they are bewildered, that they are asking the same question over and over that we in America are asking too, “Where are we going?” he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great broadside of modern life.  London, his last resort, is as bewildered as New York; and so, at last, here it is.  It has to be faced now and here, as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, “WHERE ARE WE GOING?”

* * * * *

The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern times is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society—­our present machine-civilization—­a common expectation for people which will make them want to live.

If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being his building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a book—­an exultant book about common people.  He would focus and express democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will ever do it.  A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation before men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make it a fact.  What makes a society great is that it is full of people who have something to live for and who know what it is.  It is because nobody knows, now, that our present society is not great.  The different kinds of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other kinds are for.

We are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, and some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this vision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-up individualist, a great man or artist—­a man who is all of us in one—­to express for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go, what we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want.

This will have to be done first in a book.  The modern world is collecting its thoughts.  It is trying to write its bible.

The Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of the world if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact and result of the Hebrew genius.  They did not produce a civilization, but they produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out of, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the Hebrews for two thousand years.

And the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that made it great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal, masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to see all the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer the question, “WHERE ARE WE GOING?”

I would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and outlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world and say where the people are going, and where they think they are going, and where they want to go.  I have attempted to find out, and put down what might seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a very small and unimportant question—­“Where is it that I really want to go myself?” “What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being duly considered, I really want to be in?”