_Upharsin_ is writ on the wall.
More than this, is it not clear that Art and Romance, Poetry and Literature, as hitherto understood or felt, are either to utterly vanish before the stupendous advances of science, or what is perhaps more probable, will, coalescing with it, take new forms, based on a general familiarity with all the old schools or types?
A few years ago it seemed, as regarded all aesthetic creation, that man had exhausted the old models, and knew not where to look for new.

Now the aim of Art is to interest or please, by gratifying the sense or taste for the beautiful or human genius in _making_; also to instruct and refine; and it is evident that Science is going to fulfill all these conditions on such a grand scale in so many new ways, that, when man shall be once engaged in them, all that once gratified him in the past will seem as childish things, to be put away before pursuits more worthy of manly dignity.

If Art in all forms has of late been quiet, it has been because it has drawn back like the tiger in order to make the greater bound.
One of the causes why some are laying aside all old spiritualism, romance and sentiment, is that their realisation takes up too much time, and Science, which is the soul of business, seeks in all things brevity and directness.

It is probable that the phrase, "but to the point," has been oftener repeated during the past few years, than it ever was before, since Time begun, of which directness I shall have more to say anon.
And this is the end to which these remarks on the _fin-de-siecle_ were written, to lay stress upon the fact that with the year Nineteen Hundred we shall begin a century during which civilized mankind will attain its majority and become _manly_, doing that which is right as a man should, _because it is right_ and for no other reason, and shunning wrong for as good cause.

For while man is a child he behaves well, or misbehaves, for _reasons_ such as the fear of punishment or hope of reward, but in a manly code no reasons are necessary but only a persuasion or conviction that anything is right or wrong, and a principle which is as the earth unto a seed.
For as the world is going on, or getting to be, it is very evident that as it is popularly said, "he who will tell a lie will generally not hesitate to commit perjury," so he who cannot be really honest, _per se_, without being sustained by principle based only on tradition and the opinion of others, is a poor creature, whose morality or honesty is in fact merely theatrical, or acted, to satisfy certain conditions or exigencies from which he were better freed.
This spirit of scientific directness, and economy of thought and trouble by making the principle of integrity the basis of all forms, and cutting all ethical theories down to "be good because you _ought_," is rapidly astonishing us with another marvellous fact which it illustrates, namely, that as in this axiom--as in man himself-- there are latent undiscovered powers, so in a thousand other sayings, or things known to us all, used by us all, and regarded as common-place, there are astounding novelties and capacities as yet undreamed of.