MARCUS AURELIUS, 1914
Let me exaggerate! For in exaggeration there is life and the punch that makes for progress. Whereas no man can manifestly qualify as a live wire who sees things as they are.
Let me exaggerate the number of millions of bacteria to the cubic centimetre in our morning milk; and the hosts of virulent bacilli that make their encampment on the unlaundered dollar-bill; and the anti-social micro-organisms that beset the common drinking-cup.
Let me exaggerate the virtue of assiduously and courageously swatting the common house-fly.
Let me exaggerate the grey and monotonous life of the poor, forgetting the children who dance to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy; and the mothers who smile over their babies in tenement cradles, and the lovers in the parks, and the May parties, and the millions who patronise the moving-picture theatres, and the millions in Coney Island.
Let me exaggerate the grinding, crushing, withering speed of modern industry, forgetting the hundreds of thousands who throng the baseball parks and the additional millions who study the score boards on Park Row.
Let me exaggerate the number of children who go breakfastless to school, since nothing less than 25,000 gets into the newspaper headlines; and the wickedness of regularly ordained clergymen who marry people without asking for a physician's certificate; and the peril of helping an old lady up the Subway steps lest she turn out to be a recruiter of white slaves.
Let me exaggerate the blessings of an age when babies shall be born without adenoids and tonsils, and shall develop just as automatically into clear-eyed little Boy Scouts and Camp-fire Girls.
Let me exaggerate! Teach me that outlook upon life which the highbrow pragmatists describe as the will to believe, and the low-brow describes as pipe dreams! Save me from those twin devils, the Sense of Humour and the Sense of Proportion; for in common sense is stagnation and death, but progress lies in exaggeration!
[XXXII]
BY THE TURN OF A HAND
In seven different ways has the world been on the point of being regenerated since the Spanish-American War. For the completeness with which the world has been reconstructed consult the current files of the newspapers.
The world was to be made over by the bicycle. The strap-hanger was to abandon his strap and ride joyfully down the Broadway cable-slot, snapping his fingers at traction magnates and imbibing ozone. The factory-hand was to abandon his city flat and live in the open country, going to and from his work through the green lanes at fifteen miles an hour, with his lunch on the handle bars. The old were to grow young again and the young were to dream close to the heart of Nature. The doctors were to perish of starvation. But where is the bicycle to-day?
The world was to be made over by jiu-jitsu. Elderly gentlemen were to regain the waistline of their youth by ten minutes' attention every morning to the secrets of the Samurai. Slim young women, when attacked by heavy ruffians, were to seize their assailants by the wrist and hurl them over the right shoulder. The police were to discard their revolvers and their night sticks, and suppress rioters by mere muscular contraction. The doctors, as before, were to grow extinct through the rapid process of starvation. But where is jiu-jitsu to-day?
The world was to be regenerated by denatured alcohol. Congress had merely to remove the internal revenue tax and a new motive power would be let loose, far transcending the total available horsepower of our coal mines. Denatured alcohol was to drive the farmer's machines, propel our war automobiles, run our factories, and reduce the cost of living to a ridiculous minimum. But where is denatured alcohol to-day?
The world was to be redeemed by the bungalow. The landlord was to disappear and in his place would come a race of free-men bowing the head to no man and raising their own vegetables. Kitchen drudgery was to be eliminated by the simple device of abolishing the kitchen and calling it a kitchenette. With no more stairs to climb, rheumatism would pass into history. So would the doctors. The bungalow is still with us, and alas, so are the doctors.
The world was to be regenerated by sour milk; by the simple life; by sleeping in the open air. But where now are Prof. Metchnikoff and Pastor Wagner? And the pictures of rose-embowered sleeping porches in the garden magazines have been supplanted by pictures of colonial farmhouses transformed into charming interiors by two coats of white-wash and a thin-paper edition of the classics.
Does this show that we must give up all hope of seeing a new world around us before 1915? By no means. We still have Eugenics.