I deprecate the smug virtuosity which his kind often favor, I
dislike a vinegar morality, and am repelled by the monstrous
egoism of the idea that redeeming one's soul is such a serious
matter that every moment spared from contemplating the sins of
others or the pieties of oneself is irretrievably wasted.
But I object still more strongly to the anti-Puritans. Those
rebels who make unconventionality their only convention, with
their distrust of duty because they see no reason to be dutiful,
and their philosophic nihilism, which comes to this, that all
things having been proved false except their own desires, their
desires become a philosophy, those anti-Puritans, as one sees
them, especially in plays and on the stage, are an obstreperous,
denying folk that seldom know their own minds to the end of the
story. In fiction, distrusting what the Puritans call duty, they
are left gasping in the last chapter, wondering usually what they
are to do next; while the delightful lack of conscience that makes
the flappers audacious and the young men so unremorsefully naughty
leads to nothing at the end but a passionate desire to discover
some new reason for living (which I take to mean, a new
conscience) even if homes and social utility are wrecked in the
attempt.
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