Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1886 — The Future of Society. [ARTICLE]

The Future of Society.

It has chanced to the writer to read recently a number of memoirs, biographies, and sketches, all intended to describe “society” in its technical sense —the upper society, that is, of great capitals, the large group of more or less idle persons which in every European country has drawn together round the center of affairs, be it court, parliament, or conspicuous person, has called itself and thought itself “the world,” has given laws to manners and greatly influenced morals, and in all ages has attracted to itself for no obvious reason an exceptional attention and regard. It is not an interesting study, except for an object, and one is soon startled to see how little variety it presents; but it is impossible to read such accounts without noticing that “society,” in its limited sense, though without demonstrable raison d’eter, is apparently indestructible, or wondering whether, if indestructible, as time advances, grows worse or better. The closer you study European history the more certain are you to find a limited yet large circle which surrounds the center of power, which claims lor itself most of the enjoyments of life and secures them, which the millions around regard with admiration, or envy, occasionally 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 effort, and though rapidly fluctuating in its components, still marked by the presence of its constituents, such as the great families, which hardly change. 11 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 powerful round Charles the Bold, or Philip 11., or Henri Quatre, as around Louis XV., or Napoleon III.; as marked in the time of Charles 11., as of Queen Victoria; and allowing the difference of manners, always showing the same characteristics. All within it are seeking distraction; all are self-willed and in a way lawless, yet without independence; and all, as a body, seek money. The satirists of to-day who describe Berlin, 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 its factitious eminencies; but all that is very old. Legacy-hunt-ing was a trade with the Boman aristocracy; society in the middle ages hungered for grants of land, heiresses’ appanages, and ceurt pensions; the grand society of Louis courted farmers- general as the little society of M. Grevy courts German and Levantine 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 an improvement. Cruelty has been struck out of the list of permissible detractions; sexual vice, if still a motive power, is far less cynically coarse; luxury has got itself a varnish of refinement from art, which is sometimes genuine; and idleness, though still dominant, is broken by a quantity of thin but harmless intellectual interests. Whatever the change, however, “society” has lasted on. It has 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 see no 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 rampant in Berlin when, after the French invasion, fortunes were not, and £IOO a year was a salary coveted by great persons. Will “society” ever get better? History does not suggest hope, for even religious revivals have only touched it for a moment; misfortunes have never sobered it, as witness the history of the French emigres and nobles, and the progress of intelligence has made but its amusements a little more varied. Indeed, if we were to calculate closely, a probability would become visible that “society” might grow a 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, its members feeling that if they are to enjoy at all they must disregard opinion, and it is deriving from the progress of. democracy a new and evil strength.— The Spectator.