Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

taken in moderation, beneficial to him, and conduce to his physical welfare and material happiness; but if taken in excess they may interfere to a serious and harmful degree with the processes of digestion and assimilation. It also is made clear that dietetic habits which may prove agreeable and useful to those who enjoy vigorous health and a strong digestion need to be greatly modified in the case of those who are feeble and dyspeptic.

J. BURNEY YEO, M.D.

SENSATIONALISM IN SOCIAL REFORM.

[ocr errors]

THEUDAS and Jesus were alike moved by the suffering of the Jews. Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody, drew away much people; Jesus, who did not strive nor cry, had only a few disciples, and died deserted by them. The present method of reform is by striving and crying. The voice of those who see the evils of society is heard in the streets, and much people is drawn to meetings and demonstrations. Many, moved by what they hear, profess themselves to be frantic,' and the country seems ready for a moral revolt.

What shall the end be? Will the evil cease because the bitter cry of those who suffer is heard in the land? Will the 'frantic❜ striving of many people relieve society from the slavery of selfishness and lead a moral reform, or will it be that after a few months some one like Browning's Cardinal will be found saying, 'I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolt'?

This is a question to be considered, if possible, with calmness of mind, without prejudice for or against sensationalism. It may be that what seems sensational is the bigger cry suited to a bigger world, and therefore the only means of making known the facts which must afterwards be weighed and considered. It may be that some must be made frantic before any will act. It may be, on the other hand, that this trumpeting of sorrow and sin is the vengeance of the crime of sense-itself a sense to be worn with time; that men trumpet sorrows for mere love of noise and size, and become frantic over tales of sin, wringing from the very tale a new pleasure. Sensationalism in social reform is either the vengeance of sensationalism in self-love, or it is the divine voice making itself heard in language which he that runs may read.

Not lightly at any rate are Midlothian speeches, 'bitter cries,' and religious revivals to be passed over. They, by striving and crying, by forcible statements and strong language, have caused public opinion to stop its course of easy satisfaction, and to express itself in new legislation. For the sake of the Bulgarians a Ministry was overturned; because of the cry of the poor, an Act of Parliament has been passed; and because of the success of the Salvation Army, the services in our churches have been modified. In face though of these results on legislation, and of other results represented by various

societies and leagues, the question still is, Will the same causes result in raising character? Professor Clifford in one of his essays speaks with religious fervour on the importance of character to society:

Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought are common property fashioned and perfected from age to age. . . . Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live!

Further he goes on to point out that a bad method is bad, whatever good results may follow, because it weakens the character of the doer and so weakens society.

If (he says) I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby.

In judging, therefore, of methods of reform, it is not enough to show that laws have been passed and leagues formed; it must also be shown that the character of all concerned is raised. Jesus drew few people after Him and died alone, but He so raised the character of man that His death inaugurated a permanent reformation of society. It is as the character of men is raised that all reforms become permanent. Oppressed nationalities, like the Bulgarians, depend for effectual help on the growth of sympathy among free peoples; the poor will have starvation wages till the rich learn what justice requires; and religion will fail to be a power till men are honest enough to ask themselves in what they do really believe. Methods of reform are valuable just in so far as they tend to increase sympathy, justice, honesty, reverence, and all the virtues of high character. The answer, therefore, as to the end of this striving and crying of modern philanthropy, is to be found in the effects which such methods. have on character.

On the one side it is urged (1) that laws and institutions are great educators. By the many laws against theft thieving has come to be regarded as the great crime, and by societies like that for the prevention of cruelty to animals kindness has come to be a common virtue. If, therefore, it is argued, by this rough awakening of the public conscience, laws have been passed and institutions started, something has been done to develope the higher part of character. 'Principles,' as it has been said, are no more than moral habits.'

6

It is further urged that (2) if association is the watchword of the future and the educational force of the new age, it is by these somewhat noisy means that associations are formed, and that the trumpet note

which is to draw men together from parties and classes between whom great gulfs are fixed must be a loud one. The loudness cannot hurt men's character, and when they are drawn together their sympathy will be developed by contact and their energy by numbers.

Lastly it is said (3) that many whose imagination has been made dull by the modern systems of education could never know the truth unless it were shown to them under the strongest light. They have been so rarely taught in school to take pleasure in knowledge or to stretch their minds, they have so little accustomed themselves to think over what is absent or to trace effects to causes, that it is more often by ignorance than by selfishness that they are cruel. They have been so eager in managing their inheritance of wealth that they have failed to use their other inheritance-the power of putting questions by which their fathers won their wealth. Such people, it is argued, hearing of atrocities, learning the cost at which wealth is made, and seeing the brutal side of vice, get such development of character that they question habits, customs, conditions, which they before accepted, and become more just and generous.

On the other side, keeping still in view the effects on character, it is urged (1) that actions caused by the excitement of the emotions before they can be supported by reason are followed by apathy. The people who became 'frantic' at the tale of the Bulgarian atrocities have since heard almost with equanimity of suffering as terrible. The many who wrote and spoke of the bitter lot of the poor hardly give the few pounds a year required to keep alive the Sanitary Aid Society which was started to deal with what was allowed to lie nearest the root of the bitterness-the ill-administered laws of health. The leaders of the Salvation Army, pursued by this fear of apathy, have continually to seek new forms of excitement, just as politicians have to seek new cries. It seems as if the wave which is raised by the emotions must fall back unless it is followed by the rising tide of reason, and that the effect on character of neglecting the reason is to make it unfeeling and apathetic. According to Rossetti's allegory, they who are stirred by the sight of vice become, like those who look on the Gorgon's head, hardened to stone.

Let not thine eyes know

Any forbidden thing itself, although

It once should save as well as kill; but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.

Of the greatest

The emotions cannot be strained without loss. English actress it is told that she paid in old age the price of early strain on her feelings by weariness, vacuity, and deadness of spirit.'

It is urged further by those who argue against sensationalism, (2) that the advertisement which is said to be necessary to promote association, promotes only organisation, or that if it does promote

association it fills it also with the party spirit, which is a corrupting influence.

Organisations, we have been lately told, are weakening real charitable effort. They by their very nature become hardened ronnd the objects set forth in their prospectus, and to achieve those objects become official. They have at once the strength and the weakness of the standing-army system, and in charitable efforts the weakness is fatal which releases any individual from the duty of serving the need he has recognised. That the sensational method of rousing the charitable activities has resulted in organisation rather than association may be seen by reference to the Charities Register with its endless record of new societies and institutions.

That it also inspires with party spirit the associations which it forms is more difficult of proof, but advertisement to be successful in gathering people must be strong and loud. Strong statements can hardly be fair statements, and loud statements can rarely be exhaustively accurate. The basis of the association will thus be like that which has been the basis of too many religious parties-a basis to be occupied only by those who refuse to consider the position of others, and to be defended by blows rather than by arguments. Where there is neither fairness of feeling nor accuracy of thought, there will be always the theological hatred. 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of,' said Christ to His disciples who, ignorant of His purpose, would have used force in His service against the Samaritans. In the same way it is party spirit which still sometimes inspires those who hold even grand beliefs and support great causes, the height and depth and breadth of which they have had neither time nor will to measure; and the spirit degrades their character. It is not a gain to a man to be a Christian or a Liberal if by so doing he becomes certain that there is no right nor truth on the side of a Mohammedan or a Tory. He has not, that is, risen to the height of his character: rather, as Mr. Coleridge says, 'He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.' A teetotaler will not add so much to society by his temperance as he will take away from society, if his character becomes proud or narrow. Party spirit the spirit, that is, which is roused and limited by some hasty view of truth or right-is likely to make men unjust and cruel, and a method of reform which produces this spirit cannot be approved. Under the influence of the grandest causes, missionaries were in old time cruel, and philanthropists are in modern times unjust.

Lastly (3), those who have pressed the advantage of the law as an educator have been met by the paradox that laws and institutions rarely exist till they have ceased to be wanted. In England, public opinion condemns cruelty to animals, and so a society has been created. In Egypt, where the need is greater, but where there is no public opinion

« ForrigeFortsæt »