hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best governments. God keep us from both!"
Now God has not kept us from schools and printing; but politicians frequently have. The Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages, the burning of Bibles during the Counter Reformation, the Russian censorship under the czars, the censorship in all the battling nations during the late war, show us what the practical politician, especially the politician of Taoist ancestry, thinks of printing and literature: "God keep us from them both." The censorship of the press is the highest tribute paid to literature by the practical man. It is his attempt to prevent society from governing itself by the expression of its ideas and emotions.
If, now, we enquire rather particularly why literature is actually such a formidable power in the state that Taoist governors ask God to be delivered from it, we shall be on the track of the true utility of literature. Aristotle declared, you remember, that literature is an imitation of life. At first blush, there should seem to be no more innocent and idle occupation than making, with words, a picture or imitation of life. Why is an imitation of life more feared
