May 1931
216
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
\ \ Ü Sïeart to S~Ceart clÔ)ith 0 u r °ïbung Readers B y F lo re n c e N y e W h ifw ell —•
Rainbow {Continued, from last month)
“It is all so new to me that I have a better perspec tive, I think. You see I am- really a product of a bygone generation of civilization. Secluded (wisely or unwise ly—who shall say?) by a couple of dear artistic parents! Oh yes! I used to read—English literature up to George Meredith, and French, up to Rostand, Goethe and Schil ler also, and even Ibsen! But Freud! And Schopenhau er! Never! Horrible!” “They are horrible —and worse,” agreed Althea. Constance interposed in her quietest tone: “I think with Beatrice that Christians have no right to dabble in psycho-analytical lore. All that has its place in sanitar iums and in the hands of those who know how to use it wisely. But to have such terms broadcast among teen age young people., and to allow them to play with edged tools— ! Why, only last night I heard that college Fresh man say to his younger brother, ‘Sis is really getting a complex on the General. If we don’t watch out, it’ll be a repression.’ ” The girls all shouted, and then Beatrice said soberly: “Don’t you see what it is doing to youth? It’s rob bing many of them of their bloom. I mean they’ve taken away the romance of early life by this terrible diagonsis of normal human emotions. You talk of a girl having a mother-complex. Why not say, ‘That girl had a wise and tender mother, whose influence she will feel all dur ing her life’?. I believe there would be fewer flaming youth tragedies if many of the younger generation were not being shamed out of their allegiance to the ideals of their parents by the awful fear of being accused of a mother-complex.” “Mother says that this younger set mystify and fas cinate her,” remarked Althea. “She says they are so silent and inscrutable. She thinks they possess a great deal of new power. She finds that their elders amuse them. ‘They tolerate us merely,’ she says. ‘We know nothing at all about what they think or feel, and very little about what they do. I hardly dared to tell your brother when to go to bed, after he was twelve or so. He would look at me in a peculiar, silent way, and what he did thereafter I never used to discover.’ ” ' “How can she be mystified and fascinated with them for that?” cried Beatrice. “It’s simply insubordination, lawlessness, youthful communism, and all that. You know that decadent Rome really owed her existence as a power to her reverence for the wisdom of her older men and to their advice. Didn’t a senator have to be more than sixty years of age in order to hold office?” “I don’t know! I am sure, however, that none of our
“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud” (Gen. 9:12-14). OD remembered Noah, Beatrice dear!” “Yes! And He will remember—does re member—me, you mean! The time will come when this storm-driven ark, that is myself, will rest upon some mountain top of an Ararat, and I shall be sending forth a dove, perhaps!” Two weeks had gone rapidly by. The white sunlight of spring beat down upon the earth. It was Palm Sunday. The girls had chosen to walk out upon a road associated with the Master and Saviour of men, who had walked there, they had been told, twenty centuries ago. They had been talking and wondering if it might not have been along this roadway that the children sang their hosannas and the people threw down their garments and palm branches when He came, riding quietly, upon the ass’s colt. Then the conversation had drifted to Beatrice’s prob lems. They were many. Constance and Althea entered into them as heartily as only genuine women can enter into the trouble or sorrow of their friends. “Speak more hopefully, dear. God .is able!” Althea cried, tie r white hat was pushed slightly back, allow ing rings of red-gold hair to show themselves. Her violet eyes were dark with feeling. “I do believe it,” answered Beatrice. “But I think I am still so sore from the many strokes that the world has dealt me that I do not, as you say, Althea, react normally!” “You scorn psycho-analysis!’’ : “Yes, because it tends to make the sufferer suffer more. It is a fearful menace in unwise hands. Inhibitions and repressions and complexes! I hate the terms,” Beatrice cried. “What are people, old and young, seeking by them ? Release!” “Release? Most people call it wanting to enjoy life.” “Release covers it—release from care; release from pain, sorrow, illness, and most of all from sin ! Flaming youth plunges into wild parties, wants release from stand ardized living, monotony of office and classroom! Why drag in psycho-analysis ? It won’t deliver us from sin!” “For a mountain nymph, but recently emerged from her virgin fastnesses, you have accumulated a vast amount of information, Beatrice.”
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