Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/28

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pure fountain of health. But the measure and the significance which this flight and migration has assumed at present, are something new. The diaspora of European culture which we are witnessing, the arrival of so many of its bearers, representatives of all categories of science and art, to these shores; their more or less involuntary decision, transformed, however, into an amor fati, to complete their work in the American air of life,—that is something very strange and unprecedented; it opens unexampled possibilities of exchange and equalization and may be supremely helpful in creating the new feeling of humanism of which I spoke. Our emigration thus assumes an entirely different significance from that of any former emigration, the significance of the coalescence of the hemispheres, of the unification of the earth. "Europe wants to become one" that is long obsolete; the earth wants to become one. "Unification" is the word and command of the world hour, and the future be longs to the union of knowledge and hope, of profundity and courage, of faith and labor in the face of all doubt, and despite all doubt.

U. S . GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1943