Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/113

 ing the pages of his Juvenal or his Petrarch or even by running through the files of an illustrated New York weekly from 1860 to 1890. On the basis of rouge and "rag-time" and startling ups and downs of feminine apparel, the ultimate decline of civilization has probably been predicted every thirty years since the time of Queen Semiramis.

The historically-minded critic will be slow to assert that the manners and morals of our younger generation are, on the whole, any worse than those of the older generation, or any better. Yet he may still insist that they are significantly different. For the tendency of young people is to react against both the virtues and the defects of their elders. The father is a hard drinker but the son in disgust resolves not to touch a drop—that sometimes happens. Or the mother reads. The Ladies' Home Journal and the daughter The Liberator: that also happens. This sort of alternation is not invariable; yet, as we say, an excess in one direction tends to produce an excess in the opposite direction. And between one generation and the next morality does sometimes shift its centre.

Morality has two principal centres.

At one period, we have a morality of which the centre is within the individual. It works