INTRODUCTION. OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies,
histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we,
through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why
should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by
revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose
floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to
action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put
the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also.
There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let
us demand our own works and laws and worship.