It is the war that has emphasized so overwhelmingly the triviality of trivial things. Out of such utter dehumanization one has a vision of the race which might emerge--a race purified of small struggles, small causes, small patriotisms; a race animated by those big impulses which have always made up the dreams of men. And then would come the more subtle personal development: a race of human units purged of small ideals and ambitions, cleansed to the point where education can at least proceed with economy--that is, without having to destroy two ounces of superstition to produce one ounce of knowledge. And at the foundation of such a race structure, I believe, will be a corner stone of Individualism--or whatever you may choose to call it. What it means is very simple: it is a matter of heightened inner life. Our culture--or what little we have of such a thing--is clogged by masses of dead people who have no conscious inner life. The man who asked, "Did you ever see an old artist?" put a profound question. People get old because they have no vision. And they have no vision because they have no inner life. Of course, any sort of inner life is impossible to the man or woman who must be a slave instead of a human being. And this brings us, of course, to a discussion of economic emancipation--which I shall not take advantage of; because I want to talk here not of what the individual should have done for him, but of what he might very well do for himself. There are so many slaves whose bondage can be traced to no cause except their refusal or their inability to come to life; and the significance of the fact that spiritual resourcefulness is most rare among those persons who have the most leisure to cultivate it need not be emphasized even in an article devoted to the apparent. Human weakness is reducible to so many causes beside that much-abused one of "circumstance." We talk so much nonsense about people not being able to help themselves. The truth is that people can help themselves out of nine-tenths of all the trouble they get into. (We'll leave the other tenth to circumstance.) If they could only be made to realize this, or that if they are helped out by some one else they might as well stay in trouble! To be dragged out is more desirable than starving to death, because it is more sensible, and because people are so sentimental in their attitude toward receiving that one welcomes almost any emergency which drives them to accepting aid with grace and honesty: _anything_ to teach a man that he need not smirk about taking what he himself would like to give without being smirked at! But in spite of this, one must help himself to anything which is to be of positive value to him; and must learn that personality gets what it demands. However, this begins to sound like a pamphlet from East Aurora....