BOOKS.
YOUTH.* AMONG the qualities which distinguish French writers is the power of investing ideas with concrete form and vivid colour. Few nations can point to such a record of noble sentiments or actions in the cause of the ideal as France can. Not always right, and by no means always wise, she can still claim the merit of having shed her blood freely when the great aspira- tions which underlie humanity have called upon her to do so. If " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" have proved inadequate watch-words when separated from religion, it shows a power of grasping the meaning of ideas that they should have been
* Youth. By Charles Wagner. Translated from the French by Ernest Redwood. London : James it. Osgood, RoIlvaine, and Co.
found equal to rousing the spirit and holding the affections of a whole great nation. But, to descend to a smaller area, the power to treat ideas as concrete facts has, when allied to power of expression, produced the essayist in perfection ; and it is the want of this power which has made the essay on the more abstract side almost an exotic in English literature. When we have to deal with facts, whether of science, history, or action, our writers can compare with the best in any nation; but when the Englishman is called on to analyse things so intangible as thought and feeling, he signally fails. " Ideas " are then apt to crystallise into " purposes," and the essay to become a sermon. It is the absence of power to realise " ideas" that makes so much conversation in England fiat and uninteresting. Apart from politics, science, and personal gosaip,the average Englishman finds no solid footing. To in- troduce a question of ethics, to raise a point of philosophy, or to inquire into the meaning of a poem, is to pronounce oneself a prig, or to lay oneself open to the grave accusation of being a Bohemian, or Agnostic. Such a book as Youth, by M. Wagner, would be an impossible production from an English pen. There is not a concrete fact of any kind in it, and it is difficult to place it in any category intelligible to most English readers. But as an exhaustive analysis of the forces and aspirations which make up the positive past, present, and future of the youth of France, it is unique ; and the courage and sympathy brought to bear upon the diagnosis, and the treatment, is in all ways most admirable, and as a careful and conscientious study of human nature it cannot fail to be interesting to those who can watch the progress of humanity without passion and without despair.
Like all serious French writers, M. Wagner spares no pains in the arrangement of his work. In a first-rate analysis of its contents he divides the volume into three books, and sub- divides these again into chapters and sections. In the first book, he treats of the characteristics of the century, and all that has been gained by the inductive method of science. He paints its aims and its results, both beneficial and otherwise, and ends with an able definition of Realism and the Modern Spirit, making clear to the reader the essential differences between the two, and the justice of his stern condemnation of Realism. With all this we thoroughly agree, except perhaps in the title of Modern Spirit to what he admits belongs to no special source or period. But the definition given is plain enough, and is fearlessly set out :—" The materialistic concep- tion of the world, and such portions of our civilisation as are the temporary result of it, seem. to us antagonistic to the Modern Spirit at every point. The Modern Spirit represents the epitomised inheritance of the ages It is the sum- total condensed of the best which humanity has drawn from all the mighty labours and all the sufferings of the past. It is in the domain of thought a broad outlook over all things, a premeditation to exclude nothing, to see clearly and to find the truth as it is, without any reservation ; in a word, the true scientific spirit." In fact, it is the idealism of science so often asserted in word, so seldom, if ever, accepted in honest prac- tice by men of science, Realisni; he defines, " both scientific and practical, is the negation of all this." In thought, "realism is the most narrow provincialism one can imagine,— the true parish feeling which considers nothing outside of its limits." In affection, " realism is absolute egoism ; " in poli- tics, it " is the deification of brute-force ; in the higher grades of society it is tyranny; in the lower, unbridled licence In all ways Realism and the Modern Spirit are in conflict in the heart of existing society." What, therefore, will bring light out of this darkness, peace out of this warfare? "A return," he says, " to normal thinking and to a normal way of living," to reverence, to a feeling of responsi- bility, to work, and to simplicity." He asks,—Is this possible, and can youth rise to the situation ?
In the second part M. Wagner inquires into the charac- teristics of youth as formed by the past and dealing with the present. He takes its intellectual and moral outlook in detail ; he defines the various classes with their special aims and difficulties. He notes the effect that life produces on different kinds of temperament. He compares the youth of the people with the youth of the leisured classes. He is just to both, and sympathetic while severe. He realises that selfishness and egoism may only be the husk to the kernel of a truer life and purer aspiration. There is no despair in his utterance, though he is fully alive to the great dangers and obstacles of a national society full of evil tendencies and paralysed re- ligious thoughts. And he sets out the landmarks and helps which show how much life and hope still lie before the youth of France. Fashion and the passion for variety he considers the most enervating influence of the present time. Modern civilisation, with its " great levellers, indus- trialism and bureaucracy and fashion, have crushed out origin- ality Where can ability and originality find a place in a world so constituted P Manners and ideas must conform to the same rule as dress." No one may strike out a new line without incurring the charge of eccentricity. Perhaps this is even more the case in France than in England, though here, in certain circles, to differ is to be cast out. But in France, the desire to regulate all things has grown into a passion. Everything is under cover and supervision. At the entrance to all professions are "examinations which bar out all inde- pendent thinkers Liberty of instruction has nothing in common with intellectual liberty,"—and this from the de- scendants of the French Revolution—this the fruit of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity !
In the third part, he treats of the " Ideal Life," and opening with the question, "Is the world old P" he paints the picture of the cynics' world, and shows how untrue it all is. " The first condition," he says, "of a renaissance of true life is to throw overboard this idle talk of a blase disillusioned octo- genarian. Happy they who understand this, for it is the beginning of salvation." Then follow some helpful chapters upon life and its conditions. Firstly, its ideal ; then the con- ditions necessary for its attainment. Action, discipline, work, enjoyment, friendship,—all that makes up the sum of human existence. All are treated in careful and sympathetic detail. Nothing is unimportant in the great warfare of life. "Life demands the conquering in detail of the inevitable, and of out- side influences ; of the desires, the appetites, the passions, and the force of inertia which is in every one of us the great business of human life is to live life, and not to allow ourselves to be carried along and dominated by it. These are the things that must be taught young soldiers who wish to enter this school of war,—they must seize on life, they must keep a watch on it, and must strive to gain ground little by little on this passiveness which surprises and blinds us, in spite of our- selves, when the guard within is sleeping.
.In. a final chapter on " Belief he deals with faith, and though it is easy to see that M. Wagner does not belong to the Catholic party, he by no means dispenses with the Gospel and its divine truths. That his creed would wholly satisfy the orthodox believer, we doubt ; but he fully accepts the Fatherhood of God and the teaching of Christ. In no spirit of protest he distinguishes between verbal acceptance of divine truth and a religious life which, taking the Gospel for its guide, endeavours to live, in the fullest sense, a follower of that Gospel. This he desires to impress strongly upon young France ; a life without religion is a limited and aimless exist- ence, not worthy of the name of life. Spiritual realities are as real and more real than earthly realities. They cannot be put aside in the great science of noble living, and if to this faith in the unseen world we add hope of attaining to it, through right-thinking and right-doing in this present one, we have the foundation on. which he would build up the future of France. It is impossible to dwell on the details of this able analysis. Its thoroughness leaves little room for addition, and its exhaustiveness on all sides disarms criticism. No doubt, to English readers it is written with the peculiar French expres- sion of enthusiasm that we should be tempted to call gush ; and our English youth would not go much further in the book than its chapter of contents. But this is only another sign of what we asserted at the beginning. Ideas and their treatment appear absurd and sentimental to English ears. No brilliancy or ingenuity of style is sufficient to cover the sin of treating abstract things as if they were real. Honesty of purpose, however, is evident throughout the book ; and if its aim and teaching are frankly moral, it never becomes dull or oppressive. As a study of character in the abstract, it is keenly interesting, and its unaffected enthusiasm is its own justification. Its title is not its happiest point ; and though the translation is sound and readable, every now and then a freer rendering would have made the spirit of the book more English. Though we could wish it otherwise, our fear is that it will only be elders, as a rule, who will read Youth.
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