The Mind Is Not A Hermit's Cell,

The Actual God Of Many Americans... Is Simply The Current Of American Life.

I Is A Militant Social Tendency, Working To Hold And Enlarge Its Place In The General Current Of Tendencies. So Far As It Can It Waxes, As All Life Does. To Think Of It As Apart From Society Is A Palpable Absurdity Of Which No One Could Be Guilty Who Really Saw It As A Fact Of Life.

It Is Partly To Avoid Consciousness Of Greed That We Prefer To Associate With Those Who Are At Least As Greedy As We Ourselves. Those Who Consume Much Less Are A Reproach.

We Have No Higher Life That Is Really Apart From Other People. It Is By Imagining Them That Our Personality Is Built Up; To Be Without The Power Of Imagining Them Is To Be A Low-grade Idiot.

The Passion Of Self-aggrandizement Is Persistent But Plastic; It Will Never Disappear From A Vigorous Mind, But May Become Morally Higher By Attaching Itself To A Larger Conception Of What Constitutes The Self.