Counter-Currents. Agnes Repplier
in a simpler, sterner creed. The call to duty embraced for them the call to arms.
"A country's a thing men should die for at need."
Some of them remember the days when Americans died for their country, and it is a recollection good for the soul. Again, the men over forty were taught by men; the men under thirty were taught by women; and the most dangerous economy practised by our extravagant Republic is the eliminating of the male teacher from our public schools. It is no insult to femininity to say that the feminization of boys is not a desirable development.
It was thought and said a few years ago that the substitution of organized charities for the somewhat haphazard benevolence of our youth would exclude sentiment, just as it excluded human and personal relations with the poor. It was thought and said that the steady advance of women in commercial and civic life would correct the sentimental bias which only Mr. Chesterton has failed to observe in the sex. No one who reads books and newspapers, or listens to speeches, or indulges in the pleasures of conversation can any longer cherish these illusions. No one can fail to see that sentiment is the motor power which drives us to intemperate words and actions; which weakens our judgment, and destroys our sense of proportion. The current phraseology, the current criticisms, the current enthusiasms of the day, all betray an excess of emotionalism. I pick up a table of statistics, furnishing economic data, and this is what I read: "Case 3. Two children under five. Mother shortly expecting the supreme trial of womanhood." That is the way to write stories, and, possibly, sermons; but it is not the way to write reports. I pick up a newspaper, and learn that an Englishman visiting the United States has made the interesting announcement that he is a reincarnation of one of the Pharaohs, and that an attentive and credulous band of disciples are gathering wisdom from his lips. I pick up a very serious and very well-written book on the Brontë sisters, and am told that if I would "touch the very heart of the mystery that was Charlotte Brontë" (I had never been aware that there was anything mysterious about this famous lady), I will find it—save the mark!—in her passionate love for children.
"We are face to face here, not with a want, but with an abyss, depth beyond depth of tenderness, and longing, and frustration; with a passion that found no clear voice in her works because it was one with the elemental nature in her, undefined, unuttered, unutterable!"
It was certainly unuttered. It was not even hinted at in Miss Brontë's novels, nor in her voluminous correspondence. Her attitude toward children—so far as it found expression—was the arid but pardonable attitude of one who had been their reluctant caretaker and teacher. If, as we are now told, "there were moments when it was pain for Charlotte to see the children born of and possessed by other women," there were certainly hours—so much she makes clear to us—in which the business of looking after them wearied her beyond her powers of endurance. It is true that Miss Brontë said a few, a very few friendly words about these little people. She did not, like Swift, propose that babies should be cooked and eaten. But this temperate regard, this restricted benevolence, gives us no excuse for wallowing in sentiment at her expense.
"If some virtues are new, all vices are old." We can reckon the cost of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them. We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which grows hysterical over animals it should soberly protect; which accuses the consumer of strange cruelties to the producer; which condones lawbreaking and vindicates the lawbreaker; which admits no difference between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and insults the intelligence of mankind.
The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we cannot afford any waste in the conservation of honour and goodness. We cannot afford errors of judgment, or errors of taste. The business of leading lives morally worthy of men is neither simple nor easy. And there are moments when, with the ageing Fontenelle, we sigh and say, "I am beginning to see things as they are. It is surely time for me to die."
Our Loss of Nerve
Our Loss of Nerve
IF any lover of Hogarth will look at the series of pictures which tell the story of the Idle and the Industrious Apprentice, he will feel that while the industrious apprentice fitted admirably into his time and place, the idle apprentice had the misfortune to be born out of date. In what a different spirit would his tragic tale be told to-day, and what different emotions it would awaken. A poor tired boy, who ought to be at school or at play, sleeping for very exhaustion at his loom. A cruel boss daring to strike the worn-out lad. No better playground given him in the scant leisure which Sunday brings than a loathsome graveyard. No healthier sport provided for him than gaming. And, in the end, a lack of living wage forcing him to steal. Unhappy apprentice, to have lived and sinned nearly two centuries too soon! And as if this were not a fate bitter enough for tears, he must needs have contrasted with him at every step an industrious companion, whom that unenlightened age permitted to work as hard as he pleased, even for the benefit of a master, and to build up his own fortunes on the foundation of his own worth. Hogarth's simple conception of personal responsibility and of personal equation is as obsolete as the clumsy looms at which his apprentices sit, and the full-skirted coats they wear.
Yet the softening of the hard old rules, the rigid old standards, has not tended to strengthen the fibre of our race. Nobody supposes that the industrious apprentice had an enjoyable boyhood. As far as we can see, going to church was his sole recreation, as it was probably the principal recreation of his master's daughter, whose hymn-book he shares, and whom he duly marries. Her home-life doubtless bore a strong resemblance to the home-life of the tumultuous heroine of "Fanny's First Play," who tells us with a heaving breast that she never knew what a glorious thing life was until she had knocked out a policeman's tooth. Hogarth's young lady would probably have cared little for this form of exercise, even had the London policemen of 1748 been the chivalrous sufferers they were in 1911. She is a buxom, demure damsel; and in her, as in the lad by her side, there is a suggestion of reserve power. They are citizens in the making, prepared to accept soberly the restrictions and responsibilities of citizenship, and to follow with relish the star of their own destinies.
And all things considered, what can be better than to make a good job out of a given piece of work? "That intricate web of normal expectation," which Mr. Gilbert Murray tells us is the very essence of human society, provides incentives for reasonable men and women, and provides also compensations for courage. What Mr. Murray calls a "failure of nerve" in Greek philosophy and Greek religion is the relaxing of effort, the letting down of obligation. With the asceticism imposed, or at least induced, by Christianity, "the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live in what survives the more completely," he has but scant and narrow sympathy; but he explains with characteristic clearness that the ideals of Greek citizenship withered and died, because of a weakening of faith in normal human resistance. "All the last manifestations of Hellenistic religion betray a lack of nerve."
It is with the best intentions in the world that we Americans are now engaged in letting down the walls of human resistance, in lessening personal obligation; and already the failure of nerve is apparent on every side. We begin our kindly ministrations with the little kindergarten scholar, to whom work is presented as play, and who is expected to absorb the elements of education without conscious effort, and certainly without compulsion. We encourage him to feel that the business of his teacher is to keep him interested in his task, and that he is justified in stopping short as soon as any mental process becomes irksome or difficult. Indeed, I do not know why I permit myself the use of the word "task," since by common consent it is banished from the vocabulary of school. Professor Gilman said it was a word which should never be spoken by teacher, never heard by pupil, and no doubt a kind-hearted public cordially agreed with him.
The firm old belief that the task is a valuable asset in education, that the making of a good job out of a given piece of work is about the highest thing on earth, has lost its hold upon the world. The firm old disbelief in a