Let those who are so eager to cast the first stone at the aesthetic and
moral anarchy of the present day consider Professor Babbitt's indictment
of themselves and decide whether they have no sin:--
'"If I am to judge by myself," said an eighteenth-century Frenchman,
"man is a stupid animal." Man is not only a stupid animal, in spite
of his conceit of his own cleverness, but we are here at the source
of his stupidity. The source is the moral indolence that Buddha,
with his almost infallible sagacity, defined long ago. In spite of
the fact that his spiritual and, in the long run, his material
success, hinge on his ethical effort, man persists in dodging this
effort, in seeking to follow the line of least or lesser resistance.
An energetic material working does not mend, but aggravate the
failure to work ethically, and is therefore especially stupid. Just
this combination has in fact led to the crowning stupidity of the
ages--the Great War. No more delirious spectacle has ever been
witnessed than that of hundreds of millions of human beings using a
vast machinery of scientific efficiency to turn life into a hell for
one another.
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