NOISE AND CIVILISATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19660, 11 June 1927, Page 6 (Supplement)

NOISE AND CIVILISATION.

UNNECESSARY NOISES. (By Leonard "Williams, in the Empire Review.) About ten years ago Dr. Dan McKenzie published a book entitled " The City of Din," which bore tho sub-title "A Tirade Against Noise." It 1 is a most excellent book, erudite and suggestive, and I have often wondered that it excited so little attention. Somebody said of Izaak Walton that he had no business to be absorbed in piscatorial interests while the Civil War was in progress, and I suppose that the year of the appearance of Dan McKenzie s book had something to say to its comparative neglect. Now that ten years have elapsed, I make no apology for calling attrition to its many merits, among which a pawky sense of i humour is very conspicuous. Tho first! part of the little book (it has only 111 pages) is devoted to a consideration of what the author called Nature's noises, those, that is, which are made by animals, birds, water, thunder, and the like. ! Amohg the natural rtoises made by man he properly gives laughter a. high place, and says concerning it: "A modern philosopher, examining the foundations of laughter, holds that it is based upon a feeling of superiority to the laughed at." This, by the way, is an old doctrine. Hobbes, he of The Leviathan, in his Discourse of Human Nature thus determines: " The passion of laughter .is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance except they bring with thom any present dishonour." Noise and Civilisation. From the subject of natural noises tho author passes to the consideration of those which are artificial, and roundly declares at the outset that " Civilisation is a noise. At least, modern civilisation is. And the more it progresses the noisier it becomes." This is, no doubt, true, but most of us, consciously, draw a very definite distinction between necessary or inevitable artificial noises on tho one hand, and, on the other, those which are unnecessary. It was, I bolieve, Herbert Spencer who said that it was possible to gauge a person's intellectual capacity by the degree of his intolerance of unnecessary noises. A necessary noise, however disagreeable, as soon as it is recognised as necessary, is discounted by the human nervous system and ceases to irritate or alarm. It is supposed that the receptor mechanism immediately distributes it below the level of consciousness, but in such a manner as enables the memory of it to be recalled. An unnecessary noise is treated differently. The receptor mechanism refuses to admit it, and so it continues to bang at the door, so to speak, with that vulgar insistence which is so devastating to the educated nervous system. For it is necessary to realise that, while civilisation increases the amount and intensity of noise in tho world it is at the same time, though by a different route, increasing our sensibility to phonetic stimulation, and it ought to be a question of considerable concern to us as to whether our adaptability wijl continuo to be equal to tho strain or whether tho over-increasing noise will gradually exhaust and thus abolish our perception of the finer and, ultimately, the coarser sounds. Regulation of Noise. The only satisfactory manner of dealing with this situation, which, be it noted, holds a real menace to future generations, is for the powers that be to recognise the close association between cacophony and the nervous system. The said powers now very properly protect us from unpleasant sights and odours, but they do very little to protect us from unpleasant sounds. I can gratefully record that well within my recollection tho whistling for taxis has been abolished, and the shouts of the newspaper vendor have been, if not altogether stopped, then mercifully mitigated. Nevertheless, there remain a great many unnecessary noises which cry aloud for supression. Why, for instance, does not the proper authority insist that there shall, in towns at any rate, be a uniform note for motor-car horns 1 The present libertv accorded to drivers to announce their progress by any noise, however strident, does no good, and the harm, which it does includes the encouragement of hogging, which is bad enough, but what in the long run may be infinitely worse, namely, the devastating effects upon tho nerves of the present generation. It is, presumably, not recognised by our matter-of-fact rulers that tho auditory nerves are in very close contact with the brain, and that, consequently, irritation and exhaustion of these sensitive and highly specialised nerves is necessarily reflected in the whole nervous system. The fatigue of a long railway journey is due almost entirely to exhaustion of the auditory nerves" by the constant noise, though it may be admitted that the ocular nerves irritated by the cinema effect of the rapidly-passing landscape may contribute something to the result. (To be continued.)