But the more actively censorious hold that the weak need to be saved from themselves; that a constant brooding upon indecencies is the death of the soul. Well, if it is obscenity that we war against, by all means root it out, for it can be recognized at a glance, and the reformer need not brood long upon it. But in the realm of art in which decency rises, the suppression of indecency involves as much brooding on it by the reformer as by the endangered public—in fact, the reformer must specialize in such brooding. Whether or not it is to the death of his soul, it seems to be to the impairment of his taste. You cannot give all your time to bad art and know much about good. The rôle of the censor would take on some dignity if there ever were a censor who was a connoisseur, who was the patron of good poets and painters, who actively supported a clean stage. But then, if you had the taste for the best, no inducement whatever would make you give your life to the detection of indecency. Human nature is wiser in the long run than any censor; in the long run the books of the highest decency hold their place in fame by crowding out the others. The public suppresses indecent books by reading decent ones. Every artist would respectfully suggest this method to all censors. Perhaps the censors will say that the method is too slow—that it takes too long for the good books to crowd out the others. It does take too long now, but why not hasten the process by calling attention to the good books, instead of delaying it by advertising the bad? If the energy which now tries to suppress books sure to be forgotten in fifty years, were directed to the encouragement of the few books which after fifty years might still be worth reading, the final verdict of fame might be hastened. But there seems to be a decorum in morals too, or perhaps two decorums, a creative and a negative—one seeking to displace evil by a positive good, the other too much preoccupied with the evil to notice the good at all. II ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE I If we accept the doctrine of criticism today, originality is a great virtue in a writer, and if we believe the book advertisements, all the new writers as they appear, and as they reappear, have this virtue to a striking, even to an explosive extent. But with all their originality, some of the new books turn out to be dull, and if we reconsider for a moment the books men have finally judged great, we observe that they were rather destitute of the kind of originality we talk of nowadays.