The name is absent

Dreiser’s Supernatural Naturalism 67
ing of young by mated animals and concludes that the be-
getting of children is a demand laid upon him by both the
“race spirit” and the “whole American spirit” (The “Genius,”
p. 690). The Titan, like The Financier, closes with a semi-
detached epilogue that glances philosophically at the career
of Frank Cowperwood. It begins with an attack on profes-
sional moralists and religionists, and proceeds to a somewhat
cloudy identification of the social contract with the élan
vital:

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 ap-
pears to be that of generating the individual, in all his glitter-
ing variety and scope, and through him progressing to the
mass with its problems. In the end a balance is invariably
struck wherein the mass subdues the individual or the indi-
vidual 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
phases 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? Nirvana!
Nirvana! The ultimate, still, equation.

(The Titan, pp. 550-551)

If the words “Only in” are supplied before “Nirvana!” the
meaning will become a little clearer. For Theodore Dreiser,
life was the bittersweet material-seeming and shadow-play of
an unknowable and inconceivable reality. Tormented like
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh in the Rue Saint-Thomas de ΓEnfer,
like the Wanderer he made answer with emphasis: “Canst
thou fix thine eye on the morning? Be glad. And if in the ulti-
mate it blind thee, be glad also! Tliou hast lived.” (Ibid.,
p. 552.)

J. D. Thomas

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