ugh
either of these roles may be part of his disguise. He is not merely
something negligible or accidental or ornamental, he is something real
and true, the product of his time, at once a phenomenon and a portent.

He is the walking hermit, the world-forsaker, but he is above all
things a rebel and a prophet, and he stands in very distinct relation
to the life of his time.

The great fact of the human world to-day is the tremendous commercial
machine which is grinding out at a marvellous acceleration the smaller
and meaner sort of man, the middle class, the average man, "the
damned, compact, liberal majority," to use the words of Ibsen, and
the world daily becomes "more _Chinese_". The rocks are fraying one
another down to desert sand, and mankind becomes a new Sahara.

But over and against the commercial machine stand the rebels, the
defiers of it, those who wish to limit its power, to redeem some of
the slaves, and to rebuild the temples which it has broken down.

Commercialism is at present the great enemy of the individual man. One
already reads in leading articles such phrases as "our commercial,
national, and imperial welfare"--commercial first, national second,
imperial third, and spiritual nowhere.

Commercialism has already subdued the Church of Christ in Western
Europe, it has disorganised the forces of art, and it tends to deny
the living sources of religion, art, and life.

It remains for the rebel to assert that even though the name and idea
of Christianity be sold--as was its Founder--for silver, though it
be rendered an impotent and useless word, yet there is in mankind a
religion which is independent of all names and all words, a spring of
living water that may be subterraneanised for a while, but can never
be altogether dammed and stopped; that there is an art which shall
blossom through all ages, either in the secret places of the world or
in the open, in the place of honour, as long as man lives upon the
world.

And he does more than assert, than merely wind upon his horn outside
the gates of the enchanted city, he is a builder, collector, saver.
He wishes to find the few who, in this fearful commercial submersion,
ought to be living the spiritual life, and showing forth in blossom
the highest significance of the Adam tree. He himself lives the life
which more must of necessity live, if only as a matter of salt to save
the body politic.

It has been urged, "You are unpracticable; you want a