Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1882-08-29
Why Crowds Kill joy.


people do not in general love to be
quite alone is not surprising; the es-
sence of the greater half OF human
happiness is sympathy, and you cans
not enjoy sympathy without COM
panionship of some sort. Observe
the behavior of people when they
get out of pleasure vans, and you
will seldom or never see them break
up into multitude of small parties,
though one or two small parties
will probably be given off For the
most part, the remainder will keep
together in very large groups and
not break up at all. There seems to
be very great pleasure in the mere
volume of pleasuring, which attracts
all the pleasure seekers, as the earth
attracts the little shooting stars.
And this is, perhaps, one
of the most difficult things
for many of us to understand.
Ali men with any kindness in them
like to see enjoyment, but the enjoy
ment in the mass is not, to most OF
US, half as great as the enjoyments
which are inconsistent with and over
Swallowed by cumulative life of any
kind. How can you enjoy a CONVEX
sation, or the beauty of scenery, or
sunset, or even fresh air thorough
ly with crowd around you? You
must be very benevolent indeed to
take more pleasure in the sight of
crowd of cheerful faces than you
would take in the enjoyment of many
sishts and sounds necessarily oblit-
Grated for you by the presence of all
these faces. Nor can we bellve that
it is the benevolence of the majority
of the human race which gives them
such a keen enjoyment of the vol
ume Of the life around them. We
imagine the truth to be that the
mere sense of vivid life around is
usually found pleasant and stlmu-
lating until you discover that 1t
interferes with some life within which
IS more stimulating still. To see the
large parties which on public holi-
days voluntarily keep together for
the purpose of enjoying their own
uprOariousness, whether indoors or
out, is almost proof positive that the
sense of neighboring life is in itself
one of the keenest of pleasures, until
it comes to interfere with something
else which you enjoy more.
and cannot enjoy while all this neigh
boring life is surging about you We
suspect that the mass OF people gain
confidence in themselves from feeling
he identity of their enjoyments with
! the epjOyments of others, and that
that new confidence in themselves is
part of the delight. But it is not the
stimulus to seIf-contidence alone-lt
seems to be q stimulus to vitality
generally which is caused by sea OF
life around And, perhaps, the very
reason why crowd becomes somucE
of k1ll-joy to many of US, is that il
dlminishes the vitality of those who
suffer under it-perhaps by impress
ing upon them the wide divergence
between their own pleasures ant
those pleasures of the multltud'
which to them individually are llttl
but glare and noise and restlessness
Yet it is certain that glare and nols
and restlessness act like wine upol
the greater number of our fellow
creatures, and exalt common enjoy
ments to a point not far from rap
ture. Life In the mass seems to b
the greatest stimulus which man
human beings can take, until the
begin to discriminate carefully thel
own life and its delights from othe
peoples, and then they become awar
that the impressiveness OF life IN th
mass extinguishes even more OF ID
dlvidual than 1t stimulates of socia
sensibility.