"Mental Efficiency And Other Hints to Men and Women"

And certainly when we behold the spectacle of genuine distinguished merit gaining, without undue delay and without the sacrifice of dignity or of conscience, the applause of the kind-hearted but obtuse and insensible majority of the human race, we have fair reason to hug ourselves.

MENTAL EFFICIENCY

VIII THE PETTY ARTIFICIALITIES

THE phrase petty artificialities," employed by one of the correspondents in the great Simple Life argument, has stuck in my mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer wanted there.

Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to arraign the conditions of modern life." A vituperative epithet is capable of making a big show. Artificialities is a sufficiently scornful word, but when you add petty" you somehow give the quietus to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its diminished head, after that. Modern life is settled and done for -- in the opinion of those who have thrown the dart.

Only it isn't done for, really, you know. Petty," after all, means nothing in that connexion. Are there, then, artificialities which are not "petty," which are noble, large, and grand? Petty" means merely that the users of the word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their spleen they refer to petty " artificialities. The device is a common one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air, but they do no execution.

At the same time, let me admit that I deeply sympathize with the irritated users of the im- polite phrase "petty artificialities." For it does at any rate show a " divine discontent"; it does prove a high dissatisfaction with conditions which at best are not the final expression of the eternal purpose. It does make for a sort of crude and churlish righteousness. I well know that feeling which induces one to spit out savagely the phrase "petty artificialities of modern life."

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