When the war broke out, European countries, too, suddenly adopted (at first quite sincerely) this black-and-white world; and America’s heart went out to Europe--that is, to the shining white part of it. At last America understood Europe. But as early as 1915 Europeans began to feel that they had made a bitter mistake, and by now they have slipped back into an even more perplexed, shadowy and complicated world than before; and we, who never change, are further away from them than ever. It is difficult to account for this rigidly consistent attitude of our mind. Our youth will not explain it (our youth being, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, our oldest tradition); neither will puritanism, nor the pioneer spirit, nor even, entirely, our standardization. Perhaps as much as to any one thing it is due to our unquestioning assumption that the business of making a living and better is the single, really important function of a man’s life. (In at least one provincial American city of considerable size the half-page conceded by the morning paper to art, letters and music is entitled ‘In Woman’s Realm’). Now it is difficult enough, heaven knows! to make a living; and, what with the fierceness of competition, to achieve ‘success in business’ may very likely demand every ounce of a man’s energy and almost every moment of his day. But it does not develop more than a very small part of his mind. At the end of an intensely active life the business man is mentally in much the same condition as the workman who for thirty years has made the same automobile part in a factory. Really he is intensely ignorant of life. By which, of course, I do not mean that he is ignorant because he has not read Thomas Hardy or heard a Richard Strauss tone-poem; rather, that he is ignorant of himself. He has not grown up; he is still a child; in any true sense he does not think at all. And his childish spirit is over everything; it and his puerile canons are shared even by the thousands who have not succeeded in business or in so much as making a living. He is so sure of himself; but he is sure of himself just because he does not know himself at all. And as he is, so are we. This widespread ignorance of self is no doubt fostered by the manifold senseless activities with which our life is encrusted. Telephones, motor cars, radios, phonographs, movies, magazines, and newspapers save us from the leisure that we dread because, not being able to think, we should not know what to do with it. However that may be, ignorance of self is certainly at the bottom of our conception of the world as black-and-white and miracle-spotted. One deep unafraid look into our own hearts, and we should never again see life as so simple, sharp-edged an affair, because we could never again dissociate ourselves from any manifestation of it. That, of course, is exactly what we do at present and have always done, and it leads to many strange and wonderful things--among others, the institution of scapegoats.