THE TREND OF THINGS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1025, 14 January 1911, Page 14

THE TREND OF THINGS.

(From tho "Now York Nation.")

"Porhaps," a preacher is reported as saying recently, "nothing is moro significant to 0110 watching tho trend of things, than tho fact that tlio union Thanksgiving service in a certain Now England city the other day was put off so as not to interfere with a football game." -Of at least equal significance wo should consider, this observation itself. ' In tho first place, it illustrates the tendency of the twentieth-century moraliser to point out the threatened dominance of our civilisation by its light and materialistic elements, oven though, in another mood, tho same moraliser would fain persuade us of our uniquo development of tho humanitarian instinct-. It shows also the unerring certainty of tho normal observer of presentday 'life in singling out- as tho basis of his generalisations incidents that aro partially or entirely sensational. Another .oosoryer laments "the eagerness |Of tho public to read murdor trials." In a century boasting its enlightenment, we are tearfully informed, people do not talk of tlio probloms "so high and so deop that their grandfathers could not even stats them."

Interpreting. what used to be called the signs of tho times has always been difficult, not so much bccauso of the obscurity or the ambiguity of. the -signs as on account of tlio lack of any sure method of knowing what arc signs and what are only passing : phenomena. Daniel's task was not easy,- but.it would obviously have been far harder if, instead of 'being, simply tho solving of tho ominous. words so mysteriously written 011 the wall, it had involved the preliminary ascertaining of what, among all the words • spoken or written in Babylon that day, were to be counted significant. This .is. true in spite of the historic circumstances that, conspjeuousness .of soma sort has always been identified with significance, .in tho minds of all but tho narrowly observant. .Wo may. pride ourselves upon ■ our freedom from regard for impressive .dreams, but, for niost of us, the fading away of any extraordinarily spectacular occurrence, leaving not a rack,behind, finds us a little astonished at the disparity betweon appearance: and reality. It takes a gonuino prophet not to be misled -by the earthquake and. the fire,-, and. to catch,' after-tho subsidence of noiso' and glare, tho still small voice.

If this has always been true, tliero was never a time when it was easier to forget it than the'present. Nothing more .impresses one in putting himself back into the days of Socrates or of Caesar than tho grayness of life then in comparison with" lifo now. Wars were numerous enough, .to be suro, but, in most ' cases, fighting was a mere business. Tho Romans had their amphitheatre, but the range.of appeal of the contests that distinguished its arena was extremely/limited. It was reservod for. our advanced ago to discover what could really be dono for impressing the mind. is tho endless series of mechanical contrivances,well representby tho moving-picture lhachino,-' tho object 'of-, which is merely to amuse, or, as- often, to attract attention for : a commercial, end. And there is the ostensibly, moro serious, form of imppssion represented by -tho •.'.multifarious output, of the printing-press.. To thess must be added tho fact that ours is an age of noise and of speed. Wo cannot imagino the civilisation of the Tigris; the Nile, or tho. Mediterranean being characterised by either. , Tho result. is : an assault upon tho auditory and .the optic nerves, arid, still worse, upon tho purely receptive faculties -.of tho mind, that almost renders us in-, capable of real thinking. A modern person must receive every twenty-four hours many times the number of impressions that, in the same time, fell to tho lot of an ancient.

With all this the number of our interpreters is not diminished. The complexity of. our conditions seems to havo a fatal temptation for them. Instead of feeling tho old • necessity for retirement to tho desert, there to analyse in quiet the.theory of impressions that refuse to speak their meaning in less secluded surroundings, wo make hasto to announce ■ conclusions. Wo easily- catch the spirit of tho time, and, in our anxiety to make ourselves heard, shout tho most startling thing we can think of. Newspaper head-lines havo given' the cue to many a puzzled pulpit. This short-sighted reading of the handwriting .011 our modern walls is, notwithstanding, tho next best thing to its .• accurate interpretation. To bo forewarned of what we had 110 intention of doing is not all tho superfluous thing it might seem. Such preaching, even if in a negative way, enforces the ideal which wo are not' too consciously and cannot bo too closely following. .Shallow enough as exegesis, it is excellent as precept. Yet- its greatest value must be'admitted to be its usefulness : as an ' illustration' of the' kind of analysis to avoid. Tho struggle for supremacy between union Thanksgiving services and football game?, and even the wido interest in the - fate' of . a brutish murderer, wo cannot accept- as straws showing tho trend of tilings. Taken together, they ■night well plunge ono into a serious train of rifiection over the. persistence tho animal element in the human makeup. But such a conclusion would ill accord with any other occurrences of the ■ pre-lioliday season. The truth is, that such ■ simplicity of ..generalisation is impossible. Things are not going to limit themselves to one trend as long as they are able to enjoy several.