Constriction

“ In a narrow street, in a den of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that there was order, but that civilization only showed its morbidity and order only its monotony. ”

“ To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction, let us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis. Consider the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey, in thought, the actions of the several classes into which they are divided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability of human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity of the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves, and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain hour, and applies himself to the task enjoined him. ”

“ But there are, both in Nature and Reason, certain Provinces assign’d to each; and a Man’s attempting to overturn them, would be as absurd and preposterous, as a Merchant’s sending his Wife to transact Business upon Change, while he stay’d at home to preside over the Nursery. ”

“ This contravention of the natural order has produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain confusion and false movement, of which we are now beginning to feel, in almost every direction, the inconvenience. In all directions our habitual causes of action seem to be losing efficaciousness, credit, and control, both with others and even with ourselves. Everywhere we see the beginnings of confusion, and we want a clue to some sound order and authority. ”

“ And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. ”

“ The conditions that dictate our education, the distribution of our property, our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things, change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them, being inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting, and then are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ But now the man of the cities finds the space too circumscribed. He is surrounded by alluring temptation, and like an invisible procureur there slinks through society the knowledge of preventive methods which evade all consequences. ”

“ The din and crowds of the city streets grow confusing and wearisome. If he stays and gains a situation, and begins to work his way up in the world, he finds competition intense, his freedom sharply curtailed, and his lodgings narrow and in many ways lacking comfort. ”

“ We emphasise the difficulty of limiting the frontier impartially. [144] It would be a good thing to make use of a criterion, good or bad, but exact. One will, no doubt, be found, but in the meantime we have none. ”

“ For in almost every state where, owing to peculiar circumstances, such precautionary measures have not been taken, the most dangerous disorders and jarring discords have affected the whole of public life, as the inevitable consequences of its absence. ”

“ Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our whole social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles. ”

“ We had hardly got well upon the street before I realized the enormous change that total prohibition had effected. Everywhere were the bright smiling faces of working people, laughing and singing at their tasks, and, early though it was, cracking jokes and asking one another riddles as they worked. ”

“ Yet these movements are in many ways in conflict with one another, and they naturally tend to bring one another to a uniformity—that is, into a state in which one movement is as little obstructive to the other as possible. ”

“ To which there comes the undeniable corollary that every law which serves to alter men's modes of action—compelling, or restraining, or aiding, in new ways—so affects them as to cause in course of time an adjusted nature. ”

“ But the physical conditions of the city life are so novel to them, the bustle and violence of it all so insistent, the effect of the mechanical labour, the little leisure, mostly consumed in transit, the grey, similar streets of tiny houses so desolating, that it is hard to stimulate a high political, social, or religious aspiration. ”

“ Well, they are like most other limits that determine the conduct of men and women. They are shifting limits, they change from age to age, and from climate to climate; nay, more than that, from social set to social set. ”

“ Ethical standards of which he has no conception clash. Watch the meeting of two currents in river or bay, and see the line of drift that tells of the struggle. So in the city's life strive the currents of the old and the new, and in the churning the boy goes adrift. ”

“ This freedom and ease, so desirable and so universally admired, is affected by every person who is in the habit of riding, but with this difference, some [43] possess system, with negligence, and ease, and others merely negligence and ease, without system. ”

“ Come, tell me that!"
"Well," said I, "I suppose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people's action about these matters."
"I should think so, indeed," said he. "At all events, experience shows that it is so. Amongst us, our differences concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. ”

“ From man's drawing the world closer and closer together, his own affairs and institutions have consolidated. Concentration may typify the chief movement of the age — concentration, classification, order ”

“ Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each, so that there is, we may say, an orbit traced out within which the action of each is brought into play by its own native right. ”

“ In the follower's honest, slow brain, the processes which complicate decision in subtler minds are clotted into one--the sense of order, continuity, routine, everything that is implied in a regulation. ”

“ Such is exactly my present feeling,—an unutterable weariness of the aggressive characteristics of existence in a highly organized society. The higher the social development, the sharper the struggle. One feels this especially in America,—in the nervous centres of the world's activity. ”

“ The coercive forces by which aggregates keep their units together are at first very slight, and, becoming extreme at a certain stage of social evolution, afterward relax—or, rather, change their forms. ”

“ On the other hand, it is an elaborate web of regulations—legal, ecclesiastical, economic—which is to-day quite out of relation to our impulses. On the one hand, it is a force which springs from within; on the other hand, it is a force which presses on us from without. ”

“ The evidence at our command is conflicting, and does no more than suggest that the restrictions or relaxations common to the whole community may be connected with the belief in lucky and unlucky days. ”

“ Viewed in the light of their second station—the station of distinction, differentiation, temporal limitations, characteristics and standards,—they manifest absolute servitude, utter destitution and complete self-effacement. ”

“ Measures, of course, must change with the times, and such as bear on individuals and on their liberty are a ticklish matter; still, we ought, perhaps, to show some breadth and boldness as to merely material measures—air, light, and construction. ”

“ While thus some progress has been made in the adjustment of difficulties and the danger of disturbance on a large scale seems remote, it would be unwise to lose sight of the lesson taught by experience, that such as to present extraordinary difficulties to civilizing influences. ”

“ To glance backward over a century is to feel that life constantly reiterates this situation. We all of us are roughly divided—very roughly, sometimes—into the two groups: the people in the cars and the people in the doorways. ”

“ Such an attitude—exalted by the even, though powerful, the cold, though penetrating voice—the face impassive and inscrutable—the eye, steady, unmoving, and unreadable—all this, I say, was just the kind of thing to produce an immense impression on those who are ready only to accept Home Rule as the policy that pays best. ”

“ Control tends to keep society static, but there are powerful dynamic forces that are continually upsetting the equilibrium. In spite of the natural conservatism of institutions and agencies of control, group life is as [11] continually changing as the physical elements in nature. Continued observation recorded over a considerable period of time reveals changing habits, changing occupations, changing interests, even changing laws and governments. ”

“ It is complicated, heterogeneous, full of activity, so that its phases are constantly changing. Legislation and state action are stiff, rigid, inelastic, incapable of adaptation to cases; they are never adopted except under stress of the perception of some one phase which has, for some reason or other, arrested attention. ”

“ This divergence, viz., estimate of control by a stranger, now as lighter, now as severer, than control by one who is nearer, has certain utilitarian justifications. The stranger is less partisan, the member of the group is more intelligent about its conditions. ”

“ XXI. Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it. When, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. ”

“ There is both a minuter subdivision of functions, and a wider freedom of choice in the selection of their functions by individuals. In the rudest state, the relative condition and mode of life of whole classes are rigidly fixed by their birth or by arbitrary violence. ”

“ When the multitude is strongly stirred by a consciousness of the abnormal in its midst, to someone, or to something, it means danger. Order is not preserved by authority, but by tradition. A suspicion that events are about to happen which are contrary to established order shakes that tradition, with the immediate result that confusion threatens. ”

“ Upon a general comparative review of these two systems, civilization seems to have lost sight of Nature, and reasoning from relation, establishes a system of coercion to secure existence and to establish misery. ”

“ Finally, the individuals composing many orders will be found identical in some important character of the systems by which ordinary life is maintained, as in the nervous and circulatory: the divisions thus outlined are called classes. ”

“ Omitting those lowest types which show no differentiations at all, we have but few exceptions to the rule that each society has structures for carrying on conflict with other societies and structures for carrying on sustentation ”

“ If your Lordships look to the situation of our neighbours it will appear that the same causes have produced precisely the same effects, and that these causes have proceeded further amongst them, than they have with us, because they have existed for a longer period of time. ”

“ But the point where these two opposing forces of life find their most perfect equilibrium changes continually from age to age; and any epoch approaches more or less near this point according to the degree of activity of the two forces struggling within it. ”

“ To put the point another way, restricting our attention to the behavior of some system considered as a collection of states can distract us from relevant factors in predicting the future of the system. ”

“ In order to understand the forces which in every large city tend to develop these detached milieus, in which vagrant and suppressed impulses, passions, and ideals emancipate themselves from the dominant moral order, it is necessary to refer to the fact or theory of latent impulses of men. ”