It is my thesis that because the acids of modernity have dissolved the adjustments of the ancestral order, there exists to-day on a scale never before experienced by mankind and of an urgency without a parallel, the need for that philosophy of life of which the insight of high religion is a prophecy. For it is immature and unregenerate desire which creates the disorders and the frustrations that confound us. The preoccupation of the popular religion has been to find a way of governing these disorders and of compensating for their frustrations. The preoccupation of high religion is with the regeneration of the passions that create the disorders and the frustrations. Insofar as modernity has dissolved the power of the popular religion to govern and to compensate, the need for a high religion which regenerates becomes imperative, and what was once a kind of spiritual luxury of the few has, under modern conditions, become an urgent necessity of the many. The insight of high religion which has hitherto indicated a kind of bypath into rare experiences is now a trail which the leaders of mankind are compelled to take. There is implied in this a radical displacement in the field of morals. The main interest of the practical moralist in the past has been to interpret, administer, and enforce a moral code. He knew what was right. The populace acknowledged that he knew what was right. His task was to persuade and compel them to do what was right. There was a tacit assumption, which was [p209] quite correct, that very often the populace and even the moralist himself would much rather have done what was wrong. Very often they did it. Then they were punished in this world or in the next. But to-day the moralist finds himself in a different position. He is no longer absolutely sure that he knows what is right. The populace, even if it respects him, is disinclined to believe that a thing is right simply because he says it is. The populace continues very frequently to prefer what was once regarded as wrong. It no longer knows whether it is right or wrong, and of course it gives itself the benefit of the doubt. The result is that there no longer exists a moral code which the moralist can interpret, administer, and enforce. The effect of that is moral anarchy within and without. Since there is no principle under modern conditions which authorizes the re-establishment of a moral code, the moralist, unless he revises his premises, becomes entirely ineffectual. To revise his premises can, under the circumstances, mean only one thing: that he occupies himself with the problem of how to encourage that growth into maturity, that outgrowing of naive desire, that cultivation of disinterestedness, which render passion innocent and an authoritative morality unnecessary.