“Children may be delightful, may be interesting, may be ever so full of promise, and one may be as fond of them as possible — and yet when one has them for warp and filling, one must get a bit bored with them now and then, in spite of oneself. I have had little to do with children, so I speak under correction; but I should imagine that one would become bored with their intense simplification of life, their tendency to drive the whole current of life noisily through one channel, their vehement reduction of all values to that of quantity, their inability to take any but a personal view of anything. But just these are the qualities of American civilization as indicated by the test of conversation… I can imagine, then, that one might in time come to be tired of them and to wish oneself in surroundings where man is accepted as a creature of ‘a large discourse, looking before and after,’ where life is admittedly more complex and its current distributed in more channels — in other words, where maturity prevails.” (Albert Jay Nock, The Decline of Conversation, 1928)
Discussion
Agitation, Its Life and Grace
“We say of certain works that they smell of oil and the lamp, because of a certain harshness and roughness that labor imprints on productions in which it has a large part. But besides this, the anxiety to do well, and the tension of straining too intently on one’s work, put the soul on the rack, break it, and make it impotent; as happens with water, which because of the very pressure of its violence and abundance cannot find a way out of an open bottle-neck. It is no less peculiar to the kind of temperament I am speaking of, that it wants to be stimulated: not shaken and stung by such passions as Cassius’ anger (for that emotion would be too violent); not shocked; but roused and warmed up by external, present, and accidental stimuli. If it goes along all by itself, it does nothing but drag and languish. Agitation is its very life and grace. I have little control over myself and my moods. Chance has more power here than I. The occasion, the company, the very sound of my voice, draw more from my mind than I find in it when I sound it and use it by myself. Thus its speech is better than its writings.” (I:11, 26, Frame)
IWP BOOKS 