Civilization is Destroying Poetry, Humor

1906--

DECAY OF IMAGINATION.

Assertion Made That Civilization Not Only Killing Poetry, But Sense of Humor.

An Italian scientist thinks that civilization is not only killing poetry, but the sense of humor. Both depend upon the seen object suggesting other things to the mind, in one case congruous, in the other incongruous. Science has made our minds more rigid so that we see only what we see. "More rigid" means less vitalized.

Under new conditions at hand, we shall get back our vitality, shall once more have some to spare, once more be able to see the naked visible in its proper robes. Imagination is the seeing of real relations. It is seeing what we feel ought to be, which, when sane, is a deeper seeing of what they are. Humor is imagination relaxing herself and playing the caricaturist. While she lives at all, she must be permitted to recreate. She thrives on the surplus age of mental vitality.

Nordau dwells somewhere on the tendency of artists he calls degenerate to paint everything more or less violet. One would suppose that every color, like every sound, must be yielding its overtones. Any one can see the color as it stands. It takes an artist to see--feel, "Imagine"--its overtones and bring them down for us.-Student in the New Century.

--The Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, August 9, 1906, page 4.