This Younger Generation

I HAVE been reading, rather tardily, the article by Mr. Bourne in the September Atlantic on ‘This Older Generation,’ and am impressed by its cleverness and its candor. ‘This older generation,’ the ‘mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts of the youth of both sexes between twenty and thirty,’ — the people, that is to say, between fifty and sixty years of age, and ‘ of the comfortable or fairly comfortable American middle class,’ — are, it appears — not to put too fine a point on it — very much in the way. They are confronted by a new world, and instead of trying to understand it, they pretend that it is not there and obstruct its progress. They are under the illusion that the world is still governed by ‘ the verities of Protestant religion and conventional New England morality’; they fancy that ‘social ills may be cured by personal virtue’; they talk proudly of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘service’ when in fact these ideals are ‘ intensely selfish.’ They assume a permanent social stratification, of those above who may do for others and those below who must be done for; while to the younger generation, inspired by the vision of a social democracy, all such talk is ‘an insult to the democratic ideal.’ ‘The entire Christian scheme is a clever but unsuccessful attempt to cure the evils of inequality by transposing the values.’

‘ It fails to recognize the higher ethics, the ethics of democracy.’ As a consequence the influence of ‘this older generation’ is ‘profoundly pernicious.’It has ‘depressed and disintegrated us’; it ‘has grown weary of thinking’; ‘it has simply put up the bars of its intellectual shop windows and gone off home to rest.’

The indictment proceeds so far as even to suggest a motive for this obstructiveness. It is, Mr. Bourne insists, consciously designed to block the course of change. ‘I deliberately accuse the older generation of conserving and greatly strengthening these ideals as a defensive measure.’ In other words, the moral ideals which prevailed in the ‘ notorious Victorian era ’ have exhibited a deliberate attempt ‘ to retain the status quo ’ and ‘ to buttress the social situation.’ Under the form of a ‘plausible altruistic spirit’ they represent ‘a fierce and jealous egoism.’ Thus the hope of the world is with ‘ this younger generation.’ ‘ Enthusiasm, passion for ideas, sensuality, religious fervor’ — these are the ‘heated weapons with which the younger generation attacks the world.’ The younger generation must ‘ shoulder the gigantic task of putting into practice its ideals and revolutionary points of view as whole-heartedly and successfully as our great-grandfathers applied theirs and tightened the philosophy of life which imprisons the older generation.’

If one dismisses from consideration the notion of a conscious conspiracy against change, which would be abusive if it were not absurd, there is certainly much in this indictment which the older generation must recognize as both just and chastening. One cannot grow old without feeling his philosophy of life ‘tightening’ round him, and recognizing the risk of becoming ‘weary, complacent, evasive.’ He sees ‘many uncles and aunts and parents of youths between twenty and thirty’ settling back into a comfortable view of life, shaping their ideals like their figures to their armchairs, and satisfying their consciences by subscriptions to fashionable charities and conformity to conventional religion . He appreciates that he is himself beset by similar temptations, by the spirit of patronage and condescension, by the danger of assuming as duties what should be privileges, or by what Herbert Spencer called the ‘flunkeyism’ of social relationships, — looking for advantage or salvation or some moral ‘ tip ’ from the doing of one’s bit in the social world. He realizes that, as Robert Louis Stevenson said in his ‘Crabbed Age and Youth,’ the old have ‘a strong feeling in favor of cowardly and prudential proverbs.’ To be forced by Mr. Bourne’s inquisitorial arraignment to this self-examination and selfconfession is a salutary experience for the older generation.

Are there not, however, at this point some reflections which the older generation in its turn might offer, not so much to refute Mr. Bourne’s main contention as to supplement it? Mr. Bourne remarks, ‘I know this older generation ... I have lived with it for the last fifteen years ... I was educated by it, grew up with it; I doubt if any generation ever had a more docile pupil than I.’ As one of that older generation I may perhaps be permitted with the same frankness to affirm, ‘I know this younger generation; I have lived with it and its predecessors for thirty years; I have tried to educate it and watched it grow up; I doubt if any generation ever had a more sympathetic and appreciative observer than I.’ What, then, is the general conclusion which may be reached after such observation and companionship? How does this younger generation of the ‘ comfortable or fairly comfortable American middle class’ look to an old man?

The first impression made by the life and conduct of modern youths of both sexes is delightfully reassuring. ‘This younger generation’ is, of course, as a whole very much like its predecessors. The vast majority of young people exhibit the same eagerness, open-mindedness, and responsiveness which older people like to recall as the habit of their own young days. It is a great happiness to be associated with such youths and an exhilaration to teach them. To these traits of youth, however, which each generation reproduces, there is now added a characteristic which in some degree distinguishes young people to-day from their predecessors. If one were asked to select a word descriptive of the modern type, he would be inclined to choose the word healthiness. Young people in their habits and tastes cherish and crave and admire health with a devotion unparalleled since the days of the Greeks. The call of the fields and of the wild, the inoculation of early childhood with the fever of athletics, and the enormous distinction obtained by strength, agility, and pluck, — even the unprecedented candor of literature and conversation concerning sex, parenthood, eugenics, and feminism, — all these signs of the time, though they may involve new risks, unquestionably free young people in large degree from the introspection, sentimentalism, morbid conscientiousness, prudishness, and prurience, which have afflicted earlier generations. Fearlessness, self-confidence, even audacity, issue from this healthiness. Nothing is too personal to be mentioned; nothing too startling to be welcomed; nothing too sacred to be criticized. The most repelling of traits is sickliness, either of body or of mind. Strong doctrine, naked truth, undisguised convictions, are marks of the cult of healthiness, and the resultant type of youth is one which cannot be observed without admiration, as one watches an athlete stripped for his game and rejoicing in his strength.

Such is the general and salutary impression which the new generation makes upon its elders. There succeed, however, certain more limited observations. Within this great aggregation of healthiness two sub-types may be distinguished, whose characteristics are less completely admirable. Neither of these groups is numerically more than a small fraction of this younger generation, but each of them by the definiteness of its traits has attracted much attention, and each offers a problem which is really new. On the one hand is the group in which the body has overmastered the mind; on the other hand is the group in which the mind has overmastered the will.

The first group is composed of those youths of both sexes, for the most part in schools and colleges, to whom games, sports, and competitive athletics have become an absorbing and dominating interest, and study, reading, literature, the cultivation of intellectual tastes and habits, an interruption, imposition, or bore. Little can be said in criticism of this passion for athletics in its physical or animal aspects. It is unquestionably a great contribution to both the healthiness and happiness of youth. Harm from excess is much more rare than good from exercise. The best lessons of courage, temperance, scorn of injury, and loyalty to mates, are probably learned nowadays, not from parents or schoolmasters, but from coaches and teams. When, however, one turns from the question of breeding animals to the question of creating a more humanized world, from play to work, or — in Mr. Bourne’s words — from social service to social democracy; still more, when one turns from the teams to the lookers-on, from the bases to the bleachers, and considers the problem of preparedness for the creative tasks of the future, is the athletic ideal likely to seem adequate? One sometimes asks of young people of this type what they are reading, and the answer not infrequently is that, except under compulsion of the classroom, they are reading little or nothing. The baseball averages, the athletic records, the golf handicaps, the slang of the sporting reporters, the ‘ thrillers ’ of the magazines, and the romances of physical exploits or lusts — not to speak of the endless discussion of momentous athletic events of the past or the future — leave for these young persons little time or heart for more exacting or less prosy literature. This intensive culture of physical prowess begins very early. Little boys in the elementary classes are as grave as their elders or teachers in their competitions and admirations. The honor of the school, the school spirit, demands that every leg and muscle shall be at the school’s service. One headmaster said to me not long ago that the chief disadvantage of conducting a small school was the necessity laid on the same boy to participate in so many sports. The schedule of games, in other words, had to be maintained in completeness, even if it were at the cost of the boys.

What, then, may those who with Mr. Bourne are considering the future of the world fairly expect from this group in which the body has overmastered the mind? They may expect to get just about the return which the investment assures: healthiness, animal spirits, contempt of weakness, joy in strength, and in many instances an athletic morality, — temperance, selfrestraint, and honor, — the ideals, in short, of good sportsmanship. Admirable, however, as is this physical training, the world which is waiting for this younger generation happens to be one which needs something besides good sportsmanship to direct its affairs. Intellectual preparedness and grasp are now demanded in a degree unprecedented in history. It may be said, for example, that these young athletes will make the best of soldiers, and that this devotion to bodily training is the best way to secure national ‘ preparedness.’ Waterloo, it is repeated, was won on the cricket-fields of Eton. The fact is, however, that a new conception of war now confronts the world. War is no longer determined by animal courage or athletic prowess. War has become a complex science, devised by scholars and practiced by experts. The Waterloos of the future are not to be decided by cricketers, but by engineers, chemists, and mathematicians. Reckless courage may, in fact, be a defect in generalship. The fearful decimation of English officers in the present war is a splendid tribute to their courage, but in many instances it is a tragic reminder of the changed conditions of war. Modern strategy may often demand that officers shall be spared rather than sacrificed. An army is strong, not through its numbers, but through its leaders. To win a cross of valor, however heroic it may be, may be culpable waste. It is the same with the conflicts and disorders which afflict the social and industrial world. There are still needed the qualities of the primitive soldier, — daring, self-sacrifice, and enthusiasm ; but there are much more needed a new wisdom and foresight, a knowledge of history and of men, a large view as of a great campaign, to direct far-sighted strategy and to deter from frontal attacks which have often been tried and failed. The place of Greece in history was determined, not by her athletes but by her philosophers, not in the games but in the Schools. In short, it is a dangerous habit to regard life as a sport; and young men and women who want to have a share in shaping the future must recognize that sportsmanship cannot compete with science, or animal courage with intellectual discipline.

The second sub-type to which I have referred must be taken more seriously, because it is in this way that it takes itself. It is the group of youthful and revolutionary ‘intellectuals’ to whom the faults and sins of the present worldorder are a hideous blot which it is for their doctrines to wipe away. Numerically this group is much smaller than that which is dominated by the athletic obsession, but it has become conspicuous of late by its audacity and candor. These young people are delightfully self-confident. ‘The rays of morn,’ as Lowell said of the young soldiers of the Civil War, ‘are on their white shields of expectation.’ They carry what Mr. Bourne calls the ‘ heated weapons of enthusiasm, passion for ideas, sensuality, and religious fervor.’ ‘The notorious Victorian era,’ with its respectable literature and bourgeois individualism, is recalled with contempt. It is for this group ‘to shoulder the gigantic task of putting into practice its ideas and revolutionary points of view’; and this task is attacked without a tremor of self-distrust. These clever young iconoclasts fancy that the older generation is a kind of prudish old woman, who cannot understand their language and whom they rather like to shock. But that, I think, is where they in their turn fail to understand their elders. We have read something of history; we know something of the Utopias, from Plato to Wells, and of the revolutionists, from Lassalle to Nietzsche. Some of us, indeed, have tried to instruct the younger generation in the significance and limitations of these writers. The ideal of a social democracy is as persuasive to us as to the youngest generation. There is no ‘deep hostility of the elder generation to the new faith.' What we observe with regret in this group of young people is not so much their opinions as their ineffectiveness. They seem to fancy that criticism of the existing social order will of itself create a better world. We, on the other hand, are apprehensive lest, as Miss Procter once wrote, they may

They despise the ‘ ideals of sacrifice and service ’ as ‘ utterly selfish’; but do they ‘coöperate in working ceaselessly toward an ideal where all may be free and none may serve or be served ’ ? ‘ Working ceaselessly’ is not criticizing but contributing, — participating, that is to say, in better ways of industry, developing fraternalism in business, promoting schemes of coöperation and partnership, illustrating social democracy in home, office, and shop.

The Hebrew Psalmist in his enumeration of social beatitudes said, ‘ Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.' These three obstacles to the law of the Lord seemed to him coördinated, — irreverence, immorality, and contempt. No one would arraign our young revolutionists for the second offense, but something might be intimated of the first, and the third is manifestly conspicuous. It is interesting to observe that the scorner, according to the Psalmist, sat in his seat. He was not helping — I had almost used the offensive word, serving — or ‘coöperating ceaselessly.’ He just sat in his seat and scorned. The same attitude is not uncommon to-day, and older people who are trying to take the first steps toward a social democracy, to bridge the chasm of social animosities or prejudice, to humanize industrialism, or, as the Hebrews said, ‘to take up the stumbling-blocks out of the way of my people, to cast up the highway and gather out the stones,’ have about given up expecting much help from these young radicals. They are so busy with devising programmes for the future that the older generation cannot enlist them as allies in redeeming the present. They just sit in their seats and scorn.

Indeed, they reproduce, however unconsciously, a habit of mind which was common among the early Christians, who felt sure that the end of the world was at hand. ‘ Why prop up a decaying civilization?’ said these eschatologists of the first Christian century. ‘Let the end of the age come quickly, and then the Messianic era will arrive. We have a kingdom which cannot be moved.’ The Christian eschatologists of the first century were, however, mistaken. The world did not come to an end, and those who were waiting for a cataclysm waited in vain. The kingdom of God was to come like leaven, like a great tree; by growth, not by surprise; by evolution, not by revolution. The familiar ways of sacrifice and service had to be trodden once more in the name of Christ; and the expectant catastrophists were left sitting in their seats. It may be the same again. The trouble with these neo-eschatologists is that both history and human nature are against them. They look for a world in which service and sacrifice shall play no part, and where, as has been said of the teaching of Nietzsche, ‘Each man may look another in the face and tell him to go to hell.’ But that is simply not a world which history or human nature indicate as probable. Anarchism is not democracy; service is not servile. To recognize with the Apostle Paul that we are members one of another, and that in the service of each is the strength of all, is not social weariness, or Victorian sentimentalism, or the ‘clever but unsuccessful attempt of the Christian scheme,’ but, on the contrary, the first adumbration of that social solidarity and interdependence, which is to be the foundation of all sane socialism and the fulfillment of all stable democracy.

These reflections bring one to a somewhat obvious conclusion. The fact is that this entire discussion of the different provinces which different generations occupy is in large degree futile. There is no such distinction between old and young. ‘No one is infallible at Oxford,’ said Jowett, ‘not even the youngest of us.’ There are foolish people and stupid people of every age, ‘weary and complacent’ people both old and young, and people who ‘ lighten, cheer, and purify’ at sixty as at twenty. ‘I draw no distinction,’ said Aristotle, ‘ between young in years and young in disposition. The defect to which I allude is not the result of age, but of living at the call of passion and following each advantage as it arises.’ It is a curious commentary on the despondency with which Mr. Bourne views the older generation that in his enumeration of the tasks which the younger generation must fulfill, he is led to cite lessons which the older generation has taught. The older generation, he says, ’can never understand that supreme loyalty which is loyalty to a community’; but here he is apparently quoting from Professor Royce and his philosophy of loyalty, and Professor Royce’s children are already between twenty and thirty years of age. Or again, when Mr. Bourne laments that ‘A few years ago there seemed to be a promise of a forward movement toward democracy,’ and asks, ‘ Where are the leaders of the older generation who . . . are rallying round them the disintegrated members of idealistic youth?’ he is apparently chanting a dirge at the political obsequies of Mr. Roosevelt; and Mr. Roosevelt is already several times a grandfather. Or if, still further, any reader of the Atlantic would observe how completely without age-limit is the capacity to read the signs of the present time, let him turn back from Mr. Bourne’s essay to the first article in the same number, and read the wise and farsighted anticipations of an invalided veteran of letters, with their background of sound learning and their calm prophecy of a ‘revival of civilization.’

In a word, we are brought to Stevenson’s conclusion: ‘Age may have one side, but assuredly youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong.’ These boisterous days are not a good time to send one generation below while the other stands watch; still less are they a time either for reckless carrying of sail or for rash shifting

of course. All hands are needed on deck, every hand at its own rope; and with nothing less than this ‘freely cooperating and freely reciprocating’ crew are we likely to weather the storm.