THRIFT AND IDEAS

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1930, Page 7

THRIFT AND IDEAS

PARIS A CLEARING-HOUSE. 4 ; - LEADERS OP. THOUGHT'. EUROPE AND THE FUTURE. ■L * . (By Gordon ’S. Troup in “Dominion.”) enjoys a reputation for fru<&mty that borders on the extravagant. Nothing f could be more praiseworthy than the pains taken to keep historic houses intact, antique furniture at least apparently sale, venerable books and pictures in circulation, and antediluvian, locomotives and automobiles on the move. Parisians dictate the newest fashions to the rest of the world, while their wives and sisters are busy turning a pre-war coat inside out'so as to “make it do” for five years more. Stupendous frugality, that keeps even yesterday’s tea leaves for to-morrow’s cup of • . . floating relics in. an amber liquid! Rut the deep-seated prodigality of mankind must find an outlet somewhere, and in France it is Hie intellectual elite that indulges its expensive tastes. . . . in the realm of thought. The rest of the nation does not follow their example—it, enjoys the orgy vicariously, very much as the poor of England identify themselves with, the splendour of the aristocracy, and .tighten their belts with reverent contentment. COMMERCE OF IDEAS. The populace will inherit these rich baubles in the generation or so, when the elite are off, on a new fashion. Thus'the . “sans-culottes” of the Revolution took to themselves .the doctrines fopmed in the. “encyclopaedist”. school of; thought fifty.years before; and fstuclents .Ayho move among the revolutionary working classes in Paris ' to-day arp struck by the way in .which the Communist arrays 'himself in the intellect,nal hand-me-downs .of scientific determination as 'elaborated; byComte, liittre and Cousin in .the: middle of lasT^century. .. Often," again, the outworn idea is shipped abroad, and takes a new" lease pf life. "When, .for-'instance,, Europe grew tired of . wailing for the millennium foretold by ; Lamartine, Hugo, Michelet, Quinet, and all the Utopian mystics of a hundred, years ago, the commodity, sliyroed past the U.S. Customs and is now all the rage under the tradename of. “humanism” across the Atlantic. . ... .whence it threatens to return and .invade Europe! Somewhat similar has been, the discovery of the “new education” in the new continent Vflvg after Festalezzi and Rousseau had ceased to- preach it in the old. REVIVAL OF REVERENCE. Naturally, it is the present activity of the younger thinkers which, ’ in

spite, of its baffling complexity, is most interesting to us; for some of its ideas are- sure to become current coin in the future. What are the most frequently recurring notions in an effervescent discussion group in a studio of Montparnasse or in the students’ association rooms near the Sorbonne when the heated politics of the day are put aside? Each answer to this is tentative and purely personal, of course; but these did seem to he outstanding features that can be distinguished. From the first one misses the profound cynicism of the previous generations of thought—their disillusionment and refusal to take anything seriously.

Certainly irony is a treasured weapon in literary armoury still, but it does not pierce very deep. There are once again things in which “the best people” can and do believe. There is mystical, reverence for the crowd—a warm, affectionate fellow-feeling with a mass such as a theatre audience, the spectators at a review, and especially a, nation regarded as a. mighty host. One has a sense of well-being therein, and an exaltation verging on the religious. Pcetry and art arc full of this, as also of a kindred worship of the subconscious. Freud and the scientists have rediscovered this mental tract, cubist and futurist painters have delineated it, and. now literary and philosophic devotees are busy on liturgies ad theologies, so to speak, of the new worship. At the same time, Christianity : is occupying a new and large place in the thoughts of manv of these young intellectuals, many of whom are joining the Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox communions, while others stand outside the existing confessions, yet unmistakably attracted bv the university and modernity of the Gospel, which have burst upon them like a new discovrey. DEMOCRACY DISCREDITED. We are most familiar with that aspect of Christianity which adds value anxUdignity to the individual soul. Not so. these men and women, who are appealed to by the fellowship which they find in religion. Indeed, they, are very little concerned with individual human values, except insofar as their study of the unconscious, already mentioned, leads them to view peculiar types in a special way. Oneistriking example of this “impersonal”' tendency is the place occupied by,;.'women in it all. Naturally, there are;.-many young women among the most capable thinkers of them all. Their position is just the reverse of the chivalrous and affectionate supremacy accorded to them in the schools of thought and romanticism. There sex is abstracted from the field of view, they are collaborators with material restrictions; they are animated problems or solutions, rather than persons. The most general denial of personal values is, however, the assumpt-

ion everywhere apparent in their thinking and writing, that democracy is bankrupt and doomed to disappear, with its basis of human equality and individual liberty, No single system holds the field to succeed it though communism and different forms of absolutism are freely canvassed. The one point of agreement is just that

one man is not necessarily as good as another, and that, as far as women are concerned, anything prefeiable to the regime in America/ where women have the deciding voice. AMERICAN VALUES. This is the most striking because in most other respects it is American standards that have won their way in there people’s thinking. A quite obvious sign is their clothing. Gone are the black, broad-brimmed hat and wide bow-ties, the intentionally fanciful .clothing once indicative of the “moderp” or “futurist.” He is well tailored in quiet grey, and a Stetson surmounts his American-cut'hair. Pub- : licity is organised with •supcr-efficien-I cy, “service” is extolled, and life is organised so as to be full of everythingI but leisure and <oiiteinpbi.'ien. Their prefaces and art catalogues are nasterJ pieces of “salesmanship,” that refined form of psychology which is concerned with “selling an idea,” or “getting it across,” while the language of the sports field, and prize ring, and the race track, with all the rapid and pregnant slang of railroad and seafaring men, is added to the vocabulan of the elite. Thus while the superficial thinkers, the “intellectual bargain-hunters,” are deploring the Americanisation of Europe, the bolder and more fo. wardlooking thinkers find in that fact the natural and healthy prolongation of tendencies common to all Western culture. It would be n great mistake to find in all this a summary of what the workaday world will be thinking a generation hence. Many things in it will doubtless suffer loss of cliaime. But it is among the ideas there repie,seated that we may expect some vital formative influence to emerge. They are like seed, much of which is I'ertined simply to perish while a remnant produces abundant fruitage for pood or evil.