We think they have not
sufficiently considered it.
Any experience shared daily and for a long time by a great many
people comes to have a communal and social importance; it is
desirable to fill it with meaning and see whether there may not be
some beauty in it. The task of civilization is not to be always
looking wistfully back at a Good Time long ago, or always panting
for a doubtful millennium to come; but to see the significance and
secret of that which is around us. And so we say, in full
seriousness, that for one observer at any rate the subway is a great
school of human study. We will not say that it is an easy school: it
is no kindergarten; the curriculum is strenuous and wearying, and
not always conducive to blithe cheer.
But what a tide of humanity, poured to and fro in great tides over
which the units have little control. What a sharp and troubled
awareness of our fellow-beings, drawn from study of those thousands
of faces--the fresh living beauty of the girls, the faces of men
empty of all but suffering and disillusion, a shabby errand boy
asleep, goggling with weariness and adenoids--so they go crashing
through the dark in a patient fellowship of hope and mysterious
endurance. How can one pass through this quotidian immersion in
humanity without being, in some small degree, enriched by that
admiring pity which is the only emotion that can permanently endure
under the eye of a questioning star?
Why, one wonders, should we cry out at the pangs and scuffles of the
subway? Do we expect great things to come to pass without
corresponding suffering? Some day a great poet will be born in the
subway--spiritually speaking; one great enough to show us the
terrific and savage beauty of this multitudinous miracle.
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