to electricity- and steam-driven machinery, produces, is prodigious. No century ever witnessed the realisation of the miracle of abundance in a more marvellous way. But the quality of the things suffers in consequence. The ugliness and the crude vulgarity of so many objects, which in much poorer times had an elegance and a beauty which have now vanished, are the price we pay for the abundance of our times. The necessities of man have increased beyond all measure, and to satisfy them lavish and rapid production is required. The need for rapid production accounts for the invention of so many machines. But it is not possible to secure the manufacture by rigid hands of iron of so many things at such speed, and at the same time to impart to them an exquisitely artistic appearance, revealing the personal excellence of the artist. It is as much as we can do to impart to them a coarse and rude appearance of beauty, with a few ornamentations copied casually from the beautiful things which our fathers succeeded in creating in poorer and less busy times. Machinery, driven by steam or electricity, has the advantage of speed over the hand of man. It can produce in the same time a much greater number of objects. For this reason it has triumphed in a time like ours, in which the increased necessities of the world demand an extraordinary growth in production. But the hand of man,—that living and mind-inspired machine,—if it cannot compete with machines of iron for speed, is alone capable of imparting to things that perfection, that grace, and that excellence of form which can fill us with a joy which is different from, but perhaps more intense than, that afforded by easy and coarse abundance. * * * * * This contrast between ancient and modern times, between the civilisations which preceded the French Revolution and the modern American civilisation, should and would have received more attention than it has, had not the students of antiquity been too prone to lose their way in the maze of a dead erudition. We are proud of our wealth and power. We are proud of having extended our dominion over the whole planet, only a small part of which was known to the ancients, and that but vaguely. We are proud of having surprised so many of nature’s secrets, of having deciphered the mystery of so many laws, of having thrown light on so many lurking-places of disease and death, of having shaken ourselves free from so many vain fears which tormented our ancestors, of having released ourselves from so many yokes—political, moral, and intellectual—which used to weigh upon their necks. We feel ourselves strong, sure of ourselves and of our destiny as no men before us in history, in face of the blind forces of the Universe, so many of which we have subjected to our dominion and forced to serve our necessities, our ambitions, and our whims.