THE SPIRITUAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE PRESENT GENERATION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There was an article in the Spectator last week headed " The Civilization of the Future," in which, violence was done to the feelings of young people. I think one of them ought to be allowed to protest.
That article reviewed twentieth-century life and condemned it as unsatisfactory, because it contained everywhere the assumption that material goods were the only things of real importance. It went on to say that there was hope never- theless, because youth would come to the rescue, especially a certain section of it which happens to be strongly Christian. The great conflict in modern life, according to that article, is the conflict between the secular and the Christian spirits, and youth is on the side of the Christian. In these statements unfortunate Youth is misrepresented as usual.
For the conflict is not between the secular and the Christian. but between body and mind. Twentieth-century people are not restless and dissatisfied because they value material things too much, but because material things no longer satisfy them. The mind is everlastingly climbing above the body, and in the process people suffer and complain. That sufficiently accounts for modern discontent.
Of course, Youth is longing to relieve this discontent. Youth is certainly, as that article said, seeking for reality. But by reality it means truth and not God, knowledge and not emotion. Young people are on the side of the mind against the bc4y, they lust for new knowledge and new
ideas. If they are without a religion, and a little the worse for it, that is not their fault. In their ideas and speculations they are perfectly honest and sincere, and if the current religion does not convince them, they keep faith with them- selves and pass it by.
They do not wish it to be supposed that they can do nothing to improve modern life except by means of a religion handed to them from the past. If they are appealed to for help, they naturally expect those who appeal to accept new things from them, and not look for Christianity where it does not belong. A new religion will come in time.—I am, Sir, &c., AN UNDERGRADUATE.
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