ABSTRACT
To praise action is well enough. But only too often this praise implies a contempt for thought. Sometimes this contempt is not implied, but natively expressed. Today there is actually a "mysticism" of action. That is, men do not require that action shall produce its credentials; they take it on faith; and the mere word, "action", is enough to excite and uplift them, as at other times the words "God, country, revolution" have done. One may say of the prestige of action what we said of the prestige of speed. It is a bastard consequence of the myth of Progress: action is that which brings about a change in the world, and under the hypothesis of progress all change is desirable, since all tilings are proceeding from good to better. The belief in progress is abandoned, wherefore men cling all the more desperately, in defiance of all logic, to belief in action. One must have faith in something.
