PREFACE
TO
"SYMBOLISTS."
Contempt of ancient learning is a sure sign of an enlightened mind.
We are the men.
Before our time, reason but little influenced mankind.
The demonstration of the above assertion being that in times gone by there were no railways, steamboats, torpedoes, or any of those anaesthetic inventions in regard to time and space on which we pride ourselves, and upon which we base our claim to have advanced the general welfare of mankind.
Marvels of science, mechanical improvements, increase of wealth (and income tax), and the perfection of all warlike apparatus, seem to blind us to the fact that abstract qualities of mind have shown no symptoms of progression. A rich barbarian, pale and dyspeptic, florid or flatulent, seated in a machine travelling at eighty miles an hour, with the machine luxuriously upholstered and well heated, and yet the traveller's mind a blank, or only occupied with schemes to cheat his fellows
