u know I think a man's religious philosophy ought to fit him
particularly for his present environment of earth and flesh. One cannot
tell so much about the life after death. It may be necessary to make us
over in the twinkling of an eye, and even to change the very direction of
all spirit life in us. But here, we know accurately what the needs are;
and any sort of wisdom that fails to provide us with the right way of
dealing with one another is defective. Thus your Buddhism seems to me more
mesmeric than satisfying. It is a way men have of murdering themselves,
while continuing to live, into peace and oblivion. There is a surrender, a
negation of life, a denial of total responsibilities, or human
obligations, which to my mind indicates a monstrous selfishness, none the
less real because its manifestations are passive and dignified by a
philosophic pose. You see I am reading your last two letters by the light
of certain earlier confessions.

And again I do not think you can fairly complain of humanitarianism
because in some books "it is synonymous with all that is lax and
materialistic in the age." The author of a novel is never so concerned to
tell the truth as he is to exploit and illustrate an interesting theory.
You have no right to expect gospel from literary mountebanks. Nor can you
judge the integrity of it by such disciples as Rousseau, who was merely a
decadent soul fascinated by the contemplation of his own depravity. The
scriptures of such a Solomon, however true in theory, are neither honest
nor effective. But as a final climax of your argument, you declare that in
your "own experience" you have found these humanitarians "impossible to
live with." I do not wonder at that. A question far more to the point is,
Did they find _you_ impossible to live with? Come to think of it, I would
rather live with a humanitarian, myself, even if his soul was carnally
bow-legged. But my sort of charity is so perverse, so awry with humour,
that the constant contemplation of a man trying to wriggle out of the
flesh through some spiritual key-hole, made by his own imagination, into a
form of existence much higher than agreeable, would be, to say the least
of it, diverting.

You copy several sentences from the Hull-House book in your letter and cry
to me in an accusing voice to know why I quoted them in my review "with
approval." Suppose I did not comprehend their important relation to the
subject from your point of view? But I do