Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/283

Rh then society deserves no such reproach. Finally, if to be vulgar means to possess and cultivate individuality, to study the principles of taste, and to consider these as more entitled to respect than the dictates of fashion, to regard advantages of wealth and position as held in trust for mankind at large, and to make the enjoyment of pleasure secondary to the performance of duty, the accusation of vulgarity is very much beside the mark.

The word "vulgar," as we all know, means "appertaining to, or characteristic of, the multitude." We have not turned up the word in the dictionary, for we feel sure this definition will suffice. An infallible rule, therefore, for being vulgar according to the measure of your ability, is to keep your eye on others, so that whatsoever they do you may do also, irrespective of your own judgment as to the merits of the particular act or course of action. If you begin to study the right or wrong of the thing, to consider whether what suits, or seems to suit, others is also suitable to you—if, in a word, you bring private judgment and a moral or æsthetic conscience to bear on the matter—you at once run the risk of not being vulgar, and that is a risk which a good many persons do not care to run. "As well out of the world as out of the fashion" is the whole law and gospel of vulgarity, seeing that it is the maxim which compels people to abnegate and set at nought their private judgment, and act blindly in troops at the bidding of some unseen and possibly very despicable master of ceremonies.

We begin to see now, perhaps, what the eminent clergyman meant when he said that "society" was vulgar. He did not mean any of the things first hinted at. He was thinking of the essential meaning of the word. He saw, with a clearness of vision which it would be well if all ministers of the gospel possessed, that luxury does not shut out vulgarity, that so-called polite manners are not incompatible with it, that even educational acquirements may only, like varnish, bring out its grain more distinctly. He saw that "society," when all is said and done, lives mainly to eat and drink and nourish the bodily senses; that far from believing in and cultivating individuality, it represses it to the utmost; that, instead of discussing, like citizens of a free republic, the codes by which it is governed, it only asks to know that they have been imposed by some recognized authority; that, in a word, it is whatever is most commonplace, glorified by the power of gold. So he ventured to say it was vulgar, and, if it is not, then what is it? It is, broadly speaking, a region of tinsel, of monotonous routine, of rival vanities so alike in their expression that one is hardly to be distinguished from another, and of slavish imitation. The way of escape from this City of Destruction lies through the cultivation of individuality and thoughtfulness for others. As the essence of vulgarity is to be a selfish, unreflecting slave of fashion, so the farthest remove from it is to be a freely thinking, judging, and acting individual, seeking ever higher modes of life, and desiring to communicate as much of good as possible to others. The aim of education ought to be to rescue from vulgarity and win over to a broad humanity—to plant the law of reason in the mind and the law of love in the heart.

several psychological works of Prof. James Sully are so widely read and frequently cited in America that their author needs no introduction to the readers of the Accordingly, we feel that we are making a very welcome announcement in stating that Prof. Sully has consented to contribute to this magazine a series of articles embodying some of the studies of mental development in childhood that he has been making during the past few years. The first of these articles, under the