Take a man who was
born in 1860, and who is to die with the century--what would be _his_
idea of life? Contention, bickering, discontent, chronic irritation--a
regime of hair-cloth tempered by finger-nails."
"Yes," said another, "as you say, we have all the elements at last. And
the elements of human nature are unchanging--like the elements of
chemistry; and they combine in the same unchanging fashions. Imagine a
reconstructed universe without sulphur or nitrogen; or imagine elements
that combine to one purpose in this corner of the laboratory combining to
another purpose in that. The same human compounds are produced through
the ages, and the elements that follow one formula in the old world will
follow the same formula in the new--even if they break the crucible. A
generation ago we thought--poor pathetic creatures--that our pacific
processes showed social science in its fullest development. But to-day we
have all the elements possessed by the old world itself, and we must take
whatever they develop, as the old world does. We have the full working
apparatus finally, with all its resultant noise, waste, stenches, stains,
dangers, explosions."
"Um," said Truesdale, to whom these observations sounded disagreeably
like oratory; "how does all this bear on my case? I _call_ it mine,
to observe the forms," he added, with a smile to which no one responded.
"I can tell you that myself," broke in Brower. "The last twenty years
have brought us elements that have never been in our national life
before: a heavy immigration from southeastern Europe, for example.
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