The author says: "There stands America, engaged in this superb struggle to dominate Nature and put the elements into bondage to man. Involuntarily all talents apply themselves to material production. No wonder that men of science no longer study Nature for Nature's sake; they must perforce put her powers into harness; no wonder that professors no longer teach knowledge for the sake of knowledge; they must make their students efficient factors in the industrial world; no wonder that clergymen no longer preach repentance for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; they must turn churches into prosperous corporations, multiplying communicants and distributing Christmas presents by the gross. Industrial civilization has decreed that statesmanship shall consist of schemes to make the nation richer, that presidents shall be elected with a view to the stock-market, that literature shall keep close to the life of the average man, and that art shall become national by means of a protective tariff.... "The process of this civilization is simple: the industrial habit of thought moulds the opinion of the majority, which rolls along, abstract and impersonal, gathering bulk till its giant figure is selected as the national conscience. As in an ecclesiastical state of society decrees of a council become articles of private faith, and men die for homoöusion or election, so in America the opinions of the majority, once pronounced, become primary rules of conduct.... The central ethical doctrine of industrial thought is that material production is the chief duty of man." The author goes on to show that the acceptance of this doctrine has produced in America "_conventional sentimentality_" in the emotional life, "_spiritual feebleness_" in the religious life, "_formlessness_" in the social life, "_self-deception_" in the political life, and a "slovenly" intelligence in all matters outside of business. "We accept sentimentality," he says, "because we do not stop to consider whether our emotional life is worth an infusion of blood and vigour, rather than because we have deliberately decided that it is not. We neglect religion, because we cannot spare time to think what religion means, rather than because we judge it only worth a conventional lip service. We think poetry effeminate, because we do not read it, rather than because we believe its effect injurious. We have been swept off our feet by the brilliant success of our industrial civilization; and, blinded by vanity, we enumerate the list of our exports, we measure the swelling tide of our national prosperity; but we do not stop even to repeat to ourselves the names of other things." This rather sweeping indictment against a whole civilization reminds me of the way in which one of my students once defined rhetoric. "Rhetoric," said this candid youth, "is the art of using words so as to make statements which are not entirely correct look like truths which nobody can deny."