One Does Not Realize The Historical Sensation

Quite Apart From Any Conscious Program, The Great Cultural Historians Have Always Been Historical Morphologists: Seekers After Theforms Of Life, Thought, Custom, Knowledge, Art.

People Accept A Representation In Which The Elements Of Wish And Fantasy Are Purposely Included But Which Nevertheless Proclaims To Represent "the Past" And To Serve As A Guide-rule For Life, Thereby Hopelessly Confusing The Spheres Of Knowledge And Will.

Most Thoughtful Americans Of Today Seem To Have Forgotten How Strongly Their Own And Immediate Predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne And Whitman, Were Still Preoccupied With The Essence Behind Things.

But One Sound Always Rose Above The Clamor Of Busy Life And, No Matter How Much Of A Tintinnabulation, Was Never Confused And, Fora Moment Lifted Everything Into An Ordered Sphere: That Of The Bells.

No Other Discipline Has Its Portals So Wide Open To The General Public As History.