52 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
civilization we appear to be in a parlous state, at least if one’s 
view is colored for him by the modern prophet of pessimism. 
Yet these clever and incisive writers of our decade are more 
than masters of the telling phrase. There is ample evidence that 
things are not as they were with our fathers. Everywhere cables 
are slipping, moorings are lost; the thought of our age flounders 
amidst the tide-rips, the cross and shifting currents of an un¬ 
charted sea. Denial, rebellion, daring experimentation, are at the 
wheel, and the compass has evidently been thrown overboard. 
Thomas Hardy ventures the opinion that it would not be at all amiss 
if man should undertake the education of God as an effort toward 
the general improvement of things. 
Modernity has entered the classic halls of learning—there is no 
doubt of that. Indeed, the once sacred precincts are proving 
particularly fertile soil for the growth of the new idea. In the 
better institutions, there is apparently little hostility on the part 
of administration and faculty towards the intellectual insurgency, 
wherever it is thoughtful and genuine. Unfortunately, college 
youth often assume an easy cynicism which in its sublime ignor¬ 
ance would be impertinent if it were not so absurd. It flaunts 
itself in the face of the instructor with such sophomoric assurance 
and condescending tolerance that the teacher may well be congrat¬ 
ulated on his self-control in not wringing the necks of his pro¬ 
teges. But if the instructor has the grace of God in his heart to 
stand this arrant cockiness, he has reason to welcome the condition 
of which it is a symptom. It is the evidence nearly always of 
intellectual alertness, a thing vastly to be desired in the student, 
and all too frequently sought in vain. Cynicism and rebellion are 
not diseases of youth to be treated pathologically. They are grow¬ 
ing pains, signs of healthy expansion in the body politic. “The 
most hopeful thing of intellectual promise in America today, ’ ’ says 
a daring modern writer, “is the contempt of the younger people 
for their elders; they are restless, uneasy, disaffected. ’ ’ However 
much our civilization may resent this contempt, it can seek within 
itself at least partial cause for its repudiation by the rising gen¬ 
eration. Too often has it wrapped its faith about with the trap¬ 
pings of sanctity, and sacrificed logic to the promptings of mere 
sentiment. Striking as were the changes in the thinking of the 
nineteenth century, we and our fathers have been curiously help¬ 
less in our efforts to throw off the inhibitions of tradition. Again 
and again the cake of custom has not been broken up. The intrepid 
