Or they give
themselves to the penetration of some still opaque riddle in phenomena
as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work that
was once the whole substance of social existence--for most men spent all
their lives in earning a living--is now no more than was the burden upon
one of those old climbers who carried knapsacks of provisions on their
backs in order that they might ascend mountains. It matters little to
the easy charities of our emancipated time that most people who have
made their labour contribution produce neither new beauty nor new
wisdom, but are simply busy about those pleasant activities and
enjoyments that reassure them that they are alive. They help, it may be,
by reception and reverberation, and they hinder nothing. ...
Section 11
Now all this phase of gigantic change in the contours and appearances
of human life which is going on about us, a change as rapid and as
wonderful as the swift ripening of adolescence to manhood after the
barbaric boyish years, is correlated with moral and mental changes at
least as unprecedented. It is not as if old things were going out
of life and new things coming in, it is rather that the altered
circumstances of men are making an appeal to elements in his nature
that have hitherto been suppressed, and checking tendencies that have
hitherto been over-stimulated and over-developed.
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