Twentieth Century-Fox

“ The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development—years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century—the wonderful century. ”

“ Let us talk of our college days, of our travels, of war, of soldiers, and of Italy!
XII.
We old classmates will many of us doubtless live to see the twentieth century. Strange thought! I know, of course, that the transition from nineteen hundred to nineteen hundred and one will seem as natural as that from ninety-nine to a hundred, or from this year to next. And yet it seems to me that to see the first dawn of the new century will be like reaching the summit of some high mountain, and looking out over new countries and new horizons. ”

“ The last century was notable because of the great change in method and organization of human work and we call the early part of the nineteenth century the time of economic revolution in Europe and to some extent in America. ”

“ Now, for the third time, a new century is upon us, and another time to choose. We began the 19th century with a choice, to spread our nation from coast to coast. We began the 20th century with a choice, to harness the Industrial Revolution to our values of free enterprise, conservation, and human decency. ”

“ I have no doubt that the Elizabethan and the Victorian Ages will appear to the [Pg 54] historian of the future as the twin peaks in which English civilisation culminated. The twentieth century will doubtless be full of interest, and may even develop some elements of greatness. But as regards the fortunes of this country, the signs are that our work on a grand scale, with the whole world as our stage, is probably nearing its end. Europe has sacrificed its last fifty years of primacy by an insane and suicidal struggle. America has emerged as the tertius gaudens. ”

“ The suggestion that the nineteenth century cannot yet be judged as to its final effect in many directions has already been made, and of nothing is this more true than of its Art. Of one phase of this period, however, we may speak with confidence. No other century of which we know the history has seen so many changes—such progress, or such energy of purpose so largely rewarded as in the century we are considering. ”

“ The new century has come upon us with a rush of energy that no century has shown before. Let us stand aside for a moment that we may see what kind of a century it is to be, what is the work it has to do, and what manner of men it will demand to do it.
In most regards one century is like another. Just as men are men, so times are times. In the Twentieth Century there will be the same joys, the same sorrows, the same marrying and giving in marriage, the same round of work and play, of wisdom and duty, of folly and distress which other centuries have seen. ”

“ But the eighteenth century, notwithstanding its nearness in time, and the immense mass of information that we have about it, appears strangely remote, separated from us as it is by the great gulf of the French Revolution. The century of which men still vigorous have known many living representatives impresses us as markedly different in temper and point of view from our own. ”

“ Whatever the division in men's minds as to the relation between the close of the century and a race's history, and the precise moment at which the old century ends and the new begins, one thing in 1800 was radiantly clear to all men—the glory and the wonder, the endless peace and felicity not less endless, which the opening century and the new age dimly portended or securely promised to humanity. ”

“ If the nineteenth century is other and better than the eighteenth, it is, in great measure, to him and to such men as he, that we owe the change. If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley’s footsteps. ”

“ Certainly we are now being forced back to a new consideration of this periodical beat, in history at least, for now that our own era, which came in by the power of the Renaissance and the Reformation and received its final energizing force through the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth, is so manifestly coming to its end, we look backward for precedents for this unexpected debacle and lo, they appear every five hundred years back as far as history records. ”

“ With these considerations in mind, it is easier to understand how men in the later nineteenth century and beginning twentieth century are prone to think of their periods as representing an acme in the course of progress. There is no doubt that we are far above the eighteenth century. That, however, was a deep valley in human accomplishment, indeed, a veritable slough of despond, out of which we climbed ”

“ And if the latter half of the twentieth century does for the constructions of the first half of the same century, what the latter half of the nineteenth century did for the first half of that century, this new criticism will only be to illustrate the way in which the human spirit makes every form of its progress. ”

“ The sixteenth reminds us of audacious youth, still clinging to parental authority; the nineteenth reminds us of cynical and irreverent old age, believing in nothing but the triumphs of science and art, and shaking off the doctrines of the ages as exploded superstitions.
The sixteenth century was marked not only by intensely earnest religious inquiries, but by great civil and social disorders,--showing a transition period of society from the slaveries and discomforts of the feudal ages to the liberty and comforts of highly civilized life. ”

“ It can scarcely fail to be a matter of supreme surprise to find that a century so distant as the Thirteenth, should thus equal our own vaunted Twentieth Century in the matter of opportunities for the higher education afforded and taken advantage of. ”

“ In the centuries between the Great Plague and the Reformation, just as in the nineteenth century, the real significance of our history lies in the advent of a new class to wealth and power, as the result of a great industrial revolution. ”

“ That this growth in wealth will go on during the twentieth century cannot be doubted, but that the proportionate rate of increase will equal that of the century now at its end may well be questioned, the inventive activity and application of nature’s forces within this century having reached a development which seems to preclude as great a future rate of progress. The nineteenth may, therefore, perhaps remain the banner century in material progress. ”

“ We have hitherto dealt solely with the progress of the nineteenth century. Now, standing like Bellamy at the dawn of the twentieth, it may be well to take a long look ahead, and strive to trace some stages of the probable progress of the coming time, looking forward from this summit of the ages and stating what this outlook into the dim and distant future brings to our eyes. ”

“ Millions of young Americans who stepped forward in times of crisis or conflict to defend our Nation and uphold our values around the world sacrificed their freedom and lost their lives. The century just past will forever be known as the American century, not only because of our economic strength, military might, and technological prowess, but also because of the character, determination, and indomitable spirit our people demonstrated time and again. ”

“ There can be no more fitting time than this to review the marvelous progress of the closing century, through a portion of which all of us have lived, many of us through a great portion of it. Some of the greatest of its events have taken place before our own eyes; in some of them many now living have borne a part; to picture them again to our mental vision cannot fail to be of interest and profit to us all. ”

“ Many have called the 20th century the American Century. The question before us today is about the next century, looking just a few years ahead.
Let me tell you a story that will help shape that century, a story you probably haven't heard about. It's about a battle between those who want to change things and those who want to protect the status quo. And in this battle those who support change are telling those who want to stand pat: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. ”

“ I am firmly convinced, for my opinion, that the conditions of wealth and civilization for the next quarter of a century are provided for in excess of any previous period of history, and that nothing but human folly can prevent a period of prosperity which we, even now, should regard as fabulous. ”

“ We might consider the question of the twentieth century progress from other points of view, such as agriculture, architecture, household art, literature, medicine, surgery, social relations, etc., though in doing so we should be considering simply developments of existing conditions. ”

“ With the peace of 1815, however, the era of industrial development commences, and this has been treated with great—though it is believed not too great—fullness of detail; for, beyond all question, the event of the world's history during the nineteenth century is the growth of the United States. ”

“ After its long career of triumph and disaster, glory and shame, the world stands to-day at the end of an old and the beginning of a new century, looking forward with hope and backward with pride, for it has just completed the most wonderful hundred years it has ever known, and has laid a noble foundation for the twentieth century, now at its dawn. ”

“ Indeed, without permitting existing and pardonable pride to endanger rigid truth, it may be said that along many of the lines of invention and progress which have most intimately affected the life and civilization of the world, the nineteenth century has achieved triumphs and accomplished wonders equal, if not superior, to all other centuries combined. ”

“ Enterprise and practicalness we are apt to think of as the exclusive possession of much more modern generations. Least of all would we be apt to consider them as likely to be found in the Thirteenth Century, yet here they are, and the commercial arrangements which were made are as absolute premonitions of our modern thought as were the literature and architecture, the painting, even the teachings of science at the same period. ”

“ It is surely worth while, therefore, to make an attempt to individualize the centuries, not by affixing to them any arbitrary marks of one’s own, but by taking notice of the distinguishing quality they possess, and grouping round that, as a centre, the incidents which either produce this characteristic or are produced by it. What should we call the present century, for instance? We should at once name it the Century of Invention. ”

“ It is also the century of national systems of popular education, and at the same time of nation-great armies; the century that has done more than any other to scatter men over the face of the earth, and to concentrate them in cities; the century of a universal suffrage that is based upon a belief in the inherent value of the individual; and the century of the corporation and the labor union, which in the domain of capital and of labor threaten to obliterate the individual. ”

“ Every century has had its epoch-making characters,—men and women who dominated and directed the thoughts, purposes, activities, and achievements of their times. The nineteenth century is distinguished above all others by the number and quality of those who came to stand for the inception, advance, and culmination of the world’s great movements and who highly exemplified in their careers the enterprise and genius of their day. ”

“ For hackneyed as the period of the Wars of the Roses may seem to the superficial reader, no student has yet adequately studied the secret of the age in which the great revolutions of the next century were being prepared—the age which made possible for England the revival of letters and the reformation, which founded her commercial greatness, which revolutionized her industrial system, which cast away the last bonds of feudalism and laid the foundations of the modern State. ”

“ The fifteenth century, the last century of an age, was a backwater in education as in literature. The great revival was to come. The fifteenth century was indeed a century of revolution in so far as under the almost placid surface of continuity and conformity, there were forces of revolt at work, probing, accumulating knowledge and experience, perhaps unconsciously, for the day of liberation and change. ”

“ But it was eminently characteristic of the eighteenth century, an age of staid and decorous subsidence from the energetic restlessness of the seventeenth—an age in which men eschewed revolution and innovation, and devoted themselves assiduously to conserve, consolidate, polish, refine, and make the best of what they had. ”

“ The history of the middle ages—a subject of which lectures are promised at some future period—is a theme replete with the interest to every one who would trace the moral and political progress of society. It was then that the elements which compose our present political system, though still in a state of fusion, were beginning to shape themselves into order. ”

“ The men of this epoch inherited a ferment of ideas attendant upon the historical revolt of the sixteenth century, and they bequeathed formed systems of thought touching every aspect of human life. It is the one century which consistently, and throughout the whole range of human activities, provided intellectual genius adequate for the greatness of its occasions. ”

“ We find in it a harmony of power, a universality of endowment, a glow, an aspiring ambition and confidence such as we never find in later centuries, at least so generally and so permanently diffused. ...
The Thirteenth Century was an era of no special character. It was in nothing one-sided and in nothing discordant. It had great thinkers, great rulers, great teachers, great poets, {xii} great artists, great moralists, and great workmen. It could not be called the material age, the devotional age, the political age, or the poetic age in any special degree. ”