of the kick, perhaps we have been specializing in the recherché 0for so long that our kick can be gotten only by a deeper examination into those facts which are immediately before our eyes—we having o'erleapt ourselves and fallen on t'other.
Are we not already beginning to find that the intelligence required in inventing something is much lower than the intelligence required in using the invention properly? Similarly, a truly classical age, devoted to dropping everything into its just place, must begin by attacking the national religion of creative "energy" and putting in its place a religion of minimal productiveness. In literature this involves the simple heresy against Bergsonism that it is more blessed to read a book than to write one.
The peculiarly disheartening paradox, however, is this: classical eras heretofore have always glorified the powers that be. Yet in these gnarled times, the classical spirit would be so inimical to the spirit of modern business that when all its ramifications have been followed through we learn that classicism would be nothing other than howling rebellion. A religion of minimal productiveness and maximal order would, in the present state of society, be much more radical than Bolshevism. Whereat we begin to suspect that the world to-day, in its commercial code, is so thoroughly anti-classical that a truly classical movement in art and letters would have to be pursued in the catacombs.
