France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.
Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than
is the analysis of the human heart. We live in an age of universal
investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama,
because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other
the individual lot of man. These embrace the whole of life. But it is the
province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond
life, beyond time, into eternity.
Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?