Chapter II

THE question why we, who are the heirs of all the ages, should be so much worse off than our ancestors in that which means essential life might well give us pause. In all external matters we seem to have made great gain. We are carried about more swiftly; our houses have far superior plumbing; the goods we purchase are delivered more promptly, and existence has in every way become far more convenient and easy. Is not this the age of progress? Progress--it is a word constantly on men’s lips; have earlier ages ever heard such a din of talk about progress? It would appear as if our forefathers had little claim to be called happy, having lived before the time of great modern inventions and discoveries; yet, with this sheaf of old records in my hands, and many memories at work, I am forced to admit that the comparison works the other way. Here, in these fading papers, is a sense of significance in living, of illimitable destiny, that makes me ask why we are thus stripped, robbed, disinherited. Why is it that we seem to have inherited all of life except the point? The willful poverty of our spiritual lives contrasts strangely with their quiet sense of great possessions.

After all, are frenzied motion and progress synonymous? Any kitten chasing its own tail might, if we were really observant, disprove for us much of our modern claim of great gain. Would any age of real progress talk so much about progress, and so loudly count its achievements? Is not much of this done to hide the inner sense of loss and lack? Perhaps it is from a far-off country childhood that I derive a persistent belief, not obscured by all the noise and dust and glamour of our time, that real growth is silent. For many and many a day I have heard this glowing talk of progress, of widening intellectual horizons, and for many a day have watched the growing wistfulness of human faces. The more thoughtful become increasingly sad, while the number of the merely stolid increases apace, as do the restless ones, with their apparent longing for distraction and change. Unfinished faces, unsatisfied faces, are familiar to us all. They lack the high record of experience greatly taken; expression that denotes profound inner life. To-day we are so comfortable, so enlightened, and, with our widening philanthropy, so estimable, that we surely ought to be happy! Yet we see few satisfied faces, such as we can remember from long ago, full of inner content,--faces “on which the dove of peace sat brooding,”--and we pause to ask what our boasted progress has to offer by way of compensation for the great loss that has come through the seeming gain of these later years?

The whole emphasis of life has changed since those days; its focus has shifted. The meanings of existence were to our ancestors inner meanings; now, passionate clutching at externals betrays a different aim. They show themselves capable of fault and error in these recorded experiences of old days, yet they are lightened and lifted by a great power; they touch ever the divine. Their contrasted reading of the significance of life shows most emphatically in this: they thought and felt in terms of the spirit. The modern world thinks and lives and speaks in terms of the body, not of mind and soul. The soul, that secret of personality, conceived as a part of one not wholly caught in the mechanical chain of things and capable of choice, was their great concern. To them a little child was something sacred, immortal, whose endless destiny commanded of those to whom it was entrusted, alertness, watchfulness, lest its feet should go astray from the narrow path that led to the heavenly hills. Words spoken near the cradle where the new-born baby lay, turned the spot to holy ground.

To those of us who are most advanced to-day, a little child is a little animal; few are left who, in its presence, think of sacredness any more than in the presence of a little pig. There is the utmost alertness in meeting its physical needs; there is, if possible, a trained nurse to bring scientific knowledge to its requirements, to keep loving fingers away; but the ideas that encircle it concern for the most part its body. Meanwhile, the most progressive thought of the age is busy with the question whether its standard cannot be raised to that of choice animal stock; whether the infant human being may not be bred, as colt or calf of approved ancestry is bred, by choice of the physically fit. This represents the furthest vision of the future; this is the goal against which the imagination of the present dreams.