The quest of the passing age was for Gold. The real meaning and symbol and glory of gold, as the highest, smoothest and most finished of minerals, has been lost in the bulkier products and possessions it meant to measure and signify. More and more has gold itself hid away from vulgar hands and been represented by objects intrinsically inferior. We now behold a civilisation destroying itself for commodities and destroying the commodities for which the destruction began.
Gold itself will serve Beauty in the coming age; commerce will serve æsthetics. The lovers of Beauty begin with the sand, with the clay. They love nature from the ground up; they are fervent for light and air, for sun and sky and water, for fruits and grains and bees, for stars and rains and romances. They say such things are holy. Words are inadequate for their loves and appreciations. They find the ways to love God infinite. They see Him in stone and stream; they see Him in the eyes of the deep down men; they see Him risen and inevitable in the eyes of their lovers....
Straight goodness will not do for the New Race, nor straight intellectuality. Artists, singers, painters and idealists will be the heroes of the generations to come, for they will add the quest of Beauty to the unwashed goodness of the saints and pilgrims.
These are but flaring points; one is embarrassed in short space because of a myriad things to say. Free verse is a sign of the New, also the dream of a free world and the planetary patriotism. The immanence of the spirit of all things, is a sign; the sense of the underlying oneness of humanity; not alone the Fatherland, but the Kinterland, where new Fountains are established and sages and masters come for inspiration—all these, like a passing train of wonder, a glimpse of many cars....
I think I can bring the picture in closer by using a few pages of work from one of the young men with me. His name is Steve. I called him The Dakotan,[1] in the book, Child and Country. We've romped and ridden together for three years, and I've known Steve better every day—still far from the end. The rest of the chapter is Steve's writing:
NORTH AMERICANS
Out of the centuries of moil and mix and fuse of Europe, the orient and the north countries, a gleaming archetype has emerged here which may be called the real North Americans. They are scattered here and there among the younger generation—young people new in name only; in soul they are as old as Zeus. Often they are strangers in their father's house. They blend the mind of the occidental with the soul of the east; splendid firstlings of an untried future. They betray themselves by their genius. Heredity is the first fetich overthrown by them.
From the first they are a law unto themselves. They cast off churches, codes, creeds, schools and parents as preliminary steps in their teens. In the twenties they are prodigies, leaders in the arts or the revolutions. It is their aim to over-reach themselves, not to further a type. Very early they conjourn together in secret and obscure places, revolting against life as it is lived, like a handful of white dwellers in a foreign city.