In such a world as this will be, it
will be no difficult matter to create very quiet and snug retreats
for oneself. "The era of mediocrity in all things is about to begin,"
remarked a short time ago that distinguished thinker, M. Arniel of
Geneva. "Equality begets uniformity, and it is by the sacrifice of the
excellent, the remarkable, the extraordinary that we extirpate what
is bad. The whole becomes less coarse; but the whole becomes more
vulgar." We may at least hope that vulgarity will not yet a while
persecute freedom of mind. Descartes, living in the brilliant
seventeenth century, was nowhere so well off as at Amsterdam, because,
as "every one was engaged in trade there," no one paid any heed to
him. It may be that general vulgarity will one day be the condition
of happiness, for the worst American vulgarity would not send Giordano
Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no right to be
very fastidious. In the past we were never more than tolerated.
This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future.
A narrow-minded, democratic _regime_ is often, as we know, very
troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they
can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. _Noli me
tangere is_ the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass
through several alternatives of anarchy and despotism before we find
repose in this happy medium. But liberty is like truth; scarcely any
one loves it on its own account, and yet, owing to the impossibility
of extremes, one always comes back to it.
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