lly unwilling to
submit to a power imposed from above and without, or to accept those
restrictions of society, self-imposed by man's own codified and
corrected observations of the natural world and his own impulses. He
jeers at the one as hypocrisy and superstition and at the other as
mere "middle-class respectability." He himself is the perpetual Ajax
standing defiant upon the headland of his own inflamed desires,
and scoffing at the lightnings either of heaven or society. Neither
devoutness nor progress but mere personal expansion is his goal. The
humanist curbs both the flesh and the imagination by a high doctrine
of expediency. Natural values are always critically appraised in the
light of humane values, which is nearly, if not quite, the same as
saying that the individual desires and delights must be conformed
to the standards of the group. There can be no anarchy of the
imagination, no license of the mind, no unbridled will. Humanism,
no less than religion, is nobly, though not so deeply, traditional.
But there is no tradition to the naturalist; not the normal and
representative, but the unique and spectacular is his goal. Novelty
and expansion, not form and proportion, are his goddesses. Not truth
and duty, but instinct and appetite, are in the saddle. He will try
any horrid experiment from which he may derive a new sensation.

Over against them both stands the man of religion with his vision of
the whole and his consequent law of proud humility. The next three
chapters will try to discuss in detail these several attitudes toward
life and their respective manifestations in contemporary society.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHILDREN OF ZION AND THE SONS OF GREECE

We are not using the term "humanism" in this chapter in its strictly
technical sense. Because we are not concerned with the history of
thought merely, but also with its practical embodiments in various
social organizations as well. So we mean by "humanism" not only those
modes and systems of thought in which human interests predominate but
also the present economic, political and ecclesiastical institutions
which more or less consistently express them. Hence, the term as
used will include concepts not always agreeing with each other, and
sometimes only semi-related to the main stream of the movement. This
need not trouble us. Strict intellectual consistency is a fascinating
and impossible goal of probably dubious value. Moreover, it is
this whole expre