Obituary for Ten Young Men
OBITUARY FOR TEN YOUNG MEN THE prevalence of suicide on a number of college campuses is probably not to be associated with any specific kind of academic teaching or environment. It is bound up with...
...Youth will seek truth outside the pale of respectable indolence because truth does not exist inside...
...Men approaching toothless senility dream of further drams of existence...
...Men prominent in business, creative endeavor and affairs have recently been destroying their lives with a staggering lack of regard for the Christian moral code...
...The same thing is so true of civilizations, that one has only to look around in order to verify it...
...At any rate, the ten young men were uncommonly proficient in their pragmatism, and they tested it well...
...Upon this structure, the value of which we ourselves doubted, there was then erected an extremely questionable spiritual residence...
...If the game is not worth the candle, why should one play it in the rain...
...Never were rooms more airy and spacious, never was there a house in which it was easier to move about...
...art and invention hurried to increase their joys...
...But there happens to be a certain amount of difficulty about accepting all the conclusions which follow from this position...
...All the ancient psychologists had much to say concerning it...
...Did not America surround the ten young men with lavish promises...
...the young, with all the glory of maturity before them, snuff the candle out...
...They followed their principles to the end...
...That our civilization has deluged the individual with material gifts, that it has taken for granted these would be hugely enjoyed, is a truth sufficiently known...
...Tragic though it is to think of ten young men convinced of the virtues of lethal night, it would be more harrowing still to fancy they would have grown up content with the stuffy everyday of the stalest of worlds, in which bathtubs were synonymous with cultural advance and wit was the definition of wisdom...
...Living in a "flaming" world where no convention stood as a hampering barrier, where the pleasures of youth are celebrated in story and melodious song, what was it against which they dashed their angry heads...
...It is bound up with a much wider social and spiritual condition...
...It was created by the simple expediency of turning the ministry into a professorate...
...the Stoics made it an integral part of their doctrine...
...During a bright moment Maeterlinck declared that "a work of art does not grow old excepting in proportion to its anti-mysticism...
...If we are to be governed by "bleak truth" and "useful instincts," then it is conceivable we may face hours in which happiness is contingent upon non-existence...
...Cicero, who had spent all his life in practical business pursuits, looked forward to an old age which could be spent in enriching the mind...
...The transition was so gradual that few noticed it at all...
...They saw a little farther than their elders...
...If the energetic Atheist Society is true to the spirit of its constitution, the ten young men will have a monument and incense will be burned to their courageous shades...
...The present is characterized, however, by more Sophists than even Athens knew...
...One may, of course, seek an explanation in the prevalence of neurotic diseases, caused by too lavish an expenditure of vital energy...
...This reference to Rome is appropriate because the last dozens of years have convinced Americans that 422 paganism is an art of living which can be accepted with great ease...
...But those who question and learn to see through the empty prose of comfort will not be seduced...
...Perhaps the anaesthetics have not worked, or possibly they lead to curiosity about a far more potent sleeping draught...
...Well, there is one answer in this little passage from Lewis Mumford: "I am not sure but that the search for anaesthetics may prove in the long run to be the clue to the nineteenth century, in all its depauperate phases...
...Theoretically we have deplored the fact, but in practice we have done everything possible to establish it...
...Even the notorious criminals of 1927 require a guard to prevent them from serving as executioners in their own behalf...
...All the time it was forgotten that while a man may mature into any kind of pattern and stay put there tranquilly, youth is forever interested in a restless search...
...Here and there in the history of heathenism, one finds even what might be termed "prophets of self-destruction," who left multitudes of dead behind them as they moved from town to town...
...But unfortunately enough, the agencies which naturally oppose this frigid anti-mysticism, which lead back into the sunlight of God, are more than a little infected themselves with the easy compromises of the past...
...It must see that the morrow is different from today...
...It is easier still to say that one's soul is under one's own captaincy and shall march by no other rule...
...Here are two extremes, seemingly irreconcilable...
...Meanwhile it is worth remembering that varied fascinating experiments with philosophies and doctrines may not be so harmless as they seem...
...In so far as they drew this inevitable deduction and acted upon it, the ten young college lads who recently took their lives must be congratulated for a significant heroism...
...Nevertheless, the contrast is not so brand-new as it might seem...
...That young people wish to be told what to think rather than how to think is a safe educational assumption, even though a number of psychologists have thought otherwise...
...It is curious that we have almost entirely overlooked the deeply rooted human instinct to seek relief in death...
...True enough, these things may attract, even if they cannot reform, those portions of the multitude which accept life as it is...
...Wealth, opportunity, education, leisure—all in quantities undreamed of by former generations—had been placed at their command...
...Medicinal science promised to alleviate their physical sufferings...
...By way of contrast the modern habit of optimism had practically established as a commonplace the idea that loss of life is the greatest of calamities and that anything destructive of life (for instance, war) must be energetically removed from the human scene...
...It is convenient to regulate one's conduct by irony or self-interest...
...Strangely enough, the very season which brings news of so many youthful suicides has also been thrilled with the announcement that the span of life may probably be extended beyond the century mark by medical science...
...After all, it might be advisable to remove Rodin's Thinker from the campus, and substitute Saint Michael —who not only clung bravely to the task he set out to do, but could find his way about in the light of God...
...There are, after all, few years in history marked by the inquiring sincerity of Socrates...
...and in another decade or so it had become the normal thing to profess the scientific, sceptical mind...
...The old Calvinistic divine suddenly became a romantic transcendentalist...
...They died because people had assured them life is made for happiness...
...But such an explanation cannot account for all the phases of this really startling social phenomenon...
...The fact is that pragmatism was a blessed anaesthetic...
...For whenever in any time men have knelt reverently to receive a sacrament, they have known that here was a mystery before which all the world passed away...
...And it is always a young man's wisdom to act on the suggestion of his elders...
...The use of ether itself first came as a parlor sport in dull little American communities that had no good wine to bring a milder oblivion from their boredom...
...But, it will be objected, who is responsible for this situation...
...When Newman said that "not to be uneasy is to be unsafe," he formulated one of the basic laws of the human spirit...
...and perhaps one may look upon anaesthetics in all their physical and spiritual forms—ether, Christian Science, speed—as the culmination of the Protestant attack upon the senses...
...It is assumed that evidences of material success—grandiose establishments, the glitter of parades, the accumulation of money—will wean men back into the churches...
...And there is only one morrow after scientific agnosticism—a morrow in which the world is suddenly new with bright, immemorial, eternal spiritual sunlight, or suddenly old with doom...
...Even the "thought of something after death" had been carefully mitigated in order to cause them no mental anguish...
...That undergraduates should join in the macabre pastime, for quaint reasons or for no particular reason at all, merely proves that the adventure called suicide is far more attractive to the present generation than has usually been imagined...
...and even the contemplative Hindus, though they refrained from slaughtering themselves, fixed their eyes on the bliss of coffin-nails...
...Petro-nius, satiated with antique culture, tranquilly opened his veins when the hour had come...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 16
