They say that all men are united by needs and
sympathies far more permanent and radical than anything that
temporarily divides them and sets them in opposition to each
other. If they affect art, they say that the decay in artistic
expression is due to the decay in ethics, that art when shut away
from the human interests and from the great mass of humanity is
self-destructive. They tell their elders with all the bitterness
of youth that if they expect success from them in business or
politics or in whatever lines their ambition for them has run,
they must let them consult all of humanity; that they must let
them find out what the people want and how they want it. It is
only the stronger young people, however, who formulate this. Many
of them dissipate their energies in so-called enjoyment. Others
not content with that, go on studying and go back to college for
their second degrees; not that they are especially fond of study,
but because they want something definite to do, and their powers
have been trained in the direction of mental accumulation. Many
are buried beneath this mental accumulation with lowered vitality
and discontent. Walter Besant says they have had the vision that
Peter had when he saw the great sheet let down from heaven,
wherein was neither clean nor unclean.
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