Hence here, as elsewhere
on the continent, and formerly in China, in Greece and in Rome, a sort
of neo-paganism has been steadily supplanting it.
To the study of this neo-paganism we now address ourselves. It is
the third and lowest of those levels of human experience to which we
referred in the first lecture. The naturalist, you may remember,
is that incorrigible individual who imagines that he is a law unto
himself, that he may erect his person into a sovereign over the whole
universe. He perversely identifies discipline with repression and
makes the unlimited the goal both of imagination and conduct. Oscar
Wilde's epigrams, and more particularly his fables, are examples of
a thoroughgoing naturalist's insolent indifference to any form of
restraint. All things, whether holy or bestial, were material for his
topsy-turvy wit, his literally unbridled imagination. No humanistic
law of decency, that is to say, a proper respect for the opinions of
mankind, and no divine law of reverence and humility, acted for him
as a restraining force or a selective principle. An immediate and
significant example of this naturalistic riot of feeling, with its
consequent false and anarchic scale of values, is found in the
film dramas of the moving picture houses. Unreal extravagance of
imagination, accompanied by the debauch of the aesthetic and moral
judgment, frequently distinguishes them.
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