Taste in some degree, is often inherent in the individual, but its necessary development is made possible only by familiarity with superior work. There are fashions in literature as in everything else, and they change from time to time, from country to country, from race to race. But what is essential to the quality of greatness in literature does not change, for it is not primarily a matter of technique or style or even dominant social concepts. Great works of literature have endured for the reason that they deal in some measure with characteristic moods which occur in all races and times, and relate us all in an unbroken descent throughout the centuries. The passions and struggles, the hopes and failures, the triumphs and defeats, the joys and heartaches of men and women are what they were three thousand years ago, and shall be so, after the moon shall have become a popular summer resort.
World literature is the vehicle of race consciousness.
Since 1912, when the great wave of impressionism struck us over here in the United States, we have been living in a state of cultural anarchy. Impressionism, as I use the term, may be defined as the tendency to repudiate all standards of judgment that grew out of accumulated race-experience, and the substitution of individual caprice as a guide. In whatever phase of our culture you may examine, you will find this anarchic mood dominant. Our entire scale of values is in a higgledy-piggledy condition. But it is not my intention to disparage our time.