ments, nothing of any worldly value was taught in them. The principal subject of study, first and last, was theology, and it was theology of the most grotesque and insane sort ever cherished by man. Genuine education began in New England only when the rising minority of anti-Puritans, eventually to become a majority, rose against this theology, and tried to put it down. The revolt was first felt at Harvard; it gradually converted a seminary for the training of Puritan pastors into a genuine educational institution. Harvard delivered New England, and made civilization possible there. All the men who adorned that civilization in the days of its gloryEmerson, Hawthorne, and all the rest of themwere essentially anti-Puritans.

Today, save in its remoter villages, New England is no more Puritan than, say, Maryland or Pennsylvania. There is scarcely a clergyman in the entire region who, if the Mathers could come back to life, would not be condemned by them instantly as a heretic, and even as an atheist. The dominant theology is mild, skeptical, and wholly lacking in passion. The evangelical spirit has completely disappeared. Save in a small minority of atavistic fanatics, there is a tolerance that is almost indistinguishable from indifference. Roman Catholicism and Christian Science are alike viewed amiably. The old heat is gone. Where it lingers in America is in far places— on the Methodist prairies of the Middle West, in the Baptist back-waters of the South. There, I believe, it still retains not a little of its old vitality.

There Puritanism survives, not merely as a system of theology, but also as a way of life. It colors every human activity. Kiwanis mouths it; it is powerful in politics; learning wears its tinge. To charge a Harvard professor of today with agnosticism would sound as banal as to charge him with playing the violoncello. But his colleague of Kansas, facing the same accusation, would go damp upon the forehead, and his colleague of Texas would leave town between days.

Wendell, a sentimentalist, tried to put these facts behind him, though he must have been well aware of them. There got into his work, in consequence, a sense of futility, even when he was discussing very real and important things. He opened paths that he was unable to traverse himself. Sturdier men, following him, were soon marching far ahead of him. He will live in the history of American criticism, but his own criticism is already dead.

OF CRITICS, AND HENS1

By W. B. PRESSEY

CRITIC, who had lived all his life in the city, his profession, having been ordered by his where, of course, he had to live to practice physician to go to the country, went to his cousin's farm, fifteen miles from the railroad. His cousin, a very busy man, had no time for the talk the Critic wished since he was forbidden to write. "But," said the farmer, "it would be good for you to feed the poultry and gather the eggs." So the Critic took grain and went to the poultry yard.

In the poultry yard he came upon the most extraordinary hen, who, instead of retreating at his approach as the others had done, remained seated upon the ground, eyeing him insolently. The Critic, a little abashed, for he was unaccustomed to hens, said-for he had to talk, being a Critic-"Why don't you move?" To his astonishment the hen replied in the most polished accents, "I am creating, and must not be disturbed." "Ah," said the Critic, "I can understand that, though I am surprised to find such devotion to creation in a hen. But you may not know that I am a Critic, one who, while not himself creating, at least in the first instance, ex

1 From The New Republic, August 19, 1925.

plains and judges the creations of others. Upon such as I rests the responsibility of deciding which of these creations shall be preserved and which shall not, and of explaining why."

"Indeed," said the hen. "And may I ask how you can tell what should be preserved and what should not?" "I am glad," said the Critic, "to find some one, even if only a hen, to whom I may explain the principles of criticism. We Critics first set ourselves to comprehend what is the artist's intuition, that is, how he has obtained the material for his work and how he has given that material form. The form must fit the material perfectly, so that we may say of the work that it has style. If it has style, the beauty of the material may appear, but not otherwise." "You mention beauty," interrupted the hen. "Does beauty inhere in the material or in the style?" "In both," replied the Critic, “but especially in the style. Ugliness in subject may be redeemed by beauty in the manner of its representation."

"Would you say this has beauty?" asked the hen, rising and revealing a very white and handsome egg. "I see that you belong to the school of Brancusi,' said the Critic, who was nothing if not modern. "You have produced a very interesting example of the ovoid tendency." "Has it style?" murmured the hen. "Distinctly," said the Critic. "In arrangement of both line and plane your work pleases. In color, though you lack contrast, you have succeeded. by uniformity in establishing a mood which enables

the mind to grasp more firmly the smoothness of your curves and the grace of your mass." "Thank you," said the hen. "But what was my intuition?" "It is obvious," the Critic replied, "that life presents itself to you demanding a shape, and that the shape in which you see life is ovate." "In other words," said the hen, "I make eggs because I see life in eggshapes." "Precisely," said the Critic. "Do you really think I do?" asked the hen, eyeing the Critic sardonically. The Critic felt uncomfortable. He decided to be aggressive. After all, it was only a hen. "Of course you do."

"I am sorry," said the hen, "to find a human so wrong. You are carrying grain. I see life as grain and the struggle for grain. I see life as the rooster's love and his infidelity. I see life as the chance which gives me a beetle and leaves the guinea-fowl there only an ant. I see life as the destiny which drives me to making eggs. I do not see it as eggshapes. For the shape of the egg is only the most convenient and economical form in which I may convey eggness, which is my way of expressing life. I can no more help it than you can help calling yourself I, if you are to call yourself at all. The lines and planes and mass of my egg do not matter; whether it has beauty does matter; but the fullness of its eggness determines whether it has beauty." "But eggness has nothing to do with art," said the Critic, desperately. "Then," replied the hen, "art has nothing to do with life. For life demands expression of its creatures, sometimes in eggness, some