erently.

Today, anti-adrenal, anti-religious ideas are epidemic. Of these,
first prize belongs to a cult of egotism fathered by the Napoleonic
Idea, consciously assertive and self-conscious in Max Stirner's
"The Ego and His Own," which engendered a swarm of imitators and
plagiarists. Human beings are all incorrigible egoists more or less,
furtive or frank. But social and religious codes curbed the most
narcissistic of kings and conquerors. Before Napoleon, all of them
vowed allegiance and expressed submission to some sort of deity,
confessed some fear of the Lord in their hearts. But the ideas
of Napoleon flouted all that. The unscrupulous predatory who
put effectual scheming for the self plainly above every other
consideration and rode rough shod over all his fellows appealed
powerfully to the latent animality of the adrenal types. Then came
the dawning awareness of capital and labor of themselves as classes
fiercely opposed forever in the policy of cut-throat versus
cut-throat. The labor organizations and the commercial companies
and corporations pitted themselves against each other consciously.
Doctrines like "Property is but Robbery," "Everyone for himself and
the devil take the hindmost," the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Facts
is Facts" of the Gradgrinds were the phrases of the nineteenth century
that assisted. Finally came the Darwinian revelation of man as the
ape-parvenu, which completed the disintegration of the old restraints.

Man seemed to see himself now for the first time stark and naked. But
Man consists of many varieties, and all reacted differently to
the image in the clouded mirror. There was universal attempt at
suppression. But slowly the anti-adrenal forces infiltrated every
activity and every soul. Like a hidden focus of infection in the body,
it germinated and poisoned. A slow fever crept into life. A febrile
quality tinged the acquisition of wealth, the concentration upon sex,
and the desperate pursuit of the novel stimulus.

Then, like the hand that appeared at Belshazzar's Feast, came the War,
only it was a hand that stayed with a long flashing lightning sword in
its grip, sweeping pitilessly among the erstwhile dancing multitudes
to mutilate and destroy. A good many people, with that sturdy
animality George Santayana speaks somewhere of as a trait of mankind,
set out to enjoy the War. It was a new sort of good time upon an
incredibly large scale. It was an undreamed-of opportunity. The
me