Those of us endowed with these things in mind and blood are truly terrible to the mass--pariahs, failures, shams, disgraces. Yet life is no better than its worst elements, no worse than its best. Its perfections are changing temporalities, illusions of perfection that will be something very different to-morrow. Again I say, we do not know what life is--not nearly enough to set forth a fixed code of any kind, religious or otherwise. But we do know that it sings and stings, that it has perfections, entrancements, shames--each according to his blood flux and its chemical character. Life is rich, gorgeous, an opium-eater’s dream of something paradisiacal--but it is never the thin thing that thin blood and a weak, ill-nourished, poorly responding brain would make it, and that is where the majority of our religions, morals, rules and safeguards come from. From thin, petered-out blood, and poor, nervous, non-commanding, weak brains. Life is greater than anything we know. It is stronger. It is wilder. It is more horrible. It is more beautiful. We need not stop and think we have found a solution. We have not even found a beginning. We do not know. And my patriotic father wanted us all to believe in the Catholic Church and the Infallibility of the Pope and confession and communion! Great Pan of the Greeks, and you, Isis of the Egyptians, save me! These moderns are all insane![26] Thus speaks the American Zarathustra. Theodore Dreiser was not satisfied with lyrical statements of his philosophy. “Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub” is a direct and almost _ex professo_ comment on the subject of life and conduct. Important qualifications of his pessimism will be found in particular in an important essay of that book, called “The Inevitable Equation.” Yes, Dreiser is a moralist; may I say an Emersonian moralist? “The Inevitable Equation” recalls to our mind Emerson’s famous essay on “Compensation.” Crimes, monstrosities, lust and greed, the rascalities of Frank Cowperwood or the crimes of Clyde Griffiths do not disturb the novelist’s serenity. He does not feel the need, like Zola, of calling society to the rescue, or like Dostoievski to resort to mysticism to make the world better. He remains a positivist. Life is Life. _C’est la guerre!_ Call it God, the Oversoul or the Vital Force, the ruling energies of Nature are blind and indifferent. Never did Nature listen to a course in philosophy. What does Dreiser care how the Vital Force will call itself? It is enough for him that he can wonder daily at its wonderful display. A volcano or a cyclone are not moral, but they are impressive and thrilling. A world without dangers would not be an interesting world. Moreover there is an automatic (or call it, if you like, providential) Westinghouse brake somewhere in the worst furies of the monster. Nature is a self-regulated energy. It manages alone to keep a balance in the midst of its turmoil.