"In the garden of death, where the singers, whose names are deathless, One with another make music unheard of men."
Then there is the region of Science, and here I am not qualified to speak, because I know no science, and have not even taught it, as Mr.
Arthur Sidgwick said. I do not really know what const.i.tutes greatness in science. I suppose that the great man of science is the man who to a power of endlessly patient investigation joins a splendid imaginative, or perhaps deductive power, like Newton or Darwin. But we who stand at the threshold of the scientific era are perhaps too near the light, and too much dazzled by the results of scientific discovery to say who is great and who is not great. I have met several distinguished men of science, and I have thought some of them to be men of obviously high intellectual gifts, and some of them men of inert and secretive temperaments. But that is only natural, for to be great in other departments generally implies a certain knowledge of the world, or at all events of the thought of the world; whereas the great man of science may be moving in regions of thought that may be absolutely incommunicable to the ordinary person. But I do not suppose that scientific greatness is a thing which can be measured by the importance of the practical results of a discovery. I mean that a man may hit upon some process, or some treatment of disease, which may be of incalculable benefit to humanity, and yet not be really a great man of science, only a fortunate discoverer, and incidentally a great benefactor to humanity.
The unknown discoverers of things like the screw or the wheel, persons lost in the mists of antiquity, could not, I suppose, be ranked as great men of science. The great man of science is the man who can draw some stupendous inference, which revolutionises thought and sets men hopefully at work on some problem which does not so much add to the convenience of humanity as define the laws of nature. We are still surrounded by innumerable and awful mysteries of life and being; the evidence which will lead to their solution is probably in our hands and plain enough, if any one could but see the bearing of facts which are known to the simplest child. There is little doubt, I suppose, that the greatest reputations of recent years have been made in science; and perhaps when our present age has globed itself into a cycle, we shall be amazed at the complaint that the present era is lacking in great men. We are busy in looking for greatness in so many directions, and we are apt to suppose, from long use, that greatness is so inseparably connected with some form of human expression, whether it be the utterance of thought, or the marshalling of armies, that we may be overlooking a more stable form of greatness, which will be patent to those that come after. My own belief is that the condition of science at the present day answers best to the conditions which we have learnt to recognise in the past as the fruitful soil of greatness. I mean that when we put our finger, in the past, on some period which seems to have been producing great work in a great way, we generally find it in some knot or school of people, intensely absorbed in what they were doing, and doing it with a whole-hearted enjoyment, loving the work more than the rewards of it, and indifferent to the pursuit of fame. Such it seems to me is the condition of science at the present time, and it is in science, I am inclined to think, that our heroes are probably to be found.
I do not, then, feel at all sure that we are lacking in great men, though it must be admitted that we are lacking in men whose supremacy is recognised. I suppose we mean by a great man one who in some region of human performance is confessedly pre-eminent; and he must further have a theory of his own, and a power of pursuing that theory in the face of depreciation and even hostility. I do not think that great men have often been indifferent to criticism. Often, indeed, by virtue of a greater sensitiveness and a keener perception, they have been profoundly affected by unpopularity and the sense of being misunderstood. Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, for instance, were men of almost morbid sensibility, and lived in sadness; and, on the other hand, there are few great men who have not been affected for the worse by premature success. The best soil for greatness to grow up in would seem to be an early isolation, sustained against the disregard of the world by the affection and admiration of a few kindred minds. Then when the great man has learned his method and his message, and learned too not to over-value the popular verdict, success may mature and mellow his powers. Yet of how many great men can this be said? As a rule, indeed, a great man"s best work has been done in solitude and disfavour, and he has attained his sunshine when he can no longer do his best work.
The question is whether the modern conditions of life are unfavourable to greatness; and I think that it must be confessed that they are. In the first place, we all know so much too about each other, and there is so eager a personal curiosity abroad, a curiosity about the smallest details of the life of any one who seems to have any power of performance, that it encourages men to over-confidence, egotism, and mannerism. Again, the world is so much in love with novelty and sensation of all kinds, that facile successes are easily made and as easily obliterated. What so many people admire is not greatness, but the realisation of greatness and its tangible rewards. The result of this is that men who show any faculty for impressing the world are exploited and caressed, are played with as a toy, and as a toy neglected. And then, too, the age is deeply permeated by social ambitions. Men love to be labelled, ticketed, decorated, differentiated from the crowd. Newspapers pander to this taste; and then the ease and rapidity of movement tempt men to a restless variety of experience, of travel, of society, of change, which is alien to the settled and sober temper in which great designs are matured. There is a story, not uncharacteristic, of modern social life, of a hostess who loved to a.s.semble about her, in the style of Mrs. Leo Hunter, notabilities small and great, who was reduced to presenting a young man who made his appearance at one of her gatherings as "Mr. ----, whose uncle, you will remember, was so terribly mangled in the railway accident at S----." It is this feverish desire to be distinguished at any price which has its counterpart in the feverish desire to find objects of admiration. Not so can solid greatness be achieved.
The plain truth is that no one can become great by taking thought, and still less by desiring greatness. It is not an attainable thing; fame only is attainable. A man must be great in his own quiet way, and the greater he is, the less likely is he to concern himself with fame. It is useless to try and copy some one else"s greatness; that is like trying to look like some one else"s portrait, even if it be a portrait by Velasquez. Not that modesty is inseparable from greatness; there are abundance of great men who have been childishly and grotesquely vain; but in such cases it has been a greatness of performance, a marvellous faculty, not a greatness of soul. Hazlitt says somewhere that modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and a real confession of the deficiency which it indicates. He adds that a man who underrates himself is justly undervalued by others. This is a cynical and a vulgar maxim. It is true that a great man must have a due sense of the dignity and importance of his work; but if he is truly great, he will have also a sense of relation and proportion, and not forget the minuteness of any individual atom. If he has a real greatness of soul, he will not be apt to compare himself with others, and he will be inclined to an even over-generous estimate of the value of the work of others. In no respect was the greatness of D. G. Rossetti more exemplified than in his almost extravagant appreciation of the work of his friends; and it was to this royalty of temperament that he largely owed his personal supremacy.
I would believe then that the lack of conspicuous greatness is due at this time to the overabundant vitality and eagerness of the world, rather than to any languor or listlessness of spirit. The rise of the decadent school in art and literature is not the least sign of any indolent or corrupt deterioration. It rather shows a desperate appet.i.te for testing sensation, a fierce hunger for emotional experience, a feverish ambition to impress a point-of-view. It is all part of a revolt against settled ways and conventional theories. I do not mean that we can expect to find greatness in this direction, for greatness is essentially well-balanced, calm, deliberate, and decadence is a sign of a neurotic and over-vitalised activity.
Our best hope is that this excessive restlessness of spirit will produce a revolt against itself. The essence of greatness is unconventionality, and restlessness is now becoming conventional. In education, in art, in literature, in politics, in social life, we lose ourselves in denunciations of the dreamer and the loafer. We cannot bear to see a slowly-moving, deliberate, self-contained spirit, advancing quietly on its discerned path. Instead of being content to perform faithfully and conscientiously our allotted task, which is the way in which we can best help the world, we demand that every one should want to do good, to be responsible for some one else, to exhort, urge, beckon, restrain, manage. That is all utterly false and hectic. Our aim should be patience rather than effectiveness, sincerity rather than adaptability, to learn rather than to teach, to ponder rather than to persuade, to know the truth rather than to create illusion, however comforting, however delightful such illusion may be.
VIII. SHYNESS
I have no doubt that shyness is one of the old, primitive, aboriginal qualities that lurk in human nature--one of the crude elements that ought to have been uprooted by civilisation, and security, and progress, and enlightened ideals, but which have not been uprooted, and are only being slowly eliminated. It is seen, as all aboriginal qualities are seen, at its barest among children, who often reflect the youth of the world, and are like little wild animals or infant savages, in spite of all the frenzied idealisation that childhood receives from well-dressed and amiable people.
Shyness is thus like those little bits of woods and copses which one finds in a country-side that has long been subdued and replenished, turned into arable land and pasture, with all the wildness and the irregularity ploughed and combed out of it; but still one comes upon some piece of dingle, where there is perhaps an awkward tilt in the ground, or some ancient excavation, or where a stream-head has cut out a steep channel, and there one finds a sc.r.a.p of the old forest, a rood or two that has never been anything but woodland. So with shyness; many of our old, savage qualities have been smoothed out, or glazed over, by education and inheritance, and only emerge in moments of pa.s.sion and emotion. But shyness is no doubt the old suspicion of the stranger, the belief that his motives are likely to be predatory and sinister; it is the tendency to bob the head down into the brushwood, or to sneak behind the tree-bole on his approach. One sees a little child, washed and brushed and delicately apparelled, with silken locks and clear complexion, brought into a drawing-room to be admired; one sees the terror come upon her; she knows by experience that she has nothing to expect but attention, and admiration, and petting; but you will see her suddenly cover her face with a tiny hand, relapse into dismal silence, even burst into tears and refuse to be comforted, till she is safely entrenched upon some familiar knee.
I have a breezy, boisterous, cheerful friend, of transparent simplicity and goodness, who has never known the least touch of shyness from his cradle, who always says, if the subject is introduced, that shyness is all mere self-consciousness, and that it comes from thinking about oneself. That is true, in a limited degree; but the diagnosis is no remedy for the disease, because shyness is as much a disease as a cold in the head, and no amount of effort can prevent the attacks of the complaint; the only remedy is either to avoid the occasions of the attacks,--and that is impossible, unless one is to abjure the society of other people for good and all;--or else to practise resolutely the hardening process of frequenting society, until one gets a sort of courage out of familiarity. Yet even so, who that has ever really suffered from shyness does not feel his heart sink as he drives up in a brougham to the door of some strange house, and sees a grave butler advancing out of an unknown corridor, with figures flitting to and fro in the background; what shy person is there who at such a moment would not give a considerable sum to be able to go back to the station and take the first train home? Or who again, as he gives his name to a servant in some brightly-lighted hall, and advances, with a hurried glance at his toilet, into a roomful of well-dressed people, buzzing with what Rossetti calls a "din of doubtful talk," would not prefer to sink into the earth like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and be reckoned no more among the living?
It is recorded in Tennyson"s Life that he used to recommend to a younger brother the thought of the stellar s.p.a.ces, swarming with constellations and traversed by planets at ineffable distances, as a cure for shyness; and a lady of my acquaintance used to endeavour as a girl to stay her failing heart on the thought of Eternity at such moments. It is all in vain; at the urgent moment one cares very little about the stellar motions, or the dim vistas of futurity, and very much indeed about the cut of one"s coat, and the appearance of one"s collar, and the glances of one"s enemies; the doctrines of the Church, and the prospects of ultimate salvation, are things very light in the scales in comparison with the pressing necessities of the crisis, and the desperate need to appear wholly unconcerned!
The wild and fierce shyness of childhood is superseded in most sensitive people, as life goes on, by a very different feeling--the shyness of adolescence, of which the essence, as has been well said, is "a shamefaced pride." The shyness of early youth is a thing which springs from an intense desire to delight, and impress, and interest other people, from wanting to play a far larger and brighter part in the lives of every one else than any one in the world plays in any one else"s life. Who does not recognise, with a feeling that is half contempt and half compa.s.sion, the sight of the eager pretentiousness of youth, the intense shame of confessing ignorance on any point, the deep desire to appear to have a stake in the world, and a well-defined, respected position? I met the other day a young man, of no particular force or distinction, who was standing in a corner at a big social gathering, bursting with terror and importance combined. He was inspired, I would fain believe, by discerning a vague benevolence in my air and demeanour, to fix his attention on me. He had been staying at a house where there had been some important guests, and by some incredibly rapid transition of eloquence he was saying to me in a minute or two, "The Commander-in-Chief said to me the other day," and "The Archbishop pointed out to me a few days ago," giving, as personal confidences, sc.r.a.ps of conversation which he had no doubt overheard as an unwelcome adjunct to a crowded smoking-room, with the busy and genial elders wondering when the boys would have the grace to go to bed. My heart bled for him as I saw the reflection of my own pushing and pretentious youth, and I only desired that the curse should not fall upon him which has so often fallen upon myself, to recall ineffaceably, with a blush that still mantles my cheek in the silence and seclusion of my bedroom, in a wakeful hour, the thought of some such piece of transparent and ridiculous self-importance, shamefully uttered by myself, in a transport of ambitious vanity, long years ago. How out of proportion to the offence is the avenging phantom of memory which dogs one through the years for such stupidities! I remember that as a youthful undergraduate I went to stay in the house of an old family friend in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. The only other male guest was a grim and crusty don, sharp and trenchant in speech, and with a determination to keep young men in their place. At Cambridge he would have taken no notice whatever of me; but there, on alien ground, with some lurking impulse of far-off civility, he said to me when the ladies retired, "I am going to have a cigar; you know your way to the smoking-room?" I did not myself smoke in those days, so foolish was I and innocent; but recalling, I suppose, some similar remark made by an elderly and genial non-smoker under the same circ.u.mstances, I said pompously--I can hardly bring myself even now to write the words--"I don"t smoke, but I will come and sit with you for the pleasure of a talk." He gave a derisive snort, looked at me and said, "What! not allowed to smoke yet? Pray don"t trouble to come on my account." It was not a genial speech, and it made me feel, as it was intended to do, insupportably silly. I did not make matters better, I recollect, on the following day, when on returning to Cambridge I offered to carry his bag up from the station, for he insisted on walking. He refused testily, and no doubt thought me, as in fact I was, a very spiritless young man.
I remember, too, another incident of the same kind, happening about the same time. I was invited by a fellow-undergraduate to come to tea in his rooms, and to meet his people. After tea, in the lightness of his heart, my friend performed some singular antics, such as standing on his head like a clown, and falling over the back of his sofa, alighting on his feet. I, who would not have executed such gambols for the world in the presence of the fairer s.e.x, but anxious in an elderly way to express my sympathy with the performer, said, with what was meant to be a polite admiration: "I can"t think how you do that!" Upon which a shrewd and trenchant maiden-aunt who was present, and was delighting in the exuberance of her nephew, said to me briskly, "Mr. Benson, have you never been young?" I should be ashamed to say how often since I have arranged a neat repartee to that annoying question. At the same time I think that the behaviour both of the don and the aunt was distinctly unjust and unadvisable. I am sure that the one way to train young people out of the miseries of shyness is for older people never to snub them in public, or make them appear in the light of a fool. Such snubs fall plentifully and naturally from contemporaries. An elder person is quite within his rights in inflicting a grave and serious remonstrance in private. I do not believe that young people ever resent that, if at the same time they are allowed to defend themselves and state their case.
But a merciless elder who inflicts a public mortification is terribly una.s.sailable and impregnable. For the shy person, who is desperately anxious to bear a sympathetic part, is quite incapable of retort; and that is why such a.s.saults are unpardonable, because they are the merest bullying.
The nicest people that I have known in life have been the people of kindly and sensible natures, who have been thoroughly spoilt as children, encouraged to talk, led to expect not only toleration, but active kindness and sympathy from all. The worst of it is that such kindness is generally reserved for pretty and engaging children, and it is the awkward, unpleasing, ungainly child who gets the slaps in public.
But, as in Tennyson-Turner"s pretty poem of "Letty"s Globe," a child"s hand should be "welcome at all frontiers." Only deliberate rudeness and insolence on the part of children should be publicly rebuked; and as a matter of fact both rudeness and insolence are far oftener the result of shyness than is easily supposed.
After the shyness of adolescence there often follows a further stage.
The shy person has learnt a certain wisdom; he becomes aware how easily he detects pretentiousness in other people, and realises that there is nothing to be gained by claiming a width of experience which he does not possess, and that the being unmasked is even more painful than feeling deficient and ill-equipped. Then too he learns to suspect that when he has tried to be impressive, he has often only succeeded in being priggish; and the result is that he falls into a kind of speechlessness, comforting himself, as he sits mute and awkward, unduly elongated, and with unaccountable projections of limb and feature, that if only other people were a little less self-absorbed, had the gift of perceiving hidden worth and real character, and could pierce a little below the surface, they would realise what reserves of force and tenderness lay beneath the heavy shapelessness of which he is still conscious. Then is the time for the shy person to apply himself to social gymnastics. He is not required to be voluble; but if he will practise bearing a hand, seeing what other people need and like, carrying on their line of thought, constructing small conversational bridges, asking the right questions, perhaps simulating an interest in the pursuits of others which he does not naturally feel, he may unloose the burden from his back. Then is the time to practise a sympathetic smile, or better still to allow oneself to indicate and even express the sympathy one feels; and the experimentalist will soon become aware how welcome such un.o.btrusive sympathy is. He will be amazed at first to find that, instead of being tolerated, he will be confided in; he will be regarded as a pleasant adjunct to a party, and he will soon have the even pleasanter experience of finding that his own opinions and adventures, if they are not used to cap and surpa.s.s the opinions and adventures of others, but to elicit them, will be duly valued. Yet, alas, a good many shy people never reach that stage, but take refuge in a critical and fastidious att.i.tude. I had an elderly relative of this kind--who does not know the type?--who was a man of wide interests and accurate information, but a perfect terror in the domestic circle. He was too shy to mingle in general talk, but sat with an air of acute observation, with a dry smile playing over his face; later on, when the circle diminished, it pleased him to retail the incautious statements made by various members of the party, and correct them with much acerbity.
There are few things more terrific than a man who is both speechless and distinguished. I have known several such, and their presence lies like a blight over the most cheerful party. It is unhappily often the case that shyness is apt to exist side by side with considerable ability, and a shy man of this type regards distinction as a kind of defensive armour, which may justify him in applying to others the contempt which he has himself been conscious of incurring. One of the most disagreeable men I know is a man of great ability, who was bullied in his youth. The result upon him has been that he tends to believe that most people are inspired by a vague malevolence, and he uses his ability and his memory, not to add to the pleasure of a party, but to make his own power felt. I have seen this particular man pa.s.s from an ungainly speechlessness into brutal onslaughts on inoffensive persons; and it is one of the most unpleasant transformations in the world. On the other hand, the modest and amiable man of distinction is one of the most agreeable figures it is possible to encounter. He is kind and deferential, and the indulgent deference of a distinguished man is worth its weight in gold.
I was lately told a delightful story of a great statesman staying with a humble and anxious host, who had invited a party of simple and unimportant people to meet the great man. The statesman came in late for dinner, and was introduced to the party; he made a series of old-fashioned bows in all directions, but no one felt in a position to offer any observations. The great man, at the conclusion of the ceremony, turned to his host, and said, in tones that had often thrilled a listening senate: "What very convenient jugs you have in your bedrooms! They pour well!" The social frost broke up; the company were delighted to find that the great man was interested in mundane matters of a kind on which every one might be permitted to have an opinion, and the conversation, starting from the humblest conveniences of daily life, melted insensibly into more liberal subjects. The fact is that, in ordinary life, kindness and simplicity are valued far more than brilliance; and the best brilliance is that which throws a novel and lambent light upon ordinary topics, rather than the brilliance which disports itself in unfamiliar and exalted regions. The hero only ceases to be a hero to his valet if he is too lofty-minded to enter into the workings of his valet"s mind, and cannot duly appraise the quality of his services.
And then, too, to go back a little, there are certain defects, after all, which are appropriate at different times of life. A certain degree of shyness and even awkwardness is not at all a disagreeable thing--indeed it is rather a desirable quality--in the young. A perfectly self-possessed and voluble young man arouses in one a vague sense of hostility, unless it is accompanied by great modesty and ingenuousness. The artless prattler, who, in his teens, has an opinion on all subjects, and considers that opinion worth expressing, is pleasant enough, and saves one some embarra.s.sment; but such people, alas, too often degenerate into the bores of later life. If a man"s opinion is eventually going to be worth anything, he ought, I think, to pa.s.s through a tumultuous and even p.r.i.c.kly stage, when he believes that he has an opinion, but cannot find the aplomb to formulate it. He ought to be feeling his way, to be in a vague condition of revolt against what is conventional. This is likely to be true not only in his dealings with his elders, but also in his dealings with his contemporaries. Young people are apt to regard a youthful doctrinaire, who has an opinion on everything, with sincere abhorrence. He bores them, and to the young boredom is not a condition of pa.s.sive suffering, it is an acute form of torture. Moreover, the stock of opinions which a young man holds are apt to be parrot-cries repeated without any coherence from talks overheard and books skimmed. But in a modest and ingenuous youth, filled to the brim with eager interest and alert curiosity, a certain deference is an adorable thing, one of the most delicate of graces; and it is a delightful task for an older person, who feels the sense of youthful charm, to melt stiffness away by kindly irony and gentle provocation, as Socrates did with his sweet-natured and modest boy-friends, so many centuries ago.
The aplomb of the young generally means complacency; but one who is young and shy, and yet has the grace to think about the convenience and pleasure of others, can be the most perfect companion in the world. One has then a sense of the brave and unsophisticated freshness of youth, that believes all things and hopes all things, the bloom of which has not been rubbed away by the rough touch of the world. It is only when that shyness is prolonged beyond the appropriate years, when it leaves a well-grown and hard-featured man gasping and incoherent, jerky and ungracious, that it is a painful and disconcerting deformity. The only real shadow of early shyness is the quite disproportionate amount of unhappiness that conscious gaucherie brings with it. Two incidents connected with a ceremony most fruitful in nervousness come back to my mind.
When I was an Eton boy, I was staying with a country squire, a most courteous old gentleman with a high temper. The first morning, I contrived to come down a minute or two late for prayers. There was no chair for me. The Squire suspended his reading of the Bible with a deadly sort of resignation, and made a gesture to the portly butler.
That functionary rose from his own chair, and with loudly creaking boots carried it across the room for my acceptance. I sat down, covered with confusion. The butler returned; and two footmen, who were sitting on a little form, made reluctant room for him. The butler sat down on one end of the form, unfortunately before his equipoise, the second footman, had taken his place at the other end. The result was that the form tipped up, and a cataract of flunkies poured down upon the floor. There was a ghastly silence; then the Gadarene herd slowly recovered itself, and resumed its place. The Squire read the chapter in an accent of suppressed fury, while the remainder of the party, with handkerchiefs pressed to their faces, made the most unaccountable sounds and motions for the rest of the proceeding. I was really comparatively guiltless, but the shadow of that horrid event sensibly clouded the whole of my visit.
I was only a spectator of the other event. We had a.s.sembled for prayers in the dimly-lighted hall of the house of a church dignitary, and the chapter had begun, when a man of almost murderous shyness, who was a guest, opened his bedroom door and came down the stairs. Our host suspended his reading. The unhappy man came down, but, instead of slinking to his place, went and stood in front of the fire, under the impression that the proceedings had not taken shape, and addressed some remarks upon the weather to his hostess. In the middle of one of his sentences, he suddenly divined the situation, on seeing the row of servants sitting in a thievish corner of the hall. He took his seat with the air of a man driving to the guillotine, and I do not think I ever saw any one so much upset as he was for the remainder of his stay. Of course it may be said that a sense of humour should have saved a man from such a collapse of moral force, but a sense of humour requires to be very strong to save a man from the sense of having made a conspicuous fool of himself.
I would add one more small reminiscence, of an event from which I can hardly say with honesty that I have yet quite recovered, although it took place nearly thirty years ago. I went, as a schoolboy, with my parents, to stay at a very big country house, the kind of place to which I was little used, where the advent of a stately footman to take away my clothes in the morning used to fill me with misery. The first evening there was a big dinner-party. I found myself sitting next my delightful and kindly hostess, my father being on the other side of her. All went well till dessert, when an amiable, long-haired spaniel came to my side to beg of me. I had nothing but grapes on my plate, and purely out of compliment I offered him one. He at once took it in his mouth, and hurried to a fine white fur rug in front of the hearth, where he indulged in some unaccountable convulsions, rolling himself about and growling in an ecstasy of delight. My host, an irascible man, looked round, and then said: "Who the devil has given that dog a grape?" He added to my father, by way of explanation, "The fact is that if he can get hold of a grape, he rolls it on that rug, and it is no end of a nuisance to get the stain out." I sat crimson with guilt, and was just about to falter out a confession, when my hostess looked up, and, seeing what had happened, said, "It was me, Frank--I forgot for the moment what I was doing." My grat.i.tude for this angelic intervention was so great that I had not even the gallantry to own up, and could only repay my protectress with an intense and lasting devotion. I have no doubt that she explained matters afterwards to our host; and I contrived to murmur my thanks later in the evening. But the shock had been a terrible one, and taught me not only wisdom, but the Christian duty of intervening, if I could, to save the shy from their sins and sufferings.
"Taught by the Power that pities me, I learn to pity them."
But the consideration that emerges from these reminiscences is the somewhat bewildering one, that shyness is a thing which seems to be punished, both by immediate discomfort and by subsequent fantastic remorse, far more heavily than infinitely more serious moral lapses.
The repentance that follows sin can hardly be more poignant than the agonising sense of guilt which steals over the waking consciousness on the morning that follows some such social lapse. In fact it must be confessed that most of us dislike appearing fools far more than we dislike feeling knaves; so that one wonders whether one does not dread the ridicule and disapproval of society more than one dreads the sense of a lapse from morality; the philosophical outcome of which would seem to be that the verdict of society upon our actions is at the base of morality. We may feel a.s.sured that the result of moral lapses will ultimately be that we shall have to face the wrath of our Creator; but one hopes that side by side with justice will be found a merciful allowance for the force of temptation. But the final judgment is in any case not imminent, while the result of a social lapse is that we have to continue to face a disapproving and even a contemptuous circle, who will remember our failure with malicious pleasure, and whose sense of justice will not be tempered by any appreciable degree of mercy. Here again is a discouraging circ.u.mstance, that when we call to mind some similarly compromising and grotesque adventure in the life of one of our friends, in spite of the fact that we well know the distress that the incident must have caused him, we still continue to hug, and even to repeat, our recollection of the occasion with a rich sense of joy. Is it that we do not really desire the peace and joy of others? It would seem so. How many of us are not conscious of feeling extremely friendly and helpful when our friend is in sorrow, or difficulty, or discredit, and yet of having no taste for standing by and applauding when our friend is joyful and successful! There is nothing, it seems, that we can render to our friend in the latter case, except the praise of which he has already had enough!
It seems then that the process of anatomising the nature and philosophy of shyness only ends in stripping off, one by one, as from an onion, the decent integuments of the human spirit, and revealing it every moment more and more in its native rankness. Let me forbear, consoling myself with the thought that the qualities of human beings are not meant to be taken up one by one, like coins from a tray, and scrutinised; but that what matters is the general effect, the blending, the grouping, the mellowed surface, the warped line. I was only yesterday in an old church, where I saw an ancient font-cover--a sort of carved extinguisher--and some dark panels of a rood-screen. They had been, both cover and panels, coa.r.s.ely and brightly painted and gilt; and, horrible to reflect, it flashed upon me that they must have once been both glaring and vulgar. Yet to-day the dim richness of the effect, the dints, the scaling-off of the flakes, the fading of the pigment, the dulling of the gold, were incomparable; and I began to wonder if perhaps that was not what happened to us in life; and that though we foolishly regretted the tarnishing of the bright surfaces of soul and body with our pa.s.sions and tempers and awkwardnesses and feeblenesses, yet perhaps it was, after all, that we were taking on an unsuspected beauty, and making ourselves fit, some far-off day, for the Communion of Saints!
IX. EQUALITY
It is often said that the Anglo-Saxon races suffer from a lack of ideals, that they do not hold enough things sacred. But there is a.s.suredly one thing which the most elementary and barbarous Anglo-Saxon holds sacred, beyond creed and Decalogue and fairplay and morality, and that is property. At inquests, for instance, it may be noted how often inquiries are solicitously made, not whether the deceased had religious difficulties or was disappointed in love, but whether he had any financial worries. We hold our own property to be very sacred indeed, and our respect for other men"s rights in the matter is based on the fact that we wish our own rights to be respected. If I were asked what other ideals were held widely sacred in England and America I should find it very difficult to reply. I think that there is a good deal of interest taken in America in education and culture; whereas in England I do not believe that there is very much interest taken in either; almost the only thing which is valued in England, romantically, and with a kind of enthusiasm, besides property, is social distinction; the democracy in England is sometimes said to be indignant at the existence of so much social privilege; the word "cla.s.s" is said to be abhorrent to the democrat; but the only cla.s.ses that he detests are the cla.s.ses above him in the social scale, and the democrat is extremely indignant if he is a.s.signed to a social station which he considers to be below his own. I have met democrats who despise and contemn the social tradition of the so-called upper cla.s.ses, but I have never met a democrat who is not much more infuriated if it is supposed that he has not social traditions of his own vastly superior to the social traditions of the lowest grade of precarious mendicity. The reason why socialism has never had any great hold in England is because equality is only a word, and in no sense a real sentiment in England. The reason why members of the lowest cla.s.s in England are not as a rule convinced socialists is because their one ambition is to become members of the middle-cla.s.s, and to have property of their own; and while the sense of personal possession is so strong as it is, no socialism worthy of the name has a chance. It is possible for any intelligent, virtuous, and capable member of the lower cla.s.s to transfer himself to the middle cla.s.s; and once there he does not favour any system of social equality. Socialism can never prevail as a political system, until we get a majority of disinterested men, who do not want to purchase freedom from daily work by acquiring property, and who desire the responsibility rather than the influence of administrative office. But administrative office is looked upon in England as an important if indirect factor in acquiring status and personal property for oneself and one"s friends.
I am myself a sincere believer in socialism; that is to say, I do not question the right of society to deprive me of my private property if it chooses to do so. It does choose to do so to a certain extent through the medium of the income-tax. Such property as I possess has, I think it as well to state, been entirely acquired by my own exertions. I have never inherited a penny, or received any money except what I have earned. I am quite willing to admit that my work was more highly paid than it deserved; but I shall continue to cling tenaciously to that property until I am convinced that it will be applied for the benefit of every one; I should not think it just if it was taken from me for the benefit of the idle and incompetent; and I should be reluctant to part with it unless I felt sure that it would pa.s.s into the hands of those who are as just-minded and disinterested as myself, and be fairly administered. I should not think it just if it were taken from me by people who intended to misuse it, as I have misused it, for their own personal gratification.
It was made a matter of merriment in the case of William Morris that he preached the doctrines of socialism while he was a prosperous manufacturer; but I see that he was perfectly consistent. There is no justice, for instance, about the principle of disarmament, unless all nations loyally disarm at the same time. A person cannot be called upon to strip himself of his personal property for disinterested reasons, if he feels that he is surrounded by people who would use the spoils for their own interest. The process must be carried out by a sincere majority, who may then coerce the selfish minority. I have no conception what I should do with my money if I determined that I ought not to possess it. It ought not to be applied to any public purpose, because under a socialist regime all public inst.i.tutions would be supported by the public, and they ought not to depend upon private generosity. Still less do I think that it ought to be divided among individuals, because, if they were disinterested persons, they ought to refuse to accept it. The only good reason I should have for disenc.u.mbering myself of my possessions would be that I might set a good example of the simple life, by working hard for a livelihood, which is exactly what I do; and my only misfortune is that my earnings and the interest of my acc.u.mulated earnings produce a sum which is far larger than the average man ought to possess. Thus the difficulty is a very real one. Moreover the evil of personal property is that it tends to emphasise cla.s.s-distinctions and to give the possessors of it a sense of undue superiority. Now I am democratic enough to maintain that I have no sense whatever of personal superiority. I do not allow my possession of property to give me a life of vacuous amus.e.m.e.nt, for the simple reason that my work amuses me far more than any other form of occupation, If it is asked why I tend to live by preference among what may be called my social equals, I reply that the only people one is at ease with are the people whose social traditions are the same as one"s own, for the simple reason that one does not then have to think about social traditions at all. I do not think my social traditions are better than the social traditions of any other stratum of society, whether it be described as above or below my own; all I would say is that they are different from the social traditions of other strata, and I much prefer to live without having to consider such matters at all. The manners of the upper middle-cla.s.s to which scientifically I belong, are different from the manners of the upper, lower-middle, and lower cla.s.s, and I feel out of my element in the upper cla.s.s, just as I feel out of my element in the lower cla.s.s. Of course if I were perfectly simple-minded and sincere, this would not be so; but, as it is, I am at ease with professional persons of my own standing; I understand their point-of-view without any need of explanation; in any cla.s.s but my own, I am aware of the constant strain of trying to grasp another point-of-view; and to speak frankly, it is not worth the trouble. I do not at all desire to migrate out of my own cla.s.s, and I have never been able to sympathise with people who did. The motive for doing so is not generally a good one, though it is of course possible to conceive a high-minded aristocrat who from motives based upon our common humanity might desire to apprehend the point-of-view of an artisan, or a high-minded artisan who for the same motive desired to apprehend the point-of-view of an earl. But one requires to feel sure that this is based upon a strong sense of charity and responsibility, and I can only say that I have not found that the desire to migrate into a different cla.s.s is generally based upon these qualities.
The question is, what ought a man who believes sincerely in the principle of equality to do in the matter, if he is situated as I am situated? What I admire and desire in life is friendly contact with my fellows, interesting work, leisure for following the pursuits I enjoy, such as art and literature. I honestly confess that I am not interested in what are called Social Problems, or rather I am not at all interested in the sort of people who study them. Such problems have hardly reached the vital stage; they are in the highly technical stage, and are mixed up with such things as political economy, politics, organisation, and so forth, which, to be perfectly frank, are to me blighting and dreary objects of study. I honour profoundly the people who engage in such pursuits; but life is not long enough to take up work, however valuable, from a sense of duty, if one realises one"s own unfitness for such labours. I wish with all my heart that all cla.s.ses cared equally for the things which I love. I should like to be able to talk frankly and unaffectedly about books, and interesting people, and the beauties of nature, and abstract topics of a mild kind, with any one I happened to meet. But, as a rule, to speak frankly, I find that people of what I must call the lower cla.s.s are not interested in these things; people in what I will call the upper cla.s.s are faintly interested, in a horrible and condescending way, in them--which is worse than no interest at all.
A good many people in my own cla.s.s are impatient of them, and think of them as harmless recreations; I fall back upon a few like-minded friends, with whom I can talk easily and unreservedly of such things, without being thought priggish or donnish or dilettanteish or unintelligible. The subjects in which I find the majority of people interested are personal gossip, money, success, business, politics.
I love personal gossip, but that can only be enjoyed in a circle well acquainted with each other"s faults and foibles; and I do not sincerely care for talking about the other matters I have mentioned. Hitherto I have always had a certain amount of educational responsibility, and that has furnished an abundance of material for pleasant talk and interesting thoughts; but then I have always suffered from the Anglo-Saxon failing of disliking responsibility except in the case of those for whom one"s efforts are definitely pledged on strict business principles. I cannot deliberately a.s.sume a sense of responsibility towards people in general; to do that implies a sense of the value of one"s own influence and example, which I have never possessed; and, indeed, I have always heartily disliked the manifestation of it in others. Indeed, I firmly believe that the best and most fruitful part of a man"s influence, is the influence of which he is wholly unconscious; and I am quite sure that no one who has a strong sense of responsibility to the world in general can advance the cause of equality, because such a sense implies at all events a consciousness of moral superiority. Moreover, my educational experience leads me to believe that one cannot do much to form character. The most one can do is to guard the young against pernicious influences, and do one"s best to recommend one"s own disinterested enthusiasms. One cannot turn a violet into a rose by any horticultural effort; one can only see that the violet or the rose has the best chance of what is horribly called self-effectuation.
My own belief is that these great ideas like Equality and Justice are things which, like poetry, are born and cannot be made. That a number of earnest people should be thinking about them shows that they are in the air; but the interest felt in them is the sign and not the cause of their increase. I believe that one must go forwards, trying to avoid anything that is consciously harsh or pompous or selfish or base, and the great ideas will take care of themselves.
The two great obvious difficulties which seem to me to lie at the root of all schemes for producing a system of social equality are first the radical inequality of character, temperament, and equipment in human beings. No system can ever hope to be a practical system unless we can eliminate the possibility of children being born, some of them perfectly qualified for life and citizenship, and others hopelessly disqualified.
If such differences were the result of environment it would be a remediable thing. But one can have a strong, vigorous, naturally temperate child born and brought up under the meanest and most sordid conditions, and, on the other hand, a thoroughly worthless and detestable person may be the child of high-minded, well-educated people, with every social advantage. My work as a practical educationalist enforced this upon me. One would find a boy, born under circ.u.mstances as favourable for the production of virtue and energy as any socialistic system could provide, who was really only fitted for the lowest kind of mechanical work, and whose instincts were utterly gross. Even if the State could practise a kind of refined Mendelism, it would be impossible to guard against the influences of heredity. If one traces back the hereditary influences of a child for ten generations, it will be found that he has upwards of two thousand progenitors, any one of whom may give him a bias.
And secondly, I cannot see that any system of socialism is consistent with the system of the family. The parents in a socialistic state can only be looked upon as brood stock, and the nurture of the rising generation must be committed to some State organisation, if one is to secure an equality of environing influences. Of course, this is done to a certain extent by the boarding-schools of the upper cla.s.ses; and here again my experience has shown me that the system, though a good one for the majority, is not the best system invariably for types with marked originality--the very type that one most desires to propagate.
These are, of course, very crude and elementary objections to the socialistic scheme; all that I say is that until these difficulties seem more capable of solution, I cannot throw myself with any interest into the speculation; I cannot continue in the path of logical deduction, while the postulates and axioms remain so unsound.
What then can a man who has resources that he cannot wisely dispose of, and happiness that he cannot impart to others, but yet who would only too gladly share his gladness with the world, do to advance the cause of the general weal? Must he plunge into activities for which he has no apt.i.tude or inclination, and which have as their aim objects for which he does not think that the world is ripe? Every one will remember the figure of Mrs. Pardiggle in Bleak House, that raw-boned lady who enjoyed hard work, and did not know what it was to be tired, who went about rating inefficient people, and "boned" her children"s pocket-money for charitable objects. It seems to me that many of the people who work at social reforms do so because, like Mrs. Pardiggle, they enjoy hard work and love ordering other people about. In a society wisely and rationally organised, there would be no room for Mrs. Pardiggle at all; the question is whether things must first pa.s.s through the Pardiggle stage.
I do not in my heart believe it. Mrs. Pardiggle seems to me to be not part of the cure of the disease, but rather one of the ugliest of its symptoms. I think that she is on the wrong tack altogether, and leading other people astray. I do know some would-be social reformers, whom I respect and commiserate with all my heart, who see what is amiss, and have no idea how to mend it, and who lose themselves, like Hamlet, in a sort of hopeless melancholy about it all, with a deep-seated desire to give others a kind of happiness which they ought to desire, but which, as a matter of fact, they do not desire. Such men are often those upon whom early youth broke, like a fresh wave, with an incomparable sense of rapture, in the thought of all the beauty and loveliness of nature and art; and who lived for a little in a Paradise of delicious experiences and fine emotions, believing that there must be some strange mistake, and that every one must in reality desire what seemed so utterly desirable; and then, as life went on, there fell upon these the shadow of the harsh facts of life; the knowledge that the majority of the human race had no part or lot in such visions, but loved rather food and drink and comfort and money and rude mirth; who did not care a pin what happened to other people, or how frail and suffering beings spent their lives, so long as they themselves were healthy and jolly. Then that shadow deepens and thickens, until the sad dreamers do one of two things--either immure themselves in a tiny scented garden of their own, and try to drown the insistent noises without; or, on the other hand, if they are of the n.o.bler sort, lose heart and hope, and even forfeit their own delight in things that are sweet and generous and pleasant and pure.
A mournful and inextricable dilemma!
Perhaps one or two of such visionaries, who are made of sterner stuff, have deliberately embarked, hopefully and courageously, upon the Pardiggle path; they have tried absurd experiments, like Ruskin, in road-making and the formation of Guilds; they have taken to journalism and committees like William Morris. But they have been baffled. I do not mean to say that such lives of splendid renunciation may not have a deep moral effect; but, on the other hand, it is little gain to humanity if a richly-endowed spirit deserts a piece of work that he can do, to toil unsuccessfully at a piece of work that cannot yet be done at all.
I myself believe that when Society is capable of using property and the better pleasures, it will arise and take them quietly and firmly: and as for the fine spirits who would try to organise things before they are even sorted, well, they have done a n.o.ble, ineffectual thing, because they could not do otherwise; and their desire to mend what is amiss is at all events a sign that the impulse is there, that the sun has brightened upon the peaks before it could warm the valleys.