A great many men and women... let us frankly admit
it, in spite of all our humanitarian and democratic prejudices — do not want to
be cultured, are not interested in the higher life. For these people existence
on the lower animal level is perfectly satisfactory. Given food, drink, the
company of their fellow, sexual enjoyment, and plenty of noisy distractions
from without, they are happy. They enjoy bodily, but hate mental exercise. They
cannot bear to be alone, or to think. Contemporary urban life, with it jazz
bands, its Negroid dancing, its movies, theatres, football matches, newspapers,
and the like, is for them ideal. They can live out their lives without once
being solitary, without once making a serious mental effort (for the work which
most of these people do -is mainly mechanical and requires little or no
thought), without once being out of sight or sound or some readymade
distraction. The notion that one can derive pleasure from arduous intellectual occupations is to such people
merely absurd. More leisure and more prosperity mean for them more dancing,
more parties, more movies, and more distractions in general. Most of the
inhabitants of ancient Rome belonged to this type, so probably do most of the
inhabitants of modern New York and London. And unless some system of eugenics
is practiced in the interval, there is no reason to suppose that the
inhabitants of the great cities in the year 5000 A.D. will be radically
different. (244 words)