of its hitherto adroit worshippers. A snowball rolling uphill toward
God and gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewd
janitors of orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep it within
bounds.

Thus in the war, confronted with the platitude that the world must be
made safe for democracy and with the further platitude that democracy
and equality were the goals of Christianity and with a dozen similar
platitudes none of which had any authentic contact with the life of
the nation, thus confronted, the proletaire was forced to lift itself
up by its boot straps and rise to the defence of a Frankenstein
idealism of which it was the parent-victim. Disillusionment with the
causes of the war has, however, served no high purpose. The
Frankenstein God, the Frankenstein virtue is still enshrined in the
Heaven of the Copy Books. And we find the proletaire still
worshipping, albeit with the squirmings and grimacings, a horrible
idealization of itself.

The Thou Shalt Nots have escaped. They increase and multiply with a
life of their own. Logic is the most irresponsible of the manias which
operate in life. Logic demands that ideas be carried to their climax
and this demand, as inexorable as Mr. Newton's law, has made a
Frankenstein of the unsuspecting Galilean.

Hypnotized by the demands of logic, bewildered by the contemplation of
this code of backworldism which he himself seems somehow to have
created, the ballot maniac stands riveted at the polls and sacrifices
to his own image by hitting himself on the head with further virtuous
restrictions--a gesture necessary to prevent his own image from giving
him the lie. He must, in other words, prove himself as virtuous,