Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/773

 A NEGLECTED PRINCIPLE IN CIVIC REFORM 7 $7

the municipal theater would not stop here. It would bring the people into touch with the best there is in literature. The dramatized forms of literature would tend to excite an appetite for the better quality of reading.

The ethical force might be made very great. The play is well calculated to appeal to the higher emotions. It has often been observed that nobility of character in the play is always applauded, while the craven and cunning character is hissed. The audience instinctively loves the hero and hates the villain. It has been said that an assemblage of people represents a com- posite of nobility and high-mindedness in excess of the highest type of individual nobility and high-mindedness present. It is owing to this fact that in a religious meeting the most conse- crated and devoted Christian always feels the contact with higher virtues than his own. In the same way a meeting for any improving purpose tends to elevate and purify every character present. Habitual appeals to the nobler impulses through the drama — the universally attractive institution — will greatly tend to make virtue lovely and vice hateful.

The opera and concert together represent a higher stage in culture than the drama. They tend more to give wings to the imagination, and to cultivate a responsiveness to beauty in its more essential and less substantial form. When the appeals of fine music have met with a response in the nature of a person, the capacity for poetic imaginings has been aroused. It brings a find sense of harmony and a sensitiveness to discord which become woven into character. The play tells the whole story to the dullest wit, and may be enjoyed with scarcely the aid of thought. Music is more positive in its results. At the same time it is almost as universal in its appeal.

The culture effects of such an institution would be largely unconscious. It is the pleasurable effects that v/ould create a keen consciousness, and upon this would depend the advantage to the growth of civicism. With the growth of a delight in good acting and good music, which would not be satisfied with anything inferior, a keen demand for quality would be estab- lished. The people would begin to look to the city for excellence.