It
is an age, therefore, interested and legitimately interested in
behavior rather than character, in matter and its laws rather than
in the control of matter for the purposes of fine living.
Therefore, our vital literature is behavioristic, naturalistic,
experimental--rightly so I think--and must be so until we seek
another way. That search cannot be long deferred. One expects its
beginning at any moment, precisely as one expects, and with
reason, a reaction against the lawless thinking and unrestrained
impulses which have followed the war. One hopes that it will not
be to Puritanism, unless it be that stoic state of mind which lay
behind Puritanism, for no old solution will serve. The neo-
Puritans to-day abuse the rebels, young and old, because they have
thrown over dogma and discipline. The rebels accuse Puritanism for
preserving the dogma that cramps instead of frees. It is neither
return to the old nor the destruction thereof that we must seek,
but a new religion, a new discipline, a new hope, and a new end
which can give more significance to living than dwellers in our
industrial civilization are now finding.
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