I
I read with ever-increasing wonder the guarded defenses and discreet
apologies for the older generation which keep filtering through
the essays of the _Atlantic_. I can even seem to detect a growing
decision of tone, a definite assurance of conviction, which seems to
imply that a rally has been undertaken against the accusations which
the younger generation, in its self-assurance, its irreverence for
the old conventions and moralities, its passion for the novel and
startling, seemed to be bringing against them. The first faint twinges
of conscience felt by the older generation have given place to renewed
homily. There is an evident anxiety to get itself put on record as
perfectly satisfied with its world, and desirous that its sons and
daughters should learn anew of those peculiar beauties in which it has
lived. Swept off its feet by the call to social service and social
reform, it is slowly regaining its foundation, and, slightly flushed,
and with garments somewhat awry, it proclaims again its belief in the
eternal verities of Protestant religion and conventional New England
morality.
It is always an encouraging sign when people are rendered
self-conscious and are forced to examine the basis of their ideals. The
demand that they explain them to skeptics always makes for clarity.
When the older generation is put on the defensive, it must first
discover what convictions it has, and then sharpen them to their finest
point in order to present them convincingly. There are always too many
unquestioned things in the world, and for a person or class to have to
scurry about to find reasons for its prejudices is about as healthy
an exercise as one could wish for either of them. To be sure, the
reasons are rarely any more than _ex post facto_ excuses,--supports
and justifications for the prejudices rather than the causes thereof.
Reason itself is very seldom more than that. The important point is
that one should feel the need of a reason. This always indicates that
something has begun to slide, that the world is no longer so secure as
it was, that obvious truths no longer are obvious, that the world has
begun to bristle with question marks.
One of the basic grievances of this older generation against the
younger of to-day, with its social agitation, its religious heresy,
its presumptive individuality, its economic restlessness, is that
all this makes it uncomfortable. When you have found growing older
to be a process of the reconciliation of the spirit to life, it is
decidedly disconcerting to have some youngster come along and point
out the irreconcilable things in the universe. Just as you have made
a tacit agreement to call certain things non-existent, it is highly
discommoding to have somebody shout with strident tones that they are
very real and significant. When, after much struggling and compromise,
you have got your world clamped down, it is discouraging to have a
gale arise which threatens to blow over all your structure. Through so
much of the current writing runs this quiet note of disapprobation.
These agnostic professors who unsettle the faith of our youth, these
“intellectuals who stick a finger in everybody’s pie in the name of
social justice,” these sensation-mongers who unveil great masses of
political and social corruption, these remorseless scientists who would
reveal so many of our reticences--why can’t they let us alone? Can they
not see that God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world?