one that you wish to attract—every one with Ram Dass's endowment of "fire in his belly"—does not turn away in disgust. If you mark your flag with "Prohibition," "Inhibition," "Restriction," "Conventions," "Frein Vital" or "Inner Check" there is danger that it will rally only, or mainly, those merely gap-filling persons who could not be blasted out of their sterile conventionality with dynamite. From all youths, dear to the gods, in whose blood the spring flames, "wintry negativity," as William James called it, meets with negation. The only point of view to which they can possibly be persuaded to repair is one which promises them some positive object for their expansive and creative energies; some better, more expeditious, route to a felicity of which they have already tasted the sweetness; some glory so unmistakable that the difficulty of compassing it will not seem altogether "not worth while. "To the sense of young people, a day passed in positive achievement is better than a thousand years of renunciation, and a small artist who will show them how to paint grasshoppers perfectly is a far more welcome counselor than a great prophet who dissuades them from taking a city.
In recognition of this fact, there emerge, or reemerge, in France enthusiastic cults, like that of M. Motherlant, for the athletic life; and M. André Beaunier gives eleven pages of the "Revue des Deux Mondes" (August 1, 1924) to extolling a moralist, meet for our times, M. Eugène Marsan, an author whose most significant work is a little manual for the man of fashion (l'homme élégant), entitled "The Walking Sticks of M. Paul Bourget."
What is all this about? Well, the moment you reflect upon your own walking stick you see that in the
