But we, Verhaeren thinks, must not belong to this world of the past, this moribund world; no, we who live in towns must think with them, must live with the new age, create in league with it, and find a new language for its dumb yearning. A return to nature is no longer possible for us: evolution cannot be screwed back again. If we have lost great values, we must replace them by new; if our religious feeling for the old God is cold and dead, we must create new ideals. We must find new aims that our ancestors knew not of; in the new forms of the city we must find a new beauty, in her noises a new rhythm, in her confusion an order, in her energy an object, in her stammering a language. If the towns have destroyed much, they will perhaps create still more. In their melting-pot professions, races, religions, nations, languages are blended: ...les Babels enfin réalisées Et les peuples fondus et la cité commune Et les langues se dissolvant en une.[17] 'The old order changeth, giving place to new'; and we must not ask whether the new is better than the old; we must trust that it is so. The feverish convulsions of the great cities, this unrest, this screaming torment, cannot be in vain. For they, these pains and convulsions, are only the birth-throes of the new. But he who has been the first to feel, with a glad presentiment, this pain of the masses, this fermentation, as joy, this unrest as hope, must himself be an authentic new man, one of those who are called to give a poetic answer to all the complaints and questions of our time. FOOTNOTES: [1] 'L'Âme de la Ville' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [2] Ibid. (_Ibid._). [3] 'La Foule' (_Les Visages de la Vie_). [4] 'Les Villes' (_Les Flambeaux Noirs_). [5] 'L'Âme de la Ville' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [6] 'La Ville' (_Les Campagnes Hallucinées_). [7] 'Les Spectacles' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [8] 'Les Promeneuses' (_Ibid_.). [9] 'La Bourse' (_Ibid._). [10] 'Le Bazar' (_Ibid._). [11] 'Le Départ' (_Les Campagnes Hallucinées_). [12] 'La Plaine' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [13] 'Le Port' (_Ibid._). [14] 'La Plaine' (_Ibid._). [15] 'Vers le Futur' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [16] 'L'Âme de la Ville' (_Les Villes Tentaculaires_). [17] 'Le Port'(_Ibid._). THE MULTITUDE Mets en accord ta force avec les destinées Que la foule, sans le savoir, Promulgue, en cette nuit d'angoisse illuminée. É.V., 'La Foule.'