Chapter XI: Part III: Association (2)

Yes, this is a true account of the way in which the words irreligious and religious have always been used and there does not appear to be any necessity for altering their signification. Every event which is transferred, in human opinion, from supernatural to natural action is transferred from the domain of religion to that of science; and it is because such transferrences have been so frequent in our time that we are becoming so much less religious than our forefathers were. In how many things is the modern man perfectly irreligious! He is so in everything that relates to applied science, to steam, telegraphy, photography, metallurgy, agriculture, manufactures. He has not the slightest belief in spiritual intervention, either for or against him, in these material processes. He is beginning to be equally irreligious in government. Modern politicians have been accused of thinking that God cannot govern, but that is not a true account of their opinion. What they really think is that government is an application of science to the direction of national life, in which no invisible powers will either thwart a ruler in that which he does wisely, or shield him from the evil consequences of his errors.

But though we are less religious than our ancestors because we believe less in the interferences of the supernatural, do we deserve censure for our way of understanding the world? Certainly not. Was Nikias a proper object of praise because the eclipse seen by him at Syracuse seemed a warning from the gods; and was Wolseley a proper object of blame because the comet seen by him on the Egyptian plain was without a Divine message? Both these opinions are quite outside of merit, although the older opinion was in the highest degree religious, and the later one is not religious in the least. Such changes simply indicate a gradual revolution in man's conception of the universe, which is the result of more accurate knowledge. So why not accept the fact, why not admit that we have really become less religious? Possibly we have a compensation, a gain equivalent to our loss. If the gods do not speak to us by signs in the heavens; if the entrails of victims and the flight of birds no longer tell us when to march to battle and where to remain inactive in our tents; if the oracle is silent at Delos, and the ark lost to Jerusalem; if we are pilgrims to no shrine; if we drink of no sacred fountain and plunge into no holy stream; if all the special sanctities once reverenced by humanity are unable any longer to awaken our dead enthusiasm, have we gained nothing in exchange for the many religious excitements that we have lost? Yes, we have gained a keener interest in the natural order, and a knowledge of it at once more accurate and more extensive, a gain that Greek and Jew might well have envied us, and which a few of their keener spirits most ardently desired. Our passion for natural knowledge is not a devout emotion, and therefore it is not religious; but it is a noble and a fruitful passion nevertheless, and by it our eyes are opened. The good Saint Bernard had his own saintly qualities; but for us the qualities of a De Saussure are not without their worth. Saint Bernard, in the perfection of ancient piety, travelling a whole day by the lake of Geneva without seeing it, too much absorbed by devout meditation to perceive anything terrestrial, was blinded by his piety, and might with equal profit have stayed in his monastic cell. De Saussure was a man of our own time. Never, in his writings, do you meet with any allusion to supernatural interferences (except once or twice in pity for popular superstitions); but fancy De Saussure passing the lake of Geneva, or any other work of nature, without seeing it! His life was spent in the continual study of the natural world; and this study was to him so vigorous an exercise for the mind, and so strict a discipline, that he found in it a means of moral and even of physical improvement. There is no trace in his writings of what is called devout emotion, but the bright light of intelligent admiration illumines every page; and when he came to die, if he could not look back, like Saint Bernard, upon what is especially supposed to be a religious life, he could look back upon many years wisely and well spent in the study of that nature of which Saint Bernard scarcely knew more than the mule that carried him.

ESSAY XVI.

ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH.

In the art of painting there are two opposite ways of dealing with natural color. It may be intensified, or it may be translated by tints of inferior chromatic force. In either case the picture may be perfectly harmonious, provided only that the same principle of interpretation be consistently followed throughout.

The first time that I became acquainted with the first of these two methods of interpretation was in my youth, when I met with a Scottish painter who has since become eminent in his art. He was painting studies from nature; and I noticed that whenever in the natural object there was a trace of dull gold, as in some lichen, he made it a brighter gold, and whenever there was a little rusty red he made it a more vivid red. So it was with every other tint. His eye seemed to become excited by every hue, and he translated it by one of greater intensity and power.

Now that is a kind of exaggeration which is very commonly recognized as a departure from the sober truth. People complain that the sky is too blue, the fields too green, and so on.

Afterwards I saw French painters at work, and I noticed that they (in those days) interpreted natural color by an intentional lowering of the chromatic force. When they had to deal with the splendors of autumnal woods against a blue sky they interpreted the azure by a blue-gray, and the flaming gold by a dull russet. They even refused themselves the more quiet brightness of an ordinary wheat-field, and translated the yellow of the wheat by an earthy brown.

Unlike falsehood by exaggeration, this other kind of falsehood (by diminution) is very seldom recognized as a departure from the truth. Such coloring as this French coloring excited but few protests, and indeed was often praised for being "modest" and "subdued."

Both systems are equally permissible in the fine arts, if consistently followed, because in art the unity and harmony of the work are of greater importance than the exact imitation of nature. It is not as an art-critic that I should have any fault to find with a well-understood and thoroughly consistent conventionalism in the interpretation of nature; but the two kinds of falsity we have noticed are constantly found in action outside of the fine arts, and yet only one of them is recognized in its true character, the other being esteemed as a proof of modesty and moderation.

The general opinion, in our own country, condemns falsehood by exaggeration, but it does not blame falsehood by diminution. Overstatement is regarded as a vice, and understatement as a sort of modest virtue, whilst in fact they are both untruthful, exactly in the degree of their departure from perfect accuracy.

If a man states his income as being larger than it really is, if he adopts a degree of ostentation which (though he may be able to pay for it) conveys the idea of more ample means than he really possesses, and if we find out afterwards what his income actually is, we condemn him as an untruthful person; but lying by diminution with reference to money matters is looked upon simply as modesty.

I remember a most respectable English family who had this modesty in perfection. It was their great pleasure to represent themselves as being much less rich than they really were. Whenever they heard of anybody with moderate or even narrow means, they pretended to think that he had quite an ample income. If you mentioned a man with a family, struggling on a pittance, they would say he was "very comfortably provided for," and if you spoke of another whose expenses were the ordinary expenses of gentlemen, they wondered by what inventions of extravagance he could get through so much money. They themselves pretended to spend much less than they really spent, and they always affected astonishment when they heard how much it cost other people to live exactly in their own way. They considered that this was modesty; but was it not just as untruthful as the commoner vice of assuming a style more showy than the means warrant?

In France and Italy the departure from the truth is almost invariably in the direction of overstatement, unless the speaker has some distinct purpose to serve by adopting the opposite method, as when he desires to depreciate the importance of an enemy. In England people habitually understate, and the remarkable thing is that they believe themselves to be strictly truthful in doing so. The word "lying" is too harsh a term to be applied either to the English or the Continental habit in this matter; but it is quite fair to say that both of them miss the truth, one in falling short of it, the other in going beyond it.

An English family has seen the Alps for the first time. A young lady says Switzerland is "nice;" a young gentleman has decided that it is "jolly." This is what the habit of understatement may bring us down to,--absolute inadequacy. The Alps are not "nice," and they are not "jolly;" far more powerful adjectives are only the precise truth in this instance. The Alps are stupendous, overwhelming, magnificent, sublime. A Frenchman in similar circumstances will be embarrassed, not by any timidity about using a sufficiently forcible expression, but because he is eager to exaggerate; and one scarcely knows how to exaggerate the tremendous grandeur of the finest Alpine scenery. He will have recourse to eloquent phraseology, to loudness of voice, and finally, when he feels that these are still inadequate, he will employ energetic gesture. I met a Frenchman who tried to make me comprehend how many English people there were at Cannes in winter. "Il y en a--des Anglais--il y en a,"--then he hesitated, whilst seeking for an adequate expression. At last, throwing out both his arms, he cried, "_Il y en a plus qu'en Angleterre!_"

The English love of understatement is even more visible in moral than in material things. If an Englishman has to describe any person or action that is particularly admirable on moral grounds, he will generally renounce the attempt to be true, and substitute for the high and inspiring truth some quiet little conventional expression that will deliver him from what he most dreads,--the appearance of any noble enthusiasm. It does not occur to him that this inadequacy, this insufficiency of expression, is one of the forms of untruth; that to describe noble and admirable conduct in commonplace and non-appreciative language is to pay tribute of a kind especially acceptable to the Father of Lies. If we suppose the existence of a modern Mephistopheles watching the people of our own time and pleased with every kind of moral evil, we may readily imagine how gratified he must be to observe the moral indifference which uses exactly the same terms for ordinary and heroic virtue, which never rises with the occasion, and which always seems to take it for granted that there are neither noble natures nor high purposes in the world. The dead mediocrity of common talk, too timid and too indolent for any expression equivalent either to the glory of external nature or the intellectual and moral grandeur of great and excellent men, has driven many of our best minds from conversation into literature, because in literature it is not thought extraordinary for a man to express himself with a degree of force and clearness equivalent to the energy of his feelings, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the importance of his subject. The habit of using inadequate expression in conversation has led to the strange result that if an Englishman has any power of thought, any living interest in the great problems of human destiny, you will know hardly anything of the real action of his mind unless he becomes an author. He dares not express any high feelings in conversation, because he dreads what Stuart Mill called the "sneering depreciation" of them; and if such feelings are strong enough in him to make expression an imperative want, he has to utter them on paper. By a strange result of conventionalism, a man is admired for using language of the utmost clearness and force in literature, whilst if he talked as vigorously as he wrote (except, perhaps, in extreme privacy and even secrecy with one or two confidential companions) he would be looked upon as scarcely civilized. This may be one of the reasons why English literature, including the periodical, is so abundant in quantity and so full of energy. It is a mental outlet, a _dérivatif_.

The kind of untruthfulness which may be called _untruthfulness by inadequacy_ causes many strong and earnest minds to keep aloof from general society, which seems to them insipid. They find frank and clear expression in books, they find it even in newspapers and reviews, but they do not find it in social intercourse. This deficiency drives many of the more intelligent of our countrymen into the strange and perfectly unnatural position of receiving ideas almost exclusively through the medium of print, and of communicating them only by writing. I remember an Englishman of great learning and ability who lived almost entirely in that manner. He received his ideas through books and the learned journals, and whenever any thought occurred to him he wrote it immediately on a slip of paper. In society he was extremely absent, and when he spoke it was in an apologetic and timidly suggestive manner, as if he were always afraid that what he had to say might not be interesting to the hearer, or might even appear objectionable, and as if he were quite ready to withdraw it. He was far too anxious to be well-behaved ever to venture on any forcible expression of opinion or to utter any noble sentiment; and yet his convictions on all important subjects were very serious, and had been arrived at after deep thought, and he was capable of real elevation of mind. His writings are the strongest possible contrast to his oral expression of himself. They are bold in opinion, very clear and decided in statement, and full of well-ascertained knowledge.

ESSAY XVII.

ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY.

In De Tocqueville's admirable book on "Democracy in America" there is an interesting chapter on the behavior of Englishmen to each other when they meet in a foreign country:--

"Two Englishmen meet by chance at the antipodes; they are surrounded
by foreigners whose language and mode of life are hardly known to
them.

"These two men begin by studying each other very curiously and with a
kind of secret uneasiness; they then turn away, or, if they meet, they
are careful to speak only with a constrained and absent air, and to
say things of little importance.

"And yet they know nothing of each other; they have never met, and
suppose each other to be perfectly honorable. Why, then, do they take
such pains to avoid intercourse?"

De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I hardly know a single instance in which his faculty of observation shows itself in greater perfection. In his terse style of writing every word tells; and even in my translation, unavoidably inferior to the original, you actually see the two Englishmen and the minute details of their behavior.

Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at a foreign _table d'hôte_, as described with great skill and truth by a well-known English novelist, Miss Betham-Edwards:--

"The time, September; the scene, a _table d'hôte_ dinner in a
much-frequented French town. For the most part nothing can be more
prosaic than these daily assemblies of English tourists bound for
Switzerland and the South, and a slight sprinkling of foreigners, the
two elements seldom or never blending; a visitant from another planet
might, indeed, suppose that between English and French-speaking people
lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from the swarth
African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the reserve. Nor is there
anything like cordiality between the English themselves. Our imaginary
visitant from Jupiter would here find matter for wonder also, and
would ask himself the reason of this freezing reticence among the
English fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion
could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gallic
travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall into
friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes and all ages
speak only in subdued voices and to the members of their own family."

Next, let me give an account of a personal experience in a Parisian hotel. It was a little, unpretending establishment that I liked for its quiet and for the honest cookery. There was a _table d'hôte_, frequented by a few French people, generally from the provinces, and once there came some English visitors who had found out the merits of the little place. It happened that I had been on the Continent a long time without revisiting England, so when my fellow-countrymen arrived I had foolish feelings of pleasure on finding myself amongst them, and spoke to them in our common English tongue. The effect of this bold experiment was extremely curious, and to me, at the time, almost inexplicable, as I had forgotten that chapter by De Tocqueville. The new-comers were two or three young men and one in middle life. The young men seemed to be reserved more from timidity than pride. They were quite startled and frightened when spoken to, and made answer with grave brevity, as if apprehensive of committing themselves to some compromising statement. With an audacity acquired by habits of intercourse with foreigners, I spoke to the older Englishman. His way of putting me down would have been a charming study for a novelist. His manner resembled nothing so much as that of a dignified English minister,--Mr. Gladstone for example, when he is questioned in the House by some young and presumptuous member of the Opposition. A few brief words were vouchsafed to me, accompanied by an expression of countenance which, if not positively stern, was intentionally divested of everything like interest or sympathy. It then began to dawn upon me that perhaps this Englishman was conscious of some august social superiority; that he might even know a lord; and I thought, "If he does really know a lord we are very likely to hear his lordship's name." My expectation was not fulfilled to the letter, but it was quite fulfilled in spirit; for in talking to a Frenchman (for me to hear) our Englishman shortly boasted that he knew an English duchess, giving her name and place of abode. "One day when I was at ---- House I said to the Duchess of ----," and he repeated what he had said to Her Grace; but it would have no interest for the reader, as it probably had none for the great lady herself. Shade of Thackeray! why wast thou not there to add a paragraph to the "Book of Snobs"?

The next day came another Englishman of about fifty, who distinguished himself in another way. He did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were not informed of his good fortune; but he assumed a wonderful air of superiority to his temporary surroundings, that filled me, I must say, with the deepest respect and awe. The impression he desired to produce was that he had never before been in so poor a little place, and that our society was far beneath what he was accustomed to. He criticised things disdainfully, and when I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is true, to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed to say, "Who and what are you that you dare to speak to a gentleman like me, who am, as you must perceive, a person of wealth and consideration?"

This account of our English visitors is certainly not exaggerated by any excessive sensitiveness on my part. Paris is not the Desert; and one who has known it for thirty years is not dependent for society on a chance arrival from beyond the sea. For me these Englishmen were but actors in a play, and perhaps they afforded me more amusement with their own peculiar manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. One result, however, was inevitable. I had been full of kindly feeling towards my fellow-countrymen when they came, but this soon gave place to indifference; and their departure was rather a relief. When they had left Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the south with her son and a priest, who seemed to be tutor and chaplain. The three lived at our _table d'hôte_; and we found them most agreeable, always ready to take their share in conversation, and, although far too well-bred to commit the slightest infraction of the best French social usages, either through ignorance or carelessness, they were at the same time perfectly open and easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, they gave themselves no airs, and when they returned to their own southern sunshine we felt their departure as a loss.

The foreign idea of social intercourse under such conditions (that is, of intercourse between strangers who are thrown together accidentally) is simply that it is better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary isolation. People may not have much to say that is of any profound interest, but they enjoy the free play of the mind; and it sometimes happens, in touching on all sorts of subjects, that unexpected lights are thrown upon them. Some of the most interesting conversations I have ever heard have taken place at foreign _tables d'hôte_, between people who had probably never met before and who would separate forever in a week. If by accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognize each other by a bow, but there is none of that intrusiveness which the Englishman so greatly dreads.

Besides these transient acquaintanceships which, however brief, are by no means without their value to one's experience and culture, the foreign way of understanding a _table d'hôte_ includes the daily and habitual meeting of regular subscribers, a meeting looked forward to with pleasure as a break in the labors of the day, or a mental refreshment when they are over. Nothing affords such relief from the pressure of work as a free and animated conversation on other subjects. Of this more permanent kind of _table d'hôte_, Mr. Lewes gave a lively description in his biography of Goethe:--

"The English student, clerk, or bachelor, who dines at an
eating-house, chop-house, or hotel, goes there simply to get his
dinner, and perhaps look at the 'Times.' Of the other diners he knows
nothing, cares little. It is rare that a word is interchanged between
him and his neighbor. Quite otherwise in Germany. There the same
society is generally to be found at the same table. The _table d'hôte_
is composed of a circle of _habitués_, varied by occasional visitors
who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle. _Even with
strangers conversation is freely interchanged_; and in a little while
friendships are formed over these dinner-tables, according as natural
tastes and likings assimilate, which, extending beyond the mere hour
of dinner, are carried into the current of life. Germans do not rise
so hastily from the table as we, for time with them is not so
precious; life is not so crowded; time can be found for quiet
after-dinner talk. The cigars and coffee, which appear before the
cloth is removed, keep the company together; and in that state of
suffused comfort which quiet digestion creates, they hear without
anger the opinions of antagonists."

In this account of German habits we see the repast made use of as an opportunity for human intercourse, which the Englishman avoids except with persons already known to him or known to a private host. The reader has noticed the line I have italicized,--"Even with strangers conversation is freely interchanged." The consequence is that the stranger does not feel himself to be isolated, and if he is not an Englishman he does not take offence at being treated like an intelligent human being, but readily accepts the welcome that is offered to him.

The English peculiarity in this respect does not, however, consist so much in avoiding intercourse with foreigners as in shunning other English people. It is true that in the description of a _table d'hôte_ by Miss Betham-Edwards, the English and foreign elements are represented as separated by an icy distance, and the description is strikingly accurate; but this shyness and timidity as regards foreigners may be sufficiently accounted for by want of skill and ease in speaking their language. Most English people of education know a little French and German, but few speak those languages freely, fluently, and correctly. When it does happen that an Englishman has mastered a foreign tongue, he will generally talk more readily and unreservedly with a foreigner than with one of his own countrymen. This is the notable thing, that if English people do not really dislike and distrust one another, if there is not really "a deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion" to separate them, they expose themselves to the accusation of John Stuart Mill, that "everybody acts as if everybody else was either an enemy or a bore."

This English avoidance of English people is so remarkable and exceptional a characteristic that it could not but greatly interest and exercise so observant a mind as that of De Tocqueville. We have seen how accurately he noticed it; how exactly the conduct of shy Englishmen had fixed itself in his memory. Let us now see how he accounted for it.

Is it a mark of aristocracy? Is it because our race is more aristocratic than other races?

De Tocqueville's theory was, that it is _not_ the mark of an aristocratic society, because, in a society classed by birth, although people of different castes hold little communication with each other, they talk easily when they meet, without either fearing or desiring social fusion. "Their intercourse is not founded on equality, but it is free from constraint."

This view of the subject is confirmed by all that I know, through personal tradition, of the really aristocratic time in France that preceded the Revolution. The old-fashioned facility and directness of communication between ranks that were separated by wide social distances would surprise and almost scandalize a modern aspirant to false aristocracy, who has assumed the _de_, and makes up in _morgue_ what is wanting to him in antiquity of descent. I believe, too, that when England was a far more aristocratic country than it is at present, manners were less distant and not so cold and suspicious.

If the blame is not to be laid on the spirit of aristocracy, what is the real cause of the indisputable fact that an Englishman avoids an Englishman? De Tocqueville believed that the cause was to be found in the uncertainty of a transition state from aristocratic to plutocratic ideas; that there is still the notion of a strict classification; and yet that this classification is no longer determined by blood, but by money, which has taken its place, so that although the ranks exist still, as if the country were really aristocratic, it is not easy to see clearly, and at the first glance, who occupies them. Hence there is a _guerre sourde_ between all the citizens. Some try by a thousand artifices to edge their way in reality or apparently amongst those above them; others fight without ceasing to repel the usurpers of their rights; or rather, the same person does both; and whilst he struggles to introduce himself into the upper region he perpetually endeavors to put down aspirants who are still beneath him.

"The pride of aristocracy," said De Tocqueville, "being still very great with the English, and the limits of aristocracy having become doubtful, every one fears that he may be surprised at any moment into undesirable familiarity. Not being able to judge at first sight of the social position of those they meet, the English prudently avoid contact. They fear, in rendering little services, to form in spite of themselves an ill-assorted friendship; they dread receiving attention from others; and they withdraw themselves from the indiscreet gratitude of an unknown fellow-countryman as carefully as they would avoid his hatred."

This, no doubt, is the true explanation, but something may be added to it. An Englishman dreads acquaintances from the apprehension that they may end by coming to his house; a Frenchman is perfectly at his ease on that point by reason of the greater discretion of French habits. It is perfectly understood, in France, that you may meet a man at a _café_ for years, and talk to him with the utmost freedom, and yet he will not come near your private residence unless you ask him; and when he meets you in the street he will not stop you, but will simply lift his hat,--a customary salutation from all who know your name, which does not compromise you in any way. It might perhaps be an exaggeration to say that in France there is absolutely no struggling after a higher social position by means of acquaintances, but there is certainly very little of it. The great majority of French people live in the most serene indifference as regards those who are a little above them socially. They hardly even know their titles; and when they do know them they do not care about them in the least.[18]

It may not be surprising that the conduct of Americans should differ from that of Englishmen, as Americans have no titles; but if they have not titles they have vast inequalities of wealth, and Englishmen can be repellent without titles. Yet, in spite of pecuniary differences between Americans, and notwithstanding the English blood in their veins, they do not avoid one another. "If they meet by accident," says De Tocqueville, "they neither seek nor avoid one another; their way of meeting is natural, frank, and open; it is evident that they hope or fear scarcely anything from each other, and that they neither try to exhibit nor to conceal the station they occupy. If their manner is often cold and serious, it is never either haughty or stiff; and when they do not speak it is because they are not in the humor for conversation, and not because they believe it their interest to be silent. In a foreign country two Americans are friends at once, simply because they are Americans. They are separated by no prejudice, and their common country draws them together. In the case of two Englishmen the same blood is not enough; there must be also identity of rank."

The English habit strikes foreigners by contrast, and it strikes Englishmen in the same way when they have lived much in foreign countries. Charles Lever had lived abroad, and was evidently as much struck by this as De Tocqueville himself. Many readers will remember his brilliant story, "That Boy of Norcott's," and how the young hero, after finding himself delightfully at ease with a society of noble Hungarians, at the Schloss Hunyadi, is suddenly chilled and alarmed by the intelligence that an English lord is expected. "When they shall see," he says, "how my titled countryman will treat me,--the distance at which he will hold me, and the measured firmness with which he will repel, not my familiarities, for I should not dare them, _but simply the ease of my manner_,--the foreigners will be driven to regard me as some ignoble upstart who has no pretension whatever to be amongst them."

Lever also noted that a foreigner would have had a better chance of civil treatment than an Englishman. "In my father's house I had often had occasion to remark that while Englishmen freely admitted the advances of a foreigner and accepted his acquaintance with a courteous readiness, with each other they maintained a cold and studied reserve, as though no difference of place or circumstance was to obliterate that insular code which defines class, and limits each man to the exact rank he belongs to."

These readings and experiences, and many others too long to quote or narrate, have led me to the conclusion that it is scarcely possible to attempt any other manner with English people than that which the very peculiar and exceptional state of national feeling appears to authorize. The reason is that in the present state of feeling the innovator is almost sure to be misunderstood. He may be perfectly contented with his own social position; his mind may be utterly devoid of any desire to raise himself in society; the extent of his present wishes may be to wile away the tedium of a journey or a repast with a little intelligent conversation; yet if he breaks down the barrier of English reserve he is likely to be taken for a pushing and intrusive person who is eager to lift himself in the world. Every friendly expression on his part, even in a look or the tone of his voice, "simply the ease of his manner," may be repelled as an impertinence. In the face of such a probable misinterpretation one feels that it is hardly possible to be too distant or too cold. When two men meet it is the colder and more reserved man who always has the advantage. He is the rock; the other is the wave that comes against the rock and falls shattered at its foot.

It would be wrong to conclude this Essay without a word of reference to the exceptional Englishman who can pass an hour intelligently with a stranger, and is not constantly preoccupied with the idea that the stranger is plotting how to make some ulterior use of him. Such Englishmen are usually men of ripe experience, who have travelled much and seen much of the world, so that they have lost our insular distrust. I have met with a few of them,--they are not very numerous,--and I wish that I could meet the same fellow-countrymen by some happy accident again. There is nothing stranger in life than those very short friendships that are formed in an hour between two people born to understand each other, and cut short forever the next day, or the next week, by an inevitable separation.[19]

ESSAY XVIII.

OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE.

All virtue has its negative as well as its positive side, and every ideal includes not having as well as having. Gentility, for those who aspire to it and value it, is an ideal condition of humanity, a superior state which is maintained by selection amongst the things that life offers to a man who has the power to choose. He is judged by his selection. The genteel person selects in his own way, not only amongst things that can be seen and handled, such as the material adjuncts of a high state of civilization, but also amongst the things of the mind, including all the varieties of knowledge.

That a selection of this kind should be one of the marks of gentility is in itself no more than a natural consequence of the idealizing process as we see it continually exercised in the fine arts. Every work of fine art is a result of selection. The artist does not give us the natural truth as it is, but he purposely omits very much of it, and alters that which he recognizes. The genteel person is himself a work of art, and, as such, contains only partial truth.

This is the central fact about gentility, that it is a narrow ideal, impoverishing the mind by the rejection of truth as much as it adorns it by elegance; and it is for this reason that gentility is disliked and refused by all powerful and inquiring intellects. They look upon it as a mental condition with which they have nothing to do, and they pursue their labors without the slightest deference or condescension to it. They may, however, profitably study it as one of the states of human life, and a state towards which a certain portion of humanity, aided by wealth, appears to tend inevitably.

The misfortune of the genteel mind is that it is carried by its own idealism so far away from the truth of nature that it becomes divorced from fact and unable to see the movement of the actual world; so that genteel people, with their narrow and erroneous ideas, are sure to find themselves thrust aside by men of robust intelligence, who are not genteel, but who have a stronger grip upon reality. There is, consequently, a pathetic element in gentility, with its fallacious hopes, its certain disappointments, so easily foreseen by all whom it has not blinded, and its immense, its amazing, its ever invincible ignorance.

There is not a country in Europe more favorable than France for the study of the genteel condition of mind. There you have it in its perfection in the class _qui n'a rien appris et rien oublié_, and in the numerous aspirants to social position who desire to mix themselves and become confounded with that class. It has been in the highest degree fashionable, since the establishment of the Republic, to be ignorant of the real course of events. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, genteel people either really believed or universally professed to believe during the life-time of the Count de Chambord, that his restoration was not only probable but imminent. No belief could have been more destitute of foundation in fact; and if genteel people had not been compelled by gentility to shut their eyes against what was obvious to everybody else, they might have ascertained the truth with the utmost facility. The truth was simply this, that the country was going away further and further from divine right every day, and from every sort of real monarchy, or one-man government, and was becoming more and more attached to representative institutions and an elective system everywhere; and what made this truth glaringly evident was not only the steadily increasing number of republican elections, but the repeated return to power of the very ministers whom the party of divine right most bitterly execrated. The same class of genteel French people affected to believe that the end of the temporal power of the Papacy by the foundation of the Italian kingdom was but a temporary crisis, probably of short duration; though the process which had brought the Papacy to nothing as a temporal sovereignty had been slow, gradual, and natural,--the progressive enfeeblement of a theocracy unable to defend itself against its own subjects, and dependent on foreign soldiers for every hour of its artificial survival. Such is genteel ignorance in political matters. It is a polite shutting of the eyes against all facts and tendencies that are disagreeable to people of fashion. It is unpleasant to people of fashion to be told that the France of the future is more likely to be governed by men of business than by kings and cardinals; it is disagreeable to them to hear that the Pope is not to do what he likes with the Roman people; and so, to please them, we are to pretend that we do not understand the course of recent history, which is obvious to everybody who thinks. The course of events has always proved the blindness of the genteel world, its incapacity to understand the present and forecast the future; yet still it goes on in the old way, shutting its eyes resolutely against surrounding facts, and making predictions that are sure to be falsified by the event. Such a state of mind is unintelligent to the last degree, but then it is genteel; and there is always, in every country, a large class of persons who would rather be gentlemanly than wise.

In religion, genteel ignorance is not less remarkable than in politics. Here the mark of gentility is to ignore the unfashionable churches, and generally to underestimate all those forces of opinion that are not on the side of the particular form of orthodoxy which is professed by the upper class. In France it is one of the marks of high breeding not to know anything about Protestantism. The fact that there are such people as Protestants is admitted, and it is believed that some of them are decent and respectable people in their line of life, who may follow an erroneous religion with an assiduity praiseworthy in itself, but the nature of their opinions is not known, and it is thought better not to inquire into them.

In England the gentry know hardly anything about Dissenters. As to the organization of dissenting communities, nobody ever hears of any of them having bishops, and so it is supposed that they must have some sort of democratic system. Genteel knowledge of dissenting faith and practice is confined to a very few points,--that Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity, that Baptists have some unusual practice about baptism, and that Methodists are fond of singing hymns. This is all, and more than enough; as it is inconceivable that an aristocratic person can have anything to do with Dissent, unless he wants the Nonconformist vote in politics. If Dissenters are to be spoken of at all, it should be in a condescending tone, as good people in their way, who may be decent members of the middle and lower classes, of some use in withstanding the tide of infidelity.

I remember a lady who condemned some eminent man as an atheist, on which I ventured to object that he was a deist only. "It is exactly the same thing," she replied. Being at that time young and argumentative, I maintained that there existed a distinction: that a deist believed in God, and an atheist had not that belief. "That is of no consequence," she rejoined; "what concerns us is that we should know as little as possible about such people." When this dialogue took place the lady seemed to me unreasonable and unjust, but now I perceive that she was genteel. She desired to keep her soul pure from the knowledge which gentility did not recognize; she wanted to know nothing about the shades and colors of heresy.

There is a delightful touch of determined ignorance in the answer of the Russian prelates to Mr. William Palmer, who went to Russia in 1840 with a view to bring about a recognition of Anglicanism by Oriental orthodoxy. In substance, according to Cardinal Newman, it amounted to this: "We know of no true Church besides our own. We are the only Church in the world. The Latins are heretics, or all but heretics; you are worse; _we do not even know your name_." It would be difficult to excel this last touch; it is the perfection of uncontaminated orthodoxy, of the pure Russian religious _comme il faut_. We, the holy, the undefiled, the separate from heretics and from those lost ones, worse than heretics, into whose aberrations we never inquire, "_we do not even know your name_."

Of all examples of genteel ignorance, there are none more frequent than the ignorance of those necessities which are occasioned by a limited income. I am not, at present, alluding to downright poverty. It is genteel to be aware that the poor exist; it is genteel, even, to have poor people of one's own to pet and patronize; and it is pleasant to be kind to such poor people when they receive our kindness in a properly submissive spirit, with a due sense of the immense distance between us, and read the tracts we give them, and listen respectfully to our advice. It is genteel to have to do with poor people in this way, and even to know something about them; the real genteel ignorance consists in not recognizing the existence of those impediments that are familiar to people of limited means. "I cannot understand," said an English lady, "why people complain about the difficulties of housekeeping. Such difficulties may almost always be included under one head,--insufficiency of servants; people have only to take more servants, and the difficulties disappear." Of course the cost of maintaining a troup of domestics is too trifling to be taken into consideration. A French lady, in my hearing, asked what fortune had such a family. The answer was simple and decided, they had no fortune at all. "No fortune at all! then how can they possibly live? How can people live who have no fortune?" This lady's genteel ignorance was enlightened by the explanation that when there is no fortune in a family it is generally supported by the labor of one or more of its members. "I cannot understand," said a rich Englishman to one of my friends, "why men are so imprudent as to allow themselves to sink into money embarrassments. There is a simple rule that I follow myself, and that I have always found a great safeguard,--it is, _never to let one's balance at the banker's fall below five thousand pounds_. By strictly adhering to this rule one is always sure to be able to meet any unexpected and immediate necessity." Why, indeed, do we not all follow a rule so evidently wise? It may be especially recommended to struggling professional men with large families. If only they can be persuaded to act upon it they will find it an unspeakable relief from anxiety, and the present volume will not have been penned in vain.

Genteel ignorance of pecuniary difficulties is conspicuous in the case of amusements. It is supposed, if you are inclined to amuse yourself in a certain limited way, that you are stupid for not doing it on a much more expensive scale. Charles Lever wrote a charming paper for one of the early numbers of the "Cornhill Magazine," in which he gave an account of the dangers and difficulties he had encountered in riding and boating, simply because he had set limits to his expenditure on those pastimes, an economy that seemed unaccountably foolish to his genteel acquaintances. "Lever will ride such screws! Why won't he give a proper price for a horse? It's the stupidest thing in the world to be under-horsed; and bad economy besides." These remarks, Lever said, were not sarcasms on his skill or sneers at his horsemanship, but they were far worse, they were harsh judgments on himself expressed in a manner that made reply impossible. So with his boating. Lever had a passion for boating, for that real boating which is perfectly distinct from yachting and incomparably less costly; but richer acquaintances insisted on the superior advantages of the more expensive amusement. "These cockle-shells, sir, must go over; they have no bearings, they lee over, and there you are,--you fill and go down. Have a good decked boat,--I should say five-and-thirty or forty tons; _get a clever skipper and a lively crew_." Is not this exactly like the lady who thought people stupid for not having an adequate establishment of servants?

Another form of genteel ignorance consists in being so completely blinded by conventionalism as not to be able to perceive the essential identity of two modes of life or habits of action when one of them happens to be in what is called "good form," whilst the other is not accepted by polite society. My own tastes and pursuits have often led me to do things for the sake of study or pleasure which in reality differ but very slightly from what genteel people often do; yet, at the same time, this slight difference is sufficient to prevent them from seeing any resemblance whatever between my practice and theirs. When a young man, I found a wooden hut extremely convenient for painting from nature, and when at a distance from other lodging I slept in it. This was unfashionable; and genteel people expressed much wonder at it, being especially surprised that I could be so imprudent as to risk health by sleeping in a little wooden house. Conventionalism made them perfectly ignorant of the fact that they occasionally slept in little wooden houses themselves. A railway carriage is simply a wooden hut on wheels, generally very ill-ventilated, and presenting the alternative of foul air or a strong draught, with vibration that makes sleep difficult to some and to others absolutely impossible. I have passed many nights in those public wooden huts on wheels, but have never slept in them so pleasantly as in my own private one.[20] Genteel people also use wooden dwellings that float on water. A yacht's cabin is nothing but a hut of a peculiar shape with its own special inconveniences. On land a hut will remain steady; at sea it inclines in every direction, and is tossed about like Gulliver's large box. An Italian nobleman who liked travel, but had no taste for dirty Southern inns, had four vans that formed a square at night, with a little courtyard in the middle that was covered with canvas and served as a spacious dining-room. The arrangement was excellent, but he was considered hopelessly eccentric; yet how slight was the difference between his vans and a train of saloon carriages for the railway! He simply had saloon carriages that were adapted for common roads.

It is difficult to see what advantage there can be in genteel ignorance to compensate for its evident disadvantages. Not to be acquainted with unfashionable opinions, not to be able to imagine unfashionable necessities, not to be able to perceive the real likeness between fashionable and unfashionable modes of life on account of some external and superficial difference, is like living in a house with closed shutters. Surely a man, or a woman either, might have as good manners, and be as highly civilized in all respects, with accurate notions of things as with a head full of illusions. To understand the world as it really is, to see the direction in which humanity is travelling, ought to be the purpose of every strong and healthy intellect, even though such knowledge may take it out of gentility altogether.

The effect of genteel ignorance on human intercourse is such a deduction from the interest of it that men of ability often avoid genteel society altogether, and either devote themselves to solitary labors, cheered principally by the companionship of books, or else keep to intimate friends of their own order. In Continental countries the public drinking-places are often frequented by men of culture, not because they want to drink, but because they can talk freely about what they think and what they know without being paralyzed by the determined ignorance of the genteel. In England, no doubt, there is more information; and yet Stuart Mill said that "general society as now carried on in England is so insipid an affair, even to the persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion on matters in which opinions differ being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the art of talking agreeably on trifles, the sole attraction of what is called society to those who are not at the top of the tree is the hope of being aided to climb a little higher. To a person of any but a very common order in thought or feeling, such society, unless he has personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive; and most people in the present day of any really high class of intellect make their contact with it so slight and at such long intervals as to be almost considered as retiring from it altogether." The loss here is distinctly to the genteel persons themselves. They may not feel it, they may be completely insensible of it, but by making society insipid they eliminate from it the very men who might have been its most valuable elements, and who, whether working in solitude or living with a few congenial spirits, are really the salt of the earth.

ESSAY XIX.

PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE.

Patriotic ignorance is maintained by the satisfaction that we feel in ignoring what is favorable to another nation. It is a voluntary closing of the mind against the disagreeable truth that another nation may be on certain points equal to our own, or even, though inferior, in some degree comparable to our own.