Millennial reign

“ Here the swarming millions yet to be, molded by free institutions217 and universal education into a refined and homogeneous race, multiplying their material comforts by now undreamed-of physical appliances, adorning their homes until each family shall dwell, self-centered, in a world of beauty as in a shining sphere of crystal, and warming in the sunshine of God's presence as they grow in moral stature nearer to His throne,—here the coming millions will advance to the millennial fruition promised as the goal of earthly hope and effort. ”

“ Abstractly considered, such a society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial society the saint would be entirely adapted. ”

“ Bagehot somewhere says, only a short time ago it was the common belief that, if everybody would set to work in good earnest, human society might be renovated and perfected and brought to a millennial condition in about ten years. ”

“ For that reason men of every nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth in the political equilibrium of the generations. ”

“ From this period for many years all the youth of that tremendous Empire—every boy, every girl, from the highest to the lowest, was to rise up, alone, uninfluenced, demanding of age and guardianship the right to go forth into the world to work, to study—to learn, in fine, how a great country might in the future be developed. ”

“ We are too apt to be afraid of the men, and take to the children as our pis-aller, covering our despair of dealing with the majority, the adult population, in a pompous display of machinery for influencing that very small fraction, the children. “Oh, but the destinies of the empire depend on the rising generation!” Who has told us so?—how do we know that they do not depend on the risen generation? Who are likely to do more work during our lifetime, for good and evil,—those who are now between fifteen and five-and-forty, or those who are between five and fifteen? ”

“ When this question is solved then is the chief millennium reached.’
‘Let me have a word now,’ said Sadbag, whose eyes glistened with the enthusiasm that inspired him for the moment; ‘when the insignia of Royalty is done away with; when 169kings are a luxury of the past, and Emperors are persons of bygone history; when liberty and equality are recognised everywhere; when exorbitant taxes are no longer levied on the poor; when society recognises the duty of honesty and purity towards each other, and the golden rule is abided by, then is the millennium! Each of us has his goal, his ideal ”

“ It is curious how deeply imbedded in ordinary discourse are traces of the conviction that childhood, maturity, and old age, are stages in the corporate, as they are in the individual, life. “A young and vigorous nation,” “a decrepit and moribund civilisation”—phrases like these, and scores of others containing the same implication, come as trippingly from the tongue as if they suggested no difficulty and called for no explanation. ”

“ But the time comes when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable that a younger generation should take the government of the world, should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest period of life. ”

“ From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world. ”

“ The older generation still uses the old ideas for the new problem. Whatever new wine it finds must be poured into the old bottles.
Where are the leaders among the older generation in America who, with luminous faith and intelligence, are rallying around them the disintegrated numbers of idealistic youth, as Bergson and Barrès and Jaurès have done in France? A few years ago there seemed to be a promise of a forward movement toward Democracy, led by embattled veterans in a war against privilege. But how soon the older generation became wearied in the march! ”

“ The younger generation, inspired with the hopes, aspirations, and energy of youth, stirred by the achievements, opportunities, and general prosperity of a truly great Nation, and encouraged by the possibilities of a liberal education, cannot afford to stake its future on the eking out of a mere existence under the shadow of a rapidly increasing farm mortgage or the threatening omen of a deserted homestead. ”

“ Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for that will be good for the present, because the virtues of either age, may correct the defects of both; and good for succession, that young men may be learners, while men in age are actors; and, lastly, good for extern accidents, because authority followeth old men, and favor and popularity, youth. But for the moral part, perhaps youth will have the pre-eminence, as age hath for the politic. ”

“ The political meaning of the new social organization, its very basis, its token, and the guarantee for its continuance, are in a certain sharing of the governing power with the middle classes, classes who are the true strength of modern societies, the centre of morality, of all good sentiments and intelligent work. But we cannot conceal from ourselves that the principle of election, extended now to almost every function, has brought the interests of ambition, and the passion for being something, excuse the word, into social depths where they ought never to have penetrated. ”

“ In the midst of this civil war, a young man, scarcely one-and-twenty would be very likely rapidly to rise to be the Prime Minister of our great commercial country! for although, if this world teaches us any one moral, it is, that youth and inexperience are synonymous; yet when talent only be the palm, surely none have better right to contend for it than the young! ”

“ If the present system does not undergo some change, I much apprehend we shall see a degenerate and sinking race, such as came to exist among the higher classes in France before the Revolution, and such as now deforms a large part of the noblest families in Spain; [5] but if the spirit of improvement, so happily awakened, continues—as I trust it will—to animate those concerned in the formation of the young members of society, we shall soon be able, I doubt not, to exhibit an active, beautiful, and wise generation, of which the age may be proud. ”

“ An era that sees a populace always clamouring for the Millennium, which ranting demagogues have never ceased to promise: a Millennium to be achieved alternatively through the extermination of Aristocracy, of Titles, of Riches, and the abrogation of Priesthood: through dethroned royalty and desecrated altars, through an army without leadership, or an Assembly without power. ”

“ From the combination of these losses on the battle-field and in the cradle arises what the biologist Doctor Saleeby terms “the menace of the dearth of youth.” The European populations to-day contain an undue proportion of adults and the aged, while “the younger generation is no longer knocking at the door. We senescents may grow old in peace; but the facts bode ill for our national future.” ”

“ They made and sold for all the world. Whether the very different future which we are now entering is to be laid to their door or to our own, that generation will still remain one of the principal things in English history, like the Elizabethan generation, or the group of men who organized the Seven Years' War, or the group of men who fought in the Peninsula. And of that generation the note of health and of stability is represented by its humour. ”

“ Each generation must send forth its valorous and adventurous youth to the proof of its manhood in battle, while those who survived wounds and disease became the heroes of their reminiscences, inciting the younger generation to emulation. With each step in the evolution learning had spread and civilization developed.
Since the last war universal conscription had gone hand in hand with popular education and the telegraphic click of the news of the world to all breakfast tables and cheap travel and better living. ”

“ All through the past century the best and noblest of each generation, wherever and whenever they could find newspapers or magazines that dared to publish their utterances, poured forth, in the same earnest tones, similar prophecies and appeals. But in vain. Each generation found the condition of things more desperate and hopeless: every year multiplied the calamities of the world. The fools could not see that a great cause must continue to operate until checked by some higher power. ”

“ And we must tap the talent pool that still lies dormant in our 69 million people, the majority of whom are under 40 years of age. We must break the remaining concentration of economic and political power in a few -- so that we can unleash the creativity, the resourcefulness and the entrepreneurship in the many. ”

“ With this as our experience, how can we convince young people that a world government would be a good thing?
My answer is to stress function over form. Gen-X is less interested in, and in fact is turned off by "institutions" and grand plans. "Today's twentysomethings may be cynical about institutions, but they remain remarkably optimistic as individuals" concludes Time's article on Gen-X. We are more into function. WFA should approach our youth recruitment talking about "tackling world problems at the appropriate level" and "governance." ”

“ This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation—the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. ”

“ Its quarrel is not with the past, but with the present, where its elders are so obviously powerful, and no cause seems lost if it seem to threaten that power. Does cultivated youth ever really love the future, where the eye can discover no persecuted Royalty hidden among oak leaves, though from it certainly does come so much proletarian rhetoric? I was unlike others of my generation in one thing only. ”

“ Then, for reasons which have never, I think, been fully explained, the deathrate rapidly declined, at the very time when economic conditions demanded a larger population. This is the more remarkable, when we remember the manner in which young children were treated before the Factory Acts.
Political power was in the hands of a genuine aristocracy, who did more to deserve their privileges than any other aristocracy of modern times. They were, as a class, highly cultivated men, who had travelled much on the Continent, and mixed in society there. ”

“ Age should bring wisdom. The age specified is great enough to permit the passions of youth to become moderated and the judgment matured. As a matter of fact, the youngest president yet elected was much older than this minimum. In monarchies the rulers are sometimes children. It cannot be so with us.
[4] But a "natural born citizen," even, may live so long in a foreign country as to lose his interest in his native land. This provision is intended to preclude the election of such persons to the presidency. They might seek it at the instance of a foreign government, for sinister purposes. ”

“ The succeeding generation inherit their consequences in the shape of high taxation and the attempts to mend and reconstruct the dislocated national life. The horror has gone but the memory remains. To the succeeding generation they become episodes read of in the cold pages of history, and then at last they fade into mere names—a battle with a vaguely remembered date. ”

“ And a youthful transformation of what exists is in no way characteristic of those who are now young; it is present solely in the economic system, in the dynamism of capitalism. It is things that rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly replacing each another. ”

“ Rather was it that they encouraged a middle class to rise. Even with no longer a perpetuation of power through landed estates, the old aristocracy has so far continued to exert the preponderating influence in national leadership. ”

“ Each new generation, consumed in its own heat in less than ten years, believed steadfastly that it alone had reached the zenith, and hurled its predecessors down and stoned them: each new generation bestirred itself, and shouted, and took to itself the power and the glory, only to be hurled down and stoned in turn by its successors and so to disappear. ”

“ But, after all, it leaves the older generation still untouched, and the assimilation of the younger can hardly be complete or certain as long as the homes of the parents remain comparatively unaffected. Social, economic and intellectual conditions are changing at a rate undreamed of in past history. ”

“ We still surrender to semi-old men the authority to govern us, think for us, act for us. We endow them with spiritual as well as practical leadership, and allow them to strip youth of its opportunities and powers. We permit them to rule not only their own but all the generations. If we could be sure that their rule meant progress, we could trust them to guide us. But, in these times at least, it seems to mean nothing so much as a last fight for a discredited undemocratic philosophy that modern youth are completely through with. ”