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 a very feeble conclusion, perhaps to an impotent and hopeless conclusion, when I express my belief that the only proper instrument for undertaking the modification of the temper and character of our literature is an independent and dispassionate criticism. But if anyone declares that this instrument is more inadequate than the law, I shall retort, as Mr. Chesterton retorts to those who declare that Christianity has failed: 'It has never been tried.' Of course, the statement is not quite true, yet it is true enough to bear consideration. It is true that independent and dispassionate criticism of the so-called 'unprintable' books, criticism in the common interest of publishers, authors, and readers is now almost non-existent. Instead, we have violent partisan combats between champions of litera ture who express their contempt for public morals, and champions of public morals who express their contempt for literature.

The confusion of these conflicts, in which no principle is established, will never end until a conception of public welfare that includes the interests of both literature and morality is restored and reintroduced as a mediative and conciliatory agency between the contending parties. Criticism's need of fixing that conception is as elementary as navigation's need of the North Star.

The next elementary step is to establish on firm grounds the intricate inter-relationship of so-called æsthetic and so-called moral experience—to estab-