Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/23

 ONE ASPECT OF VICE 9

further interest remains that of men in general. Does not society with its massive power, with its sweep of varied life and interest, with its mighty purposes, its wars and rumors of war, its successes and its failures, its crushings and its nurturings, its fatalistic necessity and its womanlike tender-heartedness does not this gigantic panorama of living seize him, and call forth the tribute of his thought and feeling ? I answer, no ; it is an unknown world to him. His vision is limited to an infinitely smaller field of view. The interests of his locality may be his ; and since man is everywhere a political animal, this is generally true. But the kind of organization which here obtains is not such as to make him independent of, but rather dependent on, the will of the "boss;" and the petty part which he is allowed to play, in place of calling forth his own enthusiasm, leads him into counsels where he must merely obey. The rule of the machine is everywhere a menace to American manhood, because under the very pretense of expressing the will of its followers, and quite unknown to them, it robs them of their will, and counts their votes while it suppresses their intelligence. Such is the situation in which many forms of " vice " prosper. A thoroughgoing division of labor has robbed the workingman of the necessity of using his brain. His employer thinks out his work. His wife thinks out the problems of domestic life. The bombastic freethinker and the boastful atheist or the com- placent priest think out his religion for him. While the "boss" and his cabinet do his political thinking, the energy of his own consciousness is nowhere demanded. He is nowhere immediately responsible for these processes. He seldom becomes vitally interested in them. They are outside him. He accepts their results, but can do so only formally. They do not lay hold of him as his own. They, therefore, cannot demand the tribute of his feeling cannot call forth the energy to think, which nature is constantly renewing within him. Brain-energy is little used in his process of life. It accumulates. He becomes restless, uneasy, is not functioning properly, does not feel like himself, and tries to get away from so unsatisfactory a state.