Excerpt from Democracy and the Church
For a long time I have wondered why it is that many intelligent persons who accept the genetic view of the development of life have no open-mindedness for the genetic view of history. They recognize that there are certain periods in the history of life when old environments give way, new forms of life appear showing a fresh summertime, and sustaining heart and hope. This class of persons may recognize that there is a history of art, and if they do not glory in the pre-Raphaelite as Beauty's last word or accept the impressionists school as the final despair of the creative gods, they do see continuity in Art; they do recognize that every time must create its own artistic forms in harmony with the terms and the conditions of its life. Literature in successive periods may flower out in the great secular bibles; the works of Homer, ?schylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. But even these men are social products as well as social forces, and literature has its continuity, its progress and its invincible relationships.
In the domain of what is called history the task has not been so easy. It is difficult to harmonize the influence of the personal will with the conclusions of the social mind. It is not easy to see that in the historic development a certain legitimacy has attached to every form of human society.
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