Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-01-02
THE NEW YEAR

CIVILIZATION. said recent cssayiSt,
~ rcstatng nm old truth, is a growth and
not n trick Consequently the man who
expects the year 1922 to become by some
sleight of hand radically different from the
year 1921 is doomed to disappointment.
But If he will take thought for moment
or two of his own attitude toward life he
will see what little ground there is for sur
prise that the things that have been prove
to be substantially the things that will be.
II nothing else enlightened him the joke
that New Years resolutions are should be
sufficient. We do not keep the resolutions
which would change our way of living.
This is because they are resolutions to
change our habits. and habit is the mo-
mentum OF q mans whole past life. IL
takes n greater force than resides in the
human will TO change at once the direction
in which that momentum is driving man
forward.
As the momentum Of society Is the sum
of the momentums of the individuals which
compose it. the general direction in which It
moves remains pretty constant Attempts
have been made to force it at right angles
from its old course, but they have never
succeeded. They have been accompanied by
wrecks like those which overtakc an auto
mobile trying to turn sharp corner at
sixty miles an hour. Inertia. that tendency
to continue moving in the direction in which
one has started, makes il difficult to bring
about any changes. II takes powerful
external force to accomplish anything and
that force Is usually powerful enough to
produce only a curve from the old drec-
tion-a curve Of 80 long radius that for
years Its variation from the old direction
is barely apparent
An external force was applied by Car
penter in Palestine nearly 1000 years ago.
If We look back over the centuries we can
see some evidence Of a change in the drec-
ton in which society is moving. But if we
look back to the beginning Of 1921 society
will seem TO have made no progress toward
better things. And at the end of 1922 the
same thing will be substantially true.
But the world, does move on toward bet
ter things And it is because Of the con-
scous resolutions to avoid the old errors
and the old injustices that men are making
every year and also because of the immor-
tai idcalsm of youth, keeping alive a belief
in progress.
As men grow old they lose their ideals.
but residuum of the early beliefs remains,
so that each generation is little further
advanced than the last. It has been said
that the dreams Of one generation become
the realities Of the next, but this is only
partly true. II it were wholly true we
should have a new world in thirty or forty
years But it is undoubted that such prog
ress as we do make is due to those few
youthful dreams which survive the sophisti-
cation and cynicism OF maturity.
We shall all have to continue TO earn our
daily bread this year as last, and We shall
all hope that II may be little easier to
do it. And it begins 10 look as If this hope
might be realized.
Material prosperity, however, does not
make the world better. II takes something
else, and that is spiritual discernmcnt and
a devotion to those things which it dis
closes. The Carpenter of Nazareth never
talked through a telephone or rode in a
steamship, an automobile or an airplane
The world has made greater material prog
rcss in the,last century than in all previous
recorded time. If its soul had expanded in
the same proportion It would b" q better
DlncP TO live in,