Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/159

 “return to nature” in a simpler human life may not only be desirable, but come to be desired. To not a few of us, the recent rush of the fine arts and literature into fantastic eccentricity and flamboyancy attests a failure in that higher self-command which is the supreme quality of personality. There are, of course, grave perils to our material civilization from the failure of pacific co-operation in the political and economic fields. But a collapse of those creative arts of thought and imagination, hitherto regarded as the supreme achievements of man, would, it is contended, complete the human downfall. How much truth attaches to these abuses of science and the fine arts it is difficult for those of us who are unskilled in any of those activities to judge. It may well be the case that the fears I cite arise from the hasty judgments of persons predisposed to hostile criticism of matters of which they are conscious of possessing little knowledge. After all, the long range of history discloses not a few epochs when the rapid advances of science and novelties in literature and the fine arts have evoked fears and condemnations as terrifying as those that to-day fill the minds of some intellectual agitators. Is it fair to describe the science of our time as primarily subservient to the arts of physical destruction, or our fine arts as devoted to the cult of ugliness and inhumanity?