To all simple peoples in history, as to the
young in every age, the seasons
have meant
much : not only marking out the paths of action
and
filling the cup of sense, but giving varying
colour to thought and fancy.
And even among
us to-day, so slenderly related as we are apt to
be
to the primary Nature of Things, it
would yet seem that the most
harmonious
lives—seen in glimpses now and then—
are
those whose times of effort and of
rest, of growing and of ripening, are
in
tune with the seasonal rhythm of the earth.
That is the ultimate
system in which we live ; and we
needs must respond to it, however
reluctantly, as the
finger acknowledges the heart-throbs and the fjord the
tides.
So, at this time, the voice of Spring echoes through us all, and
is felt as a tidal message in the landlocked places of our
being.
The evergreen feels it, even. For though its branches
are never bare, it
now shares in the fulness of sap that is
given to all things living.
The sun has swept through Aries, the west wind blows, the
showers soften
the earth—and behold ! the world is young
again and visionary. The
Sleeping Beauty has awaked in
fragrance; Proserpina, escaped from Hades,
goes joyously
about the fields, hearing the sprouting of the corn, the
rising
of the sap, the tiny clamour of buds new breaking into life.
Some of the Wanderers who went last Autumn have returned
with the
sunshine, and the little hills shout for joy. It is a time
of Renascence.
And not only do we rejoice because what has
been is again, but we feel
that every Spring is the epochal
dawn of a new age. This time of birth is
also the time of
head of change.
And so it will be not amiss if we try in the present foreword to
give some
hint of what our particular variation may be, what
is our conception of
that present from which we start and the
future towards which we
tend—unanimously, if in broken
order. For though we are one, we are
also many; and
the words and lines which form our book will show how
variously each, according to his or her listening, interprets
the seasonal
melody—the true song of the spheres—which we
all bow to.
And first we would say that we do not ignore the Decadence
around us, so
much spoken of. If we wished, we could not.
For while at one social level,
all the land over, it fills the gaze
with a vision of slums and the
hearing with outcries of coarse-
ness and cretinous insanity—at
another it is trumpeted as a
boast and worn as a badge and studied as the
ultimate syllable
of this world's wisdom. So many clever writers emulously
working in a rotten vineyard, so many healthy young men
eager for
the distinction of decay ! And yet, out of each other's
sight as those two
worlds lie, there is but a step between and
their kinship is unmistakable.
A literature of distinguished
style and moral vulgarity is indeed a
misproduct of the same
process that gives us in our meaner streets a
degeneration of
human type worse than what follows famine. We see also
the restless craving, high and low, for undignified excitement,
the
triumphant system of education which is the nationalised
blasting of buds,
our science metamorphosed into the man
with the muck-rake, our religion
become the symbol of a drifting
ship. All these things we see, if we are
for the most part silent
regarding them. It may be that they are a part of
us ; for even
from the evergreen the leaves fall singly at this time of
greatest
hopefulness. By reaction, at least, and by counter-influence,
we would gladly have our relation to them made certain and a
remembered thing. Nay, already we seem to see, against the
picture of
New-Birth.
And as the evil began in the social and economic sphere, it is
there that
we first mark the remedial beginnings of a better
order. A generation or
two ago, in an age committed to arid
industrialism and the keenest
practice, men happened on a
half-thought which had strayed from science
into the market-
place. That thought was the conception of the Struggle
for
Existence as Nature's sole method of progress. It was, to be
sure, a libel projected upon Nature, but it had enough truth in
it to be
mischievous for a while. For now the pitiful creed of
individualism—'Each for himself!'—seemed to have gained
unexpected sanction, as a cosmic process. Egoism and reck-
lessness,
provided they be on a large scale and out-of-doors,
were evolutionary
forces as fair as the sunlight, making ulti-
mately for the welfare of the
race. We need not wonder, then,
that the individualist waxed arrogant,
that his work prospered,
that he built cities which are a degradation unto
this day.
But all error is a deciduous growth : truths and evergreens
only are
perpetual. Science, working honestly within its own
region, has perceived
in good time how false to natural fact the
theory was, and has lately
vindicated for Nature a more logical
method and a nobler character. It has
shown how primordial,
how organically imperative the social virtues are;
how love,
not egoism, is the motive which the final history of every
species justifies ; how fostering, not ravening, is the pioneer
process in
the ascent of life. The practical inference has been
quickly made: that a
rule of conduct—'Each for himself!'—
which is not half good
enough for the beasts, has but little
relevance to human intercourse and
social action.
And thus the good sense and sympathies of the best men and
women are no
longer at heresy with the accredited teaching of
their time. A communal
quickening of the conscience is one
of the most marked notes of recent
history : that, and a grow-
ing faith in the value of all good precedents,
an increasing
man's loss. Experiments in co-operation have been an
effec-
tive object-lesson in citizenship ; the union of workers is
rapidly passing beyond its earlier character as a mere article
of war. And
this had need to be so. For the social organism
must integrate, or perish
of its own energies : and our hope
can never be in any banding together
which shall merely make
bread and butter cheaper, still less in any
massing of similar
interests which shall enable a legion to triumph over a
phalanx, or a city to prosper at the expense of a shire. Least
of
all with the desperadoes of chimerical reform can we have
anything to do.
Our trust is rather in following a subtler
indication which Nature gives
to those who study her domestic
economy : by trying to bring the most
diverse interests under
the dominance of a common civic ideal, in what to
naturalists
is known as a Symbiosis—in which the strength of one
shall
call forth, instead of cancelling, the strength of the other, in
which each shall have his place, and even his privileges un-
grudged, but shall feel that he has them through and for all.
A second way of escape we are reminded of now, when we
throw our windows
open to the morning air. The time of
the singing of birds has come, and in
the city precincts a
thousand voices are gossiping of green fields beyond,
calling
upon us to go out into the country. The decadent of idleness
is putting his yacht in trim, the decadent of another order now
buys to
himself a singing bird — a pathetic act, surely, to make
the angels weep !
Both are witnesses to one truth, and it is
an old one: that Nature,
whether you drive her out with a
pitchfork or with material progress,
never ceases trying to
come back. We can never quite lose a kindly feeling
towards
the old memories and the old menage of the race, unless our-
selves be lost altogether. The desire of them is an organic
inheritance of
the heart, and the need of them haunts our
spirit in every generation. We
are wont enough to look for
health in the rural ways of living to which
all our pedigrees so
ing, also,
would be saner and more wholesome if we listened
to the counsel of the
birds, or drew an inference from the
trees in the city square
:—
From urban to rural, from fever to fresh air—that may fitly be
the
second rallying-word of Renascence.
And let no one too promptly construe our saying, or accuse us
of ignoring
the forces which bind men to their fate. Cities
there are and must be, and
it is in cities that much of to-day's
work and breadwinning must needs be
done. But a more
open route from town to country is surely not beyond
achiev-
ing, nor is it necessary that all the travelling should tend
for ever one way. People might at least be kept from for-
getting that the
fields are still under the open sky, that the
occupations of Adam still go
on, that the nature of things and
man's relation to the earth have a
creation freshness still, some
ten miles from town. Of the moral value of
even such know-
ledge as that, and of the present-day need for it, many
things
might be said. But here we shall rather say that the means
of
salvation lie not in any unhoped migration to the solitary
places of the
land, but in a transformation of the populous
centres. While the town
grows year by year in our heart's
despite, we can determine in some degree
the aspects it shall
take. Spaces may be left for the sunlight to fill,
trees may
redeem the dismal street, fit architecture call forth the pride
of
citizenship. Some sylvan graces may brave the vicinage of the
factory, and the cultivation of flowers become a school of
manners. So we
may draw a little nearer to the City Beautiful
—the rural
town—in which joy inhabits, and righteousness has
a chance of
increase.
And we have many cities that are called to a splendid future,
if men were
only wise. Before all others there is our own,
unique in the world: 'A
city that is set upon an hill.' Its
houses are in mourning, and its
streets have been washed with
tears ; but it has kept well its brave
outlook over sea and land,
its own gifts of sanity and eagerness. Paved
with history,
echoing with romance, rich in an unbroken intellectual
tradi-
tion—what might not this city become! Meanwhile it sends
forth its sons, there being little for them here to do, and they
are
of service in carrying on the wasting business of that
metropolitan life
which resembles so much the proliferation of
a cancer. Yet the stirrings
of better things are visible here
also ; there are those who do not
hesitate to discuss already
the tendencies of the local Renascence as a
thing assured.
Howsoever that be, there are many places in the land which
seem marked just now for hope to alight upon. In a vision of
fair
cities——Houses Beautiful or about to be—we cannot miss
the
grey town in the east, splashed with sea-foam, cinctured
by green fields
and the paradise of golfers; nor the city of
industry in the west,
mistress of many ships, trafficking with
all peoples ; nor the granite
city of the north, cold and clear,
defined into dignity, softened into
music. Upon them all is the
flying shadow of a regret, the breaking light
of a promise. We
see them—with Durham, York and Liverpool,
Manchester,
Bristol, Dundee and Perth—all with a struggling
sublimity,
all dishevelled and disgraced, all alive and full of hope !
One thought more. Now is the season of young things, of
buds and seedlings,
of lambs and other children. Round the
earth has gone a cry of
resurrection, and Life renews itself
from point to point. It was in vain,
seemingly, that Autumn
withered and Winter laid waste—for behold!
the muster of
young lives, the splendour of fresh energies. The hawthorn
which the hedger stripped, leaving it a gaunt skeleton, is
clothed
again with green leaves, and among the leaves is the
shining of blossoms.
And looking at the blossoms we are
unceasingly being
made. The dust of life dries up the heart of
a generation, character is
fretted out in mean practice, thought
itself is frittered down to cheap
expedients and broken views
(for which reason, notice, every vicious age
and circle is
addicted to epigram as a means of masking its emotional
impotence, its bankruptcy of generous human qualities). With
all
this cheapening, we are driven to think, the moral wealth of
mankind must
be dwindling, the common fund will soon be
dissipated, the human average
tends steadily downward. But
such fears are fanciful ; against those evil
issues there is an
eternal safeguard. For while the love of man and maid
is a
daily discovery for some one in town and village, and while the
greater love it leads to supplies the powerfullest motive in life
and the
most pervading, human nature can never permanently
forfeit either its
dignity or its strength. The higher truths are
in the keeping of every
household, while the women educate
and the children lead the Race. Through
them in every
generation Nature conserves her good, and returns always to
the standard of normality for a fresh outfaring. We have
reason
therefore, when, looking at the Children, we feel that
the blossom is of
more purchase than the tree. Another line of
the Renascence must surely be
in the right unfolding of these,
in care for the new that is in them, in
perfecting their powers,
in teaching them to love, in helping them to
learn by living.
This, then, in the Springtime, would be our particular
variation,
if only we might achieve it perfectly: to think and to dream,
to rhyme and to picture, in unison with the music of the
Renascence.
Of that music we hear as yet only broken
snatches. But in these snatches
four chords are sounded,
which we would fain carry in our hearts— That
faith may be
had still in the friendliness of fellows; that the
love of
country is not a lost cause ; that the love of women
is
the way of life ; and that in the eternal newness of
every Child is an undying promise for the
Race.