One evil that arose from the study of past literature, the over-valuation of literary work, they tried to obviate. They placed noble deeds on the same footing with noble words and thoughts, and saw that they were as carefully recorded and described. It was the duty of the young to report, and give permanent form to, anything that was done greatly. With their enthusiasm made more glowing by their ignorance and inexperience, they acted as the historiographers of the race. The youth of a family went with the elders whenever any difficulty offered itself, and with their recording instruments, inasans and linasans and idrosans, they took flying pictures, electrographs, and reports of the scene for deposit in the valley of memories. If any emergency arose and was nobly met when the youthful remembrancers were not present, they wrote the annals of it none the less, and reproduced its scenes in moving representations after interviewing all who witnessed the deed. There was as much inspiration, this people held, in a great action as in a great book, provided it illumined the darkness of the road ahead of them. For to them the true test of greatness and inspiration was the power of fore-illumination or of stimulus to progress. Whatsoever flashed light over the unknown in front must have come from a higher point of view than their own immediate surroundings. Word or deed, it was to them all the same, if it had this divine characteristic; the one was as worthy of chronicling and preserving as the other. But they ceased to look upon it as a source of stimulus to action as soon as it failed to throw light upon their future, or to hold up an ideal that they had not yet attained. Inspiration, like all other things and beings in the universe, was progressive. No idea or deed, no word or book could be permanently inspired. And the quicker a race progressed, the sooner it sterilised its sacred thoughts and deeds. All noble human advance was a process of deinspiration; a step upwards makes the climber capable of looking down upon the previous point of vision, and of looking up for a still higher, and to gaze downwards is to encourage retrogression. Whosoever or whatsoever caught the first gleam of a peak above them was to them inspired. But it was the duty to reach that peak in their march upwards as soon as possible; and once it was reached, where was the inspiration? It was itself far below with the age that supplied it.