motor-cars.  Who is this man?  We do not care a fig about him.  He is probably a Jewish syndicate.  Such being the case, I cannot bring myself to reverence Monsieur Cadillac and his cars.  They are comfortable, but that factor of authority, which compels our homage to the Eros, is wholly lacking.  Yet both things are called beautiful.  That we should apply the same word to products so different, so hopelessly conflicting, as those of Praxiteles and Monsieur Cadillac—­what does it prove?  It proves our poverty of invention.  And what does it explain?  It explains our confusion of thought.”

The millionaire remarked: 

“I suppose the human outlook has shifted with the years.  Democracy hyas changed your old point of view.”

“Assuredly.  No American, no modern of any race, I fancy, can divest himself of the notion that one man is as good as another; in the eyes of God, they add—­meaning in their own eyes.  No Greek, no ancient of any race, I fancy, could have burdened himself with so preposterous a delusion.  Democracy has killed my point of view.  It has substituted progress for civilization.  To appreciate things of beauty, as do the Americans, a man requires intelligence.  Intelligence is compatible with progress.  To create them, as did the Greeks, he requires intelligence and something else as well:  time.  Democracy, in abolishing slavery, has eliminated that element of time—­an element which is indispensable to civilization.”

“We have some fine slavery in America at this moment.”

“I am using the word in the antique sense.  Your modern slavery is of another kind.  It has all the drawbacks and few of the advantages of the classic variety.  It gives leisure to the wrong people—­to those who praise the dignity of labour.  Men who talk about the Dignity of Labour had better say as little as possible about civilization, for fear of confusing it with the North Pole.”

The American laughed.

“That’s one for me!” he remarked.

“On the contrary!  You are an admirable example of that happy graft which we mentioned just now.”

“Progress and civilization!” exclaimed Mr. Heard.  “One uses those words so much in my walk of life that, thinking it over, I begin to wonder whether they mean more than this:  that there are perpetual readjustments going on.  They are supposed to indicate an upward movement, some vague step in the direction of betterment which, frankly, I confess myself unable to perceive.  What is the use of civilization if it makes a man unhappy and unhealthy?  The uncivilized African native is happy and healthy.  The poor creatures among whom I worked, in the slums of London, are neither the one nor the other; they are civilized.  I glance down the ages, and see nothing but—­change!  And perhaps not even change.  Mere differences of opinion as to the value of this or that in different times and places.”