MADACH 253 has indeed become wide, but of a dead leve l of mediocr ity. Love itself is to be bought and sold. The wh ole world is a n immense market, in which none of the higher impulses find play, and the soul of Adam is possessed with the idea that this stream of people, this crowd filling the streets of the great metropolis, is engaged in the one task of digging its own grave . Adam sees the vast grave, but sees above it, while all the rest sink into its depths, Eve freed from all that is base, radiant in her purity, tiymg beavenward as the genius of Love. The ninth scene is laid in the future, in the new socialistic world that is to be. Adam, as a traveliing scholar, visits the .S tate of the future, the Ph alanstere, established in accordance with the ideas of the Freneh socialists. The whole world is one vast settlement ; the individual has no power or initiative, fo r everything is determined by the common will. The idea of Fatherland has long ceased to exist. Every man is but a part of a huge machine, the Phalanstere. No man has a name, but merely a number, like a prisoner. Every action is in conformity with the common good, but this conformity has the Iifeless perfection only to be found in a machine. Art and poetry have bcome superfluous, it is only the useful which has a right to exist. Th e horse and the dog are only to be found in archreological museums : their place has been taken by machinery. The heads of babies are carefully examined by phreno logists, in order that their careers may be judiciously chosen. The divi ne Plato hímself is considered insan e here, and fit only for prison. Adam, however, is re pelied by such a world, so like a vast automaton, uninspired by a single grand idea, and illumined by no lofty virtue. And at length the end approaches, the dreary, sad,
