Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/209

 In France the evolution, whether conducted in the personal consciousness of a master like Bourget, or in the general mind and being, has followed the same curve to the same issue. After Renan there was but one refinement possible: M. Anatole France appeared. But the signs of dissolution have, of late, been accumulating about this specialist in patchouli and paganism. For instance, he has been translated into English. Anatomists like M. Michaut, whose book is one of the literary events of recent years, have made the tour of his philosophy from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren. Through the sociologisme of writers like Guyau, and the solidarité of writers like Bourgeois, the new France has come back to the old sanities. The experiment of the passing generation consisted essentially in an attempt to live without a brain or a conscience. That experiment, it is curious to note, was pushed to its extreme by an English-writing, French-trained Irishman, Mr. George Moore. It has reached its Vale. A rhapsodist in the last issue of the Sociological Review bewails, but at any rate confesses, the change. It is bad enough that "reactionary" illusions like patriotism should be returning to honour. But when you find University students going to MassGoing on week-days. And Bergson and mysticism, construed as a tonic of action, setting the fashion.

In the field of politics, as such, the most interesting new fact is the attitude of the Conservatives.