The Styling and Transmission of Fashions Historically Considered

In a review of a recent play by T. S. Eliot, the critic sums up the action as “a tragedy of non-communication between parent and child.” We may be sure the reviewer did not intend to raise a doubt in the reader's mind as to whether the father or son in question had difficulty in getting to a telephone, finding a telegraph office or deciphering one another's handwriting. The level of communication he must have had in mind lies deep in the human dependency on expressive symbols. These primary factors of human experience—primary in the sense that nothing stands between them and the raw sensations and impulses—are made up of words, gestures, and images which are, in turn, invariably organized in systems or complexes. These we call by such names as aims, standards and ideals or, more generally, attitudes.