On the Crank and the Cad

these two extremes do in fact meet.

They meet in the modern thing called journalism, or the Press, and the cause of the conjunction of contrariness is curious and amusing. It arises out of the combination of two different things: the newspaper looking for customers and the newspaper looking for copy. For the purpose of circulation, it is all to the interest of the newspaper that Mr. Bundleton-Brown should be very common indeed. That is, that there should be a great many of him, and that they should be all approximately alike; that they should all have the same social habits, including the habit of reading the newspaper. It is desirable that they should be regular in their habits, and even in their virtues; as, for example, that Mr. Bundleton-Brown should pay for the newspaper, and not think it funny to snatch it off the newspaper stall and rush in triumph down the street, leaping Hke a young goat and emitting shrill cries of joy. Mr. Bundleton-Brown is expected to show business enterprise, but not to be enterprising in any direct romantic fashion like that. If he shows enough business enterprise, of the sort that is entirely unromantic, he may at last be rewarded by buying wholesale instead of retail. He who once stopped humbly to "buy a newspaper," with no intention save that of being a newspaper-reader, may some day "buy a newspaper," just as he buys the shooting, in the sense of becoming a newspaper proprietor. In that position he may discover that there is, after all, another side to the newspaper. It Is not enough that an endless procession of BundletonBrowns should pass perpetually in front o£ the news-stall, as they pass through the booking-office or by the ticket collector. There are other and more threatening necessities. There are other dark and menacing problems which, neglected perhaps hitherto, and lightly tossed aside in the first conception of a great capitalist design, nevertheless return and crowd upon the mind in the supreme hour of successful purchase and ownership.

After all, he must put something in the paper. However well trained and well behaved be the BundletonBrowns as a class, however smoothly they are accustomed to performing the same social functions everyday, however automatic it has become for them to buy a paper just as they eat a breakfast or catch a train — still, even in them there would be a faint stir, as of half-awakened minds moving about in worlds not realized, if they opened the daily paper and found nothing but completely blank pages. It is not too much to say that they would vaguely miss something; something, they knew not what, that had been part of what the biologists would call their lives. Now when it comes to filling up the pages of a paper, the news about the eccentric

Is much better than the news about the regular guy. The man who has birds' nests in his hair is a much better feature for a sheet meant to produce a certain shallow distraction of mind than the worthy patron of the paper who begins shooting at the right season, or reads the newspaper at the right hour. Mr. BundletonBrown may live entirely by the commandment to do whatever is done by Mr. Jumbleton-Jones. But he does not want to read about Mr. Jumbleton-Jones, and how he does everything that is done by Mr. BundletonBrown. If he must read, since he can read, since he is a free modern citizen and has been compulsorily taught to read, he would rather read about something a little odd or out of the way. Thus does Mr. Gurley Wow, his eccentric rival, come back into his kingdom; his wild kingdom of the birds. He and his birds, and the wild hair and whiskers to which they cling, may fill a whole Illustrated page in a paper, while there is only a curt sentence in the fashionable news to show that Mr. Bundleton-Brown has bought the shooting from the Duke. Thus, the paper tends more and more to be a record of rare and unrepresentative things, or even of cracked and crazy things. But it is written about extraordinary people, because it is written for ordinary people. It is no guide to the opinion of the public on any serious matter; it is at the most a guide to the newspaper proprietor's opinion; or to his desire to conceal the fact that he has not got an opinion; or to his equally solid conviction (more sincere and, in some cases, even possibly true) that the public has not got an opinion either. It is merely a witness to the fact that mankind wants to be amused and that mankind is still amused, as much as ever it was, with dwarfs and giants, bearded women, and twelve-toed men.

To a certain extent this was equally true of the records of the remote past; and a well-equipped modern newspaper is not much behind a barbaric chronicle or saga of the Dark Ages. They also delighted to record that a child had been born with the head of an elephant, as we to record that a prize Eugenic child is destined to grow up as a Superman. They rejoiced to tell tales of some remote Turkish Sultan who had cut off the noses of all his subjects, just as our newspapers seriously record proposals for general mutilation in the name of morality and science. But there is one little difficulty about it: that, in the ages of faith, the story-tellers were not moralists. They recorded the acts of mad kings or dubious magicians, but they never said they approved of them any more than the manager of a travelling show expresses a moral conviction that all women ought to have beards. The curiosities were exhibited because they were curious. There was never a panic spread in the fair to the effect that the curiosity was contagious. It was never the fashion for women to grow hair on their faces, as it can be the fashion for them to shave it off their heads. The gentleman with twelve toes was not treated as a Superman, whose feet were more beautiful upon the mountains than those of other bearers of good news; he was not regarded as a new and promising evolutionary growth or expanding organism. The curse of the present conjunction between the commonplace spirit in the public and the eccentric nature of the news and notions offered them in the newspaper is that the wildest things are suggested with a savour of serious prophecy; and, above all, that the wildest things are preached to the tamest people. And they are so accustomed to taking what is given them, and so unaccustomed to tasting what is good, that there is a real danger of such nonsense acting like a stimulant on an empty stomach. There is so much that is nonsensical in the daily news-sheet, and so little that is new in the daily life, that there may be a dangerous breach between the unreal and the real. It is not the most commonly discussed of the problems of the Press; but it is one of the most vital, or deadly.

XX On Dreams

THE subject of Dreams has always been admittedly allied to mysticism, and not far from superstition. The interpretation of dreams was a well-known function of many ancient prophets, and only gradually died away under what was considered the march of enlightenment. Unfortunately, in this as in many things, the march of enlightenment proceeded to march very straight into all the ancient darkness and mystery. The man who talked about his dreams, who had become rather a bore at breakfast, suddenly found that he had the opportunity of being a broader, brainier, and more universal and philosophical bore in the lecture-room or on the platform of scientific and religious debate. Psychoanalysis resurrected the archaic interpreter of dreams, just as Psychical Research resurrected the ancient necromancer or professional raiser of ghosts. We often read about the modern world as mocking the superstitions of the past, even of the immediate past; but almost the exact opposite is the truth. A number of things are taken seriously now that would only have been mocked a hundred years ago; or, in some cases, even two hun-