Shoddy Wares


"The world is dosed with too much religion. Life is to
be learned from life, and the professional moralist is
at best but a manufacturer of shoddy wares. At the
ultimate remove, God or the life force, if anything,
is an equation, and at its nearest expression for man-
the contract social- it is that also. Its method of
expression appears to be that of generating the
individual, in all his glittering variety and scope,
and through him progressing to the mass with its
problems. In that end a balance is invariably
struck wherein the mass subdues the individual
or the individual the mass- for the time being. For,
behold, the sea is ever dancing or raging.

In the mean time there have sprung up social words
and phrases, expressing a need of balance- of
equation. These are right, justice, truth, morality,
an honest mind, a pure heart- all words meaning
a balance must be struck. the strong must not be too strong-
the weak not too weak. But without variation how could the
balance be maintained? Nivana! Nirvana! The ultimate,
still, equation."


from *The Titan*
Theodore Dreiser
(1914)