to reduce the spontaneous in life to a minimum.
Mr. Arnold Bennett puts forth a rather curious hybrid when he advises us
to treat ourselves as free agents and everyone else as an automaton. On
the other hand Prof. Muensterberg has always insisted that in social
relations we must always treat everyone as a purposeful, integrated
character.

Your doctrine, in short, depends on your purpose: a theory by itself is
neither moral nor immoral, its value is conditioned by the purpose it
serves. In any accurate sense theory is to be judged only as an effective
or ineffective instrument of a desire: the discussion of doctrines is
technical and not moral. A theory has no intrinsic value: that is why the
devil can talk theology.

No creed possesses any final sanction. Human beings have desires that are
far more important than the tools and toys and churches they make to
satisfy them. It is more penetrating, in my opinion, to ask of a creed
whether it served than whether it was "true." Try to judge the great
beliefs that have swayed mankind by their inner logic or their empirical
solidity and you stand forever, a dull pedant, apart from the interests
of men. The Christian tradition did not survive because of Aquinas or
fall before the Higher Criticism, nor will it be revived because someone
proves the scientific plausibility of its doctrine. What we need to know
about the Christian epic is the effect it had on men--true or false, they
have believed in it for nineteen centuries. Where has it helped them,
where hindered? What needs did it answer? What energies did it transmute?
And what part of mankind did it neglect? Where did it begin to do
violence to human nature?

Political creeds must receive the same treatment. The doctrine of the
"social contract" formulated by Hobbes and made current by Rousseau can
no longer be accepted as a true account of the origin of society.
Jean-Jacques is in fact a supreme case--perhaps even a slight
caricature--of the way in which formal creeds bolster up passionate
wants. I quote from Prof. Walter's introduction in which he says that
"The Social Contract _showed to those who were eager to be convinced_
that no power was legitimate which was guilty of abuses. It is no wonder
that its author was buried in the Pantheon with pompous procession, that
the framers of the new Constitution, Thouret and Lieyes and La Fayette,
did not forget and dared not forget its doctrines, that it was the
text-book and