Modernism.-The egoistic, superficial, unstable, morbidly restless, spirit of the time, "modernism," now encroaches upon established opinion in every field of thought. It is rampant latest, perhaps, in the fine arts. The "post-impressionistic" impulse is exaggerated into the strange work of the "Cubists" and "Futurists," and of those who have advanced still farther into what seems the realm of absurdity. Music shows its influence progressively in the disregard of key-relationships, and boisterous cacophony replaces the harmonies of Bach and Beethoven. "Grace and charm make me seasick!" exclaimed the most famous male dancer in Europe, when protest was offered to the revolutionary forms which he had recently introduced into the ballet. He explained that he had adopted "new ideals."

"A glance with an eye confounds the learning of all times," says Walt Whitman. This is a revelation which the untrained and ignorant mind accepts with avidity; and it represents the half-conscious conviction of a large part of our people, appealing to their selfesteem and natural indolence. Everyone has an eye: he needs but to look and, without further effort, the mists which have darkened the life of man through the ages will be dissipated. The lessons of history and experience we are supposed to need no longer: what is best for us we may know by the moment's intuition. The goal toward which our ancestors have looked and labored in despair, we shall now reveal to ourselves. We perceive that all of our institutions are defective: such of them as cannot be immediately remodeled into complete accordance with present ideals must be suppressed and expunged.

The new sense of freedom now inspires to an escape not only from all external restraints and burdens but

from those internal checks generated by sympathy with one's fellows and by conscience. Religion, private property, marriage and the family relation, distinction between right and wrong, all, we may fear, must go. They are fetishes and superstitions, we are told, which have too long infested the human mind; for the moral man and the moral thing there is no longer any use. We should give allegiance to nothing, suppressing the sense of moral obligation as the last form of superstition.

Explanation of Wild Spirit of the Time.-An explanation of the wild spirit of our time does not seem difficult. There are two very evident factors. Liberty, wealth, and diffusion of knowledge have come within the general reach so suddenly and so lavishly that we have not yet been able to adjust ourselves to the new conditions. These are intrinsically beneficent, perhaps, but to our unprepared organisms they are as yet toxic rather than nutrient, and the result is delirium. The second factor This has been a

is the influence of the great War. broad appeal to material force and men have again realized the facility and speed with which—for a while— their ends may be accomplished by this brutish method of the olden time; and they have become impatient of the gentle means of fair discussion and decision by moral right. Further, the principle of so-called selfdetermination has been proclaimed by the authorities to whom men generally have looked for the refashioning of the world, and the vague term has been so widely reiterated and impressed that many peoples have become ecstatic in their visions of liberty and many individuals have come to interpret liberty as an almost unlimited license for the accomplishment of their desires.

The time is, as it were, one of wild experimentation on the part of nature. Hitherto, progress has usually come slowly, men feeling their way into new paths so cautiously that the influences of material and spiritual invention have been barely perceptible, and the times have seemed stagnant. Now, with an indifference to individual fate, nature throws us along the innumerable possible paths, reckless, it would seem, whether they lead to desirable goals or toward destruction.

The waste of effort, the unhappiness, the degradation of life, for individuals, for communities, for the whole people of the epoch, seem to count for nothing in the unknown purpose which drives us onward; but, by this almost limitless experimentation, new and better ways for the men of the future may be in preparation. In the myriad crude and fantastic combinations which now disconcert and affright us there are elements which will persist, to be recombined perhaps into principles of lasting worth. Not extinction but a rejuvenation may await the near future of the race.

Patience, then, and the aim to make thoughtful contribution to its guidance should be our attitude in the whirl of opinion amid which we live. Our best hope lies in more careful thought and, our aims being raised, in the seeking of things which are of enduring worth and for the general good. Man's most ancient and most potent enemy, whether as ignorance or as faulty reasoning, is error: our safety requires that we appreciate the misleading influences of our fellow-men and the limitations and frailties of our own individual natures, and these elements it is now our purpose to study.

CHAPTER I

SOCIAL INFLUENCES

In this chapter, we shall consider some of the forms in which the interplay of thought between mind and mind is manifested, and see how at every point misunderstanding and error are prone to arise. That such is the case, everyone knows; but by us all it is constantly ignored or forgotten, and it will be of value to impress ourselves once more, and in some detail, with the part which social influences play in the generation of error.

Like fish hatched into the waters of a turbid aquarium, we are born into a restricted corner of an incomprehensible universe; and, as if these fish were enclosed within a series of nets, we are shut in from such truth as our powers might otherwise attain by the accumulated error and prejudice which form the fourfold screen of family, nation, race, and epoch.

The Child's Environment.-Whatever the physical poverty about a child, he has been born into an environment relatively rich in ideas. He is not left to grapple independently with the problems of existence, but finds at hand long-established principles of interpretation for every phenomenon of external nature and of mind. These principles are always crude but, for a long time, they satisfy; and by them we are all influenced throughout life. They constitute a heritage of preconceptions

which bias every inquiry into truth. They vaunt themselves not only with the authority of knowledge but with the reverence due to parents and teachers and, at times, with an awe of the Divine.

Says a writer, from his own experience:

These four little boys (they were in the infant school) used to wonder in their childish way about everything. Their wonder was always tinged by the superstitions of their elders. It was said to be wicked to point a finger at the moon. Why, no one knew. But not one of these boys ever dared lift a finger towards the moon, lest unthinkable terrors should befall him.” I

The little narrative may seem commonplace; but as illustrative of the restricting and misleading influence under which all human minds must grow, it becomes impressive as we reflect upon it.

Every advance of the individual thinker is a step forward from the confines of accepted knowledge and belief, an assault upon the jealously guarded wall of ignorance and error which hedges us in from the outlying fields of truth; but we love our world of erroneous thought, have all our interests vested in it, and for a multiplicity of reasons oppose those who seek to let in new light. The man who destroys our illusions we are prone to hate.

This strange attitude and the fact that a good thought, as too advanced for the times, must often perish or produce but little fruit are, presumably, for the advantage of the race; yet thereby the best thought of the present is still permeated with elements of error derived from the thinking of an earlier time, and 'Joseph Whittaker in Tumblefold, New York, 1919.