Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/117

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are stereotyped and fashionable. He "revolts" by regiments. Three distinct forces tend to fortify this social morality in a position of predominance over the younger generation: popular philosophy, military discipline, and women.

In the first place, all the popular psychologists are physiologists, looking upon man as merely a nervous organism; and all the popular philosophers are pragmatists, behaviourists, etc., and occupy themselves with the actions and reactions, the responses and inhibitions of this nervous automaton. For them there is no spiritual centre. For them there is really no inside to personality. Everything is valued in terms of visible behaviour. Everything gets its meaning and significance in a network of external relations. Intelligently or otherwise, our young people seize upon current philosophy to help them construct an entire universe for themselves which shall have no "insides." In the violence of their reaction against the idealism and inwardness of their fathers, they rejoice in their intention of living on the surface of things. They will get rid of what their fathers called sin by getting rid of what their fathers called the soul.

The heroine of current fiction has no soul—she has not even a heart; she has only a nervous