On the other hand, it is true, the toll levied by Puritanism on human happiness has been ominous. For the average mind it meant intellectual consumption and asphyxiation. Puritan asceticism was an enemy of everything beautiful. Puritan institutions, the Puritan spirit of prohibition and constraint, have been justly denounced by modern critics as the chief obstacle to a rational and acceptable conception of life. Puritanism showed an admirable knowledge of the truest sides of existence and of its responsibilities, but it did not see all its sides. It perceived only and denounced flesh and the devil. It was suspicious of all the happy instincts and denied some essential human cravings. Hence the present revolt against it. The critics of Puritanism in America to-day are legion. The anti-Puritan spirit forms the substratum of contemporary American literature. It is only fair to Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Cabell and others to try to show, in way of preamble, that their plea against Puritan hypocrisy is supported by most of the up-to-date critics who handle a pen in the United States to-day. To review them all would be a long task. I shall deal only in this chapter with the most noted, like Messrs. Waldo Frank, Henry Mencken, Theodore Dreiser and a few others. Waldo Frank (in “Our America”) views Puritanism as a sort of moral and mystic utilitarianism based on the repression of natural instincts. As a religious and a practical expansionist (the one is not to be separated from the other), the Puritan sacrificed moral growth to physical hegemony. To conquer the continent and intensify his energies he surrounded himself on all sides with restraints. Neurosis was the result, but the Puritan charged it to the account of the Prince of Darkness and the invisible powers. He wanted to reach salvation by a short cut and did not hesitate to do violence to human nature. When they attack Puritanism the new insurgents do not aim at windmills. They see it as a practical influence still at work in American society to-day. It gives them the key to American behavior. According to them, the average American is a victim of puritanic repressions since childhood. The system of American education is hostile to what modern psychologists call “wish-fulfillment.” The American is active, expansive, a progressionist and a doer in regard to matter. He shows a virile conscience in his conduct toward the physical universe. On the contrary, in regard to spiritual life, he dodges the facts and shrinks within himself. His physical courage is undeniable, but he is mentally and morally a coward. Read an American novel, attend a play or a “movie.” All begins well. Human problems are not ignored but, at the end, Puritan cowardice interferes to twist the facts and hide them in an enforced “happy ending.” The American is a wonderful mechanical engineer. When he cannot subdue reality by machinery, he resorts to plots and schemes of his own.