Questions of our day / Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Questions of our day / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/336 page 34
    XII HOW ABOUT SPIRITUAL AWAKENINGS? Distinguished missionaries, several rabbis, appar¬ ently Pope Pius XI, with other observers of various faiths, hold that the world is being prepared for an extensive spiritual awakening. On the other hand are those whose current message is of very different tenor. Personally, though of optimistic bent, my later years of contact with the world reveal symptoms of discouraging indifference to things of the spirit, indeed a drift to altogether lower ideals. Sometimes I feel that the real 'depression' which besets the world to-day is this lapse. 'Watchman, what of the night?' is not a question for missionaries and preachers alone. That is why I address to you in no attitude of idle curiosity the earnest inquiry; Just what is your reaction? Like the witnesses quoted by my correspondent, I also am persuaded of extensive spiritual awakenings now taking place. I could furnish evidence of such. Like my correspondent I am also convinced that there are symptoms of discouraging indifference towards the things of the spirit. I can everywhere see an irrepressible drift towards low ideals. But why should the existence of these two contradictory currents be surprising? Have they not always existed in the world's history? Not to go too far back, take the eighteenth century. That is usually regarded as typically a period of moral licence and spiritual indifference. Yet never was there a finer seed-time of spiritual life, and we still to-day rejoice in the fruits from germs then sown, when we are not actually living on them. 34
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