Noise — "You Gotta a Problem With It?"

1893

The Philosophy of Noise

Aversion to Disturbance is a Symptom of Neurotic Degeneration

A woman suffering from neuralgia stations her son to keep boys from making noise in front of the house. A boy comes by whistling — a performance in which we must recognize a natural, wholesome and boylike act, whereupon there ensues a short, sharp fight between the pair, in which one is accidentally cut. The upshot is not important; the origin of it is.

It has long been usual to accord special privileges to invalids in relieving them against noise. Formerly straw would be strewn in the street, and thousands of persons who were not sick would be inconvenienced to ease the pains of one who was. In part, this custom was one of ostentation. It could be practiced only by the influential who were exalted by making themselves a nuisance. When death ensued, a hatchment was set up in the same spirit of vainglory. All the windows in the house were closed for a term, the duration of which was fixed by custom, but which bore a relation to the estate of the deceased and the consequent degree of exaltation descending upon his heirs.

All healthy animals delight in noise. The description includes barbarous folk and children. Dogs bark (curs only sneak off), birds scream, boys shout, girls clap hands to their ears in sweet confusion, horses paw, all animate nature responds to the exhilaration of noise. The sick do not. In every form of sickness the nervous function is deranged. As we have seen above mankind has shown its appreciation of this fact by its customs. Excessive sensibility to noise is thus one symptom of neurotic degeneration. It is the mark of one broad distinction between the state of civilization and its opposite. It testifies to one part of the price which that state exacts from man on his physical side.

Within civilization itself indifference to noise is one of the distinctions of a system rudely healthful, both in body and mind. The converse of this proposition is equally true. Whenever a person displays peculiar sensitiveness to noise we may know that the case is one of an unwholesome mind in an unwholesome body. From the fact that the disturbance is essentially a neurotic one it follows that it is controllable to a great extent by the will. Much of the disturbance that is experienced from noise can be put completely aside by exercise of the will. A barking dog may keep one person awake while his healthier or wiser neighbor sleeps the sleep of the just. Under the pinging of the cable car bells a valetudinarian subsides into frenzy while his younger clerk is lapped in dreams of the equally unconscious typewriter on the next floor. The contrast here need not be one of relative strength of mind merely; one of the two minds is sick.

In such a case the willpower is impaired. It would probably be found that the complaining person is also irritable, passionate, perhaps consumed by self contemplation. In many cases of this order relief could no doubt be gained through treatment by suggestion. But in vastly the greater number the patient is competent to minister to himself. He is still capable of exerting the will, and in this exercise lies complete and permanent cure. Furthermore, the cure does not apply alone to the particular noise that may have called for it. It will be found to have influenced the mind permanently. The injurious effects attributed to noise do not proceed from without, but from within. They do not inhere in the aerial vibrations, but in the mental response made to them.

Finally it ought to be observed that the disease is one that increases by being yielded to. The noise that is first noticed as an annoyance in some moment of irritation, anxiety or other nervous disturbance can be nursed into an object of horror. Time was when folks thought sensitiveness to noise to be evidence of high strung character. They were rather proud of it and trotted it forth in public. The world knows better now. It erects hospitals for the Mrs. Wittitterlys, whom it rather admired in Nicholas Nickleby's time. It no longer holds poor Tom of Bedlam for inspired, and since it has learned how much sickness is either a fruit or a phase of ignorance it is getting a little sick of those sick folks, at least of whom it has a right to look for something better. — New York Evening Sun.