Poetry and Democracy 51
not transformed human nature. It has not done away with
the vices of older civilisations, and it has developed new
faults of its own. It is, among many of those who do not
expressly reject it, accepted wearily as a necessity rather
than embraced eagerly as a faith. Citizenship has with
them become a burden, not an inspiration. Freedom and
equality have sunk into mere formulary names, giving
neither light nor heat, having little to do with the actual
conduct and motives of life. Material progress goes on
mechanically; the higher progress, the fuller self-realisation
of mankind, is doubted or denied. Once more, as Words-
worth complained a century ago, false gods have been en-
throned in the temple of the human spirit.
The wealthiest man among us is the best;
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us: rapine, avarice, expense,—
This is idolatry, and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more.
So Wordsworth wrote then; and we must remember, if
we are inclined to be despondent over the present case of
democracy, that our dissatisfaction is no new thing, and that
the mere fact of our being dissatisfied shews that we have
not lost sight of higher ideals, and have the impulse in us,
if we can direct and sustain it, to resume our progress to-
wards them.
Poetry is also on its trial. The patterns of life it offers to
us, the interpretation of life with which it presents us, seem
to many unreal and remote. It speaks a strange language,
thin and ghostly to the ears that are not attuned to it; it
often holds itself aloof from, or mingles but passingly with,