The Fly Leaf, No. 2, Vol. 1 - Public Domain

La vision de la jeunesse.

It may be accepted as an axiom that the strong are always audacious, and so when we hear of any man in literature who is shocking and rumpling all the susceptibilities of nice, quiet, drowsy people we may be sure that his capital crime is independence of thought and opinion. He is looking at life for himself, instead of through[2] the refracted lenses of old class habit or antiquated religious dogma. And it is a thousand to one he has the criminal audacity to be young; for the vision of youth is clearer and more sure, and more pitying than the old green or crimson goggles of selfish age, that would paint the world as popes and kings and classes and governments, with rewards and honors to give, would have it. All men whose life and work make for the uplifting of human conditions and thought are set in the way of truth before reaching thirty. If a man is timorous before thirty, he will be an unmitigable coward, perhaps knave, for the rest of his days. And today the only profession which demands any active spirit of heroism is the calling of literature, that has become the Deus ex machina of all modern civilized life.