When a system of this sort is thoroughly established, as in the case of the later Roman Empire, it confines the individual mind as in a narrow cage by supplying it with only one sort of suggestions. The variation of ideas and the supplanting of old types by new can begin only by individuals getting hold of suggestions that conflict with those of the ruling system; and in the absence of this an old type may go on reproducing itself indefinitely, individuals seeming no more to it than the leaves of a tree, which drop in the autumn and in the spring are replaced by others indistinguishable from them. It “breeds true” on the same principle that wild pigeons, long kept to a fixed type by natural limitations, are less variable than domestic species, in whose recent past there have been elements of change.
Among the Hindoos, for instance, a child is brought up from infancy in subjection to ceremonies and rites which stamp upon him the impression of a fixed and immemorial system. They control the most minute details of his life, and leave little room for choice either on his part or that of his parents. There is no attempt to justify tradition by reason: custom as such is obligatory.
Intolerance goes very naturally with formalism, since to a mind in the unresisted grasp of a fixed system of thought anything that departs from that system must appear irrational and absurd. The lowest Chinaman unaffectedly despises the foreigner, of whatever rank, as a vulgar barbarian, just as Christians used to despise the Jews, and the Jews, in their time, the Samaritans. Tolerance comes in along with peaceful discussion, when there is a competition of various ways of thinking, no one of which is strong enough to suppress the others.
In America and western Europe at the present day there is a great deal of formalism, but it is, on the whole, of a partial and secondary character, existing rather from the inadequacy of vital force than as a ruling principle. The general state of thought favors adaptation, because we are used to it and have found it on the whole beneficial. We expect, for example, that a more vital and flexible form of organization will supplant the rigid systems of Russia and the Orient, and whatever in our own world is analogous to these.
But dead mechanism is too natural a product of human conditions not to exist at all times, and we may easily find it to-day in the church, in politics, in education, industry and philanthropy; wherever there is a lack of vital thought and sentiment to keep the machinery pliant to its work.
Thus our schools, high and low, exhibit a great deal of it. Routine methods, here as everywhere, are a device for turning out cheap work in large quantities, and the temptation to use them, in the case of a teacher who has too much to do, or is required to do that which he does not understand or believe in, is almost irresistible. Indeed, they are too frequently inculcated by principals and training schools, in contempt of the fact that the one essential thing in real teaching is a personal expression between teacher and pupil. Drill is easy for one who has got the knack of it, just because it requires nothing vital or personal, but is a convenient appliance for getting the business done with an appearance of success and little trouble to any one.
Even universities have much of this sort of cant. In literature, for instance, whether ancient or modern, English or foreign, little that is vital is commonly imparted. Compelled by his position to teach something to large and diverse classes, the teacher is led to fix upon certain matters—such as grammar, metres, or the biographies of the authors—whose definiteness suits them for the didactic purpose, and drill them into the student; while the real thing, the sentiments that are the soul of literature, are not communicated. If the teacher himself feels them, which is often the case, the fact that they cannot be reduced to formulas and tested by examinations discourages him from dwelling upon them.
In like manner our whole system of commerce and industry is formal in the sense that it is a vast machine grinding on and on in a blind way which is often destructive of the human nature for whose service it exists. Mammon—as in the painting by Watts—is not a fiend, wilfully crushing the woman’s form that lies under his hand, but only a somewhat hardened man of the world, looking in another direction and preoccupied with the conduct of business upon business principles.
A curious instance of the same sort of thing is the stereotyping of language by the cheap press and the habit of hasty reading. The newspapers are called upon to give a maximum of commonplace information for a minimum of attention, and in doing this are led to adopt a small standard vocabulary and a uniform arrangement of words and sentences. All that requires fresh thought, either from reader or writer, is avoided to the greater comfort of both. The telegraph plays a considerable part in this, and an observer familiar with its technique points out how it puts a premium on long but unmistakable words, on conventional phrases (for which the operators have brief signs) and on a sentence structure so obvious that it cannot be upset by mistakes in punctuation.[154] In this way our newspapers, and the magazines and books that partake of their character, are the seat of a conventionalism perhaps as destructive of the spirit of literature as ecclesiasticism is of the spirit of Christianity.
The apparent opposite of formalism, but in reality closely akin to it, is disorganization or disintegration, often, though inaccurately, called “individualism.”[155] One is mechanism supreme, the other mechanism going to pieces; and both are in contrast to that harmony between human nature and its instruments which is desirable.