But the history of civilisation explains this apparent mystery. A civilisation cannot deck itself with the most exquisite beauties of art, if it cannot persuade itself to live with a certain simplicity and to work with a certain deliberation. What kills art in our civilisation is the mad desire for wealth, the giddy increase of necessities, the universal craze for speed, the effort to multiply production, the general restlessness of body and mind. Beauty is not so simple and commonplace a thing as to admit of its examples being multiplied by machinery in furious haste. Whether in big things or in little, it can only be the result of a long and steady effort of the intellect and the will, which must be expressed at all costs through the medium of that living and marvellous machine, the human hand. If we wish to accumulate round us the wealth of the world at express speed, if we wish to produce and to consume with giddy rapidity, we must not be too exacting in our demands for quality and beauty in the things produced. We cannot have a great deal in this world, and have that great deal beautiful. Therefore, speaking still more generally, we might say that in the ancient civilisation the dominant principle was quality, in the modern civilisation, on the other hand, quantity. In ancient times, the more cultured, powerful, and wealthy a nation became, the greater efforts it made to produce in every branch of human activity but few things, but to ensure the materialisation in those things of a difficult and lofty ideal of perfection which should find common acceptance and admiration. Men of our time, on the other hand, direct their efforts towards production in large quantities, and at great speed, and are proud of seeing their power and grandeur expressed in the formidable figures of modern statistics. That the goods produced are of deteriorating quality is of small account. Thus the ancient civilisations tended, so to speak, towards eternity, towards the manufacture of things which, if not eternal in the precise meaning of the word, should last a long time, should conquer the ages, and should succeed in conveying to distant posterity a supreme image of their past existence. In very truth, after numberless catastrophes and pillagings, the material remains of ancient civilisations, which are piously preserved to this day, are very numerous. Our age produces in great quantities, but maybe not a single one of the buildings and material objects produced by it in such abundance can hope to conquer the ages. Everything is precarious, ephemeral, destined to live a few months or a few years; destined to a premature death from the very first hour of its birth.