XI Have We Already Forgotten the Natural Loyalty of Youth. How Are We Paying — Our Debt to Them?
Honour the dead, care for those who saved the homes: for, as we have here striven to show, never before has youth been in such dire need of sympathy, understanding, and help. Too soon we forget that war blasts humanity, a state of war makes us all brutes, degrades every man, woman, and child, in every part of their nature, for all hours of their lives. Youth, indeed, was rudderless through no fault of its own and, when least prepared, most needing a clear vision, it has been tossed into such a medley of mad notions as never before deluded mankind.
We were, indeed, at the approach of Dawn; new light was breaking over the mists of Victorian morality. To recover the real progress, which has been diverted into a mere riot of attack, we have endeavoured to gather together, examine, and clearly state what the “new” morality really means and leads to, how it has come to be upheld. Without denying in some the honest seeking of truth, we have sought to make clear where the teaching around us to-day is untrue, destructive of reality, and poisonous in its effect.
As now proclaimed, this teaching cannot escape its responsibility for much evil talk, thought, and emotion, for many black deeds. Under its influence, thoughtless humanity is fast coming to believe and say that all love, or even comradeship, between the sexes without immediate physical satisfaction is hypocritical and unreal; that is, cramped by forced self-denial or an evidence of cold blood and incapacity for real love. The young live feverishly by this conviction: they flaunt their passions, their falls and their conquests, before the world. They jest at sin, sneer at restraint, and spare no thought for purity. Kindness, courtesy, thought for others, are cast to the winds. At all costs, they must be themselves, and snatch the hour’s joy.
Such feverish disorder of emotion—the swooning delirium, sudden fires, and complete abandon of balance—is not natural to wholesome humanity; but, as we have seen, it can easily be produced by suggestion. Now that popular novelists casually produce drama and crude excitement by smart tales of such over-sexed human beings, an immense body of readers, without knowledge or experience to combat the falseness of the picture, have come to accept it as a normal record of real life. They are adapting themselves to its alluring thrills, modelling their lives to its pattern, and acting upon its teaching. From men and women, they may too soon become mere male and female, as God did not create them. The whole history of mankind, our centuries of growth from cave-man to the last word in civilization, have established truths which remain true. Our right to be ourselves can never wipe out our duty to others. There is an eternal and infinite difference between Right and Wrong, and those who ignore this cannot escape the penalty. Love is not lust. All that is finest and noblest in human nature has been built upon a pure and constant loyalty; of which the eternal symbol (however smirched and stained by folly or sin) is marriage and the home. Character, which ultimately rules the world, grows straight amidst the influence of family life. The permanent ideal for man and woman; creating new life, bearing and cherishing each new generation, is a complete union of the whole nature, spiritual and physical, whereof the spiritual bond must be supreme.
Self-control, restraint, and, if needs be, Sacrifice, are the highest expression of Self.
If we may not refuse new light, we can never forget old truth. The foundations of morality have been established by our gradual emergence from that state of savagery, into which we were again for a few years submerged by war.
Those who blot out the Vision attained by centuries of man’s upward fight, thereby confounding the ultimate issues of right and wrong, setting the body above the soul, are intoxicating and poisoning humanity as with a deadly drug.
From A. M. PHILPOT’S LIST
BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. I
THE
FALLACIES of SPIRITUALISM
By A. LEONARD SUMMERS
SOME EARLY REVIEWS
“This booklet is an extremely able and interesting criticism of a craze that has become widespread with the most pernicious results. The writer does not limit himself to an account of the sensational frauds that have been exposed on both sides of the Atlantic, but he analyses the evidence of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Mr. Vale Owen, and other distinguished spiritualists, with merciless severity and very great acumen.”—Freeman’s Journal.
“Lucidly written, and without bitterness, Mr. Summers makes out a good case for the ‘againsts’ in this little book.”—Glasgow Citizen.
“As a popular indictment, Mr. Summer’s pamphlet is likely to make a considerable impression. It remains for his opponents to offer as succinct and well-documented an answer.”—The Times Literary Supplement.
BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. II
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA IN
THE OLD TESTAMENT
By SARAH A. TOOLEY
Scenes and occurrences in the Old Testament, so familiar as to have lost their real significance, are here described in a way that will be of extraordinary interest to the psychic student of to-day.
BLUE BOOKLET, VOL. III
MORAL POISON IN
MODERN FICTION
By R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON
The truth about certain new theories of morality, taught in some modern novels, assumed in others, and to some extent already put in practice by young readers, frankly and carefully examined, with an exposure of their probable evil influence. Extracts from novels by well-known writers give point and interest to what amounts to an unhesitating condemnation.
NEW BOOK BY TROWARD.
This important volume, which includes practically all Troward’s unpublished manuscripts and magazine articles, concludes the series of books on Mental Science by an author who was described by the late Archdeacon Wilberforce as “one of the greatest thinkers of our times.” It is significant to note that these books, beautiful in their sustained clearness of thought and style, are now included in the curriculum of societies, clubs and classes devoted to the study of Mental Science.
Complete List of the Series.
Mental Science defined as the proper understanding of Livingness, based on the distinction between Spirit and Matter; i.e., Thought and Form.
An exposition of the relation of the Individual to the Universal Originating Principle of the Cosmos—the Mind of God.
A study of spiritual evolution which, the author maintains, is but another aspect of physical evolution.
“No thinker should be without this book.”—The late Archdeacon Wilberforce.
Troward here proposes that “we shall re-read the Bible on the supposition that Jesus and these other speakers really meant what they said, which is a startling proposition from the standpoint of traditional interpretation.” An illumination for those who seek to render the older theology into terms of modern science.
An arresting pamphlet upon the Great War; providing clues to prophetic utterances of the Bible concerning the Time of the End. To-day is the End of the Age.
In this posthumous volume, Troward formulates a final statement of his beliefs after long investigation and profound study in the field of Mental Science.
A. M. PHILPOT LTD, 69 Great Russell Street, W.C. 1