Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split. Tragedy that breaks man’s face and a white fire flies out of it; vision that fools him Out of his limits, desire that fools him out of his limits, unnatural crime, inhuman science, Slit eyes in the mask; wild loves that leap over the walls of nature, the wild fence-vaulter science, Useless intelligence of far stars, dim knowledge of the spinning demons that make an atom, These break, these pierce, these deify, praising their God shrilly with fierce voices: not in a man’s shape He approves the praise, he that walks lightning-naked on the Pacific, that laces the suns with planets, The heart of the atom with electrons: what is humanity in this cosmos? For him, the last Least taint of a trace in the dregs of the solution; for itself, the mould to break away from, the coal To break into fire, the atom to be split.[40] In interpretation of his thought Mr. Louis Adamic quotes Mr. Jeffers as saying that civilisation tends inevitably toward downfall through sexual introversion. Although to attempt to “break out of humanity” after the fashion exalted in _Roan Stallion_ is, to be sure, dangerous, “misinterpreted in the mind of a fool or a lunatic,” nevertheless the fault of the civilised person is that he “regards man exclusively,” “founding his values, desires, his picture of the universe, all on his own humanity.” Mr. Jeffers thus levels his attack directly at the foundation of humanism, and allies himself with the naturalists who seek salvation in the physical. He thus flies from normal humanity into cruelty and perversion. But the end of these is death. And in poem after poem is expressed the longing for the peace and endurance of granite,--of the grave. The violent destruction of the individual is the logical outcome of his creed, and the denial of human values leads to the annihilation of humanity. This tendency, the extreme development of which we find in Jeffers, we find in less degree in our leading American dramatist. But in Eugene O’Neill it is obscured by other qualities; and generalisations are rendered difficult because he is groping and experimental, not only in technic but in philosophy. Because of this difficulty as well as for his intrinsic importance, O’Neill requires special consideration. IV A writer’s ’prentice work is likely to be revealing, and O’Neill’s is no exception. The one-act play _Thirst_, for example, reveals an imaginative absorption in the violences and brutalities of life. Most of the one-acts in the volume with _The Moon of the Caribbees_ have more normal and convincing characterisation, but about half are built upon abnormal situations involving incipient insanities or morbid passions.