The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-02-20
EQUALITY.
[New orleans Pica1uns.l

In turning the leaves of one of the ex- quisitely illustrated magazines, which are now the most magnificent pratrons of the American wood engTaver, one is nat urally led to consider the overmastering tendency of our civilization, which is, in a certain sense, typi6ed by these luxur- ious periodicals. The American maga- zine, so far as the letter press is con- cerned, lacks the profundity that belongs to the leading English publications 1;
 but the paper is of the finest quality, the illustrations are often real works of art, and the articles treat on the questions which go to make up "the form and body of the time." It is not very long since such a book could not have been produced at all, even for the use of the privileged few, and it is very short time, indeed, since the masses could hope to know any of the pleasures which are now provided with unfailing regularity.
 It is the same throughout all the wide domain of human thought. In ancient times there was no lack of marvelously aeSse speculation, but the grandest efforts of the thinkers wrought but little change in the surrounding conditions of the masses who must always constitute the essential fibre of society While Cicero was writing his masterly tractates on the relations of men, millions of human be- ings were annually being appropriated as the spells of imperial conquest. The grandest flights of Greeian oratory did not touch very deeply the moral nature of the average Greek. There existed then an intense appreciation of everything that possessed the radiant form of art, but there was an utter inability to perceive the immense importance of general prin- ciples to the greatest masses of the hu- man race. Democracy had then made great progress in theory, but it had ab- solutely failed to mold the thought and legislation of the time.
 Now, however, all this is changed. Books are no longer written for the few, laws are not made for the benefit of a narrow caste, governments are no longer worked for the advantage of what was once the governing class. Equality, the essence of democracy, is the very soul Of our civilization, and no statesman can now afford to overlook this dominating fact. The writer and the man of science must also clearly recognize the existence of this new factor in our modern thought if they hope to materially influence the destinies of the race.
 Doubtless this immediate responsibil. ity to public opinion, and the consequent temptation to work with an eye to imme- diate effect, are fatal to the highest form of art. If Demosthenes were living now, he would hardly have the patience to painfully transcribe and re-transcribe the works of Thucydides, in order to catch the secret of his style for he would know full well that all the loftier ends of ora tory are now to be achieved by simpler, and less artistic means. The master pieces of art were produced with no con- sideration as to the effect they would have on contemporaneous thought, and it is quite possible that the capacity to do perfect work has gone with this indifFer- ence to public opinion. ..c
 Yet we can afford to view complacently the absence of the human intellect's highest manifestations if we are to have, in their place, the gradual amelioraaion of the average mans condition in life. There is boundless pathos in hopeless suffering. There is an inexpressible sad ness in the fate of human being for whom the arrangements of society have made ambition the merest 6gment of a dream. The world is rich in works of art whose eternal lines of beauty times destroying hand can never touch, and we may, therefore, forgive the artistic short comings of our civilization which through the correlated agencies of lisera- ture, science and legislation-seeks to re- move the barriers to that equality which is not the synonym for license, but is simply the expression of belief that all men should be forever free to struggle upward through the darkness to the light.