The Book Review, Past and Present

WHAT is the value of a book review ? The phrase “book review” seems pleonastic ; but as there are now many classes of critics in addition to those who are literary, some newspapers awarding the name even to reporters of baseball and kindred matters, it is necessary to be specific in order to be understood. What then is the value of a book review ? Measured by the animosities of authors and critics, no doubt, this value is appreciable at a very high rate. The estimate put upon a book review was noteworthy when Brougham cut to pieces the juvenile poetry of Lord Byron, and when the legend arose that the life of Keats had been put out by the malice of Gifford and Croker. Croker had no doubts on the subject when he was hammered fiat by Thor-Macaulay. Gifford imagined in his earlier days that reviewers were a breed of venom-spitting toads, and some said that he lived to exemplify his own theory in the Quarterly. We all know what Izaak Walton’s opinion was of worms; we should like to know what the worms thought of Izaak Walton. So we know what author Gifford thought of critics, and what critic Gifford thought of authors. Now, if we only knew what the man Gifford thought, between his two militant attitudes, of himself, we might gain some scientific data for our theme. Hated he may have been ; he was not despised. Nor was criticism despised when Scioppius obliged Henry of Navarre to stop the sale of Thuanus’ history, nor when John Dennis irritated Pope and the playwrights, nor when J. B. Mencke in Charlataneria strewed half Europe with the literary remains of his contemporaries, nor when Dryden seconded his verse with profuse and facile critical prose, nor when Addison established the fame of Milton, and Voltaire showed how the methods of criticism could be applied to every conceivable topic. The very earliest of journalistic book reviews, the brief comment with which the Journal des Savans started, on an edition of the works of certain African bishops, instead of being condemned for aridity was hailed as the beginning of a new era in letters. It did not matter whether the critic was dishonest and malignant like Scioppius, satirical like Mencke or de Sallo, or genuinely scientific like Addison; the significance of his writing was high enough if measured by the resentment of his victims or the pleasure of less prejudiced readers.

It is useless to look in the past for a golden age when Lamb the author and Lion the critic dwelt together in peace and harmony. Such a time seems possible in the future, for reasons which ought to be obvious to every one who is observant of literary conditions. Certainly the earlier years of the current century, when periodical criticism reached a height in popular esteem which it never attained before, and from which it has sadly fallen since, belonged to no era of good will. One who in his time was on both sides of the battle, like Gifford, but whose last words were those of an author, thought nothing could be more devoid of conscience than the book-reviewing of the twenties. lie wrote : “ It has been said that criticism has been at all times corrupt or prejudiced. It is possible that these epithets may have been occasionally applicable with justice to that of all times ; but at no other periods were such faults systematic. Individual critics might indulge their passions ; now all is carried on by conspiracy. Formerly there was at least some approach to candor and integrity; now the very thought of these regards is abandoned. An examination of the literary journals which came into common use at the end of the seventeenth century, such as the Journal des Savans, and the critical publications of Le Clerc, Bayle, etc., will exemplify these assertions. Impartial posterity has in general ratified the judgments whieh were then pronounced.” Of course, this writer neglected the fact, which he was well aware of, that authors in the seventeenth century were as little pleased with criticism in their day as he was in his. Southey was not more resentful toward Jeffrey than Guy Patin was toward de Sallo. In two generations so much of the heat has departed from the essays of Jeffrey and Gifford that their judgments also have become classic, and are partly or wholly approved by posterity without prejudice to the books concerned. “ The Lyrical Ballads are not liked at all by any,” wrote Mrs. Coleridge to her husband and the Wordsworths in 1798 ; and it is doubtful if all those poems would escape now, were the question brought to a test among reading people. One sometimes hears the critics who censured Carlyle anathematized. Carlyle’s literary method is justified by its success ; but the critics also have their justification in the fact that when this author is impartially estimated now, much of what they said is repeated. Sartor Resartus is as much of a classic as Religio Medici or the Tale of a Tub ; but who can read it and not feel with a detractor of sixty years ago that “ it is capital sport to know all the while, fever-dream-like that actually not bending is one his optical convexities, cat-like-over-mouse, on High Dutch ” ? In short, financial success is no answer to legitimate criticism, nor does failure to please the public, after the critics have expressed their approval, show that the book is bad and that the critics were wrong.

It is here, certainly, that the doubt lies as to the value of the book review. From how many modern periodicals this sort of literary comment lias been excluded altogether, in how many more it has become a mere vermiform appendix, an almost atrophied part of the organism, it would be useless to inquire. But evidently the tendency is toward the status which Hallam anticipated, when it will be possible to compare the last book review with the first; the first being the above-mentioned discussion of certain ecclesiastical writings, and the last, in all likelihood, pertaining neither to theology nor to any other science, nor even to good literature. One need not assume that literature has declined because criticism lacks the popularity which it once had. It may be that the world is only illustrating anew the old saying, “ Mundus vultdecipi,” Englished by Barnum in the phrase, “ The public loves a humbug.” So imperative is the necessity for mere advertising that authors who are privately rational and quiet take in public an air of the highest assumption. They would not think of display except in print. If one had never seen them, one might think that they were of the same kidney with the renowned Johannes Seger, poet laureate of Wittenberg, who, it was said, had a tablet of brass engraved with Christ on the cross, and he himself, robed and laureated, standing below imperiously asking, “Lord Jesus, lovest thou me?” The suffering Saviour was not so much engrossed in his own affairs but that he could reply, with consummate courtesy, “ Most renowned, most estimable, and most learned Herr Meister Seger, imperial poet laureate and most worthy rector of the school in Wittenberg, I do love thee. " It would be an ungrateful task to specify cases in the last five years in which Seger’s effrontery, though not his impiety, has been fairly matched.

Naturally in such a state of literature the critic, whatever he may have been in the past, no longer has a serious auditory. The question What is the value of the book review ? becomes academic, a problem for solution at the Greek calends. Nevertheless it is discussed with some heat, particularly by those who insist that it is not worth discussing at all. A letter from one who is certainly expert in all literary affairs contains these lines: “ The book reviewer (whereby I mean the critic of new books) is not worthy of the slightest consideration. I do not believe that any single piece of contemporary criticism was ever worth the paper it was written on. There is such a thing as reporting a book’s contents, which will be a guide to a man trying to decide whether he wants the book or not; but as for criticism of a new book, — that this can be of any value is one of the persistent superstitions of a vain and barren and analytic rather than constructive era.” The inference is that there is some kind of a review, a report of a book’s contents, which is useful, and so of value corresponding to its utility. But a certain acute bookseller canceled thislonely concession to the contemporary literary critic. " No review ever sells a book ” was his dictum, and he substantiated it by citing a long list of books within his own observation which had fallen unnoticed, or barely mentioned, from the critics’ hands, and shortly afterward had been taken up by an enthusiastic public and carried forward to abnormal success. A particular instance which he cited was the now famous novel Ben-Hur, which, he insisted, won its way with almost no help from the critics, and not only won its own way, but retrieved the fortunes of its brother, The Fair God. Hardly any one capable of a solid judgment will say that of these Ben-Hur is the better book in an artistic sense. The clever management of a religious motive (which must, however, always be Christian) has been noted for several hundred years as an element of popularity in an English book. Warton alludes to the fact, and the latest passing triumph of the kind illustrates it. How different the Quo Vadis ? that we know from the book of the same title which, some centuries ago, was one of the minor ornaments of English literature !

Then our bookseller cited other works, a mournful catalogue of good books which the critics approved and analyzed and reported, and in fact treated to every kind of commendatory writing known to a literary page; and all these gathered the dust of neglect on his shelves, save that now and then some bookworm, with the penetration of his kind, picked out a volume and carried it away. Now the genuine bookworm, as a rule, — and this is well known, — cares little for reviews. He likes an article to have some of the qualities of the books he buys,—to have a modicum of learning, for example, — and he rarely finds these qualities in fugitive essays which he suspects — wrongly, we are bound to say —of being written more like advertisements than otherwise. Perhaps he has read such stories as that which Derby tells in his reminiscences, of the effort to injure a book by a professional reader who had rejected it, or the more recent anecdote of an author who is the victim of a conspiracy on the part of certain literary editors against all writers from the section of the country to which he belongs. If the bookworm noticed such tales, he would be just perverse enough to interpret them backward. What he does in practice is to scan footnotes and accidental allusions, and from these to make up his mind whether the work he is in doubt about is worthy of a place in the same room with the pigskins and seventeenth-century folios which are his proper standards of literary value.

According to this epigrammatic hookseller, who was also a publisher of experience, there are two kinds of criticism which contribute to the sale of books. One of these is the statement of the publisher, accepted, of course, as the opinion also of his professional readers, upon the merits of a given book. That statement is based upon wide practical experience, and is restricted to just the points which should make the book attractive to the class of readers to whom the appeal in its behalf must be made. Obviously the reputation of the publisher for solidity of judgment and candor must affect the question here, but this has to be read between the lines. A statement of the kind alluded to is usually very brief, — as brief as the ordinary paragraph bestowed by the newspaper critic on books which he views with indifference or finds himself incapable of handling ; but it is nevertheless the product of mature consideration. Secondary to this printed notice from the publisher’s hands are the oral explanations of the travelers for publishing houses. These men can be divided into two classes, — the one consisting of those whose predictions as to the selling qualities of a new book can be trusted, the other of those who lack this accuracy. The difference between the two is not necessarily nor usually a matter of personality. It is really a line of discrimination among publishers themselves. Not long ago, in the case of a popular but rather costly biography of a man of great distinction, the traveler who had the book in hand, and knew the region in which he worked, gave his local patrons an estimate of the number of copies they would require. It was a sort of trial of skill, and it turned out that he hit the demand more closely than did the men who thought they knew their own trade best. They had to supplement their first order with a second, losing a little money by the operation in accordance with the fitness of things. It was, perhaps, an easy task to estimate possibilities with that book. But similar prevision in less favorable circumstances shows that, calculations were not made on a purely experimental basis. The local bookseller knows well enough when be faces a mere experiment. “ You need not show me any books of poetry from X or Y,” said one. “ I know that they have not been read by any one competent to pass judgment upon them ; it will be a mere chance if they are not all rubbish.”

The other kind of profitable criticism — looking always, of course, from the mercantile point of view — is that of the social dinner and the club. Here, precisely, is where the historic change has occurred in the popular estimate of criticism. Time was when the book review certainly guided social literary opinions. That somewhat dyspeptic writer of the twenties, whom we have already had occasion to quote, grudgingly confesses the fact. “ In no age,” says he, “ did the mass of mankind make much attempt to judge for themselves. In the present age they do not affect to conceal that they are entirely guided by the decision of one of the fashionable reviews. In what way these reviews are manufactured ; how far the critics are qualified to pronounce judgment, and by what motives they are actuated in the opinions they express, this is not the place and opportunity to discuss at length. If the mask could he withdrawn from the face of each respective critic, the decision would in most cases lose all its authority.” The mask never was an effectual disguise, and now it is either removed altogether or retained only as a matter of form. Criticism has grown milder. It even calculates, in making an estimate of a book, the following that the author may have. Yet that it has grown stronger or more popular would be rash to assert. On the contrary, the influence which this writer attributes to the great reviews three generations ago seems a mere reminiscence now. Is this because everybody has caught the trick of putting an opinion about a book ? That seems a plausible theory for a time in which, it is said, nobody wants to read a book ; what everybody wants to do is to write a book. But a better answer may he that literature, such as it is, has shifted its ground, so that in great part it is no longer amenable to formal criticism, whether this be laudatory or the reverse. In the twenties poets still existed, and style even in prose fiction was removed from the expression of ordinary life. Now verse approximates to every-day speech, and the novel, unless it deals with a past age, — and often in that case as well, — becomes a transcript of what men and women say to one another in the very words and parts of words, dialect included, which they habitually use. The literary critic figures as little among these stenographic reports of life as the art critic in a gallery of photographs. It is a waste of time to pick flaws, for the artist replies at once that the sun must he to blame. The novelist can be accused of putting up automatons for men and women, but the words are there to show that his lay figures talk just like people. Often he can be detected outlining his own features, but the voice of Esau is no longer peculiar, and this Jacob is as easy about showing his hand as his prototype was. Occasionally moral comment is deemed necessary ; but there is nothing worse than morality in literary criticism, except immorality.

Whatever the reason may be, it seems a fact that criticism which is of financial value to the bookseller has shifted from the printed periodical to the social dinner and the club. Somebody happens to say in conversation that a book is worth looking at, and a few days later the dealers observe that it has come into demand. Years ago the conversational remark would have been that in such or such quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily the book was said to be good. But those days of unsophistication, when one gave an authority for a literary opinion, are past. In the conversation at the dinner table, this lapse from the conscientious pedantry of earlier days is venial. But the formal critic can safely be guilty of analogous pilferings without confession only when he has recourse to writings which his readers know nothing about. To borrow opinions from a contemporary, however remote, to translate convenient paragraphs from Sainte-Beuve, to paraphrase well-known books like Stedman on the Victorian poets, or to copy whole pages from Macaulay’s essays, is to try conclusions, like Shakespeare’s ape, at the risk of a similar catastrophe.

It will be observed that in all this informal treatment of books we have precisely the kind of comment which makes any business successful. People who buy usually put faith in the words of those with whom they are acquainted, and especially in the suggestions of an experienced man of business. They carry this confiding spirit to the length of buying books of that learned connoisseur who also sells them their dry goods. It may sound harsh, but it is merely the prosaic statement of a fact, to say that to this conclusion descends all criticism in the interest of the publisher made at his real or supposed dictation. The method may be successful financially, but it is nevertheless a step downward intellectually. Let him who demands an illustration compare the literary gossip of a past age with the notes scattered, supposedly by the syndicates, to the minor newspapers of the country. These notes, as a rule, are worth the regular rates per line, and that is all they are worth. But, according to the law of literary evolution, the spread of this degenerate species of writing is sure to starve out all better kinds. Another result must be the rigid limitation of books to certain classes known to be profitable ; the exclusion of all that might subvert the literary fashions and upset the calculations of the trade. Then will come the effort to shift the responsibility for the decay of literature to shoulders where it does not belong. In fact, the responsibility rests on the same commonplace traits of human nature upon which it has always fallen under similar conditions. The publisher aims quite properly at books that pay, and the world, when it can do without great writers, is invariably obliged to do so. History is crowded with illustrations of the way the thing works. Virgil and Dante would have starved on their literary achievements alone. The parasitic Martial had his epigrams on sale in every Roman camp from the Tigris to the Thames, made a fairly profitable trade of verse-writing, and in old age retired to Spain on money which Pliny gave him confessedly for praises past. Martial has since been read only as a curiosity ; possibly the only generous buyer of his works in modern times was Andreas Naugerius, and Naugerius bought them to burn. In Virgil’s time there was hardly a bookseller in Rome, but men of genius were numerous. In the time of Gellius booksellers were plenty, and men who wrote books were not few, but genius was found only in works that were already ancient. The Virgil who might have starved in his own day but for the one friend who introduced him to the Emperor was the most profitable author the later booksellers had. “ Ronsard is forgotten,’’ remarked Gouget in the Bibliotheque Francaise, “ he who formed so many disciples and had so many bad imitators. This writer, so famous at one time, whose whole life was a triumph, who was loved by his king, cherished by the court, admired by all savants, overwhelmed with the most pompous eulogies, whose funeral oration was pronounced by the celebrated du Perron, — this poet, who had no hesitation in calling himself the Prince of Poets and the dearest favorite of the Muses, is read no more; he is not even named except with contempt.” Gouget could not anticipate that Ronsard would be restored to public favor for a time. What he impresses on us is that there is no permanence in a literary reputation artificially built up. “ How many works of the last twenty years,” remarks the discontented author already quoted, “which were of temporary demand have become waste paper! ” On the other hand, every publisher will say, probably, that he finds the ideas of authors, when allowed free range, rather impracticable.

By looking over the whole field of literature, it will be found that the various kinds of social and across-the-counter criticism are of imperative significance only with those growths in which a fair equipoise can be preserved between the practical and the impracticable. Neither the publisher’s reader, nor the literary diner-out, nor the distinguished specialist in criticism who counts the year lost in which he fails to exploit three or four brand new warranted real poets and a novelist or two in whom burns the smouldering fire of genius, has much influence over the fate of books that cost a lifetime of hard labor. We imagine that there was but one man in the United States who could have put Herbert Spencer’s series of philosophical volumes on a line where they were certain to catch the public eye. Most solid books lack this intelligent support. They cannot be made as cheaply — or at least they are not made as cheaply — as the lighter productions of the press. Unfortunately, the writer in the one case needs notoriety as much as in the other. It was remarked long ago that " what is true in the course of the general affairs of human life is not less true of literature. The same means of success and the same causes of defeat are in full force. An author cannot emerge into fame and obtain the rewards accompanying it by mere merit. The addition of avast deal of manœuvre and obtrusiveness, and perhaps, it may be added, accidental opportunity and good fortune, is necessary.” Outside of the libraries, more or less public in their character, the most skillful manoeuvre adds comparatively few to the number of buyers of a weighty book. Few books were better exploited beforehand than The Origin of Species; few books of value were ever more successful. Yet it may be that a novel could be named, written in one season, read in the next, and almost forgotten by the end of the year, which surpassed The Origin of Species as a wage-earner by thousands of dollars. It took a quarter of a century to write the one, and a quarter of a year to write the other. Evidently the ordinary methods of business are at fault here. It is certain that the comparatively few buyers of books that signify are persons not to be caught by the usual methods of advertising. They are apt to be persons who think for themselves, and possibly they are to be the final refuge of the critic before that last review presaged by Hallam has to be written. The people who know good books when they see them soon find out how far a reviewer, 'whose work they like otherwise, can be trusted. Human limitations are manifold, and even the man who has the reminiscence of a library in his head knows that he can write with but meagre authority on most topics. If the well-read book reviewer did not know, also, how few of the books that pass under his eye are through and through work at first hand, he might well despair when he has to pass a judgment or complete an analysis without access to original sources. It is here, between the book before him and the origins which he looks for, that the reviewer discovers a curious fact. One of the last men to understand a really thoughtful book is the author himself. The cause of this is that the author has worked from within, and knows only the inner aspect of the structure which he has raised. Its outer aspect startles him when revealed in the words of some reviewer, even if those words are words of commendation. He understands the kind of book review which is a cento from his own writing, more or less carefully patched together. He has already mourned over the obvious defects of pen or type which some critics laboriously heap up against him. But the restatement of his thought in new phrases by another mind comes to him like something out of a foreign language. In fact, he has seen the outside of his house, be it molehill or palace, for the first time.

Let us concede that the book review has nothing to do with the sale of books. The inference must be that it is time wasted to bestow criticism upon books which need no aid except what will facilitate their sale. This would forthwith exclude the novel of the present day from the reviewer’s table, and would save him from a task which grows annually more irksome, as the novel, in the light, of artistic requirements, declines toward inevitable extinction. No other work of the pen is so purely a bid for money as the novel. A book of learning, of science, of philosophy, usually requires too many years of labor to have its value measured in coin. Worse still, the relation of such a book to ordinary life is so intricate and obscure that its value is not even measured in the good will of mankind. People who enjoy the public life of the United States hardly waste a thought upon the men who extricated the problem of the state from mediaeval anarchy and the spirit of caste, and formulated it for solution. We laugh at Duns Scotus and think of Hudibras. But no Duns Scotus, — then, no Wicliffe, no Luther, no Grotius, no Locke, no Federalist. If this ancient thinker has not yet come in touch with the popular mind, after all the centuries since his time, how can the contemporary thinker expect honor except for something quite remote from what he considers his real achievement ? So the philosopher has to carry his reward with him, and he is usually able to do this without breaking his back. While he complains, as Mr. Spencer does, that he is hardly understood by those who have read him, there are those who speak of the influence of novels, morally, socially, intellectually. It can be said with confidence that, outside of the imagination of persons who think that they could write a novel if they tried, this boasted influence does not exist. The reason is plain. A novel never creates the moral, social, or intellectual movement which it reveals to its readers. It is an echo of what is passing, and the chances are that the movement which caused it has already run its course and merged in some new commotion before the novel is written. Exceptions may be noted, but we believe most of them to be more apparent than real. The question is open to practical test by way of answer. Send the case of novels which you have read in the last five years to a dealer, and observe the result. The specimens which you regret having had in your possession will head your bookseller’s list, and the books which were supposed to influence the world in some way or other he will hardly take as a gift. Your bookseller cares no more for the ulterior purpose of a book than your thermometer cares for the temperature. He simply records a fact, namely, that the reading public has not absorbed a drop of additional wisdom from the books which his experience rejects. It follows that the reviews of such books must have failed, like the books themselves, to impress the public. As the total result is nil, aside from the money made or lost in the operation, with which, per hypothesim, the reviewer had nothing to do, the only correct procedure is to give up that field of reviewing entirely to the advertiser. An additional reason for doing this is found in the nature of the comment to which novels are subjected. It is an unwritten law that plot and characterization must not be reported. The reviewer falls back upon what he is pleased to call his originality as a critic, eked out frequently by the earlier originality of another. This leads him in a curve which ultimately closes, and he is thereafter constantly engaged in repeating, with verbal changes, the group of opinions which he had at the outset. Add to these considerations a third, that a large number of the prominent novels of the year have already been subjected piecemeal in magazines and newspaper syndicates to the judgment of readers, and it must be obvious that to this branch of criticism, if to any, applies in full force the Roman proverb about carrying fagots to the forest.

The case is similar, with a class of more or less striking books which are usually heralded, orally and in print, as each “ The book of the year,” long before they fall from the press. They often come to the reviewer in sheets for prompt attention, and yet everything which he is likely to say about them in haste has been forestalled. His work is perfunctory to the last degree. He scribbles some commonplace connecting links, whets a pair of scissors on the attractive passages which have been put under his hand, throws the whole mass together, and calls it by courtesy a review. The public, which was bound to buy that particular book in any case, does not trouble itself about the reviewer further than to observe that he has filled the requisite and conventional amount of space. In some cases the book treated thus is really treated as it deserves. In many cases a grievous wrong is done, and, speaking generally, the custom which dictates this kind of reviewing is a mistaken one. The early sale of the book has been provided for. If, instead of being expected to give a hasty notice, the reviewer were left to come in at the lull after the first rush, he would not only do himself justice as a man of brains and acumen, but he would perform a service, judged by the lowest standard, different from all other kinds of advertising. He is useful, if he is ever so financially, to the publisher, at a moment when indifference or reaction sets in ; when readers have forgotten the book, and have begun to think about something else. A book is not a perishable product. If it be good, the demand for it is likely to last long, and a notice of it is not likely to be amiss because it happens to be later than the day of publication.

The great mass of books worthy of a reviewer’s attention are, however, such as really need the help which he can give. Not only do the books need it, but the public needs it as well. The complaint of the Biblical writer about the endless multiplication of books was echoed with emphatic variations more than two centuries ago, when it was said that merely to enumerate the books in existence, without passing judgment on the authors, would require the long life of a Nestor. And even then the task would not be accomplished because of the vast addition to the number printed daily. It would be a mistake to suppose that no effort was made in those early days to keep pace in the periodicals with the increase of books. Before 1787 there were fully seven hundred journals in Western Europe to record the advance in science and literature, and these were on the whole more uniformly devoted to reviewing of one kind or another, direct or indirect, than the thousands of papers published at the present day. And wherever the work was attempted it was apt to be well done. What the great English critics were capable of is known, but the average compares favorably with that of the present day, though much of the writing, especially on the Continent, was in the scholastic Latin of the period, accurate, but incapable of delicate observation. In the very merit of this early work in the Journal des Savans, Acta Eruditorum, and other publications of that day lies a most discouraging fact. How can criticism expect to maintain its hold, when it reached perfection so early, and is now only observing and enforcing the maxims which were long ago proved and copiously illustrated ? It seems as if there were but one general line of procedure left to it. In the majority of cases, a well-read man, taking up a book of serious purpose and information in philosophy, history, science, belles - lettres, archaeology, criticism of past literature, and so on, can add something of value which the author leaves unsaid, besides giving a fair abstract of the book’s contents without pretending to a slavish fidelity. He can turn the subject about and display it in a novel aspect, thus really contributing something of original value to the discussion. He can direct attention to the topic in general, and thus waken a curiosity which is usually not satisfied with one book alone. In this way he can box the whole compass of learning, and lead his readers to that universality of outlook which is indispensable in this age of many sciences. Without the pretense of polymathy in his own person, he may help others to be, according to the measure of their abilities, specialists in the general truths of all knowledge, such as Comte desiderated. If he gets them to taking the universal and critical view, to looking for the universal induction, as Renan called it, he will have done them a real favor. And anything will be better than the existing hopeless feeling in the presence of the chaos of learning and literature which the next generation must reduce to the semblance of an orderly creation. It will be better to encourage the ephemeral summary of the intellectual activity of the age than to wait for another Isidore to abolish science and civilization together, while pretending to preserve them in miniature. Remember this : when civilization goes to seed the next time, it will be the last; for no barbarians will be left to plough it under and start humanity afresh.

J. S. Tunison.