The emotions that can occur in such a crisis cover a whole spectrum from self-loathing to gladness. The state that we most need to cultivate is gladness or joy that we are able to break through the shell of self into a larger world. What a hell our selfhood would be if one could no longer repent of anything! Repentance is not the winter’s grave of our self-respect; it is the springtime of it. It is needless to ask what class in society is impoverishing itself most by neglecting the grace of repentance. For nearly every class and institution has built up one or another defence-mechanism whereby it employs some supposed virtue of its own as a justification for continuing on its present course. Neither in the State nor in the church; neither in education nor in business and industry; neither in the family nor in the larger social groupings, do we find the habit of facing faults in a manly and rational way; in none of them does one hear the spring-song of growth through repentance. Nor is this note audible in the vocalizations of most of our _intelligentsia_ who occupy themselves so much with the fact of their own emancipation and the lack of it in their contemporaries. The function of the critic is both important and permanent, but the goal of criticism is neither the chagrin that depresses the powers of another, nor yet inflation of the critic’s self-esteem through applause from the irresponsible. As in games the best sort of sportsmanship encourages and helps a competitor to do his best, so the discoverer of our defects should so reveal us to ourselves that we desire to improve ourselves. Criticism at its best is a sympathetic entering into the problems of others; it is not taking “pot shots” at them. When the problem for another is to achieve repentance, the problem for the critic is to make repentance seem attractive as well as necessary. The writer or the speaker who merely utters flings at our faults suffers in his own person the same sort of closing-up or self-involution that he produces in those whom he “lambastes” or denounces. Lacking the sympathy or the humor to enter into the human-nature situation of another, he forfeits the capacity of self-criticism also. He becomes opinionated, dogmatic, sometimes intolerant, and at last careless of fact and unable to repent of his own follies. Some of our difficulty, as I have indicated, arises from habits and traditions generated by experience under arbitrary governments, when citizens had compelling motive for concealment and for putting the best foot forward. But in addition we must admit that our nature spontaneously shrinks from paying the cost of freedom; it longs for joy, but fears to grasp it. Self-overcoming, therefore, and self-discipline are indispensable.