ce in constitutions. Theodore Roosevelt,
who reflects so much of America, has very definitely cast down this idol.
Now since he stands generally some twenty years behind the pioneer and
about six months ahead of the majority, we may rest assured that this
much-needed iconoclasm is in process of achievement.

Closely related to the constitution and just as decadent to-day are the
Sanctity of Private Property, Vested Rights, Competition the Life of
Trade, Prosperity (at any cost). Each one of these ideas was born of an
original need, served its historical function and survived beyond its
allotted time. Nowadays you still come across some of these ancient
notions, especially in courts, where they do no little damage in
perverting justice, but they are ghost-like and disreputable, gibbering
and largely helpless. He who is watching the ascendant ideas of American
life can afford to feel that the early maxims of capitalism are doomed.

But the habit of mind which would turn an instrument of life into an
immutable law of its existence--that habit is always with us. We may
outgrow our adoration of the Constitution or Private Property only to
establish some new totem pole. In the arts we call this inveterate
tendency classicalism. It is, of course, a habit by no means confined to
the arts. Politics, religion, science are subject to it,--in politics we
call it conservative, in religion orthodox, in science we describe it as
academic. Its manifestations are multiform but they have a common source.
An original creative impulse of the mind expresses itself in a certain
formula; posterity mistakes the formula for the impulse. A genius will
use his medium in a particular way because it serves his need; this way
becomes a fixed rule which the classicalist serves. It has been pointed
out that because the first steam trains were run on roads built for carts
and coaches, the railway gauge almost everywhere in the world became
fixed at four feet eight and one-half inches.

You might say that genius works inductively and finds a method; the
conservative works deductively from the method and defeats whatever
genius he may have. A friend of mine had written a very brilliant article
on a play which had puzzled New York. Some time later I was discussing
the article with another friend of a decidedly classicalist bent. "What
is it?" he protested, "it isn't criticism for it's half rhapsody; it
isn't rhapsody because it is analytical.... What is