As for Wendell’s amazing contradictions and inconsistencies, his endless flounderings between orthodoxy and heresy, I believe that an adequate explanation of them is to be found in the compositions of Prof. Dr. Sigmund Freud, the Viennese necromancer. Freud, himself a Jew, discusses in one of his books the curious fact that jokes at the expense of the Jews are chiefly circulated by Jews themselves, and especially by the younger ones. Two Jewish drummers in a Pullman smoking-room fall into an exchange of such jocosities almost automatically. Why? Because, says Freud, they attain thereby to an escape from their Jewishness, which often irks them. It is not they are ashamed of being Jews; it is that the Jewish practices of their elders are burdensome. They dare not revolt openly, for their sense of filial piety is strong, so they take it out by making jokes. By much the same psychological process, I believe, Wendell arrived at his curious mixture of contrarieties. Sentimentally and emotionally, he was moved powerfully by the New England tradition, and felt a strong impulse to defend it against the world. Intellectually, he saw clearly that it was in collapse around him--worse, that it had been full of defects and weaknesses even when, by his own doctrine, it had been strong. The result was his endless shuttling between worship and ribaldry. The last of the New Englanders, he clung pathetically to a faith which gradually succumbed to doubts. In his later years he thus stood upon a burning deck, whence all but him had fled.