pack our world into the dogma of “idealism” and see all hard material
things as emanations from our spiritual self and plastic under our
hand, we were brought with a shock against some tough, incorrigible
fact that sobered our elation, and forced the unwilling recognition of
our impotence upon us again.
It is not, however, from an excess of idealism that the world suffers
to-day. But it is sick rather with the thorough-going and plausible
scientific materialism with which our philosophy and literature seem to
reek. Pure idealism has long ago proved too intoxicating a confirmation
of our hopes and desires to seduce for long our tough-mindedness.
Science has come as a challenge to both our courage and our honesty.
It covertly taunts us with being afraid to face the universe as it is;
if we look and are saddened, we have seemed to prove ourselves less
than men. For this advance of scientific speculation has seemed only
to increase the gulf between the proven and certain facts, and all the
values and significances of life that our reactions to its richness
have produced in us. And so incorrigibly honest is the texture of the
human mind that we cannot continue to believe in and cultivate things
that we no longer consider to be real. And science has undermined our
faith in the reality of a spiritual world that to our forefathers
was the only reality in the universe. We are so honest, however,
that when the scientist relegates to a subjective shadowy realm our
world of qualities and divinities, we cannot protest, but only look
wistfully after the disappearing forms. A numbness has stolen over
our religion, art, and literature, and the younger generation finds a
chill and torpor in those interests of life that should be the highest
inspiration.
Religion in these latter days becomes poetry, about which should never
be asked the question, “Is it true?” Art becomes a frivolous toy;
literature a daily chronicle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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