THE DEARTH OF GENIUS

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 308, 22 September 1908, Page 10

THE DEARTH OF GENIUS

... "INSPIRATION DIED OUT." "Detractors of the age," . says the "Nation,"- "think it a telling argument to refer us 'back to tho 'seventies, 1 asking what men wo have to set against the giants of those days. In poetry they ask us, 'Where is your Tonnyfeou and Browning, your' coming Swinburne, your Matthew Arnold?' 'What theologians tb-<lay can rank with Newman, Stanley, Lightfoot, Martineau, .or Manning? What historians with Freeman, Fronde, and J. R. Green ? 'What essayists wit-li Carlyle. and Ru'skin? Among general thinkers or philosophers, whom will you match against' Mill, Spencer, or T.-H. Green? In this boasted age of soience, who stands out as did Darwin/ Huxley, Tyndall, thirty years ago? Even in the novel, whom will you pit against "the George Eliot/ Dickons, Meredith of'the last generation?' And so they brandish in the world of politics the names of Gladstone and Disraeli, in art those of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, and repeat in ever-growing confidence their challenge.

THE GREAT MEN OF THE SEVENTIES

"Tho great.men of the 'seventies carried a certain real distinction of personality, an inspiration of expression, whieli'no body of men of similar influence ami authority carry now. Poets, artists, essayists, scientists,, were in large measure the conscious prophets or interpreters of new, large, transforming ideas, tho quick fruitago of remit discovery and audacious speculation in fifty, new- fields. It was a time of .Pisgali. views, of swift, unfolding visions and transformations, which furnished . strong nourishment and splendid inspiration to men of quick imagining and popular , sympathies, Tho early intellectual and emotional operation of tho new scientific and critical ideas was liberativo and tliaumaturgic; the oxtension of the reign of law into human history, the doctrines of tho conservation of enorgy and correlation of . physical forces; tlio great conception of scientific evolution, still lay in a vaguo plaster shnpo, rich material for tho poetic eloquence of ail 'In Memoriam' or a 'Belfast Address,'

"Suoh oracles are now dumb, and it is their trunipet notes we miss, not only among the poets of our time, but among: tho statesmen) sciontists, and reformers. Tho great liberatjve and stimulative thoughts of a generation ago seem to hare become conservative and restrictive, almost, paralysing, influences' of ' to-day. This'is partly what is

meant hy saying that we live in a too critical age. It.is not merely the evident breakdown of old orthodoxies, in religion, politics, and general.thought, but the rapid subsidence of .the-early effervescence of tho new forma-

tive ideas. Science seems to havo overmechanised our thinking and our outlook upon_lifc, as it has our industries; tho .glow and inspiration have died out of the new thought, and havo left a dull lieritago of semi-fatalistic formulae, breeding excessive caution, and- imposing tho intellectual duty of going slow. "We arc to-day cultivating, as tho best fruit of modern culturo, a typo of broadminded, shallow-feeling man and wc-mau, who move with self-conscious slowness among the intricacies of life, shunning fanaticism and refusing to tako risks. Many familiar features of" our modern civilisation co-operate with this tendency, tho growth of material comfort and security in an ago of peace, strong governments, and economic advance. There is also the congestion of ideas and of information, pouring out upon tho mind in ways that well-nigh inhibit selection and preclude settled convictions upon issues of critical importance to the inner life. Such conditions aro injurious to tho emergeuco and free life of natural genius. Men bred in these intellectual preserves will not venture as boldly as thoir fathers into.tho,wilds of life; they will be less eager and less able to "grasp the skirts of. happy chance and breast the blows -of circumstance' in following their star. It is the general recognition of these facts that leads not a few modern counsellors to urge, justly, if somewhat vaguely, that what is wanted is 'a new religion.' For most patent among our discouragements of effort is the gradual fading of practical faith, not merely in tho personal Providence of current theologies, but in tho creative powers of man and the sustaining order of the universe. THE TORPOR OP OUR TIMES. "Take tho present case of politics as a signal example. Is it not evidently true that .wo can there do 110 great work beeanso of our unbelief, and that the marking-timo in most of our great humanitarian movements is primarily duo to a want of confidence in man's mission in tho universe? Not a few of our churches aro .alive to tho torpor of our times, -but their magical rites .seem ineffectual for exorcising it. It may be, perhaps, to -a further, fuller, wiser scionco that wo must first look for tho new impulso which shall break the spell, rovivify the dulled emotions, and kindle once more tho live imaginations to great and spiritually fruitful endeavours." •.