are so enlisted that they can be in something like equipoise.

What talent is it that is withheld from a writer like Mrs. Austin and is given to a writer like, say, H. G. Wells, who hardly knows as much or feels as profoundly as she does, yet who has twice the capacity for pouring himself into effective forms of art? Perhaps it is the talent for strategic ignorance, which she lacks as well as strategic monotony. Men and Wellses have the advantage over angels and Mrs. Austins that they rush in unafraid, no matter what the peril. Art, after all, is action, not reflection. The artist must strike, must put himself behind the blow, without too much weighing of the consequences, whether to himself or to abstract truth. Let it not appear that Mrs. Austin is always accurate or ever timid. But she has

a spacious mind, with many inlets. Within it she revolves and broods, turning over all the sciences, building up huge structures of doctrine, constantly shaping the universe in reasonable forms. Then when she comes to utter what has taken shape within her, she hesitates. Or if she does not consciously hesitate, she is nevertheless held back by the weight of her speculations. So much as she has assembled cannot crowd with impetuous haste through the outlet of her art. Perhaps, however, it is wiser not to give much credit to ignorance, strategic or otherwise. It may be that what Mrs. Austin lacks is the ability to focus her diffused powers and interests, however great, within a necessarily narrow field. The farsighted sometimes fumble when they try to do neat tasks near at hand.

comic relief. At any rate, H. G. Wells has ventured the confident guess that the world is about to trade its sackcloth for cymbals and enter an era of humor. He predicts that "between now and 1940 or 1960, when the nations will be tested by their next bloody tragedy, they will look chiefly for fun." The notion of a carnival mood settling down over Europe with its paralyzing fears, its quivering insecurity, and its contagious unrest sounds paradoxical at least. How can a continent with so much unfinished business on hand afford to take a day off? How can Job turn jester while his boils last? Clearly here is a forecast that invites closer examination.

Ten years ago the prophet did not have the ready-made audience he finds to-day, for then men still believed in the myth of automatic progress. But to-day, the smiling optimist speaks to empty benches. And all the social, economic, and political astrologers find their ante-rooms crowded with eager throngs begging for any clear glimpse into the future that is to be had. Three representative forecasts come readily to mind.

Dean Inge foresees the possibility of a new Dark Age. "We are," he says, "witnessing the suicide of a social

." He gravely asserts that he does not consider himself specially fortunate in having been born in 1860 and that he looks forward with great anxiety to the journey through life which his children will have to make. And the gloomy Dean is but the director of a vast chorus of despair. His generalizations are confirmed by an increasing throng of specialists. Biologists say he is right; that the human species is biologically deteriorating. Psychologists say he is right; that the mind of the world is becoming the unstable, credulous, irrational, simple, and immoral mind of the mob. Economists say that he is right; that the economic machine is running down, that our industrial civilization is breaking down under its own weight. Administrators say he is right; that our cities, our states, and our empires have outgrown our ability to administer them, that the administrative capacity of mankind has been over-taxed, that the human race resembles nothing as much as a nervous spinster weakly clutching at the reins of a runaway team. Moralists say he is right; that we have rebelled against the old authorities without raising new ones, and are morally drifting without rudder or compass. Oswald Spengler writes

his "Der Untergang des Abendlandes" as a sort of swan-song of Western civilization, contending that civilization is itself a sort of slow death, that races develop a "culture," which is a live and growing thing, and that this "culture" later becomes a "civilization," which is a stage of formalization and decay. Flinders Petrie flings out his thesis that there have been eight periods of civilization, and that we are now at the end of the eighth, which reached its height in the year 1800 or thereabout.

And

A. R. Orage foresees the possibility of a new Renaissance. He suspects that "a fresh advance of the human spirit is about to be made." He does not condescend to details, as do the prophets of a new Dark Age, but contents himself with saying that he senses the approach of an era of renewal in the temper and attitude of both scientists and mystics. Mary Austin, in whom science and mysticism have arrived at a subtle union, predicts the emergence of a new prophet of social redemption. And she thinks the race will recognize and rally to such a prophet, though he bears no signs and works no wonders as credentials. "Cattle in a drought will sense water much farther than they can smell it. The homing pigeon travels securely in the dark," she reminds us, and suggests that, in like manner, "Society, once it realizes its utterly lost condition, will probably rediscover its trail by some native instinct for social direction such as you cannot imagine it being without."

Against these two widely divergent outlooks, Mr. Wells throws his suggestion that we are about to enter an Era of Fun. "The world is at the present time drifting into an era of

humor, an era of fun," he said recently to Mr. Ernest Brennecke. "We 've had our fill of tragedy, high seriousness, and storm and strife for the present, and we 're about to enter into a lighter period of existence. The world is now sick of wars and tumults and is looking for lighter entertainment, in order to forget the Inferno it has just passed through. Immediate dangers are not so terribly pressing; we are all simply anxious for diversion. Between now and 1940 or 1960, when the nations will be tested by their next bloody tragedy, they will look chiefly for fun. And so I am now at work on the kind of writing that I used to do, the sort of thing which provides me with the most fun. We need fun in our architecture as well as in our literature. Why not comic relief in our buildings, a bit of flippancy in our stolid, austere cities? Yes!"

If this were said by any one of a thousand other writers we might dismiss it as merely the literary opportunism of a writer bent on turning out pot-boilers to catch a passing mood. But Mr. Wells has always had an abnormal sensitiveness to trends. His mind is seismographic. He is like the Japanese pheasant which catches, apparently before any other living thing, the first faint tremors of the impending earthquake. He is barometric. His mind senses, in advance of their coming, changes in the climate of opinion. He is not always right in his prophecies, but one always has the feeling that he is likely to be right, and that it is wise to inquire into the basis of his forecasts. What, then, is the significance of this latest Wellsian prophecy of a coming era of fun?

For one thing, it may be only

another instance of a prophet's getting tired and abdicating just when he is most needed. Prophets have that habit. It has been hinted that even Atlas now and then got tired of carrying the world. It was Walter Weyl, I think, who suggested that there are epochs in history when humanity becomes tired, when emotions age quicker than usual, and radicals disappear. In such periods of reaction, he suggested, men who might have been rebels become saints or debauchés, depending on temperament and circumstances. A man like Mr. Wells who has spent a life-time pleading for intelligent social control might conceivably give up the ghost after a war that seems to have sent all his hopes of an ordered world aglimmering.

I do not think that Mr. Wells's feeling of personal responsibility for the human race has abated. He will be to the end a gadfly to the muddlers, but there have been signs that his earlier confidence in the outcome of the human experiment has been weakening. There was an almost pathetic wistfulness in his final comment on the Washington conference in 1921. "My moods," he said, "have fluctuated between hope and despair. But I But know that I must needs go about this present world of disorder and darkness like an exile doing such feeble things as I can towards the world of my desire, now hopefully, now bitterly, as the moods may happen, until I die."

I

This weariness of prophets is as regrettable as it is understandable. Chaos is always creation's supreme opportunity. When things are going along at a fairly pleasant gait the pleader for a new order is blocked by

inertia, the most subtle and serious foe of intelligence. But in moments of wide-spread disorder the crust of custom is broken and, as drowning men clutch at straws, society may be willing to listen to new voices on the ground that any change may be for the better. But this is just the time when prophets are likely to grow sullen and content themselves with predictions of doom or go pleasurehunting in an attempt to find some personal city of refuge from their fears.

The whole world to-day is in a mood of transient hysteria. And this hysteria is only another way of saying that the world is woolgathering. On the first day a man returns from his vacation and finds his desk piled high with a hundred details awaiting his decision, he is likely to spend the day nibbling at the edges of the pile, knowing hardly where to begin, and coming to the end of the day with an irritating sense of futility. The next day he is likely to pull himself together and do more work than he ordinarily does in two days. Just so the end of the war found the world's desk piled high with a thousand and one problems all crying for instant solution. No wonder the world threw up its hands and left the office. No wonder Parliament has been deserted for the music hall. No wonder the world is tempted to say, "We'd as well go in for an era of fun. We can't manage all this. We're swamped." But this is just the time for statesmen, prophets, and publicists to refuse to spend their energies in dire prediction or on recipes for diversion, and to undertake the simple analysis of this woolgathering mood of the world. A dozen minds doing that might help give the world fresh confidence that, after a

good night's sleep, it may after all be equal to the pile of problems on its desk. Our leaders just now need to use the simple psychology of the oldfashioned family physician; instead they are frightening mankind with a medley of separate and partial diagnosis.

We are at the end of a long destructive process, in which the war was only an incident, the result of which has been the shattering of many of the ancient authorities and traditional methods of control. All the while this destructive process has been going on we have been gathering together the raw materials for a new social order. But, as before in history, we are standing paralyzed between the old world that is dead and the new that is yet unborn. Such an interim is always dangerous. We have patched together as best we could an interim ethics and an interim politics, but neither meets the situation adequately. Two dangers beset such a period.

On the one hand, humanity may scurry back to the old shelters instead of building new ones. This is happening all about us. In government the quest of the moment is for equilibrium. The three political catch-words of the last few years have all been concerned with the problem of equilibrium. Mr. Harding's "normalcy" and Bonar Law's "tranquillity" were followed by Mr. Coolidge's "stability." The goal of contemporary politics seems to be restoration rather than reconstruction. Now, we need political, social, and economic equilibrium, but there are different minds of equilibrium. There is the equilibrium of the boulder that sits unmoved through the generations, and there is the equilibrium of the moving wheel that keeps its equilib

rium only as long as it keeps its momentum. Equilibrium is the byproduct, not the main consideration of creative politics. In religion we are witnessing a scurrying back to the ancient shelters. And the educational world is caught in the sweep of a "safety first" movement.

On the other hand, humanity may simply give up and go fun-hunting. Unless the race is challenged by something more creative than a quest for equilibrium, it will inevitably grow bored and drift into an era of frivolity.

The era of fun that Mr. Wells suggests may be sinister or it may be salutary. It is not a very happy outlook if the race is to achieve no more than a moral laziness that enables it to go to hell gaily. This will be the outcome if the era of fun means only that humanity is looking for escape. If we turn to fun, as a dope-fiend turns to dope, to forget our troubles, humor will flit across the present night of disorder like a firefly, ornamenting but not illuminating the darkness. But there is a laughter of understanding as well as a laughter of escape. In its periods of greatest achievement the race has always been good-humored. "The mother of debauchery," as Neitzsche said, "is not joy, but joylessness." We are to-day in possession of all the knowledge and power we need to establish social control, but we lack the poise, the sense of relative values. A freshened sense of humor will help us to achieve poise and also to avoid an undue emphasis of one aspect of life at the expense of the others. The era of fun will be redemptive if it enables us to avoid the pathological seriousness of the reformer and to go gaily to the task of reconstruction.