THE EPIDEMIC OF VULGARITY

New Zealand Tablet, 8 January 1920, Page 13

THE EPIDEMIC OF VULGARITY

(By Edward F.; Garksche, S.J., in America.) Considering the influence, of print, it is really astonishing that society is not more deeply corrupted. One would think that the stuff they read would make half the world criminal and the other half crazy. Look over the heaps of magazines of every color that litter the news-stands, and conjecture what' influence they are likely to have on the Credulous, receptive, and uninstructed mind It is sensationalism and emotionalism that give the current fiction of the masses what the chaste authors would call its kick, and the sensationalism runs into the lurid and the emotion verges to the vile. We are overcome by an avalanche of vulgarity. it is this that impresses itself on the character of the age more than the offences of current literature against the laws of morals. The trivial, the cheap, the falsely sentimental really does get into the minds and the li' ves of the people who read in their idle and receptive hours the huge' piles - of stuff that one finds on the “news butchers’ ’ is not the title significant?stalls. It is a supreme calamity to have an immoral mind, but it is also a great misfortune to have a vulgar mind. Vulgarity is a degradation. If the heaps of “current fiction” and “light literature” that clutter the news-stands are making our people more vulgar, they should assuredly be cleared away. Evidently there is profit in vulgarity, and it will require no little power of protest to stamp out this plague at its fountain head, the conscienceless publishers. The dictionary defines vulgarity as meanness, grossness, coarseness of manners, but of course the word in its original derivation comes from the Latin term for crowd. So that in its literal sense “vulgar means according to the taste and manners of cue crowd. Combining these meanings of the word, one comes to a conclusion that is not very complimentary to the multitude, to wit, that the taste and manners of the crowd are mean, gross', coarse Inhabit and preference. At least it will be interesting to inquire whether this low taste of the multitude is a cause or an effect, in other words, whether vulgarity is only a necessary response to the ingrained and natural craving of the many for what is mean, gross, and coarse, or whether the apparent taste for meanness, grossness, ■ and coarseness is only the result of being fed upon things unworthy, low, and mean. The .second , theory is far more probable.' Taking the common run of men and women, one may say that their taste depends in great measure upon what their imagination, intelligence, and feelings have been fed on. One must, of course, except the two extremes, those who have naturally such sound and excellent taste that it will scarcely bo corrupted by a diet of vulgarity, and those whose natural equipment is so gross and mean that they will scarcely relish higher and nobler things, even when urged upon them. But both these classes are the exception, the second almost as much so as the first. Take the child of the slums out of his gross environment and give him only what is noble, beautiful, and lofty to contemplate, and his love and desire will he fixed on the higher things. Set the child of artists and poets in the sour and crude atmosphere of the slums, and. lie will batten on vulgarity. This may he* seen clearly in those stages of society when refinement and the taste for beauty were in the air and common to high and lowly. In the fortunate middle ages, when Catholicism had sway to exercise, its refining influence, the recreations, the delights of the poor were often as refined as those of the learned. The fireside legends of those days were literature, the ballads were poetry. The art of glorious cathedrals and the paintings of the masters stirred the common people as much, though with a less conscious joy, as they did the small company of the learned. More, the craftsman who wrought the iron for the minster’s door was no less an artist in his way than the sculptor who carved the statuary above it. The taste of the people in those times, whether for things to- be heard nr things to be seen, was not vulgar in the evil sense. The culture of the mind was, it is true, rarer than now ; the culture of the heart, which is refinement, was far more common. What has changed all this and made vulgarity, the taste of the crowd, once more a synonym for baseness and coarseness as it was in the pagan times? Unquestionably the destruction of Catholic traditions brought about in the sixteenth century is in great part responsible. The ancient monasteries were centres of culture. Catholicism is the great patron of the great arts. True Christianity is of its nature inimical to coarseness, baseness, meanness. Let the Church have a free sway, and she will refine any stratum of society. The corruptions that preceded the revolt of Luther weakened her refining influence on great bodies of society, and that revolt killed it altogether. It is

significant that whenever our separated brethren become highly cultured in the true sense they recur, to Catholic models. , Tennyson rewrites the Mort a"Arthur, Longfellow translates Dante; the best modern art is busy with tho great Catholic originals, architecture hangs on the summits of the medieval masters, musicians over the unapproachable creations of men who were Catholic or touched with Catholic inspiration. The huge destruction of lovely works of art that was wrought by the barbarous "reformers" was. an allegory. Their principles destroyed culture in the hearts of the peoples no less than their hands destroyed its masterpieces. But there is a still more fecund source of vulgarity that has risen in modern times. It is the immense increase of information and curiosity without a corresponding increase in the true culture of the taste and feelings. Education is almost universal. Culture is, even more than of old, 'the (possession of the proportionately few. - If a man knows how to read and not what to read, his case is more desperate so far as culture is concerned than that of him who does not read at all. A man may be cultured with the knowledge of but a few excellent books, or without books at all, from intercourse with those who have good taste and fine feelings. So, too, one may be an omnivorous reader and withal very vulgar-minded. To read everything that comes one's way is, nowadays, save to the solidly mature, quite ruinous to culture. Again, the immense demand for reading and for all things else that can be heard or seen, such as songs, pictures, shows, sensations, experiences, which finds its supply in books, magazines, picture-books (for the young and for those who should have somewhat outgrown them), moving pictures, vaudeville, plays, operas, good and bad, and till the hectic array of commercialised amusements which cater to a world too nervous to stay at home, requires an immense diversity of material to supply it. Consider the appalling bulk of written matter that is needed to feed the ogre of the daily press. It is impossible, considering tin- present state of education, that there. should be enough cultured persons on earth, male and female together, to shovel provender for that insatiable monster. Therefore, tribes of "pen-pushers" have grown up, and since they must, come what may. turn out in a given time a certain hulk of matter, it is inevitable that their product should be tinged with vulgarity. For human nature has two sides, the base and the noble, and literature in its wide sense appeals to one or the other. To appeal to the noble side one must have discrimination, taste, skill, and a power of patient application. To appeal to what is baser in us is easy, obvious, and, alas! natural. The angel in men often needs awakening, the animal is always awake and hungry. Therefore, it is only natural that the tribe of pen-pushers, being pressed for copy, write vulgarity. And since vulgarity appeals to one side of human nature very strongly, it is no wonder that it finds a sale. The publishers, who in many instances are no better and no worse than any other tradesmen, see their business flourish, and rejoice. And, alas, again!-the situation promises to grow worse instead of better; as the demand grows, the state of culture is progressively injured, the scribes and their congeners in other lines of commercialised amusement —For in that class must modern publications be —grow more hurried and badgered, the monetary rewards of vulgarity increase, and so also does vulgarity. What are we Catholics to do to stem the tide? When vulgarity goes so far as to become indecent we can protest and claim the enforcement of the law. But what of that even more dangerous kind that invades even chaste minds and lowers the standards and aspirations of our own people? We cannot shield them from it nor keep it from them, for it goes everyplace and is heard and seen everywhere. Our only and best resource is to fortify them against it. The work must begin in the schools.