{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_67628/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_67628","id":"gutenberg_67628","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67628","summary":null,"tags":["American essays -- 20th century","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"YOUTH AND LIFE\n\n  BY\n\n  RANDOLPH S. BOURNE\n\n  [Illustration: Publisher mark]\n\n  BOSTON AND NEW YORK\n  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n  The Riverside Press Cambridge\n  1913\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1911, 1912, AND 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY\n  COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY RANDOLPH S. BOURNE\n\n  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n  _Published March 1913_\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS\n\n\n  I. YOUTH                                         1\n\n  II. THE TWO GENERATIONS                         29\n\n  III. THE VIRTUES AND THE SEASONS OF LIFE        53\n\n  IV. THE LIFE OF IRONY                           99\n\n  V. THE EXCITEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP                133\n\n  VI. THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE                      153\n\n  VII. SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION                 189\n\n  VIII. THE MYSTIC TURNED RADICAL                205\n\n  IX. SEEING, WE SEE NOT                         215\n\n  X. THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE                       225\n\n  XI. THE DODGING OF PRESSURES                   247\n\n  XII. FOR RADICALS                              289\n\n  XIII. THE COLLEGE: AN INNER VIEW               311\n\n  XIV. A PHILOSOPHY OF HANDICAP                  337\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nYOUTH\n\n\nHow shall I describe Youth, the time of contradictions and anomalies?\nThe fiercest radicalisms, the most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible\ngayety, bitter melancholy,--all these moods are equally part of that\nshowery springtime of life. One thing, at least, it clearly is: a\ngreat, rich rush and flood of energy. It is as if the store of life\nhad been accumulating through the slow, placid years of childhood,\nand suddenly the dam had broken and the waters rushed out, furious\nand uncontrolled, before settling down into the quieter channels of\nmiddle life. The youth is suddenly seized with a poignant consciousness\nof being alive, which is quite wanting to the na\u00efve unquestioning\nexistence of the child. He finds himself overpoweringly urged toward\nself-expression. Just as the baby, born into a \u201cgreat, blooming,\nbuzzing confusion,\u201d and attracted by every movement, every color, every\nsound, kicks madly in response in all directions, and only gradually\ngets his movements co\u00f6rdinated into the orderly and precise movements\nof his elders,--so the youth suddenly born into a confusion of ideas\nand appeals and traditions responds in the most chaotic way to this new\nspiritual world, and only gradually learns to find his way about in it,\nand get his thoughts and feelings into some kind of order.\n\nFortunate the young man who does not make his entrance into too wide\na world. And upon the width and depth of that new world will depend\nvery much whether his temperament is to be radical or conservative,\nadventurous or conventional. For it is one of the surprising things\nabout youth that it can so easily be the most conservative of all\nages. Why do we suppose that youth is always radical? At no age are\nsocial proprieties more strictly observed, and Church, State, law, and\norder, more rigorously defended. But I like to think that youth is\nconservative only when its spiritual force has been spent too early,\nor when the new world it enters into is found, for some reason, to be\nrather narrow and shallow. It is so often the urgent world of pleasure\nthat first catches the eye of youth; its flood of life is drawn off\nin that direction; the boy may fritter away his precious birthright\nin pure lightness of heart and animal spirits. And it is only too\ntrue that this type of youth is transitory. Pleasure contrives to\nburn itself out very quickly, and youth finds itself left prematurely\nwith the ashes of middle age. But if, in some way, the flood of life\nis checked in the direction of pleasure, then it bursts forth in\nanother,--in the direction of ideals; then we say that the boy is\nradical. Youth is always turbulent, but the momentous difference is\nwhether it shall be turbulent in passion or in enthusiasm. Nothing is\nso pathetic as the young man who spends his spiritual force too early,\nso that when the world of ideals is presented to him, his force being\nspent, he can only grasp at second-hand ideals and mouldy formulas.\n\nThis is the great divergence which sets youth not only against old\nage, but against youth itself: the undying spirit of youth that seems\nto be fed by an unquenchable fire, that does not burn itself out but\nseems to grow steadier and steadier as life goes on, against the\nfragile, quickly tarnished type that passes relentlessly into middle\nlife. At twenty-five I find myself full of the wildest radicalisms,\nand look with dismay at my childhood friends who are already settled\ndown, have achieved babies and responsibilities, and have somehow got\nten years beyond me in a day. And this divergence shows itself in a\nthousand different ways. It may be a temptation to a world of pleasure,\nit may be a sheltering from the stimulus of ideas, or even a sluggish\ntemperament, that separates traditional and adventurous youth, but\nfundamentally it is a question of how youth takes the world. And here I\nfind that I can no longer drag the traditional youth along with me in\nthis paper. There are many of him, I know, but I do not like him, and\nI know nothing about him. Let us rather look at the way radical youth\ngrows into and meets the world.\n\nFrom the state of \u201cthe little child, to whom the sky is a roof of\nblue, the world a screen of opaque and disconnected facts, the\nhome a thing eternal, and \u2018being good\u2019 just simple obedience to\nunquestioned authority,\u201d one steps suddenly into that \u201cvast world of\nadult perception, pierced deep by flaring search-lights of partial\nunderstanding.\u201d\n\nThe child has an utter sense of security; childhood is unconscious even\nthat it is alive. It has neither fears nor anxieties, because it is\nincorrigibly poetical. It idealizes everything that it touches. It is\nunfair, perhaps, to blame parents and teachers, as we sometimes do in\nyouth, for consciously biasing our child-minds in a falsely idealistic\ndirection; for the child will infallibly idealize even his poorest of\nexperiences. His broken glimpses and anticipations of his own future\nshow him everything that is orderly, happy, and beautifully fit. He\nsees his grown-up life as old age, itself a sort of reversed childhood,\nsees its youth. The passing of childhood into youth is, therefore,\nlike suddenly being turned from the cosy comfort of a warm fireside to\nshift for one\u2019s self in the world. Life becomes in a moment a process\nof seeking and searching. It appears as a series of blind alleys, all\nequally and magnificently alluring, all equally real and possible.\nYouth\u2019s thirst for experience is simply that it wants to be everything,\ndo everything and have everything that is presented to its imagination.\nYouth has suddenly become conscious of life. It has eaten of the tree\nof the knowledge of good and evil.\n\nAs the world breaks in on a boy with its crashing thunder, he has a\nfeeling of expansion, of sudden wisdom and sudden care. The atoms of\nthings seem to be disintegrating around him. Then come the tearings and\nthe grindings and the wrenchings, and in that conflict the radical or\nthe poet is made. If the youth takes the struggle easily, or if his\nguardian angels have arranged things so that there is no struggle,\nthen he becomes of that conservative stripe that we have renounced\nabove. But if he takes it hard,--if his struggles are not only with\noutward material conditions, but also with inner spiritual ones,--then\nhe is likely to achieve that gift of the gods, perpetual youth. The\ngreat paradox is that it is the sleek and easy who are prematurely and\npermanently old. Struggle brings youth rather than old age.\n\nIn this struggle, thus beset with problems and crises, all calling\nfor immediate solution, youth battles its way into a sort of\nrationalization. Out of its inchoateness emerges a sort of order; the\ndisturbing currents of impulse are gradually resolved into a character.\nBut it is essential that that resolution be a natural and not a\nforced one. I always have a suspicion of boys who talk of \u201cplanning\ntheir lives.\u201d I feel that they have won a precocious maturity in some\nillegitimate way. For to most of us youth is so imperious that those\nwho can escape the hurly-burly and make a sudden leap into the prudent,\nquiet waters of life seem to have missed youth altogether. And I do\nnot mean here the hurly-burly of passion so much as of ideals. It\nseems so much better, as well as more natural, to expose one\u2019s self to\nthe full fury of the spiritual elements, keeping only one purpose in\nview,--to be strong and sincere,--than to pick one\u2019s way cautiously\nalong.\n\nThe old saying is the truest philosophy of youth: \u201cSeek ye first\nthe Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.\u201d\nHow impossible for a youth who is really young to plan his life\nconsciously! This process that one sometimes sees of cautiously\nbecoming acquainted with various ideas and systems, and then choosing\ndeliberately those that will be best adapted to a concerted plan,\nis almost uncanny. This confidence in one\u2019s immunity to ideas that\nwould tend to disarrange the harmony of the scheme is mystifying and\nirritating. Youth talks of \u201cgetting\u201d or \u201caccepting\u201d ideas! But youth\ndoes not get ideas,--ideas get him! He may try to keep himself in a\nstate of spiritual health, but that is the only immunity he can rely\nupon. He cannot really tell what idea or appeal is going to seize upon\nhim next and make off with him.\n\nWe speak as if falling in love were a unique phase in the life of\nyouth. It is rather the pattern and symbol of a youth\u2019s whole life.\nThis sudden, irresistible seizure of enthusiasm that he cannot explain,\nthat he does not want to explain, what is it but the aspect of all his\nexperience? The youth sees a pretty face, reads a noble book, hears a\nstirring appeal for a cause, meets a charming friend, gets fired with\nthe concept of science, or of social progress, becomes attracted to\na profession,--the emotion that fixes his enthusiasm and lets out a\nflood of emotion in that direction, and lifts him into another world,\nis the same in every case. Youth glories in the sudden servitude,\nis content to let the new master lead wherever he will; and is as\nsurprised as any one at the momentous and startling results. Youth is\nvulnerable at every point. Prudence is really a hateful thing in youth.\nA prudent youth is prematurely old. It is infinitely better, I repeat,\nfor a boy to start ahead in life in a spirit of moral adventure,\ntrusting for sustenance to what he may find by the wayside, than to\nlay in laboriously, before starting, a stock of principles for life,\nand burden himself so heavily for the journey that he dare not, and\nindeed cannot, leave his pack unguarded by the roadside to survey the\nfair prospects on either hand. Youth at its best is this constant\nsusceptibility to the new, this constant eagerness to try experiments.\n\nIt is here that youth\u2019s quarrel with the elder generation comes in.\nThere is no scorn so fierce as that of youth for the inertia of\nolder men. The lack of adjustment to the ideas of youth\u2019s elders and\nbetters, one of the permanent tragedies of life, is certainly the most\nsensational aspect of youth. That the inertia of the older people is\nwisdom, and not impotence, is a theory that you will never induce\nyouth to believe for an instant. The stupidity and cruelties of their\nmanagement of the world fill youth with an intolerant rage. In every\ncontact with its elders, youth finds them saying, in the words of\nKipling:--\n\n  \u201cWe shall not acknowledge that old stars fade and alien planets arise,\n  That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient well-head\n   dries,\n  Or any new compass wherewith new men adventure \u2019neath new skies.\u201d\n\nYouth sees with almost a passionate despair its plans and dreams and\nenthusiasms, that it knows so well to be right and true and noble,\nbrushed calmly aside, not because of any sincere searching into their\npracticability, but because of the timidity and laziness of the old,\nwho sit in the saddle and ride mankind. And nothing torments youth so\nmuch as to have this inertia justified on the ground of experience.\nFor youth thinks that it sees through this sophism of \u201cexperience.\u201d\nIt sees in it an all-inclusive attempt to give the world a character,\nand excuse the older generation for the mistakes and failures which it\nhas made. What is this experience, youth asks, but a slow accretion of\ninhibitions, a learning, at its best, not to do again something which\nought not to have been done in the first place?\n\nOld men cherish a fond delusion that there is something mystically\nvaluable in mere quantity of experience. Now the fact is, of course,\nthat it is the young people who have all the really valuable\nexperience. It is they who have constantly to face new situations, to\nreact constantly to new aspects of life, who are getting the whole\nbeauty and terror and cruelty of the world in its fresh and undiluted\npurity. It is only the interpretation of this first collision with life\nthat is worth anything. For the weakness of experience is that it so\nsoon gets stereotyped; without new situations and crises it becomes so\nconventional as to be practically unconscious. Very few people get any\nreally new experience after they are twenty-five, unless there is a\nreal change of environment. Most older men live only in the experience\nof their youthful years.\n\nIf we get few ideas after we are twenty-five, we get few ideals after\nwe are twenty. A man\u2019s spiritual fabric is woven by that time, and\nhis \u201cexperience,\u201d if he keeps true to himself, consists simply in\nbroadening and enriching it, but not in adding to it in arithmetical\nproportion as the years roll on, in the way that the wise teachers of\nyouth would have us believe.\n\nBut few men remain quite true to themselves. As their youthful ideals\ncome into contact with the harshnesses of life, the brightest succumb\nand go to the wall. And the hardy ones that survive contain all that\nis vital in the future experience of the man,--so that the ideas of\nolder men seem often the curious parodies or even burlesques of what\nmust have been the cleaner and more potent ideas of their youth.\nOlder people seem often to be resting on their oars, drifting on the\nspiritual current that youth has set going in life, or \u201ccoasting\u201d on\nthe momentum that the strong push of youth has given them.\n\nThere is no great gulf between youth and middle age, as there is\nbetween childhood and youth. Adults are little more than grown-up\nchildren. This is what makes their arrogance so insulting,--the\nassumption that they have acquired any impartiality or objectivity of\noutlook, and have any better standards for judging life. Their ideas\nare wrong, and grow progressively more wrong as they become older.\nYouth, therefore, has no right to be humble. The ideals it forms will\nbe the highest it will ever have, the insight the clearest, the ideas\nthe most stimulating. The best that it can hope to do is to conserve\nthose resources, and keep its flame of imagination and daring bright.\n\nTherefore, it is perhaps unfair to say that the older generation rules\nthe world. Youth rules the world, but only when it is no longer young.\nIt is a tarnished, travestied youth that is in the saddle in the person\nof middle age. Old age lives in the delusion that it has improved and\nrationalized its youthful ideas by experience and stored-up wisdom,\nwhen all it has done is to damage them more or less--usually more. And\nthe tragedy of life is that the world is run by these damaged ideals.\nThat is why our ideas are always a generation behind our actual social\nconditions. Press, pulpit, and bar teem with the radicalisms of\nthirty years ago. The dead hand of opinions formed in their college\ndays clutches our leaders and directs their activities in this new and\nstrangely altered physical and spiritual environment. Hence grievous\nfriction, maladjustment, social war. And the faster society moves, the\nmore terrific is the divergence between what is actually going on and\nwhat public opinion thinks is actually going on. It is only the young\nwho are actually contemporaneous; they interpret what they see freshly\nand without prejudice; their vision is always the truest, and their\ninterpretation always the justest.\n\nYouth does not simply repeat the errors and delusions of the past, as\nthe elder generation with a tolerant cynicism likes to think; it is\never laying the foundations for the future. What it thinks so wildly\nnow will be orthodox gospel thirty years hence. The ideas of the young\nare the living, the potential ideas; those of the old, the dying, or\nthe already dead. This is why it behooves youth to be not less radical,\nbut even more radical, than it would naturally be. It must be not\nsimply contemporaneous, but a generation ahead of the times, so that\nwhen it comes into control of the world, it will be precisely right\nand coincident with the conditions of the world as it finds them. If\nthe youth of to-day could really achieve this miracle, they would have\nfound the secret of \u201cperpetual youth.\u201d\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn this conflict between youth and its elders, youth is the incarnation\nof reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the\nremorseless questions to everything that is old and established,--Why?\nWhat is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive\nanswers of the defenders, it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of\nreason to institutions, customs, and ideas, and, finding them stupid,\ninane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in\ntheir place the things with which its visions teem.\n\n\u201cThis constant return to purely logical activity with each generation\nkeeps the world supplied with visionaries and reformers, that is\nto say, with saviors and leaders. New movements are born in young\nminds, and lack of experience enables youth eternally to recall\ncivilization to sound bases. The passing generation smiles and\ncracks its weather-worn jokes about youthful effusions: but this\nnew, ever-hopeful, ever-daring, ever-doing, youthful enthusiasm,\never returning to the logical bases of religion, ethics, politics,\nbusiness, art, and social life,--this is the salvation of the\nworld.\u201d[1]\n\nThis was the youthful radicalism of Jesus, and his words sound across\nthe ages \u201ccalling civilization ever back to sound bases.\u201d With him,\nyouth eternally reproaches the ruling generation,--\u201cO ye of little\nfaith!\u201d There is so much to be done in the world; so much could be done\nif you would only dare! You seem to be doing so little to cure the\nwaste and the muddle and the lethargy all around you. Don\u2019t you really\ncare, or are you only faint-hearted? If you do not care, it must be\nbecause you do not know; let us point out to you the shockingness of\nexploitation, and the crass waste of human personality all around you\nin this modern world. And if you are faint-hearted, we will supply the\nneeded daring and courage, and lead you straight to the attack.\n\nThese are the questions and challenges that the youth puts to his\nelders, and it is their shifty evasions and quibblings that confound\nand dishearten him. He becomes intolerant, and can see all classes in\nno other light than that of accomplices in a great crime. If they only\nknew! Swept along himself in an irrationality of energy, he does not\nsee the small part that reason plays in the intricate social life, and\nonly gradually does he come to view life as a \u201cvarious and splendid\ndisorder of forces,\u201d and exonerate weak human nature from some of its\nheavy responsibility. But this insight brings him to appreciate and\nalmost to reverence the forces of science and conscious social progress\nthat are grappling with that disorder, and seeking to tame it.\n\nYouth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes\nfermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity\nof youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on\nthings as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the\npolicy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to\nhide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy\nof silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But\nmeanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic\nantiseptic. It will not let its elders cry peace, where there is no\npeace. Its fierce sarcasms keep issues alive in the world until they\nare settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that\nthey be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts\nthe younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail. \u201cIt is young\nmen who provide the logic, decision, and enthusiasm necessary to\nrelieve society of the crushing burden that each generation seeks to\nroll upon the shoulders of the next.\u201d\n\nOur elders are always optimistic in their views of the present,\npessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward\nthe present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this\nhope which is the lever of progress,--one might say, the only lever\nof progress. The lack of confidence which the ruling generation feels\nin the future leads to that distrust of the machinery of social\nreform and social organization, or the use of means for ends, which\nis so characteristic of it to-day. Youth is disgusted with such\nsentimentality. It can never understand that curious paralysis which\nseizes upon its elders in the face of urgent social innovations; that\nrefusal to make use of a perfectly definite programme or administrative\nscheme which has worked elsewhere. Youth concludes that its elders\ndiscountenance the machinery, the means, because they do not really\nbelieve in the end, and adds another count to the indictment.\n\nYouth\u2019s attitude is really the scientific attitude. Do not be afraid\nto make experiments, it says. You cannot tell how anything will work\nuntil you have tried it. Suppose science confined its interests to\nthose things that have been tried and tested in the world, how far\nshould we get? It is possible indeed that your experiments may produce\nby accident a social explosion, but we do not give up chemistry because\noccasionally a wrong mixture of chemicals blows up a scientist in a\nlaboratory, or medical research because an investigator contracts the\ndisease he is fighting. The whole philosophy of youth is summed up in\nthe word, Dare! Take chances and you will attain! The world has nothing\nto lose but its chains--and its own soul to gain!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have dwelt too long on the conflicts of youth. For it has also its\nstill places, where it becomes introspective and thinks about its\ndestiny and the meaning of its life. In our artificial civilization\nmany young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of\nactivity. As one looks back, then, over eight or nine years, one sees\na panorama of seemingly formidable length. So many crises, so many\nstartling surprises, so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and\ndisappointments, that one feels startlingly old; one wonders if one\nwill ever feel so old again. And in a sense, youth at twenty-five is\nolder than it will ever be again. For if time is simply a succession\nof incidents in our memory, we seem to have an eternity behind us.\nMiddle-aged people feel no such appalling stretch of time behind them.\nThe years fade out one by one; often the pressure of life leaves\nnothing of reality or value but the present moment. Some of youth\u2019s\nelders seem to enjoy almost a new babyhood, while youth has constantly\nwith it in all its vividness and multifariousness that specious wealth\nof abrupt changes, climaxes and disillusions that have crowded the\nshort space of its life.\n\nWe often envy the sunny noon of the thirties and forties. These elders\nof ours change so little that they seem to enjoy an endless summer\nof immortality. They are so placid, so robust, so solidly placed in\nlife, seemingly so much further from dissolution than we. Youth seems\ncuriously fragile. Perhaps it is because all beauty has something\nof the precarious and fleeting about it. A beautiful girl seems too\ndelicate and fine to weather a long life; she must be burning away\ntoo fast. This wistfulness and haunting pathos of life is very real\nto youth. It feels the rush of time past it. Only youth can sing of\nthe passing glory of life, and then only in its full tide. The older\npeople\u2019s lament for the vanished days of youth may be orthodox, but it\nrings hollow. For our greatest fears are those of presentiment, and\nyouth is haunted not only by the feeling of past change, but by the\npresentiment of future change.\n\nMiddle age has passed the waters; it has become static and placid.\nIts wistfulness for youth is unreal, and a forced sentimentality.\nIn the same breath that it cries for its youth it mocks at youth\u2019s\npreoccupation with the thought of death. The lugubrious harmonies of\nyoung poets are a favorite joke. But the feeling of the precariousness\nof life gives the young man an intimate sense of its preciousness;\nnothing shocks him quite so much as that it should be ruthlessly and\ninstantly snatched away. Middle age has acclimated itself to the\nearth, has settled down familiarly in it, and is easily be fooled into\nthinking that it will live here forever, just as, when we are settled\ncomfortably in a house, we cannot conceive ourselves as ever being\ndislodged. But youth takes a long time to get acclimated. It has seen\nso many mysteries and dangers about it, that the presence of the\nGreatest Mystery and the Greatest Danger must be the most portentous of\nthings to it.\n\nIt is this sense of the preciousness of his life, perhaps, that makes\na youth so impatient of discipline. Youth can never think of itself\nas anything but master of things. Its visions are a curious blend of\ndevotion and egotism. Its enthusiasm for a noble cause is apt to be all\nmixed up with a picture of itself leading the cohorts to victory. The\nyouth never sees himself as a soldier in the ranks, but as the leader,\nbringing in some long-awaited change by a brilliant _coup d\u2019\u00e9tat_,\nor writing and speaking words of fire that win a million hearts at a\nstroke. And he fights shy of discipline in smaller matters. He does not\nsubmit willingly to a course of work that is not immediately appealing,\neven for the sake of the glorious final achievement. Fortunate it is\nfor the young man, perhaps, that there are so many organs of coercion\nall ready in the world for him,--economic need, tradition, and subtle\ninfluence of family ambition,--to seize him and nail him fast to some\nprofession or trade or activity, before he is aware, or has time to\nprotest or draw back!\n\nIt is another paradox of youth that, with all its fine enthusiasm, it\nshould accomplish so little. But this seeming aimlessness of purpose\nis the natural result of that deadly fear of having one\u2019s wings clipped\nby discipline. Infinitely finer, it seems to youth, is it to soar\nfreely in the air, than to run on a track along the ground! And perhaps\nyouth is right. In his intellectual life, the young man\u2019s scorn for the\npedantic and conventional amounts almost to an obsession. It is only\nthe men of imagination and inspiration that he will follow at all. But\nmost of these professors, these lawyers, these preachers,--what has\nbeen their training and education, he says, but a gradual losing of\nthe grip of life, a slow withdrawing into an ideal world of phrases\nand concepts and artificial attitudes? Their thought seems like the\nendless spinning out of a spider\u2019s web, or like the camel living upon\nthe fat of his own hump. The youth fears this sophistication of thought\nas he would fear losing his soul. And this seeming perversity toward\ndiscipline is often simply his refusal to let a system submerge his own\nreal and direct reactions to his observation and experience.\n\nAnd yet as he studies more and more, and acquires a richer material\nfor thought, a familiarity with words, and a skill in handling them,\nhe can see the insidious temptation that comes to thinking men to\nmove all their spiritual baggage over into that fascinating unreal\nworld. And he admires almost with reverence the men who have been able\nto break through the terrible crust, and have got their thinking into\nclose touch with life again; or, best of all, those who have kept\ntheir thinking constantly checked up with life, and are occupied with\ninterpreting what they see about them. Youth will never be able to see\nthat this is not the only true and right business of thought.\n\nIt is the glory of the present age that in it one can be young.\nOur times give no check to the radical tendencies of youth. On the\ncontrary, they give the directest stimulation. A muddle of a world and\na wide outlook combine to inspire us to the bravest of radicalisms.\nGreat issues have been born in the last century, and are now loose\nin the world. There is a radical philosophy that illuminates our\nenvironment, gives us terms in which to express what we see, and\nco\u00f6rdinates our otherwise aimless reactions.\n\nIn this country, it is true, where a certain modicum of free\ninstitutions, and a certain specious enfranchisement of the human\nspirit have been achieved, youth may be blinded and drugged into an\nacquiescence in conditions, and its enthusiasm may easily run into a\nglorification of the present. In the face of the more urgent ideals\nthat are with us, it may be inspired by vague ideas of \u201cliberty,\u201d or\n\u201cthe rights of man,\u201d and fancy it is truly radical when it is but\nliving on the radicalisms of the past. Our political thought moves so\nslowly here that even our radicalism is traditional. We breathe in with\nthe air about us the belief that we have attained perfection, and we do\nnot examine things with our own eyes.\n\nBut more and more of the clear-sighted youth are coming to see the\nappalling array of things that still need to be done. The radical young\nman of to-day has no excuse for veering round to the conservative\nstandpoint. Cynicism cannot touch him. For it is the beauty of the\nmodern radical philosophy that the worse the world treats a man, the\nmore it convinces him of the truth of his radical interpretation of\nit. Disillusion comes, not through hard blows, but by the insidious\nsappings of worldly success. And there never was a time when there\nwere so many radical young people who cared little about that worldly\nsuccess.\n\nThe secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should\nnever be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine\nprecipitate--a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It\nmust be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas,\nand a keen insight into experience. To keep one\u2019s reactions warm and\ntrue, is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual\nyouth is salvation.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Earl Barnes.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE TWO GENERATIONS\n\n\nIt is always interesting to see ourselves through the eyes of others,\neven though that view may be most unflattering. The recent \u201cLetter to\nthe Rising Generation,\u201d[2] if I may judge from the well-thumbed and\nunderscored copy of the \u201cAtlantic\u201d which I picked up in the College\nLibrary, has been read with keen interest by many of my fellows, and\ndoubtless, too, with a more emphatic approval, by our elders. The\nindictment of an entire generation must at its best be a difficult\ntask, but the author of the article has performed it with considerable\ncircumspection, skirting warily the vague and the abstract, and passing\nfrom the judge\u2019s bench to the pulpit with a facility that indicates\nthat justice is to be tempered with mercy. The rather appalling picture\nwhich she draws of past generations holding their breath to see what\nmy contemporaries will make of themselves suggests, too, that we are\nstill on probation, and so, before final judgment is passed, it may be\npertinent to attempt, if not, from the hopeless nature of the case, a\ndefense, at least an extenuation of ourselves.\n\nThe writer\u2019s charge is pretty definite. It is to the effect that the\nrising generation, in its reaction upon life and the splendid world\nwhich has been handed down to it, shows a distinct softening of human\nfibre, spiritual, intellectual, and physical, in comparison with the\ngenerations which have preceded it. The most obvious retort to this\nis, of course, that the world in which we find ourselves is in no way\nof our own making, so that if our reactions to it are unsatisfactory,\nor our rebellious attitude toward it distressing, it is at least a\nplausible assumption that the world itself, despite the responsible\ncare which the passing generation bestowed upon it, may be partly to\nblame.\n\nBut this, after all, is only begging the question. The author herself\nadmits that we are the victims of educational experiments, and, in any\nevent, each generation is equally guiltless of its world. We recognize\nwith her that the complexity of the world we face only makes more\nnecessary our bracing up for the fray. Her charge that we are not doing\nthis overlooks, however, certain aspects of the situation which go far\nto explain our seemingly deplorable qualities.\n\nThe most obvious fact which presents itself in this connection is\nthat the rising generation has practically brought itself up. School\ndiscipline, since the abolition of corporal punishment, has become\nalmost nominal; church discipline practically nil; and even home\ndiscipline, although retaining the forms, is but an empty shell.\nThe modern child from the age of ten is almost his own master. The\nhelplessness of the modern parent face to face with these conditions is\namusing. What generation but the one to which our critic belongs could\nhave conceived of \u201cmothers\u2019 clubs\u201d conducted by the public schools,\nin order to teach mothers how to bring up their children! The modern\nparent has become a sort of _parlement_ registering the decrees of a\nGrand Monarque, and occasionally protesting, though usually without\neffect, against a particularly drastic edict.\n\nI do not use this assertion as a text for an indictment of the\npreceding generation; I am concerned, like our critic, only with\nresults. These are a peculiarly headstrong and individualistic\ncharacter among the young people, and a complete bewilderment on the\npart of the parents. The latter frankly do not understand their\nchildren, and their lack of understanding and of control over them\nmeans a lack of the moral guidance which, it has always been assumed,\nyoung people need until they are safely launched in the world. The two\ngenerations misunderstand each other as they never did before. This\nfact is a basal one to any comprehension of the situation.\n\nNow let us see how the rising generation brings itself up. It is\nperfectly true that the present-day secondary education, that curious\nfragmentary relic of a vitally humanistic age, does not appeal to them.\nThey will tell you frankly that they do not see any use in it. Having\nbrought themselves up, they judge utility by their own standards, and\nnot by those of others. Might not the fact that past generations went\nwith avidity to their multiplication table, their Latin Grammar, and\ntheir English Bible, whereas the rising generation does not, imply that\nthe former found some intellectual sustenance in those things which the\nlatter fails to find? The appearance of industrial education on the\nfield, and the desperate attempts of educational theory to make the old\nthings palatable which fifty years ago were gulped down raw, argues,\ntoo, that there may be a grain of truth in our feeling. Only after a\nserious examination of our intellectual and spiritual viands should\nour rejection of them be attributed to a disordered condition of our\nstomachs.\n\nThe charge that the rising generation betrays an extraordinary love\nof pleasure is also true. The four years\u2019 period of high-school life\namong the children of the comfortable classes is, instead of being a\npreparation for life, literally one round of social gayety. But it is\nnot likely that this is because former generations were less eager\nfor pleasure, but rather because they were more rigidly repressed\nby parents and custom, while their energy was directed into other\nchannels, religious, for instance. But now, with every barrier removed,\nwe have the unique spectacle of a youthful society where there is\nperfectly free intercourse, an unforced social life of equals, in\nwhich there are bound to develop educative influences of profound\nsignificance. Social virtues will be learned better in such a society\nthan they can ever be from moral precepts. An important result of this\ncamaraderie is that the boy\u2019s and the girl\u2019s attitude toward life,\ntheir spiritual outlook, has come to be the same. The line between the\ntwo \u201cspheres\u201d has long disappeared in the industrial classes; it is\nnow beginning to fade among the comfortable classes.\n\nOur critic has not seen that this avidity for pleasure is a natural\nebullition which, flaring up naturally, within a few years as naturally\nsubsides. It goes, too, without that ennui of over-stimulation; and\nthe fact that it has been will relieve us of the rising generation\nfrom feeling that envy which invariably creeps into the tone of the\npassing generation when they say, \u201cWe did not go such a pace when we\nwere young.\u201d After this period of pleasure has begun to subside, there\nensues for those who have not been prematurely forced into industry, a\nstrange longing for independence. This feeling is most striking among\nthe girls of the rising generation, and crops up in the most unexpected\nplaces, in families in the easiest circumstances, where to the\npreceding generation the idea of caring to do anything except stay at\nhome and get married, if possible, would have been inconceivable. They\nwant somehow to feel that they are standing on their own feet. Like\ntheir brothers, they begin to chafe under the tutelage, nominal though\nit is, of the home. As a result, these daughters of the comfortable\nclasses go into trained nursing, an occupation which twenty years ago\nwas deemed hardly respectable; or study music, or do settlement work,\nor even public-school teaching. Of course, girls who have had to earn\ntheir own living have long done these things; the significant point is\nthat the late rapid increase in these professions comes from those who\nhave a comfortable niche in society all prepared for them. I do not\nargue that this proves any superior quality of character on the part of\nthis generation, but it does at least fail to suggest a desire to lead\nlives of ignoble sloth.\n\nThe undergraduate feels this spirit, too. He often finds himself\nvaguely dissatisfied with what he has acquired, and yet does not\nquite know what else would have been better for him. He stands on the\nthreshold of a career, with a feeling of boundless possibility, and yet\noften without a decided bent toward any particular thing. One could do\nalmost anything were one given the opportunity, and yet, after all,\njust what shall one do? Our critics have some very hard things to say\nabout this attitude. They attribute it to an egotistic philosophy,\nimperfectly absorbed. But may it not rather be the result of that\nabsence of repression in our bringing-up, of that rigid moulding which\nmade our grandfathers what they were?\n\nIt must be remembered that we of the rising generation have to work\nthis problem out alone. Pastors, teachers, and parents flutter\naimlessly about with their ready-made formulas, but somehow these\nare less efficacious than they used to be. I doubt if any generation\nwas ever thrown quite so completely on its own resources as ours\nis. Through it all, the youth as well as the girl feels that he\nwants to count for something in life. His attitude, which seems so\negotistical to his elders, is the result of this and of a certain\nexpansive outlook, rather than of any love of vain-glory. He has never\nknown what it was to be moulded, and he shrinks a little perhaps\nfrom going through that process. The traditional professions have\nlost some of their automatic appeal. They do conventionalize, and\nfurthermore, the youth, looking at many of their representatives,\nthe men who \u201ccount\u201d in the world to-day, may be pardoned if he feels\nsometimes as if he did not want to count in just that way. The youth\n\u201cwho would not take special training because it would interfere with\nhis sacred individuality\u201d is an unfair caricature of this weighing,\ntesting attitude toward the professions. The elder generation should\nremember that life is no longer the charted sea that it was to\nour grandfathers, and be accordingly lenient with us of the rising\ngeneration.\n\nBusiness, to the youth standing on the threshold of life, presents a\nsimilar dilemma. Too often it seems like a choice between the routine\nof a mammoth impersonal corporation and chicanery of one kind or\nanother, or the living by one\u2019s wits within the pale of honesty. The\npredatory individualist, the \u201chard-as-nails\u201d specimen, does exist, of\ncourse, but we are justified in ignoring him here; for, however much\nhis tribe may increase, it is certain that it will not be his kind, but\nthe more spiritually sensitive, the amorphous ones of the generation,\nwho will impress some definite character upon the age, and ultimately\ncount for good or evil, as a social force. With these latter, it should\nbe noted that, although this is regarded as a mercenary age, the\nquestion of gain, to an increasingly large number, has little to do\nwith the final decision.\n\nThe economic situation in which we find ourselves, and to which not\nonly the free, of whom we have been speaking, but also the unfree of\nthe rising generation are obliged to react, is perhaps the biggest\nfactor in explaining our character. In this reaction the rising\ngeneration has a very real feeling of coming straight up against a\nwall of diminishing opportunity. I do not see how it can be denied\nthat practical opportunity is less for this generation than it has\nbeen for those preceding it. The man of fifty years ago, if he was\nintellectually inclined, was able to get his professional training\nat small expense, and usually under the personal guidance of his\nelders; if commercially inclined, he could go into a small, settled,\nself-respecting business house, practically a profession in itself\nand a real school of character. If he had a broader outlook, there\nwas the developing West for him, or the growing industrialism of the\nEast. It looks, at least from this distance, as if opportunity were\neasy for that generation. They had the double advantage of being\nmore circumscribed in their outlook, and of possessing more ready\nopportunity at hand.\n\nBut these times have passed forever. Nowadays, professional training is\nlengthy and expensive; independent business requires big capital for\nsuccess; and there is no more West. It is still as true as ever that\nthe exceptional man will always \u201cget there,\u201d but now it is likely to be\nonly the exceptional man, whereas formerly all the able \u201cgot there,\u201d\ntoo. The only choice for the vast majority of the young men of to-day\nis between being swallowed up in the routine of a big corporation, and\nexperiencing the vicissitudes of a small business, which is now an\nuncertain, rickety affair, usually living by its wits, in the hands\nof men who are forced to subordinate everything to self-preservation,\nand in which the employee\u2019s livelihood is in constant jeopardy. The\ngrowing consciousness of this situation explains many of the peculiar\ncharacteristics of our generation.\n\nIt has a direct bearing on the question of responsibility. Is it\nnot sound doctrine that one becomes responsible only by being made\nresponsible for something? Now, what incentive to responsibility is\nproduced by the industrial life of to-day? In the small business there\nis the frank struggle for gain between employer and employee, a contest\nof profits vs. wages, each trying to get the utmost possible out of the\nother. The only kind of responsibility that this can possibly breed\nis the responsibility for one\u2019s own subsistence. In the big business,\nthe employee is simply a small part of a big machine; his work\ncounts for so little that he can rarely be made to feel any intimate\nresponsibility for it.\n\nThen, too, our haphazard industrial system offers such magnificent\nopportunities to a young man to get into the wrong place. He is forced\nby necessity to go early, without the least training or interest, into\nthe first work that offers itself. The dull, specialized routine of\nthe modern shop or office, so different from the varied work and the\npersonal touch which created interest in the past, is the last thing\non earth that will mould character or produce responsibility. When the\nsituation with an incentive appears, however, we are as ready as any\ngeneration, I believe, to meet it.\n\nI have seen too many young men, of the usual futile bringing-up and\nnegligible training, drift idly about from one \u201cjob\u201d to another,\nwithout apparent ambition, until something happened to be presented\nto them which had a spark of individuality about it, whereupon they\nfaced about and threw themselves into the task with an energy that\nbrought success and honor,--I have seen too much of this not to wonder,\nsomewhat impiously perhaps, whether this boasted character of our\nfathers was not rather the result of their coming into contact with\nthe proper stimulus at the proper time, than of any tougher, grittier\nstrain in their spiritual fibre. Those among our elders, who, deploring\nSocialism, insist so strenuously on the imperfections of human nature,\nought not to find fault with the theory that frail humanity is under\nthe necessity of receiving the proper stimulus before developing a good\ncharacter or becoming responsible.\n\nNor is the rising generation any the less capable of effort when\nconditions call it forth. I wonder how our critic accounts for the\ncorrespondence schools which have sprung up so abundantly within the\npast fifteen years. They are patronized by large numbers of young men\nand women who have had little academic training and have gone early\ninto industry. It is true that the students do not spend their time on\nthe Latin grammar; they devote themselves to some kind of technical\ncourse which they have been led to believe will qualify them for a\nbetter position. But the fact that they are thus willing to devote\ntheir spare time to study certainly does not indicate a lack of effort.\nRather, it is the hardest kind of effort, for it is directed toward no\nimmediate end, and, more than that, it is superimposed on the ordinary\nwork, which is usually quite arduous enough to fatigue the youth.\n\nYoung apprentices in any branch where there is some kind of technical\nor artistic appeal, such as mechanics or architecture, show an almost\nincredible capacity of effort, often spending, as I have seen them\ndo, whole days over problems. I know too a young man who, appointed\nvery young to political office, found that the law would be useful\nto him, and travels every evening to a near-by city to take courses.\nHis previous career had been most inglorious, well calculated by its\naimlessness to ruin any \u201ccharacter\u201d; but the incentive was applied, and\nhe proved quite capable of putting forth a surprising amount of steady\neffort.\n\nOur critics are perhaps misled by the fact that these young men do\nnot announce with a blare of trumpets that they are about to follow\nin the footsteps of an Edison or a Webster. It must be admitted that\neven such men as I have cited do still contrive to work into their\ntime a surprising amount of pleasure. But the whole situation shows\nconclusively, I think, that our author has missed the point when she\nsays that the rising generation shows a real softening of the human\nfibre. It is rather that we have the same reserves of ability and\neffort, but that from the complex nature of the economic situation\nthese reserves are not unlocked so early or so automatically as with\nformer generations.\n\nThe fact that our fathers did not need correspondence schools or night\nschools, or such things, implies either that they were not so anxious\nas we to count in the world, or that success was an easier matter\nin their day, either of which conclusions furnishes a pretty good\nextenuation of our apparent incapacity. We cannot but believe that our\ndifficulties are greater in this generation; it is hard to see that the\neffort we put forth to overcome these difficulties is not proportional\nto that increase. I am aware that to blame your surroundings when the\nfault lies in your own character is the one impiety which rouses the\nhorror of present-day moral teachers. Can it not count to us for good,\nthen, that most of us, while coming theoretically to believe that this\neconomic situation explains so much of our trouble, yet continue to act\nas if our deficiencies were all our own fault?\n\nOur critics are misled by the fact that we do not talk about\nunselfishness and self-sacrifice and duty, as their generation\napparently used to do, and conclude that we do not know what these\nthings mean. It is true that we do not fuss and fume about our souls,\nor tend our characters like a hot-house plant. This is a changing,\ntransitional age, and our view is outward rather than inward. In an\nage of newspapers, free libraries, and cheap magazines, we necessarily\nget a broader horizon than the passing generation had. We see what is\ngoing on in the world, and we get the clash of different points of\nview, to an extent which was impossible to our fathers. We cannot be\nblamed for acquiring a suspicion of ideals, which, however powerful\ntheir appeal once was, seem singularly impotent now, or if we seek for\nmotive forces to replace them, or for new terms in which to restate\nthe world. We have an eagerness to understand the world in which we\nlive that amounts almost to a passion. We want to get behind the\nscenes, to see how the machinery of the modern world actually works.\nWe are curious to learn what other people are thinking, and to get\nat the forces that have produced their point of view. We dabble in\nphilanthrophy as much from curiosity to see how people live as from any\nfeeling of altruism. We read all sorts of strange philosophies to get\nthe personal testimony of men who are interpreting the world. In the\nlast analysis, we have a passion to understand why people act as they\ndo.\n\nWe have, as a result, become impatient with the conventional\nexplanations of the older generation. We have retained from childhood\nthe propensity to see through things, and to tell the truth with\nstartling frankness. This must, of course, be very disconcerting to\na generation, so much of whose activity seems to consist in glossing\nover the unpleasant things or hiding the blemishes on the fair face\nof civilization. There are too many issues evaded which we would\nlike to meet. Many of us find, sooner or later, that the world is a\nvery different sort of place from what our carefully deodorized and\nidealized education would have us believe.\n\nWhen we find things simply not as they are painted, is it any wonder\nthat we turn to the new prophets rather than to the old? We are more\nthan half confident that the elder generation does not itself really\nbelieve all the conventional ideals which it seeks to force upon us,\nand much of our presumption is a result of the contempt we naturally\nfeel for such timorousness. Too many of your preachers seem to be\nwhistling simply to keep up your courage. The plain truth is that the\nyounger generation is acquiring a positive faith, in contact with\nwhich the elder generation with its nerveless negations feels its\nhelplessness without knowing just what to do about it except to scold\nthe young.\n\nThis positive aspect is particularly noticeable in the religion of the\nrising generation. As our critic says, the religious thinking of the\npreceding generation was destructive and uncertain. We are demanding a\ndefinite faith, and our spiritual centre is rapidly shifting from the\npersonal to the social in religion. Not personal salvation, but social;\nnot our own characters, but the character of society, is our interest\nand concern. We feel social injustice as our fathers felt personal sin.\nSettlement work and socialist propaganda, things done fifty years ago\nonly by rare and heroic souls like Kingsley, Ruskin, and Maurice, are\nnow the commonplaces of the undergraduate.\n\nThe religion that will mean anything to the rising generation will be\nbased on social ideals. An essay like ex-President Eliot\u2019s \u201cReligion\nof the Future,\u201d which in a way synthesizes science and history and\nthese social ideals and gives them the religious tinge which every age\ndemands, supplies a real working religious platform to many a young\nman and woman of the rising generation, and an inspiration of which\nour elders can form no conception. Perhaps it is unfair to call this\nreligion at all. Perhaps it is simply the scientific attitude toward\nthe world. But I am sure that it is more than this; I am sure that\nit is the scientific attitude tinged with the religious that will be\nours of the rising generation. We find that we cannot keep apart our\nreligion, our knowledge, our practice, and our hopes in water-tight\ncompartments, as our ancestors did. We are beginning to show an\nincorrigible tendency to work our spiritual assimilations into one\nintelligible, constructive whole.\n\nIt is to this attitude rather than to a softening of fibre that I think\nwe may lay our growing disinclination to deify sacrifice and suffering.\nA young chemistry student said to me the other day, \u201cScience means that\nnothing must be wasted!\u201d This idea somehow gets mixed up with human\nexperience, and we come to believe that human life and happiness are\nthings that must not be wasted. Might it not be that such a belief that\nhuman waste of life and happiness was foolish and unnecessary would\npossibly be of some avail in causing that waste to disappear? And one\nof the most inspiring of the prophets to the rising generation, William\nJames, has told us that certain \u201cmoral equivalents\u201d of these things are\npossible which will prevent that incurable decaying of fibre which the\nelder generation so anxiously fears.\n\nAnother result of this attitude is our growing belief in political\nmachinery. We are demanding of our preachers that they reduce quality\nto quantity. \u201cStop talking about liberty and justice and love, and show\nus institutions, or concerted attempts to model institutions that shall\nbe free or just or lovely,\u201d we cry. You have been trying so long to\nreform the world by making men \u201cgood,\u201d and with such little success,\nthat we may be pardoned if we turn our attention to the machinery of\nsociety, and give up for a time the attempt to make the operators of\nthat machinery strictly moral. Indeed, the charm of Socialism to so\nmany of the rising generation is just that scientific aspect of it,\nits claim of historical basis, and its very definite and concrete\norganization for the attainment of its ends. A philosophy which gives\nan illuminating interpretation of the present, and a vision of the\nfuture, with a definitely crystallized plan of action with concrete\nmethods, however unsound it may all be, can hardly be said to appeal\nsimply to the combination of \u201ca weak head, a soft heart, and a desire\nto shirk.\u201d\n\nPlaced in such a situation as we are, and with such an attitude\ntoward the world, we are as interested as you and the breathless\ngenerations behind you to see what destinies we shall work out for\nourselves. An unpleasantly large proportion of our energy is now\ndrained off in fighting the fetishes which you of the elder generation\nhave passed along to us, and which, out of some curious instinct of\nself-preservation, you so vigorously defend. We, on the other hand,\nare becoming increasingly doubtful whether you believe in yourselves\nquite so thoroughly as you would have us think. Your words are very\nbrave, but the tone is hollow. Your mistrust of us, and your reluctance\nto convey over to us any of your authority in the world, looks a\nlittle too much like the fear and dislike that doubt always feels in\nthe presence of conviction, to be quite convincing. We believe in\nourselves; and this fact, we think, is prophetic for the future. We\nhave an indomitable feeling that we shall attain, or if not, that we\nshall pave the way for a generation that shall attain.\n\nMeanwhile our constructive work is hampered by your distrust, while\nyou blame us for our lack of accomplishment. Is this an attitude\ncalculated to increase our responsibility and our self-respect? Would\nit not be better in every way, more constructive and more fruitful, to\nhelp us in our aspirations and endeavors, or, failing that, at least to\nstrive to understand just what those aspirations and endeavors are?\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[2] _The Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1911.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE VIRTUES AND THE SEASONS OF LIFE\n\n\nEach season of life has its proper virtues, as each season of the year\nhas its own climate and temperature. If virtue is the excellent working\nof the soul, then youth, middle age, and old age, all have their\npeculiar ways of working excellently. When we speak of a virtuous life,\nwe should mean, not a life that has shown one single thread of motive\nand attitude running through it, but rather one that has varied with\nthe seasons, as spring grows gently into summer and summer into autumn,\neach season working excellently in respect to the tilling and harvest\nof the soul. If it is a virtue to be contented in old age, it is no\nvirtue to be contented in youth; if it is a virtue for youth to be bold\nand venturesome, it is the virtue of middle life to take heed and begin\nto gather up the lines and nets so daringly cast by youth into the sea\nof life. A virtuous life means a life responsive to its powers and its\nopportunities, a life not of inhibitions, but of a straining up to\nthe limit of its strength. It means doing every year what is fitting\nto be done at that year to enhance or conserve one\u2019s own life or the\nhappiness of those around one. Virtue is a word that abolishes duty.\nFor duty has steadily fallen into worse and worse opprobrium; it has\ncome to mean nothing but effort and stress. It implies something that\nis done rightly, but that cuts straight across the grain of all one\u2019s\ninclinations and motive forces. It is following the lines of greatest\nresistance; it is the working of the moral machine with the utmost\nfriction possible. Now there is no doubt that the moral life involves\nstruggle and effort, but it should be the struggle of adequate choice,\nand not of painful inhibition. We are coming to see that the most\neffective things we do are those that have some idea of pleasure yoked\nup with them. In the interests of moral efficiency, the ideal must be\nthe smooth and noiseless workings of the machine, and not the rough and\ngrinding movements that we have come to associate with the word \u201cduty.\u201d\nFor the emphasis on the negative duty we must substitute emphasis on\nthe positive virtue. For virtue is excellence of working, and all\nexcellence is pleasing. When we know what are the virtues appropriate\nto each age of life, we can view the moral life in a new light. It\nbecomes not a claim upon us of painful obligation, but a stimulus to\nexcellent spontaneity and summons to self-expression.\n\nIn childhood we acquire the spiritual goods that we shall take with\nus through life; in youth we test our acquisitions and our tools,\nselecting, criticizing, comparing; in old age, we put them away\ngently into the attic of oblivion or retire them honorably, full of\nyears and service. Our ideas, however, of what those spiritual goods\nwere that childhood acquired have been very much confused. We have\nimagined that we could give the child \u201cthe relish of right and wrong,\u201d\nas Montaigne calls it. The attempt has usually been made to train up\nthe child in the moral life, by telling him from his earliest years\nwhat was right and what was wrong. It was supposed that in this way\nhe absorbed right principles that would be the guiding springs of\nhis youthful and later life. The only difficulty, of course, with\nthis theory is that the moral life hardly begins before the stresses\nand crises of youth at all. For really moral activity implies choice\nand it implies significant choice; and the choices of the child are\nfew in number and seldom significant. You can tell a child that a\ncertain thing is wrong, and he will believe it, but his belief will be\na purely mechanical affair, an external idea, which is no more woven\ninto the stuff of his life than is one of those curious \u201cpost-hypnotic\nsuggestions,\u201d that psychologists tell about, where the subject while\nhypnotized is told to do something at a certain time after he awakes.\nWhen the time comes he does it without any consciousness of the reason\nand without any immediate motive. Now most moral ideas in a child\u2019s\nmind are exactly similar to these suggestions. They seem to operate\nwith infallible accuracy, and we say,--\u201cWhat a good child!\u201d As a fact\nthe poor child is as much under an alien spell as the subject of\nthe hypnotist. Now all this sort of hypnotized morality the younger\ngeneration wants to have done with. It demands a morality that is\nglowing with self-consciousness, that is healthy with intelligence. It\nrefuses to call the \u201cgood\u201d child moral at all; it views him as a poor\nlittle trained animal, that is doomed for the rest of his life to go\nthrough mechanical motions and moral tricks at the crack of the whip\nof a moral code or religious authority. From home and Sunday-school,\nchildren of a slightly timid disposition get moral wounds, the scars of\nwhich never heal. They enter a bondage from which they can never free\nthemselves; their moral judgment in youth is warped and blighted in a\nthousand ways, and they pass through life, seemingly the most moral\nof men and women, but actually having never known the zest of true\nmorality, the relish of right and wrong. The best intentions of parents\nand teachers have turned their characters into unnatural channels from\nwhich they cannot break, and fixed unwittingly upon them senseless\ninhibitions and cautions which they find they cannot dissolve, even\nwhen reason and common sense convince them that they are living under\nan alien code. Looked upon from this light, childish goodness and\nchildish conscientiousness is an unhealthy and even criminal forcing\nof the young plant, the hot-house bringing to maturity of a young soul\nwhose sole business is to grow and learn. When moral instruction is\ngiven, a criminal advantage is taken of the child\u2019s suggestibility,\nand all possibility of an individual moral life, growing naturally\nand spontaneously as the young soul meets the real emergencies and\nproblems that life will present to it, is lost. If, as we are coming\nmore and more to realize, the justification of knowledge is that it\nhelps us to get along with and enjoy and grapple with the world, so\nthe justification of virtue is that it enables us to get along with\nand enjoy and grapple with the spiritual world of ideals and feelings\nand qualities. We should be as careful about giving a child moral\nideas that will be of no practical use to him as we are in giving him\nlearning that will be of no use to him.\n\nThe virtues of childhood, then, we shall not find in the moral realm.\nThe \u201cgood\u201d child is not cultivated so much to-day as he was by the\nformer generation, whose one aim in education and religion was to bind\nthe young fast in the fetters of a puritan code; but he is still, in\nwell-brought-up families, an appalling phenomenon. The child, who at\nthe age of five has a fairly complete knowledge of what God wants\nhim and all around him to do and not to do, is an illustration of\nthe results of the confusion of thought that would make childhood\ninstead of youth the battle-ground of the moral life. We should not\ndismiss such a child as quaint, for in him have been sowed the seeds\nof a general obscurantism and conservatism that will spread like a\npalsy over his whole life. The acceptance of moral judgments that\nhave no vital meaning to the young soul will mean in later life the\nacceptance of ideas and prejudices in political and religious and\nsocial matters that are uncriticized and unexamined. The \u201cgood\u201d child\ngrows up into the conventional bigoted man. The duties and tastes which\nare inculcated into him in childhood, far from aiding the \u201cexcellent\nworkings of his soul,\u201d clog and rust it, and prevent the fine free\nexpression of its individuality and genius. For the child has not\nyet the material of experience that will enable him to get the sense\nof values which is at the bottom of what we call the spiritual life.\nAnd it is this sense that is so easily dulled, and that must be so\ncarefully protected against blunting. That the child cannot form\nmoral judgments for himself, however, does not mean that they must be\nformed for him by others; it means that we must patiently wait until\nhe meets the world of vivid contrasts and shocks and emergencies that\nis youth. It is not repairing his lack of moral sensitiveness to get\nhim to repeat parrot-like the clean-cut and easily learned taboos and\npermissions of the people around him. To get him to do this is exactly\nlike training an animal to bolt any kind of food. The child, however,\nhas too weak a stomach to digest very much of the moral pabulum that\nis fed him. The inevitable result is a moral indigestion, one form of\nwhich is the once fashionable sense of sin. The youth, crammed with\nuncriticized taboos delivered to him with the awful prestige of an\nAlmighty God, at a certain age revolts, and all the healthy values\nof life turn sour within him. The cure for this spiritual dyspepsia\nis called conversion, but it is a question whether the cure is not\noften worse than the disease. For it usually means that the relish of\nright and wrong, which had suddenly become a very real thing, has been\npermanently perverted in a certain direction. By a spiritual operation,\nthe soul has been forced to digest all this strange food, and acquires\nthe ability to do so forever after. Those who do not suffer this\noperation pass through life with an uneasiness of spirit, the weight\nand burden of an imperfectly assimilated moral life. Few there are\nwho are able to throw off the whole soddenness, and if they do they\nare fortunate if they are not left without any food at all. Religious\nteachers have always believed that all these processes were necessary\nfor the soul\u2019s health. They have believed that it was better to have\nmechanical morals than no morals at all. When the younger generation\nsees the damage such morals work, it would prefer to have none.\n\nDiscarding the \u201cgood\u201d child, then, we will find the virtues of\nchildhood in that restless, pushing, growing curiosity that is the\ncharacteristic of every healthy little boy or girl. The child\u2019s life is\nspent in learning his way around the world; in learning the ropes of\nthings, the handles and names of whatever comes within the range of his\nexperience. He is busy acquiring that complex bundle of common-sense\nknowledge that underlies all our grown-up acts, and which has become\nso automatic with us that it hardly seems possible to us that we have\nslowly acquired it all. We do not realize that thousands of facts and\nhabits, which have become stereotyped and practically unconscious in\nour minds, are the fresh and vital experiences of the mind of the\nlittle child. We cannot put ourselves back into that world where the\nabsorbing business is to give things a position and a name and to\nlearn all the little obvious facts about the things in the house and\nthe yard and the village, and in that far land of mystery beyond. What\nsort of sympathy can we have with these little people,--we, to whom all\nthis na\u00efve world of place and nomenclature is so familiar as to seem\nintuitive? We should have to go back to a world where every passing\nrailroad train was a marvel and a delight, where a walk to the village\nmeant casting ourselves adrift into an adventurous country where\nanything was likely to happen and where all calculations of direction\nor return were upset. It takes children a long time to get accustomed\nto the world. This common workaday knowledge of ours seems intuitive\nto us only because we had so many years during which it was reiterated\nto us, and not because we were unusually sensitive to impressions.\nChildren often seem almost as stupid as any young animal, and to\nrequire long practice before they know their way around in the world,\nalthough, once obtained, this common sense is never forgotten. That\nchild is virtuous who acquires all he can of it.\n\nThis curiosity of childhood makes children the first scientists. They\nbegin, as soon as their eyes are open, dissolving this confused mystery\nof the world, distinguishing and classifying its parts according to\ntheir interests and needs. They push on and on, ever widening the\ncircle, and ever bringing more and more of their experience under the\nsubjugation of their understanding. They begin the process that the\nscientist completes. As children, after several years we came to know\nour house and yard, although the attic and cellar were perhaps still\ndim and fearsome places. Inside the household things were pretty\nwell tabulated and rationalized. It was only when we went outside the\ngate that we might expect adventures to happen. We should have been\nvery much shocked to see the fire leap from the stove and the bread\nfrom the table, as they did in the \u201cBlue Bird,\u201d but in walking down\nto the village we should not have been surprised to see a giant or a\nfairy sitting on the green. When we became familiar with the village,\nthe fairies were, of course, banished to remoter regions, until they\nfinally vanished altogether. But it is not so long ago that I lost the\nlast vague vestige of a feeling that there were fairies in England.\n\nThe facility, one might almost say skill, which children show in\ngetting lost, is the keynote of childhood\u2019s world. For they have no\nbearings among the unfamiliar, no principles for the solution of the\nunknown. In their accustomed realm they are as wise and canny and\nfree from superstition as we are in ours. We, as grown-ups, have not\nacquired any magical release from fantasy. The only difference is that\nwe are accustomed to make larger hazards of faith that things will\nrepeat themselves, and that we have a wider experience to check off\nour novelties by. We have charted most of our world; we unfortunately\nhave no longer any world to get lost in. To be sure, we have opened\nup perhaps an intangible world of philosophy and speculation, which\nchildhood does not dream of, and heaven knows we can get lost there!\nBut the thing is different. The adventure of childhood is to get lost\nhere in this everyday world of common sense which is so familiar to us.\nTo become really as little children we should have to get lost again\nhere. The best substitute we can give ourselves is to keep exploring\nthe new spiritual world in which we may find ourselves in youth and\nmiddle life, pushing out ever, as the child does, our fringe of\nmystery. And we can gain the gift of wonder, something that the child\ndoes not have. He is too busy drinking in the facts to wonder about\nthem, or to wonder about what is beyond them. We may count ourselves\nfortunate, however, that we are able to retain the child\u2019s virtue of\ncuriosity, and transmute it into the beauty of spiritual wonder.\n\nIt is facts and not theories that the child is curious about, and\nrightly. He cannot assimilate moral theories, nor can he assimilate\nany other kind of theories. It is his virtue to learn how the world\nruns; youth will be time enough to philosophize about that running.\nIt is the immediate and the present that interest children, and they\nare omnivorous with regard to any facts about either. What they hear\nabout the world they accept without question. We often think when we\nare telling them fairy stories or animal stories that we are exercising\ntheir poetic imagination; but from their point of view we are telling\nthem sober facts about the world they live in. We are often surprised,\ntoo, at the apathy they show in the midst of wonders that we point out\nto them. They are wonders to us because we appreciate the labor or the\ngenius that has produced them. In other words, we have added a value\nto them. But it is just this value which the child-mind does not get\nand can never get. To the child they are not surprising, but simply\nsome more information about his world. All is grist that comes to the\nchild\u2019s mill. Everything serves to plot and track for him a new realm\nof things as they are.\n\nThe child\u2019s mind, so suggestible to facts, seems to be almost\nimpervious to what we call spiritual influences. He lives in a world\nhermetically sealed to our interests and concerns. Parents and teachers\nmake the most conscientious efforts to influence their children, but\nthey would better realize that they can influence them only in the\nmost indirect way. The best thing they can do for the children is to\nfeed their curiosity, and provide them with all the materials that will\nstimulate their varied interests. They can then leave the \u201cinfluence\u201d\nto take care of itself. The natural child seems to be impregnable to\nany appeals of shame, honor, reverence, honesty, and even ridicule,--in\nother words, to all those methods we have devised for getting a\nclutch on other people\u2019s souls, and influencing and controlling\nthem according to our desires. And this is not because the child is\nimmoral, but simply because, as I have tried to show, those social\nvalues mean as yet nothing to him. He lives in a splendid isolation\nfrom our conventional standards; the influences of his elders, however\nwell-directed and prayerful they may be, simply do not reach him. He\nlives unconscious of our interests and motives. Only the \u201cgood\u201d child\nis susceptible, and he is either instinctively submissive, or is the\nvictim of the mechanical imposition of standards and moral ideas.\n\nThe child works out what little social morality he does obtain, not\nunder the influence of his elders, but among his playmates. And the\nstandards worked out there are not refined and moral at all, but\nrough ones of emulation and group honor, and respect for prowess. Even\nobedience, which we all like to think of as one of the indispensable\naccomplishments of a well-trained child, seems to be obtained at the\ncost of real moral growth. It might be more beneficial if it were not\ntoo often merely a means for the spiritual edification of the parents\nthemselves. Too often it is the delight of ruling, of being made\nobeisance to, that is the secret motive of imposing strict obedience,\nand not our desire simply that they shall learn the excellent habits\nthat are our own. One difficulty with the child who has \u201clearned to\nmind\u201d is that, if he learns too successfully, he runs the risk of\ngrowing up to be a cowardly and servile youth. There is a theory that\nsince the child will be obliged in later life to do many things that\nhe does not want to do, he might as well learn how while he is young.\nThe difficulty here seems to be that learning to do one kind of a\nthing that you do not want to do does not guarantee your readiness to\ndo other kinds of unpleasant things. That art cannot be taught. Each\nsituation of compulsion, unless the spirit is completely broken, will\nhave its own peculiar quality of bitterness, and no guarantee against\nit can be inculcated. Life will present so many inevitable necessities\nto the child when he gets out into the world that it seems premature to\nburden his childhood with a training which will be largely useless. So\nmuch of our energy is wasted, and so much friction created, because we\nare unwilling to trust life. If life is the great demoralizer, it is\nalso the great moralizer. It whips us into shape, and saddles us with\nresponsibilities and the means of meeting them, with obligations and\nthe will to meet them, with burdens and a strength to bear them. It\ncreates in us a conscience and the love of duty, and endows us with a\nmorality that a mother and father with the power and the love of angels\nworking through all the years of our childhood could not have created\nwithin us. Trust life and not your own feeble efforts to create the\nsoul in the child!\n\nThe virtue of childhood, then, is an exhaustless curiosity and interest\nin the world in which the child finds himself. He is here to learn his\nway around in it, to learn the names of things and their uses, how\nto use his body and his capacities. This will be the most excellent\nworking of his soul. If his mind and body are active, he will be a\n\u201cgood\u201d child, in the best sense of the word. We can almost afford to\nlet him be insolent and irreverent and troublesome as long as he is\nonly curious. If he has a temper, it will not be cured by curbing, but\nby either letting it burn out, or not giving it fuel to feed on. Food\nfor his body and facts for his mind are the sustenance he requires.\nFrom the food will be built up his body, and from the facts and his\nreactions to them will slowly evolve his world of values and ideals. We\ncannot aid him by giving him our theories, or shorten the path for him\nby presenting him with ready-made standards. In spite of all the moral\nteachers, there is no short cut to the moral life of youth, any more\nthan there is a royal road to knowledge. Nor can we help him to grow\nby transferring some of our superfluous moral flesh to his bones. The\nchild\u2019s qualities which shock our sense of propriety are evidences not\nof his immorality, but of his pre-morality. A morality that will mean\nanything to him can only be built up out of a vast store of experience,\nand only when his world has broadened out into a real society with\ninfluences of every kind coming from every side. He cannot get the\nrelish of right and wrong until he has tasted life, and it is the\ntaste of life that the child does not have. That taste comes only with\nyouth, and then with a bewildering complexity and vividness.\n\nBut between childhood and youth there comes a trying period when the\nchild has become well cognizant of the practical world, but has as yet\nno hint of the gorgeous colors of youth. At thirteen, for instance, one\nhas the world pretty well charted, but not yet has the slow chemistry\nof time transmuted this experience into meanings and values. There is\na crassness and materiality about the following three or four years\nthat have no counterpart until youth is over and the sleek years of the\nforties have begun. How cocksure and familiar with the world is the boy\nor girl at this age! They have no doubts, but they have no glow. At no\ntime in life is one so unspiritual, so merely animal, so much of the\nearth, earthy. How different is it to be a few years later! How shaken\nand adventurous will the world appear then! For this waiting period\nof life, the virtues are harder to discover. Curiosity has lapsed,\nfor there do not seem to be many things left to be curious about. The\nchild is beautifully unconscious of his own ignorance. Similarly has\nthe play activity diminished; the boy has put away his Indian costumes,\nand the girl her dolls. At this season of life the virtue would seem\nto consist in the acquirement of some skill in some art or handicraft\nor technique. This is the time to search for the budding talents and\nthe strong native bents and inclinations. To be interesting is one of\nthe best of virtues, and few things make a person more interesting than\nskill or talent. From a selfish point of view, too, all who have grown\nup with unskillful hands will realize the solid virtue of knowing how\nto do something with the hands, and avoid that vague restlessness and\ndesire to get at grips with something that haunts the professional\nman who has neglected in youth to cultivate this virtue of technique.\nAnd it is a virtue which, if not acquired at that time, can never be\nacquired. The deftness of hand, alertness of mind, are soon lost if\nthey are not taken advantage of, and the child grows up helpless and\nunskillful, with a restless void where a talent and interest should be.\n\nIt is with youth, then, that the moral life begins, the true relish of\nright and wrong. Out of the crucible of passion and enthusiasm emerge\nthe virtues of life, virtues that will have been tested and tried in\nthe furnace of youth\u2019s poignant reactions to the world of possibilities\nand ideals that has been suddenly opened up to it. Those young people\nwho have been the victims of childish morality will not feel this new\nworld so clearly or keenly, or, if there did lurk underneath the crust\nof imposed priggishness some latent touch of genius, they will feel\nthe new life with a terrible searing pain that maddens them and may\npermanently distort their whole vision of life. To those without the\nspark, the new life will come stained by prejudice. Their reactions\nwill be dulled; they will not see clearly; and will either stagger at\nthe shock, or go stupidly ahead oblivious of the spiritual wonders\non every side. Only those who have been allowed to grow freely like\nyoung plants, with the sun and air above their heads, will get the\nfull beauty and benefit of youth. Only those whose eyes have been kept\nwide open ceaselessly learning the facts of the material and practical\nworld will truly appreciate the values of the moral world, and be able\nto acquire virtue. Only with this fund of practical knowledge will\nthe youth be able to balance and contrast and compare the bits of his\nexperience, see them in the light of their total meaning, and learn to\nprefer rightly one bit to another. It is as if silent forces had been\nat work in the soul during the last years of childhood, organizing the\nknowledge and nascent sentiments of the child into forms of power ready\nfor the free expression of youth.\n\nYouth expresses itself by falling in love. Whether it be art, a girl,\nsocialism, religion, the sentiment is the same; the youth is swept\naway by a flood of love. He has learned to value, and how superlative\nand magnificent are his values! The little child hardly seems to love;\nindeed, his indifference to grown people, even to his own parents,\nis often amazing. He has the simple affection of a young animal, but\nhow different his cool regard from the passionate flame of youth!\nLove is youth\u2019s virtue, and it is wide as well as deep. There is no\ntragic antithesis between a youth\u2019s devotion to a cause and his love\nfor a girl. They are not mutually exclusive, as romanticists often\nlove to think, but beautifully compatible. They tend to fuse, and they\nstimulate and ennoble each other. The first love of youth for anything\nis pure and ethereal and disinterested. It is only when thwarted that\nlove turns sensual, only when mocked that enthusiasm becomes fanatical\nor mercenary. Worldly opinion seems to care much more for personal\nlove than for the love of ideals. Perhaps it is instinctively more\ninterested in the perpetuation of the race than in its progress. It\ngives its suffrage and approval to the love of a youth for a girl, but\nit mocks and discredits the enthusiast. It just grudgingly permits\nthe artist to live, but it piles almost insurmountable obstacles in\nthe path of the young radical. The course of true love may never run\nsmooth, but what of the course of true idealism?\n\nThe springs that feed this love are found, of course, in hero-worship.\nSexual love is objectified in some charming and appealing girl, love\nfor ideals in some teacher or seer or the inspiring personality of\na friend. It is in youth that we can speak of real influence. Then\nis the soul responsive to currents and ideas. The embargo which kept\nthe child\u2019s mind immune to theory and opinion and tastes is suddenly\nlifted. In childhood, our imitation is confined to the external; we\ncopy ways of acting, but we are insensitive to the finer nuances of\npersonality. But in youth we become sensitive to every passing tone\nand voice. Youth is the season when, through this sensitiveness, the\ndeadly pressures get their purchase on the soul; it is also the season\nfor the most momentous and potent influences for good. In youth, if\nthere is the possibility that the soul be permanently warped out of\nshape, there is also the possibility that it receive the nourishment\nthat enables it to develop its own robust beauty. It is by hero-worship\nthat we copy not the externals of personality, as in childhood, but\nthe inner spirit. We feel ourselves somehow merged with the admired\npersons, and we draw from them a new stimulating grace. We find\nourselves in them. It is not yielding to a pressure that would force us\nto a type, but a drawing up of ourselves to a higher level, through the\naid of one who possesses all those qualities which have been all along,\nwe feel, our vague and hitherto unexpressed ideal. We do not feel that\nour individualities are being lost, but that they are for the first\ntime being found. We have discovered in another personality all those\nbest things for which our hearts have been hungering, and we are simply\nhelping ourselves to that which is in reality our own. Our hero gives\nof himself inexhaustibly, and we take freely and gladly what we need.\nIt is thus that we stock up with our first store of spiritual values.\nIt is from the treasury of a great and good personality that we receive\nthe first confirmation of ourselves. In the hero-personality, we see\nour own dim, baby ideals objectified. Their splendor encourages us,\nand nerves us for the struggle to make them thoroughly our own.\n\nThere is a certain pathos in the fact that parents are so seldom\nthe heroes from whom the children derive this revelation of their\nown personality. It is more often some teacher or older friend or\neven a poet or reformer whom the youth has never seen and knows only\nthrough his words and writings. But for this the parents are partly\nresponsible. They are sufficiently careful about the influences which\nplay upon their young children. They give care and prayers and tears\nto their bringing-up in the years when the children are almost immune\nto any except the more obvious mechanical influences, and learn of\nideals and values only in a parrot-like fashion. But when the child\napproaches youth, the parent is apt to relax vigilance and, with a cry\nof thanksgiving and self-congratulation that the child has been brought\nsafely through so many perils to the desired haven, to surrender him\nto his own devices. Just at the time when he becomes really sensitive\nfor the first time to spiritual influences, he is deprived of this\nclosest and warmest influence of the home. But he has not been brought\ninto a haven, but launched into a heaving and troubled sea. This is\nthe time when his character lies at stake, and the possibility of his\nbeing a radical, individual force in the world hangs in the balance.\nWhether he will become this force depends on the pressures that he is\nable to dodge, and on the positive ideals he is able to secure. And\nthey will depend largely on the heroes he worships, upon his finding\nthe personalities that seem to contain all the best for which he\nyearns. Hero-worship is the best preservative against cheapness of\nsoul, that besetting sin of modern youth. It directs our attention away\nfrom the light and frothy things of the world, which are wont to claim\nso much of youth\u2019s interest, to qualities that are richer and more\nsatisfying. Yet hero-worship is no mere imitation. We do not simply\nadopt new qualities and a new character. We rather impregnate our\nhitherto sterile ideals with the creative power of a tested and assured\npersonality, and give birth to a new reliance and a new faith. Our\nheroes anticipate and provide for our doubts and fears, and fortify us\nagainst the sternest assaults of the world. We love our heroes because\nthey have first loved us.\n\nOut of this virtue of love and the clashing of its clear spirit with\nthe hard matter of established things come the sterner virtues. From\nthat conflict, courage is struck off as youth feels the need of\nkeeping his flame steady and holding to his own course, regardless\nof obstacles or consequences. Youth needs courage, that salt of\nthe virtues, for if youth has its false hopes, it has its false\ndepressions. That strange melancholy, when things seem to lose their\nsubstance and the world becomes an empty shell, is the reverse shield\nof the elation of youth. To face and overcome it is a real test of the\ncourage of youth. The dash and audacity, the daring and self-confidence\nof youth, are less fine than this simple courage of optimism. Youth\nneeds courage, too, when its desires do not come true, when it meets\nsuspicion or neglect, and when its growth seems inexorably checked by\ncircumstance. In these emergencies, the youth usually plays the stoic.\nHe feels a savage pride in the thought that circumstance can never rob\nhim of his integrity, or bring his best self to be dependent on mere\nchange of fortune. Such a courage is a guarantor of youth. It forms a\nprotecting crust over life and lessens the shock of many contingencies.\nThe only danger is that it may become too perfect a shell and harden\nthe character. It is not well for youth to shun the battle. Courage\ndemands exposure to assault.\n\nAnd besides courage, youth needs temperance. The sins and excesses\nof hot-blooded youth are a byword; youth would not seem to be youth\nwithout its carnality and extravagance. It is fortunate that youth is\nable to expend that extravagance partly in idealism. Love is always\nthe antidote to sensuality. And we can always, if we set ourselves\nresolutely to the task, transmute the lower values into higher.\nThis, indeed, is the crucial virtue of youth, and temperance is the\nseal and evidence of the transmutation. Temperance in things of the\nflesh is ordained not through sentimental reasons, but on the best of\nphysiological and psychological motives. Temperance is a virtue because\nof the evil consequences to one\u2019s self and others which follow excess\nof indulgence in appetite.\n\nBut this temperance does not mean quite the same thing as the rigid\nself-control that used to be preached. The new morality has a more\npositive ideal than the rigid mastery which self-control implies. We\nare to fix our attention more in giving our good impulses full play\nthan in checking the bad. The theory is that if one is occupied with\nhealthy ideas and activities, there will be no room or time for the\nexpression of the unhealthy ones. Anything that implies an inhibition\nor struggle to repress is a draining away into a negative channel of\nenergy that might make for positive constructive work in the character.\nThe repressed desires and interests are not killed, but merely checked,\nand they persist, with unabated vigor, in struggling to get the upper\nhand again. They are little weakened by lying dormant, and lurk warily\nbelow, ready to swarm up again on deck, whenever there is the smallest\nlapse of vigilance. But if they are neglected they gradually cease from\ntroubling, and are killed by oblivion where they could not have been\nhurt by forcible repression. The mortification of the flesh seems too\noften simply to strengthen its pride.\n\nIn the realm of emotion, the dangers of rigid self-control are\nparticularly evident. There are fashions in emotion as well as in\ndress, and it seems to have become the fashion in certain circles\nof youth to inhibit any emotional expression of the sincere or\nthe serious. There is a sort of reign of terrorism which prevents\npersonal conversation from being carried on upon any plane except one\nof flippancy and insincerity. Frankness of expression in regard to\npersonal feelings and likes and dislikes is tabooed. A strange new\nethics of tact has grown up which makes candor so sacrilegious a\nthing that its appearance in a group or between two young people of\nthe opposite sex creates general havoc and consternation. Young people\nwho dare to give natural expression to their feelings about each other\nor about their ideals and outlook on life find themselves genuinely\nunpopular. When this peculiar ethics works at its worst, it gives a\nperson a pride in concealing his or her feelings on any of the vital\nand sincere aspects of life, the interests and admirations and tastes.\nBut this energy, dammed up thus from expression in its natural way,\noverflows in a hysterical admiration for the trivial, and an unhealthy\ninterest in the mere externals, the \u201csafe\u201d things, of life. Such\nself-control dwarfs the spirit; it results only in misunderstandings\nand a tragic ignorance of life. It is one of the realest of the vices\nof youth, for it is the parent of a host of minor ailments of the\nsoul. It seems to do little good even to repress hatred and malice.\nIf repressed, they keep knocking at the door of consciousness, and\npoison the virtues that might develop if the soul could only get rid of\nits load of spleen. If the character is thickly sown with impersonal\ninterests and the positive virtues are carefully cultivated, there will\nbe no opportunity for these hateful weeds to reach the sun and air.\nVirtue should actually crowd out vice, and temperance is the tool that\nyouth finds ready to its hand. Temperance means the happy harmonizing\nand co\u00f6rdinating of the expression of one\u2019s personality; it means\nhealth, candor, sincerity, and wisdom,--knowledge of one\u2019s self and the\nsympathetic understanding of comrades.\n\nJustice is a virtue which, if it be not developed in youth, has little\nchance of ever being developed. It depends on a peculiarly sensitive\nreaction to good and evil, and it is only in youth that those reactions\nare keen and disinterested. Real justice is always a sign of great\ninnocence; it cannot exist side by side with interested motives or a\ntrace of self-seeking. And a sense of justice is hard to develop in\nthis great industrial world where the relations of men are so out of\njoint and where such flaunting anomalies assail one at every turn. Yet\nin the midst of it all youth is still pure of heart, and it is only\nthe pure of heart who can be just. For in youth we live in a world\nof clean disinterestedness. We have ambitions and desires, but not\nyet have we learned the devious way by which they may be realized.\nWe have not learned how to achieve our ends by taking advantage of\nother people, and using them and their interests and necessities as\nmeans. We still believe in the possibility of every man\u2019s realizing\nhimself side by side with us. In early youth, therefore, we have an\ninstinctive and almost unconscious sense of justice. Not yet have\nwe learned the trick of exploiting our fellow men. If we are early\nassailed with the reality of social disorder, and have brought home\nto our hearts the maladjustments of our present order, that sense of\njustice is transformed into a passion. This passion for social justice\nis one of the most splendid of the ideals of youth. It has the power of\nkeeping alive all the other virtues; it stimulates life and gives it a\nnew meaning and tone. It furnishes the _leit-motiv_ which is so sadly\nlacking in many lives. And youth must find a _leit-motiv_ of some kind,\nor its spirit perishes. This social idealism acts like a tonic upon\nthe whole life; it keeps youth alive even after one has grown older in\nyears.\n\nWith justice comes the virtue of democracy. We learn all too early\nin youth the undemocratic way of thinking, the divisions and\ndiscriminations which the society around us makes among people. But\nyouth cannot be swept by love or fired by the passion for justice\nwithout feeling a wild disgust at everything that suggests artificial\ninequalities and distinctions. Democracy means a belief that people\nare worthy; it means trust in the good faith and the dignity of the\naverage man. The chief reason why the average man is not now worthy\nof more trust, the democrat believes, is simply that he has not been\ntrusted enough in the past. Democracy has little use for philanthropy,\nat least in the sense of a kindly caring for people, with the constant\nrecognition that the person who is kind is superior to the person\nwho is being done good to. The spirit of democracy is a much more\nrobust humanity. It is rough and aggressive; it stands people up on\ntheir own feet, makes them take up their beds and walk. It prods them\nto move their own limbs and take care of themselves. It makes them\nstrong by giving them something to do. It will have nothing more to do\nwith the superstition of trusteeship which paralyzes now most of our\ninstitutional life. It does not believe for a minute that everybody\nneeds guardians for most of the serious concerns of life. The great\ncrime of the past has been that humankind has never been willing to\ntrust itself, or men each other. We have tied ourselves up with laws\nand traditions, and devised a thousand ways to prevent men from being\nthrown on their own responsibility and cultivating their own powers.\nOur society has been constituted on the principle that men must be\nsaved from themselves. We have surrounded ourselves with so many moral\nhedges, have imposed upon ourselves so many checks and balances, that\nlife has been smothered. Our liberation has just begun. We are far from\nfree, but the new spirit of democracy is the angel that will free us.\nNo virtue is more potent for youth.\n\nAnd the last of these virtues, redolent of the old Greek time,\nwhen men walked boldly, when the world was still young, and gods\nand nymphs not all dead, is wisdom. To be wise is simply to have\nblended and harmonized one\u2019s experience, to have fused it together\ninto a \u201cphilosophy of life.\u201d Wisdom is a matter not of quantity,\nbut of quality of experience. It means getting at the heart of it,\nand obtaining the same clear warm impression of its meaning that\nthe artist does of the \u00e6sthetic idea that he is going to represent.\nWisdom in youth or early middle life may be far truer than in later\nlife. One\u2019s courage may weaken under repeated failure, one\u2019s sense of\njustice be dulled by contact with the wrong relations between men and\nclasses, one\u2019s belief in democracy destroyed by the seeming failure of\nexperiments. But this gathering cynicism does not mean the acquiring\nof wisdom, but the losing of it. The usefulness and practicability of\nthese virtues of youth are not really vitiated by the struggles they\nhave in carrying themselves through into practice; what is exhibited\nis merely the toughness of the old forces of prejudice and tradition,\nand the \u201cpig-headedness\u201d of the old philosophy of timorousness and\ndistrust. True wisdom is faith in love, in justice, in democracy; youth\nhas this faith in largest measure; therefore youth is most wise.\n\nMiddle age steals upon a youth almost before he is aware. He will\nrecognize it at first, perhaps, by a slight paling of his enthusiasms,\nor by a sudden consciousness that his early interests have been\nsubmerged in the flood of routine work and family cares. The later\nyears of youth and the early years of middle life are in truth the\ndangerous age, for then may be lost the virtues that were acquired in\nyouth. Or, if not lost, many will be felt to be superfluous. There is\ndanger that the peculiar bias of the relish of right and wrong that\nthe virtues of youth have given one may be weakened, and the soul\nspread itself too thin over life. Now one of the chief virtues of\nmiddle life is to conserve the values of youth, to practice in sober\nearnest the virtues that came so naturally in the enthusiasm of youth,\nbut which take on a different hue when exposed to what seem to be the\ncrass facts of the workaday world. But there is no reason why work,\nambition, the raising of a family, should dull the essential spirit\nof youthful idealism. It may not be so irrepressible, so freakish, so\nintolerant, but it should not be different in quality and significance.\nThe burdens of middle life are not a warrant for the releasing of the\nspiritual obligations of youth. They do not give one the right to look\nback with amused regret to the dear follies of the past. For as soon\nas the spirit of youth begins to leave the soul, that soul begins to\ndie. Middle-aged people are too much inclined to speak of youth as a\nsort of spiritual play. They forget that youth feels that it itself has\nthe serious business of life, the real crises to meet. To youth it is\nmiddle age that seems trivial and playful. It is after the serious work\nof love-making and establishing one\u2019s self in economic independence\nis over that one can rest and play. Youth has little time for that\nsort of recreation. In middle age, most of the problems have been\nsolved, the obstacles overcome. There is a slackening of the lines,\na satisfied taking of one\u2019s reward. And to youth this must always\nseem a tragedy, that the season of life when the powers are at their\nhighest should be the season when they are oftener turned to material\nthan to spiritual ends. Youth has the energy and ideals, but not the\nvantage-ground of prestige from which to fight for them. Middle age has\nthe prestige and the power, but too seldom the will to use it for the\nfurtherance of its ideals. Youth has the isolation, the independence,\nthe disinterestedness so that it may attack any foe, but it has not\nthe reserve force to carry that attack through. Middle age has all the\nreserve power necessary, but is handicapped by family obligations, by\nbusiness and political ties, so that its power is rarely effective for\nsocial or individual progress.\n\nThe supreme virtue of middle age will be, then, to make this difficult\nfusion,--to combine devotion to one\u2019s family, to one\u2019s chosen work,\nwith devotion to the finer idealism and impersonal aims that formed\none\u2019s philosophy of youth. To keep alive through all the twistings\nand turnings of life\u2019s road the sense of a larger humanity that needs\nspiritual and material succor, of the individual spiritual life of\nideal interests, is a task of virtue that will tax the resources of\nany man or woman. Yet here lies the true virtue of middle age,--to use\nits splendid powers to enhance the social and individual life round\none, to radiate influence that transforms and elevates. The secret\nof such a radiant personality seems to be that one, while mingling\nfreely in the stress of everyday life, sees all its details in the\nlight of larger principles, against the background of their social\nmeaning. In other words, it is a virtue of middle life to be socially\nself-conscious. And this spirit is the best protector against the\nravages of the tough material world. Only by this social consciousness\ncan that toughness be softened. The image of the world the way it ought\nto be must never be lost sight of in the picture of the world the way\nit is.\n\nThis conservation of the spirit is even more necessary for the woman\nthan for the man. The active life of the latter makes it fairly\ncertain that he, while he may become hard and callous, will at least\nretain some sort of grip on the world\u2019s bigger movements. There is\nno such certainty for the mother. Indeed, she seems often to take a\nreal pleasure in voluntarily offering up in sacrifice at the time of\nmarriage what few ideal interests and tastes she has. The spectacle\nof the young mother devoting all her time and strength to her children\nand husband, and surrendering all other interests to the interests of\nthe home, is usually considered inspiring and attractive, especially by\nthe men. Not so attractive is she thirty years later, when, her family\ncares having lapsed and her children scattered, she is left high and\ndry in the world. If she then takes a well-earned rest, it seems a\npity that that rest should be so generally futile and uninteresting.\nWithout interests and tastes, and with no longer any useful function in\nsociety, she is relegated to the most trivial amusements and pursuits.\nIdle and vapid, she finds nothing to do but fritter away her time. The\nresult is a really appalling waste of economic and social energy in\nmiddle age. Now it is the virtue of this season of life to avoid all\nthis. The woman as well as the man must realize that her home is not\nbounded by the walls of the house, that it has wider implications,\nleading out into all the interests of the community and the state. That\nwomen of this age have not yet learned to be good mothers and good\ncitizens at the same time, does not show that it is impossible, but\nthat it is a virtue that requires more resolution than our morality\nhas been willing to exhibit. The relish of right and wrong must be a\nrelish of social right and wrong as well as of individual.\n\nAs middle age passes on into old age, however, one earns a certain\nright of relaxation. If there is no right to let go the sympathy\nfor the virtues of youth and the conservation of its spirit, there\ncomes the right to give over some of the aggressive activity. To\nyouth belongs the practical action. At no other age is there the same\nimpulse and daring. The virtue of later middle age is to encourage\nand support, rather than actively engage. It is true we have never\nlearned this lesson. We still surrender to semi-old men the authority\nto govern us, think for us, act for us. We endow them with spiritual\nas well as practical leadership, and allow them to strip youth of\nits opportunities and powers. We permit them to rule not only their\nown but all the generations. If we could be sure that their rule\nmeant progress, we could trust them to guide us. But, in these times\nat least, it seems to mean nothing so much as a last fight for a\ndiscredited undemocratic philosophy that modern youth are completely\nthrough with. From this point of view one of the virtues of this middle\nseason of life will be the imaginative understanding of youth\u2019s\npurposes and radical ideals. At that age, one no longer needs the same\ncourage to face the battles of life; they are already most of them\nirrevocably won or lost. There is not the same claim of temperance; the\npassions and ambitions are relaxed. The sense of justice and democracy\nwill have become a habit or else they will have been forever lost. Only\nthe need of wisdom remains,--that unworldly wisdom which mellowing\nyears can bring, which sees through the disturbance and failure of life\nthe truth and efficacy of youth\u2019s ideal vision.\n\nOld age is such a triumph that it may almost be justly relieved of any\nburden of virtues or duties; it is so unique and beautiful that the\nold should be given the perfect freedom of the moral city. So splendid\na victory is old age over the malign forces of disease and weakness\nand death that one is tempted to say that its virtue lies simply in\nbeing old. Those virtues of youth which grew out of the crises and\ntemptations, physical and spiritual, of early life, are no longer\nrelevant. There may come instead the quieter virtues of contentment\nand renunciation. Old people have few crises and few temptations; they\nlive in the past and not in the future, as youth does. They cannot\nbe required, therefore, to have that scorn for tradition which is the\nvirtue of youth. They can keep alive for us the tradition that _is_\nvital, and from them we can learn many things.\n\nThe value of their experience to us is not that it teaches us to avoid\ntheir mistakes, for we must try all things for ourselves. The older\ngeneration, it is true, often flatters itself that its mistakes somehow\nmake for our benefit, because we learn from their errors to avoid\nthe pitfalls into which they came. But there is no making mistakes\nby the proxy of a former generation. The world has moved on in the\nmean time; the pitfalls are new, and we shall only entangle ourselves\nthe more by adopting the methods of our ancestors in getting out of\nthe difficulties. But the value of an old man\u2019s experience is that\nhe has preserved in it the living tradition and hands down to us old\nhonesties, old sincerities, and old graces, that have been crushed in\nthe rough-and-tumble of modern life. It is not tradition in itself\nthat is dangerous, but only dead tradition that has no meaning for the\npresent and is a mere weight on our progress. Such is the legal and\neconomic tradition given to us by our raucous, middle-aged leaders of\nopinion, adopted by them through motives of present gain, and not\nthrough sincere love of the past.\n\nBut old men, looking back over the times in which they have lived,\nthrow a poetic glamour over the past and make it live again. They see\nit idealized, but it is the _real_ that they see idealized. An old man\nof personality and charm has the faculty of cutting away from the past\nthe dead wood, and preserving for us the living tissue which we can\ngraft profitably on our own growing present. Old men have much of the\ndisinterestedness of youth; they have no ulterior motive in giving us\nthe philosophy of their past. The wisest of them instinctively select\nwhat is vital for our present nourishment. It is not old men that youth\nhas to fear, but the semi-old, who have lost touch with their youth,\nand have not lived long enough to get the disinterested vision of their\nidealized past. But old men who have lived this life of radical virtue\nare the best of teachers; they distill the perfume of the past, and\nbring it to us to sweeten our present. Such men grow old only in body.\nThe radical spirit of youth has the power of abolishing considerations\nof age; the body changes, but the spirit remains the same. In this\nsense, it is the virtue of old age not to become old.\n\nThe besetting sin of this season of life is apathy. Old age should not\nbe a mere waiting for death. The fact that we cannot reconcile death\nwith life shows that they ought not to be discussed in the same terms.\nThey belong to two different orders. Death has no part in life, and in\nlife there can be no such thing as preparation for death. An old man\nlives to his appointed time, and then his life ends; but the life up to\nthat ending, barring the loss of his faculties, has been all life and\nnot a whit death. Old men do not fear death as much as do young men,\nand this calmness is not so much a result of disillusionment with life\nas a recognition that their life has been lived, their work finished,\nthe cycle of their activity rounded off. One virtue of old age, then,\nis to live as fully at the height of one\u2019s powers as strength will\npermit, passing out of life serene and unreluctant, with willingness to\nlive and yet with willingness to die. To know an old man who has grown\nold slowly, taking the seasons as they came, conserving the spirit of\nhis youthful virtues, mellowing his philosophy of life, acquiring a\nclearer, saner, and more beautiful outlook on human nature and all its\nspiritual values with each passing year, is an education in the virtues\nof life. The virtues which produce an old age such as this do not cut\nacross the grain of life, but enhance and conserve the vital impulses\nand forces. Such an old age is the crowning evidence of the excellent\nworking of the soul. A life needs no other proof than this that each\nseason has known its proper virtue and healthful activity.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE LIFE OF IRONY\n\n\nI could never, until recently, divest myself of the haunting feeling\nthat being ironical had something to do with the entering of the iron\ninto one\u2019s soul. I thought I knew what irony was, and I admired it\nimmensely. I could not believe that there was something metallic and\nbitter about it. Yet this sinister connotation of a clanging, rasping\nmeanness of spirit, which I am sure it has still in many people\u2019s\nminds, clung about it, until one happy day my dictionary told me that\nthe iron had never entered into the soul at all, but the soul into\nthe iron (St. Jerome had read the psalm wrong), and that irony was\nGreek, with all the free, happy play of the Greek spirit about it,\nletting in fresh air and light into others\u2019 minds and our own. It\nwas to the Greek an incomparable method of intercourse, the rub of\nmind against mind by the simple use of simulated ignorance and the\nadoption, without committing one\u2019s self, of another\u2019s point of view.\nNot until I read the Socrates of Plato did I fully appreciate that\nthis irony,--this pleasant challenging of the world, this insistent\njudging of experience, this sense of vivid contrasts and incongruities,\nof comic juxtapositions, of flaring brilliancies, and no less\nheartbreaking impossibilities, of all the little parts of one\u2019s world\nbeing constantly set off against each other, and made intelligible only\nby being translated into and defined in each others\u2019 terms,--that this\nwas a life, and a life of beauty, that one might suddenly discover\none\u2019s self living all unawares. And if one could judge one\u2019s own feeble\nreflection, it was a life that had no room for iron within its soul.\n\nWe should speak not of the Socratic method but of the Socratic life.\nFor irony is a life rather than a method. A life cannot be taken\noff and put on again at will; a method can. To be sure, some people\ntalk of life exactly as if it were some portable commodity, or some\nexchangeable garment. We must live, they cry, as if we were about to\nbegin. And perhaps they are. Only some of us would rather die than live\nthat puny life that they can adopt and cover themselves with. Irony is\ntoo rich and precious a thing to be capable of such transmission. The\nironist is born and not made. This critical attitude towards life, this\ndelicious sense of contrasts that we call irony, is not a pose or an\namusement. It is something that colors every idea and every feeling of\nthe man who is so happy as to be endowed with it.\n\nMost people will tell you, I suppose, that the religious conviction\nof salvation is the only permanently satisfying coloring of life. In\nthe splendid ironists, however, one sees a sweeter, more flexible and\nhuman principle of life, adequate, without the buttress of supernatural\nbelief, to nourish and fortify the spirit. In the classic ironist of\nall time, irony shows an inherent nobility, a nobility that all ages\nhave compared favorably with the Christian ideal. Lacking the spur of\nreligious emotion, the sweetness of irony may be more difficult to\nmaintain than the mood of belief. But may it not for that very reason\nbe judged superior, for is it not written, He that endureth unto the\nend shall be saved?\n\nIt is not easy to explain the quality of that richest and most\nsatisfying background of life. It lies, I think, in a vivid and intense\nfeeling of aliveness which it gives. Experience comes to the ironist in\nlittle darts or spurts, with the added sense of contrast. Most men, I\nam afraid, see each bit of personal experience as a unit, strung more\nor less loosely on a string of other mildly related bits. But the\nman with the ironical temperament is forced constantly to compare and\ncontrast his experience with what was, or what might be, or with what\nought to be, and it is the shocks of these comparisons and contrasts\nthat make up his inner life. He thinks he leads a richer life, because\nhe feels not only the individual bits but the contrasts besides in all\ntheir various shadings and tints. To this sense of impingement of facts\nupon life is due a large part of this vividness of irony; and the rest\nis due to the alertness of the ironical mind. The ironist is always\ncritically awake. He is always judging, and watching with inexhaustible\ninterest, in order that he may judge. Now irony in its best sense is an\nexquisite sense of proportion, a sort of spiritual tact in judging the\nvalues and significances of experience. This sense of being spiritually\nalive which ceaseless criticism of the world we live in gives us,\ncombined with the sense of power which free and untrammeled judging\nproduces in us, is the background of irony. And it should be a means to\nthe truest goodness.\n\nSocrates made one mistake,--knowledge is not goodness. But it is a step\ntowards judging, and good judgment is the true goodness. For it is on\njudgment impelled by desire that we act. The clearer and cleaner our\njudgments then, the more definite and correlated our actions. And the\ngreat value of these judgments of irony is that they are not artificial\nbut spring naturally out of life. Irony, the science of comparative\nexperience, compares things not with an established standard but with\neach other, and the values that slowly emerge from the process, values\nthat emerge from one\u2019s own vivid reactions, are constantly revised,\ncorrected, and refined by that same sense of contrast. The ironic\nlife is a life keenly alert, keenly sensitive, reacting promptly with\nfeelings of liking or dislike to each bit of experience, letting none\nof it pass without interpretation and assimilation, a life full and\nsatisfying,--indeed a rival of the religious life.\n\nThe life of irony has the virtues of the religious life without its\ndefects. It expresses the aggressive virtues without the quiescence of\nresignation. For the ironist has the courageous spirit, the sympathetic\nheart and the understanding mind, and can give them full play,\nunhampered by the searching introspection of the religious mind that\noften weakens rather than ennobles and fortifies. He is at one with the\nreligious man in that he hates apathy and stagnation, for they mean\ndeath. But he is superior in that he attacks apathy of intellect and\npersonality as well as apathy of emotion. He has a great conviction\nof the significance of all life, the lack of which conviction is the\nmost saddening feature of the religious temperament. The religious\nman pretends that every aspect of life has meaning for him, but in\npractice he constantly minimizes the noisier and vivider elements. He\nis essentially an aristocrat in his interpretation of values, while the\nironist is incorrigibly a democrat. Religion gives a man an intimacy\nwith a few selected and rarified virtues and moods, while irony makes\nhim a friend of the poor and lowly among spiritual things. When the\nreligious man is healing and helping, it is at the expense of his\nspiritual comfort; he must tear himself away from his companions and go\nout grimly and sacrificingly into the struggle. The ironist, living his\ndays among the humbler things, feels no such severe call to service.\nAnd yet the ironist, since he has no citadel of truth to defend, is\nreally the more adventurous. Life, not fixed in predestined formulas or\nmeasurable by fixed, immutable standards, is fluid, rich and exciting.\nTo the ironist it is both discovery and creation. His courage seeks\nout the obscure places of human personality, and his sympathy and\nunderstanding create new interests and enthusiasms in the other minds\nupon which they play. And these new interests in turn react upon his\nown life, discovering unexpected vistas there, and creating new insight\ninto the world that he lives in. That democratic, sympathetic outlook\nupon the feelings and thoughts and actions of men and women is the life\nof irony.\n\nThat life is expressed in the social intercourse of ourselves with\nothers. The daily fabric of the life of irony is woven out of our\ncritical communings with ourselves and the personalities of our friend,\nand the people with whom we come in contact. The ironist, by adopting\nanother\u2019s point of view and making it his own in order to carry light\nand air into it, literally puts himself in the other man\u2019s place.\nIrony is thus the truest sympathy. It is no cheap way of ridiculing an\nopponent by putting on his clothes and making fun of him. The ironist\nhas no opponent, but only a friend. And in his irony he is helping that\nfriend to reveal himself. That half-seriousness, that solemn treatment\nof the trivial and trivial treatment of the solemn which is the pattern\nof the ironist\u2019s talk is but his way of exhibiting the unexpected\ncontrasts and shadings that he sees to be requisite to the keenest\nunderstanding of the situation. The ironist borrows and exchanges\nand appropriates ideas and gives them a new setting in juxtaposition\nwith others, but he never burlesques or caricatures or exaggerates\nthem. If an idea is absurd, the slightest change of environment will\nshow that absurdity. The mere transference of an idea to another\u2019s\nmouth will bring to light all its hidden meaninglessness. It needs no\nextraneous aid. If an idea is hollow, it will show itself cowering\nagainst the intellectual background of the ironist like the puny,\nshivering thing it is. If a point of view cannot bear being adopted\nby another person, if it is not hardy enough to be transplanted, it\nhas little right to exist at all. This world is no hothouse for ideas\nand attitudes. Too many outworn ideas are skulking in dark retreats,\nsequestered from the light; every man has great sunless stretches in\nhis soul where base prejudices lurk and flourish. On these the white\nlight of irony is needed to play. And it delights the ironist to watch\nthem shrivel and decay under that light. The little tabooed regions of\nwell-bred people, the \u201cthings we never mention,\u201d the basic biases and\nassumptions that underlie the lives and thinking of every class and\nprofession, our second-hand dogmas and phrases,--all these live and\nthrive because they have never been transplanted, or heard from the\nlips of another. The dictum that \u201cthe only requisites for success are\nhonesty and merit,\u201d which we applaud so frantically from the lips of\nthe successful, becomes a ghastly irony in the mouth of an unemployed\nworkingman. There would be a frightful mortality of points of view\ncould we have a perfectly free exchange such as this. Irony is just\nthis temporary borrowing and lending. Many of our cherished ideals\nwould lose half their validity were they put bodily into the mouths\nof the less fortunate. But if irony destroys some ideals it builds up\nothers. It tests ideals by their social validity, by their general\ninterchangeability among all sorts of people and the world, but if it\nleaves the foundations of many in a shaky condition and renders more\nsimply provisional, those that it does leave standing are imperishably\nfounded in the common democratic experience of all men.\n\nTo the ironist it seems that the irony is not in the speaking but in\nthe things themselves. He is a poor ironist who would consciously\ndistort, or attempt to make another\u2019s idea appear in any light except\nits own. Absurdity is an intrinsic quality of so many things that they\nonly have to be touched to reveal it. The deadliest way to annihilate\nthe unoriginal and the insincere is to let it speak for itself. Irony\nis this letting things speak for themselves and hang themselves by\ntheir own rope. Only, it repeats the words after the speaker, and\nadjusts the rope. It is the commanding touch of a comprehending\npersonality that dissolves the seemingly tough husk of the idea.\nThe ironical method might be compared to the acid that develops a\nphotographic plate. It does not distort the image, but merely brings\nclearly to the light all that was implicit in the plate before. And\nif it brings the picture to the light with values reversed, so does\nirony revel in a paradox, which is simply a photographic negative of\nthe truth, truth with the values reversed. But turn the negative ever\nso slightly so that the light falls upon it, and the perfect picture\nappears in all its true values and beauty. Irony, we may say then, is\nthe photography of the soul. The picture goes through certain changes\nin the hands of the ironist, but without these changes the truth would\nbe simply a blank, unmeaning surface. The photograph is a synonym for\ndeadly accuracy. Similarly the ironist insists always on seeing things\nas they are. He is a realist, whom the grim satisfaction of seeing the\ntruth compensates for any sordidness that it may bring along with it.\nThings as they are, thrown against the background of things as they\nought to be,--this is the ironist\u2019s vision. I should like to feel that\nthe vision of the religious man is not too often things as they are,\nthrown against the background of things as they ought not to be.\n\nThe ironist is the only man who makes any serious attempt to\ndistinguish between fresh and second-hand experience. Our minds are so\nunfortunately arranged that all sorts of beliefs can be accepted and\npropagated quite independently of any rational or even experimental\nbasis at all. Nature does not seem to care very much whether our ideas\nare true or not, as long as we get on through life safely enough.\nAnd it is surprising on what an enormous amount of error we can get\nalong comfortably. We cannot be wrong on every point or we should\ncease to live, but so long as we are empirically right in our habits,\nthe truth or falsity of our ideas seems to have little effect upon\nour comfort. We are born into a world that is an inexhaustible store\nof ready-made ideas, stored up in tradition, in books, and in every\nmedium of communication between our minds and others. All we have to\ndo is to accept this predigested nourishment, and ask no questions.\nWe could live a whole life without ever making a really individual\nresponse, without providing ourselves out of our own experience with\nany of the material that our mind works on. Many of us seem to be just\nthis kind of spiritual parasite. We may learn and absorb and grow, up\nto a certain point. But eventually something captures us: we become\nencased in a suit of armor, and invulnerable to our own experience. We\nhave lost the faculty of being surprised. It is this encasing that the\nironist fears, and it is the ironical method that he finds the best for\npreventing it. Irony keeps the waters in motion, so that the ice never\nhas a chance to form. The cut-and-dried life is easy to form because\nit has no sense of contrast; everything comes to one on its own terms,\nvouching for itself, and is accepted or rejected on its own good looks,\nand not for its fitness and place in the scheme of things.\n\nThis is the courage and this the sympathy of irony. Have they not\na beauty of their own comparable in excellence with the paler glow\nof religious virtue? And the understanding of the ironist although\naggressive and challenging has its justification, too. For he is mad\nto understand the world, to get to the bottom of other personalities.\nThat is the reason for his constant classification. The ironist is\nthe most dogmatic of persons. To understand you he must grasp you\nfirmly, or he must pin you down definitely; if he accidentally nails\nyou fast to a dogma that you indignantly repudiate, you must blame\nhis enthusiasm and not his method. Dogmatism is rarely popular, and\nthe ironist of course suffers. It hurts people\u2019s eyes to see a strong\nlight, and the pleasant mist-land of ideas is much more emotionally\nwarming than the clear, sunny region of transmissible phrases. How the\naverage person wriggles and squirms under these piercing attempts to\ncorner his personality! \u201cTell me what you mean!\u201d or \u201cWhat do you see\nin it?\u201d are the fatal questions that the ironist puts, and who shall\ncensure him if he does display the least trace of malicious delight as\nhe watches the half-formed baby ideas struggle towards the light, or\nscurry around frantically to find some decent costume in which they may\nappear in public?\n\nThe judgments of the ironist are often discounted as being too\nsweeping. But he has a valid defense. Lack of classification is\nannihilation of thought. Even the newest philosophy will admit that\nclassification is a necessary evil. Concepts are indispensable,--and\nyet each concept falsifies. The ironist must have as large a stock as\npossible, but he must have a stock. And even the unjust classification\nis marvelously effective. The ironist\u2019s name for his opponent is a\nchallenge to him. The more sweeping it is, the more stimulus it gives\nhim to repel the charge. He must explain just how he is unique and\nindividual in his attitude. And in this explanation he reveals and\ndiscovers all that the ironist wishes to know about him. A handful of\nepithets is thus the ammunition of the ironist. He must call things\nby what seem to him to be their right names. In a sense, the ironist\nassumes the prisoner to be guilty until he proves himself innocent;\nbut it is always in order that justice may be done, and that he may\ncome to learn the prisoner\u2019s soul and all the wondrous things that are\ncontained there.\n\nIt is this passion for comprehension that explains the ironist\u2019s\napparently scandalous propensity to publicity. Nothing seems to him too\nsacred to touch, nothing too holy for him to become witty about. There\nare no doors locked to him, there is nothing that can make good any\nclaim of resistance to scrutiny. His free and easy manner of including\neverything within the sweep of his vision is but his recognition,\nhowever, of the fact that nothing is really so serious as we think it\nis, and nothing quite so petty. The ironist will descend in a moment\nfrom a discussion of religion to a squabble over a card-game, and he\nwill defend himself with the reflection that religion is after all a\nhuman thing and must be discussed in the light of everyday living,\nand that the card-game is an integral part of life, reveals the\npersonalities of the players--and his own to himself--and being worthy\nof his interest is worthy of his enthusiasm. The ironist is apt to\ntest things by their power to interest as much as by their nobility,\nand if he sees the incongruous and inflated in the lofty, so he sees\nthe significant in the trivial and raises it from its low degree.\nMany a mighty impostor does he put down from his seat. The ironist is\nthe great intellectual democrat, in whose presence and before whose\nlaw all ideas and attitudes stand equal. In his world there is no\nprivileged caste, no aristocracy of sentiments to be reverenced, or\nsegregated systems of interests to be tabooed. Nothing human is alien\nto the ironist; the whole world is thrown open naked to the play of his\njudgment.\n\nIn the eyes of its detractors, irony has all the vices of democracy.\nIts publicity seems mere vulgarity, its free hospitality seems to shock\nall ideas of moral worth. The ironist is but a scoffer, they say, with\nweapon leveled eternally at all that is good and true and sacred. The\nadoption of another\u2019s point of view seems little better than malicious\ndissimulation,--the repetition of others\u2019 words, an elaborate mockery;\nthe ironist\u2019s eager interest seems a mere impudence or a lack of\nfiner instincts; his interest in the trivial, the last confession of\na mean spirit; and his love of classifying, a proof of his poverty\nof imaginative resource. Irony, in other words, is thought to be\nsynonymous with cynicism. But the ironist is no cynic. His is a kindly,\nnot a sour interest in human motives. He wants to find out how the\nhuman machine runs, not to prove that it is a worthless, broken-down\naffair. He accepts it as it comes, and if he finds it curiously feeble\nand futile in places, blame not him but the nature of things. He finds\nenough rich compensation in the unexpected charm that he constantly\nfinds himself eliciting. The ironist sees life steadily and sees it\nwhole; the cynic only a distorted fragment.\n\nIf the ironist is not cynic, neither is he merely a dealer in satire,\nburlesque and ridicule. Irony may be the raw material, innocent in\nitself but capable of being put to evil uses. But it involves neither\nthe malice of satire, nor the horse-play of burlesque, nor the stab of\nridicule. Irony is infinitely finer and more delicate and impersonal.\nThe satirist is always personal and concrete, but the ironist deals\nwith general principles, and broad aspects of human nature. It cannot\nbe too much emphasized that the function of the ironist is not to\nmake fun of people, but to give their souls an airing. The ironist\nis a judge on the bench, giving men a public hearing. He is not an\naggressive spirit who goes about seeking whom he may devour, or a\nspiritual lawyer who courts litigation, but the judge before whom file\nall the facts of his experience, the people he meets, the opinions\nhe hears or reads, his own attitudes and prepossessions. If any are\nconvicted they are self-convicted. The judge himself is passive,\nmerciful, lenient. There is judgment, but no punishment. Or rather, the\ntrial itself is the punishment. Now satire is all that irony is not.\nThe satirist is the aggressive lawyer, fastening upon particular people\nand particular qualities. But irony is no more personal than the sun\nthat sends his flaming darts into the world. The satirist is a purely\npractical man, with a business instinct, bent on the main chance and\nthe definite object. He is often brutal, and always overbearing; the\nironist never. Irony may wound from the very fineness and delicacy of\nits attack, but the wounding is incidental. The sole purpose of the\nsatirist and the burlesquer is to wound, and they test their success\nby the deepness of the wound. But irony tests its own by the amount\nof generous light and air it has set flowing through an idea or a\npersonality, and the broad significance it has revealed in neglected\nthings.\n\nIf irony is not brutal, neither is it merely critical and destructive.\nThe world has some reason, it is true, to complain against the rather\nsupercilious judiciousness of the ironist. \u201cWho are you to judge us?\u201d\nit cries. The world does not like to feel the scrutinizing eyes of the\nironist as he sits back in his chair; does not like to feel that the\nironist is simply studying it and amusing himself at its expense. It\nis uneasy, and acts sometimes as if it did not have a perfectly clear\nconscience. To this uncomfortableness the ironist can retort,--\u201cWhat\nis it that you are afraid to have known about you?\u201d If the judgment\namuses him, so much the worse for the world. But if the idea of the\nironist as judge implies that his attitude is wholly detached, wholly\nobjective, it is an unfortunate metaphor. For he is as much part and\nparcel of the human show as any of the people he studies. The world\nis no stage, with the ironist as audience. His own personal reactions\nwith the people about him form all the stuff of his thoughts and\njudgments. He has a personal interest in the case; his own personality\nis inextricably mingled in the stream of impressions that flows\npast him. If the ironist is destructive, it is his own world that\nhe is destroying; if he is critical, it is his own world that he is\ncriticizing. And his irony is his critique of life.\n\nThis is the defense of the ironist against the charge that he has\na purely \u00e6sthetic attitude towards life. Too often, perhaps, the\nsparkling clarity of his thought, the play of his humor, the easy\nsense of superiority and intellectual command that he carries off,\nmake his irony appear as rather the \u00e6sthetic nourishment of his life\nthan an active way of doing and being. His rather detached air makes\nhim seem to view people as means, not ends in themselves. With his\ndelight in the vivid and poignant he is prone to see picturesqueness\nin the sordid, and tolerate evils that he should condemn. For all\nhis interest and activity, it is said that he does not really care.\nBut this \u00e6sthetic taint to his irony is really only skin-deep. The\nironist is ironical not because he does not care, but because he cares\ntoo much. He is feeling the profoundest depths of the world\u2019s great\nbeating, laboring heart, and his playful attitude towards the grim and\nsordid is a necessary relief from the tension of too much caring. It\nis his salvation from unutterable despair. The terrible urgency of the\nreality of poverty and misery and exploitation would be too strong upon\nhim. Only irony can give him a sense of proportion, and make his life\nfruitful and resolute. It can give him a temporary escape, a slight\nmomentary reconciliation, a chance to draw a deep breath of resolve\nbefore plunging into the fight. It is not a palliative so much as a\nperspective. This is the only justification of the \u00e6sthetic attitude,\nthat, if taken provisionally, it sweetens and fortifies. It is only\ndeadly when adopted as absolute. The kind of \u00e6sthetic irony that Pater\nand Omar display is a paralyzed, half-seeing, half-caring reflection\non life,--a tame, domesticated irony with its wings cut, an irony that\nfurnishes a justification and a command to inaction. It is the result\nnot of exquisitely refined feelings, but of social an\u00e6sthesia. Their\nirony, cut off from the great world of men and women and boys and girls\nand their intricate interweavings and jostlings and incongruities,\nturns pale and sickly and numb. The ironist has no right to see beauty\nin things unless he really cares. The \u00e6sthetic sense is harmless only\nwhen it is both ironical and social.\n\nIrony is thus a cure for both optimism and pessimism. Nothing is so\nrevolting to the ironist as the smiling optimist, who testifies in his\nfatuous heedlessness to the desirability of this best of all possible\nworlds. But the ironist has always an incorrigible propensity to see\nthe other side. The hopeless maladjustment of too many people to their\nworld, of their bondage in the iron fetters of circumstance,--all\nthis is too glaring for the ironist\u2019s placidity. When he examines\nthe beautiful picture, too often the best turns worst to him. But if\noptimism is impossible to the ironist, so is pessimism. The ironist\nmay have a secret respect for the pessimist,--he at least has felt\nthe bitter tang of life, and has really cared,--but he feels that\nthe pessimist lacks. For if the optimist is blind, the pessimist is\nhypnotized. He is abnormally suggestive to evil. But clear-sighted\nirony sees that the world is too big and multifarious to be evil\nat heart. Something beautiful and joyous lurks even in the most\nhapless,--a child\u2019s laugh in a dreary street, a smile on the face of a\nweary woman. It is this saving quality of irony that both optimist and\npessimist miss. And since plain common sense tells us that things are\nnever quite so bad or quite so good as they seem, the ironist carries\nconviction into the hearts of men in their best moments.\n\nThe ironist is a person who counts in the world. He has all sorts of\nunexpected effects on both the people he goes with and himself. His\nis an insistent personality; he is as troublesome as a missionary.\nAnd he is a missionary; for, his own purpose being a comprehension of\nhis fellows\u2019 souls, he makes them conscious of their own souls. He\nis a hard man; he will take nothing on reputation; he will guarantee\nfor himself the qualities of things. He will not accept the vouchers\nof the world that a man is wise, or clever, or sincere, behind the\nimpenetrable veil of his face. He must probe until he elicits the\nevidence of personality, until he gets at the peculiar quality which\ndistinguishes that individual soul. For the ironist is after all a\nconnoisseur in personality, and if his conversation partakes too\noften of the character of cross-examination, it is only as a lover of\nthe beautiful, a possessor of taste, that he inquires. He does not\nwant to see people squirm, but he does want to see whether they are\nalive or not. If he pricks too hard, it is not from malice, but merely\nfrom error in his estimation of the toughness of their skins. What\npeople are inside is the most interesting question in the world to the\nironist. And in finding out he stirs them up. Many a petty doubting\nspirit does he challenge and bully into a sort of self-respect. And\nmany a bag of wind does he puncture. But his most useful function\nis this of stimulating thought and action. The ironist forces his\nfriends to move their rusty limbs and unhinge the creaking doors of\ntheir minds. The world needs more ironists. Shut up with one\u2019s own\nthoughts, one loses the glow of life that comes from frank exchange\nof ideas with many kinds of people. Too many minds are stuffy, dusty\nrooms into which the windows have never been opened,--minds heavy\nwith their own crotchets, cluttered up with untested theories and\nconflicting sympathies that have never got related in any social way.\nThe ironist blows them all helter-skelter, sweeps away the dust, and\nsets everything in its proper place again. Your solid, self-respectful\nmind, the ironist confesses he can do little with; it is not of his\nworld. He comes to freshen and tone up the stale minds. The ironist is\nthe great purger and cleanser of life. Irony is a sort of spiritual\nmassage, rubbing the souls of men. It may seem rough to some tender\nsouls, but it does not sere or scar them. The strong arm of the ironist\nrestores the circulation, and drives away an\u00e6mia.\n\nOn the ironist himself the effect of irony is even more invigorating.\nWe can never really understand ourselves without at least a touch of\nirony. The interpretation of human nature without is a simple matter\nin comparison with the comprehension of that complex of elations and\ndisgusts, inhibitions and curious irrational impulses that we call\nourselves. It is not true that by examining ourselves and coming to\nan understanding of the way we behave we understand other people, but\nthat by the contrasts and little revelations of our friends we learn\nto interpret ourselves. Introspection is no match for irony as a\nguide. The most illuminating experience that we can have is a sudden\nrealization that had we been in the other person\u2019s place we should have\nacted precisely as he did. To the ironist this is no mere intellectual\nconviction that, after all, none of us are perfect, but a vivid\nemotional experience which has knit him with that other person in one\nmoment in a bond of sympathy that could have been acquired in no other\nway. Those minds that lack the touch of irony are too little flexible,\nor too heavily buttressed with self-esteem to make this sudden change\nof attitudes. The ironist, one might almost say, gets his brotherhood\nintuitively, feels the sympathy and the oneness in truth before he\nthinks them. The ironist is the only man who really gets outside of\nhimself. What he does for other people,--that is, picking out a little\npiece of their souls and holding it up for their inspection,--he does\nfor himself. He gets thus an objective view of himself. The unhealthy\nindoor brooding of introspection is artificial and unproductive,\nbecause it has no perspective or contrast. But the ironist with\nhis constant outdoor look sees his own foibles and humiliations in\nthe light of those of other people. He acquires a more tolerant,\nhalf-amused, half-earnest attitude toward himself. His self-respect\nis nourished by the knowledge that whatever things discreditable and\nfoolish and worthless he has done, he has seen them approximated by\nothers, and yet his esteem is kept safely pruned down by the recurring\nevidence that nothing he has is unique. He is poised in life, ready to\nsoar or to walk as the occasion demands. He is pivoted, susceptible to\nevery stimulus, and yet chained so that he cannot be flung off into\nspace by his own centrifugal force.\n\nIrony has the same sweetening and freshening effect on one\u2019s own life\nthat it has on the lives of those who come in contact with it. It gives\none a command of one\u2019s resources. The ironist practices a perfect\neconomy of material. For he must utilize his wealth constantly and\nover and over again in various shapes and shadings. He may be poor\nin actual material, but out of the contrast and arrangement of that\nslender store he is able, like a kaleidoscope, to make a multifarious\nvariety of wonderful patterns. His current coin is, so to speak, kept\nbright by constant exchange. He is infinitely richer than your opulent\nbut miserly minds that hoard up facts, and are impotent from the very\nplethora of their accumulations.\n\nIrony is essential to any real honesty. For dishonesty is at bottom\nsimply an attempt to save somebody\u2019s face. But the ironist does not\nwant any faces saved, neither his own nor those of other people. To\nsave faces is to sophisticate human nature, to falsify the facts, and\nmiss a delicious contrast, an illuminating revelation of how people\nact. So the ironist is the only perfectly honest man. But he suffers\nfor it by acquiring a reputation for impudence. His willingness to\nbear the consequences of his own acts, his quiet insistence that\nothers shall bear consequences, seem like mere shamelessness, a lack\nof delicate feeling for \u201csituations.\u201d But accustomed as he is to range\nfreely and know no fear nor favor, he despises this reserve as a\nspecies of timidity or even hypocrisy. It is an irony itself that the\none temperament that can be said really to appreciate human nature, in\nthe sense of understanding it rightly, should be called impudent, and\nit is another that it should be denounced as monstrously egotistical.\nThe ironical mind is the only truly modest mind, for its point of view\nis ever outside itself. If it calls attention to itself, it is only as\nanother of those fascinating human creatures that pass ever by with\ntheir bewildering, alluring ways. If it talks about itself, it is only\nas a third person in whom all the talkers are supposed to be eagerly\ninterested. In this sense the ironist has lost his egotism completely.\nHe has rubbed out the line that separates his personality from the\nrest of the world.\n\nThe ironist must take people very seriously, to spend so much time over\nthem. He must be both serious and sincere or he would not persist in\nhis irony and expose himself to so much misunderstanding. And since it\nis not how people treat him, but simply how they act, that furnishes\nthe basis for his appreciation, the ironist finds it easy to forgive.\nHe has a way of letting the individual offense slide, in favor of a\ndeeper principle. In the act of being grossly misrepresented, he can\nfeel a pang of exasperated delight that people should be so dense; in\nthe act of being taken in, he can feel the cleverness of it all. He\nbecomes for the moment his enemy; and we can always forgive ourselves.\nEven while he is being insulted, or outraged or ignored, he can feel,\n\u201cAfter all, this is what life is! This is the way we poor human\ncreatures behave!\u201d The ironist is thus in a sense vicarious human\nnature. Through that deep, anticipatory sympathy, he is kept clean from\nhate or scorn.\n\nThe ironist therefore has a valid defense against all the charges of\nbrutality and triviality and irreverence, that the religious man is\nprone to bring against him. He can care more deeply about things\nbecause he can see so much more widely. And he can take life very\nseriously because it interests him so intensely. And he can feel\nits poignancy and its flux more keenly because he delivers himself\nup bravely to its swirling, many-hued current. The inner peace of\nreligion seems gained only at the expense of the reality of living. A\nlife such as the life of irony, lived fully and joyously, cannot be\npeaceful; it cannot even be happy, in the sense of calm content and\nsatisfaction. But it can be better than either--it can be wise, and it\ncan be fruitful. And it can be good, in a way that the life of inner\npeace cannot be. For the life of irony having no reserve and weaving\nitself out of the flux of experience rather than out of eternal values\nhas the broad, honest sympathy of democracy, that is impossible to any\ntemperament with the aristocratic taint. One advantage the religious\nlife has is a salvation in another world to which it can withdraw. The\nlife of irony has laid up few treasures in heaven, but many in this\nworld. Having gained so much it has much to lose. But its glory is that\nit can lose nothing unless it lose all.\n\nTo shafts of fortune and blows of friends or enemies then, the ironist\nis almost impregnable. He knows how to parry each thrust and prepare\nfor every emergency. Even if the arrows reach him, all the poison has\nbeen sucked out of them by his clear, resolute understanding of their\nsignificance. There is but one weak spot in his armor, but one disaster\nthat he fears more almost than the loss of his life,--a shrinkage of\nhis environment, a running dry of experience. He fears to be cut off\nfrom friends and crowds and human faces and speech and books, for\nhe demands to be ceaselessly fed. Like a modern city, he is totally\ndependent on a steady flow of supplies from the outside world, and\nwill be in danger of starvation, if the lines of communication are\ninterrupted. Without people and opinions for his mind to play on, his\nirony withers and faints. He has not the faculty of brooding; he cannot\nmine the depths of his own soul, and bring forth after labor mighty\nnuggets of thought. The flow and swirl of things is his compelling\ninterest. His thoughts are reactions, immediate and vivid, to his daily\nexperience. Some deep, unconscious brooding must go on, to produce that\nhappy precision of judgment of his; but it is not voluntary. He is\nconscious only of the shifting light and play of life; his world is\ndynamic, energetic, changing. He lives in a world of relations, and he\nmust have a whole store of things to be related. He has lost himself\ncompletely in this world he lives in. His ironical interpretation\nof the world is his life, and this world is his nourishment. Take\naway this environmental world and you have slain his soul. He is\ninvulnerable to everything except that deprivation.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE EXCITEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP\n\n\nMy friends, I can say with truth, since I have no other treasure,\nare my fortune. I really live only when I am with my friends. Those\nsufficient persons who can pass happily long periods of solitude\ncommuning with their own thoughts and nourishing their own souls\nfill me with a despairing admiration. Their gift of auto-stimulation\nargues a personal power which I shall never possess. Or else it\nargues, as I like to think in self-defense, a callousness of spirit,\nan insensitiveness to the outside influences which nourish and sustain\nthe more susceptible mind. And those persons who can shut themselves\nup for long periods and work out their thoughts alone, constructing\nbeautiful and orderly representations of their own spirits, are to me a\ncontinual mystery. I know this is the way that things are accomplished,\nthat \u201cmonotony and solitude\u201d are necessary for him who would produce\ncreative thought. Yet, knowing well this truth, I shun them both. I am\na battery that needs to be often recharged. I require the excitement\nof friendship; I must have the constant stimulation of friends. I do\nnot spark automatically, but must have other minds to rub up against,\nand strike from them by friction the spark that will kindle my thoughts.\n\nWhen I walk, I must have a friend to talk to, or I shall not even\nthink. I am not of those who, like Stevenson, believe that walking\nshould be a kind of vegetative stupor, where the sun and air merely\nfill one with a diffused sense of well-being and exclude definite\nthought. The wind should rather blow through the dusty regions of the\nmind, and the sun light up its dark corners, and thinking and talking\nshould be saner and higher and more joyful than within doors. But one\nmust have a friend along to open the windows. Neither can I sympathize\nwith those persons who carry on long chains of reasoning while they\nare traveling or walking. When alone, my thinking is as desultory as\nthe scenery of the roadside, and when with a friend, it is apt to\nbe as full of romantic surprises as a walk through a woodland glen.\nGood talk is like good scenery--continuous yet constantly varying,\nand full of the charm of novelty and surprise. How unnatural it is\nto think except when one is forced to do it, is discovered when one\nattempts to analyze one\u2019s thoughts when alone. He is a rare genius who\nfinds something beyond the mere visual images that float through his\nmind,--either the reflection of what he is actually seeing, or the\npictorial representations of what he has been doing or what he wants\nor intends to do in the near or far future. We should be shocked to\nconfess to ourselves how little control we have over our own minds; we\nshall be lucky if we can believe that we guide them.\n\nThinking, then, was given us for use in emergencies, and no man can\nbe justly blamed if he reserves it for emergencies. He can be blamed,\nhowever, if he does not expose himself to those crises which will call\nit forth. Now a friend is such an emergency, perhaps the most exciting\nstimulus to thinking that one can find, and if one wants to live beyond\nthe vegetative stupor, one must surround one\u2019s self with friends. I\nshall call my friends, then, all those influences which warm me and\nstart running again all my currents of thought and imagination. The\npersons, causes, and books that unlock the prison of my intellectual\ntorpor, I can justly call my friends, for I find that I feel toward\nthem all the same eager joy and inexhaustible rush of welcome. Where\nthey differ it shall be in degree and not in kind. The speaker whom\nI hear, the book that I read, the friend with whom I chat, the music\nthat I play, even the blank paper before me, which subtly stirs me\nto cover it with sentences that unfold surprisingly and entice me to\nfollow until I seem hopelessly lost from the trail,--all these shall be\nmy friends as long as I find myself responding to them, and no longer.\nThey are all alike in being emergencies that call upon me for instant\nand definite response.\n\nThe difference between them lies in their response to me. My personal\nfriends react upon me; the lecturers and books and music and pictures\ndo not. These are not influenced by my feelings or by what I do. I\ncan approach them cautiously or boldly, respond to them slowly or\nwarmly, and they will not care. They have a definite quality, and do\nnot change; if I respond differently to them at different times, I\nknow that it is I and not they who have altered. The excitement of\nfriendship does not lie with them. One feels this lack particularly\nin reading, which no amount of enthusiasm can make more than a feeble\nand spiritless performance. The more enthusiasm the reading inspires\nin one, the more one rebels at the passivity into which one is forced.\nI want to get somehow at grips with the book. I can feel the warmth\nof the personality behind it, but I cannot see the face as I can the\nface of a person, lighting and changing with the iridescent play of\nexpression. It is better with music; one can get at grips with one\u2019s\npiano, and feel the resistance and the response of the music one plays.\nOne gets the sense of aiding somehow in its creation, the lack of which\nfeeling is the fatal weakness of reading, though itself the easiest\nand most universal of friendly stimulations. One comes from much\nreading with a sense of depression and a vague feeling of something\nunsatisfied; from friends or music one comes with a high sense of\nelation and of the brimming adequacy of life.\n\nIf one could only retain those moments! What a tragedy it is that our\nperiods of stimulated thinking should be so difficult of reproduction;\nthat there is no intellectual shorthand to take down the keen\nthoughts, the trains of argument, the pregnant thoughts, which spring\nso spontaneously to the mind at such times! What a tragedy that one\nmust wait till the fire has died out, till the light has faded away,\nto transcribe the dull flickering remembrances of those golden hours\nwhen thought and feeling seemed to have melted together, and one\nsaid and thought what seemed truest and finest and most worthy of\none\u2019s immortalizing! This is what constitutes the hopeless labor of\nwriting,--that one must struggle constantly to warm again the thoughts\nthat are cold or have been utterly consumed. What was thought in the\nhours of stimulation must be written in the hours of solitude, when the\nmind is apt to be cold and gray, and when one is fortunate to find on\nthe hearth of the memory even a few scattered embers lying about. The\nblood runs sluggish as one sits down to write. What worry and striving\nit takes to get it running freely again! What labor to reproduce even\na semblance of what seemed to come so genially and naturally in the\ncontact and intercourse of friendship!\n\nOne of the curious superstitions of friendship is that we somehow\nchoose our friends. To the connoisseur in friendship no idea could be\nmore amazing and incredible. Our friends are chosen for us by some\nhidden law of sympathy, and not by our conscious wills. All we know\nis that in our reactions to people we are attracted to some and are\nindifferent to others. And the ground of this mutual interest seems\nbased on no discoverable principles of similarity of temperament or\ncharacter. We have no time, when meeting a new person, to study him or\nher carefully; our reactions are swift and immediate. Our minds are\nmade up instantly,--\u201cfriend or non-friend.\u201d By some subtle intuitions,\nwe know and have measured at their first words all the possibilities\nwhich their friendship has in store for us. We get the full quality of\ntheir personality at the first shock of meeting, and no future intimacy\nchanges that quality.\n\nIf I am to like a man, I like him at once; further acquaintance\ncan only broaden and deepen that liking and understanding. If I am\ndestined to respond, I respond at once or never. If I do not respond,\nhe continues to be to me as if I had never met him; he does not exist\nin my world. His thoughts, feelings, and interests I can but dimly\nconceive of; if I do think of him it is only as a member of some\ngeneral class. My imaginative sympathy can embrace him only as a type.\nIf his interests are in some way forced upon my attention, and my\nimagination is compelled to encompass him as an individual, I find his\nideas and interests appearing like pale, shadowy things, dim ghosts of\nthe real world that my friends and I live in.\n\nAssociation with such aliens--and how much of our life is necessarily\nspent in their company--is a torture far worse than being actually\ndisliked. Probably they do not dislike us, but there is this strange\ngulf which cuts us off from their possible sympathy. A pall seems\nto hang over our spirits; our souls are dumb. It is a struggle and\nan effort to affect them at all. And though we may know that this\ndepressing weight which seems to press on us in our intercourse\nwith them has no existence, yet this realization does not cure our\nhelplessness. We do not exist for them any more than they exist for\nus. They are depressants, not stimulators as are our friends. Our\nwords sound singularly futile and half-hearted as they pass our lips.\nOur thoughts turn to ashes as we utter them. In the grip of this\npredestined antipathy we can do nothing but submit and pass on.\n\nBut in how different a light do we see our friends! They are no types,\nbut each a unique, exhaustless personality, with his own absorbing\nlittle cosmos of interests round him. And those interests are real and\nvital, and in some way interwoven with one\u2019s own cosmos. Our friends\nare those whose worlds overlap our own, like intersecting circles.\nIf there is too much overlapping, however, there is monotony and a\nmutual cancellation. It is, perhaps, a question of attitude as much as\nanything. Our friends must be pointed in the same direction in which we\nare going, and the truest friendship and delight is when we can watch\neach other\u2019s attitude toward life grow increasingly similar; or if not\nsimilar, at least so sympathetic as to be mutually complementary and\nsustaining.\n\nThe wholesale expatriation from our world of all who do not overlap us\nor look at life in a similar direction is so fatal to success that we\ncannot afford to let these subtle forces of friendship and apathy have\nfull sway with our souls. To be at the mercy of whatever preordained\nrelations may have been set up between us and the people we meet is\nto make us incapable of negotiating business in a world where one\nmust be all things to all men. From an early age, therefore, we work,\ninstinctively or consciously, to get our reactions under control, so\nas to direct them in the way most profitable to us. By a slow and\nimperceptible accretion of impersonality over the erratic tendencies\nof personal response and feeling, we acquire the professional\nmanner, which opens the world wide to us. We become human patterns\nof the profession into which we have fallen, and are no longer\nindividual personalities. Men find no difficulty in becoming soon so\nprofessionalized that their manner to their children at home is almost\nidentical with that to their clients in the office. Such an extinction\nof the personality is a costly price to pay for worldly success. One\nhas integrated one\u2019s character, perhaps, but at the cost of the zest\nand verve and peril of true friendship.\n\nTo those of us, then, who have not been tempted by success, or who\nhave been so fortunate as to escape it, friendship is a life-long\nadventure. We do not integrate ourselves, and we have as many sides to\nour character as we have friends to show them to. Quite unconsciously I\nfind myself witty with one friend, large and magnanimous with another,\npetulant and stingy with another, wise and grave with another, and\nutterly frivolous with another. I watch with surprise the sudden\nand startling changes in myself as I pass from the influence of one\nfriend to the influence of some one else. But my character with each\nparticular friend is constant. I find myself, whenever I meet him,\nwith much the same emotional and mental tone. If we talk, there is\nwith each one some definite subject upon which we always speak and\nwhich remains perennially fresh and new. If I am so unfortunate as to\nstray accidentally from one of these well-worn fields into another, I\nam instantly reminded of the fact by the strangeness and chill of the\natmosphere. We are happy only on our familiar levels, but on these\nwe feel that we could go on exhaustless forever, without a pang of\nennui. And this inexhaustibility of talk is the truest evidence of good\nfriendship.\n\nFriends do not, on the other hand, always talk of what is nearest\nto them. Friendship requires that there be an open channel between\nfriends, but it does not demand that that channel be the deepest in our\nnature. It may be of the shallowest kind and yet the friendship be of\nthe truest. For all the different traits of our nature must get their\nairing through friends, the trivial as well as the significant. We let\nourselves out piecemeal, it seems, so that only with a host of varied\nfriends can we express ourselves to the fullest. Each friend calls out\nsome particular trait in us, and it requires the whole chorus fitly to\nteach us what we are. This is the imperative need of friendship. A man\nwith few friends is only half-developed; there are whole sides of his\nnature which are locked up and have never been expressed. He cannot\nunlock them himself, he cannot even discover them; friends alone can\nstimulate him and open them. Such a man is in prison; his soul is in\npenal solitude. A man must get friends as he would get food and drink\nfor nourishment and sustenance. And he must keep them, as he would keep\nhealth and wealth, as the infallible safeguards against misery and\npoverty of spirit.\n\nIf it seems selfish to insist so urgently upon one\u2019s need for friends,\nif it should be asked what we are giving our friends in return for\nall their spiritual fortification and nourishment, the defense would\nhave to be, that we give back to them in ample measure what they give\nto us. If we are their friends, we are stimulating them as they are\nstimulating us. They will find that they talk with unusual brilliancy\nwhen they are with us. And we may find that we have, perhaps, merely\nlistened to them. Yet through that curious bond of sympathy which has\nmade us friends, we have done as much for them as if we had exerted\nourselves in the most active way. The only duty of friendship is that\nwe and our friends should live at our highest and best when together.\nHaving achieved that, we have fulfilled the law.\n\nA good friendship, strange to say, has little place for mutual\nconsolations and ministrations. Friendship breathes a more rugged air.\nIn sorrow the silent pressure of the hand speaks the emotions, and\nlesser griefs and misfortunes are ignored or glossed over. The fatal\nfacility of women\u2019s friendships, their copious outpourings of grief to\neach other, their sharing of wounds and sufferings, their half-pleased\ninterest in misfortune,--all this seems of a lesser order than the\nrobust friendships of men, who console each other in a much more\nsubtle, even intuitive way,--by a constant pervading sympathy which is\nfelt rather than expressed. For the true atmosphere of friendship is\na sunny one. Griefs and disappointments do not thrive in its clear,\nhealthy light. When they do appear, they take on a new color. The\nsilver lining appears, and we see even our own personal mistakes and\nchagrins as whimsical adventures. It is almost impossible seriously\nto believe in one\u2019s bad luck or failures or incapacity while one is\ntalking with a friend. One achieves a sort of transfiguration of\npersonality in those moments. In the midst of the high and genial flow\nof intimate talk, a pang may seize one at the thought of the next day\u2019s\ndrudgery, when life will be lived alone again; but nothing can dispel\nthe ease and fullness with which it is being lived at the moment. It\nis, indeed, a heavy care that will not dissolve into misty air at the\nmagic touch of a friend\u2019s voice.\n\nFine as friendship is, there is nothing irrevocable about it. The\nbonds of friendship are not iron bonds, proof against the strongest of\nstrains and the heaviest of assaults. A man by becoming your friend\nhas not committed himself to all the demands which you may be pleased\nto make upon him. Foolish people like to test the bonds of their\nfriendships, pulling upon them to see how much strain they will stand.\nWhen they snap, it is as if friendship itself had been proved unworthy.\nBut the truth is that good friendships are fragile things and require\nas much care in handling as any other fragile and precious things.\nFor friendship is an adventure and a romance, and in adventures it is\nthe unexpected that happens. It is the zest of peril that makes the\nexcitement of friendship. All that is unpleasant and unfavorable is\nforeign to its atmosphere; there is no place in friendship for harsh\ncriticism or fault-finding. We will \u201ctake less\u201d from a friend than we\nwill from one who is indifferent to us.\n\nGood friendship is lived on a warm, impetuous plane; the long-suffering\nkind of friendship is a feeble and, at best, a half-hearted affair.\nIt is friendship in the valley and not on the breezy heights. For the\nsecret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization\nor suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other\nthat swiftly breaks the charm. Now this admiration must have in it no\ntaint of adulation, which will wreck a friendship as soon as suspicion\nwill. But it must consist of the conviction, subtly expressed in every\ntone of the voice, that each has found in the other friend a rare\nspirit, compounded of light and intelligence and charm. And there must\nbe no open expression of this feeling, but only the silent flattery,\nsoft and almost imperceptible.\n\nAnd in the best of friendships this feeling is equal on both sides.\nToo great a superiority in our friend disturbs the balance, and casts\na sort of artificial light on the talk and intercourse. We want to\nbelieve that we are fairly equal to our friends in power and capacity,\nand that if they excel us in one trait, we have some counterbalancing\nquality in another direction. It is the reverse side of this shield\nthat gives point to the diabolical insight of the Frenchman who\nremarked that we were never heartbroken by the misfortunes of our\nbest friends. If we have had misfortunes, it is not wholly unjust and\nunfortunate that our friends should suffer too. Only their misfortunes\nmust not be worse than ours. For the equilibrium is then destroyed,\nand our serious alarm and sympathy aroused. Similarly we rejoice in\nthe good fortune of our friends, always provided that it be not too\ndazzling or too undeserved.\n\nIt is these aspects of friendship, which cannot be sneered away by the\nreproach of jealousy, that make friendship a precarious and adventurous\nthing. But it is precious in proportion to its precariousness, and its\nlittlenesses are but the symptoms of how much friends care, and how\nsensitive they are to all the secret bonds and influences that unite\nthem.\n\nSince our friends have all become woven into our very selves, to part\nfrom friends is to lose, in a measure, one\u2019s self. He is a brave and\nhardy soul who can retain his personality after his friends are gone.\nAnd since each friend is the key which unlocks an aspect of one\u2019s own\npersonality, to lose a friend is to cut away a part of one\u2019s self. I\nmay make another friend to replace the loss, but the unique quality\nof the first friend can never be brought back. He leaves a wound which\nheals only gradually. To have him go away is as bad as to have him pass\nto another world. The letter is so miserable a travesty on the personal\npresence, a thin ghost of the thought of the once-present friend. It\nis as satisfactory as a whiff of stale tobacco smoke to the lover of\nsmoking.\n\nThose persons and things, then, that inspire us to do our best, that\nmake us live at our best, when we are in their presence, that call\nforth from us our latent and unsuspected personality, that nourish and\nsupport that personality,--those are our friends. The reflection of\ntheir glow makes bright the darker and quieter hours when they are not\nwith us. They are a true part of our widest self; we should hardly have\na self without them. Their world is one where chagrin and failure do\nnot enter. Like the sun-dial, they \u201conly mark the shining hours.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE ADVENTURE OF LIFE\n\n\nThat life is an adventure it needs nothing more than the wonder of\nour being in the world and the precariousness of our stay in it to\ninform us. Although we are, perhaps, as the scientists tell us, mere\ninert accompaniments of certain bundles of organized matter, we tend\nincorrigibly to think of ourselves as unique personalities. And as\nwe let our imagination roam over the world and dwell on the infinite\nvariety of scenes and thoughts and feelings and forms of life, we\nwonder at the incredible marvel that has placed us just here in this\nage and country and locality where we were born. That it should be\nthis particular place and time and body that my consciousness is\nilluminating gives, indeed, the thrill of wonder and adventure to the\nmere fact of my becoming and being.\n\nAnd as life goes on, the feeling for the precariousness of that being\ngrows upon one\u2019s mind. The security of childhood gives place to an\nawareness of the perils of misfortune, disease, and sudden death which\nseem to lie in wait for men and seize them without regard to their\nchoices or deserts. We are prone, of course, to believe in our personal\nluck; it is the helplessness of others around us rather that impresses\nus, as we see both friends and strangers visited with the most dreadful\nevils, and with an impartiality of treatment that gradually tends to\nforce upon us the conviction that we, too, are not immune. At some\nstage in our life, oftenest perhaps when the first flush of youth is\npast, we are suddenly thrown into a suspicion of life, a dread of\nnameless and unforeseeable ill, and a sober realization of the need\nof circumspection and defense. We discover that we live in a world\nwhere almost anything is likely to happen. Shocking accidents that\ncut men off in their prime, pain and suffering falling upon the just\nand the unjust, maladjustments and misunderstandings that poison and\nruin lives,--all these things are daily occurrences in our experience,\neither of personal knowledge or out of that wider experience of our\nreading.\n\nReligion seems to give little consolation in the face of such\nincontrovertible facts. For no belief in Providence can gainsay the\nseeming fact that we are living in a world that is run without regard\nto the health and prosperity of its inhabitants. Whatever its ulterior\nmeanings, they do not seem to be adjusted to our scale of values.\nPhysical law we can see, but where are the workings of a moral law?\nIf they are present, they seem to cut woefully against the grain of\nthe best desires and feelings of men. Evil seems to be out of all\nproportion to the ability of its sufferers to bear it, or of its\nchastening and corrective efficacy. Our feelings are too sensitive for\nthe assaults which the world makes upon them. If the responsibility\nfor making all things work together for his good is laid entirely\nupon man, it is a burden too heavy for his weakness and ignorance to\nbear. And thus we contemplate the old, old problem of evil. And in its\ncontemplation, the adventure of life, which should be a tonic and a\nspur, becomes a depressant; instead of nerving, it intimidates, and\nmakes us walk cautiously and sadly through life, where we should ride\nfast and shout for joy.\n\nIn these modern days, the very wealth of our experience overwhelms us,\nand makes life harder to live in the sight of evil. The broadening of\ncommunication, giving us a connection through newspapers and magazines\nwith the whole world, has made our experience almost as wide as the\nworld. In that experience, however, we get all the world\u2019s horrors\nas well as its interests and delights. Thus has it been that this\nwidening, which has meant the possibility of living the contemplative\nand imaginative life on an infinitely higher plane than before, has\nmeant also a soul-sickness to the more sensitive, because of the\nimmense and over-burdening drafts on their sympathy which the new\nexperience involved. Although our increased knowledge of the world has\nmeant everywhere reform, and has vastly improved and beautified life\nfor millions of men, it has at the same time opened a nerve the pain\nof which no opiate has been able to soothe. And along with the real\nincrease of longevity and sounder health for civilized man, attained\nthrough the triumphs of medical science, there has come a renewed\nrealization of the shortness and precariousness, at its best, of life.\nThe fact that our knowledge of evil is shared by millions of men\nintensifies, I think, our sensitiveness. Through the genius of display\nwriters, thousands of readers are enabled to be present imaginatively\nat scenes of horror. The subtle sense of a vast concourse having\nwitnessed the scene magnifies its potency to the individual mind, and\ngives it the morbid touch as of crowds witnessing an execution.\n\nOur forefathers were more fortunate, and could contemplate evil more\nphilosophically and objectively. Their experience was happily limited\nto what the normal soul could endure. Their evil was confined to\ntheir vicinity. What dim intelligence of foreign disaster and misery\nleaked in, only served to purify and sober their spirits. Evil did\nnot then reverberate around the world as it does now. Their nerves\nwere not strained or made raw by the reiterations and expatiations\non far-away pestilence and famine, gigantic sea disasters, wanton\nmurders, or even the shocking living conditions of the great city\nslums. Their imaginations had opportunity to grow healthily, unassailed\nby the morbidities of distant evil, which seems magnified and ominous\nthrough its very strangeness. They were not forced constantly to ask\nthemselves the question, \u201cWhat kind of a world do we live in anyhow?\nHas it no mercy and no hope?\u201d They were not having constantly thrown\nup to them a justification of the universe. Perhaps it was because\nthey were more concerned with personal sin than with objective evil.\nThe enormity of sin against their Maker blotted out all transient\nmisfortune and death. But it was more likely that the actual ignorance\nof that evil permitted their personal flagrancies to loom up larger in\ntheir sight. Whatever the cause, there was a difference. We have only\nto compare their literature--solid, complacent, rational--with our\nrestless and hectic stuff; or contrast their portraits--well-nourished,\nself-respecting faces--with the cheap or callous or hunted faces that\nwe see about us to-day, to get the change in spiritual fibre which this\nopening of the world has wrought. It has been a real eating of the tree\nof the knowledge of good and evil. A social conscience has been born.\nAn expansion of soul has been forced upon us. We have the double need\nof a broader vision to assimilate the good that is revealed to us, and\na stronger courage to bear the evil with which our slowly-bettering old\nworld still seems to reek.\n\nBut the youth of this modern generation are coming more and more to\nsee that the gloom and hysteria of this restless age, with all the\nother seemingly neurotic symptoms of decay, are simply growing-pains.\nThey signify a better spiritual health that is to be. The soul is\nnow learning to adjust itself to the new conditions, to embrace the\nwide world that is its heritage, and not to reel and stagger before\nthe assaults of a malign power. Life will always be fraught with real\nperil, but it is peril which gives us the sense of adventure. And as we\ngain in our command over the resources, both material and spiritual,\nof the world, we shall see the adventure as not so much the peril of\nevil as an opportunity of permanent achievement. We can only cure our\nsuffering from the evil in the world by doing all in our power to\nwipe out that which is caused by human blundering, and prevent what\nwe can prevent by our control of the forces of nature. Our own little\npersonal evils we can dismiss with little thought. Such as have come\nto us we can endure,--for have we not already endured them?--and those\nthat we dread we shall not keep away by fear or worry. We can easily\nbecome as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can\nnever rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by\nour excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding\nso anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.\nIn the light of our own problematical misfortune, we must rather live\nfreely and easily, taking the ordinary chances and looking To-morrow\nconfidently in the face as we have looked To-day. I have come thus far\nsafely and well; why may I not come farther?\n\nBut in regard to the evil that we see around us, the problem is more\ndifficult. Though the youth of this generation hope to conquer, the\nbattle is still on. We have fought our way to a knowledge of things as\nthey are, and we must now fight our way beyond it. That first fight\nwas our first sense of the adventure of life. Our purpose early became\nto track the world relentlessly down to its lair. We were resolute\nto find out the facts, no matter how sinister and barren they proved\nthemselves to be. We would make no compromises with our desires,\nor with those weak persons who could not endure the clear light of\nreality. We were scornful in the presence of the superstitions of our\nelders. We could not conceive that sufficient knowledge combined with\naction would not be able to solve all our problems and make clear all\nour path. As our knowledge grew, so did our courage. We pressed more\neagerly on the trail of this world of ours, purposing to capture and\ntame its mysteries, and reveal it as it is, so that none could doubt\nus. As we penetrated farther, however, into the cave, the path became\nmore and more uncertain. We discovered our prey to be far grimmer and\nmore dangerous than we had ever imagined. As he turned slowly at bay,\nwe discovered that he was not only repulsive but threatening. We were\nsternly prepared to accept him just as we found him, exulting that we\nshould know things as they really were. We were ready for the worst,\nand yet somehow not for this worst. We had not imagined him retaliating\nupon us. In our first recoil, the thought flashed upon us that our\ntracking him to his lair might end in his feasting on our bones.\n\nIt is somewhat thus that we feel when the full implications of the\nmaterialism to which we have laboriously fought our way dawn upon\nus, or we realize the full weight of the sodden social misery around\nus. Hitherto we have been so intent on the trail that we have not\nstopped to consider what it all meant. Now that we know, not only\nour own salvation seems threatened, but that of all around us, even\nthe integrity of the world itself. In these moments of perplexity\nand alarm, we lose confidence in ourselves and all our values and\ninterpretations. To go further seems to be to court despair. We are\nashamed to retreat, and, besides, have come too far ever to get back\ninto the safe plain of ignorance again. The world seems to be revealed\nto us as mechanical in its workings and fortuitous in its origin, and\nthe warmth and light of beauty and ideals that we have known all along\nto be our true life seem to be proven illusions. And the wailing of the\nworld comes up to us, cast off from any divine assistance, left to the\nmercy of its own weak wills and puny strengths. In this fall, our world\nitself seems to have lost merit, and we feel ourselves almost degraded\nby being a part of it. We have suddenly been deprived of our souls; the\nworld seems to have beaten us in our first real battle with it.\n\nNow this despair is partly the result of an excessive responsibility\nthat we have taken for the universe. In youth, if we are earnest and\neager, we tend to take every bit of experience that comes to us,\nas either a justification or a condemnation of the world. We are\nall instinctive monists at that age, and crave a complete whole. As\nwe unconsciously construct our philosophy of life, each fact gets\nautomatically recorded as confirming or denying the competency of\nthe world we live in. Even the first shock of disillusionment, which\nbanishes those dreams of a beautiful, orderly, and rational world that\nhad suffused childhood with their golden light, did not shatter the\nconviction that there was somehow at least a Lord\u2019s side. The sudden\nclosing of the account in the second shock, when the world turns on us,\nshows us how mighty has been the issue at stake,--nothing less than our\nfaith in the universe, and, perhaps, in the last resort, of our faith\nin ourselves. We see now that our breathless seriousness of youth was\nall along simply a studying of our crowded experience to see whether it\nwas on the Lord\u2019s side or not. And now in our doubt we are left with a\nweight on our souls which is not our own, a burden which we have really\nusurped.\n\nIn its adventure with evil, youth must not allow this strange,\nmetaphysical responsibility to depress and incapacitate it. We shall\nnever face life freely and bravely and worthily if we do. I may wonder,\nit is true, as I look out on these peaceful fields, with the warm\nsun and blue sky above me and the kindly faces of my good friends\naround me, how this can be the same world that houses the millions\nof poor and wretched people in their burning and huddled quarters in\nthe city. Can these days, in which I am free to come and go and walk\nand study as I will, be the same that measure out the long hours of\ndrudgery to thousands of youth amid the whir of machines, and these\nlong restful nights of mine, the same that are for them only gasps\nbreaking a long monotony? It must be the same world, however, whether\nwe can ever reconcile ourselves to it or not. But we need plainly feel\nno responsibility for what happened previously to our generation. Our\nresponsibility now is a collective, a social responsibility. And it is\nonly for the evil that society might prevent were it organized wisely\nand justly. Beyond that it does not go. For the accidental evil that is\nshowered upon the world, we are not responsible, and we need not feel\neither that the integrity of the universe is necessarily compromised by\nit. It is necessary to be somewhat self-centred in considering it. We\nmust trust our own feelings rather than any rational proof. In spite\nof everything, the world seems to us so unconquerably good, it affords\nso many satisfactions, and is so rich in beauty and kindliness, that\nwe have a right to assume that there is a side of things that we miss\nin our pessimistic contemplation of misfortune and disaster. We see\nonly the outer rind of it. People usually seem to be so much happier\nthan we can find any very rational excuse for their being, and that\nold world that confronted us and scared us may look very much worse\nthan it really is. And we can remember that adding to the number of the\nsufferers does not intensify the actual quality of the suffering. There\nis no more suffering than one person can bear.\n\nThese considerations may allay a little our first terror and despair.\nWhen we really understand that the world is not damned by the evil in\nit, we shall be ready to see it in its true light as a challenge to our\nheroisms. Not how evil came into the world, but how we are going to get\nit out, becomes the problem. Not by brooding over the hopeless, but by\nlaying plans for the possible will we shoulder our true responsibility.\nWe shall find then that we had no need of despair. We were on the\nright track. When the world that we were tracking down turned at bay,\nhe threatened more than he was able to perform. Not less science but\nmore science do we need in order that we may more and more get into\nour control the forces and properties of nature, and guide them for\nour benefit. But we must learn that the interpretation of the world\nlies not in its mechanism but in its meanings, and those meanings we\nfind in our values and ideals, which are very real to us. Science\nbrings us only to an \u201carea of our dwelling,\u201d as Whitman says. The\nmoral adventure of the rising generation will be to learn this truth\nthoroughly, and to reinstate ideals and personality at the heart of the\nworld.\n\nOur most favorable battle-ground against evil will for some time at\nleast be the social movement. Poverty and sin and social injustice\nwe must feel not sentimentally nor so much a symptom of a guilty\nconscience as a call to co\u00f6perate with the exploited and sufferers in\nthrowing off their ills. Sensitiveness to evil will be most fruitful\nwhen it rouses a youth to the practical encouragement of the under-men\nto save themselves. Youth to-day needs to \u201cbeat the gong of revolt.\u201d\nThe oppressed seldom ask for our sympathy, and this is right and\nfitting; for they do not need it. (It might even make them contented\nwith their lot.) What they need is the inspiration and the knowledge to\ncome into their own. All we can ever do in the way of good to people\nis to encourage them to do good to themselves. \u201cWho would be free,\nhimself must strike the blow!\u201d This is the social responsibility of\nmodern youth. It must not seek to serve humanity so much as to rouse\nand teach it. The great moral adventure that lies still ahead of us is\nto call men to the expansion of their souls to the wide world which\nhas suddenly been revealed to them.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPerhaps with that expansion youth will finally effect a reconciliation\nwith life of those two supremest and most poignant of adventures: the\nthoughts that cluster around sex, and the fears and hopes that cluster\naround death, the one the gateway into life, the other out of it. Youth\nfinds them the two hardest aspects of life to adjust with the rest of\nthe world in which we live. They are ever-present and pervasive, and\nyet their manifestations always cause us surprise, and shock us as of\nsomething unwonted intruding in our daily affairs. They are the unseen\nspectres behind life, of which we are always dimly conscious, but which\nwe are always afraid to meet boldly and face to face. We speak of them\nfurtively, or in far-away poetical strains. They are the materials\nfor the tragedies of life, of its pathos and wistfulness, of its\nsplendors and defeats. Yet they are treated always with an incorrigible\nand dishonest delicacy. The world, youth soon finds, is a much less\norderly and refined place than would appear on the surface of our daily\nintercourse and words. As we put on our best clothes to appear in\npublic, so the world puts on its best clothes to appear in talk and\nprint.\n\nMen ignore death, as if they were quite unconscious that it would\nsometime come to them, yet who knows how many pensive or terrible\nmoments the thought gives them? But the spectre is quite invisible to\nus. Or if they have passions, and respond as sensitively as a vibrating\nstring to sex influences and appeals, we have little indication of that\nthrobbing life behind the impenetrable veil of their countenances. We\ncan know what people think about all other things, even what they think\nabout God, but what they think of these two adventures of sex and death\nwe never know. It is not so much, I am willing to believe, shame or\nfear that keeps us from making a parade of them, as awe and wonder and\nbaffled endeavors to get our attitude towards them into expressible\nform. They are too elemental, too vast and overpowering in their\nworkings to fit neatly into this busy, accounted-for, and tied-down\nworld of daily life. They are superfluous to what we see as the\nhigher meanings of this our life, and irritate us by their clamorous\ninsistence and disregard for the main currents of our living. They seem\nirrelevant to life; or rather they overtop its bounty. Their pressure\nto be let in is offensive, and taints and mars irrevocably what would\notherwise be so pleasant and secure a life. That is, perhaps, why we\ncall manifestations of sex activity, obscene, and of death, morbid and\nghastly.\n\nIn these modern days we are adopting a healthier attitude, especially\ntowards sex. Perhaps the rising generation will be successful in\nreconciling them both, and working them into our lives, where they may\nbe seen in their right relations and proportions, and no longer the\npleasure of sex and the peace of death seem an illegitimate obtrusion\ninto life. To get command of these arch-enemies is an endeavor worthy\nof the moral heroes of to-day. We can get control, it seems, of the\nrest of our souls, but these always lie in wait to torment and harass\nus. To tame this obsession of sex and the fear of death will be a\nHerculean task for youth in the adventure of life. Perhaps some will\nsucceed where we have failed. For usually when we try to tame sex, it\npoisons the air around us, and if we try to tame the fear of death by\nresigning ourselves to its inevitability, we find that we have not\ntamed it but only drugged it. At certain times, however, our struggles\nwith the winged demons which they send into our minds may constitute\nthe most poignant incidents in our adventure of life, and add a beauty\nto our lives. Where they do not make for happiness, they may at least\nmake for a deepening of knowledge and appreciation of life. Along\nthrough middle life, we shall find, perhaps, that, even if untamed,\nthey have become our allies, and that both have lost their sting and\ntheir victory,--sex diffusing our life with a new beauty, and death\nwith a courageous trend towards a larger life of which we shall be an\nintegral part.\n\nWhen we have acclimated ourselves to youth, suddenly death looms up\nas the greatest of dangers in our adventure of life. It puzzles and\nshocks and saddens us by its irrevocability and mystery. That we should\nbe taken out of this world to which we are so perfectly adapted, and\nwhich we enjoy and feel intimate with, is an incredible thing. Even if\nwe believe that we shall survive death, we know that that after-life\nmust perforce be lived outside of this our familiar world. Reason tells\nus that we shall be annihilated, and yet we cannot conceive our own\nannihilation. We can easier imagine the time before our birth, when we\nwere not, than the time after our death, when we shall not be. Old men\nfind nothing very dreadful in the thought of being no more, and we\nshall find that it is the combined notion of being annihilated, and yet\nof being somehow conscious of that annihilation, that terrifies us, and\nstartles our minds sometimes in the dead of night when our spirits are\nsluggish and the ghoulish ideas that haunt the dimmest chambers of the\nmind are flitting abroad. We can reason with ourselves that if we are\nannihilated we shall not be conscious of it, and if we are conscious we\nshall not be annihilated, but this easy proof does not help us much in\na practical way. We simply do not know, and all speculations seem to be\nequally legitimate. If we are destined to assume another form of life,\nno divination can prophesy for us what that life shall be.\n\nOn the face of it the soul as well as the body dies. The fate of the\nbody we know, and it seems dreadful enough to chill the stoutest heart;\nand what we call our souls seem so intimately dependent upon these\nbodies as to be incapable of living alone. And yet somehow it is hard\nto stop believing in the independent soul. We can believe that the\nwarmth dissipates, that the chemical and electrical energies of the\nbody pass into other forms and are gradually lost in the immensity of\nthe universe. But this wonder of consciousness, which seems to hold\nand embrace all our thoughts and feelings and bind them together, what\ncan we know of its power and permanence? In our own limited sphere it\nalready transcends space and time, our imaginations triumphing over\nspace, and our memories and anticipations over time: this magic power\nof the imagination, which transcends our feeble experience and gives\nideas and images which have not appeared directly through the senses.\nWe can connect this conscious life with no other aspect of the world\nnor can we explain it by any of the principles which we apply to\nphysical things. It is the divine gift that reveals this world; why may\nit not reveal sometime a far wider universe?\n\nIt is this incalculability of our conscious life that makes its seeming\nend so great an adventure. This Time which rushes past us, blotting\nout everything it creates, leaving us ever suspended on a Present,\nwhich, as we turn to look at it, has melted away,--how are we to\ncomprehend it? The thin, fragile and uncertain stream of our memory\nseems insufficient to give any satisfaction of permanence. I like to\nthink of a world-memory that retains the past. Physical things that\nchange or perish continue to live psychically in memory; why may not\nall that passes, not only in our minds, but unknown to us, be carried\nalong in a great world-mind of whose nature we get a dim inkling\neven now in certain latent mental powers of ours which are sometimes\nrevealed, and seem to let down bars into a boundless sea of knowledge.\nThe world is a great, rushing, irreversible life, not predestined in\nits workings, but free like ourselves. The accumulating past seems to\ncut into the future, and create it as it goes along. Nothing is then\nlost, and we, although we had no existence before we were born,--how\ncould we have, since that moving Present had not created us?--would\nyet, having been born, continue to exist in that world-memory. We do\nnot need to re\u00ebcho the sadness of the centuries,--\u201cEverything passes;\nnothing remains!\u201d For even if we take this world-memory at its lowest\nterms as a social memory, the effects of the deeds of men, for good or\nfor evil, remain. And their words remain, the distillation of their\nthought and experience. This we know, and we know, moreover, that \u201cone\nthing at least is certain,\u201d not that \u201cthis life dies\u201d--for that has yet\nto be proved--but that \u201cthe race lives!\u201d Nature is so careless about\nthe individual life, so careful for the species, that it seems as if\nit were only the latter that counted, that her only purpose was the\neternal continuation of life. And many to-day find a satisfaction for\ntheir cravings for immortality in the thought that they will live in\ntheir children and so on immortally as long as their line continues.\n\nBut we have a right to make greater hazards of faith than this. Might\nit not be that, although nature never purposed that the individual soul\nshould live, man has outwitted her? He has certainly outwitted her in\nregard to his bodily life. There was no provision in nature for man\u2019s\nliving by tillage of the soil and domestication of animals, or for his\ndwelling in houses built with tools in his hands, or for traveling\nat lightning speed, or for harnessing her forces to run for him the\nmachines that should turn out the luxuries and utilities of life. All\nthese were pure gratuities, devised by man and wrested from nature\u2019s\nunwilling hands. She was satisfied with primitive, animal-like man,\nas she is satisfied with him in some parts of the world to-day. We\nhave simply got ahead of her. All the other animals are still under\nher dominion, but man has become the tool-maker and the partial master\nof nature herself. Although still far from thoroughly taming her, he\nfinds in the incessant struggle his real life purpose, his inspiration,\nand his work, and still brighter promises for his children\u2019s children.\nFor the race lives and takes advantage of all that has been discovered\nbefore.\n\nNow, since nature has seemed to care as little about the continuation\nof life beyond death as she has of man\u2019s comfort upon earth, might\nit not be that, just as we have outwitted her in the physical sphere\nand snatched comfort and utility by our efforts, so we may, by the\ncultivation of our intelligence and sentiments and whole spiritual\nlife, outwit her in this realm and snatch an immortality that she has\nnever contemplated? She never intended that we should audaciously read\nher secrets and speculate upon her nature as we have done. Who knows\nwhether, by our hardihood in exploring the uncharted seas of the life\nof feeling and thought, we may have over-reached her again and created\na real soul, which we can project beyond death? We are provided with\nthe raw material of our spiritual life in the world, as we are provided\nwith the raw material to build houses, and it may be our power and\nour privilege to build our immortal souls here on earth, as men have\nbuilt and are still building the civilization of this world of ours.\nThis would not mean that we could all attain, any more than that all\nmen have the creative genius or the good-will for the constructive\nwork of civilization; there may be \u201creal losses and real losers\u201d in\nthe adventure for immortality, but to the stout-hearted and the wise\nit will be possible. We shall need, as builders need the rules of the\ncraft, the aid and counsel of the spiritually gifted who have gone\nbefore us. It has been no mistake that we have prized them higher\neven than our material builders, for we have felt instinctively the\nspiritual power with which they have endowed us in the contest for the\nmighty stake of immortality. They are helping us to it, and we have the\nright to rely on their visions and trusts and beliefs in this supremest\nand culminating episode of the adventure of life.\n\nAre all such speculations idle and frivolous? Have they no place on\nthe mental horizon of a youth of to-day, living in a world whose\ninner nature all the mighty achievements of the scientists, fruitful\nas they have been in their practical effects, have tended rather to\nobscure than to illumine? Well, a settled conviction that we live in\na mechanical world, with no penumbra of mystery about us, checks the\nlife-enhancing powers, and chills and depresses the spirit. A belief\nin the deadness of things actually seems to kill much of the glowing\nlife that makes up our appreciation of art and personality in the\nworld. The scientific philosophy is as much a matter of metaphysics, of\ntheoretical conjecture, as the worst fanaticisms of religion. We have\na right to shoot our guesses into the unknown. Life is no adventure\nif we let our knowledge, still so feeble and flickering, smother us.\nIn this scientific age there is a call for youth to soar and paint a\nnew spiritual sky to arch over our heads. If the old poetry is dead,\nyouth must feel and write the new poetry. It has a challenge both to\ntranscend the physical evil that taints the earth and the materialistic\npoison that numbs our spirits.\n\nThe wise men thought they were getting the old world thoroughly charted\nand explained. But there has been a spiritual expansion these recent\nyears which has created new seas to be explored and new atmospheres\nto breathe. It has been discovered that the world is alive, and that\ndiscovery has almost taken away men\u2019s breaths; it has been discovered\nthat evolution is creative and that we are real factors in that\ncreation. After exploring the heights and depths of the stars,\nand getting ourselves into a state of mind where we saw the world\nobjectively and diminished man and his interests almost to a pin-point,\nwe have come with a rush to the realization that personality and values\nare, after all, the important things in a living world. And no problem\nof life or death can be idle. A hundred years ago it was thought\nchastening to the fierce pride of youth to remind it often of man\u2019s\nmortality. But youth to-day must think of everything in terms of life;\nyes, even of death in terms of life. We need not the chastening of\npride, but the stimulation to a sense of the limitless potentialities\nof life. No thought or action that really enhances life is frivolous or\nfruitless.\n\nWhat does not conduce in some way to men\u2019s interests does not enhance\nlife. What decides in the long run whether our life will be adventurous\nor not is the direction and the scope of our interests. We need a\nlivelier imaginative sympathy and interest in all that pertains to\nhuman nature and its workings. It is a good sign that youth does\nnot need to have its attention called to the worthy and profitable\ninterest of its own personality. It is a healthy sign that we are\ngetting back home again to the old endeavor of \u201cKnow thyself!\u201d Our\nwidening experience has shifted the centre of gravity too far from\nman\u2019s soul. A cultivation of the powers of one\u2019s own personality is\none of the greatest needs of life, too little realized even in these\nassertive days, and the exercise of the personality makes for its most\ndurable satisfactions. Men are attentive to their business affairs, but\nnot nearly enough to their own deeper selves. If they treated their\nbusiness interests as they do the interests of their personality, they\nwould be bankrupt within a week. Few people even scratch the surface,\nmuch less exhaust the contemplation, of their own experience. Few know\nhow to weave a philosophy of life out of it, that most precious of all\npossessions. And few know how to hoard their memory. For no matter what\nwe have come through, or how many perils we have safely passed, or how\nimperfect and jagged--in some places perhaps irreparably--our life has\nbeen, we cannot in our heart of hearts imagine how it could have been\ndifferent. As we look back on it, it slips in behind us in orderly\narray, and, with all its mistakes, acquires a sort of eternal fitness,\nand even, at times, of poetic glamour.\n\nThe things I did, I did because, after all, I am that sort of a\nperson--that is what life is;--and in spite of what others and what I\nmyself might desire, it is that kind of a person that I am. The golden\nmoments I can take a unique and splendid satisfaction in because they\nare my own; my realization of how poor and weak they might seem, if\ntaken from my treasure-chest and exposed to the gaze of others, does\nnot taint their preciousness, for I can see them in the larger light\nof my own life. Every man should realize that his life is an epic;\nunfortunately it usually takes the onlooker to recognize the fact\nbefore he does himself. We should oftener read our own epics--and write\nthem. The world is in need of true autobiographies, told in terms of\nthe adventure that life is. Not every one, it is said, possesses the\nliterary gift, but what, on the other hand, is the literary gift but an\nabsorbing interest in the personality of things, and an insight into\nthe wonders of living? Unfortunately it is usually only the eccentric\nor the distinguished who reveal their inner life. Yet the epic of the\nhumblest life, told in the light of its spiritual shocks and changes,\nwould be enthralling in its interest. But the best autobiographers are\nstill the masters of fiction, those wizards of imaginative sympathy,\nwho create souls and then write their spiritual history, as those\nsouls themselves, were they alive, could perhaps never write them.\nEvery man, however, can cultivate this autobiographical interest in\nhimself, and produce for his own private view a real epic of spiritual\nadventure. And life will be richer and more full of meaning as the\nstory continues and life accumulates.\n\nLife changes so gradually that we do not realize our progress. This\nsmall triumph of yesterday we fail to recognize as the summit of the\nmountain at whose foot we encamped several years ago in despair. We\nforget our hopes and wistfulness and struggles. We do not look down\nfrom the summit at the valley where we started, and thus we lose the\ndramatic sense of something accomplished. If a man looking back sees\nno mountain and valley, but only a straight level plain, it behooves\nhim to take himself straight to some other spiritual country where\nthere is opportunity for climbing and where five years hence will\nsee him on a higher level, breathing purer air. Most people have no\ntrouble in remembering their rights and their wrongs, their pretensions\nand their ambitions,--things so illusory that they should never even\nhave been thought of. But to forget their progress, to forget their\ngolden moments, their acquisitions of insight and appreciation, the\ncharm of their friends, the sequence of their ideals,--this is indeed\na deplorable aphasia! \u201cThe days that make us happy make us wise!\u201d\nHappiness is too valuable to be forgotten, and who will remember yours\nif you forget it? It is what has made the best of you; or, if you have\nthrown it away from memory, what could have made you, and made you\nricher than you are. If you have neglected such contemplation, you are\npoor, and that poverty will be apparent in your daily personality.\n\nLife in its essence is a heaping-up and accumulation of thought and\ninsight. It should mount higher and higher, and be more potent and\nflowering as life is lived. If you do not keep in your memory and\nspirit the finer accumulations of your life, it will be as if you had\nonly partly lived. Your living will be a travesty on life, and your\nprogress only a dull mechanical routine. Even though your life may be\noutwardly routine, inwardly, as moralists have always known, it may\nbe full of adventure. Be happy, but not too contented. Contentment\nmay be a vice as well as a virtue; too often it is a mere cover for\nsluggishness, and not a sign of triumph. The mind must have a certain\namount of refreshment and novelty; it will not grow by staying too\ncomfortably at home, and refusing to put itself to the trouble of\ntravel and change. It needs to be disturbed every now and then to keep\nthe crust from forming. People do not realize this, and let themselves\nbecome jaded and uninterested--and therefore uninteresting--when such\na small touch of novelty would inspire and stimulate them. A tired\ninterest, in a healthy mind, wakes with as quick a response to a new\ntouch or aspect as does a thirsty flower to the rain. Too many people\nsit in prison with themselves until they get meagre and dull, when the\ndoor was really all the time open, and outside was freshness and green\ngrass and the warm sun, which might have revived them and made them\nbright again. Listlessness in an old man or woman is often the telltale\nsign of such an imprisonment. Life, instead of being an accumulation\nof spiritual treasure, has been the squandering of its wealth, in a\nlapse of interest, as soon as it was earned. Even unbearable sorrow\nmight have been the means, by a process of transmutation, of acquiring\na deeper appreciation of life\u2019s truer values. But the squanderer has\nlost his vision, because he did not retain on the background of memory\nhis experience, against which to contrast his new reactions, and\ndid not have the emotional image of old novelties to spur him to the\napprehension and appreciation of new ones.\n\nMore amazing even than the lack of a healthy interest in their own\npersonalities is the lack of most people of an interest, beyond one\nof a trivial or professional nature, in others. Our literary artists\nhave scarcely begun to touch the resources of human ways and acts.\nWriters surrender reality for the sake of a plot, and in attempting to\nmake a point, or to write adventure, squeeze out the natural traits\nand nuances of character and the haphazardnesses of life that are the\ntrue adventure and point. We cannot know too much about each other.\nAll our best education comes from what people tell us or what we\nobserve them do. We cannot endure being totally separated from others,\nand it is well that we cannot. For it would mean that we should have\nthen no life above the satisfaction of our crudest material wants.\nOur keenest delights are based upon some manifestation or other of\nsocial life. Even gossip arises not so much from malice as from a real\nsocial interest in our neighbors; the pity of it is, of course, that\nto so many people it is only the misfortunes and oddities that are\ninteresting.\n\nLet our interests in the social world with which we come in contact be\nactive and not passive. Let us give back in return as good an influence\nand as much as is given to us. Let us live so as to stimulate others,\nso that we call out the best powers and traits in them, and make them\nbetter than they are, because of our comprehension and inspiration.\nOur life is so bound up with our friends and teachers and heroes\n(whether present in the flesh or not), and we are so dependent upon\nthem for nourishment and support, that we are rarely aware how little\nof us there would be left were they to be taken away. We are seldom\nconscious enough of the ground we are rooted in and the air we breathe.\nWe can know ourselves best by knowing others. There are adventures of\npersonality in acting and being acted upon, in studying and delighting\nin the ideas and folkways of people that hold much in store for those\nwho will only seek them.\n\nThus in its perils and opportunities, in its satisfactions and\nresistances, in its gifts and responsibilities, for good or for evil,\nlife is an adventure. In facing its evil, we shall not let it daunt\nor depress our spirits; we shall surrender some of our responsibility\nfor the Universe, and face forward, working and encouraging those\naround us to co\u00f6perate with us and with all who suffer, in fighting\npreventable wrong. Death we shall transcend by interpreting everything\nin terms of life; we shall be victorious over it by recognizing in it\nan aspect of a larger life in which we are immersed. We shall accept\ngladly the wealth of days poured out for us. Alive, in a living world,\nwe shall cultivate those interests and qualities which enhance life.\nWe shall try to keep the widest possible fund of interests in order\nthat life may mount ever richer, and not become jaded and wearied in\nits ebb-flow. We shall never cease to put our questions to the heart\nof the world, intent on tracking down the mysteries of its behavior\nand its meaning, using each morsel of knowledge to pry further into\nits secrets, and testing the tools we use by the product they create\nand the hidden chambers they open. To face the perils and hazards\nfearlessly, and absorb the satisfactions joyfully, to be curious and\nbrave and eager,--is to know the adventure of life.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nSOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION\n\n\nIn youth we grow and learn and always the universe widens around us.\nThe horizon recedes faster than we can journey towards it. There comes\na time when we look back with longing to the days when everything we\nlearned seemed a fast gaining upon the powers of darkness, and each new\nprinciple seemed to illuminate and explain an immense region of the\nworld. We had only to keep on learning in steady progress, it seemed,\nuntil we should have dominion over the whole of it. But there came a\ntime, perhaps, when advance halted, and our carefully ordered world\nbegan to dissipate and loose ends and fringes to appear. It became a\nreal struggle to keep our knowledge securely boxed in our one system,\nindeed, in any system, as we found when we restlessly tried one dogma\nafter another as strong-boxes for our spiritual goods. Always something\neluded us; it was \u201cever not quite.\u201d Just when we were safest, some\nnew experience came up to be most incongruously unaccounted for.\nWe had our goods, for instance, safely stowed away in the box of\n\u201cmaterialism,\u201d when suddenly we realized that, on its theory, our whole\nlife might run along precisely as we see it now, we might talk and love\nand paint and build without a glimmer of consciousness, that wondrous\nstuff which is so palpably our light and our life. The materialist\ncan see in us nothing but the inert accompaniment of our bodies, the\nhelpless, useless, and even annoying spectators of the play of physical\nforces through these curious compounds of chemical elements that we\ncall our bodies. Or if, filled with the joy of creation, we tried to\npack our world into the dogma of \u201cidealism\u201d and see all hard material\nthings as emanations from our spiritual self and plastic under our\nhand, we were brought with a shock against some tough, incorrigible\nfact that sobered our elation, and forced the unwilling recognition of\nour impotence upon us again.\n\nIt is not, however, from an excess of idealism that the world suffers\nto-day. But it is sick rather with the thorough-going and plausible\nscientific materialism with which our philosophy and literature seem to\nreek. Pure idealism has long ago proved too intoxicating a confirmation\nof our hopes and desires to seduce for long our tough-mindedness.\nScience has come as a challenge to both our courage and our honesty.\nIt covertly taunts us with being afraid to face the universe as it is;\nif we look and are saddened, we have seemed to prove ourselves less\nthan men. For this advance of scientific speculation has seemed only\nto increase the gulf between the proven and certain facts, and all the\nvalues and significances of life that our reactions to its richness\nhave produced in us. And so incorrigibly honest is the texture of the\nhuman mind that we cannot continue to believe in and cultivate things\nthat we no longer consider to be real. And science has undermined our\nfaith in the reality of a spiritual world that to our forefathers\nwas the only reality in the universe. We are so honest, however,\nthat when the scientist relegates to a subjective shadowy realm our\nworld of qualities and divinities, we cannot protest, but only look\nwistfully after the disappearing forms. A numbness has stolen over\nour religion, art, and literature, and the younger generation finds a\nchill and torpor in those interests of life that should be the highest\ninspiration.\n\nReligion in these latter days becomes poetry, about which should never\nbe asked the question, \u201cIs it true?\u201d Art becomes a frivolous toy;\nliterature a daily chronicle.\n\nThere is thus a crucial intellectual dilemma that faces us to-day. If\nwe accept whole-heartedly the spiritual world, we seem to be false to\nthe imposing new knowledge of science which is rapidly making the world\ncomprehensible to us; if we accept all the claims and implications of\nscience, we seem to trample on our own souls. Yet we feel instinctively\nthe validity of both aspects of the world. Our solution will seem to\nbe, then, to be content with remaining something less than monists.\nWe must recognize that this is an infinite universe, and give up our\nattempt to get all our experience under one roof. Striving ever for\nunity, we must yet understand that this \u201cnot-quite-ness\u201d is one of\nthe fundamental principles of things. We can no longer be satisfied\nwith a settlement of the dreary conflict between religion and science\nwhich left for religion only the task of making hazardous speculations\nwhich science was later to verify or cast aside, as it charted the seas\nof knowledge. We cannot be content with a religion which science is\nconstantly overtaking and wiping out, as it puts its brave postulates\nof faith to rigorous test.\n\nThe only view of religion and science that will satisfy us is one\nthat makes them each the contemplation of a different aspect of the\nuniverse,--one, an aspect of quantities and relations, the other, an\naspect of qualities, ideals, and values. They may be co\u00f6rdinate and\ncomplementary, but they are not expressible in each others\u2019 terms.\nThere is no question of superior reality. The blue of a flower is just\nas real as the ether waves which science tells us the color \u201creally\u201d\nis. Scientific and intuitive knowledge are simply different ways of\nappreciating an infinite universe. Scientific knowledge, for all its\ndogmatic claims to finality, is provisional and hypothetical. \u201cIf\nwe live in a certain kind of a world,\u201d it says, \u201ccertain things are\ntrue.\u201d Each fact hinges upon another. Yet these correlations of the\nphysical world are so certain and predictable that no sane mind can\ndoubt them. On the other hand, our knowledge of qualities is direct and\nimmediate, and seems to depend on nothing for its completeness. Yet it\nis so uncertain and various that no two minds have precisely the same\nreactions, and we do not ourselves have the same reactions at different\ntimes.\n\nAnd these paradoxes give rise to the endless disputes as to which\ngives the more real view of the universe in which we find ourselves\nliving. The matter-of-fact person takes the certainty and lets the\nimmediacy go; the poet and the mystic and the religious man choose the\ndirect revelation and prize this vision far above any logical cogency.\nNow it will be the task of this intellectual generation to conquer\nthe paradoxes by admitting the validity of both the matter-of-fact\nview and the mystical. And it is the latter that requires the present\nemphasis; it must be resuscitated from the low estate into which it has\nfallen. We must resist the stern arrogances of science as vigorously\nas the scientist has resisted the allurements of religion. We must\nremind him that his laws are not visions of eternal truth, so much as\nrough-and-ready statements of the practical nature of things, in so\nfar as they are useful to us for our grappling with our environment\nand somehow changing it. We must demand that he climb down out of the\npapal chair, and let his learning become what it was meant to be,--the\nhumble servant of humanity. Truth for truth\u2019s sake is an admirable\nmotto for the philosopher, who really searches to find the inner nature\nof things. But the truth of science is for use\u2019s sake. To seek for\nphysical truth which is irrelevant to human needs and purposes is as\npurely futile an intellectual gymnastic as the logical excesses of the\nschoolmen. The scientist is here to tell us the practical workings of\nthe forces and elements of the world; the philosopher, mystic, artist,\nand poet are here to tell us of the purposes and meanings of the world\nas revealed directly, and to show us the ideal aspect through their own\nclear fresh vision.\n\nThat vision, however, must be controlled and enriched by the democratic\nexperience of their fellow men; their ideal must be to reveal meanings\nthat cannot be doubted by the normal soul, in the same way that\nscientific formulations cannot be doubted by the normal mind. It is\nhere that we have a quarrel with old religion and old poetry, that\nthe vision which it brings us is not sufficiently purged of local\ndiscolorations or intellectualistic taints. But it is not a quarrel\nwith religion and poetry as such; this age thirsts for a revelation\nof the spiritual meanings of the wider world that has been opened to\nus, and the complex and baffling anomalies that seem to confront us.\nIt is our imperative duty to re\u00ebmphasize the life of qualities and\nideals, to turn again our gaze to that aspect of the world from which\nmen have always drawn what gave life real worth and reinstate those\nspiritual things whose strength advancing knowledge has seemed to sap.\nThere is room for a new idealism, but an idealism that sturdily keeps\nits grip on the real, that grapples with the new knowledge and with the\nirrevocable loss of much of the old poetry and many of the old values,\nand wrests out finer qualities and a nobler spiritual life than the\nworld has yet seen. It is not betrayal of our integrity to believe that\nthe desires and interests of men, their hopes and fears and creative\nimaginings, are as real as any atoms or formulas.\n\nNow the place of religion in this new idealism will be the same place\nthat its essential spirit has always held in the spiritual life of\nmen. Religion is our sense of the quality of the universe itself, the\nbroadest, profoundest, and most constant of our intuitions. Men have\nalways felt that, outside of the qualities of concrete things, there\nlay a sort of infinite quality that they could identify with the spirit\nof the universe, and they have called it God. To this quality men have\nalways responded, and that response and appreciation is religion. To\nappreciate this cosmic quality is to be religious, and to express that\nappreciation is to worship. Religion is thus as much and eternally\na part of life as our senses themselves; the only justification for\nmaking away with religion would be an event that would make away with\nour senses. The scientist must always find it difficult to explain why,\nif man\u2019s mind, as all agree that it did, developed in adaptation to his\nenvironment, it should somehow have become adapted so perfectly to a\nspiritual world of qualities and poetic interpretation of phenomena,\nand not to the world of atomic motion and mechanical law which\nscientific philosophy assures us is the \u201creal\u201d world. Our minds somehow\nadapted themselves, not to the hard world of fact, but to a world of\nillusion, which had not the justification of being even practically\nuseful or empirically true. If the real world is mechanical, we should\nhave a right to expect the earliest thinking to be scientific, and\nthe spiritual life to come in only after centuries of refinement\nof thought. But the first reactions of men were of course purely\nqualitative, and it is only within the last few minutes of cosmic time\nthat we have known of the quantitative relations of things. Is it hard,\nthen, to believe that, since we and the world have grown up together,\nthere must be some subtle correlation between it and the values and\nqualities that we feel, that our souls must reflect--not faithfully,\nperhaps, because warped by a thousand alien compelling physical forces,\nand yet somehow indomitably--a spiritual world that is perhaps even\nmore real, because more immediate and constant, than the physical? We\nmay partially create it, but we partially reflect it too.\n\nThat cosmic quality we feel as personality. Not artificial or illusive\nis this deeply rooted anthropomorphic sense which has always been at\nthe bottom of man\u2019s religious consciousness. We are alive, and we\nhave a right to interpret the world as living; we are persons, and we\nhave a right to interpret the world in terms of personality. In all\nreligions, through the encrustations of dogma and ritual, has been\nfelt that vital sense of the divine personality, keeping clean and\nsweet the life of man. The definite appeal of the Church, in times\nlike these, when the external props fall away, is to the incarnation\nof the divine personality, and the ideal of character deduced from it\nas a pattern for life. This is the religion of ordinary people to-day;\nit has been the heart of Christianity for nineteen hundred years. Our\nfeeling of this cosmic quality may be vague or definite, diffused or\ncrystallized, but to those of us who sense behind our pulsing life a\nmystery which perplexes, sobers, and elevates us, that quality forms a\npermanent scenic background for our life.\n\nTo feel this cosmic quality of a divine personality, in whom we live,\nmove, and have our being, is to know religion. The ordinary world we\nlive in is incurably dynamic; we are forced to think and act in terms\nof energy and change and constant rearrangement and flux of factors and\nelements. And we live only as we give ourselves up to that stream and\nplay of forces. Throughout all the change, however, there comes a sense\nof this eternal quality. In the persistence of our own personality,\nthe humble fragment of a divine personality, we get the pattern of its\npermanence. The Great Companion is ever with us, silently ratifying\nour worthy deeds and tastes and responses. The satisfactions of our\nspiritual life, of our judgments and appreciations of morality and art\nand any kind of excellence, come largely from this subtle corroboration\nthat we feel from some unseen presence wider than ourselves. It\naccompanies not a part but the whole of our spiritual life, silently\nstrengthening our responses to personality and beauty, our sense of\nirony, the refinement of our taste, sharpening our moral judgment,\nelevating our capacities for happiness, filling ever richer our sense\nof the worth of life. And this cosmic influence in which we seem to be\nimmersed we can no more lose or doubt--after we have once felt the rush\nof time past us, seen a friend die, or brooded on the bitter thought of\nour personal death, felt the surge of forces of life and love, wondered\nabout consciousness, been melted before beauty--than we can lose or\ndoubt ourselves. The wonder of it is exhaustless,--the beneficence over\nwhose workings there yet breathes an inexorable sternness, the mystery\nof time and death, the joy of beauty and creative art and sex, and\nsheer consciousness.\n\nAgainst this scenic background, along this deep undercurrent of\nfeeling, our outward, cheerful, settled, and orderly life plays its\npart. That life is no less essential; we must be willing to see life in\ntwo aspects, the world as deathless yet ever-creative, evolution yet\ntimeless eternity. To be religious is to turn our gaze away from the\ndynamic to the static and the permanent, away from the stage to the\nscenic background of our lives. Religion cannot, therefore, be said\nto have much of a place in our activity of life, except as it fixes\nthe general emotional tone. We have no right to demand that it operate\npractically, nor can we call altruistic activity, and enthusiasm for a\nnoble cause, religion. Moral action is really more a matter of social\npsychology than of religion. All religions have been ethical only as a\nsecondary consideration. Religion in and for itself is something else;\nwe can enjoy it only by taking, as it were, the moral holiday into its\nregions when we are weary of the world of thinking and doing. It is a\nland to retreat into when we are battered and degraded by the dynamic\nworld about us, and require rest and recuperation. It is constantly\nthere behind us, but to live in it always is to take a perpetual\nholiday.\n\nAt all times we may have its beauty with us, however, as we may have\nprospects of far mountains and valleys. As we go in the morning to\nwork in the fields, religion is this enchanting view of the mountains,\ninspiring us and lifting our hearts with renewed vigor. Through all the\nlong day\u2019s work we feel their presence with us, and have only to turn\naround to see them shining splendidly afar with hope and kindliness.\nEven the austerest summits are warm in the afternoon sun. Yet if we\ngaze at them all day long, we shall accomplish no work. Nor shall we\nfinish our allotted task if we succumb to their lure and leave our\nfields to travel towards them. As we return home weary at night, the\nmountains are still there to refresh and cheer us with their soft\ncolors and outline blended in the purple light. When our task is\nentirely done, it has been our eternal hope to journey to those far\nmountains and valleys; if this is not to be, at least their glorious\nview will be the last to fall upon us as we close our eyes. But we know\nthat, whatever happens, if we have done our work well, have performed\nfaithfully our daily tasks of learning to control and manage and\nmake creative the tough soil of this material world in which we find\nourselves, if we have neither allowed its toughness to distract us from\nthe beauty of the eternal background, nor let those far visions slow\ndown the wheels of life, distract us from our work, or blur our thought\nand pale by their light the other qualities and beauties around us--we\nshall attain what is right for us when we lay down our tools. In a\nliving world, death can be no more than an apparition.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE MYSTIC TURNED RADICAL\n\n\nThe mystical temperament is little enough popular in this workaday\nmodern world of ours. The mystic, we feel, comes to us discounted\nfrom the start; he should in all decency make constant apologies for\nhis existence. In a practical age of machinery he is an anomaly, an\nanachronism. He must meet the direct challenge of the scientist, who\nguards every approach to the doors of truth and holds the keys of its\ncitadel. Any thinker who gets into the fold by another way is a thief\nand a robber.\n\nThe mystic must answer that most heinous of all charges,--of being\nunscientific. By tradition he is even hostile to science. For his main\ninterest is in wonder, and science by explaining things attacks the\nvery principle of his life. It not only diminishes his opportunities\nfor wonder, but threatens to make him superfluous by ultimately\nexplaining everything.\n\nThe scientist may say that there is no necessary antithesis between\nexplanation and that beautiful romance of thought we call wonder. The\nsavage, who can explain nothing, is the very creature who has no wonder\nat all. Everything is equally natural to him. Only a mind that has\nacquaintance with laws of behavior can be surprised at events.\n\nThe wonder of the scientist, however, although it be of a more robust,\ntough-minded variety, is none the less wonder. A growing acquaintance\nwith the world, an increasing at-homeness in it, is not necessarily\nincompatible with an ever-increasing marvel both at the beautiful\nfitness of things and the limitless field of ignorance and mystery\nbeyond. So the modern mystic must break with his own tradition if he\nis to make an appeal to this generation, and must recognize that the\nantithesis between mystic and scientific is not an eternally valid one.\n\nIt is just through realization of this fact that Maeterlinck, the best\nof modern mystics, makes his extraordinary appeal. For, as he tells us,\nthe valid mystery does not begin at the threshold of knowledge but only\nafter we have exhausted our resources of knowing. His frank and genuine\nacceptance of science thus works out a _modus vivendi_ between the seen\nand the unseen. It allows many of us who have given our allegiance\nto science to hail him gladly as a prophet who supplements the work\nof the wise men of scientific research, without doing violence to our\nown consciences. For the world is, in spite of its scientific clamor,\nstill far from ready really to surrender itself to prosaicness. It is\nstill haunted with the dreams of the ages--dreams of short roads to\ntruth, visions of finding the Northwest passage to the treasures of the\nUnseen. Only we must go as far as possible along the traveled routes of\nscience.\n\nMaeterlinck is thus not anti-scientific or pseudo-scientific, but\nrather sub-scientific. He speaks of delicately felt and subtle\ninfluences and aspects of reality that lie beneath the surface of our\nlives, of forces and shadows that cannot be measured quantitatively\nor turned into philosophical categories. Or we may say that he\nis ultra-scientific. As science plods along, opening up the dark\nwilderness, he goes with the exploring party, throwing a search-light\nbefore them; flickering enough and exasperatingly uncertain at times,\nbut sufficiently constant to light up the way, point out a path, and\ngive us confidence that the terrors before us are not so formidable\nas we have feared. His influence on our time is so great because we\nbelieve that he is a seer, a man with knowledge of things hidden from\nour eyes. We go to him as to a spiritual clairvoyant,--to have him tell\nus where to find the things our souls have lost.\n\nBut the modern mystic must not only recognize the scientific aspect\nof the age,--he must feel the social ideal that directs the spiritual\nenergies of the time. It is the glory of Maeterlinck\u2019s mysticism that\nit has not lingered in the depths of the soul, but has passed out to\nilluminate our thinking in regard to the social life about us. The\ngrowth of this duality of vision has been with him a long evolution.\nHis early world was a shadowy, intangible thing. As we read the early\nessays, we seem to be constantly hovering on the verge of an idea, just\nas when we read the plays we seem to be hovering on the verge of a\npassion. This long brooding away from the world, however, was fruitful\nand momentous. The intense gaze inward trained the eye, so that when\nthe mists cleared away and revealed the palpitating social world about\nhim, his insight into its meaning was as much more keen and true than\nour own as had been his sense of the meaning of the individual soul.\nThe light he turns outward to reveal the meaning of social progress is\nall the whiter for having burned so long within.\n\nIn the essay on \u201cOur Social Duty,\u201d the clearest and the consummate\nexpression of this new outward look, there are no contaminating fringes\nof vague thought; all is clear white light. With the instinct of the\ntrue radical, the poet has gone to the root of the social attitude. Our\nduty as members of society is to be radical, he tells us. And not only\nthat, but an excess of radicalism is essential to the equilibrium of\nlife. Society so habitually thinks on a plane lower than is reasonable\nthat it behooves us to think and to hope on an even higher plane than\nseems to be reasonable. This is the overpoweringly urgent philosophy of\nradicalism. It is the beautiful courage of such words that makes them\nso vital an inspiration.\n\nIt is the sin of the age that nobody dares to be anything to too great\na degree. We may admire extremists in principle, but we take the best\nof care not to imitate them ourselves. Who in America would even be\nlikely to express himself as does Maeterlinck in this essay? Who of us\nwould dare follow the counsel? Of course we can plead extenuation. In\nEurope the best minds are thinking in terms of revolution still, while\nin America our radicalism is still simply amateurish and incompetent.\n\nTo many of us, then, this call of Maeterlinck\u2019s to the highest of\nradicalisms will seem irrelevant; this new social note which appears\nso strongly in all his later work will seem a deterioration from\nthe nobler mysticism of his earlier days. But rather should it be\nviewed as the fruit of matured insight. There has been no decay,\nno surrender. It is the same mysticism, but with the direction of\nthe vision altered. This essay is the expression of the clearest\nvision that has yet penetrated our social confusion, the sanest and\nhighest ideal that has been set before progressive minds. It may be\nthat its utter fearlessness, its almost ascetic detachment from the\nmatter-of-fact things of political life, its clear cold light of\nconviction and penetration, may repel some whose hearts have been\nwarmed by Maeterlinck\u2019s subtle revelations of the spiritual life. They\nmay reproach him because it has no direct bearings on the immediate\npractical social life; it furnishes no weapon of reform, no tool with\nwhich to rush out and overthrow some vested abuse. But to the traveler\nlost in the wood the one thing needful is a pole-star to show him\nhis direction. The star is unapproachable, serene, cold, and lofty.\nBut although he cannot touch it, or utilize it directly to extend\nhis comfort and progress, it is the most useful of all things to\nhim. It fills his heart with a great hope; it co\u00f6rdinates his aimless\nwanderings and gropings, and gives meaning and purpose to his course.\n\nSo a generation lost in a chaos of social change can find in these\nlater words of Maeterlinck a pole-star and a guide. They do for the\nsocial life of man what the earlier essays did for the individual. They\nendow it with values and significances that will give steadfastness\nand resource to his vision as he looks out on the great world of human\nprogress, and purpose and meaning to his activity as he looks ahead\ninto the dim world of the future.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nSEEING, WE SEE NOT\n\n\nIt is a mere superstition, Maeterlinck tells us in one of his beautiful\nessays, that there is anything irrevocable about the past. On the\ncontrary, we are constantly rearranging it, revising it, remaking it.\nFor it is only in our memory that it exists, and our conception of it\nchanges as the loose fringes of past events are gathered up into a\nnew meaning, or when a sudden fortune lights up a whole series in our\nlives, and shows us, stretching back in orderly array and beautiful\nsignificance, what we had supposed in our blindness to be a sad and\nchaotic welter. It is no less a superstition to suppose that we have\na hand in making the present. The present, like the past, is always\nstill to be made; indeed, must wait its turn, so to speak, to be seen\nin its full meaning until after the past itself has been remoulded and\nreconstituted. It is depressing to think that we do not know our own\ntime, that the events we look upon have a permanent value far different\nfrom the petty one that we endow them with, that they fit into a\nlarger whole of which we see only a dim fraction--and that the least\nimportant because the seed of something that shall come much later\ninto full fruition. Must our short life pass away without knowledge\nor vision of the majestic processes which are unfolding themselves\nunder our very eyes, while we have wasted our admiration and distorted\nour purpose by striving to interpret the ephemeral, that is gone as\nsoon as we? Even the wisest among us can see with but a dim eye into\nthe future, and make rather a lucky guess at its potentialities than\na true prophecy based on a realization of the real tendencies of the\ntime. It is only the Past that we really make. And this may account\nfor our love of it. This fragile thing of tradition that we have\nso carefully constructed and so lovingly beautified, this artistic\ncreation of a whole people or race, becomes most naturally the object\nof our tenderest solicitude. Any attack upon it that suggests a marring\nof its golden beauty, any new proposal that threatens to render it\nsuperfluous, elicits the outraged cry of anger, the passionate defense,\nof the mother protecting her child. For the Past is really the child\nof the Present. We are the authors of its being, and upon it we lavish\nall our thoughts, our interest and our delight. And even our hopes\nare centred in the Past, for the most enthusiastic among us can do no\nmore than hope that something worth while will come out of the Past\nto nourish us in the approaching Present. Concern for the Future is\nso new a thing in human history that we are hardly yet at home with\nthe feeling. Perhaps, if we thought more about what was before us, we\nshould come to know more about it. Meanwhile our only consolation is\nthat if _we_ cannot see, neither did the generations that were before\nus. And we have the advantage of _knowing_ that we do not see, while\nthey did not care about their ignorance at all.\n\nWe have constantly to check ourselves in reading history with the\nremembrance that, to the actors in the drama, events appeared very\ndifferently from the way they appear to us. We know what they were\ndoing far better than they knew themselves. We are in the position of\nthe novel reader who looks, before he begins to read, to see how the\nplot turns out. This orderly and dramatic chronicle of history that\nthrills us as we read has only been orderly and dramatic to readers of\nthe present time, who can see the _d\u00e9nouement_ of the story. History is\npeculiarly the creation of the present. Even the great men of the past\nare largely the agglomerations of centuries of hero-worship. Genius is\nas much a slow accretion of the ages as an endowment of man. Few great\npoets were seen in the full glory of their superhuman capacity by their\nfellows. Contemporary opinion of the great has been complimentary but\nseldom excessively laudatory, and there are sad instances of the decay\nand deflation of a supernatural personality through the smooth, gentle,\nimperceptibly creeping oblivion of the centuries.\n\nWe rarely see what is distinctive in our own time. The city builders\nof the West are quite unconscious of the fact that they are leaving\nbehind them imperishable and mighty memorials of themselves. Few of the\nthings that we admire now will be considered by posterity as noteworthy\nand distinctive of our age. All depends on the vitality of our customs\nand social habits, and some show as high a mortality as others do\na stubborn tenacity of life. What we are witnessing is a gigantic\nstruggle of customs and ideas to survive and propagate their kind.\nThe means of subsistence is limited; it is impossible that all should\nbe able to live. The fascinating problem for the social philosopher\nis which of these beliefs and tendencies will prove strong enough to\novercome their rivals and make their stock a permanent type. How many\nof the fads and brilliant theories and new habits of thought and taste\nwill be able to maintain their place in the world? If we could discern\nthem, we should know the distinction of our age. Definite epochs of\nthe past we distinguish and celebrate because they contained the germs\nof ideas or the roots of institutions that still survive among us,\nor customs and habits of thought that flourished in them with great\nbrilliancy but have now utterly passed away. Now these beginnings are\nquite too subtle for us to see in our contemporary life, and there\nare so many brilliancies that it is impossible to pick out with any\ndefiniteness the things which have power to project themselves into\nthe future, and cast a broad trail of light back to our age. Most of\nthose very things that seem to us imperishable will be the ones to\nfade,--fade, indeed, so gradually that they will not even be missed. It\nis this gradual disappearance that gives the most thorough oblivion.\nHistory remembers only the brilliant failures and the brilliant\nsuccesses.\n\nWe are fond of calling this an age of transition, but if we trace\nhistory back we find that practically every age--at least for\nmany centuries--has been an age of transition. If we must set a\nstarting-point from which we have been moving, the social philosopher\nwill be inclined to place it about the beginning of the sixteenth\ncentury. If we have been in transition for four hundred years, it\nseems almost time to settle down from this wild ferment of beliefs\nand discoveries that has kept the world\u2019s mind in constant turmoil\nsince the time of the Renaissance. There are signs that such a\ncrystallization is taking place. We are weeding out our culture, and\ncasting aside the classical literature that was the breeding-ground for\nthe old ideas. We have achieved as yet little to take its place. Most\nof the modern literature is rather a restless groping about in the dark\nfor new modes of thinking and new principles of life, and thus far it\nhardly seems to have grasped the robust and vital in the new to any\nappreciable extent. One can hardly believe that this morbid virus that\nis still working with undiminished vigor and deadly effect will succeed\nin making itself the dominant note in European literature for the next\nfive hundred years. One hates to think that our posterity is to be\ndoomed to torture itself into appreciating our feverish modern art and\nmusic, and learn to rank the wild complexities of Strauss with the\nsublimities of Beethoven. Shall we be sure that the conquest of the air\nis finally achieved and a third dimension added to man\u2019s traveling, or\nis it all simply another daring and brilliant stab at the impossible,\nanother of those blasphemies against nature which impious man is\nconstantly striving to commit? There are few signs of the Socialistic\nState, but who knows what births of new institutions, of which we are\nnow quite unaware, future ages will see to have been developing in our\nvery midst? Is religion doomed, or is it merely being transformed, so\nthat we shall be seen to have been creating amid all our indifference a\nnew type and a new ideal? Will our age actually be distinctive as the\nera of the Dawn of Peace, or will the baby institution of arbitration\ndisappear before a crude and terrible reality? Are we progressing, or\nshall we seem to have sown the seeds of world decay in this age of\nours, and at a great crisis in history let slip another opportunity\nto carry mankind to a higher social level? It is maddening to the\nphilosopher to think how long he will have to live to find an answer\nto these questions. He wants to know, but in the present all he can do\nis to guess at random. Not immortality, but an opportunity to wake up\nevery hundred years or so to see how the world is progressing, may well\nbe his desire and his dream. Such an immortality may be incredible, but\nit is the only form which has ever proved satisfactory, or ever will,\nto the rational man.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nTHE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE\n\n\nIt is good to be reasonable, but too much rationality puts the soul\nat odds with life. For rationality implies an almost superstitious\nreliance on logical proofs and logical motives, and it is logic that\nlife mocks and contradicts at every turn. The most annoying people\nin the world are those who demand reasons for everything, and the\nmost discouraging are those who map out ahead of them long courses of\naction, plan their lives, and systematically in the smallest detail\nof their activity adapt means to ends. Now the difficulty with all\nthe prudential virtues is that they imply a world that is too good to\nbe true. It would be pleasant to have a world where cause and effect\ninterlocked, where we could see the future, where virtue had its\nreward, and our characters and relations with other people and the work\nwe wish to do could be planned out with the same certainty with which\ncooks plan a meal. But we know that that is not the kind of a world\nwe actually live in. Perhaps men have thought that, by cultivating\nthe rational virtues and laying emphasis on prudence and forethought,\nthey could bend the stubborn constitution of things to meet their\nideals. It has always been the fashion to insist, in spite of all the\nevidence, that the world was in reality a rational place where certain\nimmutable moral principles could be laid down with the same certainty\nof working that physical laws possess. It has always been represented\nthat the correct procedure of the moral life was to choose one\u2019s end\nor desire, to select carefully all the means by which that end could\nbe realized, and then, by the use of the dogged motive force of the\nwill, to push through the plans to completion. In the homilies on\nsuccess, it has always been implied that strength of will was the only\nrequisite. Success became merely a matter of the ratio between the\nquantity of effort and will-power applied, and the number of obstacles\nto be met. If one failed, it was because the proper amount of effort\nhad not been applied, or because the plans had not been properly\nconstructed. The remedy was automatically to increase the effort or\nrationalize the plans. Life was considered to be a battle, the strategy\nof which a general might lay out beforehand, an engagement in which he\nmight plan and anticipate to the minutest detail the movement of his\nforces and the disposition of the enemy. But one does not have to live\nvery long to see that this belief in the power and the desirability\nof controlling things is an illusion. Life works in a series of\nsurprises. One\u2019s powers are given in order that one may be alert and\nready, resourceful and keen. The interest of life lies largely in its\nadventurousness, and not in its susceptibility to orderly mapping.\nThe enemy rarely comes up from the side the general has expected; the\nbattle is usually fought out on vastly different lines from those that\nhave been carefully foreseen and rationally organized. And similarly in\nlife do complex forces utterly confound and baffle our best laid plans.\n\nOur strategy, unless it is open to instant correction, unless it is\nflexible, and capable of infinite resource and modification, is a\nhandicap rather than an aid in the battle of life. In spite of the\nveracious accounts of youths hewing their way to success as captains\nof industry or statesmen, with their eye singly set on a steadfast\npurpose, we may be sure that life seldom works that way. It is not so\ntractable and docile, even to the strongest. The rational ideal is\none of those great moral hypocrisies which every one preaches and no\none practices, but which we all believe with superstitious reverence,\nand which we take care shall be proven erroneous by no stubborn facts\nof life. Better that the facts should be altered than that the moral\ntradition should die!\n\nOne of its evil effects is the compressing influence it has on many of\nus. Recognizing that for us the world is an irrational place, we are\nwilling to go on believing that there are at least some gifted beings\nwho are proving the truth and vindicating the eternal laws of reason.\nWe join willingly the self-stigmatized ranks of the incompetent and are\ncontent to shine feebly in the reflected light of those whose master\nwills and power of effort have brought them through in rational triumph\nto their ends. The younger generation is coming very seriously to doubt\nboth the practicability and worth of this rational ideal. They do not\nfind that the complex affairs of either the world or the soul work\naccording to laws of reason. The individual as a member of society is\nat the mercy of great social laws that regulate his fortune for him,\nconstruct for him his philosophy of life, and dictate to him his ways\nof making a living. As an individual soul, he is the creature of\nimpulses and instincts which he does not create and which seem to lie\nquite outside the reach of his rational will. Looked at from this large\nsocial viewpoint, his will appears a puny affair indeed. There seems\nlittle room left in which to operate, either in the sphere of society\nor in his own spiritual life. That little of free-will, however, which\nthere is, serves for our human purposes. It must be our care simply\nthat we direct it wisely; and the rational ideal is not the wisest way\nof directing it. The place of our free will in the scheme of life is\nnot to furnish driving, but _directing_ power. The engineer could never\ncreate the power that drives his engine, but he can direct it into the\nchannels where it will be useful and creative. The superstition of the\nstrong will has been almost like an attempt to create power, something\nthe soul could never do. The rational ideal has too often been a mere\nchallenge to attain the unattainable. It has ended in futility or\nfailure.\n\nThis superstition comes largely from our incorrigible habit of looking\nback over the past, and putting purpose into it. The great man looking\nback over his career, over his ascent from the humble level of his\nboyhood to his present power and riches, imagines that that ideal\nsuccess was in his mind from his earliest years. He sees a progress,\nwhich was really the happy seizing of fortunate opportunities, as\nthe carrying-out of a fixed purpose. But the purpose was not there\nat the beginning; it is the crowning touch added to the picture,\nwhich completes and satisfies our age-long hunger for the orderly and\ncorrect. But we all, rich and poor, successful and unsuccessful, live\nfrom hand to mouth. We all alike find life at the beginning a crude\nmass of puzzling possibilities. All of us, unless we inherit a place in\nthe world,--and then we are only half alive,--have the same precarious\nstruggle to get a foothold. The difference is in the fortune of the\nfoothold, and not in our private creation of any mystical force of\nwill. It is a question of happy occasions of exposure to the right\nstimulus that will develop our powers at the right time. The capacity\nalone is sterile; it needs the stimulus to fertilize it and produce\nactivity and success. The part that our free will can play is to expose\nourselves consciously to the stimulus; it cannot create it or the\ncapacity, but it can bring them together.\n\nIn other words, for the rational ideal we must substitute the\nexperimental ideal. Life is not a campaign of battle, but a laboratory\nwhere its possibilities for the enhancement of happiness and the\nrealization of ideals are to be tested and observed. We are not to\nstart life with a code of its laws in our pocket, with its principles\nof activity already learned by heart, but we are to discover those\nprinciples as we go, by conscientious experiment. Even those laws that\nseem incontrovertible we are to test for ourselves, to see whether they\nare thoroughly vital to our own experience and our own genius. We are\nanimals, and our education in life is, after all, different only in\ndegree, and not in kind, from that of the monkey who learns the trick\nof opening his cage. To get out of his cage, the monkey must find\nand open a somewhat complicated latch. How does he set about it? He\nblunders around for a long time, without method or purpose, but with\nthe waste of an enormous amount of energy. At length he accidentally\nstrikes the right catch, and the door flies open. Our procedure in\nyouth is little different. We feel a vague desire to expand, to get out\nof our cage, and liberate our dimly felt powers. We blunder around for\na time, until we accidentally put ourselves in a situation where some\ncapacity is touched, some latent energy liberated, and the direction\nset for us, along which we have only to move to be free and successful.\nWe will be hardly human if we do not look back on the process and\ncongratulate ourselves on our tenacity and purpose and strong will. But\nof course the thing was wholly irrational. There were neither plans nor\npurposes, perhaps not even discoverable effort. For when we found the\nwork that we did best, we found also that we did it easiest. And the\noutlines of the most dazzling career are little different. Until habits\nwere formed or prestige acquired which could float these successful\ngeniuses, their life was but the resourceful seizing of opportunity,\nthe utilization, with a minimum of purpose or effort, of the promise of\nthe passing moment. They were living the experimental life, aided by\ngood fortune and opportunity.\n\nNow the youth brought up to the strictly rational ideal is like the\nanimal who tries to get out of his cage by going straight through the\nbars. The duck, beating his wings against his cage, is a symbol of\nthe highest rationality. His logic is plain, simple, and direct. He\nis in the cage; there is the free world outside; nothing but the bars\nseparate them. The problem is simply to fortify his will and effort\nand make them so strong that they will overcome the resistance of the\ncage. His error evidently lies not in his method, but in his estimation\nof the strength of the bars. But youth is no wiser; it has no data\nupon which to estimate either its own strength or the strength of\nits obstacles. It counts on getting out through its own self-reliant\nstrength and will. Like the duck, \u201cimpossible\u201d is a word not found in\nits vocabulary. And like the duck, it too often dashes out its spirit\nagainst the bars of circumstance. How often do we see young people,\nbrought up with the old philosophy that nothing was withheld from those\nwho wanted and worked for things with sufficient determination, beating\ntheir ineffectual wings against their bars, when perhaps in another\ndirection the door stands open that would lead to freedom!\n\nWe do not hear enough of the tragedies of misplaced ambition. When the\nplans of the man of will and determination fail, and the inexorable\nforces of life twist his purposes aside from their end, he is sure\nto suffer the prostration of failure. His humiliation, too, is in\nproportion to the very strength of his will. It is the burden of\ndefeat, or at best the sting of petty success, that crushes men, and\ncrushes them all the more thoroughly if they have been brought up to\nbelieve in the essential rationality of the world and the power of will\nand purpose. It is not that they have aimed too high, but that they\nhave aimed in the wrong direction. They have not set out experimentally\nto find the work to which their powers were adapted, they did not test\ncoolly and impartially the direction in which their achievement lay.\nThey forgot that, though faith may remove mountains, the will alone is\nnot able. There is an urgency on every man to develop his powers to\nthe fullest capacity, but he is not called upon to develop those that\nhe does not possess. The will cannot create talent or opportunity. The\nwise man is he who has the clear vision to discern the one, and the\ncalm patience to await the other. Will, without humor and irony and a\nluminous knowledge of one\u2019s self, is likely to drive one to dash one\u2019s\nbrains out against a stone wall. The world is too full of people with\nnothing except a will. The mistake of youth is to believe that the\nphilosophy of experimentation is enervating. They want to attack life\nfrontally, to win by the boldness of their attack, or by the exceeding\nexcellence of their rational plans and purposes. But therein comes a\ntime when they learn perhaps that it is better to take life not with\ntheir naked fists, but more scientifically,--to stand with mind and\nsoul alert, ceaselessly testing and criticizing, taking and rejecting,\npoised for opportunity, and sensitive to all good influences.\n\nThe experimental life does not put one at the mercy of chance. It is\nrather the rational mind that is constantly being shocked and deranged\nby circumstances. But the dice of the experimenter are always loaded.\nFor he does not go into an enterprise, spiritual or material, relying\nsimply on his reason and will to pull him through. He asks himself\nbeforehand whether something good is not sure to come whichever way\nthe dice fall, or at least whether he can bear the event of failure,\nwhether his spirit can stand it if the experiment ends in humiliation\nand barrenness. It is surprising how many seeming disasters one finds\none can bear in this anticipatory look; the tension of the failure is\nrelieved, anyhow. By looking ahead, one has insured one\u2019s self up to\nthe limit of the venture, and one cannot lose. But to the man with the\ncarefully planned campaign, every step is crucial. If all does not turn\nout exactly as he intends, he is ruined. He thinks he insures himself\nby the excellence of his designs and the craftiness of his skill. But\nhe insures himself by the strange method of putting all his eggs in one\nbasket. He thinks, of course, he has arranged his plans so that, if\nthey fall, the universe falls with them. But when the basket breaks,\nand the universe does not fall, his ruin is complete.\n\nAmbition and the rational ideal seem to be only disastrous; if\nunsuccessful, they produce misanthropists; if successful, beings that\nprey upon their fellow men. Too much rationality makes a man mercenary\nand calculating. He has too much at stake in everything he does to\nknow that calm disinterestedness of spirit which is the mark of the\nexperimental attitude towards life. Our attitude towards our personal\naffairs, material and spiritual, should be like the interest we take\nin sports and games. The sporting interest is one secret of a healthy\nattitude towards life. The detached enthusiasm it creates is a real\ningredient of happiness. The trouble with the rational man is that\nhe has bet on the game. If his side wins, there is a personal reward\nfor him; if it loses, he himself suffers a loss. He cannot know the\ntrue sporting interest which is unaffected by considerations of the\nend, and views the game as the thing, and not the outcome. To the\nexperimental attitude, failure means nothing beyond a shade of regret\nor chagrin. Whether we win or lose, something has been learned, some\ninsight and appreciation of the workings of others or of ourselves. We\nare ready and eager to begin another game; defeat has not dampened our\nenthusiasm. But if the man who has made the wager loses, he has lost,\ntoo, all heart for playing. Or, if he does try again, it is not for\ninterest in the game, but with a redoubled intensity of self-interest\nto win back what he has lost. With the sporting interest, one looks on\none\u2019s relations with others, on one\u2019s little r\u00f4le in the world, in the\nsame spirit that we look on a political contest, where we are immensely\nstirred by the clash of issues and personalities, but where we know\nthat the country will run on in about the same way, whoever is elected.\nThis knowledge does not work against our interest in the struggle\nitself, nor in the outcome. It only insures us against defeat. It makes\nlife livable by endowing us with disinterestedness. If we lose, why,\nbetter luck next time, or, at worst, is not losing a part of life?\n\nThe experimenter with life, then, must go into his laboratory with the\nmind of the scientist. He has nothing at stake except the discovery\nof the truth, and he is willing to work carefully and methodically\nand even cold-bloodedly in eliciting it from the tangled skein of\nphenomena. But it is exactly in this cheerful, matter-of-fact way that\nwe are never willing to examine our own personalities and ideas. We\ntake ourselves too seriously, and handle our tastes and enthusiasms\nas gingerly as if we feared they would shrivel away at the touch. We\nperpetually either underestimate or overestimate our powers and worth,\nand suffer such losses on account of the one and humiliations on\naccount of the other, as serve to unbalance our knowledge of ourselves,\nand discourage attempts to find real guiding principles of our own or\nothers\u2019 actions. We need this objective attitude of the scientist.\nWe must be self-conscious with a detached self-consciousness,\ntreating ourselves as we treat others, experimenting to discover our\npossibilities and traits, testing ourselves with situations, and\ngradually building up a body of law and doctrine for ourselves, a real\nmorality that will have far more worth and power and virtue than all\nthat has been tried and tested before by no matter how much of alien\nhuman experience. We must start our quest with no prepossessions,\nwith no theory of what ought to happen when we expose ourselves to\ncertain stimuli. It is our business to see what does happen, and then\nact accordingly. If the electrical experimenter started with a theory\nthat like magnetic poles attract each other, he would be shocked to\ndiscover that they actually repelled each other. He might even set it\ndown to some inherent depravity of matter. But if his theory was not\na prejudice but a hypothesis, he would find it possible to revise it\nquickly when he saw how the poles actually behaved. And he would not\nfeel any particular chagrin or humiliation.\n\nBut we usually find it so hard to revise our theories about ourselves\nand each other. We hold them as prejudices and not as hypotheses, and\nwhen the facts of life seem to disprove them, we either angrily clutch\nat our theories and snarl in defiance, or we pull them out of us with\nsuch a wrench that they draw blood. The scientist\u2019s way is to start\nwith a hypothesis and then to proceed to verify it by experiment.\nSimilarly ought we to approach life and test all our hypotheses by\nexperience. Our methods have been too rigid. We have started with\nmoral dogmas, and when life obstinately refused to ratify them, we\nhave railed at it, questioned its sincerity, instead of adopting some\nnew hypothesis, which more nearly fitted our experience, and testing\nit until we hit on the principle which explained our workings to\nourselves. The common-sense, rule-of-thumb morality which has come down\nto us is no more valid than the common-sense, scientific observation\nthat the sun goes round the earth. We can rely no longer on the loose\ngleanings of homely proverb and common sense for our knowledge of\npersonality and human nature and life.\n\nIf we do not adopt the experimental life, we are still in bondage to\nconvention. To learn of life from others\u2019 words is like learning to\nbuild a steam-engine from books in the class-room. We may learn of\nprinciples in the spiritual life that have proven true for millions\nof men, but even these we must test to see if they hold true for our\nindividual world. We can never attain any self-reliant morality if we\nallow ourselves to be hypnotized by fixed ideas of what is good or\nbad. No matter how good our principles, our devotion to morality will\nbe mere lip-service unless each belief is individually tested, and its\npower to work vitally in our lives demonstrated.\n\nBut this moral experimentation is not the mere mechanical repetition of\nthe elementary student in the laboratory, who makes simple experiments\nwhich are sure to come out as the law predicts. The laws of personality\nand life are far more complex, and each experiment discovers something\nreally novel and unique. The spiritual world is ever-creative; the same\nexperiments may turn out differently for different experimenters, and\nyet they may both be right. In the spiritual experimental life, we must\nhave the attitude of the scientist, but we are able to surpass him in\ndaring and boldness. We can be certain of a physical law that as it has\nworked in the past, so it will work in the future. But of a spiritual\nlaw we have no such guarantee. This it is that gives the zest of\nperpetual adventure to the moral life. Human nature is an exhaustless\nfield for investigation and experiment. It is inexhaustible in its\nrichness and variety.\n\nThe old rigid morality, with its emphasis on the prudential virtues,\nneglected the fundamental fact of our irrationality. It believed\nthat if we only knew what was good, we would do it. It was therefore\nsatisfied with telling us what was good, and expecting us automatically\nto do it. But there was a hiatus somewhere. For we do not do what we\nwant to, but what is easiest and most natural for us to do, and if\nit is easy for us to do the wrong thing, it is that that we will do.\nWe are creatures of instincts and impulses that we do not set going.\nAnd education has never taught us more than very imperfectly how to\ntrain these impulses in accordance with our worthy desires. Instead of\nendeavoring to cure this irrationality by directing our energy into the\nchannel of experimentation, it has worked along the lines of greatest\nresistance, and held up an ideal of inhibition and restraint. We have\nbeen alternately exhorted to stifle our bad impulses, and to strain\nand struggle to make good our worthy purposes and ambitions. Now the\nirrational man is certainly a slave to his impulses, but is not the\nrational man a slave to his motives and reasons? The rational ideal has\nmade directly for inflexibility of character, a deadening conservatism\nthat is unable to adapt itself to situations, or make allowance for the\nchanges and ironies of life. It has riveted the moral life to logic,\nwhen it should have been yoked up with sympathy. The logic of the heart\nis usually better than the logic of the head, and the consistency of\nsympathy is superior as a rule for life to the consistency of the\nintellect.\n\nLife is a laboratory to work out experiments in living. That same\nfreedom which we demand for ourselves, we must grant to every one.\nInstead of falling with our spite upon those who vary from the textbook\nrules of life, we must look upon their acts as new and very interesting\nhypotheses to be duly tested and judged by the way they work when\ncarried out into action. Nonconformity, instead of being irritating\nand suspicious, as it is now to us, will be distinctly pleasurable,\nas affording more material for our understanding of life and our\nformulation of its satisfying philosophy. The world has never favored\nthe experimental life. It despises poets, fanatics, prophets, and\nlovers. It admires physical courage, but it has small use for moral\ncourage. Yet it has always been those who experimented with life,\nwho formed their philosophy of life as a crystallization out of that\nexperimenting, who were the light and life of the world. Causes have\nonly finally triumphed when the rational \u201cgradual progress\u201d men have\nbeen overwhelmed. Better crude irrationality than the rationality that\nchecks hope and stifles faith.\n\nIn place, then, of the rational or the irrational life, we preach\nthe experimental life. There is much chance in the world, but there\nis also a modicum of free will, and it is this modicum that we\nexploit to direct our energies. Recognizing the precariousness and\nhaphazardness of life, we can yet generalize out of our experience\ncertain probabilities and satisfactions that will serve us as well\nas scientific laws. Only they must be flexible and they must be\ntested. Life is not a rich province to conquer by our will, or to\nwring enjoyment out of with our appetites, nor is it a market where\nwe pay our money over the counter and receive the goods we desire. It\nis rather a great tract of spiritual soil, which we can cultivate or\nmisuse. With certain restrictions, we have the choice of the crops\nwhich we can grow. Our duty is evidently to experiment until we find\nthose which grow most favorably and profitably, to vary our crops\naccording to the quality of the soil, to protect them against prowling\nanimals, to keep the ground clear of noxious weeds. Contending against\nwind and weather and pests, we can yet with skill and vigilance win a\nliving for ourselves. None can cultivate this garden of our personality\nbut ourselves. Others may supply the seed; it is we who must plough and\nreap. We are owners in fee simple, and we cannot lease. None can live\nmy life but myself. And the life that I live depends on my courage,\nskill, and wisdom in experimentation.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE DODGING OF PRESSURES\n\n\nFor a truly sincere life one talent is needed,--the ability to steer\nclear of the forces that would warp and conventionalize and harden the\npersonality and its own free choices and bents. All the kingdoms of\nthis world lie waiting to claim the allegiance of the youth who enters\non the career of life, and sentinels and guards stand ready to fetter\nand enslave him the moment he steps unwarily over the wall out of the\nfree open road of his own individuality. And unless he dodges them\nand keeps straight on his path, dusty and barren though it may be, he\nwill find himself chained a prisoner for life, and little by little\nhis own soul will rot out of him and vanish. The wise men of the past\nhave often preached the duty of this open road, they have summoned\nyouth to self-reliance, but they have not paid sufficient heed to the\nenemies that would impede his progress. They have been too intent on\nencouraging him to be independent and lead his own life, to point out\nto him the direction from which the subtle influences that might\ncontrol him would come. As a result, young men have too often believed\nthat they were hewing out a career for themselves when they were really\nsimply offering themselves up to some institutional Moloch to be\ndestroyed, or, at the best, passively allowing the career or profession\nthey had adopted to mould and carve them. Instead of working out their\nown destiny, they were actually allowing an alien destiny to work them\nout. Youth enters the big world of acting and thinking, a huge bundle\nof susceptibilities, keenly alive and plastic, and so eager to achieve\nand perform that it will accept almost the first opportunity that comes\nto it. Now each youth has his own unique personality and interweaving\nweb of tendencies and inclinations, such as no other person has ever\nhad before. It is essential that these trends and abilities be so\nstimulated by experience that they shall be developed to their highest\ncapacity. And they can usually be depended upon, if freedom and\nopportunity are given, to grow of themselves upward towards the sun and\nair. If a youth does not develop, it is usually because his nature has\nbeen blocked and thwarted by the social pressures to which every one of\nus is subjected, and which only a few have the strength or the wisdom\nto resist. These pressures come often in the guise of good fortune,\nand the youth meets them halfway, goes with them gladly, and lets them\ncrush him. He will do it all, too, with so easy a conscience, for is\nnot this meeting the world and making it one\u2019s own? It is meeting the\nworld, but it is too often only to have the world make the youth its\nown.\n\nOur spiritual guides and leaders, then, have been too positive, too\nheartening, if such a thing be possible. They have either not seen the\ndangers that lurked in the path, or they have not cared to discourage\nand depress us by pointing them out. Many of our modern guides, in\ntheir panegyrics on success, even glorify as aids on the journey these\nvery dangers themselves, and urge the youth to rely upon them, when he\nshould have been warned not to gaze at all on the dazzling lure. The\nyouth is urged to imitate men who are themselves victims of the very\ninfluences that he should dodge, and doctrines and habits are pressed\nupon him which he should ceaselessly question and never once make his\nown unless he is sure that they fit him. He will have need to be ever\nalert to the dangers, and, in early youth at least, would better think\nmore of dodging them than of attaining the goal to which his elders\ntempt him. Their best service to him would be to warn him against\nthemselves and their influence, rather than to encourage him to become\nlike them.\n\nThe dangers that I speak of are the influences and inducements which\ncome to youth from family, business, church, society, state, to\ncompromise with himself and become in more or less degree conformed\nto their pattern and type. \u201cBe like us!\u201d they all cry, \u201cit is easiest\nand safest thus! We guarantee you popularity and fortune at so small\na price,--only the price of your best self!\u201d Thus they seduce him\ninsidiously rather than openly attack him. They throw their silky\nchains over him and draw him in. Or they press gently but ceaselessly\nupon him, rubbing away his original roughness, polishing him down,\nmoulding him relentlessly, and yet with how kindly and solicitous a\ntouch, to their shape and manner. As he feels their caressing pressure\nagainst him in the darkness, small wonder is it that he mistakes it for\nthe warm touch of friends and guides. They are friends and guides who\nalways end, however, by being masters and tyrants. They force him to\nperpetuate old errors, to keep alive dying customs, to breathe new life\ninto vicious prejudices, to take his stand against the saving new.\nThey kill his soul, and then use the carcass as a barricade against the\nadvancing hosts of light. They train him to protect and conserve their\nown outworn institutions when he should be the first, by reason of his\nclear insight and freedom from crusted prejudice, to attack them.\n\nThe youth\u2019s only salvation lies, then, in dodging these pressures. It\nis not his business to make his own way in life so much as it is to\nprevent some one else from making it for him. His business is to keep\nthe way clear, and the sky open above his head. Then he will grow and\nbe nurtured according to his needs and his inner nature. He must fight\nconstantly to keep from his head those coverings that institutions\nand persons in the guise of making him warm and safe throw over his\nbody. If young people would spend half the time in warding away the\nunfavorable influences that they now spend in conscientiously planning\nwhat they are going to be, they would achieve success and maintain\ntheir individuality. It seems, curiously enough, that one can live\none\u2019s true life and guarantee one\u2019s individuality best in this indirect\nway,--not by projecting one\u2019s self out upon the world aggressively,\nbut by keeping the track clear along which one\u2019s true life may run.\nA sane, well-rounded, original life is attained not so much by taking\nthought for it as by the dodging of pressures that would limit and warp\nits natural growth. The youth must travel the straight road serenely,\nconfident that \u201chis own will come to him.\u201d All he must strive for is\nto recognize his own when it does come, and to absorb and assimilate\nit. His imagination must be large enough to envisage himself and his\nown needs. This wisdom, however, comes to too many of us only after\nwe are hopelessly compromised, after we are encrusted over so deeply\nthat, even if we try to break away, our struggles are at the expense\nof our growth. The first duty of self-conscious youth is to dodge the\npressures, his second to survey the world eagerly to see what is \u201chis\nown.\u201d If he goes boldly ahead at first to seek his own, without first\nmaking provision for silencing the voices that whisper continually at\nhis side, \u201cConform!\u201d--he will soon find himself on alien ground, and,\nif not a prisoner, a naturalized citizen before he has time to think.\n\nNor is this a mere invitation to whimsicality and eccentricity. These\nepithets, in our daily life, are somewhat loosely used for all sorts\nof behavior ranging from nonconformity to pure freakishness. If we\nreally had more original, unspoiled people in the world, we should\nnot use these terms so frequently. If we really had more people who\nwere satisfying their healthy desires, and living the life that\ntheir whole inner conscience told them was best, we should not find\neccentric or queer the self-sustaining men and women who live without\nregard to prejudice. And all real whimsicality is a result rather of\nthe thwarting of individuality than of letting it run riot. It is\nwhen persons of strong personality are subjected to pressures heavier\nthan they can bear that we get real outbursts of eccentricity. For\nsomething unnatural has occurred, a spontaneous flow and progress has\nbeen checked. Your eccentric man par excellence is your perfectly\nconventional man, who never offends in the slightest way by any\noriginal action or thought. For he has yielded to every variety of\npressure that has been brought to bear upon him, and his original\nnature has been completely obscured. The pressures have been, however,\nuniform on every side, so that they have seemingly canceled each other.\nBut this equilibrium simply conceals the forces that have crushed\nhim. The conventional person is, therefore, not the most natural\nbut the most unnatural of persons. His harmlessness is a proof of\nhis tremendous eccentricity. He has been rubbed down smooth on all\nsides like a rock until he has dropped noiselessly into his place in\nsociety. But at what a cost does he obtain this peace! At the cost of\ndepersonalizing himself, and sacrificing his very nature, which, as in\nevery normal person, is precious and worthy of permanence and growth.\nThis treason to one\u2019s self is perhaps the greatest mistake of youth,\nthe one unpardonable sin. It is worse than sowing one\u2019s wild oats,\nfor they are reaped and justice is done; or casting one\u2019s bread upon\nthe waters, for that returneth after many days. But this sin is the\nthrowing away in willfulness or carelessness the priceless jewel of\nself-hood, and with no return, either of recompense or punishment.\n\nHow early and insidious is the pressure upon us to conform to some\ntype whose fitness we have not examined, but which we are forced to\ntake strictly on authority! On the children in the family what a\npetty tyranny of ideas and manners is imposed! Under the guise of\nbeing brought up, how many habits of doubtful value we learned, how\nmany moral opinions of doubtful significance we absorbed, how many\nstrange biases that harass and perplex us in our later life we had\nfastened upon our minds, how many natural and beautiful tendencies\nwe were forced to suppress! The tyranny of manners, of conventional\npoliteness, of puritanical taboos, of superstitious religion, were all\nimposed upon us for no reason that our elders could devise, but simply\nthat they in turn had had them imposed upon them. Much of our early\neducation was as automatic and unconscious as the handing down of the\nimmemorial traditions in a primitive savage tribe. Now I am far from\nsaying that this household tradition of manners and morals is not an\nexcellent thing for us to acquire. Many of the habits are so useful\nthat it is a wise provision that we should obtain them as naturally as\nthe air we breathe. And it is a pressure that we could not, at that\nage, avoid, even if we would. But this childhood influence is a sample\nof true pressure, for it is both unconscious and irresistible. Were we\nto infringe any of the rules laid down for us, the whole displeasure of\nthe family descended upon our heads; they seemed to vie with each other\nin expressing their disapproval of our conduct. So, simply to retain\nour self-respect, we were forced into their pattern of doing things,\nand for no other reason than that it was their pattern.\n\nThis early pressure, however, was mild in comparison with what we\nexperienced as we grew older. We found then that more and more of\nour actions came insensibly but in some way or other before this\ncourt of appeal. We could choose our friends, for instance, only with\nreservations. If we consorted with little boys who were not clean, or\nwho came from the less reputable portions of the town, we were made to\nfeel the vague family disapproval, perhaps not outspoken, but as an\nundercurrent to their attitude. And usually we did not need flagrantly\nto offend to be taught the need of judicious selection, for we were\nsensitive to the feeling that we knew those around us would entertain,\nand so avoided the objectionable people from a diffused feeling that\nthey were not \u201cnice.\u201d When we grew old enough to move in the youthful\nsocial world, we felt this circle of tyranny suddenly widen. It was\nour \u201cset\u201d now that dictated our choices. The family pressure had been\nrather subtle and uneasy; this was bold and direct. Here were the most\narbitrary selections and disqualifications, girls and boys being banned\nfor no imaginable reason except that they were slightly out of the\nordinary, and our little world circumscribed by a rigid public opinion\nwhich punished nonconformity by expulsion. If we tried to dodge this\npressure and assert our own privileges of making lovers and friends, we\nwere soon delivered an ultimatum, and if we refused to obey, we were\nspeedily cast out into utter darkness, where, strange to say, we lacked\neven the approbation of the banned. Sometimes we were not allowed to\nchoose our partners to whom we paid our momentary devotions, sometimes\nwe were not allowed to give them up. The price we paid for free\nparticipation in the parties and dances and love-affairs of this little\nsocial world of youth was an almost military obedience to the general\nfeeling of propriety and suitability of our relationships with others,\nand to the general will of those in whose circle we went. There was apt\nto be a rather severe code of propriety, which bore especially upon\nthe girls. Many frank and natural actions and expressions of opinion\nwere thus inhibited, from no real feeling of self-respect, but from\nthe vague, uncomfortable feeling that somebody would not approve. This\nprice for society was one that we were all willing to pay, but it was a\nbad training. Our own natural likings and dislikings got blunted; we\nceased to seek out our own kind of people and enjoy them and ourselves\nin our own way, but we \u201cwent with\u201d the people that our companions\nthought we ought to \u201cgo with,\u201d and we played the games and behaved\ngenerally as they thought we ought to do.\n\nThe family rather corroborated this pressure than attempted to fortify\nus in our own individuality. For their honor seemed to be involved in\nwhat we did, and if all our walk in life was well pleasing to those\naround us, they were well pleased with us. And all through life, as\nlong at least as we were protected under the sheltering wing of the\nfamily, its members constituted a sort of supreme court over all our\nrelations in life. In resisting the other pressures that were brought\nto bear on us, we rarely found that we had the family\u2019s undivided\nsupport. They loved, like all social groups, a smoothly running person,\nand as soon as they found us doing unconventional things or having\nunusual friends they were vaguely uneasy, as if they were harboring\nin their midst some unpredictable animal who would draw upon them the\ndisapproving glances of the society around them. The family philosophy\nhas a horror for the \u201cqueer.\u201d The table-board is too often a place\nwhere the eccentricities of the world get thoroughly aired. The dread\nof deviation from accepted standards is impressed upon us from our\nyouth up. The threat which always brought us to terms was,--\u201cIf you do\nthis, you will be considered queer!\u201d There was very little fight left\nin us after that.\n\nBut the family has other formidable weapons for bringing us to terms.\nIt knows us through and through as none of our friends and enemies know\nus. It sees us in undress, when all our outward decorations of spirit\nand shams and pretenses are thrown off, and it is not deceived by the\napologies and excuses that pass muster in the world at large and even\nto our own conscience. We can conceal nothing from it; it knows all\nour weakest spots and vulnerable feelings. It does not hesitate to\ntake shameless advantage of that knowledge. Its most powerful weapon\nis ridicule. It can adopt no subtler method, for we in our turn know\nall its own vulnerabilities. And where the world at large is generally\ntoo polite to employ ridicule upon us, but works with gentler methods\nof approbation and coldness, our family associates feel no such\ncompunction. Knowing us as they do, they are able to make that ridicule\ntell. We may have longings for freedom and individuality, but it is a\nterrible dilemma that faces us. Most men would rather be slaves than\nbutts; they would rather be corralled with the herd than endure its\ntaunts at their independence.\n\nBesides the pressure on a youth or girl to think the way the family\ndoes, there is often the pressure brought upon them to sacrifice\nthemselves for its benefit. I do not mean to deprecate that perfectly\nnatural and proper desire to make some return for the care and kindness\nthat have been lavished upon them. But the family insistence often goes\nmuch further than this. It demands not only that its young people shall\nrecompense it for what it has done for them, but that they do it in the\nkind of work and vocation that shall seem proper to it. How often, when\nthe youth or girl is on the point of choosing a congenial occupation\nor profession, does the family council step in and, with the utmost\napparent good-will in the world, dictate differently! And too often the\nmotives are really policy or ambition, or, at best, sheer prejudice.\nIf the youth be not persuaded, then he must bear the brunt of lonely\ntoil without the sympathy or support of those most dear to him. Far\nharder is the lot of the young woman. For there is still so much\nprejudice against a girl\u2019s performing useful work in society, apart\nfrom her God-given duty of getting married, that her initiative is\ncrushed at the very beginning. The need of cultivating some particular\ntalent or interest, even if she has not to earn her living, seems to be\nseldom felt. Yet women, with their narrower life, have a greater need\nof sane and vigorous spiritual habits than do men. It is imperative\nthat a girl be prevented from growing up into a useless, fleshly, and\ntrivial woman, of the type one sees so much of nowadays. Even if a\ngirl does marry, a few intellectual interests and gifts and tastes\nwill not be found to detract from her charm or usefulness. The world\nnever needed so much as it does to-day women of large hearts and large\nminds, whose home and sphere are capable of embracing something beyond\nthe four corners of their kitchen. And the world can get such women\nonly by allowing them the initiative and opportunity to acquire varied\ninterests and qualities while they are young.\n\nThe family often forges sentimental bonds to keep it living together\nlong after the motive and desire have departed. There is no group so\nuncongenial as an uncongenial family. The constant rubbing together\naccentuates all the divergencies and misunderstandings. Yet sometimes\na family whose members are hopelessly mismated will cling together\nthrough sheer inertia or through a conscientious feeling of duty. And\nduty to too many of us is simply a stimulus to that curious love for\nfutile suffering that form some of the darker qualities of the puritan\nsoul. Family duty may not only warp and mutilate many a life that would\nbloom healthily outside in another environment, but it may actually\nmean the pauperization of the weaker members. The claims of members\nof the family upon each other are often overwhelming, and still more\noften quite fictitious in their justice. Yet that old feeling of the\nindissolubility of the family will often allow the weak, who might, if\nforced to shift for themselves, become strong, to suck the lifeblood\nfrom the stronger members. Co\u00f6peration, when it is free and spontaneous\nand on a basis of congeniality, is the foundation of all social life\nand progress, but forced cohesion can do little good. The average\nfamily is about as well mated as any similar group would be, picked\nout at random from society. And this means, where the superstition\nof indissolubility is still effective, that the members share not\nonly all the benefits, but also all each others\u2019 shortcomings and\nirritations. Family life thus not only presses upon its youth to\nconform to its customs and habits and to the opinions of the little\nsocial world in which it lives, but also drags its youth down with\nits claims, and warps it by its tension of uncongeniality, checks\nits spontaneity by its lack of appreciation, and injures its soul by\nfriction and misunderstanding.\n\nThis family pressure upon youth is serious, and potent for much good\nand evil in his later life. It is necessary that he understand how to\nanalyze it without passion or prejudice, and find out just how he can\ndodge the unfavorable pressure without injury to the love that is borne\nhim or the love that he bears to the others. But let him not believe\nthat his love is best shown by submission. It is best shown by a\nresolute determination and assertion of his own individuality. Only he\nmust know, without the cavil of a doubt, what that individuality is; he\nmust have a real imaginative anticipation of its potentialities. Only\nwith this intuition will he know where to dodge and how to dodge.\n\nIt is true that the modern generation seems to be changing all this.\nFamily cohesion and authority no longer mean what they did even twenty\nyears ago. The youth of to-day are willful, selfish, heartless, in\ntheir rebellion. They are changing the system blindly and blunderingly.\nThey feel the pressure, and without stopping to ask questions or\nanalyze the situation, they burst the doors and flee away. Their\nseeming initiative is more animal spirits than anything else. They\nhave exploded the myth that their elders have any superhuman wisdom\nof experience to share with them, or any incontrovertible philosophy\nof life with which to guide their wandering footsteps. But it must be\nadmitted that most have failed so far to find a wisdom and a philosophy\nto take its place. They have too often thrown away the benefits of\nfamily influence on account of mere trivialities of misunderstanding.\nThey have not waited for the real warpings of initiative, the real\npressure of prejudice, but have kicked up their heels at the first\nbreath of authority. They have not so much dodged the pressure as\nfled it altogether. Instead of being intent on brushing away the\nannoying obstacles that interfered with the free growth of their\nown worthier selves, they have mistaken the means for the end, and\nhave merely brushed off the interferences, without first having any\nconsciousness of that worthier self. Now of course this is no solution.\nIt is only as they substitute for the authority that they throw off\na definite authority of their own, crystallized out of their own\nideals and purposes, that they will gain or help others to gain. For\nlack of a vision the people perish. For lack of a vision of their own\npersonalities, and the fresh, free, aggressive, forward, fearless,\nradical life that we all ought to lead, and could lead if we only had\nthe imagination for it, the youth of to-day will cast off the narrowing\nconfining fetters of authority only to wander without any light at\nall. This is not to say that this aimless wandering is not better than\nthe prison-house, but it is to say that the emancipation of the spirit\nis insufficient without a new means of spiritual livelihood to take\nits place. The youth of to-day cannot rest on their liberation; they\nmust see their freedom as simply the setting free of forces within\nthemselves for a cleaner, sincerer life, and for radical work in\nsociety. The road is cut out before them by pioneers; they have but to\nlet themselves grow out in that direction.\n\nI have painted the family pressures in this somewhat lurid hue\nbecause they are patterns of the other attacks which are made upon\nthe youth as he meets the world. The family is a little microcosm,\na sheltered group where youth feels all those currents of influence\nthat sway men in their social life. Some of them are exaggerated, some\nperverted, but they are most of them there in that little world. It\nis no new discovery that in family life one can find heaven or one\ncan find hell. The only pressure that is practically absent in the\nfamily is the economic pressure, by which I mean the inducements,\nand even necessities, that a youth is under of conforming to codes\nor customs and changing his ideals and ideas, when he comes to earn\nhis livelihood. This pressure affects him as soon as he looks for an\nopening, as he calls it, in which to make his living. At that time\nall this talk of natural talents or bents or interests begin to sound\nfar-away and ideal. He soon finds that these things have no commercial\nvalue in themselves and will go but a short way towards providing him\nwith his living. The majority of us \u201cgo to work\u201d as soon as our short\n\u201ceducation\u201d is completed, if not before, and we go not by choice,\nbut wherever opportunity is given. Hence the ridiculous misfits, the\napathy, the restlessness and discontent. The world of young people\naround us seems too largely to be one where both men and girls are\nengaged in work in which they have no interest, and for which they\nhave no aptitude. They are mournfully fettered to their work; all they\ncan seem to do is to make the best of it, and snatch out of the free\nmoments what pleasure and exhilaration they can. They have little hope\nfor a change. There is too much of a scramble for places in this busy,\ncrowded world, to make a change anything but hazardous. It is true that\nrestlessness often forces a change, but it is rarely for the better, or\nin the line of any natural choice or interest. One leaves one\u2019s job,\nbut then one takes thankfully the first job that presents itself; the\nlast state may be worse than the first. By this economic pressure most\nof us are sidetracked, turned off from our natural path, and fastened\nirrevocably to some work that we could only acquire an interest in at\nthe expense of our souls.\n\nIt is a pressure, too, that cannot easily be dodged. We can frankly\nrecognize our defeat, plunge boldly at the work and make it a part\nof ourselves; this course of action, which most of us adopt, is\nreally, however, simply an unconditional surrender. We can drift\nalong apathetically, without interest either in our work or our own\npersonalities; this course is even more disastrous. Or we can quietly\nwait until we have found the vocation that guarantees the success of\nour personalities; this course is an ideal that is possible to very\nfew. And yet, did we but know it, a little thought at the beginning\nwould often have prevented the misfit, and a little boldness when\none has discovered the misfit would often have secured the favorable\nchange. That self-recognition, which is the only basis for a genuine\nspiritual success in life, is the thing that too many of us lack. The\napathy comes from a real ignorance of what our true work is. Then\nwe are twice a slave,--a prey to our circumstance and a prey to our\nignorance.\n\nLike all discoveries, what one\u2019s work is can be found only by\nexperiment. But this can often be an imaginative experiment. One can\ntake an \u201cinventory of one\u2019s personality,\u201d and discover one\u2019s interests,\nand the kind of activity one feels at home with or takes joy in. Yet\nit is true that there are many qualities which cannot be discovered by\nthe imagination, which need the fairy touch of actual use to develop\nthem. There is no royal road to this success. Here the obstacles are\nusually too thick to be dodged. We do not often enough recognize the\nincredible stupidity of our civilization where so much of the work is\nuninteresting and monotonous. That we should consider it a sort of\ntriumph that a man like Mr. John Burroughs should have been able to\nlive his life as he chose, travel along his own highroad, and develop\nhimself in his own natural direction, is a curious reflection on our\nideals of success and on the incompleteness of our civilization. Such a\nman has triumphed, however, because he has known what to dodge. He has\nnot been crushed by the social opinion of his little world, or lured by\nspecious success, or fettered by his \u201cjob,\u201d or hoodwinked by prejudice.\nHe has kept his spirit clear and pure straight through life. It would\nbe well for modern youth if it could let an ideal like this color their\nlives, and permeate all their thoughts and ambitions. It would be well\nif they could keep before them such an ideal as a pillar of fire by day\nand a cloud by night.\n\nIf we cannot dodge this economic pressure, at least we can face it.\nIf we are situated so that we have no choice in regard to our work,\nwe may still resist the influences which its uncongeniality would\nbring to bear upon us. This is not done by forcing an interest in\nit, or liking for it. If the work is socially wasteful or useless or\neven pernicious, as so much business and industrial work to-day is,\nit is our bounden duty not to be interested in it or to like it. We\nshould not be playing our right place in society if we enjoyed such a\nprostitution of energies. One of the most insidious of the economic\npressures is this awaking the interest of youth in useless and wasteful\nwork, work that takes away energy from production to dissipate in\nbarter and speculation and all the thousand ways that men have\ndiscovered of causing money to flow from one pocket to another without\nthe transference of any fair equivalent of real wealth. We can dodge\nthese pressures not by immolating ourselves, but by letting the routine\nwork lie very lightly on our soul. We can understand clearly the nature\nand effects of this useless work we are doing, and keep it from either\nalluring or smothering us. We can cultivate a disinterested aloofness\ntowards it, and keep from breathing its poisonous atmosphere. The extra\nhours we can fill with real interests, and make them glow with an\nintensity that will make our life almost as rich as if we were wholly\ngiven over to a real lifework. We can thus live in two worlds, one\nof which is the more precious because it is one of freedom from very\nreal oppression. And that oppression will seem light because it has the\nreverse shield of liberty. If we do drudgery, it must be our care to\nsee that it does not stifle us. The one thing needful in all our work\nand play is that we should always be on top, that our true personality\nshould always be in control. Our life must not be passive, running\nsimply by the momentum furnished by another; it must have the motive\npower within itself; although it gets the fuel from the stimulation of\nthe world about it, the steam and power must be manufactured within\nitself.\n\nThese counsels of aloofness from drudgery suggest the possibilities of\navoiding the economic pressures where they are too heavy completely to\ndodge, and where the work is an irrevocable misfit. But the pressures\nof success are even more deadly than those of routine. How early is\none affected by that first pressure of worldly opinion which says that\nlack of success in business or a profession is disgraceful! The one\ndevil of our modern world is failure, and many are the charms used by\nthe medicine men to ward him away. If we lived in a state of society\nwhere virtue was its own reward, where our actions were automatically\nmeasured and our rewards duly proportioned to our efforts, a lack of\nsuccess would be a real indication of weakness and flaw, or, at best,\nill-preparation. But where business success is largely dependent on\nthe possession of capital, a lucky risk, the ability to intimidate or\ndeceive, and where professional success is so often dependent upon\nself-assertion or some irrelevant but pleasing trait of personality,\nfailure means nothing more than bad luck, or, at most, inability to\nplease those clients to whom one has made one\u2019s appeal. To dodge this\npressure of fancied failure and humiliation is to have gone a long way\ntowards guaranteeing one\u2019s real success. We are justified in adopting\na pharisaical attitude towards success,--\u201cLord, I thank thee that I\nhave not succeeded as other men have!\u201d To have judged one\u2019s self by\nthe inner standards of truth to one\u2019s own personality, to count the\nconsciousness of having done well, regardless of the corroboration of\na public, as success, is to have avoided this most discouraging of\npressures.\n\nIt is even doubtful whether business or professional success, except\nin the domain of science and art, can be attained without a certain\nbetrayal of soul. The betrayal may have been small, but at some point\none has been compressed, one has yielded to alien forces and conformed\nto what the heart did not give assent to. It may be that one has kept\nsilent when one should have spoken, that one has feigned interests\nand enthusiasms, or done work that one knew was idle and useless, in\norder to achieve some goal; but always that goal has been reached not\nspontaneously but under a foreign pressure. More often than not the\nfortunate one has not felt the direct pressure, has not been quite\nconscious of the sacrifice, but only vaguely uneasy and aware that all\nwas not right within him, and has won his peace only by drugging his\nuneasiness with visions of the final triumph. The pressure is always\nupon him to keep silent and conform. He must not only adopt all the\noutward forms and ceremonies, as in the family and social life, but he\nmust also adopt the traditional ideals.\n\nThe novice soon finds that he is expected to defend the citadel, even\nagainst his own heresies. The lawyer who finds anomalies in the law,\ninjustice in the courts, is not encouraged to publish abroad his\nfacts, or make proposals for reform. The student who finds antiquated\nmethod, erroneous hypotheses in his subject, is not expected to use\nhis knowledge and his genius to remodel the study. The minister who\ncomes upon new and living interpretations for his old creeds is not\nencouraged to speak forth the truth that is in him. Nor is the business\nman who finds corrupt practices in his business encouraged to give the\nsecrets away. There is a constant social pressure on these \u201creformers\u201d\nto leave things alone.\n\nAnd this does not arise from any corrupt connivance with the wrong,\nor from any sympathy with the evildoers. The cry rises equally from\nthe corrupt and the holy, from the men who are responsible for the\nabuses and those who are innocent, from those who know of them and\nthose who do not. It is simply the instinctive reaction of the herd\nagainst anything that savors of the unusual; it is the tendency of\nevery social group simply to resist change. This alarm at innovation is\nuniversal, from college presidents to Catholic peasants, in fashionable\nclub or sewing circle or political party. On the radical there is\nimmediately brought, without examination, without reason or excuse,\nthe whole pressure of the organization to stultify his vision and\nforce him back into the required grooves. The methods employed are\nmany: a warning is issued against him as being unsound and unsafe; his\nmotive is to make trouble, or revenge himself on the directors for some\nslight; finally he is solemnly pilloried as an \u201cenemy of the people.\u201d\nExcellent reasons are discovered for his suppression. Effective working\nof an organization requires co\u00f6peration, but also subordination; in\nthe interests of efficiency, therefore, individual opinion cannot be\nallowed full sway. The reputation of the organization before the world\ndepends on its presenting a harmonious and united front; internal\ndisagreements and criticisms tend to destroy the respect of the public.\nSmoothness of working is imperative; a certain individual liberty must,\ntherefore, be sacrificed for the success of the organization. And if\nthese plausible excuses fail, there is always the appeal to authority\nand to tried and tested experience. Now all these reasons are simply\napologies brought up after the fact to justify the first instinctive\nreaction. What they all mean is this, and only this: He would unsettle\nthings; away with him!\n\nIn olden times, they had sterner ways of enforcing these pressures.\nBut although the stake and dungeon have disappeared, the spirit of\nconservatism does not seem to have changed very much. Educated men\nstill defend the hoariest abuses, still stand sponsor for utterly\nantiquated laws and ideals. That is why the youth of this generation\nhas to be so suspicious of those who seem to speak authoritatively. He\nknows not whom he can trust, for few there are who speak from their own\ninner conviction. Most of our leaders and moulders of public opinion\nspeak simply as puppets pulled by the strings of the conservative\nbigotry of their class or group. It is well that the youth of to-day\nshould know this, for the knowledge will go far towards steeling him\nagainst that most insidious form of pressure that comes from the\nintellectual and spiritual prestige of successful and honored men. When\nyouth sees that a large part of their success has been simply their\nsuccumbing to social pressure, and that their honor is based largely\non the fact that they do not annoy vested interests with proposals or\nagitations for betterment, he will seek to discover new standards of\nsuccess, and find his prophets and guides among the less fortunate,\nperhaps, but among those who have retained their real integrity.\nThis numbing palsy of conservative assent which steals over so many\nbrilliant and sincere young men as they are subjected to the influence\nof prestige and authority in their profession is the most dangerous\ndisease that threatens youth. It can be resisted only by constant\ncriticism and candid vigilance. \u201cProve all things; hold fast to that\nwhich is good,\u201d should be the motto of the intellectual life. Only\nby testing and comparing all the ideals that are presented to one is\nit possible to dodge that pressure of authority that would crush the\nsoul\u2019s original enthusiasms and beliefs. Not doubt but convention is\nthe real enemy of youth.\n\nYet these spiritual pressures are comparatively easy to dodge when\none is once awake to them. It is the physical pressure that those in\npower are able to bring to bear upon the dissenter that constitutes\nthe real problem. The weak man soon becomes convinced of his hardihood\nand audacity in supposing that his ideas could be more valuable than\nthe running tradition, and recants his heresies. But those who stick\nstiff-neckedly out are soon crushed. When the youth is settled in life,\nhas trained for his profession and burned his bridges behind him, it\nmeans a great deal to combat authority. For those in power can make\nuse of the economic pressure to force him to conformity. It is the\nshame of our universities that they are giving constant illustrations\nof this use of arbitrary power, directed usually against nonconformity\nin social and political opinion. Recent examples show the length to\nwhich even these supposedly enlightened institutions are willing to\ngo to prevent social heresy in their midst. Often such harsh measures\nare not needed. A subtle appeal to a man\u2019s honor is effective. \u201cWhile\nyou are a member of a society,\u201d it is said, \u201cit is your duty to think\nin harmony with its ideals and policies. If you no longer agree with\nthose ideals, it is your duty to withdraw. You can fight honorably for\nyour own ideas only from the outside.\u201d All that need be said about this\ndoctrine, so fair and reasonable on the surface, is that it contains\nall the philosophic support that would perpetuate the evil of the\nworld forever. For it means attacking vested evil from the weakest\nvantage-point; it means willfully withdrawing to the greatest distance,\nshooting one\u2019s puny arrows at the citadel, and then expecting to\ncapture it. It means also to deny any possibility of progress within\nthe organization itself. For as soon as dissent from the common inertia\ndeveloped, it would be automatically eliminated. It is a principle,\nof course, that plays directly into the hands of the conservators. It\nis an appeal to honor that is dishonorable. Let it seduce no man\u2019s\nsincerity!\n\nThe principal object of every organization, as every youth soon\ndiscovers who feels dissatisfaction with the policies of church,\nclub, college, or party, is to remain true to type. Each is organized\nwith a central vigilance committee, whose ostensible function is\ndirection, but whose real business is to resist threatening change\nand keep matters as they are. The ideal is smoothness; every part of\nthe machine is expected to run along in its well-oiled groove. Youths\nwho have tried to introduce their new ideas into such organizations\nknow the weight of this fearful resistance. It seems usually as if\nall the wisdom and experience of these elders had taught them only\nthe excellence of doing nothing at all. Their favorite epithet for\nthose who have individual opinions is \u201ctrouble-makers,\u201d forgetting\nthat men do not run the risk of the unpopularity and opprobrium that\naggressiveness always causes, for the sheer love of making trouble.\nThrough an instinct of self-preservation, such an organization always\nplaces loyalty above truth, the permanence of the organization above\nthe permanence of its principles. Even in churches we are told that to\nalter one\u2019s opinion of a creed to which one has once given allegiance\nis basely to betray one\u2019s higher nature. These are the pressures that\nkeep wavering men in the footpaths where they have once put their feet,\nand stunts their truer, growing selves. How many souls a false loyalty\nhas blunted none can say; perhaps almost as many as false duty!\n\nIn the dodging of these pressures many a man finds the real spiritual\nbattle of his life. They are a challenge to all his courage and faith.\nUnless he understands their nature, his defeat will bring despair\nor cynicism. When the group is weak and he is strong, he may resist\nsuccessfully, press back in his turn, actually create a public opinion\nthat will support him, and transfuse it all with his new spirit and\nattitude. Fortunate, indeed, is he who can not only dodge these\npressures but dissolve them! If he is weak and his efforts are useless,\nand the pressure threatens to crush him, he would better withdraw and\nlet the organization go to its own diseased perdition. If he can remain\nwithin without sacrifice to his principles, this is well, for then he\nhas a vantage-ground for the enunciation of those principles. Eternal\nvigilance, however, is the price of his liberty.\n\nThe secret ambition of the group seems to be to turn out all its\nmembers as nearly alike as possible. It seeks to create a type to\nwhich all new adherents shall be moulded. Each group, then, that we\nhave relations with is ceaselessly working to mould us to its type and\npattern. It is this marvellous unseen power that a group has of forming\nafter its own image all that come under its influence, that conquers\nmen. It has the two instincts of self-preservation and propagation\nstrongly developed, and we tend unthinkingly to measure its value in\nterms of its success in the expression of those instincts. Rather\nshould it be measured always in terms of its ability to create and\nstimulate varied individuality. This is the new ideal of social life.\nThis is what makes it so imperative that young men of to-day should\nrecognize and dodge the pressures that would thwart the assertion of\nthis ideal. The aim of the group must be to cultivate personality,\nleaving open the road for each to follow his own. The bond of cohesion\nwill be the common direction in which those roads point, but this is\nfar from saying that all the travelers must be alike. It is enough that\nthere be a common aim and a common ideal.\n\nSocieties are rarely content with this, however; they demand a close\nmechanical similarity, and a conformity to a reactionary and not a\nprogressive type. If we would be resolute in turning our gaze towards\nthe common aim, and dodging the pressure of the common pattern, our\nfamily, business, and social life would be filled with a new spirit. We\ncan scarcely imagine the achievement and liberation that would result.\nIndividuality would come to its own; it would no longer be suspect.\nYouth would no longer be fettered and bound, but would come to its own\nas the leaven and even leader of life. Men would worship progress as\nthey now worship stagnation; their ideal in working together would be a\nliving effectiveness instead of a mechanical efficiency.\n\nThis gospel is no call to ease and comfort. It is rather one of peril.\nThe youth of this generation will not be so lightly seduced, or go so\ninnocently into the bonds of conservatism and convention, under the\nimpression that they are following the inspired road to success. Their\nconsciences will be more delicate. They know now the dangers that\nconfront them and the road they are called on to tread. It is not an\neasy road. It is beset with opportunities for real eccentricity, for\nselfishness, for willfulness, for mere bravado. It would be surprising,\nafter the long premium that has been placed on the pattern, not to see\na reaction in favor of sheer freakishness. Many of our modern radicals\nare examples of this reaction. Yet their method is so sound, their\ngoal so clear and noble, their spirit so sincere, that they are true\npioneers of the new individuality. Their raciness is but the raciness\nof all pioneers everywhere. And much of their irresponsibility is a\nresult of that intolerable pressure against which they are revolting.\nThey have dodged it, but it dogs them and concentrates itself sullenly\nbehind them to punish them for their temerity. The scorn of the world\nhurts and hampers them. That ridicule which the family employed against\ndeviation is employed in all large social movements against the\ninnovators. Yet slowly and surely the new social ideal makes its way.\n\nIt is not a call to the surrendering of obligations, in family\nor business or profession, but it is a call to the criticism of\nobligations. Youth must distinguish carefully between the essential\nduties and the non-essential, between those which make for the\nrealization of the best common ideals, and those which make merely for\nthe maintenance of a dogma or unchallenged superstition. By resisting\nthe pressures that would warp, do we really best serve society; by\nallowing our free personality to develop, do we contribute most to\nthe common good. We must recognize that our real duty is always found\nrunning in the direction of our worthiest desires. No duty that runs\nrough-shod over the personality can have a legitimate claim upon us. We\nserve by being as well as by doing.\n\nIt is easy to distort this teaching into a counsel to unbridled\nselfishness. And that, of course, is the risk. But shall we not\ndare to take the risk? It may be also that in our care to dodge the\npressures, we may lose all the inestimable influences of good that come\nalong mixed in with the hurtful. But shall we not take the risk? Our\njudgments can only grow by exercise; we can only learn by constantly\ndiscriminating. Self-recognition is necessary to know one\u2019s road, but,\nknowing the road, the price of the mistakes and perils is worth paying.\nThe following of that road will be all the discipline one needs.\nDiscipline does not mean being moulded by outside forces, but sticking\nto one\u2019s road against the forces that would deflect or bury the soul.\nPeople speak of finding one\u2019s niche in the world. Society, as we have\nseen, is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of a statue\nit likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.\nBut for us, not the niche but the open road, with the spirit always\ntraveling, always criticizing, always learning, always escaping the\npressures that threaten its integrity. With its own fresh power it will\nkeep strong and true to the journey\u2019s end.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nFOR RADICALS\n\n\nThe great social movement of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow has\nhit us of the younger generation hard. Many of us were early converted\nto a belief in the possibilities of a regenerated social order, and to\na passionate desire to do something in aid of that regeneration. The\nappeal is not only to our sympathy for the weak and exploited, but also\nto our delight in a healthy, free, social life, to an artistic longing\nfor a society where the treasures of civilization may be open to all,\nand to our desire for an environment where we ourselves will be able\nto exercise our capacities, and exert the untrammeled influences which\nwe believe might be ours and our fellows\u2019. All these good things the\nsocial movement seems to demand and seems to offer, and its appeal is\nirresistible. Before the age of machinery was developed, or before\nthe structure of our social system and the relations between classes\nand individuals was revealed, the appeal might have been merely\nsentimental. But it is no longer so. The aims of the social movement\nto-day seem to have all the tremendous power of a practicable ideal.\nTo the satisfactions which its separate ideals give to all the finer\ninstincts of men is added the overwhelming conviction that those\nsatisfactions are most of them realizable here and now by concerted\nmethods which are already partly in operation and partially successful.\nIt is this union of the idealistic and the efficient that gives the\nmovement its hold on the disinterested and serious youth of to-day.\n\nWith that conversion has necessarily come the transvaluation of many\nof our social values. No longer can we pay the conventional respect\nto success or join in the common opinions of men and causes. The\nmighty have been pulled down from their seats, and those of low degree\nexalted. We feel only contempt for college presidents, editors, and\nstatesmen who stultify their talents and pervert their logical and\nhistorical knowledge in defending outworn political philosophies and\neconomic codes. We can no longer wholly believe in the usefulness\nor significance of those teachers and writers who show themselves\nserenely oblivious to the social problems. We become keen analysts of\nthe society around us; we put uncomfortable questions to our sleek\nand successful elders. We criticize the activities in which they\nengage, the hitherto sacred professions and businesses, and learn to\ndistinguish carefully between actually productive work for society,\nwork which makes for the material and spiritual well-being of the\npeople for whom it is done, and parasitic or wasteful work, which\nsimply extends the friction of competition, or lives on the labor or\nprofits of others. We distinguish, too, between the instruction and\nwriting that consists in handing down unexamined and uncriticized moral\nand political ideas, and ideas that let in the fresh air and sunlight\nto the thick prejudices of men. We come to test the papers we read,\nthe teachers we learn from, the professional men we come into contact\nwith, by these new standards. Various and surprising are the new\ninterweavings we discover, and the contrasts and ironies of the modern\nintellectual life. The childlike innocence in which so many seem still\nto slumber is almost incredible to those whose vision is so clear. The\nmechanical way in which educated men tend to absorb and repeat whole\nsystems of formulas is a constant surprise to those whose ideas hum\nand clash and react against each other. But the minds of so many of\nthese men of position seem to run in automatic channels, such that,\ngiven one set of opinions, one could predict with accuracy their whole\nphilosophy of life. Our distrust of their whole spiritual fabric thus\nbecomes fundamental. We can no longer take most of them seriously. It\nis true that they are doing the serious work of the world, while we\ndo nothing as yet except criticize, and perhaps are doomed to fail\naltogether when we try. To be sure, it is exactly their way of doing\nthat serious work that we object to, but still we are the dreamers,\nthey the doers; we are the theorists, they the practical achievers. Yet\nthe precision of our view will not down; we can see in their boasted\nactivity little but a resolute sitting on the lid, a sort of glorified\nroutine of keeping the desk clear. And we would rather remain dreamers,\nwe feel, than do much of their work. Other values we find are changed.\nWe become hopelessly perverted by democracy. We no longer make the\ncareful distinctions between the fit and the unfit, the successful and\nthe unsuccessful, the effective and the ineffective, the presentable\nand the unpresentable. We are more interested in the influences that\nhave produced these seeming differences than in the fact of the\ndifferences themselves. We classify people by new categories. We look\nfor personality, for sincerity, for social sympathy, for democratic\nfeeling, for social productiveness, and we interpret success in terms\nof these attainments.\n\nThe young radical, then, in such a situation and in possession of these\nnew social values, stands on the verge of his career in a mood of\ngreat perplexity. Two questions he must answer,--\u201cWhat is to be done?\u201d\nand \u201cWhat must I do?\u201d If he has had an education and is given a real\nopportunity for the choice of a vocation, his position is crucial. For\nhis education, if it has been in one of the advanced universities, will\nhave only tended to confirm his radicalism and render more vivid the\ncontrast between the new philosophy which is being crystallized there\nout of modern science and philosophy and the new interpretations of\nhistory and ethics, and the obscurantist attitude of so many of our\nintellectual guardians. The youth, ambitious and aggressive, desires an\neffective and serviceable career, yet every career open to him seems\na compromise with the old order. If he has come to see the law as an\nattempt to fit immutable principles of social action on a dynamic\nand ever-growing society; if he has come to see the church as an\norganization working along the lines of greatest spiritual resistance,\npreaching a personal where the world is crying for a social gospel;\nif he has come to see higher education as an esoteric institution\nof savants, only casually reaching down to touch the mass of people\nwith their knowledge and ideas; if he has come to see business as\na clever way of distributing unearned wealth, and the levying of a\nrefined tribute on the property-less workers; if he has come to see\nthe press as devoted to bolstering up all these institutions in their\ninefficiency and inertia;--if he has caught this radical vision of the\nsocial institutions about him, he will find it hard to fit neatly into\nany of them and let it set its brand upon him. It would seem to be a\ntreason not only to society but to his own best self. He would seem to\nhave become one of the vast conspiracy to keep things as they are. He\nhas spent his youth, perhaps, in studying things as they are in order\nto help in changing them into things as they ought to be, but he is now\nconfronted with the question how the change can be accomplished, and\nhow he can help in that accomplishment.\n\nThe attempt to answer these questions seems at first to bring him to a\ndeadlock and to inhibit all his powers. He desires self-development\nand self-expression, and the only opportunities offered him seem to be\nways of life and training that will only mock the best social ideals\nthat he has. This is the dilemma of latter-day youth, and it is a\ndilemma which is new and original to our own age. Earnest men and\nwomen have always had before them the task of adjusting themselves\nto this world, of \u201covercoming the world,\u201d but the proper method has\nalways been found in withdrawing from it altogether, or in passing\nthrough it with as little spot and blemish as possible, not in plunging\ninto its activity and attempting to subjugate it to one\u2019s ideals. Yet\nthis is the task that the young radical sets for himself. Subjugation\nwithout compromise! But so many young men and women feel that this is\nimpossible. Confident of their sincerity, yet distrustful of their\nstrength, eager yet timorous, they stand on the brink, longing to\nserve, but not knowing how, and too likely, through their distrust and\nfears, to make a wreck of their whole lives. They feel somehow that\nthey have no right to seek their own welfare or the training of their\nown talents until they have paid that service to society which they\nhave learned is its due.\n\nIt does not do to tell them that one of their best services will be\nthat training. They demand some more direct way of influencing their\nfellows, some short road to radical activity. It would be good for them\nto know that they cannot hope to accomplish very much in radiating\ntheir ideals without the skill and personality which gives impetus to\nthat radiation. Good-will alone has little efficacy. For centuries\nwell-wishers of men have shown a touching faith in the power of pure\nideals to propagate themselves. The tragic failures of the beginnings\nof the social movement itself were largely due to this belief. Great\nefforts ended only in sentimentality. But we have no intention now that\nthe fund of intellectual and spiritual energy liberated by radical\nthought in the younger generation shall die away in such ineffective\nefforts. To radiate influence, one\u2019s light must shine before men, and\nit must glow, moreover, with a steady and resolute flame, or men will\nneither see nor believe the good works that are being done.\n\nIt would be an easy way out of the dilemma if we could all adopt the\nsolution of Kropotkin, the Russian radical writer, and engage in\nradical journalism. This seems to be the most direct means of bringing\none\u2019s ideals to the people, to be a real fighting on the firing\nline. It is well to remember, however, that a weak propagandist is a\nhindrance rather than an assistance, and that the social movement needs\nthe best of talent, and the skill. This is a challenge to genius, but\nit is also a reminder that those who fight in other ranks than the\nfront may do as valiant and worthy service. One of the first lessons\nthe young radical has to learn is that influence can be indirect as\nwell as direct, and will be strongest when backed by the most glowing\npersonality. So that self-cultivation becomes almost a duty, if one\nwants to be effective towards the great end. And not only personality\nbut prestige; for the prestige of the person from whom ideals come is\none of the strongest factors in driving home those ideas to the mind of\nthe hearer and making them a motive force in his life. Vested interests\ndo not hesitate to make use of the services of college presidents\nand other men of intellectual prestige to give their practices a\nphilosophic support; neither should radicals disdain, as many seem to\ndisdain, the use of prestige as a vantage-ground from which to hurl\ntheir dogmas. Even though Kropotkin himself deprecated his useless\nlearning, his scientific reputation has been a great factor in\nspreading his radical ideas.\n\nIt is the fashion among some radicals to despise the applause of the\nconventional, unthinking mass, and scorn any success which has that\nappreciation as an ingredient. But this is not the way to influence\nthat same crass, unthinking mass or convert it to one\u2019s doctrines. It\nis to alienate at the beginning the heathen to whom the gospel is being\nbrought. And even the radical has the right to be wise as a serpent\nand harmless as a dove. He must see merely that his distinctiveness is\nbased on real merit and not, as many reputations are, on conformity\nto an established code. Scientific research, engineering, medicine,\nand any honest craft, are vocations where it is hard to win prestige\nwithout being socially productive; their only disadvantage lies in the\nfact that their activity does not give opportunity for the influence\nof the kind the radical wishes to exert. Art, literature, and teaching\nare perilous; the pressures to conform are deadly, but the triumphs of\nindividuality splendid. For one\u2019s daily work lies there directly in\nthe line of impressing other minds. The genius can almost swing the\nlash over men\u2019s spirits, and form their ideas for them; he combines\nenormous prestige with enormous direct influence. Law, the ministry,\nand business seem to be peculiarly deadly; it is hard to see how\neminence can be attained in those professions except at the cost of\nmany of one\u2019s social ideals.\n\nThe radical can thus choose his career with full knowledge of the\nsocial possibilities. Where he is forced by economic necessity to\nengage in distasteful and unsocial work, he may still leave no doubt,\nin the small realm he does illuminate, as to his attitude and his\npurpose, his enthusiasm and his hope. For all his powers and talents\ncan be found to contribute something; fusing together they form his\npersonality and create his prestige, and it is these that give the\nreal impetus and the vital impulse that drive one\u2019s beliefs and ideals\ninto the hearts of other men. If he speaks, he will be listened to,\nfor it is faith and not doubt that men strain their ears to hear. It\nis the believing word that they are eager to hear. Let the social\nfaith be in a youth, and it will leak out in every activity of his\nlife, it will permeate his words and color his deeds. The belief and\nthe vision are the essentials; these given, there is little need for\nhim to worry how he may count in society. He will count in spite of\nhimself. He may never know just how he is counting, he may never hear\nthe reverberations of his own personality in others, but reverberate it\nwill, and the timbre and resonance will be in proportion to the quality\nand power of that vision.\n\nThe first concrete duty of every youth to whom social idealism is more\nthan a phrase is to see that he is giving back to society as much\nas or more than he receives, and, moreover, that he is a nourisher\nof the common life and not a drain upon its resources. This was\nTolstoy\u2019s problem, and his solution to the question--\u201cWhat is to be\ndone?\u201d--was--\u201cGet off the other fellow\u2019s back!\u201d His duty, he found,\nwas to arrange his life so that the satisfaction of his needs did not\ninvolve the servitude or the servility of any of his fellow men; to do\naway with personal servants, and with the articles of useless luxury\nwhose production meant the labor of thousands who might otherwise have\nbeen engaged in some productive and life-bringing work; to make his own\nliving either directly from the soil, or by the co\u00f6perative exchange of\nservices, in professional, intellectual, artistic, or handicraft labor.\nSplendidly sound as this solution is, both ethically and economically,\nthe tragic fact remains that so inextricably are we woven into the\nsocial web that we cannot live except in some degree at the expense of\nsomebody else, and that somebody is too often a man, woman, or even\nlittle child who gives grudgingly, painfully, a stint of labor that we\nmay enjoy. We do not see the labor and the pain, and with easy hearts\nand quiet consciences we enjoy what we can of the good things of life;\nor, if we see the truth, as Tolstoy saw it, we still fancy, like him,\nthat we have it in our power to escape the curse by simple living and\nour own labor. But the very food we eat, the clothes we wear, the\nsimplest necessities of life with which we provide ourselves, have\ntheir roots somewhere, somehow, in exploitation and injustice. It is a\ncardinal necessity of the social system under which we live that this\nshould be so, where the bulk of the work of the world is done, not for\nhuman use and happiness, but primarily and directly for the profits of\nmasters and owners. We are all tainted with the original sin; we cannot\nescape our guilt. And we can be saved out of it only by the skill and\nenthusiasm which we show in our efforts to change things. We cannot\nhelp the poisonous soil from which our sustenance springs, but we can\nbe laboring mightily at agitating that soil, ploughing it, turning it,\nand sweetening it, against the day when new seed will be planted and a\nfairer fruitage be produced.\n\nThe solution of these dilemmas of radical youth will, therefore, not\ncome from a renunciation of the personality or a refusal to participate\nactively in life. Granted the indignation at our world as it is,\nand the vision of the world as it might and ought to be, both the\nheightening of all the powers of the personality and a firm grappling\nwith some definite work-activity of life are necessary to make that\nindignation powerful and purging, and to transmute that vision into\nactual satisfaction for our own souls and those of our fellows. It is\na fallacy of radical youth to demand all or nothing, and to view every\npartial activity as compromise. Either engage in something that will\nbring revolution and transformation all at one blow, or do nothing,\nit seems to say. But compromise is really only a desperate attempt\nto reconcile the irreconcilable. It is not compromise to study to\nunderstand the world in which one lives, to seek expression for one\u2019s\ninner life, to work to harmonize it and make it an integer, nor is it\ncompromise to work in some small sphere for the harmonization of social\nlife and the relations between men who work together, a harmonization\nthat will bring democracy into every sphere of life, industrial and\nsocial.\n\nRadical youth is apt to long for some supreme sacrifice and feels that\na lesser surrender is worth nothing. But better than sacrifice is\nefficiency! It is absurd to stand perplexedly waiting for the great\noccasion, unwilling to make the little efforts and test the little\noccasions, and unwilling to work at developing the power that would\nmake those occasions great. Of all the roads of activity that lie\nbefore the youth at the threshold of life, one paramount road must be\ntaken. This fear that one sees so often in young people, that, if they\nchoose one of their talents or interests or opportunities of influence\nand make themselves in it \u201ccompetent ones of their generation,\u201d they\nmust slaughter all the others, is irrational. It is true that the stern\npresent demands singleness of purpose and attention. A worthy success\nis impossible to-day if the labor is divided among many interests. In\na more leisurely time, the soul could encompass many fields, and even\nto-day the genius may conquer and hold at once many spiritual kingdoms.\nBut this is simply a stern challenge to us all to make ourselves\ngeniuses. For serious and sincere as the desire of radical youth may\nbe to lead the many-sided life, a life without a permanent core of\nactive and productive interest, of efficient work in the world, leads\nto dilettantism and triviality. Such efficient work, instead of killing\nthe other interests of life, rather fertilizes them and makes them in\nturn enrich the central activity. Instead of feeding on their time, it\nactually creates time for the play of the other interests, which is all\nthe sweeter for its preciousness.\n\nAlways trying to make sure that the work, apart from the inevitable\ntaint of exploitation which is involved in modern work, is socially\nproductive, that it actually in some way contributes to the material\nor spiritual welfare of the people for whom it is done, and does not\nsimply reiterate old formulas, does not simply extend the friction\nof competition or consist simply in living on the labor and profits\nof others. Such work cannot be found by rule. The situation is a\nreal dilemma for the idealistic youth of to-day, and its solution is\nto be worked out in the years to come. It is these crucial dilemmas\nthat make this age so difficult to live in, that make life so hard to\nharmonize and integrate. The shock of the crassnesses and crudities of\nthe modern social world thrown against the conventionally satisfying\npicture which that world has formed of itself makes any young life of\npurpose and sincerity a real peril and adventure. There are all sorts\nof spiritual disasters lying in wait for the youth who embarks on the\nperilous ocean of radicalism. The disapproval of those around him is\nlikely to be the least of his dangers. It should rather fortify his\nsoul than discourage him. Far more dangerous is it that he lose his way\non the uncharted seas before him, or follow false guides to shipwreck.\nBut the solution is not to stay at home, fearful and depressed. It is\nrather to cultivate deliberately the widest knowledge, the broadest\nsympathy, the keenest insight, the most superb skill, and then set\nsail, exulting in one\u2019s resources, and crowding on every inch of sail.\n\nFor if the radical life has its perils, it also has its great rewards.\nThe strength and beauty of the radical\u2019s position is that he already\nto a large extent lives in that sort of world which he desires. Many\npeople there are who would like to live in a world arranged in some\nsort of harmony with socialistic ideals, but who, believing they\nare impossible, dismiss the whole movement as an idle if delightful\ndream. They thus throw away all the opportunity to have a share\nin the extending of those ideals. They do not see that the gradual\ninfiltration of those ideals into our world as it is does brighten and\nsweeten it enormously. They do not know the power and advantage of\neven their \u201clittle faith\u201d which their inclinations might give them.\nBut the faith of the radical has already transformed the world in\nwhich he lives. He sees the \u201cmuddle\u201d around him, but what he actually\nfeels and lives are the germs of the future. His mind selects out the\nliving, growing ideas and activities of the socially fruitful that\nexist here and now, and it is with these that his soul keeps company;\nit is to their growth and cultivation that he is responsive. This is\nno illusion that he knows, no living in a pleasing but futile world of\nfancy. For this living the socialistic life as far as he is able, he\nbelieves has its efficient part in creating that communal life of the\nfuture. He feels himself, not as an idle spectator of evolution, but as\nan actual co-worker in the process. He does not wait timidly to jump\nuntil all the others are ready to jump; he jumps now, and anticipates\nthat life which all desire, but which most, through inertia, prejudice,\ninsufficient knowledge, and feeble sympathy, distrust or despair of.\nHe knows that the world runs largely on a principle of imitation,\nand he launches boldly his personality into society, confident of its\neffect in polarizing the ideas and attitudes of the wistful. Towards\nhimself he finds gravitating the sort of people that he would find\nin a regenerated social order. To him come instinctively out of his\nreading and his listening the ideas and events that give promise of\nthe actual realization of his ideals. In unlooked-for spots he finds\nthe seeds of regeneration already here. In the midst of the sternest\npracticalities he finds blossoming those activities and personalities\nwhich the unbelieving have told him were impossible in a human world.\nAnd he finds, moreover, that it is these activities and personalities\nthat furnish all the real joy, the real creation, the real life of the\npresent. The prophets and the teachers he finds are with him. In his\ncamp he finds all those writers and leaders who sway men\u2019s minds to-day\nand make their life, all unconscious as they are of the revolutionary\ncharacter of the message, more rich and dynamic. To live this life of\nhis vision practically here in the present is thus the exceeding great\nreward of radical youth. And this life, so potent and glowing amongst\nthe crude malignity of modern life, fortifies and stimulates him, and\ngives him the surety, which is sturdier than any dream or hope, of\nthe coming time when this life will permeate and pervade all society\ninstead of only a part.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE COLLEGE: AN INNER VIEW\n\n\nThe undergraduate of to-day, if he reads the magazines, discovers\nthat a great many people are worrying seriously about his condition.\nCollege presidents and official investigators are discussing his\nscholarship, his extra-curricular activities, and his moral stamina.\nNot content with the surface of the matter, they are going deeper and\nare investigating the college itself, its curriculum, the scholarship\nof the instructors, and its adequacy in realizing its high ideal as\na preparation for life. The undergraduate finds that these observers\nare pretty generally inclined to exonerate him for many of his\nshortcomings, and to lay the blame on the college itself; the system is\nindicted, and not the helpless product.\n\nFor this he is grateful, and he realizes that this dissatisfaction\namong educators, this uneasy searching of the academic heart, promises\nwell for the education of his children, and for himself if he remains\nin college long enough to get the benefit of the reforms. Meanwhile,\nas he attends recitations and meetings of undergraduate societies,\ntalks with his fellow students and the professors, and reads the\ncollege papers, he may, even if he can get no hint of the mysterious\ninner circles where the destinies of the students are shaped and great\nquestions of policy decided, be able himself to see some of the things\nthat complicate college scholarship to-day, from an inner point of\nview which is impossible to the observer looking down from above. He\nmay find in the character of the student body itself, and the way in\nwhich it reacts to what the college offers it, an explanation of some\nof the complications of scholarship that so disturb our critics; and in\na certain new quality in the spirit of the college, something that is\nbeginning to crystallize his own ideals, and to make him count himself\nfortunate that he is receiving his education in this age and no other.\nIn the constitution of college society, and in the intellectual and\nspiritual ideals of the teachers, he may find the explanation of why\nthe college is as it is, and the inspiration of what the college ought\nto be and is coming to be.\n\nThe first thing that is likely to impress the undergraduate is the\nobservation that college society is much less democratic than it used\nto be. It is to be expected, of course, that it will be simply an\nepitome of the society round about it. But the point is, that whereas\nthe college of the past was probably more democratic than the society\nabout it, the present-day college is very much less democratic.\nDemocracy does not require uniformity, but it does require a certain\nhomogeneity, and the college to-day is less homogeneous than that of\nour fathers. For the growing preponderance of the cities has meant\nthat an ever-increasing proportion of city-bred men go to college, in\ncontrast to the past, when the men were drawn chiefly from the small\ntowns and country districts. Since social distinctions are very much\nmore sharply marked in the city than in the country, this trend has\nbeen a potent influence in undemocratizing the college. In ordinary\ncity life these distinctions are not yet, at least, insistent enough to\ncause any particular class feeling, but in the ideal world of college\nlife they become aggravated, and sufficiently acute to cause much\nmisunderstanding and ill-feeling. With increasing fashionableness,\nthe small college, until recently the stronghold of democracy, is\nbeginning to succumb, and to acquire all those delicately devised,\nsubtle forms of snobbery which have hitherto characterized the life\nof the large college. If this tendency continues, the large college\nwill have a decided advantage as a preparation for life, for as a rule\nit is situated in a large city, where the environment more nearly\napproximates the environment of after life than does the artificial and\nsheltered life of the small college.\n\nThe presence of aliens in large numbers in the big colleges, and\nincreasingly in the smaller colleges, is an additional factor in\ncomplicating the social situation. It ought not to be ignored, for\nit has important results in making the college considerably less\ndemocratic even than would otherwise be the case. It puts the American\nrepresentatives on the defensive, so that they draw still more closely\ntogether for self-defense, and pull more tightly their lines of vested\ninterest and social and political privilege. The prejudice of race\ncan always be successfully appealed to in undergraduate matters,\neven to the extent of beguiling many men with naturally democratic\nconsciences into doing things which they would murmur at if called\non to do as individuals, and not as the protectors of the social\nprestige of the college. The fraternities are of course the centre of\nthis vast political system which fills the athletic managerships,\nselects members of the societies, officers of classes and clubs,\neditors and assistants of publications, and performs generally all\nthat indispensable public service of excluding the aliens, the\nunpresentable, and the generally unemployable from activity.\n\nI am aware that most of the colleges pride themselves on the fact\nthat the poor man has an equal chance with the rich to-day to win\nextra-curricular honors, and mingle in college society on a perfect\nplane of social equality with the best. It is true, of course, that\nin college as in real life the exceptional man will always rise\nto the top. But this does not alter the fact that there exists at\ntoo many American colleges a wholesale disfranchisement from any\nparticipation in the extra-curricular activities, that is not based on\nany recognizable principle of talent or ability. It is all probably\ninherent in the nature of things, and to cavil at it sets one down as\nchildish and unpractical. At present it certainly seems inevitable\nand unalterable. The organized efforts of the President recently to\ndemocratize the social situation at Princeton met with such dull,\npersistent hostility on the part of the alumni that they had to be\nabandoned.\n\nThis social situation in the college is not very often mentioned\nin the usual discussions of college problems, but I have dwelt on\nit here at length because I believe that it has a direct bearing on\nscholarship. For it creates an eternal and irreconcilable conflict\nbetween scholarship and extra-curricular activities. Scholarship is\nfundamentally democratic. Before the bar of marks and grades, penniless\nadventurer and rich man\u2019s son stand equal. In college society,\ntherefore, with its sharply marked social distinctions, scholarship\nfails to provide a satisfactory field for honor and reputation. This\nimplies no dislike to scholarship as such on the part of the ruling\nclass in college society, but means simply that scholarship forces an\nunwelcome democratic standard on a naturally undemocratic society. This\nclass turns therefore to the extra-curricular activities as a superior\nfield for distinction, a field where honor will be done a man, not\nonly for his ability, but for the undefinable social prestige which he\nbrings along with him to college from the outside world. There is thus\na division of functions,--the socially fit take the fraternities, the\nmanagerships, the publications, the societies; the unpresentable take\nthe honors and rewards of scholarship. Each class probably gets just\nwhat it needs for after life. The division would thus be palpably fair\nwere it not for the fact that an invidious distinction gets attached to\nthe extra-curricular activities, which turns the energy of many of the\nmost capable and talented men, men with real personality and powers of\nleadership, men without a taint of snobbery, into a mad scramble for\nthese outside places, with consequent, but quite unintentional, bad\neffects on their scholarship.\n\nThe result of all this is, of course, a general lowering of scholarship\nin the college. The ruling class is content with passing marks, and\nhas no ambition to excel in scholarship, for it does not feel that the\nattainment of scholars\u2019 honors confers the distinctions upon it that\nit desires. In addition, this listlessness for scholarship serves to\nretard the work of the scholarly portion of the classes; it makes the\ninstructor work harder, and clogs up generally the work of the course.\nThis listlessness may be partly due to another factor in the situation.\nAn ever larger proportion of college students to-day comes from the\nbusiness class, where fifty years ago it came from the professional\nclass. This means a difference between the intellectual background of\nthe home that the man leaves and of the college to which he comes,\nvery much greater than when college training was still pretty much\nthe exclusive property of the professional man or the solid merchant,\nand almost an hereditary matter. For, nowadays, probably a majority\nof undergraduates are sent to college by fathers who have not had a\ncollege education themselves, but who, reverencing, as all Americans\ndo, Education if not Learning, are ambitious that their sons shall\nhave its benefits. These parents can well afford to set their sons up\nhandsomely so that they shall lose nothing of the well-rounded training\nthat makes up college life; and although it is doubtful whether their\nidea of the result is much more than a vague feeling that college\nwill give their boys tone, and polish them off much in the way that\nthe young ladies\u2019 boarding-school polishes off the girls, they are\na serious factor to be reckoned with in any discussion of college\nproblems.\n\nMost of these young men come thus from homes of conventional religion,\ncheap literature, and lack of intellectual atmosphere, bring few\nintellectual acquisitions with them, and, since they are most of them\ngoing into business, and will therefore make little practical use of\nthese acquisitions in after life, contrive to carry a minimum away\nwith them. In the college courses and talks with their instructors they\ncome into an intellectual atmosphere that is so utterly different from\nwhat they have been accustomed to that, instead of an intellectual\nsympathy between instructor and student, there ensues an intellectual\nstruggle that is demoralizing to both. The instructor has sometimes to\ncarry on a veritable guerilla warfare of new ideas against the pupils\nin his courses, with a disintegrating effect that is often far from\nhappy. If he does not disintegrate, he too often stiffens the youth,\nif of the usually tough traditional cast of mind, into an impregnable\nresolution that defies all new ideas forever after. This divergence\nof ideals and attitudes toward life is one of the most interesting\ncomplications of scholarship, for it is dramatic and flashes out in the\nclass-room, in aspects at times almost startling.\n\nThere is still another thing that complicates scholarship, at least in\nthe larger colleges that have professional schools. Two or three years\nof regular college work are now required to enter the schools of law,\nmedicine, divinity, and education. An undergraduate who looks forward\nto entering these professional schools, too often sees this period of\ncollege work as a necessary but troublesome evil which must be gone\nthrough with as speedily as possible. In his headlong rush he is apt\nto slight his work, or take a badly synthesized course of studies, or,\nin an effort to get all he can while he is in the college, to gorge\nhimself with a mass of material that cannot possibly be digested.\nNow, the college work is of course only prescribed in order that the\nprofessional man may have a broad background of general culture before\nhe begins to specialize. Any hurrying through defeats this purpose, and\nrenders this preliminary work worse than useless. A college course must\nhave a chance to digest if it is to be at all profitable to a man; and\ndigestion takes time. Between the listlessness of the business youths\nwho have no particular interest in scholarship, and the impetuosity of\nthe prospective professional man who wants to get at his tools, the\nordinary scholar who wants to learn to think, to get a robust sort of\nculture in an orderly and leisurely way, and feel his mental muscles\ngrowing month by month, gets the worst of it, or at least has little\nattention paid to him. The instructor is so busy, drumming on the\nlaggards or restraining the reckless, that the scholar has to work out\nmuch of his own salvation alone.\n\nWhether or not all this is good for the scholar in cultivating his\nself-reliance, the general level of scholarship certainly suffers.\nNeither the college administration nor the faculties have been\nentirely guiltless, in the past, of yielding before the rising tide\nof extra-curricular activities. Athletics, through the protection,\nsupervision, and even financial assistance, of the college, have become\na thoroughly unwholesome excrescence on college life. They have become\nthe nucleus for a perverted college sentiment. College spirit has come\nto mean enthusiasm for the winning of a game, and a college that has\nno football team is supposed to have necessarily no college spirit.\nPride and loyalty to Alma Mater, the prestige of one\u2019s college, one\u2019s\nown collegiate self-respect, get bound up and dependent upon a winning\nseason at athletics. It seems amazing sometimes to the undergraduate\nhow the college has surrendered to the student point of view.\nInstructors too often, in meeting students informally, assume that they\nmust talk about what is supposed to interest the student rather than\ntheir own intellectual interests. They do not deceive the student,\nand they do miss a real opportunity to impress their personality upon\nhim and to awaken him to a recognition of a broader world of vital\ninterests than athletic scores and records.\n\nIf the college would take away its patronage of athletics, which puts\na direct premium on semi-professionalism, would circumscribe the\nclub-house features of the fraternities, and force some more democratic\nmethod of selection on the undergraduate societies, would it have the\neffect of raising the general level of scholarship? It surely seems\nthat such a movement on the part of the college administration would\nresult in keeping athletics proportioned directly to the interest that\nthe student body took in it, to the extent of their participation\nin it, and the voluntary support that they gave to it, instead of\nto the amount of money that an army of graduate managers and alumni\nassociations can raise for it and to the exertions of paid professional\ncoaches and volunteer rah-rah boys. This would permit college sentiment\nto flow back into its natural channels, so that the undergraduate might\nbegin to feel some pride in the cultural prestige of his college, and\nacquire a new respect for the scholarly achievements of its big men.\nThis would mean an awakened interest in scholarship. The limitation of\nextra-curricular activities would mean that that field would become\nless adequate as a place for acquiring distinction; opportunity would\nbe diminished, and it would become more and more difficult to maintain\nsocial eminence as the _sine qua non_ of campus distinction. Who knows\nbut what these activities might be finally abandoned entirely to the\nunpresentable class, and the ruling class seize upon the field of\nscholarship as a surer way of acquiring distinction, since the old gods\nhad fled?\n\nIf the college is not yet ready to adopt so drastic an attitude, it has\nat least already begun to preach democracy. It is willing to preach\ninspirationally what it cannot yet do actively. In the last few years\nthere has been creeping into the colleges in the person of the younger\nteachers a new spirit of positive conviction, a new enthusiasm, that\nmakes a college education to-day a real inspiration to the man who\ncan catch the message. And at the risk of being considered a traitor\nto his class, the sincere undergraduate of to-day must realize the\nchanged attitude, and ally himself with his radical teachers in spirit\nand activity. He then gets an altered view of college life. He begins\nto see the college course as an attempt, as yet not fully organized\nbut becoming surer of its purpose as time goes on, to convert the\nheterogeneous mass of American youth--scions of a property-getting\nclass with an antiquated tradition and ideals that are out of harmony\nwith the ideals of the leaders of thought to-day; slightly dispirited\naliens, whose racial ideals have been torn and confused by the\ndisintegrating influences of American life; men of hereditary culture;\npenniless adventurers hewing upward to a profession--to a democratic,\nrealistic, scientific attitude toward life that will harmonize and\nexplain the world as a man looks at it, enable him to interpret human\nnature in terms of history and the potentialities of the future, and\nfurnish as solid and sure an intellectual and spiritual support as the\nold religious background of our fathers that has been fading these many\nyears.\n\nThis is the work of the college of to-day, as it was the work of\nthe college of fifty years ago to justify the works of God to man.\nThe college thus becomes for the first time in American history a\nreorganizing force. It has become thoroughly secularized these last\ntwenty years, and now finds arrayed against it, in spirit at least if\nnot in open antagonism, the churches and the conservative moulders of\nopinion. The college has a great opportunity before it to become, not\nonly the teacher, but the inspirational centre of the thought and\nideals of the time.\n\nIf to the rising generation our elders rarely seem quite\ncontemporaneous in their criticisms of things, we in turn are apt to\ntake the ordinary for the unique. We may be simply reading into the\ncollege our own enthusiasms, and may attribute to the college a new\nattitude when it is ourselves that are different. But I am sure that\nsome such ideal is vaguely beginning to crystallize in the minds of the\nyounger professors and the older undergraduates, or those who have been\nout in the world long enough to get a slightly objective point of view.\nThe passing of the classics has meant much more than a mere change\nin the curriculum of the college; it has meant a complete shifting\nof attitude. The classics as a cultural core about which the other\ndisciplines were built up have given place to the social sciences,\nespecially history, which is hailed now by some of its enthusiastic\ndevotees as the sum of all knowledge. The union of humanistic spirit\nwith scientific point of view, which has been longed for these many\nyears, seems on the point of being actually achieved, and it is the new\nspirit that the colleges seem to be propagating.\n\nI am sure that it is a democratic spirit. History, economics, and the\nother social sciences are presented as the record of the development\nof human freedom, and the science of man\u2019s social life. We are told\nto look on institutions not as rigid and eternally fixed, but as\nfluid and in the course of evolution to an ever higher cultivation of\nindividuality and general happiness, and to cast our thinking on public\nquestions into this new mould. A college man is certainly not educated\nto-day unless he gets this democratic attitude. That is what makes the\naristocratic organization of undergraduate life doubly unfortunate. For\none of the most valuable opportunities of college life is the chance to\nget acquainted, not politely and distantly, but intimately, with all\ntypes of men and minds from all parts of the country and all classes\nof society, so that one may learn what the young men of the generation\nare really thinking and hoping. Knowledge of men is an indispensable\nfeature of a real education: not a knowledge of their weaknesses, as\ntoo many seem to mean by the phrase, but knowledge of their strength\nand capabilities, so that one may get the broadest possible sympathy\nwith human life as it is actually lived to-day, and not as it is seen\nthrough the idealistic glasses of former generations. The association\nonly with men of one\u2019s own class, such as the organization of college\nlife to-day fosters, is simply fatal to any broad understanding of\nlife. The refusal to make the acquaintance while in college of as many\nas possible original, self-dependent personalities, regardless of race\nand social status, is morally suicidal. There are indications, however,\nthat the preaching of the democratic gospel is beginning to have its\ninfluence, in the springing-up of college forums and societies which do\nwithout the rigid co\u00f6ptation that has cultivated the cutting one\u2019s self\noff from one\u2019s fellows.\n\nI am sure that it is a scientific spirit. The scientific attitude\ntoward life is no longer kept as the exclusive property of the\ntechnical schools. It has found its way into those studies that have\nbeen known as humanistic, but, in penetrating, it has become colored\nitself, so that the student is shown the world, not as a relentless\nmachine, running according to mechanical laws, but as an organism,\nprofoundly modifiable and directive by human will and purpose. He\nlearns that the world in which he lives is truly a mechanism, but\na mechanism that exists for the purpose of turning out products\nas man shall direct for the enrichment of his own life. He learns\nto appreciate more the application to social life of machinery in\norganization and co\u00f6peration; he gets some idea of the forces that\nbuild up human nature and sway men\u2019s actions. He acquires an impartial\nway of looking at things; effort is made to get him to separate his\npersonal prejudices from the larger view, and get an objective vision\nof men and events. The college endeavors with might and main to\ncultivate in him an open-mindedness, so that at twenty-five he will not\nclose up to the entrance of new ideas, but will find his college course\nmerely introductory to life, a learning of one\u2019s bearings in a great\nworld of thought and activity, and an inspiration to a constant working\nfor better things.\n\nI am sure that it is a critical spirit. A critical attitude toward\nlife is as bad a thing for a boy as it is an indispensable thing for\nan educated man. The college tries to cultivate it gradually in its\nstudents, so that by the end of his four years a man will have come\nsimply not to take everything for granted, but to test and weigh and\nprove ideas and institutions with which he comes in contact. Of course\nthe results are unfortunate when this critical attitude comes with a\nsudden shock so as to be a mere disillusionment, the turning yellow\nof a beautiful world; but it must come if a man is to see wisely and\nunderstand. The college must teach him to criticize without rancor, and\nsee that his cynicism, if that must come too, is purging and cleansing\nand not bitter.\n\nAnd lastly, I am sure that it is an enthusiastic spirit. The college\nwants to give a man a keen desire for social progress, a love for the\narts, a delight in sheer thinking, and a confidence in his own powers.\nIt will do little good to teach a man about what men have thought and\ndone and built unless some spark is kindled, some reaction produced\nthat will have consequences for the future; it will do little good\nto teach him about literature and the arts unless some kind of an\nemotional push is imparted to him that will drive him on to teach\nhimself further and grow into a larger appreciation of the best; it\nwill do little good to enforce scientific discipline unless by it\nthe mind is forged into a keener weapon for attacking problems and\nsolving them scientifically and not superficially. And it is just this\nenthusiasm that the college, and only the college, can impart. We come\nthere to learn from men, not from books. We could learn from books\nas well at home, but years of individual study will not equal the\ninspirational value of one short term of listening to the words of a\nwise and good man. Only enthusiasm can knit the scattered ideals and\ntimorous aspirations into a constructive whole.\n\nSome such spirit as I have endeavored to outline, the college is\nbeginning to be infused with to-day; some such spirit the undergraduate\nmust get if he is to be in the best sense educated and adequately\nequipped for the complex work of the world. If such a spirit is\ninstilled, it almost matters little what the details of his courses\nare, or the mere material of his knowledge. Such an attitude will be a\nsufficient preparation for life, and adequate training for citizenship.\nWe want citizens who are enthusiastic thinkers, not docile and\nuncritical followers of tradition; we want leaders of public opinion\nwith the scientific point of view: unclassed men, not men like the\nleaders of the passing generation, saturated with class prejudices and\nclass ideals.\n\nThe college is rapidly revising its curriculum in line with the new\nstandards. The movement is so new, to be sure, that things have hardly\ngot their bearings yet. Men who graduated only ten years ago tell me\nthat there was nothing like this new spirit when they were in college.\nThe student finds a glut of courses, and flounders around for two or\nthree years before he gets any poise at all. A judicious mixture of\ncompulsory and elective courses seems to be furnishing a helpful guide,\nand a system of honor courses like that recently introduced at Columbia\nprovides an admirable means, not only to a more intensive culture, but\nalso to the synthesis of intellectual interests that creates a definite\nattitude toward life, and yet for the absence of which so many young\nmen of ability and power stand helpless and undecided on the threshold\nof active life. To replace the classics, now irretrievably gone as the\nbackbone of the curriculum, the study of history seems an admirable\ndiscipline, besides furnishing the indispensable background for the\nliterary and philosophical studies. Scientific ethics and social\npsychology should occupy an important place in the revised curriculum.\nThe college cannot afford to leave the undergraduate to the mercies of\nconventional religion and a shifting moral tradition.\n\nThe pedantic, Germanistic type of scholarship is rapidly passing.\nThe divisions, between the departments are beginning to break down.\nAlready the younger instructors are finding their ideal professor in\nthe man who, while he knows one branch thoroughly, is interested in a\nwide range of subjects. The departments are reacting upon one another;\nboth undergraduates and instructors are coming to see intellectual\nlife as a whole, and not as a miscellaneous collection of specialized\nchunks of knowledge. The type of man is becoming common who could go to\nalmost any other department of the college and give a suggestive and\ninteresting, if not erudite, lecture on some subject in connection with\nits work. It is becoming more and more common now that when you touch a\nprofessor you touch a man and not an intellectual specialty.\n\nThe undergraduate himself is beginning to react strongly to this sort\nof scholarship. He catches an inspiration from the men in the faculty\nwho exhibit it, and he is becoming expert in separating the sheep from\nthe goats. He does not want experiments in educational psychology tried\nupon him: all he demands in his teacher is personality. He wants to\nfeel that the instructor is not simply passing on dead knowledge in the\nform it was passed on to him, but that he has assimilated it and has\nread his own experience into it, so that it has come to mean more to\nhim than almost anything in the world.\n\nProfessors are fond of saying that they like to have their students\nreact to what they bring them; the student in turn likes to feel that\nthe professor himself has reacted to what he is teaching. Otherwise his\nteaching is very apt to be in vain. American youth are very much less\ndocile than they used to be, and they are little content any longer to\nhave second-hand knowledge, a little damaged in transit, thrust upon\nthem. The undergraduate wants to feel that the instructor is giving him\nhis best all the time, a piece out of the very warp and woof of his own\nthinking.\n\nThe problem of the college in the immediate future is thus to make\nthese ideals good, to permeate undergraduate society with the new\nspirit, and to raise the level of scholarship by making learning not an\nend in itself but a means to life. The curriculum and administrative\nroutine will be seen simply as means to the cultivation of an attitude\ntowards life. As the ideals crystallize out and the college becomes\nsurer and surer of its purpose, it will find itself leading the thought\nof the age in new channels of conviction and constructive statesmanship\nthrough its inspirational influence on the young men of the time.\nAdmitting that these ideals are still unorganized and unestablished,\nthat in many of the colleges they have hardly begun to appear, while\neven in the larger ones they are little more than tendencies as\nyet,--is it too much to hope that a few years will see the college\nconscious of its purpose, and already beginning to impose on the rank\nand file of its members, instructors and undergraduates alike, the\nideals which have been felt this last decade by the more sensitive?\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nA PHILOSOPHY OF HANDICAP\n\n\nIt would not perhaps be thought, ordinarily, that the man whom physical\ndisabilities have made so helpless that he is unable to move around\namong his fellows, can bear his lot more happily, even though he suffer\npain, and face life with a more cheerful and contented spirit, than\ncan the man whose handicaps are merely enough to mark him out from the\nrest of his fellows without preventing him from entering with them\ninto most of their common affairs and experiences. But the fact is\nthat the former\u2019s very helplessness makes him content to rest and not\nto strive. I know a young man so helplessly disabled that he has to be\ncarried about, who is happy in reading a little, playing chess, taking\na course or two in college, and all with the sunniest good-will in\nthe world, and a happiness that seems strange and unaccountable to my\nrestlessness. He does not cry for the moon.\n\nWhen the handicapped youth, however, is in full possession of his\nfaculties, and can move about freely, he is perforce drawn into all\nthe currents of life. Particularly if he has his own way in the world\nto make, his road is apt to be hard and rugged, and he will penetrate\nto an unusual depth in his interpretation both of the world\u2019s attitude\ntoward such misfortunes, and of the attitude toward the world which\nsuch misfortunes tend to cultivate in men like him. For he has all the\nbattles of a stronger man to fight, and he is at a double disadvantage\nin fighting them. He has constantly with him the sense of being obliged\nto make extra efforts to overcome the bad impression of his physical\ndefects, and he is haunted with a constant feeling of weakness and\nlow vitality which makes effort more difficult and renders him easily\nfaint-hearted and discouraged by failure. He is never confident of\nhimself, because he has grown up in an atmosphere where nobody has been\nvery confident of him; and yet his environment and circumstances call\nout all sorts of ambitions and energies in him which, from the nature\nof his case, are bound to be immediately thwarted. This attitude is\nlikely to keep him at a generally low level of accomplishment unless he\nhave an unusually strong will, and a strong will is perhaps the last\nthing to develop under such circumstances.\n\nThe handicapped man is always conscious that the world does not\nexpect very much from him. And it takes him a long time to see in\nthis a challenge instead of a firm pressing down to a low level of\naccomplishment. As a result, he does not expect very much of himself;\nhe is timid in approaching people, and distrustful of his ability to\npersuade and convince. He becomes extraordinarily sensitive to other\npeople\u2019s first impressions of him. Those who are to be his friends he\nknows instantly, and further acquaintance adds little to the intimacy\nand warm friendship that he at once feels for them. On the other hand,\nthose who do not respond to him immediately cannot by any effort either\non his part or theirs overcome that first alienation.\n\nThis sensitiveness has both its good and its bad sides. It makes\nfriendship the most precious thing in the world to him, and he finds\nthat he arrives at a much richer and wider intimacy with his friends\nthan do ordinary men with their light, surface friendships, based on\ngood fellowship or the convenience of the moment. But on the other hand\nthis sensitiveness absolutely unfits him for business and the practice\nof a profession, where one must be \u201call things to all men,\u201d and the\nprofessional manner is indispensable to success. For here, where he\nhas to meet a constant stream of men of all sorts and conditions, his\nsensitiveness to these first impressions will make his case hopeless.\nExcept with those few who by some secret sympathy will seem to respond,\nhis physical deficiencies will stand like a huge barrier between his\npersonality and other men\u2019s. The magical good fortune of attractive\npersonal appearance makes its way almost without effort in the world,\nbreaking down all sorts of walls of disapproval and lack of interest.\nEven the homely person can attract by personal charm.\n\nThe doors of the handicapped man are always locked, and the key is\non the outside. He may have treasures of charm inside, but they will\nnever be revealed unless the person outside co\u00f6perates with him in\nunlocking the door. A friend becomes, to a much greater degree than\nwith the ordinary man, the indispensable means of discovering one\u2019s own\npersonality. One only exists, so to speak, with friends. It is easy\nto see how hopelessly such a sensitiveness incapacitates a man for\nbusiness, professional or social life, where the hasty and superficial\nimpression is everything, and disaster is the fate of the man who has\nnot all the treasures of his personality in the front window, where\nthey can be readily inspected and appraised.\n\nIt thus takes the handicapped man a long time to get adjusted to his\nworld. Childhood is perhaps the hardest time of all. As a child he is\na strange creature in a strange land. It was my own fate to be just\nstrong enough to play about with the other boys, and attempt all their\ngames and \u201cstunts,\u201d without being strong enough actually to succeed in\nany of them. It never used to occur to me that my failures and lack of\nskill were due to circumstances beyond my control, but I would always\nimpute them, in consequence of my rigid Calvinistic bringing-up, I\nsuppose, to some moral weakness of my own. I suffered tortures in\ntrying to learn to skate, to climb trees, to play ball, to conform\nin general to the ways of the world. I never resigned myself to the\ninevitable, but over-exerted myself constantly in a grim determination\nto succeed. I was good at my lessons, and through timidity rather\nthan priggishness, I hope, a very well-behaved boy at school; I was\ndevoted, too, to music, and learned to play the piano pretty well. But\nI despised my reputation for excellence in these things, and instead of\nadapting myself philosophically to the situation, I strove and have\nbeen striving ever since to do the things I could not.\n\nAs I look back now it seems perfectly natural that I should have\nfollowed the standards of the crowd, and loathed my high marks in\nlessons and deportment, and the concerts to which I was sent by my\naunt, and the exhibitions of my musical skill that I had to give\nbefore admiring ladies. Whether or not such an experience is typical\nof handicapped children, there is tragedy there for those situated as\nI was. For had I been a little weaker physically, I should have been\nthrown back on reading omnivorously and cultivating my music, with\nsome possible results; while if I had been a little stronger, I could\nhave participated in the play on an equal footing with the rest. As it\nwas, I simply tantalized myself, and grew up with a deepening sense of\nfailure, and a lack of pride in that at which I really excelled.\n\nWhen the world became one of dances and parties and social evenings and\nboy-and-girl attachments,--the world of youth,--I was to find myself\nstill less adapted to it. And this was the harder to bear because I was\nnaturally sociable, and all these things appealed tremendously to me.\nThis world of admiration and gayety and smiles and favors and quick\ninterest and companionship, however, is only for the well-begotten\nand the debonair. It was not through any cruelty or dislike, I think,\nthat I was refused admittance; indeed they were always very kind\nabout inviting me. But it was more as if a ragged urchin had been\nasked to come and look through the window at the light and warmth of\na glittering party; I was truly in the world, but not of the world.\nIndeed there were times when one would almost prefer conscious cruelty\nto this silent, unconscious, gentle oblivion. And this is the tragedy,\nI suppose, of all the ill-favored and unattractive to a greater or less\ndegree; the world of youth is a world of so many conventions, and the\nabnormal in any direction is so glaringly and hideously abnormal.\n\nAlthough it took me a long time to understand this, and I continued\nto attribute my failure mostly to my own character, trying hard to\ncompensate for my physical deficiencies by skill and cleverness, I\nsuffered comparatively few pangs, and got much better adjusted to this\nworld than to the other. For I was older, and I had acquired a lively\ninterest in all the social politics; I would get so interested in\nwatching how people behaved, and in sizing them up, that only at rare\nintervals would I remember that I was really having no hand in the\ngame. This interest just in the ways people are human, has become more\nand more a positive advantage in my life, and has kept sweet many a\nsituation that might easily have cost me a pang. Not that a person with\ndisabilities should be a sort of detective, evil-mindedly using his\nsocial opportunities for spying out and analyzing his friends\u2019 foibles,\nbut that, if he does acquire an interest in people quite apart from\ntheir relation to him, he may go into society with an easy conscience\nand a certainty that he will be entertained and possibly entertaining,\neven though he cuts a poor enough social figure. He must simply not\nexpect too much.\n\nPerhaps the bitterest struggles of the handicapped man come when he\ntackles the business world. If he has to go out for himself to look\nfor work, without fortune, training, or influence, as I personally\ndid, his way will indeed be rugged. His disability will work against\nhim for any position where he must be much in the eyes of men, and his\ngeneral insignificance has a subtle influence in convincing those to\nwhom he applies that he is unfitted for any kind of work. As I have\nsuggested, his keen sensitiveness to other people\u2019s impressions of him\nmakes him more than usually timid and unable to counteract that fatal\nfirst impression by any display of personal force and will. He cannot\nget his personality over across that barrier. The cards seem stacked\nagainst him from the start. With training and influence something\nmight be done, but alone and unaided his case is almost hopeless. The\nattitude toward him ranges from, \u201cYou can\u2019t expect us to create a place\nfor you,\u201d to, \u201cHow could it enter your head that we should find any use\nfor you?\u201d He is discounted at the start: it is not business to make\nallowances for anybody; and while people are not cruel or unkind, it is\nthe hopeless finality of the thing that fills one\u2019s heart with despair.\n\nThe environment of a big city is perhaps the worst possible that a\nman in such a situation could have. For the thousands of seeming\nopportunities lead one restlessly on and on, and keep one\u2019s mind\nperpetually unsettled and depressed. There is a poignant mental torture\nthat comes with such an experience,--the urgent need, the repeated\nfailure, or rather the repeated failure even to obtain a chance to\nfail, the realization that those at home can ill afford to have you\nidle, the growing dread of encountering people,--all this is something\nthat those who have never been through it can never realize. Personally\nI know of no particular way of escape. One can expect to do little by\none\u2019s own unaided efforts. I solved my difficulties only by evading\nthem, by throwing overboard some of my responsibility, and taking the\ndesperate step of entering college on a scholarship. Desultory work\nis not nearly so humiliating when one is using one\u2019s time to some\nadvantage, and college furnishes an ideal environment where the things\nat which a man handicapped like myself can succeed really count. One\u2019s\nself-respect can begin to grow like a weed.\n\nFor at the bottom of all the difficulties of a man like me is really\nthe fact that his self-respect is so slow in growing up. Accustomed\nfrom childhood to being discounted, his self-respect is not naturally\nvery strong, and it would require pretty constant success in a\ncongenial line of work really to confirm it. If he could only more\neasily separate the factors that are due to his physical disability\nfrom those that are due to his weak will and character, he might\nmore quickly attain self-respect, for he would realize what he is\nresponsible for, and what he is not. But at the beginning he rarely\nmakes allowances for himself; he is his own severest judge. He longs\nfor a \u201cstrong will,\u201d and yet the experience of having his efforts\npromptly nipped off at the beginning is the last thing on earth to\nproduce that will.\n\nIf the handicapped youth is brought into harsh and direct touch with\nthe real world, life proves a much more complex thing to him than to\nthe ordinary man. Many of his inherited platitudes vanish at the first\ntouch. Life appears to him as a grim struggle, where ability does not\nnecessarily mean opportunity and success, nor piety sympathy, and where\nhelplessness cannot count on assistance and kindly interest. Human\naffairs seem to be running on a wholly irrational plan, and success\nto be founded on chance as much as on anything. But if he can stand\nthe first shock of disillusionment, he may find himself enormously\ninterested in discovering how they actually do run, and he will want\nto burrow into the motives of men, and find the reasons for the crass\ninequalities and injustices of the world he sees around him. He has\npractically to construct anew a world of his own, and explain a great\nmany things to himself that the ordinary person never dreams of finding\nunintelligible at all. He will be filled with a profound sympathy\nfor all who are despised and ignored in the world. When he has been\nthrough the neglect and struggles of a handicapped and ill-favored man\nhimself, he will begin to understand the feelings of all the horde of\nthe unpresentable and the unemployable, the incompetent and the ugly,\nthe queer and crotchety people who make up so large a proportion of\nhuman folk.\n\nWe are perhaps too prone to get our ideas and standards of worth from\nthe successful, without reflecting that the interpretations of life\nwhich patriotic legend, copy-book philosophy, and the sayings of the\nwealthy give us, are pitifully inadequate for those who fall behind in\nthe race. Surely there are enough people to whom the task of making a\ndecent living and maintaining themselves and their families in their\nsocial class, or of winning and keeping the respect of their fellows,\nis a hard and bitter task, to make a philosophy gained through personal\ndisability and failure as just and true a method of appraising the life\naround us as the cheap optimism of the ordinary professional man. And\ncertainly a kindlier, for it has no shade of contempt or disparagement\nabout it.\n\nIt irritates me as if I had been spoken of contemptuously myself, to\nhear people called \u201ccommon\u201d or \u201cordinary,\u201d or to see that deadly and\ndelicate feeling for social gradations crop out, which so many of our\nupper middle-class women seem to have. It makes me wince to hear a man\nspoken of as a failure, or to have it said of one that he \u201cdoesn\u2019t\namount to much.\u201d Instantly I want to know why he has not succeeded, and\nwhat have been the forces that have been working against him. He is\nthe truly interesting person, and yet how little our eager-pressing,\non-rushing world cares about such aspects of life, and how hideously\nthough unconsciously cruel and heartless it usually is!\n\nOften I had tried in argument to show my friends how much of\ncircumstance and chance go to the making of success; and when I reached\nthe age of sober reading, a long series of the works of radical social\nphilosophers, beginning with Henry George, provided me with the\nmaterials for a philosophy which explained why men were miserable and\noverworked, and why there was on the whole so little joy and gladness\namong us,--and which fixed the blame. Here was suggested a goal, and a\ndefinite glorious future, toward which all good men might work. My own\nworking hours became filled with visions of how men could be brought\nto see all that this meant, and how I in particular might work some\ngreat and wonderful thing for human betterment. In more recent years,\nthe study of history and social psychology and ethics has made those\ncrude outlines sounder and more normal, and brought them into a saner\nrelation to other aspects of life and thought, but I have not lost the\nfirst glow of enthusiasm, nor my belief in social progress as the first\nright and permanent interest for every thinking and true-hearted man or\nwoman.\n\nI am ashamed that my experience has given me so little chance to count\nin any way either toward the spreading of such a philosophy or toward\ndirect influence and action. Nor do I yet see clearly how I shall be\nable to count effectually toward this ideal. Of one thing I am sure,\nhowever: that life will have little meaning for me except as I am\nable to contribute toward some such ideal of social betterment, if\nnot in deed, then in word. For this is the faith that I believe we\nneed to-day, all of us,--a truly religious belief in human progress,\na thorough social consciousness, an eager delight in every sign and\npromise of social improvement, and best of all, a new spirit of courage\nthat will dare. I want to give to the young men whom I see,--who, with\nfine intellect and high principles, lack just that light of the future\non their faces that would give them a purpose and meaning in life,--to\nthem I want to give some touch of this philosophy, that will energize\ntheir lives, and save them from the disheartening effects of that\npoisonous counsel of timidity and distrust of human ideals which pours\nout in steady stream from reactionary press and pulpit.\n\nIt is hard to tell just how much of this philosophy has been due to\nhandicap. If it is solely to that that I owe its existence, the price\nhas not been a heavy one to pay. For it has given me something that I\nshould not know how to be without. For, however gained, this radical\nphilosophy has not only made the world intelligible and dynamic to\nme, but has furnished me with the strongest spiritual support. I know\nthat many people, handicapped by physical weakness and failure, find\nconsolation and satisfaction in a very different sort of faith,--in\nan evangelical religion, and a feeling of close dependence on God\nand close communion with him. But my experience has made my ideal of\ncharacter militant rather than long-suffering.\n\nI very early experienced a revulsion against the rigid Presbyterianism\nin which I had been brought up,--a purely intellectual revulsion, I\nbelieve, because my mind was occupied for a long time afterwards with\ntheological questions, and the only feeling that entered into it was a\nsort of disgust at the arrogance of damning so great a proportion of\nthe human race. I read T. W. Higginson\u2019s \u201cThe Sympathy of Religions\u201d\nwith the greatest satisfaction, and attended the Unitarian church\nwhenever I could slip away. This faith, while it still appeals to me,\nseems at times a little too static and refined to satisfy me with\ncompleteness. For some time there was a considerable bitterness in my\nheart at the narrowness of the people who could still find comfort in\nthe old faith. Reading Buckle and Oliver Wendell Holmes gave me a new\ncontempt for \u201cconventionality,\u201d and my social philosophy still further\ntortured me by throwing the burden for the misery of the world on these\nsame good neighbors. And all this, although I think I did not make a\nnuisance of myself, made me feel a spiritual and intellectual isolation\nin addition to my more or less effective physical isolation.\n\nHappily these days are over. The world has righted itself, and I have\nbeen able to appreciate and realize how people count in a social and\ngroup capacity as well as in an individual and personal one, and to\nseparate the two in my thinking. Really to believe in human nature\nwhile striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal\ndevelopment,--to call for and expect much from men and women, and not\nto be disappointed and embittered if they fall short,--to try to do\ngood with people rather than to them,--this is my religion on its human\nside. And if God exists, I think that He must be in the warm sun, in\nthe kindly actions of the people we know and read of, in the beautiful\nthings of art and nature, and in the closeness of friendships. He may\nalso be in heaven, in life, in suffering, but it is only in these\nsimple moments of happiness that I feel Him and know that He is there.\n\nDeath I do not understand at all. I have seen it in its crudest, most\nirrational forms, where there has seemed no excuse, no palliation. I\nhave only known that if we were more careful, and more relentless in\nfighting evil, if we knew more of medical science, such things would\nnot be. I know that a sound body, intelligent care and training,\nprolong life, and that the death of a very old person is neither sad\nnor shocking, but sweet and fitting. I see in death a perpetual warning\nof how much there is to be known and done in the way of human progress\nand betterment. And equally, it seems to me, is this true of disease.\nSo all the crises and deeper implications of life seem inevitably to\nlead back to that question of social improvement, and militant learning\nand doing.\n\nThis, then, is the goal of my religion,--the bringing of fuller, richer\nlife to more people on this earth. All institutions and all works that\ndo not have this for their object are useless and pernicious. And\nthis is not to be a mere philosophic precept which may well be buried\nunder a host of more immediate matter, but a living faith, to permeate\none\u2019s thought, and transfuse one\u2019s life. Prevention must be the method\nagainst evil. To remove temptation from men, and to apply the stimulus\nwhich shall call forth their highest endeavors,--these seem to me the\nonly right principles of ethical endeavor. Not to keep waging the\nage-long battle with sin and poverty, but to make the air around men\nso pure that foul lungs cannot breathe it,--this should be our noblest\nreligious aim.\n\nEducation, knowledge and training,--I have felt so keenly my lack\nof these things that I count them as the greatest of means toward\nmaking life noble and happy. The lack of stimulus has tended with me\nto dissipate the power which might otherwise have been concentrated\nin some one productive direction. Or perhaps it was the many weak\nstimuli that constantly incited me and thus kept me from following one\nparticular bent. I look back on what seems a long waste of intellectual\npower, time frittered away in groping and moping, which might easily\nhave been spent constructively. A defect in one of the physical senses\noften means a keener sensitiveness in the others, but it seems that\nunless the sphere of action that the handicapped man has is very much\nnarrowed, his intellectual ability will not grow in compensation for\nhis physical defects. He will always feel that, had he been strong or\neven successful, he would have been further advanced intellectually,\nand would have attained greater command over his powers. For his mind\ntends to be cultivated extensively, rather than intensively. He has so\nmany problems to meet, so many things to explain to himself, that he\nacquires a wide rather than a profound knowledge. Perhaps eventually,\nby eliminating most of these interests as practicable fields, he may\ntie himself down to one line of work; but at first he is pretty apt\nto find his mind rebellious. If he is eager and active, he will get\na smattering of too many things, and his imperfect, badly trained\norganism will make intense application very difficult.\n\nNow that I have talked a little of my philosophy of life, particularly\nabout what I want to put into it, there is something to be said also\nof its enjoyment, and what I may hope to get out of it. I have said\nthat my ideal of character was militant rather than long-suffering.\nIt is true that my world has been one of failure and deficit,--I have\naccomplished practically nothing alone, and until my college life freed\nme could count only two or three instances where I had received kindly\ncounsel and suggestion; moreover it still seems a miracle to me that\nmoney can be spent for anything beyond the necessities without being\nfirst carefully weighed and pondered over,--but it has not been a\nworld of suffering and sacrifice, my health has been almost criminally\nperfect in the light of my actual achievement, and life has appeared\nto me, at least since my more pressing responsibilities were removed,\nas a challenge and an arena, rather than a vale of tears. I do not\nlike the idea of helplessly suffering one\u2019s misfortunes, of passively\nbearing one\u2019s lot. The Stoics depress me. I do not want to look on my\nlife as an eternal making the best of a bad bargain. Granting all the\ncircumstances, admitting all my disabilities, I want too to \u201cwarm both\nhands before the fire of life.\u201d What satisfactions I have, and they are\nmany and precious, I do not want to look on as compensations, but as\npositive goods.\n\nThe difference between what the strongest of the strong and the most\nwinning of the attractive can get out of life, and what I can, is after\nall so slight. Our experiences and enjoyments, both his and mine, are\nso infinitesimal compared with the great mass of possibilities; and\nthere must be a division of labor. If he takes the world of physical\nsatisfactions and of material success, I at least can occupy the far\nricher kingdom of mental effort and artistic appreciation. And on the\nside of what we are to put into life, although I admit that achievement\non my part will be harder relatively to encompass than on his, at least\nI may have the field of artistic creation and intellectual achievement\nfor my own. Indeed, as one gets older, the fact of one\u2019s disabilities\nfades dimmer and dimmer away from consciousness. One\u2019s enemy is now\none\u2019s own weak will, and the struggle is to attain the artistic ideal\none has set.\n\nBut one must have grown up, to get this attitude. And that is the best\nthing the handicapped man can do. Growing up will have given him one of\nthe greatest satisfactions of his life, and certainly the most durable\none. It will mean at least that he is out of the woods. Childhood has\nnothing to offer him; youth little more. They are things to be gotten\nthrough with as soon as possible. For he will not understand, and he\nwill not be understood. He finds himself simply a bundle of chaotic\nimpulses and emotions and ambitions, very few of which, from the nature\nof the case, can possibly be realized or satisfied. He is bound to be\nat cross-grains with the world, and he has to look sharp that he does\nnot grow up with a bad temper and a hateful disposition, and become\ncynical and bitter against those who turn him away. But grown up, his\nhorizon will broaden; he will get a better perspective, and will not\ntake the world so seriously as he used to, nor will failure frighten\nhim so much. He can look back and see how inevitable it all was, and\nunderstand how precarious and problematic even the best regulated of\nhuman affairs may be. And if he feels that there were times when he\nshould have been able to count upon the help and kindly counsel of\nrelatives and acquaintances who remained dumb and uninterested, he will\nnot put their behavior down as proof of the depravity of human nature,\nbut as due to an unfortunate blindness which it will be his work to\navoid in himself by looking out for others when he has the power.\n\nWhen he has grown up, he will find that people of his own age and\nexperience are willing to make those large allowances for what is out\nof the ordinary, which were impossible to his younger friends, and\nthat grown-up people touch each other on planes other than the purely\nsuperficial. With a broadening of his own interests, he will find\nhimself overlapping other people\u2019s personalities at new points, and\nwill discover with rare delight that he is beginning to be understood\nand appreciated,--at least to a greater degree than when he had to\nkeep his real interests hid as something unusual. For he will begin to\nsee in his friends, his music and books, and his interest in people\nand social betterment, his true life; many of his restless ambitions\nwill fade gradually away, and he will come to recognize all the more\nclearly some true ambition of his life that is within the range of\nhis capabilities. He will have built up his world, and have sifted\nout the things that are not going to concern him, and participation\nin which will only serve to vex and harass him. He may well come to\ncount his disabilities even as a blessing, for it has made impossible\nto him at last many things in the pursuit of which he would only\nfritter away his time and dissipate his interest. He must not think\nof \u201cresigning himself to his fate\u201d; above all, he must insist on his\nown personality. For once really grown up, he will find that he has\nacquired self-respect and personality. Grown-upness, I think, is not a\nmere question of age, but of being able to look back and understand and\nfind satisfaction in one\u2019s experience, no matter how bitter it may have\nbeen.\n\nSo to all the handicapped and the unappreciated, I would say,--Grow up\nas fast as you can. Cultivate the widest interests you can, and cherish\nall your friends. Cultivate some artistic talent, for you will find\nit the most durable of satisfactions, and perhaps one of the surest\nmeans of livelihood as well. Achievement is, of course, on the knees of\nthe gods; but you will at least have the thrill of trial, and, after\nall, not to try is to fail. Taking your disabilities for granted, and\nassuming constantly that they are being taken for granted, make your\nsocial intercourse as broad and as constant as possible. Do not take\nthe world too seriously, nor let too many social conventions oppress\nyou. Keep sweet your sense of humor, and above all do not let any\nmorbid feelings of inferiority creep into your soul. You will find\nyourself sensitive enough to the sympathy of others, and if you do not\nfind people who like you and are willing to meet you more than halfway,\nit will be because you have let your disability narrow your vision and\nshrink up your soul. It will be really your own fault, and not that of\nyour circumstances. In a word, keep looking outward; look out eagerly\nfor those things that interest you, for people who will interest you\nand be friends with you, for new interests and for opportunities to\nexpress yourself. You will find that your disability will come to have\nlittle meaning for you, that it will begin to fade quite completely out\nof your sight; you will wake up some fine morning and find yourself,\nafter all the struggles that seemed so bitter to you, really and truly\nadjusted to the world.\n\nI am perhaps not yet sufficiently out of the wilderness to utter all\nthese brave words. For, I must confess, I find myself hopelessly\ndependent on my friends and my environment. My friends have come to\nmean more to me than almost anything else in the world. If it is far\nharder work to make friendships quickly, at least friendships once\nmade have a depth and intimacy quite beyond ordinary attachments. For\na man such as I am has little prestige; people do not feel the need of\nimpressing him. They are genuine and sincere, talk to him freely about\nthemselves, and are generally far less reticent about revealing their\nreal personality and history and aspirations. And particularly is this\nso in friendships with young women. I have found their friendships the\nmost delightful and satisfying of all. For all that social convention\nthat insists that every friendship between a young man and woman must\nbe on a romantic basis is necessarily absent in our case. There is\nno fringe around us to make our acquaintance anything but a charming\ncompanionship. With all my friends, the same thing is true. The first\nbarrier of strangeness broken down, our interest is really in each\nother, and not in what each is going to think of the other, how he is\nto be impressed, or whether we are going to fall in love with each\nother. When one of my friends moves away, I feel as if a great hole\nhad been left in my life. There is a whole side of my personality that\nI cannot express without him. I shudder to think of any change that\nwill deprive me of their constant companionship. Without friends I\nfeel as if even my music and books and interests would turn stale on\nmy hands. I confess that I am not grown up enough to get along without\nthem.\n\nBut if I am not yet out of the wilderness, at least I think I see the\nway to happiness. With health and a modicum of achievement, I shall\nnot see my lot as unenviable. And if misfortune comes, it will only\nbe something flowing from the common lot of men, not from my own\nparticular disability. Most of the difficulties that flow from that\nI flatter myself I have met by this time of my twenty-fifth year,\nhave looked full in the face, have grappled with, and find in no wise\nso formidable as the world usually deems them,--no bar to my real\nambitions and ideals.\n\n\n  THE END\n\n\n\n\n  The Riverside Press\n\n  CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS\n\n  U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\nPage 112: \u201ckind of spiritual parasites\u201d changed to \u201ckind of spiritual\nparasite\u201d\n\nPage 264: \u201cform sone of the darker\u201d changed to \u201cform some of the darker\u201d","title":"Youth and Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":70814}