Trend

“ The tremendous and complicated development of our material civilization, the multiplicity, and variety of our social forms, the depth, subtlety, and sophistry of our imaginative impressions, gathered, remultiplied, and disseminated by such agencies as the railroad, the express and the post-office, the telephone, the telegraph, the newspaper, and, in short, the whole machinery of social intercourse—these elements of existence combine to produce what may be termed a kaleidoscopic glitter, a dazzling and confusing phantasmagoria of life that wearies and stultifies the mental and moral nature. ”

“ Fashions and modes in literature and art, as in society, come and go; new institutions arise, demanding new methods and modifying cherished customs; and men’s thoughts enlarge and widen with improved conditions, as with the inevitable progress of the age. ”

“ We know now that they are stages in a growth, and in a growth not determined by an accidental environment only, but by an original purpose, a purpose to be realized in the history of the human race as a whole. ”

“ Carven capital, fluted pillar, and scrolled entablature each tell a different tale, and in the wide aisles, open to every wind of heaven, a child might learn, almost as it might learn from nature, the unending mutation, the ceaseless variety of life. ”

“ Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated: and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the state of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception of Progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. ”

“ All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of progression, and all of an objective nature.’”—Ibid. ”

“ Religion, industry, state, education, and literature have been consciously transformed by the heroic efforts of such great men of the world, and these conscious and artificial transformations of the several aspects of social life have been the constituents of a new environment and thus the seeds of Renaissance. ”

“ For my own part, I prefer modern society—I may say, the society of the latest arrivals."
"That's exactly why I asked," said I. "The excessively modern tone of your language and idioms struck me, so to speak, as a sort of anachronism with your Restoration costume—an anachronism which I fancy I have noticed in many printed accounts of gentlemen from your portion of the universe."
"Your observation is quite true," replied the apparition. "We continue always to wear the clothes which were in fashion at the time of our decease ”

“ He loves to contemplate the entrance of new social ways and forms, into a world of old social preference and tradition; to show how there is waged, all the land over, a conflict between street and field, factory and farm, or between the instincts of blood and the capacities of brain ”

“ It is to study the succession of events, not as separate units, but as links of one vast chain, on every one of which is inscribed a phrase discoursing of the progress of the human race, and showing the growth of man in the complex, from infancy to adolescence. ”

“ The marvels of capitalised industry, the results of science, the miracles of art, are daily displayed. Old friends, new books, freshly-coined ideas, strange sights, wonder-signs of all shades and hues, press closely the flying hours. ”

“ Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists. ”

“ But the changes of fashion are so pervasive, so familiar, and, indeed, universal phenomena that we do not regard the changes which they bring, no matter how fantastic, as quite out of the usual and expected order. ”

“ And it is often chance that places in our hands those books which mark the beginning of a new era in the evolution of our ideas. The most casual circumstances, a few lines that happen somehow to come before our eyes, decide our future and plant us in the appointed groove. ”

“ In tracing analogies through the history of the past, the conditions, premonitory, present, and subsequent to great world-movements have often been referred to.
Nothing is more common or more patent than the oft-repeated saying, “This is the age of science.” 211 Any great movement that undertakes at the present day to deal with the deeper problems of individual and social life, must fit in and conform to the “spirit of the present age.” ”

“ And let his [Pg 151] development be full and rounded. Let the roar of ocean and the sough of the pines make music for his ears as well as the whir of factories; let the starry heavens speak to his soul as vividly as the electric lamp to his eye. Let us evolve from the material present ideals that shall stand in place of the vanished ones. ”

“ Popular sentiment remains conservative; and the apparent zeal for superficial innovation affords no indication of the real order of existence. Fashions and formalities, house-interiors and street-vistas, habits and methods, and all the outer aspects of life are changed ”

“ It is possible, given the physiognomic rhythm, to recover from scattered details of ornament, building, script, or from odd political, economic and religious data, the organic characters of whole centuries of history, and from known elements on the scale of art-expression, to find corresponding elements on the scale of political forms, or from that of mathematical forms to read that of economic. ”

“ The dynamical consideration of the progressive development of civilized humanity, affords, no doubt, a still more efficacious means of effecting this interesting verification of the consensus of the social phenomena, by displaying the manner in which every change in any one part, operates immediately, or very speedily, upon all the rest. ”

“ The public scenes opened gradually, and went on increasing in importance; the men grew in number, the personages in dignity, their appurtenances, as well as themselves, in splendour; and thus it advanced with every day, till at last even a well-prepared and firm eye became bewildered. ”

“ His ambitious design is, in his own words, to show "the successive changes in human society, the influence which each instant exerts on the succeeding instant, and thus, in its successive modifications, the advance of the human species towards truth or happiness." ”

“ In each a peculiar economy is observed in the management of the arguments, in the sentiments, in the opinions, in the logical tone, in the manifestations of individuality which diffuse themselves over the whole and give a colour to it. ”

“ We may now turn to those deeper currents of change which together make up social progress; including all distinct advance from lower to higher forms of intelligence, sentiment and character, as well as from lower to higher types of social life ”

“ We cannot, however, say more than that the factors of human progress have always had these three aspects, Folk, Place, Work, and that if progress is to continue on stable lines it must always recognise the essential correlation of fitter folk in body and mind: improved habits and functions, alike in work and leisure ”

“ And when the current of taste of some new generation that overflows conventions and washes forward, or backward, into regions long unlaved, is viewed as a current, its direction plotted, its force estimated, its quality compared, why that is definition, and some good will come of it. ”

“ Societies, especially young societies, are very impressible, and their character—the quality, that is, of their life—is fixed by prevailing influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, and tendencies, in the common types of thought, or taste, or behaviour, or conduct. ”

“ May we not welcome, as at least a step in the right direction, a change in our conventional habits, which may extend, though in ever so small a degree, the region of common thoughts and aims, common hopes and disappointments, common joys and common sorrows? ”

“ Having taken full note of places as they were and are, of things as they have come about, and of people as they are—of their occupations, families, and institutions, their ideas and ideals—may we not to some extent discern, then patiently plan out, at length boldly suggest, something of their actual or potential development? ”

“ That all these semiotic means-expression in very complex dynamic sign systems-change the nature of individual practical experiences and of social life cannot be emphasized enough. Everything we conceive of can be viewed, criticized, felt, sensed, experienced, and evaluated before it is actually produced. ”

“ An adjunct of progress in every stage of development, as indicated with especial clearness in the earliest stages, is the annulment or curtailment of both physical and formal law, and the substitution of cumulatively growing volition: the development of the esthetic passes from the intuitive toward the ratiocinative, that of the industrial from the instinctive toward the inventive, and that of the social from the merely reflective to the vigorously constructive ”

“ But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over the present. ”

“ Fuse them together in proper proportions for a few generations, the improvident and dreamy with the thrifty and energetic, the voluble with the reticent, the romantic and humorous with the truthful and blunt of speech, the fiery and impulsive with the sober of thought, and how greatly is the type improved in the new race evolved from the union of both. ”

“ Again, a word will travel on by slow and regularly progressive courses of change, itself a faithful index of changes going on in society and in the minds of men, till at length everything is changed about it. ”

“ While in all these departments changes have been going on, which upon a superficial view appear to indicate a kind of spontaneous development, when they are analyzed they are seen to have been wholly caused, or more or less influenced, by the genius, the thought, the discoveries, the exertions, and the acts of particular individuals who have had the force to impress themselves upon the age, and thus to make new systems, new beliefs, new products, new rules of social or political life, new tastes, and new habits of thinking and acting. ”

“ When nations have reached a certain growth and pitch of culture, certain sentiments, affectations, ways of thinking, modes of self-expression, habits of life, fashions, and the like, appear as the outcome of complex and long-established social conditions. ”

“ Each variety of form, color, and character has its appropriate style; but our space here is too limited to allow us to do more than drop a hint toward what each requires, to produce the most harmonious and effective combination. ”

“ But without soaring to the stars, the moment that this theory of progression, which seems so natural to us amid an advancing civilization, looks around the world, it comes against an enormous fact—the fixed, petrified civilizations. ”

“ And as these colours intensify and the tradition of the former order fades, as these cultures become more and more shaped and conscious, as the new literatures grow in substance and power, as differences develop from speculative matter of opinion to definite intentions, as contrasts and affinities grow sharper and clearer, there must follow some very extensive modifications in the collective public life. ”

“ Radical changes are to be seen, for example, in the style of architecture, the mode of transmission of news, the methods of transport, the form of municipal government, the maintenance of the public peace, and in social relationships, more particularly with regard to industry and commerce and the parts played by employer and employed. ”

“ All circumstances, moral and physical, their geographical and political state, the past and the present, combine to one end, namely, the development of one faculty and one tendency at the expense of the rest, shrewd management and temperate emotions, a practical understanding and limited desires; they comprehend the amelioration of outward things, and, this accomplished, they crave no more. ”

“ I have spoken so far of material beauty, and here the change in society has been an inexpressible improvement; but, when I turn to beauty of another kind, I cannot speak with equal certainty. Have our manners improved? ”

“ I say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to something more right and more related. ”

“ Behind this change of language is the change of the people involved in various aspects of social life, i.e., their projection into a world appropriated through practical experiences based on the human ability to differentiate-between useful and harmful, pleasant and unpleasant, similar and dissimilar. ”