But the times show a certain change in spirit. Our Babel of today does not assail God’s security, for our babble builders do not seek to play the prophet or the sage so much as to play the clown successfully. The seer who gives us words of fire and folly in his futile attempt to cleave body and soul with the sword of thought, at least contrives to show us that life here can be sweet and beautiful and grand. Those whose fearful content with the life of sense and show drags us all to the level of our necessities, make life even more of an irony; for they deny the intellect and spirit their right of unfettered freedom in the domain of thought. And when thought is fettered with the appetites, life, indeed, becomes a very slavery. And half our writers are in servitude to the Egyptians. Only a few _thinkers_ lie sullen and idle in the sun--profitless vagabonds, who can only work by whim and inspiration. [Illustration] At this end of the century our Babel lacks the genuine inspiration of ancient prophecy and poetry. It is taken for granted, seemingly, that as we cannot reach God, it is not worth while to rise in thought above the mere show of life, and so all the mystery of man is swept out of our literature and philosophy. We are deafened with a million small noises of small, soulless, unreal persons. The old stirring voices that thrilled us with the clamor and sternness of life, are, for the most part, silenced or muffled, because those who grow fat on the partial enlightenment of the masses, will not allow any sort of literature to prosper which, in the words of the Areopagitica, contains “views or sentiments at all above the level of the vulgar superstition.” The literature that sprang from the marrow of the intellect, the core of the heart and life, is out of fashion, is a drug in the market. This is a day in which mere noise and notoriety completely ousts and worsts any real thought in every joust of letters. In fact, literature is read less as letters, in the old sense, than as autobiography of scandalous and notorious people. Only the sensational in literature can attract attention. There are lots of good books published every year, but they steal quietly into the world, and no one knows about them. They burden the bookseller’s shelves for awhile, and their only chance of circulation is finally that some whimsical crank may pick them out of the “remainder” boxes, when their one brief season of undisturbed respectability on the shelves is over.