cannot be discussed here the scientific world of our time suffers a perfect plague of new theories, most of which are the very truth for a few years and are then abandoned in out-of-date editions of encyclopedias. Indeed it is not merely the scientific world, but the general world of thought. Poets rage about new types of poetry, musicians about the "new music," sculptors about Rodin and Epstein, painters about Futurism and Cubism, and even economists and Socialists run on through a series of Marxian Socialism, Guild Socialism, Unionism, Direct Action, Credit Control, Anarchy, Soviet Socialism, etc., etc. It is not so much a new "psychology" in our generation as an expression of a new freedom and, particularly, a vast new literature, always itching for novelties, which broadcasts or megaphones every new idea and gives it a fictitious importance.
Having for thirty years observed philosophers, scientists, and economists hug their new theory for five or ten years and then discard it for another which was equally certain (and generally quite contradictory of the preceding), I have become in my mental attitude what I might describe as a conservative anarchist. I have no more respect for the authority of the hour than I have for the authority of Jesus
