Meanwhile, those who remain unbitten of the dread _Lycosa_ may find peace in M. Andrè Salmon's dictum that "critics encourage the most absurd, for the most absurd is necessary to art"--which may be stretched to include the art of letters--and anything that is really necessary may, by right effort, be endured. It is sufficiently clear that not on this side of the bridge of Al Sirat shall we and the Neo-Parnassians agree: but we can at least avoid each other like gentlemen. HUMANISM AND DEMOCRACY When our fathers formulated their program for democracy, and announced that its chief objective was to secure for the individual, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, contemporary records show that they generally believed that if these ends could be attained, a new golden age would be inaugurated among men, and that all the various ills would drop out of life. We have been disillusioned. Since the formulation of the Declaration of Independence we have learned the extreme antiquity of man upon the earth, and we have learned by what slow and tortuous paths the human family has zigzagged up to its present state of imperfection. To-day we do not hope that any form of government can assure us an immediate millennium, and we look with suspicion upon any prophet who promises an immediate utopia. Condemned as we are to look with straining eyes towards a distant land of promise, some remote perfection of our race, we are all the more jealous of our chance to do our bit in achieving that goal. The inalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, has yielded place to the inalienable right to grow. Forms of government seem worthy to endure, in proportion as they minister to growth. We still cling to democracy, because it still seems to promise the largest chance for growth. It is a significant fact that along with the phrase "make the world safe for democracy," there has sprung into existence the phrase "make democracy safe for the world," as if to warn us that democracy like all forms of government, is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end is humanism.