Strange that the great dramatic poets of modern times have had a weakness for turning their tragedies into encyclopædias! Consider "Faust" and "Brand," for instance. Is it that the sentiment of the eternal was already beginning to weaken in Goethe and Ibsen? Were they overburdened by their own age? Their world was too much with them; and so they did not reach the highest peaks of tragedy: they were not universal. 96 _What is Modern_ It is time we erected a standard whereby to test what is modern. To be an adherent of all the latest movements--that is at most to be anarchistic, eclectic, inconsistent--call it what you will. Futurism, Realism, Feminism, Traditionalism may be all of them opposed or irrelevant to modernity. It is not sufficient that movements should be new--if they are ever new; the question is, To what end are they? If they are movements in the direction of emancipation, "the elevation of the type Man," then they are modern; if they are not, then they are movements to be opposed or ignored by moderns. If modernism be a vital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential expression of humanity, to be traced, therefore, in the history of humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition. The true modern is a continuator of tradition as much as the Christian or the conservative: the tine fight between progress and stagnation is always a fight between antagonistic _traditions._ To battle against tradition _as such_ is, therefore, not the task of the modern; but rather to enter the conflict--an eternal one--for his tradition against its opposite: Nietzsche found for this antithesis the symbolism of Dionysus and Apollo. Does such a tradition of modernity exist? Is there a "modern spirit" not dependent upon time and place, and in all ages modern? If there is--and there is--the possession of it in some measure will alone entitle us to the name of moderns, give us dignity and make the history of Man once more dramatic and tragical. It is a pity that some historian has not yet traced, in its expression in events, the history of this conflict--a task requiring the deepest subtlety and insight. Meantime, for this tradition may be claimed with confidence such events as Greek Tragedy, most of the Renaissance, and the emancipators of last century. These are triumphant expressions of "the modern spirit," but that spirit is chiefly to be recognized as a principle not always triumphant or easy of perception, constantly struggling, assuming many disguises and tirelessly creative. It is not, indeed, only a tradition of persons, of dogmas, or of sentiments: it is a principle of Life itself. This conception, it is true, is grand, and even terrifying--a disadvantage in this age. But is there any other which grants modernity more than the status of an accident of time and fashion? 97 _How We Shall Be Known_