Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/19

industrial operations regulated by mechanical routine, an even more injurious congestion in home life, the constant attrition of a superficial intercourse in work or leisure with great numbers of persons subject to the same environment – these conditions are apt to destroy or impair independence of character, without substituting any sound, rational sociality such as may arise in a city which has come into being primarily for good life, and not for cheap work. The bad conditions of town life in our great industrial centres, lowering the vitality of the inhabitants, operate with peculiar force upon their nervous organization. It is true that the cerebral stimulus of town life has its gains, and in certain instances may feed true individuality. But normally it educates a surface smartness, an alertness of manipulation of ideas within a narrow area of interest and experience; and as the environment is largely similar for larger numbers, a similarity of character and life is bred in it. Moreover, the strain of adaptation to the many complex changes of external environment is, for those absorbed in the constant struggle for a livelihood, so grave as to impose a nervous wear and tear which is quite apparent in the features of a town population, and which marks them out with tolerable