Life and Letters
September It, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 465 in their choice of a school for their children. Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must be no differentiation on the ground...
...There never has been any proof that literature is so connected with whatever men may be doing in other fields of endeavor that its creation is inevitable whenever there are adventures afoot, battles being fought, changes in the crafts and sciences...
...And according to Mr...
...And each day there were new scientific miracles to inspire the writer to celebrate an age so completely superior to, so satisfactorily separated from, any which had preceded it...
...Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must be no differentiation on the ground of religion...
...At the time only a few men saw that those hopes were based on signs not altogether reliable...
...Wordsworth about the place of science in letters...
...Above all, in our conceit we would not be taught-after a mere year or two of prentice work...
...It was always being said that the war had not only made the world eager for achievements of the mind and the spirit, but offered in itself the materials of art...
...Gorham B. Munson, this is one of the reasons for the failure of his generation to live up to what was expected of it a decade back...
...What was overlooked, of course, was the example of history...
...In a recent issue of the Saturday Review of Literature he writes: "We wished to do new things without questioning very much whether we had acquired the power to do old things...
...The price we have paid for this early independence is to find ourselves now inadequately prepared for the next two or three decades of what should be our mature serious work...
...that discovery and conquest had "enlarged the souls" of all Englishmen...
...Whatever authority he may possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the state, except in so far as the state is acting on behalf of the parents...
...It has sometimes been pretended that the great literature of Elizabeth can be explained as a response to the success of the explorers and the admirals...
...Whether they ever will, now, we are determined not to inquire...
...but it may do so only 'in default of, and in substitution for, and to the extent of, the responsibility of the parents of the children who need this accommodation...
...When hopes run too high, most of us are impatient with discipline and impatient for achievement...
...It made no difference that the adventurous activity of England in the late sixteenth century had been approximated in many other times and places without being accompanied by any literature to speak of...
...Most of us share Mr...
...7) Thus a teacher never is and never can be a civil servant, and should never regard himself or allow himself to be so regarded...
...It made no difference that Drake and Frobisher and a half a dozen other most romantic figures had gone neglected by men of letters while Shakespeare pored over Plutarch, Froissart and the chronicles of Holinshed, or while Ben Jonson, writing directly of the contemporary scene, saved his most ridiculous r61e for the soldier...
...6) The teacher is always acting in loco parentis, never in ]oco civitatis, though the state to safeguard its citizenship may take reasonable care to see that teachers are efficient...
...We were familiarizing ourseIves with new circumstances of living, and would produce a great new literature...
...We feel that for the present at least our editorial duty is fulfilled by giving what wider circulation we can effect to the discussion and study of this splendidly lucid statement of fundamental principles in a matter of vital concern, and also by directing our readers' attention to the equally lucid commentary upon this remarkable document contributed by Father Vincent McNabb to the July and August numbers of Blackfriars...
...identifying, rather hastily, the progress of mechanics with an advance of the spirit, were sure that the environment was congenial...
...We should not be fooled in that way again...
...Half a dozen able men had prepared the general consciousness for a literature which would express our times rather than be a reflection of the literary experiences of the nineteenth century...
...It is not the intention of The Commonweal at this time to discuss the problems which would be connected with the application of these principles, either in England or in the United States...
...The phenomena of nature had already become more strange to many of us than the marvels of our laboratories, but these latter had not yet contributed prominently to literature...
...It was popular to suppose that since one of the characteristics of the Elizabethan age had reappeared, however changed and strangely garmented, in our own times, the rest would follow...
...September It, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 465 in their choice of a school for their children...
...For the rest it was too beautifully clear that the work of the previous decade, combined with a great expansion of activity in science and industry, called for a great literature...
...For partly because of them we have been so busy congratulating ourselves on being the creators of a new literature that we have had no time left in which to create it...
...Mistaking restlessness, possibly, for energy, they were satisfied that the necessary talent was at hand...
...Munson's disappointment with the present literary output in America, and it is a disappointment the more acute because the hopes of ten years ago were so unshakable and high...
...Well, for twenty years at least we had been as familiar with the work of science as he could have wished...
...5) Where there is need of greater school accommodation the state may, in default of other agencies, intervene to supply it...
...Ten years ago this was a very popular explanation...
...For the assurance of authority, we remembered the prediction of Mr...
...LIFE AND LETTERS IS just as well that the general enthusiasm with T which the immediate future of American letters was regarded some years ago should give place to something almost the opposite...
Vol. 10 • September 1929 • No. 19
