The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 2

dignity of a national purpose.
Our century has a host of things to do, bold things, noble things,
tedious things, difficult things, enduring things. It has only a hundred
years to do them in, and two of these years are gone already. We must
be up and bestir ourselves. If we are called to help in this work, there is
no time for an idle minute. Idle men and idle women no doubt will
cumber our way, for there are many who have never heard of the work
to do, many who will never know that there has been a new century.

These the century will pass by with the gentle tolerance she shows to
clams and squirrels, but on those of us she calls to her service she will
lay heavy burdens of duty. "The color of life is red." Already the fad of
the drooping spirit, the end-of-the-century pose, has given way to the
rush of the strenuous life, to the feeling that struggle brings its own
reward. The men who are doing ask no favor at the end. Life is repaid
by the joy of living it.
As the century is strenuous so will it be complex. The applications of
science have made the great world small, while every part of it has
grown insistent. As the earth has shrunk to come within our grasp, so
has our own world expanded to receive it. "My mind to me a kingdom
is," and to this kingdom all the other kingdoms of the earth now send
their embassadors. The complexity of life is shown by the extension of
the necessity of choice. Each of us has to render a decision, to say yes
or no a hundred times when our grandfathers were called upon a single
time. We must say yes or no to our neighbors' theories or plans or
desires, and whoever has lived or lives or may yet live in any land or on
any island of the sea has become our neighbor. Through modern
civilization we are coming into our inheritance, and this heirloom
includes the best that any man has done or thought since history and
literature and art began. It includes, too, all the arts and inventions by
which any men of any time have separated truth from error. Of one
blood are all the people of the earth, and whatsoever is done to the least
of these little ones in some degree comes to me. We suffer from the
miasma of the Indian jungles; we starve with the savages of the
harvestless islands; we grow weak with the abused peasants of the
Russian steppes, who leave us the legacy of their grippe. The great
volcano which buries far off cities at its foot casts its pitying dust over
us. It is said that through the bonds of commerce, common trade, and
common need, there is growing up the fund of a great "bank of human
kindness," no genuine draft on which is ever left dishonored. Whoever
is in need of help the world over, by that token has a claim on us.
In our material life we draw our resources from every land. Clothing,
spices, fruits, toys, household furniture,--we lay contributions on the
whole world for the most frugal meal, for the humblest dwelling. We
need the best work of every nation and every nation asks our best of us.
The day of home-brewed ale, of home-made bread, and home-spun

clothing is already past with us. Better than we can do, our neighbors
send us, and we must send our own best in return. With home-made
garments also pass away inherited politics and hereditary religion, with
all the support of caste and with all its barriers. We must work all this
out for ourselves; we must make our own place in society; we must
frame our own creeds; we must live our own religion; for no longer can
one man's religion be taken unquestionably by any other. As the world
has been unified, so is the individual unit exalted. With all this, the
simplicity of life is passing away. Our front doors are wide open as the
trains go by. The caravan traverses our front yard. We speak to millions,
millions speak to us; and we must cultivate the social tact, the
gentleness, the adroitness, the firmness necessary to carry out our own
designs without thwarting those of others. Time no longer flows on
evenly. We must count our moments, so much for ourselves, so much
for the world we serve and which serves us in return. We must be swift
and accurate in the part we play in a drama so mighty, so strenuous,
and so complex.
More than any of the others, the Twentieth Century will be democratic.
The greatest discovery of the