The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1874-08-21
Excitement a .,.....-. y. society.

In q recent conversation with Ger
| man friend upon the state of modern
society, he made the following very
forcible remarks:
Excitement is disease. Man does
not need it. He ought not to have it.
What healthy mind most Graves is
placidity; to do its work in perfect calm,
without any stimulus except that af-
forded by perfect bodily health. Mind
and body healthy, each will give all the
stimulus the other needs without resort
to artificial Means There is much
meaning in this that it will bear consi-
derable amplifcation. Mental dissipa-
ton and physical debauchery are alike
disastrous in their effects; alike breed
fierce appetite for more, an appetite
that will not be appeased except by
deeper and deeper draughts, which final
~ ruin body, mind and soul.
The taste for mental excitement now
prevalent, through all classes of society,
is strongly evinced in the theatrical per-
formances, the prominent literature of
the times, the morbid taste for sensatio-
nal displays, involving danger to human
life, the detailed accounts of crimes and
executions demanded of the press by
the public, and the general personal IN
easiness to be observed when people
having nothing in particular to do. Few
people, comparatively, can sit down and
content themselves in quiet thought. A
philosophical work would reduce them
to the last stages of mental exhaustion.
A discussion upon any solid topic is in
effably wearying. Their menta notions
are, SO to speak, shaky and uncertain
till they have had their intellectual
grog.
This state of things is so wide spread
that we are justified In calling it dis
ease of modern society. It's symptoms
are exotic suicides, speculative manias,
gambling, embezzlement, and crimes of
a more heinous type. What is the re-
medy? That question ia easily asked,
but terribly hard to answer. Religion,
Legislative enactments, social philosophy
all seem powerless to effect a cure.
We are sometimes disposed to think
that the only way is to let the disease
run it's course, like smallpox, producing
its unsightly eruption, until the poison
eliminates itself from the body polite.
Society, rs at present organized, may
die of the disease, or peradventure it
may survive to enjoy better health after
wards.
The social science conventions do not
seem to get at the root of the matter at
all. They persist in isoiatlng single
symptoms, and looking upon them as
the disease itself. One member will tell
you that the inordinate love of wealth
is the mattor, taking for text the ia
miliar, but utterly false maxim, ''The
love of money is the root Of all evil,
md propose 20 enact laws that shall
prohibit the accumulation of giant for
tunes Another assigns the evils OF So
ciety to drunkenness, and SO on. These
things are results, not causes.
We do not profess ability to prescribe
a cure for the universal malady of the
age It will require the sober study OF
philosophers for years to come; but of
one thing we feal very certain, namely
that all systems of ethics which place
faith in the emotional nature of man.
kind, only substitute one form Of excite
ment for another, without even approx
mating cure.