ave cut off the development of forms of amusement, arrested vice, and
forced new beginnings.

+670. Amusements need the control of educated judgment and will.+ The
history shows that amusements are a pitfall in which good mores may be
lost and evil ones produced. They require conventional control and good
judgment to guide them. This requirement cannot be set aside. Amusements
always present a necessity for moral education and moral will. This fact
has impressed itself on men in all ages, and all religions have produced
Puritan and ascetic sects who sought welfare, not in satisfying but in
counteracting the desire for amusement and pleasure. Their efforts have
proved that there is no solution in that direction. There must be an
educated judgment at work all the time, and it must form correct
judgments to be made real by a cultivated will, or the whole societal
interest may be lost without the evil tendency being perceived.

+671. Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of progress.+ It is
clear from the history that amusements have gone through waves upward
and downward, but that the amplitude of the waves is very small. It is
true that the shows of the late Roman empire were very base, and that
the great drama has gone very high by comparison, but the oscillation
between the two entirely destroys anything like a steady advance in
dramatic composition or dramatic art. This is a very instructive fact.
It entirely negatives the current notion of progress as a sort of
function of time which is to be expected to realize itself in a steady
improvement and advance to better and better. The useful arts do show an
advance. The fine arts do not. They return to the starting point, or
near it, again and again. The dramatic art is partly literary and partly
practical handicraft. Theater buildings improve; the machinery, lights,
scenery, and manipulation improve. The literary products are like other
artistic products: they have periods of glory and periods of decay. It
is the literary products which are nearest to the mores. They lack all
progress, or advance only temporarily from worse to better literary
forms.

[1987] Wellhausen, _Skizzen und Vorarbeiten_, III, 85.

[1988] Maspero, _Peuples de l'Orient_, I, 580.

[1989] Tiele-Gehrich, _Relig. im Altert._, I, 160.

[1990] Barton, _Semitic Origins_, 85.

[1991] _Archiv fuer Anthrop._, XXIX, 129.

[1992] _Ibid._, 138, 150.

[1993] _Origines du The