NOTES 453 



philosophy in a new and startling way, without the slightest regard to its 

 truth. 



For such writers as these, the secret of great poetry, the poetry in which 

 Matthew Arnold could affirm that our race would come to find a surer and 

 surer stay, would seem to be lost. And what is that secret ? It is simply 

 this — that all great poetry, all great art, brings us into communion with the 

 central harmony of the Universe. 



The business of art is to take the isolated incident and relate it to the 

 whole ; to set the temporal fact in relation to the eternal. Poetry is the 

 strongest part of our religion to-day, because, in the very simplest and 

 noblest sense, poetry is religion. 



The literature of the world to-day reflects as a matter of course the 

 world's confusion. It can be said with perfect truth that never in the 

 history of the world was there a time so fraught with danger to everything 

 that makes life worth living, or civilisation worth defending ; and yet never 

 was there a time of such immense possibilities and hope. Neither the peril 

 nor the hope can be exaggerated ; and perhaps the peril is the price that 

 we have to pay for so large a prospect. 



The field of endeavour is so wide, that it is, perhaps, more than ever 

 necessary at this moment to take a bird's-eye view of the whole field. The 

 creators of our new literature must certainly be men who have a clearer 

 consciousness of their aims and the direction in which they are going than 

 was necessary in less chaotic times. To use a word that has been worked 

 to death, they will have to be " constructive." 



It is only in time of rigid order that the destructive mind is really useful, 

 and even then it is only useful as a means to an end, the construction of 

 something better. The destructive mind can only exist when it is in a very 

 small minority. As soon as it is in a majority, the over-civilisation by which 

 it is produced comes to an end. At the present moment the destruc- 

 tive mind in literature is popular, fashionable. In fact, the whole ground 

 has shifted under our feet during the last ten years ; and, unless we realise 

 that a revision of values is necessary, there will be nothing but chaos in 

 the literary criticism of the next few years. 



We want all the new ideas, and especially all the new achievements, 

 that the new age can give us ; but one surely can hardly be regarded as a 

 reactionary if one asserts that the great new railway station at Charing 

 Cross will not be built any the more quickly if we devote our energies to the 

 destruction of Westminster Abbey. 



We talk of giving the new generation its opportunity, and our cynics 

 are laying upon its shoulders the heaviest and dreariest burden that the 

 young have ever been caUed upon to bear. We are telling them that dust 

 ends aU, and they are not always able to summon up that vast cloud of 

 witness which in all ages has declared the contrary. We are dinning into 

 their ears that there is no knowledge or device in the past that can help 

 them ; and I know of nothing sadder than the sight of the young trying to 

 conceal the intellectual wounds that our elderly cynics have inflicted upon 

 them. It is not one young man in ten thousand who wiU " revolt " against 

 the greatest work of Browning, Tennyson, or Wordsworth. 



The quietness and sadness of many of the more thoughtful young to-day 

 arises from that bitterest and most desolate feeling of the human heart — 

 " They have taken aw-iay my Master, and I know not where they have laid 

 Him." 



The New Poetry: 



It is really time that a memorial of protest be sent to the editors of many 

 of our daily and weekly periodicals against the monstrous matter which 



