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THE COSMOPOLITAN OUTLOOK

writings; I know also that few even of his most inveterate opponents are bold or foolish enough to express a doubt of his courageous sincerity and essential nobility; and—what is the main thing to me—I know that no other contemporary voice speaks so directly to my heart and to the hearts of thousands of other men throughout the world. And I know too that the message of Tolstoy, whatever its impractical elements, represents what I understand as true Cosmopolitanism; that is to say, citizenship in that ideal republic of men and women of which the good and wise in all ages have dreamed, and for the coming of which they have labored. In so far as that message in its spirit is influential to-day, in so far, in my opinion, Literature and life have a cosmopolitan outlook of high significance. I trust that prosperity and the intellectual cramping and flattening, which so often result from what I have called the democratic pressure, will never seriously impede the promulgation of that message in this country and in the world at large, and that in a broad sense it may fairly be taken as an index of the spirit of that Literature of the future in which our sons and our grandsons will find solace and inspiration.

What matter if coming generations accept as entirely valid not a single article of his idealistic creed! The main consideration should be for us, as it will be, I think, for them, the man's essentially idealistic attitude toward his fellows. He is a great cosmopolitan because he is a great altruistic idealist; because, with ardor undiminished and faith unperturbed, he stands there an aged prophet amid the Russian snows:—

"Still nourishing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade."

The hope I have just expressed is not jeopardized by a curious condition of affairs to which we must now turn our thoughts. We are considering the Cosmopolitan Outlook