,,youth ,,and ,,life ,,by ,,randolph ,s4 ,,bourne ,illustration3 ,publisher mark ,,boston ,,and ,,new ,,york ,,houghton ,,mifflin ,,company ,the ,riverside ,press ,cambridge #aiac ,,copyright1 #aiaa1 #aiab1 ,,and #aiac1 ,,by ,,the ,,atlantic ,,monthly ,,company ,,copyright1 #aiac1 ,,by ,,randolph ,s4 ,,bourne ,,all ,,rights ,,reserved ,published ,march #aiac ,,contents ,i4 ,,youth #a ,,ii4 ,,the ,,two ,,generations #bi ,,iii4 ,,the ,,virtues ,,and ,,the ,,seasons ,,of ,,life #ec ,,iv4 ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,irony #ii ,v4 ,,the ,,excitement ,,of ,,friendship #acc ,,vi4 ,,the ,,adventure ,,of ,,life #aec ,,vii4 ,,some ,,thoughts ,,on ,,religion #ahi ,,viii4 ,,the ,,mystic ,,turned ,,radical #bje ,,ix4 ,,seeing1 ,,we ,,see ,,not #bae ,x4 ,,the ,,experimental ,,life #bbe ,,xi4 ,,the ,,dodging ,,of ,,pressures #bdg ,,xii4 ,,for ,,radicals #bhi ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,college3 ,,an ,,inner ,,view #caa ,,xiv4 ,a ,,philosophy ,,of ,,handicap #ccg ,i ,,youth ,how shall ,i describe ,youth1 the time of contradictions and anomalies8 ,the fiercest radicalisms1 the most dogged conservatisms1 irrepressible gayety1 bitter melancholy1--all these moods are equally part of that showery springtime of life4 ,one thing1 at least1 it clearly is3 a great1 rich rush and flood of energy4 ,it is as if the store of life had been accumulating through the slow1 placid years of childhood1 and suddenly the dam had broken and the waters rushed out1 furious and uncontrolled1 before settling down into the quieter channels of middle life4 ,the youth is suddenly seized with a poignant consciousness of being alive1 which is quite wanting to the nave unquestioning existence of the child4 ,he finds himself overpoweringly urged toward self-expression4 ,just as the baby1 born into a 8great1 blooming1 buzzing confusion10 and attracted by every movement1 every color1 every sound1 kicks madly in response in all directions1 and only gradually gets his movements cordinated into the orderly and precise movements of his elders1--so the youth suddenly born into a confusion of ideas and appeals and traditions responds in the most chaotic way to this new spiritual world1 and only gradually learns to find his way about in it1 and get his thoughts and feelings into some kind of order4 ,fortunate the young man who does not make his entrance into too wide a world4 ,and upon the width and depth of that new world will depend very much whether his temperament is to be radical or conservative1 adventurous or conventional4 ,for it is one of the surprising things about youth that it can so easily be the most conservative of all ages4 ,why do we suppose that youth is always radical8 ,at no age are social proprieties more strictly observed1 and ,church1 ,state1 law1 and order1 more rigorously defended4 ,but ,i like to think that youth is conservative only when its spiritual force has been spent too early1 or when the new world it enters into is found1 for some reason1 to be rather narrow and shallow4 ,it is so often the urgent world of pleasure that first catches the eye of youth2 its flood of life is drawn off in that direction2 the boy may fritter away his precious birthright in pure lightness of heart and animal spirits4 ,and it is only too true that this type of youth is transitory4 ,pleasure contrives to burn itself out very quickly1 and youth finds itself left prematurely with the ashes of middle age4 ,but if1 in some way1 the flood of life is checked in the direction of pleasure1 then it bursts forth in another1--in the direction of ideals2 then we say that the boy is radical4 ,youth is always turbulent1 but the momentous difference is whether it shall be turbulent in passion or in enthusiasm4 ,nothing is so pathetic as the young man who spends his spiritual force too early1 so that when the world of ideals is presented to him1 his force being spent1 he can only grasp at second-hand ideals and mouldy formulas4 ,this is the great divergence which sets youth not only against old age1 but against youth itself3 the undying spirit of youth that seems to be fed by an unquenchable fire1 that does not burn itself out but seems to grow steadier and steadier as life goes on1 against the fragile1 quickly tarnished type that passes relentlessly into middle life4 ,at twenty-five ,i find myself full of the wildest radicalisms1 and look with dismay at my childhood friends who are already settled down1 have achieved babies and responsibilities1 and have somehow got ten years beyond me in a day4 ,and this divergence shows itself in a thousand different ways4 ,it may be a temptation to a world of pleasure1 it may be a sheltering from the stimulus of ideas1 or even a sluggish temperament1 that separates traditional and adventurous youth1 but fundamentally it is a question of how youth takes the world4 ,and here ,i find that ,i can no longer drag the traditional youth along with me in this paper4 ,there are many of him1 ,i know1 but ,i do not like him1 and ,i know nothing about him4 ,let us rather look at the way radical youth grows into and meets the world4 ,from the state of 8the little child1 to whom the sky is a roof of blue1 the world a screen of opaque and disconnected facts1 the home a thing eternal1 and #8being good' just simple obedience to unquestioned authority10 one steps suddenly into that 8vast world of adult perception1 pierced deep by flaring search-lights of partial understanding40 ,the child has an utter sense of security2 childhood is unconscious even that it is alive4 ,it has neither fears nor anxieties1 because it is incorrigibly poetical4 ,it idealizes everything that it touches4 ,it is unfair1 perhaps1 to blame parents and teachers1 as we sometimes do in youth1 for consciously biasing our child-minds in a falsely idealistic direction2 for the child will infallibly idealize even his poorest of experiences4 ,his broken glimpses and anticipations of his own future show him everything that is orderly1 happy1 and beautifully fit4 ,he sees his grown-up life as old age1 itself a sort of reversed childhood1 sees its youth4 ,the passing of childhood into youth is1 therefore1 like suddenly being turned from the cosy comfort of a warm fireside to shift for one's self in the world4 ,life becomes in a moment a process of seeking and searching4 ,it appears as a series of blind alleys1 all equally and magnificently alluring1 all equally real and possible4 ,youth's thirst for experience is simply that it wants to be everything1 do everything and have everything that is presented to its imagination4 ,youth has suddenly become conscious of life4 ,it has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil4 ,as the world breaks in on a boy with its crashing thunder1 he has a feeling of expansion1 of sudden wisdom and sudden care4 ,the atoms of things seem to be disintegrating around him4 ,then come the tearings and the grindings and the wrenchings1 and in that conflict the radical or the poet is made4 ,if the youth takes the struggle easily1 or if his guardian angels have arranged things so that there is no struggle1 then he becomes of that conservative stripe that we have renounced above4 ,but if he takes it hard1--if his struggles are not only with outward material conditions1 but also with inner spiritual ones1--then he is likely to achieve that gift of the gods1 perpetual youth4 ,the great paradox is that it is the sleek and easy who are prematurely and permanently old4 ,struggle brings youth rather than old age4 ,in this struggle1 thus beset with problems and crises1 all calling for immediate solution1 youth battles its way into a sort of rationalization4 ,out of its inchoateness emerges a sort of order2 the disturbing currents of impulse are gradually resolved into a character4 ,but it is essential that that resolution be a natural and not a forced one4 ,i always have a suspicion of boys who talk of 8planning their lives40 ,i feel that they have won a precocious maturity in some illegitimate way4 ,for to most of us youth is so imperious that those who can escape the hurly-burly and make a sudden leap into the prudent1 quiet waters of life seem to have missed youth altogether4 ,and ,i do not mean here the hurly-burly of passion so much as of ideals4 ,it seems so much better1 as well as more natural1 to expose one's self to the full fury of the spiritual elements1 keeping only one purpose in view1--to be strong and sincere1--than to pick one's way cautiously along4 ,the old saying is the truest philosophy of youth3 8,seek ye first the ,kingdom of ,god1 and all these things shall be added unto you40 ,how impossible for a youth who is really young to plan his life consciously6 ,this process that one sometimes sees of cautiously becoming acquainted with various ideas and systems1 and then choosing deliberately those that will be best adapted to a concerted plan1 is almost uncanny4 ,this confidence in one's immunity to ideas that would tend to disarrange the harmony of the scheme is mystifying and irritating4 ,youth talks of 8getting0 or 8accepting0 ideas6 ,but youth does not get ideas1--ideas get him6 ,he may try to keep himself in a state of spiritual health1 but that is the only immunity he can rely upon4 ,he cannot really tell what idea or appeal is going to seize upon him next and make off with him4 ,we speak as if falling in love were a unique phase in the life of youth4 ,it is rather the pattern and symbol of a youth's whole life4 ,this sudden1 irresistible seizure of enthusiasm that he cannot explain1 that he does not want to explain1 what is it but the aspect of all his experience8 ,the youth sees a pretty face1 reads a noble book1 hears a stirring appeal for a cause1 meets a charming friend1 gets fired with the concept of science1 or of social progress1 becomes attracted to a profession1--the emotion that fixes his enthusiasm and lets out a flood of emotion in that direction1 and lifts him into another world1 is the same in every case4 ,youth glories in the sudden servitude1 is content to let the new master lead wherever he will2 and is as surprised as any one at the momentous and startling results4 ,youth is vulnerable at every point4 ,prudence is really a hateful thing in youth4 ,a prudent youth is prematurely old4 ,it is infinitely better1 ,i repeat1 for a boy to start ahead in life in a spirit of moral adventure1 trusting for sustenance to what he may find by the wayside1 than to lay in laboriously1 before starting1 a stock of principles for life1 and burden himself so heavily for the journey that he dare not1 and indeed cannot1 leave his pack unguarded by the roadside to survey the fair prospects on either hand4 ,youth at its best is this constant susceptibility to the new1 this constant eagerness to try experiments4 ,it is here that youth's quarrel with the elder generation comes in4 ,there is no scorn so fierce as that of youth for the inertia of older men4 ,the lack of adjustment to the ideas of youth's elders and betters1 one of the permanent tragedies of life1 is certainly the most sensational aspect of youth4 ,that the inertia of the older people is wisdom1 and not impotence1 is a theory that you will never induce youth to believe for an instant4 ,the stupidity and cruelties of their management of the world fill youth with an intolerant rage4 ,in every contact with its elders1 youth finds them saying1 in the words of ,kipling3-- 8,we shall not acknowledge that old stars fade and alien planets arise1 ,that the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient well-head dries1 ,or any new compass wherewith new men adventure 'neath new skies40 ,youth sees with almost a passionate despair its plans and dreams and enthusiasms1 that it knows so well to be right and true and noble1 brushed calmly aside1 not because of any sincere searching into their practicability1 but because of the timidity and laziness of the old1 who sit in the saddle and ride mankind4 ,and nothing torments youth so much as to have this inertia justified on the ground of experience4 ,for youth thinks that it sees through this sophism of 8experience40 ,it sees in it an all-inclusive attempt to give the world a character1 and excuse the older generation for the mistakes and failures which it has made4 ,what is this experience1 youth asks1 but a slow accretion of inhibitions1 a learning1 at its best1 not to do again something which ought not to have been done in the first place8 ,old men cherish a fond delusion that there is something mystically valuable in mere quantity of experience4 ,now the fact is1 of course1 that it is the young people who have all the really valuable experience4 ,it is they who have constantly to face new situations1 to react constantly to new aspects of life1 who are getting the whole beauty and terror and cruelty of the world in its fresh and undiluted purity4 ,it is only the interpretation of this first collision with life that is worth anything4 ,for the weakness of experience is that it so soon gets stereotyped2 without new situations and crises it becomes so conventional as to be practically unconscious4 ,very few people get any really new experience after they are twenty-five1 unless there is a real change of environment4 ,most older men live only in the experience of their youthful years4 ,if we get few ideas after we are twenty-five1 we get few ideals after we are twenty4 ,a man's spiritual fabric is woven by that time1 and his 8experience10 if he keeps true to himself1 consists simply in broadening and enriching it1 but not in adding to it in arithmetical proportion as the years roll on1 in the way that the wise teachers of youth would have us believe4 ,but few men remain quite true to themselves4 ,as their youthful ideals come into contact with the harshnesses of life1 the brightest succumb and go to the wall4 ,and the hardy ones that survive contain all that is vital in the future experience of the man1--so that the ideas of older men seem often the curious parodies or even burlesques of what must have been the cleaner and more potent ideas of their youth4 ,older people seem often to be resting on their oars1 drifting on the spiritual current that youth has set going in life1 or 8coasting0 on the momentum that the strong push of youth has given them4 ,there is no great gulf between youth and middle age1 as there is between childhood and youth4 ,adults are little more than grown-up children4 ,this is what makes their arrogance so insulting1--the assumption that they have acquired any impartiality or objectivity of outlook1 and have any better standards for judging life4 ,their ideas are wrong1 and grow progressively more wrong as they become older4 ,youth1 therefore1 has no right to be humble4 ,the ideals it forms will be the highest it will ever have1 the insight the clearest1 the ideas the most stimulating4 ,the best that it can hope to do is to conserve those resources1 and keep its flame of imagination and daring bright4 ,therefore1 it is perhaps unfair to say that the older generation rules the world4 ,youth rules the world1 but only when it is no longer young4 ,it is a tarnished1 travestied youth that is in the saddle in the person of middle age4 ,old age lives in the delusion that it has improved and rationalized its youthful ideas by experience and stored-up wisdom1 when all it has done is to damage them more or less--usually more4 ,and the tragedy of life is that the world is run by these damaged ideals4 ,that is why our ideas are always a generation behind our actual social conditions4 ,press1 pulpit1 and bar teem with the radicalisms of thirty years ago4 ,the dead hand of opinions formed in their college days clutches our leaders and directs their activities in this new and strangely altered physical and spiritual environment4 ,hence grievous friction1 maladjustment1 social war4 ,and the faster society moves1 the more terrific is the divergence between what is actually going on and what public opinion thinks is actually going on4 ,it is only the young who are actually contemporaneous2 they interpret what they see freshly and without prejudice2 their vision is always the truest1 and their interpretation always the justest4 ,youth does not simply repeat the errors and delusions of the past1 as the elder generation with a tolerant cynicism likes to think2 it is ever laying the foundations for the future4 ,what it thinks so wildly now will be orthodox gospel thirty years hence4 ,the ideas of the young are the living1 the potential ideas2 those of the old1 the dying1 or the already dead4 ,this is why it behooves youth to be not less radical1 but even more radical1 than it would naturally be4 ,it must be not simply contemporaneous1 but a generation ahead of the times1 so that when it comes into control of the world1 it will be precisely right and coincident with the conditions of the world as it finds them4 ,if the youth of to-day could really achieve this miracle1 they would have found the secret of 8perpetual youth40 99 99 99 99 99 ,in this conflict between youth and its elders1 youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition4 ,youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established1--,why8 ,what is this thing good for8 ,and when it gets the mumbled1 evasive answers of the defenders1 it applies its own fresh1 clean spirit of reason to institutions1 customs1 and ideas1 and1 finding them stupid1 inane1 or poisonous1 turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem4 8,this constant return to purely logical activity with each generation keeps the world supplied with visionaries and reformers1 that is to say1 with saviors and leaders4 ,new movements are born in young minds1 and lack of experience enables youth eternally to recall civilization to sound bases4 ,the passing generation smiles and cracks its weather-worn jokes about youthful effusions3 but this new1 ever-hopeful1 ever-daring1 ever-doing1 youthful enthusiasm1 ever returning to the logical bases of religion1 ethics1 politics1 business1 art1 and social life1--this is the salvation of the world40#a ,this was the youthful radicalism of ,jesus1 and his words sound across the ages 8calling civilization ever back to sound bases40 ,with him1 youth eternally reproaches the ruling generation1--8,o ye of little faith60 ,there is so much to be done in the world2 so much could be done if you would only dare6 ,you seem to be doing so little to cure the waste and the muddle and the lethargy all around you4 ,don't you really care1 or are you only faint-hearted8 ,if you do not care1 it must be because you do not know2 let us point out to you the shockingness of exploitation1 and the crass waste of human personality all around you in this modern world4 ,and if you are faint-hearted1 we will supply the needed daring and courage1 and lead you straight to the attack4 ,these are the questions and challenges that the youth puts to his elders1 and it is their shifty evasions and quibblings that confound and dishearten him4 ,he becomes intolerant1 and can see all classes in no other light than that of accomplices in a great crime4 ,if they only knew6 ,swept along himself in an irrationality of energy1 he does not see the small part that reason plays in the intricate social life1 and only gradually does he come to view life as a 8various and splendid disorder of forces10 and exonerate weak human nature from some of its heavy responsibility4 ,but this insight brings him to appreciate and almost to reverence the forces of science and conscious social progress that are grappling with that disorder1 and seeking to tame it4 ,youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning1 testing attitudes fermenting in the world4 ,if it were not for this troublesome activity of youth1 with its hatred of sophisms and glosses1 its insistence on things as they are1 society would die from sheer decay4 ,it is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can1 or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist4 ,but meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same4 ,youth is the drastic antiseptic4 ,it will not let its elders cry peace1 where there is no peace4 ,its fierce sarcasms keep issues alive in the world until they are settled right4 ,it drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained4 ,no wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger4 ,youth is the avenging ,nemesis on its trail4 8,it is young men who provide the logic1 decision1 and enthusiasm necessary to relieve society of the crushing burden that each generation seeks to roll upon the shoulders of the next40 ,our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present1 pessimistic in their views of the future2 youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future4 ,and it is this hope which is the lever of progress1--one might say1 the only lever of progress4 ,the lack of confidence which the ruling generation feels in the future leads to that distrust of the machinery of social reform and social organization1 or the use of means for ends1 which is so characteristic of it to-day4 ,youth is disgusted with such sentimentality4 ,it can never understand that curious paralysis which seizes upon its elders in the face of urgent social innovations2 that refusal to make use of a perfectly definite programme or administrative scheme which has worked elsewhere4 ,youth concludes that its elders discountenance the machinery1 the means1 because they do not really believe in the end1 and adds another count to the indictment4 ,youth's attitude is really the scientific attitude4 ,do not be afraid to make experiments1 it says4 ,you cannot tell how anything will work until you have tried it4 ,suppose science confined its interests to those things that have been tried and tested in the world1 how far should we get8 ,it is possible indeed that your experiments may produce by accident a social explosion1 but we do not give up chemistry because occasionally a wrong mixture of chemicals blows up a scientist in a laboratory1 or medical research because an investigator contracts the disease he is fighting4 ,the whole philosophy of youth is summed up in the word1 ,dare6 ,take chances and you will attain6 ,the world has nothing to lose but its chains--and its own soul to gain6 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have dwelt too long on the conflicts of youth4 ,for it has also its still places1 where it becomes introspective and thinks about its destiny and the meaning of its life4 ,in our artificial civilization many young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of activity4 ,as one looks back1 then1 over eight or nine years1 one sees a panorama of seemingly formidable length4 ,so many crises1 so many startling surprises1 so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and disappointments1 that one feels startlingly old2 one wonders if one will ever feel so old again4 ,and in a sense1 youth at twenty-five is older than it will ever be again4 ,for if time is simply a succession of incidents in our memory1 we seem to have an eternity behind us4 ,middle-aged people feel no such appalling stretch of time behind them4 ,the years fade out one by one2 often the pressure of life leaves nothing of reality or value but the present moment4 ,some of youth's elders seem to enjoy almost a new babyhood1 while youth has constantly with it in all its vividness and multifariousness that specious wealth of abrupt changes1 climaxes and disillusions that have crowded the short space of its life4 ,we often envy the sunny noon of the thirties and forties4 ,these elders of ours change so little that they seem to enjoy an endless summer of immortality4 ,they are so placid1 so robust1 so solidly placed in life1 seemingly so much further from dissolution than we4 ,youth seems curiously fragile4 ,perhaps it is because all beauty has something of the precarious and fleeting about it4 ,a beautiful girl seems too delicate and fine to weather a long life2 she must be burning away too fast4 ,this wistfulness and haunting pathos of life is very real to youth4 ,it feels the rush of time past it4 ,only youth can sing of the passing glory of life1 and then only in its full tide4 ,the older people's lament for the vanished days of youth may be orthodox1 but it rings hollow4 ,for our greatest fears are those of presentiment1 and youth is haunted not only by the feeling of past change1 but by the presentiment of future change4 ,middle age has passed the waters2 it has become static and placid4 ,its wistfulness for youth is unreal1 and a forced sentimentality4 ,in the same breath that it cries for its youth it mocks at youth's preoccupation with the thought of death4 ,the lugubrious harmonies of young poets are a favorite joke4 ,but the feeling of the precariousness of life gives the young man an intimate sense of its preciousness2 nothing shocks him quite so much as that it should be ruthlessly and instantly snatched away4 ,middle age has acclimated itself to the earth1 has settled down familiarly in it1 and is easily be fooled into thinking that it will live here forever1 just as1 when we are settled comfortably in a house1 we cannot conceive ourselves as ever being dislodged4 ,but youth takes a long time to get acclimated4 ,it has seen so many mysteries and dangers about it1 that the presence of the ,greatest ,mystery and the ,greatest ,danger must be the most portentous of things to it4 ,it is this sense of the preciousness of his life1 perhaps1 that makes a youth so impatient of discipline4 ,youth can never think of itself as anything but master of things4 ,its visions are a curious blend of devotion and egotism4 ,its enthusiasm for a noble cause is apt to be all mixed up with a picture of itself leading the cohorts to victory4 ,the youth never sees himself as a soldier in the ranks1 but as the leader1 bringing in some long-awaited change by a brilliant coup d'tat1 or writing and speaking words of fire that win a million hearts at a stroke4 ,and he fights shy of discipline in smaller matters4 ,he does not submit willingly to a course of work that is not immediately appealing1 even for the sake of the glorious final achievement4 ,fortunate it is for the young man1 perhaps1 that there are so many organs of coercion all ready in the world for him1--economic need1 tradition1 and subtle influence of family ambition1--to seize him and nail him fast to some profession or trade or activity1 before he is aware1 or has time to protest or draw back6 ,it is another paradox of youth that1 with all its fine enthusiasm1 it should accomplish so little4 ,but this seeming aimlessness of purpose is the natural result of that deadly fear of having one's wings clipped by discipline4 ,infinitely finer1 it seems to youth1 is it to soar freely in the air1 than to run on a track along the ground6 ,and perhaps youth is right4 ,in his intellectual life1 the young man's scorn for the pedantic and conventional amounts almost to an obsession4 ,it is only the men of imagination and inspiration that he will follow at all4 ,but most of these professors1 these lawyers1 these preachers1--what has been their training and education1 he says1 but a gradual losing of the grip of life1 a slow withdrawing into an ideal world of phrases and concepts and artificial attitudes8 ,their thought seems like the endless spinning out of a spider's web1 or like the camel living upon the fat of his own hump4 ,the youth fears this sophistication of thought as he would fear losing his soul4 ,and this seeming perversity toward discipline is often simply his refusal to let a system submerge his own real and direct reactions to his observation and experience4 ,and yet as he studies more and more1 and acquires a richer material for thought1 a familiarity with words1 and a skill in handling them1 he can see the insidious temptation that comes to thinking men to move all their spiritual baggage over into that fascinating unreal world4 ,and he admires almost with reverence the men who have been able to break through the terrible crust1 and have got their thinking into close touch with life again2 or1 best of all1 those who have kept their thinking constantly checked up with life1 and are occupied with interpreting what they see about them4 ,youth will never be able to see that this is not the only true and right business of thought4 ,it is the glory of the present age that in it one can be young4 ,our times give no check to the radical tendencies of youth4 ,on the contrary1 they give the directest stimulation4 ,a muddle of a world and a wide outlook combine to inspire us to the bravest of radicalisms4 ,great issues have been born in the last century1 and are now loose in the world4 ,there is a radical philosophy that illuminates our environment1 gives us terms in which to express what we see1 and cordinates our otherwise aimless reactions4 ,in this country1 it is true1 where a certain modicum of free institutions1 and a certain specious enfranchisement of the human spirit have been achieved1 youth may be blinded and drugged into an acquiescence in conditions1 and its enthusiasm may easily run into a glorification of the present4 ,in the face of the more urgent ideals that are with us1 it may be inspired by vague ideas of 8liberty10 or 8the rights of man10 and fancy it is truly radical when it is but living on the radicalisms of the past4 ,our political thought moves so slowly here that even our radicalism is traditional4 ,we breathe in with the air about us the belief that we have attained perfection1 and we do not examine things with our own eyes4 ,but more and more of the clear-sighted youth are coming to see the appalling array of things that still need to be done4 ,the radical young man of to-day has no excuse for veering round to the conservative standpoint4 ,cynicism cannot touch him4 ,for it is the beauty of the modern radical philosophy that the worse the world treats a man1 the more it convinces him of the truth of his radical interpretation of it4 ,disillusion comes1 not through hard blows1 but by the insidious sappings of worldly success4 ,and there never was a time when there were so many radical young people who cared little about that worldly success4 ,the secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost4 ,out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate--a sane1 strong1 aggressive spirit of daring and doing4 ,it must be a flexible1 growing spirit1 with a hospitality to new ideas1 and a keen insight into experience4 ,to keep one's reactions warm and true1 is to have found the secret of perpetual youth1 and perpetual youth is salvation4 ,,footnotes3 #a ,earl ,barnes4 ,,ii ,,the ,,two ,,generations ,it is always interesting to see ourselves through the eyes of others1 even though that view may be most unflattering4 ,the recent 8,letter to the ,rising ,generation10#b if ,i may judge from the well-thumbed and underscored copy of the 8,atlantic0 which ,i picked up in the ,college ,library1 has been read with keen interest by many of my fellows1 and doubtless1 too1 with a more emphatic approval1 by our elders4 ,the indictment of an entire generation must at its best be a difficult task1 but the author of the article has performed it with considerable circumspection1 skirting warily the vague and the abstract1 and passing from the judge's bench to the pulpit with a facility that indicates that justice is to be tempered with mercy4 ,the rather appalling picture which she draws of past generations holding their breath to see what my contemporaries will make of themselves suggests1 too1 that we are still on probation1 and so1 before final judgment is passed1 it may be pertinent to attempt1 if not1 from the hopeless nature of the case1 a defense1 at least an extenuation of ourselves4 ,the writer's charge is pretty definite4 ,it is to the effect that the rising generation1 in its reaction upon life and the splendid world which has been handed down to it1 shows a distinct softening of human fibre1 spiritual1 intellectual1 and physical1 in comparison with the generations which have preceded it4 ,the most obvious retort to this is1 of course1 that the world in which we find ourselves is in no way of our own making1 so that if our reactions to it are unsatisfactory1 or our rebellious attitude toward it distressing1 it is at least a plausible assumption that the world itself1 despite the responsible care which the passing generation bestowed upon it1 may be partly to blame4 ,but this1 after all1 is only begging the question4 ,the author herself admits that we are the victims of educational experiments1 and1 in any event1 each generation is equally guiltless of its world4 ,we recognize with her that the complexity of the world we face only makes more necessary our bracing up for the fray4 ,her charge that we are not doing this overlooks1 however1 certain aspects of the situation which go far to explain our seemingly deplorable qualities4 ,the most obvious fact which presents itself in this connection is that the rising generation has practically brought itself up4 ,school discipline1 since the abolition of corporal punishment1 has become almost nominal2 church discipline practically nil2 and even home discipline1 although retaining the forms1 is but an empty shell4 ,the modern child from the age of ten is almost his own master4 ,the helplessness of the modern parent face to face with these conditions is amusing4 ,what generation but the one to which our critic belongs could have conceived of 8mothers' clubs0 conducted by the public schools1 in order to teach mothers how to bring up their children6 ,the modern parent has become a sort of parlement registering the decrees of a ,grand ,monarque1 and occasionally protesting1 though usually without effect1 against a particularly drastic edict4 ,i do not use this assertion as a text for an indictment of the preceding generation2 ,i am concerned1 like our critic1 only with results4 ,these are a peculiarly headstrong and individualistic character among the young people1 and a complete bewilderment on the part of the parents4 ,the latter frankly do not understand their children1 and their lack of understanding and of control over them means a lack of the moral guidance which1 it has always been assumed1 young people need until they are safely launched in the world4 ,the two generations misunderstand each other as they never did before4 ,this fact is a basal one to any comprehension of the situation4 ,now let us see how the rising generation brings itself up4 ,it is perfectly true that the present-day secondary education1 that curious fragmentary relic of a vitally humanistic age1 does not appeal to them4 ,they will tell you frankly that they do not see any use in it4 ,having brought themselves up1 they judge utility by their own standards1 and not by those of others4 ,might not the fact that past generations went with avidity to their multiplication table1 their ,latin ,grammar1 and their ,english ,bible1 whereas the rising generation does not1 imply that the former found some intellectual sustenance in those things which the latter fails to find8 ,the appearance of industrial education on the field1 and the desperate attempts of educational theory to make the old things palatable which fifty years ago were gulped down raw1 argues1 too1 that there may be a grain of truth in our feeling4 ,only after a serious examination of our intellectual and spiritual viands should our rejection of them be attributed to a disordered condition of our stomachs4 ,the charge that the rising generation betrays an extraordinary love of pleasure is also true4 ,the four years' period of high-school life among the children of the comfortable classes is1 instead of being a preparation for life1 literally one round of social gayety4 ,but it is not likely that this is because former generations were less eager for pleasure1 but rather because they were more rigidly repressed by parents and custom1 while their energy was directed into other channels1 religious1 for instance4 ,but now1 with every barrier removed1 we have the unique spectacle of a youthful society where there is perfectly free intercourse1 an unforced social life of equals1 in which there are bound to develop educative influences of profound significance4 ,social virtues will be learned better in such a society than they can ever be from moral precepts4 ,an important result of this camaraderie is that the boy's and the girl's attitude toward life1 their spiritual outlook1 has come to be the same4 ,the line between the two 8spheres0 has long disappeared in the industrial classes2 it is now beginning to fade among the comfortable classes4 ,our critic has not seen that this avidity for pleasure is a natural ebullition which1 flaring up naturally1 within a few years as naturally subsides4 ,it goes1 too1 without that ennui of over-stimulation2 and the fact that it has been will relieve us of the rising generation from feeling that envy which invariably creeps into the tone of the passing generation when they say1 8,we did not go such a pace when we were young40 ,after this period of pleasure has begun to subside1 there ensues for those who have not been prematurely forced into industry1 a strange longing for independence4 ,this feeling is most striking among the girls of the rising generation1 and crops up in the most unexpected places1 in families in the easiest circumstances1 where to the preceding generation the idea of caring to do anything except stay at home and get married1 if possible1 would have been inconceivable4 ,they want somehow to feel that they are standing on their own feet4 ,like their brothers1 they begin to chafe under the tutelage1 nominal though it is1 of the home4 ,as a result1 these daughters of the comfortable classes go into trained nursing1 an occupation which twenty years ago was deemed hardly respectable2 or study music1 or do settlement work1 or even public-school teaching4 ,of course1 girls who have had to earn their own living have long done these things2 the significant point is that the late rapid increase in these professions comes from those who have a comfortable niche in society all prepared for them4 ,i do not argue that this proves any superior quality of character on the part of this generation1 but it does at least fail to suggest a desire to lead lives of ignoble sloth4 ,the undergraduate feels this spirit1 too4 ,he often finds himself vaguely dissatisfied with what he has acquired1 and yet does not quite know what else would have been better for him4 ,he stands on the threshold of a career1 with a feeling of boundless possibility1 and yet often without a decided bent toward any particular thing4 ,one could do almost anything were one given the opportunity1 and yet1 after all1 just what shall one do8 ,our critics have some very hard things to say about this attitude4 ,they attribute it to an egotistic philosophy1 imperfectly absorbed4 ,but may it not rather be the result of that absence of repression in our bringing-up1 of that rigid moulding which made our grandfathers what they were8 ,it must be remembered that we of the rising generation have to work this problem out alone4 ,pastors1 teachers1 and parents flutter aimlessly about with their ready-made formulas1 but somehow these are less efficacious than they used to be4 ,i doubt if any generation was ever thrown quite so completely on its own resources as ours is4 ,through it all1 the youth as well as the girl feels that he wants to count for something in life4 ,his attitude1 which seems so egotistical to his elders1 is the result of this and of a certain expansive outlook1 rather than of any love of vain-glory4 ,he has never known what it was to be moulded1 and he shrinks a little perhaps from going through that process4 ,the traditional professions have lost some of their automatic appeal4 ,they do conventionalize1 and furthermore1 the youth1 looking at many of their representatives1 the men who 8count0 in the world to-day1 may be pardoned if he feels sometimes as if he did not want to count in just that way4 ,the youth 8who would not take special training because it would interfere with his sacred individuality0 is an unfair caricature of this weighing1 testing attitude toward the professions4 ,the elder generation should remember that life is no longer the charted sea that it was to our grandfathers1 and be accordingly lenient with us of the rising generation4 ,business1 to the youth standing on the threshold of life1 presents a similar dilemma4 ,too often it seems like a choice between the routine of a mammoth impersonal corporation and chicanery of one kind or another1 or the living by one's wits within the pale of honesty4 ,the predatory individualist1 the 8hard-as-nails0 specimen1 does exist1 of course1 but we are justified in ignoring him here2 for1 however much his tribe may increase1 it is certain that it will not be his kind1 but the more spiritually sensitive1 the amorphous ones of the generation1 who will impress some definite character upon the age1 and ultimately count for good or evil1 as a social force4 ,with these latter1 it should be noted that1 although this is regarded as a mercenary age1 the question of gain1 to an increasingly large number1 has little to do with the final decision4 ,the economic situation in which we find ourselves1 and to which not only the free1 of whom we have been speaking1 but also the unfree of the rising generation are obliged to react1 is perhaps the biggest factor in explaining our character4 ,in this reaction the rising generation has a very real feeling of coming straight up against a wall of diminishing opportunity4 ,i do not see how it can be denied that practical opportunity is less for this generation than it has been for those preceding it4 ,the man of fifty years ago1 if he was intellectually inclined1 was able to get his professional training at small expense1 and usually under the personal guidance of his elders2 if commercially inclined1 he could go into a small1 settled1 self-respecting business house1 practically a profession in itself and a real school of character4 ,if he had a broader outlook1 there was the developing ,west for him1 or the growing industrialism of the ,east4 ,it looks1 at least from this distance1 as if opportunity were easy for that generation4 ,they had the double advantage of being more circumscribed in their outlook1 and of possessing more ready opportunity at hand4 ,but these times have passed forever4 ,nowadays1 professional training is lengthy and expensive2 independent business requires big capital for success2 and there is no more ,west4 ,it is still as true as ever that the exceptional man will always 8get there10 but now it is likely to be only the exceptional man1 whereas formerly all the able 8got there10 too4 ,the only choice for the vast majority of the young men of to-day is between being swallowed up in the routine of a big corporation1 and experiencing the vicissitudes of a small business1 which is now an uncertain1 rickety affair1 usually living by its wits1 in the hands of men who are forced to subordinate everything to self-preservation1 and in which the employee's livelihood is in constant jeopardy4 ,the growing consciousness of this situation explains many of the peculiar characteristics of our generation4 ,it has a direct bearing on the question of responsibility4 ,is it not sound doctrine that one becomes responsible only by being made responsible for something8 ,now1 what incentive to responsibility is produced by the industrial life of to-day8 ,in the small business there is the frank struggle for gain between employer and employee1 a contest of profits vs4 wages1 each trying to get the utmost possible out of the other4 ,the only kind of responsibility that this can possibly breed is the responsibility for one's own subsistence4 ,in the big business1 the employee is simply a small part of a big machine2 his work counts for so little that he can rarely be made to feel any intimate responsibility for it4 ,then1 too1 our haphazard industrial system offers such magnificent opportunities to a young man to get into the wrong place4 ,he is forced by necessity to go early1 without the least training or interest1 into the first work that offers itself4 ,the dull1 specialized routine of the modern shop or office1 so different from the varied work and the personal touch which created interest in the past1 is the last thing on earth that will mould character or produce responsibility4 ,when the situation with an incentive appears1 however1 we are as ready as any generation1 ,i believe1 to meet it4 ,i have seen too many young men1 of the usual futile bringing-up and negligible training1 drift idly about from one 8job0 to another1 without apparent ambition1 until something happened to be presented to them which had a spark of individuality about it1 whereupon they faced about and threw themselves into the task with an energy that brought success and honor1--,i have seen too much of this not to wonder1 somewhat impiously perhaps1 whether this boasted character of our fathers was not rather the result of their coming into contact with the proper stimulus at the proper time1 than of any tougher1 grittier strain in their spiritual fibre4 ,those among our elders1 who1 deploring ,socialism1 insist so strenuously on the imperfections of human nature1 ought not to find fault with the theory that frail humanity is under the necessity of receiving the proper stimulus before developing a good character or becoming responsible4 ,nor is the rising generation any the less capable of effort when conditions call it forth4 ,i wonder how our critic accounts for the correspondence schools which have sprung up so abundantly within the past fifteen years4 ,they are patronized by large numbers of young men and women who have had little academic training and have gone early into industry4 ,it is true that the students do not spend their time on the ,latin grammar2 they devote themselves to some kind of technical course which they have been led to believe will qualify them for a better position4 ,but the fact that they are thus willing to devote their spare time to study certainly does not indicate a lack of effort4 ,rather1 it is the hardest kind of effort1 for it is directed toward no immediate end1 and1 more than that1 it is superimposed on the ordinary work1 which is usually quite arduous enough to fatigue the youth4 ,young apprentices in any branch where there is some kind of technical or artistic appeal1 such as mechanics or architecture1 show an almost incredible capacity of effort1 often spending1 as ,i have seen them do1 whole days over problems4 ,i know too a young man who1 appointed very young to political office1 found that the law would be useful to him1 and travels every evening to a near-by city to take courses4 ,his previous career had been most inglorious1 well calculated by its aimlessness to ruin any 8character02 but the incentive was applied1 and he proved quite capable of putting forth a surprising amount of steady effort4 ,our critics are perhaps misled by the fact that these young men do not announce with a blare of trumpets that they are about to follow in the footsteps of an ,edison or a ,webster4 ,it must be admitted that even such men as ,i have cited do still contrive to work into their time a surprising amount of pleasure4 ,but the whole situation shows conclusively1 ,i think1 that our author has missed the point when she says that the rising generation shows a real softening of the human fibre4 ,it is rather that we have the same reserves of ability and effort1 but that from the complex nature of the economic situation these reserves are not unlocked so early or so automatically as with former generations4 ,the fact that our fathers did not need correspondence schools or night schools1 or such things1 implies either that they were not so anxious as we to count in the world1 or that success was an easier matter in their day1 either of which conclusions furnishes a pretty good extenuation of our apparent incapacity4 ,we cannot but believe that our difficulties are greater in this generation2 it is hard to see that the effort we put forth to overcome these difficulties is not proportional to that increase4 ,i am aware that to blame your surroundings when the fault lies in your own character is the one impiety which rouses the horror of present-day moral teachers4 ,can it not count to us for good1 then1 that most of us1 while coming theoretically to believe that this economic situation explains so much of our trouble1 yet continue to act as if our deficiencies were all our own fault8 ,our critics are misled by the fact that we do not talk about unselfishness and self-sacrifice and duty1 as their generation apparently used to do1 and conclude that we do not know what these things mean4 ,it is true that we do not fuss and fume about our souls1 or tend our characters like a hot-house plant4 ,this is a changing1 transitional age1 and our view is outward rather than inward4 ,in an age of newspapers1 free libraries1 and cheap magazines1 we necessarily get a broader horizon than the passing generation had4 ,we see what is going on in the world1 and we get the clash of different points of view1 to an extent which was impossible to our fathers4 ,we cannot be blamed for acquiring a suspicion of ideals1 which1 however powerful their appeal once was1 seem singularly impotent now1 or if we seek for motive forces to replace them1 or for new terms in which to restate the world4 ,we have an eagerness to understand the world in which we live that amounts almost to a passion4 ,we want to get behind the scenes1 to see how the machinery of the modern world actually works4 ,we are curious to learn what other people are thinking1 and to get at the forces that have produced their point of view4 ,we dabble in philanthrophy as much from curiosity to see how people live as from any feeling of altruism4 ,we read all sorts of strange philosophies to get the personal testimony of men who are interpreting the world4 ,in the last analysis1 we have a passion to understand why people act as they do4 ,we have1 as a result1 become impatient with the conventional explanations of the older generation4 ,we have retained from childhood the propensity to see through things1 and to tell the truth with startling frankness4 ,this must1 of course1 be very disconcerting to a generation1 so much of whose activity seems to consist in glossing over the unpleasant things or hiding the blemishes on the fair face of civilization4 ,there are too many issues evaded which we would like to meet4 ,many of us find1 sooner or later1 that the world is a very different sort of place from what our carefully deodorized and idealized education would have us believe4 ,when we find things simply not as they are painted1 is it any wonder that we turn to the new prophets rather than to the old8 ,we are more than half confident that the elder generation does not itself really believe all the conventional ideals which it seeks to force upon us1 and much of our presumption is a result of the contempt we naturally feel for such timorousness4 ,too many of your preachers seem to be whistling simply to keep up your courage4 ,the plain truth is that the younger generation is acquiring a positive faith1 in contact with which the elder generation with its nerveless negations feels its helplessness without knowing just what to do about it except to scold the young4 ,this positive aspect is particularly noticeable in the religion of the rising generation4 ,as our critic says1 the religious thinking of the preceding generation was destructive and uncertain4 ,we are demanding a definite faith1 and our spiritual centre is rapidly shifting from the personal to the social in religion4 ,not personal salvation1 but social2 not our own characters1 but the character of society1 is our interest and concern4 ,we feel social injustice as our fathers felt personal sin4 ,settlement work and socialist propaganda1 things done fifty years ago only by rare and heroic souls like ,kingsley1 ,ruskin1 and ,maurice1 are now the commonplaces of the undergraduate4 ,the religion that will mean anything to the rising generation will be based on social ideals4 ,an essay like ex-,president ,eliot's 8,religion of the ,future10 which in a way synthesizes science and history and these social ideals and gives them the religious tinge which every age demands1 supplies a real working religious platform to many a young man and woman of the rising generation1 and an inspiration of which our elders can form no conception4 ,perhaps it is unfair to call this religion at all4 ,perhaps it is simply the scientific attitude toward the world4 ,but ,i am sure that it is more than this2 ,i am sure that it is the scientific attitude tinged with the religious that will be ours of the rising generation4 ,we find that we cannot keep apart our religion1 our knowledge1 our practice1 and our hopes in water-tight compartments1 as our ancestors did4 ,we are beginning to show an incorrigible tendency to work our spiritual assimilations into one intelligible1 constructive whole4 ,it is to this attitude rather than to a softening of fibre that ,i think we may lay our growing disinclination to deify sacrifice and suffering4 ,a young chemistry student said to me the other day1 8,science means that nothing must be wasted60 ,this idea somehow gets mixed up with human experience1 and we come to believe that human life and happiness are things that must not be wasted4 ,might it not be that such a belief that human waste of life and happiness was foolish and unnecessary would possibly be of some avail in causing that waste to disappear8 ,and one of the most inspiring of the prophets to the rising generation1 ,william ,james1 has told us that certain 8moral equivalents0 of these things are possible which will prevent that incurable decaying of fibre which the elder generation so anxiously fears4 ,another result of this attitude is our growing belief in political machinery4 ,we are demanding of our preachers that they reduce quality to quantity4 8,stop talking about liberty and justice and love1 and show us institutions1 or concerted attempts to model institutions that shall be free or just or lovely10 we cry4 ,you have been trying so long to reform the world by making men 8good10 and with such little success1 that we may be pardoned if we turn our attention to the machinery of society1 and give up for a time the attempt to make the operators of that machinery strictly moral4 ,indeed1 the charm of ,socialism to so many of the rising generation is just that scientific aspect of it1 its claim of historical basis1 and its very definite and concrete organization for the attainment of its ends4 ,a philosophy which gives an illuminating interpretation of the present1 and a vision of the future1 with a definitely crystallized plan of action with concrete methods1 however unsound it may all be1 can hardly be said to appeal simply to the combination of 8a weak head1 a soft heart1 and a desire to shirk40 ,placed in such a situation as we are1 and with such an attitude toward the world1 we are as interested as you and the breathless generations behind you to see what destinies we shall work out for ourselves4 ,an unpleasantly large proportion of our energy is now drained off in fighting the fetishes which you of the elder generation have passed along to us1 and which1 out of some curious instinct of self-preservation1 you so vigorously defend4 ,we1 on the other hand1 are becoming increasingly doubtful whether you believe in yourselves quite so thoroughly as you would have us think4 ,your words are very brave1 but the tone is hollow4 ,your mistrust of us1 and your reluctance to convey over to us any of your authority in the world1 looks a little too much like the fear and dislike that doubt always feels in the presence of conviction1 to be quite convincing4 ,we believe in ourselves2 and this fact1 we think1 is prophetic for the future4 ,we have an indomitable feeling that we shall attain1 or if not1 that we shall pave the way for a generation that shall attain4 ,meanwhile our constructive work is hampered by your distrust1 while you blame us for our lack of accomplishment4 ,is this an attitude calculated to increase our responsibility and our self-respect8 ,would it not be better in every way1 more constructive and more fruitful1 to help us in our aspirations and endeavors1 or1 failing that1 at least to strive to understand just what those aspirations and endeavors are8 ,,footnotes3 #b ,the ,atlantic ,monthly1 ,february1 #aiaa4 ,,iii ,,the ,,virtues ,,and ,,the ,,seasons ,,of ,,life ,each season of life has its proper virtues1 as each season of the year has its own climate and temperature4 ,if virtue is the excellent working of the soul1 then youth1 middle age1 and old age1 all have their peculiar ways of working excellently4 ,when we speak of a virtuous life1 we should mean1 not a life that has shown one single thread of motive and attitude running through it1 but rather one that has varied with the seasons1 as spring grows gently into summer and summer into autumn1 each season working excellently in respect to the tilling and harvest of the soul4 ,if it is a virtue to be contented in old age1 it is no virtue to be contented in youth2 if it is a virtue for youth to be bold and venturesome1 it is the virtue of middle life to take heed and begin to gather up the lines and nets so daringly cast by youth into the sea of life4 ,a virtuous life means a life responsive to its powers and its opportunities1 a life not of inhibitions1 but of a straining up to the limit of its strength4 ,it means doing every year what is fitting to be done at that year to enhance or conserve one's own life or the happiness of those around one4 ,virtue is a word that abolishes duty4 ,for duty has steadily fallen into worse and worse opprobrium2 it has come to mean nothing but effort and stress4 ,it implies something that is done rightly1 but that cuts straight across the grain of all one's inclinations and motive forces4 ,it is following the lines of greatest resistance2 it is the working of the moral machine with the utmost friction possible4 ,now there is no doubt that the moral life involves struggle and effort1 but it should be the struggle of adequate choice1 and not of painful inhibition4 ,we are coming to see that the most effective things we do are those that have some idea of pleasure yoked up with them4 ,in the interests of moral efficiency1 the ideal must be the smooth and noiseless workings of the machine1 and not the rough and grinding movements that we have come to associate with the word 8duty40 ,for the emphasis on the negative duty we must substitute emphasis on the positive virtue4 ,for virtue is excellence of working1 and all excellence is pleasing4 ,when we know what are the virtues appropriate to each age of life1 we can view the moral life in a new light4 ,it becomes not a claim upon us of painful obligation1 but a stimulus to excellent spontaneity and summons to self-expression4 ,in childhood we acquire the spiritual goods that we shall take with us through life2 in youth we test our acquisitions and our tools1 selecting1 criticizing1 comparing2 in old age1 we put them away gently into the attic of oblivion or retire them honorably1 full of years and service4 ,our ideas1 however1 of what those spiritual goods were that childhood acquired have been very much confused4 ,we have imagined that we could give the child 8the relish of right and wrong10 as ,montaigne calls it4 ,the attempt has usually been made to train up the child in the moral life1 by telling him from his earliest years what was right and what was wrong4 ,it was supposed that in this way he absorbed right principles that would be the guiding springs of his youthful and later life4 ,the only difficulty1 of course1 with this theory is that the moral life hardly begins before the stresses and crises of youth at all4 ,for really moral activity implies choice and it implies significant choice2 and the choices of the child are few in number and seldom significant4 ,you can tell a child that a certain thing is wrong1 and he will believe it1 but his belief will be a purely mechanical affair1 an external idea1 which is no more woven into the stuff of his life than is one of those curious 8post-hypnotic suggestions10 that psychologists tell about1 where the subject while hypnotized is told to do something at a certain time after he awakes4 ,when the time comes he does it without any consciousness of the reason and without any immediate motive4 ,now most moral ideas in a child's mind are exactly similar to these suggestions4 ,they seem to operate with infallible accuracy1 and we say1--8,what a good child60 ,as a fact the poor child is as much under an alien spell as the subject of the hypnotist4 ,now all this sort of hypnotized morality the younger generation wants to have done with4 ,it demands a morality that is glowing with self-consciousness1 that is healthy with intelligence4 ,it refuses to call the 8good0 child moral at all2 it views him as a poor little trained animal1 that is doomed for the rest of his life to go through mechanical motions and moral tricks at the crack of the whip of a moral code or religious authority4 ,from home and ,sunday-school1 children of a slightly timid disposition get moral wounds1 the scars of which never heal4 ,they enter a bondage from which they can never free themselves2 their moral judgment in youth is warped and blighted in a thousand ways1 and they pass through life1 seemingly the most moral of men and women1 but actually having never known the zest of true morality1 the relish of right and wrong4 ,the best intentions of parents and teachers have turned their characters into unnatural channels from which they cannot break1 and fixed unwittingly upon them senseless inhibitions and cautions which they find they cannot dissolve1 even when reason and common sense convince them that they are living under an alien code4 ,looked upon from this light1 childish goodness and childish conscientiousness is an unhealthy and even criminal forcing of the young plant1 the hot-house bringing to maturity of a young soul whose sole business is to grow and learn4 ,when moral instruction is given1 a criminal advantage is taken of the child's suggestibility1 and all possibility of an individual moral life1 growing naturally and spontaneously as the young soul meets the real emergencies and problems that life will present to it1 is lost4 ,if1 as we are coming more and more to realize1 the justification of knowledge is that it helps us to get along with and enjoy and grapple with the world1 so the justification of virtue is that it enables us to get along with and enjoy and grapple with the spiritual world of ideals and feelings and qualities4 ,we should be as careful about giving a child moral ideas that will be of no practical use to him as we are in giving him learning that will be of no use to him4 ,the virtues of childhood1 then1 we shall not find in the moral realm4 ,the 8good0 child is not cultivated so much to-day as he was by the former generation1 whose one aim in education and religion was to bind the young fast in the fetters of a puritan code2 but he is still1 in well-brought-up families1 an appalling phenomenon4 ,the child1 who at the age of five has a fairly complete knowledge of what ,god wants him and all around him to do and not to do1 is an illustration of the results of the confusion of thought that would make childhood instead of youth the battle-ground of the moral life4 ,we should not dismiss such a child as quaint1 for in him have been sowed the seeds of a general obscurantism and conservatism that will spread like a palsy over his whole life4 ,the acceptance of moral judgments that have no vital meaning to the young soul will mean in later life the acceptance of ideas and prejudices in political and religious and social matters that are uncriticized and unexamined4 ,the 8good0 child grows up into the conventional bigoted man4 ,the duties and tastes which are inculcated into him in childhood1 far from aiding the 8excellent workings of his soul10 clog and rust it1 and prevent the fine free expression of its individuality and genius4 ,for the child has not yet the material of experience that will enable him to get the sense of values which is at the bottom of what we call the spiritual life4 ,and it is this sense that is so easily dulled1 and that must be so carefully protected against blunting4 ,that the child cannot form moral judgments for himself1 however1 does not mean that they must be formed for him by others2 it means that we must patiently wait until he meets the world of vivid contrasts and shocks and emergencies that is youth4 ,it is not repairing his lack of moral sensitiveness to get him to repeat parrot-like the clean-cut and easily learned taboos and permissions of the people around him4 ,to get him to do this is exactly like training an animal to bolt any kind of food4 ,the child1 however1 has too weak a stomach to digest very much of the moral pabulum that is fed him4 ,the inevitable result is a moral indigestion1 one form of which is the once fashionable sense of sin4 ,the youth1 crammed with uncriticized taboos delivered to him with the awful prestige of an ,almighty ,god1 at a certain age revolts1 and all the healthy values of life turn sour within him4 ,the cure for this spiritual dyspepsia is called conversion1 but it is a question whether the cure is not often worse than the disease4 ,for it usually means that the relish of right and wrong1 which had suddenly become a very real thing1 has been permanently perverted in a certain direction4 ,by a spiritual operation1 the soul has been forced to digest all this strange food1 and acquires the ability to do so forever after4 ,those who do not suffer this operation pass through life with an uneasiness of spirit1 the weight and burden of an imperfectly assimilated moral life4 ,few there are who are able to throw off the whole soddenness1 and if they do they are fortunate if they are not left without any food at all4 ,religious teachers have always believed that all these processes were necessary for the soul's health4 ,they have believed that it was better to have mechanical morals than no morals at all4 ,when the younger generation sees the damage such morals work1 it would prefer to have none4 ,discarding the 8good0 child1 then1 we will find the virtues of childhood in that restless1 pushing1 growing curiosity that is the characteristic of every healthy little boy or girl4 ,the child's life is spent in learning his way around the world2 in learning the ropes of things1 the handles and names of whatever comes within the range of his experience4 ,he is busy acquiring that complex bundle of common-sense knowledge that underlies all our grown-up acts1 and which has become so automatic with us that it hardly seems possible to us that we have slowly acquired it all4 ,we do not realize that thousands of facts and habits1 which have become stereotyped and practically unconscious in our minds1 are the fresh and vital experiences of the mind of the little child4 ,we cannot put ourselves back into that world where the absorbing business is to give things a position and a name and to learn all the little obvious facts about the things in the house and the yard and the village1 and in that far land of mystery beyond4 ,what sort of sympathy can we have with these little people1--we1 to whom all this nave world of place and nomenclature is so familiar as to seem intuitive8 ,we should have to go back to a world where every passing railroad train was a marvel and a delight1 where a walk to the village meant casting ourselves adrift into an adventurous country where anything was likely to happen and where all calculations of direction or return were upset4 ,it takes children a long time to get accustomed to the world4 ,this common workaday knowledge of ours seems intuitive to us only because we had so many years during which it was reiterated to us1 and not because we were unusually sensitive to impressions4 ,children often seem almost as stupid as any young animal1 and to require long practice before they know their way around in the world1 although1 once obtained1 this common sense is never forgotten4 ,that child is virtuous who acquires all he can of it4 ,this curiosity of childhood makes children the first scientists4 ,they begin1 as soon as their eyes are open1 dissolving this confused mystery of the world1 distinguishing and classifying its parts according to their interests and needs4 ,they push on and on1 ever widening the circle1 and ever bringing more and more of their experience under the subjugation of their understanding4 ,they begin the process that the scientist completes4 ,as children1 after several years we came to know our house and yard1 although the attic and cellar were perhaps still dim and fearsome places4 ,inside the household things were pretty well tabulated and rationalized4 ,it was only when we went outside the gate that we might expect adventures to happen4 ,we should have been very much shocked to see the fire leap from the stove and the bread from the table1 as they did in the 8,blue ,bird10 but in walking down to the village we should not have been surprised to see a giant or a fairy sitting on the green4 ,when we became familiar with the village1 the fairies were1 of course1 banished to remoter regions1 until they finally vanished altogether4 ,but it is not so long ago that ,i lost the last vague vestige of a feeling that there were fairies in ,england4 ,the facility1 one might almost say skill1 which children show in getting lost1 is the keynote of childhood's world4 ,for they have no bearings among the unfamiliar1 no principles for the solution of the unknown4 ,in their accustomed realm they are as wise and canny and free from superstition as we are in ours4 ,we1 as grown-ups1 have not acquired any magical release from fantasy4 ,the only difference is that we are accustomed to make larger hazards of faith that things will repeat themselves1 and that we have a wider experience to check off our novelties by4 ,we have charted most of our world2 we unfortunately have no longer any world to get lost in4 ,to be sure1 we have opened up perhaps an intangible world of philosophy and speculation1 which childhood does not dream of1 and heaven knows we can get lost there6 ,but the thing is different4 ,the adventure of childhood is to get lost here in this everyday world of common sense which is so familiar to us4 ,to become really as little children we should have to get lost again here4 ,the best substitute we can give ourselves is to keep exploring the new spiritual world in which we may find ourselves in youth and middle life1 pushing out ever1 as the child does1 our fringe of mystery4 ,and we can gain the gift of wonder1 something that the child does not have4 ,he is too busy drinking in the facts to wonder about them1 or to wonder about what is beyond them4 ,we may count ourselves fortunate1 however1 that we are able to retain the child's virtue of curiosity1 and transmute it into the beauty of spiritual wonder4 ,it is facts and not theories that the child is curious about1 and rightly4 ,he cannot assimilate moral theories1 nor can he assimilate any other kind of theories4 ,it is his virtue to learn how the world runs2 youth will be time enough to philosophize about that running4 ,it is the immediate and the present that interest children1 and they are omnivorous with regard to any facts about either4 ,what they hear about the world they accept without question4 ,we often think when we are telling them fairy stories or animal stories that we are exercising their poetic imagination2 but from their point of view we are telling them sober facts about the world they live in4 ,we are often surprised1 too1 at the apathy they show in the midst of wonders that we point out to them4 ,they are wonders to us because we appreciate the labor or the genius that has produced them4 ,in other words1 we have added a value to them4 ,but it is just this value which the child-mind does not get and can never get4 ,to the child they are not surprising1 but simply some more information about his world4 ,all is grist that comes to the child's mill4 ,everything serves to plot and track for him a new realm of things as they are4 ,the child's mind1 so suggestible to facts1 seems to be almost impervious to what we call spiritual influences4 ,he lives in a world hermetically sealed to our interests and concerns4 ,parents and teachers make the most conscientious efforts to influence their children1 but they would better realize that they can influence them only in the most indirect way4 ,the best thing they can do for the children is to feed their curiosity1 and provide them with all the materials that will stimulate their varied interests4 ,they can then leave the 8influence0 to take care of itself4 ,the natural child seems to be impregnable to any appeals of shame1 honor1 reverence1 honesty1 and even ridicule1--in other words1 to all those methods we have devised for getting a clutch on other people's souls1 and influencing and controlling them according to our desires4 ,and this is not because the child is immoral1 but simply because1 as ,i have tried to show1 those social values mean as yet nothing to him4 ,he lives in a splendid isolation from our conventional standards2 the influences of his elders1 however well-directed and prayerful they may be1 simply do not reach him4 ,he lives unconscious of our interests and motives4 ,only the 8good0 child is susceptible1 and he is either instinctively submissive1 or is the victim of the mechanical imposition of standards and moral ideas4 ,the child works out what little social morality he does obtain1 not under the influence of his elders1 but among his playmates4 ,and the standards worked out there are not refined and moral at all1 but rough ones of emulation and group honor1 and respect for prowess4 ,even obedience1 which we all like to think of as one of the indispensable accomplishments of a well-trained child1 seems to be obtained at the cost of real moral growth4 ,it might be more beneficial if it were not too often merely a means for the spiritual edification of the parents themselves4 ,too often it is the delight of ruling1 of being made obeisance to1 that is the secret motive of imposing strict obedience1 and not our desire simply that they shall learn the excellent habits that are our own4 ,one difficulty with the child who has 8learned to mind0 is that1 if he learns too successfully1 he runs the risk of growing up to be a cowardly and servile youth4 ,there is a theory that since the child will be obliged in later life to do many things that he does not want to do1 he might as well learn how while he is young4 ,the difficulty here seems to be that learning to do one kind of a thing that you do not want to do does not guarantee your readiness to do other kinds of unpleasant things4 ,that art cannot be taught4 ,each situation of compulsion1 unless the spirit is completely broken1 will have its own peculiar quality of bitterness1 and no guarantee against it can be inculcated4 ,life will present so many inevitable necessities to the child when he gets out into the world that it seems premature to burden his childhood with a training which will be largely useless4 ,so much of our energy is wasted1 and so much friction created1 because we are unwilling to trust life4 ,if life is the great demoralizer1 it is also the great moralizer4 ,it whips us into shape1 and saddles us with responsibilities and the means of meeting them1 with obligations and the will to meet them1 with burdens and a strength to bear them4 ,it creates in us a conscience and the love of duty1 and endows us with a morality that a mother and father with the power and the love of angels working through all the years of our childhood could not have created within us4 ,trust life and not your own feeble efforts to create the soul in the child6 ,the virtue of childhood1 then1 is an exhaustless curiosity and interest in the world in which the child finds himself4 ,he is here to learn his way around in it1 to learn the names of things and their uses1 how to use his body and his capacities4 ,this will be the most excellent working of his soul4 ,if his mind and body are active1 he will be a 8good0 child1 in the best sense of the word4 ,we can almost afford to let him be insolent and irreverent and troublesome as long as he is only curious4 ,if he has a temper1 it will not be cured by curbing1 but by either letting it burn out1 or not giving it fuel to feed on4 ,food for his body and facts for his mind are the sustenance he requires4 ,from the food will be built up his body1 and from the facts and his reactions to them will slowly evolve his world of values and ideals4 ,we cannot aid him by giving him our theories1 or shorten the path for him by presenting him with ready-made standards4 ,in spite of all the moral teachers1 there is no short cut to the moral life of youth1 any more than there is a royal road to knowledge4 ,nor can we help him to grow by transferring some of our superfluous moral flesh to his bones4 ,the child's qualities which shock our sense of propriety are evidences not of his immorality1 but of his pre-morality4 ,a morality that will mean anything to him can only be built up out of a vast store of experience1 and only when his world has broadened out into a real society with influences of every kind coming from every side4 ,he cannot get the relish of right and wrong until he has tasted life1 and it is the taste of life that the child does not have4 ,that taste comes only with youth1 and then with a bewildering complexity and vividness4 ,but between childhood and youth there comes a trying period when the child has become well cognizant of the practical world1 but has as yet no hint of the gorgeous colors of youth4 ,at thirteen1 for instance1 one has the world pretty well charted1 but not yet has the slow chemistry of time transmuted this experience into meanings and values4 ,there is a crassness and materiality about the following three or four years that have no counterpart until youth is over and the sleek years of the forties have begun4 ,how cocksure and familiar with the world is the boy or girl at this age6 ,they have no doubts1 but they have no glow4 ,at no time in life is one so unspiritual1 so merely animal1 so much of the earth1 earthy4 ,how different is it to be a few years later6 ,how shaken and adventurous will the world appear then6 ,for this waiting period of life1 the virtues are harder to discover4 ,curiosity has lapsed1 for there do not seem to be many things left to be curious about4 ,the child is beautifully unconscious of his own ignorance4 ,similarly has the play activity diminished2 the boy has put away his ,indian costumes1 and the girl her dolls4 ,at this season of life the virtue would seem to consist in the acquirement of some skill in some art or handicraft or technique4 ,this is the time to search for the budding talents and the strong native bents and inclinations4 ,to be interesting is one of the best of virtues1 and few things make a person more interesting than skill or talent4 ,from a selfish point of view1 too1 all who have grown up with unskillful hands will realize the solid virtue of knowing how to do something with the hands1 and avoid that vague restlessness and desire to get at grips with something that haunts the professional man who has neglected in youth to cultivate this virtue of technique4 ,and it is a virtue which1 if not acquired at that time1 can never be acquired4 ,the deftness of hand1 alertness of mind1 are soon lost if they are not taken advantage of1 and the child grows up helpless and unskillful1 with a restless void where a talent and interest should be4 ,it is with youth1 then1 that the moral life begins1 the true relish of right and wrong4 ,out of the crucible of passion and enthusiasm emerge the virtues of life1 virtues that will have been tested and tried in the furnace of youth's poignant reactions to the world of possibilities and ideals that has been suddenly opened up to it4 ,those young people who have been the victims of childish morality will not feel this new world so clearly or keenly1 or1 if there did lurk underneath the crust of imposed priggishness some latent touch of genius1 they will feel the new life with a terrible searing pain that maddens them and may permanently distort their whole vision of life4 ,to those without the spark1 the new life will come stained by prejudice4 ,their reactions will be dulled2 they will not see clearly2 and will either stagger at the shock1 or go stupidly ahead oblivious of the spiritual wonders on every side4 ,only those who have been allowed to grow freely like young plants1 with the sun and air above their heads1 will get the full beauty and benefit of youth4 ,only those whose eyes have been kept wide open ceaselessly learning the facts of the material and practical world will truly appreciate the values of the moral world1 and be able to acquire virtue4 ,only with this fund of practical knowledge will the youth be able to balance and contrast and compare the bits of his experience1 see them in the light of their total meaning1 and learn to prefer rightly one bit to another4 ,it is as if silent forces had been at work in the soul during the last years of childhood1 organizing the knowledge and nascent sentiments of the child into forms of power ready for the free expression of youth4 ,youth expresses itself by falling in love4 ,whether it be art1 a girl1 socialism1 religion1 the sentiment is the same2 the youth is swept away by a flood of love4 ,he has learned to value1 and how superlative and magnificent are his values6 ,the little child hardly seems to love2 indeed1 his indifference to grown people1 even to his own parents1 is often amazing4 ,he has the simple affection of a young animal1 but how different his cool regard from the passionate flame of youth6 ,love is youth's virtue1 and it is wide as well as deep4 ,there is no tragic antithesis between a youth's devotion to a cause and his love for a girl4 ,they are not mutually exclusive1 as romanticists often love to think1 but beautifully compatible4 ,they tend to fuse1 and they stimulate and ennoble each other4 ,the first love of youth for anything is pure and ethereal and disinterested4 ,it is only when thwarted that love turns sensual1 only when mocked that enthusiasm becomes fanatical or mercenary4 ,worldly opinion seems to care much more for personal love than for the love of ideals4 ,perhaps it is instinctively more interested in the perpetuation of the race than in its progress4 ,it gives its suffrage and approval to the love of a youth for a girl1 but it mocks and discredits the enthusiast4 ,it just grudgingly permits the artist to live1 but it piles almost insurmountable obstacles in the path of the young radical4 ,the course of true love may never run smooth1 but what of the course of true idealism8 ,the springs that feed this love are found1 of course1 in hero-worship4 ,sexual love is objectified in some charming and appealing girl1 love for ideals in some teacher or seer or the inspiring personality of a friend4 ,it is in youth that we can speak of real influence4 ,then is the soul responsive to currents and ideas4 ,the embargo which kept the child's mind immune to theory and opinion and tastes is suddenly lifted4 ,in childhood1 our imitation is confined to the external2 we copy ways of acting1 but we are insensitive to the finer nuances of personality4 ,but in youth we become sensitive to every passing tone and voice4 ,youth is the season when1 through this sensitiveness1 the deadly pressures get their purchase on the soul2 it is also the season for the most momentous and potent influences for good4 ,in youth1 if there is the possibility that the soul be permanently warped out of shape1 there is also the possibility that it receive the nourishment that enables it to develop its own robust beauty4 ,it is by hero-worship that we copy not the externals of personality1 as in childhood1 but the inner spirit4 ,we feel ourselves somehow merged with the admired persons1 and we draw from them a new stimulating grace4 ,we find ourselves in them4 ,it is not yielding to a pressure that would force us to a type1 but a drawing up of ourselves to a higher level1 through the aid of one who possesses all those qualities which have been all along1 we feel1 our vague and hitherto unexpressed ideal4 ,we do not feel that our individualities are being lost1 but that they are for the first time being found4 ,we have discovered in another personality all those best things for which our hearts have been hungering1 and we are simply helping ourselves to that which is in reality our own4 ,our hero gives of himself inexhaustibly1 and we take freely and gladly what we need4 ,it is thus that we stock up with our first store of spiritual values4 ,it is from the treasury of a great and good personality that we receive the first confirmation of ourselves4 ,in the hero-personality1 we see our own dim1 baby ideals objectified4 ,their splendor encourages us1 and nerves us for the struggle to make them thoroughly our own4 ,there is a certain pathos in the fact that parents are so seldom the heroes from whom the children derive this revelation of their own personality4 ,it is more often some teacher or older friend or even a poet or reformer whom the youth has never seen and knows only through his words and writings4 ,but for this the parents are partly responsible4 ,they are sufficiently careful about the influences which play upon their young children4 ,they give care and prayers and tears to their bringing-up in the years when the children are almost immune to any except the more obvious mechanical influences1 and learn of ideals and values only in a parrot-like fashion4 ,but when the child approaches youth1 the parent is apt to relax vigilance and1 with a cry of thanksgiving and self-congratulation that the child has been brought safely through so many perils to the desired haven1 to surrender him to his own devices4 ,just at the time when he becomes really sensitive for the first time to spiritual influences1 he is deprived of this closest and warmest influence of the home4 ,but he has not been brought into a haven1 but launched into a heaving and troubled sea4 ,this is the time when his character lies at stake1 and the possibility of his being a radical1 individual force in the world hangs in the balance4 ,whether he will become this force depends on the pressures that he is able to dodge1 and on the positive ideals he is able to secure4 ,and they will depend largely on the heroes he worships1 upon his finding the personalities that seem to contain all the best for which he yearns4 ,hero-worship is the best preservative against cheapness of soul1 that besetting sin of modern youth4 ,it directs our attention away from the light and frothy things of the world1 which are wont to claim so much of youth's interest1 to qualities that are richer and more satisfying4 ,yet hero-worship is no mere imitation4 ,we do not simply adopt new qualities and a new character4 ,we rather impregnate our hitherto sterile ideals with the creative power of a tested and assured personality1 and give birth to a new reliance and a new faith4 ,our heroes anticipate and provide for our doubts and fears1 and fortify us against the sternest assaults of the world4 ,we love our heroes because they have first loved us4 ,out of this virtue of love and the clashing of its clear spirit with the hard matter of established things come the sterner virtues4 ,from that conflict1 courage is struck off as youth feels the need of keeping his flame steady and holding to his own course1 regardless of obstacles or consequences4 ,youth needs courage1 that salt of the virtues1 for if youth has its false hopes1 it has its false depressions4 ,that strange melancholy1 when things seem to lose their substance and the world becomes an empty shell1 is the reverse shield of the elation of youth4 ,to face and overcome it is a real test of the courage of youth4 ,the dash and audacity1 the daring and self-confidence of youth1 are less fine than this simple courage of optimism4 ,youth needs courage1 too1 when its desires do not come true1 when it meets suspicion or neglect1 and when its growth seems inexorably checked by circumstance4 ,in these emergencies1 the youth usually plays the stoic4 ,he feels a savage pride in the thought that circumstance can never rob him of his integrity1 or bring his best self to be dependent on mere change of fortune4 ,such a courage is a guarantor of youth4 ,it forms a protecting crust over life and lessens the shock of many contingencies4 ,the only danger is that it may become too perfect a shell and harden the character4 ,it is not well for youth to shun the battle4 ,courage demands exposure to assault4 ,and besides courage1 youth needs temperance4 ,the sins and excesses of hot-blooded youth are a byword2 youth would not seem to be youth without its carnality and extravagance4 ,it is fortunate that youth is able to expend that extravagance partly in idealism4 ,love is always the antidote to sensuality4 ,and we can always1 if we set ourselves resolutely to the task1 transmute the lower values into higher4 ,this1 indeed1 is the crucial virtue of youth1 and temperance is the seal and evidence of the transmutation4 ,temperance in things of the flesh is ordained not through sentimental reasons1 but on the best of physiological and psychological motives4 ,temperance is a virtue because of the evil consequences to one's self and others which follow excess of indulgence in appetite4 ,but this temperance does not mean quite the same thing as the rigid self-control that used to be preached4 ,the new morality has a more positive ideal than the rigid mastery which self-control implies4 ,we are to fix our attention more in giving our good impulses full play than in checking the bad4 ,the theory is that if one is occupied with healthy ideas and activities1 there will be no room or time for the expression of the unhealthy ones4 ,anything that implies an inhibition or struggle to repress is a draining away into a negative channel of energy that might make for positive constructive work in the character4 ,the repressed desires and interests are not killed1 but merely checked1 and they persist1 with unabated vigor1 in struggling to get the upper hand again4 ,they are little weakened by lying dormant1 and lurk warily below1 ready to swarm up again on deck1 whenever there is the smallest lapse of vigilance4 ,but if they are neglected they gradually cease from troubling1 and are killed by oblivion where they could not have been hurt by forcible repression4 ,the mortification of the flesh seems too often simply to strengthen its pride4 ,in the realm of emotion1 the dangers of rigid self-control are particularly evident4 ,there are fashions in emotion as well as in dress1 and it seems to have become the fashion in certain circles of youth to inhibit any emotional expression of the sincere or the serious4 ,there is a sort of reign of terrorism which prevents personal conversation from being carried on upon any plane except one of flippancy and insincerity4 ,frankness of expression in regard to personal feelings and likes and dislikes is tabooed4 ,a strange new ethics of tact has grown up which makes candor so sacrilegious a thing that its appearance in a group or between two young people of the opposite sex creates general havoc and consternation4 ,young people who dare to give natural expression to their feelings about each other or about their ideals and outlook on life find themselves genuinely unpopular4 ,when this peculiar ethics works at its worst1 it gives a person a pride in concealing his or her feelings on any of the vital and sincere aspects of life1 the interests and admirations and tastes4 ,but this energy1 dammed up thus from expression in its natural way1 overflows in a hysterical admiration for the trivial1 and an unhealthy interest in the mere externals1 the 8safe0 things1 of life4 ,such self-control dwarfs the spirit2 it results only in misunderstandings and a tragic ignorance of life4 ,it is one of the realest of the vices of youth1 for it is the parent of a host of minor ailments of the soul4 ,it seems to do little good even to repress hatred and malice4 ,if repressed1 they keep knocking at the door of consciousness1 and poison the virtues that might develop if the soul could only get rid of its load of spleen4 ,if the character is thickly sown with impersonal interests and the positive virtues are carefully cultivated1 there will be no opportunity for these hateful weeds to reach the sun and air4 ,virtue should actually crowd out vice1 and temperance is the tool that youth finds ready to its hand4 ,temperance means the happy harmonizing and cordinating of the expression of one's personality2 it means health1 candor1 sincerity1 and wisdom1--knowledge of one's self and the sympathetic understanding of comrades4 ,justice is a virtue which1 if it be not developed in youth1 has little chance of ever being developed4 ,it depends on a peculiarly sensitive reaction to good and evil1 and it is only in youth that those reactions are keen and disinterested4 ,real justice is always a sign of great innocence2 it cannot exist side by side with interested motives or a trace of self-seeking4 ,and a sense of justice is hard to develop in this great industrial world where the relations of men are so out of joint and where such flaunting anomalies assail one at every turn4 ,yet in the midst of it all youth is still pure of heart1 and it is only the pure of heart who can be just4 ,for in youth we live in a world of clean disinterestedness4 ,we have ambitions and desires1 but not yet have we learned the devious way by which they may be realized4 ,we have not learned how to achieve our ends by taking advantage of other people1 and using them and their interests and necessities as means4 ,we still believe in the possibility of every man's realizing himself side by side with us4 ,in early youth1 therefore1 we have an instinctive and almost unconscious sense of justice4 ,not yet have we learned the trick of exploiting our fellow men4 ,if we are early assailed with the reality of social disorder1 and have brought home to our hearts the maladjustments of our present order1 that sense of justice is transformed into a passion4 ,this passion for social justice is one of the most splendid of the ideals of youth4 ,it has the power of keeping alive all the other virtues2 it stimulates life and gives it a new meaning and tone4 ,it furnishes the leit-motiv which is so sadly lacking in many lives4 ,and youth must find a leit-motiv of some kind1 or its spirit perishes4 ,this social idealism acts like a tonic upon the whole life2 it keeps youth alive even after one has grown older in years4 ,with justice comes the virtue of democracy4 ,we learn all too early in youth the undemocratic way of thinking1 the divisions and discriminations which the society around us makes among people4 ,but youth cannot be swept by love or fired by the passion for justice without feeling a wild disgust at everything that suggests artificial inequalities and distinctions4 ,democracy means a belief that people are worthy2 it means trust in the good faith and the dignity of the average man4 ,the chief reason why the average man is not now worthy of more trust1 the democrat believes1 is simply that he has not been trusted enough in the past4 ,democracy has little use for philanthropy1 at least in the sense of a kindly caring for people1 with the constant recognition that the person who is kind is superior to the person who is being done good to4 ,the spirit of democracy is a much more robust humanity4 ,it is rough and aggressive2 it stands people up on their own feet1 makes them take up their beds and walk4 ,it prods them to move their own limbs and take care of themselves4 ,it makes them strong by giving them something to do4 ,it will have nothing more to do with the superstition of trusteeship which paralyzes now most of our institutional life4 ,it does not believe for a minute that everybody needs guardians for most of the serious concerns of life4 ,the great crime of the past has been that humankind has never been willing to trust itself1 or men each other4 ,we have tied ourselves up with laws and traditions1 and devised a thousand ways to prevent men from being thrown on their own responsibility and cultivating their own powers4 ,our society has been constituted on the principle that men must be saved from themselves4 ,we have surrounded ourselves with so many moral hedges1 have imposed upon ourselves so many checks and balances1 that life has been smothered4 ,our liberation has just begun4 ,we are far from free1 but the new spirit of democracy is the angel that will free us4 ,no virtue is more potent for youth4 ,and the last of these virtues1 redolent of the old ,greek time1 when men walked boldly1 when the world was still young1 and gods and nymphs not all dead1 is wisdom4 ,to be wise is simply to have blended and harmonized one's experience1 to have fused it together into a 8philosophy of life40 ,wisdom is a matter not of quantity1 but of quality of experience4 ,it means getting at the heart of it1 and obtaining the same clear warm impression of its meaning that the artist does of the sthetic idea that he is going to represent4 ,wisdom in youth or early middle life may be far truer than in later life4 ,one's courage may weaken under repeated failure1 one's sense of justice be dulled by contact with the wrong relations between men and classes1 one's belief in democracy destroyed by the seeming failure of experiments4 ,but this gathering cynicism does not mean the acquiring of wisdom1 but the losing of it4 ,the usefulness and practicability of these virtues of youth are not really vitiated by the struggles they have in carrying themselves through into practice2 what is exhibited is merely the toughness of the old forces of prejudice and tradition1 and the 8pig-headedness0 of the old philosophy of timorousness and distrust4 ,true wisdom is faith in love1 in justice1 in democracy2 youth has this faith in largest measure2 therefore youth is most wise4 ,middle age steals upon a youth almost before he is aware4 ,he will recognize it at first1 perhaps1 by a slight paling of his enthusiasms1 or by a sudden consciousness that his early interests have been submerged in the flood of routine work and family cares4 ,the later years of youth and the early years of middle life are in truth the dangerous age1 for then may be lost the virtues that were acquired in youth4 ,or1 if not lost1 many will be felt to be superfluous4 ,there is danger that the peculiar bias of the relish of right and wrong that the virtues of youth have given one may be weakened1 and the soul spread itself too thin over life4 ,now one of the chief virtues of middle life is to conserve the values of youth1 to practice in sober earnest the virtues that came so naturally in the enthusiasm of youth1 but which take on a different hue when exposed to what seem to be the crass facts of the workaday world4 ,but there is no reason why work1 ambition1 the raising of a family1 should dull the essential spirit of youthful idealism4 ,it may not be so irrepressible1 so freakish1 so intolerant1 but it should not be different in quality and significance4 ,the burdens of middle life are not a warrant for the releasing of the spiritual obligations of youth4 ,they do not give one the right to look back with amused regret to the dear follies of the past4 ,for as soon as the spirit of youth begins to leave the soul1 that soul begins to die4 ,middle-aged people are too much inclined to speak of youth as a sort of spiritual play4 ,they forget that youth feels that it itself has the serious business of life1 the real crises to meet4 ,to youth it is middle age that seems trivial and playful4 ,it is after the serious work of love-making and establishing one's self in economic independence is over that one can rest and play4 ,youth has little time for that sort of recreation4 ,in middle age1 most of the problems have been solved1 the obstacles overcome4 ,there is a slackening of the lines1 a satisfied taking of one's reward4 ,and to youth this must always seem a tragedy1 that the season of life when the powers are at their highest should be the season when they are oftener turned to material than to spiritual ends4 ,youth has the energy and ideals1 but not the vantage-ground of prestige from which to fight for them4 ,middle age has the prestige and the power1 but too seldom the will to use it for the furtherance of its ideals4 ,youth has the isolation1 the independence1 the disinterestedness so that it may attack any foe1 but it has not the reserve force to carry that attack through4 ,middle age has all the reserve power necessary1 but is handicapped by family obligations1 by business and political ties1 so that its power is rarely effective for social or individual progress4 ,the supreme virtue of middle age will be1 then1 to make this difficult fusion1--to combine devotion to one's family1 to one's chosen work1 with devotion to the finer idealism and impersonal aims that formed one's philosophy of youth4 ,to keep alive through all the twistings and turnings of life's road the sense of a larger humanity that needs spiritual and material succor1 of the individual spiritual life of ideal interests1 is a task of virtue that will tax the resources of any man or woman4 ,yet here lies the true virtue of middle age1--to use its splendid powers to enhance the social and individual life round one1 to radiate influence that transforms and elevates4 ,the secret of such a radiant personality seems to be that one1 while mingling freely in the stress of everyday life1 sees all its details in the light of larger principles1 against the background of their social meaning4 ,in other words1 it is a virtue of middle life to be socially self-conscious4 ,and this spirit is the best protector against the ravages of the tough material world4 ,only by this social consciousness can that toughness be softened4 ,the image of the world the way it ought to be must never be lost sight of in the picture of the world the way it is4 ,this conservation of the spirit is even more necessary for the woman than for the man4 ,the active life of the latter makes it fairly certain that he1 while he may become hard and callous1 will at least retain some sort of grip on the world's bigger movements4 ,there is no such certainty for the mother4 ,indeed1 she seems often to take a real pleasure in voluntarily offering up in sacrifice at the time of marriage what few ideal interests and tastes she has4 ,the spectacle of the young mother devoting all her time and strength to her children and husband1 and surrendering all other interests to the interests of the home1 is usually considered inspiring and attractive1 especially by the men4 ,not so attractive is she thirty years later1 when1 her family cares having lapsed and her children scattered1 she is left high and dry in the world4 ,if she then takes a well-earned rest1 it seems a pity that that rest should be so generally futile and uninteresting4 ,without interests and tastes1 and with no longer any useful function in society1 she is relegated to the most trivial amusements and pursuits4 ,idle and vapid1 she finds nothing to do but fritter away her time4 ,the result is a really appalling waste of economic and social energy in middle age4 ,now it is the virtue of this season of life to avoid all this4 ,the woman as well as the man must realize that her home is not bounded by the walls of the house1 that it has wider implications1 leading out into all the interests of the community and the state4 ,that women of this age have not yet learned to be good mothers and good citizens at the same time1 does not show that it is impossible1 but that it is a virtue that requires more resolution than our morality has been willing to exhibit4 ,the relish of right and wrong must be a relish of social right and wrong as well as of individual4 ,as middle age passes on into old age1 however1 one earns a certain right of relaxation4 ,if there is no right to let go the sympathy for the virtues of youth and the conservation of its spirit1 there comes the right to give over some of the aggressive activity4 ,to youth belongs the practical action4 ,at no other age is there the same impulse and daring4 ,the virtue of later middle age is to encourage and support1 rather than actively engage4 ,it is true we have never learned this lesson4 ,we still surrender to semi-old men the authority to govern us1 think for us1 act for us4 ,we endow them with spiritual as well as practical leadership1 and allow them to strip youth of its opportunities and powers4 ,we permit them to rule not only their own but all the generations4 ,if we could be sure that their rule meant progress1 we could trust them to guide us4 ,but1 in these times at least1 it seems to mean nothing so much as a last fight for a discredited undemocratic philosophy that modern youth are completely through with4 ,from this point of view one of the virtues of this middle season of life will be the imaginative understanding of youth's purposes and radical ideals4 ,at that age1 one no longer needs the same courage to face the battles of life2 they are already most of them irrevocably won or lost4 ,there is not the same claim of temperance2 the passions and ambitions are relaxed4 ,the sense of justice and democracy will have become a habit or else they will have been forever lost4 ,only the need of wisdom remains1--that unworldly wisdom which mellowing years can bring1 which sees through the disturbance and failure of life the truth and efficacy of youth's ideal vision4 ,old age is such a triumph that it may almost be justly relieved of any burden of virtues or duties2 it is so unique and beautiful that the old should be given the perfect freedom of the moral city4 ,so splendid a victory is old age over the malign forces of disease and weakness and death that one is tempted to say that its virtue lies simply in being old4 ,those virtues of youth which grew out of the crises and temptations1 physical and spiritual1 of early life1 are no longer relevant4 ,there may come instead the quieter virtues of contentment and renunciation4 ,old people have few crises and few temptations2 they live in the past and not in the future1 as youth does4 ,they cannot be required1 therefore1 to have that scorn for tradition which is the virtue of youth4 ,they can keep alive for us the tradition that is vital1 and from them we can learn many things4 ,the value of their experience to us is not that it teaches us to avoid their mistakes1 for we must try all things for ourselves4 ,the older generation1 it is true1 often flatters itself that its mistakes somehow make for our benefit1 because we learn from their errors to avoid the pitfalls into which they came4 ,but there is no making mistakes by the proxy of a former generation4 ,the world has moved on in the mean time2 the pitfalls are new1 and we shall only entangle ourselves the more by adopting the methods of our ancestors in getting out of the difficulties4 ,but the value of an old man's experience is that he has preserved in it the living tradition and hands down to us old honesties1 old sincerities1 and old graces1 that have been crushed in the rough-and-tumble of modern life4 ,it is not tradition in itself that is dangerous1 but only dead tradition that has no meaning for the present and is a mere weight on our progress4 ,such is the legal and economic tradition given to us by our raucous1 middle-aged leaders of opinion1 adopted by them through motives of present gain1 and not through sincere love of the past4 ,but old men1 looking back over the times in which they have lived1 throw a poetic glamour over the past and make it live again4 ,they see it idealized1 but it is the real that they see idealized4 ,an old man of personality and charm has the faculty of cutting away from the past the dead wood1 and preserving for us the living tissue which we can graft profitably on our own growing present4 ,old men have much of the disinterestedness of youth2 they have no ulterior motive in giving us the philosophy of their past4 ,the wisest of them instinctively select what is vital for our present nourishment4 ,it is not old men that youth has to fear1 but the semi-old1 who have lost touch with their youth1 and have not lived long enough to get the disinterested vision of their idealized past4 ,but old men who have lived this life of radical virtue are the best of teachers2 they distill the perfume of the past1 and bring it to us to sweeten our present4 ,such men grow old only in body4 ,the radical spirit of youth has the power of abolishing considerations of age2 the body changes1 but the spirit remains the same4 ,in this sense1 it is the virtue of old age not to become old4 ,the besetting sin of this season of life is apathy4 ,old age should not be a mere waiting for death4 ,the fact that we cannot reconcile death with life shows that they ought not to be discussed in the same terms4 ,they belong to two different orders4 ,death has no part in life1 and in life there can be no such thing as preparation for death4 ,an old man lives to his appointed time1 and then his life ends2 but the life up to that ending1 barring the loss of his faculties1 has been all life and not a whit death4 ,old men do not fear death as much as do young men1 and this calmness is not so much a result of disillusionment with life as a recognition that their life has been lived1 their work finished1 the cycle of their activity rounded off4 ,one virtue of old age1 then1 is to live as fully at the height of one's powers as strength will permit1 passing out of life serene and unreluctant1 with willingness to live and yet with willingness to die4 ,to know an old man who has grown old slowly1 taking the seasons as they came1 conserving the spirit of his youthful virtues1 mellowing his philosophy of life1 acquiring a clearer1 saner1 and more beautiful outlook on human nature and all its spiritual values with each passing year1 is an education in the virtues of life4 ,the virtues which produce an old age such as this do not cut across the grain of life1 but enhance and conserve the vital impulses and forces4 ,such an old age is the crowning evidence of the excellent working of the soul4 ,a life needs no other proof than this that each season has known its proper virtue and healthful activity4 ,,iv ,,the ,,life ,,of ,,irony ,i could never1 until recently1 divest myself of the haunting feeling that being ironical had something to do with the entering of the iron into one's soul4 ,i thought ,i knew what irony was1 and ,i admired it immensely4 ,i could not believe that there was something metallic and bitter about it4 ,yet this sinister connotation of a clanging1 rasping meanness of spirit1 which ,i am sure it has still in many people's minds1 clung about it1 until one happy day my dictionary told me that the iron had never entered into the soul at all1 but the soul into the iron 7,st4 ,jerome had read the psalm wrong71 and that irony was ,greek1 with all the free1 happy play of the ,greek spirit about it1 letting in fresh air and light into others' minds and our own4 ,it was to the ,greek an incomparable method of intercourse1 the rub of mind against mind by the simple use of simulated ignorance and the adoption1 without committing one's self1 of another's point of view4 ,not until ,i read the ,socrates of ,plato did ,i fully appreciate that this irony1--this pleasant challenging of the world1 this insistent judging of experience1 this sense of vivid contrasts and incongruities1 of comic juxtapositions1 of flaring brilliancies1 and no less heartbreaking impossibilities1 of all the little parts of one's world being constantly set off against each other1 and made intelligible only by being translated into and defined in each others' terms1--that this was a life1 and a life of beauty1 that one might suddenly discover one's self living all unawares4 ,and if one could judge one's own feeble reflection1 it was a life that had no room for iron within its soul4 ,we should speak not of the ,socratic method but of the ,socratic life4 ,for irony is a life rather than a method4 ,a life cannot be taken off and put on again at will2 a method can4 ,to be sure1 some people talk of life exactly as if it were some portable commodity1 or some exchangeable garment4 ,we must live1 they cry1 as if we were about to begin4 ,and perhaps they are4 ,only some of us would rather die than live that puny life that they can adopt and cover themselves with4 ,irony is too rich and precious a thing to be capable of such transmission4 ,the ironist is born and not made4 ,this critical attitude towards life1 this delicious sense of contrasts that we call irony1 is not a pose or an amusement4 ,it is something that colors every idea and every feeling of the man who is so happy as to be endowed with it4 ,most people will tell you1 ,i suppose1 that the religious conviction of salvation is the only permanently satisfying coloring of life4 ,in the splendid ironists1 however1 one sees a sweeter1 more flexible and human principle of life1 adequate1 without the buttress of supernatural belief1 to nourish and fortify the spirit4 ,in the classic ironist of all time1 irony shows an inherent nobility1 a nobility that all ages have compared favorably with the ,christian ideal4 ,lacking the spur of religious emotion1 the sweetness of irony may be more difficult to maintain than the mood of belief4 ,but may it not for that very reason be judged superior1 for is it not written1 ,he that endureth unto the end shall be saved8 ,it is not easy to explain the quality of that richest and most satisfying background of life4 ,it lies1 ,i think1 in a vivid and intense feeling of aliveness which it gives4 ,experience comes to the ironist in little darts or spurts1 with the added sense of contrast4 ,most men1 ,i am afraid1 see each bit of personal experience as a unit1 strung more or less loosely on a string of other mildly related bits4 ,but the man with the ironical temperament is forced constantly to compare and contrast his experience with what was1 or what might be1 or with what ought to be1 and it is the shocks of these comparisons and contrasts that make up his inner life4 ,he thinks he leads a richer life1 because he feels not only the individual bits but the contrasts besides in all their various shadings and tints4 ,to this sense of impingement of facts upon life is due a large part of this vividness of irony2 and the rest is due to the alertness of the ironical mind4 ,the ironist is always critically awake4 ,he is always judging1 and watching with inexhaustible interest1 in order that he may judge4 ,now irony in its best sense is an exquisite sense of proportion1 a sort of spiritual tact in judging the values and significances of experience4 ,this sense of being spiritually alive which ceaseless criticism of the world we live in gives us1 combined with the sense of power which free and untrammeled judging produces in us1 is the background of irony4 ,and it should be a means to the truest goodness4 ,socrates made one mistake1--knowledge is not goodness4 ,but it is a step towards judging1 and good judgment is the true goodness4 ,for it is on judgment impelled by desire that we act4 ,the clearer and cleaner our judgments then1 the more definite and correlated our actions4 ,and the great value of these judgments of irony is that they are not artificial but spring naturally out of life4 ,irony1 the science of comparative experience1 compares things not with an established standard but with each other1 and the values that slowly emerge from the process1 values that emerge from one's own vivid reactions1 are constantly revised1 corrected1 and refined by that same sense of contrast4 ,the ironic life is a life keenly alert1 keenly sensitive1 reacting promptly with feelings of liking or dislike to each bit of experience1 letting none of it pass without interpretation and assimilation1 a life full and satisfying1--indeed a rival of the religious life4 ,the life of irony has the virtues of the religious life without its defects4 ,it expresses the aggressive virtues without the quiescence of resignation4 ,for the ironist has the courageous spirit1 the sympathetic heart and the understanding mind1 and can give them full play1 unhampered by the searching introspection of the religious mind that often weakens rather than ennobles and fortifies4 ,he is at one with the religious man in that he hates apathy and stagnation1 for they mean death4 ,but he is superior in that he attacks apathy of intellect and personality as well as apathy of emotion4 ,he has a great conviction of the significance of all life1 the lack of which conviction is the most saddening feature of the religious temperament4 ,the religious man pretends that every aspect of life has meaning for him1 but in practice he constantly minimizes the noisier and vivider elements4 ,he is essentially an aristocrat in his interpretation of values1 while the ironist is incorrigibly a democrat4 ,religion gives a man an intimacy with a few selected and rarified virtues and moods1 while irony makes him a friend of the poor and lowly among spiritual things4 ,when the religious man is healing and helping1 it is at the expense of his spiritual comfort2 he must tear himself away from his companions and go out grimly and sacrificingly into the struggle4 ,the ironist1 living his days among the humbler things1 feels no such severe call to service4 ,and yet the ironist1 since he has no citadel of truth to defend1 is really the more adventurous4 ,life1 not fixed in predestined formulas or measurable by fixed1 immutable standards1 is fluid1 rich and exciting4 ,to the ironist it is both discovery and creation4 ,his courage seeks out the obscure places of human personality1 and his sympathy and understanding create new interests and enthusiasms in the other minds upon which they play4 ,and these new interests in turn react upon his own life1 discovering unexpected vistas there1 and creating new insight into the world that he lives in4 ,that democratic1 sympathetic outlook upon the feelings and thoughts and actions of men and women is the life of irony4 ,that life is expressed in the social intercourse of ourselves with others4 ,the daily fabric of the life of irony is woven out of our critical communings with ourselves and the personalities of our friend1 and the people with whom we come in contact4 ,the ironist1 by adopting another's point of view and making it his own in order to carry light and air into it1 literally puts himself in the other man's place4 ,irony is thus the truest sympathy4 ,it is no cheap way of ridiculing an opponent by putting on his clothes and making fun of him4 ,the ironist has no opponent1 but only a friend4 ,and in his irony he is helping that friend to reveal himself4 ,that half-seriousness1 that solemn treatment of the trivial and trivial treatment of the solemn which is the pattern of the ironist's talk is but his way of exhibiting the unexpected contrasts and shadings that he sees to be requisite to the keenest understanding of the situation4 ,the ironist borrows and exchanges and appropriates ideas and gives them a new setting in juxtaposition with others1 but he never burlesques or caricatures or exaggerates them4 ,if an idea is absurd1 the slightest change of environment will show that absurdity4 ,the mere transference of an idea to another's mouth will bring to light all its hidden meaninglessness4 ,it needs no extraneous aid4 ,if an idea is hollow1 it will show itself cowering against the intellectual background of the ironist like the puny1 shivering thing it is4 ,if a point of view cannot bear being adopted by another person1 if it is not hardy enough to be transplanted1 it has little right to exist at all4 ,this world is no hothouse for ideas and attitudes4 ,too many outworn ideas are skulking in dark retreats1 sequestered from the light2 every man has great sunless stretches in his soul where base prejudices lurk and flourish4 ,on these the white light of irony is needed to play4 ,and it delights the ironist to watch them shrivel and decay under that light4 ,the little tabooed regions of well-bred people1 the 8things we never mention10 the basic biases and assumptions that underlie the lives and thinking of every class and profession1 our second-hand dogmas and phrases1--all these live and thrive because they have never been transplanted1 or heard from the lips of another4 ,the dictum that 8the only requisites for success are honesty and merit10 which we applaud so frantically from the lips of the successful1 becomes a ghastly irony in the mouth of an unemployed workingman4 ,there would be a frightful mortality of points of view could we have a perfectly free exchange such as this4 ,irony is just this temporary borrowing and lending4 ,many of our cherished ideals would lose half their validity were they put bodily into the mouths of the less fortunate4 ,but if irony destroys some ideals it builds up others4 ,it tests ideals by their social validity1 by their general interchangeability among all sorts of people and the world1 but if it leaves the foundations of many in a shaky condition and renders more simply provisional1 those that it does leave standing are imperishably founded in the common democratic experience of all men4 ,to the ironist it seems that the irony is not in the speaking but in the things themselves4 ,he is a poor ironist who would consciously distort1 or attempt to make another's idea appear in any light except its own4 ,absurdity is an intrinsic quality of so many things that they only have to be touched to reveal it4 ,the deadliest way to annihilate the unoriginal and the insincere is to let it speak for itself4 ,irony is this letting things speak for themselves and hang themselves by their own rope4 ,only1 it repeats the words after the speaker1 and adjusts the rope4 ,it is the commanding touch of a comprehending personality that dissolves the seemingly tough husk of the idea4 ,the ironical method might be compared to the acid that develops a photographic plate4 ,it does not distort the image1 but merely brings clearly to the light all that was implicit in the plate before4 ,and if it brings the picture to the light with values reversed1 so does irony revel in a paradox1 which is simply a photographic negative of the truth1 truth with the values reversed4 ,but turn the negative ever so slightly so that the light falls upon it1 and the perfect picture appears in all its true values and beauty4 ,irony1 we may say then1 is the photography of the soul4 ,the picture goes through certain changes in the hands of the ironist1 but without these changes the truth would be simply a blank1 unmeaning surface4 ,the photograph is a synonym for deadly accuracy4 ,similarly the ironist insists always on seeing things as they are4 ,he is a realist1 whom the grim satisfaction of seeing the truth compensates for any sordidness that it may bring along with it4 ,things as they are1 thrown against the background of things as they ought to be1--this is the ironist's vision4 ,i should like to feel that the vision of the religious man is not too often things as they are1 thrown against the background of things as they ought not to be4 ,the ironist is the only man who makes any serious attempt to distinguish between fresh and second-hand experience4 ,our minds are so unfortunately arranged that all sorts of beliefs can be accepted and propagated quite independently of any rational or even experimental basis at all4 ,nature does not seem to care very much whether our ideas are true or not1 as long as we get on through life safely enough4 ,and it is surprising on what an enormous amount of error we can get along comfortably4 ,we cannot be wrong on every point or we should cease to live1 but so long as we are empirically right in our habits1 the truth or falsity of our ideas seems to have little effect upon our comfort4 ,we are born into a world that is an inexhaustible store of ready-made ideas1 stored up in tradition1 in books1 and in every medium of communication between our minds and others4 ,all we have to do is to accept this predigested nourishment1 and ask no questions4 ,we could live a whole life without ever making a really individual response1 without providing ourselves out of our own experience with any of the material that our mind works on4 ,many of us seem to be just this kind of spiritual parasite4 ,we may learn and absorb and grow1 up to a certain point4 ,but eventually something captures us3 we become encased in a suit of armor1 and invulnerable to our own experience4 ,we have lost the faculty of being surprised4 ,it is this encasing that the ironist fears1 and it is the ironical method that he finds the best for preventing it4 ,irony keeps the waters in motion1 so that the ice never has a chance to form4 ,the cut-and-dried life is easy to form because it has no sense of contrast2 everything comes to one on its own terms1 vouching for itself1 and is accepted or rejected on its own good looks1 and not for its fitness and place in the scheme of things4 ,this is the courage and this the sympathy of irony4 ,have they not a beauty of their own comparable in excellence with the paler glow of religious virtue8 ,and the understanding of the ironist although aggressive and challenging has its justification1 too4 ,for he is mad to understand the world1 to get to the bottom of other personalities4 ,that is the reason for his constant classification4 ,the ironist is the most dogmatic of persons4 ,to understand you he must grasp you firmly1 or he must pin you down definitely2 if he accidentally nails you fast to a dogma that you indignantly repudiate1 you must blame his enthusiasm and not his method4 ,dogmatism is rarely popular1 and the ironist of course suffers4 ,it hurts people's eyes to see a strong light1 and the pleasant mist-land of ideas is much more emotionally warming than the clear1 sunny region of transmissible phrases4 ,how the average person wriggles and squirms under these piercing attempts to corner his personality6 8,tell me what you mean60 or 8,what do you see in it80 are the fatal questions that the ironist puts1 and who shall censure him if he does display the least trace of malicious delight as he watches the half-formed baby ideas struggle towards the light1 or scurry around frantically to find some decent costume in which they may appear in public8 ,the judgments of the ironist are often discounted as being too sweeping4 ,but he has a valid defense4 ,lack of classification is annihilation of thought4 ,even the newest philosophy will admit that classification is a necessary evil4 ,concepts are indispensable1--and yet each concept falsifies4 ,the ironist must have as large a stock as possible1 but he must have a stock4 ,and even the unjust classification is marvelously effective4 ,the ironist's name for his opponent is a challenge to him4 ,the more sweeping it is1 the more stimulus it gives him to repel the charge4 ,he must explain just how he is unique and individual in his attitude4 ,and in this explanation he reveals and discovers all that the ironist wishes to know about him4 ,a handful of epithets is thus the ammunition of the ironist4 ,he must call things by what seem to him to be their right names4 ,in a sense1 the ironist assumes the prisoner to be guilty until he proves himself innocent2 but it is always in order that justice may be done1 and that he may come to learn the prisoner's soul and all the wondrous things that are contained there4 ,it is this passion for comprehension that explains the ironist's apparently scandalous propensity to publicity4 ,nothing seems to him too sacred to touch1 nothing too holy for him to become witty about4 ,there are no doors locked to him1 there is nothing that can make good any claim of resistance to scrutiny4 ,his free and easy manner of including everything within the sweep of his vision is but his recognition1 however1 of the fact that nothing is really so serious as we think it is1 and nothing quite so petty4 ,the ironist will descend in a moment from a discussion of religion to a squabble over a card-game1 and he will defend himself with the reflection that religion is after all a human thing and must be discussed in the light of everyday living1 and that the card-game is an integral part of life1 reveals the personalities of the players--and his own to himself--and being worthy of his interest is worthy of his enthusiasm4 ,the ironist is apt to test things by their power to interest as much as by their nobility1 and if he sees the incongruous and inflated in the lofty1 so he sees the significant in the trivial and raises it from its low degree4 ,many a mighty impostor does he put down from his seat4 ,the ironist is the great intellectual democrat1 in whose presence and before whose law all ideas and attitudes stand equal4 ,in his world there is no privileged caste1 no aristocracy of sentiments to be reverenced1 or segregated systems of interests to be tabooed4 ,nothing human is alien to the ironist2 the whole world is thrown open naked to the play of his judgment4 ,in the eyes of its detractors1 irony has all the vices of democracy4 ,its publicity seems mere vulgarity1 its free hospitality seems to shock all ideas of moral worth4 ,the ironist is but a scoffer1 they say1 with weapon leveled eternally at all that is good and true and sacred4 ,the adoption of another's point of view seems little better than malicious dissimulation1--the repetition of others' words1 an elaborate mockery2 the ironist's eager interest seems a mere impudence or a lack of finer instincts2 his interest in the trivial1 the last confession of a mean spirit2 and his love of classifying1 a proof of his poverty of imaginative resource4 ,irony1 in other words1 is thought to be synonymous with cynicism4 ,but the ironist is no cynic4 ,his is a kindly1 not a sour interest in human motives4 ,he wants to find out how the human machine runs1 not to prove that it is a worthless1 broken-down affair4 ,he accepts it as it comes1 and if he finds it curiously feeble and futile in places1 blame not him but the nature of things4 ,he finds enough rich compensation in the unexpected charm that he constantly finds himself eliciting4 ,the ironist sees life steadily and sees it whole2 the cynic only a distorted fragment4 ,if the ironist is not cynic1 neither is he merely a dealer in satire1 burlesque and ridicule4 ,irony may be the raw material1 innocent in itself but capable of being put to evil uses4 ,but it involves neither the malice of satire1 nor the horse-play of burlesque1 nor the stab of ridicule4 ,irony is infinitely finer and more delicate and impersonal4 ,the satirist is always personal and concrete1 but the ironist deals with general principles1 and broad aspects of human nature4 ,it cannot be too much emphasized that the function of the ironist is not to make fun of people1 but to give their souls an airing4 ,the ironist is a judge on the bench1 giving men a public hearing4 ,he is not an aggressive spirit who goes about seeking whom he may devour1 or a spiritual lawyer who courts litigation1 but the judge before whom file all the facts of his experience1 the people he meets1 the opinions he hears or reads1 his own attitudes and prepossessions4 ,if any are convicted they are self-convicted4 ,the judge himself is passive1 merciful1 lenient4 ,there is judgment1 but no punishment4 ,or rather1 the trial itself is the punishment4 ,now satire is all that irony is not4 ,the satirist is the aggressive lawyer1 fastening upon particular people and particular qualities4 ,but irony is no more personal than the sun that sends his flaming darts into the world4 ,the satirist is a purely practical man1 with a business instinct1 bent on the main chance and the definite object4 ,he is often brutal1 and always overbearing2 the ironist never4 ,irony may wound from the very fineness and delicacy of its attack1 but the wounding is incidental4 ,the sole purpose of the satirist and the burlesquer is to wound1 and they test their success by the deepness of the wound4 ,but irony tests its own by the amount of generous light and air it has set flowing through an idea or a personality1 and the broad significance it has revealed in neglected things4 ,if irony is not brutal1 neither is it merely critical and destructive4 ,the world has some reason1 it is true1 to complain against the rather supercilious judiciousness of the ironist4 8,who are you to judge us80 it cries4 ,the world does not like to feel the scrutinizing eyes of the ironist as he sits back in his chair2 does not like to feel that the ironist is simply studying it and amusing himself at its expense4 ,it is uneasy1 and acts sometimes as if it did not have a perfectly clear conscience4 ,to this uncomfortableness the ironist can retort1--8,what is it that you are afraid to have known about you80 ,if the judgment amuses him1 so much the worse for the world4 ,but if the idea of the ironist as judge implies that his attitude is wholly detached1 wholly objective1 it is an unfortunate metaphor4 ,for he is as much part and parcel of the human show as any of the people he studies4 ,the world is no stage1 with the ironist as audience4 ,his own personal reactions with the people about him form all the stuff of his thoughts and judgments4 ,he has a personal interest in the case2 his own personality is inextricably mingled in the stream of impressions that flows past him4 ,if the ironist is destructive1 it is his own world that he is destroying2 if he is critical1 it is his own world that he is criticizing4 ,and his irony is his critique of life4 ,this is the defense of the ironist against the charge that he has a purely sthetic attitude towards life4 ,too often1 perhaps1 the sparkling clarity of his thought1 the play of his humor1 the easy sense of superiority and intellectual command that he carries off1 make his irony appear as rather the sthetic nourishment of his life than an active way of doing and being4 ,his rather detached air makes him seem to view people as means1 not ends in themselves4 ,with his delight in the vivid and poignant he is prone to see picturesqueness in the sordid1 and tolerate evils that he should condemn4 ,for all his interest and activity1 it is said that he does not really care4 ,but this sthetic taint to his irony is really only skin-deep4 ,the ironist is ironical not because he does not care1 but because he cares too much4 ,he is feeling the profoundest depths of the world's great beating1 laboring heart1 and his playful attitude towards the grim and sordid is a necessary relief from the tension of too much caring4 ,it is his salvation from unutterable despair4 ,the terrible urgency of the reality of poverty and misery and exploitation would be too strong upon him4 ,only irony can give him a sense of proportion1 and make his life fruitful and resolute4 ,it can give him a temporary escape1 a slight momentary reconciliation1 a chance to draw a deep breath of resolve before plunging into the fight4 ,it is not a palliative so much as a perspective4 ,this is the only justification of the sthetic attitude1 that1 if taken provisionally1 it sweetens and fortifies4 ,it is only deadly when adopted as absolute4 ,the kind of sthetic irony that ,pater and ,omar display is a paralyzed1 half-seeing1 half-caring reflection on life1--a tame1 domesticated irony with its wings cut1 an irony that furnishes a justification and a command to inaction4 ,it is the result not of exquisitely refined feelings1 but of social ansthesia4 ,their irony1 cut off from the great world of men and women and boys and girls and their intricate interweavings and jostlings and incongruities1 turns pale and sickly and numb4 ,the ironist has no right to see beauty in things unless he really cares4 ,the sthetic sense is harmless only when it is both ironical and social4 ,irony is thus a cure for both optimism and pessimism4 ,nothing is so revolting to the ironist as the smiling optimist1 who testifies in his fatuous heedlessness to the desirability of this best of all possible worlds4 ,but the ironist has always an incorrigible propensity to see the other side4 ,the hopeless maladjustment of too many people to their world1 of their bondage in the iron fetters of circumstance1--all this is too glaring for the ironist's placidity4 ,when he examines the beautiful picture1 too often the best turns worst to him4 ,but if optimism is impossible to the ironist1 so is pessimism4 ,the ironist may have a secret respect for the pessimist1--he at least has felt the bitter tang of life1 and has really cared1--but he feels that the pessimist lacks4 ,for if the optimist is blind1 the pessimist is hypnotized4 ,he is abnormally suggestive to evil4 ,but clear-sighted irony sees that the world is too big and multifarious to be evil at heart4 ,something beautiful and joyous lurks even in the most hapless1--a child's laugh in a dreary street1 a smile on the face of a weary woman4 ,it is this saving quality of irony that both optimist and pessimist miss4 ,and since plain common sense tells us that things are never quite so bad or quite so good as they seem1 the ironist carries conviction into the hearts of men in their best moments4 ,the ironist is a person who counts in the world4 ,he has all sorts of unexpected effects on both the people he goes with and himself4 ,his is an insistent personality2 he is as troublesome as a missionary4 ,and he is a missionary2 for1 his own purpose being a comprehension of his fellows' souls1 he makes them conscious of their own souls4 ,he is a hard man2 he will take nothing on reputation2 he will guarantee for himself the qualities of things4 ,he will not accept the vouchers of the world that a man is wise1 or clever1 or sincere1 behind the impenetrable veil of his face4 ,he must probe until he elicits the evidence of personality1 until he gets at the peculiar quality which distinguishes that individual soul4 ,for the ironist is after all a connoisseur in personality1 and if his conversation partakes too often of the character of cross-examination1 it is only as a lover of the beautiful1 a possessor of taste1 that he inquires4 ,he does not want to see people squirm1 but he does want to see whether they are alive or not4 ,if he pricks too hard1 it is not from malice1 but merely from error in his estimation of the toughness of their skins4 ,what people are inside is the most interesting question in the world to the ironist4 ,and in finding out he stirs them up4 ,many a petty doubting spirit does he challenge and bully into a sort of self-respect4 ,and many a bag of wind does he puncture4 ,but his most useful function is this of stimulating thought and action4 ,the ironist forces his friends to move their rusty limbs and unhinge the creaking doors of their minds4 ,the world needs more ironists4 ,shut up with one's own thoughts1 one loses the glow of life that comes from frank exchange of ideas with many kinds of people4 ,too many minds are stuffy1 dusty rooms into which the windows have never been opened1--minds heavy with their own crotchets1 cluttered up with untested theories and conflicting sympathies that have never got related in any social way4 ,the ironist blows them all helter-skelter1 sweeps away the dust1 and sets everything in its proper place again4 ,your solid1 self-respectful mind1 the ironist confesses he can do little with2 it is not of his world4 ,he comes to freshen and tone up the stale minds4 ,the ironist is the great purger and cleanser of life4 ,irony is a sort of spiritual massage1 rubbing the souls of men4 ,it may seem rough to some tender souls1 but it does not sere or scar them4 ,the strong arm of the ironist restores the circulation1 and drives away anmia4 ,on the ironist himself the effect of irony is even more invigorating4 ,we can never really understand ourselves without at least a touch of irony4 ,the interpretation of human nature without is a simple matter in comparison with the comprehension of that complex of elations and disgusts1 inhibitions and curious irrational impulses that we call ourselves4 ,it is not true that by examining ourselves and coming to an understanding of the way we behave we understand other people1 but that by the contrasts and little revelations of our friends we learn to interpret ourselves4 ,introspection is no match for irony as a guide4 ,the most illuminating experience that we can have is a sudden realization that had we been in the other person's place we should have acted precisely as he did4 ,to the ironist this is no mere intellectual conviction that1 after all1 none of us are perfect1 but a vivid emotional experience which has knit him with that other person in one moment in a bond of sympathy that could have been acquired in no other way4 ,those minds that lack the touch of irony are too little flexible1 or too heavily buttressed with self-esteem to make this sudden change of attitudes4 ,the ironist1 one might almost say1 gets his brotherhood intuitively1 feels the sympathy and the oneness in truth before he thinks them4 ,the ironist is the only man who really gets outside of himself4 ,what he does for other people1--that is1 picking out a little piece of their souls and holding it up for their inspection1--he does for himself4 ,he gets thus an objective view of himself4 ,the unhealthy indoor brooding of introspection is artificial and unproductive1 because it has no perspective or contrast4 ,but the ironist with his constant outdoor look sees his own foibles and humiliations in the light of those of other people4 ,he acquires a more tolerant1 half-amused1 half-earnest attitude toward himself4 ,his self-respect is nourished by the knowledge that whatever things discreditable and foolish and worthless he has done1 he has seen them approximated by others1 and yet his esteem is kept safely pruned down by the recurring evidence that nothing he has is unique4 ,he is poised in life1 ready to soar or to walk as the occasion demands4 ,he is pivoted1 susceptible to every stimulus1 and yet chained so that he cannot be flung off into space by his own centrifugal force4 ,irony has the same sweetening and freshening effect on one's own life that it has on the lives of those who come in contact with it4 ,it gives one a command of one's resources4 ,the ironist practices a perfect economy of material4 ,for he must utilize his wealth constantly and over and over again in various shapes and shadings4 ,he may be poor in actual material1 but out of the contrast and arrangement of that slender store he is able1 like a kaleidoscope1 to make a multifarious variety of wonderful patterns4 ,his current coin is1 so to speak1 kept bright by constant exchange4 ,he is infinitely richer than your opulent but miserly minds that hoard up facts1 and are impotent from the very plethora of their accumulations4 ,irony is essential to any real honesty4 ,for dishonesty is at bottom simply an attempt to save somebody's face4 ,but the ironist does not want any faces saved1 neither his own nor those of other people4 ,to save faces is to sophisticate human nature1 to falsify the facts1 and miss a delicious contrast1 an illuminating revelation of how people act4 ,so the ironist is the only perfectly honest man4 ,but he suffers for it by acquiring a reputation for impudence4 ,his willingness to bear the consequences of his own acts1 his quiet insistence that others shall bear consequences1 seem like mere shamelessness1 a lack of delicate feeling for 8situations40 ,but accustomed as he is to range freely and know no fear nor favor1 he despises this reserve as a species of timidity or even hypocrisy4 ,it is an irony itself that the one temperament that can be said really to appreciate human nature1 in the sense of understanding it rightly1 should be called impudent1 and it is another that it should be denounced as monstrously egotistical4 ,the ironical mind is the only truly modest mind1 for its point of view is ever outside itself4 ,if it calls attention to itself1 it is only as another of those fascinating human creatures that pass ever by with their bewildering1 alluring ways4 ,if it talks about itself1 it is only as a third person in whom all the talkers are supposed to be eagerly interested4 ,in this sense the ironist has lost his egotism completely4 ,he has rubbed out the line that separates his personality from the rest of the world4 ,the ironist must take people very seriously1 to spend so much time over them4 ,he must be both serious and sincere or he would not persist in his irony and expose himself to so much misunderstanding4 ,and since it is not how people treat him1 but simply how they act1 that furnishes the basis for his appreciation1 the ironist finds it easy to forgive4 ,he has a way of letting the individual offense slide1 in favor of a deeper principle4 ,in the act of being grossly misrepresented1 he can feel a pang of exasperated delight that people should be so dense2 in the act of being taken in1 he can feel the cleverness of it all4 ,he becomes for the moment his enemy2 and we can always forgive ourselves4 ,even while he is being insulted1 or outraged or ignored1 he can feel1 8,after all1 this is what life is6 ,this is the way we poor human creatures behave60 ,the ironist is thus in a sense vicarious human nature4 ,through that deep1 anticipatory sympathy1 he is kept clean from hate or scorn4 ,the ironist therefore has a valid defense against all the charges of brutality and triviality and irreverence1 that the religious man is prone to bring against him4 ,he can care more deeply about things because he can see so much more widely4 ,and he can take life very seriously because it interests him so intensely4 ,and he can feel its poignancy and its flux more keenly because he delivers himself up bravely to its swirling1 many-hued current4 ,the inner peace of religion seems gained only at the expense of the reality of living4 ,a life such as the life of irony1 lived fully and joyously1 cannot be peaceful2 it cannot even be happy1 in the sense of calm content and satisfaction4 ,but it can be better than either--it can be wise1 and it can be fruitful4 ,and it can be good1 in a way that the life of inner peace cannot be4 ,for the life of irony having no reserve and weaving itself out of the flux of experience rather than out of eternal values has the broad1 honest sympathy of democracy1 that is impossible to any temperament with the aristocratic taint4 ,one advantage the religious life has is a salvation in another world to which it can withdraw4 ,the life of irony has laid up few treasures in heaven1 but many in this world4 ,having gained so much it has much to lose4 ,but its glory is that it can lose nothing unless it lose all4 ,to shafts of fortune and blows of friends or enemies then1 the ironist is almost impregnable4 ,he knows how to parry each thrust and prepare for every emergency4 ,even if the arrows reach him1 all the poison has been sucked out of them by his clear1 resolute understanding of their significance4 ,there is but one weak spot in his armor1 but one disaster that he fears more almost than the loss of his life1--a shrinkage of his environment1 a running dry of experience4 ,he fears to be cut off from friends and crowds and human faces and speech and books1 for he demands to be ceaselessly fed4 ,like a modern city1 he is totally dependent on a steady flow of supplies from the outside world1 and will be in danger of starvation1 if the lines of communication are interrupted4 ,without people and opinions for his mind to play on1 his irony withers and faints4 ,he has not the faculty of brooding2 he cannot mine the depths of his own soul1 and bring forth after labor mighty nuggets of thought4 ,the flow and swirl of things is his compelling interest4 ,his thoughts are reactions1 immediate and vivid1 to his daily experience4 ,some deep1 unconscious brooding must go on1 to produce that happy precision of judgment of his2 but it is not voluntary4 ,he is conscious only of the shifting light and play of life2 his world is dynamic1 energetic1 changing4 ,he lives in a world of relations1 and he must have a whole store of things to be related4 ,he has lost himself completely in this world he lives in4 ,his ironical interpretation of the world is his life1 and this world is his nourishment4 ,take away this environmental world and you have slain his soul4 ,he is invulnerable to everything except that deprivation4 ,v ,,the ,,excitement ,,of ,,friendship ,my friends1 ,i can say with truth1 since ,i have no other treasure1 are my fortune4 ,i really live only when ,i am with my friends4 ,those sufficient persons who can pass happily long periods of solitude communing with their own thoughts and nourishing their own souls fill me with a despairing admiration4 ,their gift of auto-stimulation argues a personal power which ,i shall never possess4 ,or else it argues1 as ,i like to think in self-defense1 a callousness of spirit1 an insensitiveness to the outside influences which nourish and sustain the more susceptible mind4 ,and those persons who can shut themselves up for long periods and work out their thoughts alone1 constructing beautiful and orderly representations of their own spirits1 are to me a continual mystery4 ,i know this is the way that things are accomplished1 that 8monotony and solitude0 are necessary for him who would produce creative thought4 ,yet1 knowing well this truth1 ,i shun them both4 ,i am a battery that needs to be often recharged4 ,i require the excitement of friendship2 ,i must have the constant stimulation of friends4 ,i do not spark automatically1 but must have other minds to rub up against1 and strike from them by friction the spark that will kindle my thoughts4 ,when ,i walk1 ,i must have a friend to talk to1 or ,i shall not even think4 ,i am not of those who1 like ,stevenson1 believe that walking should be a kind of vegetative stupor1 where the sun and air merely fill one with a diffused sense of well-being and exclude definite thought4 ,the wind should rather blow through the dusty regions of the mind1 and the sun light up its dark corners1 and thinking and talking should be saner and higher and more joyful than within doors4 ,but one must have a friend along to open the windows4 ,neither can ,i sympathize with those persons who carry on long chains of reasoning while they are traveling or walking4 ,when alone1 my thinking is as desultory as the scenery of the roadside1 and when with a friend1 it is apt to be as full of romantic surprises as a walk through a woodland glen4 ,good talk is like good scenery--continuous yet constantly varying1 and full of the charm of novelty and surprise4 ,how unnatural it is to think except when one is forced to do it1 is discovered when one attempts to analyze one's thoughts when alone4 ,he is a rare genius who finds something beyond the mere visual images that float through his mind1--either the reflection of what he is actually seeing1 or the pictorial representations of what he has been doing or what he wants or intends to do in the near or far future4 ,we should be shocked to confess to ourselves how little control we have over our own minds2 we shall be lucky if we can believe that we guide them4 ,thinking1 then1 was given us for use in emergencies1 and no man can be justly blamed if he reserves it for emergencies4 ,he can be blamed1 however1 if he does not expose himself to those crises which will call it forth4 ,now a friend is such an emergency1 perhaps the most exciting stimulus to thinking that one can find1 and if one wants to live beyond the vegetative stupor1 one must surround one's self with friends4 ,i shall call my friends1 then1 all those influences which warm me and start running again all my currents of thought and imagination4 ,the persons1 causes1 and books that unlock the prison of my intellectual torpor1 ,i can justly call my friends1 for ,i find that ,i feel toward them all the same eager joy and inexhaustible rush of welcome4 ,where they differ it shall be in degree and not in kind4 ,the speaker whom ,i hear1 the book that ,i read1 the friend with whom ,i chat1 the music that ,i play1 even the blank paper before me1 which subtly stirs me to cover it with sentences that unfold surprisingly and entice me to follow until ,i seem hopelessly lost from the trail1--all these shall be my friends as long as ,i find myself responding to them1 and no longer4 ,they are all alike in being emergencies that call upon me for instant and definite response4 ,the difference between them lies in their response to me4 ,my personal friends react upon me2 the lecturers and books and music and pictures do not4 ,these are not influenced by my feelings or by what ,i do4 ,i can approach them cautiously or boldly1 respond to them slowly or warmly1 and they will not care4 ,they have a definite quality1 and do not change2 if ,i respond differently to them at different times1 ,i know that it is ,i and not they who have altered4 ,the excitement of friendship does not lie with them4 ,one feels this lack particularly in reading1 which no amount of enthusiasm can make more than a feeble and spiritless performance4 ,the more enthusiasm the reading inspires in one1 the more one rebels at the passivity into which one is forced4 ,i want to get somehow at grips with the book4 ,i can feel the warmth of the personality behind it1 but ,i cannot see the face as ,i can the face of a person1 lighting and changing with the iridescent play of expression4 ,it is better with music2 one can get at grips with one's piano1 and feel the resistance and the response of the music one plays4 ,one gets the sense of aiding somehow in its creation1 the lack of which feeling is the fatal weakness of reading1 though itself the easiest and most universal of friendly stimulations4 ,one comes from much reading with a sense of depression and a vague feeling of something unsatisfied2 from friends or music one comes with a high sense of elation and of the brimming adequacy of life4 ,if one could only retain those moments6 ,what a tragedy it is that our periods of stimulated thinking should be so difficult of reproduction2 that there is no intellectual shorthand to take down the keen thoughts1 the trains of argument1 the pregnant thoughts1 which spring so spontaneously to the mind at such times6 ,what a tragedy that one must wait till the fire has died out1 till the light has faded away1 to transcribe the dull flickering remembrances of those golden hours when thought and feeling seemed to have melted together1 and one said and thought what seemed truest and finest and most worthy of one's immortalizing6 ,this is what constitutes the hopeless labor of writing1--that one must struggle constantly to warm again the thoughts that are cold or have been utterly consumed4 ,what was thought in the hours of stimulation must be written in the hours of solitude1 when the mind is apt to be cold and gray1 and when one is fortunate to find on the hearth of the memory even a few scattered embers lying about4 ,the blood runs sluggish as one sits down to write4 ,what worry and striving it takes to get it running freely again6 ,what labor to reproduce even a semblance of what seemed to come so genially and naturally in the contact and intercourse of friendship6 ,one of the curious superstitions of friendship is that we somehow choose our friends4 ,to the connoisseur in friendship no idea could be more amazing and incredible4 ,our friends are chosen for us by some hidden law of sympathy1 and not by our conscious wills4 ,all we know is that in our reactions to people we are attracted to some and are indifferent to others4 ,and the ground of this mutual interest seems based on no discoverable principles of similarity of temperament or character4 ,we have no time1 when meeting a new person1 to study him or her carefully2 our reactions are swift and immediate4 ,our minds are made up instantly1--8friend or non-friend40 ,by some subtle intuitions1 we know and have measured at their first words all the possibilities which their friendship has in store for us4 ,we get the full quality of their personality at the first shock of meeting1 and no future intimacy changes that quality4 ,if ,i am to like a man1 ,i like him at once2 further acquaintance can only broaden and deepen that liking and understanding4 ,if ,i am destined to respond1 ,i respond at once or never4 ,if ,i do not respond1 he continues to be to me as if ,i had never met him2 he does not exist in my world4 ,his thoughts1 feelings1 and interests ,i can but dimly conceive of2 if ,i do think of him it is only as a member of some general class4 ,my imaginative sympathy can embrace him only as a type4 ,if his interests are in some way forced upon my attention1 and my imagination is compelled to encompass him as an individual1 ,i find his ideas and interests appearing like pale1 shadowy things1 dim ghosts of the real world that my friends and ,i live in4 ,association with such aliens--and how much of our life is necessarily spent in their company--is a torture far worse than being actually disliked4 ,probably they do not dislike us1 but there is this strange gulf which cuts us off from their possible sympathy4 ,a pall seems to hang over our spirits2 our souls are dumb4 ,it is a struggle and an effort to affect them at all4 ,and though we may know that this depressing weight which seems to press on us in our intercourse with them has no existence1 yet this realization does not cure our helplessness4 ,we do not exist for them any more than they exist for us4 ,they are depressants1 not stimulators as are our friends4 ,our words sound singularly futile and half-hearted as they pass our lips4 ,our thoughts turn to ashes as we utter them4 ,in the grip of this predestined antipathy we can do nothing but submit and pass on4 ,but in how different a light do we see our friends6 ,they are no types1 but each a unique1 exhaustless personality1 with his own absorbing little cosmos of interests round him4 ,and those interests are real and vital1 and in some way interwoven with one's own cosmos4 ,our friends are those whose worlds overlap our own1 like intersecting circles4 ,if there is too much overlapping1 however1 there is monotony and a mutual cancellation4 ,it is1 perhaps1 a question of attitude as much as anything4 ,our friends must be pointed in the same direction in which we are going1 and the truest friendship and delight is when we can watch each other's attitude toward life grow increasingly similar2 or if not similar1 at least so sympathetic as to be mutually complementary and sustaining4 ,the wholesale expatriation from our world of all who do not overlap us or look at life in a similar direction is so fatal to success that we cannot afford to let these subtle forces of friendship and apathy have full sway with our souls4 ,to be at the mercy of whatever preordained relations may have been set up between us and the people we meet is to make us incapable of negotiating business in a world where one must be all things to all men4 ,from an early age1 therefore1 we work1 instinctively or consciously1 to get our reactions under control1 so as to direct them in the way most profitable to us4 ,by a slow and imperceptible accretion of impersonality over the erratic tendencies of personal response and feeling1 we acquire the professional manner1 which opens the world wide to us4 ,we become human patterns of the profession into which we have fallen1 and are no longer individual personalities4 ,men find no difficulty in becoming soon so professionalized that their manner to their children at home is almost identical with that to their clients in the office4 ,such an extinction of the personality is a costly price to pay for worldly success4 ,one has integrated one's character1 perhaps1 but at the cost of the zest and verve and peril of true friendship4 ,to those of us1 then1 who have not been tempted by success1 or who have been so fortunate as to escape it1 friendship is a life-long adventure4 ,we do not integrate ourselves1 and we have as many sides to our character as we have friends to show them to4 ,quite unconsciously ,i find myself witty with one friend1 large and magnanimous with another1 petulant and stingy with another1 wise and grave with another1 and utterly frivolous with another4 ,i watch with surprise the sudden and startling changes in myself as ,i pass from the influence of one friend to the influence of some one else4 ,but my character with each particular friend is constant4 ,i find myself1 whenever ,i meet him1 with much the same emotional and mental tone4 ,if we talk1 there is with each one some definite subject upon which we always speak and which remains perennially fresh and new4 ,if ,i am so unfortunate as to stray accidentally from one of these well-worn fields into another1 ,i am instantly reminded of the fact by the strangeness and chill of the atmosphere4 ,we are happy only on our familiar levels1 but on these we feel that we could go on exhaustless forever1 without a pang of ennui4 ,and this inexhaustibility of talk is the truest evidence of good friendship4 ,friends do not1 on the other hand1 always talk of what is nearest to them4 ,friendship requires that there be an open channel between friends1 but it does not demand that that channel be the deepest in our nature4 ,it may be of the shallowest kind and yet the friendship be of the truest4 ,for all the different traits of our nature must get their airing through friends1 the trivial as well as the significant4 ,we let ourselves out piecemeal1 it seems1 so that only with a host of varied friends can we express ourselves to the fullest4 ,each friend calls out some particular trait in us1 and it requires the whole chorus fitly to teach us what we are4 ,this is the imperative need of friendship4 ,a man with few friends is only half-developed2 there are whole sides of his nature which are locked up and have never been expressed4 ,he cannot unlock them himself1 he cannot even discover them2 friends alone can stimulate him and open them4 ,such a man is in prison2 his soul is in penal solitude4 ,a man must get friends as he would get food and drink for nourishment and sustenance4 ,and he must keep them1 as he would keep health and wealth1 as the infallible safeguards against misery and poverty of spirit4 ,if it seems selfish to insist so urgently upon one's need for friends1 if it should be asked what we are giving our friends in return for all their spiritual fortification and nourishment1 the defense would have to be1 that we give back to them in ample measure what they give to us4 ,if we are their friends1 we are stimulating them as they are stimulating us4 ,they will find that they talk with unusual brilliancy when they are with us4 ,and we may find that we have1 perhaps1 merely listened to them4 ,yet through that curious bond of sympathy which has made us friends1 we have done as much for them as if we had exerted ourselves in the most active way4 ,the only duty of friendship is that we and our friends should live at our highest and best when together4 ,having achieved that1 we have fulfilled the law4 ,a good friendship1 strange to say1 has little place for mutual consolations and ministrations4 ,friendship breathes a more rugged air4 ,in sorrow the silent pressure of the hand speaks the emotions1 and lesser griefs and misfortunes are ignored or glossed over4 ,the fatal facility of women's friendships1 their copious outpourings of grief to each other1 their sharing of wounds and sufferings1 their half-pleased interest in misfortune1--all this seems of a lesser order than the robust friendships of men1 who console each other in a much more subtle1 even intuitive way1--by a constant pervading sympathy which is felt rather than expressed4 ,for the true atmosphere of friendship is a sunny one4 ,griefs and disappointments do not thrive in its clear1 healthy light4 ,when they do appear1 they take on a new color4 ,the silver lining appears1 and we see even our own personal mistakes and chagrins as whimsical adventures4 ,it is almost impossible seriously to believe in one's bad luck or failures or incapacity while one is talking with a friend4 ,one achieves a sort of transfiguration of personality in those moments4 ,in the midst of the high and genial flow of intimate talk1 a pang may seize one at the thought of the next day's drudgery1 when life will be lived alone again2 but nothing can dispel the ease and fullness with which it is being lived at the moment4 ,it is1 indeed1 a heavy care that will not dissolve into misty air at the magic touch of a friend's voice4 ,fine as friendship is1 there is nothing irrevocable about it4 ,the bonds of friendship are not iron bonds1 proof against the strongest of strains and the heaviest of assaults4 ,a man by becoming your friend has not committed himself to all the demands which you may be pleased to make upon him4 ,foolish people like to test the bonds of their friendships1 pulling upon them to see how much strain they will stand4 ,when they snap1 it is as if friendship itself had been proved unworthy4 ,but the truth is that good friendships are fragile things and require as much care in handling as any other fragile and precious things4 ,for friendship is an adventure and a romance1 and in adventures it is the unexpected that happens4 ,it is the zest of peril that makes the excitement of friendship4 ,all that is unpleasant and unfavorable is foreign to its atmosphere2 there is no place in friendship for harsh criticism or fault-finding4 ,we will 8take less0 from a friend than we will from one who is indifferent to us4 ,good friendship is lived on a warm1 impetuous plane2 the long-suffering kind of friendship is a feeble and1 at best1 a half-hearted affair4 ,it is friendship in the valley and not on the breezy heights4 ,for the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration1 and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm4 ,now this admiration must have in it no taint of adulation1 which will wreck a friendship as soon as suspicion will4 ,but it must consist of the conviction1 subtly expressed in every tone of the voice1 that each has found in the other friend a rare spirit1 compounded of light and intelligence and charm4 ,and there must be no open expression of this feeling1 but only the silent flattery1 soft and almost imperceptible4 ,and in the best of friendships this feeling is equal on both sides4 ,too great a superiority in our friend disturbs the balance1 and casts a sort of artificial light on the talk and intercourse4 ,we want to believe that we are fairly equal to our friends in power and capacity1 and that if they excel us in one trait1 we have some counterbalancing quality in another direction4 ,it is the reverse side of this shield that gives point to the diabolical insight of the ,frenchman who remarked that we were never heartbroken by the misfortunes of our best friends4 ,if we have had misfortunes1 it is not wholly unjust and unfortunate that our friends should suffer too4 ,only their misfortunes must not be worse than ours4 ,for the equilibrium is then destroyed1 and our serious alarm and sympathy aroused4 ,similarly we rejoice in the good fortune of our friends1 always provided that it be not too dazzling or too undeserved4 ,it is these aspects of friendship1 which cannot be sneered away by the reproach of jealousy1 that make friendship a precarious and adventurous thing4 ,but it is precious in proportion to its precariousness1 and its littlenesses are but the symptoms of how much friends care1 and how sensitive they are to all the secret bonds and influences that unite them4 ,since our friends have all become woven into our very selves1 to part from friends is to lose1 in a measure1 one's self4 ,he is a brave and hardy soul who can retain his personality after his friends are gone4 ,and since each friend is the key which unlocks an aspect of one's own personality1 to lose a friend is to cut away a part of one's self4 ,i may make another friend to replace the loss1 but the unique quality of the first friend can never be brought back4 ,he leaves a wound which heals only gradually4 ,to have him go away is as bad as to have him pass to another world4 ,the letter is so miserable a travesty on the personal presence1 a thin ghost of the thought of the once-present friend4 ,it is as satisfactory as a whiff of stale tobacco smoke to the lover of smoking4 ,those persons and things1 then1 that inspire us to do our best1 that make us live at our best1 when we are in their presence1 that call forth from us our latent and unsuspected personality1 that nourish and support that personality1--those are our friends4 ,the reflection of their glow makes bright the darker and quieter hours when they are not with us4 ,they are a true part of our widest self2 we should hardly have a self without them4 ,their world is one where chagrin and failure do not enter4 ,like the sun-dial1 they 8only mark the shining hours40 ,,vi ,,the ,,adventure ,,of ,,life ,that life is an adventure it needs nothing more than the wonder of our being in the world and the precariousness of our stay in it to inform us4 ,although we are1 perhaps1 as the scientists tell us1 mere inert accompaniments of certain bundles of organized matter1 we tend incorrigibly to think of ourselves as unique personalities4 ,and as we let our imagination roam over the world and dwell on the infinite variety of scenes and thoughts and feelings and forms of life1 we wonder at the incredible marvel that has placed us just here in this age and country and locality where we were born4 ,that it should be this particular place and time and body that my consciousness is illuminating gives1 indeed1 the thrill of wonder and adventure to the mere fact of my becoming and being4 ,and as life goes on1 the feeling for the precariousness of that being grows upon one's mind4 ,the security of childhood gives place to an awareness of the perils of misfortune1 disease1 and sudden death which seem to lie in wait for men and seize them without regard to their choices or deserts4 ,we are prone1 of course1 to believe in our personal luck2 it is the helplessness of others around us rather that impresses us1 as we see both friends and strangers visited with the most dreadful evils1 and with an impartiality of treatment that gradually tends to force upon us the conviction that we1 too1 are not immune4 ,at some stage in our life1 oftenest perhaps when the first flush of youth is past1 we are suddenly thrown into a suspicion of life1 a dread of nameless and unforeseeable ill1 and a sober realization of the need of circumspection and defense4 ,we discover that we live in a world where almost anything is likely to happen4 ,shocking accidents that cut men off in their prime1 pain and suffering falling upon the just and the unjust1 maladjustments and misunderstandings that poison and ruin lives1--all these things are daily occurrences in our experience1 either of personal knowledge or out of that wider experience of our reading4 ,religion seems to give little consolation in the face of such incontrovertible facts4 ,for no belief in ,providence can gainsay the seeming fact that we are living in a world that is run without regard to the health and prosperity of its inhabitants4 ,whatever its ulterior meanings1 they do not seem to be adjusted to our scale of values4 ,physical law we can see1 but where are the workings of a moral law8 ,if they are present1 they seem to cut woefully against the grain of the best desires and feelings of men4 ,evil seems to be out of all proportion to the ability of its sufferers to bear it1 or of its chastening and corrective efficacy4 ,our feelings are too sensitive for the assaults which the world makes upon them4 ,if the responsibility for making all things work together for his good is laid entirely upon man1 it is a burden too heavy for his weakness and ignorance to bear4 ,and thus we contemplate the old1 old problem of evil4 ,and in its contemplation1 the adventure of life1 which should be a tonic and a spur1 becomes a depressant2 instead of nerving1 it intimidates1 and makes us walk cautiously and sadly through life1 where we should ride fast and shout for joy4 ,in these modern days1 the very wealth of our experience overwhelms us1 and makes life harder to live in the sight of evil4 ,the broadening of communication1 giving us a connection through newspapers and magazines with the whole world1 has made our experience almost as wide as the world4 ,in that experience1 however1 we get all the world's horrors as well as its interests and delights4 ,thus has it been that this widening1 which has meant the possibility of living the contemplative and imaginative life on an infinitely higher plane than before1 has meant also a soul-sickness to the more sensitive1 because of the immense and over-burdening drafts on their sympathy which the new experience involved4 ,although our increased knowledge of the world has meant everywhere reform1 and has vastly improved and beautified life for millions of men1 it has at the same time opened a nerve the pain of which no opiate has been able to soothe4 ,and along with the real increase of longevity and sounder health for civilized man1 attained through the triumphs of medical science1 there has come a renewed realization of the shortness and precariousness1 at its best1 of life4 ,the fact that our knowledge of evil is shared by millions of men intensifies1 ,i think1 our sensitiveness4 ,through the genius of display writers1 thousands of readers are enabled to be present imaginatively at scenes of horror4 ,the subtle sense of a vast concourse having witnessed the scene magnifies its potency to the individual mind1 and gives it the morbid touch as of crowds witnessing an execution4 ,our forefathers were more fortunate1 and could contemplate evil more philosophically and objectively4 ,their experience was happily limited to what the normal soul could endure4 ,their evil was confined to their vicinity4 ,what dim intelligence of foreign disaster and misery leaked in1 only served to purify and sober their spirits4 ,evil did not then reverberate around the world as it does now4 ,their nerves were not strained or made raw by the reiterations and expatiations on far-away pestilence and famine1 gigantic sea disasters1 wanton murders1 or even the shocking living conditions of the great city slums4 ,their imaginations had opportunity to grow healthily1 unassailed by the morbidities of distant evil1 which seems magnified and ominous through its very strangeness4 ,they were not forced constantly to ask themselves the question1 8,what kind of a world do we live in anyhow8 ,has it no mercy and no hope80 ,they were not having constantly thrown up to them a justification of the universe4 ,perhaps it was because they were more concerned with personal sin than with objective evil4 ,the enormity of sin against their ,maker blotted out all transient misfortune and death4 ,but it was more likely that the actual ignorance of that evil permitted their personal flagrancies to loom up larger in their sight4 ,whatever the cause1 there was a difference4 ,we have only to compare their literature--solid1 complacent1 rational--with our restless and hectic stuff2 or contrast their portraits--well-nourished1 self-respecting faces--with the cheap or callous or hunted faces that we see about us to-day1 to get the change in spiritual fibre which this opening of the world has wrought4 ,it has been a real eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil4 ,a social conscience has been born4 ,an expansion of soul has been forced upon us4 ,we have the double need of a broader vision to assimilate the good that is revealed to us1 and a stronger courage to bear the evil with which our slowly-bettering old world still seems to reek4 ,but the youth of this modern generation are coming more and more to see that the gloom and hysteria of this restless age1 with all the other seemingly neurotic symptoms of decay1 are simply growing-pains4 ,they signify a better spiritual health that is to be4 ,the soul is now learning to adjust itself to the new conditions1 to embrace the wide world that is its heritage1 and not to reel and stagger before the assaults of a malign power4 ,life will always be fraught with real peril1 but it is peril which gives us the sense of adventure4 ,and as we gain in our command over the resources1 both material and spiritual1 of the world1 we shall see the adventure as not so much the peril of evil as an opportunity of permanent achievement4 ,we can only cure our suffering from the evil in the world by doing all in our power to wipe out that which is caused by human blundering1 and prevent what we can prevent by our control of the forces of nature4 ,our own little personal evils we can dismiss with little thought4 ,such as have come to us we can endure1--for have we not already endured them8--and those that we dread we shall not keep away by fear or worry4 ,we can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear4 ,although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable1 we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living4 ,in the light of our own problematical misfortune1 we must rather live freely and easily1 taking the ordinary chances and looking ,to-morrow confidently in the face as we have looked ,to-day4 ,i have come thus far safely and well2 why may ,i not come farther8 ,but in regard to the evil that we see around us1 the problem is more difficult4 ,though the youth of this generation hope to conquer1 the battle is still on4 ,we have fought our way to a knowledge of things as they are1 and we must now fight our way beyond it4 ,that first fight was our first sense of the adventure of life4 ,our purpose early became to track the world relentlessly down to its lair4 ,we were resolute to find out the facts1 no matter how sinister and barren they proved themselves to be4 ,we would make no compromises with our desires1 or with those weak persons who could not endure the clear light of reality4 ,we were scornful in the presence of the superstitions of our elders4 ,we could not conceive that sufficient knowledge combined with action would not be able to solve all our problems and make clear all our path4 ,as our knowledge grew1 so did our courage4 ,we pressed more eagerly on the trail of this world of ours1 purposing to capture and tame its mysteries1 and reveal it as it is1 so that none could doubt us4 ,as we penetrated farther1 however1 into the cave1 the path became more and more uncertain4 ,we discovered our prey to be far grimmer and more dangerous than we had ever imagined4 ,as he turned slowly at bay1 we discovered that he was not only repulsive but threatening4 ,we were sternly prepared to accept him just as we found him1 exulting that we should know things as they really were4 ,we were ready for the worst1 and yet somehow not for this worst4 ,we had not imagined him retaliating upon us4 ,in our first recoil1 the thought flashed upon us that our tracking him to his lair might end in his feasting on our bones4 ,it is somewhat thus that we feel when the full implications of the materialism to which we have laboriously fought our way dawn upon us1 or we realize the full weight of the sodden social misery around us4 ,hitherto we have been so intent on the trail that we have not stopped to consider what it all meant4 ,now that we know1 not only our own salvation seems threatened1 but that of all around us1 even the integrity of the world itself4 ,in these moments of perplexity and alarm1 we lose confidence in ourselves and all our values and interpretations4 ,to go further seems to be to court despair4 ,we are ashamed to retreat1 and1 besides1 have come too far ever to get back into the safe plain of ignorance again4 ,the world seems to be revealed to us as mechanical in its workings and fortuitous in its origin1 and the warmth and light of beauty and ideals that we have known all along to be our true life seem to be proven illusions4 ,and the wailing of the world comes up to us1 cast off from any divine assistance1 left to the mercy of its own weak wills and puny strengths4 ,in this fall1 our world itself seems to have lost merit1 and we feel ourselves almost degraded by being a part of it4 ,we have suddenly been deprived of our souls2 the world seems to have beaten us in our first real battle with it4 ,now this despair is partly the result of an excessive responsibility that we have taken for the universe4 ,in youth1 if we are earnest and eager1 we tend to take every bit of experience that comes to us1 as either a justification or a condemnation of the world4 ,we are all instinctive monists at that age1 and crave a complete whole4 ,as we unconsciously construct our philosophy of life1 each fact gets automatically recorded as confirming or denying the competency of the world we live in4 ,even the first shock of disillusionment1 which banishes those dreams of a beautiful1 orderly1 and rational world that had suffused childhood with their golden light1 did not shatter the conviction that there was somehow at least a ,lord's side4 ,the sudden closing of the account in the second shock1 when the world turns on us1 shows us how mighty has been the issue at stake1--nothing less than our faith in the universe1 and1 perhaps1 in the last resort1 of our faith in ourselves4 ,we see now that our breathless seriousness of youth was all along simply a studying of our crowded experience to see whether it was on the ,lord's side or not4 ,and now in our doubt we are left with a weight on our souls which is not our own1 a burden which we have really usurped4 ,in its adventure with evil1 youth must not allow this strange1 metaphysical responsibility to depress and incapacitate it4 ,we shall never face life freely and bravely and worthily if we do4 ,i may wonder1 it is true1 as ,i look out on these peaceful fields1 with the warm sun and blue sky above me and the kindly faces of my good friends around me1 how this can be the same world that houses the millions of poor and wretched people in their burning and huddled quarters in the city4 ,can these days1 in which ,i am free to come and go and walk and study as ,i will1 be the same that measure out the long hours of drudgery to thousands of youth amid the whir of machines1 and these long restful nights of mine1 the same that are for them only gasps breaking a long monotony8 ,it must be the same world1 however1 whether we can ever reconcile ourselves to it or not4 ,but we need plainly feel no responsibility for what happened previously to our generation4 ,our responsibility now is a collective1 a social responsibility4 ,and it is only for the evil that society might prevent were it organized wisely and justly4 ,beyond that it does not go4 ,for the accidental evil that is showered upon the world1 we are not responsible1 and we need not feel either that the integrity of the universe is necessarily compromised by it4 ,it is necessary to be somewhat self-centred in considering it4 ,we must trust our own feelings rather than any rational proof4 ,in spite of everything1 the world seems to us so unconquerably good1 it affords so many satisfactions1 and is so rich in beauty and kindliness1 that we have a right to assume that there is a side of things that we miss in our pessimistic contemplation of misfortune and disaster4 ,we see only the outer rind of it4 ,people usually seem to be so much happier than we can find any very rational excuse for their being1 and that old world that confronted us and scared us may look very much worse than it really is4 ,and we can remember that adding to the number of the sufferers does not intensify the actual quality of the suffering4 ,there is no more suffering than one person can bear4 ,these considerations may allay a little our first terror and despair4 ,when we really understand that the world is not damned by the evil in it1 we shall be ready to see it in its true light as a challenge to our heroisms4 ,not how evil came into the world1 but how we are going to get it out1 becomes the problem4 ,not by brooding over the hopeless1 but by laying plans for the possible will we shoulder our true responsibility4 ,we shall find then that we had no need of despair4 ,we were on the right track4 ,when the world that we were tracking down turned at bay1 he threatened more than he was able to perform4 ,not less science but more science do we need in order that we may more and more get into our control the forces and properties of nature1 and guide them for our benefit4 ,but we must learn that the interpretation of the world lies not in its mechanism but in its meanings1 and those meanings we find in our values and ideals1 which are very real to us4 ,science brings us only to an 8area of our dwelling10 as ,whitman says4 ,the moral adventure of the rising generation will be to learn this truth thoroughly1 and to reinstate ideals and personality at the heart of the world4 ,our most favorable battle-ground against evil will for some time at least be the social movement4 ,poverty and sin and social injustice we must feel not sentimentally nor so much a symptom of a guilty conscience as a call to coperate with the exploited and sufferers in throwing off their ills4 ,sensitiveness to evil will be most fruitful when it rouses a youth to the practical encouragement of the under-men to save themselves4 ,youth to-day needs to 8beat the gong of revolt40 ,the oppressed seldom ask for our sympathy1 and this is right and fitting2 for they do not need it4 7,it might even make them contented with their lot47 ,what they need is the inspiration and the knowledge to come into their own4 ,all we can ever do in the way of good to people is to encourage them to do good to themselves4 8,who would be free1 himself must strike the blow60 ,this is the social responsibility of modern youth4 ,it must not seek to serve humanity so much as to rouse and teach it4 ,the great moral adventure that lies still ahead of us is to call men to the expansion of their souls to the wide world which has suddenly been revealed to them4 99 99 99 99 99 ,perhaps with that expansion youth will finally effect a reconciliation with life of those two supremest and most poignant of adventures3 the thoughts that cluster around sex1 and the fears and hopes that cluster around death1 the one the gateway into life1 the other out of it4 ,youth finds them the two hardest aspects of life to adjust with the rest of the world in which we live4 ,they are ever-present and pervasive1 and yet their manifestations always cause us surprise1 and shock us as of something unwonted intruding in our daily affairs4 ,they are the unseen spectres behind life1 of which we are always dimly conscious1 but which we are always afraid to meet boldly and face to face4 ,we speak of them furtively1 or in far-away poetical strains4 ,they are the materials for the tragedies of life1 of its pathos and wistfulness1 of its splendors and defeats4 ,yet they are treated always with an incorrigible and dishonest delicacy4 ,the world1 youth soon finds1 is a much less orderly and refined place than would appear on the surface of our daily intercourse and words4 ,as we put on our best clothes to appear in public1 so the world puts on its best clothes to appear in talk and print4 ,men ignore death1 as if they were quite unconscious that it would sometime come to them1 yet who knows how many pensive or terrible moments the thought gives them8 ,but the spectre is quite invisible to us4 ,or if they have passions1 and respond as sensitively as a vibrating string to sex influences and appeals1 we have little indication of that throbbing life behind the impenetrable veil of their countenances4 ,we can know what people think about all other things1 even what they think about ,god1 but what they think of these two adventures of sex and death we never know4 ,it is not so much1 ,i am willing to believe1 shame or fear that keeps us from making a parade of them1 as awe and wonder and baffled endeavors to get our attitude towards them into expressible form4 ,they are too elemental1 too vast and overpowering in their workings to fit neatly into this busy1 accounted-for1 and tied-down world of daily life4 ,they are superfluous to what we see as the higher meanings of this our life1 and irritate us by their clamorous insistence and disregard for the main currents of our living4 ,they seem irrelevant to life2 or rather they overtop its bounty4 ,their pressure to be let in is offensive1 and taints and mars irrevocably what would otherwise be so pleasant and secure a life4 ,that is1 perhaps1 why we call manifestations of sex activity1 obscene1 and of death1 morbid and ghastly4 ,in these modern days we are adopting a healthier attitude1 especially towards sex4 ,perhaps the rising generation will be successful in reconciling them both1 and working them into our lives1 where they may be seen in their right relations and proportions1 and no longer the pleasure of sex and the peace of death seem an illegitimate obtrusion into life4 ,to get command of these arch-enemies is an endeavor worthy of the moral heroes of to-day4 ,we can get control1 it seems1 of the rest of our souls1 but these always lie in wait to torment and harass us4 ,to tame this obsession of sex and the fear of death will be a ,herculean task for youth in the adventure of life4 ,perhaps some will succeed where we have failed4 ,for usually when we try to tame sex1 it poisons the air around us1 and if we try to tame the fear of death by resigning ourselves to its inevitability1 we find that we have not tamed it but only drugged it4 ,at certain times1 however1 our struggles with the winged demons which they send into our minds may constitute the most poignant incidents in our adventure of life1 and add a beauty to our lives4 ,where they do not make for happiness1 they may at least make for a deepening of knowledge and appreciation of life4 ,along through middle life1 we shall find1 perhaps1 that1 even if untamed1 they have become our allies1 and that both have lost their sting and their victory1--sex diffusing our life with a new beauty1 and death with a courageous trend towards a larger life of which we shall be an integral part4 ,when we have acclimated ourselves to youth1 suddenly death looms up as the greatest of dangers in our adventure of life4 ,it puzzles and shocks and saddens us by its irrevocability and mystery4 ,that we should be taken out of this world to which we are so perfectly adapted1 and which we enjoy and feel intimate with1 is an incredible thing4 ,even if we believe that we shall survive death1 we know that that after-life must perforce be lived outside of this our familiar world4 ,reason tells us that we shall be annihilated1 and yet we cannot conceive our own annihilation4 ,we can easier imagine the time before our birth1 when we were not1 than the time after our death1 when we shall not be4 ,old men find nothing very dreadful in the thought of being no more1 and we shall find that it is the combined notion of being annihilated1 and yet of being somehow conscious of that annihilation1 that terrifies us1 and startles our minds sometimes in the dead of night when our spirits are sluggish and the ghoulish ideas that haunt the dimmest chambers of the mind are flitting abroad4 ,we can reason with ourselves that if we are annihilated we shall not be conscious of it1 and if we are conscious we shall not be annihilated1 but this easy proof does not help us much in a practical way4 ,we simply do not know1 and all speculations seem to be equally legitimate4 ,if we are destined to assume another form of life1 no divination can prophesy for us what that life shall be4 ,on the face of it the soul as well as the body dies4 ,the fate of the body we know1 and it seems dreadful enough to chill the stoutest heart2 and what we call our souls seem so intimately dependent upon these bodies as to be incapable of living alone4 ,and yet somehow it is hard to stop believing in the independent soul4 ,we can believe that the warmth dissipates1 that the chemical and electrical energies of the body pass into other forms and are gradually lost in the immensity of the universe4 ,but this wonder of consciousness1 which seems to hold and embrace all our thoughts and feelings and bind them together1 what can we know of its power and permanence8 ,in our own limited sphere it already transcends space and time1 our imaginations triumphing over space1 and our memories and anticipations over time3 this magic power of the imagination1 which transcends our feeble experience and gives ideas and images which have not appeared directly through the senses4 ,we can connect this conscious life with no other aspect of the world nor can we explain it by any of the principles which we apply to physical things4 ,it is the divine gift that reveals this world2 why may it not reveal sometime a far wider universe8 ,it is this incalculability of our conscious life that makes its seeming end so great an adventure4 ,this ,time which rushes past us1 blotting out everything it creates1 leaving us ever suspended on a ,present1 which1 as we turn to look at it1 has melted away1--how are we to comprehend it8 ,the thin1 fragile and uncertain stream of our memory seems insufficient to give any satisfaction of permanence4 ,i like to think of a world-memory that retains the past4 ,physical things that change or perish continue to live psychically in memory2 why may not all that passes1 not only in our minds1 but unknown to us1 be carried along in a great world-mind of whose nature we get a dim inkling even now in certain latent mental powers of ours which are sometimes revealed1 and seem to let down bars into a boundless sea of knowledge4 ,the world is a great1 rushing1 irreversible life1 not predestined in its workings1 but free like ourselves4 ,the accumulating past seems to cut into the future1 and create it as it goes along4 ,nothing is then lost1 and we1 although we had no existence before we were born1--how could we have1 since that moving ,present had not created us8--would yet1 having been born1 continue to exist in that world-memory4 ,we do not need to recho the sadness of the centuries1--8,everything passes2 nothing remains60 ,for even if we take this world-memory at its lowest terms as a social memory1 the effects of the deeds of men1 for good or for evil1 remain4 ,and their words remain1 the distillation of their thought and experience4 ,this we know1 and we know1 moreover1 that 8one thing at least is certain10 not that 8this life dies0--for that has yet to be proved--but that 8the race lives60 ,nature is so careless about the individual life1 so careful for the species1 that it seems as if it were only the latter that counted1 that her only purpose was the eternal continuation of life4 ,and many to-day find a satisfaction for their cravings for immortality in the thought that they will live in their children and so on immortally as long as their line continues4 ,but we have a right to make greater hazards of faith than this4 ,might it not be that1 although nature never purposed that the individual soul should live1 man has outwitted her8 ,he has certainly outwitted her in regard to his bodily life4 ,there was no provision in nature for man's living by tillage of the soil and domestication of animals1 or for his dwelling in houses built with tools in his hands1 or for traveling at lightning speed1 or for harnessing her forces to run for him the machines that should turn out the luxuries and utilities of life4 ,all these were pure gratuities1 devised by man and wrested from nature's unwilling hands4 ,she was satisfied with primitive1 animal-like man1 as she is satisfied with him in some parts of the world to-day4 ,we have simply got ahead of her4 ,all the other animals are still under her dominion1 but man has become the tool-maker and the partial master of nature herself4 ,although still far from thoroughly taming her1 he finds in the incessant struggle his real life purpose1 his inspiration1 and his work1 and still brighter promises for his children's children4 ,for the race lives and takes advantage of all that has been discovered before4 ,now1 since nature has seemed to care as little about the continuation of life beyond death as she has of man's comfort upon earth1 might it not be that1 just as we have outwitted her in the physical sphere and snatched comfort and utility by our efforts1 so we may1 by the cultivation of our intelligence and sentiments and whole spiritual life1 outwit her in this realm and snatch an immortality that she has never contemplated8 ,she never intended that we should audaciously read her secrets and speculate upon her nature as we have done4 ,who knows whether1 by our hardihood in exploring the uncharted seas of the life of feeling and thought1 we may have over-reached her again and created a real soul1 which we can project beyond death8 ,we are provided with the raw material of our spiritual life in the world1 as we are provided with the raw material to build houses1 and it may be our power and our privilege to build our immortal souls here on earth1 as men have built and are still building the civilization of this world of ours4 ,this would not mean that we could all attain1 any more than that all men have the creative genius or the good-will for the constructive work of civilization2 there may be 8real losses and real losers0 in the adventure for immortality1 but to the stout-hearted and the wise it will be possible4 ,we shall need1 as builders need the rules of the craft1 the aid and counsel of the spiritually gifted who have gone before us4 ,it has been no mistake that we have prized them higher even than our material builders1 for we have felt instinctively the spiritual power with which they have endowed us in the contest for the mighty stake of immortality4 ,they are helping us to it1 and we have the right to rely on their visions and trusts and beliefs in this supremest and culminating episode of the adventure of life4 ,are all such speculations idle and frivolous8 ,have they no place on the mental horizon of a youth of to-day1 living in a world whose inner nature all the mighty achievements of the scientists1 fruitful as they have been in their practical effects1 have tended rather to obscure than to illumine8 ,well1 a settled conviction that we live in a mechanical world1 with no penumbra of mystery about us1 checks the life-enhancing powers1 and chills and depresses the spirit4 ,a belief in the deadness of things actually seems to kill much of the glowing life that makes up our appreciation of art and personality in the world4 ,the scientific philosophy is as much a matter of metaphysics1 of theoretical conjecture1 as the worst fanaticisms of religion4 ,we have a right to shoot our guesses into the unknown4 ,life is no adventure if we let our knowledge1 still so feeble and flickering1 smother us4 ,in this scientific age there is a call for youth to soar and paint a new spiritual sky to arch over our heads4 ,if the old poetry is dead1 youth must feel and write the new poetry4 ,it has a challenge both to transcend the physical evil that taints the earth and the materialistic poison that numbs our spirits4 ,the wise men thought they were getting the old world thoroughly charted and explained4 ,but there has been a spiritual expansion these recent years which has created new seas to be explored and new atmospheres to breathe4 ,it has been discovered that the world is alive1 and that discovery has almost taken away men's breaths2 it has been discovered that evolution is creative and that we are real factors in that creation4 ,after exploring the heights and depths of the stars1 and getting ourselves into a state of mind where we saw the world objectively and diminished man and his interests almost to a pin-point1 we have come with a rush to the realization that personality and values are1 after all1 the important things in a living world4 ,and no problem of life or death can be idle4 ,a hundred years ago it was thought chastening to the fierce pride of youth to remind it often of man's mortality4 ,but youth to-day must think of everything in terms of life2 yes1 even of death in terms of life4 ,we need not the chastening of pride1 but the stimulation to a sense of the limitless potentialities of life4 ,no thought or action that really enhances life is frivolous or fruitless4 ,what does not conduce in some way to men's interests does not enhance life4 ,what decides in the long run whether our life will be adventurous or not is the direction and the scope of our interests4 ,we need a livelier imaginative sympathy and interest in all that pertains to human nature and its workings4 ,it is a good sign that youth does not need to have its attention called to the worthy and profitable interest of its own personality4 ,it is a healthy sign that we are getting back home again to the old endeavor of 8,know thyself60 ,our widening experience has shifted the centre of gravity too far from man's soul4 ,a cultivation of the powers of one's own personality is one of the greatest needs of life1 too little realized even in these assertive days1 and the exercise of the personality makes for its most durable satisfactions4 ,men are attentive to their business affairs1 but not nearly enough to their own deeper selves4 ,if they treated their business interests as they do the interests of their personality1 they would be bankrupt within a week4 ,few people even scratch the surface1 much less exhaust the contemplation1 of their own experience4 ,few know how to weave a philosophy of life out of it1 that most precious of all possessions4 ,and few know how to hoard their memory4 ,for no matter what we have come through1 or how many perils we have safely passed1 or how imperfect and jagged--in some places perhaps irreparably--our life has been1 we cannot in our heart of hearts imagine how it could have been different4 ,as we look back on it1 it slips in behind us in orderly array1 and1 with all its mistakes1 acquires a sort of eternal fitness1 and even1 at times1 of poetic glamour4 ,the things ,i did1 ,i did because1 after all1 ,i am that sort of a person--that is what life is2--and in spite of what others and what ,i myself might desire1 it is that kind of a person that ,i am4 ,the golden moments ,i can take a unique and splendid satisfaction in because they are my own2 my realization of how poor and weak they might seem1 if taken from my treasure-chest and exposed to the gaze of others1 does not taint their preciousness1 for ,i can see them in the larger light of my own life4 ,every man should realize that his life is an epic2 unfortunately it usually takes the onlooker to recognize the fact before he does himself4 ,we should oftener read our own epics--and write them4 ,the world is in need of true autobiographies1 told in terms of the adventure that life is4 ,not every one1 it is said1 possesses the literary gift1 but what1 on the other hand1 is the literary gift but an absorbing interest in the personality of things1 and an insight into the wonders of living8 ,unfortunately it is usually only the eccentric or the distinguished who reveal their inner life4 ,yet the epic of the humblest life1 told in the light of its spiritual shocks and changes1 would be enthralling in its interest4 ,but the best autobiographers are still the masters of fiction1 those wizards of imaginative sympathy1 who create souls and then write their spiritual history1 as those souls themselves1 were they alive1 could perhaps never write them4 ,every man1 however1 can cultivate this autobiographical interest in himself1 and produce for his own private view a real epic of spiritual adventure4 ,and life will be richer and more full of meaning as the story continues and life accumulates4 ,life changes so gradually that we do not realize our progress4 ,this small triumph of yesterday we fail to recognize as the summit of the mountain at whose foot we encamped several years ago in despair4 ,we forget our hopes and wistfulness and struggles4 ,we do not look down from the summit at the valley where we started1 and thus we lose the dramatic sense of something accomplished4 ,if a man looking back sees no mountain and valley1 but only a straight level plain1 it behooves him to take himself straight to some other spiritual country where there is opportunity for climbing and where five years hence will see him on a higher level1 breathing purer air4 ,most people have no trouble in remembering their rights and their wrongs1 their pretensions and their ambitions1--things so illusory that they should never even have been thought of4 ,but to forget their progress1 to forget their golden moments1 their acquisitions of insight and appreciation1 the charm of their friends1 the sequence of their ideals1--this is indeed a deplorable aphasia6 8,the days that make us happy make us wise60 ,happiness is too valuable to be forgotten1 and who will remember yours if you forget it8 ,it is what has made the best of you2 or1 if you have thrown it away from memory1 what could have made you1 and made you richer than you are4 ,if you have neglected such contemplation1 you are poor1 and that poverty will be apparent in your daily personality4 ,life in its essence is a heaping-up and accumulation of thought and insight4 ,it should mount higher and higher1 and be more potent and flowering as life is lived4 ,if you do not keep in your memory and spirit the finer accumulations of your life1 it will be as if you had only partly lived4 ,your living will be a travesty on life1 and your progress only a dull mechanical routine4 ,even though your life may be outwardly routine1 inwardly1 as moralists have always known1 it may be full of adventure4 ,be happy1 but not too contented4 ,contentment may be a vice as well as a virtue2 too often it is a mere cover for sluggishness1 and not a sign of triumph4 ,the mind must have a certain amount of refreshment and novelty2 it will not grow by staying too comfortably at home1 and refusing to put itself to the trouble of travel and change4 ,it needs to be disturbed every now and then to keep the crust from forming4 ,people do not realize this1 and let themselves become jaded and uninterested--and therefore uninteresting--when such a small touch of novelty would inspire and stimulate them4 ,a tired interest1 in a healthy mind1 wakes with as quick a response to a new touch or aspect as does a thirsty flower to the rain4 ,too many people sit in prison with themselves until they get meagre and dull1 when the door was really all the time open1 and outside was freshness and green grass and the warm sun1 which might have revived them and made them bright again4 ,listlessness in an old man or woman is often the telltale sign of such an imprisonment4 ,life1 instead of being an accumulation of spiritual treasure1 has been the squandering of its wealth1 in a lapse of interest1 as soon as it was earned4 ,even unbearable sorrow might have been the means1 by a process of transmutation1 of acquiring a deeper appreciation of life's truer values4 ,but the squanderer has lost his vision1 because he did not retain on the background of memory his experience1 against which to contrast his new reactions1 and did not have the emotional image of old novelties to spur him to the apprehension and appreciation of new ones4 ,more amazing even than the lack of a healthy interest in their own personalities is the lack of most people of an interest1 beyond one of a trivial or professional nature1 in others4 ,our literary artists have scarcely begun to touch the resources of human ways and acts4 ,writers surrender reality for the sake of a plot1 and in attempting to make a point1 or to write adventure1 squeeze out the natural traits and nuances of character and the haphazardnesses of life that are the true adventure and point4 ,we cannot know too much about each other4 ,all our best education comes from what people tell us or what we observe them do4 ,we cannot endure being totally separated from others1 and it is well that we cannot4 ,for it would mean that we should have then no life above the satisfaction of our crudest material wants4 ,our keenest delights are based upon some manifestation or other of social life4 ,even gossip arises not so much from malice as from a real social interest in our neighbors2 the pity of it is1 of course1 that to so many people it is only the misfortunes and oddities that are interesting4 ,let our interests in the social world with which we come in contact be active and not passive4 ,let us give back in return as good an influence and as much as is given to us4 ,let us live so as to stimulate others1 so that we call out the best powers and traits in them1 and make them better than they are1 because of our comprehension and inspiration4 ,our life is so bound up with our friends and teachers and heroes 7whether present in the flesh or not71 and we are so dependent upon them for nourishment and support1 that we are rarely aware how little of us there would be left were they to be taken away4 ,we are seldom conscious enough of the ground we are rooted in and the air we breathe4 ,we can know ourselves best by knowing others4 ,there are adventures of personality in acting and being acted upon1 in studying and delighting in the ideas and folkways of people that hold much in store for those who will only seek them4 ,thus in its perils and opportunities1 in its satisfactions and resistances1 in its gifts and responsibilities1 for good or for evil1 life is an adventure4 ,in facing its evil1 we shall not let it daunt or depress our spirits2 we shall surrender some of our responsibility for the ,universe1 and face forward1 working and encouraging those around us to coperate with us and with all who suffer1 in fighting preventable wrong4 ,death we shall transcend by interpreting everything in terms of life2 we shall be victorious over it by recognizing in it an aspect of a larger life in which we are immersed4 ,we shall accept gladly the wealth of days poured out for us4 ,alive1 in a living world1 we shall cultivate those interests and qualities which enhance life4 ,we shall try to keep the widest possible fund of interests in order that life may mount ever richer1 and not become jaded and wearied in its ebb-flow4 ,we shall never cease to put our questions to the heart of the world1 intent on tracking down the mysteries of its behavior and its meaning1 using each morsel of knowledge to pry further into its secrets1 and testing the tools we use by the product they create and the hidden chambers they open4 ,to face the perils and hazards fearlessly1 and absorb the satisfactions joyfully1 to be curious and brave and eager1--is to know the adventure of life4 ,,vii ,,some ,,thoughts ,,on ,,religion ,in youth we grow and learn and always the universe widens around us4 ,the horizon recedes faster than we can journey towards it4 ,there comes a time when we look back with longing to the days when everything we learned seemed a fast gaining upon the powers of darkness1 and each new principle seemed to illuminate and explain an immense region of the world4 ,we had only to keep on learning in steady progress1 it seemed1 until we should have dominion over the whole of it4 ,but there came a time1 perhaps1 when advance halted1 and our carefully ordered world began to dissipate and loose ends and fringes to appear4 ,it became a real struggle to keep our knowledge securely boxed in our one system1 indeed1 in any system1 as we found when we restlessly tried one dogma after another as strong-boxes for our spiritual goods4 ,always something eluded us2 it was 8ever not quite40 ,just when we were safest1 some new experience came up to be most incongruously unaccounted for4 ,we had our goods1 for instance1 safely stowed away in the box of 8materialism10 when suddenly we realized that1 on its theory1 our whole life might run along precisely as we see it now1 we might talk and love and paint and build without a glimmer of consciousness1 that wondrous stuff which is so palpably our light and our life4 ,the materialist can see in us nothing but the inert accompaniment of our bodies1 the helpless1 useless1 and even annoying spectators of the play of physical forces through these curious compounds of chemical elements that we call our bodies4 ,or if1 filled with the joy of creation1 we tried to pack our world into the dogma of 8idealism0 and see all hard material things as emanations from our spiritual self and plastic under our hand1 we were brought with a shock against some tough1 incorrigible fact that sobered our elation1 and forced the unwilling recognition of our impotence upon us again4 ,it is not1 however1 from an excess of idealism that the world suffers to-day4 ,but it is sick rather with the thorough-going and plausible scientific materialism with which our philosophy and literature seem to reek4 ,pure idealism has long ago proved too intoxicating a confirmation of our hopes and desires to seduce for long our tough-mindedness4 ,science has come as a challenge to both our courage and our honesty4 ,it covertly taunts us with being afraid to face the universe as it is2 if we look and are saddened1 we have seemed to prove ourselves less than men4 ,for this advance of scientific speculation has seemed only to increase the gulf between the proven and certain facts1 and all the values and significances of life that our reactions to its richness have produced in us4 ,and so incorrigibly honest is the texture of the human mind that we cannot continue to believe in and cultivate things that we no longer consider to be real4 ,and science has undermined our faith in the reality of a spiritual world that to our forefathers was the only reality in the universe4 ,we are so honest1 however1 that when the scientist relegates to a subjective shadowy realm our world of qualities and divinities1 we cannot protest1 but only look wistfully after the disappearing forms4 ,a numbness has stolen over our religion1 art1 and literature1 and the younger generation finds a chill and torpor in those interests of life that should be the highest inspiration4 ,religion in these latter days becomes poetry1 about which should never be asked the question1 8,is it true80 ,art becomes a frivolous toy2 literature a daily chronicle4 ,there is thus a crucial intellectual dilemma that faces us to-day4 ,if we accept whole-heartedly the spiritual world1 we seem to be false to the imposing new knowledge of science which is rapidly making the world comprehensible to us2 if we accept all the claims and implications of science1 we seem to trample on our own souls4 ,yet we feel instinctively the validity of both aspects of the world4 ,our solution will seem to be1 then1 to be content with remaining something less than monists4 ,we must recognize that this is an infinite universe1 and give up our attempt to get all our experience under one roof4 ,striving ever for unity1 we must yet understand that this 8not-quite-ness0 is one of the fundamental principles of things4 ,we can no longer be satisfied with a settlement of the dreary conflict between religion and science which left for religion only the task of making hazardous speculations which science was later to verify or cast aside1 as it charted the seas of knowledge4 ,we cannot be content with a religion which science is constantly overtaking and wiping out1 as it puts its brave postulates of faith to rigorous test4 ,the only view of religion and science that will satisfy us is one that makes them each the contemplation of a different aspect of the universe1--one1 an aspect of quantities and relations1 the other1 an aspect of qualities1 ideals1 and values4 ,they may be cordinate and complementary1 but they are not expressible in each others' terms4 ,there is no question of superior reality4 ,the blue of a flower is just as real as the ether waves which science tells us the color 8really0 is4 ,scientific and intuitive knowledge are simply different ways of appreciating an infinite universe4 ,scientific knowledge1 for all its dogmatic claims to finality1 is provisional and hypothetical4 8,if we live in a certain kind of a world10 it says1 8certain things are true40 ,each fact hinges upon another4 ,yet these correlations of the physical world are so certain and predictable that no sane mind can doubt them4 ,on the other hand1 our knowledge of qualities is direct and immediate1 and seems to depend on nothing for its completeness4 ,yet it is so uncertain and various that no two minds have precisely the same reactions1 and we do not ourselves have the same reactions at different times4 ,and these paradoxes give rise to the endless disputes as to which gives the more real view of the universe in which we find ourselves living4 ,the matter-of-fact person takes the certainty and lets the immediacy go2 the poet and the mystic and the religious man choose the direct revelation and prize this vision far above any logical cogency4 ,now it will be the task of this intellectual generation to conquer the paradoxes by admitting the validity of both the matter-of-fact view and the mystical4 ,and it is the latter that requires the present emphasis2 it must be resuscitated from the low estate into which it has fallen4 ,we must resist the stern arrogances of science as vigorously as the scientist has resisted the allurements of religion4 ,we must remind him that his laws are not visions of eternal truth1 so much as rough-and-ready statements of the practical nature of things1 in so far as they are useful to us for our grappling with our environment and somehow changing it4 ,we must demand that he climb down out of the papal chair1 and let his learning become what it was meant to be1--the humble servant of humanity4 ,truth for truth's sake is an admirable motto for the philosopher1 who really searches to find the inner nature of things4 ,but the truth of science is for use's sake4 ,to seek for physical truth which is irrelevant to human needs and purposes is as purely futile an intellectual gymnastic as the logical excesses of the schoolmen4 ,the scientist is here to tell us the practical workings of the forces and elements of the world2 the philosopher1 mystic1 artist1 and poet are here to tell us of the purposes and meanings of the world as revealed directly1 and to show us the ideal aspect through their own clear fresh vision4 ,that vision1 however1 must be controlled and enriched by the democratic experience of their fellow men2 their ideal must be to reveal meanings that cannot be doubted by the normal soul1 in the same way that scientific formulations cannot be doubted by the normal mind4 ,it is here that we have a quarrel with old religion and old poetry1 that the vision which it brings us is not sufficiently purged of local discolorations or intellectualistic taints4 ,but it is not a quarrel with religion and poetry as such2 this age thirsts for a revelation of the spiritual meanings of the wider world that has been opened to us1 and the complex and baffling anomalies that seem to confront us4 ,it is our imperative duty to remphasize the life of qualities and ideals1 to turn again our gaze to that aspect of the world from which men have always drawn what gave life real worth and reinstate those spiritual things whose strength advancing knowledge has seemed to sap4 ,there is room for a new idealism1 but an idealism that sturdily keeps its grip on the real1 that grapples with the new knowledge and with the irrevocable loss of much of the old poetry and many of the old values1 and wrests out finer qualities and a nobler spiritual life than the world has yet seen4 ,it is not betrayal of our integrity to believe that the desires and interests of men1 their hopes and fears and creative imaginings1 are as real as any atoms or formulas4 ,now the place of religion in this new idealism will be the same place that its essential spirit has always held in the spiritual life of men4 ,religion is our sense of the quality of the universe itself1 the broadest1 profoundest1 and most constant of our intuitions4 ,men have always felt that1 outside of the qualities of concrete things1 there lay a sort of infinite quality that they could identify with the spirit of the universe1 and they have called it ,god4 ,to this quality men have always responded1 and that response and appreciation is religion4 ,to appreciate this cosmic quality is to be religious1 and to express that appreciation is to worship4 ,religion is thus as much and eternally a part of life as our senses themselves2 the only justification for making away with religion would be an event that would make away with our senses4 ,the scientist must always find it difficult to explain why1 if man's mind1 as all agree that it did1 developed in adaptation to his environment1 it should somehow have become adapted so perfectly to a spiritual world of qualities and poetic interpretation of phenomena1 and not to the world of atomic motion and mechanical law which scientific philosophy assures us is the 8real0 world4 ,our minds somehow adapted themselves1 not to the hard world of fact1 but to a world of illusion1 which had not the justification of being even practically useful or empirically true4 ,if the real world is mechanical1 we should have a right to expect the earliest thinking to be scientific1 and the spiritual life to come in only after centuries of refinement of thought4 ,but the first reactions of men were of course purely qualitative1 and it is only within the last few minutes of cosmic time that we have known of the quantitative relations of things4 ,is it hard1 then1 to believe that1 since we and the world have grown up together1 there must be some subtle correlation between it and the values and qualities that we feel1 that our souls must reflect--not faithfully1 perhaps1 because warped by a thousand alien compelling physical forces1 and yet somehow indomitably--a spiritual world that is perhaps even more real1 because more immediate and constant1 than the physical8 ,we may partially create it1 but we partially reflect it too4 ,that cosmic quality we feel as personality4 ,not artificial or illusive is this deeply rooted anthropomorphic sense which has always been at the bottom of man's religious consciousness4 ,we are alive1 and we have a right to interpret the world as living2 we are persons1 and we have a right to interpret the world in terms of personality4 ,in all religions1 through the encrustations of dogma and ritual1 has been felt that vital sense of the divine personality1 keeping clean and sweet the life of man4 ,the definite appeal of the ,church1 in times like these1 when the external props fall away1 is to the incarnation of the divine personality1 and the ideal of character deduced from it as a pattern for life4 ,this is the religion of ordinary people to-day2 it has been the heart of ,christianity for nineteen hundred years4 ,our feeling of this cosmic quality may be vague or definite1 diffused or crystallized1 but to those of us who sense behind our pulsing life a mystery which perplexes1 sobers1 and elevates us1 that quality forms a permanent scenic background for our life4 ,to feel this cosmic quality of a divine personality1 in whom we live1 move1 and have our being1 is to know religion4 ,the ordinary world we live in is incurably dynamic2 we are forced to think and act in terms of energy and change and constant rearrangement and flux of factors and elements4 ,and we live only as we give ourselves up to that stream and play of forces4 ,throughout all the change1 however1 there comes a sense of this eternal quality4 ,in the persistence of our own personality1 the humble fragment of a divine personality1 we get the pattern of its permanence4 ,the ,great ,companion is ever with us1 silently ratifying our worthy deeds and tastes and responses4 ,the satisfactions of our spiritual life1 of our judgments and appreciations of morality and art and any kind of excellence1 come largely from this subtle corroboration that we feel from some unseen presence wider than ourselves4 ,it accompanies not a part but the whole of our spiritual life1 silently strengthening our responses to personality and beauty1 our sense of irony1 the refinement of our taste1 sharpening our moral judgment1 elevating our capacities for happiness1 filling ever richer our sense of the worth of life4 ,and this cosmic influence in which we seem to be immersed we can no more lose or doubt--after we have once felt the rush of time past us1 seen a friend die1 or brooded on the bitter thought of our personal death1 felt the surge of forces of life and love1 wondered about consciousness1 been melted before beauty--than we can lose or doubt ourselves4 ,the wonder of it is exhaustless1--the beneficence over whose workings there yet breathes an inexorable sternness1 the mystery of time and death1 the joy of beauty and creative art and sex1 and sheer consciousness4 ,against this scenic background1 along this deep undercurrent of feeling1 our outward1 cheerful1 settled1 and orderly life plays its part4 ,that life is no less essential2 we must be willing to see life in two aspects1 the world as deathless yet ever-creative1 evolution yet timeless eternity4 ,to be religious is to turn our gaze away from the dynamic to the static and the permanent1 away from the stage to the scenic background of our lives4 ,religion cannot1 therefore1 be said to have much of a place in our activity of life1 except as it fixes the general emotional tone4 ,we have no right to demand that it operate practically1 nor can we call altruistic activity1 and enthusiasm for a noble cause1 religion4 ,moral action is really more a matter of social psychology than of religion4 ,all religions have been ethical only as a secondary consideration4 ,religion in and for itself is something else2 we can enjoy it only by taking1 as it were1 the moral holiday into its regions when we are weary of the world of thinking and doing4 ,it is a land to retreat into when we are battered and degraded by the dynamic world about us1 and require rest and recuperation4 ,it is constantly there behind us1 but to live in it always is to take a perpetual holiday4 ,at all times we may have its beauty with us1 however1 as we may have prospects of far mountains and valleys4 ,as we go in the morning to work in the fields1 religion is this enchanting view of the mountains1 inspiring us and lifting our hearts with renewed vigor4 ,through all the long day's work we feel their presence with us1 and have only to turn around to see them shining splendidly afar with hope and kindliness4 ,even the austerest summits are warm in the afternoon sun4 ,yet if we gaze at them all day long1 we shall accomplish no work4 ,nor shall we finish our allotted task if we succumb to their lure and leave our fields to travel towards them4 ,as we return home weary at night1 the mountains are still there to refresh and cheer us with their soft colors and outline blended in the purple light4 ,when our task is entirely done1 it has been our eternal hope to journey to those far mountains and valleys2 if this is not to be1 at least their glorious view will be the last to fall upon us as we close our eyes4 ,but we know that1 whatever happens1 if we have done our work well1 have performed faithfully our daily tasks of learning to control and manage and make creative the tough soil of this material world in which we find ourselves1 if we have neither allowed its toughness to distract us from the beauty of the eternal background1 nor let those far visions slow down the wheels of life1 distract us from our work1 or blur our thought and pale by their light the other qualities and beauties around us--we shall attain what is right for us when we lay down our tools4 ,in a living world1 death can be no more than an apparition4 ,,viii ,,the ,,mystic ,,turned ,,radical ,the mystical temperament is little enough popular in this workaday modern world of ours4 ,the mystic1 we feel1 comes to us discounted from the start2 he should in all decency make constant apologies for his existence4 ,in a practical age of machinery he is an anomaly1 an anachronism4 ,he must meet the direct challenge of the scientist1 who guards every approach to the doors of truth and holds the keys of its citadel4 ,any thinker who gets into the fold by another way is a thief and a robber4 ,the mystic must answer that most heinous of all charges1--of being unscientific4 ,by tradition he is even hostile to science4 ,for his main interest is in wonder1 and science by explaining things attacks the very principle of his life4 ,it not only diminishes his opportunities for wonder1 but threatens to make him superfluous by ultimately explaining everything4 ,the scientist may say that there is no necessary antithesis between explanation and that beautiful romance of thought we call wonder4 ,the savage1 who can explain nothing1 is the very creature who has no wonder at all4 ,everything is equally natural to him4 ,only a mind that has acquaintance with laws of behavior can be surprised at events4 ,the wonder of the scientist1 however1 although it be of a more robust1 tough-minded variety1 is none the less wonder4 ,a growing acquaintance with the world1 an increasing at-homeness in it1 is not necessarily incompatible with an ever-increasing marvel both at the beautiful fitness of things and the limitless field of ignorance and mystery beyond4 ,so the modern mystic must break with his own tradition if he is to make an appeal to this generation1 and must recognize that the antithesis between mystic and scientific is not an eternally valid one4 ,it is just through realization of this fact that ,maeterlinck1 the best of modern mystics1 makes his extraordinary appeal4 ,for1 as he tells us1 the valid mystery does not begin at the threshold of knowledge but only after we have exhausted our resources of knowing4 ,his frank and genuine acceptance of science thus works out a modus vivendi between the seen and the unseen4 ,it allows many of us who have given our allegiance to science to hail him gladly as a prophet who supplements the work of the wise men of scientific research1 without doing violence to our own consciences4 ,for the world is1 in spite of its scientific clamor1 still far from ready really to surrender itself to prosaicness4 ,it is still haunted with the dreams of the ages--dreams of short roads to truth1 visions of finding the ,northwest passage to the treasures of the ,unseen4 ,only we must go as far as possible along the traveled routes of science4 ,maeterlinck is thus not anti-scientific or pseudo-scientific1 but rather sub-scientific4 ,he speaks of delicately felt and subtle influences and aspects of reality that lie beneath the surface of our lives1 of forces and shadows that cannot be measured quantitatively or turned into philosophical categories4 ,or we may say that he is ultra-scientific4 ,as science plods along1 opening up the dark wilderness1 he goes with the exploring party1 throwing a search-light before them2 flickering enough and exasperatingly uncertain at times1 but sufficiently constant to light up the way1 point out a path1 and give us confidence that the terrors before us are not so formidable as we have feared4 ,his influence on our time is so great because we believe that he is a seer1 a man with knowledge of things hidden from our eyes4 ,we go to him as to a spiritual clairvoyant1--to have him tell us where to find the things our souls have lost4 ,but the modern mystic must not only recognize the scientific aspect of the age1--he must feel the social ideal that directs the spiritual energies of the time4 ,it is the glory of ,maeterlinck's mysticism that it has not lingered in the depths of the soul1 but has passed out to illuminate our thinking in regard to the social life about us4 ,the growth of this duality of vision has been with him a long evolution4 ,his early world was a shadowy1 intangible thing4 ,as we read the early essays1 we seem to be constantly hovering on the verge of an idea1 just as when we read the plays we seem to be hovering on the verge of a passion4 ,this long brooding away from the world1 however1 was fruitful and momentous4 ,the intense gaze inward trained the eye1 so that when the mists cleared away and revealed the palpitating social world about him1 his insight into its meaning was as much more keen and true than our own as had been his sense of the meaning of the individual soul4 ,the light he turns outward to reveal the meaning of social progress is all the whiter for having burned so long within4 ,in the essay on 8,our ,social ,duty10 the clearest and the consummate expression of this new outward look1 there are no contaminating fringes of vague thought2 all is clear white light4 ,with the instinct of the true radical1 the poet has gone to the root of the social attitude4 ,our duty as members of society is to be radical1 he tells us4 ,and not only that1 but an excess of radicalism is essential to the equilibrium of life4 ,society so habitually thinks on a plane lower than is reasonable that it behooves us to think and to hope on an even higher plane than seems to be reasonable4 ,this is the overpoweringly urgent philosophy of radicalism4 ,it is the beautiful courage of such words that makes them so vital an inspiration4 ,it is the sin of the age that nobody dares to be anything to too great a degree4 ,we may admire extremists in principle1 but we take the best of care not to imitate them ourselves4 ,who in ,america would even be likely to express himself as does ,maeterlinck in this essay8 ,who of us would dare follow the counsel8 ,of course we can plead extenuation4 ,in ,europe the best minds are thinking in terms of revolution still1 while in ,america our radicalism is still simply amateurish and incompetent4 ,to many of us1 then1 this call of ,maeterlinck's to the highest of radicalisms will seem irrelevant2 this new social note which appears so strongly in all his later work will seem a deterioration from the nobler mysticism of his earlier days4 ,but rather should it be viewed as the fruit of matured insight4 ,there has been no decay1 no surrender4 ,it is the same mysticism1 but with the direction of the vision altered4 ,this essay is the expression of the clearest vision that has yet penetrated our social confusion1 the sanest and highest ideal that has been set before progressive minds4 ,it may be that its utter fearlessness1 its almost ascetic detachment from the matter-of-fact things of political life1 its clear cold light of conviction and penetration1 may repel some whose hearts have been warmed by ,maeterlinck's subtle revelations of the spiritual life4 ,they may reproach him because it has no direct bearings on the immediate practical social life2 it furnishes no weapon of reform1 no tool with which to rush out and overthrow some vested abuse4 ,but to the traveler lost in the wood the one thing needful is a pole-star to show him his direction4 ,the star is unapproachable1 serene1 cold1 and lofty4 ,but although he cannot touch it1 or utilize it directly to extend his comfort and progress1 it is the most useful of all things to him4 ,it fills his heart with a great hope2 it cordinates his aimless wanderings and gropings1 and gives meaning and purpose to his course4 ,so a generation lost in a chaos of social change can find in these later words of ,maeterlinck a pole-star and a guide4 ,they do for the social life of man what the earlier essays did for the individual4 ,they endow it with values and significances that will give steadfastness and resource to his vision as he looks out on the great world of human progress1 and purpose and meaning to his activity as he looks ahead into the dim world of the future4 ,,ix ,,seeing1 ,,we ,,see ,,not ,it is a mere superstition1 ,maeterlinck tells us in one of his beautiful essays1 that there is anything irrevocable about the past4 ,on the contrary1 we are constantly rearranging it1 revising it1 remaking it4 ,for it is only in our memory that it exists1 and our conception of it changes as the loose fringes of past events are gathered up into a new meaning1 or when a sudden fortune lights up a whole series in our lives1 and shows us1 stretching back in orderly array and beautiful significance1 what we had supposed in our blindness to be a sad and chaotic welter4 ,it is no less a superstition to suppose that we have a hand in making the present4 ,the present1 like the past1 is always still to be made2 indeed1 must wait its turn1 so to speak1 to be seen in its full meaning until after the past itself has been remoulded and reconstituted4 ,it is depressing to think that we do not know our own time1 that the events we look upon have a permanent value far different from the petty one that we endow them with1 that they fit into a larger whole of which we see only a dim fraction--and that the least important because the seed of something that shall come much later into full fruition4 ,must our short life pass away without knowledge or vision of the majestic processes which are unfolding themselves under our very eyes1 while we have wasted our admiration and distorted our purpose by striving to interpret the ephemeral1 that is gone as soon as we8 ,even the wisest among us can see with but a dim eye into the future1 and make rather a lucky guess at its potentialities than a true prophecy based on a realization of the real tendencies of the time4 ,it is only the ,past that we really make4 ,and this may account for our love of it4 ,this fragile thing of tradition that we have so carefully constructed and so lovingly beautified1 this artistic creation of a whole people or race1 becomes most naturally the object of our tenderest solicitude4 ,any attack upon it that suggests a marring of its golden beauty1 any new proposal that threatens to render it superfluous1 elicits the outraged cry of anger1 the passionate defense1 of the mother protecting her child4 ,for the ,past is really the child of the ,present4 ,we are the authors of its being1 and upon it we lavish all our thoughts1 our interest and our delight4 ,and even our hopes are centred in the ,past1 for the most enthusiastic among us can do no more than hope that something worth while will come out of the ,past to nourish us in the approaching ,present4 ,concern for the ,future is so new a thing in human history that we are hardly yet at home with the feeling4 ,perhaps1 if we thought more about what was before us1 we should come to know more about it4 ,meanwhile our only consolation is that if we cannot see1 neither did the generations that were before us4 ,and we have the advantage of knowing that we do not see1 while they did not care about their ignorance at all4 ,we have constantly to check ourselves in reading history with the remembrance that1 to the actors in the drama1 events appeared very differently from the way they appear to us4 ,we know what they were doing far better than they knew themselves4 ,we are in the position of the novel reader who looks1 before he begins to read1 to see how the plot turns out4 ,this orderly and dramatic chronicle of history that thrills us as we read has only been orderly and dramatic to readers of the present time1 who can see the dnouement of the story4 ,history is peculiarly the creation of the present4 ,even the great men of the past are largely the agglomerations of centuries of hero-worship4 ,genius is as much a slow accretion of the ages as an endowment of man4 ,few great poets were seen in the full glory of their superhuman capacity by their fellows4 ,contemporary opinion of the great has been complimentary but seldom excessively laudatory1 and there are sad instances of the decay and deflation of a supernatural personality through the smooth1 gentle1 imperceptibly creeping oblivion of the centuries4 ,we rarely see what is distinctive in our own time4 ,the city builders of the ,west are quite unconscious of the fact that they are leaving behind them imperishable and mighty memorials of themselves4 ,few of the things that we admire now will be considered by posterity as noteworthy and distinctive of our age4 ,all depends on the vitality of our customs and social habits1 and some show as high a mortality as others do a stubborn tenacity of life4 ,what we are witnessing is a gigantic struggle of customs and ideas to survive and propagate their kind4 ,the means of subsistence is limited2 it is impossible that all should be able to live4 ,the fascinating problem for the social philosopher is which of these beliefs and tendencies will prove strong enough to overcome their rivals and make their stock a permanent type4 ,how many of the fads and brilliant theories and new habits of thought and taste will be able to maintain their place in the world8 ,if we could discern them1 we should know the distinction of our age4 ,definite epochs of the past we distinguish and celebrate because they contained the germs of ideas or the roots of institutions that still survive among us1 or customs and habits of thought that flourished in them with great brilliancy but have now utterly passed away4 ,now these beginnings are quite too subtle for us to see in our contemporary life1 and there are so many brilliancies that it is impossible to pick out with any definiteness the things which have power to project themselves into the future1 and cast a broad trail of light back to our age4 ,most of those very things that seem to us imperishable will be the ones to fade1--fade1 indeed1 so gradually that they will not even be missed4 ,it is this gradual disappearance that gives the most thorough oblivion4 ,history remembers only the brilliant failures and the brilliant successes4 ,we are fond of calling this an age of transition1 but if we trace history back we find that practically every age--at least for many centuries--has been an age of transition4 ,if we must set a starting-point from which we have been moving1 the social philosopher will be inclined to place it about the beginning of the sixteenth century4 ,if we have been in transition for four hundred years1 it seems almost time to settle down from this wild ferment of beliefs and discoveries that has kept the world's mind in constant turmoil since the time of the ,renaissance4 ,there are signs that such a crystallization is taking place4 ,we are weeding out our culture1 and casting aside the classical literature that was the breeding-ground for the old ideas4 ,we have achieved as yet little to take its place4 ,most of the modern literature is rather a restless groping about in the dark for new modes of thinking and new principles of life1 and thus far it hardly seems to have grasped the robust and vital in the new to any appreciable extent4 ,one can hardly believe that this morbid virus that is still working with undiminished vigor and deadly effect will succeed in making itself the dominant note in ,european literature for the next five hundred years4 ,one hates to think that our posterity is to be doomed to torture itself into appreciating our feverish modern art and music1 and learn to rank the wild complexities of ,strauss with the sublimities of ,beethoven4 ,shall we be sure that the conquest of the air is finally achieved and a third dimension added to man's traveling1 or is it all simply another daring and brilliant stab at the impossible1 another of those blasphemies against nature which impious man is constantly striving to commit8 ,there are few signs of the ,socialistic ,state1 but who knows what births of new institutions1 of which we are now quite unaware1 future ages will see to have been developing in our very midst8 ,is religion doomed1 or is it merely being transformed1 so that we shall be seen to have been creating amid all our indifference a new type and a new ideal8 ,will our age actually be distinctive as the era of the ,dawn of ,peace1 or will the baby institution of arbitration disappear before a crude and terrible reality8 ,are we progressing1 or shall we seem to have sown the seeds of world decay in this age of ours1 and at a great crisis in history let slip another opportunity to carry mankind to a higher social level8 ,it is maddening to the philosopher to think how long he will have to live to find an answer to these questions4 ,he wants to know1 but in the present all he can do is to guess at random4 ,not immortality1 but an opportunity to wake up every hundred years or so to see how the world is progressing1 may well be his desire and his dream4 ,such an immortality may be incredible1 but it is the only form which has ever proved satisfactory1 or ever will1 to the rational man4 ,x ,,the ,,experimental ,,life ,it is good to be reasonable1 but too much rationality puts the soul at odds with life4 ,for rationality implies an almost superstitious reliance on logical proofs and logical motives1 and it is logic that life mocks and contradicts at every turn4 ,the most annoying people in the world are those who demand reasons for everything1 and the most discouraging are those who map out ahead of them long courses of action1 plan their lives1 and systematically in the smallest detail of their activity adapt means to ends4 ,now the difficulty with all the prudential virtues is that they imply a world that is too good to be true4 ,it would be pleasant to have a world where cause and effect interlocked1 where we could see the future1 where virtue had its reward1 and our characters and relations with other people and the work we wish to do could be planned out with the same certainty with which cooks plan a meal4 ,but we know that that is not the kind of a world we actually live in4 ,perhaps men have thought that1 by cultivating the rational virtues and laying emphasis on prudence and forethought1 they could bend the stubborn constitution of things to meet their ideals4 ,it has always been the fashion to insist1 in spite of all the evidence1 that the world was in reality a rational place where certain immutable moral principles could be laid down with the same certainty of working that physical laws possess4 ,it has always been represented that the correct procedure of the moral life was to choose one's end or desire1 to select carefully all the means by which that end could be realized1 and then1 by the use of the dogged motive force of the will1 to push through the plans to completion4 ,in the homilies on success1 it has always been implied that strength of will was the only requisite4 ,success became merely a matter of the ratio between the quantity of effort and will-power applied1 and the number of obstacles to be met4 ,if one failed1 it was because the proper amount of effort had not been applied1 or because the plans had not been properly constructed4 ,the remedy was automatically to increase the effort or rationalize the plans4 ,life was considered to be a battle1 the strategy of which a general might lay out beforehand1 an engagement in which he might plan and anticipate to the minutest detail the movement of his forces and the disposition of the enemy4 ,but one does not have to live very long to see that this belief in the power and the desirability of controlling things is an illusion4 ,life works in a series of surprises4 ,one's powers are given in order that one may be alert and ready1 resourceful and keen4 ,the interest of life lies largely in its adventurousness1 and not in its susceptibility to orderly mapping4 ,the enemy rarely comes up from the side the general has expected2 the battle is usually fought out on vastly different lines from those that have been carefully foreseen and rationally organized4 ,and similarly in life do complex forces utterly confound and baffle our best laid plans4 ,our strategy1 unless it is open to instant correction1 unless it is flexible1 and capable of infinite resource and modification1 is a handicap rather than an aid in the battle of life4 ,in spite of the veracious accounts of youths hewing their way to success as captains of industry or statesmen1 with their eye singly set on a steadfast purpose1 we may be sure that life seldom works that way4 ,it is not so tractable and docile1 even to the strongest4 ,the rational ideal is one of those great moral hypocrisies which every one preaches and no one practices1 but which we all believe with superstitious reverence1 and which we take care shall be proven erroneous by no stubborn facts of life4 ,better that the facts should be altered than that the moral tradition should die6 ,one of its evil effects is the compressing influence it has on many of us4 ,recognizing that for us the world is an irrational place1 we are willing to go on believing that there are at least some gifted beings who are proving the truth and vindicating the eternal laws of reason4 ,we join willingly the self-stigmatized ranks of the incompetent and are content to shine feebly in the reflected light of those whose master wills and power of effort have brought them through in rational triumph to their ends4 ,the younger generation is coming very seriously to doubt both the practicability and worth of this rational ideal4 ,they do not find that the complex affairs of either the world or the soul work according to laws of reason4 ,the individual as a member of society is at the mercy of great social laws that regulate his fortune for him1 construct for him his philosophy of life1 and dictate to him his ways of making a living4 ,as an individual soul1 he is the creature of impulses and instincts which he does not create and which seem to lie quite outside the reach of his rational will4 ,looked at from this large social viewpoint1 his will appears a puny affair indeed4 ,there seems little room left in which to operate1 either in the sphere of society or in his own spiritual life4 ,that little of free-will1 however1 which there is1 serves for our human purposes4 ,it must be our care simply that we direct it wisely2 and the rational ideal is not the wisest way of directing it4 ,the place of our free will in the scheme of life is not to furnish driving1 but directing power4 ,the engineer could never create the power that drives his engine1 but he can direct it into the channels where it will be useful and creative4 ,the superstition of the strong will has been almost like an attempt to create power1 something the soul could never do4 ,the rational ideal has too often been a mere challenge to attain the unattainable4 ,it has ended in futility or failure4 ,this superstition comes largely from our incorrigible habit of looking back over the past1 and putting purpose into it4 ,the great man looking back over his career1 over his ascent from the humble level of his boyhood to his present power and riches1 imagines that that ideal success was in his mind from his earliest years4 ,he sees a progress1 which was really the happy seizing of fortunate opportunities1 as the carrying-out of a fixed purpose4 ,but the purpose was not there at the beginning2 it is the crowning touch added to the picture1 which completes and satisfies our age-long hunger for the orderly and correct4 ,but we all1 rich and poor1 successful and unsuccessful1 live from hand to mouth4 ,we all alike find life at the beginning a crude mass of puzzling possibilities4 ,all of us1 unless we inherit a place in the world1--and then we are only half alive1--have the same precarious struggle to get a foothold4 ,the difference is in the fortune of the foothold1 and not in our private creation of any mystical force of will4 ,it is a question of happy occasions of exposure to the right stimulus that will develop our powers at the right time4 ,the capacity alone is sterile2 it needs the stimulus to fertilize it and produce activity and success4 ,the part that our free will can play is to expose ourselves consciously to the stimulus2 it cannot create it or the capacity1 but it can bring them together4 ,in other words1 for the rational ideal we must substitute the experimental ideal4 ,life is not a campaign of battle1 but a laboratory where its possibilities for the enhancement of happiness and the realization of ideals are to be tested and observed4 ,we are not to start life with a code of its laws in our pocket1 with its principles of activity already learned by heart1 but we are to discover those principles as we go1 by conscientious experiment4 ,even those laws that seem incontrovertible we are to test for ourselves1 to see whether they are thoroughly vital to our own experience and our own genius4 ,we are animals1 and our education in life is1 after all1 different only in degree1 and not in kind1 from that of the monkey who learns the trick of opening his cage4 ,to get out of his cage1 the monkey must find and open a somewhat complicated latch4 ,how does he set about it8 ,he blunders around for a long time1 without method or purpose1 but with the waste of an enormous amount of energy4 ,at length he accidentally strikes the right catch1 and the door flies open4 ,our procedure in youth is little different4 ,we feel a vague desire to expand1 to get out of our cage1 and liberate our dimly felt powers4 ,we blunder around for a time1 until we accidentally put ourselves in a situation where some capacity is touched1 some latent energy liberated1 and the direction set for us1 along which we have only to move to be free and successful4 ,we will be hardly human if we do not look back on the process and congratulate ourselves on our tenacity and purpose and strong will4 ,but of course the thing was wholly irrational4 ,there were neither plans nor purposes1 perhaps not even discoverable effort4 ,for when we found the work that we did best1 we found also that we did it easiest4 ,and the outlines of the most dazzling career are little different4 ,until habits were formed or prestige acquired which could float these successful geniuses1 their life was but the resourceful seizing of opportunity1 the utilization1 with a minimum of purpose or effort1 of the promise of the passing moment4 ,they were living the experimental life1 aided by good fortune and opportunity4 ,now the youth brought up to the strictly rational ideal is like the animal who tries to get out of his cage by going straight through the bars4 ,the duck1 beating his wings against his cage1 is a symbol of the highest rationality4 ,his logic is plain1 simple1 and direct4 ,he is in the cage2 there is the free world outside2 nothing but the bars separate them4 ,the problem is simply to fortify his will and effort and make them so strong that they will overcome the resistance of the cage4 ,his error evidently lies not in his method1 but in his estimation of the strength of the bars4 ,but youth is no wiser2 it has no data upon which to estimate either its own strength or the strength of its obstacles4 ,it counts on getting out through its own self-reliant strength and will4 ,like the duck1 8impossible0 is a word not found in its vocabulary4 ,and like the duck1 it too often dashes out its spirit against the bars of circumstance4 ,how often do we see young people1 brought up with the old philosophy that nothing was withheld from those who wanted and worked for things with sufficient determination1 beating their ineffectual wings against their bars1 when perhaps in another direction the door stands open that would lead to freedom6 ,we do not hear enough of the tragedies of misplaced ambition4 ,when the plans of the man of will and determination fail1 and the inexorable forces of life twist his purposes aside from their end1 he is sure to suffer the prostration of failure4 ,his humiliation1 too1 is in proportion to the very strength of his will4 ,it is the burden of defeat1 or at best the sting of petty success1 that crushes men1 and crushes them all the more thoroughly if they have been brought up to believe in the essential rationality of the world and the power of will and purpose4 ,it is not that they have aimed too high1 but that they have aimed in the wrong direction4 ,they have not set out experimentally to find the work to which their powers were adapted1 they did not test coolly and impartially the direction in which their achievement lay4 ,they forgot that1 though faith may remove mountains1 the will alone is not able4 ,there is an urgency on every man to develop his powers to the fullest capacity1 but he is not called upon to develop those that he does not possess4 ,the will cannot create talent or opportunity4 ,the wise man is he who has the clear vision to discern the one1 and the calm patience to await the other4 ,will1 without humor and irony and a luminous knowledge of one's self1 is likely to drive one to dash one's brains out against a stone wall4 ,the world is too full of people with nothing except a will4 ,the mistake of youth is to believe that the philosophy of experimentation is enervating4 ,they want to attack life frontally1 to win by the boldness of their attack1 or by the exceeding excellence of their rational plans and purposes4 ,but therein comes a time when they learn perhaps that it is better to take life not with their naked fists1 but more scientifically1--to stand with mind and soul alert1 ceaselessly testing and criticizing1 taking and rejecting1 poised for opportunity1 and sensitive to all good influences4 ,the experimental life does not put one at the mercy of chance4 ,it is rather the rational mind that is constantly being shocked and deranged by circumstances4 ,but the dice of the experimenter are always loaded4 ,for he does not go into an enterprise1 spiritual or material1 relying simply on his reason and will to pull him through4 ,he asks himself beforehand whether something good is not sure to come whichever way the dice fall1 or at least whether he can bear the event of failure1 whether his spirit can stand it if the experiment ends in humiliation and barrenness4 ,it is surprising how many seeming disasters one finds one can bear in this anticipatory look2 the tension of the failure is relieved1 anyhow4 ,by looking ahead1 one has insured one's self up to the limit of the venture1 and one cannot lose4 ,but to the man with the carefully planned campaign1 every step is crucial4 ,if all does not turn out exactly as he intends1 he is ruined4 ,he thinks he insures himself by the excellence of his designs and the craftiness of his skill4 ,but he insures himself by the strange method of putting all his eggs in one basket4 ,he thinks1 of course1 he has arranged his plans so that1 if they fall1 the universe falls with them4 ,but when the basket breaks1 and the universe does not fall1 his ruin is complete4 ,ambition and the rational ideal seem to be only disastrous2 if unsuccessful1 they produce misanthropists2 if successful1 beings that prey upon their fellow men4 ,too much rationality makes a man mercenary and calculating4 ,he has too much at stake in everything he does to know that calm disinterestedness of spirit which is the mark of the experimental attitude towards life4 ,our attitude towards our personal affairs1 material and spiritual1 should be like the interest we take in sports and games4 ,the sporting interest is one secret of a healthy attitude towards life4 ,the detached enthusiasm it creates is a real ingredient of happiness4 ,the trouble with the rational man is that he has bet on the game4 ,if his side wins1 there is a personal reward for him2 if it loses1 he himself suffers a loss4 ,he cannot know the true sporting interest which is unaffected by considerations of the end1 and views the game as the thing1 and not the outcome4 ,to the experimental attitude1 failure means nothing beyond a shade of regret or chagrin4 ,whether we win or lose1 something has been learned1 some insight and appreciation of the workings of others or of ourselves4 ,we are ready and eager to begin another game2 defeat has not dampened our enthusiasm4 ,but if the man who has made the wager loses1 he has lost1 too1 all heart for playing4 ,or1 if he does try again1 it is not for interest in the game1 but with a redoubled intensity of self-interest to win back what he has lost4 ,with the sporting interest1 one looks on one's relations with others1 on one's little rle in the world1 in the same spirit that we look on a political contest1 where we are immensely stirred by the clash of issues and personalities1 but where we know that the country will run on in about the same way1 whoever is elected4 ,this knowledge does not work against our interest in the struggle itself1 nor in the outcome4 ,it only insures us against defeat4 ,it makes life livable by endowing us with disinterestedness4 ,if we lose1 why1 better luck next time1 or1 at worst1 is not losing a part of life8 ,the experimenter with life1 then1 must go into his laboratory with the mind of the scientist4 ,he has nothing at stake except the discovery of the truth1 and he is willing to work carefully and methodically and even cold-bloodedly in eliciting it from the tangled skein of phenomena4 ,but it is exactly in this cheerful1 matter-of-fact way that we are never willing to examine our own personalities and ideas4 ,we take ourselves too seriously1 and handle our tastes and enthusiasms as gingerly as if we feared they would shrivel away at the touch4 ,we perpetually either underestimate or overestimate our powers and worth1 and suffer such losses on account of the one and humiliations on account of the other1 as serve to unbalance our knowledge of ourselves1 and discourage attempts to find real guiding principles of our own or others' actions4 ,we need this objective attitude of the scientist4 ,we must be self-conscious with a detached self-consciousness1 treating ourselves as we treat others1 experimenting to discover our possibilities and traits1 testing ourselves with situations1 and gradually building up a body of law and doctrine for ourselves1 a real morality that will have far more worth and power and virtue than all that has been tried and tested before by no matter how much of alien human experience4 ,we must start our quest with no prepossessions1 with no theory of what ought to happen when we expose ourselves to certain stimuli4 ,it is our business to see what does happen1 and then act accordingly4 ,if the electrical experimenter started with a theory that like magnetic poles attract each other1 he would be shocked to discover that they actually repelled each other4 ,he might even set it down to some inherent depravity of matter4 ,but if his theory was not a prejudice but a hypothesis1 he would find it possible to revise it quickly when he saw how the poles actually behaved4 ,and he would not feel any particular chagrin or humiliation4 ,but we usually find it so hard to revise our theories about ourselves and each other4 ,we hold them as prejudices and not as hypotheses1 and when the facts of life seem to disprove them1 we either angrily clutch at our theories and snarl in defiance1 or we pull them out of us with such a wrench that they draw blood4 ,the scientist's way is to start with a hypothesis and then to proceed to verify it by experiment4 ,similarly ought we to approach life and test all our hypotheses by experience4 ,our methods have been too rigid4 ,we have started with moral dogmas1 and when life obstinately refused to ratify them1 we have railed at it1 questioned its sincerity1 instead of adopting some new hypothesis1 which more nearly fitted our experience1 and testing it until we hit on the principle which explained our workings to ourselves4 ,the common-sense1 rule-of-thumb morality which has come down to us is no more valid than the common-sense1 scientific observation that the sun goes round the earth4 ,we can rely no longer on the loose gleanings of homely proverb and common sense for our knowledge of personality and human nature and life4 ,if we do not adopt the experimental life1 we are still in bondage to convention4 ,to learn of life from others' words is like learning to build a steam-engine from books in the class-room4 ,we may learn of principles in the spiritual life that have proven true for millions of men1 but even these we must test to see if they hold true for our individual world4 ,we can never attain any self-reliant morality if we allow ourselves to be hypnotized by fixed ideas of what is good or bad4 ,no matter how good our principles1 our devotion to morality will be mere lip-service unless each belief is individually tested1 and its power to work vitally in our lives demonstrated4 ,but this moral experimentation is not the mere mechanical repetition of the elementary student in the laboratory1 who makes simple experiments which are sure to come out as the law predicts4 ,the laws of personality and life are far more complex1 and each experiment discovers something really novel and unique4 ,the spiritual world is ever-creative2 the same experiments may turn out differently for different experimenters1 and yet they may both be right4 ,in the spiritual experimental life1 we must have the attitude of the scientist1 but we are able to surpass him in daring and boldness4 ,we can be certain of a physical law that as it has worked in the past1 so it will work in the future4 ,but of a spiritual law we have no such guarantee4 ,this it is that gives the zest of perpetual adventure to the moral life4 ,human nature is an exhaustless field for investigation and experiment4 ,it is inexhaustible in its richness and variety4 ,the old rigid morality1 with its emphasis on the prudential virtues1 neglected the fundamental fact of our irrationality4 ,it believed that if we only knew what was good1 we would do it4 ,it was therefore satisfied with telling us what was good1 and expecting us automatically to do it4 ,but there was a hiatus somewhere4 ,for we do not do what we want to1 but what is easiest and most natural for us to do1 and if it is easy for us to do the wrong thing1 it is that that we will do4 ,we are creatures of instincts and impulses that we do not set going4 ,and education has never taught us more than very imperfectly how to train these impulses in accordance with our worthy desires4 ,instead of endeavoring to cure this irrationality by directing our energy into the channel of experimentation1 it has worked along the lines of greatest resistance1 and held up an ideal of inhibition and restraint4 ,we have been alternately exhorted to stifle our bad impulses1 and to strain and struggle to make good our worthy purposes and ambitions4 ,now the irrational man is certainly a slave to his impulses1 but is not the rational man a slave to his motives and reasons8 ,the rational ideal has made directly for inflexibility of character1 a deadening conservatism that is unable to adapt itself to situations1 or make allowance for the changes and ironies of life4 ,it has riveted the moral life to logic1 when it should have been yoked up with sympathy4 ,the logic of the heart is usually better than the logic of the head1 and the consistency of sympathy is superior as a rule for life to the consistency of the intellect4 ,life is a laboratory to work out experiments in living4 ,that same freedom which we demand for ourselves1 we must grant to every one4 ,instead of falling with our spite upon those who vary from the textbook rules of life1 we must look upon their acts as new and very interesting hypotheses to be duly tested and judged by the way they work when carried out into action4 ,nonconformity1 instead of being irritating and suspicious1 as it is now to us1 will be distinctly pleasurable1 as affording more material for our understanding of life and our formulation of its satisfying philosophy4 ,the world has never favored the experimental life4 ,it despises poets1 fanatics1 prophets1 and lovers4 ,it admires physical courage1 but it has small use for moral courage4 ,yet it has always been those who experimented with life1 who formed their philosophy of life as a crystallization out of that experimenting1 who were the light and life of the world4 ,causes have only finally triumphed when the rational 8gradual progress0 men have been overwhelmed4 ,better crude irrationality than the rationality that checks hope and stifles faith4 ,in place1 then1 of the rational or the irrational life1 we preach the experimental life4 ,there is much chance in the world1 but there is also a modicum of free will1 and it is this modicum that we exploit to direct our energies4 ,recognizing the precariousness and haphazardness of life1 we can yet generalize out of our experience certain probabilities and satisfactions that will serve us as well as scientific laws4 ,only they must be flexible and they must be tested4 ,life is not a rich province to conquer by our will1 or to wring enjoyment out of with our appetites1 nor is it a market where we pay our money over the counter and receive the goods we desire4 ,it is rather a great tract of spiritual soil1 which we can cultivate or misuse4 ,with certain restrictions1 we have the choice of the crops which we can grow4 ,our duty is evidently to experiment until we find those which grow most favorably and profitably1 to vary our crops according to the quality of the soil1 to protect them against prowling animals1 to keep the ground clear of noxious weeds4 ,contending against wind and weather and pests1 we can yet with skill and vigilance win a living for ourselves4 ,none can cultivate this garden of our personality but ourselves4 ,others may supply the seed2 it is we who must plough and reap4 ,we are owners in fee simple1 and we cannot lease4 ,none can live my life but myself4 ,and the life that ,i live depends on my courage1 skill1 and wisdom in experimentation4 ,,xi ,,the ,,dodging ,,of ,,pressures ,for a truly sincere life one talent is needed1--the ability to steer clear of the forces that would warp and conventionalize and harden the personality and its own free choices and bents4 ,all the kingdoms of this world lie waiting to claim the allegiance of the youth who enters on the career of life1 and sentinels and guards stand ready to fetter and enslave him the moment he steps unwarily over the wall out of the free open road of his own individuality4 ,and unless he dodges them and keeps straight on his path1 dusty and barren though it may be1 he will find himself chained a prisoner for life1 and little by little his own soul will rot out of him and vanish4 ,the wise men of the past have often preached the duty of this open road1 they have summoned youth to self-reliance1 but they have not paid sufficient heed to the enemies that would impede his progress4 ,they have been too intent on encouraging him to be independent and lead his own life1 to point out to him the direction from which the subtle influences that might control him would come4 ,as a result1 young men have too often believed that they were hewing out a career for themselves when they were really simply offering themselves up to some institutional ,moloch to be destroyed1 or1 at the best1 passively allowing the career or profession they had adopted to mould and carve them4 ,instead of working out their own destiny1 they were actually allowing an alien destiny to work them out4 ,youth enters the big world of acting and thinking1 a huge bundle of susceptibilities1 keenly alive and plastic1 and so eager to achieve and perform that it will accept almost the first opportunity that comes to it4 ,now each youth has his own unique personality and interweaving web of tendencies and inclinations1 such as no other person has ever had before4 ,it is essential that these trends and abilities be so stimulated by experience that they shall be developed to their highest capacity4 ,and they can usually be depended upon1 if freedom and opportunity are given1 to grow of themselves upward towards the sun and air4 ,if a youth does not develop1 it is usually because his nature has been blocked and thwarted by the social pressures to which every one of us is subjected1 and which only a few have the strength or the wisdom to resist4 ,these pressures come often in the guise of good fortune1 and the youth meets them halfway1 goes with them gladly1 and lets them crush him4 ,he will do it all1 too1 with so easy a conscience1 for is not this meeting the world and making it one's own8 ,it is meeting the world1 but it is too often only to have the world make the youth its own4 ,our spiritual guides and leaders1 then1 have been too positive1 too heartening1 if such a thing be possible4 ,they have either not seen the dangers that lurked in the path1 or they have not cared to discourage and depress us by pointing them out4 ,many of our modern guides1 in their panegyrics on success1 even glorify as aids on the journey these very dangers themselves1 and urge the youth to rely upon them1 when he should have been warned not to gaze at all on the dazzling lure4 ,the youth is urged to imitate men who are themselves victims of the very influences that he should dodge1 and doctrines and habits are pressed upon him which he should ceaselessly question and never once make his own unless he is sure that they fit him4 ,he will have need to be ever alert to the dangers1 and1 in early youth at least1 would better think more of dodging them than of attaining the goal to which his elders tempt him4 ,their best service to him would be to warn him against themselves and their influence1 rather than to encourage him to become like them4 ,the dangers that ,i speak of are the influences and inducements which come to youth from family1 business1 church1 society1 state1 to compromise with himself and become in more or less degree conformed to their pattern and type4 8,be like us60 they all cry1 8it is easiest and safest thus6 ,we guarantee you popularity and fortune at so small a price1--only the price of your best self60 ,thus they seduce him insidiously rather than openly attack him4 ,they throw their silky chains over him and draw him in4 ,or they press gently but ceaselessly upon him1 rubbing away his original roughness1 polishing him down1 moulding him relentlessly1 and yet with how kindly and solicitous a touch1 to their shape and manner4 ,as he feels their caressing pressure against him in the darkness1 small wonder is it that he mistakes it for the warm touch of friends and guides4 ,they are friends and guides who always end1 however1 by being masters and tyrants4 ,they force him to perpetuate old errors1 to keep alive dying customs1 to breathe new life into vicious prejudices1 to take his stand against the saving new4 ,they kill his soul1 and then use the carcass as a barricade against the advancing hosts of light4 ,they train him to protect and conserve their own outworn institutions when he should be the first1 by reason of his clear insight and freedom from crusted prejudice1 to attack them4 ,the youth's only salvation lies1 then1 in dodging these pressures4 ,it is not his business to make his own way in life so much as it is to prevent some one else from making it for him4 ,his business is to keep the way clear1 and the sky open above his head4 ,then he will grow and be nurtured according to his needs and his inner nature4 ,he must fight constantly to keep from his head those coverings that institutions and persons in the guise of making him warm and safe throw over his body4 ,if young people would spend half the time in warding away the unfavorable influences that they now spend in conscientiously planning what they are going to be1 they would achieve success and maintain their individuality4 ,it seems1 curiously enough1 that one can live one's true life and guarantee one's individuality best in this indirect way1--not by projecting one's self out upon the world aggressively1 but by keeping the track clear along which one's true life may run4 ,a sane1 well-rounded1 original life is attained not so much by taking thought for it as by the dodging of pressures that would limit and warp its natural growth4 ,the youth must travel the straight road serenely1 confident that 8his own will come to him40 ,all he must strive for is to recognize his own when it does come1 and to absorb and assimilate it4 ,his imagination must be large enough to envisage himself and his own needs4 ,this wisdom1 however1 comes to too many of us only after we are hopelessly compromised1 after we are encrusted over so deeply that1 even if we try to break away1 our struggles are at the expense of our growth4 ,the first duty of self-conscious youth is to dodge the pressures1 his second to survey the world eagerly to see what is 8his own40 ,if he goes boldly ahead at first to seek his own1 without first making provision for silencing the voices that whisper continually at his side1 8,conform60--he will soon find himself on alien ground1 and1 if not a prisoner1 a naturalized citizen before he has time to think4 ,nor is this a mere invitation to whimsicality and eccentricity4 ,these epithets1 in our daily life1 are somewhat loosely used for all sorts of behavior ranging from nonconformity to pure freakishness4 ,if we really had more original1 unspoiled people in the world1 we should not use these terms so frequently4 ,if we really had more people who were satisfying their healthy desires1 and living the life that their whole inner conscience told them was best1 we should not find eccentric or queer the self-sustaining men and women who live without regard to prejudice4 ,and all real whimsicality is a result rather of the thwarting of individuality than of letting it run riot4 ,it is when persons of strong personality are subjected to pressures heavier than they can bear that we get real outbursts of eccentricity4 ,for something unnatural has occurred1 a spontaneous flow and progress has been checked4 ,your eccentric man par excellence is your perfectly conventional man1 who never offends in the slightest way by any original action or thought4 ,for he has yielded to every variety of pressure that has been brought to bear upon him1 and his original nature has been completely obscured4 ,the pressures have been1 however1 uniform on every side1 so that they have seemingly canceled each other4 ,but this equilibrium simply conceals the forces that have crushed him4 ,the conventional person is1 therefore1 not the most natural but the most unnatural of persons4 ,his harmlessness is a proof of his tremendous eccentricity4 ,he has been rubbed down smooth on all sides like a rock until he has dropped noiselessly into his place in society4 ,but at what a cost does he obtain this peace6 ,at the cost of depersonalizing himself1 and sacrificing his very nature1 which1 as in every normal person1 is precious and worthy of permanence and growth4 ,this treason to one's self is perhaps the greatest mistake of youth1 the one unpardonable sin4 ,it is worse than sowing one's wild oats1 for they are reaped and justice is done2 or casting one's bread upon the waters1 for that returneth after many days4 ,but this sin is the throwing away in willfulness or carelessness the priceless jewel of self-hood1 and with no return1 either of recompense or punishment4 ,how early and insidious is the pressure upon us to conform to some type whose fitness we have not examined1 but which we are forced to take strictly on authority6 ,on the children in the family what a petty tyranny of ideas and manners is imposed6 ,under the guise of being brought up1 how many habits of doubtful value we learned1 how many moral opinions of doubtful significance we absorbed1 how many strange biases that harass and perplex us in our later life we had fastened upon our minds1 how many natural and beautiful tendencies we were forced to suppress6 ,the tyranny of manners1 of conventional politeness1 of puritanical taboos1 of superstitious religion1 were all imposed upon us for no reason that our elders could devise1 but simply that they in turn had had them imposed upon them4 ,much of our early education was as automatic and unconscious as the handing down of the immemorial traditions in a primitive savage tribe4 ,now ,i am far from saying that this household tradition of manners and morals is not an excellent thing for us to acquire4 ,many of the habits are so useful that it is a wise provision that we should obtain them as naturally as the air we breathe4 ,and it is a pressure that we could not1 at that age1 avoid1 even if we would4 ,but this childhood influence is a sample of true pressure1 for it is both unconscious and irresistible4 ,were we to infringe any of the rules laid down for us1 the whole displeasure of the family descended upon our heads2 they seemed to vie with each other in expressing their disapproval of our conduct4 ,so1 simply to retain our self-respect1 we were forced into their pattern of doing things1 and for no other reason than that it was their pattern4 ,this early pressure1 however1 was mild in comparison with what we experienced as we grew older4 ,we found then that more and more of our actions came insensibly but in some way or other before this court of appeal4 ,we could choose our friends1 for instance1 only with reservations4 ,if we consorted with little boys who were not clean1 or who came from the less reputable portions of the town1 we were made to feel the vague family disapproval1 perhaps not outspoken1 but as an undercurrent to their attitude4 ,and usually we did not need flagrantly to offend to be taught the need of judicious selection1 for we were sensitive to the feeling that we knew those around us would entertain1 and so avoided the objectionable people from a diffused feeling that they were not 8nice40 ,when we grew old enough to move in the youthful social world1 we felt this circle of tyranny suddenly widen4 ,it was our 8set0 now that dictated our choices4 ,the family pressure had been rather subtle and uneasy2 this was bold and direct4 ,here were the most arbitrary selections and disqualifications1 girls and boys being banned for no imaginable reason except that they were slightly out of the ordinary1 and our little world circumscribed by a rigid public opinion which punished nonconformity by expulsion4 ,if we tried to dodge this pressure and assert our own privileges of making lovers and friends1 we were soon delivered an ultimatum1 and if we refused to obey1 we were speedily cast out into utter darkness1 where1 strange to say1 we lacked even the approbation of the banned4 ,sometimes we were not allowed to choose our partners to whom we paid our momentary devotions1 sometimes we were not allowed to give them up4 ,the price we paid for free participation in the parties and dances and love-affairs of this little social world of youth was an almost military obedience to the general feeling of propriety and suitability of our relationships with others1 and to the general will of those in whose circle we went4 ,there was apt to be a rather severe code of propriety1 which bore especially upon the girls4 ,many frank and natural actions and expressions of opinion were thus inhibited1 from no real feeling of self-respect1 but from the vague1 uncomfortable feeling that somebody would not approve4 ,this price for society was one that we were all willing to pay1 but it was a bad training4 ,our own natural likings and dislikings got blunted2 we ceased to seek out our own kind of people and enjoy them and ourselves in our own way1 but we 8went with0 the people that our companions thought we ought to 8go with10 and we played the games and behaved generally as they thought we ought to do4 ,the family rather corroborated this pressure than attempted to fortify us in our own individuality4 ,for their honor seemed to be involved in what we did1 and if all our walk in life was well pleasing to those around us1 they were well pleased with us4 ,and all through life1 as long at least as we were protected under the sheltering wing of the family1 its members constituted a sort of supreme court over all our relations in life4 ,in resisting the other pressures that were brought to bear on us1 we rarely found that we had the family's undivided support4 ,they loved1 like all social groups1 a smoothly running person1 and as soon as they found us doing unconventional things or having unusual friends they were vaguely uneasy1 as if they were harboring in their midst some unpredictable animal who would draw upon them the disapproving glances of the society around them4 ,the family philosophy has a horror for the 8queer40 ,the table-board is too often a place where the eccentricities of the world get thoroughly aired4 ,the dread of deviation from accepted standards is impressed upon us from our youth up4 ,the threat which always brought us to terms was1--8,if you do this1 you will be considered queer60 ,there was very little fight left in us after that4 ,but the family has other formidable weapons for bringing us to terms4 ,it knows us through and through as none of our friends and enemies know us4 ,it sees us in undress1 when all our outward decorations of spirit and shams and pretenses are thrown off1 and it is not deceived by the apologies and excuses that pass muster in the world at large and even to our own conscience4 ,we can conceal nothing from it2 it knows all our weakest spots and vulnerable feelings4 ,it does not hesitate to take shameless advantage of that knowledge4 ,its most powerful weapon is ridicule4 ,it can adopt no subtler method1 for we in our turn know all its own vulnerabilities4 ,and where the world at large is generally too polite to employ ridicule upon us1 but works with gentler methods of approbation and coldness1 our family associates feel no such compunction4 ,knowing us as they do1 they are able to make that ridicule tell4 ,we may have longings for freedom and individuality1 but it is a terrible dilemma that faces us4 ,most men would rather be slaves than butts2 they would rather be corralled with the herd than endure its taunts at their independence4 ,besides the pressure on a youth or girl to think the way the family does1 there is often the pressure brought upon them to sacrifice themselves for its benefit4 ,i do not mean to deprecate that perfectly natural and proper desire to make some return for the care and kindness that have been lavished upon them4 ,but the family insistence often goes much further than this4 ,it demands not only that its young people shall recompense it for what it has done for them1 but that they do it in the kind of work and vocation that shall seem proper to it4 ,how often1 when the youth or girl is on the point of choosing a congenial occupation or profession1 does the family council step in and1 with the utmost apparent good-will in the world1 dictate differently6 ,and too often the motives are really policy or ambition1 or1 at best1 sheer prejudice4 ,if the youth be not persuaded1 then he must bear the brunt of lonely toil without the sympathy or support of those most dear to him4 ,far harder is the lot of the young woman4 ,for there is still so much prejudice against a girl's performing useful work in society1 apart from her ,god-given duty of getting married1 that her initiative is crushed at the very beginning4 ,the need of cultivating some particular talent or interest1 even if she has not to earn her living1 seems to be seldom felt4 ,yet women1 with their narrower life1 have a greater need of sane and vigorous spiritual habits than do men4 ,it is imperative that a girl be prevented from growing up into a useless1 fleshly1 and trivial woman1 of the type one sees so much of nowadays4 ,even if a girl does marry1 a few intellectual interests and gifts and tastes will not be found to detract from her charm or usefulness4 ,the world never needed so much as it does to-day women of large hearts and large minds1 whose home and sphere are capable of embracing something beyond the four corners of their kitchen4 ,and the world can get such women only by allowing them the initiative and opportunity to acquire varied interests and qualities while they are young4 ,the family often forges sentimental bonds to keep it living together long after the motive and desire have departed4 ,there is no group so uncongenial as an uncongenial family4 ,the constant rubbing together accentuates all the divergencies and misunderstandings4 ,yet sometimes a family whose members are hopelessly mismated will cling together through sheer inertia or through a conscientious feeling of duty4 ,and duty to too many of us is simply a stimulus to that curious love for futile suffering that form some of the darker qualities of the puritan soul4 ,family duty may not only warp and mutilate many a life that would bloom healthily outside in another environment1 but it may actually mean the pauperization of the weaker members4 ,the claims of members of the family upon each other are often overwhelming1 and still more often quite fictitious in their justice4 ,yet that old feeling of the indissolubility of the family will often allow the weak1 who might1 if forced to shift for themselves1 become strong1 to suck the lifeblood from the stronger members4 ,coperation1 when it is free and spontaneous and on a basis of congeniality1 is the foundation of all social life and progress1 but forced cohesion can do little good4 ,the average family is about as well mated as any similar group would be1 picked out at random from society4 ,and this means1 where the superstition of indissolubility is still effective1 that the members share not only all the benefits1 but also all each others' shortcomings and irritations4 ,family life thus not only presses upon its youth to conform to its customs and habits and to the opinions of the little social world in which it lives1 but also drags its youth down with its claims1 and warps it by its tension of uncongeniality1 checks its spontaneity by its lack of appreciation1 and injures its soul by friction and misunderstanding4 ,this family pressure upon youth is serious1 and potent for much good and evil in his later life4 ,it is necessary that he understand how to analyze it without passion or prejudice1 and find out just how he can dodge the unfavorable pressure without injury to the love that is borne him or the love that he bears to the others4 ,but let him not believe that his love is best shown by submission4 ,it is best shown by a resolute determination and assertion of his own individuality4 ,only he must know1 without the cavil of a doubt1 what that individuality is2 he must have a real imaginative anticipation of its potentialities4 ,only with this intuition will he know where to dodge and how to dodge4 ,it is true that the modern generation seems to be changing all this4 ,family cohesion and authority no longer mean what they did even twenty years ago4 ,the youth of to-day are willful1 selfish1 heartless1 in their rebellion4 ,they are changing the system blindly and blunderingly4 ,they feel the pressure1 and without stopping to ask questions or analyze the situation1 they burst the doors and flee away4 ,their seeming initiative is more animal spirits than anything else4 ,they have exploded the myth that their elders have any superhuman wisdom of experience to share with them1 or any incontrovertible philosophy of life with which to guide their wandering footsteps4 ,but it must be admitted that most have failed so far to find a wisdom and a philosophy to take its place4 ,they have too often thrown away the benefits of family influence on account of mere trivialities of misunderstanding4 ,they have not waited for the real warpings of initiative1 the real pressure of prejudice1 but have kicked up their heels at the first breath of authority4 ,they have not so much dodged the pressure as fled it altogether4 ,instead of being intent on brushing away the annoying obstacles that interfered with the free growth of their own worthier selves1 they have mistaken the means for the end1 and have merely brushed off the interferences1 without first having any consciousness of that worthier self4 ,now of course this is no solution4 ,it is only as they substitute for the authority that they throw off a definite authority of their own1 crystallized out of their own ideals and purposes1 that they will gain or help others to gain4 ,for lack of a vision the people perish4 ,for lack of a vision of their own personalities1 and the fresh1 free1 aggressive1 forward1 fearless1 radical life that we all ought to lead1 and could lead if we only had the imagination for it1 the youth of to-day will cast off the narrowing confining fetters of authority only to wander without any light at all4 ,this is not to say that this aimless wandering is not better than the prison-house1 but it is to say that the emancipation of the spirit is insufficient without a new means of spiritual livelihood to take its place4 ,the youth of to-day cannot rest on their liberation2 they must see their freedom as simply the setting free of forces within themselves for a cleaner1 sincerer life1 and for radical work in society4 ,the road is cut out before them by pioneers2 they have but to let themselves grow out in that direction4 ,i have painted the family pressures in this somewhat lurid hue because they are patterns of the other attacks which are made upon the youth as he meets the world4 ,the family is a little microcosm1 a sheltered group where youth feels all those currents of influence that sway men in their social life4 ,some of them are exaggerated1 some perverted1 but they are most of them there in that little world4 ,it is no new discovery that in family life one can find heaven or one can find hell4 ,the only pressure that is practically absent in the family is the economic pressure1 by which ,i mean the inducements1 and even necessities1 that a youth is under of conforming to codes or customs and changing his ideals and ideas1 when he comes to earn his livelihood4 ,this pressure affects him as soon as he looks for an opening1 as he calls it1 in which to make his living4 ,at that time all this talk of natural talents or bents or interests begin to sound far-away and ideal4 ,he soon finds that these things have no commercial value in themselves and will go but a short way towards providing him with his living4 ,the majority of us 8go to work0 as soon as our short 8education0 is completed1 if not before1 and we go not by choice1 but wherever opportunity is given4 ,hence the ridiculous misfits1 the apathy1 the restlessness and discontent4 ,the world of young people around us seems too largely to be one where both men and girls are engaged in work in which they have no interest1 and for which they have no aptitude4 ,they are mournfully fettered to their work2 all they can seem to do is to make the best of it1 and snatch out of the free moments what pleasure and exhilaration they can4 ,they have little hope for a change4 ,there is too much of a scramble for places in this busy1 crowded world1 to make a change anything but hazardous4 ,it is true that restlessness often forces a change1 but it is rarely for the better1 or in the line of any natural choice or interest4 ,one leaves one's job1 but then one takes thankfully the first job that presents itself2 the last state may be worse than the first4 ,by this economic pressure most of us are sidetracked1 turned off from our natural path1 and fastened irrevocably to some work that we could only acquire an interest in at the expense of our souls4 ,it is a pressure1 too1 that cannot easily be dodged4 ,we can frankly recognize our defeat1 plunge boldly at the work and make it a part of ourselves2 this course of action1 which most of us adopt1 is really1 however1 simply an unconditional surrender4 ,we can drift along apathetically1 without interest either in our work or our own personalities2 this course is even more disastrous4 ,or we can quietly wait until we have found the vocation that guarantees the success of our personalities2 this course is an ideal that is possible to very few4 ,and yet1 did we but know it1 a little thought at the beginning would often have prevented the misfit1 and a little boldness when one has discovered the misfit would often have secured the favorable change4 ,that self-recognition1 which is the only basis for a genuine spiritual success in life1 is the thing that too many of us lack4 ,the apathy comes from a real ignorance of what our true work is4 ,then we are twice a slave1--a prey to our circumstance and a prey to our ignorance4 ,like all discoveries1 what one's work is can be found only by experiment4 ,but this can often be an imaginative experiment4 ,one can take an 8inventory of one's personality10 and discover one's interests1 and the kind of activity one feels at home with or takes joy in4 ,yet it is true that there are many qualities which cannot be discovered by the imagination1 which need the fairy touch of actual use to develop them4 ,there is no royal road to this success4 ,here the obstacles are usually too thick to be dodged4 ,we do not often enough recognize the incredible stupidity of our civilization where so much of the work is uninteresting and monotonous4 ,that we should consider it a sort of triumph that a man like ,mr4 ,john ,burroughs should have been able to live his life as he chose1 travel along his own highroad1 and develop himself in his own natural direction1 is a curious reflection on our ideals of success and on the incompleteness of our civilization4 ,such a man has triumphed1 however1 because he has known what to dodge4 ,he has not been crushed by the social opinion of his little world1 or lured by specious success1 or fettered by his 8job10 or hoodwinked by prejudice4 ,he has kept his spirit clear and pure straight through life4 ,it would be well for modern youth if it could let an ideal like this color their lives1 and permeate all their thoughts and ambitions4 ,it would be well if they could keep before them such an ideal as a pillar of fire by day and a cloud by night4 ,if we cannot dodge this economic pressure1 at least we can face it4 ,if we are situated so that we have no choice in regard to our work1 we may still resist the influences which its uncongeniality would bring to bear upon us4 ,this is not done by forcing an interest in it1 or liking for it4 ,if the work is socially wasteful or useless or even pernicious1 as so much business and industrial work to-day is1 it is our bounden duty not to be interested in it or to like it4 ,we should not be playing our right place in society if we enjoyed such a prostitution of energies4 ,one of the most insidious of the economic pressures is this awaking the interest of youth in useless and wasteful work1 work that takes away energy from production to dissipate in barter and speculation and all the thousand ways that men have discovered of causing money to flow from one pocket to another without the transference of any fair equivalent of real wealth4 ,we can dodge these pressures not by immolating ourselves1 but by letting the routine work lie very lightly on our soul4 ,we can understand clearly the nature and effects of this useless work we are doing1 and keep it from either alluring or smothering us4 ,we can cultivate a disinterested aloofness towards it1 and keep from breathing its poisonous atmosphere4 ,the extra hours we can fill with real interests1 and make them glow with an intensity that will make our life almost as rich as if we were wholly given over to a real lifework4 ,we can thus live in two worlds1 one of which is the more precious because it is one of freedom from very real oppression4 ,and that oppression will seem light because it has the reverse shield of liberty4 ,if we do drudgery1 it must be our care to see that it does not stifle us4 ,the one thing needful in all our work and play is that we should always be on top1 that our true personality should always be in control4 ,our life must not be passive1 running simply by the momentum furnished by another2 it must have the motive power within itself2 although it gets the fuel from the stimulation of the world about it1 the steam and power must be manufactured within itself4 ,these counsels of aloofness from drudgery suggest the possibilities of avoiding the economic pressures where they are too heavy completely to dodge1 and where the work is an irrevocable misfit4 ,but the pressures of success are even more deadly than those of routine4 ,how early is one affected by that first pressure of worldly opinion which says that lack of success in business or a profession is disgraceful6 ,the one devil of our modern world is failure1 and many are the charms used by the medicine men to ward him away4 ,if we lived in a state of society where virtue was its own reward1 where our actions were automatically measured and our rewards duly proportioned to our efforts1 a lack of success would be a real indication of weakness and flaw1 or1 at best1 ill-preparation4 ,but where business success is largely dependent on the possession of capital1 a lucky risk1 the ability to intimidate or deceive1 and where professional success is so often dependent upon self-assertion or some irrelevant but pleasing trait of personality1 failure means nothing more than bad luck1 or1 at most1 inability to please those clients to whom one has made one's appeal4 ,to dodge this pressure of fancied failure and humiliation is to have gone a long way towards guaranteeing one's real success4 ,we are justified in adopting a pharisaical attitude towards success1--8,lord1 ,i thank thee that ,i have not succeeded as other men have60 ,to have judged one's self by the inner standards of truth to one's own personality1 to count the consciousness of having done well1 regardless of the corroboration of a public1 as success1 is to have avoided this most discouraging of pressures4 ,it is even doubtful whether business or professional success1 except in the domain of science and art1 can be attained without a certain betrayal of soul4 ,the betrayal may have been small1 but at some point one has been compressed1 one has yielded to alien forces and conformed to what the heart did not give assent to4 ,it may be that one has kept silent when one should have spoken1 that one has feigned interests and enthusiasms1 or done work that one knew was idle and useless1 in order to achieve some goal2 but always that goal has been reached not spontaneously but under a foreign pressure4 ,more often than not the fortunate one has not felt the direct pressure1 has not been quite conscious of the sacrifice1 but only vaguely uneasy and aware that all was not right within him1 and has won his peace only by drugging his uneasiness with visions of the final triumph4 ,the pressure is always upon him to keep silent and conform4 ,he must not only adopt all the outward forms and ceremonies1 as in the family and social life1 but he must also adopt the traditional ideals4 ,the novice soon finds that he is expected to defend the citadel1 even against his own heresies4 ,the lawyer who finds anomalies in the law1 injustice in the courts1 is not encouraged to publish abroad his facts1 or make proposals for reform4 ,the student who finds antiquated method1 erroneous hypotheses in his subject1 is not expected to use his knowledge and his genius to remodel the study4 ,the minister who comes upon new and living interpretations for his old creeds is not encouraged to speak forth the truth that is in him4 ,nor is the business man who finds corrupt practices in his business encouraged to give the secrets away4 ,there is a constant social pressure on these 8reformers0 to leave things alone4 ,and this does not arise from any corrupt connivance with the wrong1 or from any sympathy with the evildoers4 ,the cry rises equally from the corrupt and the holy1 from the men who are responsible for the abuses and those who are innocent1 from those who know of them and those who do not4 ,it is simply the instinctive reaction of the herd against anything that savors of the unusual2 it is the tendency of every social group simply to resist change4 ,this alarm at innovation is universal1 from college presidents to ,catholic peasants1 in fashionable club or sewing circle or political party4 ,on the radical there is immediately brought1 without examination1 without reason or excuse1 the whole pressure of the organization to stultify his vision and force him back into the required grooves4 ,the methods employed are many3 a warning is issued against him as being unsound and unsafe2 his motive is to make trouble1 or revenge himself on the directors for some slight2 finally he is solemnly pilloried as an 8enemy of the people40 ,excellent reasons are discovered for his suppression4 ,effective working of an organization requires coperation1 but also subordination2 in the interests of efficiency1 therefore1 individual opinion cannot be allowed full sway4 ,the reputation of the organization before the world depends on its presenting a harmonious and united front2 internal disagreements and criticisms tend to destroy the respect of the public4 ,smoothness of working is imperative2 a certain individual liberty must1 therefore1 be sacrificed for the success of the organization4 ,and if these plausible excuses fail1 there is always the appeal to authority and to tried and tested experience4 ,now all these reasons are simply apologies brought up after the fact to justify the first instinctive reaction4 ,what they all mean is this1 and only this3 ,he would unsettle things2 away with him6 ,in olden times1 they had sterner ways of enforcing these pressures4 ,but although the stake and dungeon have disappeared1 the spirit of conservatism does not seem to have changed very much4 ,educated men still defend the hoariest abuses1 still stand sponsor for utterly antiquated laws and ideals4 ,that is why the youth of this generation has to be so suspicious of those who seem to speak authoritatively4 ,he knows not whom he can trust1 for few there are who speak from their own inner conviction4 ,most of our leaders and moulders of public opinion speak simply as puppets pulled by the strings of the conservative bigotry of their class or group4 ,it is well that the youth of to-day should know this1 for the knowledge will go far towards steeling him against that most insidious form of pressure that comes from the intellectual and spiritual prestige of successful and honored men4 ,when youth sees that a large part of their success has been simply their succumbing to social pressure1 and that their honor is based largely on the fact that they do not annoy vested interests with proposals or agitations for betterment1 he will seek to discover new standards of success1 and find his prophets and guides among the less fortunate1 perhaps1 but among those who have retained their real integrity4 ,this numbing palsy of conservative assent which steals over so many brilliant and sincere young men as they are subjected to the influence of prestige and authority in their profession is the most dangerous disease that threatens youth4 ,it can be resisted only by constant criticism and candid vigilance4 8,prove all things2 hold fast to that which is good10 should be the motto of the intellectual life4 ,only by testing and comparing all the ideals that are presented to one is it possible to dodge that pressure of authority that would crush the soul's original enthusiasms and beliefs4 ,not doubt but convention is the real enemy of youth4 ,yet these spiritual pressures are comparatively easy to dodge when one is once awake to them4 ,it is the physical pressure that those in power are able to bring to bear upon the dissenter that constitutes the real problem4 ,the weak man soon becomes convinced of his hardihood and audacity in supposing that his ideas could be more valuable than the running tradition1 and recants his heresies4 ,but those who stick stiff-neckedly out are soon crushed4 ,when the youth is settled in life1 has trained for his profession and burned his bridges behind him1 it means a great deal to combat authority4 ,for those in power can make use of the economic pressure to force him to conformity4 ,it is the shame of our universities that they are giving constant illustrations of this use of arbitrary power1 directed usually against nonconformity in social and political opinion4 ,recent examples show the length to which even these supposedly enlightened institutions are willing to go to prevent social heresy in their midst4 ,often such harsh measures are not needed4 ,a subtle appeal to a man's honor is effective4 8,while you are a member of a society10 it is said1 8it is your duty to think in harmony with its ideals and policies4 ,if you no longer agree with those ideals1 it is your duty to withdraw4 ,you can fight honorably for your own ideas only from the outside40 ,all that need be said about this doctrine1 so fair and reasonable on the surface1 is that it contains all the philosophic support that would perpetuate the evil of the world forever4 ,for it means attacking vested evil from the weakest vantage-point2 it means willfully withdrawing to the greatest distance1 shooting one's puny arrows at the citadel1 and then expecting to capture it4 ,it means also to deny any possibility of progress within the organization itself4 ,for as soon as dissent from the common inertia developed1 it would be automatically eliminated4 ,it is a principle1 of course1 that plays directly into the hands of the conservators4 ,it is an appeal to honor that is dishonorable4 ,let it seduce no man's sincerity6 ,the principal object of every organization1 as every youth soon discovers who feels dissatisfaction with the policies of church1 club1 college1 or party1 is to remain true to type4 ,each is organized with a central vigilance committee1 whose ostensible function is direction1 but whose real business is to resist threatening change and keep matters as they are4 ,the ideal is smoothness2 every part of the machine is expected to run along in its well-oiled groove4 ,youths who have tried to introduce their new ideas into such organizations know the weight of this fearful resistance4 ,it seems usually as if all the wisdom and experience of these elders had taught them only the excellence of doing nothing at all4 ,their favorite epithet for those who have individual opinions is 8trouble-makers10 forgetting that men do not run the risk of the unpopularity and opprobrium that aggressiveness always causes1 for the sheer love of making trouble4 ,through an instinct of self-preservation1 such an organization always places loyalty above truth1 the permanence of the organization above the permanence of its principles4 ,even in churches we are told that to alter one's opinion of a creed to which one has once given allegiance is basely to betray one's higher nature4 ,these are the pressures that keep wavering men in the footpaths where they have once put their feet1 and stunts their truer1 growing selves4 ,how many souls a false loyalty has blunted none can say2 perhaps almost as many as false duty6 ,in the dodging of these pressures many a man finds the real spiritual battle of his life4 ,they are a challenge to all his courage and faith4 ,unless he understands their nature1 his defeat will bring despair or cynicism4 ,when the group is weak and he is strong1 he may resist successfully1 press back in his turn1 actually create a public opinion that will support him1 and transfuse it all with his new spirit and attitude4 ,fortunate1 indeed1 is he who can not only dodge these pressures but dissolve them6 ,if he is weak and his efforts are useless1 and the pressure threatens to crush him1 he would better withdraw and let the organization go to its own diseased perdition4 ,if he can remain within without sacrifice to his principles1 this is well1 for then he has a vantage-ground for the enunciation of those principles4 ,eternal vigilance1 however1 is the price of his liberty4 ,the secret ambition of the group seems to be to turn out all its members as nearly alike as possible4 ,it seeks to create a type to which all new adherents shall be moulded4 ,each group1 then1 that we have relations with is ceaselessly working to mould us to its type and pattern4 ,it is this marvellous unseen power that a group has of forming after its own image all that come under its influence1 that conquers men4 ,it has the two instincts of self-preservation and propagation strongly developed1 and we tend unthinkingly to measure its value in terms of its success in the expression of those instincts4 ,rather should it be measured always in terms of its ability to create and stimulate varied individuality4 ,this is the new ideal of social life4 ,this is what makes it so imperative that young men of to-day should recognize and dodge the pressures that would thwart the assertion of this ideal4 ,the aim of the group must be to cultivate personality1 leaving open the road for each to follow his own4 ,the bond of cohesion will be the common direction in which those roads point1 but this is far from saying that all the travelers must be alike4 ,it is enough that there be a common aim and a common ideal4 ,societies are rarely content with this1 however2 they demand a close mechanical similarity1 and a conformity to a reactionary and not a progressive type4 ,if we would be resolute in turning our gaze towards the common aim1 and dodging the pressure of the common pattern1 our family1 business1 and social life would be filled with a new spirit4 ,we can scarcely imagine the achievement and liberation that would result4 ,individuality would come to its own2 it would no longer be suspect4 ,youth would no longer be fettered and bound1 but would come to its own as the leaven and even leader of life4 ,men would worship progress as they now worship stagnation2 their ideal in working together would be a living effectiveness instead of a mechanical efficiency4 ,this gospel is no call to ease and comfort4 ,it is rather one of peril4 ,the youth of this generation will not be so lightly seduced1 or go so innocently into the bonds of conservatism and convention1 under the impression that they are following the inspired road to success4 ,their consciences will be more delicate4 ,they know now the dangers that confront them and the road they are called on to tread4 ,it is not an easy road4 ,it is beset with opportunities for real eccentricity1 for selfishness1 for willfulness1 for mere bravado4 ,it would be surprising1 after the long premium that has been placed on the pattern1 not to see a reaction in favor of sheer freakishness4 ,many of our modern radicals are examples of this reaction4 ,yet their method is so sound1 their goal so clear and noble1 their spirit so sincere1 that they are true pioneers of the new individuality4 ,their raciness is but the raciness of all pioneers everywhere4 ,and much of their irresponsibility is a result of that intolerable pressure against which they are revolting4 ,they have dodged it1 but it dogs them and concentrates itself sullenly behind them to punish them for their temerity4 ,the scorn of the world hurts and hampers them4 ,that ridicule which the family employed against deviation is employed in all large social movements against the innovators4 ,yet slowly and surely the new social ideal makes its way4 ,it is not a call to the surrendering of obligations1 in family or business or profession1 but it is a call to the criticism of obligations4 ,youth must distinguish carefully between the essential duties and the non-essential1 between those which make for the realization of the best common ideals1 and those which make merely for the maintenance of a dogma or unchallenged superstition4 ,by resisting the pressures that would warp1 do we really best serve society2 by allowing our free personality to develop1 do we contribute most to the common good4 ,we must recognize that our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires4 ,no duty that runs rough-shod over the personality can have a legitimate claim upon us4 ,we serve by being as well as by doing4 ,it is easy to distort this teaching into a counsel to unbridled selfishness4 ,and that1 of course1 is the risk4 ,but shall we not dare to take the risk8 ,it may be also that in our care to dodge the pressures1 we may lose all the inestimable influences of good that come along mixed in with the hurtful4 ,but shall we not take the risk8 ,our judgments can only grow by exercise2 we can only learn by constantly discriminating4 ,self-recognition is necessary to know one's road1 but1 knowing the road1 the price of the mistakes and perils is worth paying4 ,the following of that road will be all the discipline one needs4 ,discipline does not mean being moulded by outside forces1 but sticking to one's road against the forces that would deflect or bury the soul4 ,people speak of finding one's niche in the world4 ,society1 as we have seen1 is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of a statue it likes1 and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has4 ,but for us1 not the niche but the open road1 with the spirit always traveling1 always criticizing1 always learning1 always escaping the pressures that threaten its integrity4 ,with its own fresh power it will keep strong and true to the journey's end4 ,,xii ,,for ,,radicals ,the great social movement of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow has hit us of the younger generation hard4 ,many of us were early converted to a belief in the possibilities of a regenerated social order1 and to a passionate desire to do something in aid of that regeneration4 ,the appeal is not only to our sympathy for the weak and exploited1 but also to our delight in a healthy1 free1 social life1 to an artistic longing for a society where the treasures of civilization may be open to all1 and to our desire for an environment where we ourselves will be able to exercise our capacities1 and exert the untrammeled influences which we believe might be ours and our fellows'4 ,all these good things the social movement seems to demand and seems to offer1 and its appeal is irresistible4 ,before the age of machinery was developed1 or before the structure of our social system and the relations between classes and individuals was revealed1 the appeal might have been merely sentimental4 ,but it is no longer so4 ,the aims of the social movement to-day seem to have all the tremendous power of a practicable ideal4 ,to the satisfactions which its separate ideals give to all the finer instincts of men is added the overwhelming conviction that those satisfactions are most of them realizable here and now by concerted methods which are already partly in operation and partially successful4 ,it is this union of the idealistic and the efficient that gives the movement its hold on the disinterested and serious youth of to-day4 ,with that conversion has necessarily come the transvaluation of many of our social values4 ,no longer can we pay the conventional respect to success or join in the common opinions of men and causes4 ,the mighty have been pulled down from their seats1 and those of low degree exalted4 ,we feel only contempt for college presidents1 editors1 and statesmen who stultify their talents and pervert their logical and historical knowledge in defending outworn political philosophies and economic codes4 ,we can no longer wholly believe in the usefulness or significance of those teachers and writers who show themselves serenely oblivious to the social problems4 ,we become keen analysts of the society around us2 we put uncomfortable questions to our sleek and successful elders4 ,we criticize the activities in which they engage1 the hitherto sacred professions and businesses1 and learn to distinguish carefully between actually productive work for society1 work which makes for the material and spiritual well-being of the people for whom it is done1 and parasitic or wasteful work1 which simply extends the friction of competition1 or lives on the labor or profits of others4 ,we distinguish1 too1 between the instruction and writing that consists in handing down unexamined and uncriticized moral and political ideas1 and ideas that let in the fresh air and sunlight to the thick prejudices of men4 ,we come to test the papers we read1 the teachers we learn from1 the professional men we come into contact with1 by these new standards4 ,various and surprising are the new interweavings we discover1 and the contrasts and ironies of the modern intellectual life4 ,the childlike innocence in which so many seem still to slumber is almost incredible to those whose vision is so clear4 ,the mechanical way in which educated men tend to absorb and repeat whole systems of formulas is a constant surprise to those whose ideas hum and clash and react against each other4 ,but the minds of so many of these men of position seem to run in automatic channels1 such that1 given one set of opinions1 one could predict with accuracy their whole philosophy of life4 ,our distrust of their whole spiritual fabric thus becomes fundamental4 ,we can no longer take most of them seriously4 ,it is true that they are doing the serious work of the world1 while we do nothing as yet except criticize1 and perhaps are doomed to fail altogether when we try4 ,to be sure1 it is exactly their way of doing that serious work that we object to1 but still we are the dreamers1 they the doers2 we are the theorists1 they the practical achievers4 ,yet the precision of our view will not down2 we can see in their boasted activity little but a resolute sitting on the lid1 a sort of glorified routine of keeping the desk clear4 ,and we would rather remain dreamers1 we feel1 than do much of their work4 ,other values we find are changed4 ,we become hopelessly perverted by democracy4 ,we no longer make the careful distinctions between the fit and the unfit1 the successful and the unsuccessful1 the effective and the ineffective1 the presentable and the unpresentable4 ,we are more interested in the influences that have produced these seeming differences than in the fact of the differences themselves4 ,we classify people by new categories4 ,we look for personality1 for sincerity1 for social sympathy1 for democratic feeling1 for social productiveness1 and we interpret success in terms of these attainments4 ,the young radical1 then1 in such a situation and in possession of these new social values1 stands on the verge of his career in a mood of great perplexity4 ,two questions he must answer1--8,what is to be done80 and 8,what must ,i do80 ,if he has had an education and is given a real opportunity for the choice of a vocation1 his position is crucial4 ,for his education1 if it has been in one of the advanced universities1 will have only tended to confirm his radicalism and render more vivid the contrast between the new philosophy which is being crystallized there out of modern science and philosophy and the new interpretations of history and ethics1 and the obscurantist attitude of so many of our intellectual guardians4 ,the youth1 ambitious and aggressive1 desires an effective and serviceable career1 yet every career open to him seems a compromise with the old order4 ,if he has come to see the law as an attempt to fit immutable principles of social action on a dynamic and ever-growing society2 if he has come to see the church as an organization working along the lines of greatest spiritual resistance1 preaching a personal where the world is crying for a social gospel2 if he has come to see higher education as an esoteric institution of savants1 only casually reaching down to touch the mass of people with their knowledge and ideas2 if he has come to see business as a clever way of distributing unearned wealth1 and the levying of a refined tribute on the property-less workers2 if he has come to see the press as devoted to bolstering up all these institutions in their inefficiency and inertia2--if he has caught this radical vision of the social institutions about him1 he will find it hard to fit neatly into any of them and let it set its brand upon him4 ,it would seem to be a treason not only to society but to his own best self4 ,he would seem to have become one of the vast conspiracy to keep things as they are4 ,he has spent his youth1 perhaps1 in studying things as they are in order to help in changing them into things as they ought to be1 but he is now confronted with the question how the change can be accomplished1 and how he can help in that accomplishment4 ,the attempt to answer these questions seems at first to bring him to a deadlock and to inhibit all his powers4 ,he desires self-development and self-expression1 and the only opportunities offered him seem to be ways of life and training that will only mock the best social ideals that he has4 ,this is the dilemma of latter-day youth1 and it is a dilemma which is new and original to our own age4 ,earnest men and women have always had before them the task of adjusting themselves to this world1 of 8overcoming the world10 but the proper method has always been found in withdrawing from it altogether1 or in passing through it with as little spot and blemish as possible1 not in plunging into its activity and attempting to subjugate it to one's ideals4 ,yet this is the task that the young radical sets for himself4 ,subjugation without compromise6 ,but so many young men and women feel that this is impossible4 ,confident of their sincerity1 yet distrustful of their strength1 eager yet timorous1 they stand on the brink1 longing to serve1 but not knowing how1 and too likely1 through their distrust and fears1 to make a wreck of their whole lives4 ,they feel somehow that they have no right to seek their own welfare or the training of their own talents until they have paid that service to society which they have learned is its due4 ,it does not do to tell them that one of their best services will be that training4 ,they demand some more direct way of influencing their fellows1 some short road to radical activity4 ,it would be good for them to know that they cannot hope to accomplish very much in radiating their ideals without the skill and personality which gives impetus to that radiation4 ,good-will alone has little efficacy4 ,for centuries well-wishers of men have shown a touching faith in the power of pure ideals to propagate themselves4 ,the tragic failures of the beginnings of the social movement itself were largely due to this belief4 ,great efforts ended only in sentimentality4 ,but we have no intention now that the fund of intellectual and spiritual energy liberated by radical thought in the younger generation shall die away in such ineffective efforts4 ,to radiate influence1 one's light must shine before men1 and it must glow1 moreover1 with a steady and resolute flame1 or men will neither see nor believe the good works that are being done4 ,it would be an easy way out of the dilemma if we could all adopt the solution of ,kropotkin1 the ,russian radical writer1 and engage in radical journalism4 ,this seems to be the most direct means of bringing one's ideals to the people1 to be a real fighting on the firing line4 ,it is well to remember1 however1 that a weak propagandist is a hindrance rather than an assistance1 and that the social movement needs the best of talent1 and the skill4 ,this is a challenge to genius1 but it is also a reminder that those who fight in other ranks than the front may do as valiant and worthy service4 ,one of the first lessons the young radical has to learn is that influence can be indirect as well as direct1 and will be strongest when backed by the most glowing personality4 ,so that self-cultivation becomes almost a duty1 if one wants to be effective towards the great end4 ,and not only personality but prestige2 for the prestige of the person from whom ideals come is one of the strongest factors in driving home those ideas to the mind of the hearer and making them a motive force in his life4 ,vested interests do not hesitate to make use of the services of college presidents and other men of intellectual prestige to give their practices a philosophic support2 neither should radicals disdain1 as many seem to disdain1 the use of prestige as a vantage-ground from which to hurl their dogmas4 ,even though ,kropotkin himself deprecated his useless learning1 his scientific reputation has been a great factor in spreading his radical ideas4 ,it is the fashion among some radicals to despise the applause of the conventional1 unthinking mass1 and scorn any success which has that appreciation as an ingredient4 ,but this is not the way to influence that same crass1 unthinking mass or convert it to one's doctrines4 ,it is to alienate at the beginning the heathen to whom the gospel is being brought4 ,and even the radical has the right to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove4 ,he must see merely that his distinctiveness is based on real merit and not1 as many reputations are1 on conformity to an established code4 ,scientific research1 engineering1 medicine1 and any honest craft1 are vocations where it is hard to win prestige without being socially productive2 their only disadvantage lies in the fact that their activity does not give opportunity for the influence of the kind the radical wishes to exert4 ,art1 literature1 and teaching are perilous2 the pressures to conform are deadly1 but the triumphs of individuality splendid4 ,for one's daily work lies there directly in the line of impressing other minds4 ,the genius can almost swing the lash over men's spirits1 and form their ideas for them2 he combines enormous prestige with enormous direct influence4 ,law1 the ministry1 and business seem to be peculiarly deadly2 it is hard to see how eminence can be attained in those professions except at the cost of many of one's social ideals4 ,the radical can thus choose his career with full knowledge of the social possibilities4 ,where he is forced by economic necessity to engage in distasteful and unsocial work1 he may still leave no doubt1 in the small realm he does illuminate1 as to his attitude and his purpose1 his enthusiasm and his hope4 ,for all his powers and talents can be found to contribute something2 fusing together they form his personality and create his prestige1 and it is these that give the real impetus and the vital impulse that drive one's beliefs and ideals into the hearts of other men4 ,if he speaks1 he will be listened to1 for it is faith and not doubt that men strain their ears to hear4 ,it is the believing word that they are eager to hear4 ,let the social faith be in a youth1 and it will leak out in every activity of his life1 it will permeate his words and color his deeds4 ,the belief and the vision are the essentials2 these given1 there is little need for him to worry how he may count in society4 ,he will count in spite of himself4 ,he may never know just how he is counting1 he may never hear the reverberations of his own personality in others1 but reverberate it will1 and the timbre and resonance will be in proportion to the quality and power of that vision4 ,the first concrete duty of every youth to whom social idealism is more than a phrase is to see that he is giving back to society as much as or more than he receives1 and1 moreover1 that he is a nourisher of the common life and not a drain upon its resources4 ,this was ,tolstoy's problem1 and his solution to the question--8,what is to be done80--was--8,get off the other fellow's back60 ,his duty1 he found1 was to arrange his life so that the satisfaction of his needs did not involve the servitude or the servility of any of his fellow men2 to do away with personal servants1 and with the articles of useless luxury whose production meant the labor of thousands who might otherwise have been engaged in some productive and life-bringing work2 to make his own living either directly from the soil1 or by the coperative exchange of services1 in professional1 intellectual1 artistic1 or handicraft labor4 ,splendidly sound as this solution is1 both ethically and economically1 the tragic fact remains that so inextricably are we woven into the social web that we cannot live except in some degree at the expense of somebody else1 and that somebody is too often a man1 woman1 or even little child who gives grudgingly1 painfully1 a stint of labor that we may enjoy4 ,we do not see the labor and the pain1 and with easy hearts and quiet consciences we enjoy what we can of the good things of life2 or1 if we see the truth1 as ,tolstoy saw it1 we still fancy1 like him1 that we have it in our power to escape the curse by simple living and our own labor4 ,but the very food we eat1 the clothes we wear1 the simplest necessities of life with which we provide ourselves1 have their roots somewhere1 somehow1 in exploitation and injustice4 ,it is a cardinal necessity of the social system under which we live that this should be so1 where the bulk of the work of the world is done1 not for human use and happiness1 but primarily and directly for the profits of masters and owners4 ,we are all tainted with the original sin2 we cannot escape our guilt4 ,and we can be saved out of it only by the skill and enthusiasm which we show in our efforts to change things4 ,we cannot help the poisonous soil from which our sustenance springs1 but we can be laboring mightily at agitating that soil1 ploughing it1 turning it1 and sweetening it1 against the day when new seed will be planted and a fairer fruitage be produced4 ,the solution of these dilemmas of radical youth will1 therefore1 not come from a renunciation of the personality or a refusal to participate actively in life4 ,granted the indignation at our world as it is1 and the vision of the world as it might and ought to be1 both the heightening of all the powers of the personality and a firm grappling with some definite work-activity of life are necessary to make that indignation powerful and purging1 and to transmute that vision into actual satisfaction for our own souls and those of our fellows4 ,it is a fallacy of radical youth to demand all or nothing1 and to view every partial activity as compromise4 ,either engage in something that will bring revolution and transformation all at one blow1 or do nothing1 it seems to say4 ,but compromise is really only a desperate attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable4 ,it is not compromise to study to understand the world in which one lives1 to seek expression for one's inner life1 to work to harmonize it and make it an integer1 nor is it compromise to work in some small sphere for the harmonization of social life and the relations between men who work together1 a harmonization that will bring democracy into every sphere of life1 industrial and social4 ,radical youth is apt to long for some supreme sacrifice and feels that a lesser surrender is worth nothing4 ,but better than sacrifice is efficiency6 ,it is absurd to stand perplexedly waiting for the great occasion1 unwilling to make the little efforts and test the little occasions1 and unwilling to work at developing the power that would make those occasions great4 ,of all the roads of activity that lie before the youth at the threshold of life1 one paramount road must be taken4 ,this fear that one sees so often in young people1 that1 if they choose one of their talents or interests or opportunities of influence and make themselves in it 8competent ones of their generation10 they must slaughter all the others1 is irrational4 ,it is true that the stern present demands singleness of purpose and attention4 ,a worthy success is impossible to-day if the labor is divided among many interests4 ,in a more leisurely time1 the soul could encompass many fields1 and even to-day the genius may conquer and hold at once many spiritual kingdoms4 ,but this is simply a stern challenge to us all to make ourselves geniuses4 ,for serious and sincere as the desire of radical youth may be to lead the many-sided life1 a life without a permanent core of active and productive interest1 of efficient work in the world1 leads to dilettantism and triviality4 ,such efficient work1 instead of killing the other interests of life1 rather fertilizes them and makes them in turn enrich the central activity4 ,instead of feeding on their time1 it actually creates time for the play of the other interests1 which is all the sweeter for its preciousness4 ,always trying to make sure that the work1 apart from the inevitable taint of exploitation which is involved in modern work1 is socially productive1 that it actually in some way contributes to the material or spiritual welfare of the people for whom it is done1 and does not simply reiterate old formulas1 does not simply extend the friction of competition or consist simply in living on the labor and profits of others4 ,such work cannot be found by rule4 ,the situation is a real dilemma for the idealistic youth of to-day1 and its solution is to be worked out in the years to come4 ,it is these crucial dilemmas that make this age so difficult to live in1 that make life so hard to harmonize and integrate4 ,the shock of the crassnesses and crudities of the modern social world thrown against the conventionally satisfying picture which that world has formed of itself makes any young life of purpose and sincerity a real peril and adventure4 ,there are all sorts of spiritual disasters lying in wait for the youth who embarks on the perilous ocean of radicalism4 ,the disapproval of those around him is likely to be the least of his dangers4 ,it should rather fortify his soul than discourage him4 ,far more dangerous is it that he lose his way on the uncharted seas before him1 or follow false guides to shipwreck4 ,but the solution is not to stay at home1 fearful and depressed4 ,it is rather to cultivate deliberately the widest knowledge1 the broadest sympathy1 the keenest insight1 the most superb skill1 and then set sail1 exulting in one's resources1 and crowding on every inch of sail4 ,for if the radical life has its perils1 it also has its great rewards4 ,the strength and beauty of the radical's position is that he already to a large extent lives in that sort of world which he desires4 ,many people there are who would like to live in a world arranged in some sort of harmony with socialistic ideals1 but who1 believing they are impossible1 dismiss the whole movement as an idle if delightful dream4 ,they thus throw away all the opportunity to have a share in the extending of those ideals4 ,they do not see that the gradual infiltration of those ideals into our world as it is does brighten and sweeten it enormously4 ,they do not know the power and advantage of even their 8little faith0 which their inclinations might give them4 ,but the faith of the radical has already transformed the world in which he lives4 ,he sees the 8muddle0 around him1 but what he actually feels and lives are the germs of the future4 ,his mind selects out the living1 growing ideas and activities of the socially fruitful that exist here and now1 and it is with these that his soul keeps company2 it is to their growth and cultivation that he is responsive4 ,this is no illusion that he knows1 no living in a pleasing but futile world of fancy4 ,for this living the socialistic life as far as he is able1 he believes has its efficient part in creating that communal life of the future4 ,he feels himself1 not as an idle spectator of evolution1 but as an actual co-worker in the process4 ,he does not wait timidly to jump until all the others are ready to jump2 he jumps now1 and anticipates that life which all desire1 but which most1 through inertia1 prejudice1 insufficient knowledge1 and feeble sympathy1 distrust or despair of4 ,he knows that the world runs largely on a principle of imitation1 and he launches boldly his personality into society1 confident of its effect in polarizing the ideas and attitudes of the wistful4 ,towards himself he finds gravitating the sort of people that he would find in a regenerated social order4 ,to him come instinctively out of his reading and his listening the ideas and events that give promise of the actual realization of his ideals4 ,in unlooked-for spots he finds the seeds of regeneration already here4 ,in the midst of the sternest practicalities he finds blossoming those activities and personalities which the unbelieving have told him were impossible in a human world4 ,and he finds1 moreover1 that it is these activities and personalities that furnish all the real joy1 the real creation1 the real life of the present4 ,the prophets and the teachers he finds are with him4 ,in his camp he finds all those writers and leaders who sway men's minds to-day and make their life1 all unconscious as they are of the revolutionary character of the message1 more rich and dynamic4 ,to live this life of his vision practically here in the present is thus the exceeding great reward of radical youth4 ,and this life1 so potent and glowing amongst the crude malignity of modern life1 fortifies and stimulates him1 and gives him the surety1 which is sturdier than any dream or hope1 of the coming time when this life will permeate and pervade all society instead of only a part4 ,,xiii ,,the ,,college3 ,,an ,,inner ,,view ,the undergraduate of to-day1 if he reads the magazines1 discovers that a great many people are worrying seriously about his condition4 ,college presidents and official investigators are discussing his scholarship1 his extra-curricular activities1 and his moral stamina4 ,not content with the surface of the matter1 they are going deeper and are investigating the college itself1 its curriculum1 the scholarship of the instructors1 and its adequacy in realizing its high ideal as a preparation for life4 ,the undergraduate finds that these observers are pretty generally inclined to exonerate him for many of his shortcomings1 and to lay the blame on the college itself2 the system is indicted1 and not the helpless product4 ,for this he is grateful1 and he realizes that this dissatisfaction among educators1 this uneasy searching of the academic heart1 promises well for the education of his children1 and for himself if he remains in college long enough to get the benefit of the reforms4 ,meanwhile1 as he attends recitations and meetings of undergraduate societies1 talks with his fellow students and the professors1 and reads the college papers1 he may1 even if he can get no hint of the mysterious inner circles where the destinies of the students are shaped and great questions of policy decided1 be able himself to see some of the things that complicate college scholarship to-day1 from an inner point of view which is impossible to the observer looking down from above4 ,he may find in the character of the student body itself1 and the way in which it reacts to what the college offers it1 an explanation of some of the complications of scholarship that so disturb our critics2 and in a certain new quality in the spirit of the college1 something that is beginning to crystallize his own ideals1 and to make him count himself fortunate that he is receiving his education in this age and no other4 ,in the constitution of college society1 and in the intellectual and spiritual ideals of the teachers1 he may find the explanation of why the college is as it is1 and the inspiration of what the college ought to be and is coming to be4 ,the first thing that is likely to impress the undergraduate is the observation that college society is much less democratic than it used to be4 ,it is to be expected1 of course1 that it will be simply an epitome of the society round about it4 ,but the point is1 that whereas the college of the past was probably more democratic than the society about it1 the present-day college is very much less democratic4 ,democracy does not require uniformity1 but it does require a certain homogeneity1 and the college to-day is less homogeneous than that of our fathers4 ,for the growing preponderance of the cities has meant that an ever-increasing proportion of city-bred men go to college1 in contrast to the past1 when the men were drawn chiefly from the small towns and country districts4 ,since social distinctions are very much more sharply marked in the city than in the country1 this trend has been a potent influence in undemocratizing the college4 ,in ordinary city life these distinctions are not yet1 at least1 insistent enough to cause any particular class feeling1 but in the ideal world of college life they become aggravated1 and sufficiently acute to cause much misunderstanding and ill-feeling4 ,with increasing fashionableness1 the small college1 until recently the stronghold of democracy1 is beginning to succumb1 and to acquire all those delicately devised1 subtle forms of snobbery which have hitherto characterized the life of the large college4 ,if this tendency continues1 the large college will have a decided advantage as a preparation for life1 for as a rule it is situated in a large city1 where the environment more nearly approximates the environment of after life than does the artificial and sheltered life of the small college4 ,the presence of aliens in large numbers in the big colleges1 and increasingly in the smaller colleges1 is an additional factor in complicating the social situation4 ,it ought not to be ignored1 for it has important results in making the college considerably less democratic even than would otherwise be the case4 ,it puts the ,american representatives on the defensive1 so that they draw still more closely together for self-defense1 and pull more tightly their lines of vested interest and social and political privilege4 ,the prejudice of race can always be successfully appealed to in undergraduate matters1 even to the extent of beguiling many men with naturally democratic consciences into doing things which they would murmur at if called on to do as individuals1 and not as the protectors of the social prestige of the college4 ,the fraternities are of course the centre of this vast political system which fills the athletic managerships1 selects members of the societies1 officers of classes and clubs1 editors and assistants of publications1 and performs generally all that indispensable public service of excluding the aliens1 the unpresentable1 and the generally unemployable from activity4 ,i am aware that most of the colleges pride themselves on the fact that the poor man has an equal chance with the rich to-day to win extra-curricular honors1 and mingle in college society on a perfect plane of social equality with the best4 ,it is true1 of course1 that in college as in real life the exceptional man will always rise to the top4 ,but this does not alter the fact that there exists at too many ,american colleges a wholesale disfranchisement from any participation in the extra-curricular activities1 that is not based on any recognizable principle of talent or ability4 ,it is all probably inherent in the nature of things1 and to cavil at it sets one down as childish and unpractical4 ,at present it certainly seems inevitable and unalterable4 ,the organized efforts of the ,president recently to democratize the social situation at ,princeton met with such dull1 persistent hostility on the part of the alumni that they had to be abandoned4 ,this social situation in the college is not very often mentioned in the usual discussions of college problems1 but ,i have dwelt on it here at length because ,i believe that it has a direct bearing on scholarship4 ,for it creates an eternal and irreconcilable conflict between scholarship and extra-curricular activities4 ,scholarship is fundamentally democratic4 ,before the bar of marks and grades1 penniless adventurer and rich man's son stand equal4 ,in college society1 therefore1 with its sharply marked social distinctions1 scholarship fails to provide a satisfactory field for honor and reputation4 ,this implies no dislike to scholarship as such on the part of the ruling class in college society1 but means simply that scholarship forces an unwelcome democratic standard on a naturally undemocratic society4 ,this class turns therefore to the extra-curricular activities as a superior field for distinction1 a field where honor will be done a man1 not only for his ability1 but for the undefinable social prestige which he brings along with him to college from the outside world4 ,there is thus a division of functions1--the socially fit take the fraternities1 the managerships1 the publications1 the societies2 the unpresentable take the honors and rewards of scholarship4 ,each class probably gets just what it needs for after life4 ,the division would thus be palpably fair were it not for the fact that an invidious distinction gets attached to the extra-curricular activities1 which turns the energy of many of the most capable and talented men1 men with real personality and powers of leadership1 men without a taint of snobbery1 into a mad scramble for these outside places1 with consequent1 but quite unintentional1 bad effects on their scholarship4 ,the result of all this is1 of course1 a general lowering of scholarship in the college4 ,the ruling class is content with passing marks1 and has no ambition to excel in scholarship1 for it does not feel that the attainment of scholars' honors confers the distinctions upon it that it desires4 ,in addition1 this listlessness for scholarship serves to retard the work of the scholarly portion of the classes2 it makes the instructor work harder1 and clogs up generally the work of the course4 ,this listlessness may be partly due to another factor in the situation4 ,an ever larger proportion of college students to-day comes from the business class1 where fifty years ago it came from the professional class4 ,this means a difference between the intellectual background of the home that the man leaves and of the college to which he comes1 very much greater than when college training was still pretty much the exclusive property of the professional man or the solid merchant1 and almost an hereditary matter4 ,for1 nowadays1 probably a majority of undergraduates are sent to college by fathers who have not had a college education themselves1 but who1 reverencing1 as all ,americans do1 ,education if not ,learning1 are ambitious that their sons shall have its benefits4 ,these parents can well afford to set their sons up handsomely so that they shall lose nothing of the well-rounded training that makes up college life2 and although it is doubtful whether their idea of the result is much more than a vague feeling that college will give their boys tone1 and polish them off much in the way that the young ladies' boarding-school polishes off the girls1 they are a serious factor to be reckoned with in any discussion of college problems4 ,most of these young men come thus from homes of conventional religion1 cheap literature1 and lack of intellectual atmosphere1 bring few intellectual acquisitions with them1 and1 since they are most of them going into business1 and will therefore make little practical use of these acquisitions in after life1 contrive to carry a minimum away with them4 ,in the college courses and talks with their instructors they come into an intellectual atmosphere that is so utterly different from what they have been accustomed to that1 instead of an intellectual sympathy between instructor and student1 there ensues an intellectual struggle that is demoralizing to both4 ,the instructor has sometimes to carry on a veritable guerilla warfare of new ideas against the pupils in his courses1 with a disintegrating effect that is often far from happy4 ,if he does not disintegrate1 he too often stiffens the youth1 if of the usually tough traditional cast of mind1 into an impregnable resolution that defies all new ideas forever after4 ,this divergence of ideals and attitudes toward life is one of the most interesting complications of scholarship1 for it is dramatic and flashes out in the class-room1 in aspects at times almost startling4 ,there is still another thing that complicates scholarship1 at least in the larger colleges that have professional schools4 ,two or three years of regular college work are now required to enter the schools of law1 medicine1 divinity1 and education4 ,an undergraduate who looks forward to entering these professional schools1 too often sees this period of college work as a necessary but troublesome evil which must be gone through with as speedily as possible4 ,in his headlong rush he is apt to slight his work1 or take a badly synthesized course of studies1 or1 in an effort to get all he can while he is in the college1 to gorge himself with a mass of material that cannot possibly be digested4 ,now1 the college work is of course only prescribed in order that the professional man may have a broad background of general culture before he begins to specialize4 ,any hurrying through defeats this purpose1 and renders this preliminary work worse than useless4 ,a college course must have a chance to digest if it is to be at all profitable to a man2 and digestion takes time4 ,between the listlessness of the business youths who have no particular interest in scholarship1 and the impetuosity of the prospective professional man who wants to get at his tools1 the ordinary scholar who wants to learn to think1 to get a robust sort of culture in an orderly and leisurely way1 and feel his mental muscles growing month by month1 gets the worst of it1 or at least has little attention paid to him4 ,the instructor is so busy1 drumming on the laggards or restraining the reckless1 that the scholar has to work out much of his own salvation alone4 ,whether or not all this is good for the scholar in cultivating his self-reliance1 the general level of scholarship certainly suffers4 ,neither the college administration nor the faculties have been entirely guiltless1 in the past1 of yielding before the rising tide of extra-curricular activities4 ,athletics1 through the protection1 supervision1 and even financial assistance1 of the college1 have become a thoroughly unwholesome excrescence on college life4 ,they have become the nucleus for a perverted college sentiment4 ,college spirit has come to mean enthusiasm for the winning of a game1 and a college that has no football team is supposed to have necessarily no college spirit4 ,pride and loyalty to ,alma ,mater1 the prestige of one's college1 one's own collegiate self-respect1 get bound up and dependent upon a winning season at athletics4 ,it seems amazing sometimes to the undergraduate how the college has surrendered to the student point of view4 ,instructors too often1 in meeting students informally1 assume that they must talk about what is supposed to interest the student rather than their own intellectual interests4 ,they do not deceive the student1 and they do miss a real opportunity to impress their personality upon him and to awaken him to a recognition of a broader world of vital interests than athletic scores and records4 ,if the college would take away its patronage of athletics1 which puts a direct premium on semi-professionalism1 would circumscribe the club-house features of the fraternities1 and force some more democratic method of selection on the undergraduate societies1 would it have the effect of raising the general level of scholarship8 ,it surely seems that such a movement on the part of the college administration would result in keeping athletics proportioned directly to the interest that the student body took in it1 to the extent of their participation in it1 and the voluntary support that they gave to it1 instead of to the amount of money that an army of graduate managers and alumni associations can raise for it and to the exertions of paid professional coaches and volunteer rah-rah boys4 ,this would permit college sentiment to flow back into its natural channels1 so that the undergraduate might begin to feel some pride in the cultural prestige of his college1 and acquire a new respect for the scholarly achievements of its big men4 ,this would mean an awakened interest in scholarship4 ,the limitation of extra-curricular activities would mean that that field would become less adequate as a place for acquiring distinction2 opportunity would be diminished1 and it would become more and more difficult to maintain social eminence as the sine qua non of campus distinction4 ,who knows but what these activities might be finally abandoned entirely to the unpresentable class1 and the ruling class seize upon the field of scholarship as a surer way of acquiring distinction1 since the old gods had fled8 ,if the college is not yet ready to adopt so drastic an attitude1 it has at least already begun to preach democracy4 ,it is willing to preach inspirationally what it cannot yet do actively4 ,in the last few years there has been creeping into the colleges in the person of the younger teachers a new spirit of positive conviction1 a new enthusiasm1 that makes a college education to-day a real inspiration to the man who can catch the message4 ,and at the risk of being considered a traitor to his class1 the sincere undergraduate of to-day must realize the changed attitude1 and ally himself with his radical teachers in spirit and activity4 ,he then gets an altered view of college life4 ,he begins to see the college course as an attempt1 as yet not fully organized but becoming surer of its purpose as time goes on1 to convert the heterogeneous mass of ,american youth--scions of a property-getting class with an antiquated tradition and ideals that are out of harmony with the ideals of the leaders of thought to-day2 slightly dispirited aliens1 whose racial ideals have been torn and confused by the disintegrating influences of ,american life2 men of hereditary culture2 penniless adventurers hewing upward to a profession--to a democratic1 realistic1 scientific attitude toward life that will harmonize and explain the world as a man looks at it1 enable him to interpret human nature in terms of history and the potentialities of the future1 and furnish as solid and sure an intellectual and spiritual support as the old religious background of our fathers that has been fading these many years4 ,this is the work of the college of to-day1 as it was the work of the college of fifty years ago to justify the works of ,god to man4 ,the college thus becomes for the first time in ,american history a reorganizing force4 ,it has become thoroughly secularized these last twenty years1 and now finds arrayed against it1 in spirit at least if not in open antagonism1 the churches and the conservative moulders of opinion4 ,the college has a great opportunity before it to become1 not only the teacher1 but the inspirational centre of the thought and ideals of the time4 ,if to the rising generation our elders rarely seem quite contemporaneous in their criticisms of things1 we in turn are apt to take the ordinary for the unique4 ,we may be simply reading into the college our own enthusiasms1 and may attribute to the college a new attitude when it is ourselves that are different4 ,but ,i am sure that some such ideal is vaguely beginning to crystallize in the minds of the younger professors and the older undergraduates1 or those who have been out in the world long enough to get a slightly objective point of view4 ,the passing of the classics has meant much more than a mere change in the curriculum of the college2 it has meant a complete shifting of attitude4 ,the classics as a cultural core about which the other disciplines were built up have given place to the social sciences1 especially history1 which is hailed now by some of its enthusiastic devotees as the sum of all knowledge4 ,the union of humanistic spirit with scientific point of view1 which has been longed for these many years1 seems on the point of being actually achieved1 and it is the new spirit that the colleges seem to be propagating4 ,i am sure that it is a democratic spirit4 ,history1 economics1 and the other social sciences are presented as the record of the development of human freedom1 and the science of man's social life4 ,we are told to look on institutions not as rigid and eternally fixed1 but as fluid and in the course of evolution to an ever higher cultivation of individuality and general happiness1 and to cast our thinking on public questions into this new mould4 ,a college man is certainly not educated to-day unless he gets this democratic attitude4 ,that is what makes the aristocratic organization of undergraduate life doubly unfortunate4 ,for one of the most valuable opportunities of college life is the chance to get acquainted1 not politely and distantly1 but intimately1 with all types of men and minds from all parts of the country and all classes of society1 so that one may learn what the young men of the generation are really thinking and hoping4 ,knowledge of men is an indispensable feature of a real education3 not a knowledge of their weaknesses1 as too many seem to mean by the phrase1 but knowledge of their strength and capabilities1 so that one may get the broadest possible sympathy with human life as it is actually lived to-day1 and not as it is seen through the idealistic glasses of former generations4 ,the association only with men of one's own class1 such as the organization of college life to-day fosters1 is simply fatal to any broad understanding of life4 ,the refusal to make the acquaintance while in college of as many as possible original1 self-dependent personalities1 regardless of race and social status1 is morally suicidal4 ,there are indications1 however1 that the preaching of the democratic gospel is beginning to have its influence1 in the springing-up of college forums and societies which do without the rigid coptation that has cultivated the cutting one's self off from one's fellows4 ,i am sure that it is a scientific spirit4 ,the scientific attitude toward life is no longer kept as the exclusive property of the technical schools4 ,it has found its way into those studies that have been known as humanistic1 but1 in penetrating1 it has become colored itself1 so that the student is shown the world1 not as a relentless machine1 running according to mechanical laws1 but as an organism1 profoundly modifiable and directive by human will and purpose4 ,he learns that the world in which he lives is truly a mechanism1 but a mechanism that exists for the purpose of turning out products as man shall direct for the enrichment of his own life4 ,he learns to appreciate more the application to social life of machinery in organization and coperation2 he gets some idea of the forces that build up human nature and sway men's actions4 ,he acquires an impartial way of looking at things2 effort is made to get him to separate his personal prejudices from the larger view1 and get an objective vision of men and events4 ,the college endeavors with might and main to cultivate in him an open-mindedness1 so that at twenty-five he will not close up to the entrance of new ideas1 but will find his college course merely introductory to life1 a learning of one's bearings in a great world of thought and activity1 and an inspiration to a constant working for better things4 ,i am sure that it is a critical spirit4 ,a critical attitude toward life is as bad a thing for a boy as it is an indispensable thing for an educated man4 ,the college tries to cultivate it gradually in its students1 so that by the end of his four years a man will have come simply not to take everything for granted1 but to test and weigh and prove ideas and institutions with which he comes in contact4 ,of course the results are unfortunate when this critical attitude comes with a sudden shock so as to be a mere disillusionment1 the turning yellow of a beautiful world2 but it must come if a man is to see wisely and understand4 ,the college must teach him to criticize without rancor1 and see that his cynicism1 if that must come too1 is purging and cleansing and not bitter4 ,and lastly1 ,i am sure that it is an enthusiastic spirit4 ,the college wants to give a man a keen desire for social progress1 a love for the arts1 a delight in sheer thinking1 and a confidence in his own powers4 ,it will do little good to teach a man about what men have thought and done and built unless some spark is kindled1 some reaction produced that will have consequences for the future2 it will do little good to teach him about literature and the arts unless some kind of an emotional push is imparted to him that will drive him on to teach himself further and grow into a larger appreciation of the best2 it will do little good to enforce scientific discipline unless by it the mind is forged into a keener weapon for attacking problems and solving them scientifically and not superficially4 ,and it is just this enthusiasm that the college1 and only the college1 can impart4 ,we come there to learn from men1 not from books4 ,we could learn from books as well at home1 but years of individual study will not equal the inspirational value of one short term of listening to the words of a wise and good man4 ,only enthusiasm can knit the scattered ideals and timorous aspirations into a constructive whole4 ,some such spirit as ,i have endeavored to outline1 the college is beginning to be infused with to-day2 some such spirit the undergraduate must get if he is to be in the best sense educated and adequately equipped for the complex work of the world4 ,if such a spirit is instilled1 it almost matters little what the details of his courses are1 or the mere material of his knowledge4 ,such an attitude will be a sufficient preparation for life1 and adequate training for citizenship4 ,we want citizens who are enthusiastic thinkers1 not docile and uncritical followers of tradition2 we want leaders of public opinion with the scientific point of view3 unclassed men1 not men like the leaders of the passing generation1 saturated with class prejudices and class ideals4 ,the college is rapidly revising its curriculum in line with the new standards4 ,the movement is so new1 to be sure1 that things have hardly got their bearings yet4 ,men who graduated only ten years ago tell me that there was nothing like this new spirit when they were in college4 ,the student finds a glut of courses1 and flounders around for two or three years before he gets any poise at all4 ,a judicious mixture of compulsory and elective courses seems to be furnishing a helpful guide1 and a system of honor courses like that recently introduced at ,columbia provides an admirable means1 not only to a more intensive culture1 but also to the synthesis of intellectual interests that creates a definite attitude toward life1 and yet for the absence of which so many young men of ability and power stand helpless and undecided on the threshold of active life4 ,to replace the classics1 now irretrievably gone as the backbone of the curriculum1 the study of history seems an admirable discipline1 besides furnishing the indispensable background for the literary and philosophical studies4 ,scientific ethics and social psychology should occupy an important place in the revised curriculum4 ,the college cannot afford to leave the undergraduate to the mercies of conventional religion and a shifting moral tradition4 ,the pedantic1 ,germanistic type of scholarship is rapidly passing4 ,the divisions1 between the departments are beginning to break down4 ,already the younger instructors are finding their ideal professor in the man who1 while he knows one branch thoroughly1 is interested in a wide range of subjects4 ,the departments are reacting upon one another2 both undergraduates and instructors are coming to see intellectual life as a whole1 and not as a miscellaneous collection of specialized chunks of knowledge4 ,the type of man is becoming common who could go to almost any other department of the college and give a suggestive and interesting1 if not erudite1 lecture on some subject in connection with its work4 ,it is becoming more and more common now that when you touch a professor you touch a man and not an intellectual specialty4 ,the undergraduate himself is beginning to react strongly to this sort of scholarship4 ,he catches an inspiration from the men in the faculty who exhibit it1 and he is becoming expert in separating the sheep from the goats4 ,he does not want experiments in educational psychology tried upon him3 all he demands in his teacher is personality4 ,he wants to feel that the instructor is not simply passing on dead knowledge in the form it was passed on to him1 but that he has assimilated it and has read his own experience into it1 so that it has come to mean more to him than almost anything in the world4 ,professors are fond of saying that they like to have their students react to what they bring them2 the student in turn likes to feel that the professor himself has reacted to what he is teaching4 ,otherwise his teaching is very apt to be in vain4 ,american youth are very much less docile than they used to be1 and they are little content any longer to have second-hand knowledge1 a little damaged in transit1 thrust upon them4 ,the undergraduate wants to feel that the instructor is giving him his best all the time1 a piece out of the very warp and woof of his own thinking4 ,the problem of the college in the immediate future is thus to make these ideals good1 to permeate undergraduate society with the new spirit1 and to raise the level of scholarship by making learning not an end in itself but a means to life4 ,the curriculum and administrative routine will be seen simply as means to the cultivation of an attitude towards life4 ,as the ideals crystallize out and the college becomes surer and surer of its purpose1 it will find itself leading the thought of the age in new channels of conviction and constructive statesmanship through its inspirational influence on the young men of the time4 ,admitting that these ideals are still unorganized and unestablished1 that in many of the colleges they have hardly begun to appear1 while even in the larger ones they are little more than tendencies as yet1--is it too much to hope that a few years will see the college conscious of its purpose1 and already beginning to impose on the rank and file of its members1 instructors and undergraduates alike1 the ideals which have been felt this last decade by the more sensitive8 ,,xiv ,a ,,philosophy ,,of ,,handicap ,it would not perhaps be thought1 ordinarily1 that the man whom physical disabilities have made so helpless that he is unable to move around among his fellows1 can bear his lot more happily1 even though he suffer pain1 and face life with a more cheerful and contented spirit1 than can the man whose handicaps are merely enough to mark him out from the rest of his fellows without preventing him from entering with them into most of their common affairs and experiences4 ,but the fact is that the former's very helplessness makes him content to rest and not to strive4 ,i know a young man so helplessly disabled that he has to be carried about1 who is happy in reading a little1 playing chess1 taking a course or two in college1 and all with the sunniest good-will in the world1 and a happiness that seems strange and unaccountable to my restlessness4 ,he does not cry for the moon4 ,when the handicapped youth1 however1 is in full possession of his faculties1 and can move about freely1 he is perforce drawn into all the currents of life4 ,particularly if he has his own way in the world to make1 his road is apt to be hard and rugged1 and he will penetrate to an unusual depth in his interpretation both of the world's attitude toward such misfortunes1 and of the attitude toward the world which such misfortunes tend to cultivate in men like him4 ,for he has all the battles of a stronger man to fight1 and he is at a double disadvantage in fighting them4 ,he has constantly with him the sense of being obliged to make extra efforts to overcome the bad impression of his physical defects1 and he is haunted with a constant feeling of weakness and low vitality which makes effort more difficult and renders him easily faint-hearted and discouraged by failure4 ,he is never confident of himself1 because he has grown up in an atmosphere where nobody has been very confident of him2 and yet his environment and circumstances call out all sorts of ambitions and energies in him which1 from the nature of his case1 are bound to be immediately thwarted4 ,this attitude is likely to keep him at a generally low level of accomplishment unless he have an unusually strong will1 and a strong will is perhaps the last thing to develop under such circumstances4 ,the handicapped man is always conscious that the world does not expect very much from him4 ,and it takes him a long time to see in this a challenge instead of a firm pressing down to a low level of accomplishment4 ,as a result1 he does not expect very much of himself2 he is timid in approaching people1 and distrustful of his ability to persuade and convince4 ,he becomes extraordinarily sensitive to other people's first impressions of him4 ,those who are to be his friends he knows instantly1 and further acquaintance adds little to the intimacy and warm friendship that he at once feels for them4 ,on the other hand1 those who do not respond to him immediately cannot by any effort either on his part or theirs overcome that first alienation4 ,this sensitiveness has both its good and its bad sides4 ,it makes friendship the most precious thing in the world to him1 and he finds that he arrives at a much richer and wider intimacy with his friends than do ordinary men with their light1 surface friendships1 based on good fellowship or the convenience of the moment4 ,but on the other hand this sensitiveness absolutely unfits him for business and the practice of a profession1 where one must be 8all things to all men10 and the professional manner is indispensable to success4 ,for here1 where he has to meet a constant stream of men of all sorts and conditions1 his sensitiveness to these first impressions will make his case hopeless4 ,except with those few who by some secret sympathy will seem to respond1 his physical deficiencies will stand like a huge barrier between his personality and other men's4 ,the magical good fortune of attractive personal appearance makes its way almost without effort in the world1 breaking down all sorts of walls of disapproval and lack of interest4 ,even the homely person can attract by personal charm4 ,the doors of the handicapped man are always locked1 and the key is on the outside4 ,he may have treasures of charm inside1 but they will never be revealed unless the person outside coperates with him in unlocking the door4 ,a friend becomes1 to a much greater degree than with the ordinary man1 the indispensable means of discovering one's own personality4 ,one only exists1 so to speak1 with friends4 ,it is easy to see how hopelessly such a sensitiveness incapacitates a man for business1 professional or social life1 where the hasty and superficial impression is everything1 and disaster is the fate of the man who has not all the treasures of his personality in the front window1 where they can be readily inspected and appraised4 ,it thus takes the handicapped man a long time to get adjusted to his world4 ,childhood is perhaps the hardest time of all4 ,as a child he is a strange creature in a strange land4 ,it was my own fate to be just strong enough to play about with the other boys1 and attempt all their games and 8stunts10 without being strong enough actually to succeed in any of them4 ,it never used to occur to me that my failures and lack of skill were due to circumstances beyond my control1 but ,i would always impute them1 in consequence of my rigid ,calvinistic bringing-up1 ,i suppose1 to some moral weakness of my own4 ,i suffered tortures in trying to learn to skate1 to climb trees1 to play ball1 to conform in general to the ways of the world4 ,i never resigned myself to the inevitable1 but over-exerted myself constantly in a grim determination to succeed4 ,i was good at my lessons1 and through timidity rather than priggishness1 ,i hope1 a very well-behaved boy at school2 ,i was devoted1 too1 to music1 and learned to play the piano pretty well4 ,but ,i despised my reputation for excellence in these things1 and instead of adapting myself philosophically to the situation1 ,i strove and have been striving ever since to do the things ,i could not4 ,as ,i look back now it seems perfectly natural that ,i should have followed the standards of the crowd1 and loathed my high marks in lessons and deportment1 and the concerts to which ,i was sent by my aunt1 and the exhibitions of my musical skill that ,i had to give before admiring ladies4 ,whether or not such an experience is typical of handicapped children1 there is tragedy there for those situated as ,i was4 ,for had ,i been a little weaker physically1 ,i should have been thrown back on reading omnivorously and cultivating my music1 with some possible results2 while if ,i had been a little stronger1 ,i could have participated in the play on an equal footing with the rest4 ,as it was1 ,i simply tantalized myself1 and grew up with a deepening sense of failure1 and a lack of pride in that at which ,i really excelled4 ,when the world became one of dances and parties and social evenings and boy-and-girl attachments1--the world of youth1--,i was to find myself still less adapted to it4 ,and this was the harder to bear because ,i was naturally sociable1 and all these things appealed tremendously to me4 ,this world of admiration and gayety and smiles and favors and quick interest and companionship1 however1 is only for the well-begotten and the debonair4 ,it was not through any cruelty or dislike1 ,i think1 that ,i was refused admittance2 indeed they were always very kind about inviting me4 ,but it was more as if a ragged urchin had been asked to come and look through the window at the light and warmth of a glittering party2 ,i was truly in the world1 but not of the world4 ,indeed there were times when one would almost prefer conscious cruelty to this silent1 unconscious1 gentle oblivion4 ,and this is the tragedy1 ,i suppose1 of all the ill-favored and unattractive to a greater or less degree2 the world of youth is a world of so many conventions1 and the abnormal in any direction is so glaringly and hideously abnormal4 ,although it took me a long time to understand this1 and ,i continued to attribute my failure mostly to my own character1 trying hard to compensate for my physical deficiencies by skill and cleverness1 ,i suffered comparatively few pangs1 and got much better adjusted to this world than to the other4 ,for ,i was older1 and ,i had acquired a lively interest in all the social politics2 ,i would get so interested in watching how people behaved1 and in sizing them up1 that only at rare intervals would ,i remember that ,i was really having no hand in the game4 ,this interest just in the ways people are human1 has become more and more a positive advantage in my life1 and has kept sweet many a situation that might easily have cost me a pang4 ,not that a person with disabilities should be a sort of detective1 evil-mindedly using his social opportunities for spying out and analyzing his friends' foibles1 but that1 if he does acquire an interest in people quite apart from their relation to him1 he may go into society with an easy conscience and a certainty that he will be entertained and possibly entertaining1 even though he cuts a poor enough social figure4 ,he must simply not expect too much4 ,perhaps the bitterest struggles of the handicapped man come when he tackles the business world4 ,if he has to go out for himself to look for work1 without fortune1 training1 or influence1 as ,i personally did1 his way will indeed be rugged4 ,his disability will work against him for any position where he must be much in the eyes of men1 and his general insignificance has a subtle influence in convincing those to whom he applies that he is unfitted for any kind of work4 ,as ,i have suggested1 his keen sensitiveness to other people's impressions of him makes him more than usually timid and unable to counteract that fatal first impression by any display of personal force and will4 ,he cannot get his personality over across that barrier4 ,the cards seem stacked against him from the start4 ,with training and influence something might be done1 but alone and unaided his case is almost hopeless4 ,the attitude toward him ranges from1 8,you can't expect us to create a place for you10 to1 8,how could it enter your head that we should find any use for you80 ,he is discounted at the start3 it is not business to make allowances for anybody2 and while people are not cruel or unkind1 it is the hopeless finality of the thing that fills one's heart with despair4 ,the environment of a big city is perhaps the worst possible that a man in such a situation could have4 ,for the thousands of seeming opportunities lead one restlessly on and on1 and keep one's mind perpetually unsettled and depressed4 ,there is a poignant mental torture that comes with such an experience1--the urgent need1 the repeated failure1 or rather the repeated failure even to obtain a chance to fail1 the realization that those at home can ill afford to have you idle1 the growing dread of encountering people1--all this is something that those who have never been through it can never realize4 ,personally ,i know of no particular way of escape4 ,one can expect to do little by one's own unaided efforts4 ,i solved my difficulties only by evading them1 by throwing overboard some of my responsibility1 and taking the desperate step of entering college on a scholarship4 ,desultory work is not nearly so humiliating when one is using one's time to some advantage1 and college furnishes an ideal environment where the things at which a man handicapped like myself can succeed really count4 ,one's self-respect can begin to grow like a weed4 ,for at the bottom of all the difficulties of a man like me is really the fact that his self-respect is so slow in growing up4 ,accustomed from childhood to being discounted1 his self-respect is not naturally very strong1 and it would require pretty constant success in a congenial line of work really to confirm it4 ,if he could only more easily separate the factors that are due to his physical disability from those that are due to his weak will and character1 he might more quickly attain self-respect1 for he would realize what he is responsible for1 and what he is not4 ,but at the beginning he rarely makes allowances for himself2 he is his own severest judge4 ,he longs for a 8strong will10 and yet the experience of having his efforts promptly nipped off at the beginning is the last thing on earth to produce that will4 ,if the handicapped youth is brought into harsh and direct touch with the real world1 life proves a much more complex thing to him than to the ordinary man4 ,many of his inherited platitudes vanish at the first touch4 ,life appears to him as a grim struggle1 where ability does not necessarily mean opportunity and success1 nor piety sympathy1 and where helplessness cannot count on assistance and kindly interest4 ,human affairs seem to be running on a wholly irrational plan1 and success to be founded on chance as much as on anything4 ,but if he can stand the first shock of disillusionment1 he may find himself enormously interested in discovering how they actually do run1 and he will want to burrow into the motives of men1 and find the reasons for the crass inequalities and injustices of the world he sees around him4 ,he has practically to construct anew a world of his own1 and explain a great many things to himself that the ordinary person never dreams of finding unintelligible at all4 ,he will be filled with a profound sympathy for all who are despised and ignored in the world4 ,when he has been through the neglect and struggles of a handicapped and ill-favored man himself1 he will begin to understand the feelings of all the horde of the unpresentable and the unemployable1 the incompetent and the ugly1 the queer and crotchety people who make up so large a proportion of human folk4 ,we are perhaps too prone to get our ideas and standards of worth from the successful1 without reflecting that the interpretations of life which patriotic legend1 copy-book philosophy1 and the sayings of the wealthy give us1 are pitifully inadequate for those who fall behind in the race4 ,surely there are enough people to whom the task of making a decent living and maintaining themselves and their families in their social class1 or of winning and keeping the respect of their fellows1 is a hard and bitter task1 to make a philosophy gained through personal disability and failure as just and true a method of appraising the life around us as the cheap optimism of the ordinary professional man4 ,and certainly a kindlier1 for it has no shade of contempt or disparagement about it4 ,it irritates me as if ,i had been spoken of contemptuously myself1 to hear people called 8common0 or 8ordinary10 or to see that deadly and delicate feeling for social gradations crop out1 which so many of our upper middle-class women seem to have4 ,it makes me wince to hear a man spoken of as a failure1 or to have it said of one that he 8doesn't amount to much40 ,instantly ,i want to know why he has not succeeded1 and what have been the forces that have been working against him4 ,he is the truly interesting person1 and yet how little our eager-pressing1 on-rushing world cares about such aspects of life1 and how hideously though unconsciously cruel and heartless it usually is6 ,often ,i had tried in argument to show my friends how much of circumstance and chance go to the making of success2 and when ,i reached the age of sober reading1 a long series of the works of radical social philosophers1 beginning with ,henry ,george1 provided me with the materials for a philosophy which explained why men were miserable and overworked1 and why there was on the whole so little joy and gladness among us1--and which fixed the blame4 ,here was suggested a goal1 and a definite glorious future1 toward which all good men might work4 ,my own working hours became filled with visions of how men could be brought to see all that this meant1 and how ,i in particular might work some great and wonderful thing for human betterment4 ,in more recent years1 the study of history and social psychology and ethics has made those crude outlines sounder and more normal1 and brought them into a saner relation to other aspects of life and thought1 but ,i have not lost the first glow of enthusiasm1 nor my belief in social progress as the first right and permanent interest for every thinking and true-hearted man or woman4 ,i am ashamed that my experience has given me so little chance to count in any way either toward the spreading of such a philosophy or toward direct influence and action4 ,nor do ,i yet see clearly how ,i shall be able to count effectually toward this ideal4 ,of one thing ,i am sure1 however3 that life will have little meaning for me except as ,i am able to contribute toward some such ideal of social betterment1 if not in deed1 then in word4 ,for this is the faith that ,i believe we need to-day1 all of us1--a truly religious belief in human progress1 a thorough social consciousness1 an eager delight in every sign and promise of social improvement1 and best of all1 a new spirit of courage that will dare4 ,i want to give to the young men whom ,i see1--who1 with fine intellect and high principles1 lack just that light of the future on their faces that would give them a purpose and meaning in life1--to them ,i want to give some touch of this philosophy1 that will energize their lives1 and save them from the disheartening effects of that poisonous counsel of timidity and distrust of human ideals which pours out in steady stream from reactionary press and pulpit4 ,it is hard to tell just how much of this philosophy has been due to handicap4 ,if it is solely to that that ,i owe its existence1 the price has not been a heavy one to pay4 ,for it has given me something that ,i should not know how to be without4 ,for1 however gained1 this radical philosophy has not only made the world intelligible and dynamic to me1 but has furnished me with the strongest spiritual support4 ,i know that many people1 handicapped by physical weakness and failure1 find consolation and satisfaction in a very different sort of faith1--in an evangelical religion1 and a feeling of close dependence on ,god and close communion with him4 ,but my experience has made my ideal of character militant rather than long-suffering4 ,i very early experienced a revulsion against the rigid ,presbyterianism in which ,i had been brought up1--a purely intellectual revulsion1 ,i believe1 because my mind was occupied for a long time afterwards with theological questions1 and the only feeling that entered into it was a sort of disgust at the arrogance of damning so great a proportion of the human race4 ,i read ,t4 ,w4 ,higginson's 8,the ,sympathy of ,religions0 with the greatest satisfaction1 and attended the ,unitarian church whenever ,i could slip away4 ,this faith1 while it still appeals to me1 seems at times a little too static and refined to satisfy me with completeness4 ,for some time there was a considerable bitterness in my heart at the narrowness of the people who could still find comfort in the old faith4 ,reading ,buckle and ,oliver ,wendell ,holmes gave me a new contempt for 8conventionality10 and my social philosophy still further tortured me by throwing the burden for the misery of the world on these same good neighbors4 ,and all this1 although ,i think ,i did not make a nuisance of myself1 made me feel a spiritual and intellectual isolation in addition to my more or less effective physical isolation4 ,happily these days are over4 ,the world has righted itself1 and ,i have been able to appreciate and realize how people count in a social and group capacity as well as in an individual and personal one1 and to separate the two in my thinking4 ,really to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development1--to call for and expect much from men and women1 and not to be disappointed and embittered if they fall short1--to try to do good with people rather than to them1--this is my religion on its human side4 ,and if ,god exists1 ,i think that ,he must be in the warm sun1 in the kindly actions of the people we know and read of1 in the beautiful things of art and nature1 and in the closeness of friendships4 ,he may also be in heaven1 in life1 in suffering1 but it is only in these simple moments of happiness that ,i feel ,him and know that ,he is there4 ,death ,i do not understand at all4 ,i have seen it in its crudest1 most irrational forms1 where there has seemed no excuse1 no palliation4 ,i have only known that if we were more careful1 and more relentless in fighting evil1 if we knew more of medical science1 such things would not be4 ,i know that a sound body1 intelligent care and training1 prolong life1 and that the death of a very old person is neither sad nor shocking1 but sweet and fitting4 ,i see in death a perpetual warning of how much there is to be known and done in the way of human progress and betterment4 ,and equally1 it seems to me1 is this true of disease4 ,so all the crises and deeper implications of life seem inevitably to lead back to that question of social improvement1 and militant learning and doing4 ,this1 then1 is the goal of my religion1--the bringing of fuller1 richer life to more people on this earth4 ,all institutions and all works that do not have this for their object are useless and pernicious4 ,and this is not to be a mere philosophic precept which may well be buried under a host of more immediate matter1 but a living faith1 to permeate one's thought1 and transfuse one's life4 ,prevention must be the method against evil4 ,to remove temptation from men1 and to apply the stimulus which shall call forth their highest endeavors1--these seem to me the only right principles of ethical endeavor4 ,not to keep waging the age-long battle with sin and poverty1 but to make the air around men so pure that foul lungs cannot breathe it1--this should be our noblest religious aim4 ,education1 knowledge and training1--,i have felt so keenly my lack of these things that ,i count them as the greatest of means toward making life noble and happy4 ,the lack of stimulus has tended with me to dissipate the power which might otherwise have been concentrated in some one productive direction4 ,or perhaps it was the many weak stimuli that constantly incited me and thus kept me from following one particular bent4 ,i look back on what seems a long waste of intellectual power1 time frittered away in groping and moping1 which might easily have been spent constructively4 ,a defect in one of the physical senses often means a keener sensitiveness in the others1 but it seems that unless the sphere of action that the handicapped man has is very much narrowed1 his intellectual ability will not grow in compensation for his physical defects4 ,he will always feel that1 had he been strong or even successful1 he would have been further advanced intellectually1 and would have attained greater command over his powers4 ,for his mind tends to be cultivated extensively1 rather than intensively4 ,he has so many problems to meet1 so many things to explain to himself1 that he acquires a wide rather than a profound knowledge4 ,perhaps eventually1 by eliminating most of these interests as practicable fields1 he may tie himself down to one line of work2 but at first he is pretty apt to find his mind rebellious4 ,if he is eager and active1 he will get a smattering of too many things1 and his imperfect1 badly trained organism will make intense application very difficult4 ,now that ,i have talked a little of my philosophy of life1 particularly about what ,i want to put into it1 there is something to be said also of its enjoyment1 and what ,i may hope to get out of it4 ,i have said that my ideal of character was militant rather than long-suffering4 ,it is true that my world has been one of failure and deficit1--,i have accomplished practically nothing alone1 and until my college life freed me could count only two or three instances where ,i had received kindly counsel and suggestion2 moreover it still seems a miracle to me that money can be spent for anything beyond the necessities without being first carefully weighed and pondered over1--but it has not been a world of suffering and sacrifice1 my health has been almost criminally perfect in the light of my actual achievement1 and life has appeared to me1 at least since my more pressing responsibilities were removed1 as a challenge and an arena1 rather than a vale of tears4 ,i do not like the idea of helplessly suffering one's misfortunes1 of passively bearing one's lot4 ,the ,stoics depress me4 ,i do not want to look on my life as an eternal making the best of a bad bargain4 ,granting all the circumstances1 admitting all my disabilities1 ,i want too to 8warm both hands before the fire of life40 ,what satisfactions ,i have1 and they are many and precious1 ,i do not want to look on as compensations1 but as positive goods4 ,the difference between what the strongest of the strong and the most winning of the attractive can get out of life1 and what ,i can1 is after all so slight4 ,our experiences and enjoyments1 both his and mine1 are so infinitesimal compared with the great mass of possibilities2 and there must be a division of labor4 ,if he takes the world of physical satisfactions and of material success1 ,i at least can occupy the far richer kingdom of mental effort and artistic appreciation4 ,and on the side of what we are to put into life1 although ,i admit that achievement on my part will be harder relatively to encompass than on his1 at least ,i may have the field of artistic creation and intellectual achievement for my own4 ,indeed1 as one gets older1 the fact of one's disabilities fades dimmer and dimmer away from consciousness4 ,one's enemy is now one's own weak will1 and the struggle is to attain the artistic ideal one has set4 ,but one must have grown up1 to get this attitude4 ,and that is the best thing the handicapped man can do4 ,growing up will have given him one of the greatest satisfactions of his life1 and certainly the most durable one4 ,it will mean at least that he is out of the woods4 ,childhood has nothing to offer him2 youth little more4 ,they are things to be gotten through with as soon as possible4 ,for he will not understand1 and he will not be understood4 ,he finds himself simply a bundle of chaotic impulses and emotions and ambitions1 very few of which1 from the nature of the case1 can possibly be realized or satisfied4 ,he is bound to be at cross-grains with the world1 and he has to look sharp that he does not grow up with a bad temper and a hateful disposition1 and become cynical and bitter against those who turn him away4 ,but grown up1 his horizon will broaden2 he will get a better perspective1 and will not take the world so seriously as he used to1 nor will failure frighten him so much4 ,he can look back and see how inevitable it all was1 and understand how precarious and problematic even the best regulated of human affairs may be4 ,and if he feels that there were times when he should have been able to count upon the help and kindly counsel of relatives and acquaintances who remained dumb and uninterested1 he will not put their behavior down as proof of the depravity of human nature1 but as due to an unfortunate blindness which it will be his work to avoid in himself by looking out for others when he has the power4 ,when he has grown up1 he will find that people of his own age and experience are willing to make those large allowances for what is out of the ordinary1 which were impossible to his younger friends1 and that grown-up people touch each other on planes other than the purely superficial4 ,with a broadening of his own interests1 he will find himself overlapping other people's personalities at new points1 and will discover with rare delight that he is beginning to be understood and appreciated1--at least to a greater degree than when he had to keep his real interests hid as something unusual4 ,for he will begin to see in his friends1 his music and books1 and his interest in people and social betterment1 his true life2 many of his restless ambitions will fade gradually away1 and he will come to recognize all the more clearly some true ambition of his life that is within the range of his capabilities4 ,he will have built up his world1 and have sifted out the things that are not going to concern him1 and participation in which will only serve to vex and harass him4 ,he may well come to count his disabilities even as a blessing1 for it has made impossible to him at last many things in the pursuit of which he would only fritter away his time and dissipate his interest4 ,he must not think of 8resigning himself to his fate02 above all1 he must insist on his own personality4 ,for once really grown up1 he will find that he has acquired self-respect and personality4 ,grown-upness1 ,i think1 is not a mere question of age1 but of being able to look back and understand and find satisfaction in one's experience1 no matter how bitter it may have been4 ,so to all the handicapped and the unappreciated1 ,i would say1--,grow up as fast as you can4 ,cultivate the widest interests you can1 and cherish all your friends4 ,cultivate some artistic talent1 for you will find it the most durable of satisfactions1 and perhaps one of the surest means of livelihood as well4 ,achievement is1 of course1 on the knees of the gods2 but you will at least have the thrill of trial1 and1 after all1 not to try is to fail4 ,taking your disabilities for granted1 and assuming constantly that they are being taken for granted1 make your social intercourse as broad and as constant as possible4 ,do not take the world too seriously1 nor let too many social conventions oppress you4 ,keep sweet your sense of humor1 and above all do not let any morbid feelings of inferiority creep into your soul4 ,you will find yourself sensitive enough to the sympathy of others1 and if you do not find people who like you and are willing to meet you more than halfway1 it will be because you have let your disability narrow your vision and shrink up your soul4 ,it will be really your own fault1 and not that of your circumstances4 ,in a word1 keep looking outward2 look out eagerly for those things that interest you1 for people who will interest you and be friends with you1 for new interests and for opportunities to express yourself4 ,you will find that your disability will come to have little meaning for you1 that it will begin to fade quite completely out of your sight2 you will wake up some fine morning and find yourself1 after all the struggles that seemed so bitter to you1 really and truly adjusted to the world4 ,i am perhaps not yet sufficiently out of the wilderness to utter all these brave words4 ,for1 ,i must confess1 ,i find myself hopelessly dependent on my friends and my environment4 ,my friends have come to mean more to me than almost anything else in the world4 ,if it is far harder work to make friendships quickly1 at least friendships once made have a depth and intimacy quite beyond ordinary attachments4 ,for a man such as ,i am has little prestige2 people do not feel the need of impressing him4 ,they are genuine and sincere1 talk to him freely about themselves1 and are generally far less reticent about revealing their real personality and history and aspirations4 ,and particularly is this so in friendships with young women4 ,i have found their friendships the most delightful and satisfying of all4 ,for all that social convention that insists that every friendship between a young man and woman must be on a romantic basis is necessarily absent in our case4 ,there is no fringe around us to make our acquaintance anything but a charming companionship4 ,with all my friends1 the same thing is true4 ,the first barrier of strangeness broken down1 our interest is really in each other1 and not in what each is going to think of the other1 how he is to be impressed1 or whether we are going to fall in love with each other4 ,when one of my friends moves away1 ,i feel as if a great hole had been left in my life4 ,there is a whole side of my personality that ,i cannot express without him4 ,i shudder to think of any change that will deprive me of their constant companionship4 ,without friends ,i feel as if even my music and books and interests would turn stale on my hands4 ,i confess that ,i am not grown up enough to get along without them4 ,but if ,i am not yet out of the wilderness1 at least ,i think ,i see the way to happiness4 ,with health and a modicum of achievement1 ,i shall not see my lot as unenviable4 ,and if misfortune comes1 it will only be something flowing from the common lot of men1 not from my own particular disability4 ,most of the difficulties that flow from that ,i flatter myself ,i have met by this time of my twenty-fifth year1 have looked full in the face1 have grappled with1 and find in no wise so formidable as the world usually deems them1--no bar to my real ambitions and ideals4 ,,the ,,end ,the ,riverside ,press ,,cambridge 4 ,,massachusetts ,u4,s4,a4 ,transcriber's ,notes ,page #aab3 8kind of spiritual parasites0 changed to 8kind of spiritual parasite0 ,page #bfd3 8form sone of the darker0 changed to 8form some of the darker0