What will come out of this vast, unbarriered flood of sunshine of enlightenment, out of these concentrations social called cities, these concentrations industrial called combinations? Who can say? Who would care to destroy life’s chief interest, the veiled future, by foreseeing? One thing we can be assured of--it will not be tyranny. It could not be tyranny, because the light of intellect, of real intelligence, is now in millions of minds, is kindling in millions more. Of the many misreadings of history perhaps the silliest is that which attributes to former times an idealism greater than that of our own day. And of the many misreadings of our own times certainly the silliest is that which attributes more idealism to such countries as Germany, Austria, and Italy than to these United States. The Middle Ages are generally cited as the period of intensest and loftiest idealism. But looking past the artistic and literary few of those centuries, looking at nations and peoples, what do we see? Ignorance, squalor, inconceivable physical and mental and moral wretchedness; ferocious tyrannies worse almost than anarchy itself and constantly producing it; stolid and heartless indifference in almost all to the welfare of their fellow-beings; “Every man for himself” the universal cry. No wonder there was a passionate yearning for the life beyond the grave with its promise of escape from a world made hideous by “man’s inhumanity to man.” And in these modern countries where so-called idealism is rampant, we find false and oppressive social and industrial conditions in the ascendant, we find a deplorable incapacity for dealing with the problems of life or an ignorant insensibility to them. If idealism means inanely beating the empty air, if it means the worship of the vague, the remote and the purely fanciful, then this age cannot be charged with idealism and our country must plead guilty to the charge of gross materialism; and for idealism we must look to seclusions and deserts, where a few surviving dirty and distracted hermits and yogis spend their time in fantastical imaginings. But if idealism means rational, realizable and realizing dreams of a to-morrow that shall be as much better than to-day as to-day is better than yesterday, then the world was never before so idealistic, and America is the chief prophet and chief apostle of idealism.