Things

— It is Curious to note how two apparently conflicting tendencies can be operative at the same time in a given civilization. Thus in the newer portions of our West nothing is more marked than the element of outwardness, the immense appreciation of things involved in its sudden rise to prosperity, The only standard of value is a tangible one; ideas count for nothing. The new millionaire, whose success in herds, or mines, or real estate has pushed him into social prominence, becomes the possessor of a house too large by half and ludicrously pretentious. Its furnishings are glaring and oppressive, with a general air throughout of having sacrificed unity of effect to what is striking and costly. Even in the rudest and most remote of American communities an unmistakable emphasis is put upon the commodity or convenience, while we are assured that in the older portions of the East people may be found who have put their idealism to the test by an actual surrender of property for the sake of that high thinking and plain living so often advocated in theory. Having come to look upon their establishments as a sort of enslaving encumbrance, they have disposed of them in an effort to gather themselves together for the freest possible movement in time and space, heralding a return to nature and those simple tastes and resources which are conducive of intellectual and spiritual independence. They seek to minimize the claims which mere things have upon them as resolutely as if poverty had forced them to the position. Perhaps no better illustration of the spirit in which these people look out upon the world can be found than the family life of the Peabodys, as it appears in the biography of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, by their son. This would seem to be the starting-point of a possible reaction to materialism, and, if there should be a likelihood of its spreading, might well encourage the idealists, who are supposed to be having so hard a time of it now.