The New Failure of Nerve
Sidney
Hook
Editor's Note: This article is the first
in
a series on "The
New Failure of Nerve." The following two articles in this issue,
by
I
ohn Dewey
and
Ernest Nagel, continue the discussion. Further
articles in the series will appear
in
the next issue.
IN.
THE FAMOUS
third chapter of his
Four Stages of Greek Religion
Gilbert Murray characterizes the period from 300 B.C. through
the first century of the Christian era as marked by "a failure of
nerve." This failure of nerve exhibited itself in "a rise of
asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of self–
confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human
efforts; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revela–
tion: an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of
the soul to God."
A survey of the cuhural tendencies of our own times shows
many signs pointing to a new failure of nerve in Western civiliza–
tion. Its manifestations are more complex and sophisticated than
in any previous time. It speaks in a modem idiom and employs
techniques of expression and persuasion that reflect the ways of
a secular culture. But at bottom it betrays, except in one respect,
the same flight from responsibility, both on the plane of action
and on the plane of belief, that drove the ancient world into the
shelters of pagan and Christian supernaturalism.
There is hardly a field of theoretical life from which these
signs of intellectual panic, heralded as portents of spiritual re–
vival, are lacking. No catalogue can do justice to the variety of
doctrines in which this mood appears. For purposes of illustration
we mention the recrudescence of beliefs in the original depravity
of human nature; prophecies of doom for western culture, no
matter who wins the war or peace, dressed up as laws of social–
dynamics; the frenzied search for a center of value that transcends
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