The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is impossible to
hear any one of them distinctly, no matter what its claim on our
attention may be. The newspaper, the circulating library, the free
library, and the magazine are doing their best to prevent unity of
direction and the din and confusion of tongues beget a doubt whether
literature and the printing press have actually been such a blessing to
the race as enlightenment universally proclaims them to be.
The great currents of human destiny seem more than ever to move by
forces which tend to no particular point. There is a drift, tremendous
and overpowering, due to nobody in particular, but to hundreds of
millions of small impulses. Achilles is dead, and the turn of the
Myrmidons has come.
"Myrmdons, race feconde
Myrmidons,
Enfin nous commandons:
Jupiter livre le monde
Aux Myrmidons, aux Myrmidons.
Voyant qu' Achille succombe,
Ses Myrmidons, hors des rangs,
Disent: Dansons sur sa tombe
Ses petits vont etre grands."
My last defence is that the Universe is an organic unity, and so subtle
and far-reaching are the invisible threads which pass from one part of
it to another that it is impossible to limit the effect which even an
insignificant life may have.
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