Dreiser’s philosophy may not be very cheerful, but it is genuine and far more original than could be expected from a writer of fiction. Spencer and Huxley--not to forget Nietzsche--robbed Dreiser of his religious beliefs and left him in a quandary of philosophical nihilism. A summary of his creed may be set forth about as follows: There are only facts. The moral and religious interpretations of life are erroneous. They fail to cope with reality. Dreiser is a self-confessed agnostic. The key to the riddles of human destiny will be found, not in metaphysics, but in bio-chemistry. Idealism is a lie. Dreiser has called himself a man longing for poetry and at the same time a materialist ardently enamored with life. He doubts, on the other hand--to use his own words--whether a human being, no matter how poetic of material he may have been, has ever thrown over the scenes of this world, material or spiritual, a glance more avid and covetous than his own. His challenge to idealism rests upon the feeling that there exists a gap between reality as it can be observed and its interpretation at the hand of the professional philosophers. He is ready to adhere to principles and to accept interpretations, provided that they be in accord with facts as scientifically determined. Meanwhile he sees little proportion between the world such as it is, and the creeds or systems imagined on its account. Our systems of thought belie experience. Ethics contradict bio-chemistry. There are people whose particular interest seems to be to disfigure things as they are, and to present man to himself as being different from what he is in reality. This is hypocrisy. Life is not a harmony but a struggle. Our existence is a tragic conflict of forces, aspirations, passions and energies, all excellent in themselves, but perverted by irrational repressions. Let us admire Dreiser’s frankness on this point. Man, to him, is not a pre-Raphaelite seraph dressed with wings, but a being of blood and flesh. Like Whitman and Jack London, Dreiser is full of an orgiastic enthusiasm for the human body. He cannot help reducing the moral to the physical, the soul to the body, and translating psychology in terms of bio-chemistry: