" Evidently the new
American would need to think in contradictions, and instead of
Kant's famous four antinomies, the new universe would know no law
that could not be proved by its anti-law.
To educate -- one's self to begin with -- had been the effort
of one's life for sixty years; and the difficulties of education
had gone on doubling with the coal-output, until the prospect of
waiting another ten years, in order to face a seventh doubling of
complexities, allured one's imagination but slightly. The law of
acceleration was definite, and did not require ten years more
study except to show whether it held good. No scheme could be
suggested to the new American, and no fault needed to be found,
or complaint made; but the next great influx of new forces seemed
near at hand, and its style of education promised to be violently
coercive. The movement from unity into multiplicity, between 1200
and 1900, was unbroken in sequence, and rapid in acceleration.
Prolonged one generation longer, it would require a new social
mind. As though thought were common salt in indefinite solution
it must enter a new phase subject to new laws. Thus far, since
five or ten thousand years, the mind had successfully reacted,
and nothing yet proved that it would fail to react -- but it
would need to jump.
CHAPTER XXXV
NUNC AGE (1905)
NEARLY forty years had passed since the ex-private secretary
landed at New York with the ex-Ministers Adams and Motley, when
they saw American society as a long caravan stretching out
towards the plains.
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