another occasion, when I permitted myself in public to praise Mr. Bennett's picture of. The Five Towns, it was one of our distinguished women writers of fiction who, wishing to destroy me, asked the public to consider what my judgment was worth after praise of such disgusting towns.
In these circumstances,—and these are the circumstances of American authorship,—literature is a part and a tremendously impressive part of the environment of the mind. Its influence, though incalculable, is not in the slightest danger of being exaggerated. Its influence is immense. It is daily increasing. It is rapidly becoming 'the effective voice of the social government.' Just in proportion to its effectiveness as art, it takes possession of the emotions and the imagination of men, and thus controls the dynamic part of the public mind.
Now, to modify the controllable part of environment in the interest of public welfare is one of the noblest enterprises of statecraft. To attempt it is not an 'impertinence,' when it is attempted by men who understand the materials they are working with: it is a duty. Speculative writers, from Plato to Tolstoy, clearly perceiving the intimate connection between literature and public welfare, have, in jest or in earnest, proposed it as the duty of statecraft to control, with a rigor far beyond the wildest
