Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/24

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here it is; and you will recognize that it liberates us from Puritanism and from Democracy. It emancipates us from you!

'You ask me, perhaps,' continued the young representative of American letters, 'what we intend to do with this new freedom, which, as Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn truly says, is our "central passion." Well, we intend to let ourselves out. If you press me as to what I mean by that, I can refer you to the new psychology. This invaluable science, developed by great German investigators, has recently announced, as you possibly know, an epoch-making discovery—namely, that most of the evil in the world is due to self-control. To modern inquiry, it appears that what all the moralists, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, have tried to curb or to suppress is precisely what they should have striven to release. If you wish corroboration, let me quote the words of our talented English colleague, Mr. W. L. George, the novelist, who says, "I suspect that it does a people no good if its preoccupations find no outlet."

"'In passing I will remark that Mr. George, being an Englishman, shows a certain taint of inherited English Puritanism in defending letting the people out in order to do them good. From the point of view of the new philosophy,