However unquestioningly the average boy or girl of the 1880’s may have accepted the traditional views of ethics in relation to the world, many forces of different sorts had long been operative which almost before a new generation should be born were going to blow the old world to bits and create a new one so different as to be almost unrecognizable. That the old ethics and the old sanctions should in all respects have fitted nicely in all the adjustments with that new world is surely too much to expect. And if they did not fit, the only thing to do was to face that fact and try to work out some new adjustment between ideals of conduct and the new environment. It is that need which the older generation has for the most part refused to recognize but which has been recognized by the younger, in many cases heedlessly, but in many more cases seriously, sanely, bravely. That there may be need for a revaluation of our ethics is obvious to them. Why should it be to them and not to so many of their elders? For one thing, these youngsters have been fed on a different intellectual fare from that on which their parents were fed. It must not be lost to sight, however,[Pg 67] that this fare has been prepared for them by their parents, or at least by their elders. It must also be noted that they are receiving instruction in enormously increased numbers. College is no longer for the exceptional man only, socially or intellectually. Young men of all grades, and, what is more important, young women also, are going to college by the hundreds of thousands annually. The responsibility for what happens to them there intellectually is squarely up to the older generation. The institutions are provided and run by that generation, the young are in great measure sent by it, and the instruction is almost wholly provided by it.