A Thing of Faerie
WE HAVE it on the authority of Mr. Ernest Weekley that "imp" used to connote the same kind of sober hopefulness as the word "scion." And though the present use of the term appears to have...
...Why should there not be...
...If there be any cause for academla's failure to impress the rising generation...
...Since that time many have experienced at least the pragmatic effects of agnosticism and of religion...
...Then suddenly a young man flies bravely to Europe in an humble plane...
...It is precisely in so far as religion has accepted the test and undertaken to prove the incomparable value of its truths re-reckoned In terms of living, that spiritual renascence has manifested itself...
...This custom, however, is the outcome of a serious mistake...
...May one not legitimately feel, therefore, that the supreme effort of exploration—the finding of God—has also naturally and spontaneously appealed to a great number of people...
...Recently, for instance, we have all been so startled at the emancipations of the young that a varietry of more or less picturesque terms exist to describe the audacious rising generation...
...After all, the machines by which courage and achievement are demonstrated need Imagination for their understanding quite as much as works of art do...
...An age comfortably content cannot easily become the master of another which dreams of pathfinding through the empyrean...
...And all the time it does not see that its world has become like a herbarium, wherein everything is neatly ticketed and quite respectably sterilized—wherein everything exists excepting life and a hale Invitation to energy...
...One is constantly surprised to find how many youngsters have somehow drunk deep of traditional beauty, coming to know the mediaeval glory and the aristocratic Greek perfection with an enthusiastic thoroughness which does not characterize persons who have abandoned themselves utterly to pleasure and profit-taking...
...The heyday of what Is called "atheism" In higher institutions of learning is certainly not contemporary...
...Varied explorations have enlarged the common mastery of universal forces: to the old victories over drought and timidity there are now added the myriad conquests of electricity and steam, of distance and linguistic barriers...
...For the young Athenians whom Plato and Aristotle assembled in their educational Institutions, these dramatists were great revealers of the mysteries of personality and destiny...
...It is time for somebody to risk the declaration that current snapshots of modern youth are grotesque— that if there be any notable spiritual phenomenon visible throughout the modern world, it is the appearance of an unusual vitality in the younger generation...
...The demand for "practical teaching" is misinterpreted as a desire for those things only which will turn a callow stripling into an impressive taxpayer...
...Then there will be new enthusiastic parades Into the libraries, and, perhaps, a momentary hush on the athletic field...
...There is no doubting, for instance, the intensification of spiritual practice in Catholic circles...
...He could not but feel that these hardly grown men, upon whose shoulders the almost Infinite burden of the "four years" lay, were directed also in private life to nobler purposes and more transcendent concerns...
...A hundred explosions of energy are set down as rebellions...
...One might go on to say that in allied fields the same renascent trust in "practical spiritual results" has been made manifest...
...One may suppose, therefore, that the real conflict between education and modern youth Is a failure on the part of older academia to estimate accurately and to direct properly the force of which the younger generation is so conscious...
...Is it not likely that lesser voyages of the spirit, into the secret places of art and philosophy, for instance, have been undertaken with new enthusiasm...
...To some extent, these facts represent good work on the part of institutions...
...Probably, however, they are primarily imposed by certain qualities in the time itself...
...Some day we must find out again, for Instance, that the reading of many books by a young man is not nearly so important as the fact that this young man has beer^ completely made over by the effect of some one book...
...The daring hypotheses of science, upon which every new victory is based, are great flights of reason and speculation, not spells of grubbing in "matter...
...Teaching of art, religion and philosophy recedes a little sadly but nevertheless primly from the struggle, turning over more and more of time and space to the discipline of "go-getting...
...Only we must realize that the "practical test" upon which young people are Insisting is simply the old demand that the something offered prove assimilable, transmutable into substance feeding life...
...And though the present use of the term appears to have its origin in ecclesiastical diction, it is not wholly fatuous to suppose that popular impressions of youth's folly may have had much to do with the change...
...It is precisely because the arts and philosophies have dodged this challenge that such large numbers have passed them by...
...All these triumphs mean that humanity is more energetic than It has ever before been, and energy seeks tasks to accomplish...
...Is feted with singular splendor in the most sophisticated of cities, and returns to receive several avalanches of applause from his countrymen for being the "great American boy...
...For a time men may be myopic spectators of their mechanical triumphs...
...Certainly there is no such "irrepressible conflict" between progress in the realm of physics and advancement in the kingdom of the spirit as is commonly supposed...
...The reason is surely that the "ministers of culture" have not been vigorously determined to spread their own glad tidings...
...For this failure they cannot plead the indifference of young people, because these display to all who are interested In looking an extraordinary alertness to, an almost unparalleled readiness to be concerned with, reality...
...Perhaps it is because we have become so accustomed to dissociating these qualities from modern young people that we have gone wild with astonishment at seeing them plainly manifested in the day's hero...
...Academia itself, which can be supposed to possess some experience in the matter, has been busy wondering whether its recipes and regimen may not be somewhat inadequate...
...The Scriptures record an express Divine command to subdue the earth...
...How is It that the tentative explanations of the universe offered by physical science now enthrall so many, while the still more luminous intuitions of the arts go by almost unnoticed...
...It feels that its carefully amassed treasures are not appreciated...
...It is simply inability to grasp this generation's principle of action...
...But when they are truly alive, they do not rest content with mere complacent spectatorship...
...No thoughtful Frenchman reading Agathon's report concerning this generation could fail to notice how sharply it contrasts with the positlvistic egoism which characterized the development of the earlier intellectuals of whom Prosper Merimee and Alfred de Musset were representative instances...
...In all the humanistic sciences, a governing assumption that creative accomplishment of every kind is an approximation to the real art of life...
...Similarly one might say, while remaining fully conscious of how meagre statistical Information regarding the matter is, that the young people of the United States have been stirred by several fateful salutary visions...
...it passed a dozen years ago, when the fullest pressure was exerted upon philosophical study by newly propounded archaeological evidences of evolution, by a monism which seemed to have the support of science, and by a prevailing tendency to see in Revelation a dead literary deposit, like Greek drama or Roman verse...
...Thousands of growing men and women, who may not be able to adduce convincing intellectual evidences for their faith, have demonstrated its practical value to their complete satisfaction...
...And even if one may not be prepared to accept the dictum that aviation is quite the noblest enterprise to which a young man could dedicate himself, one is ready to affirm to the fullest the enthusiastic popular appreciation of Colonel Lindbergh's simplicity and poise, daring and common sense...
...And it so happens that we no longer realize precisely what Imagination Is, possessing as we do a fondness for attending to those aspects of humanism which can be weighed and measured, ticketed and catalogued...
...How strange that we should read the Greek dramatists, for Instance, as If they were Illustrators of philology or makers of occasionally useful quotations...
...Its territory, in so far as the average traveler in education Is concerned, remains a land of Prester John, where there is fruit no man dare eat...
...We feel that this cultural world is nevertheless the very place which modernity is eager to reach, hungry as it is for the "thing of faerie" which everlastingly beckons the soul...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 8
