The unity of human thought, and the enormous, silent power of forces inherited are written in our blood. After speaking of the argument that a virile nation had better give attention to "doing things worthy to be written [than] writing things fit to be done," Philip Sidney says of England: . Certain it is that, in our plainest homeliness, yet never was the Albion nation without poetry. Marry, this argument, though it be levelled against poetry, yet is it indeed a chain-shot against all learning. Of such mind were certain Goths, of whom it is written that, having in the spoil of a famous city taken a fair library, one hangmanbelike fit to execute the fruits of their wits-who had murdered a great number of bodies, would have set fire in it. "No," said another very gravely, "take heed what you do; for while they are busy about these toys, we shall with more leisure conquer their countries." This, indeed, is the ordinary doctrine of ignorance. So in overweening and pride a band of men who likened their leaders to Wotan and Siegfried, and to another tribal deity, trampled Belgium, destroyed cathedrals and colleges and libraries, and boasted that they would replace these treasures inherited from the workmen and artists and dreamers of past ages with something just as good, turned out with speed and precision in their modern factories. But in "these toys," symbolic of the great tradition of the human spirit, resided a potency that called to arms freemen from the four quarters of the earth. In Sidney's story, as in the recent incarnation of it in the conquerors of Belgium and their nemesis, are seen the two heredities. The first heredity is that of the lust for power, brutal, unregardful alike of human suffering and of human effort to escape from the dungeon of the body to a realization of the divine essence of the soul. The savagery of war, the savagery of industrialism, the savagery of intolerance, the savagery of the mob, are all fruits of this heredity, the survival of the beast. And the other heredity is the gift of the spirit. The Russian peasant, most humble of men, thinks that he possesses some share of it. Piers Plowman talked of it. Latimer and Ridley and all the glorious company of martyrs saw its brighter flame through the flames that consumed. their mortal bodies. It was the Grail that cheered the little company of exiles. in the cabin of the Mayflower and enabled them to write that first compact of free government in America. It was the courage in the heart of Washington, and the divinity that was in Lincoln. It is "the one Spirit's plastic stress" that Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear, Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear, And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. "Genius itself," as Paul Elmer More has admirably said, "the master of music and poetry and all art that enlarges life, genius itself is nothing other than the reverberations of this enormous past [the voice of the race] on the sounding-board of some human intelligence, so finely wrought as to send forth in purity the echoed tones which from a grosser soul come forth deadened and confused by the clashing of the man's individual impulses. The faith of the martyr, the courage of the pioneer, the steadfastness of the hero, the love of the emancipator, the vision of the poet,-and the virtue of plain and inarticulate men and women everywhere, gain their power from this great tradition of the race. It was this idealism, sleeping but not dead, that swept America like a divine fire in the months following April of 1917. In the great war this heredity met and conquered the heredity of brute power. Other crises remain to be met, for the warfare never ends. It is the task of school and college to guard the flame. The editors desire to express their grateful acknowledgements to the following authors and publishers for the use of copyrighted matter contained in the book: To Paul Elmer More and to the Houghton Mifflin Company, for the selection from Aristocracy and Justice; to John Dewey and to Henry Holt & Company, for the extract from German Philosophy and Politics, and to Professor Dewey and the Atlantic Monthly Company for the paragraphs from "Understanding the Mind of Germany." The extract from British Social Politics is used by the kind permission of the author, Professor Carleton Hayes. Through the kindness of the Atlantic Monthly Company the editors are enabled to include the paragraphs from Professor Münsterberg's article on "The Standing of Scholarship in America." The selection by Donald Hankey, from A Student in Arms, is included by kind permission of E. P. Dutton & Company, publishers of the book. For the right to use an extract from Viscount Morley's Recollections, the editors are indebted to the publishers, the Macmillan Company. The selections from Whitman's prose and verse are used by the kind permission of the literary executor of Whitman's works, Mr. Horace Traubel. THE GREAT TRADITION THE RENAISSANCE I. THE EXPANSION OF THE INDIVIDUAL THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Chorus. Not marching now in fields of Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians; In courts of kings where state is overturn'd; verse: Only this, gentlemen,-we must perform So soon he profits in divinity, The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd, That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name, Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes In heavenly matters of theology; Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit, His waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow; For, falling to a devilish exercise, And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, He surfeits upon cursed necromancy; [Exit. FAUSTUS discovered in his study Faust. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin To sound the depth of that thou wilt pro fess: 1 Having commenc'd, be a divine in show, And live and die in Aristotle's works. Is, to dispute well, logic's chiefest end? Then read no more; thou hast attain'd that end: A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit: Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold, Is not thy common talk found aphorisms? And thousand desperate maladies been eas'd? Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man. Couldst thou make men to live eternally, Or, being dead, raise them to life again, Then this profession were to be esteem'd. Physic, farewell! Where is Justinian? [Reads. Si una eademque res legatur duobus, alter etc. Such is the subject of the institute, [Reads. Stipendium peccati mors est. Ha! Stipendium, etc. The reward of sin is death: that's hard. [Reads. Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas; If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us. Why, then, belike we must sin, and so consequently die: Ay, we must die an everlasting death. O, what a world of profit and delight, All things that move between the quiet poles Shall be at my command: emperors and kings Are but obeyed in their several provinces, Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds; But his dominion that exceeds in this," Enter WAGNER Resolve me of all ambiguities, For pleasant fruits and princely delicates; I'll have them fill the public schools with silk, Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad; I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, And chase the Prince of Parma from our land, And reign sole king of all the provinces; Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war, Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp's bridge, I'll make my servile spirits to invent. That will receive no object; for my head Swarm to my problems, as the infernal spirits On sweet Musæus when he came to hell, experience, Shall make all nations to canonize us. Be always serviceable to us three; Like lions shall they guard us when we please; Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves. Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides; From Venice shall they drag huge argosies, Enrich'd with tongues, well seen in minerals, And more frequented for this mystery Faust. Nothing, Cornelius. O, this cheers my soul! Come, show me some demonstrations magical, That I may conjure in some lusty grove, Enter two Scholars First Schol. I wonder what's become of Faustus, that was wont to make our schools ring with sic probo. Sec. Schol. That shall we know, for see, here comes his boy. Enter WAGNER First Schol. How now, sirrah! where's thy master? Wag. God in heaven knows. Sec. Schol. Why, dost not thou know? Wag. That follows not necessary by force Wag. Have you any witness on't? were not dunces you would never ask me such a question, for is not he corpus naturale? and is not that mobile? then wherefore should you ask me such a question? But that I am by nature phlegmatic, slow to wrath, and prone to lechery (to love, I would say), it were not for you to come within forty foot of the place of execution, although I do not doubt to see you both hanged the next sessions. Thus having triumphed over you, I will set my countenance like a precisian, and begin to speak thus:-Truly, my dear brethren, my master is within at dinner, with Valdes and Cornelius, as this wine, if it could speak, would inform your worships and so, the Lord bless you, preserve you, and keep you, my dear brethren, my dear brethren! [Exit. First Schol. Nay, then, I fear he has fallen into that damned art for which they two are infamous through the world. Sec. Schol. Were he a stranger, and not allied to me, yet should I grieve for him. But, come, let us go and inform the Rector, and see if he by his grave counsel can reclaim him. : First Schol. O, but I fear me nothing can reclaim him! Sec. Schol. Yet let us try what we can do. [Exeunt. |