ife demands a certain proportion
of solitude just as much as it demands the companionship of
others.

With the spread of education and the general enhancement
of the sense of personal selfhood and individuality among
large numbers of people, the demand for privacy has increased.
The modern reader is shocked to discover in the
literature of the Elizabethan period the amazing lack of a
sense of privacy there exhibited. In contemporary society
this sense and the possibility of its satisfaction are variously
displayed on different economic and social levels. In the
congested life of the tenements it is almost impossible, and many
social evils are to be traced to the promiscuous mingling of
large families (and sometimes additional boarders) in
congested quarters.

The demand for privacy and solitude becomes acute among
people who do a great deal of mental work. "Man," says
Nietzsche, "cannot think in a herd," and the thinker has
traditionally been pictured as a solitary man. This is because
quiet seems to be, for most men, an essential condition of
really creative thought. There are some men who find it
impossible to write when there is another person, even one of
whom they are fond, in the same room. "No man," writes
Mr. Graham Wallas, "is likely to produce creative thoughts
(either consciously or subconsciously) if he is constantly
interrupted by irregular noises." Constant association with
other people means, moreover, continual distraction by
conversation which seriously interrupts a consecutive train of
thought. The insistence in public and college reading rooms
on absolute quiet is a device for securing as nearly as may
be privacy in intellectual work.

Privacy is again demanded as a matter of emotional protection
in individuals in whom there is a highly sensitive development
of personal selfhood. We like to keep our concerns to
ourselves, or to share them only with those with whom we
have a marked community of interest and feeling. Children
love to "have secrets they won't tell," and older people,
especially sensitive and intelligent ones, feel a peculiar sense of
irritation at having their personal affairs and feelings publicly
displayed. Nearly everyone must recall occasions where he
was vividly communicative and loquacious with a friend, only
to relapse into a clam-like silence on the entry of a third person.
This is primarily due to the fact that while men are by
nature gregarious, their gregariousness ea