THE RECREATION OF THE CROWD.
ALL those people who dislike crowds, who do not feel the tonic influence of numbers, who seek their rocreation apart and lose the sense of natural beauty in every scene that is " overrun," are a little proud of their peculiarity. In their heart of hearts they regard the desire for the tonic of company, as distinct from companionship, as vulgar. There is a great deal to be said for their point of view ; of course there is, seeing that it has been hitherto the point of view of nine educated men out of ten. Even among such men, however, it is not too much to say that every tenth man has felt differently. He has liked to be with his kind ; he has liked to observe and be under observation ; and he has realized, if he is at all introspective, that when he finds himself in the wilds he is seized by unaccountable depression—his mental temperature goes down, and will only be brought back to normal when he is once more'one of the swarm. Among simple people we think the position is exactly reversed. One man in ten seeks quiet, loves to be alone, boasts that he has no friends, does not enjoy the holidays in common which delight his neighbours, is in his element in the little kingdom of his own privacy, whether the wall which surrounds it be of tangible brick or the intangible element vaguely called reserve. His love of solitude goes further than that of his more sophisticated brethren. Rich people, while they crave the luxury of occasional loneliness, are seldom content to forgo the pleasures of ho.spitality which are impossible to him, and which often owe as much to the mildly tonic influence of a selected crowd as to the higher delights of companionship ; occasionally, indeed, their vaunted love of solitude, the amount of money they will give to got away from the haunts of men, and their fear of invasion by the multitude, come of nothing whatever but a surfeit of company. They have become sick of the sensations which they have sought. The sense of social exhilaration has turned to nausea.
Apart, however, from all thought of excess, we believe that the recreative influence of the throng is more felt by sophisticated people than it used to-be. Action is always a long way behind thought in this country. We have just made up our minds that the mass of the people must no longer be herded together as they have been in the past ; that they have suffered in mind and body from want of space, want of the possibility of an hour's solitude. At the same time we have realized that something may have been gained by this life in common, and that we ourselves have lost something by eschewing it. The fashion for holiday camps is a sign of the times. Young people who work together all the year round are passionately anxious not to retire into the bosom of their families or of the lonely hills, but to play together on the beach or the downs now that work is done. Young boys who one would have thought Isere tired of a communal life in an institution elect to continue that life in pleasanter circumstances instead of breaking with it for a space. Obviously they 'feel they cannot bear to be without the stimulus of the swarm. So far as the older young people are concerned, those, we mean who have had some experience of the war, or even of strenuous war work at home or abroad, the desire to be together is natural enough. The old and young have in a strange way changed places. It is in very many, indeed in innumerable, instances the young people of a family who are now " experienced." They have worked in groups, and they want to rest in groups. Esprit de corps has entered into their very souls, has for many of them absorbed their spiritual nature and has become their soul. They are, they must be, divided from their seniors in a way that no generation was ever divided before. Specially is this true of the girls and young women of to• day. Their new way of life has knit them together, and has separated them from their elders. They cannot breathe freely any longer in the comparative solitude of family life. At play even more than at work they crave the exhilaration of the crowd. Of those who do not feel this, who long to be back in the old ways, the majority have hated their work and regret their experience. This is not to say that they have done that work badly. It is a peculiarity of the Englishman that he can do well the things he does not like, can even bring a certain enthusiasm to bear upon his toil. He is able to strain every nerve that he may do perfectly what only a sense of duty would lead him to do at all, and out of that accomplishment he can get as well as give a real if a rather rueful satisfaction. This sort of man comes back to his friends essentially as he left them, stronger, graver perhaps, but without having absorbed the new spirit of the time, and anxious to be away from its spell.
But even if it be agreed that all we have been saying is true, there remains another side to the picture. You cannot put old heads upon young shoulders. You can no more make a young person old by showing him or her new and terrible or new and vitally interesting things than you can keep an old man or woman young by confining him or her within the sheltering precincts of the habitual and the familiar. These vigorous boys and girls inflamed by the crowd spirit. are young, and in many respects they show the characteristics of a younger world. The idea of heavenly bliss which enlightened the darkness of the Middle Ages owed much to the thought of numbers. The poets sang of the crowds assembled together upon a farther shore, and the painters painted them. Visions of a countless host, multitudes whom none can number, tens upon tens of thousands, delighted the heart of the entranced worshipper. He must go alone through the gates of death, but they lead into the midst of a vast seraphic concourse, among whom all his troubles, above all, all his fears, are to be forgotten in an ecstasy of spiritual exaltation. Of this ecstasy he has obviously had a foretaste either in church or among troops arrayed for battle. Cohorts of angels defile past him ; he recognizes his friends, but they come to him not alone ; their faces shine out " among the blessed company." It is very extraordinary—this power of numbers to delay fear. It is quite as remarkable as their liability to create panic. It is possible that we are now upon the brink of a great spiritual revival and great spiritual discoveries ; it is certain that we are in the midst of a great recrudescence of superstition. Once again otherwise sane persons are prophesying the end of the world. It may be that if the suggestion spreads it will cause a certain amount of panic. At present even its authors are not apparently afraid. They ought to be if they are not.. The thought that all the suffering of the last four years has been endured to no purpose whatever, to save a civilization already doomed to immediate destruction, is a thought to distress the most apathetic. The would-be prophets are, however, quite cheerful. They believe that a very large proportion of those to be lmrled within a very few short months or years into eternity are not in the attitude of mind requisite to salvation. Yet they do not suffer greatly from the pangs of impotent pity. For themselves they are not afraid. They have, they think, too much faith ; but even the most reverent of onlookers cannot help suspecting that if they believed themselves, and themselves only, to be condemned by a committee of doctors to die within the year they would feel considerable and very unpleasant agitation. To this argument they might reply that their families and friends will be going with them. But would they, we wonder, preserve the same equilibrium if they knew that upon a journey to America they and all those they love would be drowned together in the depths of the sea ? Wo think not. Wo are not, however, prepared to deny that they believe their own message. They do really think the world is coming to an end, but they are too much exhilarated by the sense of the crowd going with them out of this world, the vast concourse of the condemned, among whom they stand, to be able to feel fear in any form. In this case there is little danger of panic. The great world does not notice their little attempt to wring to-morrow from the hand of the eternal, and remains indifferent to their warning cry. The wise man feels their presence, but is not played upon by their fears.
The power of combination is a power which has no known limits, and just now it seems as a force released. We see one of its slighter manifestations in the new desire for recreation instead of rest. The one must be taken in solitude, the other in company. The crowd-stimulant is not a spirit whose strength can be limited by lam, and that is unfortunate, seeing that it is admittedly the strongest intoxicant known.
Previous page
