cles of many homes. This new view is growing
beneath the old as a bud grows beneath its covering, and is slowly
pushing it aside. While the inherited outlook, still apparently so
strong, is losing effectiveness and becoming a thing of conventions and
phrases, the ideas and purposes which are replacing it possess the
vigor and momentum of contact with the living tendencies and needs of
the present.

Mankind grows away from its traditional beliefs as inevitably as does
the boy or girl from childhood fancies, and often with much the same
lack of realization. But the time is certain to come to both when the
change is pressed home and there is need for interpretation and serious
self-communing. At such a time, kindly--yet uncompromising and
veracious--explanation of the nature and implications of the crisis is
the course dictated by wisdom. Nothing can be more cruel,
disorganizing, and, in a way, insulting than the attempt to {2}
harmonize what cannot in the long run be harmonized. The agony is then
sure to be long drawn out and the strength of soul, given by
fearlessness, is lost. I feel that the first law of personality is
_spiritual courage_. Actions and methods founded on a doubt of this
primary law lead to a blunting of the fine edge of the self, an injury
greater than which can scarcely be conceived.

In this day of testing, when so few have been found lacking in courage
and the capacity for self-sacrifice, it seems peculiarly fitting that
spiritual values and beliefs be boldly thrown into the arena, there to
prove themselves. In the years after the Great War, mankind must build
its life afresh and it will be wisest to see that the foundation is a
sound one. And, as a matter of social psychology, I doubt that a
people which is unwilling to look carefully to the framework of its
social and spiritual edifice can build a noble mansion. Mechanical
efficiency and cleverness will not be enough for this task of spiritual
creation. We must find lasting values around which to build a humane
life. And this, also, is a kind of warfare. Some have expressed to me
a doubt whether America is prepared for this effort at reconstruction
of a basic, yet intangible, sort. I have hopes, although not blind
ones. I refuse to take the vulgarities and ignorances of popular
evangelists as completely diagnostic of America's soul.

In the following pages, which are devoted to a clear statement of the
new view of man and nature