Literature's intellectual and spiritual independence and great public appeal afford it great potential as a moving force in today's increasingly secular, unphilosophical, and nonliterary world, which nonetheless longs for harmony, unity of purpose, and spiritual oneness. Although political oppression and literary commercialism threaten literature and the writer today, the writer is challenged to reestablish, in combination with enlightened philosophical, scientific, and religious inquiry, the supremacy of humanity and humaneness in interpersonal and international affairs. Literature's unique traits render it singularly capable of reasserting itself as a moral and intellectual force in our time. (DF)