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Page 50
To explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to psychology
and sociology. The latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to
be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the
imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin
here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one
may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is
social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and
intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only
secondarily physiological, phenomena. They are _bad habits_, nothing
more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad
models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. How are idioms
acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about?
Through an accidental example set by some one, which struck the ears of
others, and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality
chimed in. Just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or
intonation, with national manners, fashions of movement and gesture, and
habitual expressions of face. We, here in America, through following a
succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace, and
through influencing each other in a bad direction, have at last settled
down collectively into what, for better or worse, is our own
characteristic national type,--a type with the production of which, so
far as these habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically
nothing at all to do.
This type, which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have
fixed upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can be _wholly_
disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning
fashion, it cannot be wholly good. Dr. Clouston was certainly right in
thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of
strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination. The even
forehead, the slab-like cheek, the codfish eye, may be less interesting
for the moment; but they are more promising signs than intense
expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run.
Your dull, unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he
never goes backward or breaks down. Your intense, convulsive worker
breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may
be when you most need his help,--he may be having one of his 'bad days.'
We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be
sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect
that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor
the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of
our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd
feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and
tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that
lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is
so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the
same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton
and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught
from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many
as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the
American camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and
tear and fatigue.
The voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired
and plaintive sound. Some of us are really tired (for I do not mean
absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); but far more
of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at all unless we had
got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by following the prevalent
habits of vocalization and expression. And if talking high and tired,
and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us to _do_ more by
the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different.
There would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the
exact reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in
no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who
is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and
future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags
upon steady progress and hindrances to our success. My colleague,
Professor M�nsterberg, an excellent observer, who came here recently,
has written some notes on America to German papers. He says in substance
that the appearance of unusual energy in America is superficial and
illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and
bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of
our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and
traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to
write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do
anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty
paradoxical little thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote,
and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof.
Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by all this
over-tension,--and I think, whatever reserves you may make, that you
will agree as to the main facts,--where does the remedy lie? It lies, of
course, where lay the origins of the disease. If a vicious fashion and
taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed.
And, though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people
with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have
to be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and
snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways
as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for
their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.
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