The individuals and the masses counterbalance each other rather harmoniously and this probably explains why the cosmos has not yet been wrecked. Saints and poets compensate for the greedy and the lusty. Saint Francis of Assisi atones for Frank Cowperwood. This belief in compensation, or, as Dreiser prefers to say, in equation, is the only trace of ethics to be found in his books, but it was already Emerson’s ethics.[27] Pity plays no part in Dreiser’s stories. His outlook on life is entirely devoid of that quality. Yet he is less cruel in his essays. An unmistakable undercurrent of tenderness and indulgence toward mankind is present in them. The author of “An American Tragedy” is the same one who wrote “Twelve Men,” a most touching, human and, yes, a truly Christian book. Optimism is not absent either from “A Traveller at Forty” and “A Book About Myself.” Outside the reporter’s office Theodore Dreiser can be truly human. Then he gives up objectivity and he does not mind helping his readers solve the riddles of this world. After all, even in his gloomiest moments he does not deal with the satanic phases of life with more complacency than, for instance, Jonathan Edwards used to do. His impartiality does not exclude convictions; much to the contrary. It is that of a judge who suspends the sentence until the criminal has been proven guilty. His indictment is then left to the jury, _i.e._, to the readers of his books on the conscience of whom he relies. Few writers have known like him the somber art of penning us in through hundreds or thousands of pages without one single ray of hope apparent, and few could operate a guillotine with the _sang-froid_ found in the execution of Clyde Griffiths. Again, however, Dreiser’s pessimism is not without an appeal.