Philosophical and scientific ideas are coming to affect the thinking of people, who may never read the books in which they are primarily expressed, with steadily increasing acceleration. It took many generations for the discovery by Copernicus that the earth was not the centre of the universe, but moved round the sun, to affect religious and other ideas.[Pg 73] It took something more than a generation for Darwin’s theory of evolution to revolutionize all our thinking. Who knows what the influence, not merely in science, but in all social thinking, including ethics, may very soon be of Einstein’s theory of relativity? It has already had great influence, in spite of the fact that those of us who are not mathematicians cannot comprehend it. But to be told—to mention only one aspect of his theory—that there is no such thing as a “correct size” of anything, but that for human knowledge the size of anything depends on the relative speed maintained by the observer and the thing observed, is, literally, appalling. This fact brings to us in startling fashion and in mathematical terms the realization that things are not absolute but relative. The theory of relativity is far more of a solvent for the eternal verities than either the Copernican or the Darwinian theory, and its effect, already being felt, is bound to be profound in realms of thought seemingly remote from physics. III In a few words, the young generation has a religion, but it is nebulous. It may to some extent serve, at moments when it is felt, as a source of strength, as an aid to being straight and decent. At many times it is not felt. In any case it issues no commands covering specific conduct. It has no decalogue, and the question of what is decent and straight is left open by it. The youngster’s ethics, therefore, have no religious sanction which points out any specific rules of conduct. On the other hand, through his anthropological and sociological studies he comes to realize that there are[Pg 74] innumerable ways of living and choices of conduct, all of which have been or are thought right and moral by some people, sometime, somewhere. What constitutes right conduct depends, therefore, apparently on conditions and not on any eternal rules. The prevailing temperament of his nation and its most popular philosophy teach him that the only test of validity is “work-ability”—that if an idea has good results it is good, if it has not it is bad. The world has never been a very satisfactorily organized place, and nowadays, what with the results of the war, our socially developed conscience, and all the conditions of present life, it can hardly be said to look like an outstanding success. Those who have lived long have for the most part become either reconciled or hopeless over the situation. But for the young it is different, fortunately. They see the poverty, the social injustice, the frequent emotional maladjustment between the individual