At the outset, while the old order is still relatively strong, and the
new relatively weak, the spokesmen of the old order can afford to
ignore the champions of the new. But as the established order grows
more senile and the new order more vigorous, the defenders of the old
order, by force or by guile, set themselves to root out the new, even
though they should be compelled to destroy themselves in the process.
Then there ensues a savage struggle in which wits are matched against
wits and force against force. Families are divided; the community is
split into factions; civil war rages; society is torn to its
foundations. At times the struggle reaches the military phase, but for
the most part it instills itself into the lives of the people until it
becomes an accepted part of the day's work.
Then it is that the real test comes between the old world and the new.
The old world holds power--economic, social, political. It holds in
its hands income, respectability and preferment, with which it seeks
first to buy, and later to destroy all who oppose its will.
Buying is the easiest, the safest, and in the long run the cheapest
method of gaining the desired end.
Each generation contains some men and women possessed of unusual
endowments--as organizers and enterprisers, as spokesmen, as singers,
as seers and prophets. These gifted ones the old order sets out to
win--lavishing upon them gratitudes, favors, rewards; filling their
lives out of the horn of economic and social plenty; teasing their
vanities and gratifying their ambitions; soothing, cajoling,
flattering. By these means the rulers succeed in bringing under their
control the strong thinkers, the capable executives, the sensitive,
the talented--all in fact who are worth buying, and who can be bought
for income and for social preferment, even though they may have been
born into the families of the humblest and most oppressed of the
workers.
Most men and women go where income promises and social preferment
beckons. But not all! There are some whose love of justice, truth and
beauty; whose yearning for betterment and increased social
opportunity, outweighs the tempting bait of ease and respectability.
Them the established order smites.
The strength of the old order is measured superficially by the extent
of its control over the means of common livelihood and by the
generalness of the satisfaction or discontent with which the masses
receive its administration. Fundamentally its strength is determined
by the direction in which its life is tending. The structure of the
Roman Empire was apparently sound before it buckled and disintegrated.
The French aristocracy was never surer of itself than in the gala days
that preceded 1789. The old order may undergo a process of gradual
transformation. In that case the change is slow, as it was when
Feudalism gave place to Capitalism in England. Again, the old order
may be exterminated as it was when Feudalism gave place to Capitalism
in France. In one case the masters of life loosens the reins of power
to ease the straining team; in the other case the masters hold the
reins taut till they are jerked from their hands, as masters and team
go together over the precipice.
The strength of the new order, at any stage in its development may be
gauged by the solidarity of its organization, the efficacy of its
propaganda, and the tone of its art. These forms of expression are
necessary to the maintenance of any phase of culture, old or new, and
by the last of the three, the esthetic expression of the culture, its
morale may best be judged. It is for this reason that artists,
musicians, dramatists and poets are so important a part of any order
of society. They voice its deepest sentiments and express its most
sacred faiths and longings. When the time arrives that a new social
order can boast its permanent art and music and literature, it is
already far advanced on the path that leads to stability and power.