CHICAGO
The function and value of literature are curiously illustrated by the
passing away of the Great White Elephant. The criticisms by spectators of
the World's Fair have not been so comprehensive as the Fair itself, and I
feel that I ought to supplement them by the impressions it made upon one
who did not see it. For, despite the assurance of the official programme,
that I delivered an address in the Parliament of Religions, I was in
England, so far as I know, the whole time. The first impression the Fair
made upon me was one of sublimity--but of what Sir William Hamilton calls
"the material sublime," scarcely at all of "the moral sublime," which was
supposed to be its _raison d'etre_. I was, of course, aware that great
spiritual facts underlay the physical grandeurs; but spiritual emotion is
difficult to get at a distance. One requires the actual objects to
impinge on the soul, the architectural glories and industrial splendours
to touch through bodily vision. One realises it so vaguely, and fails to
get the half-aesthetic, half-religious, uplifting that concrete
visualisation should supply. It is, perhaps, a pity that Whitman did not
live to see the spectacle, he whose inspiration came so often from
synthesis, from a vision of the ALL.
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