282 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



drawbacks to the binding up of researches around 

 new apparatus. The cheapness of printing and the 

 ease with which newspapers are disseminated has 

 led to the popularization of the trivial, the vulgar, 

 the criminal, and has in a degree poisoned popular 

 taste. It is, however, a law of nervous action that 

 overstimulation of any receptive neural mechanism 

 leads to fatigue and often to disgust, while at the 

 same time tending to render the mechanism more 

 sensitive than previously to contrary influences. 

 The law probably holds good of emotional stimula- 

 tion as well as simple sensory excitement, and just 

 as the eye overexposed to yellow becomes sensitized 

 to purple, so must the mind in time, wearied with this 

 sensationalism and falsity of the newspaper press, 

 become more aware of the satisfactions to be gained 

 through the opposite qualities. We may, therefore, 

 expect to witness reform following sensationalism. 



In the higher fields of literature, in criticism, 

 fiction, poetry, and philosophy, the ease of printing 

 the results has had a better influence, though, as in fic- 

 tion, not an uniformly good one, since there has come 

 into existence a great mass of writing without claim 

 to merit of permanence. But the laws of competi- 

 tion and survival are acting here, and there is every- 

 where in literature evidence that the public is growing 

 educated in ideals as well as in knowledge. A portion 

 of the community has begun to think critically. It 

 demands from poets and novelists some justification 

 for writing, some evidence of originality in thought 



