The Henson Journals

[147]

Thursday, September 2nd, 1926.

["]The prosperous middle classes, who ruled the nineteenth century, placed an excessive value upon placidity of existence. They refused to face the necessities for social reform imposed by the new industrial system, and they are now refusing to face the necessities for intellectual reform posed by the new knowledge. The middle class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a confusion between civilization and security. In the immediate future there will be less security than in the immediate past, less stability. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.["]

v. Whitehead's Science & the Modern World. p. 299

I do not perceive the foundations of fact on which this indictment of the middle classes is based, and I am disposed to think that at the present time the instability of European society has reached a point which will soon show its inconsistency with civilization. Nor am I ready to accept as needing no proof the proposition that "the great ages have been unstable ages". It is only when the instability of a revolutionary epoch has been replaced by social order that the greater achievements can be secured. Elizabethan England may be offered as one example. War, and especially civil war, involves social instability, but is enormously wasteful of every kind of ability, and extremely barren of achievement.

[148]

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A wet day made the gathering of Knutsford students less successful than might have been expected. About 15 men came to the Castle. I met them at lunch and tea, but otherwise took no part in their entertainment. Sykes came over from Middlesbrough, and Wynne Willson from Sunderland. Lionel went off for his holiday in the course of the afternoon.

Wynne Willson went with me to New Seaham, where I dedicated a memorial organ. He also acted as my staff–bearer. In the absence of Lord Londonderry, his agent Mr Dillon bagged me to dedicate the organ. The dedication was followed by shortened Evensong, at which I preached a sermon from S. Paul's words "None of us liveth to himself, & none dieth to himself." Then came an organ recital, but I did not remain for it, but forthwith returned to Auckland.

The church was crowded by a congregation which consisted mainly of miners on strike. They listened very closely to my sermon, and were, I think, impressed. In their hearts, the men know that this fatuous strike is indefensible, but they are by no means uncomfortable. Their children are fed at the expense of the ratepayers, & they themselves receive substantial relief. It is not easy to see how the strike can end even now after 4 months of idleness.

Dr Jackson, the Rector of Chester–le–Street, says that the situation there has been exaggerated, & that the disorderly elements come from Birtley, where the Belgian huts have become a kind of Alsatia, into which the worst people have drifted. It was when passing through Birtley on my way to Newcastle for my operation that my car was stoned.

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