Great Britain -- Social conditions; Moral conditions; Social problems
The second permanent strain of human evolution is the development of
fine sentiment. The notion that the world is becoming more
preponderantly intellectual, and that progress along our present lines
means a limitation of sentiment, is inaccurate. We are working toward
a healthy equilibrium. Sentimental people--those in whom a starving of
intellect or disuse of muscle has surcharged the nervous system with
morbid energy--will become more balanced, more intellectual. Ancient
phrases and modern shibboleths will not be able to induce in them an
instinctive warmth or agitation: they will have to pass the bar of
reason before they reach what one might call the executive department
of personality. But sentiment--deep and healthy feeling--has a
precious use in life. The development of fine sentiment is as
necessary as the cultivation of reason to the advance of man and of
civilisation. We find this illustrated in all the older civilisations
when they reach their highest point. We are picking up this strain of
development to-day, and, since civilisation is now too widely diffused
ever to perish again, we may assume that it will continue. Now this
finer sentiment of our time demands the revision of our traditions and
institutions no less imperiously than our higher intelligence does. We
cannot leave behind the callousness and brutality of the Middle Ages
and at the same time retain medieval practices. Intellectually and
emotionally we are improving, and we must expect that, as our finer
powers grow, there will be an increasing demand for revision and
reconstruction. As Mr. Watson finely says:
"Guests of the ages, at tomorrow's door
Why shrink we? The long track behind us lies,
The lamps gleam and the music throbs before,
Bidding us enter; and I count him wise
Who loves so well man's noble memories
He needs must love man's nobler hopes yet more."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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