It is a generation which becomes a crowd, and "individuals are occasionally guided by reason, crowds never." It is a generation which lives by catchwords, which plays tricks, which attempts to cut knots, which counts heads.
What is wrong with this generation?
Public opinion is "a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man." Democracy means "a victory of sentiment over reason"; it is the triumph of the unfit, the ascendancy of the second-rate, the conquest of quality by quantity, the smothering of the hard and true under the feather-bed of the soft and the false.
Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate.

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Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as the disillusioned sentimentalist.

He thinks that he can break or ignore nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no sentiment, he rages like a mad dog and combines with his theoretical objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with him.
Beware of sentiment! Beware of it in politics, beware of it in religion.
See things as they are.