So much needs to be said by way of charge and speculation in order to clear the air. If I write with some excitement, it is no more than the sight of the tumble from great-worded, great deeded 1918 to the indifferent, self-regarding, and a little cynical present may account for. Certainly in our national past idealism has not been an illusion, although it was often emotional. Nor, in sober fact, do I doubt the essential idealism of the normal American mind, especially that American mind which inherits the optimism and the liberal instincts of our forefathers. I am merely curious as to the exact nature of that idealism as it exists, and plays strange tricks, to-day. It seems to be a quality more resembling energy than a moral characteristic like virtue or vice. It seems, as one thinks over these recent manifestations, to be a blend of physical virility and nervous sensitiveness, good or bad, active or inactive, according to the condition and environment of the patient. Stir him, and it becomes active, beneficent, altruistic. Stir him further, and it may become sentimental, with symptoms of hysteria. Relax the pressure, and it drops into desuetude. These are the habits of American idealism, and I doubt whether more can be said of them except by way of further description. But there must be some thoughts, some ideas behind to account for these vagaries. There must be reasons why Americans idealize more readily than other nations, and why, just now at least, they so easily tire of their idealizing. Neither the scope of these pages nor my knowledge permits me to trace the history of American thinking and feeling, to say, as the historians some day must, what elements came from Europe, what modifications are due to pioneer environment, racial mixture, and centuries of unchecked material development. But tentatively, and with all modesty, one may at least seek for light. I find that two great figures of our national youth and the ways of thinking they represented most help me to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of American idealism, help to an understanding of the phenomena of 1917-20. The first is Jonathan Edwards, theologian of international importance, leader of the great spiritual revival of mid-eighteenth century New England, missionary to the Indians, president of Princeton, author of works so widely read that even now no farm-house garret in New England but will yield a sermon or two, a treatise on original sin, or his epochal essay on the freedom of the will.