Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/84

 70 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

in times of struggle a part of society must leave ease, embrace pain, defy their instincts, and act in many respects as irrational beings. Most of those thus devoted can form no mental picture of the good to accrue to others from these sacrifices. Hence they must be moved by unrealities and lured on by symbols. War time, therefore, with its high-beating emotion and its dire need of idealism, is the moment of triumph for the lords of the imagination. During this epoch of illusion the magicians become the chief custodians of the group consciousness, the incarnation of the social spirit. The crisis over, the tempered idealism of religion and morality resumes its sway, and Tyrtseus becomes a Pindar.

Art, with its strong human impulse, will always strive to make pearls of man's drops of sweat. But softening inevitable ills, or winning to present hardship for the sake of a future gain, is easy compared to the task of luring men to the supremest sacrifices for the sake, not of themselves or their near ones, but of society at large. In war stress the artist must be alchemist enough to turn lead into gold. Pain he must make sweet, dis- ease comely, mutilations lovely, and death beautiful. It is his to convince men

" That length of days is knowing how to die ; " T that

" Death for noble ends makes dying sweet ;" 2

" That death within the sulphurous hostile lines,' In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs, Plucks heart's-ease and not rue." 2

Ever a considered prudence strives to order the lives of men, but the artist must know how to make the current of emotion foam over restraining bank and dam.

This the artist does by appealing to the aesthetic sense. He sings the pomp and glory of war, its glitter and circumstance, and is silent as to its hideousness. Thanks to this favorite device of poets, painters, and orators, modern warfare is, despite

1 LOWELL, Ode read at Concord. 2 LOWELL, Memories Positum.