The American worries about health, hygiene. He worries about success. These are signs that the spiritual life is absent. Angry with himself, and with others, the disillusioned Puritan becomes a raider and an inquisitor. He wants to prohibit to others that happiness which is denied to him. He fears his own fear; he distrusts his emotions. He is afraid to surrender to nature which he regards as corrupt. And yet, without emotions there is no art or literature possible. An example of the Puritan inhibition, and of its effects on art, is Whistler painting, with all his soul, the portrait of his mother and calling it informally “Arrangement in black and white” for fear that he would betray his inner feelings. False pride, _amour-propre_ and bluff are the ransoms for Puritanism. Another American complex, if we believe our critics, is the “mother complex,” the American complex _par excellence_. The sublimation of instincts in the American woman produced the so-called “motherly feeling.” It triumphs in American magazines and in the “movies.” The sentimental appeal to the motherly feeling is the surest and shortest way to arouse the emotions of the American crowds.[8] American idealism is largely manufactured by women. It is to women that the average American owes his ideals and ethical or literary standards. It is woman who inspires, supervises and censors art and literature in the United States; it is she who makes them aseptic, consumptive and tawdry.[9] In business the American is a real “he-man” but, when he must face moral issues, he surrenders to his mate. He tamed the physical universe with machinery and became a leader of material civilization. He can well solve mechanical problems, but ethics, philosophy and gay science are beyond his pale. And this is why the typical American to-day is so idealistic, so practical too, so inventive and so little of a philosopher and of an artist. He is anxious, restless, assured of himself on the surface but, in reality, very sensitive to criticism. Nobody is more able than he to attain the goal of his ambitions and nobody is more unhappy and helpless when he has reached it.[10] Such is the survey of American ethics and psychology made by some of the best-known American critics. In this book it is meant to compare their views with those of the most noted among American novelists to-day. Floating anxiety, soul fear, Freudian complexes and inhibitions throw a great deal of light on the contemporary novel. The case against the Puritan has been pressed by modern American novelists to the limit of pathos.