The world
of thought has not expanded; it has contracted and grown provincial.
Men have lost sight of distant horizons. Nobody writes for humanity,
for civilization; they write for their country, their sect; to amuse
their friends or annoy their enemies. Pliny or Linneus or Humboldt--they
sat on mountain-tops; they surveyed the landscape at their feet, and if
some little valley lay shrouded in mist, the main outlines of the land
yet lay clearly distended before them. You will say that it is
impossible, nowadays, to gather up the threads of learning as did these
men; they are too multifarious, too divergent. A greater mistake could
not be imagined. For there is a contrary tendency at work--a tendency
towards unification. The threads converge. Medieval minds knew many
truths, hostile to one another. All truths are now seen to be
interdependent; never was synthesis easier of attainment. Conflict of
nationality and language hinders the movement. Mankind at large is the
loser. The adoption of a universal scholars' tongue would do much to
remove the obstacle.
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