"There is a religious consciousness which makes people unconscious of religion. 'The piety of art is the quest of the unattainable,' and the more freedom you give it from missions the greater the mission it will fulfil. One more answer to the theory of art for Tolstoy's sake: Here is a fable that occurred to me as I was listening to the lecture. I have no time to elaborate and polish it, but I give you the right to plagiarize it. "'You must pardon me,' said Art to Beauty, one day, 'if I do not pay so much attention to you as I used to, but this is a world of evils and problems, and I will have to leave you for awhile and go forth and help to make a better, juster system of society.' And Art went forth to fight the battle of the poor and the oppressed, and Beauty waited wistfully for its return, alone and deserted, withered and faded. After many years Beauty went in quest of her lost lover, Art, who had not returned, and she came upon a field of battle, and there, transformed into rebel warrior, was her lost lover, Art. And even as she gazed, a shot was fired from the enemy, and it pierced the heart of Art, and he lay prostrate and dead before her." V "Three Stages of the Game" We had been speaking of "the only law that never changes"--the law of change: of the glorious ascent of the youthful nonconformist, and of the sad descent of the older and wiser compromiser--a theme, by the way, as old as age and yet as new as youth. We all had friends we once looked up to and now looked down upon, and we indulged in a few reminiscences. Every army had its deserters, every cause its traitors, and the crusaders who carried the red flag also changed their minds, lost heart and ran home. "Oh, the flesh-pots of Egypt. Even the vegetarians cannot forget them," remarked my companion. "They who led the strikes among the sweat-shop workers in the course of time became heartless capitalist bosses; and there were Anarchists, who wanted to abolish all laws, who became lawyers and went into politics. One by one many of the promising young men of the Ghetto broke their promises and left the uplifting movements they brought into existence. Some died, some married for love of money, some took wives unto themselves, some became lawyers and doctors, some dentists, some wire-pullers, some went into politics, and some moved to Brooklyn. Compromise? They all hated that word and then--they compromised. "Recently I have been thinking of three particular stages of the game--this grim and gruesome little game called life," said Keidansky. "The first is when we sternly demand the truth, the second when we ask for justice, and the third--when we beg for mercy--