MODERN COMMUNICATION: SUPERFICIALITY AND STRAIN
STIMULATING EFFECT OF MODERN LIFE—SUPERFICIALITY—STRAIN—PATHOLOGICAL
EFFECTS.
The action of the new communication is essentially stimulating, and so
may, in some of its phases, be injurious. It costs the individual more
in the way of mental function to take a normal part in the new order of
things than it did in the old. Not only is his outlook broader, so that
he is incited to think and feel about a wider range of matters, but he
is required to be a more thoroughgoing specialist in the mastery of his
particular function; both extension and intension have grown. General
culture and technical training are alike more exigent than they used to
be, and their demands visibly increase from year to year, not only in
the schools but in life at large. The man who does not meet them falls
behind the procession, and becomes in some sense a failure: either
unable to make a living, or narrow and out of touch with generous
movements.
Fortunately, from this point of view, our mental functions are as a
rule rather sluggish, so that the spur of modern intercourse is for the
most part wholesome, awakening the mind, abating sensuality, and giving
men idea and purpose. Such ill effect as may be ascribed to it seems
to fall chiefly under the two heads, superficiality and strain, which
the reader will perceive to be another view of that enlargement and
animation discussed in the last chapter but one.
There is a rather general agreement among observers that, outside
of his specialty, the man of our somewhat hurried civilization is
apt to have an impatient, touch-and-go habit of mind as regards both
thought and feeling. We are trying to do many and various things, and
are driven to versatility and short cuts at some expense to truth
and depth. “The habit of inattention,” said De Tocqueville about
1835, “must be considered as the greatest defect of the democratic
character”[39]; and recently his judgment has been confirmed by
Ostrogorski, who thinks that deliverance from the bonds of space
and time has made the American a man of short views, wedded to the
present, accustomed to getting quick returns, and with no deep root
anywhere.[40] We have reduced _ennui_ considerably; but a moderate
_ennui_ is justly reckoned by Comte and others as one of the springs of
progress, and it is no unmixed good that we are too busy to be unhappy.
In this matter, as in so many others, we should discriminate, so far
as we can, between permanent conditions of modern life and what is due
merely to change, between democracy and confusion. There is nothing in
the nature of democracy to prevent its attaining, when transition has
somewhat abated, a diverse and stable organization of its own sort,
with great advantage to our spiritual composure and productivity.
In the meanwhile it is beyond doubt that the constant and varied
stimulus of a confused time makes sustained attention difficult.
Certainly our popular literature is written for those who run as they
read, and carries the principle of economy of attention beyond anything
previously imagined. And in feeling it seems to be true that we tend
toward a somewhat superficial kindliness and adaptability, rather than
sustained passion of any kind. Generally speaking, mind is spread out
very thin over our civilization; a good sort of mind, no doubt, but
quite thin.
All this may be counteracted in various ways, especially by
thoroughness in education, and is perhaps to be regarded as lack of
maturity rather than as incurable defect.
Mental strain, in spite of the alarming opinions sometimes expressed,
is by no means a general condition in modern society, nor likely
to become so; it is confined to a relatively small number, in whom
individual weakness, or unusual stress, or both, has rendered life too
much for the spirit. Yet this number includes a great part of those who
perform the more exacting intellectual functions in business and the
professions, as well as peculiarly weak, or sensitive, or unfortunate
individuals in all walks of life. In general there is an increase
of self-consciousness and choice; there is more opportunity, more
responsibility, more complexity, a greater burden upon intelligence,
will and character. The individual not only can but must deal with a
flood of urgent suggestions, or be swamped by them. “This age that
blots out life with question marks”[41] forces us to think and choose
whether we are ready or not.
Worse, probably, than anything in the way of work—though that is often
destructive—is the anxious insecurity in which our changing life keeps
a large part of the population, the well-to-do as well as the poor. And
an educated and imaginative people feels such anxieties more than one
deadened by ignorance. “In America,” said De Tocqueville, “I saw the
freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest circumstances
which the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung
upon their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in
their pleasures.”[42]
Not long ago Mr. H. D. Sedgwick contributed to a magazine a study of
what he called “The New American Type,”[43] based on an exhibition of
English and American portraits, some recent, some a century old. He
found that the more recent were conspicuously marked by the signs of
unrest and strain. Speaking of Mr. Sargent’s subjects he says, “The
obvious qualities in his portraits are disquiet, lack of equilibrium,
absence of principle, ... a mind unoccupied by the rightful heirs, as
if the home of principle and dogma had been transformed into an inn
for wayfarers. Sargent’s women are more marked than his men; women,
as physically more delicate, are the first to reveal the strain of
physical and psychical maladjustment. The thin spirit of life shivers
pathetically in its ‘fleshly dress’; in the intensity of its eagerness
it is all unconscious of its spiritual fidgeting on finding itself
astray—no path, no blazings, the old forgotten, the new not formed.”
The early Americans, he says, “were not limber minded men, not readily
agnostic, not nicely sceptical; they were ... eighteenth century
Englishmen.” Of Reynolds’ women he observes, “These ladies led lives
unvexed; natural affections, a few brief saws, a half-dozen principles,
kept their brows smooth, their cheeks ripe, their lips most wooable.”
People had “a stable physique and a well-ordered, logical, dogmatic
philosophy.” The older portraits “chant a chorus of praise for national
character, for class distinctions, for dogma and belief, for character,
for good manners, for honor, for contemplation, for vision to look upon
life as a whole, for appreciation that the world is to be enjoyed, for
freedom from democracy, for capacity in lighter mood to treat existence
as a comedy told by Goldoni.”[44]
This may or may not be dispassionately just, but it sets forth one side
of the case—a side the more pertinent for being unpopular—and suggests
a very real though intangible difference between the people of our time
and those of a century ago—one which all students must have felt. It is
what we feel in literature when we compare the people of Jane Austen
with those, let us say, of the author of The House of Mirth.
I do not propose to inquire how far the effects of strain may be seen
in an increase of certain distinctly pathological phenomena, such as
neurasthenia, the use of drugs, insanity and suicide. That it has an
important working in this way—difficult, however, to separate from that
of other factors—is generally conceded. In the growth of suicide we
seem to have a statistical demonstration of the destructive effect of
social stress at its worst; and of general paralysis, which is rapidly
increasing and has been called the disease of the century, we are told
that “it is the disease of excess, of vice, of overwork, of prolonged
worry; it is especially the disease of great urban centres, and its
existence usually seems to show that the organism has entered upon a
competitive race for which it is not fully equipped.”
FOOTNOTES:
[39] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book iii, chap. 15.
[40] Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, ii, 579-588.
[41] J. R. Lowell, The Cathedral.
[42] Democracy in America, vol. ii, book ii, chap. 13.
[43] Since published in a book having this title.
[44] The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1904.
_PART III_
THE DEMOCRATIC MIND