An example of the very "flat"
type is the clang association (cat-hat), a reaction to the sound and
not to the sense of the stimulant word. One test, for example, shows a
9% increase of clang in the second series of a hundred reactions. Now
the clang is almost a repetition, a very primitive form of analogy.
4
If the comparatively simple conditions of a laboratory can so readily
flatten out discrimination, what must be the effect of city life? In
the laboratory the fatigue is slight enough, the distraction rather
trivial. Both are balanced in measure by the subject's interest and
self-consciousness. Yet if the beat of a metronome will depress
intelligence, what do eight or twelve hours of noise, odor, and heat
in a factory, or day upon day among chattering typewriters and
telephone bells and slamming doors, do to the political judgments
formed on the basis of newspapers read in street-cars and subways? Can
anything be heard in the hubbub that does not shriek, or be seen in
the general glare that does not flash like an electric sign? The life
of the city dweller lacks solitude, silence, ease. The nights are
noisy and ablaze. The people of a big city are assaulted by incessant
sound, now violent and jagged, now falling into unfinished rhythms,
but endless and remorseless. Under modern industrialism thought goes
on in a bath of noise. If its discriminations are often flat and
foolish, here at least is some small part of the reason.
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