YOUTH AND THE AGE

Evening Star, Issue 20362, 19 December 1929, Page 8

YOUTH AND THE AGE

SEAN INGE GIVES ADVICE TO STUDENTS . 1 / ' ' A STRIKING ADDRESS Most earnestly I beg. you -to bear ■this in mind iii choosing a profession. The right work for you is the work which you can do best, work which you . can enjoy doing for its own sake; and this is the main secret of happiness in life; for in middle life your work will be your play ; and your play merely recreation. I can only offer you tho best that I have to give on some of the questions which are exercising the minds of all thoughtful men. —Dean Inge. Doan Inge, on the first Sunday of the Academical year, preached the University sermon at Cambridge, and-his* address to the undergraduates, which appears in the ‘ Cambridge Review,’ made a groat impression. The Dean said: “ It is probable that some of you are almost bewildered by the absolute freedom of thought and discussion which marks university society. You have found traditional beliefs and habits, which you have hitherto treated with respect, questioned, or even ridiculed. "Religious observances are neglected; revolutionary opinions on politics, sociology, art, and oven morals, are ' confidently advocated; everything seems to be in the_ meltingpot, even the dogmas of nineteenth century science, even the discoveries connected with the mighty names of Newton and Darwin, “It is not a time when a senior man, whatever his official position, can deal magisterially with these difficulties, as if they were'perplexing only to ■immature minds. Tho facts are far otherwise. A clever caricaturist has represented the modern man contemplating a gigantic note of interrogation. That is really the attitude of the postwar world. The dogmatist is, for the time being, silenced. We are all alike, uncertain as to what the morrow will’ bring forth, in science, in politics, in philosophy, and in religion. ‘We see not our tokens; there is not one prophet more’—or perhaps we have too many minor prophets. “ And yet it is not, as has been unwisely said, ‘ a new world since the war.’ It is the old world, and the old battle between the worse and tho better, tho better and the best. Even the problems are mainly the same; only the course, of events has been speeded up in some ways by a great convulsion, and retarded in other ways. “ The normal evolution of ideas and ideals lias been disturbed. The war broke some of the threads which secured continuity with the past; these must be joined again. Let-me remind you of the words of Mazzini, one of the liberators of Italy. ‘Those only should utter thesacred name of Progress whoso souls possess intelligence enough to comprehend tho past, and whose hearts possess sufficient poetic religion to reverence its greatness. The temple of the true believer is not tho chapel of a sect; it is a vast Pantheon. 5 . “ YOUR CHILDREN EQUALLY DISDAINFUL.’’ “ It is the function of a university to stimulate this intelligence and to excite this reference. Contempt.for their parents 5 opinions is a besetting sin of the young; you may be sure that thirty years hence your children will he equally disdainful of yours. But the spirit of a university is to bo always learning. “ I strongly deprecate the violent language often used about our industrial civilisation, which with all its faults is so far the highest achievement of co-operative effort on a large scale, ft is not true to say, with an American writer, that ‘ there are no honest goods to buy or sell, 5 and that ‘ the hideous,competitive war makes the industrial order seem like the triumph of hell and madness upon earth. 5 Still less it is true to say with the same writer that ‘ Revolution is the Christian’s business.’ Such exaggerated language is foolish, unjust, and mischievous.

“ The large majority of business men lire not by robbing their fellows, but by serving them. As Bishop Westcott said, ‘the honourable purchaser and the honourable seller meet in business for the work of citizens. Tbeir interest is the same—the right support of life.’ ‘The permanent stability and efficiency of business depend not on the evils which disfigure it, but on the virtues which it promotes. . . . If it were not the general practice of business men to tell the truth and keep their contracts, the fabric, of modei’n trade, which rests on credit, would crumble in a night.’ (Peabody.) “ The system indeed requires, and has created, a higher average level of integrity and honest service than any other that the world has seen, I put it to you that vague declamations about the intolerable conditions of modern industry do no good whatever, and a vast amount of harm.

“ Tho best way, T think, of looking at our class struggles is that they are a scramble for the enormous unearned increment created, nob by capital, nor by labour, but by the new machinery. It cannot be said to belong to anybody, and that is why it is fought for, as two hives of bees will massacre each other for a lump of honey lying between them. The amount of this unearned wealth would be colossal if the possessors of it had not squandered most of it in fighting, a kind of folly which the church has hitherto failed to stop. Tho workers also have sometimes diminished the national wealth by disloyal and unwise conspiracies. . . , IF WE WASTE TEN SHILLINGS.

“ If we thought more frequently what our money is worth in terms of human labour—if we remembered that to waste ten shillings is to waste, to render nugatory, a whole honest day’s work by somebody or other, a great deal of vulgar and selfish expenditure would be stopped l . For, remember; that which in your best moments you desire for yourselves —that your wark shall be something which you feel to be worth doing, something which as a man you can bo proud of doing well—must also he your ideal for those who directly or indirectly work for you. We have no right to waste the honest work of anybody, and no right to set anybody to do for us work which . is degrading to a free man to have to do. “ This principle will carry us a long way; and when I read statistics of the way in which boundless wealth is wasted and destroyed in the country which is now the richest in the world, I am inclined to think that right consumption is more important even than right distribution. THE CONSUMER TO BLAME. “ It is the consumer, not the capitalist, who is to blame if a large part of the labour which the workers have to do is justly felt by them to bo degrading. Every man has a right to bo making or doing something which ho knows to be useful or believes to

bo beautiful. Every citizen has a right to ‘do his bit ’ for his country in peace as in war, and most men, in every class of life, would like to do it if they were allowed. “ Periods of Puritanism and of licence seem to alternate; we are now in a period of licence, in which the priciples which have held society together since a time earlier than tho daw'ii of history are too often set aside as irrational taboos. And yet no nation has ever prospered in which family life was not held sacred. Our imaginative literature is now' deeply corrupted. There is nothing for which Englishmen have more reason to thank God than for the purity and ivholesomeness of English fiction, from Sir Walter Scott to Anthony Trollope. “ It is true that the romantic movement exaggerated the part -which sex plays in a normal human life; but it was a sublimated eroticism, purified and idealised. Now, in the new' books which I suppose most of you are reading, the element of sox is much more exaggerated, and degraded to rank sensuality. This is nob high art, it is a true picture of human life; it is just commercialised literature, a prostitution of the intellect. “ Listen to the instructions given by an American editor to bis authors. ‘Here’s a man, see? And bis wife, see? And another man. Write about that. And let the shadow' of the bed he on every page, but never Jet the bod appear.’ It seems that there are millions who enjoy these scabrous stories of a foul vice, and I cannot doubt that they are responsible for the breaking up or many homes. “ But I repeat that they are not a true picture of human life. The very large majority of marriages are faithful and happy. A happy marriage is the best thing in human life, and it will he within the roach of almost all of you. God ; is love; and the love of husband and wife brings ns nearer to the heart of reality, the know'eldge of God, than any other experience. The profanation of a sacrament is a very ugly thing, and I cannot understand why anyone should find the subject attractive.” ... There was a fine personal note in the closing words of the dean;— “Faith is a way of walking, not a way of talking, or, as Benjamin Whichcote put it. Christianity is a divine life, not a divine science. If we only talk, W'e shall very likely come to the conclusion that Christianity is played out. It is a principle of life, and it can therefore change, as only the permanent can change. But to us, as to past ages, it can bp and will be the guiding light which ive may follow over the uncharted country through which our path lies. It has not failed us who are old; it will not fail you who are young. But unless you follow the gleam, you will soon see it no longer.”