YOUTH AND LIFE BY RANDOLPH S. BOURNE [Illustration: Publisher mark] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1913 COPYRIGHT, 1911, 1912, AND 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY RANDOLPH S. BOURNE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1913_ CONTENTS I. YOUTH 1 II. THE TWO GENERATIONS 29 III. THE VIRTUES AND THE SEASONS OF LIFE 53 IV. THE LIFE OF IRONY 99 V. THE EXCITEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP 133 VI. THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE 153 VII. SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION 189 VIII. THE MYSTIC TURNED RADICAL 205 IX. SEEING, WE SEE NOT 215 X. THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 225 XI. THE DODGING OF PRESSURES 247 XII. FOR RADICALS 289 XIII. THE COLLEGE: AN INNER VIEW 311 XIV. A PHILOSOPHY OF HANDICAP 337 I YOUTH How shall I describe Youth, the time of contradictions and anomalies? The fiercest radicalisms, the most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible gayety, bitter melancholy,--all these moods are equally part of that showery springtime of life. One thing, at least, it clearly is: a great, rich rush and flood of energy. It is as if the store of life had been accumulating through the slow, placid years of childhood, and suddenly the dam had broken and the waters rushed out, furious and uncontrolled, before settling down into the quieter channels of middle life. The youth is suddenly seized with a poignant consciousness of being alive, which is quite wanting to the naïve unquestioning existence of the child. He finds himself overpoweringly urged toward self-expression. Just as the baby, born into a “great, blooming, buzzing confusion,” and attracted by every movement, every color, every sound, kicks madly in response in all directions, and only gradually gets his movements coördinated into the orderly and precise movements of his elders,--so the youth suddenly born into a confusion of ideas and appeals and traditions responds in the most chaotic way to this new spiritual world, and only gradually learns to find his way about in it, and get his thoughts and feelings into some kind of order.