Fifty
years ago nobody would listen to a gospel of rebellion, and such a
great man as Carlyle was actually preaching that to labour is to pray.
To-day men are ready to lay down their working tools and listen to any
insurrectionist, so aware has mankind become of an impending spiritual
bankruptcy. Never in any preceding generation has the young
man standing on the threshold of life felt more unsettled. His
unsettlement has frequently turned to frenzy and anarchy in individual
cases. Never has he cast his eyes about more desperately for a way of
redemption or a spiritual leader. For him, as for all of us, the one
requirement is to find out what is the _first_ thing to do; not the
nearest, but the _first_, the most essential; the one after which all
other things naturally take their places.
It is not to wreck the great machine, for that would be to rush to the
other extreme of ruin and disorder. It is not even, as I think, to
build a new machine, for that would be to enter into a wasteful
competition wherein we should spend without profit and with much loss
of brotherly love, all our patience and our new desires.
The one way and the first way is to use and subordinate the present
machine, to limit it to its true domain, and let it be our true and
vital servant.
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