of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is
a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real
laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite
external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars;
but this is not due to human activity but to human repose.
There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people
were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it
were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical
bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect.
Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery;
and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought.
Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods
to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable.
Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they
are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk
and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once
in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable.
If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is
recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological
evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,"
you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement
of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish
Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,"
you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged
to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short
words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the
word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil
of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially