vement is therefore
somewhat veiled and alleviated. But this is not so in the fields of
real culture and knowledge. The belief in the absurdities there has
not even an autosuggestive value. It is simply destructive to the life
of civilized society. It is absurd for us to put our best energies to
work to build up a splendid system of education for the youth of the
whole nation, and at the same time to allow its structure to be
undermined by the millionfold intellectual depravity.

Of course it may be difficult to say what ought to be done. I feel
sure that society ought to suppress with relentless energy all those
parlours of the astrologists and palmists, of the scientific mediums
and spiritualists, of the quacks and prophets. Their announcements by
signs or in the public press ought to be stopped, and ought to be
treated by the postal department of the government as the
advertisements of other fraudulent enterprises are treated. A large
role in the campaign would have to be played by the newspapers, but
their best help would be rendered by negative action, by not
publishing anything of a superstitious and mystical type. The most
important part of the fight, however, is to recognize the danger
clearly, to acknowledge it frankly, and to see with open eyes how
alarmingly the evil has grown around us. No one will fancy that any
social schemes can be sufficient to bring superstition to an end, any
more than any one can expect that the present fight against city vice
will forever put a stop to sexual immorality. But that surely cannot
be an argument for giving up the battle against the moral perversities
of metropolitan life. The fact that we cannot be entirely successful
ought still less to be an argument for any leniency with the
intellectual perversities and the infectious diseases the germs of
which are disseminated in our world of honest culture by the
inhabitants of the cultural underworld.

IV

THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

The harmony and soundness of society depend upon its inner unity of
mind. Social organization does not mean only an external fitting
together, but an internal equality of mind. Men must understand one
another in order to form a social unit, and such understanding
certainly means more than using the same words and the same grammar.
They must be able to grasp other men's point of view, they must have a
common world in which to work, and