rliaments.
Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely
become less literary. General theories of the relation of things have
thus been extruded from both; and we are in a position to ask, "What
have we gained or lost by this extrusion? Is literature better, is
politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher?"

When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and
ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a
man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about
health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about
their aims. There cannot be any better proof of the physical efficiency
of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of the
world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency
of a nation than that it talks constantly of a journey to the end of
the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and the New Jerusalem. There
can be no stronger sign of a coarse material health than the tendency
to run after high and wild ideals; it is in the first exuberance of
infancy that we cry for the moon. None of the strong men in the strong
ages would have understood what you meant by working for efficiency.
Hildebrand would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but
for the Catholic Church. Danton would have said that he was working not
for efficiency, but for liberty, equality, and fraternity. Even if the
ideal of such men were simply the ideal of kicking a man downstairs,
they thought of the end like men, not of the process like paralytics.
They did not say, "Efficiently elevating my right leg, using, you will
notice, the muscles of the thigh and calf, which are in excellent
order, I--" Their feeling was quite different. They were so filled with
the beautiful vision of the man lying flat at the foot of the staircase
that in that ecstasy the rest followed in a flash. In practice, the
habit of generalizing and idealizing did not by any means mean worldly
weakness. The time of big theories was the time of big results. In the
era of sentiment and fine words, at the end of the eighteenth century,
men were really robust and effective. The sentimentalists conquered
Napoleon. The cynics could not catch De Wet. A hundred years ago our
affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly by rhetoricians. Now
our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men. And just as