WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?

We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds.

It is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation, of life and love.

The poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.

A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old moral rules and formul?, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The one sin now held unpardonable is [40]hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition, any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between good and evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the older days frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed our ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best selves.

But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no one said precisely where you went to."

Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope: certainly not of any charity whatsoever. The ego they would exalt is a mere riot of moods. They snatch at a moment\'s joy, utter a moment\'s emotion, act on a moment\'s thought. There is no idea of "finding" oneself before expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung [41]out upon a bewildered world; above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old, the middle-aged, or any that bear another\'s burden. Such tempestuous demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on a curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth\'s capacity for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die unless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate any idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the higher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one\'s fellow-men.

No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly miserable human beings. They quickly cease to have any self to express. Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard of honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series of unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment.

Miss Sheila Kaye Smith does not teach this [42]ideal in Joanna Godden, but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. The heroine of that profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to snatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on "blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, all lost."

A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression, is The Sleeping Fire of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its author as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."

Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "a human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled" at any man\'s mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerable practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared "she could be no end o\' fun, if she\'d only let herself go." In fact, he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before the last supper [43]dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as good as she gets. None of your stolen pecks."

As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . . as of one yielding to an an?sthetic . . . was stealing over her. Husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away."

And at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "Feeling herself a live coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately returned the pressure of his lips."

This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact," in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is no attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that may come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples up at the first chance shot.

No wonder that, after some months\' experimenting among men, she grows "afraid—[44]afraid! . . . now I know I\'m liable to—to kindle, suddenly, inexplicably. . . . There\'s a man here—one of those to-night. He\'s unclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. And now apparently I do. The \'sleeping fire\' . . . he sees it in me and tries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I\'m frightened. Suppose one day that type ceased to sicken me. I\'ve seen the demi-monde at the tables. Their faces haunt me. They began with the sleeping fire, and men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it\'s been like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me, help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can strike and destroy."

So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—for the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone."

We admit that Mr. Henderson\'s moral is sound enough; he has, indeed, found "the way of salvation." But he has not drawn for us the "innately decent and fine woman." [45]Viva is weak and abnormally sensual from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while"; inherited from clean-living forebears.

The danger for her was exceptional, not "that natural yearning" against which "all women must be eternally on their guard." Her husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "against her mother\'s tendency."

We have a precisely similar situation in The Mother of All Living by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the world. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. The abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her husband wooed and won.

This is, perhaps, why Mr.............