The only measure of wisdom, it seems to me today, is the measure of form. A lack of taste amounts to a lack of wisdom. In reality, everything that is full of vitality, that is, determined by nature, cannot be anything but harmonious and tasteful. In our country, just take a cross-section of the life of anyone of our people. I don’t care if they are average or prominent. Everything is tasteless.

That’s the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn’t mix. Or at least we didn’t think they did, We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn’t move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion.
“We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people.”