[25] A more awkward and clumsy way to express one’s self in writing than this passage cannot be easily imagined, and there are, unfortunately, too many passages like this one in Dreiser’s books. This pseudo-scientific jargon could be endured in Haeckel but it is difficult to be, at the same time, a bio-chemist and an artist. This groping through mysticism, science or triviality, toward literary expression seems to be the curse of the new American writers. [26] “A Hoosier Holiday.” [27] Did not the Catholic Church have something similar to say on the subject, with its dogma of the Communion of Saints and the atonement for the wicked by the good? [28] The lesson of the Dutch masters has been learned very early by American realists. Thirty years ago, in his preface to “A Hoosier Schoolmaster,” Edward Eggleston attributed his vocation as a novelist to the reading of Taine’s book on Dutch painters. [29] This theory of conscience can prepare the reader for Dreiser’s views on crime and the criminal in “An American Tragedy.” It took bio-chemistry a long time to become a substitute for the Puritan doctrine of responsibility in the American novel. The first step in this direction after that of Hawthorne was taken by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the sixteenth chapter of “Elsie Venner.” There, good Dr. Holmes mobilized a college professor to demonstrate “the limitations of human responsibilities” from a scientific standpoint and present the criminal as a sick person not to be hanged or electrocuted, but preached to and cured, if possible, if not pensioned. [30] The French philosopher and historian, M. Eugene Seillères, renewed entirely the study of romanticism in Europe by viewing it as what he calls _l’impérialisme mystique_, the imperialistic tendency toward individual supremacy. If we applied his definition to America, this country would stand as essentially unromantic, _i.e._, as the one which gives the individual the least chance for self-expansion beyond certain set limits. Hence the triumph of realism and middle-class standards in American literature. In the last fifteen or twenty years, on the other hand, the “revolt against the village” may well be interpreted as the sign of a new romantic upheaval among us, if we accept Mr. Seillères’ definitions. [31] “Main Street.” [32] _Ibid._ [33] Margaret Fuller in her “Memoirs” has told similar experiences, as when she thought herself to be a whirling dervish and fell inanimate on the floor after performing like one of them. [34] Let me refer the reader for instance to Jim Blausser’s speech to his countrymen assembled to try to “boost” Gopher Prairie, and Doctor Pickerbaugh’s orations in “Arrowsmith.” [35] Let the reader turn to “Tar” in particular for a vivid impression of Anderson’s primitivism. Beauty and the Beast fight there at close hand. One marvels how a would-be artist could save his soul from disgrace out of such a muddy and zoölogical chaos.