You will see
something besides picture-galleries, and churches, and _Bons marches_.
I believe that you would realize what it is to be an atom of to-day in
the presence of twenty centuries."
She smiled up at him with quick sympathy. "Yes," she said, "I believe
one must more frequently be awed than pleased, or even enraptured. And
I can imagine how even the most self-content of men, if he absorb the
meaning of Europe, must feel his insignificance. If he has wit enough
to reflect that all these represented ages, with their extraordinary
results, abstract and concrete, have come and gone with no aid of his;
that no prophet ever whispered his name among the thousands of great
in every conceivable destiny; that he is, mentally and physically,
simply a result of evolution and civilization, not, in any way worth
mentioning, a cause, he will be apt to reflect as well upon how many
men, all told, have ever heard of his existence or who besides his
grandchildren will remember him a generation hence. He will probably
wish that arithmetic had never been invented.
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