on the power of self-criticism which the interested persons possess.

This is a parable, with wide possibilities of social application. Our average man, in town and country, is quarreling with his wife, that is to say, with our average American civilization. If he listens to certain counselors who appeal to certain of his instincts and

the entire abandonment of all standards and a general adoption of the policy of live and let live. His theory of universal sympathy, which he miscalls "the democratic theory in criticism," would, if applied, destroy both criticism and democracy.

litical and economic interests which they serve, tend at the present time, I should say, to adopt the point of view of universal cynicism.

Our journalistic critics in general, conscious of the incompatibility beto his romantic imagination, his house- 10 tween their private beliefs and the pohold, the material civilization which he has slowly built up out of the dust by faithfully working on certain traditional principles-this household will be in danger of disruption. If, on the other hand, his discontent with himself and his human conditions is adequately diagnosed, and if an adequate remedy is accepted, then he will look back upon this period of pessimism as 20 preliminary to the redintegration of the national spirit and its expression in literature. Which course will be followed depends in no small measure upon our power of criticism, which, in its turn, depends upon an adequate point of view.

The elder critics in the academic tradition have in general not dealt sympathetically, or even curiously, with 30 the phenomena. Fixed in an inveterate fidelity to the point of view established by the early classical Americans, they look with a mingling of disdain and abhorrence upon our impious younger world, as upon

a darkling plain Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The critics, on the other hand, who are endeavoring to deal sympathetically and curiously with the phenomena, are utterly unorganized; are either without standards of judgment, or in a wild state of confusion with regard to their standards. They are making efforts to get together; but they have no principle of integration. I have not time to do more than mention some of their incongruous points of view.

A man whose hearty geniality touches the affections of us all, Mr. William Allen White, proposed the other day, as an integrating principle,

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In order precisely to escape from the troublesome clashes of political, social, and moral judgment, in order to escape, in other words, from the real problem of critical redintegration, another group has adopted the æsthetic point of view, and has made a feeble effort to revive in America, with the aid of the Crocean philosophy, the doctrine of art for art's sake.

I will mention, finally, one other point of view, to which an increasing company of the younger writers are repairing, which we may call for convenience the Freudian point of view. The champions of this point of view attempt a penetrating diagnosis of all maladies of American civilization, with the assistance of the new psychology. To sum up their findings briefly, they hold that the trouble with American life is, at the root, due to age-long and cankering inhibitions, attributable to our traditional Puritanism. The remedy is a drop to the instinctive level; the opening of the gates to impulse; a free and spontaneous doing as one pleases in all directions.

Popular Freudianism is, perhaps, the most pestilential of all the prevailing winds of doctrine. Yet its champions have penetrated, I believe, nearer to the heart of our difficulty, they are nearer to an adequate point of view and an integrating principle, than any 50 of the other seekers. They at least recognize that the kingdom of disorganization is within the individual breast. The fact that they approach so near to the true destination, and

yet fall short of it, renders their counsels peculiarly seductive and peculiarly perilous.

gion, or morals, which will give direction and purpose, which will give channel and speed, to the languid diffusive Idrift of their lives. The suppressed desire which causes their unhappiness is a suppressed desire for a good life, for the perfection of their human possibilities. The The average unreflective man does not always know that this 10 is, in fact, his malady. And in the blind hunger and thirst of his unenlightened nature, he reaches out eagerly for opiates and anodynes, which leave him unsatisfied. But what the innermost law of his being demands, what his human nature craves, is something good and great that he can do with his heart and mind and body. He craves the active peace of surrender and devotion to something greater than himself. Surrender to anything less means the degradation and humiliation of his spirit.

They are right when they attribute the central malady of our civilization to suppressed desires. They are tragically wrong if they believe that this malady is due to the suppression by religion of any specific isolable physical instinct. They are tragically wrong if they think that this malady can be cured by the destruction of religious restraint and the release of any specific isolable physical instinct. When they prescribe, as many of them do with as much daring as they can muster, giving a new and large license, for example, to the sexual impulses; when they prescribe, as if with the countenance of fresh scientific discoveries, the resto- 20 ration of the grand old liberative force of alcohol; when they flatter any of the more or less disciplined instincts of our animal nature with the promise of happiness in emancipation, they are offering us intoxicants, anodynes, opiates, every one of which has been proved, by the experience of innumerable generations, hopeless even to accomplish any permanent alleviation of the malady which they profess to cure. And when they attack the essential religious principle of Puritanism,-its deep human passion for perfection, they are seeking to destroy the one principle which can possibly result in the integration of the national life.

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This is the tragedy involved in any surrender to subordinate passions or instincts. I think that our current pessimistic literature indicates that our average man is discovering this fact about his own nature, and that, therefore, like the sinner made conscious of guilt, he is ripe for regeneration; he is ready for the reception of a higher culture than he has yet enjoyed.

Democratic civilization suffereth long, because it is always waiting for the hindmost to catch up with the middle. It is always reluctant to consign the hindmost to the devil. But in the

Now, as I talk with members of the beautiful younger generation which comes through my class-room year 40 long run, I do not believe that the after year, I find that the Freudians are profoundly mistaken in mistaken in their analysis of human nature. The deepest craving of the average young men and women is not to be unbound, and released, and to be given a license for a free and spontaneous doing as they please in all directions. They recognize that nature and environment and lax educational discipline have made them 50 beings of sufficiently uncoördinated desires and scattering activities.

What they deeply crave is a binding generalization of philosophy, or reli

history of our civilization is going to verify the apprehensions entertained by our old Roman-Americans regarding the average man. To one whose measure of national accomplishment is not the rich flowering of a small aristocratic class, but the salvation of the people, the choices of the average man in the past do not conclusively prove the danger of giving him what he wants. In his first period, he wanted stable government; and he got it, and wholeheartedly glorified the political and military heroes who gave it to him.

In his second period, he wanted a rapid
and wide diffusion of the material in-
struments of civilized life; he got them,
and wholeheartedly glorified the in-
dustrial heroes who provided them.
In his third period, the average man
is growing almost as scornful of
"wealth and pomp and equipage," as
John Quincy Adams. The captains of
industry are no longer his heroes; they 10
have communicated to him what they
had of virtue for their hour. What the
average man now wants is the large-
scale production and the wide diffusion
of science, art, music, literature, health,
recreation, manners, human intercourse,
happiness-the best to be had; and he
is going to get them and to glorify
wholeheartedly the heroes of culture
who provide them for him.

ognize more fully what part the things of the mind and the imagination may play in the satisfaction of his suppressed desires. It is to help him to recognize that even an intellectual and imaginative life will yield him little. content unless it is organized around some central principle and animating purpose. It is to give the average man what the literature of our pessimistic democracy has at last proved that he wants, namely, an object to which he can joyfully surrender the full strength of his soul and body.

But this is not the whole of the remedy. It is necessary, at the same time, to persuade the superior men that the gods of the old Roman-American aristocrats have forsaken them, and that 20 the time has come when even they may safely accept the purified religion of democracy. To oppose it now is to oppose the formative spirit of our national life and to doom one's self to sterility. The remedy is, in short, to effect a redintegration of the national will on the basis of a genuinely democratic humanism, recognizing as its central principle the duty of bringing the whole body of the people to the fullest and fairest human life of which they are capable.

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The great civilizations of the world hitherto have been integrated in their religion. By religion I mean that which, in the depths of his heart, a man really believes desirable and praiseworthy. A great civilization begins to form when men reach an agreement as to what is desirable and praiseworthy. The leading Athenians, in their best period, reached such an agreement; and that is why, whether you meditate on their art, their poetry, or their philosophy, whether you gaze at the frieze of the Parthenon, or read a drama of Sophocles, or the prayer of Socrates, you feel yourself in the presence of one and the same formative spirit-one superb stream of energy, superbly controlled by a religious belief that moral and physical sym- 40 metry are the most desirable and praiseworthy things in the outer and inner man.

The prospects for our American civilization depend at present upon our capacity for a similar religious integration. Our present task is, primarily, to become clear in our minds as to what is our own formative spirit. The

The point of view which I advocate is not, as it has been called, moralistic. It is essentially religious. And the religion of an intelligent man is not a principle of repression, any more than it is a principle of release. Religion binds us to old morals and customs so long as they help us towards the attainment of our object; but it releases from old morals and customs as soon as they impede our progress towards that object. The object gives the standard. Confronted with heirlooms or with innovations, one's first question is, does this, or does it not, tend to assist the entire body of the people toward the best human life of

remedy for our present discontents is 50 which they are capable? Advance to indicated by the character of the malady. The remedy is, first, to help the average man to an understanding of his own nature, so that he may rec

this point of view, and you leave behind you universal sympathy, universal cynicism, universal æstheticism, and the black bats of the Freudian

RECENT AND CONTEMPORARY POETRY

WALT WHITMAN1 (1819-1892)

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck-hand singing on the steamboat deck,

5

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day-at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

10

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,

5

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the

same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

10

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

10

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,

Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,

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All selections from Whitman from Leaves of Grass, Inclusive Edition, edited by Emory Holloway. Copyright, 1924, Doubleday, Page & Company.

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