The New Stone Age in Northern Europe

by John M. Tyler

The élite of wealth, learning, and culture to-day have generally given up the search for ends in life. The old question: “What is man’s chief end?” sounds archaic. We are doubtful as to the existence or desirability of such a thing. We are, in the language of the broker, very “long” on means, but terribly “short” on ends, for which there is no market. Some day we shall again find a place for end and purpose in our philosophy and science, as in the systems of Paul, Plato, and especially of Aristotle, with his “passion for the obvious,” but at present these thinkers are back numbers. Yet we must have ends of life beyond mere survival, comfort, or luxury, and getting a living. Some scale of values, not solely and purely mercantile, would also be useful.

If the aristocracy of wealth, learning, and culture can provide us no adequate system of ends and values in life, would it not be well for us to borrow temporarily a few from the people? Might we not to good advantage even go into partnership with them, cordially accepting their ends, and loyally and honestly attempting to find the means of attaining them? The result might be a solidarity of thought, feeling, action, and final attainment superior even to those of our Neolithic ancestors.

You may possibly say: “We in America are already living under a democratic form of government—‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” Is this the statement of an accomplished fact or the definition of a dim, far-off event toward which we hope we are moving?

How far did the framers of our Constitution desire or intend that the will of the people should govern? Was the method of choosing and electing the President of the United States, as originally devised, intended to make that election popular or not? We have changed that. Did they intend that the Senate of the United States should be a means of carrying out the will of the people, or rather that it should defer or check its becoming the law of the land? Does our governmental action to-day represent the will of the people? Is it truly representative?

Perhaps our ancestors were wise in their caution. Perhaps a change has become advisable. We are asking how far government changes or modifies the people; how far governmental action, change of President or controlling party, their legislation and policies, affect the deeper currents of character and life. The people seem to me to be still continuing to go their own way and to follow quietly but firmly their own line of development, largely regardless of the votes of national Congress or State legislature, perhaps sometimes with a slight sigh of relief at their adjournment. It may be best that it is so. The independence and continuity of popular development is still maintained to-day as throughout prehistoric times.

How far do our vast accumulations of learning and discovery, our deep or superficial systems of philosophy, our splendid or decadent fin de siècle art and literature reach and affect these people? Their chief characteristic is an attempt at distinction, an artificial uncommonness, a self-consciousness entirely foreign to the thinker of the common mind.

The institution which has the widest and deepest influence on their feeling, thought, and life is the church. They generally love it, for they are “incurably religious.” It is conservative in the best sense of the word. It represents, of course imperfectly, the feelings, aspirations, and hopes of all men everywhere in all ages—in one word, of humanity. It stands for the worth, dignity, and brotherhood of man, and the fatherhood of God. It is almost alone to-day in recognizing that there are ends in life. It offers a way of progress and a reasonable ground of hope in a somewhat weary age inclined to indulge in criticism, fault-finding, and pessimism. The fact that it is generally roundly abused for its defects, mistakes, and sins of omission, for its inability to accomplish the impossible, is a sign of the great hope and confidence which we have rightly reposed in it.

The discordant chorus of mutually destructive criticisms arising from the cultured and intellectual classes seems to show that it is following fairly well a straight, right, and wise course, as Mr. Lincoln is said to have suggested concerning his own experience, plans, and leadership in a similar situation. “Wisdom is justified of her children,” but the families of the elect are small. That the church does not conform to all the theories—not to say vagaries and fads—of to-day is no discredit. Most of them will be very unfashionable to-morrow. “The fashion of this age passeth away.”

The existence of our nation evidently depends far more upon the fundamental and essential, nay obvious, old and common human virtues of very common people than upon our art and learning, the shrewdness of our politicians and profiteers, the amount of our wealth and exports, our inventions or luxuries, the winning of an election, or the defeat of any party. In one word, which we have already repeated ad nauseam, our chief business to-day is to continue the line of development clearly marked out by our benighted ancestors of prehistoric days—to exercise, develop, and strengthen the best instincts and feelings crystallized out of millennia of experience; to see to it that they are expressed in the law and practices of the land and commonwealth; and that they are not smothered under a mass of inventions of yesterday and of conventions of to-day. The fact that all this is entirely obvious should not conceal its importance.

The old message comes to us: “If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed; and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”