I need hardly reply to Goodman's allegation that I distorted his opinions on pregnancy when his own example supports my inference. Needless to say, the middle-class will not "learn" overnight simply at Goodman's command. And how can we have any revolution in this society without enlisting the middle-class?

Neill, in an aside to Goodman in "The Village Voice" remarked, "Paul might say! what does it matter anyway? Ultimately not a bit: which of us will matter in a hundred years? But today..."

But today! This is what I have called callous. Dr. Blaine is wrong in falling to join Goodman in condemnation of society's hostility to bastardy and the unwed mother. Goodman is wrong in pooh-poohing Blaine's recognition of this unhappy attitude as social fact. Properly, we should work towards changing the situation without minimizing the damage to people caught in the wake of social change. To Goodman, these are expendable and unimportant droplets in a great wave. To Blaine, they are miserable individuals who seek his therapy.

To confront Goodman with a childish conundrum, what would society be like if a great many people suddenly behaved as he does--denying social order in the quest for absolute personal freedom? There is only one answer to this query. We would soon find ourselves living in a community of hardened, broken, narcissistic individuals. This cannot be the Utopia he envisions.

Undeniably we live in a period of electric social change; and the tension between society's often atavistic law and the demands of individual freedom can be most terrible. Yet in our need to resolve this tension we must be wary lest a solipsistic anti-moralism become our ideology.

I eagerly anticipated a rejoinder from Mr. Goodman, but the letter above is confused and disappointing. I respect his brilliance; I admire much of his social thinking--he is one of the last utopians we have left. But I can only pity his hang-ups. How preferable it would be for us all if Mr. Goodman could launch his diatribes at the unendurable American middle-class from some secluded little New Hampshire hide-away, like J. D. Sailnger's, and leave the revolutionary field work to others.