Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/283

Rh it is still commonly a scrap-work—of information, humor, anecdote, etc., with the sketch or short story as the climax of its demands upon synthetic thought.

The mere change in average length of article which, with a few striking exceptions, has steadily declined during the past generation, is suggestive of this alteration of attitude; and the rise of the short story to a dominant place in our popular magazines is probably part of the same intellectual reaction. We seem no longer to desire sustained attention and consecutive thought. As a consequence we turn from criticism, reflection upon human affairs and constructive theory to fiction, which as a class of literature presents its materials concretely and pictorially; while in fiction itself we prefer the short story, which must deal with a single dramatic action or situation, rather than the novel with its more complex plot and sustained analysis of character and motive.

Lapsing still further, we demand that our intellectual food shall be put up in the form of mouthfuls, or boluses, in notes of travel, places, events; in anecdote, verse, personalia and the like; until each page of the publication exists in practical isolation from the rest. In such connection "mental pabulum" is a misnomer. No real intellectual stimulation, enlightenment or discipline enters into the case. Mental activity is practically limited to the pleasurable sensation of the moment. Beading becomes a stimulant, not in the sense of arousing a heightened intellectual functioning, but only in its provoking a momentary excitement of the imagination; and the mental content of the reader is reduced to a series of such crudely exhilarating moments, unprovocative of subsequent reflection and without any enduring illumination of mind. One who falls into such a habit has become an intellectual drug-fiend, for the securing by artificial means of a heightened or quieted consciousness is not restricted to the use of the needle and the pipe alone. It is a matter of common experience that we turn from the editorial page and critical discussion to more trivial and inconsequential items as the mental energies flag, and for many of us the approach of exhaustion is marked by an assiduous and almost involuntary reading of the advertising columns of our daily paper. Men of intellectual force have similarly confessed to a habit of devouring shilling shockers when tired from a long bout of work, the jaded mind still craving an activity which it was unable to sustain and finding satisfaction in the violent stimulation and elementary situations which yellow-back literature offered.

The significance of certain changes in the place of illustration to which attention has already been called in the case of books and periodicals is still more strikingly exhibited in the recent history of platform speaking. The public lecture has been an important factor in the development of American culture. Before the multiplication of periodical literature and the rise of the illustrated magazine its position was supreme. Upon the system of Lyceum lecturing the intelligent public