Morning journal and courier., 1886-05-07
THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.
Hts IndestructibIe Elements-A Grow. ing Tendency Toward CYntcism and Skepticism.

SkeptIcIsm.
 From the Spectator
 r. 1t has chanced to the writer to read a
 number of memoirs, bieegg iieeggraphies and sketch es, all intended to describe 'tsociefy" fh>iits technical sense-the upper society, that is, of great capitals, the large group of more ! or less idle persons which in every Euro
 pean country has drawn together round the center of affairs, be it court, parliament or Conspicuous persons, has called itself and thought itself ''the world" has given laws | to manners and greatly influenced morals. and in ali ages has attracted to itself for no obvious reason an exceptional attention and regard. It is not m interesting study ex- cept for an object, and one is soon startled to see how little variety it presents, but it is impossible to read such accounts without no- ticing that society,"" in it's limited sense, though without demonstrable raison d'etre is apparently indestructible, or wondering whether, if indestructible as time advances, grows worse or better. The closer you study European history the more certain yon are to find limited, yet large, circle which sur- rounds the center of power, which claims for itself most of the enjoyments of life and se- cures them, which the millions around re- gard with admiration envy, or occasional ly savage hatred, but which itself does little or nothing to draw to itself that exceptional attention. It simply is, and continues to be, floating at the top, apparently without eff fort, and though rapidly huctuating in it's components, still marked by the presence of constituents, such as the great families, which hardly change. It is always frivolous, always attentive to ceremony, always more or less vicious, and always in want of fresh supplies Of cash, which it wastes profusely; yet it does not pass away. You find it as ,e--1 1, II n H., or Henri Quatre, as round Louis XIV. or Napoleon IT,, marked in the time of Charles II. as of Queen Victoria, and, allow ing for difference of manners, always with
 the same characteristics. All within it are seeking distraction; all are self-willed and in
 a way lawless, yet without independence;
 and all, as body, seek money.
 The satirists of to-day who describe Der
 lin, Vienna, Paris and London all notice the
 money greed of 'society," the intrusion into
 it because they bring money of vulgar Jews,
 the taint of jobbing which sticks to some of
 its real and most of it's fictitious eminen- cies; but all that is very old. Legacy-hunt- ing was trade with the Roman aristocracy;
 society in the middle ages hungered for grants of land, heiresses, appanages and
 court pensions; the grand society of Louis XIV. courted farmers general as the little eo-
 oiety of M. Greyy courts German and Le-
 vantine Jews, and contracts were competed
 for by courtiers two hundred years ago, as
 Concessions" and ''early information" are
 now. There is no change in objects, and as
 to methods, there is probably improve
 ment. Cruelty has been struck out of the list Of permissible distractions; sexual vice, if still motive power, is. far less oynically coarse; luxury has got itself varnish of re- fnement from art, which Is sometimes genu- ine and idleness, though still dominant, is broken by 8 quantity of thin but harmless intellectual interests. Whatever the change, | survived all political events. It emerged
 smiling, interesting and corrupt from the
 cataclysm of the French revolution, which for one short hour did completely submerge it; it remains unaffected by the slow decay
 of the prestige of birth; and we sign
 that it is seriously threatened by the progress
 of democracy. National poverty, one would
 think, would weaken it; but it never was
 more conspicuous than under the Directory,
 when nobody had anything; and it was ram
 pant in Berlin when, after the French inva-
 sion, fortunes were not, and one hundred
 pounds sterling year was 8 salary coveted
 by great persons
 Will "society" get better? History
 does not suggest hope, for even religious re-
 vivals have only touched it for a moment;
 misfortunes have never sobered it, as witness
 the history of the French emigres, princes
 and nobles, and the progress Of intelligence
 has made but it's amusements & little more
 varied. Indeed, if we were to calculate
 closely, probability would become visible
 that "society" might grow little worse. It
 attracts wealth more than ever. It grows
 more skeptical than it did. It is becoming
 cynical under the microscope to which it is
 exposed, it's members feeling that if they are
 to enjoy at all they must disregard opinion,
 and it is deriving from the progress of de-
 moeracy new and evil strength. That prog ress ostraeises hundreds who would, but for
 it, seek public careers, and they, with their
 strength for work, seclude themselves in so- ciety, retiring, as it were, from befouled
 arena to the drawing room, to which they
 bring the invigoration of their capacities, and a new contempt for the inferior crowd outside When in some circles in France, in the best circles in America, and, alas! in one or two enlarging circles in England, it has become good form to be of society, and bad form to be of politics, "society" gains for itself temporary refrigeration. It has absorbed men and women too good for it and
 waxes fat on wasted brains. There should
 be deterioration in those circumstances of the hour, in the cosmopolitan character
 which the great life assumes-your cosmopol- itan usually learning all vices, because re- leased from the pressure of all national opin- ions-and in the growing pressure of true pessimistic thought, the thought which doubts whether in a world like this the indi- vidual nan do anything worth doing, except ransack earth for dainties, curious and beau tiful objects, or inquire with curiosity which lasts ve minutes whether peep out side the world is indeed possibility.