istresses they adored--of a Science which they enthroned above instead
of subordinating to humanistic values, of a brutal Imperialism which the
so-called Conservatives among them set up in place of the truly humane
devotion of which man is capable, of the sickening humanitarianism which
appears in retrospect to have been merely an excuse for absolute
indolence--but they certainly have forfeited the right to censure it.
Let those who are so eager to cast the first stone at the aesthetic and
moral anarchy of the present day consider Professor Babbitt's indictment
of themselves and decide whether they have no sin:--

'"If I am to judge by myself," said an eighteenth-century Frenchman,
"man is a stupid animal." Man is not only a stupid animal, in spite
of his conceit of his own cleverness, but we are here at the source
of his stupidity. The source is the moral indolence that Buddha,
with his almost infallible sagacity, defined long ago. In spite of
the fact that his spiritual and, in the long run, his material
success, hinge on his ethical effort, man persists in dodging this
effort, in seeking to follow the line of least or lesser resistance.
An energetic material working does not mend, but aggravate the
failure to work ethically, and is therefore especially stupid. Just
this combination has in fact led to the crowning stupidity of the
ages--the Great War. No more delirious spectacle has ever been
witnessed than that of hundreds of millions of human beings using a
vast machinery of scientific efficiency to turn life into a hell for
one another. It is hard to avoid concluding that we are living in a
world which has gone wrong on first principles, a world that, in
spite of all the warnings of the past, has allowed itself to be
caught once more in the terrible naturalistic trap. The dissolution
of civilisation with which we are threatened is likely to be worse
in some respects than that of Greece or Rome, in view of the success
that has been obtained in 'perfecting the mystery of murder.'
Various traditional agencies are indeed still doing much to chain up
the beast in man. Of these the chief is no doubt the Church. But the
leadership of the Occident is no longer here. The leaders have
succumbed in greater or less degree to naturalism, and so have been
tampering with the moral law. That the brutal imperialist who brooks