On the side of sensationalism it is urged (1) that laws and institutions are great educators. By the many laws against theft thieving has come to be regarded as the great crime, and by societies like that for the prevention of cruelty to animals kindness has come to be a common virtue. If, therefore, it is argued, by some rough awakening of the public conscience, laws have been passed and institutions started, something is done to develop the higher part of character. ‘Principles,’ it has been said, ‘are no more than moral habits,’ and if agitation leads to laws which enforce moral habits, sensationalism may thus have the credit of forming principles which make character.
It is further urged (2) that, if association be the watchword of the future and the educational force of the new age, it is by noisy means that associations must be formed, because the trumpet note which is to draw men together from parties and classes between whom great gulfs are fixed must be one loud enough to strike the senses.
Lastly, it is said (3) that many whose imagination has been made dull by the modern systems of education could never know the truth unless it were shown to them under the strongest light. They have been so rarely taught in school to take pleasure in knowledge or to stretch their minds, they have so little accustomed themselves to think over what is absent or to trace effects to causes, that it is more often by ignorance than by selfishness that they are cruel. They have been so eager in managing their inheritance of wealth that they have failed to use their other inheritance—the power of putting questions. Such people, it is argued, hearing of atrocities, learning the cost at which wealth is made, and seeing the brutal side of vice, get such development of character that they question habits, customs, conditions which they before accepted, and become more just and generous.
On the other hand, against this use of sensationalism, keeping still in view the effects on character, it is urged (1) that actions caused by the excitement of the emotions before they can be supported by reason are followed by apathy. The people who became ‘frantic’ at the tale of the Bulgarian atrocities have since heard almost with equanimity of suffering as terrible. The many who wrote and spoke of the bitter lot of the poor hardly give the few pounds a year required to keep alive the Sanitary Aid Society which was started to deal with what was allowed to lie nearest the root of the bitterness—the ill-administered laws of health. The leaders of the Salvation Army, pursued by this fear of apathy, have continually to seek new forms of excitement, just as politicians have to seek new cries.
Such examples seem to show that the wave which is raised by the emotions must fall back unless it is followed by the rising tide of reason, and that the effect on character of neglecting the reason is to make it unfeeling and apathetic. According to Rossetti’s allegory, they who are stirred by the sight of vice become, like those who look on the Gorgon’s head, hardened to stone.
Let not thine eyes know
Any forbidden thing itself, although
It once should save as well as kill; but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
The emotions, certainly, cannot be strained without loss. Of the greatest English actress it is told that she paid in old age the price of early strain on her feelings ‘by weariness, vacuity, and deadness of spirit.’