be denied.

One of the avowed purposes of education is to lift society to a higher
plane of thinking and acting, and it is always and altogether pertinent to
make an inventory to discover if this laudable purpose is being
accomplished. Such an inventory can be made only by an analyst; the work
cannot be delegated either to a pessimist or to an optimist. In his
efforts to determine whether society is advancing or receding, the analyst
often makes disquieting discoveries.

It must be admitted by the most devoted and patriotic American that our
civilization includes many elements that can truly be denominated
frivolous, superficial, artificial, and inconsequential. As a people, we
seek to be entertained, but fail to make a nice distinction between
entertainment and amusement. War, it is true, has caused us to think more
soberly and feel more deeply; but the bizarre, the gaudy, and the
superficial still make a strong appeal to us. We are quite happy to wear
paste diamonds, provided only that they sparkle. So long have we been
substituting the fictitious for the genuine that we have contracted the
habit of loose, fictitious thinking. So much does the show element appeal
to us that we incline to parade even our troubles. Simplicity and
sincerity, whether in dress, in speech, or in conduct, have so long been
foreign to our daily living and thinking that we incline to style these
qualities as old-fogyish.

A hundred or more young men came to a certain city to enlist for the war.
As they marched out through the railway station they rent the air with
whooping and yells and other manifestations of boisterous conduct. These
young fellows may have hearts of gold, but their real manhood was overlaid
with a veneer of rudeness that could not commend them to the admiration of