[63] From _Points of View_, 1924, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher.
[64] From _Americans_, 1922, Charles Scribner’s Sons, publisher.
[65] The rest of the sentence is “and he sees the common weal as the
mighty rock in the shadow of which his little life and personality are
to be surrendered, if need be, as things negligible and transitory.”
[66] Also he could have mastered the philosophy of Mr. John Dewey and
made his “religion of democracy” more respectable.
[67] A perusal of the _Life and Letters of Stuart P. Sherman_,
published after this essay was written, increases my confidence in the
diagnosis above of Sherman’s weaknesses. Mr. P. E. More wondered many
years ago whether his young reviewer did not have “an inclination to
avoid the central problem.” Later, he warned Sherman: “I do not like to
see a man of your ability and insight deliberately taking up the job of
whitewasher” for democracy. And finally Mr. More said: “Yours is but a
sickly sort of democracy at bottom, and needs a doctor.”
[68] From _Prejudices: Fourth Series_, Alfred A. Knopf, publisher.
[69] From _The Modern Temper_, Harcourt, Brace & Co., publisher.
[70] Mr. Lippmann is not a literary critic but his views are pertinent
to this discussion.
[71] The Macmillan Company, publisher.
[72] Even in a footnote I mention Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn with some
reluctance, and only because there are so few critics among us who have
any interest in trying to plot a direction for the future. Pauline
Christianity (grossly libelled by him as akin to the degenerate
puritanism of our day) must be destroyed, he preaches. Salvation lies
in a fusion of Hellenism (Science) and Judaism (which he interprets
selectively and sentimentally). He is a suggestive writer: he is also a
prig, a special pleader, and embarrassing in his frequent intervals of
self-pity and in his intrusions of hearth-side intimacies (proper for
telling only to his closest friends) into the public medium of print.
One cannot take this muddled romanticist seriously.
[73] In _Style and Form in American Prose_ (1929).
_Behaviour and Continuity_