"I groan beneath this cowardice of heart Which rolls the evil to be borne to-day Upon to-morrow, loading it with gloom."
ALEXANDER SMITH.
"There are two ways of escaping from suffering; the one by rising above the causes of conflict, the other by sinking below them; for there is quiet in the soul when all its faculties are harmonized about any centre. The one is the religious method; the other is the vulgar, worldly method. The one is called Christian elevation; the other, stoicism."--BEECHER.
There were few houses of the old time in New England that did not contain a well-thumbed volume of the Pilgrim"s Progress; and there were few children who did not become acquainted with its contents, either through its text or its pictures. I am sure that all the children felt as I did--very tired with sympathy for the poor pilgrim who was obliged to lug that ugly pack from picture to picture, and very "glad and lightsome" when at last it fell from his shoulders, and went tumbling down the hill. We did not marvel that "he stood still awhile, to look and wonder," or that "he looked, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks." It was a great thing for a man who was bent on progress to be freed from an unnecessary burden; and it may be pleasant to know that at the foot of the hill of life the same sepulchre which swallowed the burden of Bunyan"s Pilgrim, so that he "saw it no more," still stands open, and has room in it for all the burdens of all the pilgrims there are in the world.
I wonder whether all the pilgrims who have undertaken the journey "from this world to that which is to come" ever lose the pack whose fastenings were so quickly dissolved when our favorite old Pilgrim looked upon the Cross? I doubt it. I hear many people groaning throughout the whole course of their Christian experience with the oppressive weight of this same burden. Instead of losing it at the sight of the cross, they hold to it, and will not let it go. They mean well enough; but they do not understand that the cross was reared, and the meek sufferer nailed to it, that the burden of the penitent soul might be forever rolled off. They carry their own sins, and never yield the pack to Him who bore it for them "in His own body, on the tree." They are never "light and gladsome" with a sense of great relief; and their Christian progress is sadly impeded by the burden from which the central truth of the Christian scheme releases them. If there be any such thing as forgiveness, then there is such a thing as release; but I think there are many subjects of free and full forgiveness who insist on carrying their old, dirty packs to their graves, staggering under them all the way.
But this is not what I started to write about. A great many men carry their life as an author carries a book which he is writing-- never losing the sense of their burden. When a writer undertakes a book, and feels the necessity of perfect continuity of thought and symmetry of structure, he can never lay it wholly aside. When once he has taken up the first chapter, and comprehended his materials and machinery and end, he does not dare to lay down his work, or diverge from the grand channel of his thought, until the last chapter is finished. He can take no three months" vacation; he can read no books that do not contribute to his progress in the chosen direction; he can never wholly lay aside the burden that is on him. It is like lifting upon one"s shoulder the end of a long pole, and then walking under it from end to end. The burden upon the shoulder is not relieved until the whole length has been pa.s.sed, and it drops as we walk from under it. Such is the way that many men, and, perhaps, most men, carry life. If their business troubles them, they have no power to throw it off, and no disposition to try to do it. They are entirely aware that they gain nothing by carrying their tedious burden, but they carry it.
Not content with doing their duty, and trying their best while actively engaged, they take home with them a long face, breathe sighs around them in the saddest fashion, and really unfit themselves for the healthy exercise of their reason, and the active employment of their faculties.
With men of this stamp, it makes little difference whether they are prosperous or otherwise. If times are good, and they really have no fault to find with matters as they exist, they become troubled about bad times that may possibly lie just ahead. "Oh, it"s all well enough to-day," they say, "but you can"t tell what is coming;" so they bind the burden of the future upon them, and undertake to steal a march on G.o.d"s providence. Such a thing as doing the duty of a single day, and doing it well, and then throwing off the burden of care, and having a good time in some rational way, until the hour comes for the commencement of the next day"s duty, they are strangers to. They walk into their houses with a cloud upon their faces. They have no words of cheer for those whom they have left at home during the day. They are moody and sullen and sad--absorbed by their troubled thoughts-- taking no interest in the schemes, and having no sympathy with the trials, of their wives and children, and making no effort to relieve themselves of their burdens. If they pray at all, they practically pray like this: "Give us this day our daily bread, and to-morrow, and next day, and the day after, and next year, and fifty years to come; and lest Thou shouldst forget it, or neglect to answer us, we have undertaken to look after the matter ourselves."
To say nothing of the constant sadness, uneasiness, and discomfort of such a life as this, to all those who lead it, and to all who are intimately a.s.sociated with them, the permanent effect of it upon the character of its subjects is to make them selfish and hard, and small and mean. Whatever may be their circ.u.mstances, they become sensitive upon any expenditure of money for purposes beyond the simplest necessities of personal and family life. This result is both natural and inevitable. A man whose life, in and out of his counting-room, is absorbed by business, ceases, at last, to be any thing but a man of business; and his mind contracts and hardens down to its central, motive idea. That which becomes the dominant aim and the grand end of life, always determines the character of life; and I have known young men, even before they have approached middle age, to become mean and miserly to such a degree as to disappoint and disgust their friends, simply in consequence of a few years" absorption in business.
Business is not life, nor is it life"s end. It is simply a means of life; and all true living lies outside of it. Ministry is the mission of business--ministry to necessity, to comfort, and to a personal, family, and social life into which business never enters, save with an unwelcome foot and a disturbing hand. This everlasting hugging of the burden of business, is, therefore, not only a painful task, but it is permanently damaging to all who indulge in it.
"It is very easy to talk," says my friend, with a load upon his shoulders, "but talking does not pay notes at the bank, and keep creditors easy, and provide for one"s family." Granted: and now will you be kind enough to tell me how many notes you ever paid at bank, and how much provision you ever made for your family by "mugging" over your troubles out of business hours? If your retort is good for any thing, mine is. You never accomplished one good thing in your life by making yourself and others unhappy through constant dwelling upon trouble when not engaged in active efforts to extricate yourself from it. You never gained a single inch of progress by dwelling upon miscarriages in business which you could not avoid. All your absorption, all your sad reflection, all your misgivings about the future, all your care beyond the exercise of your best ability in action, has not only been utterly useless, but it has injured the comfort of all around you, destroyed the peace of your life, cheated you out of the reward of your labor, and made a smaller, harder, meaner man of you. If any good result could be secured by carrying the burden of your business into all your life, then there would be some apology for it; but you know that no such result can be secured. "It is very easy to talk," my friend persists in saying, "but one cannot always command one"s mind, in such a matter as this." Did you ever try? Have you ever systematically tried to do this? Is it your regular aim, after you have discharged the business of the day, to throw off care until the next day"s business is undertaken? No? Then how do you know whether it is easy or not?
I believe it is in the power of every man, who has not too long abused himself, to lay aside every night his pack of mental care and anxiety, and enter into life. Not only this, but I believe that it is absolutely essential to his business success that he do this. A man who dwells constantly upon the dark side of his affairs, and is troubled and gloomy in his apprehensions concerning the future, becomes a weak and timid man--disqualified in many essential respects for the work of his life. His mind needs rest and revivification. Suppose an a.s.s were to be treated in the manner in which men treat themselves. Suppose the burden which we place upon him during the day were kept lashed to his back at night, so that he must bear it, either standing or lying, off duty as well as on. How long would he be worth any thing for labor? The ill.u.s.tration is apposite in every particular. If the mind is to be kept fit for business, it is at regular periods to be kept out of business. A great mult.i.tude of business failures are attributable, I have no doubt, to the debilitating and damaging effect of carrying the burdens of business between business hours. Men become in a measure sick and insane by dwelling upon their affairs, when they should be receiving rest and refreshment.
Again, men who insist upon keeping their packs upon their shoulders, practically deny the existence of the providence of a Being superior to themselves, and dominant in all human affairs.
If I were to say to one of these men: "you do not believe in Providence at all," he would accuse me of a harsh judgment, and feel injured by it; but it is certainly legitimate for me to ask him what evidence he gives of his belief. All, indeed, profess to believe in Providence, in a certain general way. The popular idea is very foggy upon the matter. We somehow imagine that G.o.d knows every thing in general and nothing in particular--that He takes interest in, supervision of, and controlling influence over, matters at large, with an imperial disregard of details--that He moulds with a majestic hand the character and destiny of nations, but never condescends to meddle with the small and insignificant affairs of individuals. Providence, in this view, would seem to be very much like certain tongs used in a blacksmith"s shop, whose jaws do not wholly close--convenient for handling large pieces of iron, but incapable of grasping a nail. Or, Providence is like a great general, who only directs the movements of large bodies of men, deals only with the officers, and never thinks of so small a thing as looking after the blanket of a private soldier, or dressing a wounded finger.
It is very easy to perceive that such a Providence as this has no practical value in every-day, individual life. Very evidently it is not that Providence which numbers the hairs of men"s heads, and without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground. One is a Providence made by men who undertake to measure G.o.d by themselves; the other is the Providence revealed in the Bible. G.o.d exercises a special providence, which reaches to the minutest affairs of the most insignificant man, or we are all in a condition of essential orphanage. A special Providence denied, and prayer becomes a mockery, devotion a deceit, and the sense of individual responsibility slavery to a superst.i.tious idea. Now I do not pretend to address myself to men who do not believe in prayer. I know men well enough to know that there are very few of them who do not believe in prayer, and that there are very few of them who do not, particularly in moments of danger, pray. Deep down under the thickest crusts of depravity there lies the conviction, always ready to rise in painful emergencies, that G.o.d takes cognizance of every man, and is able to help him. Smooth away the idea of Providence as we may, into an unmeaning generality, the time comes, in every man"s life, when he recognizes the fact that G.o.d is dealing with him; and he may as well recognize the fact all the time as when he is driven to feel that he has no help in himself.
So, if there be a special Providence, it is a Providence to be trusted; and the man who believes in it has no apology for carrying a single unnecessary burden. This providence in all human affairs, is like the principle of vitality in the vegetable world.
It does not release us from effort, in every legitimate and needful way, for the accomplishment of our laudable purposes; but when our efforts are complete, it takes care of the rest. What should we think of the farmer who could never roll the burden of his cornfield from his mind, and who, after hoeing his ground repeatedly, and cutting or covering every weed, should go night after night and sit up with it, and think of it, and dream of it all the while? He has done all there is for him to do, and beyond this he cannot control an hour of sunshine, a drop of dew, or a single cloud-full of rain. He cannot influence the law of growth in any particular. His field is in the control of a power entirely above and beyond him; and every thought he gives to it, after having done what he can for its prosperity, is utterly useless. It is his business to trust. Having done what he can, the remainder is in the hands of Him who feeds the springs of being with light and heat and moisture. It is thus that man"s affairs grow while he sleeps. The hand that ministers to every plant will not fail to minister to him for whose use the plant was made.
Why do not men trust in Providence? Simply because, in their usual moods and in their usual circ.u.mstances, they do not believe in it.
There is no other explanation. You, my friend, who carry your burdens around on your shoulders all the time, and who, perhaps, pray every morning and every night, do not believe in Providence.
You do not feel that you can trust Providence. You a.s.sent to all that I say upon the subject, but, after all, your belief in Providence has no genuine vitality. You do not believe in it as you believe in the purity of your wife or the honor of your friend. You do not rely upon it for an hour. You do nod your head and say--"yes, yes;" and you think you are sincere; but you deceive yourself. So long as you persist in carrying your pack, which is a very unpleasant burden, as you know, you do not believe in Providence; else you would trust in it. You are tired and hara.s.sed by your daily labor; and it is very natural to suppose that if you could remove your burden each evening, and place it in the charge of one whom you believe would take care of it, you would do it with gladness. You fail to do it, and what is the natural conclusion? It is that your belief in Providence is a humbug. You believe in the honor of your friend, and you trust it.
You believe in the honesty and ability of your creditor, and you trust him. You trust every thing and everybody that you firmly believe in; and the only reason under heaven why you do not roll off the burden that oppresses you, every day and every hour of your life, and commit it to the care of Providence, is, that you do not believe in Providence.
We are in the habit of talking about the world as a world of care, and speaking of human life as inseparably accompanied by trouble.
This is, indeed, the truth; but if we were to remove from the world all its useless care, and take from life all its unnecessary trouble, they would be transformed into such bright and pleasant things that we should hardly know them. I know very few men and women who do not bear about with them care and trouble which G.o.d never put upon them, and which He has no desire to see upon their shoulders. It does not belong to them. It relates to things that are in the realm of Providence alone, or to things over which they have no control. The future is G.o.d"s, but they voluntarily take it upon their shoulders, and try to bear it. They pluck a section of G.o.d"s eternity out of His hands, and groan with the burden. They a.s.sume care which is not their own--which belongs to the Controller of their lives, and the Governor of the universe. It is care for that which is beyond human care--anxiety for that which anxiety cannot reach--trouble about that which we can neither make nor mend--that oppresses humanity. We can bear our daily burdens very well. We can go through our regular hours of bodily and mental labor, and feel the better rather than the worse for it; but to care for that which our care cannot touch, and to be troubled about that which is entirely beyond our sphere--this is the burden that breaks the back of the world--this is the burden which we bind to our shoulders with obstinate fatuity.
LESSON XXI.
PROPER PEOPLE AND PERFECT PEOPLE.
"I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind To blow on whom I please." SHAKSPEARE.
"They say best men are moulded out of faults."
THE SAME.
"There"s no such thing in nature, and you"ll draw A faultless monster which the world ne"er saw."
SHEFFIELD.
Nature calls for room and for freedom--room for her ocean and freedom for its waves; room for her rivers and freedom for their flowing; room for her forests and freedom for every tree to respond to the influences of earth and sky according to its law.
Exceedingly proper things are not at all in the line of nature.
Nature never trims a hedge, or cuts off the tail of a horse.
Nature never compels a brook to flow in a right line, but permits it to make just as many turns in a meadow as it pleases. Nature is very careless about the form of her clouds, and ma.s.ses and colors them with great disregard of the opinions of the painters. Nature never thinks of smoothing off her rocks, and cleaning away her mud, and keeping herself trim and neat. She does very improper things in a very impulsive manner. Instead of contriving some safe, silent, and secret way to dispose of her electricity, she comes out with a blinding flash and a stunning crash, and a rush of rain that very likely fills the mountain streams to overflowing, and destroys bridges and booms, and cabins and cornfields.
On the whole, though nature keeps up a respectable appearance, I suppose that, in the opinion of my particular friend Miss Nancy, she would be improved by taking a few lessons of a French gardener, and reading savage criticisms on Ruskin.
I have alluded to my particular friend Miss Nancy. Perhaps I ought to say, at starting, that Miss Nancy is a man, and that I use the name bestowed upon him by his enemies, because it is, in a very important sense, descriptive. Miss Nancy"s boots are faithfully polished twice a day. His linen is immaculate; and the tie of his cravat is square and faultless. He never makes a mistake in grammar while engaged in conversation. He is versed in all the forms and usages of society, and particularly at home in gallant attention to what he calls "the ladies." He seems to have lost every rough corner, if he ever had one. In politics and religion, he is just as proper as in social life. The most respectable religion is his religion; and the politics that shun extremes are his politics. I think he is what they call a conservative. At any rate, I newer knew him to do a rash or impulsive thing, or speak an improper word in his life. I think he is as nearly perfect as any man I ever saw.
But, after all, Miss Nancy is not a popular man. He will probably live and die an old bachelor, because all the women will persist in laughing at him. He is certainly good-looking, his dress is unexceptionable, his manners are "as good as they make them,"
and his morals are as proper as his manners; yet I have not yet seen the woman who would speak a pleasant word of my friend. He is decidedly a "woman"s man," yet no woman will own him, and no woman feels comfortable with him. His language is so carefully guarded against all impropriety of style and structure, that she feels as if he were criticizing every word she utters, as well as measuring his own. His manners are so very proper that they are formal and constrained, and make her uncomfortable. His sentiments and opinions are so very conservative, that they have no vitality in them. With a curious perverseness, the most gentle and accomplished women will turn from him with a sense of relief, to join in the society of a hearty fellow with a loud laugh and a dash of slang, and a free and easy way with him. It may be difficult to explain all this, but it is true. An exceedingly proper man is never a popular man. That life which is controlled by rigid and unvarying rules, and regulated by conventionalities in every minute particular, and restrained in every impulse by notions of propriety, is unlovely and unnatural, and can never he otherwise.
The instincts of men are always right in this and all cognate matters. All formalism is offensive to good taste. The painter does not study landscape in a garden. Formal isles, closely-trimmed trees, rose hushes on the top of tall sticks, flowers tied to supports, vines trained upon trellises, lakes with clipped and pebbled margins and India-rubber swans--these are not picturesque.
There is no more inspiration in them than there would be in a row of tenement houses in the city. The painter looks for beauty out where nature reigns undisturbed amid her imperfections,--where the aisles are made by the deer going to his lick; where the trees are never trimmed save by the lightning or the hurricane; where the rose-bushes spread their branches and the vines trail themselves at liberty; and where the lake looks up into the faces of trees centuries old, and hems itself in with thickets of alders and green reaches of flags and rushes, and throbs to the touch of the mountain breeze, while on its bosom
"The black duck, with her glossy breast Sits swinging silently."
A little child whose head is piled with laces and ribbons, whose dress is a ma.s.s of embroidery, and who is booted and gloved and otherwise oppressed by parental vanity and extravagance, is not picturesque, any further than its face goes. The portrait painter will cling to the face and let the clothes alone. All this I trickery of art, brought into comparison or contrast with the simple beauty of nature, is offensive. Yet a little beggar boy, with an old straw hat on, and with bare, brown feet, and a burnt shoulder which his torn shirt refuses to cover, would be a painter"s joy. Here would be drapery that he would delight to paint, simply because there would be no formality about it. It is impossible for us to know how ridiculous a dress-coat is until we see it in a statue. We are obliged to put all our modern sages and heroes into togas and blankets and long cloaks in order to make them presentable to posterity.
We never find groups of accordant, striking facts like these--and their number could be largely increased--without finding that they are all strung together by an important law. All life demands room and freedom--freedom to manifest itself in every way, according to the law of its being and the range of its circ.u.mstances. All life is individual and characteristic, and comes reluctantly under the sway of outside forces. It is not natural to be proper, or to love propriety. In saying this I simply mean that it is against nature to bring one"s individuality under the curbing and controlling hands of others--to make the notions of the world the law and limit of one"s liberty, and to square every word and every act by arbitrary rules imposed by cliques and customs. A man who has been clipped in all his puttings-forth, and modelled by outside hands and outside influences, until it is apparent that he is governed from without rather than from within, is just as unnatural an object as a tree that has been clipped and tied and bent until its top has grown into the form of a cube. Thus the reason why Miss Nancy is not popular, and why the women refuse to delight in him, is, that he is not his own master--that he has, in himself, no independent life. It is not proper that he give utterance to his impulses;--so he suppresses them. It is not proper that he frankly reveal the emotions of his heart; so he conceals them. It is not proper that he enter enthusiastically into any work or any pleasure; so he is a constant check to the enthusiasm of others. It is not proper that he speak the words that spring to his lips when his weak sensibilities are touched; so he studies his language, and shapes his phrases to the accepted models. Thus is he shortened in on every side, until his individuality is all gone, and the humanity in him becomes as characterless as its expression. Every utterance of his life is made with a well-measured reference to certain standards to which he is an acknowledged slave.
A scrupulously proper man is often a self-deceiver, and not unfrequently an intentional deceiver of others. I do not say that he is necessarily a scoundrel or a fool. He may be very little of either, and he may be a little of both. These two words, which sound rather roughly, will give us, I think, a faithful index to his character. A man who is punctiliously proper has usually become so in consequence of an attempt to cover up his mental deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious propriety is always pretentious, and pretentiousness is always an attempt at fraud. A shallow mind is very apt to clothe itself with propriety as with a garment. A brain that cannot handle large things very often undertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate great powers and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper men are nothing but a sh.e.l.l, although many of them pa.s.s with the world for more. Their life is all on the outside, and is placed and kept there for show.
We approach them, and very frequently find them so well guarded that we do not get a look into their emptiness for a long time. We examine them as we would a hillside strewn with fragments and planted with boulders of marble. We are obliged to dig to learn whether the signs we see are from an out-cropping ledge, or an outside deposition. Sometimes the plunge of a single question will reveal the whole story. A man with large brains and a large life in him has something to do besides attending to the notions of other people. He has at least no motive to deceive the world by striving to appear to be more than he is.
I have said that there are some men who are punctiliously proper for the purpose of covering their moral obliquities. The virtue of a prude is always to be suspected. "So you have been looking after the bad words," was savage old Dr. Johnson"s reply to the very proper woman who found fault with him for introducing so many indecent words into his dictionary. There are few men who have not frequently, during their lives, broken their way through a crust of punctilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of sensuality and sin. The world is full of hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is nothing more than appearing to be what one is not. Indeed, I believe that one of the strongest motives operative in the world to render men scrupulously proper in their deportment and behavior is sin. I make no hesitation in saying that shallowness and sensuality are the leading ingredients in the majority of the exceedingly proper characters with which I am acquainted.
Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to call attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect people are bores. A perfect character in a novel has no more power over a reader--no more foothold among his sympathies--than a proposition in mathematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the brain of man has given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. Sometimes we find in actual life a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at the corners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the sides, and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find fault with it; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. Such a character gets beyond the reach of our sympathies. Human affection is like ivy. It cannot cling to gla.s.s; it must plant its feet in imperfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it does not exist. What the world would call a perfect man--what would be adjudged a perfect man by the best standards--would be as tasteless as a last year"s apple. A perfect woman could no more be loved than she could be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect face--a face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no fault could be found with it--who was not more or less a numskull.
A pretty man is always a pretty fool; and the more symmetrical the features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose all charm and all significance. They descend into simple prettiness, which is simple insipidity.
I say that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. In explanation, I ought to say that all individuality is either based upon it or pre-supposes it. For instance: the preponderance of certain powers and qualities of mind and character in me, over certain other powers and qualities, and the weakness and imperfection of these latter as related to the former, and to the individualities of others, make my individuality what it, is. If in me all mental and moral powers were in equipoise--if I were a symmetrical man, as the first Adam may possibly have been--I should have no individuality, no qualities that would distinguish me--no weaknesses that would furnish footholds for human sympathy--no freshness and flavor. A whole world full of perfect men and women, each one like every other, would be unutterably stupid. Where there is no weakness there is no individuality; where there is no individuality there is no true humanity; where there is no true humanity there is no sympathy; and where there is no sympathy there is no pleasure. We demand that a man shall live according to his law--develop himself according to his law-- manifest and express himself according to his law; and then he will become the object of our sympathy or antipathy, according to our law. We demand that the true flavor of every individuality shall be declared, and not be masked by the imposition of conventional regulations.
If every tree in the world were perfect, according to any recognized standard, then all the trees would be alike, and would cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal.
The most unattractive of all houses is a model house. A house that no man can find fault with, is a house that no man can love. It is precisely thus with human character and with men. A proper, perfect, "model" man, is an unlovable man. A sphere cannot be made to fit an angle, and a spherical character has no point of sympathy with one that is thrown into the angles necessary for individuality. So we neither love symmetry and perfection in men, according to any recognized standard, nor the appearance of them.
We demand not only that men shall have individuality, but that they shall express it in their language and their lives. In society we demand variety; and in order to have it, men must act out themselves. The harmony and sweetness of social life consist in the adjustment of the strong points of some to the weak points of others.
With these facts so very evident as they must be to all thoughtful minds, it is strange that such an effort is made to bring all men to a certain standard and style of life. I do not believe there is a country on the face of the earth where public opinion and fashion and conventional and individual notions, exercise so despotic a sway as they do in America. There is, in this "free country," no play to individuality tolerated. No room is made for the peculiarities of a man--no freedom is given to his mode of manifestation. A man who has peculiar manners, and whose style of individuality is marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He is very likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his inferiors.
We take no pains to look through the outside to find the heart and soul, and refuse to see excellence behind manifestations that offend our notions or our tastes. We go to hear a preacher, and if he do not happen to have the externals, and the style of delivery which we most admire, we condemn him at once. We make no room for his individuality, and allow to it no freedom of manifestation.
Room and freedom--that which the ocean has, that which the rivers have, that which the forest has, and that from which all of them derive their beauty and their glory--room and freedom are denied to men by men who need both, quite as much as their fellows.
The choicest food of the gossips is the personal peculiarities of their acquaintances. The grand staple of ridicule is this same individuality, whose importance I have endeavored to ill.u.s.trate.
All the small wits of society busy themselves upon the eccentricities of those around them. Church and creed, party and platform, fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the development of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink before such an array of influences, and retire into themselves, drawing back and keeping in check all their out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed, who would face a cannon"s mouth without trembling, flinches when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society that the whole race of mankind are not reduced to a dead level of character, and a tasteless uniformity of life. Were it not that G.o.d does His work so strongly, it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we always have a few men and women who are true enough to G.o.d and themselves to keep the world from stagnation, and give zest to life.
They sometimes shock Miss Nancy, but as they do not happen to care what Miss Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live and do something to keep Miss Nancy"s friends from settling into chronic inanity.