ur nature does not appear to
have grown.

THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in fact
radically different from the brutes.

HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of
human government.

THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and
not drawn from the living sources.

OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial. I
never felt before what barbarians we are.

THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man is
safer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we call
our civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than to
increase the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multiplied
wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of
manners and a diffusion of education and information. Are men and
women essentially changed, however? I suppose the Parson would say
we have lost faith, for one thing.

MANDEVILLE. And superstition; and gained toleration.

HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything but
indifference.

THE PARSON. Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.

THE FIRE-TENDER. It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue of
external achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to be
in man himself. It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but what
he can produce. The best sculpture was executed two thousand years
ago. The best paintings are several centuries old. We study the
finest architecture in its ruins. The standards of poetry are
Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts,
music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a century
ago.

THE MISTRESS. Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes the
civilization of this age. It has taken eighteen hundred years for
the principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practically
incorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will take
a long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there is
growth toward him, and not away from him, and when the average
culture has reached his height, some other genius will still more
profoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.

HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age is
expressed by the Calliope.

THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon
to the orchestra.