[151] Imitation-coutume and imitation-mode.
[152] Americans should notice that what they are apt to call the snobbishness of the English middle class—their anxiety to imitate those whom they regard as social superiors—has its good result in producing a discipline in which many of us are somewhat grossly lacking. It may be better, in manners for instance, that people should adopt a standard from questionable motives than that they should have no standard at all. The trouble with us is the prevalence of a sprawling, gossiping self-content that does not know or care whether such things as manners, art and literature exist or not.
CHAPTER XXX
FORMALISM AND DISORGANIZATION
The Nature of Formalism—Its Effect upon Personality—Formalism in Modern Life—Disorganization, “Individualism”—How it Affects the Individual—Relation to Formalism—“Individualism” Implies Defective Sympathy—Contemporary “Individualism”—Restlessness under Discomfort—The Better Aspect of Disorganization.
Too much mechanism in society gives us something for which there are many names, slightly different in meaning, as institutionalism, formalism, traditionalism, conventionalism, ritualism, bureaucracy and the like. It is by no means easy, however, to determine whether mechanism is in excess or not. It becomes an evil, no doubt, when it interferes with growth and adaptation, when it suppresses individuality and stupefies or misdirects the energies of human nature. But just when this is the case is likely not to be clear until the occasion is long past and we can see the matter in the perspective of history.
Thus, in religion, it is well that men should adhere to the creeds and ritual worked out in the past for spiritual edification, so long as these do, on the whole, fulfil their function; and it is hard to fix the time—not the same for different churches, classes or individuals—when they cease to do this. But it is certain that they die, in time, like all tissue, and if not cleared away presently rot.
It has been well said that formalism is “an excess of the organ of language.”[153] The aim of all organization is to express human nature, and it does this through a system of symbols, which are the embodiment and vehicle of the idea. So long as spirit and symbol are vitally united and the idea is really conveyed, all is well, but so fast as they are separated the symbol becomes an empty shell, to which, however, custom, pride or interest may still cling. It then supplants rather than conveys the reality.
Underlying all formalism, indeed, is the fact that it is psychically cheap; it substitutes the outer for the inner as more tangible, more capable of being held before the mind without fresh expense of thought and feeling, more easily extended, therefore, and impressed upon the multitude. Thus in our own architecture or literature we have innumerable cheap, unfelt repetitions of forms that were significant and beautiful in their time and place.
The effect of formalism upon personality is to starve its higher life and leave it the prey of apathy, self-complacency, sensuality and the lower nature in general. A formalized religion and a formalized freedom are, notoriously, the congenial dwelling-place of depravity and oppression.