FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION
THE NATURE OF FORMALISM—ITS EFFECT UPON PERSONALITY—FORMALISM
IN MODERN LIFE—DISORGANIZATION, “INDIVIDUALISM”—HOW IT AFFECTS
THE INDIVIDUAL—RELATION TO FORMALISM—“INDIVIDUALISM” IMPLIES
DEFECTIVE SYMPATHY—CONTEMPORARY “INDIVIDUALISM”—RESTLESSNESS UNDER
DISCOMFORT—THE BETTER ASPECT OF DISORGANIZATION.
Too much mechanism in society gives us something for which there
are many names, slightly different in meaning, as institutionalism,
formalism, traditionalism, conventionalism, ritualism, bureaucracy
and the like. It is by no means easy, however, to determine whether
mechanism is in excess or not. It becomes an evil, no doubt, when it
interferes with growth and adaptation, when it suppresses individuality
and stupefies or misdirects the energies of human nature. But just when
this is the case is likely not to be clear until the occasion is long
past and we can see the matter in the perspective of history.
Thus, in religion, it is well that men should adhere to the creeds
and ritual worked out in the past for spiritual edification, so long
as these do, on the whole, fulfil their function; and it is hard
to fix the time—not the same for different churches, classes or
individuals—when they cease to do this. But it is certain that they
die, in time, like all tissue, and if not cleared away presently rot.
It has been well said that formalism is “an excess of the organ of
language.”[153] The aim of all organization is to express human
nature, and it does this through a system of symbols, which are the
embodiment and vehicle of the idea. So long as spirit and symbol are
vitally united and the idea is really conveyed, all is well, but so
fast as they are separated the symbol becomes an empty shell, to which,
however, custom, pride or interest may still cling. It then supplants
rather than conveys the reality.
Underlying all formalism, indeed, is the fact that it is psychically
cheap; it substitutes the outer for the inner as more tangible, more
capable of being held before the mind without fresh expense of thought
and feeling, more easily extended, therefore, and impressed upon
the multitude. Thus in our own architecture or literature we have
innumerable cheap, unfelt repetitions of forms that were significant
and beautiful in their time and place.
The effect of formalism upon personality is to starve its higher life
and leave it the prey of apathy, self-complacency, sensuality and
the lower nature in general. A formalized religion and a formalized
freedom are, notoriously, the congenial dwelling-place of depravity and
oppression.
When a system of this sort is thoroughly established, as in the case of
the later Roman Empire, it confines the individual mind as in a narrow
cage by supplying it with only one sort of suggestions. The variation
of ideas and the supplanting of old types by new can begin only by
individuals getting hold of suggestions that conflict with those of
the ruling system; and in the absence of this an old type may go on
reproducing itself indefinitely, individuals seeming no more to it
than the leaves of a tree, which drop in the autumn and in the spring
are replaced by others indistinguishable from them. It “breeds true”
on the same principle that wild pigeons, long kept to a fixed type by
natural limitations, are less variable than domestic species, in whose
recent past there have been elements of change.
Among the Hindoos, for instance, a child is brought up from infancy in
subjection to ceremonies and rites which stamp upon him the impression
of a fixed and immemorial system. They control the most minute details
of his life, and leave little room for choice either on his part or
that of his parents. There is no attempt to justify tradition by
reason: custom as such is obligatory.
Intolerance goes very naturally with formalism, since to a mind in the
unresisted grasp of a fixed system of thought anything that departs
from that system must appear irrational and absurd. The lowest Chinaman
unaffectedly despises the foreigner, of whatever rank, as a vulgar
barbarian, just as Christians used to despise the Jews, and the Jews,
in their time, the Samaritans. Tolerance comes in along with peaceful
discussion, when there is a competition of various ways of thinking, no
one of which is strong enough to suppress the others.
In America and western Europe at the present day there is a great deal
of formalism, but it is, on the whole, of a partial and secondary
character, existing rather from the inadequacy of vital force than as
a ruling principle. The general state of thought favors adaptation,
because we are used to it and have found it on the whole beneficial.
We expect, for example, that a more vital and flexible form of
organization will supplant the rigid systems of Russia and the Orient,
and whatever in our own world is analogous to these.
But dead mechanism is too natural a product of human conditions not to
exist at all times, and we may easily find it to-day in the church, in
politics, in education, industry and philanthropy; wherever there is a
lack of vital thought and sentiment to keep the machinery pliant to its
work.
Thus our schools, high and low, exhibit a great deal of it. Routine
methods, here as everywhere, are a device for turning out cheap work
in large quantities, and the temptation to use them, in the case of
a teacher who has too much to do, or is required to do that which he
does not understand or believe in, is almost irresistible. Indeed, they
are too frequently inculcated by principals and training schools, in
contempt of the fact that the one essential thing in real teaching is
a personal expression between teacher and pupil. Drill is easy for one
who has got the knack of it, just because it requires nothing vital or
personal, but is a convenient appliance for getting the business done
with an appearance of success and little trouble to any one.
Even universities have much of this sort of cant. In literature, for
instance, whether ancient or modern, English or foreign, little that
is vital is commonly imparted. Compelled by his position to teach
_something_ to large and diverse classes, the teacher is led to fix
upon certain matters—such as grammar, metres, or the biographies of
the authors—whose definiteness suits them for the didactic purpose,
and drill them into the student; while the real thing, the sentiments
that are the soul of literature, are not communicated. If the teacher
himself feels them, which is often the case, the fact that they cannot
be reduced to formulas and tested by examinations discourages him from
dwelling upon them.
In like manner our whole system of commerce and industry is formal in
the sense that it is a vast machine grinding on and on in a blind way
which is often destructive of the human nature for whose service it
exists. Mammon—as in the painting by Watts—is not a fiend, wilfully
crushing the woman’s form that lies under his hand, but only a somewhat
hardened man of the world, looking in another direction and preoccupied
with the conduct of business upon business principles.
A curious instance of the same sort of thing is the stereotyping
of language by the cheap press and the habit of hasty reading.
The newspapers are called upon to give a maximum of commonplace
information for a minimum of attention, and in doing this are led to
adopt a small standard vocabulary and a uniform arrangement of words
and sentences. All that requires fresh thought, either from reader
or writer, is avoided to the greater comfort of both. The telegraph
plays a considerable part in this, and an observer familiar with its
technique points out how it puts a premium on long but unmistakable
words, on conventional phrases (for which the operators have brief
signs) and on a sentence structure so obvious that it cannot be upset
by mistakes in punctuation.[154] In this way our newspapers, and the
magazines and books that partake of their character, are the seat of a
conventionalism perhaps as destructive of the spirit of literature as
ecclesiasticism is of the spirit of Christianity.
The apparent opposite of formalism, but in reality closely akin to
it, is disorganization or disintegration, often, though inaccurately,
called “individualism.”[155] One is mechanism supreme, the other
mechanism going to pieces; and both are in contrast to that harmony
between human nature and its instruments which is desirable.
In this state of things general order and discipline are lacking.
Though there may be praiseworthy persons and activities, society as
a whole wants unity and rationality, like a picture which is good in
details but does not make a pleasing composition. Individuals and
special groups appear to be working too much at cross purposes; there
is a “reciprocal struggle of discordant powers” but the “harmony of the
universe” does not emerge. As good actors do not always make a good
troupe nor brave soldiers a good army, so a nation or a historical
epoch—say Italy in the Renaissance—may be prolific in distinguished
persons and scattered achievements but somewhat futile and chaotic as a
system.
Disorganization appears in the individual as a mind without cogent and
abiding allegiance to a whole, and without the larger principles of
conduct that flow from such allegiance. The better aspect of this is
that the lack of support may stimulate a man to greater activity and
independence, the worse that the absence of social standards is likely
to lower his plane of achievement and throw him back upon sensuality
and other primitive impulses: also that, if he is of a sensitive fibre,
he is apt to be overstrained by the contest with untoward conditions.
How soothing and elevating it is to breathe the atmosphere of some
large and quiet discipline. I remember feeling this in reading Lord
Roberts’ Forty-one Years in India, a book pervaded with one great and
simple thought, the Anglo-Indian service, which dominates all narrow
considerations and gives people a worthy ideal to live by. How rarely,
in our day, is a book or a man dominated by restful and unquestioned
faith in anything!
The fact that great personalities often appear in disordered times
may seem to be a contradiction of the principle that the healthy
development of individuals is one with that of institutions. Thus
the Italian Renaissance, which was a time of political disorder and
religious decay, produced the greatest painters and sculptors of modern
times, and many great personalities in literature and statesmanship.
But the genius which may appear in such a period is always, in one
point of view, the fruitage of a foregoing and traditional development,
never a merely personal phenomenon. That this was true of Renaissance
art needs no exposition; like every great achievement it was founded
upon organization.
It is no doubt the case, however, that there is a spur in the struggles
of a confused time which may excite a few individuals to heroic
efforts and accomplishment, just as a fire or a railroad disaster may
be the occasion of heroism; and so the disorder of the Renaissance
was perhaps one cause of the men of genius, as well as of the
demoralization which they did not escape.
It looks at first sight as if formalism and disorganization were as far
apart as possible, but in fact they are closely connected, the latter
being only the next step after the former in a logical sequence—the
decay of a body already dead. Formalism goes very naturally
with sensuality, avarice, selfish ambition, and other traits of
disorganization, because the merely formal institution does not enlist
and discipline the soul of the individual, but takes hold of him by
the outside, his personality being left to torpor or to irreverent and
riotous activity. So in the later centuries of the Roman Empire, when
its system was most rigid, the people became unpatriotic, disorderly
and sensual.
In the same way a school whose discipline is merely formal, not
engaging the interest and good-will of the scholar, is pretty certain
to turn out unruly boys and girls, because whatever is most personal
and vital in them becomes accustomed to assert itself in opposition
to the system. And so in a church where external observance has been
developed at the expense of personal judgment, the individual conforms
to the rite and then feels free for all kinds of self-indulgence.
In general the lower “individualism” of our time, the ruthless
self-assertion which is so conspicuous, for example, in business, is
not something apart from our institutions but expresses the fact that
they are largely formal and unhuman, not containing and enlarging the
soul of the individual.
The real opposite of both formalism and disorder is that wholesome
relation between individuality and the institution in which each
supports the other, the latter contributing a stable basis for the
vitality and variation of the former.
From one point of view disorganization is a lack of communication and
social consciousness, a defect in the organ of language, as formalism
is an excess. There is always, I suppose, a larger whole; the question
is whether the individual thinks and feels it vividly through some sort
of sympathetic contact; if he does he will act as a member of it.
In the writings of one of the most searching and yet hopeful critics
of our times[156] we find that “individualism” is identified primarily
with an isolation of sentiment, like that of the scholar in his study,
the business man in his office or the mechanic who does not feel
the broader meaning of his work. The opposite of it is the life of
shoulder-to-shoulder sympathy and coöperation, in which the desire
for separate power or distinction is lost in the overruling sense of
common humanity. And the logical remedy for “individualism” is sought
in that broadening of the spirit by immediate contact with the larger
currents of life, which is the aim of the social settlement and similar
movements.
This is, indeed, an inspiring and timely ideal, but let us hold it
without forgetting that specialized and lonesome endeavor, indeed
even individual pride and self-seeking, have also their uses. If we
dwell too exclusively upon the we-feeling and the loss of the one in
the many, we may lapse into a structureless emotionalism. Eye-to-eye
fellowship and the pride of solitary achievement are both essential,
each in its own way, to human growth, and either is capable of
over-indulgence. We need the most erect individual with the widest base
of sympathy.
In so far as it is true of our time that the larger interests of
society are not impressed upon the individual, so that his private
impulses coöperate with the public good, it is a time of moral
disintegration. A well-ordered community is like a ship in which
each officer and seaman has confidence in his fellows and in the
captain, and is well accustomed to do his duty with no more than
ordinary grumbling. All hangs together, and is subject to reason in
the form of long-tried rules of navigation and discipline. Virtue is
a system and men do heroic acts as part of the day’s work and without
self-consciousness. But suppose that the ship goes to pieces—let us
say upon an iceberg—then the orderly whole is broken up and officers,
seamen and passengers find themselves struggling miscellaneously in the
water. Rational control and the virtue that is habit being gone, each
one is thrown back upon his undisciplined impulses. Survival depends
not upon wisdom or goodness—as it largely does in a social system—but
upon ruthless force, and the best may probably perish.
Here is “individualism” in the lowest sense, and it is the analogue
of this which is said, not without some reason, to pervade our own
society. Old institutions are passing away and better ones, we hope,
are preparing to take their place, but in the meantime there is a
lack of that higher discipline which prints the good of the whole upon
the heart of the member. In a traditional order one is accustomed from
childhood to regard usage, the authority of elders and the dominant
institutions as the rule of life. “So it must be” is one’s unconscious
conviction, and, like the seaman, he does wise and heroic things
without knowing it. But in our own time there is for many persons, if
not most, no authoritative canon of life, and for better or worse we
are ruled by native impulse and by that private reason which may be so
weak when detached from a rational whole. The higher morality, if it is
to be attained at all, must be specially thought out; and of the few
who can do this a large part exhaust their energy in thinking and do
not practise with any heartiness the truths they perceive.
We find, then, that people have to make up their own minds upon their
duties as wives, husbands, mothers and daughters; upon commercial
obligation and citizenship; upon the universe and the nature and
authority of God. Inevitably many of us make a poor business of it.
It is too much. It is as if each one should sit down to invent a
language for himself: these things should be thought out gradually,
coöperatively each adding little and accepting much. That great
traditions should rapidly go to pieces may be a necessary phase of
evolution and a disguised blessing, but the present effect is largely
distraction and demoralization.
In particular, we notice that few who have burdens to bear are much
under the control of submissive tradition, but every one asks “Why
must I bear this?” and the pain of trying to see why is often worse
than the evil itself. There is commonly no obvious reason, and the
answer is often a sense of rebellion and a bitterness out of which
comes, perhaps, recklessness, divorce, or suicide.
Why am I poor while others are rich? Why do I have to do work I do not
like? Why should I be honest when others are unscrupulous? Why should I
wear myself out bearing and rearing children? Why should I be faithful
to my husband or wife when we are not happy together, and another would
please me better? Why should I believe in a good God when all I know
is a bad world? Why should I live when I wish to die? Never, probably,
were so many asking such questions as this and finding no clear answer.
There have been other times of analogous confusion, but it could never
have penetrated so deeply into the masses as it does in these days of
universal stir and communication.
How contemptible these calculations seem in comparison with the
attitude of the soldier, who knows that he must suffer privation and
not improbably death, and yet faces the prospect quite cheerfully, with
a certain pride in his self-devotion. In this spirit, evidently, all
the duties of life ought to be taken up. But the soldier, the seaman,
the fireman, the brakeman, the doctor and others whose trade leads
them into obvious peril have one great advantage: they know what their
duty is and have no other thought than to do it; there is no mental
distraction to complicate the situation. And as fast as principles
become settled and habits formed, people will be as heroic in other
functions as they are in these.
We may apply to many in our own time the words of Burckhardt in
describing the disorganization of the Renaissance: “The sight of
victorious egoism in others drives him to defend his own right by his
own arm. And, while thinking to restore his inward equilibrium, he
falls, through the vengeance which he executes, into the hands of the
powers of darkness.” That is, we think we must be as selfish as other
people, but find that selfishness is misery. I notice that many men,
even of much natural sympathy and fellow-feeling, have accepted “every
man for himself” as a kind of dogma, making themselves believe that it
is the necessary rule of a competitive society, and practising it with
a kind of fanaticism which goes against their better natures. Perhaps
the sensitive are more apt to do this than others—because they are more
upset by the spectacle of “victorious egoism” around them. But the true
good of the individual is found only in subordinating himself to a
rational whole; and in turning against others he destroys himself.
The embittered and distracted individual must be a bad citizen. There
is the same kind of moral difference between those who feel life as
a rational whole, and so have some sort of a belief in God, as there
is between an army that believes in its commander and one that does
not. In either case the feeling does much to bring about its own
justification.
The fact that the breaking up of traditions throws men back upon
immediate human nature has, however, its good as well as its bad side.
It may obscure those larger truths that are the growth of time and
may let loose pride, sensuality and scepticism; but it also awakens
the child in man and a childlike pliability to the better as well as
the worse in natural impulse. We may look, among people who have lost
the sense of tradition, for the sort of virtues, as well as of vices,
that we find on the frontier: for plain dealing, love of character
and force, kindness, hope, hospitality and courage. Alongside of an
extravagant growth of sensuality, pride and caprice, we have about us
a general cult of childhood and womanhood, a vast philanthropy, and
an interest in everything relating to the welfare of the masses of
the people. The large private gifts to philanthropic and educational
purposes, and the fact that a great deal of personal pride is mingled
with these gifts, are equally characteristic of the time.
And, after all, there is never any general state of extreme
disintegration. Such as our time suffers from in art and social
relations is chiefly the penalty of a concentration of thought upon
material production and physical science. In these fields there is
no lack of unified and cumulative endeavor—though unhuman in some
aspects—resulting in total achievement. If we have not Dante and gothic
architecture, we have Darwin and the modern railway. And as fast as the
general mind turns to other aims we may hope that our chaotic material
will take on order.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] The Poet. Emerson.
[154] See the article by R. L. O’Brien in the Atlantic Monthly, Oct.,
1904.
[155] Inaccurately, because the full development of the individual
requires organization
[156] Jane Addams.