Saints preserve us from an election year, enduring, in addition to the usual rodomontade, attacks from all sides on people’s patriotism and personal integrity, the whole spectacle coarsened further by intemperance and ignorance magnified on the Internet.

Take a deep, cleansing breath and remember what William James said a century ago. Louis Menand quotes James in The Metaphysical Club as saying that a nation is saved “by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.”

Make an allowance for a degree of progress over sexism in the past hundred years and the advice for citizens holds true.