Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/392

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must ever come the fatigue of long drawn opposition, of the repeated and unavailing assaults on the cold, solid and impregnable walls of institutions. In this fatigue they may grow conservative after a while, and they should pray to be spared the acquiescence of the middle years, the base capitulation of age.

But always the people remain, pressing onward in a great stream up the slopes, and always somehow toward the light. For the great dream beckons, leads them on, the dream of social harmony always prefigured in human thought as the city. This radiant vision of the city is the oldest dream in the world. All literature is saturated with it. It has been the ideal of human achievement since the day when the men on the plains of Shinar sought to build a city whose towers should reach unto heaven. It was the angelic vision of the mystic on Patmos, the city descending out of heaven, and lying foursquare, the city where there was to be no more sorrow nor crying. It has been the goal of civilization down to this hour of the night, when, however vaguely and dimly, the ideal stirs the thousands in this feverish town going about their strange and various businesses, pleasures, devotions, sacrifices, sins. It has been the everlasting dream of humanity. And humanity will continue to struggle for it, to struggle toward it. And some day, somewhere, to the sons of men the dream will come true.


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