before birth; and all those philoso-
phies which urge abstinence from
action would cut the plant of life at
the root; they are, in the last analy-
sis, pleas for suicide. Men really
live only as they freely express them-
selves through thought, emotion,
and action. They get at the deep-
est truth and enter into the deepest
relationships only as they act. In-
action involves something more
than the disease and decay of certain
faculties; it involves the deformity
of arrested development, and failure
to enter into that larger world of
truth which is open to those races
alone which live a whole life. It is
for this reason that the drama must
always hold the first place among
those forms which the art of litera-
ture has perfected; it is for this
reason that Homer, Dante, Shake -

[[247]]

p246 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p247w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p248

v?