er of 1692, killed eighteen people for
witchcraft. Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by
fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: "The Pilgrim fathers
infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old." The
horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in
the American classic, THE SCARLET LETTER.

Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash; but it still
has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American
people. Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock. Like the
Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of
American morals; he dictates the standards of good and evil, of
purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the
private lives of the people, into their most intimate relations.
The system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to
shame the infamous Third Division of the Russian secret police. Why
does the public tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply
because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in
the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not
succeeded in fully emancipating themselves. The visionless and
leaden elements of the old Young Men's and Women's Christian
Temperance Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and the
Prohibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint, are
the grave diggers of American art and culture.

Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature which delve
deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a
severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every
Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's
liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism as
the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is
possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct,
curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.
Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of
freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It
repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but
being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions,
Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.

The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true.
The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the flesh as