Excerpt from The Shifting of Literary Values

The author of the following essay has undertaken to establish that changes in morality must affect lit erar'}7 values, that some of the classics idealize views of life now obsolete, that these books are therefore responsible for the existence Of some of our moral and intellectual stagnancy, and that a new critical outlook upon them is called for. This essay is not the result of a mere desire to dethrone literary idols, but has been the product of a conviction fortified by years of ex tensive reading and careful deliberation, that litera ture, having been the depository of men's thoughts in the past, must wane in artistic value, after the world has discovered that these ideas were false.

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