than by justice and right. They failed to see that these thoughts and feelings are a psychical inheritance from the past, are out of harmony with the latest and best developments of their own age, and are a direct contradiction to much that is highest and best in their own standards of thought and life.

The possibility of the dwelling together of these contradictions in the same mind without any seeming recognition that they are contradictions, is one of the curious facts of psychology. There are more than isolated examples of men who under the roof of the church repeat the Golden Rule with pious fervor, and in the market do unto others exactly what they do not wish others to do unto them. Many such men do not see any real inconsistency between the repetition of the formula and their practices in business. When such a man sees in David Harum the timehonored adage transposed to read, “Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, and do it fust," he is startled into the suspicion that some one has been prying into his private affairs. So common is this harmonious cohabitation of contradictions in the same mind that when a man is found, like Jonathan Edwards, who is actually consistent, we are shocked. Many theologians of his time declared that God is just and

tion of the race were foreordained to eternal damnation by this same good God. Edwards saw that whatever a good God decrees must be good, and, as Professor W. L. Phelps says, not only swallowed the whole thing, but actually declared it tasted good. Edwards rejoiced in the damnation of the wicked because it was the work of a good God, and must therefore in itself be good.

Edwards was a writer of literature as well as a powerful preacher, and his, to us, musty and sulphurous theology helped to bring the people of his day to self-consciousness. When thoughts and beliefs, emotions and aspirations, are objectified in literature, men are compelled to see the relations of part to part as never before, to harmonize contradictions, and to judge of particular beliefs and feelings as right or wrong, injurious or helpful, to individuals and to groups. When the inner life of a people is visualized in literature, the program followed out is frequently something like this: first an indignant and wholesale denial of the truth of the representation; then a suspicion on the part of the more enlightened that there may be a grain of truth in all the chaff of exaggeration and misrepresentation; then a careful investigation to ascertain how much is true and how much false; then the diffusion of the

the adoption of reforms to remedy the evils discovered.

Besides bringing those who had become dull and torpid, by reason of their long exclusion from opportunities of self-development, to a consciousness of the fact that they are enduring oppression which neither individuals nor systems have any right to put upon them; besides arousing people in general to a sympathetic appreciation of the higher ambitions and possibilities of those who are the victims of injustice sanctioned only by ignorance, foolish traditions, and unwarranted customs; besides all this, literature acts as a sort of safety-valve for the feelings of indignation and wrath, the sense of injustice and wrong, which, if they did not find this outlet, might manifest themselves in ways more violent and dangerous. To be sure, this is a two-edged sword and may cut in either direction. Literature may aid in stirring up rebellion and revolution as well as in quelling them. To determine the exact influence of literature in any particular case, many factors would have to be taken into account, which cannot be specially considered here, such as: the form and spirit of the literary product; the direct accessibility of the literature to those who feel that they are suffering the wrong which ought to be redressed; the tempera

ganization of the wronged; the attitude assumed by those who, rightly or wrongly, are supposed to be responsible for the oppression, and who would profit socially or financially by its continuance.

All these factors have an important bearing upon the subject; but the point to which we wish to give special emphasis here is the hope and optimism inspired in those who feel that they have suffered injury at the hands of society or of another class. This hopefulness arises from a consciousness that others know of the wrong endured and feel it as a wrong. There is ground then for the belief that redress is on the way. To suffer alone without the sympathy of others, from causes for which the sufferer is not responsible, is a dangerous thing for an individual or a class. When once a man feels that every man's hand is against him, it is usually only a matter of time when his hand will be against every man.

This perhaps is even more true of a group than of an individual, because of that mysterious influence which impels the crowd to do what would not be done by individuals acting separately. Feeling is inflamed and angrily expressed in a crowd. The individual takes a sober second thought and more rational measures to secure the result which he desires. To

agined oppression assurance of sympathy and brotherhood, to inspire them with the hope that here in this present world, and with as little delay as possible, their wrongs will be redressed and their rights to the best things of life will be fully recognized, this is to transform the mob into the debating society which has for its object to discover social truth, or into the peaceable union working for the ends of justice by legal and rational means. This destroys the material out of which mobs and riots and revolutions are made. To secure this end literature, though not the sole, is a very efficient agent.

Thirdly, literature has a distinct value as an aid to social progress because of its embodiment of the highest individual and social ideals. The power of an ideal over an individual or a race is unmeasured and unmeasurable. Ideals grow and change with the change and growth of those by whom they are formed and cherished. The nation whose ideal has been industrial may come to possess the ideal of conquest and empire, and there is not a village or hamlet within her borders that will not feel the influence of the change. James Lane Allen has a passage upon the two different kinds of ideals which is worth quoting here. He says:

Ideals are of two kinds. There are those that correspond to our highest sense of perfection. . . . They are

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